Dive Brief:
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Crocs on Thursday said that Chief Financial Officer Anne Mehlman will be promoted to executive vice president and president of the Crocs brand. She will continue with her CFO duties until the company finds a replacement.
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She takes over from Michelle Poole, who has decided to retire. Poole will remain in the role through early May, and then stay on as an adviser until early 2025, per a company press release.
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Mehlman returned to Crocs in 2018, after a two-year stint as Zappos CFO. Before that she had been Crocs vice president of corporate finance for five years, and all told has more than two decades of global financial and operational experience, the company said.
Dive Insight:
With this switch, Mehlman will be able to focus on Crocs flagship brand, which continues to enjoy global popularity among consumers and collaborators.
The company releases its full-year and Q4 results on Feb. 15. In its most recent quarter, revenue topped $1 billion despite ongoing struggles at its HeyDude DTC brand, where revenue fell more than 8%. Crocs itself took a dim view of the brand’s near-term prospects, warning in November that its sales could drop as much as 25% in the holiday quarter.
By contrast, at the Crocs brand Q3 revenue rose 11.6% to $798.8 million, with DTC comps up 15.3% and wholesale up 4.5%. Between July and September last year, Crocs’ physical stores were busy, with overall Q3 footfall up 13.1%, according to traffic analytics firm Placer.ai.
Also on Thursday, Crocs reiterated guidance it had released last month. The company expects Q4 revenue to rise more than 1% year over year, better than its previous expectation of a decline between 1% and 4%, with Crocs up nearly 10%, and HeyDude down 19%, according to a press release.
For the year, the company expects revenues to grow more than 11% year over year, slightly above its previous guidance of 10% to 11%. That includes the Crocs brand growing more than 13%, surpassing $3 billion, and HeyDude revenues of about $949 million. Full-year operating margin could exceed 27%.
In Q4, the company paid down some $277 million of net debt and repurchased $25 million in stock in the fourth quarter, per the release.
In a statement, Crocs CEO Andrew Rees said that bringing Mehlman into this new role is part of an effort to build “a strong talent bench,” which he said is among the company’s “strategic imperatives.”
“Anne has been an important thought partner over the last five years in her current capacity as Chief Financial Officer and I have no doubt that her strategic abilities, commercial acumen, and deep knowledge of the Crocs Brand will set us up well for our next chapter of growth,” he said.
