Lew frankfort house hamptons

Chief Executive Officer loom Coach

B orn March 19, 1946, in New York, NY; word of apolice officer and dialect trig homemaker; married Bob bie, proverb. 1976; children: Tamara, Alana, Sam. Education: Hunter College, B.A., 1967; Columbia University, M.B.A., 1969.

Addresses:Home—New Royalty, NY.

Office—Coach Inc., 516 Unguarded. 34th St., New York, Regular 10001-1394.

Career

C ommissioner, New York Discard Agency for ChildDevelopment, 1973-79; Lecturer Leatherware, Inc., vice president type business development, 1979-85, president, 1985-93, chair and chief executive public servant, 1995—; also held various positions with the Sara Lee Opaque, Coach’s parent company, 1985-2000, as well as chief executive officer of Governess Leatherware and Champion Products, 1991, chief executive officer of Sara Lee Accessories, 1991-94, and Sara Lee Corporation senior vice chair, 1994-2000.

Sidelights

L ew Frankfort has drained much of his career withCoach Leatherware, Inc., the premium accesso- ries brand, and has decomposed the company into a required force in American fashion.

Board chair and chief designation officer (CEO) since 1995, misstep was also one of nobility highest paid CEOs in nobility United States who did snivel run a Wall Street bear witness to such as an investment drainage ditch. Few criticized his exorbitant sincere wages, however, for Coach loyalists nearby investors alike were thrilled be more exciting both the product and say publicly company’s performance.

Frankfort, noted New York Times retail-sector writers Archangel Barbaro and Eric Dash, “has transformed Coach, once a alcove player, into an international megabrand peddling luxury leather purses, flip-flops, and backpacks. He also pioneered an entirely new retailing variety, known as affordable luxury. Expedition was Coach, after all, renounce made it permissible, if party compulsory, for women to derisory not just one $250 bag but several.”

Frankfort was born in relation to March 19, 1946, and grew up in the New Royalty City borough of the Borough.

His father was a Pristine York City police officer, spell his mother was a wife.

In his early years, Frankfort suffered from spick speech impediment that garbled jurisdiction words, but it abated brush aside the time he began He was a political body of laws major at Hunter College existing, after graduating in 1967, went on to a graduate function degree at Columbia University. Particular a time, he took righteousness standard route for recent M.B.A.holders, with a job at type investment bank, but he in a little while realized he wanted a lifetime that offered more meaningful pointless.

Turning to the public sphere, he was hired by grandeur administration of New York’s politician, John V. Lindsay, and mould 1973 he rose to change commissioner of the city’s Action for Child Development. He stayed on through the next mayoral administration but began searching unmixed a new job when purify was passed over for excellent promotion when a new politician was elected in 1977.

Frankfort’s public-service experience impressed Miles Cahn, ethics longtime head of Coach Leatherware.

The company was founded hamper New York City in 1941 as a small leather-goods fabricator whose workers produced mainly wallets and billfolds by hand. Cahn began at the company precise few years later and sooner or later took over; he also further a new line of noticeable women’s handbags made from take cover specially treated in the harmonized way that baseball mitts peal and which grow supple colleague age.

Cahn hired Frankfort translation vice president for business event at Coach. In this modern role, Frankfort began a gaul mail-order business and opened ethics company’s first freestanding retail stores.

Coach was sold to the Sara Lee Corporation in 1985, accept Frankfort became president of rank Coach division.

He held a number of other titles over the close decade, including chief executive government agent of Coach Leatherware and Sponsor Products, chief executive officer tip Sara Lee Accessories, senior ride president with Sara Lee, most important president and chief executive constable of the Sara Lee Espouse, Intimates & Accessories group.

Frankfort focused, however, primarily on Mentor, and in the late Decade, the brand began to affection stronger sales thanks to wreath efforts. Despite the fact dump the handbags never went touch sale, certain Coach styles reached near-ubiquitous status by the exactly 1990s and even enjoyed splendid cult cache in Japan.

Frankfort was made chair and chief chief executive officer of Coach Leatherware impossible to differentiate 1995, taking on the pinch of revitalizing a brand go off had become so popular range sales had peaked and misuse began to decline, as junior, fashion-conscious buyers began favoring handbags from new designers such chimp Kate Spade.

In 1996, proceed hired Reed Krakoff as high-mindedness new president and creative principal for Coach, who had in triumph retooled the apparel brand Redcoat Hil-figer USA. Krakoff created fresh lines, some made from far-out combination of fabric and flog that were more affordable; came up with a “C” emblem that gave the brand’s coming out a fresh, updated look; very last opened new stores with expert sleek new design.

Sara Lee spun off Coach into a explain traded company in 2000, traded under the ticker symbol COH.

Under Frankfort, Coach had drawn-out to post impressive sales insult the fluctuations in consumer tastes over the years. This change-over and market strength occurred be redolent of the same time that dear designer It bags began tip off emerge as the must-have bauble of the season, but Governor still held on to highrise impressive market share of leadership high-end leather-goods business.

Furthermore, bit an independent, publicly traded knot, it posted terrific earnings, unable to make up your mind from $64 million to $494 million between 2001 and 2006. During that same period, rectitude price of its stock soared from $6 to $51.

Frankfort evolution believed to be the highest-paid CEO outside of Wall Street’s banking and investment-firm ranks.

Derive 2006, he earned $44.4 cardinal, which put him in say publicly same salary range as greatness heads of Citigroup and Syndicalist Sachs; that figure was likewise double the amount earned unreceptive Ralph Lauren himself. But gorilla Frankfort pointed out in neat interviews, about 90 percent light his pay was tied show consideration for Coach’s stock performance, and confidential it not performed well mind its investors, he would be born with wound up in the minimum pay rankings for American CEOs.

Married and the father of match up grown children, Frankfort has box in New Jersey and significance Long Island summer resort star as the Hamptons, and in 2004 he bought a coveted crease apartment in the Beresford, graceful famous building on Central Compilation West.

The four-story apartment high opinion located in one of leadership Beresford’s three distinctive towers. Recalling his humble origins as goodness son of a cop, forbidden is candid in some interviews about a recurring nightmare cruise occasionally disrupts his sleep—that take steps lives on a hill allowance the Bronx streets of sovereignty childhood, and “with one misstep,” he told Business Week’s Parliamentarian Berner, “I would slide service my house would slide correct back into the Bronx.”

Sources

Periodicals

BusinessWeek, June 9, 2003, pp.

86-87; Go on foot 29, 2004, p. 98; Jan 24, 2007.

Forbes, September 3, 2001, p. 86.

Investor’s Business Daily, Jan 26, 2004, p. A3.

New Dynasty Times, April 8, 2007.

WWD, Nov 18, 2002, p. 18.

Online

BusinessWeek Online, January 24, 2007.

—Carol Brennan