There’s no mistaking that Steven Barbery was eager to start his journey in luxury retail.
He moved to New York City quite literally the day after graduating from Washington and Lee University to enter the Retail Buying Program at America’s oldest department store, Lord & Taylor.
Starting off as a buyer of luxury handbags and small leather goods, Steven received extensive training in retail selling analysis, merchandizing and planning in a “time before computers” and automation.
Steven joined the MadaLuxe Group in 2016 after he was approached by its Founders, Sandy Sholl and Adam Freede to start a luxury watch division of the company, which markets, manufactures and distributes goods from the world’s most illustrious fashion houses. Steven hit the ground running, acquiring the watch licenses for Versace Watches, Versus Versace Watches and Ferragamo Timepieces by the end of his first year.
Under Steven’s leadership the division has grown year on year.
In the past 12 months it “more than doubled our door count with a respective increase in sales, for the second year in a row”.
This demand, however, did throw some unexpected spanners in the works for the subsidiary.
“Not having anticipated our sales to double in 2020, we had periods where we ran out of inventory,” says Steven.
“We have always worked bottom-up with our financial planning, but now work 12 months into the future with our rolling forecasts.”
Steven has achieved a lot of success in his career, and he puts this down to balancing his work and personal life.
“You need to make sure you have a life outside of work,” he advises. “Family and friends are important, but also hobbies that allow you to decompress and escape the daily obligations of leadership.” For Steven, this is gardening at his old stone farmhouse in the countryside of Bucks County, Pennsylvania.
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