Chip Wilson, the billionaire from Vancouver, British Columbia, who famously fell out with Lululemon Athletica, the company he founded, made a stop in New York last month. He wanted to look for a SoHo retail location for his family’s new high-end street-wear company, Kit and Ace, and to meet with a literary lawyer about a possible memoir.
He also made time to see a reporter, inviting me to tag along for the day, beginning with an 8 a.m. company breakfast at the David Burke Kitchen in SoHo.
Mr. Wilson, 60, is friendly and open, without the usual filter relied upon by many in the public sphere — especially those who have been put through the wringer, as Mr. Wilson was in 2013 after he told a reporter that Lululemon’s expensive yoga pants were transparent at least in part because the size of some of the female bodies being stuffed into them was too large.
I was 15 minutes late by the time I arrived, disheveled and apologetic. Mr. Wilson was seated with eight young women at a square table set for 10.
He is an imposing figure, 6 feet 2 inches tall, with a large head shaved bald and the scruff of a beard. He stood and helped me off with my parka, an old-fashioned gentleman.
When he rejoined his guests, all employed by Kit and Ace, he asked a question: What would happen if he were to arrive, say, 15 minutes late to a design meeting?
If he were 15 minutes late to such a meeting, he went on to explain, the designers might get the idea that it’s acceptable to deliver to the production department a bit past deadline. Then? The product would arrive late at the stores, which could lead to items ending up on the clearance rack.
“If we’re selling the product at a discount,” he said, “there is less money to market the product. If there is less money to market the product, then a different type of customer than the one we’re seeking will come into the store. There will be less money to put into the product’s quality and, ultimately, less profit. The whole system falls apart. It’s fascinating.
“Now we know,” Mr. Wilson added, “that when we have breakfast with Katie, we don’t really have to be there when we say we will be there.”
Andrea Mestrovic, a Kit and Ace publicist who had made the trip from Vancouver to New York with Mr. Wilson, tried to put an end to her boss’s late-shaming, interjecting that while she is punctual for work events, she may arrive a few minutes late when joining friends for cocktails or meals. “Socially late,” she called it.
“Jewish Standard Time,” Mr. Wilson said in reply. “It’s showing you didn’t respect your friends’ time.”
Punctuality is a central focus of Mr. Wilson’s. It is also a key principle espoused by the Landmark Forum, a leadership development program based on Werner Erhard’s EST curriculum.
When Mr. Wilson was running Lululemon, the company paid for employees to attend Landmark seminars; Kit and Ace employees enjoy the same benefit. One of the main lessons of Landmark is that punctuality is a strong indicator of personal integrity.
The purpose of this breakfast was to discuss goals and leadership with the people who understand customers best: the retail staff. What should the Kit and Ace brick-and-mortar strategy be? Is the team integrating goal-setting and meditation into company culture?
Kit and Ace started in 2014 and now has about 60 stores in the United States, Canada, Australia and Britain. It specializes in clothes made from a machine-washable technical cashmere.
The line, for men and women, is designed for all-day movement, not for a workout. As you go from running errands to attending an evening event, you waste no time changing outfits. Which is good because, well, time.
Mr. Wilson surveyed the women at the table. His left arm was extended and at rest along the top of the banquette, not quite touching the shoulders of a woman who works for the company in New York.
“It is a precious experience to have these breakfasts,” Mr. Wilson said. “Look at the beautiful girl I get to sit beside!”
Everyone at the table tee-hee’d, awkwardly.
He turned to one of the women and asked, “If you woke up with amnesia and couldn’t remember your name, what would you call yourself?”
“Stephanie,” the woman answered, before mentioning that it was a name her parents had considered giving her.
Mr. Wilson rejected her response. If she had amnesia, he reasoned, she wouldn’t know that she even had parents, much less that they had almost named her Stephanie. “With amnesia,” he said, “you have no past. Your name could be Refrigerator. This is about ultimate possibility.”
Once the plates were cleared, Mr. Wilson walked with purpose and vigor out of the restaurant and toward Wooster Street, where he and his real estate guy kicked off a tour of possible new retail locations.
He bobbed in and out of each space, firing off precise questions about dimensions and handicap accessibility. After, he powered down sidewalks to the Kit and Ace store in NoLIta, where the words “Time is Precious” appear in white neon above the checkout counter.
He was greeted by his wife of 14 years, Shannon Wilson, 42, and J. J. Wilson, 27, his oldest son from his first marriage. They founded Kit and Ace with Mr. Wilson, and are the creative forces behind the company.
The month before, J. J. mentioned, he had visited Kit and Ace stores in Miami. In that city, everything happens on “coconut time,” he said. “At Kit and Ace, we are so not late for anything. That’s just not how we operate.”
Scott Elliott entered the store. He is the chief executive of a charity founded by Mr. and Ms. Wilson, Imagine1Day, which seeks to build and support schools in Ethiopia. The Wilsons pay 100 percent of the operating and administrative costs, totaling about $1.4 million a year, Mr. Elliott said.
They sat down at a square table. Mr. Wilson mentioned that he likes square tables. “I have been studying communication for a very long time,” he said, by way of explanation.
The men discussed the charity and the need to train Ethiopian teachers in Landmark principles before the talk turned to Kit and Ace.
“A new business is like a baby,” Mr. Wilson said. “It cries, it’s puking, it’s 24 hours a day and sometimes you don’t know why you did it. But then you give it a bath and put some powder on it and you can’t believe how beautiful it is.”
His iPhone alarm sounded. Three-minute warning. Time to walk to lunch.
On the sidewalk, Mr. Wilson broached again the subject of time. “I was a competitive swimmer from the ages of 8 to 25,” he said. “You have to be right on time. You are so scheduled.”
When he stopped swimming, he let go of the schedule. “Then I showed up nowhere on time,” he said. “And then I realized I had no friends left because no one could rely on me. Then I went to Landmark. It took me three years to bring my integrity back into play.”
And what of his integrity in connection with Lululemon, the company in which he still has a large ownership stake (about 14 percent) but no executive role? Is he saddened by the estrangement?
“Lululemon became a teenager who wants its own way of doing things,” he said. “It turns into a little bit of a pain in the butt, but you love it still. Now it’s at university. It still wants me, but it doesn’t want me. It wants me to support it, but it doesn’t want to acknowledge I’m supporting it.”
This arrangement is temporary, he believes. “It will get through university, and the child will return to the father,” Mr. Wilson said.
We sat down in a dark nook of Mercer Kitchen. Mr. Wilson ordered sparkling water. I ordered still water. “The trend is moving back to still, isn’t it,” he said. “I love trends.”
As we waited for the arrival of J. J. and Ms. Wilson, Mr. Wilson returned to the topic of his wayward child, Lululemon. “It has turned from being a woman’s company to being a man’s company,” he said. “It didn’t follow through on building a pipeline of women. We got a lot of women who were older, and they didn’t develop women under them. I think they were trying to protect their jobs.” (A spokesman for Lululemon declined to comment.)
I asked him what he thought about the negative reaction to the comments he made about women’s bodies and the transparency of the yoga pants. “I became a scapegoat for a lot of people not doing what they were supposed to do,” he said. “It was Machiavellian rules, but I didn’t know I was playing a game.” And then, finally, “I’ve been coached not to say the things that I’m saying.”
After the lunch, J. J. ordered an Uber. Once inside the S.U.V., Mr. Wilson checked his phone. “The market is so volatile,” he said.
“Any stars?” his wife asked.
“Lululemon, actually.”
“That is really great,” she said. “It’s very important to us. We follow it. It was where we fell in love.”
Then, suddenly, the unthinkable: Mr. Wilson realized he was running late.
It was already after 2 p.m. He had arranged to visit the library collection at Material Connexion and then go to a literary lawyer’s Midtown office at 2:15.
“How did the time get away from us?” he said. He was agitated, almost anguished. “I’m out of integrity with them,” he said, referring to the people at the museum.
He called from his iPhone and apologized for missing the tour. His demeanor visibly shifted after the call.
Moments later, he strode into the office of Michael Rudell, an entertainment lawyer.
“I don’t know what I don’t know,” Mr. Wilson said to Mr. Rudell. “What 10 questions should I be asking prospective agents?”
Back on his game. Back on time.
A version of this article appears in print on February 5, 2016, on page D4 of the New York edition with the headline: A Canadian Billionaire Starts Anew.
for more Kit and Ace see post CANADIAN FASHION: KIT AND ACE January 30, 2015
By: Francine Kopun Business reporter, Published on Sun Jan 03 2016
JJ Wilson, 27, used to skateboard in the unfinished office upstairs from his father’s store.
It wasn’t a Lululemon Athletica shop. That would come later. Chip Wilson’s first retail venture was called Westbeach. It catered to the surf, skateboard and snowboard crowd in Vancouver.
The space above the store and the company warehouse were perfect for two boys — JJ and his younger brother, Brett — to skateboard in and build elaborate cardboard kingdoms from the boxes that were cast off as merchandise arrived.
“It would be Chip’s job to come and rip up the cardboard boxes and try and find us,” says JJ, co-founder of the upmarket fashion retailer Kit and Ace. “He would run from one end through the tunnels of cardboard that we had made to the other end.”
One night, they pitched a tent and slept in a store because valuable merchandise had been delivered and the place lacked an alarm system. They made popcorn. It was a blast.
“I have really great memories of growing up,” says JJ.
So perhaps it’s not surprising that he is now running his own stores, together with his stepmother, Shannon Wilson.
In less than two years the brand has built out quickly, with 61 locations worldwide, including 33 stores and five pop-ups in the U.S. and 10 stores and two pop-ups in Canada, including locations on Queen St. W. and Bloor St. W., and in Oakville. A store in Muskoka and one in north Toronto are planned for 2016.
With Kit and Ace, the duo is seeking to tap into an emerging market in much the same way that Chip Wilson did. Lululemon made athletic clothing comfortable and chic enough to double as flattering casualwear. Shannon and JJ are making casualwear chic enough for any context.
In October, they opened their biggest store in Toronto to date, the one on Bloor, with a striking copper door and a café that backs onto Yorkville. The interior is decorated with art sourced locally and racks of sleek, lightweight apparel. The trademark fabric is Technical Cashmere, a blend of about 10-per-cent cashmere with other fabrics including viscose and elastane.
JJ and Shannon joke that he helped bring her into the family. She was the lead designer at Lululemon when Chip Wilson, by then a divorced father of two, asked her out on a date.
He was planning to take Shannon on a hike up a nearby mountain. He was going to bring sandwiches.
“I really liked Shannon,” says JJ, who was 12 at the time. “I wanted to make sure that the date went absolutely perfectly.
“Chip’s a lovely, talented, amazing father. But I knew I was better off making the sandwiches for the date. There’s three or four things he’s amazing at cooking, but that’s it. Barbecue, anything breakfast, the guy kills at. When it comes down to anything outside of those circles … I made the sandwiches.”
JJ wrapped them carefully and then put them in Tupperware containers. At the summit, Shannon opened them and said to Chip: “There is no way you made these.”
As Shannon tells it, she and Chip decided to get married on that first date.
Now a mother of three and stepmother of two, she’s ready to apply her creative talents to a new enterprise, and she wants to do it with family, just as Lululemon was built with family, led by Chip.
His offhand comments have in the past stoked controversy. In December 2013, Chip announced he was stepping down as chairman of the Lululemon board of directors, after being criticized for saying Lululemon pants don’t work for all women.
JJ and Shannon say it was tough to see him reduced to a single comment when he’s done so much to draw people into the kind of active lifestyle he has always led.
“It’s not the truth of Chip — he’s a visionary, a leader and generous, and has never endeavoured to hurt people in any way,” Shannon says during an interview at the launch of the Bloor St. store.
“He’s pretty darn smart,” says JJ, adding that for him, getting into retail was a natural progression. For a time, JJ worked in the Vancouver Lululemon stores.
“I’m so fortunate that I get to have a retail visionary I can call,” he says of his dad. “I think a lot of people in business would like to have him on speed-dial.”
Lululemon is a business that helps people live longer, healthier, more fun lives, says JJ. He wants Kit and Ace to make it easier for people to get dressed and be comfortable and stylish, so that they are free to pursue the most important things in their lives.
“That I can get behind. That is fun.”
JJ Wilson’s vitals:
•Birthplace: Vancouver
•Age: 27
•Elementary school: private Vancouver College
•High school: public school Magee Secondary
•Post-secondary: Ryerson University (business management)
•Facebook status: in a relationship
•Business: Kit and Ace is a private business with 61 stores worldwide.
He flirted with law, returned to suits
“Basically, your average man hates shopping,” Larry Rosen says after discussing with interest the finer details of what he is wearing, including the pocket square and the surgeon’s cuffs on his suit.
Surgeon’s cuffs are one of those things that send a message to a small group of people — in this case, men who know something about fashion or men who are dressed by people who know something about fashion, perhaps by one of Rosen’s 700 employees at Harry Rosen stores across Canada.
Buttons on the cuffs of suit jackets today are typically non-functional. Buttons on surgeon’s cuffs can be done up and undone. The name derives from the fact that military surgeons used to wear them so they could easily roll up their sleeves if they were suddenly called upon to perform surgery in the field.
Not that anyone is expecting Rosen to burst into an operating room. He is in the business of clothing the average man as pleasantly as possible.
Rosen’s company has made a $100-million bet that it can do so better than Saks Fifth Avenue, which is set to open its first two stores in Canada in February, and better than Nordstrom, the Seattle department store chain that will open its first GTA stores this year.
That’s how much the privately held Harry Rosen, which has 16 stores in eight Canadian cities, has invested in expanding and renovating its chain.
“No disrespect to these organizations,” says Larry of the competition, “but menswear is usually 10 per cent of their business and the guy who’s buying suits for them was buying chocolates six months ago. Men and menswear is all we do.”
His father, Harry, launched his first made-to-measure store for men on Parliament St. in 1954. Harry worked long hours, but he didn’t bring his work home with him.
The Rosens wanted their children to find what they loved to do, not follow in anyone’s footsteps.
“My dad was really respectful of us,” says Larry, at 59 the eldest of four. “He just encouraged us to be ourselves.”
The Rosens insisted that all their children attend university. Larry earned a bachelor of arts from the University of Toronto and an MBA and law degree from the University of Western Ontario. He spent summers and holidays working on the sales floor.
“As a young kid, when your father is kind of famous, you aspire to do well by him,” says Larry. “So I kind of developed a lot of ambition in me.”
His brother is a surgeon in Calgary. His sister Andrea is a web designer. His sister Rachel is a professional photographer.
Larry Rosen practised corporate law for a year before approaching his father about joining the firm, during its period of national expansion in the 1980s.
“He made it clear to me that it wasn’t going to be a ‘gimme’ — I had to work to prove myself.”
He started as a buyer in 1986. He ran a group of stores, was vice-president of corporate affairs, ran the merchandise group and was appointed president and chief operating officer in 1997. In 2000, after Harry Rosen’s longtime business partner, Bob Humphrey, died of pancreatic cancer at 53, Larry took over as chief executive officer, a position he holds today.
He governs the company together with a professional management group drawn from among the ranks of the corporation and based on the vision of its founder.
Harry officially retired in 2005. Unofficially, he was dropping in to the stores weekly until about a year ago. Now he travels widely, offering advice as needed.
“I call him the Wayne Gretzky in my back pocket,” says Larry. “He’s a great student of retail and human nature.”
It was his father who told Larry to always wear a pocket square. The splash of colour in the outside breast pocket is another one of those things that signal an inside knowledge of fashion.
“To me, the glasses you choose, the watch you wear, the belts — all those things add so much dimension to the clothes you wear,” says Larry.
He now has three sons in their 20s who have shown an interest in eventually taking over the business.
“My hope is that I can do as good a job as my father in transitioning this to the next generation. There’s really something wonderful in being a long-tenured business that has a family connection.”
Larry Rosen’s vitals:
•Birthplace: Toronto
•Age: 59
•Elementary school: Wilmington Elementary
•High school: Oakwood Collegiate
•Post-secondary: University of Toronto, University of Western Ontario
•Facebook status: married, three grown children
•Business: Harry Rosen is a private business with 16 stores in eight Canadian cities.
A business that ‘gets in your bones’
Darren Mason learned to ride a bike at Hillcrest Mall in Richmond Hill. He learned to ice skate at Yorkville’s Hazelton Lanes.
His mom, Joyce, was the founder of the Village Shop, stores that focused on quality fashion for working women in the 1970s, many of them entering the workforce for the first time.
His father was a wholesaler and his two grandfathers were in retail management — one of them ran children’s wear for Holt Renfrew.
“Every dinner conversation, everything I can remember — it involved fashion and retail,” says Darren, 48, president of Andrews, a women’s luxury department store.
Becoming a retailer was a natural move for him. “Knowing the head start I had, it would have been foolish for me not to take advantage of it,” he says.
In October, Darren and his sister, Beverley Lerner, opened the third Andrews location in the GTA, at Sherway Gardens.
The second, at Bayview Village, has been expanded three times since it was founded in 1999.
His mother took over the first Andrews in Hazelton Lanes in 1991.
The store was available and the mall owners thought Joyce, who ran Village Shops in 12 locations, was a savvy retailer who could do something with it. Joyce closed her Village Shops as the leases expired so she could focus on her new luxury store.
She kept the name Andrews. It was simpler than changing it.
The new Andrews at Sherway Gardens features herringbone-pattern floors, Persian rugs and leather ottomans. Stylish movies like The Great Gatsby play on a big screen behind the counter, and the clothing racks are filled with high-end labels.
Darren still works on the sales floor at all the stores to stay connected to his clientele, Toronto women who want to look sharp for that meeting with the CEO or who need the right dress for that party.
Selling apparel means being familiar with fashion, business and the art of service. Mason loves all three.
His reserve doesn’t waver until he begins talking about the business of fashion. Halting sentences flow into paragraphs as he outlines the strengths of different labels and the importance of having a worldwide point of view combined with the ability to pare everything down to an intelligently curated selection.
He and his sisters accompanied their mother on buying trips to New York, London, Paris, Dusseldorf and Italian fashion capitals.
His sister Cheryl McEwen was also involved in the family business, but is now a philanthropist. She understood early the necessity of providing a high level of service for customers, says Darren.
“I was very fortunate that my three children all followed me into it,” says Joyce, retired for 22 years. “They certainly knew the hours involved — forget it, you can’t even track them.
“It gets in your bones. I’d put it that way. It was my life. Believe me, to be good in retail and have a good long run, it’s got to be your life.”
Darren dresses store mannequins with a discerning eye, layering smartly, using matching and contrasting colours and fabrics. It’s a maxim he applies to his own wardrobe. On the day of the interview, he wears Aquatalia, Prada, Rolex and a tie notable not because of its pedigree but because it was chosen for him by his daughter.
He is not afraid that Saks Fifth Avenue or Nordstrom, U.S. retailers opening GTA stores in 2016, are going to put Andrews out of business any time soon.
“We are unique,” he says, noting that, given his time in the shops, he has a feel for what women want. “We’re more nimble.”
Darren Mason’s vitals:
•Birthplace: Toronto
•Age: 48
•Grades 3-6: Upper Canada College
•Grades 7-13: St. Andrew’s College
•Post-secondary: Studied English at University of Western Ontario
•Facebook status: married, father of two
•Business: Andrews is a private business with three GTA stores.
http://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2016/01/03/these-scions-of-retail-empires-make-their-own-fashion-statements.html