Former Inditex-employees take over Esprit

Loss of 46 million euro

Juan Chaparro, Elena Lazcanotegui and Jose
Antonio Ramos have to help with the strategic repositioning of the company,
which is needed to pull the company out of a slump. In the first half of the
financial year 2012/2013 Esprit had a loss of 46 million euro due to the
economic crisis.

New CEO José Manuel Martínez Gutiérrez wants Esprit to give better
value for money and he wants to improve the shopping experience at Esprit. To
achieve this turnaround he brought in three ex-Inditex managers.

Experience in the fashion sector

Chapparo was vice-president in the strategic
department of the Spanish group, Lazcanotegui worked at purchasing for Zara and
Ramos has made a little detour (after nine years of Inditex) to end up at
Esprit:  he briefly was commercial
director of food and textile at Carrefour.

Over the past two years Esprit finished a
considerable reorganisation: the company halted its activities in the United
States, Canada, India, Denmark and Sweden and it closed locations in Spain. The
company also decided to focus more on Asian markets. Esprit currently has 1069
locations worldwide.