After about a year as chief commercial officer, Mandy West now helms luxury knitwear label St. John Knits as its chief executive.
The Anaheim-based company, which had revenue of 39.7 million euros—or $46.1 million based on current exchange rates—in the first half of last year, confirmed the news to the Orange County Business Journal.
West has been with St. John since 2019, when she joined the company as its vice president of retail. She worked her way up to senior vice president of retail, wholesale and buying before being named chief commercial officer last January. Her appointment also came with the naming of Chief Merchandising Officer Lauren Parrish, with the duo signifying a new leadership regime for the brand.
The reset came after parent Lanvin Group said St. John CEO Andy Lew would step into the role of executive vice president for the group. The group portfolio also includes its namesake label, Sergio Rossi and Wolford.
West’s background is diverse having joined St. John from Tesla, where she was most recently the South Bay and San Francisco regional manager. She’s also held executive and managerial roles at Nike.
The appointment is the latest shift for St. John after decades of the upscale knit house in search of new directions to expand its customer base and secure the next generation of consumers. That search continued as its ownership changed. About 30 percent of the business was sold to Fosun International in 2013 before the company became majority owner about four years later. The label was then placed under the Lanvin Group, which Fosun owns.
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The change at the top for St. John comes amid what’s shaping up to be a difficult stretch for its parent, rife with executive turnover and business challenges as the group seeks a strategy that gets it back into growth mode.
Companywide revenue in the first half of last year, the most recent financial report available, showed a 22 percent slide from the year-ago period to about $155 million (133.4 million euros). The company pointed to challenges in luxury globally as the driver for the decline, in addition to its turnaround plans.
Slipping revenue was had across the company’s brands with the steepest drop at Lanvin, while St. John’s decline was the smallest at nearly 1 percent.
In October, Lanvin Group CFO and Executive Vice President David Chan parted ways with the company.
February saw the sale of Italian men’s wear label Caruso, one of its smaller brands by revenue, to Mondevo Group’s MondeVita. That same month, its Wolford business named Marco Pozzo CEO to helm that division’s “key restructuring measures and initiatives aimed at strengthening customer confidence.”
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