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The Glossy Podcast
CMO Sarah Crockett on DSW's rebrand: 'We're not going to throw everything out and just focus on the future'
00:32:45
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- [00:00]
Sarah Crockett
Foreign.
- [00:05]
Jill Manoff
Thanks for tuning in to the Glossy Podcast. I'm your host, Jill Manoff, and today I'm sitting down with Sarah Crockett, who joined DSW as its Chief Marketing Officer just nine months ago following CMO roles at Dickies and Burton, among other brands. At dsw, Sarah has big plans to reposition the brand while leveraging its strengths, including a large store footprint and loyal customers. So I wanted to ask her about the opportunities she plans to tackle first and the long term potential she sees in dsw. I also want to ask about the current competition for the fashion shoe shopper. What does it take to win her or him over today? Welcome Sarah.
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Sarah Crockett
Great to be here. Thanks for having me. Jill.
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Jill Manoff
So happy to see you again. Let's talk what was the Coming in dsw, you're fresh, you're new. What was your perception of the brand and your experience with it to date?
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Sarah Crockett
Yeah, you know, when I first got the call for the role, it immediately transported me back to my first time walking into a dsw, which was in Pasadena, California. This was at a time where I was just starting to make my own money. I was living out on my own, you know, young, in my pursuit of a professional career. And DSW offered me an, an experience that I just, again, it's a memory. So it clearly stood out of the pack. And what I can remember is walking into the door and just seeing the sea of shoes and they were all within my reach, which was such an important part because at this point in time, again, I'm not like sitting here with a ton of disposable income, but I had needs and I had different sides of myself that I was having to eliminate for the first time in a professional environment for job interviews for whatever it may be. And I found that I could go to DSW and get a lot for my money and that allowed me to feel confident in the things that I was trying to tackle at that time. So that's the immediate thought I had when the opportunity crossed my desk was wow, what a feeling. And I'm personally always attracted to opportunities that evoke something emotional for me. And this was certainly emotional. It was nostalgic. And I think looking at the DSW opportunity, I saw it as an opportunity to put some of that emotion back into the brand. And that's what I've been focused on.
- [02:25]
Jill Manoff
I love that you were you hired to bring this new life to the brand. Like we need somebody to give us a rebrand, we're going to find the expert for it is that was that DSW's approach, or you came in and you're like, okay, we need to do some things here.
- [02:40]
Sarah Crockett
No, I definitely think the organization and the leadership team knew what they were looking for and knew what was needed. And that need was some level of brand amplification, brand relevance, improvement. We have so many strengths that are at play with our consumers on a daily basis. But being able to have the foresight to look ahead and say, you know, we recognize this is a very different environment than it was 20 years ago, 10 years ago, and every organization goes through this where there's, you know, peaks and valleys and peaks and valleys. And how do you make sure that you're always thinking about two steps ahead while also tending to the daily business? There was a recognition that that two steps ahead needed a certain type of background, and I think that's why I find myself.
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Jill Manoff
Yes. Well, I mentioned at the beginning all of your stores. How many stores do you have now? And I definitely see that as a strength or a differentiator.
- [03:33]
Sarah Crockett
Yeah, we have about 500 stores. I see them as a strength, absolutely. From the adjacency to our customers, the average best customer lives within eight miles of a dsw. And we see it from a marketing perspective as a great billboard. I've worked at organizations that didn't have such a robust retail footprint, and you always saw that in the awareness numbers when compared to other retailers that do have a larger footprint. So the value of a store gives you so many unique benefits from a brand perspective, and probably most importantly, from a customer relationship perspective.
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Jill Manoff
Yes. Are they consolidated or like other clusters in various parts of the country? Like, I'm in St. Louis. There's definitely one up the street.
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Sarah Crockett
Good. Yes. We are definitely heavier on the east and middle of the country, but I mentioned Pasadena, California. That's my backyard. And we certainly have west coast locations, so we are nationwide and in Canada as well. And we certainly have heavier concentration in certain regions at the moment, but we're looking at growing our store footprint as well.
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Jill Manoff
Nice. How do you describe the customer today? Who is she? She's maybe young. Maybe she's entering the workforce. She's seeing she can afford the things. Like you did. Well, how would you describe her?
- [04:47]
Sarah Crockett
Yes, a lot of what you just said. So, you know, we definitely know that she is making purchase decisions for her household. She's pretty affluent. She certainly has her choices. But what we found that's more interesting from a qualitative standpoint is the how she looks at the footwear category, which is super interesting. Footwear has a unique flexibility in self expression. So when customers, you know, maybe their body types are changing, our footwear choices can sometimes remain somewhat the same. There's no judgment there. Maybe they're taking a transition from being a student into a professional. Maybe they're trying to express a different side of their personality. We know that they look at the footwear category as a place or a beacon of self expression and that drives so much of her interests within the category. That coupled with the occasion factor that footwear must cater to. So if there's a wedding that you're going to again, a job interview or first day of school, having the adjacency that 8 mile distance from our best customer allows them to satisfy their want and need without having to necessarily always wait for the fulfillment time of an online purchase. And we know she also appreciates the tryon factor with our category. There's a lot of size variance in our category. So being able to get that extra comfort of being able to put the shoe on, see how it feels, see how it looks, see how it makes yourself feel is important to her as well.
- [06:17]
Jill Manoff
Oh my gosh. It's such a plus for what you guys have going on. I'm sure you've seen the tik toks where people are like scared to like ask if they don't like how their nails were done or how their hair was done. But like just like having to bother an associate to get them another size and another size and another size if they're not finding what they need, like that will prevent a purchase.
- [06:35]
Sarah Crockett
I'm sure we know our customer loves the self service model and DSW is a pioneer in that model. So again I mentioned my personal experience walking in, seeing the sea of shoes that excited me. Now that can also be really intimidating to the average person too. It depends on where your mindset is. And we're doing some interesting research around that front as well. But that open sight line, that self service model is so valuable today and we know that the customer really responds well to that. We also have the added benefit of having incredible retail staff members who represent our brand every single day at the forefront of the consumer. So if there is a need or if there is a question, we have that informed expert available to support them.
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Jill Manoff
Yes. Well, how do you describe the rebrand or the refresh? You're going from what to what? Like what's the end goal?
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Sarah Crockett
Yeah, so it's, it's a, an opportunity to do a couple different things. First, understand what are our unique strengths. Who makes DSW up at its core. We definitely don't want this to become one of those examples of a rebranding exercise where you kind of threw everything out and just focused on on the future. You've seen a lot of disruption come as a result of that. Insert case study of Tropicana or Gap. Right. So we've all learned from those things. I think this is an opportunity to know what unique strengths of DSW carry forward. Understanding how the consumer landscape has evolved since the last time we did this work, which was, you know, quite a bit ago. So certainly some changes. It was pre pandemic. We know pandemic accelerated so many customer shifts. And then competitors looking at the marketplace and understanding what is the customer being served by within our category today. All of those inputs together lead us to a GAP analysis to say, where could DSW uniquely fulfill something for the consumer and what does that require us to sharpen up within our own personality, within our own brand? So I would say this is going to be an evolution, not a revolution when it comes to who we are as a brand. But what I do hope the consumer realizes over time is they take. Can take a step back three months down the line, six months down the line, a year down the line, and look back and be like, wow, dsw. I kind of like what they're doing nowadays. They won't know exactly what it is. Right. They won't know, oh, they're using a different font or their stores changed in this way. But the collective sentiment of the brand starts to continuously move in the right direction. And that's ultimately what you can expect.
- [09:11]
Jill Manoff
To see right on. When you talk about the changing landscape and how it's evolved, I immediately think like the, the rise of digital or the shift to digital and all things digital. Tell me what, what your focus is there and, and how you are maybe pivoting or moving more toward that. That area.
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Sarah Crockett
Yeah, we've been really focused on an omnichannel relationship with the consumer and that will continue. We have a great digital experience, whether it's through our app or through our website. We connect with our consumers regularly through digital. We know that that is a channel that they certainly are engaging with, even if they ultimately transact in the store the crossover and being able to search and browse and kind of do their own research to then fulfill it within the store. We see that happening across our best customers constantly. So we certainly need to make sure that we are tending to that digital experience to remove any of that friction. There's always going to be some Friction. And that's just simply the nature of the consumer moving at such a fast pace that the organizations keeping up can satisfy some of their needs, but not all of them. And so it's about making our best choices. What are the choices that the customer cares the most about and how can we make positive change in that direction? And we're constantly looking at that from an offline and online perspective.
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Jill Manoff
Nice. You also mentioned your competitors. Who do you consider your competitors?
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Sarah Crockett
DSW is such a broad retailer. It's very interesting. I actually love that question because it's a good gut check for me. And when I first started here and I would get that question quite a bit and ask that question quite a bit, what I realized is our customer base is so broad. Now if you think about the categories that we carry, you see within that you see a male customer, you see a work customer, you see a student customer, you see a dressy, elegant customer, you see a casual customer. So it's quite broad and that's intentional. One of the core strengths of DSW is the breadth of assortment that we have to offer from national best known brands as well as our unique private label brands that offer her the right trends at the right time for the right price. And so who our competitor is really depends on the category. So if I'm looking at my athletic category, I have a certain set of usual suspect retailers. You could imagine when I look at our dressy fashion category, a different set of competitors. There certainly are the very few Amazons of the world that cover all the bases. So we look at them as well. So it really depends on the category that you're talking about.
- [11:48]
Jill Manoff
Yes. When you're talking about acquiring customers and your target customers and who you may not have yet in terms of like that core customer, like is it about Gen Z and you, or like you mentioned sneakers, is it like the athlete, the dude? I don't know, like what are kind of the main goals in terms of target demo?
- [12:07]
Sarah Crockett
Yeah, we constantly have an opportunity to make sure we're acquiring new customers with that broad assortment, with that broad customer base. We certainly see our target customer within the mix dominating our customer feed. And we love our loyalists. We love them. They are very engaged in our brand and business and our VIP loyalty program. And frankly we look at them and say, how can we find more people like you? And so we do that. We do that within our marketing strategies and we certainly are interested like every brand in acquiring more millennial customers, more Gen Z customers. Gen Alpha is already in the mix. We don't see the need to shift away and say farewell to our current customers. Through a lot of this work, we've actually found that they're pretty closely united under a shared mindset. And that mindset is what's going to help us illuminate relevant content and marketing and product and experiences for them. And that's cross generational, but certainly focused on acquiring more customers across those demographics.
- [13:13]
Jill Manoff
Yes, I feel like a lot of what you're doing speaks to current consumer behavior in general and what we're writing about and what we're reading about all the time. But there's desire, demand for affordability. There's a desire, demand for, I don't know, especially among young consumers, like wanting to opportunity for self expression, like they don't want what everyone else has. It seems like there's great variety. How else would you say, I guess you're, you're tapping into or just naturally there into what's happening, what's working to your advantage.
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Sarah Crockett
It's so fascinating to hear and watch how the market is changing. I'm hearing a lot of conversation and kind of tend to lean in when I hear people talking about, oh, just ignore trend. It's all about your own preferences. I think there's something really quite cool about that, honestly. And I think that's there's an empowerment message behind that about just be you like, whatever makes you feel good, who cares? That said, there always is going to be an undertone of trend that plays a role in fashion and in footwear as part of that. So we certainly, certainly do see that. We see certain categories popping. And, you know, I was at vans in 2010-2016, and I always think of that as the, the best years of the brand. I'm sure there's plenty of people who can argue that, but I do think it was a time that was super unique to the footwear industry because that was when we started to see sneakers showing up on the New York Fashion Week Runway. And that taught her that wearing athletic shoes, pairing that with your trend, fashion looks, dresses, skirts, whatever it may be, is actually an acceptable look. Now, when you take her out of those uncomfortable heels and put her in a pair of really cute athletic sneakers, good luck reversing that order. We definitely see it reversing in some cases. I personally love to rock a pair of heels every now and again, but I certainly can't do it every single day. So I think that giving that permission and that flexibility is what we offer within our broad assortment as well.
- [15:16]
Jill Manoff
How are you leveraging Influencers to kind of help with what you're doing here, help that expansion.
- [15:22]
Sarah Crockett
Yeah, influencers are a very important part of our brand and a growing importance to us. And. And I like to see influencers as sort of word of mouth at scale. I see PR as that as well. And word of mouth. With all the changes that have happened in our marketing landscape and in retail and fashion and all the other places, a lot of those are digitally enabled or AI or technology centric. All of those things are so important. But really what matters at the end of the day, if you think about it and just put your human consumer hat on, it's about storytelling, it's about word of mouth, because you care what your friends and family have experience. They're likely your first place that you used to go when you're researching a product or a category. Now we see that's augmented with their digital friend network and that includes influencers. So they certainly play a critical role. We work with about 400 to 500 influencers a year, so pretty substantial. And we of course have a strategy against that where not every influencer is created equal. We have influencers who are charged with creating great brand awareness and relevance and engagement. And then there are the influencer communities that help us promote and move product within a specific window of time.
- [16:41]
Jill Manoff
Nice. And also working with some celeb types. I don't know if you call it designer a celeb, but I would. I love what you were telling me about how again, how you're leveraging your stores with some kind of in store activations. Tell me about your Christian Cowan fund.
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Sarah Crockett
We love Christian Cowan. He was such a pleasure to work with. And this was a second year activation with him during New York Fashion Week where he joined us in our Union Square store. We were able to feature his Runway looks and therefore the consumer to engage with and see firsthand. And they are just jaw dropping and so whimsical and so creative. And he just kind of hearing his story and his background and what led him to this collection and being able to host that conversation with content creators and influencers and media like yourself within the Union Square environment was so enjoyable. That was just a few weeks ago. It feels like a lifetime ago, but we certainly like to have that connection point. We're currently working with Paige Desorbo as well and have a lot of great content and storytelling happening around her and her personal interests within the category and her, you know, unique, authentic voice and just. She's just nothing but herself and unapologetic about it. And she should be. She's fantastic.
- [17:59]
Jill Manoff
She's fantastic. Well, tell me, nine months in, did you also make some hires to kind of come along and support you in these efforts?
- [18:09]
Sarah Crockett
Absolutely, yes. Part of any new leader coming into the organization is really saying, all right, well here's where we're head headed, here's what the goals are. Let's make sure that we've got the right muscle in place to help us reach those goals. So that of course comes with bringing in and making some adjustments within the team itself as well to make sure that the organization is set up well to accomplish the goals. And so that's always equal parts terrifying and exciting opportunity because people make the world go round. And frankly, I can only be my best when I'm given the access to an incredible team of subject matter experts. And that is frankly what I have. I'm a very lucky individual to have such a impressive team.
- [18:56]
Jill Manoff
Yes. And I know that you are also working with some, some outside agencies and such like. Tell me about the network that also kind of contributes to this.
- [19:04]
Sarah Crockett
Yes, I'm a personally a big believer in the right combination of resourcing being some level of internal and external, external support. I've always been an advocate for building internal teams and making sure that we're not fully outsourcing any part of our organization. But there's some beauty that comes from having external partners, you know, add their influence and bring that spark, something that maybe we are very focused on DSW 247 and, and therefore can maybe have blockers onto certain areas. So I find external partners can really help to illuminate that. So we have a very nice collection, so to speak, of really trusted partners across our PR agency, our media agencies and our creative partners as well.
- [19:55]
Jill Manoff
Awesome. Can we expect some big brand campaign that's going to be like the new DSW or like it's, you said, it's kind of an evolution and it's not quite so wham, bam, this is it now.
- [20:07]
Sarah Crockett
We are the people's brand. We, we certainly want to make sure that we are keeping our consumers updated and abreast of the, the journey of the brand. So absolutely. I think you're, you're going to certainly start to see drips of the work and then we will make sure that, you know, some of the bigger crescendo type of moments may become more obvious. You know, I don't expect to come to the consumer and say, hey, look at us, we're, you know, a renewed brand. But it, I'm more of a, you know, walk the walk person. And so I think we will certainly. And we have been walking the walk over the last few months and we're going to continue to walk the walk into the future.
- [20:46]
Jill Manoff
Nice. What do you see as the greatest challenge of moving into, I guess, in 2025, just this year?
- [20:53]
Sarah Crockett
Well, it's just been a totally smooth year. No drama whatsoever.
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Jill Manoff
Easy peasy, piece of cake.
- [21:00]
Sarah Crockett
So I think it, I think the, the landscape speaks for itself. I don't need to unpack all of the different news headlines that cross our desk about 20 times a day to say that it's, it's certainly a bit messy out there right now. So I think I probably would have answered that question a bit differently today than I would have maybe, you know, 12 weeks ago or so. So I think we're, we're certainly seeing 2025 is going to be a year just like many of them have been in recent times, where we've got to stay close to the market, to the consumer, be very agile to understand where and when we have an opportunity to connect with the consumer.
- [21:43]
Jill Manoff
Yes. Have there been any, any instances as you've made subtle changes and started moving in a new direction of like, backlash or maybe you're like, I, we're going to lose this customer. But that's okay because look at all of the, the opportunity ahead, like maybe not yet or maybe not necessarily.
- [21:58]
Sarah Crockett
I think, you know, that could certainly be a risk risk if we were to take a one size fits all approach. And that is not, you know, not the right approach for a brand with this broad of a consumer base, this broad of a, of an offering. Your relationship with the brand is different than my relationship and so on and so forth. So that's where I'll go back to just understanding that shared mindset has been such a gift as we continue, continue to work through our future here because it allows us to somewhat simplify things in an instance, but then we're able to personalize and able to make sure that we're communicating with our customers around what's important to them. And again, that's not going to be the same message for every single consumer. So we want to make sure that we spend as much time understanding their needs and delivering to them under the lens of the DSW brand. So this work is offering up a really rich and fun territory for us. I'm a big fan of guardrails. It gives us a space to play and be creative. Without them, you end up kind of, you know, getting a little bit lost. Right. So we have guardrails now and we can understand how to connect with all of our unique customers within these new guardrails.
- [23:13]
Jill Manoff
Nice. Well, we are, we have to talk about it because we are inching up on this deadline and what's going to happen with TikTok. But are you, are you watching that space closely and are there concerns there or are you not maybe leveraging that in a big way?
- [23:27]
Sarah Crockett
We certainly are paying attention. TikTok remains an important channel for us. We know that that's a very engaged content base. We work with a lot of. I mentioned our influencer community. We work with a lot of partners who see that as their primary platform. So we're certainly monitoring it. And my personal belief on what will happen if the channel gets shut down is that we're going to see the creator community make some decisions and platform choices that will frankly stretch to replace what TikTok was. How much that will happen, how much their follower base moves with them, all of that is to be seen. But I personally don't believe that one platform is the reason for having such a creative community, content based population. It can certainly accelerate it based on its tools and capabilities and population, but it certainly can evolve and be replaced if we need to. So we're watching it and we'll be agile and certainly we'll continue to lean into the creator community.
- [24:36]
Jill Manoff
Right on. What are you most proud of over the last nine months?
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Sarah Crockett
So much to be proud of. Oh, my gosh, the team. I'll go back to the team. The team. The team. The team. I will say I'm most proud of the work that the team has leaned into. I certainly recognize coming into a very mature business and evoking a lot of changes relatively quickly is a big ask on the broader team. And frankly, it's impossible for me to represent the volume of pride that I have through words, but I'm going to do my best here to do it. The responsiveness, the curiosity and the trust that was issued on the part of the team is a direct reflection of their confidence and trust in me as a leader. And that is something that I do not take for granted. And that tells me I did something to earn that and something that is so critical to not lose sight of. And that is a daily affirmation for me. That's one of the most important things I can do as a leader.
- [25:37]
Jill Manoff
So nice. And so, I mean, you could have said the shoe bra on the Christian Cowan Runway.
- [25:43]
Sarah Crockett
I did love that shoe bra.
- [25:47]
Jill Manoff
Look it up, folks.
- [25:48]
Sarah Crockett
But that goes back. I'm going to say that goes right back to the team. That is my team of subject matter experts who saw an opportunity for that partnership, put the idea together, I was able to approve it and we moved forward. I had the easiest job in all of that. It's all about the team.
- [26:04]
Jill Manoff
It was spectacular. What are any more specific goals for the year ahead? You've got a lot on your plate.
- [26:11]
Sarah Crockett
We've got a lot on our plate for sure. So our specific goals remain focused on the customer. How can we continuously improve our relationship with the customer? How can we meet more customers? So within that you hear a lot about how can we retain. If I'm using marketing speak, we have retention goals, we have acquisition goals and then we have brand equity goals. I think those are the three biggest pockets of opportunity and future proofing the organization. There's so much volatility in the marketplace within marketing. We see so much change happening within how our customers engaging with our channels. It's changing day by day, month by month. So to future proof the function requires innovation, requires us to expand our channel mix and some of those components. So I would add future proofing to our list of goals around acquisition, retention and brand equity.
- [27:06]
Jill Manoff
Right on. DSW is under a multi brand umbrella. Is that kind of. Are you familiar with this operation or what? What are the kind of, I guess the perks in terms of your. The current setup?
- [27:16]
Sarah Crockett
Yeah, absolutely. It's been a part of my past. I've worked at other retailers, I'll shout out to rei, their own private label, you know, the co op brand obviously co op cycles etc, so it is not a new situation for me to be in and frankly I think it's a very smart. If you look at it as a portfolio strategy, we have brands that we can uniquely offer to the consumer through the DSW environment and we also have brands that, that we have a special relationship with that are sold in other environments and I think there's a lot of strength in that and we can learn from each other and leverage each other's experiences on what worked and what didn't work. So the more points you have access to, I frankly I think the better.
- [28:01]
Jill Manoff
Right on. What shoes are we wearing today, Sarah?
- [28:05]
Sarah Crockett
Oh, today I'm wearing a pair of Uggs. Cute. Because it is snowing outside right now here in Park City. My feet are nice and cozy and warm and my well worn, tried and true pair of Uggs here.
- [28:20]
Jill Manoff
Nice. Park City doesn't know it's spring this week, but it is not.
- [28:24]
Sarah Crockett
I don't think it will know that. For another month.
- [28:28]
Jill Manoff
Sarah, this was so fun. Thanks for being here today.
- [28:31]
Sarah Crockett
Great to be back with you, J.
- [28:40]
Jill Manoff
That's all for this episode. Our theme music is by Otis MacDonald. Be sure to give us a rating on Apple Podcasts or wherever you're listening to the Glossy Podcast. See you next week.