Kathie De Chirico

 Kathie De Chirico is currently the Chief Strategist for Visionary Strategies, Inc., which is located in Princeton, NJ.  She founded this branding and licensing management company 5 years ago with a vision that branding would be the key ingredient to profitability and sustainability in the future fashion marketplace.

Tapping into over 25+ years of retail and wholesale positions in the fashion industry, her key role at Visionary Strategies is to provide strategic direction and assessments for brands utilizing marketing initiatives that communicate a consistent brand image.  Kathie leads a strong team environment internally, fostering cross pollination of concepts, ideas, and strategies for her clients.

Her specialty in branding focuses on defined brand strategies that provide competitive advantage for her clients, and their brands, as well as the strong relationship of licensing partners in the growth of brands through product extensions.

Kathie’s entrance into the marketplace began early in her career as one of Federated key buyer’s for Childrenswear. The scope of her travels included Japan, Thailand, Taiwan, Indonesia, as well as Hong Kong and Mainland China. This international relationship continued during her tenure with Basic Elements as both a Vice President of Men’s and Children’s, continuing in her role as President/COO with the overseeing of all of the supporting divisions of the  company- including domestic and overseas production , domestic and international finance, sales and marketing.

Today, she is part of a team that has begun inroads into international branding efforts, in which she participated in the recent teaching of the MBA Program at Instituto Superior de Empresa y Moda, in Madrid Spain on “Brand Equity- Assets in Branding”. In addition, Kathie participated in the 2005 CAFTA Summit in El Salvador, and spoke on, “Taking the Leap from Being a Producer to Developing a Brand.”  In January 2006 she has been selected to be a key speaker at a conference in New York to discuss the changes in consumer buying.

Kathie’s career started in the executive management program at Bamberger’s, where she quickly rose through the buying and store ranks to become a Buyer for the Childrenswear division. Her expertise then took her into the wholesale arena, where her keen insight into the retail world gave her the strong foundation from both market to domestic and international retailers, as well as to be able to work successfully inside companies to operationalize and motivate teams of merchandisers, logistical executives, marketing managers, and financial executives to drive business growth and profitability.

De Chirico received her BS degree in Consumer Economics from Douglass College, in addition to post-graduate studies in Consumer Law.