THERE IS NO mistaking a Hugo Boss suit. It strides into a room wearing its owner, buttoned up and businesslike.
Three such examples of precision Teutonic tailoring marched across the polished wood floor of the barn-like Hugo Boss showrooms in Harbour City. Uniformly tall, trim and groomed, any one of them could have been 46-year-old chief executive Bruno Salzer. Two steps behind them came the public relations team.
Boss is the luxury brand which co-ordinates seven PR agencies and 13 PR units globally from its headquarters in Metzingen, Germany and is famed for its firm grip on message management.
Mr Salzer is a marketing maestro and needs no message minders. He has the understated natural authority of a man who rarely needs to raise his voice. He readily admits his route to the rag trade via hairspray and face cream has been an unusual one.
After nine years as an academic at the University of Mannheim in Germany 'happily working theoretically with marketing, logistics and statistics', his move to the commercial world 'just happened'. He joined cosmetics giant Beiersdorf, maker of brands from the exclusive La Prairie to the utilitarian Nivea. He travelled the world teaching brand management and positioning.
When Nivea was launching into the Middle East, Mr Salzer, then 28, found himself telling the Nivea story in 15 countries. Five years later he was staging international hair shows for haircare company Hans Schwarzkopf. This posed a fresh challenge and forced him to think fashion.