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VF Corporation CEO Bracken Darrell kicked off day two at World Retail Congress in Berlin by outlining why his turnaround strategy for the multi-brand athleisure and fashion group was not focused purely on short-term goals.

Instead, he insisted that any turnaround strategy needed to combine both short-term results and much longer term view of the brands and the business.

“I came in for a turnaround, and when I was hired I was described as a turnaround person but I am not. It’s not about short term; despite the fact there is a sense of urgency. So, you have to take a long-term view. When I came into VF, what made it special was the value of those brands and really believing in that equity and being a passionate advocate is has to be where it starts,” he stressed.

He also outlined the advantages of stepping into the helm at a company that requires repositioning, noting that whether that is for a new brand or a long established one, it’s “great to be able to push those brands into new spaces”.

He added: “The challenging thing about a deep turnaround is that while you have more degrees of freedom than in a normal job, everything is on the table and the temptation is to go after everything. So figuring out what you are going to focus on is the key thing.”

Darrell described himself as having an intuitive pattern, and noted that invariably as a new CEO you follow someone or a business culture that had previously enjoyed phenomenal growth.

“But when you get turnaround, you are still good at growing but in overhead not revenue, so that needs to be addressed. Second, I look to immediately upgrade the innovation engine and in this industry there are much longer pipelines than I was used to,” he said, adding that one of his initial moves was to bring in more people with direct experience of the industry.

“Analysts would say mono brands have the advantage because of a single business focus. So multi brand means you have to leverage the fact that you have multiple brands. There is a way, if you look at FMCG you will never buy a product called Unilever or P&G, or in the cigarette industry, or Diageo in drinks,” he said.

“In this industry that has not happened, so to me the challenge of making a multi brand company even better is how you take a business that has best in class processes and apply them to all those brands and create an engine that feeds out and back. That’s really our goal, to create a company that is stronger than mono brands,” he added.

He stressed that the only way to get that alignment is through communication and stressed his preference for face to face, followed by video call, traditional call, then text. His last resort is email, he said, stressing he hated it now because he saw it as impersonal and typically cc’d into everyone.

On AI, he said that the “hype curve is at its absolute peak right now” and forecast that it will drain down but “quietly the line of reality keeps going up and up” he said as he reinforced that AI will be as transformative anticipated.

“But in the end I’m really excited about it and everyone has to make choices to invest in the short- and long-term advantages. We are working on 17 initiatives and I’m not betting yet but I believe some will be very significant,” he said. “Our brands are not luxury brands, everyone can afford them. We’ve brought back the Vans tour and, in a world where you don’t know what’s real or not, the tour, NBA, World Cup are all real. I think these will have more and more value, that they are really experiences and we need to make the brands even more human,” he said.

Moderator Mindy Grossman, Partner at Consello Group, agreed and said: “I believe AI will create the next human renaissance. We are seeing that in the like of Fanatics Fest [in New York].”