Anthony DiPaolo | |
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Born | September 19, 1958 |
Nationality | American |
Other names | Tony DiPaolo |
Alma mater | George Washington University (B.S.) |
Occupation | President and CEO of Work 'N Gear |
Years active | 2002-Present |
Board member of | South Shore Art Center in Cohasset, Massachusetts |
Anthony DiPaolo is an American businessman and the president and chief executive officer (CEO) of Work 'N Gear, a workwear and healthcare fashion retailer.
DiPaolo's career began at Mitsubishi where he was a footwear sales representative responsible for $20 million in sales and product development. While at Mitsubishi, he traveled throughout Europe, the Far East and Eastern Bloc countries to broker trade agreements between Dow Chemical, the Government of Romania and the other Eastern Bloc countries. DiPaolo later joined Shoe Visions, a United States footwear brand sold in major American retailers such as JCPenney, G.R. Kinney Company and Thom McAn.
In 1990, DiPaolo acquired Herman Survivors from former owners, Stride Rite Corporation, and its sales later rose from $8 million to $50 million. In 2001, he sold Herman Survivors to the American public multinational corporation, Walmart. [1]
In 2002, DiPaolo purchased Work 'N Gear, which was in bankruptcy, and became the President and CEO where he raised $40 million in investments from venture capitalists. Since then, he formed a new management team and brand focused on the workwear marketplace. [2] [3]
In 2011, DiPoalo launched Scrubology—a new "store-within-a-store" concept that caters to healthcare consumers. In conjunction with Sears Holdings Corporation, Scrubology was launched in 39 Sears and Kmart locations across the United States.
Sears Holdings Corporation named Scrubology the 2012 "Partner in Transformation" and agreed to launch an additional 52 stores in major metropolitan locations within California, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Philadelphia and Washington, DC. [4] Scrubology's flagship website was launched in June 2012 to expand the brand's reach beyond brick-and-mortar locations around the United States.
Walmart Inc. is an American multinational retail corporation that operates a chain of hypermarkets, discount department stores, and grocery stores from the United States, headquartered in Bentonville, Arkansas. The company was founded by Sam Walton in nearby Rogers, Arkansas in 1962 and incorporated under Delaware General Corporation Law on October 31, 1969. It also owns and operates Sam's Club retail warehouses.
Kmart Corporation is an American big box department store chain headquartered in Hoffman Estates, Illinois, United States. The company was incorporated in 1899 as S. S. Kresge Corporation and renamed Kmart Corporation in 1977. The first store with the Kmart name opened in 1962. At its peak in 1994, Kmart operated 2,486 stores globally, including 2,323 discount stores and Super Kmart Center locations in the United States. As of January 31, 2022, ten stores remained in operation, but by April 16, 2022, that number was down to just three. From 2005 through 2019, Kmart was a subsidiary of Sears Holdings Corporation. Since 2019, Kmart has been a subsidiary of Transform SR Brands LLC, a privately held company that was formed in 2019 to acquire assets from Sears Holdings.
Sears, Roebuck and Co., commonly known as Sears, is an American chain of department stores founded in 1892 by Richard Warren Sears and Alvah Curtis Roebuck and reincorporated in 1906 by Richard Sears and Julius Rosenwald. What began as a mail ordering catalog company migrated to opening retail locations in 1925, the first in Chicago, Illinois. In 2005, the company was bought by the management of the American big box discount chain Kmart, which upon completion of the merger, formed Sears Holdings. Through the 1980s, Sears was the largest retailer in the United States. In 2018, it was the 31st-largest. After several years of declining sales, Sears's parent company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on October 15, 2018. It announced on January 16, 2019, that it had won its bankruptcy auction, and that a reduced number of 425 stores would remain open, including 223 Sears stores.
Sears Canada Inc. was a publicly-traded Canadian company affiliated with the American-based Sears department store chain. In operation from 1952 until January 14, 2018, and headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, the company began as Simpsons-Sears—a joint venture between the Canadian Simpsons department store chain and the American Sears chain—which operated a national mail order business and co-branded Simpsons-Sears stores modelled after those of Sears in the U.S. After the Hudson's Bay Company purchased Simpsons in 1978, the joint venture was dismantled and Hudson's Bay sold its shares in the joint venture to Sears; with Sears now fully owning the company, it was renamed Sears Canada Inc. in 1984. In 1999, Sears Canada acquired the remaining assets and locations of the historic Canadian chain Eaton's. From 2014, Sears Holdings owned a 10% share in the company. ESL Investments was the largest shareholder of Sears Canada.
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Footstar, Inc., was a shoe retailer that was headquartered in Mahwah, New Jersey. The company was traded under the symbol “FTAR” on the Pink Sheets. In April 2012, Footstar was merged into Xstelos Holdings, Inc.
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John Vincent "Vince" Camuto was an American women's footwear designer and shoe industry executive, best known for co-founding the women's fashion brand Nine West. Following the 1999 sale of Nine West to Jones Apparel Group for $900 million, Camuto became CEO and Chief Creative Officer of a new fashion company, Camuto Group, maker of the Jessica Simpson brand. On October 10, 2018, Vince Camuto was acquired by Authentic Brands Group, as part of the company's definitive agreement to purchase a majority stake in the intellectual property of the Camuto Group's proprietary brands in partnership with DSW Inc.
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