VF Corp.’s Altra Running shoe brand may be small now, but it has the potential to be mighty over time.
VF’s chief executive officer Bracken Darrell told investors during the company’s first quarter earnings conference call, “We believe this brand will be a $1 billion-plus brand over time.”
“Altra continues to be deliver, building on a strong performance last year and progressing towards another year of powerful growth,” he said. “Franchise styles, including Lone Peak, Torin, Experience Flow and [Experience] Wild, continue perform well.”
Darrell said VF continues to invest in brand awareness, “which remains low but is growing.”
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According to the VF CEO, the plus for Altra is that the brand “plays in a very large addressable market.” He said Altra is the leader in trail running, but that road running is “10 times as large of a market.” And even though the brand has recently become serious is road running, “over the past few quarters, road running has become larger for Altra than trail running for the brand,” Darrell noted.
According to VF’s website, Altra was founded in 2009. The brand is known for its FootShape toe boxes that encourage splay, and for ZeroDrop platforms — equal stack height from heel to forefoot — to encourage a natural running form.
At VF’s other footwear brand, Timberland, revenue for the quarter was up 3 percent. Darrell said both “direct-to-consumer (DTC) and wholesale grew on a global basis, while regional performance was driven by continued strong growth in the Americas, up 10 percent.” He also said that the six-inch premium boot is the growth engine, adding that initiatives to “build and diversify around this strength are taking hold.”
Besides the boot, shoes continue to perform in all regions, led by the boat shoe. “As we get into the fall 2026 season and beyond, you’ll begin to see more of the new product lineups being developed from below the ankle to sneakers in footwear and across apparel,” the CEO said.
VF opened three new full-price Timberland stores in the Americas, growing the total number of full-price locations to 14 in the region. Darrell said “there are more to come.” He said the company expects another good year of growth for Timberland as VF takes steps to unlock the brand’s true potential over the next few years.
While Vans has been struggling, and first quarter revenue was down globally by nine percent year-over-year, Darrell reiterated VF’s position that the business would turn around first in DTC, then wholesale, with the brand focus initially on the Americas. “And that’s exactly what continues to happen,” he said, adding that there have been a number of “green shoots” in the last few months.
He also spoke about reinvigorating the original icons. Authentic had another double-digit quarter, he said, whole slip-ons grew. And Old Skool continues to benefit from the pearlized and distressed, as well as collaborations like the Travis Barker collab that achieved a “very high sell-through.”
The team is also working on other silhouettes, such as loafers. “We can do a better job at having sufficient volumes of these hot styles of our icons and entirely new silhouettes to better capitalize on the demand. We’re working on that,” he said, noting that wholesalers will be bringing in more new products for holiday and into spring. He also noted that following discussions with wholesale partners around the world, the expectation is that Vans will have a “strong turn” in wholesale in the back half.
“We continue to be very optimistic on Vans,” he said.
