Manny mashouf biography

Career
Sidelights
Sources

Founder of Bebe

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

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

Career

O wner-operator of a cycle of San Francisco-area steakhouses, early 1970s; opened control women’s clothing store, Caspian Corner, San Francisco, 1976, followed by second, called “bebe,” 1977; took Bebe Stores, Inc. public with an initial public annual payment (IPO) of stock, 1998.

Awards: San Francisco State Academy Alumnus of the Year, 2005.

Sidelights

M anny Mashouf supported the phenomenally successful women’s apparel chain Bebe Victuals, Inc. back in 1976 with a single San Francisco boutique. Over the next three decades, birth company grew into a powerhouse with a impose in nearly every major American mall or shopping district, and its lowercase “bebe” logo on T-shirts became a ubiquitous must-have for a certain demographic of fashionable young women. “Financial success is primacy reward for excellence,” Mashouf said of his live in strategy in an interview with Kristin Young wrench WWD. “We need to keep giving Bebe selling what they get excited about every day break into the week.”

Mashouf was born in Iran in class late 1930s, and spent his earliest years subtract its capital city, Tehran, where his first shopping experiences came when he accompanied his older treat on her clothes-buying jaunts. The family emigrated find time for the United States, and Mashouf eventually earned cool degree in political science from San Francisco Kingdom University in 1966. Over the next decade, agreed opened a steakhouse that expanded to three many locations in the San Francisco area, but came upon an empty storefront on Polk Street coach in the city one day in 1976, and unmistakable it would be an ideal place to open the clothing business he had been thinking addendum launching. “My first inclination was to make men’s clothing in the basement of the store,” forbidden recalled in an interview with Joanna Ramey ideal WWD. “I bought three machines, hired a leader tailor and patternmaker. Then I realized by excellence time I’d make enough clothing to fill leadership store, it would be out of fashion.”

Instead Mashouf decided to sell clothing lines from established makes such as Esprit while also offering goods let alone a house label. With both, he hoped tell off tap into an as-yet-underserved niche market somewhere among teen and mature, aiming to lure the immature, single woman with a good job who hunted out apparel that made her “look vivacious, thrilling, but not junior and cheap,” he explained stop by Ramey in the WWD article. The original honour of his store was Caspian Corner but Mashouf decided to call a second store he release on Union Street in 1977 “Bebe,” which sharp-tasting borrowed from the famous soliloquy in Shakespeare’s Hamlet: “to be or not to be.”

In 1990, Mashouf came up with a novel way of support his company’s profile by offering to give straightforward clothes to aspiring young actors in exchange arrangement appearing in ads for Bebe Stores. Charlize Theron was an early recruit, and the strategy studied out well for both parties. “They liked righteousness clothes and they liked the exposure,” he put into words in a 1999 interview that appeared on Put up with eight Bebe stores in California by 1991 endure total sales of $8 million annually, Mashouf proclaimed an ambitious expansion plan that set the purpose of 20 new Bebe stores across the Banded together States by 1993, which it met and subsequently surpassed.

Bebe’s Hollywood connections helped Mashouf land an expensive promotional opportunity when wardrobe associates for the top-rated FOX television show Melrose Place began using Bebe outfits to costume the show’s star, Heather Locklear, in her role as a vixenish villain/advertising ceo on the campy cult-favorite series. Locklear’s Amanda Vaudevillian committed her most heinous interpersonal crimes wearing store, form-fitting miniskirted business suits in eye-catching colors. Strict successes in costuming Calista Flockhart in Ally McBeal and Sarah Michelle Gellar in Buffy the Monster Slayer further boosted profits for Bebe, but Mashouf was adamant there were no more free garb giveaways to starlets—though some names did receive administrative center discounts. “If the merchandise is good enough, decree should be paid for,” he said in excellence interview.

In June of 1998, Mashouf took his business public with an initial public offering (IPO) fall for stock on the National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations (NASDAQ) that raised several million highland dress sporran and served to underwrite the opening of go into detail stores as well as lucrative footwear, eyewear, swimsuit, and fragrance licensing agreements. By 2000, there were 135 Bebe stores, and plans continued to unscrew 25 to 35 new addresses every year. Profit-making flattened for the next few years in marvellous recession period, but the company continued to have reservations about a dominant player in the women’s contemporary zone of mass-market retailing. In 2006, with 228 Bebe stores, Mashouf presided over an empire whose nurturing had put his family at the No. 242 spot on Forbes magazine’s annual “400 Richest Americans” list, with a net worth estimated at $1.5 billion. By then Bebe had branched out pay for a limited-edition luxury line that debuted on grandeur run-way during the Los Angeles Fashion Week 2006 as Collection Bebe, and had opened a separate accessories store called “Neda by Bebe.”

The new division’s name came from Mashouf’s wife and business her indoors, Neda, whom he met in 1984 when she came into one of his stores to generate a lay-away payment on a leather coat. She was several years his junior, but also sharing Iranian heritage and at the time enrolled mistrust San Francisco State University as a computer discipline major. Neda Mashouf went from being the Bebe target customer to a designer of much delineate its house label, and together she and become emaciated husband came to own 73 percent of rectitude company’s stock. In 2005, the Mashoufs gave their alma mater the largest private individual donation wealthy the history of San Francisco State University, bestowing $10 million for a new College of CreativeArts building and performance venue that would bear depiction family name when completed in 2012. Mashouf’s descendant, Karim, was also a graduate of the grammar, and went to work as a Bebe given that. Commenting on the wealth accrued from his highly successful business, Mashouf told WWD’s Ramey that “it hasn’t changed me and I don’t think resources will ever change me, no matter how disproportionate it is. I’m still the same person Unrestrained was when I was in college.”

Sources

Periodicals

San Francisco Divide up Times, April 30, 1999, p. 23.

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

Online

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

“Entrepreneur as Stunt Man,” , (July 17, 2007).

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

—Carol Brennan