Pakistan Information & News

THE frills and flounces of couture are to embrace the button-down world of Silicon Valley with the sale of Emanuel Ungaro, the Paris fashion house, to the internet tycoon, Asim Abdullah. The luxury label, best known for its brightly hued floral designs, is being sold by Salvatore Ferragamo, the Italian footwear firm, for an undisclosed price. Ungaro’s resident designer, Vincent Darre, will be dumped in favour of a designer with fresh vision, whose identity has not yet been decided on.
Ungaro has fallen on hard times, running up €21 million (£14 million) in losses last year on revenues of €30 million, according to reports in the textile trade. It is the second loss-making French couture brand to surrender to America this year, following the disposal in January of Christian Lacroix to Falic, a Miami-based duty-free retailer. Ferragamo, which acquired Ungaro in 1996, has been looking for a way out of the high-cost and low-profit world of haute couture and Ungaro has found an unexpected benefactor in the form of a California-based venture captialist.
Born in Karachi, 42-year old Asim Abdullah made his fortune from hi-tech investments, notably the sale of his company Veo Systems, to Commerce One, the business-to-business internet marketplace. He made $300 million (£171 million) from the flotation of Commerce One in 2001 and bought himself a $15 million mansion on Pebble Beach, a highly sought-after piece of California real estate, only to see it burned down by arsonists two years later. Last summer, the entrepreneur was spotted in Paris at Ungaro’s fashion show, the first clue that the Silicon valley millionaire was to become a fashion sugar daddy.
Asim Abdullah is an active member of the Pakistani entrepreneurial community in the Silicon Valley. He is a charter member of OPEN’s Silicon Valley chapter. I found the following [...]

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