VF’s consumer-first philosophy is best captured in a single phrase: “When we listen, we win.” Behind this seemingly simple statement is an unwavering commitment to uncover and understand the deep emotional connections that consumers have with our brands and to use these insights to better meet their needs. Listening comes in many forms, such as innovative new codesign programs that bring consumers out of the fitting rooms and into our cutting rooms, retail stores that give us direct access to consumers, and rigorous, behind-the-scenes research that takes our product development teams into our consumers’ homes and closets. This focus on consumer insight is a common thread that runs through each of our brands. It helps them remain true to their core values while discovering new ways to expand their reach intelligently and more successfully. It’s how we achieve our vision to grow by building leading lifestyle brands that excite consumers around the world.
loaded The North Face®'s iPhone Snow Report app, giving them instant access to conditions at the world's top ski resports for free.
The North Face® brand builds powerful bonds with athletes and outdoor enthusiasts around the world using a universal message: Never Stop Exploring®. The brand brings this philosophy to life by combining the power of social media with a growing retail presence to inspire outdoor participation and deepen consumers’ relationship with the brand.
In 2009, The North Face® brand partnered with groups such as the American Hiking Society, The Sierra Club, and the International Mountain Biking Association to create PlanetExplore, an online community and portal that helps individuals and families find outdoor events in their area. As part of this effort, retail locations will serve as hubs for activities in twelve key U.S. markets, encouraging events such as hiking, mountain biking, and yoga that give people new reasons to get up and go outside.
This strategy of encouraging outdoor participation is especially important internationally, as The North Face® brand expands into markets with a less defined and developed outdoor culture. For example, this year, the highly successful Global Endurance Challenge, a series of long-distance trail running races on four continents, expanded into China. The inaugural Endurance Challenge in Beijing — whose grueling 100-kilometer course took athletes and fans in the shadow of The Great Wall—shattered all expectations, with over 3,000 athletes and thousands of spectators living and breathing The North Face® brand’s values.
Whether it’s Conrad Anker, one of our top climbers and bloggers, or Renan Ozturk, who posts a lot of video, social media lets our athletes come straight off the mountain and have a conversation with consumers in real time.”
Aaron Carpenter
Vice President, Marketing,
The North Face
For its role in inventing the American premium denim category, 7 For All Mankind® jeans were named one of Ad Age magazine’s "New Products of the Decade." But that doesn’t mean we’re resting on our laurels. In fact, the
7 For All Mankind® brand is embarking on an ambitious expansion plan fueled by powerful consumer insights.
With design and styling eternally in touch with the trends, the 7 For All Mankind® brand is the absolute pinnacle of fashion and style for loyal consumers from Hollywood to Bollywood and everywhere in between. Consumers love the way the brand’s handmade fits, luxurious fabrics and stylish finishes make them look, but there’s another reason for our success that goes even deeper. People love the way they feel when they wear 7 For All Mankind® jeans. And that’s what keeps them coming back.
The process of connecting emotion to fashion takes time.
7 For All Mankind® brand leaders spent three months listening to consumers on two continents in interviews, stores and online. But the results were well worth it. Consumers said that the 7 For All Mankind® brand is bigger than just great-looking and great-fitting denim. They want us to inspire, motivate, and be a part of their lives. They’ve given us permission to be more. These insights are not only informing our design and marketing processes today, but they’re also helping guiding us as we expand into new product categories such as sportswear to become a true lifestyle brand.
Consumers tell us that our jeans make them stand a little bit taller. They feel more confident – like they can take on the world. It goes beyond just jeans. Our customers have a strong emotional tie to the brand.”
Leilani Augustine
Vice President, Marketing & Licensing,
Seven For All Mankind
Licensed sports apparel is a game of inches — where fortunes can rise or fall on the next crack of the bat. That’s why we listen closely to both fans and retailers to succeed, no matter which team wins or loses. The two biggest trends in licensed sports apparel are contradictory. Fans want more product choices so they can make their own unique statement. At the same time, retailers want to do more business with less inventory.
In 2009, we found ways to do both. The VF Tek Patch program offers on-demand fabrication by combining pre-made garments and graphic appliques. Now fans can shop online for a garment made just for them, and retailers can offer more products without having to take on more inventory. Additionally, consumers can create their own personalized jerseys on-site at new Majestic® Fan Zones inside 17 Major League Baseball stadiums.
Consumers have always worn licensed apparel to make a statement about their team and their town. Now they want personalization to make a statement about themselves.”
Michael Johnson
Vice President, Marketing,
VF Licensed Sports Group
VF succeeds internationally because of careful brand management that strikes a balance between the core attributes of our global brands and the needs of local markets. It’s both an art and a science. The science includes sophisticated research methodologies that provide us with consumer insights for specific regions, countries, and, in some cases, cities. The art is the ability to analyze these insights and apply them in ways that create excitement and value for consumers. We believe this approach is especially important in rapidly developing markets such as China, where VF is building a foundation for the sustainable, long-term growth of our brands.
Chinese consumers’ growing desire for the genuine article is a perfect fit for the Lee® brand, which celebrated its 120th birthday in 2009. The challenge is making sure that the brand stays 120 years young, using all its experience to create contemporary styles that appeal to today’s savvy young Chinese consumer.
The Lee® brand has become especially successful by mastering a difficult balancing act: selling an American heritage brand with European styling to Chinese consumers. Over the past five years, Lee® brand revenues have grown at a compound annual rate of more than 40% and the brand is now established as one of the top global denim brands in the country. Today, the Lee® brand is a case study for other VF brands expanding in China, sharing the lessons learned from its 15 years there.
Chinese consumers like to understand a brand’s history and origins. They want to know that we are producing something that’s genuine — not fake.”
Carmen Cheng
Vice President/Managing Director,
Jeanswear Asia
Even the biggest Hollywood blockbusters sometimes need a little editing to really make a splash overseas. The 7 For All Mankind® brand is no different. The brand seamlessly adapts Southern California culture and style to appeal to upscale European tastes, all the while making sure that nothing is lost in the translation.
Seven For All Mankind works to ensure that the contemporary, luxurious “look and feel” of its stores is presented properly overseas, where stores are often located in the heart of Europe’s oldest cities. Europe-based designers blend American silhouettes with global trends and finishings. The product offering is expanded by creating accessories tailored specifically for European tastes. Making sure our products remain trend-right for European consumers not only positively impacts sales, it also helps the brand continue to build its reputation as a style leader in Europe.
We never lose sight of what the 7 For All Mankind® brand stands for. We only incorporate trends or design concepts that are credible and aspirational for this brand.”
Martino Scabbia Guerrini
President, Sportswear & Contemporary Brands
EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa)
Every new market The North Face® brand enters is a new mountain to climb, but the brand always starts at the top.
Our premier positioning — based on four decades of making gear that helps elite athletes perform in the world’s toughest outdoor conditions — is always consistent no matter what the language. That translates into premier distribution and premier product in every new market we enter, from Russia to Poland to Slovenia.
In addition to expanding geographically, we have also expanded the breadth and depth of our product offerings. Today, The North Face® brand is truly a brand for all seasons, with apparel and gear not just for winter summit seekers, but for spring, summer and fall adventurers as well. The brand’s new Activity-Based Model focuses on three key consumer activities: outdoor, action sports and performance. This enables our product teams to create a comprehensive product solution with the end user in mind, rather than broad categories such as jackets or hats. We’re also applying this model to create a broader youth product offering to encourage and inspire outdoor activity.
Everybody has their own Mount Everest to climb. We provide a little bit of that magic and aura whenever somebody buys one of our products.”
Patrik Frisk
President, Outdoor & Action Sports
EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa)
As the world’s largest apparel company, we recognize that we have a responsibility to be an active participant in understanding and reducing our impact on the environment. Many of our businesses have embraced sustainability because it speaks to their brand values; others, because they find that adopting more sustainable practices can lower costs and improve efficiencies. In 2009 we made the commitment to create a sustainable approach to sustainability across our businesses — by implementing a methodical, enterprise-wide plan to reduce energy use and eliminate waste throughout our operations. To be successful, we believe sustainability must be treated like any other business discipline — incorporating solid planning, measurement and accountability. 2010 will mark the launch of our Global Sustainability Plan, a roadmap that will help us understand where we are today and what we can do to improve our use of resources. We have also created a Sustainability Advisory Team with responsibility for implementing the plan across four broad areas: carbon footprint and energy, waste, internal education and measurement tools. Teams in each focus area have already developed an initial set of interim and long-term goals, and a list of action items to achieve them.
The North Face® brand’s “triple bottom line” approach looks at the brand’s actions through three lenses: good for business, good for society and good for the environment. And by focusing on SROI (sustainability return on investment), we’re making sure that our actions will yield efficiencies and savings in our business. In fact, sustainability is so important that we’ve written it into the performance evaluation of every associate.
In July 2009, The North Face® brand issued its first Sustainability Report (thenorthface.com/sustainability). The report details the brand’s many accomplishments toward eliminating waste from its internal operations and measuring its carbon footprint. Now we’re turning an eye toward our supply chain. Since 2008, The North Face® brand has partnered with bluesign®, a company that closely measures the environmental impact of products and how they’re made. bluesign® audits not only help preserve natural resources, they also reduce costs by finding and eliminating waste. The program has been so successful that The North Face® brand is planning a fourfold increase in the number of styles containing bluesign® certified materials from Spring 2010 to Fall 2010.
Sustainability is part of The North Face® brand’s DNA. We are an outdoor company. Our consumers are passionate about outdoor activities. And when you are outdoors and you are active in the outdoors it’s natural to want to protect it.”
Letitia Webster
Director, CSR & Corporate Communications
The North Face
As a global lifestyle brand that takes its inspiration from the water, Nautica believes that sustainability is a business imperative. In 2009, we began a partnership with the non-profit Oceana®, an organization dedicated to protecting the world’s oceans. In addition to helping protect a resource so vital to our brand and our consumers, this partnership is helping us motivate and educate every Nautica® associate to make sustainability part of their everyday responsibilities.
The Nautica® brand’s commitment also extends beyond water to all areas within its operations. In 2009, the brand and the VF Sportswear coalition joined the EPA Climate Leaders program and completed our first greenhouse-gas inventory of our owned, operated and leased facilities. As a first step towards reducing our carbon emissions, we are retrofitting/ installing reduced wattage bulbs and sensors in three outlet stores with the expectation of achieving significant energy and cost savings. We’re also making strides in waste reduction, such as requiring thinner polybag shipping materials.
Despite all the evidence, there’s a misconception that it’s expensive to integrate sustainability into business. Using fewer resources means lower costs for us and for our partners. So it’s completely consistent with our business’s focus on reducing costs.”
Allison Kohll
Manager, VF Sportswear Social Compliance
The strength of VF’s leadership is best shown by our performance in tough times. To maintain this competitive advantage, we are establishing best-in-class leadership development programs to make sure we continue to excel in the years to come. The skill set of the next generation of VF leaders will encompass consumer insight and market research, as well as disciplined innovation processes that build brand strength. They will be able to apply a global lens to capitalize on local opportunities and leverage a wide diversity of perspectives to solve global problems. Our leadership training program is built on two principles: leaders teach leadership, and leaders learn best by doing. We’re investing in programs that bring our leaders together to share ideas, whether it’s our Chairman, Eric Wiseman, teaching in the VF Leadership Institute or our Supply Chain University that brings together leaders from Asia, Europe and North America. In 2009, leadership initiatives such as these helped VF gain important industry recognition. VF was named one of Fortune® magazine’s “Top Companies for Leaders in North America,” and was also included in the magazine’s “World’s Most Admired Companies” list for the fourth consecutive year.
For many people, a performance review is a form you fill out once a year and then file away. At VF, we’re changing that perception with Maximizing Performance, our new best practice performance management program. Maximizing Performance transforms the act of giving and soliciting feedback into an everyday business tool that makes our associates and our business stronger. Like an elite athlete with a personal coach, the goal is to make feedback more productive, more positive and more frequent. It’s an enormous commitment to affect the lives of more than 26,000 associates, and makes it easier to identify and groom the next generation of VF leaders. And it’s already starting to have an impact. The most common response we’ve heard from managers who have started Maximizing Performance training is a request for more feedback on how to give feedback.
Performance management isn’t just about individual results. We want to evaluate our leaders on how well they develop a team and align their personal goals with our business goals.”
Ruth Kennedy
Director, Organization Development
VF is growing rapidly in Asia. And our Human Resources team is working just as fast, keeping pace in a critical region and laying the foundation for continued growth.
VF Asia’s Human Resources and Administration Team was honored with a 2009 BEST Award by the American Society of Training and Development for using learning and development programs as a strategic tool to get business results. The team played an instrumental role in the launch of our Vans® and Kipling® brands in China, helping to support these fast-growing businesses. In 2009 alone, the China team managed the recruitment and training of 162 office associates and 739 retail associates in our fast-expanding shop-in-shop program.
Our China team works hard to understand each brand’s challenges and opportunities. We are proud that their proactive approach and continual drive to exceed expectations have been recognized.”
Jacqui Algar
Vice President, Human Resources, Asia
At VF, innovation is not an abstract concept. It is a practical, disciplined approach to problem solving that applies consumer insights to global opportunities to create value for consumers. Innovation starts at the top, with leaders who think and act differently, who collaborate to find new ideas both inside and outside of VF and who share what they’ve learned across our entire organization. This commitment to shaping the VF of tomorrow is already getting results. We’re using the principles of codesign to create products that consumers love and retailers can’t wait to stock. We’re using technological tools that help us predict consumer preferences before we’ve purchased a single piece of fabric. We’re using marketing strategies that push the limits of the new digital-media landscape. And we’ve only just begun. Our goal is to embed new processes and programs into every brand and every region, so that innovation becomes part of every VF associate’s job description. We’re creating innovation platforms to pursue opportunities that no single coalition or brand would have the resources to tackle alone. And we’ve embarked upon partnerships with other innovation leaders to share best practices across industries.
The Wrangler® brand is world-famous for its authentic, rugged jeans. In the United States, the brand is using cutting-edge technology to more intelligently broaden its product offering and extend its reach to consumers.
The Wrangler® brand’s optimized assortment tool incorporates real-time consumer input into the design process. It facilitates an online dialogue with consumers that has enabled them to codesign the brand’s entire shirt line. By capturing the preferences of a wide variety of consumers early in the process, we can focus on a few key styles that will appeal to the broadest assortment of consumers. Or, put simply, Wrangler produces fewer styles but sells more of them than ever before. We’re also analyzing how the styles work together to present the brand’s entire offering. We’ve learned that changing just one shirt — an orange shirt, to be precise — changed the way consumers viewed the entire rack and motivated them to purchase more.
It doesn’t take a sophisticated analysis to understand the benefits. Unit sales of Wrangler shirts are up nearly 30% since 2008, breaking the 10 million-unit barrier. And retailers are now dedicating more floor space than ever to Wrangler products.
Now, when you walk into a store, Wrangler is not just a jean on the rack, it’s a complete outfit. It’s a lifestyle brand. That is a very big step for jeanswear.”
Joe Bugni
Vice President/General Manager,
Mass Sportswear
In the United States, the Lee® brand has raised the bar in product innovation to revolutionize its relationships with retailers and consumers. It all starts with a secret. The Lee® brand’s Slender Secret® jeans contain a wonder fabric that stretches for a comfortable yet form-fitting fit, but never stretches out. The fabric recovers after years of wearing and washing so that the jeans fit as well as they did in the dressing room. The Lee® brand was the first to introduce this fabric with its mid-tier department store customers.
But the real secret is the brand’s commitment to fit innovation based on intense consumer research. We realized that there was an opportunity to design something specifically for women who wanted fit-flattering styles without sacrificing fashion — jeans that were built to make them look great and feel more confident.
This insight has fueled a winning streak for the Lee® brand in the U.S. In the past several years, we’ve introduced product innovations that have redefined the women’s jeans category with mid-tier customers, while significantly expanding the Lee® brand’s market share. Our customers are increasingly comfortable with testing less and buying more, and the Lee® brand is using that trust to transform its biggest customers into better customers.
It’s getting better every year. Retailers now look at us as the leader in fit innovation. For the past five years, we’ve launched a new fit solution every year.”
Bill Lynch
Vice President/General Manager,
Lee (Female)
Facebook. MySpace. Twitter. Some may dismiss them as fads of youth culture. But when a brand has helped define that youth culture, they naturally become part of its DNA. The Vans® brand has successfully harnessed the power of digital and social media to communicate its iconic and authentic brand message to a youth audience that refuses to play by the rules of conventional marketing.
Founded in 1966, Vans® created the original skate shoe. Today, Vans® is a multifaceted brand that taps into many subcultures from skating and action sports to multiple genres of music and art. The Vans® brand speaks with an authentic voice in each of these communities by letting their passionate brand champions — the athletes, musicians and artists — communicate the brand’s values directly to consumers. This strategy has transformed the Vans® brand into a social media powerhouse. In 2009, 18 million unique visitors went to vans.com and its seven blogs, making it far and away the most viewed action sports brand on the Web. Vans® brand videos on YouTube® have been viewed 1.3 million times. The brand’s main Twitter® feed communicates with 18,000 consumers following in real time. And the brand was named one of the "Facebook® 50" by Slate magazine’s The Big Money Web site. Every one of those numbers represents a real, one-to-one connection between the consumer and the brand in a way that traditional marketing strategies just can’t match.
If we don’t speak with an authentic voice that’s true to our consumer, we don’t have a prayer.”