Caroline Brown, who joined The North Face as global brand president just over two years ago, is leaving the brand, and former Dickies Global Brand President Chris Goble will replace her.
VF Corp. CEO Bracken Darrell said the leadership shift has been in the works for some time.
“Caroline Brown, who was on our board, I asked her to step in to really help us get The North Face going again,” Darrell said at the Citi 2026 Global Consumer & Retail Conference in Miami on Tuesday morning. “We’d had a lot of political challenges inside the company. There’s a lot of strife, and the morale was terribly low. Caroline came in. I thought we’d be lucky if we keep her for a couple of years. She’s come and done a super job.”
In the meantime, VF had hired Chris Goble, who had led the turnaround at Gap, Darrell said.
“We put him on Dickies, and then we held him back from Dickies because we knew we’re going to make this move,” Darrell said, referring to the sale of Dickies to Bluestar Alliance for $600 million in September 2025. “Now we’re systematically making the next step. So Caroline will go find a new transformation she really wants to do, and Chris will be promoted and put in charge of The North Face experience.”
Goble’s Commercial and Merchandising Experience
Darrell reiterated that the leadership shift has been in the works for “a while, and The North Face business is in good shape,” he said.
In its latest results, The North Face reported an 8% revenue increase in the third quarter.
“What I do think we’ll get from Chris, which is exciting, is he’s somebody who comes in with a direct commercial background and a direct merchandising background, which is a little different from a lot of the presidents that go into these jobs,” Darrell said. “Many of them in this industry don’t have both that combination of practical commercial experience, delivering the numbers, and what the assortment ought to be by channel — even by retailer — and at the same time, have a really strong merchandising background in this business. It’s a product business. If you don’t have great product, you’re not going to win.”
Darrell said TNF is healthy, but he wants to continue working to simplify the brand, which Brown detailed at an Investor Day in March 2025.
“The North Face is a big, healthy brand, but it’s also complex, and I want to keep simplifying it, even as we expand … into more and more women’s product, elevate more of our product.” Darrell said. “It’s working. We’re doing that now, but we can do that and make it more transparent to consumers.”
Caroline Brown’s Fashion Background and TNF Strategy
Since Darrell took the helm of VF Corp. in June 2023, he’s made major leadership changes at the executive level, including appointing Brown to lead TNF, Sun Choe to lead Vans and Chris Goble to lead Dickies.
Brown, who previously led Donna Karan International, replaced former TNF President Nicole Otto in June 2024.
Brown had recently been appointed to VF Corp.’s board under the recommendation of activist investor Engaged Capital following revenue declines that the company attributed to high inventory and weak wholesale results.
TNF has changed its leadership a few times in recent years. Otto, a former longtime Nike executive, was appointed in 2022, replacing Steve Murray, who retired. Murray, the former CEO of Vans, replaced Arne Arens, who had held the role for more than three years.
Over the course of 2025, TNF’s revenue has returned to revenue growth and has been one of the brighter spots in the portfolio. In:
- Q1 ended June 2025, TNF revenue increased 6% year-over-year to $557 million.
- Q2 ended Sept. 2025, TNF revenue increased 4% year-over-year to $1.15 billion.
- Q3 ended Dec. 2025, TNF revenue increased 8% year-over-year to $1.3 billion.
“But looking ahead, our ambitions are far bigger,” Brown said at an Investor Day in March, and outlined ambitious plans to:
- Double its apparel business, which makes up the majority of the brand’s sales.
- Double its equipment and bag business.
- Triple its footwear business.
“Our brand is strong. It can be even larger, and we are moving quickly to set ourselves up for that growth,” Brown said.
The plan involved appealing to a broad range of consumers, from city dwellers to core outdoor participants, as well as:
- Streamlining TNF’s product platform, improving quality and expanding into head-to-toe offerings to resonate with consumers beyond outerwear within each platform.
- Updating marketing with select collaborations such as its ski collection with Skims and continuing to work with athletes such as Alex Honnold, who climbed the Taipei 101 skyscraper live on Netflix wearing TNF gear, as well as influencers and celebrities.
- Refurbishing and growing retail, such as the Manhattan flagship that opened in December, to bring a consistent brand message across all distribution points.
- Realigning and strengthening TNF company culture and operations and leveraging the full scale of VF’s portfolio to manage supply chains and maximize margins.
Former Dickies President Chris Goble Joins TNF
Goble joined Dickies as global brand president in October 2024 after seven years at Gap and more than 11 years at Old Navy, according to LinkedIn.
Dickies struggled in recent years, with revenues decreasing by 11% and 13% in the three and six months ended Sept. 2024, just before Goble joined the company.
In Nov. 2024, VF moved the 102-year-old Dickies from its headquarters in Fort Worth, Tex., to Costa Mesa, Calif., where Vans is also headquartered. Approximately 120 employees were impacted by the move, according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
Darrell said VF wasn’t planning to sell Dickies until it received an unsolicited call from Bluestar Alliance.
“We certainly weren’t planning this,” Darrell said in Sept. 2025 at a Wells Fargo conference. “We wouldn’t move the headquarters to California; we wouldn’t have changed our reporting (segments) … It really came in and went so fast.”
Following the sale, Goble stayed on at VF as president, emerging brands, overseeing Altra, Eastpak, icebreaker, JanSport, Kipling, Napapijri and Smartwool.
