WHO WE ARE

The Following are biographical sketches of the primary advisory board members of the Exhibium Group. It is from this group that the diagnostic and project management team members are selected from.

Fernando Williams
Fernando Williams is the founder and president of the Exhibium Group, Inc. and FWA Consultants Inc., a one-stop destination for an assortment of international retail products and management expertise. Mr. Williams has assembled some of retail?s best talent into one multi-functional firm. As a result, the client secures the advantage of holism, synergy and quality assurance through single sourcing.

Mr. Williams received a degree in Architecture from City University of New York. Mr. Williams worked with various internationally recognized design firms in New York such as Walker Group, TSR, and CNI which provided project management services for Macy's, Bloomingdales, Saks Fifth Ave, and Burdine's.

In 1985 Fernando established FWA Consulting in New York in order to furnish design services to specialty retailers. The first five years provided extraordinary opportunities for creative design services, which resulted in producing award winning prototype projects for Casswell Massey, Alfred Dunhill, and Hunting World.

Based upon a strong client base in Brazil and Chile, FWA relocated to Miami in 1990. Miami allowed for an expansion and a consolidation of services into Latin America. Fernando began traveling extensively in Chile, Argentina, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru where he cultivated agents and distributors to assist in consummating retail turnkey services.

In 1994 Mr. Williams created a new division, Williams & Yarnell, a strategic retail solutions consultancy, which included clients such as Sears Latin America and La Polar in Chile. This step lead to the development of the current organizational framework of the Exhibium Group in 1996.

Mr. Williams is a member of The Institute of Store Planners, The National Retail Federation, and the National Association of Store Fixture Manufacturers.

Luis Felipe Gonzalez
What makes Luis Felipe Gonzalez stand out is his capacity to communicate at all intellectual levels, the universality of his talents and his ability to express the most complex ideas in a clear and simple way. He makes the most difficult subjects understandable and he is able to turn complicated theories about communications, business, customer service and human behavior into practical use.

Educated in Europe and realized in the United States, this multicultural and fully bilingual professional is able to solve problems creatively. Furthermore, he makes it possible and entertaining for his audience, students and teachers to apply his creative process with great success.

As president of o major healthcare company at the age of 20, he acquired extensive experience in all phases of communication, from sales, marketing, "face to face" negotiations to formal speeches and presentations. He later founded his own company and for over 20 years supplied the U. S. Department of Defense where he participated on the ground floor development of the Internet, electronic commerce, electronic marketing and other advanced promotion methods and technologies and acquired a great deal of experience working with companies in Latin America.

Currently, as Director of the prestigious Miami firm The Exhibium Group, he had the opportunity to work with many of the firm?s retail clients, both in Latin America and the United States, as a speaker, consultant and trainer. He developed the CER (Creating Excellence in Retail) seminars for the retail industry covering areas of expertise such as Organizational and Management Development, Sales and Marketing, Customer Service, Motivation, Team Building, Personality Testing and Development and Diversity Training. These seminars are delivered in either English or Spanish.

To his strong academic foundation, that includes and MBA from New York University, and his extensive experience in the business world, he adds an exceptional sense of humor, which captures the attention of the most heterogeneous audience. His ability to help people discover their own potential and promote self-motivation in his audience will add a new dimension to the future and success of any organization.

Joseph B. Siegel
Joseph Siegel has been an influential advisor to retail and retail support companies located in six continents around the world. He is a well-recognized merchandising expert with innovative educational techniques and a wealth of diverse experience.

Currently Mr. Siegel has continuing working relationships with retail and allied industry leaders in Australia, Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, England, El Salvador, Finland, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Thailand, Taiwan, Turkey and the United States.

From 1985 to 1996, Mr. Siegel served as Vice President of National Retail Federation with the responsibilities for merchandising and retail services. At the NRF daily, Joe received numerous telephone calls from around the world seeking his advice and counsel. At NRF, he established educational programs in merchandise management that included open enrollment workshops as well as in-house training sessions.

From 1977 to 1985, Joe was the President of Reynolds Bros., a chain of family apparel and women's apparel stores. He held officer positions at Bloomingdale's, Ross Atkins and Lane Bryant.

Joe Siegel has been a faculty member of New York University, City University of New York and Fairleigh Dickinson University. He has lead seminars at Columbia University, Fashion Institute of Technology and Laboratory Institute of Merchandising.

Joe holds both a Bachelor and Masters degree from New York University.

Joseph Weishar
Joseph Weishar is uniquely talented in introducing theatrical qualities into retail stores. This is based upon the hypothesis that customers form strong impressions within a few seconds upon entering the store. Mr. Weishar founded New Vision Studios, a visual merchandising firm that focuses on planning, design, renovation, signing, lighting, display, merchandise presentation and staff training. The firm has been in business since 1962.

Mr. Weishar studied at Cooper Union and Yale Art setting design at Yale Drama School. His teachers were internationally renowned artists, such as Josef Albers in painting and color and Don Oenslager in stage design. Joe was attracted to the visual merchandise business after designing stages for Broadway shows, television productions and motion pictures. He recognized that the retail business is would be a fertile extension for these techniques.

Mr. Weishar developed and promoted the concept of consumer visual response. He emphasized the fusion of market research with visual response in building an optimum selling environment. These aesthetics are not only for upscale markets. They have been employed by value-oriented retailers as well in a variety of culture settings. This approach is detailed in Mr. Weishar's book, Design for Effective Selling Space, published by McGraw-Hill. A second book, which expands the concept, will be available in the near future.

Joe has taught visual merchandising at the Fashion Institute of Technology, Barbizon School and the International Council of Shopping Centers.

Nathaniel W. Goodman
Nat Goodman is a retail operations and finance expert with significant accomplishments in Latin America, Europe, Asia, Africa and North America. Additionally, he has developed and presents several seminars worldwide. The topics include business transformation and reengineering, process improvement and performance measurements. Nat is a licensed Certified Public Accountant and an AICPA member.

Recently in Egypt, he developed a privatization strategy for a 55-retail store chain with three factories. In El Salvador, he streamlined sales accounting and general ledger operations by maximizing enabling technology.

He designed and installed a labor scheduling system for 12,500 sales associates in Indonesia that elevated customer service while cutting payroll costs. In Spain, Nat prepared a re-engineering plan that outlined the elimination of 266 administrative positions while accelerating timeliness and enhancing the relevancy of reporting.

His last corporate officer assignment was controller for Hartmarx Specialty Stores, a 275-unit specialty apparel retailer, where he directed the initiation of restructuring.

Nat had a 26-year career with Sears that included 11 hands on years within a retail store. As corporate comptroller for Sears Roebuck De Mexico S.A. from 1982 to 1985, Nat redesigned the financial and merchandise inventory plan to respond sensitively to hyperinflation and devaluation during Mexico?s economic crisis. Returning to the US, Nat was appointed financial manager for Sears Roebuck Catalog Marketing and Production where he developed a media planning system directed toward more effective investment of a $350 million advertising budget. Nat served as an artillery officer and a paratrooper in the US Army. He is proficient English/Spanish.

Linda Cahan
Linda Cahan started in retail visual merchandising in 1971 after graduating with a degree in fine arts from Syracuse University. She worked at Sibleys in her first display job and went on the Visual Merchandising Manager at Carlisles, Bonwit Teller and Macys. She then became corporate Director of Visual Merchandising for Jordan Marsh Northeast, Steinbachs and P.C. Richard & Son (a 40-store chain of electronics and appliances.)

Linda developed Cahan & Company in 1982. Since that time she authored a textbook 3A Practical Guide to Visual Merchandising2, Prentice Hall, 1984, taught at Parsons School of Design, NYC for 12 years, and wrote seven custom visual merchandising manuals for: Singer Sewing Machine Company, American Express Travel Related Services Co., Saks Fifth Avenue.

As a consultant, Linda Cahan has developed total visual merchandising programs for American Express Travel Stores, Singer stores overseas, Lamonts (a chain of 37 stores in the Northeast USA), Zaz! (Department stores) in Guatemala, Rori (Men's & women's specialty stores) in Venezuela, P.C. Richard & Son, Hickory Farms, Melvin Simon (many temporary stores for malls), Consumer Distributing, Southwestern Bell Remco and many smaller stores throughout the United States.

Martin Hall
Martin Hall is Managing Partner of Retail Education Partnerships, a London based Consultancy which advises retailers and education providers on new learning strategies centered on the workplace. The focus of work extends beyond the UK into the developing economies. He was formerly Founder and Executive Director of the British Institute of Retailing, a body dedicated to raising the professional profile of the industry.

Martin Hall is Marketing Adviser to the Egremont Group, one of the UK's leading retail management consultancy firms. He serves on the Advisory Boards of Manchester Metropolitan University's Business School, the Exhibium Group in the US, and is a Member of Court at Surrey University.

Previously Martin Hall was a Headhunter specializing in retail appointments. He is a published author, and has many TV writing credits to his name on popular drama programs. His weekly column in the US weekly retailing newsletter "Where It's" on retailing events in Britain is read worldwide.