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Frederick Lamster headshot
Frederick Lamster
Managing Director
Tri-State New York
O: +1.646.609.8666
M: +1.267.563.0535

Professional Profile

Fred joined ZRG Partners in 2019 and is a veteran Human Resources and Staffing professional whose career spans more than 25 years. He has worked across all retail apparel and fashion segments, including department and specialty retail, eCommerce, and catalogue retailing. Fred has used his expertise in organizational design and efficiency to help a number of major retailers through turnarounds, mergers, acquisitions, and major business transitions. These include (but are not limited to) numerous divisions of LBrands (The Limited, Limited Too/Justice, Abercrombie & Fitch, Galyans, Bendel’s and Express) as well as Charming Shoppes (Lane Bryant/Outlet, Catherines and Fashion Bug) and Orchard Brands (a collection of 13 catalog and eCommerce businesses in need of restructure and realignment), While at LBrands, he also built the original Central Staffing model and managed Human resources for all corporate functions. Throughout his career, he has transformed HR teams from tactical and transactional departments to strategic and results-oriented teams.

With his deep experience working in the turnaround sector, Fred led the process of organizational redesign, building organizational efficiencies, and upgrading talent to meet long term as well as current needs. In doing so, he built stronger executive teams, reduced headcount, worked cross-functionally to streamline internal operations in such functions as Merchandising and Product Development, Production and Sourcing; Design; Operations/Field Management and Human Resources.  In particular, in the last two years, he has focused on leading the redesign of the Marketing function and the building of eCommerce structures that fit the business needs and priorities.

Currently, Fred has been doing organization consulting with a variety of companies in a variety of sectors including retail (turnarounds and growth companies), wholesale (business seeking to expand and develop more forward-facing functions), even moving into real estate development where he built performance review systems, led the work on building short and long term compensation programs, building a Management By Objective process and working in the process management function.

Previous Experience

Prior to joining ZRG, Fred was a partner at Battalia Winston, a mid-sized executive search boutique where he provided retained search and organizational consulting to clients in the retail sector. Fred’s experience also includes senior-level Human Resources leadership with many well-known retail brands including Limited Brands, Aeropostale, and Charming Shoppes.

In all of these roles, Fred built high-performing executive teams and developed an internal bench of future leaders. Fred has a keen understanding of creating Human Resources strategies that align with the overall business strategies and objectives. He takes pride in helping companies build a diverse set of HR programs that will attract key hires while also retaining and cultivating leadership talent. Fred approaches each search from the perspective of the End Customer. Rather than simply “filling a job,” Fred’s goal is to build better organizations and better executive teams so that organizations achieve better results.

Education

A graduate of Queens College (CUNY) with a BA in American Literature and American History, Fred has both a master’s degree and PhD from Brown University. He has served on a number of private boards as well as the Board of Directors of Body Central, a regional retailer previously headquartered in Jacksonville, Florida.

Hobbies and Interests

Fred is married and has one son and two daughters. He enjoys reading, film, swimming, and travel.

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