Name: Paul Higgins (Vice President: Oakley Asia Pacific)
My Brand (Business):
Oakley, Arnette, Revo, Fox (sunglass), Oliver Peoples, Paul Smith (sunglass), and Mosley Tribes.
My Generation:
Definitely X, but dabble in Y from time to time. Hey, it’s part of my job!
Profile:
As Vice President of Oakley Asia Pacific, Paul Higgins manages the Oakley brands across Japan, China, India, Asia, Australia, New Zealand and the South Pacific. Oakley now forms part of Luxottica an US8 Billion wholesale and retail business (NYSE/MAT: LUX). Paul joined Oakley in 2005 as the Managing Director of Oakley South Pacific and during this tenure has taken on the 
management of six additional brands, has served as Chairman of Bright Eyes a 140 store retail chain, and more recently has taken on a significant geographical expansion.
His previous experience has been in marketing services, retail marketing, and media across Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom.
In addition Paul also has experience in management consulting (with Bain & Company) and investment banking. He holds an MBA attained at Melbourne Business School and Columbia Business School (NYC) where he was appointed to the Deans List and awarded with Chazen Fellowship.
Share a 3-minute inspiring story?:
Excellent brands have great stories. Here’s one of the many from Oakley that I love:
Oakley loves to spring board new Eyewear products by leaking them out to the world during big sporting events such as the Tour De France, Iron man competitions or Olympics. At the start of the 2008 TDF the head of Oakley’s design team, now Oakley CEO Colin Baden challenged his team to hand make a style called “JAWBONE” that was slated for release in mid 2009 and get it onto a couple riders that year.
Thor Husovd, winning stage 2 of the 2008 TDF
Even though the new Jawbone was still almost a year away from store shelves, the Oakley team raced ahead and had 2 frames hand cut from a block of O-Matter (indestructible plastic). The cost of each frame when they were completed was almost $8000 a piece, the lens engineers traced the frame and cut lenses for the frames, and the unobtanium was also painstakingly created in the design team’s Californian headquarters.
The 2 frames and multiple lens tints were sent to Paris by Fed-Ex that night, and were driven to the start of the Tour in the town of Breast, Brittany the next day. (This drive took our 10 hours due to French holiday traffic and the Tour De France road blocks!)
They arrived a couple hours before the start of the Tour Saturday morning, just in time to be fitted and approved by the riders Thor Hushovd and George Hincapie. It was so great to see how’s Sports Marketing and Design teams reacted and accomplished this feat of engineering and product placement success. Oh any BTW…. Thor won the stage that day! Leaving the world asking what the heck are those Oakleys he’s wearing!
A quote to live by:
We will find a way, and if we don’t find one we’ll create one.
My Mission: ”To build a skate ramp in the garden”
My Social Media: Bars all around the world.
Favorite Web Site: wikipedia or bom.gov.au (don’t ask!)
My Charity: World Vision, and Sacred Heart Mission.
Answer this question in your view:
“What the world needs now is… another 12 to 18 months of recession. (A short recession does not allow for sufficient change. Corrupt or incompetent administrations retain power, and the Gen Y in developed nations still kick around thinking they are bullet proof and adversity is not part of life)
Oakley HQ USA:
3 minutes a day on business | marketing | strategy | design | people
Design by [6.2] an innovation lab
Subscribe to entries
Subscribe to comments
All content © 2010 by uncluttered white spaces
