Kim Winser
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Kim Winser, OBE was appointed President and Chief Executive Officer of the British luxury fashion brand, Aquascutum, in April 2006 with a brief to significantly grow the business globally. She launched a new advertising campaign with Pierce Brosnan in her first season. Prior to this appointment, Winser was most recently associated with the turnaround of Pringle of Scotland.
Appointed to the role of Pringle's CEO following its takeover in 2000, Winser “morphed one of the oldest fashion labels in the world from frumpy to fabulous in less than five years” (The Herald, March 2005). She developed a powerful brand strategy, reined the international licenses back in-house and worked on growing the brand internationally by identifying Pringle’s key global markets. She launched a retail division, opening flagship stores in Bond Street and Sloane Street, London and across the world. She worked closely on the product and launched it to the fashion industry by showing on the Milan runway and opening showrooms in key markets important to the world of luxury fashion.
Before joining Pringle, Winser was the only female director of Marks & Spencer where she ran the womenswear division. Under her direction, the women's business grew substantially in sales, market share and profit. She joined M&S in 1977 as a management trainee and during her time there held such senior positions as executive for menswear buying and divisional director of the womenswear group. She was also responsible for setting up the first marketing group for the company and held senior positions overseas with both Brooks Brothers and Marks & Spencer’s Canadian business.
Kim Winser is listed number three in the Wall Street Journal Europe’s most successful business women; she is one of Business Week’s most innovative businesswomen in Britain; and Fortune Magazine and Management Today have both named Winser as one of the most powerful women in business. She works with The Princes Trust and CHAS (the only children’s hospice in Scotland) alongside Ewan McGregor. Winser was awarded a Doctorate by Heriot-Watt University in 2003 and an OBE for services to the fashion industry in the 2006 New Year’s honours list. She was born in 1959 in Helensburgh, Scotland and educated at Purbrook Grammar School in Hampshire.
