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How long does it take to turnaround a brand?

(And how do you do it?)

I love a good brand turnaround. Often these turnarounds (ahem, revitalizations) happen seemingly out of nowhere. Suddenly Abercrombie is cool again and everyone knows it.

Starbucks and Nike are both in the middle of revitalizations. How long will it take for them to return to their former glory?

I would love to tell you the secret to turning around your brand in a year. In reality, most turnarounds take ~5 years. At least. It takes time to update product and operations, shift perception and regain the zeitgeist.

But don’t take my word for it. Abercrombie pulled off one of the most successful brand revitalizations in recent times after the brand ousted former CEO Mike Jeffries in 2014. By 2023, A&F was the top performing stock in the S&P, beating even out NVIDIA for stock appreciation. But those 2023 results occurred 7 years into a brand revitalization that began in 2016. If we take 2020 out of the mix, Abercrombie spent 8 years from the start of its revitalization in 2015 to match its prior peak revenue set in 2012.

Source: Perplexity, Abercrombie, Author

Let’s take another example: Crocs. After sales started to slow for the foam shoe brand, the company embarked on a brand repositioning to ‘individuality’. They launched a new campaign to celebrate individuality (‘Come as you are’), refocused product on their distinctive clog, and began to push the boundaries of brand collaborations by designing shoes with luxury brand Balenciaga, musician Post Malone, and fast food chain Kentucky Fried Chicken.

After 5 years of focused marketing around individuality, Crocs’ sales took off. Compared to Abercrombie, Crocs’ turnaround was relatively fast.

Source: Perplexity, Crocs, Author

Accessible luxury brand Coach took longer. After logo-driven product and outlet overexposure began to take a toll on brand perception and sales, Coach hired creative director Stuart Vevers to premiumize the brand in 2014. Vevers and team removed the brand from outlets, redesigned product, updated stores, partnered with celebrities, and refocused the brand around a new idea of modern luxury. Finally, the brand began to break through in 2021. In all, it was ~8 years for revitalization, 7 if you take out 2020.

Source: Perplexity, Tapestry, Author

Starbucks and Nike announced their new CEOs last year (2024) which means they are one, maybe two years into what is likely a ~5 year turnaround process. Other current turnaround brands include Gap, Olaplex, Vans, and Doc Martens. If you believe in their teams and strategy, give them time. A brand turnaround, particularly for a company the size of Nike, requires a concerted effort across marketing, product, and retail to establish a fresh positioning and bring in audiences.

What happens in those ~5 years?

A lot. But from the outside, there are 3 broad phases a brand goes through as part of a major turnaround.

Source: Michelle Wiles

Phase 1: Lay Groundwork

Typically due to declining sales, declining relevance, or both, a CEO or management team aligns behind a new brand strategy which serves as a north star for the years-long revitalization. The company also updates teams, budgets and operations to support execution of the new strategy.

Key to this phase is understanding your customers. Your new positioning should be rooted in a clear customer insight. For Crocs, the team identified the growing streetwear movement as an opportunity to position Crocs as a fashionable choice, rather than a functional, comfort-forward option.

They brought this strategy to life through the positioning of ‘individuality,’ which focused on self expression, confidence, and customization. Abercrombie’s brand strategy shift was more stark, from exclusive (tight clothes, dark stores, homogeneous models) to inclusive (wide size ranges, open stores, diverse cast) to address changing cultural preferences and distance the brand from controversies associated with departing CEO Michael Jeffries.

Phase 2: Build Momentum

Once strategy is defined, momentum consists of bringing it to life. At minimum, this includes a marketing campaign to introduce the new positioning, and updated product to convey the new positioning and give customers a reason to reconsider the brand. Celebrity partnerships, updated design, retail upgrades, and brand collaborations might also be part of the momentum mix.

What’s key here is repetition and consistency. It takes time to get people to reconsider a brand that they have already defined in their minds. Abercrombie spent years weaving inclusivity through every element of its marketing, product, and retail experiences until the brand’s ‘exclusivity’ associations became history.

A&F kicked off their momentum phase in 2016 by wiping their Instagram clean and launching a campaign titled “They think they’ve got us figured out,” followed by “This is Abercrombie and Fitch.” They also unveiled a new brand identity. Abercrombie continued the push in 2017 with new, open store concepts (in contrast to their dark, heavily perfumed stores) and a second campaign, “This is the time,” which conveyed the message that your 20s are the time to try new things, date, and mess up.

Abercrombie’s brand relaunch campaign stressed a fresh start; Source: BizJournals

2018 saw the release of new inclusive products, including A&F’s viral Curve Line denim, designed to be comfortable for all sizes. In 2019 Abercombie launched their third brand campaign, ‘Face your fierce,’ which featured a diverse mix of celebrity partners including soccer star Megan Repinoe, paralympian athlete Scout Bassett, and transgender model Leyna Bloom.

Throughout its Momentum phase, Abercrombie continued to listen to customers to identify new ways to deliver ‘inclusivity’. For example, the idea for their Curve Love denim came from customer research:

We really focused on getting close to the customer to find out what they wanted from us in jeans. That’s when we [created] Curve Love, which is now 50 percent of our women’s jeans business. … Our head denim designer at the time spent hours scouring YouTube and going through shopping malls. What she found was that lots of women were talking about the waist gap, and they could never find jeans that fit their waist and their hips.

- Corey Robinson, Chief Product Officer, Abercrombie, via Rivet

Phase 3: Breakthrough

Here, the brand’s efforts start to pay off. The new positioning is both well-understood and believed, and the brand begins to benefit from positive social media, press and word of mouth. Growth accelerates, and the brand’s revenue reaches new heights. But that doesn’t mean it’s time for a brand to relax.

For Abercrombie, a breakthrough came in 2021, as evidenced by virality on TikTok (have you been to the new Abercrombie?) and sales acceleration.

Running a brand in breakthrough is great — you benefit from traffic and audience interest. You don’t need to sell your new positioning anymore. And, other companies seek your brand out for collaborations and projects. But now that people know your positioning, you need to continue to find new ways to convey it to maintain your market position and audience, or risk being outplayed by a competitor who is inspired by your growth.

Mastering this phase is less about selling your strategy the way you did during the Build Momentum phase, and more about continuing to reinvent it to prolong its ownership of the space. Brands do this by balancing innovation with brand consistency.

Again, Abercombie shows how it’s done. After starting to breakthrough in 2021, Abercombie continued to innovate, expanding into athleisure in 2022. But, instead of just launching a Lululemon lookalike, A&F launched activewear under their lens of inclusivity. They titled their line ‘Your Personal Best,’ — a nod to self acceptance and empowerment — and developed the line with input from models across genders, sizes, shapes, and heights. Your Personal Best offers an inclusive size range from XXS to XXL, with additional options for long and short lengths, ensuring accessibility for a wide range of body types.

If your brand is currently in breakthrough — i.e. Coach, Miu Miu, Hoka — ask yourself how you can continue to innovate your positioning to keep it fresh longer. You have an audience at the ready — now is the time to show them why they should stay interested.

For example — Coach, mid-breakthrough, launched Coachtopia, a sub-brand focused on circular craft and collaborative creativity, with its own line of accessible handbags, social media, and stores in 2023. They continued to evolve by returning to New York fashion week in 2025, with a star studded fashion show and influencer partnerships to match. Despite years of breakthrough growth, Coach continues to grow and attract buzz.

Coachtopia. Source: BoF

The bags in Coach’s Fall 2025 fashion show immediately sold out. Source: Marie Claire

Crocs, on the other hand, is in a bit of a holding pattern. After a series of buzzworthy collabs during their breakthrough phase (Crocs made shoes with everyone from Post Malone to Ranch Dressing) the strategy has gotten tired. Sales are declining. The brand can attempt to reinvigorate ‘individuality’ with a new style of execution… but if they wait too long, they may need to reinvigorate the brand positioning as a whole.

Takeaways for turnaround CEOs, marketers, and investors

1. Revitalizations take time. A single campaign or NikeSkims collaboration will not refresh a brand. Rather, it’s those and more. Brand revitalizations are the result of continued and consistent coordination over enough time to shift company perception. Expecting a turnaround in the short-term is folly, and it’s difficult if not impossible to build a successful turnaround if you don’t have the patience to support it for 5+ years. Give your creative teams time to work, and take time to understand your customers and adjust as you go. If you’re an investor, design early KPIs to track progress via shifting brand perception, rather than immediate sales growth, to monitor if the revitalization is on the right track.

2. Successful revitalizations are rooted in distinctive positioning. Crocs and Abercrombie fully owned concepts of individuality and inclusivity. Coach’s revitalization started with the somewhat vague concept of ‘Modern Luxury’, and began to take off when they defined their brand more specifically around ‘authenticity’ a few years into their revitalization. A watered down positioning, or brand that tries to target everyone, will end up attracting no one. Push your team to align on a positioning worthy of reattracting interest.

3. Successful revitalizations are cross-company. Revitalization is not a brand or marketing effort. It’s a company effort. Once you align on your new strategy, create a brand playbook to inspire your team around the new strategy is — and how it can come to life in stores, product, influencers, customer service, copy, and campaigns.

What are your thoughts on brand turnarounds? And how long do you think it will take for Nike to come back?