Chief Executive Officer & Director, Guess
Search every verified Carlos Alberini interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. Carlos Alberini, CEO of Guess and former Chairman and CEO of Lucky Brand, has spoken about his career and business strategies in past appearances. In a 2017 lecture, he discussed immigrating from Argentina to the United States about 32 years ago and expressed gratitude to the country. He described Lucky Brand's business model, noting that while the company generated roughly $600 million in revenue, consumer spending on its products totaled about $1.2 billion due to a sizable licensing business. Alberini highlighted that e-commerce represented 11% of total business but had a 28% penetration rate relative to full-price retail sales. He cited the idea that "the species that is the most adaptable to change is the one that survives" as applicable to retail, and described Amazon as a "powerful mover" and "big disrupter" contributing to customer traffic declines in malls. In a 2016 conference, Alberini stated that brand transformation and strategy can create "tremendous value" for companies. He said Lucky Brand's "why" is "Look good, feel good, do good," and outlined a vision to become a billion-dollar company in five years by expanding beyond denim into a premium lifestyle brand. Alberini noted that the company's customer base had significant disposable income, with 57% earning over $80,000 and 79% aged 35 or older. He described the business as balanced across wholesale, full-price stores, outlet, and e-commerce, and said the company was shifting marketing spend toward digital and grassroots efforts. Alberini also mentioned replacing Lucky Brand's infrastructure, including distribution and ERP systems, in about 18 months, operating most systems in the cloud.
“We came to this country about 32 years ago... we are completely grateful to this country.”
“We have a business that last year produced slightly over 600 million dollars in revenues but if you try to translate all those dollars into what the consumer is paying at the point-of-sale that number is about a 1.2 billion dollars because we have a very sizable licensing business and the only thing that we recognize a...”
“One of the numbers that don't seem that big over there is the e-commerce based business which represents 11% of the total business but if you relate that number to the product that is sold through other channels like the full price retail stores our penetration is pretty significant at about 28% and that of course is a...”
“The species that is the most adaptable to change is the one that survives — not the strongest nor the most intelligent — and I feel that this is very applicable to what's happening in retail today.”
“Amazon is such a powerful mover and and a big big disrupter; they continued customer traffic declines and it's just very difficult to make up for those numbers if you lose revenues in the malls.”
“We have 2.2 million people customers in our database... about 10 percent of our total base represent about 73% of the expected repeat shopping that is going to happen next year, so now think about that — if we know that those 200,000 people are so important what we wouldn't do to really satisfy them.”
“Specialty, which is full-price stores, with the decline of customer traffic and consequent decline of sales has really hurt our profitability — now we are barely profitable there — but all the other parts of the business, the wholesale business delivers a 25% operating margin, our licensing business obviously every dol...”
“At the end of 2013 I got a call from a private equity firm Leonard Green... they said you know we have an opportunity to buy Lucky Brand if you want to come and run it we will buy it for you.”
“If you have less than 400 stores that's a good thing — if you have a bigger penetration of e-commerce that is also a good thing — so being in the upper quadrant here is the best place to be; you don't want to be where you have so many stores and you don't have a penetration of e-commerce.”
“Brand transformation and strategy can really create tremendous value for companies and brands across the globe, and in my experience, this has definitely been the case.”
“We took the company Lucky Brand in 2014 with Leonard Green, a big private equity firm, and the first year was about learning everything from customer to culture, product, real estate, and brand elasticity.”
“The Lucky Brand business is well balanced: wholesale represents about a third, specialty full-price stores another third, and the remaining is outlet and e-commerce, with e-commerce growing faster and representing almost 10% of total business.”
“We found that the Lucky Brand customer has significant disposable income, is extremely loyal, and embraces the brand for multiple occasions, with 57% having incomes over $80,000 and 79% being 35 or older.”
“Multi-channel distribution is powerful, synergistic, and delivers high ROI; we make money in every channel and the more we synergize, the more money we make.”
“We see an opportunity to nearly double Lucky Brand's distribution, but we must be careful with expansion locations because Middle America is a much more profitable market than coastal markets due to prohibitive occupancy costs there.”
Visit: http://www.uctv.tv/) At the inaugural lecture of the Alberini Family Speaker Series in Design, Lucky Brand CEO Carlos ...
Carlos Alberini, Chairman and CEO, Lucky Brand, "The Power of Strategy and Brand Transformation"
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