Fred Segal is a retailing pop culture icon, rooted in Hollywood culture. Since 1961, when it opened its doors as a jeans-only boutique in West Hollywood, California, the store quickly became an LA destination.

Having just opened its brand-new West Hollywood flagship location on Sunset, the retailer also boasts three other locations worldwide–one at LAX’s Thomas Bradley International Terminal and two others in Japan. The new flagship location, which features 13,000-square-feet of retail space, was designed with the CAA-GBG Brand Studio team in Los Angeles much to the applaud of the local community.

In this exclusive interview, brought to you by CAA-GBG, John Frierson, President of Fred Segal, tells us about his growth plans for the brand, which go well beyond West Hollywood.

How will you be approaching 2018?

With a great deal of optimism. Happily, we opened Fred Segal Sunset, which is our new LA flagship store a couple of weeks ago. There’s been so much anticipation and excitement in the local LA community for this project. Building a new flagship for our iconic, much-loved retail brand has been a huge project for all of our team, as well as all of our brand partners. With this new Fred Segal, there is a world of possibilities open to us because our sense of fun and engagement travels well internationally, and across a broad range of business categories.

Earlier in the year we announced a collaboration with CB2 (Crate and Barrels’ high-end retail destination in the U.S.). Fred Segal x CB2 enjoyed over 80 million media impressions in the first week, and the collection is a best-seller out of the box. It’s an example of how our brand collaborates so easily with others and migrates into new territories.

What is the key focus for your brand?

For over five decades Fred Segal has been the go-to place for laid back, LA luxe style. More than a retailer, Fred Segal is a pop culture phenomenon. Our focus for the next five decades is to grow this extraordinarily rich experience into sustainable business partnerships with like-minded collaborators, always maintaining that eclectic, iconic, luxe lifestyle.

What are three insights that you think will make the world of business a better place?

We like to keep our Fred Segal world freshly optimistic. We’re a happy place to live, work and love.  And we’ve built our business by shining a light on other creative people and their products, rather than on ourselves. It’s not a new idea, but we only succeed when our partners succeed, and we work aggressively to make that happen.

Did you miss one of the profiles in this exclusive series from CAA-GBG?

Download the full report featuring Coca-Cola, Fred Segal, Kodak and Nicole Scherzinger here.

CAA-GBG is the largest licensing and brand management agency in the world. Created as a joint venture between Global Brands Group and Creative Artists Agency, CAA-GBG works with some of the biggest brands in the world, using its years of experience to deliver award-winning strategic brand solutions