https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohan_Murjani
2026-02-25-wikipedia-org-mohan-murjani.pdf
Born
1946 (age 79–80)
Citizenship
Indian
Occupations
Businessman, fashion entrepreneur
Years active
1960s–present
Known for
Developing and launching international designer brands[1]
Notable work
Gloria Vanderbilt[2], Tommy Hilfiger[3], Coca-Cola Clothing
Title
Chairman of the Murjani Group
Children
1 (Malini Murjani)
Family
Murjani family (business)
Mohan "Mike" Murjani is an Indian-born fashion entrepreneur and the chairman of the Murjani Group, a global brand-development company best known for launching and building several designer lifestyle labels. Born in India and raised in Hong Kong, he joined his family business in 1966 and played a major role in transforming it into a designer-branding enterprise.[4]
Murjani is particularly known for creating the Gloria Vanderbilt designer jeans in the 1970s, the first major designer-label denim line for women, in partnership with American heiress Gloria Vanderbilt.[5] The debut “Gloria Vanderbilt by Murjani” jeans, featuring her signature and swan icon, became a commercial success.[6]
Under his leadership, the Murjani Group later launched and developed other major brands, including Tommy Hilfiger, which the group helped bring to market in 1985.[7] The group also expanded into luxury retail and real estate projects, including the Vanderbilt Estate.[8] As of 2008, Murjani continued to oversee brand-building efforts while residing in Phuket, remaining active in international fashion and luxury markets.[9][10]
Murjani was born in India, raised in Hong Kong and educated in the United Kingdom and the United States.
Murjani joined the family business in 1966, founded by his father, the late B.K. Murjani. In 1930, the Murjani Group moved from retailing in Shanghai, to being one of the largest apparel producer in the World. In 1966, the Group launched its first brand in the United States, "Marco Polo", culminating in 1975 with the launch of the First Designer Jeans in the World, Gloria Vanderbilt, followed by Tommy Hilfiger in 1985.
In 2004, the Murjani group launched the First International Designer Brand in India, Tommy Hilfiger. Murjani then continued launching further brands in India including Gucci, Jimmy Choo, Bottega Veneta, Calvin Klein and French Connection.[11]
In 2007, the Murjani group built India’s first luxury mall, The Galleria, in Mumbai.[citation needed] In 2015, Murjani commenced building The Vanderbilt Estate in Phuket. This was completed in 2022.[12][13]
By Pamela G. Hollie / June 21, 1983
1983-06-21-nytimes-murjani-seeking-a-stable-of-designers.pdf
1983-06-21-nytimes-murjani-seeking-a-stable-of-designers-img-timemachine.jpg
In 1975, when jeans were designed exclusively for men, Mohan B. Murjani turned work clothes into high fashion by cutting them to fit women and using Gloria Vanderbilt's name to sell them in television advertising. The success of the Murjani-Vanderbilt team established a sure-fire formula for the selling of ''designer'' jeans and set in motion a new trend in apparel marketing and advertising.
The next step in the building of Murjani International is the acquisition of other designers to work under the company's corporate umbrella. Mr. Murjani, the 37-year-old chairman of Murjani International Inc., plans to expand on his successful designer brand concept to create a diversified company with designers operating like subsidiaries. Each would design and sell under his or her name, but the backing, advertising and management would come from the professional managers at Murjani.
Mr. Murjani says he is expanding because the Gloria Vanderbilt line is not appropriate for all markets. Essentially, he says, he has borrowed the style of industrial corporations, adding that his approach is no different from that of General Motors with its Cadillac and Chevrolet divisions.
''By having a variety of brands, you can cover a wide variety of consumer segments,'' said Dudley McIlhenny, regional manager of Kurt Salmon Associates Inc., a consulting firm for the textile and apparel industries. Generally apparel companies use only one name. The danger of single-name identification, he said, is that if the name loses its value, the whole company could be jeopardized. Not All 'Superstars'
The new effort is scheduled to begin next month with a line of clothes by the French designer Elisabeth de Senneville, whose smart sportswear is aimed at young women. Mr. Murjani has not yet identified the other designers he has in mind, but he will probably announce the second in the fall. ''There may be 10 or 12'' of the designers, Mr. Murjani said. ''Not all at once, of course. Possibly two or three a year. We don't expect them all to be superstars. Maybe one or two.''
Mr. Murjani is the son of an Indian garment manufacturer in Hong Kong. Although he inherited wealth, he has built his own shipping, banking, real estate and manufacturing empire. Murjani International is his creation. After studying business in the United States, he returned to Hong Kong in 1968 to pull together the widely diversified family business that had become involved in everything from electronics to bicycle making.
After selling off most of the company, Mr. Murjani concentrated on the family's original business, the making of apparel. But in the 1974-75 recession, he found that the company's production of privatelabel clothing for department stores and other mass merchandisers had dropped off. As a subcontractor to clothing retailers, the company had no defense against economic swings. He decided to break out of his subcontractor status and make and market clothing on his own.
By late 1975 Mr. Murjani began turning a small American marketing arm of his family's company into a Seventh Avenue corporation with $300 million in annual sales. Mr. Murjani, a Hindu, says he depends on his faith for guidance, but the charts and computer printouts in the elegant gray and silver office of Murjani International indicate an almost scientific approach to the apparel market. 'Didn't Make Any Sense'
When he began planning the company's strategy in 1974, he decided to begin with a single product. Picking it was easy. At the time, there were no jeans designed specifically for women. ''The whole thing just didn't make any sense to me,'' he said. ''The single largest-selling clothing product in America was only designed for men?''
But since jeans were so common he had to make his different. He decided to make them of a higher quality than normal jeans, which are designed for durability rather than style. And he decided to identify his jeans by associating them with a known designer.
The Murjani name meant nothing to consumers, so he looked for a personality who would lift jeans above the level of work clothes - and justify the $32 price tag at a time when Levi jeans were selling for about $15. He tried to attract Yves St. Laurent, but finally chose Gloria Vanderbilt.
A decision on marketing was almost as crucial as selecting the designer. ''The obvious tool was television,'' he said. ''I went out and spent $1 million on a television ad.''
The commercial, starring Miss Vanderbilt, set in motion a new style of apparel ads. At that time, only Frank Perdue, founder of Perdue Chickens, and a few others whose names were on the products, made such personalized commercials. Now the approach has become common.
For Murjani International, the commercial was a huge success. Before it was shown, Mr. Murjani had ordered 150,000 pairs of the new jeans and could not sell them. But ''the day the ads were on television,'' he said, ''they sold out.''
Sixty-five percent of the company's sales come from Gloria Vanderbilt jeans, the rest from the growing line of Gloria Vanderbilt skirts, blouses, sweaters, jackets and shoes.
Mr. Murjani plans to expand the concept of designer clothing into specialty stores that either would be owned by Murjani International or function as part of a franchise.
''They would all look exactly alike,'' he said. ''One hundred percent of their business would be Gloria Vanderbilt.''
By Anne-Marie Schiro / April 9, 1986
1986-04-09-nytimes-india-is-revisited-at-bloomingdale-s.pdf
1986-04-09-nytimes-india-is-revisited-at-bloomingdale-s-img-timemachine.jpg
This is a digitized version of an article from The Times’s print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996. To preserve these articles as they originally appeared, The Times does not alter, edit or update them.
Occasionally the digitization process introduces transcription errors or other problems; we are continuing to work to improve these archived versions.
ANYTHING worth doing is worth doing again, they say.
So Bloomingdale's is having another Indian promotion. The first was back in 1978, but you couldn't expect such a trend-setting store to miss out on the Festival of India currently being celebrated in museums and concert halls. Ergo, this year's spring promotion is ''Return to India,'' which will run in all Bloomingdale's stores until May 31.
Since nothing in New York is official without a party to which people can wear their fancy clothes and jewels, the promotion opened last night with a dawat - an Indian feast - in the Lexington Avenue store.
Minutes before the first of the 800 guests arrived, sidewalk painters from Calcutta decorated the ground in front of the main doors with welcome signs traditional at Indian festivals. Inside, a receiving line was set up at the sunglass counter. There, Lee and Marvin Traub (he's chairman of Blomingdale's) and Robert Tammero, the store president, joined Indian dignitaries - women in saris, men in Nehru-styled suits - who lent an authentic air to the proceedings.
Mr. Traub explained that Pupul Jayakar, chairman of the Indian Advisory Committee for the Festival of India, had talked him into the promotion at a rainy-day luncheon in his Greenwich, Conn., home. ''That must have been 18 months ago,'' he said. ''Three years ago,'' she corrected. K. Natwar Singh, a Minister of State in New Delhi, greeted Indian guests with the hands joined ''namasta'' gesture of respect. ''It literally means 'I bow before you as a personification of God,' '' said T. H. Goklaney, an Indian merchant who returned the gesture.
Other guests included Rajeev Sethi, a designer who wore a traditional shawl of his native Kashmir; S. Dillon Ripley of the Smithsonian Institution, sporting a Padma Bushan decoration awarded him by the Indian Government; Lisa and Bertram Taylor; Guni and Mohan Murjani, and Ricky and Ralph Lauren. For the Indian promotion, Mr. Lauren had designed clothes and home funishings.
After welcoming speeches, guests rode escalators through the store to ogle the cultural exhibits, then continued through the fashion and home furnishing departments, admiring all manner of Mr. Lauren's designs along the way. They peeked at the model rooms, savored Indian food on the fifth floor and ended up in the rug bazaar on the eighth floor.
As usual, the highlights of the promotion - which opens to the public today - are the model rooms and accessories for the home. There are those Lauren and Mary McFadden clothes, some moderate-priced madras and chambray sportswear, an assortment of precious jewelry and many beautiful gold-shot silk scarves.
But it's the brasses, wood carvings, hand-blocked textiles and handmade rugs, not the clothes, that seem to offer rich mines of inspiration. Take the rugs, for example. There are not only the traditional soft-colored dhurries and chain-stitched reproductions of Aubussons and Savonneries but also dhurries in the colors and geometric designs of the 1950's and rag rugs in diagonal stripes.
''This is the summer rental season,'' said Julian Tomchin, vice president and fashion director of home furnishings, ''and we believe the customer at this time of year is looking to furnish a summer house. So we've concentrated on pastels and bright colors.''
Those colors show up not only in rugs but also in table and bed linens made of Indian block prints colored in soft pinks, lavenders, blues and greens and in solid cotton napkins in bright Indian tones of turquoise, pink, orange and yellow.
Because there is very little in the way of Indian furniture, designing the six model rooms was a creative challenge to Richard Knapple and Barbara Deichman of the store's design staff. They combined a few pieces of antique Indian furniture with Indian rugs, wall coverings, upholstery, throw pillows, lamps, paintings and sculptures in settings designed to suggest various Indian regions. The rooms range from an all-white living room in New Delhi to a mountain retreat in Kashmir blanketed with red and black paisley.
By Susan Heller Anderson and David W. Dunlap / July 15, 1986
1986-07-15-nytimes-new-york-day-by-day-statue-of-gandhi-nearing-reality-for-union-square.pdf
1986-07-15-nytimes-new-york-day-by-day-statue-of-gandhi-nearing-reality-for-union-square-img-1.jpg
On the second of October in 1869, Mohandas K. Gandhi was born. On the second of October in 1986, an eight-foot bronze likeness of the Mahatma is scheduled to be unveiled in Union Square.
The way seems to be clear now that the local community board has voted 23 to 9 in favor of the monument.
Yogesh K. Gandhi, director of the Gandhi Memorial International Foundation, said yesterday that the casting of the statue by the artist Kantilal Patel was almost completed.
The foundation, based on Staten Island, is sponsoring the monument with the help of $100,000 from Mohan B. Murjani, chairman of Murjani International, the apparel concern.
After other sites in lower Manhattan had been rejected, Mr. Gandhi, a great-grandnephew of the Indian leader, settled on Union Square.
''Union Square has a history of free speech,'' he said. ''For me, union is identified with unity. And also, thousands of people are passing by every day. By seeing the statue, people get the inspiration of the philosophy of nonviolence. And that is the idea.''
There was some resistance from the neighborhood. The Union Square Park Community Coalition objected that it had not been consulted, that other statues in the square portrayed American figures and that no care was being given to the existing statuary.
The city's Commissioner of Parks and Recreation, Henry J. Stern, supported the Gandhi project and answered opponents: ''What would have happened if the Statue of Liberty were submitted to a community board? They would have said it was too big, in too remote a place, and that it was foreign, to boot.''
At the community board meeting last Thursday, Mr. Gandhi said the foundation would not only maintain the Gandhi monument but also help care for the other statues in Union Square.
''I think that is what convinced as many people to be enthusiastic about it,'' said Joseph Rose, chairman of the local board, No. 5.
By Marvine Howe and David Bird / Oct. 3, 1986
1986-10-03-nytimes-new-york-day-by-day-mahatma-s-likeness-in-union-square.pdf
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1986/10/03/issue.html
1986-10-03-nytimes-new-york-day-by-day-mahatma-s-likeness-in-union-square-img-timemachine.jpog
This is a digitized version of an article from The Times’s print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996. To preserve these articles as they originally appeared, The Times does not alter, edit or update them.
Occasionally the digitization process introduces transcription errors or other problems; we are continuing to work to improve these archived versions.
With a garland of marigolds, warm applause, many eloquent words and chants of ''Gandhiji! Gandhiji!,'' the larger-than-life statue of Mohandas K. Gandhi was welcomed yesterday to New York City.
''It is so beautiful,'' ''It is so like him,'' ''It is our Gandhiji'' said members of the Indian community, who had come out for the unveiling ceremony, marking the 117th anniversary of the Indian leader's birth.
On the southwest corner of Union Square, the eight-foot bronze statue shows Gandhi as so many people remember him, with walking stick and wearing only a dhoti, symbolizing Hindu asceticism.
''I can think of no better place to honor Mahatma Gandhi than Union Square park, which has been a forum for public assembly and peaceful protest since the early part of the 20th century,'' said Parks Commissioner Henry J. Stern, host for the ceremony.
A leader of the Indian community, Dr. H.K. Chandra Sekhar, said the monument was a gift from India and the Indian community to New York, ''the greatest city in the world.'' He thanked all those who had made it possible, from the Parks Department and Community Board 5 to the artist, H.K. Patel of Ahmedabad, India, and the chief promoter of the project, Yogesh K. Gandhi, a great-grandnephew of the Indian leader.
Special mention was made of the main benefactor, Mohan B. Murjani, president of Murjani Fabrics, who underwrote most of the cost of the $60,000 statue and donated $100,000 to the Parks Department for the maintenance of all the statuary in Union Square.
By Lisa Belkin / Nov. 9, 1986
1986-11-09-nytimes-pushing-fashion-in-the-fast-lane.pdf
1986-11-09-nytimes-pushing-fashion-in-the-fast-lane-img-timemachine.jpg
FASHION just doesn't move fast enough for Mohan Murjani.
''Why should it take years for a designer to become a sensation?'' he asks. ''Why should a line grow slowly, when it can be big from the start?''
Mr. Murjani simply refuses to play that waiting game. It was Murjani International, his company, that made Gloria Vanderbilt jeans an overnight sensation that has become a $400 million-a-year retail business. It is Murjani that has catapulted Tommy Hilfiger, the young designer, from obscurity to virtual notoriety.
And now there is Coca-Cola clothing. ''Most of the people in the industry thought it was an absolutely lunatic idea, selling clothes with a soda logo,'' said George Lois, president of Lois Pitts Gershon Pons, Murjani's advertising firm. ''But Mohan understood the idea in a second. He knew it was just a matter of promoting it right.'' Already, Murjani says its expects sales of $250 million in Coca-Cola clothes by the end of this year.
Murjani, which is family-owned, declines to release its sales or earnings. But manufacturers' revenues are generally about half of retail sales, and for some products Murjani's figures are lower still, because it merely receives royalties from licensees for much of the Vanderbilt line.
But Mr. Murjani contends that the lines have fared well, primarily because he has not run the company like an apparel business. The company far outstrips the industry average in the emphasis and money it devotes to market research and advertising. ''Research is very important to us,'' he said last week, in his office in the garment center. (Most of his time is spent in the company's office in London, where he lives with his wife and three teen-age children.) ''In the packaged goods industry,'' he said, ''they have learned the value of market research but in apparel it is rarely done.''
Similarly, he notes that few manufacturers advertise, preferring to leave that to retailers. Mr. Murjani, in contrast, advertises with gusto, often using themes that unabashedly piggyback on competitors' fame and successes. ''We're kind of made for each other, Murjani and me,'' Mr. Lois said. ''He likes to go for the jugular and so do I.''
Not surprisingly, Murjani has its share of critics. Kurt Barnard, publisher of the Retail Marketing Report, an industry newsletter, calls its products ''fads'' and ''public relations phenomena,'' and warns that ''as with all fads, they are doomed the moment they succeed.'' Still, he conceded, ''until they do, there is a lot of money to be made.''
Rival manufacturers, meanwhile, claim that the originality of Murjani's advertising belies the copycat nature of his product line. ''We were very, very honored that Coca-Cola would take our rugby shirt, our best-selling item, and put Coca-Cola on the front where ours says Benetton,'' Sally Fischer, a Benetton spokesman, said with more than a trace of sarcasm. IF not for a last-minute change of mind, the world might never have been introduced to Coca-Cola shirts and Vanderbilt jeans. Born in 1946, in a part of India that is now Pakistan, Mr. Murjani was raised in Hong Kong, where his father ran a successful apparel factory. He was educated in England and said he was accepted by Stanford University where, he said, he planned a pre-med biology major.
''I had no intention of ever going into the business,'' he said. ''I was going to take the share of the business that I felt was my due and I was going to go off to Africa and help people.''
Days before school began, however, he decided ''out of nowhere'' to major in business and called the dean of Babson College, a business school near Boston. ''I don't know why I didn't just go to Stanford and study business,'' he said. ''But I got it in my head that I should go to Babson and, when I get something in my head, it sticks.''
One of his classmates at Babson was Roger Enrico, now president of Pepsi-Cola USA, which last month introduced a line of Pepsi clothes to compete with Murjani's Coca-Cola line. The two remain friends, and Mr. Murjani was Mr. Enrico's guest at the debut fashion show of Pepsi clothes at the Hayden Planetarium.
When Mr. Murjani graduated in 1967 his father held a party in Hong Kong and announced - to the younger Mr. Murjani's surprise - that he was, as of that moment, handing the reins of the company to his son.
The elder Mr. Murjani, now 72 years old, is still a close adviser to his oldest son. His second son, Ramesh, 36, runs the London office and his youngest son, Dalip, runs the factory in Hong Kong. His only daughter, Bina Dialdas, lives in Hong Kong with her husband and children.
Initially, Murjani produced only private label clothing for stores such as K Mart and lines like Levi and Wrangler. The company still produces private label clothes for Federated Department Stores and The Limited, but now ''it is a small part of the business,'' Mr. Murjani said.
As the new chairman and president, Mr. Murjani set out to upgrade the quality of the private label merchandise and to expand the types of products the company made. Soon Murjani was making everything from bicycles to spinning machines for textile mills - an overexpansion that took its toll in slashed profits.
In the mid-1970's, Mr. Murjani spent several months in the United States, seeking a garment that would turn Murjani's fortunes around. Jeans, he decided, were ''the single most important garment in the Western Hemisphere. But all the jeans makers had been producing jeans for women that were cut the same as jeans for men.'' Even before Calvin Klein and others introduced their now-famous jeans, he directed his designers to develop a denim jean cut for a woman's figure.
Gloria Vanderbilt did not design the resulting form-fitting jeans, but her name went on their pocket. When the line was offered in 1978, stores pre-ordered only 6,000 pairs. An optimistic Mr. Murjani nonetheless produced 100,000 pairs and introduced a $1 million advertising campaign on a Tuesday night. On Wednesday, Bloomingdale's New York store sold out.
The experience made Mr. Murjani a firm believer in the power of Madison Avenue. He returned to that shrine in 1984, with Tommy Hilfiger, a 35-year-old freelance designer with no track record but ''a certain something'' that Mr. Murjani liked. In the past 18 months, Murjani has spent $20 million to promote the designer, $3 million for advertising and the rest to establish Hilfiger stores.
Indeed, much of the money went into a provocative advertising campaign earlier this year. Throughout New York, billboards, buses and telephone booths blossomed with a fill-in-the-blanks puzzle: ''The 4 great American designers for men are: R---- L-----, P---- E----, C----- K---- and T---- H-------.'' Some members of the fashion world were infuriated by the presumption of an unknown identifying himself with Ralph Lauren, Perry Ellis and Calvin Klein. Even Mr. Hilfiger called himself ''a marketing vehicle.''
The first Hilfiger store opened in August 1985, on Columbus Avenue near 73d Street. Mr. Murjani says that in the first 12 months it did $1 million in sales, or more than $2,000 a square foot, a number Mr. Barnard calls ''extremely high.'' He and other analysts say the industry average for specialty stores is about $500 a square foot.
There are now 5 Hilfiger stores and 85 department stores that carry the label. Joel J. Horowitz, president of Murjani, said the company expects to have more than 1,000 Tommy Hilfiger stores worldwide within five years. ''Tommy was going to be successful,'' he said. ''It might have taken ten years. This way it took two.'' IT didn't even take two years to make a success of Coca-Cola clothes. When Coke representatives approached Murjani in October 1983, they were interested in only a modest line of apparel. But ''the idea grew as we talked about it,'' said Richard Hosp, vice president of marketing for Murjani. ''Mohan said to me, 'This is a very big idea. It is a very big good idea or a very big bad idea. Go find out which.' ''
To explore consumer interest, the company intercepted people in shopping malls and asked their opinion of mock-ups of possible Coca-Cola clothes. Reaction was positive and, with 280 million people around the world drinking Coca-Cola every day, name recognition was no problem.
The next task was to find the proper image for the stores. Someone suggested a nostalgic ice-cream parlor motif, ''you know, the formica counter, soda-jerks in white caps, the works,'' Mr. Hosp said. ''We were all excited about it.'' But when the idea was tested in consumer focus groups, it fell as flat as a warm glass of Coke. Consumers placed Coca-Cola in the context of the future, not the past. Murjani promptly shelved the ice-cream parlor idea (a facade remains in the Murjani offices, ''a reminder of a mistake we almost made,'' said Mr. Hosp) and opened 1,400 chrome and white-tile boutiques in department stores nationwide.
The first free-standing store was opened a year ago this weekend, next door to Tommy Hilfiger on Columbus Avenue. There are now five such stores nationwide - one opened in San Francisco yesterday, another is scheduled to open in Stamford, Conn., within weeks - and Mr. Murjani said he intends to open 650 such stores by 1992.
But the New York store is the flagship, where new ideas will be tested. It is a cross between a cafeteria and a video arcade. Passers-by can see the clothes through a wall of windows on a 25-foot video screen 24 hours a day, and at an electronic video machine outside (see box).
Inside, floor-to-ceiling bins fill three sides of the store, holding 125 styles of Coca-Cola clothes. There are video touch terminals on the upper entrance level. By touching the proper square on the screen customers can see an item in any color, get a close-up of a collar or pocket and a rundown of prices, sizes, fabric and other vital statistics.
The next stop is the cafeteria-like selling floor, where a stainless-steel unit dispenses trays with the Coca-Cola logo. Shoppers slide the tray around the counter, place an order, collect it on the tray and walk through the line.
The store has attracted nationwide attention, as has the Hilfiger campaign. In fact, Mr. Murjani says that young designers approach the company, asking to be its next project. ''From one little crazy spark a business might be created,'' Mr. Murjani said. ''We're always thinking about the future. Always thinking about the future.'' USHERING IN RETAIL'S ELECTRONIC AGE
Mohan Murjani has strong feelings about how Coca-Cola stores should look: ''Not something that would feel like the future, but would be the future.''
To him, and many other manufacturers and retailers, that means a store that uses video machines to demonstrate products and take orders for them. Murjani's version is Eric, the acronym for the machine and for the Electronic Retail Investment Corporation, the Murjani subsidiary that makes it.
Eric, just outside the New York Coca-Cola store, looks like an automated teller machine. Passers-by can touch the screen to see close-ups of the clothes, insert their credit cards and place their orders.
Eric is hardly perfect. On a recent Saturday morning, customers complained that the pictures of the items were too small, that they come and go too fast, that the images are hard to see in the sunlight, that the quoted prices are sometimes wrong and that not everything sold in the store is available from the machine. Though more than a dozen people stopped at the machine over a two-hour period, no one made a purchase.
But Mr. Murjani is unfazed. The price of the Coca-Cola clothes ranges from $30 to $50, and Mr. Murjani says Eric, which costs between $8,000 and $10,000, can break even on two sales a day. However, Thomas R. Rauh, national director of retail consulting for Touche Ross & Co., projects the breakeven point at about $500 a day.
Mr. Murjani plans to have 1,500 Erics operating by the end of 1997. Most will be far from department stores - for example, in old-age homes, where residents are expected to buy Coca-Cola clothes for their grandchildren.
Mr. Rauh says that more than 200 companies are using or selling similar machines. He estimates that there will be 30,000 video sales machines in the United States by the end of this year, twice as many as in 1985. Moreover, he predicts that by 1990 there will be 70,000 picture-only machines and 30,000 order-taking machines, generating as much as $3 billion in sales.
Already, Clairol is having good success with a videotape machine, made by Intermark Corporation, that lets customers see how a certain rouge or lipstick would look when applied. And Amtech Inc., a New York company, is running Express Shop USA kiosks at a half-dozen airports. Machines in the kiosks give 20-second glimpses of 92 products; customers can place orders with a credit card for everything from Gund teddy bears to $1,500 Cartier watches.
There are some bugs in the system - few people were willing to buy a $1,500 watch from a machine, for instance. But Keith Greenberg, Amtech president, says each machine is processing 10 to 12 sales a day.
Within months Amtech, operating jointly with Liberty Travel, hopes to have a network of travel kiosks that will show videos of vacation sites, make reservations, and print tickets and itineraries. ''There've been many revolutions in this country - the American revolution, the industrial revolution,'' Mr. Greenberg said. ''We stand for the credit card revolution.''
This revolution already has losers, though. The CompuSave Corporation of Irvine, Calif., tried to sell pots, pans, even televisions from terminals in supermarkets in four states, primarily in rural areas with few discount stores. The machines, which offered 3,000 items at discount, never caught on, Mr. Rauh said, and the company filed for bankruptcy.
Mr. Murjani remains undeterred by such bleak stories. He was recently impressed with an experimental machine in the Paris subway that drops Levi jeans from a chute in the wall, and plans to test such a machine in his stores. ''Soon everyone will be shopping by machines,'' he said. ''When that happens, we want to be ready.''
By Susan M. Kirschbaum / June 10, 2001
2001-06-10-nytimes-a-night-in-with-malini-and-mohan-murjani-exercise-in-family-chic.pdf
2001-06-10-nytimes-a-night-in-with-malini-and-mohan-murjani-exercise-in-family-chic-img-1.jpg
TOMMY HILFIGER remembers Malini Murjani as a little girl, playing the junior fashion critic on visits to the Broadway office of her father, Mohan Murjani, Mr. Hilfiger's key original financial backer. ''She was probably 8 or 9 and would say, 'I like that,' or 'I don't like that,' '' Mr. Hilfiger said on Monday night. ''Even then she had a sense of style.''
Ms. Murjani -- all grown up now at 26 and a designer herself, of fur and beaded handbags -- was cohost of a party with her father in the family apartment, where they welcomed five visiting Indian courturiers, who have dressed Murjanis for sundry occasions in their home country, especially weddings.
It wasn't the first time father and daughter had combined forces on the social front. In November they gave an Indian New Year's party, and they sometimes hit the clubs together. The guest list at their United Nations Plaza duplex included friends of each, two generations of party-happy New Yorkers. There was Richard Celeste, the departing United States ambassador to India, and his wife, Jacqueline Lundquist, dressed in a sari the color of Bing cherries. ''Oh, it's so gorgeous,'' Lynn Sherr, the ABC correspondent, said, embracing her.
Ms. Sherr, a neighbor, met Mr. Murjani while working out in the building's gym. ''I fell madly in love with India after I covered midnight from Bombay, New Year's Eve 2000,'' she said. ''There's a magic about being there.'' Through her coverage, she also met Mr. Celeste.
While a D.J., Lars, a former cast member of MTV's ''Real World,'' spun Indian-inspired dance music, Ms. Murjani circled the parlor of the apartment, which was filled with crimson draperies and 19th-century paintings. She wore a brown sari with lace and leopard print trim -- an outfit she made with Tarun Tahiliani, one of the visiting designers. She used a Valentino that her mother, Guni Murjani, cast off.
Malini Murjani, who was born in Hong Kong and attended boarding school in England, is a regular in a downtown circle of artists and young designers. She speaks of her father, who also financed Gloria Vanderbilt Jeans, with an admiration any parent might envy. ''He's a brilliant marketing genius,'' is how she put it, her big brown eyes glistening.
As waiters urged trays of gravlax on the shoulder-to-shoulder crowd, Gitu Ramani closely guarded her date, Jay McInerney. Ms. Ramani said she was the woman who introduced pashmina to New York, and is now a producer of television shows.
''I'm a friend of Malini,'' Mr. McInerney, the author of ''Bright Lights, Big City,'' put in. ''We found ourselves in the same places -- the Park, Lotus, APT.'' He glanced around. ''This is just part of the world I write about,'' he said. ''A whole group of us are planning to spend New Year's Eve in Goa. There are overlapping layers of friends.''
What's unusual is that the layers would also lap over a member of the older generation. Mr. Murjani, who is 54, said: ''Malini's friends, these grown-up kids, see their parents as old fogies. They want to go on holidays with me and my family.''
He called Malini, who still lives under the family roof, ''the love of my life.''
''When I ask, no matter what her plans are, she takes me to all the places she goes to meet everyone in her life,'' he added. ''I don't do it often, but one night we did about six or seven different places. She's comfortable enough to have me do that so I can understand her mentally, have a sense of conversation.''
Mr. Murjani greeted Kim Hastreiter, a co-editor and co-publisher of Paper magazine. ''You know, I met Kim with Paige Powell,'' he said, referring to a confidante of Andy Warhol. ''Andy used to come over with his karaoke machine and sing.''
Mr. Murjani didn't miss Warhol's crooning -- a little-known pastime of the normally deadpan artist. ''You know, he wasn't very good,'' he said.
Based on reports surrounding the Jeffrey Epstein scandal and court documents, Ghislaine Maxwell accompanied Prince Andrew on a trip to Phuket, Thailand.
The Trip: The trip is described as a "wild holiday" where the group allegedly visited red-light district clubs, including areas in the Patong resort town, and frequented bars staffed by semi-naked go-go dancers.
The Context: The holiday took place around 2001, just months before Prince Andrew allegedly sexually abused Virginia Roberts Giuffre.
Significance: This excursion is often highlighted to illustrate the close, long-term relationship between Prince Andrew, Jeffrey Epstein, and Ghislaine Maxwell, despite the Duke's denials of improper behavior.
Further Travel: Reports indicate that in addition to Thailand, Maxwell facilitated travel for the Prince to other locations.
Based on reports surrounding the Jeffrey Epstein scandal and court documents, Ghislaine Maxwell accompanied Prince Andrew on a trip to Phuket, Thailand.
The Trip: The trip is described as a "wild holiday" where the group allegedly visited red-light district clubs, including areas in the Patong resort town, and frequented bars staffed by semi-naked go-go dancers.
The Context: The holiday took place around 2001, just months before Prince Andrew allegedly sexually abused Virginia Roberts Giuffre.
Significance: This excursion is often highlighted to illustrate the close, long-term relationship between Prince Andrew, Jeffrey Epstein, and Ghislaine Maxwell, despite the Duke's denials of improper behavior.
Further Travel: Reports indicate that in addition to Thailand, Maxwell facilitated travel for the Prince to other locations.
Note - The Vanderbilt Estate of Murjani is only a couple miles from the Amani...
https://www.nationthailand.com/life/30297522