“Leading in Style”

Fashion for Patrizia Lazzaro, Vice President Global E-commerce, Guess, is a way of being and expressing personality. “If we look at Guess, the Brand is the expression of being sexy, young and adventurous. If we look at Marciano, the Brand is the expression of elegance and sophistication. Fashion is such a fascinating world, with the capability to externalize and show how we feel inside to anyone around us.”

Guess?, Inc. designs, markets, distributes, and licenses a lifestyle collection of contemporary apparel, denim, handbags, watches, eyewear, footwear, and other related consumer products. Guess? products are distributed through branded Guess? stores as well as better department and specialty stores around the world. As of January 29, 2022, the Company directly operated 1,068 retail stores in the Americas, Europe, and Asia. The Company’s partners and distributors operated 563 additional retail stores worldwide. As of January 29, 2022, the Company and its partners and distributors operated in approximately 100 countries worldwide.

Guess's main strength and creative force are definitely the people, the Guess Family. All the people working in Guess are the engine of the Brand and the Company, starting from Guess’ founders, Paul and Maurice Marciano.

Being in Guess since 2008, Patrizia had the chance and the fortune to be part of several phases of the Company’s transformation, the most visionary one starting in 2019 when Paul Marciano, together with the Global CEO Carlos Alberini, set the strategy for a combination of Brand elevation, product innovation and redesign, digitalization, online boost, and operational flows improvements, investing a lot of time and energy to make all this happen very quickly. Their vision was embraced by the Company as a whole, supporting them with strong commitment and dedication. GUESS was able, under their direction, to elevate the Guess and Marciano brands, develop collections with excellent and fashionable products, redefine the Company’s global e-commerce strategy, and drive efficiencies across the business, delivering meaningful results.

“We can say that the strategy identified and set at the beginning of 2019 was really an extraordinary vision which helped the Company to navigate through Covid-19 during 2020,” says Patrizia. “Even during the pandemic, while many companies decided to reduce or stop investments, Guess continued investing in digital and online, strongly believing in the potential of the Brand and the capability of the Guess team to be able to navigate through this together with success.”

All the above reflects some of the Guess Rules that Paul Marciano has been stating since the Company was founded: Courage, Get Things Done, Be a good teammate; combined with some of his Personal Values, which Patrizia strongly believes in: Belief, Hope, Never Give up and Trust.

According to Patrizia being a woman is a strength: creativity, imagination, organization, empathy, the capacity of thinking outside the box and being multitasking are excellent. “We must have courage, as Paul Marciano always says, trust in ourselves, hope and never give up until we see our dreams coming true,” she adds. “The key is always looking for a place where women are put at the same level of men, where people are evaluated based on soft, hard skills and results, nothing else.”

For the steadfast leader, the best way to empower team members into becoming great leaders of tomorrow is by projecting self-confidence in them, allowing them to appreciate and develop all their strengths, and work on improving their weaknesses, never forgetting their roots (another Paul Marciano’s Personal Value) keeping a level of humility that engender trust.

“I was entrusted by Paul Marciano to run the e-commerce business and his trust gave me the confidence and strength to do my best. This is the kind of environment I want to recreate in my team.” Good leaders are the ones who work with the team and are not on top of the team. Consequently, a leader must be a good teammate, respect and evaluate everybody’s opinion and contribution, and be open to discussion and explanations. She/He has to be assertive yet flexible, with great communications skills. “Last, but not least, our teams are learning by example, so if we are good leaders, they will learn from us.”

For Patrizia, the future holds limitless possibilities, and she wants to keep on developing e-commerce and omnichannel business and scaling it more and more, being always on top of the best-in-class technology and processes; deeply customer-centric, consistently performing the function of a customer champion and fully understanding their motivations and behaviors. WL