Kayser-Roth has restructured its design, marketing and sales teams to take advantage of strengths within both its Department and Specialty Store and its Food/Drug/Mass groups by merging the two.
Leading Kayser-Roth in this effort are several executives who have been promoted and given additional responsibilities. Julia Townsend has been promoted to Executive Vice President, General Manager of Kayser-Roth and will oversee the DS&S/FDMC classes of trade. Molly Mott has been named Vice President of Sales for the combined operation and Catrinel Popa will serve as Vice President of Merchandising & Design.
Over the last four years, Kayser-Roth's focus was on addressing its operational efficiency by upgrading and expanding facilities to world class status and consolidating its distribution function into manufacturing locations with state of art systems. Now, with this business group merger, Kayser-Roth can expand its leadership position in the industry by providing its customers with access to an expanded array of new products. The Company believes streamlining these functions will allow it to match or beat the value equation of any source of supply across the globe.
According to Kevin Toomey, President/CEO of Kayser-Roth Corporation, the strategy behind this reorganization is to leverage proven competencies in new product development and design, account relationships, as well as strong marketing expertise. “In the past two years, the HUE brand has experienced extraordinary growth. In 2002, the overall HUE business grew 47% in an extremely difficult retail environment, and we expect the growth in 2003 to reach 40%,” said Toomey. “This growth can be attributed not only to new products in the brand's core women's legwear category, but also to successful ventures into several new business categories, including Men's Socks and Women's Intimates. We also have a strong history of legwear innovation with the No nonsense brand and plan to leverage its existing equity and strengths to move this brand into new product segments as well.
“This is only the beginning…. With our company fully-integrated, we can now focus on continuing to create remarkable legwear products as well as expand the presence of both the No nonsense and HUE brands into new product categories.”
