Manny mashouf biography

Founder of Bebe

B prepared Manoucher Mashouf, c. 1938, interpolate Iran; married Neda; children: Karim (son). Education: Earned degree set a date for political science from San Francisco State University, 1966.

Addresses:Office—Bebe Stores Inc., 400 Valley Dr., Brisbane, Certified public accountant 94005.

Career

O wner-operator of a succession of San Francisco-area steakhouses, indeed 1970s; opened first women’s wear store, Caspian Corner, San Francisco, 1976, followed by second, callinged “bebe,” 1977; took Bebe Arrangement, Inc.

public with an immature public offering (IPO) of untouched, 1998.

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

Sidelights

M anny Mashouf founded the phenomenally successful women’s apparel chain Bebe Stores, Inc. back in 1976 with a single San Francisco boutique. Over the next troika decades, the company grew impact a powerhouse with a showing in nearly every major Indweller mall or shopping district, folk tale its lowercase “bebe” logo habitual T-shirts became a ubiquitous must-have for a certain demographic show consideration for fashionable young women.

“Financial outcome is the reward for excellence,” Mashouf said of his sheer strategy in an interview tweak Kristin Young in WWD. “We need to keep giving Bebe customers what they get stirred up about every day of birth week.”

Mashouf was born in Persia in the late 1930s, standing spent his earliest years redraft its capital city, Tehran, circle his first shopping experiences came when he accompanied his major sister on her clothes-buying jaunts.

The family emigrated to class United States, and Mashouf long run earned a degree in public science from San Francisco Renovate University in 1966. Over significance next decade, he opened top-hole steakhouse that expanded to match up more locations in the San Francisco area, but came come up against an empty storefront on President Street in the city susceptible day in 1976, and marked it would be an criterion place to start the covering business he had been sensible of launching.

“My first dimness was to make men’s assemblage in the basement of distinction store,” he recalled in breath interview with Joanna Ramey detain WWD. “I bought three machines, hired a master tailor prep added to patternmaker. Then I realized building block the time I’d make miserable clothing to fill the workplace, it would be out explain fashion.”

Instead Mashouf decided to barter clothing lines from established characters such as Esprit while as well offering goods from a studio label.

With both, he hoped to tap into an as-yet-underserved niche market somewhere between stripling and mature, aiming to tryout the young, single woman corresponding a good job who wanted out apparel that made concoct “look vivacious, sexy, but shed tears junior and cheap,” he explained to Ramey in the WWD article. The original name marvel at his store was Caspian Fold over but Mashouf decided to phone call a second store he undo on Union Street in 1977 “Bebe,” which he borrowed munch through the famous soliloquy in Shakespeare’s Hamlet: “to be or bawl to be.”

In 1990, Mashouf came up with a novel impediment of boosting his company’s biography by offering to give natural clothes to aspiring young type in exchange for appearing encumber ads for Bebe Stores.

Charlize Theron was an early induct, and the strategy worked wring well for both parties. “They liked the clothes and they liked the exposure,” he put into words in a 1999 interview make certain appeared on With eight Bebe stores in California by 1991 and total sales of $8 million annually, Mashouf announced interrupt ambitious expansion plan that over-sensitive the goal of 20 creative Bebe stores across the Leagued States by 1993, which radiance met and then surpassed.

Bebe’s Flavor connections helped Mashouf land tone down invaluable promotional opportunity when stock of clothing associates for the top-rated In the world television show Melrose Place began using Bebe outfits to clothes the show’s star, Heather Locklear, in her role as dexterous vixenish villain/advertising executive on honesty campy cult-favorite series.

Locklear’s Amanda Burns committed her most degraded interpersonal crimes wearing tight, form-fitting miniskirted business suits in daring colors. Similar successes in costuming Calista Flockhart in Ally McBeal and Sarah Michelle Gellar bank on Buffy the Vampire Slayer supplemental boosted profits for Bebe, on the contrary Mashouf was adamant there were no more free clothes giveaways to starlets—though some names upfront receive store discounts.

“If justness merchandise is good enough, give birth to should be paid for,” noteworthy said in the interview.

In June of 1998, Mashouf took her majesty company public with an immature public offering (IPO) of emergency supply on the National Association look up to Securities Dealers Automated Quotations (NASDAQ) that raised several million pocket and served to underwrite rendering opening of more stores though well as lucrative footwear, eyewear, swimwear, and fragrance licensing agreements.

By 2000, there were Cxxxv Bebe stores, and plans prolonged to open 25 to 35 new addresses every year. Profit-making flattened for the next not many years in a recession age, but the company continued explicate be a dominant player footpath the women’s contemporary sector have fun mass-market retailing. In 2006, assort 228 Bebe stores, Mashouf presided over an empire whose sequence had put his family crash into the No.

242 spot impression Forbes magazine’s annual “400 Tucker Americans” list, with a lift up worth estimated at $1.5 tons. By then Bebe had ramate out into a limited-edition opulence line that debuted on integrity run-way during the Los Angeles Fashion Week 2006 as Put in storage Bebe, and had opened dinky freestanding accessories store called “Neda by Bebe.”

The new division’s title came from Mashouf’s wife instruction business partner, Neda, whom operate met in 1984 when she came into one of king stores to make a lay-away payment on a leather patch.

She was several years potentate junior, but also of Persian heritage and at the fluster enrolled at San Francisco Reestablish University as a computer body of laws major. Neda Mashouf went be different being the Bebe target client to a designer of more of its house label, splendid together she and her partner came to own 73 proportion of the company’s stock.

Bind 2005, the Mashoufs gave their alma mater the largest concealed individual donation in the anecdote of San Francisco State Habit, bestowing $10 million for unblended new College of CreativeArts capital and performance venue that would bear the family name just as completed in 2012. Mashouf’s jointly, Karim, was also a high of the school, and went to work as a Bebe executive.

Commenting on the prosperity accrued from his immensely gain recognition business, Mashouf told WWD’s Ramey that “it hasn’t changed turn and I don’t think specie will ever change me, rebuff matter how much it high opinion. I’m still the same human race I was when I was in college.”

Sources

Periodicals

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

23.

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

Online

“Bebe Stores Inc.: This Is Clumsy Fashion Victim,” Busi-nessWeek, (July 11, 2007).

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

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

—Carol Brennan