Today the class went to VF Corporation at its headquarters in Greensboro, NC. VF is a clothing company that sells jeanswear, underwear, workwear, and daypacks. VF is a publicly traded company on the New York Stock Exchange. It employs 58,000 people worldwide with assets around 9.3 Billion dollars. The company was started in Reading, Pennsylvania as the Reading Glove and Mitten Company. Over the years the company grew and underwent changes in ownership.

VF´s mission is to grow by building leading lifestyle brands that excite customers around the world. VF wants to continue to innovate their product line by continuing to combine the art and science of apparel. VF manages the industry´s most complicated supply chain that spans over different countries and distribution channels.

VF´s customers are businesses and individuals. The main business customers for VF´s product line are major superstores, department stores, and specialty stores. The superstores would be the Walmarts, K-Marts, and Targets. Department stores would be Kohls or Sears. And specialty stores would be small shops that may or not be independently owned.

The customers of VF value good quality and price for its brands. The customers also expect a high degree of innovation, they do not want to buy the same thing every year. New products and ideas are valued in the company. Since VF sells to the bigger chain stores, the businesses who buy VF expect a low price to sell products with.

VF´s results are very impressive. 20% growth every year for the past five years, with 2011 posting revenues in the range of nine billion dollars. The products VF provides are known for their quality and reasonable prices.

VF´s plan for the future is a complex growth strategy that plans to make the company the biggest clothing manufacturer in the world. VF plans to achieve $17.3 billion dollars in revenues by 2017, and reach an earnings per share of $18. In terms of geography, VF wants to decrease its footprint in China because of the currency and move those efforts to Mexico. The plan going forward to continue to grow the business model and increase revenues and assets.

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VF Corporation is an $11 billion apparel and footwear powerhouse, with an incredibly diverse, international portfolio of brands and products. VF corporation sells jeanswear, underwear, daypacks, and workwear. The corporate headquarters are located in Greensboro, North Carolina, and the International headquarters are located in Stabio, Switzerland.

VF’s mission is to create a leading jeans and lifestyle apparel company in North and South America by offering its consumers branded product solutions at a compelling value.

Since VF does not have its own retail stores, it distributes its jeans to large companies such as Walmart, Target, Kohls, Sears, JC Penny and tractor supply companies. From there on, Wrangler Jeans, for example, are aimed towards 40 year old men who are “old country,” “new country,” and “western inspired.” Studies show that these customers typically enjoy the outdoors, riding horses, watching nascar races and more.

The customers of VF Jeanswear value the well-fitting, low cost products as well as their durability. These jeans are marketed and made to hold through many outdoor activities, as well as to more casual events such as going to the movies or a barbecue. Therefore, the customers expect them to be flexible and to last for a long time without tearing. Usually once they try a pair of jeans, they are satisfied with the product and become loyal customers. In another example, those who buy from Northface value the high-quality of the product. The large companies value products that customers will buy. As soon as customers stop buying the brands, VF is out of a deal. There is no contract giving an exact length of time Walmart, for example, must sell its brands.

The VF website states that their result is new products that strengthen the bond between consumers and our brands. In 100 years, they have been extremely successful. Their stock was recently up 69%. Plus, they just generated revenues of over $10 billion. VF corporation is in charge of lots of popular brands such as Timberland, The Northface, Jansport, Wrangler, Lee, Kipling, Splendid, 7 for All Man Kind,  and more.

VF plans to reach $17.3 Billion in revenue by 2017. The challenge is constantly how to grow revenue faster. VF is looking to move into more retail locations. It is also hoping to expand into more products such as t-shirts. Plus, VF is testing its brands (ex: Wrangler) on new target audiences such as hispanics and females.

Overall, I was really impressed and surprised that one company deals with so many popular brands (and so successfully). It’s amazing that 600,000,000 yards of fabric are produced for their products each year. I found it really interesting how the marketing team branded the Wrangler jeans. They aren’t just marketed towards men who need jeans, but to men of three different categories based on their commitment to the country lifestyle. As a marketing major, this part of the presentation was most interesting to me and it made me more excited about my major.

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What is their mission?

On today’s trip we visited VF Jeanswear, which is a worldwide leader in branded lifestyle apparel, footwear, and related products. It was organized by Coalition in 1899 and is currently based out of nearby Greensboro, North Carolina. The mission of VF is “to grow lifestyle brands that excite consumers around the world.” In addition, it wants to offer its customer branded products at compelling values. VF is the owner of over thirty different clothing brands, the largest and most well known of which are The North Face, Vans, Timberland, Wrangler, and Lee. VF currently employs over 57,000 employees and plans on growing the work force in the future to help manage its planned growth.

Who is their customer?

There is no single customer of VF because of the wide variety of clothing items all of its companies offer. VF does not deal directly with the common person but instead it supplies retail stores with the clothes needed to fill their shelves and space. VF has three separate marketing units, which it calls its Mass Retail Customers, Middle Retail Customers, and Specialty Retail Customers. The Mass customers include major stores such as Walmart, K-Mart, and Target, while the Middle and Specialty customers include stores like Kohl’s, Sears, Macy’s, and Tractor Supply Co. Since so many stores want VF products the company has encountered a problem they call “cannibalism.” This is a reference to their customers getting angry that other stores are selling the same VF products that they are, and subsequently ruining business.

What does their customer value?

Just like the customers of the other corporations we have visited, the customers of VF value the high quality of products they purchase from VF. However, unlike companies such as Sandvik, the customers of VF want high quality products at the lowest cost possible. The customers are also looking to trust VF that they are producing the newest trends in the fashion world so they can keep up with the current trends. They value the fact that VF pays their employees to come to the customers so the customers don’t have to come to them to talk about business and share their newest ideas with the company.

What are their results?

The results of VF are very impressive. VF had revenue of $10.9B in 2012 and operating income of $1.5B, which is excellent. 25% of sales were through e-commerce or owned stores and 40% of sales were outside of the U.S., mainly in Europe and China. VF has representation in over sixty countries currently and last produced 486,000,000 units last year alone, which comes out to 15 units per second. This is possible because of the 32 internal manufacturing facilities they have and is also the reason why they are the largest jeans producer in the world. Lastly, their stocks increased 69% last year, which is a ridiculous amount and has created a lot more business for them.

What is their plan?

VF’s plan in the future is to continue to increase its growth and expansion around the world and especially in Asia. In 2015 VF wants to have its revenue to around $12.7 billion and by 2017 to get that number up to $17.3 billion. They also want to increase their targets on the Hispanic, baby boomer and millennial demographic of customers because they are increasing rapidly. One way they plan on expanding their business is by purchasing other companies and brands to increase their already wide area of business to target new customers. However, they are planning on working hard to keep their current customers because they do not want to risk losing them for new customers they may not even get.

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VF’s Mission

The Mission of VF is to effectively and efficiently manage, produce and market clothing products to an extremely wide range of customers.  Broken up into five coalitions: Outdoor and Actions Sports, Jeanswear, Imagewear, Sportswear and Contemporary Brands, VF Corporation is an enormous company.  Their direct mission is “To grow lifestyle brands that excite consumers around the world.” And as I learned today, there is a lot that goes into exciting their customers.  But more importantly, they need to find which customers in which to excite.  By researching new trends, staying up to date on cotton prices and other factors related to fashion around the world, VF continues to produce products that their customers want.  As a whole, they are organized mainly by Marketing Units and they are Mass Marketing, Lee, Specialty and Rockin Republic.  Each have their own marketing strategy which is interesting because they are all basically on the same team.

 VF’s Customers

As I said previously, VF has an absolutely insane amount of customers all over the world.  They seriously cater to almost everyone and anyone interested in the outdoor life, beach life, footwear, etc.. You name it, they have it.  Knowing this, I’ll focus on the Jeanswear coalition because that is what they talked most about today.  And even under the Jeanswear coalition, they have different customers they are selling to including actual Cowboys, New Cowboys and Retro Cowboys just to name a few.  They market their products by portraying the products being used by well known celebrities such as country legend George Straight, Brett Favre and Jason Aldean. Each were chosen to represent the different markets for the jeans.  In Wrangler’s case, they had a detailed profile on who their customer was.  Some of the characteristics were that they like sports, cars, they are handymen, medium salary, 40% of them didn’t graduate college and that they enjoy Nascar.  Knowing this, VF markets to this audience.

 What do VF’s customers value?

Customers of VF value the way in which they can foresee trends that will be popular in the following year and also the quality in which the products are made.  Rich told us that he relies heavily upon trends to outline what his next line will be in the coming year. But, he also said that when he produces his products, he admits that the quality isn’t that high because the kids will only wear it for six months.  On the other hand, with Wrangler, the product’s quality is more important.  So much marketing was put into telling the audience that the product is durable and will last a long time, and if the product does last it will create loyal customers that will come back time and time again.

VF’s Results

There are a few results that were meaningful to me during the info session and they mostly had to do with how the profits were split up in the company.  I thought that it was very interesting how VF’s revenues have hovered around 5-6 billion for a very long up until five years ago when the revenues started to sky rocket. Today, VF’s revenues are 10.9 billion and are expected to grow to 17 billion in 2019.  Numbers like these show how profitable VF is and will continue to be in the future. Also, I thought that it was interesting that the Jeanswear coalition consists of 20% of VF and contributes to 16% of all the profits for VF.  I would think that the two numbers would be equal (size of the coalition equals to its total profits) but I may be wrong.  Need to do more research on this.

VF’s Plan

The plan for VF, as with any company that we have visited, it to just keep on improving and becoming more profitable.  By continuing to follow their business model and striving to improve what they have already put in place, VF will be profitable. But, if they decide to invest and buy more companies I think that VF will keep exceeding their profitability numbers.  Also, they mentioned that they wanted to decrease their presence in China because of the price inflation and rather focus their efforts on Mexico and other spots.  What VF has going for them though is that they already have an incredibly large range of products in the same markets.  For instance, VF has competing jean companies, most notably Lee and Wrangler.  Sometimes they compete for the same consumer, but in the long run they are all on the same team which means the money will all be going to VF Corporation. They almost have a Monopoly of sorts in some markets.

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Today our class visited the VF Corporation in Greensboro, North Carolina. The VF Corporation is also known as the Jeanswear Coalition of VF, the company consists of many popular brands such as: North Face, Wrangler, Lee, Timberland, Vans, and etc. It was very interesting to learn that all these extremely popular clothing brands were all essentially apart of the same organization. Overall the company contains over 30 different clothing and footwear brands. The company employs around 57,000 employees and is expanding worldwide. The VF corporation has been around for about 115 years, which is very impressive and shows this company has a commitment to sustainability.

The VF corporation’s mission includes “to grow lifestyle brands that excite customers and the world”. The VF corporation has made a commitment to the VF people who are the source of their success. Whatever the people want VF is committed to find this and try and create a product through their popular brands that is exceptional quality at a reasonable price. The VF Corporation’s apparel mostly focuses on outside wear and action sports attire. Also VF is dedicated to continue grow and expand into clothing markets all over the world.

VF’s customers are so many different individuals worldwide. However, they sell to the big three marketing units (which are their most important). The big three include large superstores, department stores, and speciality stores. For example large superstores would include places like Walmart, Target, and K-mart. Department stores like Sears, Kohls, Macys, and JC Pennys. Other speciality stores include places like Tractor Supply or Boot Barn. Anywhere any of the VF brands are being sold that store has purchased that clothing through the VF Corporation.

Obviously the customers of VF expect one very important thing and that is the quality of their clothing. The only way to keep customers in the clothing business is to have exceptional quality clothing and the VF Corporation strives to make sure all of their brands have exceptionally good quality. Also their customers need good quality at a reasonable price so VF needs to make sure their clothing is sold at cheap prices.

The VF Corporation’s results are extremely high, they brought in just under 11 billion dollars last year in revenue. One of their goals in 2017 is to bring in 17 billion dollars. The VF Corporation in Greensboro, that we visited, brings in around 2.2 billion dollars in revenue.They move 175 million units a year, precisely 15 units a second. VF’s plan for the future is to too continue to expand and is to continue making the same great quality product at a lower cost. They want to find other countries to manufacture their products for less to make more profit. Also one of their other goals is to develop their e-commerce sales and try to eventually sell directly to their customers. Maybe even try and open up retail stores. Overall I thought this visit was extremely interesting and I was very impressed how VF has really taken the top spot of the jeans and other apparel market spot and has plans to improve their sales.

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Ben Doster

What is Our Missison?

The mission statement of VF is “Ours is a perpetually driven culture, focused on constant innovation. Using deep research and insights, we combine the art and science of apparel to create products that excite consumers and brands that inspire loyalty. We responsibly manage the industry’s most efficient and complex supply chain, which spans multiple geographies, product categories and distribution channels”.  This was easy to see in the jeans wear department that we visited today.  I enjoyed how passionate the employees were about the brands and products they represented.

Who is our Customer?

VF corp. makes a clothing item for just about everyone.  They have split their jeans wear department between Lee jeans for customer who enjoy a laid back casual lifestyle and Wrangler for their customers who enjoy the outdoors.  The Wrangler division is split between three different categories that are basically divided up by weather you’re a full-blown cowboy, a part time cowboy or just someone who enjoys the western look.  The company also owns other outdoor brands such as the North Face, Timberland, and Jansport.

What Does the Customer Value?

The average customer of VF values the quality and name behind the products that they make.  Cowboys really seem to enjoy how much Wrangler embraces their lifestyle and presence and support at rodeos and country music concerts all across our nation.  When a customer buys a product from the North Face or Jansport, they are expecting to get a great product that will perform properly out in the field.

What are the Results?

The results of all this are simple.  The stock value of VF has increased by 69% in the past few years.  That kid of growth is unheard of and according to the people at VF, can be credited to the constant expansion that the company is undergoing.  They buy and sale new brands all the time, looking for a niche to be filed in the market.  According to one of the VF employees in the Marketing department, this is the only way to be profitable in the fashion world.  He said if you mimic a fad, you’re already too late because people will already be looking for new clothing styles.

What is our Plan?

The current plan for VF is to start expanding faster, as they are now considered to be a slow-growth company.  According to the CFO, this can be accomplished by expanding their clothing lines and brands.  Possible future markets that they are looking to expand into include teenagers, baby boomers, and Hispanics.  It sounds hard to believe that VF is a slow-growth company when you consider how much their stock value has increased in the past few years, and it is for that reason that I do not believe that they will have any trouble expanding faster now that they are on a roll, so to speak.

Having grown up around that office, I really enjoyed our visit today.  My dad retired from the VF jeans wear department just over a year ago, and I have not been back since.  I have always thought a lot of VF due to how much passion they have behind their products and would love to work for a company such as this one in the future.

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Today we visited VF corporation. Walking in I did not realize just how massive of a corporation it is, I had no idea that Timberland, Northface, Wrangler and Lee’s were all subsidiaries of the same organization.

VF’s mission is “to grow lifestyle brands that excite customers around the world.” The entire business revolves around its brands. Northface is meant for people who love to do outdoor, somewhat extreme sports. Wrangler jeans appeal to people that like to be active in jeans. Every brand has a lifestyle applicable to it and so the company revolves around its brands and brand building.

VF has many brands and sell 40% of there revenue outside of the United States. VF is a company that has every kind of customer for every kind of brand. Customers vary from mothers of young children to skateboarding teens, to cowboys from Texas. Every type of person can find a different brand through VF and so they have an infinite amount of customers.

The customers of VF care about their brand. The philosophy of VF is that they build brand loyalty. For example Van’s started out as a simple shoe company. When customers found that they liked the shoes VF grew the brand and started selling hat’s and shirts with the Van design and logos on them. Due to the fact that people trusted the brand of the shoe they made the jump to other apparel. The customers of VF are there because of brand loyalty.

VF has been one of the most successful companies around considering it is over 100 years old. They brought in over $10 billion in revenue just last year. Even looking at just Jeanswear, the place that we visited today, they bring in enough capital to buy out other companies, such as Timberland who they acquired relatively recently and is now one of their biggest subsidiaries.

For the future they plan to continue their success as a leader in their industry. VF also knows that they must continue to be innovative in adapting to the world around them, but not forgetting the customers they have. On another note many retailers have been shutting their doors and so VF has looked to different ways to sell their goods. VF has started to open their own retail stores and sell online. It is difficult to sell certain items in a retail store and so it is very difficult to be independent. Thankfully online sales have been very beneficial to VF

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VF Corporation is a conglomerate of over 30 clothing and footwear brands, with products ranging from high-performance sportswear to affordable everyday clothing. Some of the most well-known brands include The North Face, JanSport, Majestic, Lee, Wrangler, and recently Timberland. These individual companies are separated into five independently-run “coalitions” – outdoor & action sports, jeanswear, imagewear, sportswear, and contemporary brands. The company employs 57,000 employees and has been expanding across the world over the last few decades. Although one of our presenters has noted that one of the company’s largest challenges is continual expansion, VF has been around for about 115 years and is constantly acquiring smaller businesses and expanding product lines, amassing a total revenue of just under 11 billion dollars last year.

Some of VF’s most recent goals are the transition of sales into e-commerce and into new storefronts. Because the company doesn’t have any dedicated retail sites, they rely on three separate factions of big retailers (Wal-Mart, Target, etc.), departments stores (J.C. Penny’s, Kohl’s, etc.), and specialty/independent stores to sell different product lines. While the CFO of jeanswear specifically mentioned that VF is targeting new and untapped customer bases such as women and Latinos, he also mentioned that it is essential not to leave behind already established and loyal customers. VF is one step past simply innovating on their products themselves; instead of making changes to their jean designs (which I don’t believe change drastically from season to season as much as their advertisements make it seem), they are focused on reducing production costs and optimizing distribution processes instead. Customer loyalty is important, and our class reviewed a couple charts showing the demographics and habits/hobbies of the average Wrangler jeans customer. Marketing and merchandising divisions use this data to effectively market their products to the right audiences, which is currently done through glorifying traditional American cowboys and southern pride. It was mentioned that such marketing strategies aren’t necessarily complex, but are difficult to perfect and implement. The supply chain must be studied, changes in marketplaces and retailer policies are constantly watched, and the price of supplies and distribution must be monitored as well. Specifically, the price of cotton is a major variable, as a minute change in cost will amount to millions of dollars in large-scale production. Some 400,000,000 products are produced by VF each year – this came out to an astounding ~15 products created every second.

It’s quite clear that VF’s customers value high-quality brand-name products – this was implied in the presentation along with the implication that Wrangler/Lee jeans are the most comfortable and relatively inexpensive jeans you can buy. The brand loyalty ties into what the marketing presenters stressed – once the target audience for Wrangler’s advertisements see famous athletes such as Drew Brees and his family casually rockin’ some Wranglers at a picnic and playing some pickup football, then they might be inspired to try some. At this point, the customer would obviously find them to be the single most comfortable pair of jeans ever created and never wear anything different – that’s part of the plan, anyway. In terms of both the jeanswear and other divisions, VF plans to keep on top of fashion trends and produce relevant clothing for its audiences. VF’s strategies have worked so far, as they are officially the largest clothing producer in the USA and hope to gain the same distinction for footwear in the near future.

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Today we visited the jeans wear headquarters of VF Corporation in Greensboro. Their mission statement is that “We will create the leading jeans and lifestyle Apparel Company in North America by offering our customers branded product solutions at compelling value.” VF’s customers are Target, Walmart, K-Mart, Khols, Sears, JC Pennys, Sheplers, and Tractor Supply Company, to name a few. Though anywhere that their products are sold, the company has obtained those products from VF themselves.

VF’s customers value what most apparel customers want which is high quality goods at a low cost. VF has managed to find ways to make this happen. They have done this by outsourcing their manufacturing to different countries with low production costs. VF’s results are pretty impressive. As a whole VF had revenues over $11 billion during 2012, with VF Jeans wear accounting for $2.2 billion. They are also the largest jean producer in the world.

VF has a pretty defined plan for their future. By the year 2017 as a whole company they want to have revenues over $17 billion, with VF Jeanswear wanting to account for $3 billion of that. They also want to make revenue faster by expanding distribution and getting into more store.

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The VF Corporation Jeanswear division is a company who basically oversees a bunch of Jeanswear companies and brands and makes sure that they are gaining the most profit that they possibly can. The presentation was very extensive and got repetitive at times, but it was very informative and I learned a lot about VF Corporation and the retail business. I had worked for Toys R Us for a seasonal employment job, but I had not really thought about how the retail business works. This presentation from VF Corporation Jeanswear was very informative and descriptive about how they run their business. I do not personally buy any of their branded products, but when I was little I had several pairs of Wrangler and Lee’s jeans.

The mission of VF is to create the leading jeans and lifestyle apparel company in North America by offering their customers branded product solutions at compelling value. They absolutely meet their mission statement by having several different brands within their Jeanswear branch and making profit off of healthy competition between their own brands. They treat their brands like children and supply them with the same materials that each is asking for but in the end, one ends up making more profit than the other simply because of the consumer behavior. They have to be very careful about their brands in order to not infuse bias or as they put it, “paying for one child to go to college but not the other.” I felt that this part of the discussion was best aligned with their mission statement.

The main customer of VF is the mass distributor such as Wal Mart. The customer name that was brought up constantly was Wal Mart because VF needs them as they need VF. It is a great relationship because VF has all of the brands they want to sell and since VF does not do direct relationships with consumers and is not actually in retail they just make the products, it works out great for both sides. This is an example of outsourcing in order to get their products sold. This is what VF Jeanswear does a lot of the time. They already have their brands as their main companies, but sometimes these brands do not have enough stores to meet the potential profit that VF is looking for so outsourcing is always the next option.

What customers value of VF’s products and services is their quality of jeans at an affordable price and the efficiency in supplying the products to the customer demands. VF is constantly looking for new customers while also trying to keep their everyday customers satisfied. So, they are looking at trends and changes in demographics in order to meet new customer needs and maintain their current customer satisfaction. This is exactly what customers value of VF; they are watching changes in trends to keep the customer up to date in trends and also diversifying their products to potentially attract other customers.

The result of VF is great quality jeans at a great price, exactly how they planned it. They have been buying more and more brands to add to their portfolio, and the success and profit has been outstanding over the last few years. They almost doubled their worth over the course of five years and they are well on their way into the teen-millions. This is quite an impressive result for any type of business and I was personally blown away at how much profit they have recorded in only 5 years.

The plan for VF Corporation Jeanswear is to win in the marketplace and be highly competitive within that marketplace. They also plan on continuing to watch the changes in competition, demographics, supply chain and sourcing. All of these changes have a heavy influence in the plan and strategy for VF. Their goal is to strive for constant sustainability and profitable growth through innovation and execution of what has always been effective. From what they showed to us about their plan, they are right on top of things and are doing things right in order to make the most amount of profit possible.

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