Brands
Centric Brands
Centric Brands, a lifestyle brand collective, announced the addition of two new roles at the company. Sid Keswani joins as president and Ruth Hartman joins the company’s board of directors.
Keswani joins from Pandora, where he was most recently president, North America, transforming the brand and growing it to over $1 billion in sales. He will focus on driving the company’s operations to support growth initiatives.
Hartman is currently an adviser with Bain & Co. Previously she was president of Lord & Taylor, where she oversaw digital, merchandising, stores, and marketing.
Centric Brands designs, sources, markets and sells products in multiple segments, including kids’, men’s and women’s apparel, accessories, beauty and entertainment. The company’s portfolio includes more than 100 licensed brands, including for kids apparel, Calvin Klein, Tommy Hilfiger, Nautica, Spyder and Under Armour; for men’s and women’s apparel, Joe’s Jeans and Buffalo, and for accessories, Kate Spade, Michael Kors, All Saints, Frye, Timberland and Jessica Simpson.
Owned brands include Joe’s Jeans, Hudson, Robert Graham, Favorite Daughter, Zac Posen and Avirex. The company is headquartered in New York City and has offices in Los Angeles, Greensboro, N.C., Toronto and Montreal.
Hanna Anderson
Children’s wear brand Hanna Andersson named Kelly Olmstead as its new chief marketing officer.
Most recently, Olmstead held the position of vice president of brand activation at Adidas, overseeing consumer-facing marketing efforts in the U.S. Hanna Andersson said it’s enthusiastic about Olmstead’s dedication to expressing the brand’s values through a digital-first model that will connect with a new generation of parents and families.
Related Stories
Hanna Andersson’s products are designed for children ages newborn to 12 years, with a complementary assortment of family apparel. Hanna Andersson reaches its customers through a seamless omnichannel platform encompassing e-commerce, catalog and brick-and-mortar stores.
Textiles
Schoeller
Schoeller Textil AG, a textile solutions brand, announced that Megan Fulton and Jack McPheron have joined its North America team as sales directors, covering the Western U.S. and parts of Canada.
Fulton, based in White Salmon, Wash., will concentrate on customers based in Northern California and the greater Pacific Northwest, as well as parts of Canada. Fulton comes to Schoeller after more than 10 years in the outdoor, equestrian and cycling industries. She was most recently at Kerrits Performance Equestrian Apparel as a territory sales manager.
Located in Boulder, Colo., McPheron has more than 10 years in the running and outdoor categories and joins Schoeller from On Running, where he most recently served as key accounts manager. McPheron’s regional responsibilities at Schoeller will focus on Southern California, Colorado, Utah and beyond.
Schoeller Textil, headquartered in Sevelen, Switzerland, specializes in the development and manufacturing of functional fabrics and textile technologies for athletic, outdoor, fashion and workwear categories.
Lenzing
Dominic Köfner has taken over as head of corporate communications and public affairs at Lenzing AG. As vice president, he will report directly to CEO Stefan Doboczky.
Before joining the Lenzing Group, Köfner was managing director of the communications agency Serviceplan Austria and most recently was senior consultant at the agency group Sports & Media in Munich.
Lectra
At Lectra’s shareholders’ meeting held on April 30, members voted to appoint Céline Abecassis-Moedas as a new independent director.
Nominated for a period of four years, she becomes a member of the Audit Committee, the Compensation Committee and the Strategic Committee. Lectra designs smart industrial solutions–software, equipment, data and services–for brands, manufacturers and retailers in apparel, automotive and more.
Abecassis-Moedas will also draw upon her international experience as an independent director, through positions held for nearly 10 years at four companies in Spain and Portugal: Europac from 2012 to 2019, CTT from 2016 to 2020, CUF since 2016 and Vista Alegre Atlantis since 2020.
Abecassis-Moedas is dean for executive education and associate professor at Católica Lisbon.
MycoWorks
Biomaterials company MycoWorks appointed Tjerk de Ruiter as an independent board director.
De Ruiter joins MycoWorks board directors Anders Spohr of Novo Holdings, Kiersten Stead of DCVC Bio, and MycoWorks CEO Matt Scullin.
De Ruiter brings over 35 years’ experience in the governance and scaling of innovative, private and public biotechnology businesses with a focus on enzyme and fermentation technologies, specialty chemicals and synthetic biology. The appointment constitutes part of MycoWorks’ strategic expansion following a $45 million Series B financing round to accelerate the scale-up of the company’s proprietary Fine Mycelium biomaterials platform and the opening of a new plant, which enables 10 times the previous production capacity.
De Ruiter will focus on resourcing MycoWorks with commercial-scale fermentation, enzyme and chemistry solutions toward the product and manufacturing innovations that will bring Fine Mycelium to commercial volumes. De Ruiter also serves as advisor to Novo Holdings and is a board member at NuTek Food Science.
MycoWorks is recognized for its creation of Fine Mycelium, a breakthrough in materials science and biotechnology that refers both to the company’s proprietary process and the class of materials exclusive to MycoWorks. Materials are grown to brand partners’ specifications for performance and aesthetic features, unlocking new design possibilities for the fashion and footwear industries.