Alexander Wang on His Company’s Future
Alexander Wang on His Company’s Future
Alexander Wang has had a pretty good year compared to much of the fashion industry. After three years as creative director at Balenciaga, Wang parted ways in Summer 2015, returning home to New York City where he took over the positions of CEO and chairman of his company. The company itself has maintained a forward stride, while many other luxury brands showed slow to no growth at all. All of which has only seemed to stoke the fire of Wang’s motivation.
“I like to get things done. I like to see things come to fruition,” Wang told Business of Fashion in an interview last week. “I like to use creative thinking when it comes to business decisions, and I always like to use business thinking when it comes to creative decisions. The more that I can be that bridge between the different functionalities within an organisation, the more I feel proud of the work we’ve done together as a team.”
This method has so far proven successful, growing the business by double-digits according to the company’s own reportings. At the moment, Alexander Wang is carried in over 700 stores worldwide, and the company holds 16 stores in 7 countries. While 16 stores may seem a mere few compared to other brands, the company hasn’t had to close their stores the way many others have in the past few years. Perhaps because of this, Wang has express a desire to focus inward before expanding the company further, concentrating on increasing efficiency and streamlining internal processes first.
“The first thing I said to my team when I got back was that this year, we’re not going to focus on expanding exponentially,” Wang continued in the interview. “We are going to focus on our internal functions: we are going to look at our inventory levels, we’re going to look at our merchandising strategies. We are going to look at how we function internally. That was something I really wanted to strengthen, especially in this time when stores aren’t coming in with huge budgets buying. You have to be very focused and strategic in what you’re creating and putting out there.”
Wang expressed plans to expand the accessory portions of the company – the goal is to reach the point of having a president of handbags and a president of footwear. Digital sales was another area of focus mentioned in the interview, which comes as no surprise considering the direction of the industry and the overall trajectory of the brand. Wang mentioned the potential for a see-now, wear-now, direct-to-consumer model, something many companies have moved to in recent years. With such focused, on-trend and trendsetting methods, Alexander Wang seems to be one of the main players ushering in a fresh generation of powerful players in the fashion industry.
Alexander Wang on His Company’s Future
