BLOOMBERG: Meet the Man Who Makes the Perfect Dress Shirt

BLOOMBERG | DRAKE BENNETT

One of the first things fashion designer Tomas Maier produced when he started his own label 19 years ago was a bikini.

It was a natural choice. The line focused on “time off”—something very much on Maier’s mind after 20 years with the punishing travel schedule of an in-demand freelance designer. At the time, he was in the process of moving to Miami, and the inherent challenges of the garment appealed to him: A swimsuit has to function both wet and dry, and it has to flatter with a bare minimum of material.

And for the wearer, swimsuits can be stressful. “For people to get undressed is not easy,” Maier says. Stripping down to a bathing suit is, as he puts it, “an uncomfortable time.” The job of its designer is to reassure.

Today, the German-born Maier is one of the most important designers in luxury fashion—but not because of his bikinis. In 2001 he was hired as creative director of Bottega Veneta, an Italian fashion house best known for leather goods made with an artisanal weaving process called intrecciato. The company had fallen into obscurity and debt when Tom Ford, then creative director of its owner, the Gucci Group, asked Maier to run it. Within a few months, Maier introduced the Cabat, a simple, logo-less intrecciato tote. It set off a feeding frenzy among high-end handbag enthusiasts that continues today. In 2012, Bottega passed $1 billion in sales; the Gucci Group is now called Kering, and its brands include Yves Saint Laurent, Balenciaga, Stella McCartney, and Alexander McQueen. Bottega is the second-largest of them, after Gucci itself.

All along, Maier has continued to run his eponymous label, like a chef splitting his time between a grand palace of gastronomy and a neighborhood bistro (albeit one that happens to be in a very nice neighborhood). Over the years, Tomas Maier—or TM, as it’s informally known inside the company—has expanded from a single store in Miami to locations in Palm Beach, Fla., the Hamptons, and New York City. It sells at Bergdorf Goodman and Barneys and online through Net-a-Porter and Mr Porter. In November 2013, Kering announced a joint venture with the label, investing an undisclosed amount, and a year later, the brand got a new CEO in Giuseppe Giovannetti, formerly an executive with Bottega Veneta. Last year, Maier opened a second New York store and one in Bal Harbour, Fla., and in February he rolled out his first line of sunglasses.

Unlike Bottega, with its 3,400 employees and its ethos of Venetian craftsmanship, Tomas Maier was created from scratch. Maier and his longtime companion, Andrew Preston, wanted to sell the kinds of clothes Maier himself wears: luxurious but functional, cool and comfortable. The brand reflects his temperament, his values, and his remarkably productive love-hate relationship with fashion. “It’s in many ways how the sophisticated fashion consumer dresses,” says Robert Burke, a luxury retail consultant and the former fashion director at Bergdorf Goodman. “There’s a casualness to it. It’s not complicated, and it’s extremely versatile.”

Just after Christmas, I went shirt shopping at the Tomas Maier store on Madison Avenue in Manhattan. I have issues with every button-down I own. Either the tail is too short or the sleeves too long; the chest is too tight, the collar too big. I have pants and shoes I like, and I’m pretty happy with my watch. But a shirt that stays tucked in, that doesn’t need to be pressed, that looks good with or without a sportcoat or over a T-shirt? I’ve been looking for that for a while. If I lived in L.A., I might obsess over cars; if I lived in ancient Egypt, I might have fixated on tomb design. But I live in New York, so I think a lot about things like shirts.

So does Maier, of course. Even among fashion designers, he’s famously meticulous. Walking through his Palm Beach store, he takes a cashmere sweater off the rack and turns it inside out to show me how it was knitted without seams down the arms, using a special machine so nothing will interrupt the wearer’s feeling of arm-encircling softness.

The clothes are expensive—men’s cashmere sweaters are $875, cotton shirts $295, chinos $485—yet Maier says he’s aiming for “the lower spectrum of the design world.” The term industry analysts use is “accessible luxury.” The prices, Maier says, reflect that his clothing is made not in the Third World but in Italy, in the sort of workshops that have special seam-obviating knitting machines. The prices would be even higher if he didn’t eschew runway shows and ad campaigns, and they are at least within the same realm as mass-market brands. You can, after all, spend $150 on a shirt at J.Crew. Maier says you should just wear your Tomas Maier shirt twice as often.

Maier himself does something like this, though not for financial reasons. He wants to limit how much he thinks about the clothes he wears, something that at first sounds odd coming from someone who makes clothes for a living. But Maier doesn’t want to worry about fashion when he doesn’t have to. “I would rather sit and read the paper for 10 minutes longer than figure out some elaborate outfit in my closet,” he says. He buys multiples of the same few garments: dark jeans or chinos; white or light blue shirts; navy, dark gray, or black sweaters. “And that’s it.” He pauses. “Occasionally there’s an army green.”

The day we meet in his design studio in Delray Beach, Fla., is one of those occasions. He’s wearing an army green fatigue jacket over a charcoal tank top and dark, slightly faded chinos—all from his own line—and black Nike running shoes. Delray Beach is an unlikely place to find Maier. Twenty miles south of Palm Beach, it’s full of wealthy retirees, but it’s also home to dozens of halfway houses, making it the rehab capital of the U.S.

Maier ended up here somewhat by accident. At 19 he’d fled Pforzheim, the small southwestern German city where he grew up, to study fashion in Paris at the Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture. He worked for fashion houses such as Hermès, Sonia Rykiel, Guy Laroche, and Revillon, but it was exhausting. “I would fly to Italy on Sunday night, work in Italy Monday and Tuesday, come back, work in Paris at one place on Wednesdays, work at another place in Paris on Thursday, work at another place in Paris on Fridays,” he says. The following Monday it would be off to central France to work in a client’s factory. “At some point I said, ‘I have to change my life,’ ” he recalls. “And that’s when I started to think about doing my own thing, very small.”

Maier had already been talking with Preston—an American who had worked in Paris for the U.S. Department of State—about starting a fashion line. With Preston handling the business side, they showed their first collection in Paris and Milan in 1998. The Venezuelan entrepreneur Carmen Busquets, a founding investor in Net-a-Porter, met Maier and Preston at the apartment that doubled as their showroom in Paris. She fell in love with the bathing suits and the cashmere wraps Maier was making to go with them. “I spend a lot of time in the Caribbean, I love to be in nature and I live in Verbier,” she said via e-mail. “If I go for a 7 a.m. or 6 p.m. swim, you don’t want a dress; you want a towel and cashmere! Nobody mixes luxury and lifestyle like Tomas.”

In 1999, Maier and Preston moved full-time to Florida. Miami had always fascinated the designer—the architecture and chaos and seediness. “It was a danger zone,” he says. “I liked the geography of it, and I liked the mix of different people that had to get along. I found it very cosmopolitan in a way, like the future.” Miami’s actual future was mostly garish hotel towers and condo developments, however. When it arrived, Maier retreated to Palm Beach County, which was far enough away from Miami for his sensibilities but close enough that he could still get quickly to an international airport.

He lives a hermetic life when he’s in Florida. He’s either in the Delray Beach studio or at the home he and Preston own nearby—he also has houses in Montauk, N.Y., and on an island off the coast of Maine. Maier bought the studio, originally an industrial bakery, from the Cuban artist Enrique Martínez Celaya, and the concrete floor is still gridded with paint. In the kitchen there’s a Julian Opie print of a woman stripping off her clothes, her face a blank circle. “I love to retreat to this space, because there’s no distraction,” Maier says of the studio, where he will bring creative teams from both Bottega and Tomas Maier. “They love to come here, because once we’re in here, the door is closed and we’re in this big space and we just work. We order lunch in, a salad or whatever. It’s very focused,” he says.

Maier is dismissive of designers who rely on recognizable flourishes. “I never do collections that have themes. I hate that,” he says. “ ‘Oh, it’s a movie,’ you know. ‘It’s inspired by a trip to Bhutan.’ Some crap like that.” Against one wall in his studio are two giant “mood boards,” the starting point for every collection. In mid-December they’re pinned full of photos: a 1920s skier, a Scottish lord in his tartan, a gamin in penny loafers, an old burgundy-plaid car interior, a young Asian man with a close-shaved scalp and a baggy sweater, an art-cluttered room with a blazing hearth.

The boards, Maier believes, allow him and his team to pick out the currents in his clients’ ever-shifting taste. “It’s mostly very abstract,” he says. Do people want rounded shapes or angular ones? Are they thinking about nature or the urban jungle? How adventurous are they feeling? “Would people rather stay home? Or is it more like they want to explore, because they haven’t been traveling for too long?” he asks.

Maier is, at heart, a preservationist. He isn’t afraid to revisit clothes from previous collections and build off them. “To his credit, he is unaffected, he is the same Tomas I met years ago,” writes Busquets. “We often meet up in Miami, Paris, Milan, New York, and Capri. I tell him, ‘Tomas you need to do Tomas Maier hotels, they would be amazing!’ ”

Maier’s Madison Avenue store occupies the bottom two floors of a 19th century town house with a 1920s art deco facade. The floor is pale oak, and light floods in through a quartet of two-story-tall front windows. Between the racks, in bronze vitrines and on dark wood shelves Maier designed, are books on the architect Louis Kahn, limited-edition Diptyque candles meant to evoke the scents of Montauk and Maine, and earrings from the Milanese jeweler Osanna Visconti di Modrone. Near the door are two Stone Age-style fertility statues, each the size of a child, that French furniture designer Christian Astuguevieille made from coiled rope. There isn’t actually much clothing on display.

Creativity for Maier is a matter of time management. He divides his schedule into weeklong chunks—a week for an upcoming Tomas Maier men’s show, a week for an upcoming women’s show, a week for the furniture line or fragrance he’s developing for Bottega. He does this both to allow time to immerse himself in a project and to give the employees working on it his undivided attention.

For Maier, luxury, too, is a matter of time. He hoards spare hours. “I have to be very organized, to know ahead that, ‘OK, Saturday, I can go to a museum,’ ” he says. The son of an architect, he plans trips around buildings he wants to see. He’s been trying to get to New Haven to see the ice rink and art galleries Eero Saarinen and Kahn built at Yale. He hired the Japanese architect Toshiko Mori, whose spare style matches his own, to build his house in Maine.

In photographs, Maier can look stern, but in person he comes across instead as shy. His clothes are for people who, like him, would prefer not to be the center of attention. “If you don’t feel comfortable around yourself, you don’t come over right, either,” he says. “I like to give men—and women—just that little extra something, that thoughtfulness. The proportions are right, the coloring. It’s the right silhouette but without looking like they want to make a statement through their clothes. You make a statement through who you are and what you’ve got in your brain, right? That’s how you make a statement.”

There’s a character in an Alice Munro short story who, feeling her age, decides to freshen up her look. But she warns herself, “You have to watch out, even in these garish times; you have to watch for the point at which the splendor collapses into absurdity.”

That line sticks with me in the Madison Avenue Tomas Maier store—the unspoken contract he makes with his clients is that they will never look like they are trying too hard. Although his current collection does include a few pieces—a zip-front green-and-purple velvet sweatshirt, for example—that could make a pretty loud statement, for the most part the clothes exude a muted richness. To keep the racks uncrowded, the shirts are kept in wide oak drawers. Customers are encouraged to pull them out on their own, imagining they’re at home deciding which of their many artfully rumpled shirts to wear. I try on a blue oxford. The back is darted so it doesn’t blouse. It doesn’t cling. It is, as promised, the right silhouette. The only flourish is the Tomas Maier logo, a salmon-colored palm tree near the front hem. When I tuck the shirt in, it disappears.

BUSINESS OF FASHION: Will subscription services work for fashion?

“It’s a very different mindset to say I will try or sample skincare, versus I will wear a piece of clothing or fashion that’s been selected for me,” adds retail consultant Robert Burke.

BUSINESS OF FASHION | HELENA PIKE

LONDON, United Kingdom — Monthly subscription isn’t exactly a new concept.  Wine-of-the-month-club memberships have been around for decades, and who can forget the Columbia House mail order CD club?

But today, subscription services have become an integral part of the way modern consumers shop, with companies such as Netflix and Spotify leading the charge. Consumers “are very comfortable with buying online, with buying unknown commodities, with buying products and then letting someone else select it for you,” says Marshall Cohen, chief industry analyst at the NPD Group, who predicts that subscriptions will become an additional retail channel, alongside e-commerce and bricks-and-mortar.

Subscription box companies charge customers a recurring fee to receive boxes of products — from fresh fruit and vegetables, to dog treats, to disposable razor blades — on a regular basis. Since 2012, the number of companies registered through My Subscription Addiction, an online directory for the market, has sky-rocketed from just 200 to over 2,000. In 2014, the subscription commerce industry generated $5 billion in revenue, according to Cratejoy, an online platform that helps users build their own subscription businesses.

Subscription box businesses enjoy a few advantages over other retail models. Subscription businesses operate a recurring revenue model, which requires consumers to pay a regular fee — once a customer commits, they are a guaranteed source of income for at least a month, and usually longer. Because of this, the company can predict its revenue stream, allowing management to plan and invest accordingly.

As a result, subscription services can invest heavily in growth and are often quick to gain momentum. Birchbox, a beauty subscription business that sends customers a selection of makeup samples every month, launched in September 2010 and acquired 1,200 subscribers in the fourth quarter of that year. Today, Birchbox has over a million subscribers, according to the company.

So it’s no surprise that dozens of fashion companies have also tried their hand at the subscription game. In the last six months alone, the subscription-based fashion and jewellery rental services Le Tote and RocksBox have raised $15 million and $8.7 million, respectively. Start-ups in the space include Golden Tote (which sends customers a monthly selection of clothing, costing upwards of $49), Elizabeth & Clarke (quarterly deliveries of white shirts, costing $60), Adore Me (a monthly lingerie selection for $39.95) and Avenue A, Adidas’ subscription service for women’s sportswear, which launched last month and costs $150 a quarter.

But for each of these, there are several more subscription start-ups that have faded into oblivion. Clothing companies CakeStyle, Wardrobe Wake Up and Swag of the Month, activewear brand Ellie and underwear suppliers Ditsies and the Knicker Issue are just a few of the fashion subscription services to have closed in the last few years. BeachMint, the parent company of six fashion subscription brands, raised over $70 million in funding but was quietly shuttered after being acquired by Condé Nast’s now-defunct Lucky Group in 2014.

Indeed, unlike beauty or accessories subscription boxes — or subscription streaming services like Netflix and Spotify — fashion companies trying to tap this business model face a unique set of challenges, related to sizing, personal taste and product accumulation.

Too much stuff

Thus far, the most successful subscription companies don’t require the customer to handle a physical product. In 2014, music-streaming service Spotify’s annual revenues reached €1.08 billion (about $1.21 billion), up 45 percent on the year before. Netflix has grown dramatically since adding digital services to its DVD rental programme. Today, the company (which reported $6.78 billion in sales in 2015) has over 75 million users, compared to just 7.5 million in 2007, the year it launched online streaming.

Streaming services allow users to listen and watch whatever they want, whenever they want, without touching a single product. Fashion services, on the other hand, can easily fall into the trap of overloading their customers with too much stuff — there are only so many new t-shirts or ties a customer can receive before fatigue kicks in. “After the fourth or fifth or six month… they usually just check out,” says Robin Lewis, chief executive officer of the Robin Report, a retail strategy publication. “They don’t want another box of clothes every month.” 

To combat the “accumulation trap,” some fashion subscription start-ups offer monthly memberships that allow the customer to borrow clothing instead of purchasing it outright. This week, Rent the Runway, which previously focussed on one-off rentals of high-end fashion products, launched a new “Unlimited” service, which allows customers to borrow as many pieces as they want each month through a rolling subscription.

At Gwynnie Bee, a subscription-based rental service for plus-size clothing, subscribers borrow an average of eight to nine pieces per cycle and pay upwards of $49 a month. The company adds new styles to its website every other day. “You have to constantly bring the customer newness and freshness and provide them with things that they feel they need to try,” says Christine Hunsicker, chief executive officer of Gwynnie Bee. Since launching in 2012, the company has delivered more than three million boxes across the US, becoming the largest buyer of plus-sized clothing in the country. The company declined to disclose revenues but says sales grew, on average, 15 percent per month for the last 12 months.

This is less of a problem in the beauty subscription market, where companies send customers boxes of samples, which are disposable, cheap and allow customers to try new products before deciding to buy the ones they want. As well as its subscription business, Birchbox operates an e-commerce store, which accounts for 35 percent of the company’s revenue and is the fastest-growing part of the business. “[It’s] really an industry about discovery,” says Birchbox founder and chief executive officer Katia Beauchamp. “The subscription helps you discover and then be able to purchase in a really easy, efficient and delightful way.”

Sizing and personal style

While most subscription boxes across categories such as beauty or food are non-refundable, for fashion companies, sizing issues present an additional hurdle: refunds. “If you’re sending clothes, then you have to allow some way for consumers to exchange, if not return, those items,” explains Liz Cory, founder of My Subscription Addiction.

“You have a high chance of getting things wrong — that the customer won’t like it, that it won’t be the right size, that the colour is not exactly what they want,” says Hana Ben-Shabat, a partner in the retail practice of management consultancy firm A.T. Kearney. This can dramatically impact the profitability of the business, especially if it offers free shipping and returns, she adds.

Indeed, another issue is personal taste. “Clothing is super personal,” says Hunsicker. “Everybody has their specific taste and preferences — much more so than for a make up or beauty service.”

“It’s a very different mindset to say I will try or sample skincare, versus I will wear a piece of clothing or fashion that’s been selected for me,” adds retail consultant Robert Burke.

One way around this is to let customers pick out the items they receive through their subscription. For $39.95, subscribers to JustFab, the fashion retailer that also owns the sportswear and shoe subscription services Fabletics and ShoeDazzle, receive a credit each month to spend on the site. To opt out of the charge, subscribers have to come back to the site at the start of the month. “Our customers are obligated to come back once a month,” says Adam Goldenberg, co-founder and chief executive of the company. On average, customers only make three to four purchases a year, but visit the site two-and-a-half times a month. “We don’t have to pay to reacquire customers through advertising… it’s allowed us to sell amazing product at a much better price than you can find with the competition,” he explains.

Other start-ups are attempting to personalise their subscription boxes, based on information they have about their consumers. Personal shopping service StitchFix lets customers schedule how often they want to receive its boxes of clothing, the contents of which are selected through a combination of human stylists and algorithms. “Certainly we have the biggest data science teams in retail, with over 50 data scientists… to provide really, really accurate recommendations,” says Katrina Lake, founder and chief executive of StitchFix. An algorithm suggests styles for an individual customer, which stylists can make a selection from, based on data and conversations they have had with the customer. “The algorithm is able to say probabilistically what is most like to be kept,” she explains. The method seems to be working: over 80 percent of users return for a second “fix” within three months. The company declined to disclose revenues.

But investing in building complex algorithms, large data science divisions and teams of personal stylists is a costly investment for a young business. It’s also an investment that beauty and jewellery subscription services don’t have to make: these businesses can send subscribers a selection of similar products, allowing them to buy the contents of their boxes in bulk and benefit from economies of scale — a saving that translates into larger profit margins for the company and better value for the customer.

“We’re in the midst of a massive shift in consumer demand… the traditional retail model is fading away. In its place, the companies that are thriving provide convenience, personalisation and the ability to try new things without commitment or large risk, ” says Brett Northatt, who founded subscription-based fashion rental service Le Tote in 2012. In the last two years, the company has experienced a compound annual growth rate of 450 percent.

However, many remain sceptical about the scalability of subscription services in fashion. The subscription box model works with “products that are consumable, that [customers] use on a daily or weekly basis,” says Robin Lewis. “When it comes to fashion… there just aren’t enough people that want to keep getting this stuff shoved at them every month that would allow the business to make a profit.”

WALL STREET JOURNAL: For Tory Burch, the Store Is Her Clubhouse

WALL STREET JOURNAL | ELIZABETH HOLMES

In the age of e-commerce, is an expensive, flashy store really necessary?

Tory Burch made the case for yes on a tour of the designer’s new Tory Sport store in New York City. It is the first permanent retail outpost for a fledgling brand in the world of athleisure, the fast-growing, still-confusing mode of dressing that has overtaken the apparel industry.

At Tory Sport, tennis dresses and sports bras hang alongside wide-leg sweatpants and knit midi skirts. Ms. Burch stretched the knee of a pair of yoga leggings to show the thickness of the fabric. She turned a running jacket inside out to reveal its seamless construction. She stroked the sleeve of a cashmere sweater with “Coolmax” fibers, designed to wick moisture and be cool to the touch.

It was the kind of hands-on experience that even the sleekest website can’t reproduce. “People are still tactile. They want to feel the product,” says Ms. Burch, the designer, chairman and co-CEO at Tory Burch LLC.

Among the more popular items at the Tory Sport store are a $395 tennis tote, right; a tennis sweater, left, with Coolmax fibers costs $325 and a laser-cut tennis skirt costs $395. 

Tory Sport has been available online and at a single small store (the brand calls it a “pop up” location) since last fall. The big new store, which opened March 18 on Fifth Avenue, is a significant investment for the brand and a potential launching pad for stores to come.

Stores are changing, Ms. Burch says. Their purpose is to engage customers and to build a community. They also can be a place where the online and offline worlds merge. A big cube in the middle of the Tory Sport store has an interactive tabletop where customers can view projected images from the Tory Sport lookbook.

Does anyone need a $350 navy ponte blazer with a white, hooded, zipped-in nylon dickey? Probably no. But when you are in the store, can you imagine throwing it over a sleeveless white piqué tunic dress ($225) after a tennis match? Or pairing it with cropped flared pants ($185) for a business lunch? Somehow, yes.

With just one or two sizes of most styles on display, the Tory Sport store isn’t meant to be shopped the way mass-market flagship stores are. Those behemoths, chock full of product, have a stack-’em-high-and-watch-’em-fly approach. (A Tory Sport spokeswoman says the store carries the full size range.)

Swimwear at Tory Sport is designed for performance, with built-in sun protection, while the swimwear sold in the Tory Burch line is fashion first. 

Instead, a designer store is a place to immerse and entertain shoppers in the fictitious, tightly controlled world the brand creates. It’s a chance to show and explain all that a brand stands for—and to seduce a shopper into buying something.

Such stores are an effective form of advertising. They are a good way to introduce customers to a new fashion concept, says Robert Burke, a luxury retail consultant. He points to a spate of new store openings in New York City, including the new uptown store for bohemian label Isabel Marant, and Sonia Rykiel’s library-like boutique. Menswear label Todd Snyder is opening its first U.S. store this fall in New York, with a tailor shop and a whiskey bar.

“The major statement and purpose is to make the announcement: ‘This is who I am, this is my brand,’” says Arnold Aronson, managing director, retail strategies, at Kurt Salmon and former chief executive of Saks Fifth Avenue.

Many designers see their own stores as a direct line to the consumer, more controlled (if also more costly) than selling through crowded department stores. It isn’t an either-or situation, Mr. Aronson notes. Tory Sport also began selling at select Barneys New York stores this week.

Ms. Burch’s persona and reputation will draw shoppers in; in return, she will get direct feedback from them. “It’s an opportunity for [Ms. Burch] to get a pure unadulterated, unvarnished reaction to what she’s doing,” Mr. Aronson says.

Both Ms. Burch and Roger Farah, Ms. Burch’s co-chief executive, insist the Tory Sport store remains very much about sales, though. “We’ve built the store to make money,” Mr. Farah says.

“We definitely want it to be profitable but we also want the experience to be one that people really like and get to know,” Ms. Burch says.

U.S. sales of sports-inspired, performance and outdoor apparel reached $67.4 billion last year, according to market research firm Euromonitor, which projects sales will top $82 billion by 2020.

Tory Sport also comprises golf wear, displayed near Jean Royére chairs that can be moved out to clear space for a yoga class. 

No wonder Tory Burch, like so many brands, is betting big on athleisure. (Ms. Burch and her team don’t use the term, instead calling the in-between apparel “Coming and Going.”) Late last year, Tory Burch laid off about 100 employees, or roughly 3% of its workforce. Mr. Farah says the company shifted resources to its digital team and to Tory Sport. “It’s a very high priority,” he says of the new brand.

Tory Sport appeals to the Tory Burch customer and also to a younger shopper, Ms. Burch says. Price points range from $25 for a knit wristband set to $495 for a laser-cut tennis dress--slightly lower than the Tory Burch line. Around 40% of Tory Sport shoppers online are crossing over from the Tory Burch brand; the remaining 60% are new customers, Mr. Farah says.

With 3,900 square feet of selling space, the Tory Sport store is situated in the Flatiron neighborhood, the hub of athleisure retailing in New York City, near big stores from Lululemon, Nike and Athleta. The shiny-orange lacquer that is a hallmark of the Tory Burch brand has been recast as bright white for Tory Sport.

But that’s where the similarities end. The Tory Sport store evokes a kind of lodge where Scandinavian ski meets ’70s surf, Ms. Burch says. The original Tory Burch stores, in contrast, were inspired by the designer’s own Upper East Side home.

Blue lines along the floor in the front of the store are meant to evoke lap lanes in a swimming pool. Leather railings mimic the handle of a tennis racket. Nickel-plated trim in the entryway to the store’s rear section is etched with a diamond pattern, much like a net. “Every sport has nets,” Renée Viola, vice president of global store design.

Silver beams suspended from the ceiling are mobile displays for hanging clothes. Four Jean Royére chairs and wooden ottomans can be moved out to clear space for a yoga class.

Ms. Burch’s decade in retailing shows: Everything in the new Tory Sport store is mobile and entirely interchangeable—unlike the permanent, heavy fixtures of her first stores. “Our visual team is over the moon. They can move anything they want,” Ms. Burch says.

BUSINESS OF FASHION: Beyond Basics: How Joseph’s Private Label Became Its Secret Weapon

LONDON, United Kingdom — When smart Londoners of a certain age think of Joseph, the British retailer’s iconic founder Joseph Ettedgui and his inimitable eye come to mind. From humble beginnings — the Moroccan-born Anglophile started his fashion empire in the 1960s, selling sweaters by the then-little-known Japanese designer Kenzo Takada out of the hair salon he ran with his brother on London’s King’s Road — Ettedgui had, by the time of his death in 2010, built an influential network of Joseph stores spanning London, Paris and New York.

His shops, with their slick, monochromatic palettes and chrome and glass architecture (first designed by Norman Foster), are seen as predecessors to the modern concept store, laying the foundations for Colette in Paris and Milan’s 10 Corso Como. He introduced Chelsea to the likes of Azzedine Alaïa and Helmut Lang and was the first British retailer to stock Prada.

But Ettedgui was a designer in his own right, launching Joseph’s own-brand label in 1972 to provide women with beautifully-made basics alongside his imported designer wares. After all, “An entire wardrobe can’t be made up only of designer clothes,” he explained. Today, the accessibly-priced Joseph brand is the beating heart of the business, accounting for 87 percent of the company’s worldwide sales in 2015.

Indeed, many a London-based fashion editor or luxury industry professional swears by Joseph garments.  “I grew up in London and all the girls at school lusted after a Joseph jumper,” says Lara Mingay of luxury PR firm LM Communications. “It always makes you feel well-dressed. It’s easy to move in, easy to travel in. It’s never loud and always looks chic. It’s like an old friend because it’s always been consistently good.”

A private label is not a novel business strategy among multi-brand retailers. From 2010 to 2015, the global market for private label apparel and footwear grew at a steady compound annual growth rate of 1.9 percent, according to data from Euromonitor. Department stores such as Barneys, Saks Fifth Avenue and Harrods have long produced own-brand collections. Typically consisting of basic pieces at more affordable price points than the designer brands they sit alongside, these lines can be a way for stores to fill in the gaps in their designer offering. Because they are designed and manufactured in-house, private labels have a number of financial and logistical advantages. "You're able to get a very strong margin on these items — you can control markdowns, you can control sales periods," explains Robert Burke, chairman and chief executive of consulting firm Robert Burke Associates.

But while some retailers produce private labels as a way to cover the cost of selling designer brands at low margins, Joseph’s private label has been a vehicle for international expansion. “When I joined the company four years ago [in 2012], I felt that everybody believed that Joseph had the potential to grow itself — not only mixed in with the international brands,” says Takehiro Shiraishi, managing director of Joseph.

For Shiraishi, growing the business through its private label makes more sense than trying to grow the network of multi-brand shops that made the retailer famous. Its mono-brand stores make up the vast majority of Joseph’s retail network (today, of the company’s 100-plus stores, only seven are multi-brand) and in Japan — where Onward Kashiyama, the company that bought Joseph in 2005, is based — only Joseph own-brand stores exist.

Expanding into new markets through multi-brand stores is also problematic. Last year, the business opened its first two Chinese mono-brand outposts in Beijing through a franchise partner and plans to roll out a further 13 in the next four years. “The local knowledge our franchise partners have of their markets is essential to growth when we’re establishing Joseph in a new region,” Shiraishi says. However, “We don’t do mixed branded stores with partners because it is so difficult to control what they buy… We would have to check every brand name they proposed to market under Joseph’s name.”

Concentrating on Joseph’s private label also allows the company to expand its wholesale distribution — a channel Shiraishi sees as “crucial” for exploring new markets, such as Asia and the Middle East.

But pursuing global expansion through the Joseph private label posed two key challenges for the business: competing in the contemporary market, and winning wholesale stockists, which often have large shoe and accessories departments. “We needed to propose a product mix that would complete the Joseph lifestyle,” Shiraishi says. “Other contemporary market designers do 60 percent of their sales from the accessories business. They survive with the accessories line.”

To round out its product offering, this year, the Joseph brand is expanding into two new categories. Shoes, which were launched as part of its Pre-Fall 2016 collection, will arrive in stores in June, while handbags will be introduced for Spring/Summer 2017. Shiraishi hopes to build up accessories to account for 15 to 20 percent of the Joseph brand’s sales.

For businesses looking to make their private labels more relevant, having a greater focus on fashion trends is a way forward, advises Robert Burke. “[Own brands] used to do a big business with v-neck and crew-neck cashmere sweaters. Today, those basics have been filled by the Uniqlos and the J Crews,” explains Burke, who says today’s successful private labels are producing “more of a fashion basic.”

It’s a trajectory that the Joseph label has been following. Under Louise Trotter, its creative director since 2009, the line has become more fashion forward, offering its interpretation of recent trends alongside the classic silhouettes that made Ettedgui successful. Today, while customers might “buy a simple pant from us to wear with a designer piece, they’re also buying Joseph head-to-toe,” she continues. “That’s the advancement.”

But despite its evolving collection, Shiraishi says the brand still lacked awareness amongst international consumers. For retailers trying to transition their private labels into bona fide brands, perception can be their biggest problem, concurs Bernadette Kissane, apparel and footwear analyst at Euromonitor. “Flipping their business models around — going from buying wholesale, to developing a brand, to then being a wholesaler,” poses challenges, she says, but “the biggest catch is to gain the credibility as a brand… It takes a lot to establish and create demand for it.”

“Joseph has always been well known in the UK and the French market,” Shiraishi explains. In February 2014, to put the brand on the map, Joseph made its London Fashion Week debut, holding a catwalk show to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Joseph’s 77 Fulham Road store. The business had already been under pressure from existing wholesale distributors to develop a show collection, says Trotter, who adds that the “incredible” response to the show prompted the company to create a fashion-focused show collection for Joseph every season. The impact of this decision on Joseph’s wholesale business has been tangible. Since 2014, wholesale has grown 10 percent year-on-year, and now accounts (along with franchising) for 37 percent of the Joseph brand’s annual sales.

Other specialist retailers have also benefited from making their in-house labels more fashion-focussed. The Outnet’s Iris & Ink, which launched in 2012 as a 35-piece capsule collection of basics, has since quadrupled in size and added more directional designs that have helped make it one of the site’s top five brands in terms of sales, says Shira Suveyke, executive vice president and chief merchant of The Outnet. Likewise, last year luxury e-tailer MatchesFashion.com launched Raey, a trend-driven private label that “now accounts for substantial numbers in revenue and is always on the bestseller list,” says Ruth Chapman, co-founder and co-chairman of Matches. “The brand is successful because of its strong fashion DNA, rather than being basics or essentials,” she says.

When it comes to creating a successful own-brand collection, according to Robert Burke, specialist retailers like Matches and Joseph have an advantage over larger department stores. “They’re smaller operations, usually dealing with fewer total stores… so the ability for them to be in touch with their customer is greater. [When] you know your customer, you’re able to address their needs,” Burke says.

Department stores, however, are following suit. Last year, Nordstrom — which already had a range of private labels across apparel, accessories, homeware and beauty that aim to “compliment and round out existing national and international brands,” says Mark Tritton, executive vice president of Nordstrom and president of Nordstrom Product Group — launched a private label designed by Caroline Issa, chief executive officer of Tank magazine. This February, the department store debuted another collection in collaboration with street-style star Olivia Palermo.

For Joseph, developing its own brand has contributed to a 20 percent growth in retail sales in the last two years. But while the fashion collections “send our message to the market,” says Shiraishi, it is still the brand’s pre-collection — more in keeping with Joseph’s luxury essentials origin — that makes up the bulk of the private label business. The breakdown between the pre- and show collections “is probably 80/20 or 85/15,” he says.

“Joseph has grown into something much bigger than a private label,” says Trotter. The fashion week stalwarts in London this weekend would agree.

QUARTZ: Coach is now a full-fledged American fashion house

“It has the potential to drive sales and really make [Coach] a total brand, as opposed to just a handbag brand,” says Robert Burke, CEO of retail consultancy Robert Burke Associates, of Coach 1941. “They’ve made a real push with specialty store retailers to be represented there and be sold there.”

QUARTZ | MARC BAIN

Since at least 2013, Coach has been in a sales slump, suffering from its reputation as a peddler of nice but unremarkable handbags, and the fact that Coach bags could often be had at a discount—the kiss of death for any “premium” brand. But now, a look around fashion’s best storefronts suggests that’s about to change.

As of this month, you’ll find clothes by Coach amid the racks of cool, forward-thinking labels at New York’s Opening Ceremony. At Colette in Paris, which buys some of the best European labels, Coach will be there, as it will be at luxury retailers Jeffrey and Saks Fifth Avenue in New York, Luisaviaroma in Florence, and Lane Crawford in Hong Kong, among others. And while some of these shops already carried Coach’s bags, it’s just as much the apparel—patchworked leather jackets and vests, as well as tops, dresses, and skirts printed with bustling, colorful prairie florals, with the label Coach 1941—that are finally steering the “affordable luxury” brand back toward the high-end.

Coach 1941 showed its latest collection at New York Fashion Week yesterday (Feb. 16), after an enthusiastic response to Coach’s first major runway presentation last September. That this line is simultaneously debuting at some of the top fashion retailers around the world could offer Coach’s image a much-needed boost.

There are indications that a turnaround is already taking hold. While the brand’s recent earnings report was far from stellar, it did show improvement. The company has been cutting way back on its promotions while introducing new designs, and CEO Victor Luis remarked in a call with analysts that Coach’s handbag sales in the above-$400 bracket grew to 35% of bag sales, up from around 30% last year. “The increases showed continued progress of our elevation strategy, with higher price points and more fashion-forward products,” he said.

Coach even expects to return to positive same-store sales growth by the fourth fiscal quarter this year.

The designer behind Coach 1941 is Stuart Vevers, a well-respected fashion veteran who previously reinvigorated accessories-driven brands Mulberry and Loewe. The English designer’s clothes and bags for Coach 1941 are cool, easy, and fun, and they have a broad appeal, in keeping with Coach’s accessible “affordable luxury” position in the market. They’ve already added some much needed energy to a brand that had become stagnant.

“There’s a nice, youthful spirit to the ready-to-wear,” says Jeffrey Kalinsky, founder of Jeffrey, which also bought Vevers’s work for Mulberry and Loewe. “It’s not just about a floral dress. It’s about a biker jacket. But the biker jacket is not in black leather. It’s in a shot of color.”

 Kalinsky is also an executive vice president at Nordstrom, which will carry Coach 1941, too. He says even though Coach’s main business is bags, clothing is critical in turning Coach into a complete fashion house. “In an accessory business, ready-to-wear gets to spin the fantasy about who the woman is,” he says.

Some of the clothes are selling well, Vevers has said, but Burke believes they’re more about image than sales. “It’s really meant to help in repositioning the brand and elevating it,” he says.

It’s hard to restore the luster of a brand that been overexposed in the mass-market, but there are noteworthy precedents, including Gucci and Burberry. As Burke points out, Gucci was mostly known as a mass-market handbag and accessories brand before Tom Ford took over as creative director, and made it supremely sexy, in the 1990s. And Burberry was a coat resource until Rose Marie Bravo helped it develop into a complete luxury house.

Whether this year will prove a similar turning point for Coach remains to be seen, but 2016 is important regardless. It’s the 75th anniversary of the company, which started as a family-run workshop in New York—in 1941, of course—making leather goods.

In 1996, Coach hired Reed Krakoff as creative director. He was instrumental in reworking the brand’s image and expanding the business into what it is today. Coach became ubiquitous in American malls and grew internationally, pioneering the affordable-luxury space now filled with American brands such as Michael Kors and Kate Spade. But the shine faded, and Vevers replaced Krakoff in 2014, the same year Luis took over as CEO.

It makes sense in that context that Kalinsky calls Coach 1941 a “natural evolution” of the brand rather than a change of course. It’s more than just a pivot away from recent history—it’s laying groundwork for the future, and it’s making Coach a brand to watch.

BLOOMBERG: What's Behind the Malaise in the Fashion World?

Robert Burke appears on Bloomberg Surveillance

WWD: Handbag Brands Brace for More Market Challenges

“Handbags have been a hot, call-to-action-type purchase, but now customers are looking for versatility and it’s resulted in very subtle trend and branding, which makes it less urgent to update your bag,” said Robert Burke, chief executive officer of fashion industry consulting firm Robert Burke Associates. “What happens when retail is shaky is that customers go back and shop their closet and see what they have.”

WWD | MISTY WHITE SIDELL AND DEBRA BORCHARDT

The handbag market’s been, well, a mixed bag.

Retailers are seeing a swelling inventory of sameness that lacks a “call-to-action” for the consumer to buy, yet investors have turned bullish on a few key players, such asCoach and Kate Spade, viewing these brands as relative bright spots. Stalling the market is the more cautious consumer-spending environment — and shoppers’ seeming unwillingness to buy fashion products — which could trigger even more promotions this spring and further pinch the bottom line of major brands.

Handbag stocks got a much-welcomed lift last week when Coach’s fiscal second-quarter earnings beat analysts’ expectations and gave investors hope that the other accessories brands would have similarly good results. In the two days following Coach’s earnings last Tuesday, Michael Kors Holdings’ stock leaped 6 percent while Kate Spade added 3.5 percent in value and Vera Bradley jumped more than 4 percent.

While Coach’s earnings per share of 68 cents were 2 cents better than consensus estimates, North American comparable-store sales dropped 4 percent, the eleventh quarter of decline, although the best performance in 24 months. So in traditional Wall Street fashion, not terribly bad results was cause for celebration. Most analysts were pleased that Coach’s turnaround efforts seemed to be taking hold and that the company was moving in the right direction under chief executive officer Victor Luis and executive creative director Stuart Vevers.

This week will provide a further temperature reading of the accessories market when Kors weighs in with its results on Tuesday. Kate Spade’s numbers will be out next month.

Regardless of whether those companies show stronger performances, the overall sense of the market is that accessories aren’t the surefire revenue generator they used to be. Gone are the days when shoppers would rush to stores to buy the latest “It” bag or shoe and accessories, like apparel, have suffered from the overall consumer ennui toward fashion.

At least one industry observer says the Internet has thwarted the shelf life of the segment.

For the high-end sector, there seems to be a somewhat confused and “oversaturated” market of designs that evoke the minimalism of Céline and the more-is-more aesthetic now signature to designs by Gucci under creative director Alessandro Michele and Fendi — giving the consumer no clear trend-driven incentive to buy.

“Handbags have been a hot, call-to-action-type purchase, but now customers are looking for versatility and it’s resulted in very subtle trend and branding, which makes it less urgent to update your bag,” said Robert Burke, chief executive officer of fashion industry consulting firm Robert Burke Associates. “What happens when retail is shaky is that customers go back and shop their closet and see what they have.”

“There is definitely a glut of merchandise without a point of view,” agreed Sarah Blair, Barneys New York’s senior vice president, divisional merchandise manager for shoes and bags. “Consumers are looking for newness and something with a good price value. This is not the days when they would buy the same bag in a new color. It used to be that brands were driven by an iconic bag in a plethora of colors, but that trend has plateaued.”

Neiman Marcus’ fashion director for women’s accessories, Ana Maria Pimentel, said: “I think sometimes when the economy fluctuates, designers think it’s easier to be safe, but it’s always best to step it up.”

Pimentel said there is still a “hunger” for accessories, though. “I think where we have seen success is when there is newness; she is not holding back if the product is new and emotional — I don’t think she is even being price-conscious if we are giving her a reason to buy.

“We have seen her slow in things that are stagnant and haven’t changed,” Pimentel added.

In an effort to stir emotion and design persona, labels like Fendi have stepped away from more classic, pared-down styles in favor of novelty bags fabricated in bright colors, with interchangeable straps and charms. “It’s so emotional and cute — people are really responding to that cheerfulness,” said Blair.

She also pointed to Altuzarra’s new collection of saddle bags, Loewe’s small elephant-shaped pouches, and Chloé as strong performers. Heritage labels including Delvaux and Mark Cross continue to entice consumers, she said.

But Burke said the novelty, accessory-for-your-accessory model that Fendi and others is promoting has done the larger market a disservice.

“What worries me about these novelty styles and the ability to accessorize your bag with a strap or ornament, is it means that customers are using an existing purchase…so it may be a reality from a retail perspective that these accessories mean that they don’t have to buy another bag,” he said.

Burke, like many others in the industry, said designs’ overexposure on social media often smothers a design’s success before it hits retail shelves. “Customers are looking at bags prior to delivery and are tired of it [by the time it gets to the store]. It tarnishes in some ways the impulse of a bag purchase,” he said.

“Bags had a lot more longevity before the Internet,” Burke continued. “If you think of the Fendi Baguette bag, it had a very long run. The shelf life for bags today is extremely short because of their exposure online.” He said a cocktail of “design, trendiness and exclusivity” is what now drives a bag’s success.

According to Blair: “It’s a volume business with high margins. I think a lot of people and designers are trying to get involved in this type of business.”

Just a few years ago, the launch of an accessories collection seemed like the surest way to bolster a designer’s bottom line — resulting in an explosion of merchandise. Now analysts are taking more of a wait-and-see approach — even for blockbuster brands like Kors.

Oliver Chen at Cowan & Co. wrote, “We note a cautious read-through for [Michael Kors] and Kate Spade, given Coach’s estimates that the North American premium women’s handbag and accessories market was essentially flat in the December quarter, with unit growth remaining positive, offset by lower [average unit retail]s due to heightened discounting activity.”

Chen said he has “concerns that [Michael Kors] could be under promotional risk, given management’s commentary on competition intensifying and driving higher levels of promotions than anticipated, notably in the outlet and wholesale channels.”

The consensus from FactSet for Kors’ third-quarter results is for $1.46 in earnings and sales of $1.35 billion. That would be lower than the earnings for the third quarter of 2015 of $1.48, but sales would be higher than last year’s third quarter, which came in at $1.31 billion. The average price target amongst analysts is $49.26. Unlike Coach, Kors is very promotional on its Web site, with many handbags marked down 50 percent.

David Schick of Stifel expects a challenging quarter from Kors, and is below Street estimates for earnings. “Our comp estimate reflects our concern that [Michael Kors] is reaching a saturation point in North America handbags,” wrote Schick. His survey told him that more shoppers intended to purchase from Coach than at Kors. It could be because Kors’ handbag line is mostly on the large size, whereas women’s preference is trending to smaller sizes.

Kate Spade is set to report its fourth-quarter results on March 1 before the market opens and analysts are expecting earnings of 32 cents a share on sales of $441 million. Both of those estimates are higher than the numbers delivered for the fourth quarter of 2014. The average price target on the stock is $28.06. Chen wrote, “We continue to view [Coach] as our favorite handbag name, but we still like Kate Spade, as we feel the brand is best prepared to weather a tough sector backdrop on elastic category expansion, prudent promos and controlled distribution.”

Wedbush Securities was also bullish on Kate Spade. At the end of December, the analysts wrote, “Our checks have consistently noted [Kate Spade] as the least promotional and best merchandised handbag brand compared to peers.” Kate Spade’s shareholders need for the company’s fortunes to change — the stock has fallen 46 percent over the past year, although in the last five days it has gained 6 percent. Most of that increase has come after Coach’s earnings.

Vera Bradley doesn’t report earnings until March 9, but that isn’t keeping investors from hoping for the best. The company has had very good success with its leather bags and the company guided the Street higher with its fiscal-year estimates. Gross margins were guided higher as well. Chen wrote, “We’re encouraged by solid third-quarter performance given better-than-planned revenues on reduced promo activity and disciplined expense management.”

Huffington Post: Robert Burke: Fashion's Secret Power Link

HUFFINGTON POST | RENATA M. BLACK 

Paradigm Shifters is a series of interviews with a select group of women and men from eclectic walks of life. It will highlight unspoken, real-life insights on how they have been able to turn weakness into strength. A naked soul point of view of how their breakdowns were really a preparation for breakthroughs. They are your quintessential paradigm shifters; internal shifts converted into genuine change.

Everything I have ever done has been focused on this underlying theme of shifting the paradigm because, "What we think determines what we feel and what we feel determines what we do." Hence, why Empowered by You takes lingerie, which has traditionally been seen merely as a tool of seduction and redirected that energy as a tool of empowerment.

I hope from these stories you will look at your own situations, struggles and accomplishments through a different lens. At the very least you will be more equipped with real life tools to change your own paradigm. At the end of the day, we are our own Alchemist turning the silver we were born with into the gold we are destined to become.

How did you get into the fashion industry?

After college I went to LA and was deciding whether to go to graduate school, but I needed to get a job until I figured out what I wanted to do. Some of my friends worked at the Ralph Lauren Polo store in Beverly Hills, so I thought it would be a fun job to do for a little while. I ended up working for the company for 11 years. Eventually I moved to New York and I worked in various positions. The company went public and franchise retail was brought in-house and I worked in the newly created retail division. I spent a short time in design (which Ralph encouraged me to do) before returning to retail. In my time there I had the opportunity to work very closely with Ralph, who has really been a fantastic mentor and supporter. 

In 1999 I was hired to be the V.P. Fashion Director at Bergdorf Goodman. At that particular time there were a lot of changes at BG. There's no store like Bergdorf in the world, but it had gotten very dusty. This was an amazing experience in my career. It was a fantastic team of people. I hired Michael Bastian (who has his own label now) as the Men's Fashion Director and Roopal Patel (now the Fashion Director at Saks Fifth Avenue) as the Women's Fashion Director. We had an incredible time and felt and realized that anything could happen. The CEO Ron Frasch and President Peter Rizzo at the time pushed us all to create the best store possible.

So how did Robert Burke Associates come about?

I was at Bergdorf's for 7 and a half years. I dealt with many established brands and new designers when they were just starting out: Tom Browne, Tory Burch, Proenza Schouler, and Derek Lam, plus the executives. I had this incredible vantage point into the business on what worked, what didn't work. I found that many of the brands had questions when they were looking for strategic growth and how they were going to position themselves. The only consultants out there were generally retired executives from department stores and I was about 42, and thinking about what else I wanted to do in my life. I wanted to open my own consultancy company. I went and I spoke to a handful of people: Anna Wintour, Rose Marie Bravo, who was still at Burberry, and Ralph. And Rose Marie and Anna said yes, do it, but Ralph said 'this is a terrible idea, you should come back and work for me', of course we talked it out. In the end, I started Robert Burke Associates, almost ten years ago. 
When I started out, Tory and Chris Burch were still married at the time, and Chris had just started an investment firm officed on 57th and Madison, so they offered me some office space. Our first client was Marchesa, Anna Wintour called me and said Harvey Weinstein's girlfriend (at the time), Georgina Chapman, wanted to start a new dress line, and asked if I would meet with them. So of course I said yes.

It was a fantastic start and I found that the industry did need someone who could advise brands. Brands often times need to have the perspective of the retailers, so we're unique in the way we approach things. We're not a Bain or McKinsey in that market research driven way, we are more competition and positioning driven. We work with international brands, who might be looking to come to the US and maybe don't understand nuances of the US market, like Alexandre Birman, a shoe designer from Brazil, as well his Schutz brand, which is looking at expansion in the US. So we do that type of work, and we do quite a bit of international and domestic retail, which is generally working with developers and local partners in a region.

What project would you say you are most excited about right now?

I would say the re-design and re-conceptualizing of the Beverly Center because it is such an iconic mall. It's exciting to make it into a strong retail destination for luxury and contemporary retail. Working with the Tommy Hilfiger brand globally has been a very interesting and exciting experience as well. It's a brand that is really poised for great growth.

What do you envision the future of fashion will be like? Do you have any advice for young designers or brands?

I think there is generally a lack of original ideas. This athletic apparel movement is a good example of everyone jumping on the same bandwagon. So I think new designers need to be very clear and focused and not try to be everything to everyone. We went through a period in the early 2000's where a young designer wanted to have a sunglass line, a jewelry line, a shoe line, a handbag line, a ready-to-wear line, and a secondary line, and what we've come out learning is that the customer appreciates when someone is the very best in their field at doing one thing. The advice I would give younger brands is to be very clear on who their customer is and what their product is. 

The company has evolved to work with bigger clients, because it's more advantageous, but I think it's very important to work with young designers and to see their design and help them in navigating. We've had many people who have worked with Robert Burke Associates and gone on to become quite successful. There is a young woman named Alison Chemla who interned here, who now has a jewelry line, Alison Lou, which is sold at Net-a-Porter and Matches, and she just opened a store in SoHo. George Sotelo launched a men's swimwear brand called Thorsun. That is really rewarding to see the people who worked here launch their brands at a relatively young age and find success.

What has been your biggest breakdown to breakthrough moment?

There were a few. Those experiences take you out of your depth. I had always been more interested in the business side. But I think I witnessed the bridging of design, retail and commerce while at Ralph Lauren, which set me up for my work at Bergdorf's. If I hadn't had that experience in intimate design meetings and Ralph asking me which color red I like and then in a store design meeting for a new Ralph Lauren store in London I wouldn't have become confident in what I went on to do advising brands. Unlike some very traditional houses, Ralph will put you in many different positions: you can be in a design meeting, then be in the retail store. That experience doesn't exist as much anymore, but it's important to gain as much experience as possible and hopefully have really good mentors along the way. And Ralph was really incredible in that way, he still is. 

That's the thing about fashion, it's never all business and it's never all creative. Like Andrew Rosen is highly unique because he's a product person and he's a business person. And at the end of the day, Ralph is a designer and a business and product person. You look at someone like Jason Wu, he's very left-brain and right-brain, he's very focused. He called me when he was first starting and asked to have lunch, and I could just tell he was very focused. Then six months later, Michelle Obama wore his dress.

What kind of legacy do you wish to leave behind?

Seeing the people I have worked with and mentored go out on their own. It's not about being successful, it's about having the courage to go out and follow your passion, and many times that inevitably leads toward success. Seeing those young people achieve and strive and become confident, that's probably what I am most proud of. And having some positive influence on them. I think that the creative and business processes in fashion sometimes have a rap of being difficult or pretentious, but I actually find it to be the opposite. I find there is a lot of nurturing and support. You definitely get what you put out, but my experience has been extremely positive. 

I was definitely influenced by the big names that I've been behind, and starting my own business was a very different experience from working for them. I wondered if I'd get the phone call back, or get the meeting, but I found that when you form those kind of deep relationships, you do. It's a very positive and loyal industry.

Listening to Robert's story and how all the circumstances of events in his life have led up to the point of creating a unique position in the market is quite extraordinary. By having a credible name in the industry, he has been able to create his own space where he uses his reputation and spotlight to launch others. He is not only a source of admiration but one of inspiration.

BUSINESS OF FASHION Op-Ed | Global Luxury: How to Win When You're Everywhere

BUSINESS OF FASHION | ROBERT BURKE - LONDON, United Kingdom — As the luxury market continues to grow globally and digitally, brands are facing new challenges in terms of how to capture and maintain customers’ interest at a local and international level.

The digital world, whether it be through a brand’s own website, its third-party partners, or social media, has drastically increased the amount of exposure that brands and their products can receive. While seemingly positive, this can be a double edged sword in the luxury world: digital exposure can go a long way towards increasing brand awareness, but it can also lead to consumer fatigue.

In a world where the term ‘omnichannel’ has become omnipresent, there is a fine line that brands must walk, in order to ensure they are providing customers with the products that they want, when and where they want them — and that they are simultaneously creating exclusivity and desire through the right amount of product scarcity.

This isn’t always achieved solely by a high price. Instead, desire is created when a brand strikes the right balance between availability and scarcity through its distribution.

Take the runaway success of Mansur Gavriel’s bucket handbag. It is not an expensive line — the handbags are an attainable price — but it’s very desirable as a result of the label’s distribution strategy. Before Mansur Gavriel releases its bags online at certain points in the year, it builds up a huge demand via Instagram and other online presences. When the products finally do drop, the site is usually overwhelmed with traffic and the products sell out within hours.

While this is an example in which there are surely missed opportunities for higher sales volumes, the sustained brand equity that this strategy creates is of higher value in the long run.

This idea of exclusivity through scarcity is not a new strategy, but it has become even more important, due to the accelerated turnover of information in the digital age. Hermès and Chanel are no strangers to this strategy: both have become infamous for their strategic release of their most iconic products, so much so that their loyal customers will travel the world in search of that one handbag that can only be found in a specific location.

Given that brands are investing heavily in their international flagships, this helps drive traffic to these far-flung locations. On top of that, the discerning luxury customer knows that, when they reach that destination, they will be greeted with a retail experience that matches the exclusivity of the product they seek.

Going forward, success really boils down to two things — brands have to look very closely at their overall communications strategies and also at controlling supply and demand. By possessing a product that few other consumers can have, the luxury consumer feels like an insider, like they’re been told a secret that nobody else knows. The minute that product starts being overexposed, its appeal starts to wane.

This isn’t just applicable to luxury brands. It was always thought that supply and demand was only relevant for luxury. But today, it’s becoming more evident that it’s significant for all brands. Think of Nike and its collaborations with Dover Street Market. Each of the Dover Street Market stores only has 300 or 400 pairs of shoes. During the last release, I passed Dover Street Market in New York and fans were camping out in front of the store overnight to — not because the shoes were $150, but because those loyal fans knew that once they were gone, you wouldn’t be able to get them anywhere else. That’s the crux of creating desire — availability vs. scarcity.

As told to Helena Pike

Robert Burke is chairman and chief executive of retail consultancy firm Robert Burke Associates.

BUSINESS OF FASHION: Why Orlebar Brown turned to franchising

“It’s a very viable way for brands to grow, but it all depends on the expertise of the local franchise partner,” says growth and global markets consultant Robert Burke of Robert Burke Associates. “It’s very, very important they are able to represent the brand so that it has a seamless experience with the consumer. The biggest risk is having the wrong partner. Entering the market and then exiting the market — that’s really detrimental to a brand.”

Orlebar Brown has used franchising to expand its global footprint, gaining a first-to-market advantage in important geographies without expending capital on directly operated retail locations.

BUSINESS OF FASHION | ROBIN MELLERY-PRATT - LONDON, United Kingdom — When swimwear specialist turned lifestyle brandOrlebar Brown decided to expand its retail footprint beyond the US and Europe, it didn’t plan an expensive rollout of directly operated stores. Instead, the company turned to franchising.

In August 2013, Orlebar Brown raised £8 million ($12.4 million) from private-equity firm Piper in exchange for a significant minority stake; capital that will support the expansion of the brand’s directly operated store network in the UK, the US and Northern Europe. But for more far-flung geographies, including Australia, Mexico, Singapore and China, chief executive Paul Donoghue and founder Adam Brown sought an alternative strategy that would allow the brand to enter several new markets quickly and cost-efficiently.

Orlebar Brown initially found traction with fashionable “tailored swimwear” that consumers could wear from the pool to lunch. To date, the company has sold 25,000 pairs of its classic navy blue mid-length shorts (£145). “The product that Adam [Brown] created has a relatively unique proposition,” says Donoghue. “It’s important that we’re able to get meaningful global distribution in a relatively short amount of time to retain a first mover advantage or a first to market proposition. That’s why franchising is attractive to us.”

Under franchising agreements, an external partner pays for the rights to use valuable branded assets to build a business, paying a percentage of sales revenue to the owner of the brand in return. The franchisee is effectively a wholesale partner, often buying product at costs lower than wholesale. For a brand, this makes franchising a slimmer margin channel than directly operated retail or even wholesale. But, critically, the franchisee bears the set-up costs of stores.

Franchising will allow us to accelerate expansion over the next couple of years with greater operational efficiency.

Luxury fashion brands like Tom Ford, Balmain and Ermenegildo Zegna have all successfully utilised the model. But franchising isn’t without risk. “Franchising is a high risk strategy. Bad franchisees can be extremely detrimental to a brand,” says Mortimer Singer of Marvin Traub Associates. But, “local franchisees have ‘lay of the land’ know-how and a well-placed store can serve as a billboard that can be accretive to global brand visibility.”

“We see franchise agreements as a genuinely meaningful part of our business — a fourth channel, running parallel to wholesale, digital and direct retail,” explains Donoghue.

Orlebar Brown, launched in 2007, is currently stocked at over 350 doors worldwide. Today, menswear accounts for 90 percent of the business and, divided by category, swimwear stands at 45 percent and polos and t-shirts at 30 percent, while the remaining 25 percent comes from the brand’s ‘every day’ collection (including shirts, outerwear, knitwear and trousers). The brand expects to reach £20 million (about $28.8 million) in revenue in 2016, a 40 percent increase over last year. And, while Orlebar Brown plans to deepen its wholesale accounts and expand its own retail network in markets closer to home (two directly operated stores are on course to open early this year in New York and Miami), the brand is tapping franchise agreements to drive further momentum.

“If you can get your retail concept resolved, you can always take it to a franchise format. Franchising will allow us to accelerate [expansion] over the next couple of years with greater operational efficiency,” explains Donoghue. “In the long term, what’s important to us is that we get our story and our product out to as many people as we possibly can.”

Orlebar Brown’s franchising strategy was informed by the success of two major Italian companies. “We studied Moncler and Brunello Cucinelli. They’ve done it in a really cerebral way, they’ve really thought about it. It’s about global cities, it’s about the right partners,” says Donoghue.

“It’s a very viable way for brands to grow, but it all depends on the expertise of the local franchise partner,” says growth and global markets consultant Robert Burke of Robert Burke Associates. “It’s very, very important they are able to represent the brand so that it has a seamless experience with the consumer. The biggest risk is having the wrong partner. Entering the market and then exiting the market — that’s really detrimental to a brand.”

“A bad franchisee will damage the brand,” agrees Singer. “If they buy too much inventory, they will try and flush the inventory by discounting too early, while poor sales associates can fail to represent the brand identity.”

Orlebar Brown has already entered into partnerships with retailers Peter Degotardi in Australia and Sunbarth in the US. “Sunbarth has a multi-brand swim business in the Caribbean, in the US and in France. They asked us to do the first franchise store in Cannes in 2014,” says Donoghue. Sunbarth has since opened another Orlebar Brown franchise store in East Hampton, the first in the US (and a strategic anomaly).

“The way we see them, they’re genuine partnerships,” he says. “It starts with getting ‘the pack’ [the brand’s concept and retail identity] really locked down. Then it’s about being really clear about the contract. We have to sign off every location. We retain that control,” Donoghue continues. “We opened a store in Cannes and East Hampton as tests in 2014. It taught us that we had to get the concept fully resolved — branding, store design, shop floor and the service proposition.” Orlebar Brown plans to open eight franchise locations in 2016, including one in Bondi Beach in Australia and one in Playa del Carmen in Mexico.

“It’s not that I don’t worry about the risk to the brand,” says Donoghue. “I worry about it all the time and that makes me think that it’s really important that we do all the things that negate that worry, like creating a really strong pack and keeping a close watch on everything.”

“My biggest fear is how the brand is going to be interpreted,” says Brown. “So I think it’s just as Paul [Donoghue] said — getting to know the partners.”

Often, brands use franchising strategies to expand quickly into new geographies, understand the local market and, then, over time, buy back franchised stores, turning them into directly operated retail outlets. “To do a Brunello Cucinelli and have the ability to buy back franchises to make them direct — that’s the ultimate goal of many brands. Using the franchise partner to really understand the market as a brand in a very thorough way, so that when you do have the financial ability to buy it back, you’re not going in fresh, you’re not going in inexperienced,” explains Burke. Singer agrees: “Smart brands will add buy back provisions where possible so that they can take over a mature business down the road.”

“Brunello Cucinelli went through this same process,” says Donoghue. “As I understand it, they’re starting to either buy them back. We would love to be sitting here in 10 years time, working that out.”

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Robert Burke appears on Bloomberg Surveillance.