The House of the brands, VF Corporation, interview with Frank Manesse

Lee, Kipling, Eastpak... Everybody knows these worldwide brands, but did you know that they all belong to VF Corporation? EDHEC interviewed Frank Manesse, Organisation Development Director, EMEA, for VFC.

What is VF Corporation?

VF Corporation is the world's largest apparel company, a $7 billion-plus apparel powerhouse, with an incredibly diverse, international portfolio of brands. We represent leading brands like Lee, Wrangler, Eastpak, JanSport, The North Face, Kipling, Vans, Napapijri, 7 for All Mankind and others.

VF employs more than 44.000 associates worldwide. Its global head office is located in Greensboro, USA. In Europe, VF employs more than 7.000 associates. Our European head quarters are located in Lugano (Switzerland) and Bornem (Belgium).

What is the originality of its structure?

Our structure is one of the keys to our success. We refer to our lifestyle and heritage businesses as "coalitions". Each of our brands is managed from within our coalitions: Outdoor and Action Sports, Jeanswear, Sportswear, Contemporary Brands and Imagewear. This structure enables us to leverage our size, scale and global expertise across each coalition, while ensuring that each brand is expertly managed by leaders who are deeply connected to their brands. And our open, collaborative culture enables us to share best practices across coalitions, benefiting the company as a whole.
Thanks to our structure all of our brands keep their own brand identity whilst making use of the advantages of being part of a large group. 

What is your development strategy this year?

This year further steps will be taken to increase the share of revenues of our lifestyle businesses -Outdoor and Action Sports, Sportswear and Contemporary Brands- to 60% by 2012. A robust acquisition program, combined with strong organic growth, has enabled us to show steady progress against this goal. At the same time, our heritage businesses -Jeanswear and Imagewear- will continue to be important revenue and profit centres.
VF’s International growth and expansion in our direct-to-consumer businesses are key drivers of our global Growth Plan. We expect that by 2012 international revenues will comprise a third of total revenues, while our direct-to-consumer business will account for 22% of total revenues and we aim to hit $11 billion in total revenues.

Have you felt the impact of the crisis?

2009 has been a challenging year for VF, as for most companies in our sector. For the full year 2009, revenues and net income were down compared to 2008. However, gross margins reached record levels and cash flow from operations reached a record of $973 million.

During his recent presentation in Europe, Eric Wiseman Chairman, President and CEO of VF Corporation stated that VF’s results in 2009 speak to the strength and resiliency of VF's business model and diversified brand portfolio. He added that VF’s focus on prudent brand investment, disciplined cost control, and inventory management has enabled the group to deliver exceptionally strong performance in an exceptionally difficult environment.

In terms of recruitment/internship, what is the process, what are your expectations in terms of profiles?

We are working towards a European internship program.  It’s our goal to attract the best students from carefully selected partner universities and business schools, like EDHEC. We want to offer these students a valuable internship of 6 months to 1 year in which they carry out projects for the department next to providing support in its day to day activities.
Our interns all share the following characteristic: strong affinity with fashion, team player attitude, multicultural mindset and dynamic hands on mentality.

Are you currently recruiting?

Yes, we are. Only in Switzerland we already have more than 70 vacancies on today. Next to that there’s a continuous demand for talent in most of our European country organisations.

For example in marketing we are looking for approx. 10 people: Digital Marketing Managers, Brand Coordinator, (Social) Media Coordinator, Sponsoring Coordinator, PR Coordinator, PR Supervisor and Trade Marketing Supervisor.  In the field of analysis there are also quite some vacancies that might be interesting for EDHEC alumni: Sales Planning Analysts, Business Analysts, Sales Analysts, Pricing & Cost Analyst and Acquisition Analyst.

Furthermore, there are multiple vacancies in Product Management, E-commerce and Retail (cf. visual merchandising).

People who would like to receive more information on our vacancies, in Switzerland and all over Europe, can always get in touch with us via jobseurope@vfc.com