Six lessons learned, from a business master (Pat McGovern, International Data Group)

I’m trying to mix up my media diet these days and recently rediscovered the Financial Times web site. I must say, the quality of the FT’s articles is excellent, giving the Wall Street Journal and New York Times a run for their greenbacks any day of the week.

For example, there’s an excellent article today by Richard Waters with some incisive business tips from Pat McGovern, the 70-year old founder & chairman of International Data Group, one of the world’s most successful publishing concerns. Here are the key takeaways (with verbatim excerpts):

Don’t undersell yourself

“Double your price, make it $80,000, and then people will take it seriously”.

Stay focused on (and as close as you can to) your customers

“When we presumed our competition knew what the market wants and we imitated them, we typically had problems.”

Tips for success from Mr. Biver, CEO of Hublot

I like Q&As that coax “lessons learned” or how-to advice from accomplished CEOs. Of course, it’s never that easy, but it’s nice to hear things boiled down to the essence vs. having to sift through a long book (for example).

In this vein, here’s a good snippet from Jean-Claude Biver (the man behind successful watch brands Blancpain and Hublot) on his criteria for success building a global, luxury brand:

“The most important are message of the brand, product, distribution, public relations, quality and finally pricing and charisma of the people representing the brand. All these factors need to be coherent in respect of the message of the brand. Everything starts with the message first and then all the other elements must be put into place with coherence to the message.”

Some tips from a retail master

We pay attention when Mickey Drexler, Ralph Lauren, Georgio Armani and Renzo Rosso talk about running a successful lifestyle retail business, for obvious reasons.

J. Crew just reported a strong fourth quarter ‘07, with revenues, same-store sales, gross margin and operating income up nicely over the prior period.

What’s driving this excellent performance at J. Crew in a souring retail market? Here’s some insight from Drexler, Chairman and CEO:

“It’s all about inventory today and differentiation… It’s about the quality of goods, service and innovation. We are in a game right now of beating the competition. The winners will win not because they’re cutting expense. Long term, they’re winning because they are innovating their product.”

Drexler said the key to J. Crew’s continued success has been being “obsessively focused on our customers and our product,” down to the stitching, the buttons, the colors and all the details.

And further on, another telling excerpt re: Madewell, J. Crew’s fledgling new retail concept:

“New businesses are really hard to start. They only work if there is strong long-term vision and tremendous passion and a product that’s focused on the consumer… I can’t emphasize the importance of having a store about 10 blocks away… We are in there every day looking at it and we’re living and breathing it…”

Enough said. My underlines.

Photo: detail of work by Kon Trubkovich, Marianne Boesky Gallery