It’s been an up-and-down fash ion cycle for Dov Charney. Less than two weeks ago, the sex-obsessed CEO of American Apparel looked to have the upper hand in a legal tussle with a pair of former employees — one of whom accused him of keeping her as a sex slave.
Raunchy photos of the two women — first published in The Post — included images of each of them wearing little more than come-hither smiles that appeared to be directed at Charney, raising serious doubts about the charges.
But this week, investors were treated to a different kind of snapshot — American Apparel’s 2010 finances — on Thursday, and the picture was anything but titillating.
The struggling hipster clothier lost a whopping $86 million last year as sales tumbled, and revealed that two partners from key lender Lion Capital have left the board of directors.
While headlines blared American Apparel’s warning about a possible bankruptcy, Charney pooh-poohed the possibility. “This is going to be a year of renewal for American Apparel,” Charney told The Post. “I am feeling so inspired.”
James Covert
Exiting
What if you threw a lavish party and then decided to not show up, what would your guest think?
That’s what Microsoft found out this week when it convened the world’s top global marketing chiefs from companies like Unilever, Coca-Cola Co. and its agency leadership to thrill them with tech product innovations and how they can translate into big ad opportunities for these multinational corporations.
As these Fortune 50 execs and their ad and marketing posses arrived, they just missed waving goodbye to one of the hosts — 22-year veteran of marketing PR and product design — Mich Mathews.
Mathews, who was running Microsoft’s near-$1 billion ad account, said she was leaving last week.
If that weren’t bad enough for CEO Steve Ballmer, who tried to play host on short notice by bringing in some pocket-protector-wearing engineers to mix with Madison Avenue types, then came the crit- icism from Microsoft co- founder Paul Allen, whose autobiography suggests that Ballmer and fellow founder Bill Gates tried to dupe Allen out of a stake in the company by issuing more shares while the latter was on sick leave with cancer.
And lastly, you probably don’t want your guests flying all the way to Redmond, Wash., to gossip about the fact that your top sales person, Carolyn Everson, just started working as sales chief for Facebook after some messy legal wranglings over whether Facebook would refund Mi crosoft her signing-on bonus. Seems Ballmer just can’t catch a break.
One attendee, Michael Kassan of tech and media consultancy Me dialink LLC, which ad vises Microsoft, said the event was well-re ceived. “Kinect is the fastest-growing con sumer electronic device and Xbox has some 30 million subscribers. The challenge is to marry the art with the science and the Xbox is the platform where that can happen.”
Microsoft rolled out top product executives including Qi Lu, president for online services, but the biggest draw was a session helmed by top Hollywood executives Brian Grazer and Ron Howard, who spoke about the link between great content and marketing.
Claire Atkinson
Other tiger
It’s time for the cub to leave the den. On The Money hears that Amy Chua, Yale law professor and author of the parenting book “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother,” may be heeding that adage as her daughter learned this week that she was accepted to Harvard University starting in the fall.
The self-proclaimed Tiger Mom must be feeling a little self-satisfied and vindicated after facing the wrath of enraged parents who called her “abusive” while she promoted the book on a TV tour.
The daughter, Sophia Chua-Rubenfeld, who is a piano prodigy who made her Carnegie Hall debut at 14, spent her childhood without the necessities of video games, TV or playdates.
In the book, her mother preached the virtues of strict parenting, harkening back to her own Chinese upbringing, and chastised Western-style parenting of over-indulging children in a Wall Street Journal article, “Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior.”
Post staff