**The Official Ralph Lauren Polo Thread**

[willie mcfly22]

^nice. Generous cashier. There's a nice sale goin online but looks like all Olympic gear is excluded...

 

[sneakerpimp2k8]

Towel is nice, and I make it a habit to ask cashiers if they have any coupons, most are generous and willing to assist.

 

[SlunderKingpin]

mattmattx Got that cashier love. Towel looks dope. Sill want the Rio one.
On another note slept on the Wimbledon Polo and now they out of Xxl. Could do XL but heard it fits custom so not taking a chance.

 

[bigsupa]

Polo Tennis man on Macys for $87.50 code FORYOU ends 12a PST

Spoiler

for those of us who paid retail... Call Macys and get a price adjustment. Just got mine and saved $42

 

[bklyn style baby]

Polo Tennis man on Macys for $87.50 code FORYOU ends 12a PST

Spoiler

for those of us who paid retail... Call Macys and get a price adjustment. Just got mine and saved $42

I tried the code this morning and it didnt work on the towel, smh.
Should i get a price adjustment on the $106 i paid?[emoji]129300[/emoji][emoji]129300[/emoji][emoji]129300[/emoji]

 

[bigsupa]

Polo Tennis man on Macys for $87.50 code FORYOU ends 12a PST

Spoiler

for those of us who paid retail... Call Macys and get a price adjustment. Just got mine and saved $42

I tried the code this morning and it didnt work on the towel, smh.
Should i get a price adjustment on the $106 i paid?[emoji]129300[/emoji][emoji]129300[/emoji][emoji]129300[/emoji]

I couldn't even find a towel on line.. And yea I would call them this morning and tell them you got charged 106 instead of 87. I mean that's a $20 difference... Unless you rich lol.

 

[mattmattx]

mattmattx Got that cashier love. Towel looks dope. Sill want the Rio one.
On another note slept on the Wimbledon Polo and now they out of Xxl. Could do XL but heard it fits custom so not taking a chance.

thanks. I was in a rush too and kinda rude to the cashier when i declined her offer to sign up for a Macy's card so I was surprised she offered the discount. here's the other towel I was gonna buy too.

 

[joe cool]

Saw this article today, its from last week

Wonder what the NT fam thinks about this

Sucks that they have to close stores and reduce the amount of discounts they give

Also sad Denim & Supply may get cut , But if he ever decides to cut RRL if it doesnt "prove viable", there may be a war >:

Video Link: http://wsj.net/video/20160607/060716lunchralph/060716lunchralph_v2_ec664k.mp4

Cant get it to embed

Struggling Ralph Lauren Tries to Fashion a Comeback
New CEO, formerly at Old Navy, hopes to revive company by closing stores, trimming management and reducing discounts

By SUZANNE KAPNER
Updated June 7, 2016 1:41 p.m. ET

when he sat down to dinner at Sette Mezzo on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, had Ralph Lauren been debating for months over what to do about his faltering business.

His clothes and accessories brand is still the gold standard for the country-club set, but sales have stalled, and profits have fallen 50% since 2014. The market value of Ralph Lauren Corp. , RL 0.54 % now hovers around $ 8 billion, down from $ 16 billion three years ago.

Sitting across from fashion designer that night last summer, the young executive he hoped could help stem the slide. Stefan Larsson was in some ways an odd choice. He had left its mark selling $ 10 T-shirts and $ 30 jeans, the H & M Hennes & Mauritz HMB 0.40 % AB and then Gap Inc. GPS -0.21 % s Old Navy chain.

Mr. Larsson encouraged her dinner companion to talk about what inspired his original vision for the company. They closed the restaurant down so the window went along Madison Avenue. “I left feeling that I might be able to help build his business,” Mr. Larsson recalled recently.

Last September, Mr. Larsson was named CEO of Ralph Lauren, a post that Mr. Lauren, who is 76 years old, had kept the company’s total 49-year history. His job is to restore the old school fashion house to better compete with more nimble rivals, while at the same time fulfilling a founder who has no intention to resign.

Mr. Larsson, 41, is expected to unveil a new corporate strategy Tuesday at a meeting for analysts. By his reckoning company has too many brands and retail stores. It depends on the department stores where shoppers hooked on discounts. Its cost is inflated and its inventory system ineffective.

In an interview, he said the company will concentrate on its core Ralph Lauren, Polo and Lauren labels. Fifty stores, or about 10% of the company’s retail footprint, mainly high-end stores will be closed. And shipments to stores will be reduced in the hope that scarcity will translate into more full-price sales. Mr. Larsson also want to cut six months from the production time and isolate three layers of management.

The move, he said, will result in the elimination of 1,000 jobs, about 8% of the full-time employees.

“Our results have been disappointing in the past three years and it does not match the strength of the brand,” said Mr. Larsson from his office in the company’s mahogany-paneled New York headquarters.

Such upheaval is painful for a company that was once considered the bluest of blue-chip fashion houses. Ralph Lauren faces a litany of industrywide problems, including a strong dollar that has chased away foreign buyers. Some of its problems are of its own decisions.

Slow to react
Industry executives say that the company has been slow to respond to changes reshaping business. These include the rise of fast fashion retailers such as H & M, whose short production cycles and low prices have pushed traditional clothing companies, and the shift in the direction of wear sportswear every day.

“Athleisure and fast fashion has created a dual headwinds of the traditional polo,” said John Kernan, a retail analyst with securities firm Cowen & Co. “There has been a lot of canal are new to the brand. “

Mr. Lauren, who declined to be interviewed for this article, said in a written statement: “I am very pleased with Stefan vision and the actions he takes to ensure that we continue to develop and prosper.”

Mr. Lauren is still the company’s chairman, chief creative officer and its largest shareholder. He and entities controlled by his family to vote at more than 82% of the common stock. He is one of the few designers of his generation to still play an active role in his company. And his company is one of the few design houses not to have been gobbled up by a conglomerate.

Many fashion houses, including Calvin Klein, Donna Karan and Yves Saint Laurent, for years the couple’s strong business leaders with design luminaries. At Ralph Lauren, Roger Farah, company’s longtime president and chief operating officer, sometimes worked as a business-focused control of Mr. Laurens nobler ambitions, according to several former leaders.

A spokesman for the company said Mr. Lauren’s ambitions were not limited. He noted Mr. Lauren was not only the company’s creative director, but his business head.

Mr. Farah stepped back from daily operations to become vice chairman in 2013. He left the company a year later, and now is the co-CEO of Tory Burch LLC.

The company set up an office of the chairman, consisting of Mr. Lauren and three other directors. Mr. Lauren began to insert itself in several business decisions, according to the former executives.

In China, the company tried to restore its image after buying back its license in 2010 from a partner, the former executives said. Mr. Lauren wanted to pull the lower end Polo brand in China and only sell luxury goods from the company’s Purple Label, which suits cost more than $ 5000, they said.

Ralph Lauren closed two-thirds of its Chinese retail and opened high-end stores that do not sell the $ 85 polos customers had come to associate with the brand. Then a corruption crackdown by the government reduced demand for luxury goods, and China’s burgeoning middle class was a driving force for the economy.

Sale on Ralph Lauren’s twin flagship stores on New York’s Madison Avenue fell after Mr. Lauren’s mandate in 2014, the lower-end polo shirts, sweaters and sportswear moved upstairs to make room for $ 4,100 watches and $ 2,500 handbags , named after his wife, Ricky, the former executives said.

company spokesman said Ralph Lauren closed retail stores in China, because many were subpar places, and scaled Polo because the brand had been tarnished by fakes. As for the drop in sales on Madison Avenue flagship stores, the spokesman quoted a industrywide slump in foot traffic.

Profit fell to $ 396 million in the fiscal year ended April 2 from $ 702 million the year before. Sales fell to $ 7.41 billion from $ 7.62 billion. The stock, which closed at $ 96.33 on Monday, has fallen almost 30% over the past year.

In an interview in September, Mr. Lauren said he had been looking for a couple of years for an executive who could help expand its business. Although Mr. Laurens 44-year-old son David is an executive vice president and sits on the company’s board, he was not in operation, said one of the former leaders.

The company hired the search firm Spencer Stuart, who introduced Mr. Lauren to Mr. Larsson, who had revived Old Navy by shortening lead times and stocking trendy fashion.

Mr. Larsson, who grew up in a small town in Sweden, had joined H & M in 1998, when the brand was not as hip as it is today. “The smartest of my friends, they called me and said, ‘After work, Stefan, do not bring an H & M bag because you want to take it all down,” he said.

Mr. Larsson is no stranger to navigate family-dominated companies. At Gap, founding Fisher family has a large stake, and H & M, the founder’s grandson CEO.

After Ralph Lauren hired him, Mr. Lauren made it clear that he had no plans to step aside. “As far as I’m concerned, I step up, not out,” he said in September.

Mr. Lauren, born Ralph Lif*****, rose from humble beginnings in the Bronx to become a judge of style. Beginning in 1967 with a line of ties, he built a company that now includes clothing, furniture, perfumes, accessories and restaurants. His products are sold under a dozen labels on nearly 500 company-owned stores and thousands of department stores worldwide.

People who have worked with Mr. Lauren says he considers himself more as a filmmaker than a designer with his subject is an old-fashioned, privileged lifestyle. Although this highbrow image creates a halo for the brand, the company makes much of its money selling mesh polo shirts and moderately priced sportswear at factory outlets and department stores, the former executives said.

The company does not break out sales by label, but the wholesale business, mostly sales to department stores, accounted for 45% of revenue last year and almost two-thirds of operating profit. On the retail side, 272 of the company’s 493 stores are factory outlets.

Mr. Lauren pioneering tiered strategy that competitors have copied. Nevertheless luxury business remains the focus.

Since 2013 the company has increased the number of high-end Ralph Lauren stores with 29. This drove up costs without producing enough sales or profits, said Laurent Vasilescu, an analyst with the research arm of Macquarie Group.

Expense problem
total expenditure was 45.8% of sales in the recently completed year, compared with 42.2% two years ago. On PVH Corp PVH -0.06 % , which owns Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger, spending has been declining and amounted to 41.3% of sales in his last years.

“The cost structure hasn ‘t been competitive,” Mr. Larsson recognized. He said the stores had been opened in suboptimal locations was too big and cost too much to build because of the sales and profits they generated.

Another culprit was the bloated management structure, he said there is a reason he is reducing the number of layers between entry-level employees and themselves to six from nine. The reductions will return the executive ranks to around 2012 levels.

The office of president has been dissolved to concentrate decision-making in the hands of the masters. Larsson and Lauren. A top executive abandoned its work in November and another left in May. The third member, Valérie Hermann, who oversees the company’s luxury business, now have additional oversight of women’s collections and accessories.

Mr. Larsson tapped former H & M executives to run global sourcing and business development. The new leader of online trading came from eBay Inc. EBAY 0 , 04 %

It can take 15 months for products to go from design to save, a window that Mr. Larsson hopes to narrow to nine months by having design, merchandising, sourcing and marketing teams work together. He plans to test small batches of products that can be produced for eight weeks, and then quickly reorder best sellers strategy he used at Old Navy.

Instead of spreading resources across brands, he will focus on the high-end Ralph Lauren line and the lower-than Polo and Lauren brands that are the mainstay of department stores. Smaller brands such as RRL, named after Colorado ranch to Mr. Lauren owns with his wife, who sells selvedge denim, vintage clothing and other gear will have to prove they are viable.

He wants the company’s merchandise to focus on pieces such as navy blazers, military jackets and polo shirts, it looks so timeless, but updated for today’s styles. For example, a Ralph Lauren double breasted women blazer redesigned to give it a more fitted silhouette and make it narrower in the shoulders and arms. After the changes, it became one of the company’s best selling jackets.

He also sees an opportunity to sell more handbags and accessories, which carry higher margins. It is an area where the company has struggled, and which distinguishes it from the European luxury homes, which make most of their money on bags and shoes. At Ralph Lauren, bags and small leather goods accounts for about 8% of revenue, according to Mr. Vasilescu. That compares with 57% of brokering SA KER 2.23 % p Gucci fire.

The new CEO is even considering to try out some ideas pioneer of online startups, such as creating a subscription service for shirts and ties and allow customers to rent high-end tuxedo.

Mr. Larsson said he speaks daily to Mr. Lauren, and making decisions together.

“I’ve taken a partner,” Mr. Lauren said in September, and then joked: “. He does not know what he’s in for”

Write to Suzanne Kapner the [email protected]

http://www.wsj.com/articles/struggling-ralph-lauren-tries-to-fashion-a-comeback-1465272240

 

[supermanblue79]

It stinks to see my favorite clothing brand take a hit and have to restructure, but overall I think that it's a good thing. The main goals in all of this seem to be faster delivery of products, streamlining of the companies brands, and most importantly to bring back a sense of exclusivity/prestige to the brand. The only brand I will be sad to see go away would be RRL, but we all know that many staples from the RRL collection will continue to be produced under Polo; just like the black label moto items are now produced under Polo. It will be a return to the old days, when there was no Purple Label or Black Label collections, only premium quality Polo items with the small made in Italy tag.

The problem that I see is the decline in quality. I went to see the new olympic collection and the polos are the built of the cheapest, thinnest materials that I've seen to date. This has been going on since 2012/13 and I'm sure that it will continue. RL will still produce the higher quality items which will keep me buying at sale time. And I will continue to buy older high quality items when I come across them since I won't be buying much of the cheaply made new stuff.

 

[seinfeldfan]

Damn, I didn't enjoy reading that at all. And as if the quality of many items hadn't already been on the decline, I guess we can all expect more of the same. And now they're looking to potentially cut back on promotional discounts? Jesus.

 

[rrlegend]

when they cut rrl I'm only doing made to measure from Ralph

 

[dead stokc]

They just need to refocus. Up the quality, marginally decrease the quantity, and cut off some of the branches. Get back to what made the brand legendary.

 

[badboy600]

I heard they are Making a big effort to keep merchandise out of discount stores like Marshalls and tjmaxx and reducing the inventory level at Macy's to Prevent stuff from hitting clearance

 

[seinfeldfan]

I agree with cutting back on quantity. Anyone else remember in the 'Sale' section, there used to be a 'Clearance' category? They've completely removed that and I doubt it comes back. I recall right before it vanished, there were still a bunch of items there throughout, for all groups, that I know didn't move. Still, that was the only time I can remember that many items AND an entire category being wiped from the site at once.

 

[SlunderKingpin]

To me once Ralph stepped back from things I thought this type of renovation would be coming sooner or later. To be honest it might be a good thing. Less production but higher quality does'nt sound that bad to me. As was said by everyone above, the quality over the years on a lot of items has went downhill even on their high end designs. If they can rebirth the brand by cutting the fat and making their price tags worth the cost I am all for it. Items not seeming worth the price is why everyone waits for sales or clearance as we speak. Hope fully this is the start of a better RL legacy but TBH Larsson has me kinda sketch.

 

[herueyes]

hopefully the above works...

 Thanks for the info Joe Cool...

 Peace...

 

[seinfeldfan]

Also can't forget about them making the decision, about a year or so ago, to begin charging for gift boxes, which have been free forever.

 

[shogun]

I'd stop giving away gift boxes for free also if my company was struggling.

 

[sneakerpimp2k8]

Polo Tennis man on Macys for $87.50 code FORYOU ends 12a PST

Spoiler

for those of us who paid retail... Call Macys and get a price adjustment. Just got mine and saved $42

damn I slept, wonder if they will adjust will the call after the pomo expired

 

[jayrockslo]

RRL has long been Ralph's sinking moneyhole pet project.

 

[ja508]

.
WTF all the XLs go????? Somebody on here , yall know weather this is a RL.com exclusive .?? Been waiting to see it pop up on Macy's ..
Yeooooo KUSH ? Where u at bro ? U disappeared from IG .

 

[bklyn style baby]

.
WTF all the XLs go????? Somebody on here , yall know weather this is a RL.com exclusive .?? Been waiting to see it pop up on Macy's ..
Yeooooo KUSH ? Where u at bro ? U disappeared from IG .

You mean like this? .....

Anyone know if the button up comes in xxl?

 

[ja508]

You mean like this? .....

Son really didn't put the link for me tho . Good lookin LMAOOO .
Copped from Bloomis right after I posted this anyways tho.
Appreciate the LOve . [emoji]128514[/emoji][emoji]128514[/emoji]

Anyone know if the button up comes in xxl?

 

[bklyn style baby]

The reason i didn't post the link is because the undercover lurkers roam threads and dont contribute. Every so called Lo head knows where that screen shot is from. Obviously you were savy enough to recognize and realize. Posting the link is like spoon feeding, sometimes you have to let them work.
Hope you paid less than i did.

 

[sneakerpimp2k8]

Ja - you have my number, you know how to reach me man and honestly you're better off with Macys because the .com excludes all that Team USA merchandise so I can't assist regardless