Mondottica appoints James Gotch Global Marketing and EMEA Wholesale Director and boosts international management team

By

Gianluca Bolelli

Erin Floyd

Translated by
Nicola Mira

Published
Mar 2, 2017

Mondottica has further strengthened its management team by appointing James Gotch, formerly with Luxottica and Burberry, as Global Marketing and EMEA Wholesale Director.

Gotch joined the company at the end of last year, having served previously for just over two years at Burberry as Global Eyewear Director, beginning in 2015. At Luxottica, where Gotch was employed from 2008 to 2013, he led sales and marketing as VP for Canada.

He joins Mondottica with 20 years' experience in previous sales, marketing and strategic leadership roles at brands also including Coca-Cola, Colgate Palmolive, Bacardi and Heineken.

It is a time of intense activity in several areas for British eyewear group Mondottica. On the licences front, the group has renewed a string of key agreements (Pepe Jeans, Ted Baker, Christian Lacroix) and added other major brands to its portfolio (Ducati, Karen Millen, Cath Kidston, Sandro and Maje). It has also recently bought niche, hyper-luxury French eyewear producer Yves Cogan, an acquisition which will allow Mondottica to manufacture its collections internally for the first time. The group has also extended its direct commercial presence in a number of key markets, and further strengthened the North American business, led by Group Commercial Director Steve Tulba, who is also the CEO of Mondottica USA, working alongside the latter’s President Phil Turnage.

Strategically, Mondottica is focusing on two business areas to drive growth. Last year, the group in fact launched the Brando Eyewear division, to break into the hyper-luxury eyeglasses segment. It is managed by Julian Clarke, formerly with Cutler and Gross, supported by a team including Arnaud Dubord, who has worked with Dita Eyewear in Asia, and Christophe Muszynski, the new Vice-President Sales for the USA.

The other new division, Spine Optics, has more of a high-tech focus. It is led by Dominique Bazin and Sébastien Brusset, both coming from the Logo group, and will market and manage Mondottica's portfolio of own labels, featuring the Spine, MEME e Pure brands. It will also take care of more technical labels such as Zoobug and Ducati.