Greg Furman, Founder and Chairman since 1994, has been the driving force that has grown The Luxury Marketing Council from 32 luxury brands in Manhattan into a global enterprise of some 1,000 member luxury brands, 5,000 CEOs and top marketing executives, in more than 40 cities worldwide.

The Luxury Marketing Council is a business-building, revenue-generating GLOBAL COMMUNITY of CEOs and CMOs considered THE leader in the field of luxury marketing, setting the “gold standard” for the intelligent exploration of best marketing practices and trends in the luxury marketplace and inspiring luxury brands to more creatively and profitably work together.

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Greg continues to be a pioneer in the luxury arena, one of the first to serve as a trusted advisor to inspire luxury brands to work more closely together - well before collaborations and partnerships among kindred-spirit luxury brands were common, and at a time when none of the major publishing entities had yet seen the power of global luxury summits that are now common.  His mentor, Mr. Stanley Marcus, and his friend, Ira Neimark and many other c-suite luxury marketing luminaries have recognized Greg as a global thought-leader and visionary.

He is a sought-after speaker and has served as a keynote, moderator or panelist at all of the major, global luxury summits and has worked closely with The New York Times, The International Herald Tribune, Luxury Daily's Luxury Summit, Fortune, The Financial Times, The International Luxury Travel Market (Cannes), American Express Publishing, The Couture Conference and Collection, The Fashion Group, Retail Society, The Conference Board and a host of luxury brands to develop content, find speakers, sponsors and drive attendance.

He routinely speaks to top management, sales teams and producers of Fortune 500 companies and luxury brands on how the luxury market and customer are changing, what the smartest luxury brands are doing to surprise and delight their best customers, and grow revenues and profit.
Throughout his career Greg has been a leader in advocating the 'marriage’ of business, academia, nonprofits and the arts.  He created and taught for twelve years, as adjunct professor, the first credited course in America on luxury marketing at NYU Stern Graduate School of Business.

His insights into luxury, the luxury marketplace, the luxury customer, and best marketing practices of luxury brands have been and continue to be widely quoted in a range of media including Luxury Daily, Jing Daily, New York Times, Media Post, Forbes, The Huffington Post, Departures, The Detroit News, Barrons, China Daily, Travel Daily News, National Journal, CNBC, BrandWeek and US News, to name a few.

Greg’s strategic consulting practice focuses on helping clients define their missions and corporate positioning, develop strategic plans and grow their businesses by taking a more creative, out-of-the-box approach to all facets of the marketing mix.  Included among his clients are: Andersen Consulting, BPA (Business Publications Audit International), Deloitte & Touche, American Express, Departures Magazine, Sotheby’s International Realty, New York City Opera, Leo Burnett, Atlantic Mutual Insurance, Steinway & Sons, Lexus, Godiva, Historic Charleston, Nymphenburg Porcelain, Oil & Gas Journal, Chubb, Publicis, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, NASDAQ, The International Trademark Association, Magazine Publishers of America, Interpost (a subsidiary of Dutch KLM and the Dutch Post Office) and Smith Kline Beecham. 

Greg started out as a hardscrabble journalist in Los Angeles (Compton, Watts…year of the first riots); served as policy advisor and speech writer to the Ontario Minister of Education; head of public affairs and issues management for Sun Oil’s Canadian Subsidiary, Suncor (pioneer developers – mining/refining – of the Athabasca Tar Sands); Managing Director of Advertising and Sales Promotion for the NYSE; and head of J. Walter Thompson’s corporate image advertising agency's (Brouillard - $160 million revenues) public relations division; Bergdorf Goodman's SVP Marketing where his responsibilities with a team of 40 included marketing strategy, advertising, PR, interactive initiatives, direct mail, CRM, data base marketing and every facet of the store’s $30 million catalogue business.

He and his wife, Wanda, who has her own home styling business and radio program: “Love the Life You Live" which focuses on the home, collecting and style trends, divide their time between their homes in Manhattan, Clinton Corners New York in the Hudson Valley and Toronto Canada.  A voracious reader, Greg also paints and sculpts. He has had six one-man shows of his work in the last three years. Please visitwww.daemonmouseink.com to view his work. He has published 16 books of his poems.  He is an avid outdoorsman, making time for wilderness canoeing in northern Ontario and fly fishing the great rivers of the American West.

Highlights of my educational experience include studying “Strategic Marketing” at Harvard, “Managing Critical Resources” at the University of Virginia’s Colgate Darden School of Business, a double major B.S. in English literature and philosophy from St. Peter’s College, Jersey City, the privilege of getting to know Marshall McLuhan personally, studying and influenced by his work on media having attended many of his lectures when he taught at the University of Toronto.

He has served on the boards of directors of Taj Hotels Resorts and Palaces, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Nova South Eastern University and now as a director for Nomi Network and North Carolina State’s MBA global brand management program.  He has lectured at Fordham, Kent State, LIM, Columbia, FIT, Mercy College, European School of Economics, Skolkovo Business School (Moscow, Russia) and Ryerson and York University (Toronto). And, most fun of all years ago, as part of the New York Stock Exchange’s corporate citizenship programs, taught ‘economics’ to eighth graders at Dr. Sun Yat Sen middle school.