Quotes from the Global Luxury/Retail Summits: Weds

PIPPA WICKS, A RETAIL TURNAROUND SPECIALIST AT ALIXPARTNERS, on the economic recovery:

"I think if anything it's going to be a W-shaped recovery and we might be about to go down the other side of the W any moment."

JEWELRY DESIGNER ROBERTO COIN:

"The crisis is like an unknown illness and no expert in the world is able to find a good cure or shall we say the correct remedy in a short time."

TAITTINGER CEO PIERRE-EMMANUEL TAITTINGER:

"I am a happiness producer. Figures do not interest me."

"If I wanted to sell the business, I know I could find 50 buyers as I get calls almost every month of people asking if I want to sell."

LAMBORGHINI (VOWG.DE) CEO STEPHAN WINKELMANN:

"You buy it because it's a dream."

WILLIAM MCCOMB, LIZ CLAIBORNE INC (LIZ.N) CEO on what retailers want:

"I fondly refer to it as a focus more on the bread and the butter than the jam and the honey. We became very jam and honey-focused as an industry over the lush last 5 years and now I think that the merchants, and we're doing it in our own stores, are getting much more focused on the volume turners and what will drive traffic and what will deliver the appropriate turn on the business."

Also:

"I find that our people are working better, more cooperatively and collaboratively in this environment than they were in the good, good, good times. What we have more in common is true need. There's just not any room for error. So we gotta get it right. I think crisis is an amazing thing, organizationally ... you find common ground easier in times of stress and crisis. I think the industry is working a little more effectively."

TIFFANY (TIF.N) CEO MICHAEL KOWALSKI, on people coming into the high-end jeweler's stores and trying to haggle for a lower price:

"Everyone feels compelled to ask the question for fear of feeling foolish after the fact."

"And yes, the questions are being asked more often and the answer is the same -- the price is the price is the price."