There were a couple of Bracken Darrell sightings this summer.
The newly named president and chief executive officer of VF Corp. spoke at the company’s annual meeting in late July and after its first-quarter results were released in early August.
But as he had just moved into the corner office, Darrell deferred the deep dive on just what went wrong at the parent of Vans, The North Face and Supreme. Instead, he stuck to encouraging generalities that projected optimism, like: “Our brands are as strong as I expected. Our team is loaded with talent. Our business is simply not performing at the level equal to those, but it’s because of things in our control.…This company has what it takes.”
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For many years, it seemed like an unshakable truth that VF, indeed, had what it takes.
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The company rode high on the strength of its portfolio of brands, its scale with revenues of more than $11 billion, its stable management, its supply chain savvy and its powerful balance sheet.
But with supply chain missteps, weakness at Vans and a slow start with the $2.1 billion Supreme acquisition, Wall Street has stepped back from VF and is now waiting to see what comes next and how the various turnaround efforts pan out.
Darrell has promised something more in depth this fall.
“I’m looking forward to speaking with all of you again at our second quarter earnings results [around late October] to share my perspectives on my first few months in the role,” he told analysts.
Darrell has experience doing this kind of thing. He drove the growth of Logitech as CEO and also helped turn around Old Spice while at Procter & Gamble.
This fall, it will start to become more clear — to Wall Street and everyone else — just how he plans to get VF back on track.