Paul Marciano Introduces #GUESSFamily Pt 1

Good afternoon, good afternoon everybody. My message today is about Guess Family, GuessFamily.com. This is starting most likely in the next few days. We're going to do a special website that's attached to our Guess.com where you will find GuessFamily.com. And because that word comes constantly everywhere all the time around us, around me, around the people who work at Guess for so long, around the models, around the photographers, around the customers, it's everywhere. I always hear, 'This is a family, this company. It's not just a brand, it's a family.' And I thought, maybe you know what, I think it would be the time to share stories. And we start somewhere. We have to start somewhere about the story because this is 40 years this year. 1981, Guess started, which is 40 years ago. And in 40 years you can create more than one family, but we have one. And you go anywhere around the world of Guess, you find one family. So I want to share with you some stories, not about just me or Guess, but people who made Guess, people who are part of Guess. And I think most importantly, people who spend a good part of their life here, like people who have been working here for 15 years, 20 years, 25 years, 30 years, 35 years, and they're still here. Yes, you heard correctly, 35 years and they're still here. Why? The first question would be why. Well, clearly because they find a home. But most importantly, it's not about the job, because you can find a job if you are good, if you're competent, if you're a hard worker, you can find a job anywhere. But we find a family and we find friends. And they made friends, and these people will be part of Guess in Los Angeles, in Florence, in New York, in Lugano because Lugano is a big center of everything now together for Guess, in Paris, in Barcelona, everywhere where we are as a big office. People find a family. And we have a job, but the word family becomes more important for them because when we go in the morning to work, we find a family. And they can be a co-worker in finance or co-worker in design or co-worker in merchandising, co-worker in visual, or co-worker that you are one. And this is what is so unusual. So I thought that what makes more sense than to really express and share what is a Guess family, why is it called the Guess family. Because we did many interviews, many interviews the last year, year and a half, of models. And the reason we collected all these models and their views is about the 40 years coming up now. And each time, the common thread of different cities, different regions, different countries, each model we're coming up each time with the same word: 'I feel that I'm part of a Guess family.' And it's eye-opening because we are not really working day in, day out at Guess, but we feel we are because the minute we integrate working with us, we feel part of a Guess family. And that is very unique. I think it's, I mean, I don't know that many companies have that. And I think to share all that is a natural way to see and get to know who we are when you're from outside and say, 'Wow, that's unusual.' And that's an incredible story, but not by me, by the people who share these stories. So when you log in to that GuessFamily.com, you will have different menus. You want to see a story of people who work here for Guess in Los Angeles, we put Guess California, and it would be like 10 years, 15 years, 20 years, 25 years story. You want to see just the models, we will have models Europe, models America. We will have people in design Europe, we have America. We can structure that and we will continue to add stories. I will put some videos of my brother Maurice who built Guess literally with me and my other brothers George and our mom, but they left a long time ago. It's really Maurice and me the last 30 years. And then, I mean, it's a fascinating story when you see from outside, but when you're inside you don't realize because you're inside every day so it's normal, so it's no big deal for me. But from outside, everybody says, 'Wow, this is a very, very unique story here.' And that's what encourages us to say we need to share that with people who care for the brand, because a brand is more than a brand. It's a story of a family who created a brand. So I'm going to share a few things with you. Guess has worked with many iconic models during the last 40 years. Do you think that modeling has changed a lot during this time? Yes. I think that if you go back to the time I started in Guess advertising, Guess image, which is 1982, you had only one channel to find models, which was agencies, a talent agency, model agency, actresses, actors. And that was the only way to find. The last seven years, which I explained before on my Instagram story, the world of modeling has changed completely, completely. I mean, it's not the world of modeling, the world of everything has changed because of Instagram. And it continued to change. Modeling agencies continue to exist, but a lot of them are not relevant to the point that many new talents like to work independently, alone, and they do totally fine to build up their own image and their own Instagram followers by dozens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, and sometimes millions without the help of anybody, which is kind of incredible because it would have been unthinkable to do that 10 years ago. So the world has changed drastically, of course. The classic agencies exist like the classic magazines exist, like they will always exist. But things have changed and you have to adapt to that. And as I mentioned before, I find so many models on Instagram, I find so many photographers, I find some architects, I find some sculptors, I found some makeup artists, hair stylists, fashion stylists. I found so many things which never were available before, never. It's a new world. I'm not in a world yet on TikTok and Telegram and Snapchat, it's not my world. But on Instagram, I'm fascinated because of it.