PaperCity Magazine

September 2018- Dallas

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and not getting rid of those lines. The designer roster is changing, maybe, 10 percent — little moves. What about personal growth? This is my dream job. This is it for me. This is exactly what I love doing. I love everything that goes on behind the scenes. I love the photography for the photo shoots; I love the store design; the creative direction; the buying of merchandise for the store; the fashion. I love the entire process. At the end of the day, you can build a beautiful store, but you still have a bottom line. You have to know how to run it! That's the thing. I'm against frivolity. I work in, maybe, a frivolous industry — but I'm against frivolity. I'm conservative in how I approach everything, here. I like to be smart about it. I want to make money — I want to make money for Headington Companies. I want this to be a success. We're not saving lives … … But we are creating an escape for people. My hardest working friends, who do much more important work than I do, they're like, 'I go in your store, and I feel really happy and good.' We have to have that yin and yang in life. I would be remiss if I didn't ask, what do you absolutely have to buy for fall? It's insane. From Tenoversix, it's pieces from Eckhaus Latta, Sandy Liang, Maryam Nassir Zadeh, Nomia. Then with Forty Five Ten, there's Rosetta Getty, some Céline, some Dries Van Noten, Balenciaga. I actually do all my shopping in market while I'm on appointments, so it gets really disorganized. You're in the moment, and you're with the designer, and you're like, 'Yes! I want one of those.' Then my assistant accumulates the list, and I'm like 'Oh my gosh, how many things did I buy?' It's ok. It's all important. It's what I do. It's research. It's part of my job. It's all good. So, lots of closet space at the new house? Yes. The closet is a whole thing. Part of that is New York. New York is a big one and it's going to be really beautiful — 16,000 square feet. New York will do wonders for the brand because of the accessibility — something like 30 million people will come through our doors every year. We just hired Vice media's content division, Virtue, to create content for us. It's going to amp up our marketing and advertising. I'm far more interested in connecting with our audience through the right cultural and art initiatives. We're sponsoring the Whitney — the 2019 Whitney Art Party. That's very much our customer and a nice way to connect with our New Yorkers, especially with the Whitney's proximity to Hudson Yards. So, the future of retail looks bright? I've never given up on it. I believe in brick-and-mortar because it's experiential. We all want to go into a shop and touch and feel and try things on and interact with human beings. We are launching a beautiful e-commerce site, but more as part of the conversation — not to replace our business. I in no way want our e-com site to replace our brick-and-mortar. That's not the crux of our company. That human-to-human interaction is vital, especially in our digital age. You can't replace it! Everyone likes to be doom and gloom about retail. I don't buy it. The pendulum swings back and forth. I've been through it a few times already. It's ok. It just forces retailers to up their game. For us, that means a really strong edit. Our customer needs to trust us. They need to trust that when they come here they're going to find something great, have a high level of service, and a beautiful experience — from being able to eat here to having lovely influences and feeling inspired. Do you ever get nervous? Not really. This is my passion. I'm getting to do what I've been doing for 10 years, just at a bigger level. I feel ready for it. It's going to be a nice moment. When you came on board, there were a lot of changes. I knew it would take a minute and that a few things were going to need to change with the new vision of the company. I basically flagged three months to do strategic reorganization, from the back-of-house corporate side to the customer-facing store experience. With Headington acquiring Tenoversix, I had to look at [Forty Five Ten and Tenoversix] and figure out what made sense. How can these run side by side? How can they live in big markets together and feel very different? How can I reorganize this to make sense? So, it was a few months of reorganization — it was not necessarily fun, but it had to happen. It was about slimming down the teams, bringing on some new strong people, and getting our culture right. When you walk into a store, you want to feel treated well, you want to feel welcomed and excited. A big part of that was making sure that ethos was going from front-of-house to back-of-house. You also changed some things in the store. We have 37,000 square feet, here. That's a lot of retail. I moved our corporate offices to the third floor. I deprogrammed the Forty Five Ten home division, because looking at Forty Five Ten, it's known for fashion. It's not known for home. I want to focus on what Forty Five Ten does best — luxury designer fashion and taking risks on the right bold emerging talent. Tenoversix will be on the first floor, Main Street side, in an effort to create a more approachable, fun energy right when you walk in. Home design, lighting, books, magazines, and all of that will be expressed through Tenoversix. We're doing a new café that's replacing the Copper Bar. A new concept, again, that's going to be livelier — a little more fun. We're adding children's back in. And that's kind of the same experiential shift. I wanted children's so moms could shop here on the weekends and feel welcome. I added changing tables to the bathrooms — just little things so that people can come, have brunch, bring their kids, do a little shopping. Dallas is a big city that operates like a small town. Forty Five Ten has a longtime, core Forty Five Ten bunch — the loyal client who is maybe averse to change. How do you evolve Forty Five Ten's DNA without losing its heritage? Nothing super drastic is happening, but there are a lot of little shifts in culture and point of view. As much as I want to expand and attract new customers, I also care a lot about the core customer. It's about knowing who loves what 105

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