Specialty apparel chain, Cache, names chief merchant

Cache Inc., a specialty chain of women’s apparel stores, has announced that Daphne Pappas has joined the company as EVP, chief merchandise officer.

Pappas brings more than 30 years of retail industry experience to Cache. For the past ten years, she served as VP general merchandising manager for Burberry America’s where she led the company’s women’s business. Prior to this, Pappas was the divisional merchandise manager of Juniors Sportswear at Macy’s East, a $150 million business in 82 stores.

Before Macy’s East, Daphne spent 13 years at Saks Fifth Avenue in various roles with increasing responsibility. In her most senior role at Saks she held the title of VP/director, merchandise manager of Bridge sportswear, coats, suits, dresses, and evening, which generated $162 million in 62 stores. In this role, she redirected and refocused the contemporary business in order to establish Saks as a leading contemporary retailer that appealed to a new and younger customer with great success. She also developed trend shops to set seasonal direction, and created and grew a new line of business, which offered higher levels of fashion that would differentiate Saks from its peers. Daphne grew the Bridge business over 20% in four years and repositioned the “Real Clothes” brand to satisfy lifestyle needs while successfully increasing gross margin.

Jay Margolis, chairman and CEO, commented, “We are excited to attract Daphne to our leadership team as chief merchandising officer given her strong understanding of the Cache brand and business model, as well as her unique perspective to deliver a balanced mix of price points and promotions, and her history of creating a vision to substantially grow retail businesses.

Daphne’s proven ability to interpret a brand vision and work collaboratively across all aspects of the business to deliver consistently strong selling assortments will be highly valuable to us as we position Cache to become a top destination for all of our customers lifestyle needs and to expand our consumer reach.”