Arie Kopelman, the former president and chief operating officer of Chanel, who was credited with helping fuel the significant growth of the French luxury brand, has died at the age of 86.
Kopelman’s daughter Jill Kargman posted the news of Kopelman’s death on her Instagram account. According to a Chanel spokesperson, the cause of death was pancreatic cancer.
Kopelman was known as an astute, down-to-earth businessman and marketer with a great sense of humor, known for his deft interpretation of marketing jargon standards and bizarre impersonations of department store characters. It has gained popularity in the industry. “Retail is in the details, darling” was one of his favorite quotes.
Born September 23, 1938 in Brookline, Massachusetts, Kopelman graduated from Johns Hopkins University in 1960, where he studied medicine but majored in art history. He then earned an MBA from Columbia University.
Mr. Kopelman’s first job was at Procter & Gamble, marketing Ivory soap bars. As part of his training, Kopelman spent six months in a sales field in Reno, Nevada, where he also took flying lessons and met classmate Bill Harrod of Harrod’s Casino, who invited him to try out a comedy routine. Ta. In fact, there was a time when Kopelman considered a career as a stand-up comedian. He said he might have ended up in the entertainment industry if he hadn’t pursued retail.
He said his father once opposed the idea. “I like to joke that he came up with the magic word ‘disinheritance,'” Kopelman recalled in a 2013 WWD article. “And having a lounge act in Rochester didn’t seem very exciting.”
After three years at P&G, Mr. Kopelman left and joined advertising agency Doyle Dane Bernbach as an account executive, where he spent the next 20 years rising to vice chairman and then general manager. I did. During his tenure at DDB Worldwide, he worked with clients such as JB Liquors, Heinz Ketchup, and Chanel, which was one of his largest accounts. He created advertising campaigns for French luxury brands.
In 1985, Chanel owners Alain and Gerard Wertheimer hired Kopelman as president and chief operating officer of Chanel’s New York headquarters. As Kopelman told it, Wertheimer claimed he had no other choice when hiring Kopelman. “I’ll never find someone whose wife’s name is Coco and whose first language is French,” Wertheimer is quoted as saying. Please come and run my company. ”
Kopelman was hired on January 6, 1986 to run both Chanel and Frédéric Fekai Beauté in the United States. Over the next 19 years, Kopelman expanded the company’s retail, fragrance, cosmetics, skin care, eyewear and accessories businesses into a multi-billion company. dollar companies.
When Kopelman joined Chanel, the brand had two independent boutiques and reported annual revenues of $357 million. By the time he stepped down as president and chief operating officer in 2004, there were 17 brick-and-mortar stores in the United States, and by 2014 the brand had sales of $7 billion.
In the face of increasing competition from European luxury brands, Kopelman told WWD in 2000 that the company was renovating its stores (the company rolled out a sleek new retail format designed by Peter Marino) and corners across the United States. , said it plans to increase advertising spending and branch out into new brands. Offer customers “attractive” low-priced products and take advantage of the brand’s skincare collection. “The name Chanel has a lot of meaning, it’s a standard for luxury goods, but we want to make it even more meaningful in this day and age,” Kopelman said.
Mr. Kopelman stepped down as president and chief operating officer of Chanel in 2004, and was succeeded by Banana Republic president Maureen Sike. Kopelman told WWD that he celebrated his 66th birthday on September 23, 2004, and felt it was a good time to retire. At that time, Mr. Kopelman served as vice chairman for an additional four years.
In a 2004 interview, Kopelman talked about what he likes about this job and how it encompasses everything he enjoys doing.
“It was the first time in my life that everything worked out. It was all what I wanted to do. It was advertising, it was merchandising, it was retail, it was running a business. And , I loved fashion from afar. I was one of those rare husbands who didn’t mind when my wife asked me to come look at two dresses and help her decide.” said Kopelman, who was married to Kopelman. The two often appeared together at charity events.
Allie and Coco Kopelman
Lexi Moreland
He said that when he joined Chanel in 1985, it was a very different place. At the time, Chanel had just begun opening its own stores and Karl Lagerfeld had only been designing ready-to-wear collections for a few years. . The mindset of many long-time Chanel employees he met was that Chanel fashion was scripted and should not be promoted at all, or in the same way that fragrances were promoted. It was.
Kopelman maintains strong relationships with retailers and magazine publishers, maintains Chanel’s high status as one of the world’s great brand names, protects its sophisticated appeal, and offers jewelry without having to acquire its own products. The company is credited with expanding its product range in categories such as and watches. Even in difficult times, we are on the path of promotion. He is also known for leading a careful retail expansion in the United States, and for being very careful and patient in choosing the right locations for new stores.
In his exit interview, Kopelman recalled Chanel’s expansion in the United States, which at the time had 16 company-owned stores, eight luxury jewelry boutiques and more than 90 retail accounts. The introduction of the Coco Mademoiselle fragrance and the 20-month negotiations to bring Nicole Kidman as the new face of Chanel No. 5 in commercials directed by Baz Luhrmann.
“What was interesting to me was that I felt like I could play a role in tapping into Karl’s raw talent and helping market the product,” he told WWD in 2004, adding that Kopelman’s trademarked proverbs from the war chest elicited business practices. If you have the right product, you can have a very good business, but if you have the right product, backed by the right marketing, you can have a great business,” Kopelman said.
Kopelman was involved in numerous charities and nonprofit organizations. In January 1989, he was appointed by President Ronald Reagan to the United States Holocaust Memorial Council. He served on the Board of Supervisors of Columbia Business School, St. Bernard’s School for Boys in New York, the Municipal Arts Association, and the East Side Settlement House. He also served as chairman of the Winter Antique Show. Kopelman was also president of the Nantucket Historical Society and a founding board member of the Upper East Side Historic District. He also served on the board of directors of the New York City American Ballet School, which his wife Coco attended as a child. Today there is a studio named after Kopelman there.
His previous aviation hobby came to an abrupt end when he met Coco. “I gave it up as a condition of marriage. My wife can’t stand small planes,” Kopelman said in a 2013 WWD article.
In 2022, Kopelman was honored in the Look Good Feel Better Beauty Cares DreamBall. When accepting the Legacy Award, he spoke to the audience about his tattoos (“Once I did it, I was done,” he said), his golf game (“I’m a bad golfer”) and the importance of joy. boiled. “The harder you work, the luckier you get, because you put yourself in situations where you’re looking for opportunities,” Kopelman said.
In addition to his wife Coco, Kopelman is survived by a daughter, Jill Kargman, a son, Will Kopelman, and six grandchildren. Kopelman’s fraternal twin brother, David, a judge, died in 2022, and her younger brother, Robert, died of lung cancer in 1999.
