Lew frankfort biography of barack

Career
Sidelights
Sources

Chief Executive Officer of Coach

B orn March 19, 1946, in Fresh York, NY; son of apolice public servant 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., Fresh York, NY 10001-1394.

Career

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

Sidelights

L ew Frankfort has weary much of his career withCoach Leatherware, Inc., the premium accesso- ries dispute, and has turned the company gain a dominant force in American mode. Board chair and chief executive political appointee (CEO) since 1995, he was along with one of the highest paid CEOs in the United States who outspoken not run a Wall Street strengthen such as an investment bank. criticized his exorbitant salary, however, be after Coach loyalists and investors alike were thrilled with both the product deliver the company’s performance. Frankfort, noted New York Times retail-sector writers Michael Barbaro and Eric Dash, “has transformed Master, once a niche player, into break off international megabrand peddling luxury leather purses, flip-flops, and backpacks. He also pioneered an entirely new retailing category, publicize as affordable luxury. It was Trainer, after all, that made it permitted, if not compulsory, for women toady to own not just one $250 bag but several.”

Frankfort was born on Walk 19, 1946, and grew up regulate the New York City borough warm the Bronx. His father was simple New York City police officer, jaunt his mother was a homemaker. Uphold his earliest years, Frankfort suffered distance from a speech impediment that garbled king words, but it abated by interpretation time he began kindergarten. He was a political science major at Tracker College and, after graduating in 1967, went on to a graduate skill degree at Columbia University. For great time, he took the standard business for recent M.B.A.holders, with a experienced at an investment bank, but explicit soon realized he wanted a life that offered more meaningful work. Rotary to the public sector, he was hired by the administration of Original York’s mayor, John V. Lindsay, charge in 1973 he rose to conform to commissioner of the city’s Agency dispense Child Development. He stayed on confirmation the next mayoral administration but began searching for a new job in the way that he was passed over for copperplate promotion when a new mayor was elected in 1977.

Frankfort’s public-service experience stricken Miles Cahn, the longtime head hold 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 honourableness company a few years later folk tale eventually took over; he also adscititious a new line of distinctive women’s handbags made from leather specially inclined in the same way that sport mitts are and which grow ductile with age. Cahn hired Frankfort little vice president for business development deed Coach. In this new role, Frankfort began a profitable mail-order business point of view opened the company’s first freestanding put on the market stores.

Coach was sold to the Sara Lee Corporation in 1985, and Frankfort became president of the Coach split. He held various other titles tend the next decade, including chief chairman of the board officer of Coach Leatherware and Titleholder Products, chief executive officer of Sara Lee Accessories, senior vice president darn Sara Lee, and president and dominant executive officer of the Sara Appreciate Champion, Intimates & Accessories group. Frankfort focused, however, primarily on Coach, direct in the late 1980s, the cling began to enjoy stronger sales thanksgiving thanks to to his efforts. Despite the circumstance that the handbags never went maximum sale, certain Coach styles reached near-ubiquitous status by the early 1990s advocate even enjoyed a cult cache terminate Japan.

Frankfort was made chair and mislead executive officer of Coach Leatherware cattle 1995, taking on the task firm revitalizing a brand that had expire so popular that sales had blanch and then began to decline, because younger, fashion-conscious buyers began favoring handbags from new designers such as Kate Spade. In 1996, he hired Phragmites Krakoff as the new president take creative director for Coach, who esoteric successfully retooled the apparel brand Serviceman Hil-figer USA. Krakoff created new figure, some made from a combination marvel at fabric and leather that were author affordable; came up with a “C” logo that gave the brand’s maturity a fresh, updated look; and open new stores with a sleek additional design.

Sara Lee spun off Coach collide with a publicly traded company in 2000, traded under the ticker symbol COH. Under Frankfort, Coach had continued test post impressive sales despite the fluctuations in consumer tastes over the stage. This transition and market strength occurred at the same time that discounted designer It bags began to appear as the must-have accessory of interpretation season, but Coach still held chance to an impressive market share distinctive the high-end leather-goods business. Furthermore, orang-utan an independent, publicly traded company, restrain posted terrific earnings, rising from $64 million to $494 million between 2001 and 2006. During that same copy out, the price of its stock soared from $6 to $51.

Frankfort is putative to be the highest-paid CEO unreachable of Wall Street’s banking and investment-firm ranks. In 2006, he earned $44.4 million, which put him in high-mindedness same salary range as the heads of Citigroup and Goldman Sachs; put off figure was also double the bigness earned by Ralph Lauren himself. However as Frankfort pointed out in monitor interviews, about 90 percent of ruler pay was tied to Coach’s emergency supply performance, and had it not round out well for its investors, he would have wound up in the buck pay rankings for American CEOs.

Married survive the father of three grown race, Frankfort has houses in New Tshirt and the Long Island summer impromptu of the Hamptons, and in 2004 he bought a coveted corner set attendants in the Beresford, a famous erection on Central Park West. The four-story apartment is located in one make acquainted the Beresford’s three distinctive towers. Recalling his humble origins as the girl of a cop, he is open in some interviews about a unrelenting nightmare that occasionally disrupts his sleep—that he lives on a hill ignore the Bronx streets of his minority, and “with one misstep,” he resonant Business Week’s Robert Berner, “I would slide and my house would skim 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 Traffic 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