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Hi, everyone.
Welcome to Women in Retail Talks, the podcast for C-suite executive.
Women in the retail space share their stories of professional growth leadership, development and more.
I'm Melissa Campanelli, the co-founder of the Women in Retail Leadership Circle, which is a membership-based community of executive women at leading retailers and brands.
In this episode.
I'm thrilled to welcome Katherine Dannenberg, the Chief Commercial Officer at Bowdoin, which is the quintessentially British clothing brand for women and children with the tagline Happiness You Can Wear.
Prior to Bowdoin, Catherine has held high-level merchandising roles at companies such as Uncommon Goods Anthropologie, The Children's Place, One King's Lane and Opening Ceremony.
We're thrilled to have you here, Catherine.
Welcome.
Thank you, Melissa.
I'm thrilled to be here as well and chat with you.
Yes, I'm so excited.
We're recording this right around Christmas time.
So there's a lot of excitement with the holidays coming up and all that good stuff.
So we really appreciate you taking the time to do this at this busy time.
So please tell us about your career journey.
And we talked a little bit about it in the opener.
But tell us about your career journey and sort of how you ended up at Bowdoin.
I guess, when I think about my journey and starting from the beginning, I guess, as they say, I've always been really lucky to to be able to have chosen, or have the opportunity to choose, opportunities that align with both my dreams and my ambition.
I've always loved fashion.
My first memory of you know learning about fashion was my grandmother and being at her house and seeing my first copy of Vogue magazine and and opening it and just being like, oh my God, this is amazing.
And I think from that moment, when I was probably like six years old, I knew that this was what I wanted to do.
I actually started my journey a little bit more untraditionally for someone who has been in retail and has a role like mine.
I actually started in fashion forecasting and kind of evolved more into product development, buying and merchandising.
And I had an opportunity pretty early on in my early thirties to work for a brand that I personally loved, which was Anthropologie.
And that was totally a game changer for me as far as just really understanding the customer, because it was me being part of something that was growing.
We only had 28 stores when I started at Anthropologie.
And when I left, I believe there was 180.
And just really learning how to be an entrepreneur also within a corporate environment, which is something that I've also carried forward with me in all of my roles.
The other thing that has paid forward for me is that I've managed to develop really strong relationships with with my direct managers and the CEOs of the companies that I've worked for.
And actually how I landed at Bowdoin is the former CEO of Urban was a board member at Bowdoin and he recommended me for the role that I have now at the company.
Right.
I always love to hear those kind of backstories, sort of the connections and the importance of networking and all that good stuff.
So That's a great story.
And I love how you sort of followed your passion.
Where did you grow up?
I grew up in New Jersey.
And living so close to New York City, you know, along with knowing that I wanted to work in fashion, I always knew that I wanted to live in New York City and work in New York City and have an exciting career there.
So that was also very much a part of like growing up going into the city, going to Broadway shows, going shopping at fabulous stores.
Like I loved going to Saks on Fifth Avenue as a child, especially at Christmas time, and seeing the windows and just being part of everything that has to do with like New York and shopping.
That's awesome.
I love that.
So I'm going to jump ahead.
So how would you describe your leadership style and how has it evolved over your career?
How I would describe it.
We actually just went through our end of year review process and the feedback that I got was very consistent with what I've had for the past 30 years.
And that's that I'm direct and decisive.
It's always been how I operate.
But I guess obviously over the years, especially like the past 15 to 20, that I've been more in leadership roles, I've learned that I do need to adapt my very direct style, often when I'm dealing with someone who might not receive directness quite as well as others do.
So I would say you know, it's paid forward for me to stay true to my style but also learn adaptability to others as well.
One other thing that I thought...
I would mention about my leadership style as well.
That I think isn't quite kind of important to understanding more about me and possible paths for other people is that in my past three roles I've worked for founders and I've been, you know, the second in charge basically to the founder, to the CEO and founder led brands.
And I've definitely learned as well.
It takes a different type of leader to be able to work with a founder versus working with a brand that the founder isn't there anymore.
It's a brand that's been created by a conglomerate or something like that.
You really have to be really comfortable working.
Working with people that are prolific idea generators tends to be the type of background of a founder.
And you have to be comfortable with taking somebody else's ideas for the most part and turning them into something commercial, because founders often have really great ideas and did something really commercial in the beginning.
But then, as they evolved it, They kind of like realize that they aren't the most commercial person in the world and they tend to be more creative.
And you really have to be good at listening and thinking in the moment and being able to give people feedback like hey, that idea is fantastic, but I'm not quite sure how we're going to execute it.
Let me take that away and think about it.
But that other idea that you had, that we talked about the other day.
I've been thinking about that and I think it's brilliant.
And here's some ideas on how I think we can execute it and just keep the rapport going.
Respect the creativity, but also understand that your role is to make these great ideas commercial.
I love that.
That is such a great way of putting it.
And there are so many brands that are founded by you know, creative founders.
And sometimes they don't necessarily have the skills to bring them to life.
And it's so important to find somebody who kind of enjoys that.
You know, it's not just about coming up with a creative idea.
It's about bringing it to life, which is creative in its own way.
You know, I think that's super interesting.
Well, I always kind of think about the best ideas are usually not my ideas, but I'm really really good at recognizing that.
And I'm kind of proud of that still.
It's definitely paid forward for me.
And it's interesting.
I went to this seminar in London a couple months ago.
I attended it, and I attended it with our CFO, who also happens to be a woman.
And the theme of the seminar was, what is your leadership purpose?
Like kind of what were you meant to do in leadership roles?
And we had to answer all these questions and like think about things and talk about things.
And it ended up that my leadership purpose is an enabler of creativity.
By the way, I answered questions about my background and what I loved as a child and the situations that I that I excel in.
It worked in everything.
And it kind of like really shown a light on that.
I did choose the right path by working with founders, because I am an apparently I'm an enabler of their creativity.
I love it.
That's awesome.
What a great skill.
So we talked a little bit about what Biden is all about in the opener, but I know that I did a little bit more research and I found that their values are stylish, grounded and uplifting.
And I thought it might be fun to talk about how you bring these to life, not only from the product perspective, but leading your teens.
That's.
That's really interesting that you're applying that to people and not product, because we absolutely do that.
In fact, I was having a conversation with our chief product officer, who works for me, and we were interviewing some candidates for a pretty high level role ahead of children's wear role.
And we spoke to three really, really highly qualified people.
And we actually applied, you know, stylish grounding and uplifting to how they performed in the interview process.
And we were.
You know, grounded is one of those things where it's like, do we really feel they're going to like roll up their sleeves and get into the nitty gritty?
Can they handle it?
Are they fast enough, but are they smart enough?
So we think about those types of traits where someone who's grounded, someone who's stylish, it's quite obvious.
How do they appear?
Do they have a sense of personal style?
It doesn't have to be Bowdoin style necessarily.
But, you know, do they have a sense of who they are?
Are they comfortable in their skin?
You know, do they have a presence?
And then uplifting is definitely, especially since we're a British company.
We definitely want to work for people who know how to have a laugh and how to have fun.
And this woman who works for me Christina.
She said about one of the candidates.
I think I would want to be stuck in an airport with them for 10 hours.
I don't know how uplifting they are.
And we all had a little giggle and we were like yeah, that's actually a really important trait to us when you work at Bowdoin, that you would want to travel with that person and that they can have a laugh with you.
That's actually a great, a great thing to think about.
Would you want to be in an airport with someone that you work with?
I love that.
She calls it the airport test.
I had never heard her say that before.
I'm like, oh my God, I'm totally stealing that.
Everyone's going to have to pass the airport test now.
That's great.
So another part of your job as chief commercial officer, which we didn't really discuss yet, is that you probably are having to work with a lot of different teams like marketing merchandising, design.
Can you talk a little bit about fostering collaboration in that way?
I think a lot of people, when they think about teams, they just think about managing, you know, their own team or their direct reports.
But oftentimes it's really, it's about managing the wider group.
Yeah, I I actually, in this role, have the the broadest remit i've had in my career.
I managed the design team.
I managed the buying team.
I managed we call planning merchandising in the uk.
I managed the merchandising team, brand marketing um, customer insight and and creative services.
So, to say the least, it's a broad range of departments and functions and skillset.
I probably spend well over half of my time purely facilitating collaboration between my leaders and my leaders' teams.
It's so, so critical to the success of what we do that we're all on the same page.
In particular design, product and brand, because we just opened our first retail shop in the US, but the vast majority of our business is all digital.
So how we show up to our customer is critical, critical to our success.
And if those three teams are not on the same page, it's when we fail.
Yeah, it's so important.
But can you talk a little bit about how you're able to foster the collaboration?
Do you think it has to do with the fact that you're overseeing all of them?
I think it has to do with the fact that I'm a good listener.
And oftentimes they'll come to me individually because they're at an impasse with someone else in one of those other departments.
And they're like, hey, can we have a conversation with so-and-so?
We're trying to get through something.
We can't come to an agreement.
We need you to help us get there.
And they're not necessarily.
Sometimes it's like we need someone to just make a decision, and that will be you.
But oftentimes it's more about.
We just need someone to have a perspective on this and help us to maybe see an angle that we're not considering.
And can you help us through that?
So I spend a lot of my time trying to actually not make the decision.
It sounds kind of weird, but to get them to make the decision.
Yeah, that's important.
That gives people ownership.
I love that.
That actually ties into the next question, I think, which is You know if there's any other strategies that you found effective in developing?
You know, future leaders.
I would say definitely fostering collaboration and empathy.
You know it's once you get to a certain point in leadership.
I was I actually have a career coach and I was actually just talking to her about this, and my team today was is that I have a pretty strong comfort level right now of managing multiple functions and fostering this collaboration.
But a lot of the leaders that work for me right now.
This is the first time that they've been this close to the top, for lack of a better word.
And they're really, really good at managing their own teams and telling people what to do.
And they're still not great at that cross-functional peer, you know even VPC level type of collaboration with others.
So I feel like putting them in those situations you know, kind of by force often enables it as well and coaching them when they're having a conversation with one of their peers and it doesn't go well, me kind of using the moment as a teaching moment like hey, why don't we talk about why that didn't go well?
Do you think maybe if you had said it this way it would have been more receptive, and then just kind of talking about maybe how it could go better the next time.
Yeah, that's great.
That's great advice.
I would love to just ask you quickly, I love that you have a coach.
How did you go about getting your coach?
That's always a question that our members and listeners are always interested in.
It's interesting how I found my coach.
So when I started the role at Bodum, we actually were going through kind of a tough time.
And actually, our chairman is a big proponent of coaching.
And one of the first things He said to me I think it'd be good for you to have a coach, to have someone impartial to speak to as we maneuver through this tough business time.
And I was like, yeah, I'm all for that.
And we have a non-executive director on our board who is very well connected in the UK.
And Julian suggested that I speak to him about a coach recommendation.
So I did, and that's how I found Meg, my coach, who is a former CEO of a British brand and now is an ED on a lot of different boards.
And she helps me with a lot of things.
But one of the things that she helps me with which I didn't really recognize in the beginning that I need that is super invaluable is she helps me with nuance of British culture.
Super interesting.
Yeah.
How I'm being perceived by the board when I say something in a certain way.
What is a typical way to write a board paper or to present a business case?
It's actually really, really different than what we do in the U.S.
And having her guidance, especially early on when I was giving monthly board presentations on the status of how quickly we were going to turn around the product and what was going on, it was really, really helpful.
Wow.
That is so interesting.
I love that.
That's perfect.
I'm going to jump ahead.
We have to always talk about AI in all of our interviews.
It's such a tough topic.
So I'm sure that you're leveraging AI, I'm assuming, and you know customer insights and all that good stuff.
How do you balance, you know, these data-driven decisions with creative intuition?
I mean, I actually was just at a talk with Anna Wintour and she talked about the importance of creative intuition.
It's just stuck with me, but obviously you need data-driven decisions.
So how do you sort of balance that?
Well, it's interesting, as I mentioned before, customer insight falls under my remit.
The part of it that has to do with Mostly product and how we call our customer Kate, how Kate is feeling about a future range predictively, or current range and that type of thing.
So we, I'm going to do a little plug here.
We use a company called First Insight to get, which is AI driven, that sends out surveys to our customers and potential customers about our future ranges and current ranges.
And we get back AI summaries of what the customer said about the products.
And it also ranks the product on a scale of one to 10 by what the customer thought about the price and the details.
And all of that, this algorithm that they have.
This has been a great tool, and we've used it to kind of cut the tail, so to speak, and eliminate things that really just aren't that important.
And we've also used it to identify best sellers that we didn't think would be as good as the customer thought they was.
And the predictive tool has been pretty correct.
But I will say in support of what Anna Wintour said, that you have to just use your gut instincts sometimes.
Sometimes because we're asking Kate about this almost a year ahead of time.
She's just not ready for some things yet.
And she's not ready to move on.
And if we listen to everything that First Insight was telling us, our ranges would likely look old and stale.
So we do have to put that lens on it.
Like this is a new shape.
This is a new print.
This is new fashion.
This is trend.
And she doesn't like it for these reasons, but our design team loves it.
We love it.
We've seen it on the runway.
We know it's coming.
We're still going to buy it anyway.
And we do that all of the time.
That's great.
Yeah.
It's, it's it's having the confidence to you know, of knowing that you you, you know the customer as well.
You're obviously you want the AI and the data, um, But you also know the customer.
Which is fantastic.
And I mean I would say that without it we would not be as successful as we have been with predicting the right things.
But if we listen to it all the time, we would definitely lose a lot of the fun and the whimsy of who we are.
And we can't let that happen.
I love that.
Just in closing, this is another question that we like to ask the folks that we interview.
So what advice would you give to women listening who are aspiring to executive roles in fashion and retail?
I would say know what you want as your end goal, kind of starting out on your journey.
You know the goal could be broad.
It doesn't have to be like super specific, but I think in my experience, especially with my career, I always had a plan and the plan didn't always go accordingly to what I thought the plan would be.
But the fact that I had a plan was something that, that served me well.
So yeah, I guess, for example, I would say that, like we were talking about before, when I graduated from college, I knew that I wanted to live and work in New York city.
I wanted to work in the fashion industry.
I wanted to travel to really cool places for my job.
And I wanted to work for brands and companies that gave me a pathway to a career that I knew that I would not only be successful at that, I would actually enjoy.
And that was kind of, And that's always kind of been my guide in the roles that I've chosen.
And I would say the only thing that's kind of gone off the plan is that I don't live in New York City anymore.
I actually live in London most of the time.
And when I was at Anthropologie, I lived in Philadelphia.
But that wasn't actually the most important part of the plan.
The most important part of the plan was to have a pathway to a successful career that I loved.
And I've been able to say that I've been stayed true to that for 30 years.
It's great.
It's all about manifesting, right?
Yeah, I'm a big like visualizer.
Like, I want this to look like, how do I want this to be?
But I think you also have to be.
I don't even know if it's kind with yourself, but you have to be flexible.
And you have to be open to change.
And you know I am the kind of person that visualizes the future, but I'm also receptive to like going off the path, then taking a you know, maybe not a detour, but you know taking a wander and seeing where that leads you to.
Yeah.
And also, you know, obviously having a plan too.
It's so important, sort of, you know, knowing what you want and then going for it.
So it's been so great chatting with you, Catherine.
I feel like I learned so much in the short time that we've been together.
I really loved all your answers and I'm so excited to hear about what's next for you and for Bowdoin.
As you mentioned on the lead up to the call, you guys are opening up stores in the US, which is exciting.
And I'm just looking forward to learning all about what you have in store for 2026.
So thanks for your time.
Happy holidays and Hopefully we can connect in real life soon.
That would be great, Melissa.
Thank you.
And happy holidays to you as well.
Thanks for listening.
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Thanks and until next time, this has been Women in Retail Talks.
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Register now at womeninretailsummit.com and save $100 with discount code PODCAST.
