STORES Magazine - January 2009 - (Page 24)

EXECUTIVE SUITE / RETAIL PEOPLE Head of the Class Former teacher, now CEO, still directs product selection at Crate & Barrel Barbara Turf President & CEO Crate & Barrel Naperville, Ill. rate & Barrel president Barbara Turf took over as chief executive l a st ye a r when G ordon Se g a l stepped aside from day-to-day management of the home furnishings retail chain he co-founded. C signed and it’s got to be clean. And then I think the price point is key. You have to have both an authentic price and really good quality. Who have been your role models and mentors? Turf joined the company 40 years ago as a sales associate in the original Chicago location. That part-time summer job kindled a passion so bright for home furnishings that she never returned to teaching junior high school students. She rose steadily from store manager to “master merchandiser,” holding the post of executive vice president of merchandising and marketing for many years. Turf was named Crate & Barrel president in 1996, and continues to direct the selection of all furniture and accessories sold by the 160-store chain. Did you feel you were a retail pioneer in the early days? Gordon [Segal] certainly was a mentor. I’ve always been inspired by [the late] Armi Ratia, the founder of Marimekko. I admire my mother and father for their work ethic. My parents were Italian immigrants. They came here when they were young, but they showed me if you worked hard you could do anything. What was your first paying job? When I was 15 years old I sold fresh bread at a bakery in my old Italian neighborhood in Chicago. What passions or interests might you have pursued if not for retail? Not really, even though women were not typically involved in fields outside of education and nursing. When I first started traveling to Asia 30 years ago, I thought I might have been pioneering then, as in holding your own with a Chinese vendor. But you were once an educator. Fashion. I was on both the Gucci and the AnnTaylor boards and I loved it. What’s in the CD player? Bruce Springsteen. In the DVD player? On the nightstand? Yes. There are a lot of us here who are ex-schoolteachers. Barbara Reimann, the senior vice president of store operations, who has been with the company for 34 years, is also a former schoolteacher. Teaching and retailing are very similar — both are about expressing yourself, your ideas and being passionate about what you believe. So I think a gifted teacher easily makes the transition to retail, provided he or she has the passion. Do you ever have trouble reverting to being just a customer? My son’s a filmmaker and he keeps sending the latest edited movies he’s doing. On the nightstand, there are lots of fashion and shelter magazines. I tend to read books when I’m on an airplane. Who would be guests at your ultimate dinner party — and how would you set the table? Since I’m a shopaholic it’s not hard for me to be a consumer. I’m always looking: I look at retail professionally, obviously, but I certainly look at it from a consumer point of view. What’s been the key to Crate & Barrel success? We evolved along with the American lifestyle. It’s also the approach we take to our product – it’s got to be functional, well de24 STORES / JANUARY 2009 Today it would be [president-elect Barack] Obama and Michelle – they’d be people I’d like to get to know or at least have a dinner with. I’d set the table with a mixture of product. I wouldn’t use a matching five-piece place setting. A mixture of stemware old and new and I love Marimekko fabric, so I always set a table with Marimekko. StORES — Janet Groeber WWW.STORES.ORG http://WWW.STORES.ORG

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of STORES Magazine - January 2009

STORES Magazine - Jauary 2008 Contents Executive Editor's Page President's Page Mechanical Marvel P&G Invests in Ocado Now I Remember What Shoppers Think 10 Things You May Have Missed Numbers Worth Counting Full Price/Markdown Retail People Breaking the Monotony Multi-Channel Concept2Watch E-Commerce Analytics Category Management IT Systems In-Store Technology IT Systems Communications Website Strategy Communications SOA Energy Video Surveillance Employee Theft Online Fraud Industry Perspective Loeb Retail Letter ARTS Update Point of View NRF News Retail Crossword End Cap

STORES Magazine - January 2009

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.