Jerome Chazen, Original Partner in Liz Claiborne Empire, Dies at 94

Several retail jobs and more than 25 years later, he joined Mr. Ortenberg and Ms. Claiborne in their new retail company, Liz Claiborne; he officially came aboard in 1977, a year after its founding. (Mr. Chazen said in his autobiography that he had initially been unable to join the company outright until he had shored up his finances at his existing job.)

“We came into the business in 1976 when the main mode of dress was in fact a dress — that’s what women wore,” Mr. Chazen said in an interview with Columbia University. “I felt that women were ready for a change. And in fact they were.”

With Mr. Ortenberg, Ms. Claiborne invested $50,000 of her own money and raised $200,000 more from friends. Mr. Chazen initially contributed $15,000 and eventually an additional $10,000. Leonard Boxer, a fellow partner, kicked in $25,000.

In the quartet of original partners, each had a role to play: Ms. Claiborne, the designer with a finger on the pulse of what women wanted; Mr. Ortenberg, in operations and finance; Mr. Boxer, in production; and Mr. Chazen, in marketing and sales, fostering strong relations with department stores — the industry’s power players in those days.

“He made a point of knowing everybody,” said Allen Questrom, the former chief financial officer of the giant parent company Federated Department Stores. “The salesman is the most important thing — you got to be able to sell — and he played real key role in it.”

Those relations, he added, benefited from Mr. Chazen’s keen understanding of what each store demanded, offering it an array of products that he believed would sell best.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/09/business/jerome-chazen-dead.html