vans
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VF Corporation is learning to travel light
The company behind The North Face, Vans and Timberland spent decades collecting brands. Its next chapter depends on what it can let go.
Brandon Ball and the missing logo
After 13 years at Vans, Brandon Ball built Starch Creative around a simple question: would you recognize a brand if its name disappeared from the room?
Kevin "K.C." Clarke
Kevin "K.C." Clarke is a Los Angeles-based consumer brand marketer who now leads marketing at DITA Eyewear, the Aliso Viejo-headquartered luxury eyewear house whose frames are handmade in Japan. His career reads like a tour of the Southern California brand economy: Hurley and Vans in action sports, adidas and the Anaheim Ducks in sport and sponsorship, ZICO in beverage, then brand marketing leadership at golf-lifestyle label TravisMathew and VP of Marketing at car-care cult brand Chemical Guys. He holds a BS from Arizona State University's W. P. Carey School of Business and an MBA from USC's Marshall School of Business. The through-line is a preference for brands with obsessive fans rather than merely large audiences - surfers, golfers, detailing enthusiasts, and now collectors of titanium and 18k gold optical frames.