Julie Bourgeois has extensive experience in the sales of luxury and consumer goods and is now expanding her know-how into the fashion sector for Anine Bing. In an interview with FashionUnited, the new global president explains her vision for the brand’s expansion.
What is your professional background?
I spent fifteen years in Asia, where I developed Le Peninsula, Nespresso and IWC (watches, Richemont), and five years in New York, where I worked for Four Seasons Hotels. My expertise lies in optimizing sales models – retail, wholesale, e-commerce. I bring my customer-focused vision (understanding of customer needs and focus on the customer experience, editor’s note).
How do you recognize the needs of a fashion customer?
We assume that the woman visiting a hotel is potentially the same woman dressing at Anine Bing. We look at them holistically. It’s then about how we collect this data. We are fortunate to have a physical distribution network, 35 boutiques worldwide and 470 wholesale points of sale in 45 countries.
We also sell online through our own and selected e-commerce stores that we work with to make the right selection for their clientele. With my international and cross-industry background, I have a global view of this international customer, who is Anine Bing’s core target group.
We’re talking to a modern woman who’s “on the go” and doesn’t necessarily have time to change between a morning when she’s taking her kids to school, her day at the office, and dinner in the evening. We want to accompany this “busy life” and convey values such as authenticity and simplicity.
Who portrays Anine Bing?
Anine Bing helps personify the brand. Her magic lies in orchestrating the garments to create distinctive silhouettes. For example, a blouse and jeans. This comes from her background as an influencer and singer. She brings a cultural touch and has managed to build her own community.
Kate Moss is our global brand face. She represents the iconic, elegant, timeless, chic and rebellious side that we love. She has always been a muse for Anine, who she describes as: “I had a vision board with Kate Moss and she literally became the face of my brand.”
Who owns Anine Bing?
The brand is owned by its founders: creative director Anine Bing and her husband, CEO Nico Bing. Since 2016, it has been supported by key investors: Index Ventures, founded by Danny Rimer (Facebook, Dropbox, Net-A-Porter, Nasty Gal), Greycroft Partners, founded by Dana Settle (Maker Studios, Thrive Market, AwesomenessTV) and Felix Capital, founded by Frederic Court (Goop, Farfetch, Vitrue, Dailymotion). They are fantastic partners who offer us advice and support for the next phase of growth. The company is on track to achieve double-digit growth this year.
How is your sales organized?
We have internal teams (USA, China, Europe) and multi-brand agents that give us direct feedback from the market. Based on this we decide whether to invest or not. We also recently opened boutiques in Beverly Hills (California), Montreal (Canada), Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen (China) and New Jersey (USA, East Coast).
Our most successful store is in Soho, New York. It is our primary access point due to its location, demographics and global reach. Aventura in Miami also has strong sales. The first few weeks of our Beverly Hills boutique have exceeded our expectations.
As far as Europe is concerned, our main markets are the UK and France, but we are seeing increasing demand in other European countries where we will continue to explore new opportunities.
What about Anine Bing’s presence in France?
We have two boutiques in Paris (Rue des Coutures-Saint-Gervais, 3rd arrondissement, and Rue de Grenelle, 6th arrondissement). Our new European headquarters and showroom are located in the 8th arrondissement. We are represented in France with two shop-in-shops (Le Bon Marché and Galeries Lafayette Paris Haussmann) and 38 multi-brand stores in 50 locations. We would like to open more stores of our own and are currently examining locations.
How is the price positioning?
The market is polarized, with luxury brands on one side and mainstream labels on the other. We want to offer affordable luxury as we want to increase the quality level. The price of the items is an important factor. We want to be the entry point into “attainable luxury”, with a price point that is justified by the choice of materials and design effort.
What is your vision for the future?
The priority is to anchor the brand, which has a cultural hybridity: Scandinavian roots and an American influence. Anine Bing lives and designs in Los Angeles. Her brand was based there for twelve years. I returned to Paris to open the Paris offices (Rue François 1ᵉʳ, Paris 8ᵉ). This decision follows the brand’s expansion in the French and European markets. At the same time, we opened an office in New York and also have a local team in Shanghai.
For our vision, we started from the beginnings in a garage in Silverlake between Anine and Nico, with the desire to offer women classic, “effortless”, timeless and chic clothing. After achieving this result, the idea is to make the brand even more global than it already is.
We want to expand in markets with great potential such as China or the Middle East. To achieve this, we will continue to work hand in hand with our 470 multi-brand retailers. They bring us a lot and open the way for us to a clientele that might not have opened the door to our boutiques. Thanks to them, we have opened up new territories, especially China.
Are you thinking about expanding into lifestyle?
This is already the case through the interior design of our boutiques, our website and the selection of our talent. We want to transform this brand universe. We already have a fragrance, our fashion accessories (bags and shoes) and I strongly believe in our jewelry line, both in real jewelry and costume jewelry.
Our 14k gold, diamond and pearl collection is inspired by Anine’s personal vintage collection, with prices ranging from 400 to 6,000 euros. Our high-quality jewelry is timeless and the perfect addition to our ready-to-wear collection. We produce our jewelry in the USA and Turkey.
- Julie Bourgeois, Anine Bing’s new global president, brings extensive experience in luxury and consumer goods and is focused on expanding the brand.
- Anine Bing speaks to a modern, busy woman and offers affordable luxury with a focus on authenticity and timeless style.
- The future vision includes global expansion, particularly in markets such as China and the Middle East, and expanding lifestyle offerings.
This article previously appeared on FashionUnited.fr and was created using digital tools translated.
FashionUnited uses the AI-based language tool Gemini 1.5 to speed up the translation of articles and improve the end result. They help us to make FashionUnited’s international reporting quickly and comprehensively accessible to a German-speaking readership. Articles translated using AI-based tools are proofread and carefully edited by our editors before they are published.