Liz Claiborne Inc. History

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The Company Description of Its Time

This filing carries two dated announcements at its head, and both are kept as recorded. On January 4, 2011, Liz Claiborne Inc. announced it was changing its name to Fifth & Pacific Companies, to better communicate its strategic focus on growing its three global lifestyle brands - Juicy Couture, kate spade and Lucky Brand - and to reflect the sale of the Liz Claiborne namesake brand to J.C. Penney, among other recent transactions; the change was expected to be effective on or about May 15, 2012, when the company would begin trading as Fifth & Pacific Companies, Inc. (NYSE: FNP). And on October 12, 2011, the company announced definitive agreements to sell its Liz Claiborne, Monet and Kensie brands, and the completed sale of its Dana Buchman brand, for total cash proceeds of approximately $328 million - the Liz Claiborne and Monet brands to J.C. Penney Company, Inc., Kensie to Bluestar Alliance, Dana Buchman to Kohl's - alongside an early termination of its DKNY Jeans and DKNY Active license with Donna Karan International.

1976: Separates for Working Women

The history section opens in 1976, when a relatively unknown dress designer, her textile veteran husband and two partners established Liz Claiborne Inc. - Liz Claiborne, Art Ortenberg, Leonard Boxer and Jerome Chazen - with less than half a million dollars and a focus on design, quality and value, building what became a nearly $5 billion public company. Established when women were entering the workforce in large numbers, the partners saw the opportunity to provide versatile, fashionable wardrobes appropriate for work that still conveyed individuality and femininity. A working woman herself, Liz understood how liberating it would be to mix and match separates rather than rely on the traditional dress or gray flannel suit; out of a small office on 40th Street in Manhattan, the brand was born. The concept was simple: provide the ensemble-driven sportswear available for years at designer prices through the likes of Calvin Klein and Bill Blass, but make it affordable for the working woman.

The obstacle was the department store itself. Stores were classification oriented - pants in one department, skirts in another, shirts in yet another - so a customer assembling a wardrobe had to travel department to department and hope colours and pieces matched, and buyers were classification-focused too. Liz Claiborne executives worked with retailers to test presenting all of the brand's related sportswear pieces in one department, streamlining the shopping experience. The company also questioned sourcing norms: a production control office opened in Hong Kong by mid-1976, and a test order of the poet blouse - a hot-selling yet hard-to-produce item - from a factory in Taiwan returned quality and price that, the history says, blew everyone away. The company went on to source in more than 40 countries and routinely ship five million units per week in the United States alone; it went public in 1981, and by 1985 it was the first company founded by a woman to be listed in the Fortune 500.

Founders' Succession and the Brand-Centred Structure

The succession record is kept in full. Leonard Boxer retired in 1985; in 1989, after 13 years, Liz Claiborne and Art Ortenberg announced their retirement from active management, and Jerry Chazen became chairman. Paul R. Charron joined in 1994 as vice chairman and chief operating officer, became president and chief executive officer a year later and chairman in 1996, and retired at the end of 2006 after 12 years. William L. McComb joined as chief executive officer in November 2006, and Kay Koplovitz became non-executive chairman in January 2007. On July 11, 2007, McComb announced a new organisational structure putting 'brand' at the centre, operating through two segments: Direct Brands, brand-centric and vertically organised - Juicy Couture, Kate Spade, Lucky Brand and Mexx - and Partnered Brands, customer-focused and cost efficient, including the Liz Claiborne group, the DKNY Jeans group, the Monet group, cosmetics and fragrances, and Narciso Rodriguez.

Use this page for that whole filed arc: the 2011-2012 announcements with their dates and prices, the pre-October 2011 summary, the 1976 founding and the separates insight, the one-department experiment and the Taiwan poet blouse test, the 1981 public offering and 1985 Fortune 500 distinction, and the 2007 two-segment structure. The routes include the kate spade and Lucky Brand filings named in the renaming announcement - both brands filed elsewhere in this directory - and the Liz Claiborne designer, news, careers, financial and definition pages. For the brands' current ownership and ranges, their own official sites are the authorities; this profile preserves the company that assembled them, as the historical record recorded it.

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