Change will be subtle and span toe to head at Stance amid the San Clemente, California sock company’s aspiration to carve out a global brand.
The business is in the early stages of a refreshed vision for itself under President David Tichiaz, who joined the company in May after serving as Vans Americas GM.
“This is more of an evolution than a revolution,” Tichiaz said in describing the next stage for Stance.
The executive has just come off his first holiday selling season with the brand, a time in which the business performed to expectations, with new consumer growth seen in the fourth quarter.
At the top of the to-do list has been internal and external work for the past six to eight months aimed at refining the understanding of the core consumer and refreshing the brand. Tichiaz described it as a “sharpening” of how the company views its customers to now ensure the right product and communications go out.
That’s resulted in a redesign to the digital site that rolled out at the beginning of February, followed by a new branding launch Feb. 27. New talent added to the team, including Tichiaz, will also help further Stance’s ambitions.
As the company prepares for the 10-year anniversary of its Icon sock – one of several franchises that’s expected to be expanded – it’s been a good time for reflection, the executive pointed out.
“It’s an incredible time to think about where Stance has been since its inception as it’s come into the market, and where it’s going,” Tichiaz said.
Stance Punks and Poets member Ishod Wair in the new campaign. Photo courtesy of Stance.
Reclaimed Voices
To his point, Stance’s long-running Punks and Poets community of more than 20 athletes and artists is being amplified in the new brand refresh.
Nora Vasconcellos, Melissa Santamaria, Spencer Schubert, Ishod Wair, and Neen Williams are part of the first batch of community members appearing in the marketing creative that went out late last month. More iterations of that campaign with other Punks and Poets members are expected moving forward.
“It’s really (about) uplifting the voices of our Punks and Poets and allowing their stories and their perspectives to come to the forefront of the messaging,” Tichiaz said. “The campaign was built on capturing a day in their life and how they go about their routines. The learnings that came out of that were so powerful around the duality of who they are as individuals. It was really good to understand how they’re going about their daily pursuits and try to understand how our products can support them.”
Stance, which handles its creative work in-house, brought on Garrett Close last year as global creative director to spearhead the brand initiatives.
From a two-day event in January done in partnership with Los Angeles outdoor event organizer and brand Usal. Photo courtesy of Stance.
The Product Equation
All of the work done since Tichiaz joined now paves the way for an acceleration of a strategy put into place during the pandemic that will build out key franchises and bolster not only the core sock business, but other categories.
That’s part of why hiring former Vans Vice President of Global Product, Apparel, and Accessories Vicki Redding out of retirement, made sense. Redding joined Stance in the fall to serve as vice president of product.
She’ll help further an apparel and accessories expansion that first began in Holiday 2021, with Tichiaz saying the work under Redding will materialize in a meaningful way to the market around Holiday 2024 and into Spring 2025.
“We’ve really tried to be thoughtful in honoring the legacy and culture of where Stance is and understanding how we progress into the future,” Tichiaz said. “Part of that is seeking outside expertise with someone like Vicki who just has such a tremendous background, knowledge base, and success record in building up lifestyle brands from a product side. One thing that I love about Vicki’s expertise, that I know deeply, was she was able to take a footwear company (Vans) and turn it into a toe to head company.”
Stance will lean on that expertise. The idea is to move quicker with its performance-based innovation pipeline, without abandoning what helped build Stance: socks.
“We have a tremendous opportunity to gain back share in our core category of socks and underwear,” Tichiaz said. “Socks continue to be the lion’s share of our business and will continue to be in the foreseeable future.”
However, there’s a whole casual lifestyle offering the team sees as “low-hanging fruit,” Tichiaz said.
Underwear has so far been seeing success in the first quarter, with spring product online up in the double-digits compared to a year ago.
Maintaining a sharp focus on product will help to continue that momentum, Tichiaz said.
A Stance store at the Irvine Spectrum. Photo courtesy of Stance.
Stance at Retail
With the renewed branding winding its way into wholesale partners, Stance has refined its strategy to focus on its top 30 specialty accounts and top 10 national partners, with the thought being learnings from the retail group’s performance will help inform and keep Stance in lockstep with the consumer.
Key to all of that is how Stance’s fleet of stores will complement wholesale.
The company counts 25 locations, with three stores opened last year. Tichiaz sees potential to grow the Stance store base, but it won’t be at a rapid clip.
The company hired Kaci Blair in January as vice president of retail to help lead the future store growth. In the near term her focus will be on improving the performance of existing locations. Blair comes with expertise in the digital direct-to-consumer world after having served as vice president of retail for Outdoor Voices and, prior to that, as director of new store openings at Reformation.
While store redesigns are a possibility in the future to better fit the assortments, the next 12 to 18 months will focus on creating service and branding consistencies across the store base.
“As we look to the future, we definitely see (store) expansion as an opportunity to help grow awareness and help build a presence in new markets,” Tichiaz said. “One of my key learnings coming from Vans is how to really do that thoughtfully and make sure we partner with our key specialty partners. That’s absolutely part of the strategy as well. So, as we continue to get our feet under us, we’ll be looking at new markets and where we can grow the brand in a very thoughtful way.”
