Mercedes Gonzalez talks Latino fashion consumer

By: Taylor Pineda

Mercedes Gonzalez is the epitome of a powerful, driven, working Latina. Her insight on the Latin consumer and knowledge of stimulating small businesses led to her presentation on a real perspective on the fashion industry.

Born and raised in New York, the Cuban entrepreneur and industry expert of Global Purchasing Companies, travels around the world helping to educate Fashion Week participants on everything from marketing to manufacturing. Her work specializes in retail strategies that help small retailers come up with a plan so they are competitive.

Gonzales has a theme to this, “How do you work as little as possible and make the most amount of money? You have to set up discipline!” she remarks, “Happiness isn’t number one. You are going to have to put your work in but you will get there, and then it is worth it. Some day you will wake up and actually want to go to work.”

Her raw perspective captivated Phoenix Fashion Week participants as it plunged in to the truths behind the industry.

Mercedes credits such a real approach to the influence her uncle had on her. “The older I get, the more grateful I am for my uncle. He was a very tough man. My mother on the contrast was very prim and proper church going lady. My mom wouldn’t let me cross the street. My uncle would give me money to go place bets for him.”

It was this contrast that gave Mercedes her edge in learning the ins and outs of successful entrepreneurship and people skills. She continues to explain her uncle’s impact highlighting the times they would walk down 5^th Ave and look at beautiful clothing in stores.

“I would say, ‘I love that!’ and he would say, ‘Buy it!’. [Then] I would tell him ‘I can’t’, and he would say to me, ‘If someone else can, why can’t you?’ He wasn’t a big fan of excuses!” It is with this mentality Mercedes motivates and mentors upcoming designers in the fashion industry.

Skills like this set individuals apart. Mercedes’s vouches on the value of learning the cleverness behind business as well as the fundamentals.

“He never offered limitations; there are no rules. Everything is negotiable.” she said.

Mercedes sits at the board of Lincoln Nebraska and The Board of Arkansas where she has witnessed firsthand that entrepreneurship skills are not emphasized enough in today’s education system. “A fancy degree from a fancy school is worth nothing, if you don’t have these other assets,” she remarks, “school never taught me to be an entrepreneur, they taught me middle management.”

Mercedes loves to read between the lines when working with potential clients, ‘It is not so much what people have done and accomplished, it is what they want to do”, she said.

With a specific interest in the Latino consumer, Gonzalez is able to understand both ends of fashion merchandising and how the demographics play in particular to our community. Nowadays, society no longer looks at demographics in fashion merchandising. Even if there are limited funds, parents will over spend on their children.

Mercedes credits this to the notion that Latin mothers feel like if, “their kids look really hot, they must be a good mom. If they look a little shoveled, it plays in to value system, and all the money is being spent on the kid.” 

Regardless of fiscal strains, the Latin consumer in today’s market overspends what would be considered the norm. Mercedes concludes, “With fashion there is a ying and a yang – we live in a decade of crisis. You need to understand consumer behavior.”