Jason Coelho
A career in luxury retail, brought to hospitality
Introduction and application for The Cape Town EDITION
Introduction
Twenty years across premium retail, visual merchandising, buying, and commercial growth. A decade of it at Brunello Cucinelli. An understanding of the customer EDITION wants to attract, the environment that keeps them engaged, and the brand discipline required to bring a property like this to market well.
- A CAREER IN LUXURY RETAIL — NEW YORK, LOS ANGELES, AMSTERDAM
- CLIENT AND BRAND WORK FOR AN ITALIAN LUXURY HOUSE
- MERCHANDISING FOR A CONTEMPORARY MENSWEAR LABEL
- STYLIST RELATIONS AND VIP DRESSING FOR AN AMERICAN MENSWEAR BRAND
A CAREER IN LUXURY RETAIL — NEW YORK, LOS ANGELES, AMSTERDAM
CLIENT AND BRAND WORK FOR AN ITALIAN LUXURY HOUSE
MERCHANDISING FOR A CONTEMPORARY MENSWEAR LABEL
STYLIST RELATIONS AND VIP DRESSING FOR AN AMERICAN MENSWEAR BRAND
"A cultural venue with real local gravity."
Why This Page
Recently returned to Cape Town and applied for the Sales Executive role at The Cape Town EDITION. Rather than send only a résumé, this page shows how the customer, the brand, and the kind of commercial contribution a property like this needs from the start are understood.
The brand has been experienced through the West Hollywood EDITION and Ian Schrager's wider hospitality world through PUBLIC in New York. The Cape Town opening stands out because it has the chance to become more than a luxury hotel. It can become a cultural venue with real local gravity.
The lobby becomes a social room at night. The restaurant becomes a meeting place during the day.
What I Bring
01 / The Guest
The same customer the property will sell to. I sold him a $4,000 sport coat at Brunello Cucinelli in Manhattan for eight years, and again in Beverly Hills. Repeat business. Personal appointments. Names remembered without a spreadsheet. Discretion is not a skill you learn on the job.
02 / The Room
Thirteen retail floors on the West Coast, plus Nordstrom, Saks, and Neiman Marcus. My job was how a customer moved through the space and what they picked up. Sight lines. Sequence. The reason someone stops. A hotel lobby runs on the same physics.
03 / The Business
Bought the Cucinelli men's range for twelve US boutiques. Ran open-to-buy. Then joined a visual merchandising software startup as one of the first US hires and closed two pilots in four months. Comfortable when the playbook doesn't exist yet.
Why I Fit This Role
The Cape Town EDITION will need more than rate knowledge and outbound discipline. It will need someone who understands premium customers, knows how brand perception shapes demand, and can help translate a new property into the right relationships, conversations, and commercial momentum.
This background sits at that intersection. Experience includes affluent clients, premium brands, merchandising and buying, and sales environments where polish matters but results still need to follow. There is clear comfort contributing to pre-opening rhythm, partnership thinking, and brand-led sales activity without losing sight of execution.
Cape Town · 2026
What I'm Building
04 / What I'm Building
Parallel Studio. A brand and retail practice for local makers who deserve an international audience.
The premise: rotating six-week residencies inside a hotel's ground floor. Tailor. Jeweller. Ceramicist. Small label. One discipline at a time. The retail equivalent of what Marriott already does with Canvas on the F&B side.
The concept needs a hotel partner to exist. Cape Town has the makers. The Cape Town EDITION has the room. Naming it here because that's the honest thing to do, and because it belongs in the same conversation as the role.