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ASHLEY, LAURA.   Term Paper ID:22941 Click to get this paper

Essay Subject: Career, personal style & business success of decorator & clothing designer.... More...

6 Pages / 1350 Words 4 sources, 13 Citations, MLA Format $24.00 Return to List of Papers

Paper Abstract: Career, personal style & business success of decorator & clothing designer. Paper Introduction: LAURA ASHLEY This paper will discuss the career and personal style of designer, Laura Ashley. The discussion will include a brief background on the designer, and will show the type of business that the designer ran, as well as explain how her company lasted for five decades. Finally, the paper will illustrate examples of the designer's products and look, as well as explain why this designer is important. The apparel and furnishing designer, Laura Ashley, began her career in fashion and interior decorating by selling tea towels. Ashley first started silk-screening linen dish towels with her husband, Bernard Ashley, on their kitchen table in 1953. Mrs. Ashley was experiencing a difficult first pregnancy and wanted to pass the time until her child's birth by making patchwork home furnishings. Ashley was f Text of the Paper: The entire text of the paper is shown below. However, the text is somewhat scrambled. We want to give you as much information as we possibly can about our papers and essays, but we cannot give them away for free. In the text below you will find that while disordered, many of the phrases are essentially intact. From this text you will be able to get a solid sense of the writing style, the concepts addressed, and the sources used in the research paper. .like the straw hat you are fond of, and wear all of your life" (Bain 21).Forty-three years after the designer and her husband started her owncompany, the Laura Ashley name remains synonymous with the romanticVictorian image, much to the delight of Laura Ashley fans all over theworld. and Laura Ashley, Ltd. March 1991: 15 . Ashley's fame for producing frilly frocks, pure cotton orlinen printed fabrics for upholstery, clothing, drapes and even lampshades,as well as wallpaper, lives on (Kindel 31). Her clothing andhome furnishing designs are feminine and lacy, natural and often pastelcolored, and environmentally friendly. LauraAshley, Inc. The designer remains important because she understood that manypeople just wanted to have a comfortable home that they could quietly raisefamilies in and enjoy time in their English country gardens. Ashley was frustrated by the scarcityof small prints in London at the time, so she decided to make her own.Husband Bernard, a natural entrepreneur, thought that if they used hiswife's silk-screened designs on tea towels, which could easily be cut andsewn into a marketable product. She owned her ownWelsh workshops, which made all of the products to service her retailoutlets. LAURA ASHLEY This paper will discuss the career and personal style of designer,Laura Ashley. "Life Begins at 4 for Laura Ashley." Marketing. Laura Ashley expects to save about $2million a year in distribution costs (Kindel 31). Also, years before Donna Karan was designing stockings, Ashley hadbecome internationally known for decorating Welsh Victorian homes and 18thcentury French chateaus, as well as her own family's Welsh hill farm andRegency London house. Works CitedBain, Sally. The couple read books about how to cutfabric and make patterns, and by the 196 s, Laura Ashley had branched outinto designing nightgowns and aprons. NewYork: Harmony Books, 1982.Kindel, Stephen. Although Bernard Ashley continued to head the corporation, hewas unprepared to handle the financial problems which occurred when hiscompany's stock was 34 times oversubscribed. "What do women really want?" Financial World. 8 Dec.,1992: 3 .Murphy, Rhoda Jaffin. Although Ashley's companyonce had very ambitious plans for worldwide expansion, after Laura's deathher factories in Welsh and Kentucky were sold and Maxim shelved thecompany's plans for expansion. The dealguarantees "worldwide stocking within 48 hours," effectively "out-sources"almost all of Laura Ashley's distribution competition (Kindel 31). Maxim'sbusiness decision also allows the corporation's management to focus oncreating popular designs as opposed to spending precious time solvinglogistical problems of how to get their goods in their retail stores intime for holiday shopping rushes. She also worked on a seriesof books, like "The Laura Ashley Book of Home Decorating," which explainedthe secrets of the her personal style and showed consumers how to do thingslike dress a window or decorate a bathroom on a budget with her products(Dickson 8-122). Today, the company's advertisementsappear in magazines like Country Living, Vogue, Cosmopolitan, GoodHousekeeping, Marie Claire, Prima, and She. now has 18 , credit card holders who the company sendsquestionnaires, invitations to focus groups and other monthly mailings, aswell as brochures explaining special events and presentations which arefrequently held in Laura Ashley retail stores. retains a fiercely loyalcustomer base, most of whom are well-educated working women who "possess ahigh level of self-confidence" (Kindel 31). Oneday, after she saw a line of people outside her factory in Wales waiting togather the dress-fabric remnants which her workers tossed out, she learnedthat the crowd wanted the fabric for sofa slip-covers. According to Maxim, Laura Ashley, Inc. The designer's old-fashioned home style is still reflected in every new product, and thewindow displays also use a lot of props which convey the Laura Ashleycountry-garden style, such as dried flowers, garden tools, and evenhaystacks (Bain 21). According to the company's market researchdepartment, Laura Ashley's customers love the brand's use of naturalfibers, small prints, floral designs and clothing which is comfortable andloosely fit (Kindel 31). Most peoplein the 6 s, especially the young people, were not thinking about Englishromanticism, and thus, the designer was the first to capture the market forthat romantic and Victorian-inspired designs. Customers can now orderthrough the popular Home Furnishings catalogue, or call the company's "homestyling interior design service" for a personal consultation. "Laura Ashley: A Synonym for Prettiness." HouseBeautiful. Her faded, mellow style appeared throughout homes inEurope, where she used hand-made patchwork quilts, needlework tapestries,rag rugs, lace curtains and lots of starched white linens to adorn thehomes she decorated as well as her own retail shops which featured her HomeFurnishings collection (Dickson 6-7). Mrs. Ashley was experiencing a difficultfirst pregnancy and wanted to pass the time until her child's birth bymaking patchwork home furnishings. The company then became one of the first to sell coordinatingfabric products as home furnishings. By 1992, Laura Ashley was boasting $481 million in annual sales. Laura Ashley, Inc., also had a boomingcatalogue business. Contrary to Bernard Ashley, Maxim's corporate managementstyle was guided by the business acumen of his wife, Harvard BusinessSchool Professor Shoshanna Zuboff (Kindel 3 ). The apparel and furnishing designer, Laura Ashley, began her careerin fashion and interior decorating by selling tea towels. Laura Ashley wassoon putting her Victorian designs on everything from wall coverings tofurniture. The discussion will include a brief background on thedesigner, and will show the type of business that the designer ran, as wellas explain how her company lasted for five decades. Maxim's strategy has resulted in an increase in company profits.Also, Laura Ashley, Inc., has just signed a $28 -million, 1 -year contractwith Federal Express's newly formed Business Logistics division. Ashley poured through 19thcentury French and British pattern books (Murphy 15 ) and her husbandpitched in his business acumen, and before long Laura Ashley, Inc., hadexpanded from the retail clothing business to the decorating business.Laura Ashley is also important because she paved the way for the success ofcompanies like Victoria's Secret (which expanded the romantic clothingconcept to lingerie) and Martha Stewart, who took the same ideas andstarted her own magazine and television program in America. Bernard Ashley's paternal style and local-mindedness were replaced by a more focused Maxim who believed thatcompanies' expansion into leather goods, fragrances, and furniture was well-intentioned but not economically feasible for the brand. While the designer began as an apparel designer, she kepther eyes open for ways that she could expand her artistic talents. Remarkably, Laura Ashley had maintained herassociation with pretty, quality goods in both the home furnishingsindustry and the fashion industry. Despite her untimely and tragic death, the designer's trademark isstill popular. Laura Ashley,Inc., was also too dependent on in-house manufactured, which mandatingexcessive shipping costs. died, her companywas soon sold, and shortly thereafter, its stock was offered for sale tothe public. Her company made a fortune byselling English country romanticism, during a time when other 6 s designerswere focusing on miniskirts, loud prints, and brightly-colored polyesterfabric. But in the 6 s, Ashley's success in the decorating business wasunprecedented. Finally, the paperwill illustrate examples of the designer's products and look, as well asexplain why this designer is important. Laura Ashley created the same gentlefloral prints that she had used for her apparel line for her finely pleatedlampshades and her rounded upholstery pieces. Theincrease was due, in part, to the efforts of Ashley's new chief executiveofficer, Maxim. Ashley formed Laura Ashley, Inc., and 4 years later her lines ofhome furnishing products and clothing were being sold in 475 retail outletsspread out over four continents. Whenthe founder of Laura Ashley, Inc. Despite her death, the designer's brand is still known for thepersonal style which Laura added to all of her products. The designer has risen from her modest Londonapartment to head an entire home furnishings empire. Then, at 61, Laura died unexpectedly in a car crash in 1985. . Ashley's customers, whether inEurope, Japan, or America, all want to buy something that reflect's LauraAshley's personal style. The Laura Ashley Book of Home Decorating. Suddenly there was more thanenough money to expand, which lead to stores operating in 13 countries.Two years later Bernard Ashley departed, retaining 53% of the company'sstock, but relinquishing control of the day-to-day operations to chiefexecutive Mike Smith, followed by chief executive Maxim in 1991 (Bain 18). Ashley firststarted silk-screening linen dish towels with her husband, Bernard Ashley,on their kitchen table in 1953. Thecompany which Laura Ashley founded still puts its marketing focus on thekinds of things that the British-born and raised designer liked. Forexample, years before her death, Laura commented that she didn't like"ephemeral things," but rather, preferred "things that last forever . By the 9 s, Laura Ashley's clothing still kept pace with the globalfashion industry, while remaining true to the designer's personal style.For example, recent clothing collections shown in Tokyo, Milan, andPetersborough unveiled the designer's traditional but pretty lace blouses,soft white cotton nightwear, warm and natural knitwear, and stylish butsimple outfits for weddings and other special occasions (Bain 21). Maxim engaged the company in efforts to sourceproducts globally and cut the Ashley product line in half, thereby focusingthe company's resources on marketing and distributing the brand's top-selling product lines (Kindel 3 -31). 13 May,1993: 18.Dickson, Elizabeth. Ashley's original designs wereinspired by Victorian prints and romantic ideas (Murphy 15 ). If this paper is not what you are looking for, you can search again: Search for: or Click here to request an essay written just for you.