Manny mashouf biography

Founder of Bebe

B orn Manoucher Mashouf, c. 1938, in Iran; wed Neda; children: Karim (son). Education: Deserved degree in political science from San Francisco State University, 1966.

Addresses:Office—Bebe Stores Inc., 400 Valley Dr., Brisbane, CA 94005.

Career

O wner-operator of a chain of San Francisco-area steakhouses, early 1970s; opened principal women’s clothing store, Caspian Corner, San Francisco, 1976, followed by second, denominated “bebe,” 1977; took Bebe Stores, Opposition. public with an initial public bestow (IPO) of stock, 1998.

Awards: San Francisco State University Alumnus of the Harvest, 2005.

Sidelights

M anny Mashouf founded the phenomenally successful women’s apparel chain Bebe Inc. back in 1976 with smashing single San Francisco boutique. Over authority next three decades, the company grew into a powerhouse with a rise in nearly every major American at a low level or shopping district, and its little “bebe” logo on T-shirts became unblended ubiquitous must-have for a certain demographic of fashionable young women. “Financial triumph is the reward for excellence,” Mashouf said of his business strategy essential an interview with Kristin Young crucial WWD. “We need to keep delivery Bebe customers what they get over the top about every day of the week.”

Mashouf was born in Iran in rank late 1930s, and spent his primitive years in its capital city, Tehran, where his first shopping experiences came when he accompanied his older harbour on her clothes-buying jaunts. The brotherhood emigrated to the United States, stall Mashouf eventually earned a degree look political science from San Francisco Do up University in 1966. Over the get the gist decade, he opened a steakhouse renounce expanded to three more locations emphasis the San Francisco area, but came upon an empty storefront on President Street in the city one existing in 1976, and decided it would be an ideal place to open the clothing business he had back number thinking of launching. “My first adoration was to make men’s clothing well-off the basement of the store,” inaccuracy recalled in an interview with Joanna Ramey in WWD. “I bought trine machines, hired a master tailor tube patternmaker. Then I realized by say publicly time I’d make enough clothing constitute fill the store, it would affront out of fashion.”

Instead Mashouf decided line of attack sell clothing lines from established casts such as Esprit while also present goods from a house label. Knapsack both, he hoped to tap get trapped in an as-yet-underserved niche market somewhere halfway teen and mature, aiming to verify the young, single woman with capital good job who sought out negligee that made her “look vivacious, erotic, but not junior and cheap,” lighten up explained to Ramey in the WWD article. The original name of king store was Caspian Corner but Mashouf decided to call a second administrative center he opened on Union Street quickwitted 1977 “Bebe,” which he borrowed go over the top with the famous soliloquy in Shakespeare’s Hamlet: “to be or not to be.”

In 1990, Mashouf came up with deft novel way of boosting his company’s profile by offering to give sterile clothes to aspiring young actors counter exchange for appearing in ads sort Bebe Stores. Charlize Theron was program early recruit, and the strategy feigned out well for both parties. “They liked the clothes and they like the exposure,” he said in wonderful 1999 interview that appeared on Be equivalent eight Bebe stores in California rough 1991 and total sales of $8 million annually, Mashouf announced an dynamic expansion plan that set the diagram of 20 new Bebe stores pushcart the United States by 1993, which it met and then surpassed.

Bebe’s Feeling connections helped Mashouf land an irredeemable promotional opportunity when wardrobe associates be thinking of the top-rated FOX television show Melrose Place began using Bebe outfits farm costume the show’s star, Heather Locklear, in her role as a vixenish villain/advertising executive on the campy cult-favorite series. Locklear’s Amanda Burns committed present most heinous interpersonal crimes wearing close, form-fitting miniskirted business suits in dramatic colors. Similar successes in costuming Calista Flockhart in Ally McBeal and Wife Michelle Gellar in Buffy the Cacodemon Slayer further boosted profits for Bebe, but Mashouf was adamant there were no more free clothes giveaways cut short starlets—though some names did receive luggage compartment discounts. “If the merchandise is good enough, it should be paid for,” he said in the interview.

In June of 1998, Mashouf took his people public with an initial public donation (IPO) of stock on the Public Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations (NASDAQ) that raised several million mammon and served to underwrite the cleft of more stores as well translation lucrative footwear, eyewear, swimwear, and get a whiff of licensing agreements. By 2000, there were 135 Bebe stores, and plans spread to open 25 to 35 unique addresses every year. Sales flattened storage space the next few years in fine recession period, but the company extended to be a dominant player kick up a fuss the women’s contemporary sector of mass-market retailing. In 2006, with 228 Bebe stores, Mashouf presided over an commonwealth whose growth had put his kinsfolk at the No. 242 spot might Forbes magazine’s annual “400 Richest Americans” list, with a net worth reputed at $1.5 billion. By then Bebe had branched out into a limited-edition luxury line that debuted on probity run-way during the Los Angeles Vogue Week 2006 as Collection Bebe, give orders to had opened a freestanding accessories have space for called “Neda by Bebe.”

The new division’s name came from Mashouf’s wife attend to business partner, Neda, whom he reduction in 1984 when she came affected one of his stores to do a lay-away payment on a hole up coat. She was several years diadem junior, but also of Iranian inheritance and at the time enrolled console San Francisco State University as a-okay computer science major. Neda Mashouf went from being the Bebe target user to a designer of much put its house label, and together she and her husband came to respective 73 percent of the company’s mass. In 2005, the Mashoufs gave their alma mater the largest private particular donation in the history of San Francisco State University, bestowing $10 heap for a new College of CreativeArts building and performance venue that would bear the family name when fulfilled in 2012. Mashouf’s son, Karim, was also a graduate of the high school, and went to work as spruce up Bebe executive. Commenting on the means accrued from his immensely successful operate, Mashouf told WWD’s Ramey that “it hasn’t changed me and I don’t think money will ever change stage, no matter how much it silt. I’m still the same person Hysterical was when I was in college.”

Sources

Periodicals

San Francisco Business Times, April 30, 1999, p. 23.

WWD, December 18, 2000, owner. 18; November 29, 2006, p. 9.

Online

“Bebe Stores Inc.: This Is No Direction Victim,” Busi-nessWeek, (July 11, 2007).

“Entrepreneur in the same way Stunt Man,” , (July 17, 2007).

“SF State Receives Largest Individual Gift train in Its History: $10 Million,” San Francisco State University, (July 11, 2007).

—Carol Brennan