Many are familiar with The Iconic as a dominant online fashion retailer in Australia, but fewer know it has the backing of Global Fashion Group, a $70 million company listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange and headquartered in Luxembourg. In a similar vein, The Iconic’s relatively new chief executive Jere (pronounced ‘Jerry’) Calmes has a colourful CV. The American from Lewiston, Maine, has an international career that has spanned London, Cairo, Rome and Moscow, where he most recently helmed a Russian online fashion retailer formerly part of GFG.
But the globetrotting Calmes says he brings a hyper-local focus to The Iconic. “Australia is a very developed market and offers a lot of opportunity. Business is very local here,” Calmes told this masthead in his first media interview.
Online fashion retailer The Iconic chief executive Jere Calmes. Credit: Pat Stevenson He points to Australians’ preference for neighbourhood cafes over international coffee chains as an example of the importance of small business to the economy. “It actually plays really well into The Iconic’s strategy because of our position to partner.
At the same time because [Australia is] so far away, in some ways it’s advanced, in some ways it’s a bit sleepy. We could do a lot more.” Loading Calmes, who took the helm of The Iconic after Erica Berchtold resigned April last year , hopes to remind shoppers of its 2011 origins as a disruptor of the fashion retail industry and to position itself .
