Combining Fashion and Finance: Interesting interview with Gilt Groupe CEO Kevin Ryan

Bloomberg Television conducted an interview the other day with Kevin Ryan, the CEO an co-founder of everyone's favourite flash sale shopping website, Gilt Groupe (well, not those of us in Canada, but that's another story...).  Gilt recently completed another (allegedly its final) round of financing, for $138 million.  The financing attaches a market value to Gilt Groupe of $1 billion; not bad for a company that is only three years old.  Although not yet profitable when taking all of its divisions into account, Gilt's revenue has grown steadily since its inception, and Ryan predicts gross revenue for the year ended June 30, 2011 between $400-500 million.  Gilt employs over 700 people across seven different verticals, including women's fashion, men's fashion, Gilt City (city-specific deal service a la Groupon), and Jetsetter (travel sales division).  More after the jump.

Interesting Shit that I'm Too Lazy to Write Anything About: April 29, 2011.

Today I'm starting a new column whose title should be pretty self-explanatory.  In the spirit of said new column, that will be the extent of it's intro.  Enjoy.

Combining Fashion and Finance: Hugo Boss shares hit all-time high as Q1 2011 sales up 21%.

Hugo Boss shares hit 66.41 euros today as the German company reported a strong first quarter.  Their Q1 sales were 539 million euros, as opposed to an average estimate of 531 million, and net income was 83.5 million euros for the quarter versus estimates of just over 70 million.  These numbers represented a quarter-over-quarter increase of 21% and 43%, respectively.  Net income rose 48%.  Boss forecast 2011 sales and profit to be up at least 12 and 15 percent, respectively, resulting primarily from growth in China and the U.S.  

Shit Worth Checking Out: Great article in the New York Times on the state of the shoe industry in the United States.

The New York Times published an interesting article the other day profiling the decline and moderate resurgence of American-made shoes.  Titled At Their Feet, Crafted by Hand, the article notes that only 1% of shoes bought in the United States last year were produced in America, and focuses on homegrown brands like Allen Edmonds, Alden, and Florsheim. 

Combining Fashion and Finance: The dangers of rebranding.

WWD.com posted an interesting article the other day called The Pros and Cons of Rebranding, looking at different fashion labels and their quest to reinvent themselves by changing their logo.  Trying to change the public's image of what a brand represents is a dangerous proposition, as we saw last year when GAP attempted a logo change and was forced to revert back to the original after everyone freaked out about it.  The article focuses on lower-tiered brands, which, being arrogant, I am generally less interested in, but I think the article raises some industry-wide points (and of course, the fact that it's the lower-tiered brands that feel the need to rebrand perhaps says something about their more luxurious competitors...).  Anyways, check it out here.

Combining Fashion and Finance: Salvatore Ferragamo planning IPO by end of 2011

Salvatore Ferragamo, the Italian luxury fashion group that is best known for its beautiful shoes and other high-end leather goods, announced yesterday that they are planning an IPO by the end of this year, and possibly as early as July.  The company, based in Florence, has already lined up JP Morgan and Mediobanca as joint lead-managers and global coordinators.  

At least thirty percent of the total offering would be issued in the United States and Japan.  Investors will likely be eager to get their hands on a piece of Ferragamo, which enjoyed a 26% earnings increase last year, giving the company 786 million euros in revenue and 61 million euros in net profit (113 million euros EBITDA).  The value of the company is estimated at between 1 billion and 1.7 billion euros. 

source: Reuters

Shit You Should Be Aspiring To: The entrepreneurial success of Tony Hsieh

There was a great article in the New York Times a couple of days back on Tony Hsieh, the CEO of Zappos.com, the online shoe retailer that grew to success under a business model of providing free shipping and free returns to its customers.  Hsieh sold Zappos.com to Amazon in 2009 for $1 billion, a tidy sum that he added to whatever stash he had left over from his first enterprise, LinkExchange, which he sold to Microsoft for $265 million when he was the tender age of 24.  Champ.

Head over to nytimes.com to check out the story; it's definitely worth a read.  Or, if you prefer, you can go right to the source; Hsieh wrote a book called Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion and Purpose that spent almost six months on the NYT bestsellers list last year.  Get it here.