“If you don’t have your narrative set, someone else will tell your story,” said Katie Welch, the chief marketing officer of Rare Beauty.
That was one of the key messages delivered on the second day of Retail’s Big Show, the National Retail Federation’s (NRF) annual conference and expo, which is being held in New York City this week.
Major players in the retail industry like Tracee Ellis Ross, the founder and co-CEO of Pattern Beauty; Tommy Hilfiger, founder of the iconic eponymous apparel brand; Joe Preston, the CEO and president of New Balance; and Martin Urrutia, the head of global retail experience and innovation for The Lego Group; emphasized the importance of finding a unique voice for your brand.
The business of authenticity
The second day of NRF started with a bang as an excited audience welcomed actress-turned-beauty entrepreneur Tracee Ellis Ross to the stage.
In a discussion with Sheena Butler-Young, senior correspondent for Business of Fashion, Ross recalled the origin story of her brand and how it stemmed from a personal need of hers.
“I am a curly girl who spent years trying to understand and support my hair and the products I needed just didn’t exist,” Ross recalled. “I’m 52, but thinking back to when I was younger I could probably count on one hand the number of women out in the world, other than my mother [singer Diana Ross] who wore their natural hair texture.”
Ross wanted to find a haircare brand that carried products suited to a wide variety of hair textures that were also marketed and presented in a quality manner. After years of searching and research, Ross eventually realized just how large of a market there was for consumers like herself and knew she had to take matters into her own hands.
When Young asked Ross why she thinks her brand stands out in a sea of celebrity-founded companies, the beauty entrepreneur responded that it is because Pattern Beauty “is not a celebrity brand, it is a beauty brand”.
At the end of the day, Pattern Beauty is built for and guided by the needs of Black consumers, and for all consumers with curly, kinky or coily hair, regardless of race and gender.
It is this deep understanding of how consumers want to be marketed to and the power of storytelling that Ross has achieved success.
How Tommy Hilfiger built a brand on pop-culture
Following Ross’s panel was none other than Tommy Hilfiger, who was recently honored with the title of NRF Visionary for 2025 for his accomplishments in the retail industry.
From attempting to open his first store at 19 to successfully running the eponymous apparel brand for 40-plus years, few retailers have careers rivaling that of Hilfiger’s.
In a discussion with Matthew Shay, the president and CEO of NRF, Hilfiger explained that he wanted to create a brand that could not only compete with its competitors but stand out from the rest.
The brand founder elaborated that the power of pop culture, ranging from art to celebrities, but especially musicians, was a key part of the brand’s conception and remains core to its long-term success.
“I always liked music and I thought that the rock stars coming to the US from England, coming to Woodstock and going on tour looked very cool, and I liked the way they were dressed. So I wanted to sell those types of clothes to my customers,” the designer recalled.
“So I drove to New York City, four-and-a-half hours away from my hometown of Elmira, and I would buy really cool clothes to take back to my shops and sell them, so that was sort of the impetus,” he said. “I called the [first] store People’s Place because I wanted the stores to be for the people and the people who were interested in using the fashion [to express themselves]. I thought that catering to people who were interested in music and fashion would be my strength,” Hilfiger mused.
He believes that every business needs to have a focus: “That was my focus, and it still is today. It’s gone beyond just music and fashion, because it also includes sports and fashion, Hollywood and fashion and influencers with fashion, and it helped me carve out this journey to build this lifestyle global brand.”
A new look for New Balance
During one of the last panels of the day, Joe Preston, the CEO and president of New Balance, spoke with Brad Smith, anchor for Yahoo! Finance about how the 117-year-old brand is reconnecting with younger consumers and accelerating through global momentum.
When Smith asked how brands can authentically engage with younger consumers, Preston responded, “You have to be culturally relevant, and you have to meet them on their terms. You can’t just talk down to them. So we make sure that we’re doing a significant amount of research.”
This is not an insignificant task considering New Balance has business in over 150 countries across the globe.
However, New Balance is hard at work, “running our global offense” as Preston phrased it, to ensure that the brand is presenting top-selling styles based on well-gathered research and a genuine connection with its ambassadors, like baseball player Shohei Ohtani, and consumers, old-school and new-school.
On the topic of the revival of classic sneaker silhouettes, Preston commented, “I think trends in fashion itself go in cycles and things that were made in the past sometimes can become popular, particularly if they’re brought to life in new ways. We make sure that when we bring back the retro styles that we’re adding to the comfort that consumers expect to have today. So when you’re wearing a retro style from us, the fit, the finish and the feel have all been refined to today’s standards and I think that’s an important element.”
Preston has taken this concept of a refresh to the entire business.
From clearing out retailers that don’t benefit the brand to selling at primarily full-price to making sure that the content and ambassadors align with the interests of today’s consumers, New Balance is focused on remaining relevant.
Judging from the brand’s fourth consistent year of 20 per cent growth in the North American market, it is clear that the power of revived storytelling has been working well for the legacy footwear retailer.
