Quality product and a strong brand DNA are king.
At the annual WWD x FN x Beauty Inc Women in Power summit, Hali Borenstein, chief executive officer at Reformation, Gaëlle Drevet, founder of The Frankie Shop, and Sheila Harrington, global chief executive officer at Urban Outfitters and Free People Groups, sat down with Emily Mercer, senior market editor at WWD, to discuss how to drive brand evolution.
When it comes to building a lasting brand, all three executives agreed quality product always comes first.
“Regardless of what’s going on in the world around you, customers strive for amazing product,” Borenstein said.
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Drevet added: “If you don’t have a good product, you don’t have a business.”
That being said, with new trends popping up every day, the trio emphasized the importance of strong brand DNA to build an authentic and loyal customer community.
“The best brands are living and breathing and evolving with their customers, responsive to the times around them,” Borenstein said. “The problem — or the risk — with that is, at times, you can kind of lose sight of who you are as a brand when you’re just following what’s going on with the trends around you. We’ve built a strategy of different values in which we focus on that will help us continue to evolve while staying true to ourselves.”
“You need to find your niche. You need to have something to say. You need to have something to offer,” Drevet said.
She also emphasized the importance of storytelling with product, which for The Frankie Shop is often best done through the brand’s visuals.
“A product can magically turn into some crazy bestseller just with one photo,” Drevet said. “That’s why fashion and visuals are very interconnected.”
For Harrington, maintaining a strong brand DNA and know-how of when to hop on a trend, listening to the customer and the sales associates is crucial.
“A pillar that has been core to us is…curiosity around the consumer, asking always, ‘What can we do better? How do we service you better?’ and being able to answer that strongly,” she said. “Our associates spend so much time talking to the customer and hearing from them that sometimes I forget to walk away from the reporting or the digital data that we’re getting and actually be in a store talking to the customer and the people that service them best. I always walk away with so much inspiration and a to do list that is even longer [when I do].”
The trio, who emphasized the importance of building out a global team to ensure there’s a diverse group of voices representing the brand, further discussed taking and implementing feedback, whether it be from customers or sales associates.
“When I took this role, it was 2020, an interesting time to take a fashion CEO job,” Borenstein said. “I had this idea that I was supposed to have all the answers, and then quickly I realized great leaders don’t have all the answers, but what we do is we listen. We listen incredibly intently to all the cues around us, be it the marketplace, our customer and our incredible team. You put all of this together, and you can come up with special, new ideas that will drive directions that will be differentiated for your business.”
With tariffs and fears of economic downturn, the group advised attendees on how to face challenging times as a leader.
“We’ve all had to be really much more resilient over the last couple of years, and our consumers have learned to be really resilient,” Borenstein said. “What we can do is know what’s in our control and focus on that, because it’s very clear right now, we cannot control everything going on.”
