He Revived Old Spice. Can This CEO Save a Sneaker That Lost Its Cool?
One of Bracken Darrell’s first stops as CEO of the company that owns Vans was a visit to the son of its co-founder. Darrell inspected the memorabilia in the office of Steve Van Doren, who is the brand’s ambassador, including photos of Warped Tour, a music festival Vans used to sponsor that helped burnish its counterculture status. Since the company stopped sponsoring the tour and similar events, it has lost more young people than any other age group.
Darrell thought he had hit on a clue to help answer how the shoe brand lost its cool. It is a question a lot of people are asking about the Southern California company, which is dragging down owner VF after years of being its engine of growth. The 60-year-old Darrell, who joined VF in July, is trying to resuscitate the $11.6 billion owner of brands that also include the North Face and Timberland.
He doesn’t have much time. Activist investors are urging him to cut costs and jettison brands. Key to fixing VF is turning around Vans, which is its largest brand and accounts for nearly a third of total revenue.
Vans’s performance has been hurt by a shift in the way VF operates, according to interviews with more than a dozen current and former employees as well as industry executives. The secret to VF’s success for decades was a hands-off approach that kept corporate expenses low and allowed its brands to retain autonomy over key functions such as product development and marketing. In recent years, it chipped away brand independence and consolidated more power at the corporate level.
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