This show is produced and hosted by Mark Webber. The show is sponsored by
G three of Parow. The views expressed in the following program are those of
the sponsor and not necessarily the opinion of seven ten wor or iHeartMedia. Who
is Mark Weber. He's a self made business executive here to help you find
your success from the New York City projects to the Avenue Montaigne in Paris.
His global success story in the luxury world of fashion is inspirational. He's gone
from clerk to CEO twice. Mark is classic proof that the American dream is
alive. And well, here's your host of Always in Fashion, Mark Weber.
Mark Weber Politics, politics, politics. I never gave any thought to
politics at work until things became political. You know when I first realized politics
was in the workplace. The first conversation I ever had at work. Heck,
my first interview for my first job was ripe with a political agenda.
I said what I was told to say to the interviewer because this is what
he wanted to hear. Politics. Right from the beginning, the reoccurring theme
of this show. My advice to you has always been packaging yourself as important
as the products you package. I never called it out, but that's a
political statement. Oh, it's practical, it's real. It's the essence of
success in the real world. But it's very political. How you look at
yourself, how you present yourself, how you speak, how you deliver a
message, a suggestion, or an order, it's different. All those things,
in reality are rooted in politics. The most talented people may never get
anywhere if they're not representing themselves properly. I know my ups and downs were
never about the work, or for that matter, the talent was always in
the presentation the politics of what I was doing. And if this is not
enough of a rude awakening, let me make get clear. Talent is nothing
without hard work. Nothing comes easy in adult life. We get to see
it every day, and the best of the best in the world. We
need to take athletes, for example, Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant. They
will tell you outright that they worked harder than everyone else. They got to
the gym hours earlier than anyone else on their teams, and they would take
hundreds thousands of shots if they needed to to perfect their skills. Tiger Woods,
thousands of shots practicing summer Olympics is coming from Paris this summer. You
ever look at swimmers, You ever look at their shoulders, their arms and
their torsos. They have the best builts in the world. And where is
it coming from? From working hard gym nests. Looking at what they do,
you have to scratch your head and say how do they do that?
Because they're persistent and they work hard. One of my favorite stories I heard
in a long time. It was about Jack Nicholson on a few good men.
You can't handle the truth that speech. We live in a world where
men like me are needed. Rob Briana tells the story the director that he
saw Jack in the corner practicing his lines over and over, and he walked
over and said, you know, Jack, you really don't have to practice
him as much. If you want, I'll shoot you whenever you're ready,
or just go into the trailer and wait. And Jack Nicholson looked at him
said, I love acting. This is how I get ready. Don't worry
about me when you need me, I'll be ready. Hard work school,
he who studies more gets the best grade. Business. Hard work, hours
of preparation make you successful. I for one believe learning more than the next
guy, is what makes you successful. Whenever I make a speech to students,
I put the symbol of the Godfather up behind me on a big slide.
When you think about the Godfather and the logo, it's a hand holding
Matria strings. And the point I always make in my speech is do you
want to be dangly at the bottom of those strings or do you want to
be the hand holding those strings? The answer is if you learn more about
everyone else's business in the company than just what you're doing, you're going to
beat everyone to the top and you're going to be holding the string. So
hard work is very very important. Sure talent wins out, but talent's nothing
with how hard work. Once in my life I said I was brilliant because
there's a thread in life, and every thread has a value. In my
case, If you ever look at a fabric, understanding every little thread and
what is the composition of that fabric, and understanding the price and how understanding
the price of that fabric and how it relates to the garment and what it
takes to manufacture that garment, you will understand more about design than any of
your f favorite competitors in design. He who understands it all wins, and
it all comes with hard work. Thomas Jefferson back in the day said,
I'm a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work,
the more I have of it. Having said this in spite of all the
reference to hard work, because that is the price of entry. Tonight,
I want to talk about talent. That's tonight's show, and speaking talent,
I want to introduce to you my lawyer, my co host, and most
importantly, my son, Jesse Weber. Hey, Jesse, you are the
embodiment of hard work these days. That's very kind of you to say before
I even get into that, that's a terrible Jack Nicholson impression. I'm sorry
you're talking about work. I eat breakfast three thousand yards away from four thousand
Cubans that want to kill me. It's at least a little bit your guy
sounded like Jamaican. I wasn't trying to emulate Jack Nicholson when I was you
worked. If you were, you were adding something. I think you need
a little work on that one. Talk about hard work, mine's not great.
I haven't practiced that one in a while. But you want the truth,
you can't handle the truth. That's not bad. That's not bad.
See better practice. Yes, hard work, Oh my gosh, I have
like twelve jobs. I'm working from six am to eleven o'clock at night.
And I was asked it, very interesting question the other day. Great question.
You know what somebody said to me, because they know how much I'm
doing. They said to me, what's the end goal? Why are you
doing all this? Is it to get your own show? I said exactly,
I said, I am working so hard right now. I'm hustling getting
my name out there, putting content out there that I know something will happen
in return, my own show, somewhere, something new, a new project.
So that I one hundred percent believe in that if you put out hard
work and you do a good job, things will come back. I just
believe it. I've always believed it. And the way that I learned that
was college. I was a slacker. My freshman year, I didn't even
know what the library was, and my grades were terrible. Sophomore year came
around, I worked harder than anybody, grades were great, got into law
school. I'm telling you, it's hard work is everything I know. People
want to reach it to the top. But you got to get the hard
work. You got to put in the hours to do it. News Nation's
been great. I've been filling in for a lot of their hosts, Dan
Abrams, Ashley Banfield News Nation Live on the weekends. What I do is
I work with the team of producers and bookers. What's the stories we want
to tell, what angles do we want to hit? And I have to
be as thoroughly researched as possible and really be prepared and go into the work,
look at the different issues that are surrounding it, try to anticipate different
things that I could ask or be asked. And so you have to be
You can't just wing it because not only will it not be as good of
a product, I think viewers will see that you're not prepared for it and
you don't want that. Do you have to read a TELEPROMPTU? Yeah?
How hard is that? It's a skill that you learn over time. It's
not as hard as you think. People sometimes get constrained by a teleprompter.
They become stiff because they feel like they have to read it a certain way,
and you become robotic. You just have to put it in your own
voice. What do you want to say. It took a little time for
me to get used to it, but I think I do a pretty good
job at it. How do I do at it? Could you tell I'm
reading it? No, Well, I don't know when you're reading and when
you're at living, So I guess it's great. There you go. That's
the point. So the point is you need talent. It's like everything else.
It's not just anyone could do. You have to learn how, and
you need to be talented. You said something very interesting once, you said
people shouldn't do what they want to do. People should do what they're good
at. And I think people have to realize what their strengths are and work
towards that. Because everybody has a talent for something, they just have to
figure out what that is. Yeah, the exact quote was, I don't
believe in following your passion because too many people have passion. I want to
be a singer, I want to be an astronaut. That's my passion.
I love space, but I'm not going out there. Well, I think
the best example of that is American Idol. Every one of those contestants thinks
that they're the next big star, but you see they don't have it.
They don't have it for a reason. I think there's only four hundred and
forty five professional NBA players. How many young kids do you think think they're
going to be in the NBA? How many millions and millions? Yeah,
exactly. I think there's a college player who doesn't think he's gonna make it
to the NBA. Think about this. Actors. You know when you watch
a movie and you see an actor or actress, he said, oh my
gosh, I know that person from somewhere, because they're always in movies.
They're always they're never the lead, they're never even the second billing, but
they're always supporting characters. That's a job they're lucky to have that, they're
lucky to be there. Think about how rare it is to be the top
one percent of actors. Yeah, amazing. When you said you recognize the
actor, I thought, it's because they're my favorite waiter or a waitress at
my favorite restaurant. Yeah, i'd hear you, But I'm telling you it's
it's luck and talent, but you gotta put in the work changing it up.
Being that we're here, we were talking about this week. What'd you
cover this week. I like doing that covered a bunch of things. Donald
Trump, did you happen to see that he had his trial this week a
lot more. Stormy Daniels was on the stand, which, by the way,
can I just tell you, I don't think it was a big deal
that she was on the stand. And to recap what we're talking about here,
it's Donald Trump's hush money trial that he allegedly falsified business records regarding repaying
his lawyer Michael Cohen, who paid Stormy Daniels to be quiet and keep quiet
about an affair she had with Donald Trump during the election. So she's one
of the big witnesses, right, She's going to testify, and she testified
about the affair she had with Donald Trump. She testified how she signed this
NDA, she was paid one hundred and thirty thousand dollars. She only received
ninety six thousand dollars. But anyway, so she gets paid, and all
the salacious details and all this stuff, none of it is relevant. None
of it matters to the actual issue at hand, whether he false aff business
records. The only thing that I think mattered from her testimony, And actually,
I will tell you, I think Donald Trump's team spent too much time
questioning her, cross examining her. I think they should admit that he had
the affair. The only thing that mattered is this, we had an encounter.
He wanted to keep it quiet for the election. That's what matters,
because if prosecutors can show that he had the criminal intent to keep the affair
quiet in order to influence the election, that's how they can convict him of
the felony. Everything else doesn't matter. Time out, timeout, unless it's
written somewhere or a series of witnesses. Who is saying we have to keep
this quiet because he'll get in the way of the election. Why isn't it
simply he didn't want his wife to know or his family, so they had
an affair back in the day, and she testified in all those years he
never made any attempt to keep it quiet, and he was married. He
was married, but right when the election was coming up and the Access Hollywood
tape came up, then it became we got to keep it quiet. So
if the and the motive was to keep a quiet for the election, and
this was an a legal way to undermine the election, that's where he gets
himself into trouble. Hmm, well, how's it looking the case? I
think this is a very weak case. Do you know how difficult it was
for me to just try to explain that to you. You have to do
legal gymnastics in order to get this to a felony. Let me be clear
about that. Donald Trump is charged with purely falsifying business records, which in
any other case would be a misdemeanor, and he probably would have pled guilty
to it. But the way it's being upgraded to a felony is prosecutors saying
he falsified these payments with the criminal intent to undermine New York state election law.
And it's such a complicated legal theory that I don't see it. What
election law. There's a New York state election law that says you can't promote
a candidate to office through unlawful means. What's unlawful means not entirely clear,
because hush money payments, catch and kill deals where you buy somebody's story and
you ever air it, none of that's illegal. So it's the idea that
he falsified what these payments were for because he didn't want anybody to know what
it was really about. Otherwise it would have hurt his chances in the election,
even though he paid this back after he was president. You see why
it's confusing. You see why it doesn't add up to a really concrete It's
not like this is bribery. He took money, It's nothing like that.
He's not even charged with violating New York state election law, which is again
bizarre. He's charged with falsifying business records to further a crime that he's not
even charged with. Michael Cohen is the star witness. He's the most important
witness in this whole case. Why because he is the person that allegedly paid
store Mee Daniels, and he is the person that Donald Trump allegedly paid back.
And the payments that Donald Trump made to Michael Cohen, that's what's his
issue. Did he falsify what those payments were? So Michael Cohen's gonna say,
yeah, I paid Stormy Daniels to keep quiet. Donald Trump paid me.
We made sure to call it legal expenses even though they weren't legal expenses,
because he didn't want anyone to find out. He's the most important witness.
Now he's also the most problematic witness. This is a guy who lied
to Congress. He's convicted. He's on TikTok the past few weeks criticizing Donald
Trump. So they could say, your whole platform, your whole brand,
is going after Donald Trump. That's how you make money, that's your financial
livelihood. Why should we believe anything you're saying. That's why they're saving him
for last than this prosecution, because they know how much of a problematic witness
he is. This is the weakest case that Donald Trump is facing. By
the way, that's not even the biggest legal issue for Donald Trump. Do
you want to know what else happened? What you know he's facing that classified
documents Marra a Lago case in Florida, which I think is one of the
strongest cases that he willfully retained classified documents live I Biden, like Bill Clinton,
like Barack Obama. This is different. This was the idea of lying
to authorities and trying to move the documents so nobody would see it's a bad
case. It's a bad case against them. I think it's pretty strong.
I want to know what happened this week. The judge who was overseeing this
case, the judge who I think you could say has issued rulings that have
been kind of favorable to Donald Trump. She is now indefinitely delayed this trial.
So there were all these deadlines, things that you have to do before
a trial starts. She delayed it, which means the likelihood of this trial
happening before the election is like two percent. And if Donald Trump becomes president,
this case will go away. That was the biggest win for him this
week that he might not have to go to trial on the classified documents case.
The only thing is he's got to win the election in order to make
it go away. Talk about pressure, talk about talent needed to deal with
stuff. What else is going on that you want to cover? Jess,
I got an interesting question for you. This is a business law question.
You're ready. Elon Musk might be in trouble. So apparently federal investigators are
looking into Elon Musk and Tesla Wow. It turns out that they are looking
into whether he engaged in securities fraud. Did he provide false information to investors
and customers about whether his cars were self driving? Did he make it seem
like there don't even need to be drivers there? And we know that there's
been a lot of crashes. We know that there's been a recall, and
it's now been revealed that federal investigators might be looking into securities fraud and wire
fraud against him. Now, in the law, companies are allowed to engauge
what's called puffrey. You're allowed to exaggerate about your products and your services.
My car is the way of the future, my car is the best on
the market. You're allowed to say stuff like that, But it's when you
make concrete claims like this drug can cure cancer, or this car can drive
on its own, there's no need for a driver. That's where you get
yourself into trouble. People rely on that information and I have to tell you
there could be something here. There have been statements before in the past that
might be questionable. They're looking into whether or not any of this internal communications
in the company. Well, if you're covering and what did he say,
we don't know. What they have to establish for a criminal case is that
he made willful false statements he knew they were false. Anyway, I can't
comment because I don't know what he said. I'm not following it. Well,
in six if he said, then my car unconditionally is self driving.
You don't need to drive it's the way of the future rather than a work
in progress, then it better be pretty accurate. But you need the statement.
In twenty s people went and bought the stock based on now, all
of a sudden, he has new technology. He's going to revolutionize the industry.
We learned that in a lawsuit back in twenty sixteen. They did this
demo of the self driving car, and Elon Musk had written in an email,
this is not what the car can currently do. This is what we
expected to do. But on the demo they said a driver only needs to
be in the driver's seat for legal reasons. That's bad if you ask me,
and that could be something they're looking in. You said there was a
demo. They're saying in the future, we intend to have a car that
the driver will only need to be sitting there. They won't have to do
anything. But we're not there yet. Did that imply that it's done deal
or that it's coming. I don't know. I don't know. I don't
know. It should be plain and simple. What was the public statements they
made. I don't know what they're looking into. I just thought it was
an interesting piece of news. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know.
Jesse, sounds like you're not doing your homework. I'm sorry. I'm
not a federal investigator looking at Tesla's private information. Sorry, sorry, guys,
Sorry, I don't have the inside information. Yeah, but don't they
have to state it if they're looking into it? What the statement was?
Not at all? The investigations are entitally private. By the way, P
Diddy, do we know what they're looking at? Do we know what they
found at his house? Not at all. We don't know. Investigations are
kept private secret for me. But we're talking about statements, statements of public
record. You would think there's a statement he said, my cars don't need
a drive and get in them. This is the way of the future.
We have the future, or we're working towards the future. Yeah, there's
a big difference a statement. I think it's interesting, to say the least.
Well, listen, I think this stuff is fascinating and I love it.
And when this is our current events. Now having said that, I
want to talk about talented and I want to talk about the most talented things
I think I've ever seen. When we come back in a moment, always
in fashion as one of the world's most celebrated fashion designers. Carl Lagafeld was
renowned for his aspirational and cutting edge approach to style. His unique vision of
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I, for one, love to shop. I love going around and
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and they have little tweaks and touches, whether it's a stripe on the
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details that go into Carla because he's always been he always had been one of
the world's great designers, and this legacy and goes on and on. I
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Isod is an incredibly strong golf brand. If you play golf, if
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Talk to you later, guys. I wish you are very happy spring
in summer, and I help you by telling you if you were eyesight,
you're going to look great. Welcome back to it always in fashion. Here's
your host, Mark Webber. I'm talking about talent and hard work tonight.
But I'm going to take hard work for granted, because I would think at
this point in time, everybody knows that hard work is really important to have
any kind of success. But I want to talk about talent. I have
been fortunate enough to see some of the greatest talents in business that you can
imagine. But forget me. We've all seen talent at work and talent at
play. There's not a day that goes by that you don't see a politician
make a speech, you don't see an actor or actress in a movie or
a TV show, or you don't see some sports legend get up there and
do something remarkable that in a million years you would never know how to do,
or for that matter, how he or she does it. It comes
with hard work, but there's an inherent talent, and I want to talk
about some of those things. Some of those things that I have found incredible
talented spoken by a person. I think of talented finance and law logistics,
operations, getting things from here to there talented sellers, talented designers, talented
advertisers, and talented people who make their positions known very clearly. But first
off, I want to talk finance. I have a saying there are no
flukes in business. Anybody who finds success finds it for a reason because they
did something that is really special and they deserve to be there. And in
my career, my history, I've never seen anybody there who doesn't belong there.
Now, there are times along the way people get in over their head
and they're in jobs that they don't belong in because they're not good enough,
but that in the natural scheme of things that takes care of itself, and
that this of pates they get caught and it ends it's not their fault.
They just shouldn't have been put in a particular position. But there are no
flukes in business. I was working with a chief financial officer of a public
company and he was talking about fair pay. What is it all about?
I'll never forget. When I was at Louis Viitan Moha Hennessy, I was
in France at the time, and the France papers, the newspapers in Paris
went crazy because one of the corporate executives who I knew very well, had
sold some shares of his stock from LVMH. He'd been with the company twenty
years. He had a huge position. He made a ton of money.
He had a lot of stock. And what generally happens with stock when you
work for company a person executive, most of their income is tied up in
stock. And he made a sale of stock. And it got me thinking,
because everyone is against the rich. The rich don't pay their fair share
of taxes. The rich, the rich, the rich. That I thought
about this at the time, because everything gets taxed. And I remember reading
in the newspaper and then talking with him about it. He sold twenty four
million dollars worth of stock, and the newspaper is headlined, or the first
sentence I don't recall, said his name sold twenty four million dollars worth of
stock, and that's the equivalent of fourteen hundred years of minimum wage in Paris.
And they tried to slaughter them. You know, I said a minute
ago, there are no flukes in business. When corporate executives make money,
there's a reason they're making money because they're aligned with the shareholders. Public companies
sell shriffs to the public. They're companies who make their company and the good
and bad associated with available for investment. And when you buy a share of
stock, you are aligned with the management of the company. The company does
well, the management does well, the company doesn't do well. The managers
don't get selleries, they don't get bonuses when they get fired. So when
you think about it, I was working with a financial executive at the time
at the company who explained all these things to everyone sitting around in a meeting.
You know, when you talk about stock, President Biden is talking about
raising capital gains to the level of people's income. This is calling it a
little lesson in finance for dummies. First of all, stock options. When
a company grants you a stock option, they give you, let's say,
the opportunity to purchase a thousand shares of stock at today's price, but they
give you ten years in which to purchase it. So it's not stock that
you can go out and sell right now. It's stock that usually takes a
period of time anyone from one, four or ten years that it becomes yours.
But the beauty of a stock option is you don't have to allow out
the money for it until you choose to sell it. It's yours when you
choose to take the and it's a great way to keep people aligned with shareholders.
If I'm a going to company and somebody offers me a thousand shares of
stock at today's price, the only way that'll ever have a value to me
is if the stock goes up down the road, and therefore I'm going to
stick around and stay and hopefully that stock will have meeting capital gains right now
is twenty percent. So if I'm a high paid executive and I'm paying thirty
eight percent tax on my salary and I own stock for a period in time
over one year, after I've played out cash for it, i can sell
it and only play twenty percent tax. Now, there are some other administrative
course that may take it up to twenty five percent, but it's still a
lot different than thirty eight percent. So stock options are there to encourage you
to stay with the company. They're part of what would be considered long term
compensation. Bonuses are special payments paid to executives or people in a company if
they reach certain goals. Once again, this is aligned with the shareholders.
Generally, bonus plans are tied into the company's performance and your personal performance within
the company that allows the stock price to grow, and if it grows,
you benefited by it as well as the shareholders benefit by it. Then of
course there's the four oh one K. This was something that was put in
place by the government to force people in their retirement to be safe from bankruptcy,
to have money to live on when they're no longer working. And what
it is a company will take out from your pay tax free pre tax,
a certain amount of money up to fifteen percent of your income that you could
put away. If you're making one hundred thousand, could awigh fifteen thousand dollars
per year tax free. But it's really not tax free, it's tax deferred.
You put it away and it could be five years, ten years,
fifty years to you choose to take it out when you're seventy two years old,
start taking it out, and you're making money or interest on that money
without having to pay taxes until such time as you take it out. So
it's a great way to see money. The best companies give up to half
of the percentage match if you could take out six percent according to the government,
they'll give you three percent free money if you stay with the company for
a period in time, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. That
was the best example of finance for idiots that I had ever heard in my
life, and I thought I would share it for you. Now. I've
seen some other very serious efforts going in place, and one of my favorite
stories of all time was on positioning a brand. Now, this might be
a little bit complicated, but it has to do with where brands are sold,
Jesse, you like Rolis watches. Where are Rolex watches sold? They're
sold at Rolex stores. They're sold specialty stores in malls. They're sold at
Tornel. When you say specialty stores in malls, you mean in Macy's or
Abercrombie and Fitch. What do you mean? No, I mean like a
Tornell, a specialty watch store. That is correct. Can you buy Warrols
watches in Bloomingdale's No? Can you buy him in Macy's No? You can
only buy him in luxury watch stores. Rolicks has made a decision in their
distribution to only sell one channel of distribution. I was working for the Venues
and company at one time, and we made a decision that we wanted to
sell a number of outlets. The venues and brand we were selling Macy's,
We were selling Cole's department store, which is a lower priced version of a
department store. We were selling our own outlets stores. We were selling a
lot of people. And when Macy's found out about it, the people in
Riches in Atlanta, which was owned by Macy's, asked me to come down
to talk to him about it, and my boss and I flew down to
Macy's and Riches Atlanta, who happened to be probably the best account we had
in the company, and we met and then their senior vice president of merchandising,
a gentleman named Roger Farrell, who, by the way, went on
to become the president of Polo, then went on to become the CEO and
eventually chairman of Tiffany's. Really smart guy, and he called us in and
thanked us for coming down, and he said, look, we're really unhappy
about the decisions you made with your venues and shirts. Unlike Rolex, who
made a very simple decision, I'm going to only sell in luxury boutique,
we widely distributed and outlets, those calls, etc. He says we have
a problem. We decided to drop your venues and brand from us store.
We were shell shot. He said, you can't do this. Okay,
says you leave me no choice. We're Macy's. We don't want to compete
with everyone. Too much of your business is being done at off price.
We've decided to drop. I said, but you're our biggest customer. We've
always weathered every storm together, whatever it takes. If there's a problem,
we'll make sure you're successful. How can you do it? And the more
we pushed, the more he said no. Now going in we understood his
position. We were being, if not pigs, we were being one sided.
We became like Second Avenue, figuring that we could sell anyone in the
world we wanted to and they would just accept it. And he did what
I thought was the smartest thing in the world. He looked at my boss
and he looked at me. He said, you two are very smart guys.
I want to ask you to do me a favor. He said,
would you mind standing up? And he starts standing up, and we start
standing up, and he says, to my boss, do me a favor.
Change seats with me. He comes to sit next to me, he
says, sit down, And he said to my boss, sit down in
my seat. And then he looked at my boss and he said, now
you're sitting in my seat, what would you do. My boss kind of
put his head down. In simplicity, he said, I understand your point
of view. I don't agree with it, but if I was in your
seat, I might do the same thing. Great answer right in that great
positioning. Amazing. Yeah, I really loved it. I think about also
now, while I'm thinking about talented, which is really what I'm talking about,
the most talented answer I ever got to advertising. While I'm talking about
van Usen is a woman named is Stelle Ellis. At the time I remember
working with she was eighty three years old. She's passed on. She was
on the board of directors. She was a marketing guru, very well known
in New York, and she was sitting on our board. And I used
to have a great relationship with it because in addition to being president of the
company, I was also a very savvy product development marketing person and she and
I got along very well. And one day I was struggling, you know,
you think about the van Using brand. We made pajamas me and watches.
We made everything we were, you know, considered very often a little
old in our approach, which I dealt with by making younger and younger and
more talented, more designer looking dress shirts. But I was trying to figure
out how to advertise, and I remember going to her and I said,
you know, Stelle, we've tried everything. We've had taglines, what are
changing? America is changing into buy our shirts, they wrinkle free, buy
this. By that, We've done everything, and I met a loss for
words, and I need to figure out how to advertise going forward. She
said, have you shot any photographs of what you want to do? I
said, yeah, can you bring them in? So I left, I
brought in the phonographs, I put them in front of she laid them out,
and she simply said to me, Mark, your advertising should be then
using shirts for men. To this day, I'm shell shot how smart that
was when you really come down to it. What is simpler than that shirts
for men? And for the ten years until I left the company, that's
how we're advertising every single time we're ever together. You like that one,
Jess, Yeah, it's amazing. Now this is the greatest story I ever
remember in sales back to Van using we're making flannel shirts, and the suggested
retail price was twenty five dollars. And the reality was we were selling these
shirts for six dollars so that our store could sell them for fourteen ninety nine,
and at six dollars we couldn't make money. And they were beautiful shirts.
And I said to my head of sales, the executive vice president at
the time, I no longer will sell these shirts at six dollars. I'm
the president of the company. I'm making a decision. I no longer could
sit in front of our CEO, nor the board for that matter, and
talk about selling our most important product. We're making twenty percent margin when our
customers were making sixty percent margin. We can't afford it any longer. They
want to sell the shirts, they're worth twenty five dollars, but if they
want to put them on sale, let them put them on sale for eighteen
ninety nine or nineteen ninety nine instead of fourteen ninety nine at six dollars.
Course to them, so we have to now get nine dollars for the shirt,
said we want. Don't be able to do it, Mark, I
said, we'll be able to do it. Let's you and I go to
sit with the president of Macy's and have the conversation. So I'm repeating,
we were selling them at six dollars. They were selling them at fourteen ninety
nine. They were pre ticketed at twenty five dollars, so when they went
on sale they could be fourteen ninety nine. But I couldn't afford it anymore.
So I wanted to sell that six dollars shirt for nine dollars so they
could sell them in eighteen ninety nine or nineteen ninety eight below twenty dollars.
Everybody makes money, everybody's happy. A week later, the meeting's set up
for he and I to go and visit the president of macy We go to
their headquarters in New York. I sit down with them. We need to
talk about the flannel shirt. We sell tens of thousands of them. Your
stores love them. We love selling to their design right the pictured right,
the colors are great, Everything about the shirts is great. I no longer
can sell them for six dollars. I need you to buy them at nine
dollars. President of Macy's or GMM whoever it was, said, whatever you
want us to do. We're going to do. We're important parties together with
you. Whatever you want to sell for we're going to accept. I left
the meeting and I said, my god, thank you so much. This
is great. I went home. I told the executive vice president of sales.
Now, that's a lesson in life. When you really feel strongly about
something, when you know you're right, you go in and you pitch it
and you get it done. It's more than that, right, You've built
up a great reputation. And it's not just that you were adamant and your
what you wanted. You built up such good will that they agree to it.
Yeah, you're right. So for the next six months, I was
so happy. I was so proud of myself. I was thinking great.
Macy's bought off flannel shirts. Winter comes and I noticed in Macy's that they're
still selling the shirts when they go on sale for fourteen ninety nine. I
said, I don't get it. How can they do that. They don't
like to make less money. So at first my sales executive told me they're
going to make less money and sell a lot of shirts. So I kept
asking. It bothered me. A week later, I'm seeing, well,
the sales that's selling all these shirts. Brought him in my office. I
don't understand. Could you please tell me what's going on here? He puts
his head down and he said, I saved you from yourself. He said,
what does that mean? He says, I sold all the shirts at
six dollars they would have never bought them in nine dollars, and didn't want
you to be embarrassed in front of them. Huh, So would you say?
You know? I was lost for words, and I said, I
don't know whether I should kiss you or fire you. I know, for
one thing, I can never trust you again. Well, he was protecting
you, yeah, I he he just wasn't honest with you and did something
behind your back. Let's call it one of the most talented decisions I've ever
seen. I guess that's the headline here. I've often thought talking talent about
how talented the luxury retail and fashion industry is. In a sense, this
industry is made up of geniuses who are logistically brilliant in redeveloping and redefining themselves.
Every quarter, every three months, this industry has to redevelop, come
out with brand new product, and go on sale because the seasons change every
three months. It's unlike any other industry and you really think about it.
The iPhone comes out once a year. Automobiles change their model every five years.
Ferrari, one of the most forward car companies in the world, never
has a model that comes out earlier than five years. So for a fashion
industry to do what they're doing is so talented. I'm in awe of what
the industry, what we have always accomplished, and to make it even more
brilliant or mind blowing. The talent that goes into the industry is we sell
you things that you don't need. We sell you things that you have already.
Our whole job is to make you want something that you don't need,
because we are in the want business. We are in the business of creating
one. How we obsolete products so that you want new ones. How will
change of color so you want that color. How we created different lifestyles for
different events, different wardrobes for different events. Used to be you got up,
you wore a uniform. Guys put on a suit, shirt and tie,
and yeah, there were a million variables. That's how you went to
work. It's no longer the cake Now if you wear a suit. You
wear it with a tie, without a tie, with a long sleeve,
polo shirt, with a mock or turtleneck. We've given you multiple choices,
as we talked to you in our commercial on venues in suits. We've used
regular fabrics, we use stretch fabrics. You wear these suits wherever you go.
Now we've created lifestyle. Used to be those powrel for jogging, but
now there's a powrel for working out. There's a power for golf, there's
a powerful tennis for whatever sport you might play, whatever occasion you might go
into. We have special apparel that we've created for you. Do you need
special apparel to work out? What's wrong with your sweatshirts and t shirt?
Well, we've convinced you that you need these things, and because you need
it, you've gone out and bought it. And I believe that's one of
the greatest examples of talent. The point is for us to do this and
for us to talk talent. I gave you someone I think of the most
important subjects and talented people that I've seen in my career. I'm going to
take a break and come back and continue with some talent. Always in fashion,
spent a lifetime of my career building the Van Usten Brand, and I
am so pleased that they're back with us now talking about suits, men,
we're dressing up again and it's become cool to wear a suit. This can
be one on multiple occasions, in multiple ways. You could wear a suit
formally to go out at night or to an event, wear a suit to
the office with or without a tie. If you look closely, now fashion
trends suits are being worn with turtlenecks or mack next. The choices are endless
and every one of them looks right. You could really really look the part.
I believe that packaging yourself is as important does the products you package,
and wearing a suit is one of those things that make men look their best.
Venues In invented a new idea. It's called the cool Flex suit.
It's been engineered with stretch technology, giving you the most comfortable fit and mobility.
It's wrinkled resistant fabric, it's cool moisture WICKI it makes it perfect for
all occasions. As we discussed just now, this new style of looking sharp
while feeling cool and comfortable is amazing and I'm so excited that the ven using
company is involved in this new technology. Anne is embracing the whole idea of
dressing up. Let's not forget van Usen made its name with dress shirts.
It's only proper that the suit business follows strongly in its way. You can
find van using Koolflex men's stretch suits at jcpenny or online at jcpenny dot com.
Guys, they're great. You should go look at them. Dk and
Y Donna Karen, New York. Donna Karen began her career as one of
the finest, most successful, powerful women in the fashion industry. She developed
a collection aimed at the luxury market for women on the go, women who
were powerful in their workplace, women who had lives that extended beyond the workplace,
and her clothes went from day and tonight. An extraordinary collection. But
the interesting thing Donna Karen had a young daughter, and she had friends and
they couldn't afford to buy the Donna Karon collection, and Donna invented dk Andy
Donna Karen, New York. It's an offshoot of the Donna Karen collection.
The same concept a lifestyle brand. Now we talk about lifestyle brands, what
does that really mean? Simply what they say, there are brands that follow
you throughout your lifestyle. You get up in the morning, you start to
get dressed. Donn A Karen Decan Why as intimate apparel, as hosiery,
as all those products. You're getting dressed for work. You get accessorized shoes,
handbags, and it takes you through the day. The remarkable thing about
dk andy clothes for work, they work into the evening. The dresses,
the suits, the pants, the sweaters, the blouses, extraordinary clothes at
affordable prices that go from day in tonight. Part of your lifestyle is active.
You have weekends, you have events, you participate in sports. Donna
Karen's casual clothes did that under the DKNY label. A vast array of casual
sports where that make women look great as they navigate their busy lives. Whether
you going to soccer games for your children or whether you're going out to the
movies, whatever you want to do. Dk and Y Jenes DKY Sportswear is
there for you. That's what a lifestyle brand is. And I need to
mention DKY activewear, which is extraordinary. The leggings, the sports bras,
the sweats. You can wear DKY activewear, certainly in the gym, certainly
when you're working out at home, and certainly if you want on the street,
because it's that well done. The quality of DK WHY is nothing short
of exceptional and why shouldn't it be because it was born from the idea of
luxury made affordable for women of America. DK and Why a true lifestyle brand
that takes you from day and tonight, from the week into the weekend.
DCN, why you can find DCNY and Macy's DKY dot com. Welcome back
to Always in Fashion. Here's your host Mark webber It sartter Off tonight talking
about hard work and how important it is and how people have owed. He
said, the harder the work, the luckier I get. Thomas Jeffers has
said, I believe in luck. It seems the harder I work, the
more of it I have. But I didn't want to really talk about hard
work because it comes without saying it's a given. You want any chance of
success in life, for your career, you have to have hard work.
But talent without hard work is impossible. You need both, but I wanted
to really talk about talent. What triggered this week's show was a quote I
saw on the internet. It was about Walt Disney. The day his first
theme park opened in California. One of the executives said, what a shame
and travesty that this theme park opened and Walt Disney never got to see it,
and without hesitation, Roy Disney, his brother, said, Walt Disney
did see it. That's why we're here. And that got me thinking about
talent. Walt Disney, of course, was an amazing talent. When I
think of talent, I think about Steve Jobs in our era. You know,
I talked before about we put people in the want business. We convince
them that they need something that they don't. Steve Jobs said, we make
products that people want before they even know that they wanted them. Amazing guy.
I think of Elon Musk, who is invented pretty much by himself,
the electric vehicle industry. Not only did invent it, he put it into
play. He made it happen, he made it work. Now, I,
for one, I'm a climate change guy. I'm worried about the climate.
I live on the water. I know what happens when the tide rises.
I don't believe in electric cars. I have a hybrid. It's caused
me nothing but aggravation in pain. But the guy's a genius and I admire
it. You know, while I'm talking automobiles, I think about Ferraris.
I am an admirer of Ferraris and what Ferrari has accomplished as an auto company
and an auto maker for us out there, those of us who can afford
it, to pay extraordinarily amounts of money for a car that you can buy
anywhere else with another name for one tenth. Of course, and Enzo Ferrari
didn't enter the automobile business to sell cars. He entered the automobile business to
sell cars to pay for his racing. And to this day, if you
want to buy a car, you have to beg you have to ask,
you have to get permission, you have to wait. You buy a car
that you don't know what it costs, that you don't know when you'll get
it. It's an amazing feat in brands, and I'm amazed by it.
When I think about sports, I think about George Steinbro. He bought the
New York Yankees, and he knew what to do with it. He brought
energy to the team, He brought excitement in New York. He never compromised
on the players. He was willing to spend more money for talent than anyone
because he recognized talent is what would make the New York Yankees bankable. And
he did, and it was an amazing feat. And to this day,
I love watching the Yankees. It can't help myself. They're the best that
ever was. I think about the talent that goes into those companies. Talent
is nothing without hard work. I know from my own experience that the harder
I work, the luckier I get. I know from my own experience how
hard it is to be on top of your game, how much outside work
you have to do to be successful. I can't walk into a restaurant,
I can't walk into a movie theater. I can't walk down the street without
observing people, looking at them from head to toe, understanding what's going on,
looking for trends, wondering what's going on, looking at ads on bus
stops and magazines and television on the internet, constantly trying to stay close to
culture. I think about how hard it is to come up with themes for
the radio show, how hard it is to come up with the ideas that
I want to convey to you. We're a cultural and lifestyle show. So
without me being plugged into culture, without me watching what's going on, I
can't talk to you. Jesse can't talk to you. Jesse spends his days
working day and tonight on television radio of the most current events and legal issues
going on in our country and world and politics. Hard work is necessary.
Talent is a given. Without it, you get nothing. But I also
tell you talent is nothing without hard work. Good Night,