Josie Natori appoints Kenneth C. Natori as president

MANILA, Philippines - Josie Natori announced that her son Kenneth C. Natori has been promoted to president of The Natori Company. In this new position, Ken will immediately take control of all finance and operations while continuing to be responsible for the company’s e-commerce, licensing, and PR/marketing departments.

Natori’s line of clothes and accessories is available in the Philippines exclusively at Rustan’s.

Josie Natori, CEO and chief creative officer of Natori, will remain the active design visionary behind the brand and will run the design, sales and merchandising, product development and production, but she and Ken will begin to work more closely on all aspects of the business.

“I am thrilled to be promoting Kenneth to president,” says Josie Natori. “Since he left Wall Street to join the company in 2007, he has learned the business through his work in finance, single-handedly launched e-commerce, dramatically expanded our licensing business in size and breadth, and guided the expansion of our PR/marketing efforts.”

She adds: “As we develop our strategy for thriving in a constantly evolving retail and consumer landscape, it is imperative that we have a balanced executive team in place to guide us through the future.”

The new president Ken Natori says: “I am very excited about this new transition. As Josie’s son, I have navigated my role in our family business gently, and have mostly focused on running my direct departments. I have never been more excited about the future of the company, and look forward to working with Josie to provide strategy, structure, leadership, and support to the entire company.”

Ken Natori has been vice president of The Natori Company since 2007. Prior to Natori, he worked in international sales at Lehman Brothers and as a radio and TV reporter at Bloomberg, LP from 1998 to 2003. He continues to be involved in TV and radio both through media interviews, and occasionally co-hosting retail-related shows on Bloomberg Radio. He earned an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business in 2005, and a BA from Amherst College. His wife Anika blogs for Natori’s Modern Josie by Natori collection as The Josie Girl at www.josiegirlblog.com.

The Natori Company also announced the hire of Charles Soriano, vice president of design operations, product development and production. Most recently, Charles was a strategy and business development consultant serving retail and fashion clients, after having held multiple retail and merchandising roles at Ralph Lauren. He holds an MBA degree from the Harvard Business School and a BS in Economics from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

Charles joins an executive committee which includes: Elizabeth Chin Yee, VP of sales and merchandising, who worked as a merchandise planner at Ann Taylor and a buyer at Saks Fifth Avenue before joining Natori in 2004; Kathleen Olivieri, VP of finance and operations since 2013; and Geoff Bradley, SVP of manufacturing, who has run Natori’s company-owned factories in the Philippines since 1996.

Josie Natori says, “With Kenneth’s promotion and the strengthening of our executive committee, I am confident that we are on the right path to capitalizing on all of the great opportunities that lie ahead of us.”