You can have a great brand & great product, but still have a challenging business if not effectively managed to its full potential & staying maniacally in tune with your audience.
Global denim powerhouse Levi's has had is share of ups & downs as cited by current CEO Chip Bergh who has been at the helm of the top role since 2011. One of the the major challenges Bergh speaks to in the article is not being decisive & action-oriented towards off-loading underperforming talent. And in the retail industry talent can and usually does make or break the business.
But, with a brand as BIG & vast as Levi's there's a lot more intricacy at play given the brand's global scale & vertical + wholesale business model. The latter greatly increases points of distribution & customer reach, however, it dilutes the brand's operational execution & consistency for the consumer.
Maintaining a consistent, curated brand experience across all the channels/audiences is easier said than done. This oftentimes translates to a varying degree of brand projection from geography to geography & channel to channel.
The CEO of the world’s most famous denim jeans company said he knew from his second day on the job that the best way to turn around the company was to fire more than half of his executives.
“The easiest way to change the culture is to change the people. I had 11 direct reports, and in the first 18 months, nine of them were gone,” Charles Bergh, CEO of Levi’s Strauss, said.
Still, Bergh told CNBC’s Christine Tan that his biggest regret was not firing the wrong people fast enough.
“My biggest regret is that we didn’t lean into some of these great leaders, and we lost some because I held on to somebody longer than I should have.”
#levis #retail #brandstrategy #brandmanagement
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