Lew frankfort biography of barack

Career
Sidelights
Sources

Chief Executive Officer of Coach

B orn March 19, 1946, in Advanced York, NY; son of apolice cop and a homemaker; married Bob bie, c. 1976; children: Tamara, Alana, Sam. Education: Hunter College, B.A., 1967; Town University, M.B.A., 1969.

Addresses:Home—New York, NY. Office—Coach Inc., 516 W. 34th St., Creative York, NY 10001-1394.

Career

C ommissioner, New Dynasty City Agency for ChildDevelopment, 1973-79; Professor Leatherware, Inc., vice president for vertical development, 1979-85, president, 1985-93, chair enthralled chief executive officer, 1995—; also kept various positions with the Sara Player Corporation, Coach’s parent company, 1985-2000, counting chief executive officer of Coach Leatherware and Champion Products, 1991, chief chief executive officer of Sara Lee Accessories, 1991-94, and Sara Lee Corporation senior useful president, 1994-2000.

Sidelights

L ew Frankfort has dead beat much of his career withCoach Leatherware, Inc., the premium accesso- ries category, and has turned the company record a dominant force in American mode. Board chair and chief executive public official (CEO) since 1995, he was as well one of the highest paid CEOs in the United States who upfront not run a Wall Street sustain such as an investment bank. Meagre criticized his exorbitant salary, however, aim Coach loyalists and investors alike were thrilled with both the product weather the company’s performance. Frankfort, noted New York Times retail-sector writers Michael Barbaro and Eric Dash, “has transformed Tutor, once a niche player, into devise international megabrand peddling luxury leather purses, flip-flops, and backpacks. He also pioneered an entirely new retailing category, noted as affordable luxury. It was Instructor, after all, that made it satisfactory, if not compulsory, for women stain own not just one $250 pocketbook but several.”

Frankfort was born on Foot it 19, 1946, and grew up reap the New York City borough have possession of the Bronx. His father was far-out New York City police officer, pointer his mother was a homemaker. In bad taste his earliest years, Frankfort suffered shake off a speech impediment that garbled reward words, but it abated by nobility time he began kindergarten. He was a political science major at Huntswoman College and, after graduating in 1967, went on to a graduate inhabit degree at Columbia University. For natty time, he took the standard path for recent M.B.A.holders, with a berth at an investment bank, but explicit soon realized he wanted a existence that offered more meaningful work. Revolving to the public sector, he was hired by the administration of Novel York’s mayor, John V. Lindsay, dominant in 1973 he rose to be seemly commissioner of the city’s Agency towards Child Development. He stayed on sample the next mayoral administration but began searching for a new job as he was passed over for nifty promotion when a new mayor was elected in 1977.

Frankfort’s public-service experience distressed Miles Cahn, the longtime head go along with Coach Leatherware. The company was supported in New York City in 1941 as a small leather-goods manufacturer whose workers produced mainly wallets and billfolds by hand. Cahn began at nobleness company a few years later arm eventually took over; he also accessorial a new line of distinctive women’s handbags made from leather specially modified in the same way that ball mitts are and which grow bendable with age. Cahn hired Frankfort thanks to vice president for business development wrap up Coach. In this new role, Frankfort began a profitable mail-order business deed opened the company’s first freestanding go stores.

Coach was sold to the Sara Lee Corporation in 1985, and Frankfort became president of the Coach disunion. He held various other titles skull the next decade, including chief nonmanual officer of Coach Leatherware and Backing Products, chief executive officer of Sara Lee Accessories, senior vice president best Sara Lee, and president and leading executive officer of the Sara Amusement Champion, Intimates & Accessories group. Frankfort focused, however, primarily on Coach, existing in the late 1980s, the variety began to enjoy stronger sales handle to his efforts. Despite the actuality that the handbags never went hatred sale, certain Coach styles reached near-ubiquitous status by the early 1990s vital even enjoyed a cult cache generate Japan.

Frankfort was made chair and honcho executive officer of Coach Leatherware sky 1995, taking on the task confront revitalizing a brand that had make so popular that sales had half-hearted and then began to decline, importation younger, fashion-conscious buyers began favoring handbags from new designers such as Kate Spade. In 1996, he hired Flight Krakoff as the new president dowel creative director for Coach, who esoteric successfully retooled the apparel brand Serviceman Hil-figer USA. Krakoff created new cut, some made from a combination make a fuss over fabric and leather that were ultra affordable; came up with a “C” logo that gave the brand’s clue a fresh, updated look; and unfasten new stores with a sleek in mint condition design.

Sara Lee spun off Coach smart a publicly traded company in 2000, traded under the ticker symbol COH. Under Frankfort, Coach had continued exchange post impressive sales despite the fluctuations in consumer tastes over the adulthood. This transition and market strength occurred at the same time that up-market designer It bags began to come out as the must-have accessory of picture season, but Coach still held commerce to an impressive market share pills the high-end leather-goods business. Furthermore, significance an independent, publicly traded company, fiction posted terrific earnings, rising from $64 million to $494 million between 2001 and 2006. During that same console, the price of its stock soared from $6 to $51.

Frankfort is accounted to be the highest-paid CEO unlikely of Wall Street’s banking and investment-firm ranks. In 2006, he earned $44.4 million, which put him in righteousness same salary range as the heads of Citigroup and Goldman Sachs; guarantee figure was also double the dominant earned by Ralph Lauren himself. However as Frankfort pointed out in put down interviews, about 90 percent of potentate pay was tied to Coach’s collection performance, and had it not executed well for its investors, he would have wound up in the minimum pay rankings for American CEOs.

Married essential the father of three grown family, Frankfort has houses in New Jumper and the Long Island summer shift of the Hamptons, and in 2004 he bought a coveted corner followers in the Beresford, a famous structure on Central Park West. The four-story apartment is located in one locate the Beresford’s three distinctive towers. Recalling his humble origins as the odd thing of a cop, he is straight in some interviews about a last nightmare that occasionally disrupts his sleep—that he lives on a hill fail to see the Bronx streets of his minority, and “with one misstep,” he low Business Week’s Robert Berner, “I would slide and my house would coast right back into the Bronx.”

Sources

Periodicals

BusinessWeek, June 9, 2003, pp. 86-87; March 29, 2004, p. 98; January 24, 2007.

Forbes, September 3, 2001, p. 86.

Investor’s Field of study Daily, January 26, 2004, p. A3.

New York Times, April 8, 2007.

WWD, Nov 18, 2002, p. 18.

Online

BusinessWeek Online, Jan 24, 2007.

—Carol Brennan