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It's obvious that your fashion
background has had an indelible effect on your design work at Gibson.
I have a great deal of fashion experience from my
years at Macy’s and the Gap as well as years of visual merchandising and
marketing experience which has also been a great help. There’s also seven years
at Pacific Rim where I was the product development manager where it was great
dealing with their vast assortments.
It seems like a perfect blend of jobs, culminating in overseeing design at
Gibson.
Absolutely. I know about trends, display, marketing,
product development, design. I’ve learned to be organized and focused and how to
drive trends at
retail. I’m a merchant at heart. I always look at trends, but at the end of the
day I must know if it’s going to sell. My merchandising helps in giving
retailers something they can work with on the shelf. In fact, one of my
strongest points is I’m a merchant who understands buying as well as product
development. My salespeople love when I come to meetings because they don’t just
get the creative point-of-view. I’m well-rounded in that respect; it’s one of
the many things I bring to the table.
You came to Gibson two years ago with this trove of experience. What attracted
you to the company?
I enjoy working for a company that’s privately-held.
I like being able to interact with the principals. It’s a family-owned business
and that’s key to why I was drawn to join the Gibson team. They have a passion
for what they do and it shows. I also like that Gibson is a global company, and
that 60% of our business is private label. They’re also a multi-category
company. The potential for product development is huge.
How huge?
In surface design alone, we create more than 1,200
designs a year. Each of our designers completes three to five designs a day;
that’s a huge amount of volume. [There’s a 21-person in-house creative team as
well as a coterie of freelancers.] There’s always something new and innovative
going on in our design department. We have industrial designers, packaging
designers, graphic designers, photographers, stylists. It’s a huge team.
And you oversee it all?
Yes. But for the day-to-day operations, I depend on
the management team; they really keep all the plates spinning.
How does the process work?
I have a great team and I use them well. I empower
them to use their strengths to do great jobs. We meet and strategize, develop
plans of action, and they run with it. We go over designs midway through the
process to make sure we’re all on the same page. If I give good direction on the
front end, they’re 80% there on the back end.
Where do your ideas come from?
I’m always reading and collecting reference ideas
whether it’s bits of fabric or tearing out magazine pages. I travel a lot;
there’s much to see at retail around the world. I’m always storyboarding themes
and concepts for future projects. There’s always a reference point to direct my
designers. I look at things horizontally and vertically. If botanicals are big
and so is blue, of course we’re developing blue botanicals. The key is focusing
on the sophisticated end of the curve and then we bring it to where it needs to
be to retail since not everyone is ready for blue botanicals.
With so much production, how do you keep track of what you’ve designed already?
We have a great digital archive system. I can look through scans to see if we’ve
done a design before. It’s a digital filing cabinet.
What’s the greatest challenge maintaining Gibson’s leadership position in
design?
It’s the same challenge every company faces in
today’s competitive market. How do we get products to market in a more timely
fashion? Our retailers are always challenging us to run faster, so prioritizing
where we should be with trend and product at what time in the cycle is the
toughest challenge. It’s really not a new problem, just the speed of the pace is
new. But it’s a pace I’m totally energized by. I love it and I love what I do.
There’s got to be a time when the pace is too frenetic and zaps creativity.
Your point is well taken, but I don’t feel that. I
have a great team and that makes the job easier. I’m not the one creating every
single design, but I trust my team and open the door for them to create. This
environment is perfect for creativity. We have core competencies we focus on
even as our peripheral businesses [cookware, commercial] grow. We can easily
move into new products to create more volume. When we go into new categories we
bring in top level professionals to oversee the growth. When the Gabbay family
[Gibson’s owners] decides to play ball, they step up to the plate. That’s why we
move into new categories with proficiency. We do our homework first.
How do you cope with pressure to continually churn out product?
I go to the gym every night. It’s about balance.
continued . . . .
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