MILAN – Rodrigo Bazan is exiting his function as chief government officer of Thom Browne on the finish of August, WWD has discovered. In line with sources, he’s stepping all the way down to pursue different alternatives and might be succeeded by Sam Lobban.
Lobban is at present serving as government vice chairman and common merchandising supervisor for Attire & Designer at Nordstrom. He was named to that place, a brand new one for the Seattle-based retailer, in August 2022. He has since curated collaborations with main manufacturers, together with Thom Browne.
He joined Nordstrom in 2018 as vice chairman of males’s vogue to assist merchandising and labored on advertising and marketing, content material improvement, retailer atmosphere and the purchasing expertise for menswear via his brainchild, New Ideas@Nordstrom.
Throughout his tenure, he launched 17 New Idea retailers for manufacturers together with Dior, Worry of God, Black_Space, Union, Noah and Thom Browne. He was promoted to senior vice chairman of designer and New Ideas in 2020, main all designer merchandising methods and marketing campaign inventive throughout males’s, ladies’s and kids’s classes.
Lobban began his retail profession on the gross sales ground at Selfridges, the place he was promoted to service provider roles earlier than becoming a member of Mr Porter. There, he led the designer capsule assortment technique.
Bazan joined Thom Browne within the spring of 2016 from Alexander Wang and beforehand held government roles at Marc Jacobs and Alexander McQueen.
He has led Thom Browne via main developments, from the acquisition by the Ermenegildo Zegna Group in 2018 to its public itemizing in New York in Dec. 2021. Bazan has expanded the retail community around the globe, slashing wholesale accounts, and proven ladies’s collections in Paris from 2017 to raise their visibility, via to the launch of the primary official high fashion assortment in 2023.
Thom Browne has been impacted by the slowdown in China and the streamlining of its wholesale channel, which contributed to declining gross sales previously quarters. As reported, revenues within the three months ended March 31 fell 18.9 % to 64.2 million euros.
