VMSD - October 2016 - 56

Checking Out Les Hiscoe The ceo of Boston-based Shawmut Design and Construction has built a retail business by satisfying a luxury brand clientele looking to grow in America. Was building retail stores your passion from the beginning? Not at all. As a young civil engineering graduate just out of college, I began my career building schools, assisted living, healthcare and the like. What turned you on to retail? When I first interviewed with Shawmut back in the late '90s, I saw a picture on the wall of a Disney store - a terrazzo floor with Mickey Mouse engraved in it - and I thought, 'Wow, it never dawned on me that this is a whole segment of the construction business - this stuff is cool.' Shawmut was building a lot of retail? Not much, actually. We had a restaurant and retail division, but only 10 percent of that work was stores. We were building national restaurant chains, so whenever we were working in a mall, we networked and picked up a retail store here and there, mostly as an afterthought. After a while, the owner of the company said to me, 'You really love this retail work. Can you grow us a retail unit?' 56 OCTOBER 2016 | vmsd.COm Which you did. How? When we started focusing on retail, we got a Chanel store and an Armani store on Newbury Street and a Tiffany store in Copley Plaza - all Boston. I realized that if we wanted to be in luxury retailing, we needed to be in New York. So we moved our retail headquarters to Manhattan 10 or 11 years ago and have tripled in size since 2010. A Watchband on Fifth Avenue How does Shawmut, at its best, work? I'm really proud of the new Hublot store we built on New York's Fifth Avenue. The luxury watch retailer took a narrow sliver of a space, sandwiched between the Louis Vuitton How has luxury flourished for you? There's a lot of global instability that has made luxury retailers pause. They need growth, but too many markets are unpredictable. However, not only is the U.S. the largest luxury market in the world, it's also the most stable. So luxury international brands are focusing on the U.S. flagship and Bergdorf Goodman. Why do you think clients choose your company? As I've grown into the ceo role, I'm focused on three pillars of growth that set us apart: customer service excellence; developing talent, so that every person who interfaces with a client understands the business, communicates well and is a good technician; and leading-edge technology.  links of a watchband. The store is 19 feet wide but with an 85-foot-tall façade. We had to work from back to front, inside out and on one of the busiest retail intersections in the world. The façade is black aluminum with LEDs, like the glistening Do you think Fifth Avenue's passersby appreciate the construction challenge you faced? Probably not. But the retailer did, and that's what's important to us. HE ADS HO T C OU R TE SY OF S HAWMU T DE SI GN & C O NS TRU C TI O N, BOS TO N / TOP R IGH T PH OTO GR APHY: J IM BAD ER S HAL L, BOS TON / BO TTO M R I G HT P H O T O G R AP H Y: L E E PAR Z I O , L O S AN G E L E S Interview by Steve Carly Kaufman Hagedon http://www.vmsd.COm

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of VMSD - October 2016