Susan Scheimann

President and Chief Executive

California Mart

Age: 35

The California Mart has long been considered the gateway to Southern California’s apparel market. But industry insiders sometimes complain that it has served as merely a stopover point for the global fashion industry on its way to New York.

Susan Scheimann is working to change that.

“We really have to open ourselves and establish ourselves as true players in the international marketplace,” said Scheimann, who stepped in as president and CEO of CalMart in September 1997.

Under her leadership, CalMart, one of the largest apparel and accessory marts in the country with more than 1,500 showrooms, has begun pumping up efforts to introduce its roster of tenants to Asian and European retail buyers.

“We need to work on programs to bring independent retailers in from foreign countries that could buy local manufacturers’ apparel,” she said.

In addition, Scheimann plans to work more closely with companies based out of the Pacific Rim and Europe that provide services to L.A.’s apparel manufacturers and designers, such as textile makers and even financial services. Locally, Scheimann is working on getting West Coast designers some play on television screens by supplying TV shows with wardrobes.

Scheimann, a South Africa native, joined CalMart in 1994 as executive director of marketing. She had been working closely with then-CEO Maurice Newman, who left last year to head Silena Apparel Group, a Los Angeles bathing suit manufacturer but not before making sure his heir apparent stepped into his shoes.

Scheimann got Newman’s attention after launching a successful campaign to begin turning around CalMart’s image nationwide. She started two new divisions within the marketing department and oversaw numerous departments.

“She just did a phenomenal job,” said Newman, who in late 1995 promoted her to vice president of marketing and leasing. “She has ideas of her own to take the CalMart past where it was when I left it.”

Says Scheimann, who earned a degree in communications from Trinity College in London and is a classically trained ballerina: “My goal was not to be president, but to be the best that I could be.”