Leslie Wexner Quotes
103 Leslie Wexner Quotes
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[On his vice chairman Bob Morosky who says ‘I work to enjoy the fishing, and I fish to enjoy the working.’ As well as having been an accountant and being married with three children.] We are yin and yang. He is the most objective man I know. He tells me where all the imperfections are… I’m a looser thinker, I have no sense of numbers or how much business I do. I can’t remember my phone, or what my houses cost, but I can think out what the world will be in seven years [time].
Leslie Wexner
[On always having two jobs as a boy and always working for himself.] I felt quite proud to be a worker.
Leslie Wexner
I was seven and it was my mother’s birthday and I took her to lunch, but there wasn’t enough money to go to the movies and buy her a present and I wanted to buy her white gloves. She said she didn’t need them. And I said, ‘I really want to buy you a present, Mommy,’ and she said then I wouldn’t be able to go to the movies. [She always set high standards.]
Leslie Wexner
[On what his mother used to say to him.] You can do it, we can do it, the world will be perfect.
Leslie Wexner
[In 1985] Mother just gave $3 million to the children’s pediatric hospital in Columbus.
Leslie Wexner
[In 1985 on hating making the Forbes 400 list] Someone could get robbed and kidnapped… people get crazy. Already someone offered me an eel farm. A lot of rich people love it.
Leslie Wexner
I like the anonymity.
Leslie Wexner
When the doorman says, ‘Hey, I read abut you in Forbes,’ some people like that, but I don’t… You see in their eyes that they recognize you. I stopped in the bar of a hotel here in Columbus for a glass of water, and the bartender gave me one of those looks that my face had registered. I’d rather do without it.
Leslie Wexner
We’re not going to spill our guts to WWD.
Leslie Wexner
The sense of urgent secrecy builds the espirit. The club knows the secrets. It makes it better to be in the club.
Leslie Wexner
Why did God put me on earth? God doesn’t say, ‘How many stores do you have, Les? How many Mercedeses? Do they know you at ‘21’?
Leslie Wexner
[On friends saying he had outgrown them.] When I had a mediocre year in 1977, and only made $6 million, they delighted in it. I felt very alone. I had been a golden boy to myself and never had a major reversal, and now I had bopped myself on the nose. I felt like I was going broke, and I was terrorized.
Leslie Wexner
[On his success] Oh, I’m just lucky, and I work hard.
Leslie Wexner
My skill was to work. People say, ‘Why work hard?’ but it’s a creative thing.
Leslie Wexner
[On him preferring to work hard.] In his heart of hearts, the plow horse knows the racehorse is different.
Leslie Wexner
[On the names of his dogs in 1985 - the] Wexner kids.
Leslie Wexner
[On telling his father he was running his clothing business all wrong. His father believing his best sellers were dresses and coats when they were doing disastrously.] They worked eighty-hour weeks to scratch out a living, but they never made $10,000 a year. [His father’s store later went bankrupt and in the third year of his son’s store he went to work for him.]
Leslie Wexner
Women need underwear, but they want lingerie. I like to be in the ‘want’ business. The margins are better than in the ‘need’ business.
Leslie Wexner
[In the early 1990’s on the business getting out of hand after three decades of expansion.] Everyday I was coming to work and I felt as though it was a zoo. All the cages were open and the animals were running around.
Leslie Wexner
Before I could change my business model, I needed to change from sole inventor to the leader, the teacher, the coach. It was the darkest time, but also enlightening.
Leslie Wexner
[Charles] Revson said women all hope they get laid, and I agree. They’re sensuous. They’re different from men. They dress to please men… That’s why uptight women stockbrokers will put on a G-string when they get home.
Leslie Wexner
I’ve been selling to women since 1963. Women, even as little girls, care much more about appearance then men do. Some women will have 24 different shades of lipstick in their drawer. Men do nothing like that. You can’t just sell to women like they are men wearing skirts. You have to understand the differences, the differences in mind-set. Women stare at themselves in the mirror. When a women tries on a pair of jeans, she looks at herself. She cares deeply about her appearance. You have to understand why fashion is sexy. You see it with little girls and how they play with dolls.
Leslie Wexner
[On working part-time as a 21 year old at his parent’s dress shop.] I saw the differences then. The fashions were different then, of course. But when a woman tried on outfit after outfit you could see it. Women want to be striking and beautiful.
Leslie Wexner
Women want to be striking and beautiful. Cosmetics is a case study. There is no equivalent of makeup for men.
Leslie Wexner
[In 2009] Narcissism, sex, and beauty are real whether it be Cleopatra or Angelina Jolie. In history, women had enormous influence. Today they are rising to absolute power. They are the most valuable consumers. Guys are rational and cheap. Women are willing to spend on becoming more beautiful, even in a recession.
Leslie Wexner
[In 2009] The fashion cycle is less important. People are looking for different choices for emotional content. Every woman still wants to be as sexy as she can be.
Leslie Wexner
If they buy during a recession, you can only imagine what it will do during the upside.
Leslie Wexner
[In 2000] I was an entrepreneur… You start with one store and you do all the jobs in the store, and then you have two stores, and then 10 stores, and then 50 and 100… I think what went wrong was the… entrepreneurial style was working (any longer). The business had outgrown that in terms of complexity.
Leslie Wexner
[In 2000 on going from managing a collection of specialty stores to managing a family of brands.] The reason I like that word is that I like the association of family, in terms of relationships. I think what it really speaks to is that it is a team. Everyone in the business has to work together as a team.
Leslie Wexner
[In 2000 on Wayne Calloway former Pepsi CEO and chairman] When I talked with Calloway, I asked him how he spent his time. And he said that he probably spent… 40 or 50 percent of his time on people. To me, it was startling. [He had spent most of his time on operations.] I like people, but I am busy picking sweaters, visiting stores… How do you find that much time? And he [Calloway] said, ‘Because the talent in the organization is the most important asset that you have?’ I began to see myself as the chief personnel officer… [The first thing I look for in people is] Do they know their job? The second thing I look for is, are they whole people? Do they have balanced lives?
Leslie Wexner
[On taking over Carter Hawley Hale and the battle to win control in around 1974.] I believe that what we have here is a business Watergate. Carter Hawley’s management is pushing a lot of laws and rules of moral judgment. It has serious New York Stock Exchange, SEC and Labor Department problems. If we are wrong and the SEC is wrong, I think the public company is dead.
Leslie Wexner
Better brands, best brands – I don’t believe bigger is better, I believe better is better. Period.
Leslie Wexner
[On realizing in the early 1990’s he needed to make changes at The Limited.] We were working hard but going nowhere… I was an athlete trained to be a baseball player. And one day someone taps me on the shoulder and says ‘football.’ And I say, ‘No, I’m a baseball player.’ And he says, ‘football.’ And I say, ‘I don’t know how to play football. I’m not 6’4” and I don’t weight 300 pounds.’ But if no one values baseball anymore, the baseball player will be out of business. So, I looked into the mirror and said, ‘Schlemiel, nobody wants to watch baseball. Make the transformation to football.’
Leslie Wexner
Several years ago, I could see that the business model that my colleagues and I had used so successfully over twenty years – a model that revolved around fast fashion, significant promotions, and dominant real estate positions – would not sustain us into the future. The future was in brands.
Leslie Wexner
Our business successfully made the shift to brand, and, in 2003, Fortune named us the ‘world’s most admired specialty retailer.’ Our business model works, and we continue to make progress.
Leslie Wexner
One of the major reasons for our success is that we believe in the taste and good sense of the consumer. Nothing is more annoying to me than hearing a buyer say, ‘I like it, but the customer won’t.’ I’ve been shopping the world for over forty years, and I’ve never over-reached our customers. They stay with you if you pay them the compliment of acknowledging their good taste.
Leslie Wexner
American consumers do love wonderful goods and will pay a premium to buy them. They’ll trade up. All you have to do is give them the opportunity.
Leslie Wexner
Victoria’s Secret, the world’s best-known, bestselling, and most-profitable lingerie brand. Analysts through we were crazy when we bought the business. They believed that because American women had always shopped for underwear in department stores, they always would. But I had seen women in Paris, London, Vienna, and Milan buying lingerie in marvelous little boutiques. Those women understood underwear as fashion. I was convinced that American women would, too…
Leslie Wexner
[On Victoria’s Secret] I was determined to design and market a specialty lingerie boutique that would become the best in the world.
Leslie Wexner
I have to see a lot of things and then somehow I just make conclusions. If I see enough stuff, get out and around, I can put it into trends and put things together in funny ways.
Leslie Wexner
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