Fashion brand PVH Corp. parent company to Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger in February appointed Stefan Larsson as the CEO. In the last eight months, Larsson has steered PVH through the abrupt shocks of the COVID-19 pandemic on its operations and activities, and devised strategies to ensure shore up money to strengthen its solid financial foundation and marshal the company forward.
Larsson said, “In the start, the focus was on the safety and wellbeing of our consumers and our teams. Then, we turned to shore up the liquidity needed to not only weather the storm but also to make an accelerated recovery. We wanted to take the opportunity to position ourselves post-COVID-19 — to win in the new normal.”
It aids at the time to be a global corporation, as three regions came into this catastrophe at dissimilar times. PVH was able to take the learnings from piloting through the COVID-19 in Asia and prepared itself for it to hit in Europe and then later in North America.
PVH bolstered e-commerce as well as third-party, digital commerce. Next, it continued to focus on driving product relevance at the same time, the brand also drove a more effective and collaborative consumer engagement. As a result, in our second quarter, PVH grew total digital sales over 50%, with an 87% upsurge on its sites.
Larsson told, “The Covid-19 has boosted current underlying consumer and market trends. The move towards e-commerce, towards more essential products, towards casualization and purpose-driven brands with a real commitment to sustainability — all have been accentuated by the crisis.”
“For us, as a growth platform for brands, we have to focus on what’s core to us. What are the most essential strengths we have? Our work now is to be obsessively focused on what’s important for our consumers and connecting our core strengths to where the consumer is going. That’s what I view as an exciting opportunity coming out on the other side of Covid-19.”
Besides the challenges Covid-19, there are lots of opportunities and, going forward, increased transparency is needed, added Larsson.
“There is nothing like a real, unprecedented crisis to help you prioritize what is important and what creates value. I’m optimistic that, in a world where the consumer is in charge, the fashion industry and the big companies within it will be driven to utilize our economy of scale and brand awareness as a force for good,” Larsson concluded.
