(upbeat music) Thanks for tuning into the glossy podcast. I'm your host, Jill Manoff, and today, I sit down with two leaders of the Vera Bradley brand, President and CEO, Jackie Ardry, and CMO Ellison Hyatt. Under its Project Restoration Initiative, announced in early 2023, Vera Bradley is making several changes to set the company up for long-term profitable growth, and just last week, Vera Bradley announced its first 360-degree rebrand in its 40-plus year history. I wanted to ask Jackie and Allison what inspired the big refresh and what customer the brand is targeting now. I also wanted to ask about the choice of Zoe Deschanel as brand ambassador and plans to leverage her platform to the benefit of the company. Welcome to you for Jackie Hyatt. - Hi, Jill. Thanks for having us today. - Thanks for being here and hi, Allison. - Thanks for being here. - Hi, thank you for having us. - Exciting time for the brand. You're both newer to the company, new-er, new-ish, Jackie since November 2022. I believe Allison since January 2023. Let's start there. What drew you guys to the brand? What drew you, Jackie, and what was the first order of business? - Vera Bradley is such an iconic brand, and that was the, I think the biggest motivator for me initially was that there's just so much love for this brand and so much emotional connection. I had a personal experience with the brand myself through my daughter, and so when I got the call and started to explore the possibility of coming on board, it was very intriguing. And one of the things that's so special about the brand is that for a relatively small revenue, we have pretty high awareness. And not only do we have high awareness, but just a lot of positivity around this, what we do and what we sell. So that was really, the emotional connection first was what attracted me here. And then meeting, I have to say next, probably meeting the founders who were and are just such inspirational women that kind of sealed it. And that has really provided some incredible support and encouragement through this journey that has been something that was really unexpected. - Yes, I didn't know a lot about the founders until I was preparing for this meeting. They're still involved, they're on the board, is that, am I understanding it right? - One of them is still on the board. And, but I would say that they are available to us whenever we need them. And they've just provided, they've been around, they're not really in the building very much, but except if we ask them to be. So they have been just kind of a treasured part of this whole experience, I would say. And people who work here who have been here, we have a lot of tenured team. They are delighted when they see them and when they come in the building. And it was important to us that we understood, especially initially, just the history. And because this is a rebrand, we're not changing what Fira Bradley stands for or what people love about this brand, and we're just enhancing it. So it's been so rewarding to kind of bring the founders in periodically and just listen to what they have to say. And just their opinion about where we're going. And I can say, without hesitation, that they have been our biggest cheerleaders and champions through this whole process. And that's a wonderful thing for not only the leadership, but for the whole company to be able to say that they can't wait, they sneak in here and they try to get their hands on samples, which is really encouraging. I love that we always laugh and say, we have to, every time that they come in the building, we have to check their bags to make sure that they're not leaving with anything. But it really is, it's really kind of a fun testament and a nod to what we're doing, which is great. - There's a lot of that conversation about kind of like as you evolve, is this true to the Vira Bradley brand and our DNA? Like is that a lot of it? - It's, I think that was our intent for sure. And when we started with the whole transformation, I'm gonna let Alison talk about that a little bit too, but it's, we never intended to change this brand. It's, that was not the assignment. The assignment was really about making it more relevant and modern so that we could draw more people to it. - Yes, I love it. Well, Alison, you have amazing experience, Starbucks and Amazon and crazy times. Like tell me about what drew you to the brand, what opportunity you saw. - Yeah, so first, similar to Jackie, my, I was aware of the brand. I had experience in the brand actually through my mom growing up, she had a Vira Bradley makeup bag, which there's something magical about your mom's makeup bag. And she would, was very specific about having a Vira Bradley one. So I was very familiar with the brand. And then, you know, I'm also a fan of just the idea and the concepts of why the brand was created. And then the more you start to look into it as Jackie said about these two women and what they set out to do and creating this whole company, you know, 40 plus years ago is really admirable. And I get very excited about being able to further somebody's vision that they had for their brand. And once again, as Jackie said, that you meet the founders and you understand that it was really about bringing color to our world. And just where the print, where the color, where the brightness, just as they say live colorfully, how can you not fall in love with that as a mission to bring forward? And again, whenever you talk to somebody as Jackie mentioned and you say, I work at Vira Bradley inside of the first 10 seconds of that conversation, they're going to have some memory or some great story about their Vira Bradley bag. So, you know, being a person that loves brands, that's sort of catnip for me. And then I would finally say it's very important not only having this brand that you believe in, but also knowing what the culture of the brand is going to be. And that starts with the leadership. And I'd be remiss if I didn't say that having Jackie be the leader, we are former what we say works spouses. We work together back in the day. And when you have a really great partnership with somebody, that is really a career high. And so to have that opportunity twice in a lifetime was really exciting. So great brand, great leadership. I couldn't say no to that. - When you guys both talk about the brand's amazing reputation, I mean, I would love to know what the reputation is that you're talking about, what that is. In my head, you know, I always thought of it. Well, when I was in my 20s, there was this whole, it's kind of how pre-teens and teens are talking about like, it was like this preppy girl would be carrying it and her mom sometimes would be carrying it. And I think of the great printed, soft quilted duffel, iconic. Like, is that what it's best known for? Or is that just me? - No, I think Jill, you're absolutely right. I think that's where people start. And that's a, it continues to be an important acquisition item for us. Even after all these years, people come to us and a lot of times their first purchase is the duffel bag. But it's, I think it's beyond that. It's beyond just the item. It's about the connection that comes with the item and the story. It's, I've never experienced anything like this and all the brands that I've worked for that people have the story and the print and whatever that is, it means something to them. And we always say in our offices, it's pretty amazing that there's, all the prints in our history are on the walls here. And so when people come to the office and visit, they love to walk the wall and identify what print they fell in love with or have a memory of. And so it's very powerful. So when we set out to do this transformation, we certainly didn't want to lose that. And we didn't want to lose the print part of it or the quilted cotton part of it because that's so much of our heritage. But when you think about what people wear today, that is not necessarily a go-to for everyone, right? Not everyone wants to wear print. And the founding mission of our, of Pat and Barb was really to make things more colorful. So they started with prints and that's kind of what took off early on, but this new line for us represents a whole new way to wear a color, lots of-- not that we didn't have solids in our line before. We certainly did, but they were more kind of the black and navy and that was surrounded by a lot of prints. So there's a better balance now. I mean, what we're offering is much more balanced, solid, and print, and from a fabric point of view, also a lot more choices in fabric than just quilted cotton, although we still obviously have quilted cotton and that's core to us and we'll never not have that. But it allows, I think, the brand to be experienced by a lot more people. And no matter what you wear or what your style is, there's something for everyone now in this new launch. And that's what I'm really proud of. I'm proud of what the team has delivered on that because it still feels iconic and it still feels like very broadly. But there's a lot more choices for people. For sure. And are you staying-- have you remained and will you remain in this whole bag accessories world? We're still there, yeah? Yes, for sure. One of the things that we definitely have more of is bags and more fashion bags, more fashion silhouettes. We have departed from that more in recent years. But we have a whole wall of crossbody bags, for example. I mean, that's what everybody's wearing now. And it makes sense for people's life. We need to be hands-free a lot of times. And so we have a lot of crossbody styles in the line. But we also have our tried and true backpacks. They're updated styling, a little bit of updated styling. But all the things that have been iconic for us, we still have. We're just offering them in new fabrics, amazing soft leathers and nylons updated and upgraded and softer cotton. So everything we really did set to improve here. Well, I tell you, Tatiana, our managing editor who attended your-- I guess it was like a press event or a launch event. She walked away with a scarf that looked silk. I don't know. But she was showing it to me and talking about how she was blowing her mind, how cute. She was like, it's way cuter than I expected. I didn't know. And then she's like, I'm going to wear it as a top. And she was showing-- she's just so cool. Wow, I love it. I love it. Oh my gosh, Alison, tell me. I mean, every marketer wants to work with a brand that has this rich story and heritage and all the things that you're talking about right now. I don't know, how are you leaning into that now? Well, I think as Jackie said, it really was a fine art, a fine balance. Because when you talk about wanting to modernize and elevate and refresh while also giving nod to the heritage and not losing who you are and making sure that you're still recognizable in the spirit for what the brand was created for, you might look a little differently, but people understand why you got there. That was a tremendous balancing act, if you will. And we did a lot of research with existing customers, with new customers, obviously looking out there in the market of what's available. And it has been an incredible amount of work, but incredibly rewarding. And I really appreciate Jackie calling this effort project restoration, because it's one thing to actually build a new company, if you will. But there's something else about really restoring. Over time, we see that a lot of companies might slightly drift an inch a year away from where they originally started. And then all of a sudden, they're 10 inches away from where they started, right? And I think we really had this unique opportunity to think about it and also do this holistically. So it wasn't just the product. I'll tell people we're doing a restoration, like, oh, a new logo. Well, that's one, probably the smallest thing that we did is a new logo, a new color, but the new product, the new store experience, new web experience. It really was making sure that all of the touch points exuded what we wanted to say about Vera Bradley of today. We'll be right back after this quick break. Yes, that makes good sense. When you were talking to you-- well, who is your core customer prior to this project restoration? Who would you say was your core customer then? And what do you anticipate will be their response to this rebrand? I'll give you that one, Jackie. Oh, sure. So first of all, we have the luxury of having a pretty dispersed customer base in terms of age. So if you look from-- we used to say that we served anywhere from 8 to 80. That was something that we said. And so we went back and said, well, we really have to focus a little bit more. And we looked historically at where we used to have a lot more customers coming to the brand, not only new customers, but just repeat customers. And landed in this curious place where we saw it became our new target, ultimately, that this 35 to 54-year-old. And we were trying to unpack why maybe our penetration in that customer demographic was not as-- not really where we wanted it. And we think that over time, as Allison said a minute ago, we did sort of start to drift. And we definitely did not have as many silhouettes and styles for her life as we did when we had higher penetration. So this was a place where we could look to history for some clues and said, OK, well, when we had more customers in this age range, what were we doing? And what we found was not only creatively were we speaking to this customer. And that was really spoiler alert. That was really kind of Barb and Pat when they started the business. They were in that age range. They were giving bags to their daughters who were in college. And so you can see how that all started. And that's certainly, as the companies grown up, that is where we kind of kept the distribution. So we definitely had a younger customer. And we had an older customer. And then we had customers sort of right in the middle. But what we decided to do was target really primarily this 35 to 54-year-old. Because she has influence both to a younger audience and to an older audience. She connects with her daughter. She's buying these backpacks or other bags for her daughter. But she's also part of this brand with her mom. So it made a lot of sense for us to say, this is really where we want to target again. And sort of do some deep dives into what's going on in her life and how can we help solve some problems for her. Yeah, I think we would find similarities just building on that in stories where you would notice that people love the brand and then they felt like at a certain point in time they almost had to, if they started their career or what have you, they had to move away from it for various reasons. And we know that we have things that we can offer her to take her through all stages of life now. So we know that our existing customers that we have, I feel really strongly, we're going to continue to wow them with the things that have been created by the team. But yet we have expanded to make sure that we're also able to maintain that connection with the 35 to 54-year-old, regardless of the era of her life. How does Zoe de Chanel reflect the customer and resonate? And no, yeah, how does she resonate with them based on what you've learned? Thank you for asking that, giving that a lot of thought. And she, from the very beginning, we explored a lot of options. But honestly, she always was at the top of our list. And key reasons why she really has her own sense of style. She has unapologetically been very consistent. She's not necessarily trendy, but yet she's always relevant. She's evergreen. She-- it's a notable, her own style, if you will. And we really think that that aspires and sounds like Vera as well. It's evergreen, your own sense of style. You can really make-- we like to say be your own muse. But she also has a tremendous amount of just joy and happiness and light and just not really overthinking the fashion and what she's carrying. It's purely for this joy that she's bringing to herself and those around her. So definitely a lot of synergies there. And she's been a great brand ambassador to work with. Fantastic. So we'll be seeing Zoe in her own post and your post. Where will she be represented in this rebrand? She will be in a lot of places. I'm excited to say. She will definitely be in the digital world on social media and advertising. But we also will have her in print. We're going to be in some magazines. We're very excited because we're doing a lot of out-of-home within airports, more traditional billboards. We're going to be in Times Square. So keep an eye out to see Zoe in Times Square. So we're really working with her on many places. Tell me about the authenticity. Like, why does Zoe carry the brand? Will this be believable, I guess, to her audience? Great question. She did carry the brand. Well, again, as we've talked about growing up, she's always been a big fan of the brand. And so much so that it was actually part of New Girl, a couple of different episodes for those that are playing along. You will see Vera Bradley make some debuts. And last but not least, she is a seamstress. So she's really into fabrics. And that was one of the things that she was very excited about. She was talking to me about what was some of the fabrics that we used specifically. And so I thought there was more there. And come to find out, she is really a seamstress. I mean, what a crafty couple. I know she's with a property brother. Anyway, I live for them. Talk to me about the current retail environment, kind of the challenges you anticipate in the year ahead with these changes or even without these changes. Like, it's not an easy time for your brand in particular. Are there any challenges that-- I don't know-- for the accessories category in particular or anything else specific to Vera Bradley? So it's obviously been a difficult year for accessories, categories, and just basically a lot of lifestyle brands in general. It's been a relatively tough year. As people just try to deal with inflation and less disposable income. But I think one thing to me that if you look at the brands who are doing well, it's the brands that are delivering innovation and newness. Or right now, the other end, which is just more kind of value-driven. And I think I feel confident because this is definitely what we're going to launch here is something new in the accessory space. I mean, there's nothing-- in terms of the color and the fabric and the casual nature and our price points, there's nothing else like it. And so I think we kind of check the box on delivering the innovation part. And then secondly, we do have a pretty strong value component in our factory or outlet environment. So we kind of have both of those. And so I think we have a really good chance at cutting through a lot of that noise. Because what we found is no matter what the environment, good product is still going to sell. I mean, we have launched things that are fan favorites and some of our IP collections. It doesn't matter. They would sell out at full price. So people will spend on things that are meaningful to them, and we think that that's what we're going to deliver. Yes. Where are you guys selling now? And how do you guys think of the direct-to-consumer versus wholesale conversation? And interesting also, when you Google Vera Bradley, there's so much buzz about some outlet sale that you had. The outlet channel is very interesting. We have two different parts of the business. We have our brand or full-line stores. And then we also have outlet stores. Both of those have counterparts that are web. So we have our full-line website. And then we have an online outlet website. And then as you mentioned, annually, there is an annual outlet sale for Vera Bradley, which is really something to be experienced. Because you have thousands of women that come to-- and regroup and come with their friends and family and what have you. And this is a long-stranding tradition for many people that are fans of the brand. So that's very exciting. In addition, we also sell more traditional wholesale with department stores, specialty stores. We have some fun collaborations coming up this fall with a retailer. So we're really excited about the momentum and the reaction of people learning about what we're doing with the brand and taking it forward. So more to come on those fronts. Yes. Have you been at Target and Amazon? I feel like that came up and also in my research. Yes. We are on Amazon. We have a great relationship with them. And then the brand historically did a collaboration that was in Target as well. But I do think that there's opportunity there as Jackie talked about where people are really shopping high and low and mashing it up and keeping us guessing more traditional sense. You could segment. You could figure them out. You knew what was going to happen. People are all over right now at the highest luxury. But then they're also going to fast fashion. It's really a mashup. And to Jackie's point, it's about fresh and new and just something where you reach for your wallet, regardless of the price, because you have to have it. Have you shown up in TikTok Shop? Or any of those social commerce channels? I feel like I'm seeing more and more about it. There's potential there, but I don't know that it's working. We're definitely researching and testing on those. So definitely something to keep an eye towards both TikTok and Instagram. OK, great. And really quick, pure beta. Jackie, you're overseeing-- is that how you say it? And you're overseeing both brands. Alison, are you also affiliated with both? And that was an acquisition by Vera Bradley a couple of years back. And those are the two companies under the umbrella, yes? Yes. Amazing. Can we expect the same type of a rebrand-- refresh for this brand? That's more jewelry. So I mean, the short answer to that is no. I mean, there's certainly not the same level. Certainly for project restoration that the plan was for both brands, but at different levels. For Vera Bradley, what we needed to do was much more comprehensive than at pure avita. So that's why we have so much of a focus here. But there's certainly lots of things going on at pure avita that are similar to just not the same level of-- and not as large as what's going on at Vera Bradley. Makes good sense. What can we expect from year one following-- are the specific goals tied to this rebrand? So first and foremost, it's about bringing new customers. That is the ultimate goal. That's what we have anchored all of our efforts around is bringing new customers to this brand. So that is our main measure of success. We've said many times that even if we deliver a nice increase with our existing customers, if we don't bring new customers to the brand at the levels that we expect, that we won't consider this successful. Because that is our objective here is to not only keep the customers that we have and get them to buy more, but really bring a whole new generation of Vera Bradley to people across the country. Yes. I'm in the Midwest. Where is she located? She's generally in the Midwest and South. I knew it. Northeast, too. Northeast and South. Northeast, yeah. There's definitely opportunity. But it was started in the Midwest, in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Oh, stop. OK. I knew it, you guys. I'm in St. Louis. The audience is sick of hearing about it. How many times do I say it all the time? Yes. I'm wishing you the best of luck with this. Anything else on this rebrand that I didn't ask about that you guys are excited to share? I think as Jackie talked about just introducing the brand to new customers, I'm also excited about just offering up a new choice that is really fresh and fun, that is not out there today. So selfishly, I'm excited to just watch people discover the brand and what the design team and the whole company has really worked hard to bring forth. And it just is joyful. My favorite part about this whole experience has been, first of all, just seeing the team come to life over the last 19 months. And again, I've said many times in the company, there are certain teams where you start with its design, marketing, and merchandising that the front-end teams who had this path, they had that in their hands much earlier than everyone else. And so people were always asking, OK, well, what's going to happen with this? And how are we going to deal with this? And it was just, we all kind of discovered it together, but it was different times. So different teams had different knowledge. And so to finally be at the week that we're launching and everyone knows, everyone knows exactly what we're doing, it's so joyful and it's so rewarding to actually walk through sometimes with people, even some people outside some of our partners, our landlord partners, for example, we brought a few in to walk through our new mock store, to see people's reactions initially to what they're seeing in front of them. It has just been one of the most rewarding things in my career. It's just great. So we can't wait for everyone else to see it as well. The approach to the store, is it will there be more events? Is it more kind of quote, unquote, experiential besides the fact that there's more great stuff? I think just the diversity of the product and the styles and the way it's set up, it is more experiential because we talk about that. You really are able to curate your collection, both of your bag of the moment, but also what goes inside the bag or what's going on outside the bag. You mentioned the scarf and what have you. There's just a lot of choices for how people can pull together their favorites. Yes. And last question, I'm just doing this all under the watchful eye. You're a publicly traded company. And you know, you hear about when we talk about brands, even bringing in a new creative director and how they need time and your investors knew this was coming. I know that there are references to this rebrand coming in July for quite some time now. Tell me about the pressures involved in that and what you anticipate the reaction to be on that front. It's certainly doing this and the public eye has been more challenging than when I've led other teams to transform a brand privately. However, I think the team really focused last year on resetting the cost structure in order for us while we were simultaneously doing this work. But we knew we had to invest in marketing this year. And so looking at just how do we match our cost structure to our current revenue was a pretty prescribed activity that the entire company just was able to get behind right away. So we were able to show some progress last year and the market rewarded us for that. Now, last quarter, our results were pretty much what we expected, not necessarily what the street expected. And I think you just have to deal with that all the time where it's, well, internally, we said, look, this is sometimes what happens. There's a bit of a disconnect, and we just have to wait until all of this comes together. And we knew it was going to be more of a challenging first half and a better second half. That's what we were expecting. So we are certainly-- July, then July is the end of our quarter. So we'll have a couple of weeks of project restoration and new day results to talk to in our next earnings call. But we really won't see a full quarter of it until third quarter. Yes, largest marketing campaign to date, investment-wise. Yes, I absolutely say that. And also very different in terms of using the full funnel, that's something, as we focus on new customers, getting back out there in a bigger way is been really fun, but a lot of hard work for the team to rethink how you do that and how do you make that work. So very excited to see that come to life as well. Yes, Alison, if you had to pick a favorite child, your favorite piece in the new collection? Oh, that is so hard. There's too many right now. But I definitely have my eye on quite a few of them. I could not narrow it down to one. What about you, Jackie? The leather styles are so compelling to me. So I'm a tote girl, so I love all the totes. But I'll tell you, it has been hard. It's been very hard. Oh, my gosh. It's a fun problem to have. Can't pick a favorite. Absolutely. It absolutely is. And you don't have to choose. That's the thing. That's the beauty. You just fill that card. Oh, my gosh. Thank you, both. This was so fun. Thank you for being here. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. [MUSIC PLAYING] That's all for this episode. Our theme music is by Otis McDonald. If you liked this episode, be sure to share it with someone else you think would. Thanks for listening to the glossy podcast. [MUSIC PLAYING] (upbeat music) [BLANK_AUDIO]
