Warren Donner, president and cofounder of WD.NY, a profitable girls’s and males’s attire firm, died Monday of most cancers. He was 75.
A graveside service shall be held Thursday at 12:30 p.m. at New Montefiore at 1180 Wellwood Avenue, in West Babylon, N.Y.
Born in East Meadow, N.Y., Donner graduated from Florida Worldwide College in Miami and instantly entered the garment business, the place he developed a repute as a shrewd marketer and established key relationships with retailers.
After working at quite a few corporations, corresponding to Oleg Cassini and HMS Productions (Spenser Jeremy was one of many divisions), Donner went into enterprise together with his associate Edward Zhu and began WD.NY. The model manufactures abroad, produces misses’, petites and plus-size girls’s sportswear and attire, social put on, outerwear and menswear. Donner was energetic within the enterprise till final week. The corporate is situated at 209 West thirty eighth Road in New York.
With an extravagant private fashion, Donner was something however delicate.
“His firm and being within the garment middle was the whole lot to him. He was very over-the-top in his fashion. He wore a ton of bijou, and he was very into vogue. He had scarves and furs and had an extreme character,” mentioned his son, Jordan.
Donner dealt with gross sales and advertising and marketing, whereas Zhu handles the manufacturing. “He was the salesperson. He had lots of connections with patrons,” mentioned Jordan Donner.
Zhu informed WWD that in 2003, he and Donner started at HMS Productions the identical week in January 1990 and left collectively to launch their very own enterprise in 2003.
“All of [the] folks assume he’s a tricky man and character, however to me, as a result of I knew him so lengthy, he was kind-hearted,” mentioned Zhu. He mentioned the enterprise grew quickly and within the first few years was doubling in quantity yearly. In 2006 and 2007, they began an promoting marketing campaign and had big billboards in Instances Sq. and on phone cubicles and bus shelters. Zhu mentioned they had been sued by the Donna Karan Co. as a result of the corporate’s preliminary punctuation was W.D.N.Y., and had been related on the time to D.Okay.N.Y. Zhou mentioned each side compromised, and he and Donner modified the punctuation to WD.NY, and DKNY eliminated the intervals.
In July 2008, the guardian firm of WD.NY, which was situated in Switzerland, started buying and selling on the Frankfurt Inventory Alternate. They’d a second IPO in London the subsequent 12 months, and the third 12 months went public on Nasdaq, mentioned Zhu. In 2010, they purchased again the corporate and took it non-public, mentioned Zhu.
In an interview in 2005, WWD reported that WD.NY’s showroom, which on the time was at 1412 Broadway in New York, had an enormous fish tank of unique sea creatures that simply arrived from Hawaii, a feng shui-arranged ready room and a huge advert from WD.NY’s vacation assortment on the wall with a framed lace-trimmed camisole beside it — the corporate’s first bestseller.
Throughout that interview, Donner arrived with darkish, slicked-back hair, denims (“I by no means put on the rest,” he mentioned), an untucked (and midway unbuttoned) shirt and velvet blazer, all topped off with sufficient jewellery to maintain the lads’s equipment business in enterprise for years. And the way did he get to work? In his vibrant, yellow Corvette. On the time, it was reported that the enterprise was producing greater than $60 million in its first two years of enterprise, and was promoting to greater than 2,000 division retailer and higher specialty doorways nationwide.
“We began this line on the good time,” Donner informed WWD in 2005. “It’s vogue for the misses’ buyer. It seems to be up to date, however hangs within the higher space of shops and suits the true girl. That is product that this buyer has by no means seen in higher.”
Nowadays the model sells shops in addition to Marshall’s, T.J. Maxx and Ross Shops.
Later in life, Donner grew to become very concerned in his synagogue, Central Synagogue in Manhattan, and was very energetic in a charity, The Sarcoma Basis. He was additionally a health buff and labored out commonly.
Along with his son Jordan, Donner is survived by a grandson, Lucas.
