Profile - Retail - Volume XXVII
Vicki O'Donnell
The quiet marketer of a very loud closet. For thirty-plus years she has been building - and rebranding - one of America's largest privately held footwear chains.
The quiet marketer of a very loud closet. For thirty-plus years she has been building - and rebranding - one of America's largest privately held footwear chains.
There are executives who speak at conferences, and there are executives who quietly build the thing the conferences are talking about. Vicki O'Donnell belongs firmly to the second group, which is possibly why you have never heard of her - and possibly why the shoes on your feet, or your children's feet, came from a store she helps run.
Shoe Show, Inc. is the kind of company that presents itself as a surprise every time you look at its numbers. Founded in 1960 by the Tucker family in the small town of Kannapolis, North Carolina, it has grown into a footwear empire that operates more than eleven hundred locations under a fleet of banners: Shoe Show, Shoe Dept., Shoe Dept. Encore, Burlington Shoes, and the newer, brighter Shoe Show Mega. It employs sixteen thousand people. Its annual revenue, by external estimates, hovers around 6.2 billion dollars. It has, until recently, done all of this without saying very much out loud.
O'Donnell walked into the company in May of 1992 with a fresh Bachelor of Science from Appalachian State University and a job title - Director of Visual Merchandising and Marketing - that sounded a good deal grander than the reality of stocking window displays in the North Carolina heat. She has, in one way or another, been arranging what customers see and hear about Shoe Show ever since.
Thirty-plus years later she holds two chief-officer titles at the same firm: Chief Marketing Officer and Chief Construction Officer. It is the kind of business card that provokes a second glance. Marketing the stores. Building the stores. There is a certain logic to it, of course, once you accept that the person who chooses the shade of the walls should perhaps also choose the walls.
We've been quiet for too long. We have much to offer the customer, and we have very loyal ones. But there are a lot of people, even in our hometown of Kannapolis, N.C., who don't know who we are and what we do.- Vicki O'Donnell, on Shoe Show's decision to join social media
For nearly a decade before 2018, Shoe Show spent essentially nothing on marketing. The Tucker family preferred it that way. Their business ran on price, location and repeat customers, and the ledger did not appear to be complaining. It is a strategy that works beautifully right up until the moment it does not.
O'Donnell, by then a veteran of digital-marketing coursework at Duke University, was the executive who suggested it might be time to say something. The company hired The Richards Group out of Dallas. It opened an Instagram account. It began, gently, to have a personality. The captions, in a detail that reveals more about O'Donnell than any bio ever could, were written by her personally. When customers commented, she often replied. When a sporting event was on, she invited followers to name whom they were rooting for. It was small, human work in a world of automated brand voice, and it was, on purpose, the opposite of a growth hack.
Her ambition since then has not been to shout. It has been to be heard, occasionally, by more of the right people. Shoe Show carries the brands you already know - Nike, Adidas, Puma, Vans, Skechers, Timberland, Crocs, Under Armour, New Balance, Fila - at prices that families can plausibly repeat every August. O'Donnell's job is to make sure the family remembers where those shoes came from, and to make sure the aisles and the storefronts and the parking lots all look, from a distance, like the same considered idea.
She has been doing continuing education the entire time. Wharton's Marketing Analytics program in 2023. A corporate-governance program the same year. Additional certifications through Emeritus. It is, for a woman with three decades of tenure and two chief titles, an oddly student-like resume. One suspects she likes it that way.
Joined Shoe Show as Director of Visual Merchandising and Marketing, straight out of college.
Number of years Shoe Show operated before finally opening a social media account, under her direction.
Marketing and Construction, at the same time, in the same building, on the same business card.
Locations across Shoe Show, Shoe Dept., Shoe Dept. Encore, Burlington Shoes, and Shoe Show Mega banners.
People whose paychecks are, in some small way, downstream of her marketing plan and construction schedule.
The estimated top line of a company most Americans have never thought to notice.
Studies at Appalachian State University, earning a B.S. in Art / Marketing / Communications.
Joins Shoe Show, Inc. as Director of Visual Merchandising and Marketing.
Completes a Digital Media and Marketing certification at Duke University.
Leads Shoe Show's first social-media presence and its first serious marketing investment in a decade; retains The Richards Group.
Joins CHIEF, the private network for senior women executives.
Completes Wharton's Marketing Analytics program and a corporate governance course via Emeritus.
Serves as Chief Marketing Officer and Chief Construction Officer, running the brand and building the buildings.
She is the Chief Marketing Officer and Chief Construction Officer of Shoe Show, Inc., a privately held U.S. footwear chain based in Concord, North Carolina.
Since May 1992. She joined as Director of Visual Merchandising and Marketing and has been with the company ever since.
Appalachian State University for her B.S. (1986 - 1991), followed by a Digital Media and Marketing certification at Duke, and executive programs at Wharton and via Emeritus in 2023.
She holds two chief titles simultaneously - Marketing and Construction - which is very rare in retail leadership.
She led the company's return to active marketing after roughly a decade of near-zero spend, and launched its social-media presence in 2018.