Interview #3: Valerie Keast, Multi-Channel Merchandising Strategist, Formerly at Victoria Secret (13yrs) Maintaining a fine balance of understanding the customer locally, but projecting a consistent message for your Brand globally, is one of the most important things to address as you expand a business globally. As you expand a Brand into new countries it’s important to keep the image and core of the Brand true, yet understand the nuances of the your customer in each new market. Who are they? Why do they like this Brand? What is the cultural differences in each market and how might this impact the projection, voice and content of your Brand? All of this can be challenging for your resources, and can be as time consuming as launching a new company, however it’s an important step in setting your Brand up to be successful globally.

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Remodista Interview Series: The Importance of Women in Retail Commerce
Valerie Keast, Multi-Channel Merchandising Strategist, Formerly at Victoria Secret (13yrs)
Interviewed by Kelly Stickel, President and Global Community Builder, Remodista
November 7, 2013
What is the most challenging piece of growing a brand globally thinking about the
consumer with mobility?
Maintaining a fine balance of understanding the customer locally, but projecting a consistent
message for your Brand globally, is one of the most important things to address as you expand a
business globally. As you expand a Brand into new countries it’s important to keep the image
and core of the Brand true, yet understand the nuances of your customer in each new market.
Who are they? Why do they like this Brand? What is the cultural differences in each market and
how might this impact the projection, voice and content of your Brand? All of this can be
challenging for your resources, and can be as time consuming as launching a new company,
however it’s an important step in setting your Brand up to be successful globally.
With your brand, you have a lot of experience in the area of retail commerce and
innovation. How has being a woman framed your perspective on this topic? What do you
think you do differently than men (if any)?
Innovation is a critical piece of staying relevant creatively and technically. Staying relevant
attracts customers and keeps customers tweeting, talking and sharing. All growing brands need

2. to monitor product lifecycle to remain relevant today. If you observe strong brands they have a
constant flow of new ideas, those ideas are supporting by a healthy product pipeline. I recently
read an article on Toyota, they noted that is was important to spend time and money testing and
generating new curiosities, getting feedback from your best customers so you can offer what she
wants, when she wants it. From a woman’s perspective, we inherently have a passion for
product, and share our thoughts and ideas about products we like and use. Social media is
proving to have a significant impact to build and grow brands. Women in retail have an
advantage because they take the time to read what the customers are saying tied to the data and
arrive at conclusions that provide deep understanding of what the customer likes and dislikes,
therefore synthesizing this information into proposing what might make an innovative and
relevant product launch.
What do you see as the key drivers for increasing growth in the retail sector today?
Expanding globally, allowing your brand and ideas to be accessed anywhere in the world.
Creating a demand for items no matter where you live.
The most exciting trend I see is that traditional retailers are seeing the need for investing in
infrastructure that supports omni-channel retailing. This kind of retailing allows companies to be
connected with their customer frequently to satisfy her needs and curiosities. Recently a study
shared at Fashion Digital New York showed that more than 80% of smartphone shoppers are
using search engines while in a store.
According to a March article in RetailWire, Forrester Research expects e-commerce in the U.S.
will see another string of double-digit gains over the next five years, albeit barely at a 10 percent
compound annual growth rate (CAGR). What role do you see executive women playing in this
growth?
Naturally as females, we are a large consumer group and will support this growth through
sharing our own experiences. Sharing our experiences, what we like to purchase? Why we like
them? Sharing what commerce sites inspire us can have a positive impact on e-commerce retail.
Additionally, a large part of growing in the E-commerce channel is identifying and connecting
with your customer. NastyGal.com is perfect example of one of the most successful online
apparel companies founded and run by a young female entrepreneur seeing 10,000% growth in
last year at close to $150M its a gorgeous story. Sophia Amoruso is the founder who studied
what her customer was buying, when she would buy it, and what she bought with it. Sophia lived
and breathed the NastyGal brand as well as continued to serve up to her customer what she
wanted, when she wanted it. Another example is an executive woman like Mindy Grossman,
who started in traditional Brick and Mortar retailing at Polo, Nike and now is changing they way
people are shopping at HSN. She is inspiring many executive women that might have traditional
experience in Brick and Mortar to think differently about how they embrace innovation and
growth in retail through other channels, the largest growth in being mobile/e-commerce.
The retail industry is innovating quickly. As a leader of a very innovative company, do
women approach innovation differently? What are the pros / cons to their approach?
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3. Women leaders I have studied and or worked alongside in fashion retailing have curious minds
and are innovating constantly. In fashion retail, as a leader, its imperative that you innovate and
refresh. The approach women take in innovation is very collaborative, in some ways this can be
an advantage, taking calculated risks, assessing the risks and not making costly mistakes. This
can be disadvantageous when initiatives need to move faster and the collaboration creates a
bottleneck where ideas aren’t able to push through as quickly as customers are ready for them.
How are you thinking about your brand as you extend it to the global market? What are
you learning about the global consumer?
As a leader for a world recognized Brand of Victoria’s Secret, we were very cautious in moving
into global distribution. There was a belief that we would loose the focus on the core of the
business where there was still so much growth to go after as well as so much competition. It’s
important in a large Brand to keep you eye on the core businesses as you expand. As we
expanded, we wanted to be sure to find the markets where we could easily project our brand
identity consistently. Customers have been purchasing for the Victoria’s Secret Website for more
than 5 years, it’s been constant steady growth but in apparel the challenges of size and fit can
create hurdles for online shoppers that don’t want to pay expensive shipping rates to find out
things are a challenge to wear. ASOS and Net-a-Porter have done great jobs at expanding
globally in the fashion retail space. They are great models for how to expand and still service
your customer locally.
What industry trends excite you most today? Where do you see the most opportunity for
growth?
One exciting thing is how store retailers are modernizing their checkout process in their brick
and mortar stores. Customers can shop and purchase on the spot via iPads versus having to wait
in long checkout lines. This will be a great source of growth for some retailers this Holiday
season, as they service more customers, and create a better customer experience. How retailers
are embracing the buy online and pick up in stores, allows for customers to navigate easily
online to find their item, shorten their delivery time frame and in-tern the retailer has the
opportunity add-on and interact with the customer in person when the arrive pick it up their
merchandise. This additional step can be seen as a great customer experience when executed
well but also a retailers dream for an opportunity to increase a sale.
What do you believe is the most pressing issue retail currently faces that inhibits growth?
This is a very important question for all retailers to ask themselves regularly. While it might
sound backwards, something that would enhance growth would be providing a safe environment
to fail, creating businesses that allow for experimentation and testing. If more companies saw the
benefit of long-term transformation of their businesses, listening to innovative ideas and having
incubators it would create more uniqueness in the marketplace. The creativity and uniqueness
would create dynamic story telling and therefore stronger connections to brands, less discounting
and more growth for retail businesses.
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4. Sheryl Sandberg’s book, Lean In, encourages women to work collaboratively to talk about
what they can do, rather than what they cannot do and support one another by sharing
challenges they face as females in the corporate workplace. How do you see this playing out
in the retail sector?
I have been fortunate to work with and for strong leaders that were women who supported
growth and development of other women. There are very few successful retailers that have
mastered work-life balance and it only amplifies when you have a family. Women leaders are
breaking barriers of traditional working structure, and support more creative solutions of job
sharing or working partnerships so they could attract and retain even more female leaders.
Leaders that could still manage a career, instead of feeling forced to make the choice between
work and raising a family. Having a community like Remodista, gives women a space to
collaborate, share and come up with new innovation as the world evolves thinking with mobility.
What advice do you have for women in retail? What is one piece of advice you would like
women to take away from your experiences?
Retailing is an amazing place to build a career; it is always changing, always challenging and
provides a great space to test new ideas. In my experience, it’s critical to have a curious mind
and be a student of your industry. Whatever sector of retail is your specialty, stay engaged,
understand the past and present trends in order to ask questions and propel businesses into the
future. My most important advice is to find strong women mentors that will be your sponsor and
help you find a seat at table. Women should never stop helping one another succeed. At all
levels we should define the business structure that is not fitting into traditional models but one
that works for WOMEN.
Valerie Keast, Multi-Channel Merchandising Strategist
Valerie Keast is a multi-channel merchandising professional who has successfully directed
growth in fashion apparel and denim for the world’s recognized lifestyle brands including
Victoria’s Secret, Polo Ralph Lauren, Tommy Hilfiger, and Levi’s.
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5. Most recently Valerie served as Associate Vice President, Merchandising for Apparel at
Victoria’s Secret Direct. During her 13 years with the company, she managed growth for the
fastest growing division in the largest US Direct Apparel Brand with over 1M Daily Online
Visitors, $750M Annual Sales, 60 Annual Catalogs, and 300M Circulation through influencing
the strategies around Merchandising, E-commerce Presentation, Product Design, and Marketing
for the women’s apparel category. She launched multiple successful new product strategies
including the Best Selling Fold-over Yoga Pant worn by millions of young women today. The
Modern Separates knitwear Collection that led the way in replicating successful and innovative
launch strategies for online and catalog.
During Valerie’s tenure at Victoria’s Secret, she worked alongside some of the best female
leaders in retail today. She was credited for hiring and promoting top female talent at Victoria’s
Secret, as well as motivating teams to higher levels of productivity and morale.
Prior to Victoria’s Secret, she held the positions of Merchandising Manager at Tommy Hilfiger
and Polo Jeans. At Tommy Hilfiger, she managed the assortment of Men’s Tommy Jeans with
design and development traveling to Asia and other parts of the world to negotiate and develop
the best assortment to deliver to the likes of Federated Department Stores. At Polo Jeans, she
managed the Merchandising and Product Development for Women’s Sweaters and Knits leading
the teams in building commercially viable assortments within the Polo Brand filter.
Valerie began her career in San Francisco after receiving her B.S. from University of California,
Davis in Textile Science. She came to New York City to follow her dreams of building a thriving
career in fashion retail. She’s an active supporter of Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation,
Pelatonia Bike Against Cancer, Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, and currently an active
participant in the Remodista: Retail Mobility Distilled community.
Kelly Stickel Co-founder, Global Community Builder and President
For over 15 years, Kelly has built many rich partnerships focused on community, content, and commerce. She is
proactive in building alliances with key leaders that are helping to lead the way. Kelly is experienced and passionate
about researching emerging markets, innovations in technology, business drivers for transformation, and consumer
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6. behavioral shifts due to thinking with mobility.
With the business objective to create an educational forum elevating women and collaborating on new strategies that
integrate content and commerce, Kelly founded Remodista, June of 2010.
Kelly continues to share innovative thinking with mobility. New strategies stemming from community are creating
paths that have large cost saving dollars, increased efficiencies, and new revenue streams attached to its growth.
For the last 6 years, Kelly has been an active leader, calling out trends, and supporting the expansion of mobile and
social commerce through curriculum, collaboration, video, consumer behavior research, articles, and mentoring
programs for young tenacious leaders. Kelly continues to expand thought leadership through various initiatives and
programs.
For the past 15 years, Kelly has also worked as a mosaic artist and teaches classes in the community.
Remodista is a collaborative forum with three primary goals: to elevate women, educate brands, and mentor a
community focused on shaping universal best practices for global retail mobility. By connecting industry leaders
with innovative ideas, who are ready to learn, share and bring visionary strategies to the market, Remodista has built
a strong brand community.
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