Patti Cazzato has come a good distance from being worker No. 8 at Sam & Libby when the shoe company was in its early stages some 30 years ago.

But she is tapping into that have and more as the brand new chief executive of NakedCashmere, a Southern California direct-to-consumer women’s and men’s cashmere line launched seven years ago by husband-and-wife team Bruce and Leslie Gifford.

Last 12 months, Luxembourg-based buyout fund Legatus I acquired the cashmere brand’s parent company and began scouting for a CEO.

Soon, they heard about Cazzato, who most recently was the top of emerging businesses at Victoria’s Secret. In that job, she negotiated the lingerie company’s $18 million strategic investment last 12 months in Frankies Bikinis, a swimwear and lifestyle brand began in Malibu, California, by Francesca Aiello and her mother, Mimi.

That deal got her noticed. It was done with The Sage Group, a Los Angeles investment bank that spent considerable time figuring out the finer details of the investment with Cazzato. When the brand new NakedCashmere owners reached out to The Sage Group about potential CEO candidates, managing director and partner Paul Altman quickly considered Cazzato.

The brand new CEO said the job heading up parent company 360sweater and its subsidiary, NakedCashmere, intrigued her since it met her requirements for a satisfying work experience. “I dug deep and asked what have been the one or two experiences which have made me the happiest?” she said. “Those two things were being the founding father of my very own company and later working because the CEO of Timbuk2.”

Cazzato was remembering her time in 2007 when she founded Clary Sage Organics, an eco-friendly hand-sewn yoga apparel company and holistic wellness center in San Francisco. She began the corporate a 12 months before the Great Recession and ended up having to self-finance her enterprise for seven years. It made her learn a thing or two about running an organization during tough times.

That led to her next job in 2014 as chief executive of Timbuk2, a San Francisco company that locally manufactured various kinds of baggage and backpacks with sustainability in mind. Then she transitioned to Victoria’s Secret nearly three years ago.

“My profession has at all times been a mix of entrepreneurial adventures and a few multibillion-dollar big businesses,” she shared.

In her latest job at NakedCashmere, she will likely be taking the brand to the following level with global outreach, introducing latest products, improving sustainability and exploring retail opportunities beyond the one store the Santa Monica-based NakedCashmere has in Aspen, Colorado. Until now, NakedCashmere has been primarily d-to-c with just about all its sales in america. “We’re pondering of recent ways of doing business,” Cazzato said.

First on the list is developing a latest cashmere line to be knitted in Italy, as a substitute of Mongolia, that may have modern heirloom qualities and sell for $500 to $2,000. “We love a few of the beautiful craftsmanship we are able to get out of Italy,” the brand new CEO said. “We’re going to be making sweaters which are one-of-a-kind and collectible.”

The Italian-made luxury-leaning collection will complement NakedCashmere’s essentials pieces of sweaters, skirts, dresses, ponchos, wraps, jogger pants, robes and pajamas which are made for ladies together with a men’s line of knits that sell for $200 to $650. “The Italian line will likely be launched under one other label [for spring 2024] as a subbrand,” Cazzato said, noting she and her colleagues are working on a latest label name. “This can be a pivotal move for us at once creating heirlooms.”

Next will likely be making the brand more dimensional by adding items that could be worn with NakedCashmere products, similar to jewelry or silk pieces. “I’m not going to do a full collection [of jewelry or silk] but introduce beautiful concepts that go well together with your cashmere,” she explained, adding that too will launch for spring 2024.

The corporate’s website is being redone to make it easier for international customers to purchase online and have their purchases shipped overseas. Without delay, most of NakedCashmere’s d-to-c sales are done in america, but there may be an enormous market to be explored for the brand’s merchandise.

Beyond online sales, Cazzato desires to develop relationships with luxury retailers, including boutiques and spas, where the client can touch and feel the product. She can be exploring pop-up store opportunities to see through which direction company-owned retail could go. “There’s rather a lot to return,” Cazzato said. “It will be very exciting.”