Brandman Speaks

Brandman Speaks


Ep. 16 – Vans CEO Kevin Bailey shares insight from managing a global brand

June 02, 2016

Kevin Bailey, President of VF Action Sports and CEO of Vans (VF Corporation) spoke to a group of business students at the Irvine campus and it was recorded as a podcast for this episode of Brandman Speaks. Joining in the discussion is Joe Cockrell, vice chancellor of Communications for Brandman University. During the podcast, students asked questions about Bailey's role as CEO of Vans, social media, global branding, current issues facing the company and its global mission, and challenges Bailey has faced on the road to becoming an executive.

Transcript:

Joe Cockrell: [00:00] Welcome to Brandman Speaks. I'm Joe Cockrell, vice chancellor of communications at Brandman University, and this episode is being recorded with a live audience of select students here at the Brandman campus in Irvine.

[00:12] It is my pleasure to have special guest Kevin Bailey. Mr. Bailey serves as president and CEO of Vans Americas, owned by the publicly traded VF Corp., which also has such brands as The North Face, Wrangler and Timberline. Back when VF bought Vans for $370 million in 2004, Vans was publicly traded as well. The company expects the 50-year-old brand to do $2.3 billion in sales this year, up from around $2 billion -- a measly 2 billion -- last year, making it the fastest growing part of the VF portfolio. So Kevin thank you so much for joining us today.

Kevin Bailey: [00:49] Thanks for having me.

Joe Cockrell: [00:50] I have questions here that some of the students have submitted. And let's start with the basics. Can you describe a little bit about how you came into this career and your background?

Kevin Bailey: [01:03] Sure. It's kind of a crazy story and I've had a very interesting ride, I guess. I'm from the East Coast originally. Grew up in northern New Jersey just outside of New York City. And I guess my first ... I was a typical high school kid, right, going to school for honors math, honors science all that stuff, probably targeting pre-med at the time, not having any clue what I really wanted to do. But I started working in retail and if I'm honest about it I started in retail as a stock kid at the Gap because I thought I could meet girls.

[01:34] I'm just going to be honest about it.

[01:36] That was the plan as I school kid and I there were college girls who worked there and I thought that was cool. And the Gap then sold multiple brands. It wasn't just a gap so they sell Levi's and other stuff. But I started my ..really then that sort of got the bug in me for retail. And that's really where I first got bit a little bit by having some good managers that oversaw me gave me a lot of different responsibilities and helped me learn some things that I didn't know about. And then, as well, I found retail to be a real problem-solving environment. Every day you're dealing with consumers, different issues. You're dealing with inventory in and outs; you're dealing with a variety of situations; and you're learning how to sell, which I think is a big valuable skill. I also was an artist. I tried art school after graduating high school because I was confused and thought I was going to go to med school and pre-med and I changed my mind and went to art school. Final act of rebellion from my parents and then went off to University of Vermont. And through all of that though I stayed in retail and I always worked in retail and after school that's ... I got asked to take on an assistant manager job in a retail store -- then it was an American Eagle Outfitters store that I worked in part time while in school. American Eagle then sold other things other than just American Eagle product too then. And I just sort of stepped into that life then and began the business career really by working in retail and grew up in retail.

[02:58] I was blessed and got to work with several founder-led companies in the time and sort of s...