Prada Finds New Financing

NEW YORK — In these constantly changing times, the only way companies can thrive and survive is to focus on today and tomorrow. But how? The seventh annual WWD/DNR CEO Summit at the Ritz-Carlton Battery Park addressed some of the challenges and…

Vestimenta is building an expanded U.S. infrastructure, including a new chief executive and showroom, and, potentially, new stores.

Prada said it has reached a preliminary agreement with a pool of Italian banks to provide “long-term financial support” for its development…

TUESDAY: The U.S. Labor Department releases the October Consumer Price Index.
Burberry reports interim results for the first half.
Saks Inc. reports third-quarter earnings.

WEDNESDAY: Phillips-Van Heusen, Talbots and Hot…

• BLUE MOVES: Blue Concepts LLC, a division of Commerce, Calif.-based Innovo Group Inc., the maker of Joe’s Jeans, has signed two denim licensing partnerships with designers: Los Angeles-based Henry Duarte and Rick Owens, creative…
  

Soul artist Maria Jensen makes it big by way of Scandanavia.

Blaine gets moving.

The fall auction season heats up in New York.

Sales at clothing and accessories stores edged up by a seasonally adjusted 0.1 percent in October, continuing to rebound in a still-weak environment.

David Yurman and his jewelry firm seem right at home in their spacious new Zen-inspired corporate headquarters in TriBeCa. Here’s a look.

THE SAKS DENOUEMENT: After weeks of reports, Saks Fifth Avenue is expected to let analysts in today on the news that Fred Wilson, chief executive officer of Donna Karan International, will be taking over the helm of the department store…

BOSTON — Target is sweet on Baby Boomers.

The retailer revealed on its third-quarter conference call last week it will launch two apparel lines aimed at the demographic — Linden Hill for women and Breakwater for men —in…

Tommy Hilfiger Corp. is reevaluating its distribution with Dillard’s Inc., its largest retail customer, and will likely reduce its product there.

Bergdorf Goodman and Loulou de la Falaise are preparing for the arrival of de la Falaise’s collection of jewelry and rtw in February.

PARIS — A key battle in the luxury wars will be waged today in the commercial court here.

LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, which lodged a $115 million (100 million euros) bias suit against investment firm Morgan Stanley one year…

Wholesale prices for domestically produced women’s apparel rose 0.3 percent in October, as retailers eased up on discounting, economists said.

NEW YORK — Linda J. Wachner, the former chief executive of The Warnaco Group, and two other company officials have agreed to pay $12.85 million to settle a three-year-old lawsuit accusing them of defrauding investors.

The agreement…

Fred Leighton now has a retail presence in SoHo thanks to Miuccia Prada, who is showcasing his jewelry in her Broadway flagship.

Backstage at the Victoria’s Secret fashion show, there are no models that are “your average joe.” Here’s why.

SLOW MOTION: Fast-fashion chains in France slumped for three consecutive months for the first time in more than 10 years, said François Forget, director of retail research firm Conseil Nationale de Sucursalistes de l’Habillement. For…

NEW YORK — With the economy showing signs of a pickup, accessories firms of all stripes were breathing a little easier during the November market.

After a challenging year, companies said fall retail sales have been better than expected…

NEW YORK — A sense of renewal infiltrated the November innerwear market.

The reason was the abundance of new product and ideas at a time when retailers are increasingly cutting back on the breadth of their merchandise and focusing on key…

“When you think the good old days were better, then you make your presence secondhand. It is the worst thing you can do as a crime to your life. So I always think the past is OK, but forget about it. What is important is now.”…

There is no secret to Karl Lagerfeld’s success. There is only instinct. As the world’s leading example of the possibilities for reviving a dormant fashion brand, with more than two decades of experience at the house of Chanel, Lagerfeld…

Most people at the annual WWD/DNR CEO Summit focus on immediate, actionable, best-practicey “take-aways,” but that’s not to say there isn’t a little room for some long-term thinking, particularly when cocktails are…

Though Burt Tansky has scaled the heights of retailing, rising to president and chief executive officer of The Neiman Marcus Group, he’s not always perusing the pages of the ultraexclusive Neiman Marcus magalog or touring the luxurious Neiman…

While the idea of a “thinning middle” is one that might appeal to most, in the world of retail, the term has more far-reaching and ultimately negative implications.

Such was the subject Marshal Cohen, the chief industry analyst for…

Economists who focus on America’s rising national debt and trade deficits as reasons for pessimism are missing the mark, because the big economic picture is much more positive.

So said John Lipsky, chief economist at J.P. Morgan Chase &…

Media mogul, Hollywood studio chief, TV network pioneer, E-commerce czar and deal-maker extraordinaire.

These are all words that describe Barry Diller, chairman and chief executive officer of InterActiveCorp., a conglomerate of Internet-based…

While many concede that the Internet boom has gone bust, Jeff Bezos thinks it is still in its nascent stages. And, as the founder and chief executive officer of Amazon.com, one of the most successful companies to emerge in the Internet era, he makes a…

Forget about retail-tainment. Now Cotton Incorporated is trying to make shopping a joyous experience.

J. Berrye Worsham, president and chief executive of the Cary, N.C.-based fiber promotion organization, unveiled a planned Web site devoted…

Hugging pays dividends — just ask Jack Mitchell. The chairman and chief executive officer of Mitchells and Richards, two of the country’s most successful independent specialty retailers, has taken the concept of hugging his customers to…

Fabien Baron, creative director and owner of advertising and design company Baron & Baron Inc., is an advertising guru, image-maker, video director and photographer, creative director of French Vogue and a furniture designer with a collection…

As a student at FIT, Michael Kors launched his Seventh Avenue career with a part-time sales gig at a Fifth Avenue store called Lothar’s. Quickly realizing that it was “more fun selling jeans to Cher than it was draping a pattern,”…

Esprit is out to prove that you can go home again. Founded in San Francisco 35 years ago by then husband-and-wife Doug and Susie Tompkins, the brand sold its trademark rights in the U.S. and the Caribbean to Esprit Holdings Ltd., a Hong Kong-based,…

Renowned for their fickleness, teenagers are a tough demographic to rein in. Yet that’s exactly what The WB and Jed Petrick, its president and chief operating officer, have managed to accomplish since the network was launched eight years ago….

Will the same branding principles that made Van Heusen one of the biggest shirt brands in America work in the world of high fashion?

Bruce Klatsky thinks so.

Earlier this year the chairman and chief executive of Phillips-Van Heusen Corp….

Most fairy tales end with the girl marrying the prince,” said Diane von Furstenberg as she introduced her story during her keynote address. “Mine began that way.”

Few designers could describe their careers within the…

Get ready to get emotile. That is the name futurist Edith Weiner gave for the new economy.

In a far-reaching keynote presentation, Weiner, president of the Weiner, Edrich, Brown Inc. consultancy, said the economic world we see is really four…

The textile industry hasn’t taken seriously enough the need to really, really cut a lot of costs out…Part of the psychological problem is too many of the textile people simply complaining about imports, rather than trying to figure out a…

Vanishing quotas. Price deflation. Market disruptions. Trade tensions. The sourcing industry is buckling itself in for a bumpy ride in 2004 and beyond. “The only certainty we see ahead for the next five years is uncertainty. The industry will…

Angry women in tight pants.” That’s how Phil Kowalczyk, managing director of Kurt Salmon Associates, described the vast majority of America’s female consumers after they enter fashion stores seeking style, fit and comfort and leave…

Having a reasonable acquisition price will get a buyer to first base, but often it’s the chemistry and compatibility among the key players that will determine whether the proposed merger makes it to home plate.

For apparel consolidators,…

Build it and they will come. A picture is worth a thousand words. Seeing is believing. Familiar phrases to be sure, but Simon Graj, a principal and co-founder of brand consultancy Graj+Gustavson, has taken them to heart as the guiding themes in his…

NEW YORK — Factory 2-U Stores managed to narrow its third-quarter loss despite wildfires, labor strikes, a purge of field management and what its chief executive termed other “acts of God and men.”

Concurrent with its earnings…

NEW YORK — The Buckle Inc. posted increases in net and same-store sales as well as profits in the third quarter.

The Kearney, Neb.-based retailer said that income rose 8.2 percent for the three months ended Nov. 1 to $12.2 million, or 56…

Chapter 11 Isn’t Cheap

Store Chore ’04: Building Sales Again
Retail Stocks: Will the Boom Go Bust?
Fore-Tales: Prediction Is a Precarious Art

Bankruptcies exact a very high toll on employees and shareholders alike, but advisors receive lessons in largesse.

A run-up in retail shares and an economic rebound needn’t be mutually exclusive.

Tired of cutting costs and wielding axes, retail executives are looking to rejuvenate revenues and build top-line results as a recovery looms ahead.

THE ESTEE LAUDER COS. began its new fiscal year much as it ended the last one — with healthy bottom- and top-line gains. For the first quarter ended Sept. 30, the New York-based beauty giant reported a 4.9 percent gain in net income to $77…

GUCCI GROUP didn’t hold onto the services of chief executive Domenico De Sole and creative director Tom Ford, but the luxury house, majority-owned by Pinault-Printemps-Redoute, painted a bright picture of second-half prospects just before…

Even The Best Of Consumer Intention Surveys Can’t Foretell The Future.