In the lead-up to the country’s biggest dog show, a third-generation handler prepares a gaggle of premier canines vying for the top prize.
2 min
The elite athlete is capable of tremendous discipline. At the moment, though, he’s humping the competition.
Sonny, the star Portuguese water dog, went nosing around for a girlfriend when he was supposed to be attending to press obligations in the Long Island living room of his professional dog-show handler, Kimberly Calvacca.
But there is much work to be done: In just a few days, Calvacca will load the freshly fluffed Sonny and five other crème-de-la-crème canines into a van and head to Manhattan to compete at the country’s biggest dog-sporting event: the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show.
The pedigreed dogs are the epitome of their breeds, owned by enthusiasts who pay Calvacca $150 per show day for her more than 100 dog shows each year.
The circuit reaches divine heights Tuesday in Madison Square Garden with Westminster’s top award of best in show, a status symbol that has eluded Calvacca, a third-generation dog handler in her 50s who started showing dogs in high school.
Competing alongside Sonny are Valentina, a min pin and the only contender Calvacca partly owns; Tango, a pug; Estee, a canaan; Shindig, a vizsla; and Nala, a rambunctious toller who reacted to getting kicked out of this photo shoot by peeing on the floor.
When it’s showtime, the dogs perform. “It’s a lot of time, a lot of effort and making sure that this dog is raised right so it has the temperament to say, ‘Pick me!’” Calvacca says.
She trains them to stand stock-still when a judge inspects them nose to tail, or trot in a circle without getting distracted by the crowd.
At times, she recreates show conditions at home so her pageant queens and kings won’t be spooked by whatever the competition throws at them.
Most preshow work happens in her “dog room,” a basement utility space where pet scrubs and tinctures abound like makeup at Sephora.
She says the room is filled with the good juju of champions her grandfather groomed there when this was his house.
On her boombox, when Sade’s “Smooth Operator” switches to Britney Spears’s “Toxic,” the frantic synth reflects the chaos.
First, she must wash the dogs one by one in an elevated bathtub. Then she hoists each dog onto a work table, attaching the animal loosely to a loop she cheerfully calls a noose.
She trims their toenails with a repurposed woodworking tool, styles their fur with a $600 dog blow dryer and clips their coats with $1,000 scissors. She cleans their teeth with an electric toothbrush, a dental tool for plaque and a breath-freshener spray.
Each dog spends 15 to 30 minutes daily on treadmills, one of which costs $3,500 and is specifically for dogs.
Then come meals from 40-pound bags of dog food—she’s sponsored by Purina—and various biscuits and canned meats. In the ring, she gives them human treats such as salmon, steak and meatballs.
On a recent day, she heaved a 10-pound bag of frozen chicken from Costco onto her kitchen counter, then boiled breasts with onion powder and garlic powder.
She calls it her “winning chicken,” and during shows she’ll sometimes store a chunk of it between her teeth for quick access.
Calvacca doesn’t play favorites, she says, but she snuggles Valentina and calls Sonny Mister Handsome.
He is the exuberant frat boy, the alpha of the group. He licks, he yodels, he sleeps on a purple pillow. He plays it up in the ring. “Sonny always thinks he wins,” Calvacca says.
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The Australian leather house has opened an immersive four-day pop-up in Manhattan, unveiling its Bloom Collection and redefining what a product launch can look like.
Following the successful launch of its Palais Collection, MAISON de SABRÉ has unveiled a new modular handbag system offering more than 720 styling combinations.
SHEIN’s Hong Kong IPO wiped a $4.4 billion obligation from its books, but the fast-fashion giant still faces a payout of up to $3.5 billion to early investors.
3 min
Companies typically go public to raise money to supercharge growth. Fast-fashion giant Shein has another motivation.
The company’s initial public offering in Hong Kong this week is allowing it to avoid paying out billions to early investors.
If Shein hadn’t sold shares by the end of the year, the company would have been required to fork out nearly $4.4 billion in cash to holders of its convertible redeemable preferred shares. With the IPO, the $17.3 billion in preferred shares was converted to ordinary equity, and that obligation was wiped off the books.
But Shein was still on the hook for another payment. Holders of those preferred shares were entitled to a payout of billions more, in part because the company’s valuation has fallen from its peak. That payout came to nearly $3.5 billion in cash, according to regulatory filings.
The retailer on Monday priced its shares at 48.56 Hong Kong dollars each, equivalent to about $6.20 and near the middle of the range of HK$47.60 and HK$49.50 it provided last week.
The company pressed ahead with its IPO despite slowing growth and regulatory headwinds in the U.S. and European Union. Shein priced its IPO at a valuation of around $26 billion, roughly a quarter of the $98.2 billion valuation it achieved in a funding round in 2022.
Shein started selling its wares in the U.S. around 2012 and shot to popularity during the pandemic when more people shopped online. Its supply-chain prowess and vast range of styles at affordable prices made the brand a favorite among many U.S. consumers. It showed other retailers, including Amazon.com, that consumers were willing to wait more than a week for their online purchases to be delivered—if the price was right. But rivals soon emerged, such as Temu, which sells more products apart from apparel.
Shein’s business model of selling massive amounts of cheap goods lost some of its shine as more countries started imposing tariffs on small packages. The U.S. removed a trade exemption that allowed packages valued at or below $800 to enter the country duty-free, and the EU has introduced a €3 (about $3.50) customs duty on imports of low-value parcels.
Shein has worked toward its IPO for years, and the looming $4.4 billion obligation wasn’t the only reason it went public. But the threat of the big payout on Dec. 31 was certainly a part of its reason to press ahead, said Jianggan Li, founder and chief executive of Momentum Works, a research advisory firm based in Singapore.
“Complete the listing before then,” said Li, “and a very large liability comes off the balance sheet.”
While that liability will now be off its books with a successful IPO, Shein said it was saddled with another bill: the roughly $3.5 billion it owed its early investors upon going public.
That amount includes $1.3 billion that Shein had to pay several late-stage pre-IPO investors who had been guaranteed a cash payout at an 8% or 12% annual return, and up to $2.2 billion in compensation for the fall in the company’s valuation in the period after they made their investments. The $2.2 billion was a projection based on the lower end of the offer price range, or HK$47.60 per share, so the total bill will likely be smaller than $3.5 billion. The exact amount has yet to be disclosed by the company.
Notably, the amount it owes investors is more than the roughly $1.7 billion the company raised in the IPO. The company said it was paying the funds to its investors out of cash it has on hand.
The investors entitled to the payments include entities linked to HSG, formerly known as Sequoia China, Boyu Capital, Tiger Global, General Atlantic, Thrive Capital and others.
“What the IPO really does here is resolve the capital-structure overhang,” Li said. “It gives investors liquidity, terminates those preferred-share rights and cleans up obligations created when Shein raised money at much higher valuations.”
Shein could have kicked the can down the road by renegotiating terms with its investors, he said: “Shein is not taking the cheapest way out of its old financing obligations. It is taking the cleaner way out.”
