Footwear Insight

4 Questions with Angelo Ng Obit: Gert Boyle, Columbia Sportswear, 95 INTERVIEW OUTDOOR ICON THE FOOTWEAR EYE 10 • Footwear Insight ~ November/December 2019 footwearinsight.com By Bob McGee W olverine World Wide named Angelo Ng its first Chief Merchant Officer in October, and the retail vet is ready to get to work. Ng, who spent four years with Nike and 18 with Levi Strauss, is charged with developing and implementing a merchandising growth strategy and innovation roadmap for the company's 12 brands, which include Merrell, Saucony and Sperry. Here, we catch up with Ng to find out what he has planned. What attracted you to this new position at Wolverine? "The desire to take some of these brands from footwear specialists to lifestyle brands. Some of these brand have existed forever, and I have a personal relationship with [them.] This is an opportunity to work with brands that I've known growing up and [figuring out] how I can help them change their trajectories in the future." What will you be focused on? "Consumers have changed where they shop, and their expectations of where they shop have definitely changed. But it's going back to the basics. It's looking at things like 'edit to amplify.' How do we maximize the things that we know we are strong at? All of the [Wolverine] brands have their franchises. How do we maximize those? I like to talk barbell investment strategies. On one side, how do we maximize those things that we know, that we are good at forecasting, that we know consumers love? How do we keep innovating with those? On the other side of the barbell, how do we swing for the fences? With the right consumer and marketing insights and by building the right strategies, how do we create things and new consumer connections?" How is this position different from your previous roles? "Obviously, this is predominantly footwear and I've lived predominantly in an apparel world. But something we're very clear on here is, let's not try to boil the ocean. Let's not touch everything at the same time. Let's focus on where we can make the biggest impact, faster. We have 12 brands. Not all are created equal, but obviously we want to try to achieve the same changes and consumer connections to all of them." When will consumers see the impact of your work? "The process is probably going to be slower than I like, but we're going to go as fast as we can. We really took our time to assess where these brands are. It will take a while longer for consumers to see all the results. But a lot is happening in the first 120 days." l By Jennifer Ernst Beaudry G ert Boyle, the longtime chair o f C o l u m b i a Sportswear Co. famously por- trayed as "One Tough Mother" in the brand's iconic and long-run- ning ads, died Nov. 3 in Portland, OR. She was 95. Boyle headed Columbia from 1970 to 1988, and remained inti- mately involved in the company's running even after her son Tim Boyle took over as president and CEO. Thrust into the president's role of what was then a family- owned sportswear firm after her husband's sudden death, Boyle and Tim would struggle through early years where bankruptcy seemed imminent to grow the firm to what was an almost $3 billion company in 2018. In 1984, the company debuted the first of what would be a series of ads that made her a star. They showed variations of Boyle put- ting Tim Boyle through punishing conditions — in one memora- ble ad she ran him over with a Zamboni — to test the company's outwear and footwear. Known for her sense of humor and sharp business sense, Boyle was the first woman inducted into the National Sports Goods Association Hall of Fame, in 2003. Boyle used her success to give back. In 2010, Gert and Tim Boyle endowed a $2.5 million chair at Oregon Health & Science University in honor of her sister, the scientist Hildegard Lamfrom. In 2014, she was revealed to be the anonymous donor who had contributed $100 million to OHSU in support of Nike founder Phil Knight and his wife's promise to donate $500 million to the orga- nization if it could raise the same amount to fight cancer. Boyle is survived by Tim Boyle, who will take over the chairman- ship at Columbia Sportswear; and her daughters Sally and Kathy. In lieu of flowers, the company has suggested that well-wishers consider a donation to Oregon Health and Sciences Knight Cancer Institute. l Listen to a podcast with Angelo Ng on the SportsInsightExtra.com podcast page or at soundcloud.com/ sportsinsightextra

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