January 16, 2026
Photo courtesy of NRF
NRF 2026 Rewind: What’s The Key To Successful Brand Transformations?
In a session at the NRF Big Show, the global brand presidents of VF Corp’s top brands — Caroline Brown, The North Face; Sun Choe, Vans; and Nina Flood, Timberland — discussed the strategies they’re employing to transform their brands.
“Transformation, as we all know, in this room, is one of the most overused words in business,” said Mindy Grossman — vice chair of Consello and former CEO of Weight Watchers and Home Shopping Network — who led the discussion. “Brands think that if they have a new logo, they put a sign on the wall and a new mission, they’re transformed. True transformation is large, holistic and often radical change. And this is not an easy thing, among other things, it requires a visionary leader, the alignment of the organization at every level, the support of the board, investment dollars and, yes, very importantly, resilience.”
Brand Transformations Can Vary From Retailer to Retailer, But Share Commonalities
Brown, who assumed leadership of The North Face in June 2024, said she was fortunate that the brand has some “incredible assets,” including the brand’s 59-year history and passionate employee and fan base. However, she added that, “Like many brands who have been around for a long time, we started to sway and chase areas that maybe we had some business in, but maybe we didn’t really have any business being in.”
The North Face has benefited from simplifying its focus on three areas: snow, climb, and trail.
“Making that decision drove all the other decisions of how we structured the company from an organizational perspective, from a marketing and a messaging perspective, from what we put forth to consumers in our retail stores and our wholesale outlets,” said Brown.
Choe, the former Lululemon executive who began leading Vans in July 2024, said she’s prioritizing having the “right team,” aligning around Vans’ purpose, and emphasizing “product excellence” over volume. She also stressed the importance of “dimensionalizing” the brand — or understanding Vans’ reach, rooted in the “Off The Wall” mindset, extends well beyond skate to California lifestyle and music and arts.
Choe likewise preaches resilience to her team. She said, “This is not for the faint of the heart, and results do lag after decisions are made. So, it really is being able to be confident in your choices and know that you’re doing the right thing and to really stay the course.”
Flood, who assumed leadership of Timberland in December 2023, observed that Timberland’s organizational structure, go-to-market processes, and global brand architecture needed an “overhaul.” But her team particularly “needed to have a complete and total mind shift change” to better understand Timberland’s appeal, particularly with fashion-seekers.
“I wanted to make sure that the teams had a focal point, a safe harbor that they could return to and be inspired by,” said Flood. “So, we set upon creating a compelling vision that was centered on the power of the brand and a plan to execute it. And this meant really getting a deeper understanding of our consumer and how to connect with them.”
Flood said “true transformation” is more than making incremental changes. She said, “You need bold leadership…You have to be willing to challenge everything. So, all those sacred objects, the legacies, the untouchables. They’re all up for looking at and investigating to see what we need to transform.”
BrainTrust
Neil Saunders
Managing Director, GlobalData
Scott Benedict
Founder & CEO, Benedict Enterprises LLC
Peter Charness
Retail Strategy - UST Global
Recent Discussions
Discussion Questions
What do you see as critical factors to executing a ‘true transformation’ of a brand or organization?
What do you take from the steps being taken by the leaders of The North Face, Vans, and Timberland?
Poll
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Not put too fine a point on it but……Don’t lose your existing customers faster than you can get new ones. More than a few brands (mostly former companies) have tried to attract “other/more/different” customers and in the process immediately lost their core base and not survived the lag until the newer target audience starts to buy.
Extend your reach with existing customers, position your brand for growth with new customers, communicate your benefits and advantages to both, and place each brand correctly within the target market you are aiming to grow. This is direct, simple, and clear as a marketing message/position should be.
A true brand or organizational transformation goes far beyond surface-level marketing changes. It requires a clear strategic vision, deep consumer insight, and alignment across product, merchandising, supply chain, marketing, and culture. The most successful transformations are led from the top, supported by the board, and backed with real investment — not just cost-cutting. Just as important, leadership must be willing to make difficult trade-offs, focus on fewer priorities, and move resources toward the areas that will matter most to future customers, even when the payoff is not immediate.
What stands out in the approaches taken by The North Face, Vans, and Timberland is their renewed focus on core brand purpose and category leadership. The North Face has sharpened its performance positioning around key outdoor activities, allowing product innovation, storytelling, and community engagement to reinforce one another. Vans is working to rebalance cultural relevance while expanding lifestyle appeal, and Timberland is refining its brand architecture while modernizing its go-to-market strategy. In each case, transformation is being treated as a business reinvention, not just a branding refresh.
The broader lesson is that successful transformations are strategy-led, consumer-anchored, and operationally executed. Cosmetic changes without changes to operating models, talent, incentives, and data capabilities rarely deliver lasting impact. Brands that thrive are those that reconnect with why they exist, modernize how they serve customers, and build organizations capable of evolving as consumer expectations continue to shift.
It sounds obvious, but a successful transformation takes the good things about a brand and preserves and modernizes them while ditching the things that no longer work. All of this needs to be done in reference to the customer. The latter point is key and is why a transformation like Abercrombie & Fitch worked, while the Ron Johnson transformation of JCPenney did not!
Timing. Pace. Understanding just how much change both the internal team, AND the external team (supply chain) AND the customer can actually understand and digest. ANF will always be known as a brilliant transformation. But it took, what…6-7 years? That’s patience and discipline. JCP tried to do it in a year or two. There were some good ideas on the table, and some really reckless ideas as well. Reckless change that tries to get rammed through does not end well.
True transformation only works when strategy is embedded in daily execution, how teams decide, build, and serve customers. When customers can clearly feel the change in product, experience, and consistency, transformation becomes real rather than performative.
What leaders of The North Face, Vans, and Timberland demonstrate is that meaningful transformation comes from disciplined focus, courageous choices, and sustained execution not from surface-level change.
Is there a retail organization or brand in the business that shouldn’t be in some level of transformation these days? Isn’t that the lesson of the past 3 decades…??? Retailers that evolved/transformed are doing OK these days. Target and Walmart did a pretty good job at evolving. How did the mid-tier department stores do at transforming? It was never enough to just bolt on an ecommerce business and it won’t be enough to just bolt on some AI fixes. Sometimes it’s rewriting the DNA of the business. Like ANF. And look at the time and patience that transformation took. JCP tried to transform in a year or two way back when. Nope. What would it have taken for Sears to transform and become what Amazon is today…??? Or at least still be a meaningful part of the retail scene?
Another way to view it is that if a retailer or brand is constantly pressure testing their focus and clarity against the competition and in the eyes of the customer, then they won’t get so far behind the curve that they find a dramatic transformation is necessary.
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In a session at the NRF Big Show, Abercrombie & Fitch Co.’s CEO Fran Horowitz shared…Is the Luxury Department Store Facing Extinction?
Are luxury retail stores expected to go the way of the dodo?
Not put too fine a point on it but……Don’t lose your existing customers faster than you can get new ones. More than a few brands (mostly former companies) have tried to attract “other/more/different” customers and in the process immediately lost their core base and not survived the lag until the newer target audience starts to buy.
Extend your reach with existing customers, position your brand for growth with new customers, communicate your benefits and advantages to both, and place each brand correctly within the target market you are aiming to grow. This is direct, simple, and clear as a marketing message/position should be.
A true brand or organizational transformation goes far beyond surface-level marketing changes. It requires a clear strategic vision, deep consumer insight, and alignment across product, merchandising, supply chain, marketing, and culture. The most successful transformations are led from the top, supported by the board, and backed with real investment — not just cost-cutting. Just as important, leadership must be willing to make difficult trade-offs, focus on fewer priorities, and move resources toward the areas that will matter most to future customers, even when the payoff is not immediate.
What stands out in the approaches taken by The North Face, Vans, and Timberland is their renewed focus on core brand purpose and category leadership. The North Face has sharpened its performance positioning around key outdoor activities, allowing product innovation, storytelling, and community engagement to reinforce one another. Vans is working to rebalance cultural relevance while expanding lifestyle appeal, and Timberland is refining its brand architecture while modernizing its go-to-market strategy. In each case, transformation is being treated as a business reinvention, not just a branding refresh.
The broader lesson is that successful transformations are strategy-led, consumer-anchored, and operationally executed. Cosmetic changes without changes to operating models, talent, incentives, and data capabilities rarely deliver lasting impact. Brands that thrive are those that reconnect with why they exist, modernize how they serve customers, and build organizations capable of evolving as consumer expectations continue to shift.
It sounds obvious, but a successful transformation takes the good things about a brand and preserves and modernizes them while ditching the things that no longer work. All of this needs to be done in reference to the customer. The latter point is key and is why a transformation like Abercrombie & Fitch worked, while the Ron Johnson transformation of JCPenney did not!
Timing. Pace. Understanding just how much change both the internal team, AND the external team (supply chain) AND the customer can actually understand and digest. ANF will always be known as a brilliant transformation. But it took, what…6-7 years? That’s patience and discipline. JCP tried to do it in a year or two. There were some good ideas on the table, and some really reckless ideas as well. Reckless change that tries to get rammed through does not end well.
True transformation only works when strategy is embedded in daily execution, how teams decide, build, and serve customers. When customers can clearly feel the change in product, experience, and consistency, transformation becomes real rather than performative.
What leaders of The North Face, Vans, and Timberland demonstrate is that meaningful transformation comes from disciplined focus, courageous choices, and sustained execution not from surface-level change.
Is there a retail organization or brand in the business that shouldn’t be in some level of transformation these days? Isn’t that the lesson of the past 3 decades…??? Retailers that evolved/transformed are doing OK these days. Target and Walmart did a pretty good job at evolving. How did the mid-tier department stores do at transforming? It was never enough to just bolt on an ecommerce business and it won’t be enough to just bolt on some AI fixes. Sometimes it’s rewriting the DNA of the business. Like ANF. And look at the time and patience that transformation took. JCP tried to transform in a year or two way back when. Nope. What would it have taken for Sears to transform and become what Amazon is today…??? Or at least still be a meaningful part of the retail scene?
Another way to view it is that if a retailer or brand is constantly pressure testing their focus and clarity against the competition and in the eyes of the customer, then they won’t get so far behind the curve that they find a dramatic transformation is necessary.