S.I. Investments & The Sakowitz Corporation
Detailed innovations & responsibilities
Increasing sales:
Increasing sales from $38 million to $140 million and quadrupling
the profits during the period as President of Sakowitz, Inc.
1975-1985.
Initiating new in-store marketing
concepts: Initiating new in-store concepts
of European designer ready-to-wear boutiques of America. Utilizing
a European apprenticeship experience from Galleries Lafayette,
he collaborated with French couture designers, who were both
unfamiliar with ready-to-wear in general as well as the U.S.
market in particular. In a series of personal meetings, convincing
the first “grand couturier” member of the Chambre
Syndicale to make standardized fit, graded and patterned for
the U.S. market sizes to be launched for entry into the U.S.
at Sakowitz in Houston, Texas – a “first”
in fashion and apparel marketing in America; and thus brought
Andre Courreges, Jackie Kennedy´s favorite French designer,
to the Sakowitz stores to launch his first ready-to-wear boutique
in America in 1967. The boutique was successful from its opening
day, and the concept of an in-store replicated French boutique,
recreated exactly as its Paris architecture, was later emulated
by many competitors. This began the series of what was to
become the “boutique/Europeanization of America”
in many other retail stores subsequently-
Introducing a number of other couture
and high-fashion European designers to the United States:
After Courreges, Mr. Sakowitz personally negotiated the first
distribution agreements with Richard Solomon for the first
American Yves St. Laurent Rive Gauche boutiques, with exclusivity
for Texas for seven years. Other such negotiations and first
launchings in America were with Ermenegildo Zegna, Kenzo,
Fendi, Fiorucci and Jean Muir, to name but a few most notable.
This gave the company a market niche and label exclusivity
it (and most others) had previously lacked since it's competitor,
Neiman Marcus, controlled all of the top U.S. women's designer
labels. For innovations with French Ready-to Wear, in 1972
he received the Epingle D'Or(“Golden Needle”)award
from the French Fashion Federation.
Initiating annual theme-oriented
festivals: Initiating annual theme-oriented
festivals in 1964, including international cultural and commercial
merchandising concepts sparking events with community-wide
participation for trans-industry corporate visibility, that
became part of the basis for the now word-recognized Houston
International Arts Festival. Education programs were coordinated
with the public and private schools throughout the city for
organizing student attendance. Themes such as Festival of
Fantasy, Festival of the Renaissance and Festival of Great
Religious Cultures, among others, were produced from 1964
until 1984. These festivals required Government and corporate
negotiations at the highest levels, convincing Ministries
and Corporate executives to invest in joint promotional ventures
with the Sakowitz Company. That they continued and grew for
over fourteen Festivals, with participation of numerous countries
and many Fortune Five Hundred companies, is an indication
of their acceptance and success.
Negotiating manufacturing and export
programs: Negotiating manufacturing and export
programs with European and far Eastern countries for these
events, and for these commercial and cultural successes, led
to personal decorations by President Giscard D´Estaign,
Republic of France, as Chevalier de l´Ordre National
du Merite in 1976; and subsequent decoration by Premier Craxi,
Republic of Italy, with the honor of the Cavaliere dell Ordine
Al Merito, in 1984.
National Association of Display
Industry: Planning and supervising over one
million square feet of innovative fashion specialty store
design, layout, décor and display, construction and
merchandising, receiving the National Association of Display
Industry (NADI) Outstanding Achievement Award for Retail Management
in 1976, and appointed to the NADI Hall of Fame in 1984.
Product Development:
Creating a product development process, and later a separate
division, for private label merchandise in the late 1970´s,
in fashion apparel, basics, cosmetics and fragrance, accessories
and gifts, supervising piece goods and patter system selection;
ultimately made into a separate corporate (profit center)
division. Sourcing was organized from domestic as well as
Italian , English, Japanese, Philippine, Hong Kong and other
Chinese facilities. Developed and launched a men´s fragrance,
“Rampage”, as a corporate men´s fashion
signature.
Fine and Rare Wine Auctions:
Initiating the concept of fine and rare wine auctions (conducted
at Sakowitz by Michael Broadbent of Christies, London), Innovating
one of the first in-store upscale gourmet and specialty foods
and wine education classes and world-publicized rare wine
auctions for over eighteen years.
Restaurant operations and an
outside catering: Developing in-store restaurant
operations and an outside catering business to a regionally-recognized
and awarded status, creating products that were private-labeled
from the Sky Terrace and Old Colony recipes and menus sold
at retail.
World wide media recognized
catalogue: Building a substantial catalogue
and direct mail order business, converting stores-sales seasonal
mailers into a stand-alone year round business, operationally
separate from the stores. This created and developed a world-wide-media-recognized
mail-order catalogue business, featuring the Christmas Catalogue
with “Ultimate Gifts”. These were featured annually
on Television by Johnny Carson, Good Morning America and The
Today Show, as well as in numerous periodicals from Time Magazine
to Der Sterm, newspapers and in other international publications.
The catalogues also served to encourage vendors and suppliers
to offer new products and exclusivities first to Sakowitz
on a day-to-day basis for better profitability and market
differentiation.
Commercial fashion magazine:
Conceiving, developing and publishing the first modern-day
commercial fashion magazine for a retail store, “The
Magazine”, highlighting fashion trends, lifestyles,
and product information through use of custom European fashion-runway
photography and own text.
Fashion trend analysis system:
Inventing a fashion trend analysis for Buyers and Merchandisers
to better structure the vendors and merchandising timing,
increasing cross-communications between merchants. The system
outline was subsequently published in industry media as a
marketing innovation for consideration by others.
Restructure the company:
Creating alternatives for a family-owned privately held retail
enterprise with limited access to capital to survive. Given
the competitive requirements to either expand or expire in
the face of national and international encroaching competition,
vendor pressure for greater purchases to maintain lines and
exclusivities, high interest rate, and ever-increasing minimum
wage scale hikes, the challenge was to maintain profits while
convincing real estate developers, bankers and vendors that
expansion and survival of the Sakowitz company was in everyone´s
best interest. Mr. Sakowitz was successful in doing so until
the Southwestern home-based economy unexpectedly and devastatingly
reversed in the mid-80´s. With consumer confidence destroyed
in a depressed regional economy, sales revenues diminished
and no longer supported these previous commitments. In the
face of calls by its bank consortium (60% of whom faced their
own credit call problems from the U.S. Office of the Controller
of the Currency) in 1985, Sakowitz was forced to seek protection
and reorganize. For twenty-nine months Mr. Sakowitz worked
with attorneys, accountants, vendors, bankers, creditors and
creditor´s committees, employees and customers to restructure
the company and downsize for efficiency and debt repayment.
Managing a turnaround by
personally leading the search for and finding new investors
to assist the company in emerging from the reorganization.
By crafting a plan with Chemical Bank for merging Sakowitz
with Bonwit-Teller and Garfinckels during their offered “de-accessioning”
by Allied-Federated, the offer reached the final round of
negotiations, only to be “pre-empted” at the last
moment at an “overprice” by the Australian firm
of L. J. Hooker. Mr. Sakowitz contacted them to discuss this
plan, and subsequently succeeded in creating a new company
to help Sakowitz emerge with a joint consensual creditor plan.
The successful turnaround was halted when in 1990 Sakowitz’
then- two and one-half billion dollar Australian partner,
L.J. Hooker, was itself forced into reorganization. While
preventing Sakowitz from being part of a mandatory inclusion
in the reorganization, Mr. Sakowitz could not stand alone
under the “parent cloud” to return to profitability.
Given only ninety days to arrange for the repurchase of his
former company, financing was not timely forthcoming in spite
of all efforts. The parent/partner, L.J. Hooker, could no
longer sustain world-wide operations and chose to liquidate
all assets.
All Executives were released, and Sakowitz Inc. was liquidated
by Hooker's overseers, (along with Bonwit Teller and B. Altman
in New York).
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