Consumer Group
Our Consumer Group team
members have worked with some of the largest and most influential retailers
in the world, including household names like Sharper Image, Pottery Barn,
GAP, Nordstroms, Bloomingdale's, Lord and Taylor, Eddie Bauer, Esprit, Mervyn's,
Macy's West, Smith & Hawken, Williams-Sonoma, Coach, Fendi, Gucci, Bulgari,
Cartier, Givenchy, Christian Dior, and Rolex, just to name a few. It takes
a specialized group to understand the complexities of this industry, and
the Consumer Group has the experts in:
Ray G. Brunner
Portland, OR
Ray has over 30 years of retail experience and has held senior management positions with several major retailers including The Gap, Eddie Bauer, and Conran's Habitat, North America. His international consulting experience includes 10 years of starting and growing companies and successfully repositioning brands. The nature of each of these consulting engagements has been to assist the client company's CEO in developing a strategy for expansion and to oversee the successful execution of these strategies.
H. Richard Fiedelman - Advisor
San Francisco, CA
Rick was associated with Deloitte & Touche for more than 30 years, and was a partner in the firm from 1976 to 2003, specializing in consumer business practices and professional services. As an advisor to the Regent Pacific team, Rick brings special wisdom and insight in the consumer field with respect to mergers and acquisitions, supply chain management, specialty and department stores, and wholesale distribution. He is recognized as one of the most astute practitioners of strategic planning and analysis in the consumer industry.
David Folkman
San Francisco, CA
David is a senior retail, wholesale, and consumer products executive with 35 years of general management experience in department stores, specialty stores, consumer products and services, and branded wholesale fashion apparel and accessories. His background in merchandising and brand development, combined with his relationships with sources of capital funding, enable him to perform the chief executive function in both growth and turnaround situations. David has held CEO positions in both large and medium size companies, and has participated as an investor in early-stage retail concepts, some of which have emerged as successful national chains.
Dennis Garro
San Francisco, CA
Dennis specializes in retail merchandising at the senior management level. He has spent more than 30 years in department store and specialty retailing, with extensive international experience. Dennis has held senior management positions in department stores with Macy's and Bloomingdale's and in specialty stores with Stride Rite Corporation and Duty Free Stores (DFS). His most extensive international experience has been with DFS, where he was responsible for ready-to-wear, fashion and leather accessories, watches, fine jewelry, food, and souvenir categories, totaling $1 billion in global sales. Dennis also managed luxury brands such as Coach, Fendi, Gucci, Bulgari, Cartier, Givenchy, Christian Dior, and Rolex.
Nancy E. Glaser
San Francisco, CA
Nancy specializes in business and financial strategies for start-up, growth phase, turnaround, and repositioning business situations, and has more than 30 years of experience in retail, wholesale, and consumer products industries. Her expertise includes raising equity capital and cash flow management with approximately 50 companies in positioning or repositioning assignments. Her background includes practical international experience in financial investing and business development. Nancy has completed several retail industry engagements in operating, planning and allocation, and merchandising executive positions, including CEO and CFO.
Thomas J. Goehring
San Francisco, CA
Tom is a retail specialist with 30 years of senior management experience in men's, women's, and children's soft goods merchandising, field operations, finance, information services, planning and allocation, as well as product and marketing direction. His business experience includes both domestic and international situations. Tom's background includes national rollouts and turnarounds in department stores, specialty stores, wholesale, and niche companies.
Richard T. Hamner
San Francisco, CA
Richard is a restaurant industry expert who has an intimate understanding of restaurant operations, product, menu and product development, concept development, real estate, and finances. He has been immersed in the restaurant business for more than 35 years. During the past several decades as an entrepreneurial executive, Richard has originated, financed, and operated highly successful multi-unit full service and quick service restaurant concepts. He has restaurant franchise experience as a Burger King franchisee, director of Limited-Partner Franchises (Jack In The Box), and as the CEO of a multi-unit, company-operated and franchised restaurant concept. In addition, Richard has direct experience in acquisitions, mergers, and bank workouts.
Patrick M. Holwagner
San Francisco, CA
Pat is a founding partner of Oak Harbor Partners, an affiliate of Regent Pacific. He has more than 20 years of experience in public accounting and in private companies in retail, wholesale, real estate, construction, manufacturing, high technology, e-learning, Internet services, and e-commerce. His experience includes mergers and acquisitions, debt and equity capital raising, IPO's, turnarounds, bankruptcy, debt restructuring, cash flow management, and business planning and forecasting, in both private and public markets. Pat has also held a variety of senior management positions in addition to his public accounting experience, and is a Certified Public Accountant (CPA).
Kathryn A. Huber
San Francisco, CA
Kathryn, co-founded Market Insite Group, an affiliate of Regent Pacific, based on her in-depth understanding of the retail leasing industry and her vision of how technology can streamline the normally painstaking and lengthy leasing process. She has more than 22 years of experience in retail-related real estate fields, including management leasing positions on both the landlord and tenant aspects of the shopping center industry. Kathryn was Director of Real Estate West for The Gymboree Corporation, where she led the development of the Company's strategic expansion plans and has participated in more than 100 transactions throughout the United States. While at Gymboree, Kathryn worked with every major shopping center developer.
Michael A. Laukert
Denver, CO
Michael graduated from the Culinary Institute of America, has been in the specialty food business for 15 years as a food research and development director and as a chef, and has expertise in all essential aspects of food operations. He was director of research and development for NapaStyle, and was responsible for product development, ingredient sourcing, and manufacturing for companies such as Fran's Chocolate in Seattle. Michael has in-depth experience in the chocolate industry from the perspective of the chef, the kitchen, the vendors, the brokers, and the wholesale and retail trade. He has led the development of new specialty foods, from initial concept to production, and is known for increasing profits through process improvements and product evolution. Michael employs strong project-management and organizational skills as he builds profitable specialty food businesses. He holds a Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point System (HACCP) certification.
John B. R. Leisner
Los Angeles, CA
John is a consultant in corporate restructuring and entertainment firm management. He has an in-depth background in the developing and managing theme parks, and themed electronic games, restaurants, and bar attractions. John is also known for his expertise in hotel and restaurant management. He also has extensive experience in managing a company through the bankruptcy process.
John held the post of CEO of Pizza Time Theatre (Chucky Cheese), and is Chairman of the Board of Directors of WorldWide Projects, Inc., an entertainment based project management firm. In 1984, John supervised the management of all twenty-nine Olympic Games venues, including the food and retail programs. Prior to this, John was COO of the Universal Studios Tour theme park. He also led MCA Concerts, Inc., which operated the Universal Amphitheatre and promoted stadium concerts and shows, including the major concert events of the era performed at Dodger Stadium.
DeDe F. Marchick
San Francisco, CA
DeDe is a strategic merchandising specialist, with 19 years of retail experience and 15 years of scientific research experience. She has been vice president and divisional merchandising manager in department store and specialty store chains, responsible for growth in both merchandising and operations. DeDe founded two firms: a global sourcing company and a medical disease management company. Her broad understanding of retailing and sourcing, her merchandising expertise, her scientific approach to problem solving, and her entrepreneurial attitude provide the basis for improving merchandising and customer service in retail, wholesale, and consumer products situations.
Elspeth Martin
San Francisco, CA
Elspeth, an affiliate of Regent Pacific, is a catalog consultant specializing in creative direction, print production management, and paper sourcing for start-up and mature catalogers. Her expertise is in establishing an image, sourcing creative and production suppliers, negotiating contracts, creating budgets, and managing the print production process. Elspeth also provides creative critiques, develops new creative directions, and consults with management on creative initiatives, production staffing, and objectives. Before starting her own consulting business, Elspeth was employed by Williams-Sonoma and Sunset Magazine. While at Williams-Sonoma, Elspeth won 9 gold and 4 silver awards from the American Catalog Awards and one gold ECHO award.
Paul Valerio
San Francisco, CA
Paul, an affiliate of Regent Pacific, is the founder of Group 19 Consulting. He has more than 18 years of experience in branding strategy, business development, and account management with such firms as Addwater, Inc., CKS Partners, and Landor Associates. Paul combines the ability to collect and interpret customer data with an understanding of the creative process as he produces effective solutions for clients. One of his products is the Addwater Perspective Index, a proprietary branding study of 800 consumer brands. Paul has developed and led multiple brand strategy, identity, print collateral, and website design programs for companies such as Wells Fargo, Palm Computing, NapaStyle, and Fender Musical Instruments.
Jim C. Vicars
Denver, CO
Jim is a strategic retail operations expert with 30 years of senior management and consulting experience in retail, catalog, and e-commerce concepts; strategy development; and operations. He has experience with start-ups, wholesalers, specialty chains, catalog, department stores, and e-commerce. During his tenure with Williams-Sonoma, Jim managed approximately 80 store build-outs, launched four new concepts, and had operations responsibility for four chains. Jim served as director for store planning and development with Nordstrom. He served as COO of Reel.com, responsible for operations, customer service, and back-end systems. Later Jim served as acting vice-president of operations for VivaSmart.com/Aptivia, where he managed customer service and operations functions, as well as technical development of the site, including site design and the user interface. Jim has managed more than 125 projects and worked with more than 30 e-commerce start-up businesses.
Kirsten Winter
Paris, France
Kirsten is a senior executive with 25 years of experience in the retail industry. She has held several positions in the fashion industry, including global fashion and trend representative, and managing director for large companies for both branded and private label apparel, accessories, intimate wear and home collections. Kirsten uses her skills as a photographer as she researches the fashion home and apparel markets and identifies and anticipates major trends in items, colors, and fabrications that will inspire designers and stimulate sales.
David J. Wright
San Francisco, CA
David is a strategic operations, finance, and systems expert with more than 10 years of senior management experience in the high-end, multi-channel retail market, including both e-commerce start-ups and well-established retailers. He has extensive experience with new business roll-outs, financial and strategic planning, e-commerce, back-end system development and implementation, supply chain management, distribution and logistics, business process engineering, and project management. David was a member of the founding executive management team of e-Luxury.com, Inc., a subsidiary of LVMH - Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton. He was vice-president and chief administrative officer of this Internet marketer of high-end apparel and hard goods.
- Strategic planning, business plan development
- Customer service
- Catalog, store, and e-commerce operations, marketing, merchandising, creative
- Product development and sourcing, store operations
- Finance and accounting, information technology, and logistics and distribution
- Real estate and demographics, store design and visual
- Advertising, branding strategy and creative planning
- Restaurant and fast food, franchising and licensing
- Wholesale distribution, contract manufacturing, and food services
- Website development
Ray G. Brunner
Portland, OR
Ray has over 30 years of retail experience and has held senior management positions with several major retailers including The Gap, Eddie Bauer, and Conran's Habitat, North America. His international consulting experience includes 10 years of starting and growing companies and successfully repositioning brands. The nature of each of these consulting engagements has been to assist the client company's CEO in developing a strategy for expansion and to oversee the successful execution of these strategies.
H. Richard Fiedelman - Advisor
San Francisco, CA
Rick was associated with Deloitte & Touche for more than 30 years, and was a partner in the firm from 1976 to 2003, specializing in consumer business practices and professional services. As an advisor to the Regent Pacific team, Rick brings special wisdom and insight in the consumer field with respect to mergers and acquisitions, supply chain management, specialty and department stores, and wholesale distribution. He is recognized as one of the most astute practitioners of strategic planning and analysis in the consumer industry.
David Folkman
San Francisco, CA
David is a senior retail, wholesale, and consumer products executive with 35 years of general management experience in department stores, specialty stores, consumer products and services, and branded wholesale fashion apparel and accessories. His background in merchandising and brand development, combined with his relationships with sources of capital funding, enable him to perform the chief executive function in both growth and turnaround situations. David has held CEO positions in both large and medium size companies, and has participated as an investor in early-stage retail concepts, some of which have emerged as successful national chains.
Dennis Garro
San Francisco, CA
Dennis specializes in retail merchandising at the senior management level. He has spent more than 30 years in department store and specialty retailing, with extensive international experience. Dennis has held senior management positions in department stores with Macy's and Bloomingdale's and in specialty stores with Stride Rite Corporation and Duty Free Stores (DFS). His most extensive international experience has been with DFS, where he was responsible for ready-to-wear, fashion and leather accessories, watches, fine jewelry, food, and souvenir categories, totaling $1 billion in global sales. Dennis also managed luxury brands such as Coach, Fendi, Gucci, Bulgari, Cartier, Givenchy, Christian Dior, and Rolex.
Nancy E. Glaser
San Francisco, CA
Nancy specializes in business and financial strategies for start-up, growth phase, turnaround, and repositioning business situations, and has more than 30 years of experience in retail, wholesale, and consumer products industries. Her expertise includes raising equity capital and cash flow management with approximately 50 companies in positioning or repositioning assignments. Her background includes practical international experience in financial investing and business development. Nancy has completed several retail industry engagements in operating, planning and allocation, and merchandising executive positions, including CEO and CFO.
Thomas J. Goehring
San Francisco, CA
Tom is a retail specialist with 30 years of senior management experience in men's, women's, and children's soft goods merchandising, field operations, finance, information services, planning and allocation, as well as product and marketing direction. His business experience includes both domestic and international situations. Tom's background includes national rollouts and turnarounds in department stores, specialty stores, wholesale, and niche companies.
Richard T. Hamner
San Francisco, CA
Richard is a restaurant industry expert who has an intimate understanding of restaurant operations, product, menu and product development, concept development, real estate, and finances. He has been immersed in the restaurant business for more than 35 years. During the past several decades as an entrepreneurial executive, Richard has originated, financed, and operated highly successful multi-unit full service and quick service restaurant concepts. He has restaurant franchise experience as a Burger King franchisee, director of Limited-Partner Franchises (Jack In The Box), and as the CEO of a multi-unit, company-operated and franchised restaurant concept. In addition, Richard has direct experience in acquisitions, mergers, and bank workouts.
Patrick M. Holwagner
San Francisco, CA
Pat is a founding partner of Oak Harbor Partners, an affiliate of Regent Pacific. He has more than 20 years of experience in public accounting and in private companies in retail, wholesale, real estate, construction, manufacturing, high technology, e-learning, Internet services, and e-commerce. His experience includes mergers and acquisitions, debt and equity capital raising, IPO's, turnarounds, bankruptcy, debt restructuring, cash flow management, and business planning and forecasting, in both private and public markets. Pat has also held a variety of senior management positions in addition to his public accounting experience, and is a Certified Public Accountant (CPA).
Kathryn A. Huber
San Francisco, CA
Kathryn, co-founded Market Insite Group, an affiliate of Regent Pacific, based on her in-depth understanding of the retail leasing industry and her vision of how technology can streamline the normally painstaking and lengthy leasing process. She has more than 22 years of experience in retail-related real estate fields, including management leasing positions on both the landlord and tenant aspects of the shopping center industry. Kathryn was Director of Real Estate West for The Gymboree Corporation, where she led the development of the Company's strategic expansion plans and has participated in more than 100 transactions throughout the United States. While at Gymboree, Kathryn worked with every major shopping center developer.
Michael A. Laukert
Denver, CO
Michael graduated from the Culinary Institute of America, has been in the specialty food business for 15 years as a food research and development director and as a chef, and has expertise in all essential aspects of food operations. He was director of research and development for NapaStyle, and was responsible for product development, ingredient sourcing, and manufacturing for companies such as Fran's Chocolate in Seattle. Michael has in-depth experience in the chocolate industry from the perspective of the chef, the kitchen, the vendors, the brokers, and the wholesale and retail trade. He has led the development of new specialty foods, from initial concept to production, and is known for increasing profits through process improvements and product evolution. Michael employs strong project-management and organizational skills as he builds profitable specialty food businesses. He holds a Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point System (HACCP) certification.
John B. R. Leisner
Los Angeles, CA
John is a consultant in corporate restructuring and entertainment firm management. He has an in-depth background in the developing and managing theme parks, and themed electronic games, restaurants, and bar attractions. John is also known for his expertise in hotel and restaurant management. He also has extensive experience in managing a company through the bankruptcy process.
John held the post of CEO of Pizza Time Theatre (Chucky Cheese), and is Chairman of the Board of Directors of WorldWide Projects, Inc., an entertainment based project management firm. In 1984, John supervised the management of all twenty-nine Olympic Games venues, including the food and retail programs. Prior to this, John was COO of the Universal Studios Tour theme park. He also led MCA Concerts, Inc., which operated the Universal Amphitheatre and promoted stadium concerts and shows, including the major concert events of the era performed at Dodger Stadium.
DeDe F. Marchick
San Francisco, CA
DeDe is a strategic merchandising specialist, with 19 years of retail experience and 15 years of scientific research experience. She has been vice president and divisional merchandising manager in department store and specialty store chains, responsible for growth in both merchandising and operations. DeDe founded two firms: a global sourcing company and a medical disease management company. Her broad understanding of retailing and sourcing, her merchandising expertise, her scientific approach to problem solving, and her entrepreneurial attitude provide the basis for improving merchandising and customer service in retail, wholesale, and consumer products situations.
Elspeth Martin
San Francisco, CA
Elspeth, an affiliate of Regent Pacific, is a catalog consultant specializing in creative direction, print production management, and paper sourcing for start-up and mature catalogers. Her expertise is in establishing an image, sourcing creative and production suppliers, negotiating contracts, creating budgets, and managing the print production process. Elspeth also provides creative critiques, develops new creative directions, and consults with management on creative initiatives, production staffing, and objectives. Before starting her own consulting business, Elspeth was employed by Williams-Sonoma and Sunset Magazine. While at Williams-Sonoma, Elspeth won 9 gold and 4 silver awards from the American Catalog Awards and one gold ECHO award.
Paul Valerio
San Francisco, CA
Paul, an affiliate of Regent Pacific, is the founder of Group 19 Consulting. He has more than 18 years of experience in branding strategy, business development, and account management with such firms as Addwater, Inc., CKS Partners, and Landor Associates. Paul combines the ability to collect and interpret customer data with an understanding of the creative process as he produces effective solutions for clients. One of his products is the Addwater Perspective Index, a proprietary branding study of 800 consumer brands. Paul has developed and led multiple brand strategy, identity, print collateral, and website design programs for companies such as Wells Fargo, Palm Computing, NapaStyle, and Fender Musical Instruments.
Jim C. Vicars
Denver, CO
Jim is a strategic retail operations expert with 30 years of senior management and consulting experience in retail, catalog, and e-commerce concepts; strategy development; and operations. He has experience with start-ups, wholesalers, specialty chains, catalog, department stores, and e-commerce. During his tenure with Williams-Sonoma, Jim managed approximately 80 store build-outs, launched four new concepts, and had operations responsibility for four chains. Jim served as director for store planning and development with Nordstrom. He served as COO of Reel.com, responsible for operations, customer service, and back-end systems. Later Jim served as acting vice-president of operations for VivaSmart.com/Aptivia, where he managed customer service and operations functions, as well as technical development of the site, including site design and the user interface. Jim has managed more than 125 projects and worked with more than 30 e-commerce start-up businesses.
Kirsten Winter
Paris, France
Kirsten is a senior executive with 25 years of experience in the retail industry. She has held several positions in the fashion industry, including global fashion and trend representative, and managing director for large companies for both branded and private label apparel, accessories, intimate wear and home collections. Kirsten uses her skills as a photographer as she researches the fashion home and apparel markets and identifies and anticipates major trends in items, colors, and fabrications that will inspire designers and stimulate sales.
David J. Wright
San Francisco, CA
David is a strategic operations, finance, and systems expert with more than 10 years of senior management experience in the high-end, multi-channel retail market, including both e-commerce start-ups and well-established retailers. He has extensive experience with new business roll-outs, financial and strategic planning, e-commerce, back-end system development and implementation, supply chain management, distribution and logistics, business process engineering, and project management. David was a member of the founding executive management team of e-Luxury.com, Inc., a subsidiary of LVMH - Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton. He was vice-president and chief administrative officer of this Internet marketer of high-end apparel and hard goods.