{"id":17876,"date":"2016-03-25T00:33:37","date_gmt":"2016-03-25T07:33:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=17876"},"modified":"2016-03-24T18:01:29","modified_gmt":"2016-03-25T01:01:29","slug":"one-of-the-new-dragons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2016\/03\/25\/one-of-the-new-dragons\/","title":{"rendered":"One of the new \u201cdragons\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

Soft-spoken, reserved, thoughtful. Hardly the epitome of a dragon. Yet, Joe Mimran\u2019s definitely a dragon \u2013 one of the newest on the panel of investors on Dragons\u2019 Den<\/em>, CBC\u2019s hit entrepreneur reality show.<\/p>\n

The Canadian fashion designer, clothier and entrepreneur is best known for launching the Club Monaco and Joe Fresh brands. He is also a partner in Gibraltar Ventures, investing in early-stage digital businesses.<\/p>\n

\"photo
Joe Mimran (photo from Joe Mimran)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The 63-year-old, Moroccan-born immigrant has spent nearly his entire life immersed in business, in ventures on his own or with family members, particularly in the clothing industry.<\/p>\n

At an early age, he assisted his mother, Esther \u2013 who was a couturier in Morocco \u2013 in her Toronto-based boutique garment outlet. That business grew, necessitating the purchase of a small factory in Toronto\u2019s garment district in the mid-1970s. Mimran joined to lead operations, manufacturing and finance.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was inspired by the design and esthetic world,\u201d he said. \u201cI like designing products, building stores.\u201d He was \u201cinspired by great prints, inspired to want to be entrepreneur.\u201d<\/p>\n

That inspiration evolved into Ms. Originals, tailoring suits and pants for women and, soon thereafter, Mimran and brother Saul hired designer Alfred Sung, with a goal to create their own clothing line. The Alfred Sung collection swiftly soared in popularity across the continent.<\/p>\n

By the mid-1980s, he launched yet another line, based on the idea that a plain, white, quality cotton shirt was unavailable in the market \u2013 and Club Monaco brand was born.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you\u2019re not a risk taker and abhor taking risks, entrepreneurship is not for you,\u201d said Mimran.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere were many people along the way of my career who said, \u2018You\u2019re crazy, don\u2019t do this or don\u2019t do that. What do you waste your time for doing that?\u2019 I have stuck to my guns. Sometimes you need to say to naysayers that you have to pursue your dream.\u201d<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, the plan didn\u2019t go smoothly at first. The Bay and Eaton\u2019s didn\u2019t want to carry the product.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe realized that we had all these goods coming in and the only way we could move forward was to open our own stores,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

They rolled the dice on a 5,000-square-foot store in trendy Queen Street West in Toronto, showcasing an array of attire. The day it opened in September 1985 saw their marketing campaign pay off in a major way, with line-ups to get into the store.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom adversity comes something terrific,\u201d said Mimran. \u201cWe realized, as we opened our own stores, we\u2019ll cut out the wholesale margin.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the time, such a move was rare. Typically, retail stores bought through a wholesaler, he explained. \u201cBut, sometimes, you just have to dive in, make the mistakes, fix it, move forward, make more mistakes, and try different things.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mimran dived in, not only opening a flagship Club Monaco store in New York City on Fifth Avenue in 1995, but opening another 120 stores in the next four years. That success caught the eye of Polo Ralph Lauren Corp., who purchased both Club Monaco and Caban (another Mimran line) in 1999.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of businesspeople, having had lots of problems in the past, will try to dissuade somebody else,\u201d said Mimran. \u201cBut your idea might be done in a new way, might resonate in a way that this very experienced person didn\u2019t, couldn\u2019t, anticipate. There\u2019s always an idea that surprises people, and that leads to success.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mimran has continued that success, time and again.<\/p>\n

Pink Tartan \u2013 a women\u2019s line \u2013 was yet another Mimran venture, appearing in high-end retail outlets such as Holt Renfrew and Saks Fifth Avenue, as well as in its flagship store in Toronto\u2019s Yorkville.<\/p>\n

Mimran\u2019s Joe Fresh Style, a private-label apparel line for Loblaw Companies Ltd., was launched in 2006. The label has since opened free-standing stores \u2013 the first Joe Fresh opened on Granville Street in Vancouver in 2010 and, soon thereafter, in New York City. Many others followed.<\/p>\n

Mimran said the apparel industry is among the most competitive industries in the world. Because of this fact and his own experiences, he empathizes with the entrepreneurs who come to the Den<\/em> having had tough breaks.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo matter how good you are, or what you know, you can still fail in our business,\u201d he said. \u201cIt keeps you pretty grounded.\u201d<\/p>\n

Today, Mimran sees a future of entrepreneurs that have opportunities that were nonexistent a generation ago.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s more willingness to try by the new generation \u2013 millennials \u2013 who are asset light, where boundaries and borders are not an issue. They live in a virtual world and have the ability to take on more risk. They look at the world in a dynamic way that leads to entrepreneurship,\u201d he explained. \u201cParticularly in today\u2019s world, where things are so different in terms of how one communicates with the consumer, all the new online fundraising channels that are available, what\u2019s old is new, what\u2019s new is old. It\u2019s the Wild West out there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dave Gordon<\/strong> is a Toronto-based freelance writer whose work can be found in more than 100 publications globally. His is managing editor of landmarkreport.com<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Soft-spoken, reserved, thoughtful. Hardly the epitome of a dragon. Yet, Joe Mimran\u2019s definitely a dragon \u2013 one of the newest on the panel of investors on Dragons\u2019 Den, CBC\u2019s hit entrepreneur reality show. The Canadian fashion designer, clothier and entrepreneur is best known for launching the Club Monaco and Joe Fresh brands. He is also […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[787],"tags":[985,5547,1030,5546,5545],"class_list":["post-17876","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tv-film","tag-cbc","tag-club-monaco","tag-dragons-den","tag-joe-fresh","tag-mimran"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17876","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17876"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17876\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17876"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17876"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17876"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}