Bob Biel

Random act of kindness In 2016, ahead of the Ghostbusters premiere, Leslie Jones faced a fashion dilemma as no designers offered to dress her for the event. The fashion industry's emphasis on sample sizes and the challenges of creating custom gowns within tight timelines were the primary factors behind this issue. Designers typically focus on standard sample sizes, often lacking the resources to promptly craft custom, larger-sized gowns. Custom dress creation is expensive, leading designers to rationalize the cost by repurposing the dress for various occasions, which may not align with a single celebrity event's needs. Moreover, designers tend to create dresses based on specific requirements rather than maintaining extensive inventories of dresses in all sizes. Leslie Jones's public frustration on Twitter triggered widespread public outcry, highlighting the fashion industry's neglect of women beyond standard sample sizes. A positive shift occurred when designer Christian Siriano stepped in. In response to Jones's tweet, he offered to design a dress for her, addressing the size inclusivity issue in the fashion domain. This gesture not only resolved Jones's predicament but also sparked a crucial conversation within the industry. Christian Siriano's intervention and Leslie Jones's experience brought attention to the importance of greater size inclusivity in fashion. The incident exposed the gap between industry size norms and the diverse body types of most women, urging the fashion world to more accurately represent "real women." This event mirrors Beyoncé's past challenges, where she faced rejections from high-end labels due to her and Destiny's Child's "country curvy" physique, highlighting the ongoing necessity for inclusivity and acceptance of diverse body shapes in fashion. #FashionIndustry #SizeInclusivity #DiversityInFashion

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We recently announced a strategic realignment of our Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus Stores teams. With this move, all customer-facing functions for these brands, including Brand Partnerships & Buying, Merchandise Planning, Marketing, Digital, Commercial Analytics and Customer Insights, and now Store Experience will be part of the Saks Global Commercial organization, led by Emily Essner, President and Chief Commercial Officer. The structure will allow us to move quickly as an integrated team to capture opportunities to maximize growth and better serve our customers and partners as work to redefine luxury retail. With this change in structure, we are pleased to announce the appointment of Mary McGreevy to Chief Stores Officer, Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus. Reporting to Emily, Mary will be responsible for leading the strategy and performance of our store network, overseeing the in-store customer experience and driving innovation to deliver a luxury experience that is artfully curated for every customer. https://lnkd.in/ecmeH4N5

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The Toy Association's Chief Policy Officer Kathrin Belliveau reflects on the Association's advocacy efforts in 2025 and what's coming in the year ahead. Read on: https://lnkd.in/epbSAghm

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I don’t listen to many podcasts but this one caught my attention, probably because of my past experience at Crate & Barrel and love for the brand. Great insights from CEO Janet Hayes on adapting to the changing retail landscape by investing in strong digital technology, focusing on a customer-centric experience, and emphasizing the importance of humble leadership.

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Saks Global to close nine stores. Read more https://lnkd.in/equmTJWe The move follows the company’s announcement last month to shutter its off-price business, Saks OFF 5TH.

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The Talent Studios has placed Christian Chopra as Chief Executive Officer of Foundry Brands, a growing portfolio of digitally native personal-care and lifestyle brands backed by Monogram Capital Partners and LightBay Capital. Foundry Partners with founders to acquire and scale distinctive design-led brands across categories in grooming, skincare and home. Its current portfolio includes Supply, Blu Atlas, Benevolence LA, and Craft & Kin—blending distinctive brand identity with disciplined operational execution. In this role, Chopra will lead Foundry’s next phase of value creation across personal care, sharpening the company’s strategic foundation while elevating creative, commercial, and operational capabilities. His focus is on strengthening the company’s strategic foundation, elevating its creative and commercial capabilities, and ensuring each brand connects meaningfully with consumers while driving sustainable profitability. Christian brings two decades of experience building and repositioning consumer brands across North America and Europe. Most recently, as President of Scotch Porter, he repositioned the brand from niche challenger to an omni-channel mainstream player, leading it to profitability while expanding national retail distribution and scaling Amazon and DTC. Earlier in his career, he held senior leadership roles at Henkel and L'Oréal in marketing, sales, and general management, where he developed a reputation for combining brand-building expertise with operational discipline. “At Foundry, we’re focused on building brands that connect emotionally and perform commercially,” said Chopra. “It’s about turning consumer insight into growth, about creating brands people actually care about, not just click on. I’m fortunate to work with a team that shares that conviction and brings both creativity and analytical rigor to everything we do.” The search was led by The Talent Studios’ Katlyn Maloney & Jeremy Cohen.

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Here are some interesting stories from the world of retail for Wednesday, March 11: 🏬 Kohl's signaled improvement in its apparel category in the first quarter, but it warned of another year of declining sales overall. For Q4, total sales fell 3.9% and comparable sales were down by 2.8%. 👖 Fabletics is launching its first denim collection, signaling a shift in consumer preferences away from athleisure. The collection, priced between $79.95 and $174.95, will be available online and in select stores. 🤖 OpenAI has scaled back its plans to turn ChatGPT into a fully integrated shopping destination. The company will now abandon processing purchases inside the chatbot. 🧱 Lego has published its full-year 2025 results, with revenues rising 12% to DKr83.5bn ($12.9bn) and operating profit increasing 18% to DKr22bn, while consumer sales grew 16%. 🧴 Olaplex stock has plummeted nearly 95% since its 2021 IPO due to weakened demand, regulatory challenges, and a lawsuit alleging harmful ingredients. Olaplex is now focusing on product innovation. 🥩 Around 3,800 workers at JBS’s beef processing plant in Greeley, Colorado, plan to strike from March 16th, potentially disrupting production at one of the largest US beef facilities. 💰 Amazon has drawn about $126 billion of peak demand for its US bond sale, one of the largest ever for a corporate offering. The demand underscores how investor appetite for hyperscaler debt remains strong. 👔 Hugo Boss reported an annual operating profit of €391m, surpassing forecasts. It confirmed its 2026 outlook and plans to realign its brand and channels, focusing on high-growth categories. 🍧 Costco Canada has introduced a new dessert to its food court menu, the Caramel Brownie Sundae, expanding its lineup of sweet treats that already includes ice cream cones and various sundaes. 🍫 Shares in Swiss chocolatier Lindt & Sprüngli fell yesterday, after the company lowered its 2026 organic sales growth guidance to 4%–6%, down from its previous medium-term target of 6%–8%. 📱 Apple produced about 25% of its global iPhones in India in 2025, assembling around 55m devices, up 53% from 36m in 2024, as it accelerates efforts to reduce reliance on China and avoid US tariffs. 📦 Amazon’s e-commerce business summoned a large group of engineers to a meeting for a deep dive into a spate of outages, including incidents linked to AI coding tools. 🇬🇧 British consumer spending grew slowly in February as households grew more pessimistic about the outlook for the economy with the Middle East conflict raising concerns about a fresh ‌rise in inflation. 🚫 Perplexity AI must for now stop using its Comet web browser agent to make purchases on behalf of shoppers from Amazon's online marketplace, a court has ruled. 🛋️ The Brand House Collective COO, James Schisler, is resigning to pursue other opportunities. Schisler joined the company nine months ago. #retail #retailnews #economy #DailyRetailNews

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