Narciso Rodriguez Quotes

If you don't drive your business, you will be driven out of business.

The annals of business are filled with stories of companies that thought they had it made and could milk their enterprises without having to bother about improving their products or services. It's amazing how fast they found their markets disappearing.

Every time we bring someone in we ensure that they are a strategic thinker, but even more important that they understand that if the products aren't successful and the products don't sell that there won't be anything to strategize about.

In the U.S., we didn't have scale, and without scale, it's difficult to operate.

I sensed my chance and embraced the telecom business. I started marketing telephones, answering/fax machines under the brand name Beetel, and the company picked up really fast.

AOL has a great collection of brands, and the question is, 'Can they innovate and scale their business?' And those are very challenging things to do. But I think they are well positioned to grow.

You need to focus on creating the actual value of the company, not just the theoretical value. The actual value comes from a great product that sells well and is ultimately profitable.

Relentless improvement of the product and upgrading of consumer tastes are the heart of mass merchandising.

Our investments in data, Internet and international have been particularly timely and have positioned the company to post industry-leading incremental revenue gains.

Cutting prices or putting things on sale is not sustainable business strategy. The other side of it is that you can't cut enough costs to save your way to prosperity.

When I returned from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1972, my father was running a forging business with a turnover of Rs 3.5 crore. But I had no patience and wanted to grow the business via exports.

If you go out there and start making noise and making sales - people will find you. Sales cure all. You can talk about how great your business plan is and how well you are going to do. You can make up your own opinions, but you cannot make up your own facts. Sales cure all.

Companies that grow for the sake of growth or that expand into areas outside their core business strategy often stumble. On the other hand, companies that build scale for the benefit of their customers and shareholders more often succeed over time.

Many businesses fail because the owner wasn't willing to invest and wasn't educated on the difference between spending money frivolously and investing money into the business for growth, and the risks and rewards of that cash infusion.

There are two ways to extend a business. Take inventory of what you're good at and extend out from your skills. Or determine what your customers need and work backward, even if it requires learning new skills. Kindle is an example of working backward.

When I first came into baseball, people didn't want to hear that a team was a business. But it is. And the better the business is run, the healthier the team on the field is going to be.

We built that into a wholesale business that became, really, one of the largest companies in the United States. We had success in building new markets, opening markets for competition, and that takes a personal toll.

Not long ago, the term 'business model' was not exactly on the tip of everyone's tongue. Then, in the early to mid-1990s, 'business model' became a catchphrase that described how a company makes money or saves money.

I still believe that the mission of Business 2.0 is very strong, very fundamental, and we're really at the beginning of where they're going to take us.

You just can't get too focused on worrying about what's going to happen in the next quarter. You have to worry about where the business is headed long-term.

Great products sell themselves.

Well, as we built the business in the 1990's, as I said, I enjoyed that.

A strategy is something like, an innovative new product; globalization, taking your products around the world; be the low-cost producer. A strategy is something you can touch; you can motivate people with; be number one and number two in every business. You can energize people around the message.

The purpose of a business is to create customers.

India is a large market where our focus will be to grow faster than the market and add few percentage points to our market share every year.