(Filed Under wholesale Lingerie News). Leg Avenue promoted Manuel Da Campo to vice president of sales in early September. Since last summer he has served in the post of director of international sales for the company. Prior to that he had been the commercial director at the high end French design house Marithé + François Girbaud (which sells apparel for both women and men).

According to Da Campo, he is “an expert in developing sales with key account clients as well as via distributors, agents, licensees, and private labels.” Da Campo earned his J.D. from the Universita di Bologna’ in Italy and speaks English, Italian, Spanish and French.

Interviewed during the International Lingerie Show in Las Vegas, he told BODY his mission is to continue to build and manage sales, both domestically and internationally. A significant part of his mission will be to continue to help develop a more upscale image and product for the company.

One “new strategy” that was well-received abroad, and which he intends to introduce in the U.S., utilizes elegant display racks to showcase Leg Avenue products. The racks, which the company has included in its exhibition booths in Paris, at this year’s Curve shows and at the ILS, look like giant picture frames. They are about 4 feet wide by almost 7 feet high, with a wide, shiny black frame and a light pink interior, and can be used to show a wide variety of Leg Avenue merchandise. Da Campo explained that he favors placing at least three of these racks in a retail store, creating a “corner” or “shop in a shop” exclusively devoted to Leg Avenue products. Also included are furniture items such as a table and storage units.

The displays “increase brand awareness” and help “build a stronger relationship with our customers,” he said. Yet another idea that has worked well in Europe: special gift box sets (a selected lingerie item, tissue paper and a classy box) for Valentines or the holiday season.

An important example of where Da Campo sees the company going is Leg Avenue’s Burlesque Collection. “We have been having incredible success with Burlesque,” he said of the luxurious line of highly detailed, boldly colored, Paris-inspired corsets, lingerie, petticoats, gloves, skirts, top hats and shoes the company recently launched. “Burlesque is classier, more luxurious, more boutique oriented,” he added, asking “Would you see this stuff in a sex shop? No.”

Initiatives such as the display racks, the Burlesque Collection and the addition of such trade shows as those in Paris and the Curve shows all are part of expanding Leg Avenue into more “mainstream” channels of distribution, said Da Campo. “We are definitely putting a strong emphasis on promoting classier lingerie” to a wider range of retailers including “some big key accounts.”

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Published 09-20-2012 by Nick Monjo