Funeral services will be held on Saturday at St. Mary’s Church in Stamford, Conn., for Michael Delaney, founder of The Ralsey Group.
Delaney, 61, died at his home in Stamford on Dec. 27 of lung cancer, according to his daughter Hallie.
While Delaney spent 40 years working in the fashion industry, he is best known for starting the private-label knitwear and sportswear company Ralsey Group in 1989 with his wife, Jamie. The company, which included Ralsey, RGL New York, Rocket Girl, Rocket 898 and R898, was acquired by Li & Fung in 2004. Both stayed on, with Michael Delaney helping to build LF USA’s apparel business into a $1 billion operation; he was named group president of apparel in 2008 and became an LF USA executive board member and an executive director in 2010. The couple retired from LF USA in 2011.
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“He loved what he did — we both did, which was the beauty of our relationship. I was passionate about design, and Michael was into business and sourcing. The travel was part of it, too,” Jamie Delaney said. “In 1987, we started Hillside Design, got married and had our first child. That was a big year for us.”
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That was also the time that Michael Delaney had the foresight to establish a Hong Kong outpost before opening his own office there. The fact that he was one of the first U.S. apparel executives to incorporate and oversee a design and merchandising staff in Hong Kong, as well as in New York, proved to be a selling point with Li & Fung many years later, his wife said. She and her husband started The Ralsey Group in 1989, after a falling out with their Hillside Design partner, she said.
Former Li & Fung chief executive officer Bruce Rockowitz, who is now ceo and vice chairman of the Global Brands Group, said, “Ralsey was the first company that we bought in the U.S., in 2004, and we realized immediately just how important Michael would be to our business in the U.S. Michael was instrumental in the growth of our apparel business specifically and LF USA generally from the day he became part of the LF family until the day he retired.”
One of three sons, Delaney grew up in Huntington, N.Y., and got his start in the apparel business at the age of 18, after his brother John arranged for him to interview at Milea-Sinclair, where he landed a job in shipping. The company’s president, Michael Ward, recognized Delaney’s organizational skills and tapped him to handle overseas production.
“Michael was very much someone who took charge and took responsibility. He kept things moving. This is a very time-sensitive industry, but he understood that you can’t get caught up in who-did-what and who-did-what-wrong. Michael knew you had to learn from your mistakes and move on,” his wife said.
In addition to his wife, two brothers and daughter Hallie, who works in marketing at Global Brands Group, Delaney is survived by his sons Luke and Ryan.