How a billboard transformed Tommy Hilfiger

Tommy Hilfiger survived bankruptcy and overexposure before taking his place among American Fashion Royalty. Now "turnaround Tommy" tells how he transformed his struggling label into a multi billion dollar empire and why he just can't quit the business he loves.When  your name is spelled out in 10ft-high letters over New York's Times Square you can be pretty sure that you've finally made it. Not always, however: egged on by legendary advertising art director George Lois, Tommy Hilfiger decided to do things the other way round.


"I had no idea who George was," admits Hilfiger. "He was introduced to me as the perfect advertising genius. Then I was told he didn't do fashion advertising, so I was a little confused about why we were speaking to him. I was hoping that we'd have someone like Peter Lindbergh shoot a campaign but George marched into my office and said, 'No, you can't do that.' It was a little scary.""Actually, his first idea was to show pictures of Ralph Lauren and Calvin Klein with a big X drawn through them," explains Hilfiger, "saying these are the old and a picture of me saying he is the new. I said, 'Absolutely not! I can't do that. I won't do that!'

"George said, 'Are you crazy? You can't do that. It will take you 20 years to build a brand that way.'" To prove his point Lois showed boards with adverts for Armani, Versace and a whole host of other designers. He had taken the names off the artwork and challenged Hilfiger to identify the brand by the image. "It was almost impossible, so he convinced me that we should be doing something very different."

With little hope of getting into university, his thoughts turned to business and he started going down to Manhattan to stock up on the bell-bottoms worn by his heroes to then sell to his friends at a profit. This led to him opening his own store, People's Place, selling records, rolling paper and incense. He started going to the city more regularly and was soon hanging out at Studio 54 with Andy Warhol.
Unfortunately, by the time he was 25, People's Place had gone bust. "The reason I went bankrupt was because I knew nothing about business and I simply ran out of money," he admits. "People were stealing from me and I didn't know if I was profitable or not. Above all I was a bit, you know, distracted you might say. In those Studio 54 days I used to stay up late and come into the office mid-afternoon."

The world went mad for his bright Nantucket-meets-NWA aesthetic and when Snoop Dogg wore Tommy on Saturday Night Live in 1994, sales went through the roof. Hilfiger was one of the first designers enthusiastically to embrace celebrity endorsement. He worked with Aaliyah and in 1999 the label was the main sponsor of Britney Spears' ...Baby One More Time tour.

 But his early experiences of bankruptcy had put iron into Hilfiger's soul. "The issue is that a lot of businesses run into that wall and don't survive to come back. I never thought that I would be one of those casualties." So, in 2006, the company was sold to venture capitalists Apax Partners for $1.6 billion.

And so, Forbes now describes Hilfiger as "Turnaround Tommy". In December last year, the magazine reported, "To save Tommy Hilfiger they're breaking all the rules of modern retail: raising prices, tailoring clothes smaller, alienating customers and cutting off stores. It's a counterintuitive strategy, but it's working.
"Worldwide revenues hit a record $3.4bn in 2013, up seven per cent from the year before (for perspective, sales were $1.8bn in 2005, during the brand's slump)." Read more GQ