James Maxmin

James Maxmin was an American businessman and academic who served as chief executive of the British home furnishings and fashion retailer Laura Ashley plc from 1991 until he resigned in April 1994. He took over a company that had expanded its retail outlets too fast and relied on a costly, overly complex network of outsourced manufacturers, and over the next two and a half years he worked on its manufacturing and logistics. His best known step was a ten year distribution alliance with FedEx, built on trust, which aimed to supply 99 percent of the merchandise for close to 500 stores anywhere in the world within 48 hours. In 1992 Laura Ashley returned to profit for the first time since 1989. He left after disagreeing with the chairman, Sir Bernard Ashley, over strategy. Maxmin later co-authored The Support Economy (2002) with his wife, the Harvard Business School professor Shoshana Zuboff, and he died in 2016.