Bill Hackett, Managing Partner – Sports and Outdoors at Arize, has over 30 years of experience in retail, wholesale, licensing, and brand building. Bill’s range of product width directly encompasses sporting goods, sports licensed products, athletic sportswear, traditional sportswear, urban sportswear, outdoor apparel, workwear, and dozens of categories in licensing indirectly across a wide range of brands. As a retailer, Bill rose up through the ranks of the May Company at Lord and Taylor in the men’s tailored clothing business. Bill was a buyer on the men’s collections team leading buying efforts for the premier retailer within the May Company. Over a decade later Bill led efforts at Modell’s Sporting Goods managing the sports licensing and the sporting goods team. Bill was at Modell’s at a very inspiring time where there was a ‘Rebirth’, a complete refacing of the retailer’s image. The ‘Hot Markets’ that Bill directly managed were incredibly profitable and sales driving around cornerstone wins for the NY Yankees in 2009, the Boston Bruins in 2011, and NY Giants in 2012 working in partnership with all of the professional sports leagues.Bill led US sales teams for prolific and powerful brands like Nautica, Sean John, and Everlast. He was directly involved in strategizing product assortments, pricing, strategic planning, and in-store presentations in varying capacities all while managing the retail relationships, sales performance, and profitability. Bill also led licensing efforts at Iconix for the men’s brands inclusive of Umbro, Starter, Pony, Roc Nation, Ecko, Zoo York, and Ed Hardy. Later he took on the role of leading the sports brands within the Iconix portfolio, tacking on some of Iconix’s most notable nameplate brands - Danskin and OP. The range of the categories Bill managed within his product segments covered multi-faceted categories, inclusive of apparel, headwear, accessories, hosiery, footwear, fragrance, etc.Before joining Arize, Bill presented a vision to the Tharanco Group to build and outdoor crossover apparel brand pre-Covid, long before this concept fully matured into a massive trend. With the strength of Tharanco’s back end, Bill built a men’s and women’s apparel brand under the name HI-TEC into full outdoor sportswear collections and sold the brand to a wide range of retailers inclusive of Macy’s, Kohl’s, JCPenney’s, Tractor Supply, Costco, and Amazon. Bill’s vision of the 100% technical and performance crossover concept was built from the bottom up leaning on the brand’s rich history in footwear.