Deckers Outdoor Corp – Potential Growth Beyond
Footwear & Strategic Update – 30 September 2021
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Specialist:
Title:
Moderator: Nyree Hinton (NH), Third Bridge Sector Analyst
Ian Stewart (IS)
Former VP, Marketing, Ugg at Deckers Outdoor Corp
Agenda:
1. Growth opportunities for Deckers (NYSE: DECK) across its portfolio, including Ugg, Hoka and
TevaxUgg category update
2. Impacts around digital ad spend and supply chain
3. Omnichannel strategy, D2C update and potential evolution across wholesale accounts and scalability
4. Strategic shift towards de-seasonalising sales
5. International demand outlook and company management and structure
Contents
Q: What’s your overview of the footwear market’s lifestyle brands? What key trends were happening pre-
pandemic?
Q: To what extent can the footwear players or manufacturers control the market volatility that you
highlighted? How much is within their control?
4
5
Q: How are some footwear brands reacting to those two points in e-commerce – digital ads being up 50%
YoY and the Apple privacy update which is reducing visibility? Are brands throwing more money at digital ad
spend just to work harder to get the same visibility as before, or are they scaling back and being more
nimble?
5
Q: The D2C industry-wide shift seems increasingly crowded given that every brand from each industry is
trying to market on the same platforms. How has that ad spend and ROI shifted among the big players?
Q: What are some of the more common sourcing delay issues, such as Vietnam and other parts of Asia
having limited supply?
6
6
Q: What have been the lead times and delays throughout 2021? What are you preparing for as we enter
2022? How far ahead are you planning for inventory or waiting for product? Is it around 5-6 months?
Q: How are companies re-evaluating their supply chains given the ongoing issues throughout 2021? Did
companies largely expect supply chain pressures to alleviate in January, meaning they kept the same
strategy, or did they improve efficiency to be less exposed? Is there opportunity to do so?
7
7
Q: Are companies revising forecasts down or not meeting targets mainly due to the market’s promotional
nature and demand cooling down? To what extent are supply issues playing a part? What’s really the driving
force between supply and demand?
7
Q: How has Deckers successfully grown its key brands – Ugg, Hoka and Teva – and international presence
over the years? How are the two connected?
8
9
Q: You said the sky is the limit for Hoka, but are you less optimistic on Ugg and is that because sustainability
is a big talking point around lifestyle brands? Canada Goose announced it will discontinue using fur on its
parkas. How does sustainability play into Ugg’s business model and is the company worried about consumer
perception for its sourcing and materials?
9
Q: Which of the brands – Ugg, Hoka and Teva – has the best opportunity to diversify into apparel and other
accessories outside of footwear? Where are you most optimistic for that opportunity?
10
Q: How does Deckers’ wholesale strategy differ vs other US or global wholesalers and brands’ strategies?
Most of the traditional brands that go through department stores through wholesaling get hit badly on
margin, it’s literally killing their business. Why do you think Deckers’ wholesale strategy has been so
successful given it is still a large part of revenues?
10
Q: Hoka didn’t rush into wholesale, which I think was a positive, but you said the brand is pushing further
into it. Are there any concerns about brand dilution if Deckers added some of the bigger but less premium
accounts? Dick’s Sporting Goods is vastly different than Nordstrom. How might wholesale presence evolve,
specifically with key accounts?
11
11
Q: What are the opportunities within Hoka to expand beyond footwear and build something that’s well-
renowned and accepted by younger consumers? How do you think the brand should be positioned? Should it
12
be more towards performance wear or the athleisure of Lululemon and Fabletics?
Q: What missteps might have prevented Hoka from achieving a faster growth pace? On Running just went
public at a USD 7bn-8bn valuation and has a strong US footprint. What could Hoka do to be more
aggressive?
12
Q: What do you make of Deckers as an organisation and its ability to manage brands effectively? What are
the considerations around giving a brand too much economy, or less, to make decisions and be true to core,
but also answer to investors and meet targets? It seems very difficult and many brands can’t do it, which is
why there are divestitures from brands or organisations getting too big and becoming unprofitable. How do
you not lose the brand under a bigger organisation?
13
Q: What might be preventing Deckers from making international a larger percentage of the revenue? Is it
due to a lack of growth internationally, or more because it is growing so much in the US? The company’s
channel and regional split is roughly 60% or 65% US, while international presence reduced about 3pp, so the
13
split between the US and international seems somewhat stagnant.
Q: The 65% wholesale and 35% D2C footprint seems very balanced for the past few years and doesn’t seem
to be a focus for change. What dynamics are playing into those numbers staying the same?
14
Q: What are you tracking on a more macro front given the upcoming Black Friday event, supply-demand
issues and promotional activity? Do you think many of these brands will have products inventory to meet
demand?
14
Q: What do you think is commonly overlooked by investors about Deckers? Is there anything to note about
company or brand weakness or the management team? What should we follow closely that might often be
overlooked?
15
Deckers Outdoor Corp – Potential Growth Beyond
Footwear & Strategic Update
Transcription begins at 00:00:04 of the recorded material
NH: Welcome to Third Bridge Forum’s Interview entitled Deckers Outdoor Corp – Potential Growth Beyond
Footwear & Strategic Update. I’m Nyree Hinton and I’ll be facilitating today’s Interview with Mr Ian Stewart,
former VP of Marketing, Ugg, at Deckers Outdoor Corp.
Ian, before we get started with today’s Interview, please state I agree or I disagree to the following statement:
You understand the definition of material non-public information and agree not to disclose any such
information or any other information which is confidential, during this Interview.
IS: I agree.
NH: Thank you, Ian. Could you start by giving the audience an introduction of your background and various
roles you’ve held in the industry?
IS: I’m currently the CMO and Chief Digital Officer over at Toms Shoes, I’m sure a brand you know well from
its 15 years of giving one-for-one shoes. Prior to that, I spent two-and-a-half years at Deckers Outdoor as the
VP of Marketing of the Ugg brand. I was also the most senior marketing member at Deckers, so I had a pretty
strong line into the other brands’ marketing team for guidance and steering. Before that, I spent 6-7 years at
Nike with the Converse brand, ending up as the Head of Marketing at Converse. I also spent some time in
Asia-Pacific. Before that, a variety of different roles in iconic brands like MTV, Coca-Cola, so I’ve got 30 years
of brand marketing, 11-12 years of footwear, and looking forward to talking with you all about the challenging
times, but also the opportunities that we face as we come out of the pandemic.
[00:01:45]
Q: What’s your overview of the footwear market’s lifestyle brands? What key trends were happening pre-
pandemic?
IS: It’s very interesting, one of the things I think we’ll talk a lot about in this conversation is what
unprecedented times we’re facing right now, as we look forward at our one-, two- and three-year plans,
moving forward. If we think of the three time periods of pre-COVID, COVID, which I don’t think we’re fully
out of, and then life and business post-COVID, there is no real… that the past is going to be any indication of
the future, I don’t think, in terms of what life was like in the industry, in footwear, before COVID. The changes
that COVID brought around trends, both in terms of silhouette and style, brand leaders, distribution channels
and then, more recently, some of the challenges with digital marketing. I think that the overview of the
footwear market is that we’re in the middle of extreme volatility, both because of changing consumer
behaviour, channel behaviour, digital marketing behaviour, and, more recently, to be completely honest,
supply chain disruption, which is a significant impact on all of our abilities to sell product over the next six
months. I’m not really giving you an overview of what’s going on, other than it’s extremely volatile right now.
Private and confidential 4
[00:03:12]
Q: To what extent can the footwear players or manufacturers control the market volatility that you
highlighted? How much is within their control?
IS: It’s probably some of it is, if you’re smart and nimble and able to react. In the last 18 months, consumer
behaviour obviously went indoors and there was a huge opportunity to lean into comfort and cosy indoor
silhouettes, slippers for example, or indoor/outdoor shoes, and certain brands certainly Ugg in the slipper
category, but also Crocs, with their comfortable silhouette, have capitalised well on that shift in consumer
behaviour. We thought coming into this fall, ’21, that fashion trends would become more formal, as people
went back to the office and actually wanted to have a change from over-comfort and cosy to more the opposite
end of that, which is formal and more dressed up. That hasn’t happened, because we’re not really out of
COVID, so we’re still sitting in a bit of a limbo land between cosy and formal. The brands that reacted and had
products in their portfolio to speak to that have done well. Secondly, going into COVID, obviously physical
retail went down to almost zero, so digital and e-commerce, both from wholesale and direct-to-consumer were
incredibly important. Those brands that had good, solid e-comm platforms, both site and mobile, both did well
to take up that demand, but also if they had significant exposure with their e-comm, they were able to ride
through the pandemic. Many smaller brands didn’t have enough e-comm to generate enough cash to keep
their businesses going.
The flip side of that is how dependent brands are on wholesale, and some of those big national accounts with
big physical footprints suffered, and many brands saw their wholesale revenues go down to virtually nothing
from the physical side. Being able to ride through the channel changes. Then finally, just the crazy times we’ve
had with digital marketing, because everybody was going towards e-commerce, digital marketing became
more expensive. The CPMs, the cost per thousand, to reach 1,000 people, are up 50% on last year, coupled
with the Apple privacy changes to Facebook targeting, which extremely limited brand visibilities to find
consumers. Then supply chain. If people have a heavy seasonal business that depends on a lot of sales in the
fall and holiday of this year, where supply chain is particularly challenged, vs a more balanced portfolio, then
those brands are going to have a really hard time. Container costs are up from USD 2,000-3,000 a container
to USD 15,000-16,000, so the cost of getting goods from China and Vietnam and Thailand are obviously
massively high. The massive port delays, and then there’s COVID rumbling around all the factories over in
Asia as well, which is actually closing factories and stopping brands’ abilities to even get product out. If a
brand is overexposed for fall holiday and even spring next year, they’re going to suffer.
[00:06:25]
Q: How are some footwear brands reacting to those two points in e-commerce – digital ads being up 50% YoY
and the Apple privacy update which is reducing visibility? Are brands throwing more money at digital ad
spend just to work harder to get the same visibility as before, or are they scaling back and being more nimble?
IS: You can’t scale back. I think there is a point of diminishing return, where you just can’t keep spending
forever. I think some of the digital native brands have found that, where the more you spend you actually start
to get a negative return on ad spend ROI, so you can’t keep spending. I think the brands that have particularly
suffered are the ones that were overexposed on Facebook. If your performance marketing budget was over
80% dependent on Facebook, and particularly the AI targeting, the broad targeting that Apple clamped down
on, then you suddenly can’t find people. If you had a more balanced approach to digital marketing, where you
weren’t just dependent on the broad targeting of Facebook, you were using other channels like TikTok, you
were going manually into Instagram, you were exploring places like YouTube, then I think you were able to
manage your eyeballs and acquisition. Everybody is pivoting into different areas right now, aggressively. Paid
search is particularly delivering a better ROI as affiliate sales and delivering a better ROI as well, than
Facebook paid social. Everybody is racing to change their strategies and tactics right now. It’s a very
challenging time, again, both because of the privacy constraints on targeting and the 50% rise in the cost of
doing business on platforms like Facebook.
Private and confidential 5
[00:08:20]
Q: The D2C industry-wide shift seems increasingly crowded given that every brand from each industry is
trying to market on the same platforms. How has that ad spend and ROI shifted among the big players?
IS: I think a big trend within the COVID environment has been an over-dependence on direct-to-consumer e-
commerce platforms, which, as you said, by default, means increasing dependence on performance marketing
on platforms like Facebook. We did all that because more people were at home and buying online and our
websites were the place for people to come and find products. It got extremely competitive and crowded,
initially through the back end of last year into early this year. Everybody was buying more. I think we’ve
noticed, and people have noticed that people have started to buy a bit less, just because they had bought so
much last year, and also, as we came out of the major lockdown, coming into the summer of this year, people
have started to get outdoors and spend differently as well. People started to spend on travel and restaurants
and other entertainment and so a lot of the fashion footwear spend of a year ago has definitely gone down.
What you’re then seeing is a lot more brands on promotion constantly just to try and keep up with the
expectations of revenues, so now we’re in heavily promotion period and have been for the last six months, for a
lot of brands. Even brands like Nike, who are traditionally not on sale very often, are on sale quite a lot, and
that’s an indication that they’re trying to squeeze as much revenue as they can. The challenge we have now
with all brands being on sale now, coming into October, it’s 30 September today, is we’re also traditionally
gearing up towards Black Friday and holiday sales. What’s going to happen is there’s going to be a lot of earlier
buying by consumers, because of all the sale activity. Now the next big question is what impact is Black Friday
going to have vs prior years? Again, as I said in the introduction, there is no precedent for what’s happened to
the industry in the last 18 months, as it relates to setting the course for the next 18 months. It’s extremely
volatile, it’s extremely challenging.
[00:10:54]
Q: What are some of the more common sourcing delay issues, such as Vietnam and other parts of Asia having
limited supply?
IS: Supply chain, it’s quite literally page one headlines now that the general public now knows about the
supply chain issues that we’ve all been reading about and navigating for the whole of this year. Container costs
started to rise earlier this year, beginning of this year, from the last year’s USD 2,000-2,500 to USD 5,000 to
USD 6,000 to USD 7,000, then it hit USD 10,000, then it was USD 11,000 and USD 13,000 and USD 15,000,
and there are some containers that are hitting USD 20,000 and there are some brands that are airfreighting
just to get it in, which is a complete loss lead to have to do that. That’s a supply and demand issue. Underneath
that, there were a lot over-stacked containers earlier in the year, so there were a large number of ships that lost
containers. Yes, there’s insurance that gets you full recovery, but it means you don’t have product on your
website, so there’s a supply issue, inventory issue, with that. You have all of that going on.
There were factories where it just overloaded and there were factory fires. There were so many issues to try
and keep up with the demand, and then you’ve got COVID. What everyone has been noticing over the last
three months or so, coming out of China and Vietnam in particular, is cities and ports and factory areas
opening, then closing, then closing completely, and, because it was happening so suddenly, it was putting a lot
of strain on both the ability to get the next round of products through, even if you can get them on a ship, but
it’s also putting significant strain on the back of this year product arriving at all, and then getting into early
next year. Some of the strategies that people, who were on it early enough, included moving products out of
factories quickly into other factories at recent loss of margin. Getting out of north Vietnam, getting back into
China, getting over to Indonesia. It’s been a complete scramble, to be completely honest. Again, those
businesses that have big exposure to the fall holiday season are going to be the ones that are going to suffer,
potentially, the most in the next three months of selling in Q4.
Private and confidential 6
[00:13:19]
Q: What have been the lead times and delays throughout 2021? What are you preparing for as we enter 2022?
How far ahead are you planning for inventory or waiting for product? Is it around 5-6 months?
IS: People are finding that they have just not received product at all, all the way through this year. Certainly
either delays, containers off ships, factories closing, and if it’s seasonal product, particularly if it’s a product
that’s specific to a moment, like a Valentine’s Day or St Patrick’s Day, whatever, you’ve lost a whole
opportunity to sell that inventory, so that’s gone. Otherwise, it’s just general constraint on inventory in
general. The inability to get product onto your site, the inability to get product to your wholesale partner. I
think that some of the headlines we’re seeing in the mainstream the year around telling people to get their
Christmas shopping done now, particularly because there is the chance that there may not be product around
the back end of this year. We all read last week, or the week before, when Nike provided their forecasts, not
just for the next three months, for the next six and beyond months, of supply chain disruption, believing that
the whole supply chain resettling, factories reopening, COVID, will take us into next year, for sure. That’s not
even speaking to the cost of shipping, the container costs. It’s out of control to think that a container was USD
2,000 and it’s now USD 15,000. That’s not sustainable. It eats into everybody’s margin. Beyond that, if people
are airfreighting it’s even getting into it further. A lot of pressure and this is not just a footwear problem. This
is anything coming of Vietnam and China. Everybody is facing it.
[00:15:25]
Q: How are companies re-evaluating their supply chains given the ongoing issues throughout 2021? Did
companies largely expect supply chain pressures to alleviate in January, meaning they kept the same strategy,
or did they improve efficiency to be less exposed? Is there opportunity to do so?
IS: It’s difficult – in footwear, there are only so many factories that we all use, and we all use the same
factories and primarily that’s in North Vietnam and Southern China, and a little bit of Indonesia. It’s not like
you can reinvent the supply chain from a factory point of view. They are where they are. You can do what some
brands have done, which is duck and leave and pull lines from one factory in one country, and put them in
another factory in another country. That’s not sustainable though. That costs so much money to move the
entire production line over borders, so, no, that’s just really being mercenary in the short term, to get through
the next 3-6 months. You can’t change the factories, you just have to hope that, principally, the factory should
have… many facing now is due to COVID, so you have to believe that in six to nine, 12 months, the COVID
issues that’s closing factories wont be an issue, so there’s that bit.
The other bit is world demand for products by US consumers, for products coming out of China. Will that
demand cool down next year? Yes, it probably will. A lot of that demand was fuelled by people sitting at home
with stimulus cheques with the inability to spend money on travel and restaurants and other things, and we all
read about it over the last 18 months, that people were just sitting at home buying online. That’ll settle down
for sure. Everyone is re-forecasting what their sales were, based on COVID-accelerated demand last year.
What does that mean, really, for budgets for this year and for next year? Everybody is going through that
process. The third one is the assumptions on container costs. Many brands are assuming that those costs will
be stuck in for the next 12 months, even though we all wish they weren’t, and we all wish that those shipping
companies would not be gouging so much. The best course to do in a forecast situation is to believe that we’ll
be sitting at USD 15,000-20,000 per container, so then if it goes down there’s upside, which is great, and hope
for the best.
[00:18:14]
Q: Are companies revising forecasts down or not meeting targets mainly due to the market’s promotional
nature and demand cooling down? To what extent are supply issues playing a part? What’s really the driving
Private and confidential 7
force between supply and demand?
IS: There’s always demand and people have a lot more money to spend on things that they didn’t normally,
because, as I said before, we all thought we’d be fully out of COVID by now and back to work and spending it
on all the normal things we spend on, and that’s not the case so there’s still opportunity for this year to pick up
a lot of e-comm spend, particularly in fashion footwear, so that’s fine. There’ll be another opportunity, as
people do get back out into the workforce and are back out for brands who have products that speak to that
opportunity to capture that demand. Yes, I think what we’re doing is we’re navigating in the extreme short
term right now, as that situation changes to the best of our ability, based on consumer sentiment and demand,
and using promotions and using changing our messaging strategies and tactics around at-home comfort,
getting back to work. There are a lot of things you can do. You can’t change COVID closing factories and you
can’t change shipping companies hiking up the cost of a container, so you just have to ride that through, but,
yes, I think that we’re all doing the best we can to pick up that demand and there are some brands in footwear
who are particularly hot right now and are definitely riding over the top of it.
Brands like Crocs have done an incredible job of being a fad right through COVID, with a silhouette that
speaks to it, so they’ve done well. Whether they continue to ride that, because I think that’s more of a short-
term fashion excitement. You’ve got brands like Birkenstock that have done well to scale up silhouettes like the
Arizona beyond a niche group to quite a wide part of the population. I think they’ve got some longevity. Dr
Martens have had a moment. I know that we’re going to speak to it in a minute. Hoka has done really, really
well to use the pandemic to continue riding the wave they were already on. Then brands like Skechers have
done really well as well, through just basic comfort to their consumer audience. Then finally, because again it’s
part of the topic, but Ugg have done incredibly well to be well-placed over the last 12 months with indoor and
slippers, to get booming sales over the previous 12 months.
[00:21:06]
Q: How has Deckers successfully grown its key brands – Ugg, Hoka and Teva – and international presence
over the years? How are the two connected?
IS: When I left Deckers, it was just getting over USD 2bn. As I said, I was in the Ugg brand. We’d spend three
years retuning the entire brand to become more youthful, to become more fashion-relevant, to become de-
seasonalised with spring and summer products like the Fluff Yeah, to expand into apparel, to grow the men’s
and the kids’ business with strong silhouettes like the Neumel, to ramp up D2C, direct-to-consumer, with e-
commerce, to lean into the bigger wholesale accounts like Nordstrom, that were important to the business. We
put a lot of fundamentals in place through 2017, ’18, ’19, to build the brand to a really strong place, and I left,
but not thinking that COVID was then coming, “So, let’s get ready for it.” I think that it just placed Ugg in a far
stronger place coming into the pandemic than the brand had ever been in. Then, with the pandemic, it was
able to, because it was a more top-of-mind, relevant, exciting brand, that when opportunities around slippers
and indoor came around, Ugg was there for it and soaked up huge amounts of revenue because of that. Yes, as
I said, Ugg built a great foundation. I was part of that. It put the brand in a far more positive light with
consumers. The pandemic helped incredibly, to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. Ugg’s
opportunity/challenge will be to the extent it can comp that, because of that amount of demand last year vs
this year, and because of supply chain, given the overexposure of fall holiday to that brand in general. That’s
the Ugg situation. We can come back to that.
I think Hoka is a different one. Hoka didn’t capitalise, or it was able to capitalise on the pandemic, other than
the fact that running and the one bit of exercise people could do was to get out and run around the block, so
taking Hoka out of core performance running. The marathon, ultra-marathon runners into people who just
wanted to have comfortable shoes to run around the block, I think Hoka was there for that, but Hoka is not
Nike, as it relates to being top of mind for anybody wanting to run around the block. I think that Hoka has
continued just to grow on the trajectory that it was on pre-pandemic, which is a really comfortable shoe that’s
really coveted by core performance runners that was starting to get some spillover into casual runners, that
was also getting some spillover into fashion opinion leaders, who were picking up and discovering the brand
through some of their collaborations. Then finally, the fourth segment for Hoka that’s done really well is older
Private and confidential 8
non-runners who just want a damn-comfortable cushioned shoe. Again, none of those things other than a little
bit of running around the block has been Hoka having a massive trajectory because of the pandemic, but
they’re certainly growing really well through that. As the Deckers earning report says, ending at USD 800m
and tracking to USD 1bn, I think that that’s very doable, particularly with their move into things like apparel
and trail, and international. I think Hoka will get to USD 1bn and I think they can get to USD 2bn. To your
question on international, everybody is looking at that with Deckers. I think that the international opportunity
will be driven by Hoka vs Ugg, in my opinion.
NH: What about Teva?
IS: Their portfolio is primarily four brands now. I know they’ve got Deckers Lab, but the four brands, Ugg
being, historically, the big one and the big one for fall holiday and, as I said, we did a lot of work to de-
seasonalise that with silhouettes like the Fluff Yeah. That’s the lion’s share. Hoka, when I left, was tracking
towards half a billion and now they’re at USD 800m tracking to USD 1bn, so Hoka is the breakaway success
where I think the sky is the limit. Teva has always sat at around the USD 100m. I know that they closed out
USD 138m last year, last fiscal, but I don’t think it’s a brand, in my opinion, that can get to USD 500m. I think
it’s got some great opportunity, particularly as people get outdoors. It’s an outdoor brand. It’s linked up with
white water rafting and national parks. It’s a fun shoe to wear when you’re doing casual hiking, so I think it’s a
good bread-and-butter brand. I don’t think it can explode anywhere significant. Then you’ve got Sanuk, which
I think is now on the tailspin. I think they’re sitting below USD 50m now and they were over USD 100m. The
two brands in the portfolio are clearly Ugg, being able to diversify seasonally and out of the core sheepskin
boot, and apparel and international, and then Hoka just, as I said, the sky is the limit.
[00:26:26]
Q: You said the sky is the limit for Hoka, but are you less optimistic on Ugg and is that because sustainability
is a big talking point around lifestyle brands? Canada Goose announced it will discontinue using fur on its
parkas. How does sustainability play into Ugg’s business model and is the company worried about consumer
perception for its sourcing and materials?
IS: I think there are two different topics inside that. The sustainability one is is your product, regardless of
what it’s made with, made sustainably, and the work that I’m aware of, from when I was there, in terms of the
sustainable supply chain, the Ugg product is extremely sustainable. In fact, despite some misinformation, fake
news and rumours around Ugg from Peta and killing live sheep and whatnot, which is completely fiction, Ugg
buys sheepskin as a by-product of the meat industry, 100%, so it’s actually doing a sustainable duty of taking
product that would otherwise be landfill and reusing it for purposeful boots.
I’m a proud Australian, we invented the Ugg boot, so I’m well aware that it’s a fantastic product, as it relates to
sheepskin and the Ugg supply chain is done in the most sustainable way that I’m aware of. It’s a sustainable
product. To your other point around non-fur, that’s a vegan issue. Ugg is a sheepskin product. You can’t
suddenly make it a non-sheepskin product, if that’s what it is. It’s made from sheepskin. It’s a by-product from
the meat industry, so it can never claim to be vegan. It would be crazy to go 180 degrees away from what it is,
which is a by-product of the meat industry, to become vegan and, in fact, I think any nods to being vegan
would actually destroy the main thing the product is, which is it’s not vegan. I think sustainable, yes. Vegan,
no. Is everybody in the world vegan? No. Are there people who wear animal products? Yes, so I think that’s not
an issue for the brand. I think that de-seasonalising is the biggest opportunity for Ugg, because it has been
historically, principally a product known around sheepskin boots that sell when the weather gets cold. You can
go at the highest level with climate change and talk about that relevance, or you can go at a more tangible level
and say it’s never good to be that exposed in one season, so you want to de-seasonalise, which is the work we
did to bring spring and summer products like the Fluff Yeah and sneakers for slides and fashion boots to the
table. I think that’s Ugg’s opportunity. That challenge in the short term is comping beyond record sales
because of the pandemic and slippers, and I think the guidance that I’m reading from the Deckers earnings
reports are, they’re not coming out and saying it, but they’re looking backwards and saying, “Yes, that was an
incredible run through the pandemic. We’re now trying to manage and work out our inventories and our
supply and demand, moving into this coming fall, and then beyond that into next year.”
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[00:29:35]
Q: Which of the brands – Ugg, Hoka and Teva – has the best opportunity to diversify into apparel and other
accessories outside of footwear? Where are you most optimistic for that opportunity?
IS: I think any footwear brand is looking to diversify. The places you look are seasonal, so de-seasonalising
Ugg. Hoka doesn’t have to worry about de-seasonalising, so there’s that. There’s gender. I guess, principally
are female brands, so growing the men’s business within a women’s or feminine brand is an opportunity and a
challenge, but there’s no reason why it can’t and the track record of the Neumel as a men’s silhouette for Ugg
has been fantastic and then women adopted it, so there’s some product development around having a unisex
offer with products like the Neumel. That’s second place to scale. Third place to scale for footwear brands is in
apparel and Ugg launched successfully, a great apparel line. I don’t think it’s tore off the shelves, but it’s
certainly an indication that there is a demand for comfort and cosy, which is an Ugg proposition, beyond just
footwear, so there’s that opportunity. Then finally the fourth place to scale is international. I believe that Hoka
has a huge opportunity to scale internationally, because there is a global trend around running and wellness,
be it performance or casual running, everywhere from Europe to China and the rest of Asia, so Hoka has a
great chance to get their USD 1bn if not their USD 2bn from international expansion.
I think it’s more challenging, in my opinion, with Ugg to scale internationally, because it had been there
internationally. It had a strong presence in EMEA and particularly the UK, which was challenged by brand
fatigue and Brexit. The brand, in my opinion, needs to rebuild its presence in Europe, which will take time.
Secondly, the brand was very hot, interestingly, when I was living in China in 2010, ’11, ’12. I was thinking
about it coming into this call. There are a lot of brands launching into China over the last 20 years that I
worked on China, and have done really, really well. There are very few brands that have launched in China
over the last 20 years, had great success, faded that success and have relaunched in China, if that makes sense.
Launching in China is one thing, but relaunching in China, I don’t think is a case study that many western
brands have experienced yet, so I think that the opportunity and challenge for Ugg is to relaunch themselves in
places like the UK, given Brexit and fatigue, and then China. How do you do that? That would be my
interesting observation on Ugg and international.
[00:32:33]
Q: How does Deckers’ wholesale strategy differ vs other US or global wholesalers and brands’ strategies? Most
of the traditional brands that go through department stores through wholesaling get hit badly on margin, it’s
literally killing their business. Why do you think Deckers’ wholesale strategy has been so successful given it is
still a large part of revenues?
IS: You really have to break that down by brand, because it’s different brand to brand. I think that historically,
Ugg has had great success in the US with a couple of key national retailers that have done really well for the
brand, particularly Nordstrom, historically. The Ugg products are one of the top-selling products in
Nordstrom in total. Not just footwear, but in total. Clearly, with the pandemic, wholesale in general was
challenged, particularly with those big national accounts that had big physical retail footprints, the Nordstrom,
the Macy’s and the Journeys of the world. Everybody is rebuilding their momentum in wholesale coming out
of pandemic, everybody. Not just their digital relationship with wholesale, but as wholesale gets back to
physical retail and people want to get back out and physically shop then it’s rebuilding that momentum for
brands like Ugg that had big wholesale partnership footprints. I don’t think, in my opinion, that Ugg was
overexposed in wholesale. I see a lot of brands following the lead of Nike to scale back to fewer, better
wholesale partners and perhaps regaining some control with direct-to-consumer. I think Ugg is doing what
everybody else is doing, lining up with the winners, picking up new momentum, or renewed momentum,
coming out of the pandemic, with their wholesale partners.
At the same time, growing their D2C strength. Part of it, because that’s what the pandemic necessitated, that
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you had to be strong in e-commerce to survive. Not being overexposed in direct-to-consumer retail. There are
many brands in footwear that had a lot of their own stores, which have really suffered. There are many brands
in footwear that didn’t have a lot of own stores, who didn’t suffer as much. I think Ugg doesn’t have that many
stores to have been overexposed. I think Ugg is more similar to many than others. Hoka, on the other hand, I
think, has not been dependent on big wholesale historically. They’ve managed their growth through being a
core specialist runner brand and product and lining themselves up with core speciality running, which doesn’t
deliver volume, but it does position your brand. In my experience in my time there and my observations
around Hoka, was they didn’t rush into big national accounts, because that was not part of the growth strategy
to USD 500m. If you read the earnings report, the wholesale strategy for Hoka is to start to expand into larger
wholesale accounts like Dick’s and eventually, I’m guessing, the Foot Lockers and so on will become more
important. There’s interesting growth for Hoka getting into larger athletic wholesale and then getting into
larger non-athletic wholesale with some conviction. Again, the Nordstrom, Macy’s, DSWs of the world could
propel that brand significantly towards USD 1bn and beyond.
[00:36:02]
Q: Hoka didn’t rush into wholesale, which I think was a positive, but you said the brand is pushing further
into it. Are there any concerns about brand dilution if Deckers added some of the bigger but less premium
accounts? Dick’s Sporting Goods is vastly different than Nordstrom. How might wholesale presence evolve,
specifically with key accounts?
IS: It’s interesting to look at the past to see how it’s changing strategies. 10 years and beyond back, it was all
wholesale. Very few footwear brands had their own direct-to-consumer presence. 10-15 years ago, they didn’t
have websites of any sophistication. Consumers didn’t think to go to brand websites. Brands didn’t have that
many of their own stores and it was all wholesale. That’s the old paradigm and in that old paradigm, the
strategy was to get in as many accounts as you can, as many national and speciality accounts, to be
everywhere, and Nike is a great example. They were in almost every account. If you wind the clock forward to
the last five years, the strategy has been to scale back your wholesale presence and ramp up your direct-to-
consumer presence, both in terms of stores, which that trend is now becoming a new trend of fewer stores, but
the D2C strategy was to focus on D2C, build up your website, have your store presence, scale back your
wholesale, pick your wholesale partners, pick the winners, go with the winners, close the non-performing and,
to your question, have more control.
Now, you’ve got brands who are coming into wholesale and they’re using that new paradigm, which is the
strategy is not like it was 10-15 years ago, where, “How many wholesale accounts can I open?” The strategy
now is, “Which accounts am I going to open that are going to be good for my brand, that I can have a good,
controlled brand experience and that I can work to manage that growth?” I think Hoka’s opportunity is to pick
those big accounts and work closely with them, because, in my experience in footwear, the closer you work
with a wholesale account, the more you get back, because they need you to have product on their shelves and
you need them to sell your product. You form partnerships to scale, where both parties win. If you try and
have, “How many accounts can I get tomorrow?” and you end up with 5,000, you can’t service them, which
means you lose brand control. I think Hoka gets that, they understand that. They’re going to go slowly and
carefully and pick the right winners, and then they’re going to manage their brand in those accounts.
NH: Does that same type of control necessarily apply with apparel? Is it better for apparel to push into as
many accounts as possible? How do you think about brand preservation and the wholesale strategy between
footwear and apparel?
IS: It’s interesting, a lot of those big national accounts have completely different buying teams, so there’s
actually just a fundamental challenge as a footwear brand launching apparel into wholesale that you have to
then develop a relationship with a whole new team that you didn’t deal with for the last 30 years. There’s just
that practicality. I also personally think that apparel is a great opportunity to keep closer to direct-to-
consumer as a brand differentiator, build out a really strong apparel offering within your direct-to-consumer
environment, as a head-to-toe point of difference, and then see if there’s interest from the wholesale market to
give some of that out. Traditionally, brands like Foot Locker are footwear partners anyway, so their interest in
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apparel is far more limited than a Nordstrom. As I said, Nordstrom has a footwear buying team and an apparel
buying team, so you have to suddenly double up your efforts. I think the strategy of keeping apparel closer to
home as a differentiator, as a reason to come to their website, because, “I’ve heard that Hoka has now got great
clothes and if I’m going to buy my shoes, I may as well pick up a hat or a t-shirt or a bag or whatever,” I think
is a clever one.
[00:40:12]
Q: What are the opportunities within Hoka to expand beyond footwear and build something that’s well-
renowned and accepted by younger consumers? How do you think the brand should be positioned? Should it
be more towards performance wear or the athleisure of Lululemon and Fabletics?
IS: I personally, as a marketer of many iconic brands, I think that the successful iconic brands are the ones
that stick to the core and don’t try and dilute, and let the periphery market find and discover you, because you
are truly the core. I think you see that in a lot of performance in sports brands and categories all around, from
surf and skate to outdoor brands like Patagonia. You focus on your core and you develop interest outside of
that core. I think that brands that start to turn away from the core to specifically target a non-core consumer
dilute the brand and what happens is, the core moves on and then you’ve lost the core and then you’ve lost the
reason for being, and then the mainstream consumer moves on, because you’re no longer core. As that relates
to Hoka, I think that their success will be remaining a performance running brand that performance runners
want to wear every day for running, that casual runners want to wear because performance runners wear it.
Lifestyle consumers and older consumers, who want comfort, will discover it because either the fashion
opinion leaders have discovered a core brand that no one else has, or people hear about from their running
friends that these are damn-comfortable shoes that you can wear walking the dog.
I think Hoka, and from what we can all see, that continues to primarily be their strategy, be a core running
brand that lines up with athletes and core events and makes products for core runners, that then casual
runners, lifestyle consumers, older people wanting to have comfortable shoes to walk the dog, can wear. I hope
that they stick to that strategy, because I think they can get to USD 2bn by being a really great performance
brand. You think about Nike, Nike remains a performance athletic brand that’s an incredible fashion cachet,
but Nike doesn’t try to be a fashionable brand. They try and be a core athletic brand that people with fashion
interest can wear. I use the analogy of the surf industry. I think that that industry destroyed itself by turning
away from its core to be a lifestyle opportunity and forgetting the core. I’m a life-long surfer who grew up with
all of those brands and I’m disappointed that they didn’t stick to their core, believing that the outside ring will
follow, vs focusing on the outside ring and forgetting the inner reason for being, so I hope Hoka sticks to that
strategy.
[00:43:19]
Q: What missteps might have prevented Hoka from achieving a faster growth pace? On Running just went
public at a USD 7bn-8bn valuation and has a strong US footprint. What could Hoka do to be more aggressive?
IS: I think if Hoka had gone faster, beyond USD 500m – or chasing USD 500m, but chasing USD 1bn and
USD 2bn faster, I think they could have diluted themselves too quickly. I think that they’ve done exactly the
right thing, which is to go slower, and they went slow because the focus of Deckers, when I was there, was to
really grow and solidify the Ugg proposition and kind of incubate Hoka by being true to the core of the
performance runner, then catching up some of that fashion interest with some interesting collaborations and
understanding that they were selling to older people who just wanted a comfortable shoe to walk their dog. I
think they went slow, and you can look back and say they could have gone faster, but I actually think going
slow has been a great strategy in the last 10 years to set them up for next five or 10, because they have a really
strong foundation. I use Patagonia as an analogy. I think Patagonia has always gone slow around the core and
their private… Yvon has his own desires – he may not want to be a USD 2bn or USD 3bn or USD 4bn
company, but they’re a stable brand that will continue to grow as fast as they want to, because they have a
Private and confidential 12
really strong foundation.
I think that Hoka has grown slowly and has built up a strong foundation and now they’re starting to diversify
into hiking and trail and different silhouettes, and they’ve got a really strong cadence of launch, and now
they’ve got apparel and they’re going to open retail and they’ve got eyes on international, with key markets like
China in their sight. I think the platform is strong. I’m excited to see them get beyond USD 1bn and towards
USD 2bn. Then other brands like On, who’ve raced into it, I think back on how fast Under Armour went and
then how successful is that for them? I think sometimes the rapid race can overwhelm the consumer and the
channels and people move on. This is the thing that people forget, is going super accelerated and
overwhelming the marketplace, and then having consumers move on, but you’ve set yourself such aggressive
growth targets that then suddenly disappear and then you’re left holding the bag. There are enough examples
where that hasn’t worked for other brands.
[00:46:02]
Q: What do you make of Deckers as an organisation and its ability to manage brands effectively? What are the
considerations around giving a brand too much economy, or less, to make decisions and be true to core, but
also answer to investors and meet targets? It seems very difficult and many brands can’t do it, which is why
there are divestitures from brands or organisations getting too big and becoming unprofitable. How do you not
lose the brand under a bigger organisation?
IS: I think it’s controlled growth. On the one hand, and we can all see it from the outside, Deckers has a
relatively stable leadership team. It’s pretty much the same team that it’s been for many, many years. That
said, the president of Ugg was just announced two days ago as leaving for Everlane, so there’s the first of
changes at the top, but other than that there’s been very stable leadership, which I think is really important,
because then you have stability in terms of budget, strategy, forecasts, planning, all of that. I think that
Deckers is making signals in their earnings reports to wanting to beef up the next layer down of brand and
function leaders. They’ve indicated that they’re beefing up in the Hoka team and have brought some key hires
in. I think that that’ll be critical for Deckers at the brand level, not the corporate level, to start bringing in
seasoned footwear-experienced operators across product and marketing and sales and supply chain, because,
in my experience, when we all joined Converse at less than USD 1bn, and many of us left at USD 3.5bn, so we
were on the path to USD 1bn when Nike took it over.
Then we went through the path to USD 1.5bn to USD 2bn to USD 2.5bn to USD 3bn and toward USD 3.5bn. It
gets harder and harder in many ways, because it gets really complex and cumbersome. It gets easier if you’re a
hot brand and you have that double-digit quarter in, quarter out growth, so you have the momentum to fuel
the growth, but you are growing fast. To get to USD 1bn is hard. If you have the right pieces in place to get to
the USD 1bn, theoretically the next USD 1bn should be easy, because you built the right structure and plan and
that’s why I think the pacing of Hoka has been right. They haven’t raced to USD 1bn. It’s getting there over
many years. I’m really interested to see what foundations they put in, and they’re indicating, as I said, through
key hires in functional leads in the brand, it’s going to be critical to get them beyond USD 1bn, because you’re
going to have to have seasoned operators, who know how to manage big brands and the complexity of US
marketplace, wholesale, D2C, product extensions, going international, the nuances with international growth,
how do you do international, distributor, partners, do-it-yourself? Do you do it through D2C internationally,
or do you do it through wholesale? It gets very complex when you’re suddenly dealing with having to have
growth out of 10, 15, 20 marketplaces, 20 different geographic markets.
[00:49:26]
Q: What might be preventing Deckers from making international a larger percentage of the revenue? Is it due
to a lack of growth internationally, or more because it is growing so much in the US? The company’s channel
and regional split is roughly 60% or 65% US, while international presence reduced about 3pp, so the split
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between the US and international seems somewhat stagnant.
IS: I think there are lot of things within that. I think in the short term, the last 18 months, it’s because
international was very challenging because of COVID. I think people knuckled down on making sure that their
US business, which for many brands was the bulk of their business, and within that D2C and within that e-
commerce. Everyone’s attention in the last 18 months has been making sure that their US e-comm is as strong
as it can be to ride through what we’ve just ridden through. Now, we’re all seeing pick-up momentum with US
wholesale, which is encouraging, so I think that that’s the short-term reason why international hasn’t been on
the radar. Specific to Deckers, in my opinion, I mentioned before that Ugg had stronger presence
internationally than it has more recently in places like Europe, specifically the UK, Asia specifically China.
Ugg’s opportunity is to regain momentum in those key markets, which they had and lost. Separately, Hoka
hasn’t focused on international, in my opinion, before the pandemic because they were building their right
foundation in home market and being strategic around international, and building correctly a fantastic, hot
brand that you can take internationally. I think that coming out of the pandemic, Hoka is now making signals
that they’re ready to go international. They’ve already got awareness. They’ve already got some demand among
core runners around the world, so now they’re going to use that to springboard into key places like China,
which I think is exciting.
[00:51:48]
Q: The 65% wholesale and 35% D2C footprint seems very balanced for the past few years and doesn’t seem to
be a focus for change. What dynamics are playing into those numbers staying the same?
IS: I’ve spoken to that a few times already. I think you can’t really use the last 18 months of trend to indicate
that’s where any company is heading, because, as I even just said, everyone has been over-reliant on e-comm,
direct-to-consumer and e-comm, in the last 18 months, so that’s why many businesses are reporting their e-
comm percentage of total revenue as significantly higher than it was. That’s not to say that that’s the
paradigm, moving forward, because everybody wants to see wholesale come back to have that spread. I
believe, from what I’ve read from Deckers earnings reports, that they’re trying to track towards 50% direct-to-
consumer, 50% wholesale. I think that feels healthy to me. That feels like you’ve got the right balance of D2C
control, particularly if it’s e-comm heavy, not overexposed with physical stores, the right balance with outlet
stores, etc. Then within that wholesale, again, as we spoke about, not having a wholesale strategy that says,
“How many accounts can we open?” but, “Which strategic ones are going to drive our growth in the next three
years?” which is an industry trend rather than just a Deckers trend. We’re all picking our wholesale partners
carefully. We’re all ramping up our e-comm. We’re all being very cautious and careful of our own physical
retail footprints and we’re all looking international, coming out of the pandemic, as revived growth
opportunities, both in terms of EMEA, Asia with China, Japan, Korea, Australia and then Latin America for
those that are down there.
[00:53:48]
Q: What are you tracking on a more macro front given the upcoming Black Friday event, supply-demand
issues and promotional activity? Do you think many of these brands will have products inventory to meet
demand?
IS: It’s going to be like nothing we’ve ever seen before. Last year’s Black Friday, everybody was sitting at home
buying like crazy, so it was awesome. This Black Friday, people are somewhat sitting at home, also getting out
and spending on travel and restaurants and other things, so there are changes in spend. There are massive
amounts of promotion across all brands over the last 6-7 months, so there’s been a lot of promotion in general,
so it’s not like consumers have been sitting at full price, waiting for the promotions to come. They’re already
here, so there’s that challenge. I think that people are going to jump the gun and just continue to be on
promotion riding into Black Friday, so I think there’ll be some early sales. Then on the flip side, you’ve got
your supply chain issues. Brands are hoping and wondering if they’ll even have all the product that they
Private and confidential 14
wanted, ready for Black Friday and Christmas selling, which is why you’re reading in the headlines of mass
media, “Do your Christmas shopping now.” Again, I think that there’ll be an early pick-up towards Black
Friday. If we look at the quarter, I don’t think it’ll be bad. If we look at Black Friday, I think it’ll be lower than
expectation, subject to supply chain. Assuming that people can get the bulk of what they’re hoping that’s going
to come on the ships, the ships will be offloaded at Long Beach, because they’re all sitting out there now,
assuming that we can all get the products we want, we’ll probably start selling it earlier if we get it and it’ll sell
well across the quarter, but it won’t be a traditional Black Friday, I don’t think, like we’ve seen pre-pandemic,
where consumers sat waiting for everything to drop down to 30%, 40%, 50%, and then they pounced in. I
think everyone is already on promotion now. Very, very, very tricky to predict and forecast, not just from
consumer behaviour, but just from supply chain as well.
[00:55:56]
Q: What do you think is commonly overlooked by investors about Deckers? Is there anything to note about
company or brand weakness or the management team? What should we follow closely that might often be
overlooked?
IS: I don’t want to put a dark cloud over any of it, because I’m hoping for the best for Deckers in general, and
Hoka particularly. I’m excited by that brand. I think Teva is holding where it is. Ugg, as I mentioned, has its
challenges in the short term of comping such a crazily successful fall ’20 into fall ’21, so it may not be what it
was hoping compared to last year, but it’ll settle back down. I think the fundamentals, the foundation of the
Ugg brand, are fine. All that work. I think taking that view beyond what the next couple of months of
performance are for Ugg is important. I think on the one hand, back to other factors, the stability of the
leadership team has been fantastic all the way through my experience there and beyond.. A question from
many people is is that a stable management team, moving forward? Are key people going to stay? Are people
going to move on? Nobody knows, obviously, but it will be interesting. If that stability of leadership has got the
brand and company to where it is now, it probably needs that stability, moving forward, so that would be an
important thing to make sure. As I said, just two days ago, the president of Ugg moved on to a different brand,
so I don’t know what that means, but that company needs stability to navigate its way through with two big
brands, with two USD 1bn-plus opportunities ahead of them.
[00:58:11]
NH: I think that’s a good place to end our Interview. Let me close by saying thank you again for your time
today, Ian. We covered an extensive amount. Thank you, clients, for joining Third Bridge Forum’s Interview, if
you would like to speak to Ian in a private call or meeting, please let your relationship manager know. Thank
you again for joining Third Bridge Forum's Interview. Have a good one.
IS: Yes, hope it was helpful. Thanks very much, everyone.
Transcription ends at 00:58:25 of the recorded material
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