Anna Bakst is out at Kate Spade.
On Thursday, Kate Spade parent company Tapestry, which also includes Coach and Stuart Weitzman in the greater company portfolio, said the brand’s chief executive officer would be ending her tenure with the company at the end of the calendar year.
“We thank Anna for the passion and commitment she has brought to her work at Kate Spade,” Jide Zeitlin, chairman and chief executive officer of Tapestry, said in a press release.
Joanne Crevoiserat, Tapestry’s chief financial officer, will be in charge of the brand, working with Kate Spade’s senior leadership team as Tapestry searches for a new ceo.
“We are moving ahead quickly with a search process,” Zeitlin said. “Our strong Kate Spade leadership team, working with Joanne, will take the business forward aligned with Nicola Glass’ creative vision. Quarter-to-date, Kate Spade’s performance is on track and we are confident in our ability to meet our holiday season goals.””
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Zeitlin, who took the helm at Tapestry in September, replacing former ceo Victor Luis, had his work cut out for him. After August’s disappointing earnings results, the Tapestry board was clear that it had replaced Luis because he was not delivering the results they wanted.
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Shares of Tapestry, which closed up 2 percent Thursday to $26.34 a share, are down 23.8 percent year-to-date. The Kate Spade brand is perhaps the company’s weakest link.
Last quarter, sales at Kate Spade fell 6 percent to $306 million, down from $325 million a year earlier.
The products haven’t been resonating with shoppers the way they were a decade ago. Zeitlin said this is partially because products introduced by Kate Spade creative director Nicola Glass, who was tapped by the company in November 2017, are still making their way into stores and outlets in North America. Zeitlin estimated that only about 25 percent of products in North American stores this fall were from the Nicola Glass collection.
“At Kate, we’re continuing to work through opportunities to have a more fulsome product line, a more fulsome product architecture,” Zeitlin told WWD in November, after the earnings call. “We’re still working through really finding that right balance between sophistication, between witty, novelty, understanding how much color to have in the product line. Those are all action steps that are in our control that we need to continue to deliberately take if we’re really going to reignite organic growth in that business.”