The Black Eyed Peas was in town last week to induct U2 into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Kind of a big deal when they’re rubbing shoulders with Mick Jagger and the like. He had a chance to pop into the SoHo store with Apl.
Later on we stopped into Saks to check out the shoes.
Shawn and Louis, Buyer and DMM at Saks met us on the floor.
It got kind of crazy. Kids were offering free dental work from their father’s practice in Brooklyn. Tourists from Italy were asking for autographs. One woman inadvertently asked for mine thinking I was famous. That was exciting.
They’ll be back next week to perform on SNL and at the Victoria’s Secret Fashion show and also for one mega event with us on November 12th. Keep you posted.
Amidst the socio-political unrest in Venezuela, lies a glimmering bastion of hope. That glimmering bastion of hope is JUMP. While we have our SoHo boutique, there exists a whopping eight JUMP stores in Venezuela. Years ago, we had a particular shoe of which we had tremendous inventory on but just couldn’t sell it. Yes, it happens to the best of us. A rather young Jhonathan Jraiche happened to stumble upon this shoe at a tradeshow in Miami. He went back to his father telling him he had to have this shoe in his store. He placed the order and a few months later, we had to produce more of it just for him. The shoe became so successful, it gave way to the opening of a store entirely devoted to JUMP. Soon after, more stores popped up with the most recent in the resort island of Margarita. It’s become one of Venezuela’s most well known women’s shoe brands and has recruited some of the most famous celebrities to represent JUMP. The Venezuelan JUMP team recently took a trip to NYC and produced these commercials for VZ TV.
Here’s Marjorie DeSousa, Venezuela’s top soap star.
When Ben showed up to the Upfronts he was already wearing the Paxton and got turned onto JSD by the Vigors. Today he came back and got the Vanquish in Black Nappa. Watch out for his show, The Beautiful Life on the CW premiering September 16th.
If there’s a positive side to the dramatic impact of the Global Financial Crisis on US retailers, it’s the way it illustrates the strength of the industry in Australia…
Mary Portas is a retail consultant with her own television show Mary Queen of Shops, where she does to failing shops what Gordon Ramsay does to failing restaurants…
Korean-based retailer Who.A.U has its sights clearly set on the corner of the fashion market dominated by Abercrombie & Fitch and its subsidiary brand Hollister.
The British have taken their edgy fashion franchise to New York and the result is a stunningly designed retail experience which has captured the hearts and wallets of New York shoppers.
The basic concept of the Apple store may not be new, but the constant fine-tuning ensures it is still cited by presenters throughout the tour as the best of the best in experience, customer focus and image building.
Story-telling is one of the recurring themes of this year’s Westfield World Retail Study Tour and nowhere is the concept more easily illustrated than in Timberland’s new London store in the Westfield London City.
I had the chance to meet these dudes yesterday. They’re with a very up and coming band called Lights Resolve and they’re all over the place. I’m going to see them on Thursday at the Bowery Ballroom. Very cool guys originally from Long Island.
So the Project NY show was an amazing success. The line looked fantastic and we did more business the first day in NY than we did all three days in the last Vegas show so I can only imagine what will happen at the next Vegas show. I’m already getting ready for Compass this week! Besides all our favorite buyers and many new buyers, we had some high profile people roll thru the booth as well. The celebrity love continues.
First we had Kenny Loggins swing by and he was totally into the Vanquish in Purple Croco.
You might remember Kenny as the creator of some 80s megahits like Dangerzone!!!!
This video makes me want to jump up and exclaim “YES!!” Totally my next karaoke conquest.
Shortly after, we had Ryan Grant of the Greenbay Packers, who was already a JUMP fan, check out the new line.
Again, at this show, the heavy hitters are the Vanquish and of course the new Zeto that will be in stores for August. What we did was take these two items and really blow them up to offer our customers a lot of options. Here’s a sneak peek at some of the new Vanquish that Courtney from American Rag picked out for her stores in the West Coast.
So after such a successful first day of show, we didn’t feel guilty partying hard after the second day of the show at our store in SoHo. We had the usual fare, Serrano Ham (which always leaves me hungry for more the day after I have it), cocktails sponsored by Red Bull and of course, Johnnie Walker.
We had a fantastic turnout.
There’s me, Harry Chen and Lawrence Chen.
Click on people’s faces in the photo to tag them.
Here’s Michelle Suh, Bloomingdale’s Art Director and Cara Diorio, Bloomingdale’s Asst. Buyer.
Here we are with Don Calder, owner of Local Celebrity and his friend.
Some random Austrian people who were lucky enough to be walking down Spring St.
Starr Ferguson, Saks Buyer and my old Lord & Taylor colleague, getting herself the Vanquish in Green Purple Reflex Patent.
Herman and our homeboy Eric Yang, handbag manufacturing magnate.
Lerny and friend.
Xiao-li, Saks Assistant Buyer and Shawn, our Saks Buyer.
Diana Tse, Steven Alan buyer and Lana Wong.
Larry with a random cougar from the street.
Don’t know who those two dudes were but they got MINGED.
There’s Darius, YRB editor on the right with some friends.
Here’s Tahirah, owner of Krisol in LA, and I.
Ed Bennett, brought his friends, Faye Ly, actress and model and Tora Brava, musician to join the festitivies.
Some of our lovely staff manning the liquor.
Here’s Alex, certified ham slicer and Joy. We conquered that ham.
And it looks like it was a big week for parties in SoHo as the next night Guess had a big opening party around the corner from us.
Lydia Hearst and Michelle Trachtenberg were there.
And the darling Amber Rose was looking fly.
We took this picture together after the interview but my boy, Henry, was all nervous and it came out like this. She told Henry and I we were cute. That’s why I’m blushing.
The following night was another event! THE CENTER hosted the Midsummer Night’s Salon with my buddy’s Ed Bennett and Dusty Wright. Following all the real performances we had a jam session where we did our rendition of Hound Dog.
It’s even a bit strange to me that all of a sudden, celebrities have become so enthralled with our shoes. I guess the more I think about it, it makes sense because on any sort of screen, JUMP will actually pop. With shoes, sometimes they’re just an accessory to the total outfit but these days I find myself dressing my outfit around my shoes. Ha! Here’s Tony Dovolani from Dancing With The Stars wearing the Vigor in Navy. These are available at our store in SoHo.
Joanne is a singer, songwriter, actress and model who’s been a bevy of reality shows including, American Idol where she made it as a final 24 contestant. I’ve had the occasion to hear her voice and as a conoisseur of singing, it was nothing short of a delight for me to hear it. Also peep her phat ass ring. It’s her own creation under her label Ella by J. Borgella, available at Barney’s and Bergdorf’s. Check her out in the Thurman studded bubble heels.
The cool thing about traveling is that you meet a lot of people. I think that’s really the main thing about it because otherwise traveling is really tiring. Out at Project in Vegas, a boutique called Sole from Atlanta introduced me to a hip hop artist named Kia Shine. Prior to that I’d met Don Calder who runs Local Celebrity at Project NY. So imagine the coincidence when Don emails and tells me he’s going to be in NY with a dude named Kia Shine. We all met up at the store where Don also introduced me to Nobu, his Japanese distributor.
They liked the Vague.
Watch out for Jump in Kia’s next video. In the meantime check out “So Krispy”.
