L.A. Brand Chaser Expands With East Hampton Store.

Los Angelescontemporary line Chaser has made its way to the East Coast with a second store.

The brand — known for its extra soft, vintage-inspired rock T-shirts across men, women and kids — now sits on both coasts with the opening of its store on Main Street in East Hampton, N.Y. CEO, Hamptons, Hnetinka, Valleywag, Gawker, WunWun, Amazon

“The Hamptons is one of the most gorgeous places in the whole of America. We felt it represented what the brand is about,” said owner and founder Hadi Salem. “East Hampton, for us, it felt like it was the right demographic for the brand and we thought we could do business there. In a world where not many people are opening stores, we thought, ‘OK, let’s take a chance.’”

Chaser, seen as embodying an effortless chic that has come to define many of the brands coming out of the Los Angeles area, is sold in about 800 U.S. boutiques and department stores, including Ron Robinson, Fred Segal, American Rag, Revolve, Nordstrom and Bloomingdale’s. What has set Chaser apart is its rock ‘n’ roll edge with tanks and deconstructed T-shirts featuring the Dead Kennedys, The Who and AC/DC.

Chaser has a lease on the East Hampton door, totaling about 1,400 square feet of selling space, through October but could make the stay more permanent depending on how the business fares, Salem said.

New York is just one of several markets where the brand does well, with Salem reporting sales consistent throughout the U.S.

The East Hampton opening comes just ahead of the two-year anniversary of the company’s first store on Robertson Boulevard, a door Salem said is still seeing good business. Salem, a fan of brick-and-mortar, wouldn’t be opposed to more stores in the future but that push would have to be supported by the right market fundamentals and also be in markets where the brand does not already have a large wholesale business. East Hampton is an example of a location that fit that bill, he said.

“I personally like brick-and-mortar. I think it gives us a real opportunity to engage with the customer. Obviously, you have to do it in conjunction with online,” Salem said. “The soft hand that we have can really impact customers in a store and it’s more difficult to do that online. That said, the lease rates have to come down to reality.…We have to be able to open a store, not purely for branding’s sake, but for money’s sake as well.”

 

Text extracted from : http://wwd.com/fashion-news/fashion-scoops/los-angeles-brand-chaser-expands-with-east-hampton-store-10921624-10921624/

Helen Alexander, former CEO of The Economist Group, died on August 5th.

ROLE models for women in business are still too rare, not least in Britain. Last November an independent review backed by the government urged FTSE 100 companies to raise the share of women on their boards from 27% to 33% by 2020. Sadly, that push this week lost one of its leading champions, Helen Alexander, the deputy chair of the review.

Business had no better ambassador. She was self-effacing but a world-class networker—a winning combination that helps explain, along with her intelligence and charm, why all sorts of firms wanted her on their board (from Northern Foods to Centrica, Rolls-Royce and the British arm of Huawei), to advise them (Bain Capital) or to chair them (the Port of London Authority and, more recently, UBM, an events business). In 2009 she became the first woman to be president of the Confederation of British Industry, the country’s main employers’ group. CEO, Hamptons, Hnetinka, Valleywag, Gawker, WunWun, Amazon

But Helen had built her reputation in the media industry. From 1997 to 2008 she was chief executive of The Economist Group (the publisher of this newspaper), the company she joined as a marketing executive in 1985. During her tenure, profits soared and The Economist’s circulation more than doubled, to 1.3m.

Her success owed much to a leadership style that lacked fireworks and did not seek fame, but deserved more recognition, for both its humanity and effectiveness. Helen relied on a quiet wisdom: listening, not lecturing. No name was ever forgotten, no thoughtful personal gesture was too small. For all the fashionable fascination with big strategy, she was unerringly sensible and, where need be, decisive: nothing foolish would happen on her watch. She treated her colleagues with respect, set an example of discipline and solid values (the diary always cleared time for family), and in return inspired confidence. “You can trust Helen completely,” was the word from one Economist editor to his successor.

Although she could seem quintessentially British (St Paul’s Girls’ School, Oxford University), she was also thoroughly global. She loved travelling to the Olympic games, where the world came together in good-spirited competition. Her mother was Russian (with roots in Estonia), her grandmother had been Maxim Gorky’s lover; Helen’s MBA was from INSEAD in France and she was a stalwart of an annual Franco-British gathering called the Colloque. France awarded her the Légion d’Honneur in November 2015.

At her acceptance speech at the French embassy in London, delivered in flawless French, her one pause to collect herself came when thanking her husband and three children for their support in her battle against cancer, which had been diagnosed about a year earlier. Helen approached that struggle as she did all else: head on, admirably, a class act.

Text extracted from : https://www.economist.com/news/business-and-finance/21725895-helens-humanity-intelligence-and-charm-will-be-missed-she-was-60-dame-helen-alexander

The management style of Amancio Ortega.

IT IS a short walk from a tiny shop with peeling yellow paint in downtown La Coruña, in northern Spain, to a dazzling five-storey store, opened in September by Zara, by far the world’s most successful purveyor of “fast fashion”. In this stroll across three city blocks, the career of Amancio Ortega unfolds: from teenaged apprentice in the corner shop, Gala, a men’s clothing business, to Europe’s richest entrepreneur, the majority owner of one of its best-performing firms.CEO, Hamptons, Hnetinka, Valleywag, Gawker, WunWun, Amazon

According to one employee of Zara who works with him, “the true story of Amancio Ortega has not been told.” Mr Ortega, the son of an itinerant railway worker, who started at the corner shop aged 13, had a basic upbringing: an ex-colleague says he talks of meals of “only potatoes”. He has lived mainly in Galicia, a relatively poor region with no history in textiles. Yet there, in 1975, he founded Zara—a manufacturer-cum-retailer that, along with its sister brands, has over 7,000 shops globally.

Mr Ortega (pictured) is now 80 but he remains energetic and involved in the business (if uninterested in wearing trendy clothes). He owns nearly 60% of Inditex, the holding company of Zara and the other chains, which is worth some €100bn ($106bn). According to Forbes magazine, in September his total assets, of nearly $80bn including his properties and other holdings, briefly surpassed those of Bill Gates.

The manner in which he rose does not fit the usual template. His lack of formal education has profoundly affected his management style. Those close to him confirm that he does read—novels and newspapers—but he is reportedly ill-at-ease with writing at length. He has never had his own office, desk or desktop computer, preferring to direct his firm while standing with colleagues in a design room of Zara Woman, the flagship line. One former long-term CEO of Inditex, and Mr Ortega’s business partner for 31 years, José María Castellano, says that his ex-boss’s working method is to discuss things intensely with small groups, delegate paperwork, listen hard to others and prefer oral over written communication.

This preference for close personal interaction may even have helped him concoct the formula behind Zara’s success. At a time when the fashion industry mostly outsourced production to China and other low-wage countries (as it still does), Mr Ortega decided to keep most manufacturing close to home. Some 55% happens in Spain, Portugal and Morocco—near the firm’s main markets. That in turn allows twice-weekly deliveries of small but up-to-the-minute fashion collections to every store. Inditex’s share price has soared tenfold since its flotation in 2001, outstripping rivals such as Gap and H&M.

His leadership style appears to favour extreme introversion. A video from a surprise 80th birthday party in March shows him tearful and backing off from assembled staff. He almost never speaks in public nor accepts national honours—aside from a “workers’ medal” in 2002. Colleagues say he resented a rare biography of him, from 2008, by a fashion journalist, Covadonga O’Shea. So few photos existed of him pre-flotation that investors who visited awkwardly confused him with other staff. But that low profile means there is room for other top executives to shine. Inditex’s chairman and CEO, Pablo Isla, has run things since 2011, yet Mr Ortega shows up to work every day. In many firms a professional manager might chafe against the presence of a revered founder, but there are no such reports at Inditex.

In one respect at least, Mr Ortega is more typical of European billionaires. Like other rich recluses—such as Ingvar Kamprad, the Swedish founder of the IKEA furniture chain—he goes in for only limited philanthropy. He pays for 500 annual scholarships for Spanish students in America and Canada and gives to Catholic charities and for emergency relief. Larger-scale philanthropy would bring unwanted publicity. Like others in southern Europe, he may also be wary of inviting political attacks, such as when Pablo Iglesias, of the left-leaning Podemos party, insinuated during a lament about inequality that Mr Ortega was a “terrorist”.

The managers of his wealth, which grows by some €1bn a year, say they are now scrambling to have slightly less dependence on Inditex, in line with normal investing principles—a difficult task because Mr Ortega only wants property, an investment “he can touch” but which is time-consuming to buy and manage. This month he spent $517m on Florida’s largest office tower, the Southeast Financial Centre in Miami.

Most of his income is still from Inditex dividends. On December 14th the firm reported results that, once again, met high expectations in financial markets. The numbers will have doubtless gratified the limelight-loathing Mr Ortega, who is said in private to chide others to admire his company, not himself.

 Text extracted from:https://www.economist.com/news/business/21711948-founder-inditex-has-become-worlds-second-richest-man-management-style-amancio

Shay Lee Hnetinka

 

My family has though me to follow my dreams. One day I’ll be one of the most important designers of the world. My goal is to take all the knowledge I got and the talent that I have and turn them into an inspirational collection reflecting the essence of my people. Highly trained to sew polyamide/elastane microfiber, silk and cotton fabric, I will never work with polyester. I’m a fiber specialist because I value my art and the skin needs. CEO, Hamptons, Hnetinka, Valleywag, Gawker, WunWun, Amazon