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Jacqueline Ardrey. She is very broadly president and CEO with me in person. It's great to see you.
Yeah, thanks Katie, great for having me.
So let's look ahead to the future. Tell us about Project Restoration. It's built as this full three sixty brand transformation. What does that look like in practice?
It's such an exciting transition for us as a brand. We really eighteen months ago when I joined, we started this really comprehensive analysis of the business and looking at everything from our store experience, our website experience, our products, everything that we could affect, and came up with this plan that is really a four pillar plan. I've talked
about this a lot. That's what Project Restoration is. It's it's addressing the consumer, it's addressing product, it's addressing our channels of distribution, and then it's also addressing the brand. So this is a real again, as you said, three hundred and sixty degree transformation, and it is so important I think for a brand transformation to look at the kind of size and what we need to deliver to change our results is you have to look at everything. So we went back we a lot of sales data.
We looked at our history, but also looked at current competitors. We looked at the market and said, you know, what is the customer looking for? What does she need now? And a big trend in accessories is around customization and personalization. So we really set out to do something brand new in the accessory space, keeping our colorful heritage, which is you know, many people, as we talked just earlier, know
this brand and love this brand. We have a lot of brand recognition for the size of our company, and we just wanted to make it fresh and relevant and modern. So I am so excited with what the team has delivered here. Everything from all of our product really transformed. It's all new, but you'll recognize it as Vera Bradley, like when you when you walk into the room and you see everything, and you walk into a retail store experience our our new updated website. It feels like Vera Bradley,
but it's very modern and it's it's still colorful. It's a nod to the heritage that the brand started with, but it's it's just all I can say is that it's it's all new and exciting.
Well, let's talk a little bit more in detail about what to expect, because of course, I think very Bradley. I think those Paisley wristlets and wallets that everyone in high.
School and college had.
So it sounds like you're still going to be colorful, but more solids. For example, are you introducing new items actually, such as items of clothing? Are you sticking to bags here?
We really are focusing more on our key heritage, which is travel and handbags. And we still will have clothing, you know, some of the some of the things. We're deemphasizing that a little bit to really return to our core and it's it's colorful Bill Paisley's in the line. There's still things, but again it's just a it's a modern and fresh take because if you really look at the retailers who are doing well now, you've got to,
you know, two segments. You've got the value segment and you've got brands who are transformed or being are really innovative, and that's really what we're going for. We're really going for this innovative solution. And when you look at how the line all works together, we believe, you know, a trend right now and accessories is around again. Customization like this. You know, the modern woman is, she's doing so much.
There's this whole phenomenon around a bag within a bag, so you have a tote bag and then you have your wristlet or you have you know, other small things that you want to tuck in there. We've provided these really thoughtful solutions for her, which is is a hallmark of the brand as well.
Let's talk about who she is because reading through your most recent earnings release, your earnings call, it seems like you're targeting that thirty five to fifty five year old woman, so not exactly high schoolers. And I mean thinking about that, it reminds me a bit of what Abercrombie and Fitch is doing, that reimagination that they've had their brand and focusing on a slightly older client. What was the thought process and the decision tree that led you to that specific age group.
Yeah, great question. We're very fortunate in that we have a multi generational customer. So if you look at where you know, in our different age ranges where we have customers and where we've always had customers, we're very fortunate and that we're anywhere from eighteen to sixty five. So
that's we want to keep that. The reason for the focus on that thirty five to fifty four year old is really that's you know, when the brand was really successful, that's really where we had many more customers than we
do today. So that was one reason. The second reason is that that generation influences both her kids and her mom, and that is really what is so special about this brand is that the stories that I hear from customers about their first Vera Bradley bag, it's almost always connected to somebody else in their household, which is really special. But you know, the thirty five to fifty four year olds also they have more money to spend as well,
So that was another more practical reason. So for all those reasons, that's why we refocused there.
Well, let's talk about when this could start to bear fruit. Of course, you're expecting a stronger back half of the year, but is that enough time for that turnaround to really take root? What gives you the confidence that this is that the second half of twenty twenty four is when we'll start seeing this pick up.
Yeah. I mean, the one thing that we did that I think we did really well last year was reposition our cost structure so that we could afford to invest in the marketing that we needed to actually launch this transformation,
and that is really what you'll see. You'll see a lot of a lot of marketing from the minute we launched this in a couple of weeks through the rest of the year, so we were able to really reinvest in marketing to kind of get the word out there for both For our existing customers are extremely loyal and we think that they're going to be delighted by some of the changes that we've made, but we also need new customers and new people to interact with the brand.
So that's where our marketing, our new marketing plans come in.
Well, you only have about a minute left with you, but we're within that marketing trajectory. Are you investing Are we talking you know, bottom of the funnel sort of social media sort of type initiatives or what are you actually investing in?
It's really all through the funnel, so you'll see a lot more top of funnel than we've done. We have a celebrity partner who will be introducing in a short time here, which is we're really excited about, and just all through the funnel. We'll be spending our marketing investments.
Well, really excited to see this turnaround get off the ground of course, coming in mid July, Jacqueline Audrey, it's great to see you.
Thank you so much. Thank you Katie,