Three years ago, Bracken Darrell walked into VF Corp with a problem most incoming CEOs would run from: a $10B+ apparel holding company with declining revenue, shrinking gross margins, too much debt, and a portfolio of iconic brands (The North Face, Vans, Timberland, Dickies, Supreme) that had lost their way. Today, the company is growing again, profitability is expanding from under 5% to a projected 10%, and 75% of the portfolio is back in growth mode (up from 43% when he arrived). “I’m just such a growth junkie,” Darrell tells Ken. And he’s methodically rebuilding one of the most important apparel companies in the world.

In this episode of The Retail Pilot, Ken sits down with Bracken Darrell, President and CEO of VF Corporation, to unpack how he’s turning around one of the largest apparel holding companies in the world. They explore his unconventional path from Logitech to apparel, the Vans story (how it grew from $2B to $4B and then collapsed back to $2B), what Supreme taught him about scarcity and no-discounting, why he still believes wholesale will grow faster than DTC, his trees-plants-and-seeds framework for allocating capital, and how VF is using AI to shrink product development cycles from 22 months to under 90 days.

In this episode you’ll learn:

• Why Bracken took the VF Corp job and what the board saw in a non-apparel executive
• The real reasons VF was in a tough spot in 2023: debt, declining growth, shrinking gross margins
• The Supreme acquisition ($2.1B) – what went right, what went wrong, and what he kept from the business model
• Why “scarcity + no discounting” is the model he’s replicating across The North Face, Vans and Timberland
• The Vans story: from $2B to $4B to nearly half – what happened and how Sun Choe is leading the turnaround
• How The North Face balances performance heritage with becoming a global lifestyle brand
• Why Bracken believes wholesale will keep growing faster than DTC, even in a DTC-obsessed industry
• How AI is helping VF shrink product development cycles from 22 months to under 90 days
• Live streaming in retail: the Timberland Soho store story and what it signals for commerce
• Bracken’s leadership philosophy on design, long-term orientation, and growth

This episode is for you if: you’re a retail CEO navigating a turnaround, a brand leader thinking about scarcity vs. ubiquity in pricing, a merchant weighing wholesale vs. DTC balance, an operator deploying AI across product development, or anyone who wants to hear how one of the largest apparel holding companies in the world is being rebuilt.

Don’t forget to subscribe to The Retail Pilot podcast for more conversations with retail industry leaders and visionaries shaping the future of commerce.

If you missed our last episode, where Nitin Mangtani, EVP and GM of Salesforce Commerce Cloud, unpacks how retail commerce is being rebuilt for the agentic AI era, be sure to tune in.

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