Q&A With Top Women in Retail Honoree Meera Bhatia, President and COO, Fabletics

Women in Retail Leadership Circle (WIRLC) recently released its 16th annual Top Women in Retail report. The valuable resource highlights female executives who impressed our Editorial team as well as colleagues from across the industry. One such woman was Meera Bhatia, president and chief operating officer of Fabletics, Here’s a sampling of Meera’s interview featured in the report.

Women in Retail Leadership Circle: Fabletics was born as a digitally native, membership-first brand and is now entering wholesale and accelerating retail. What does a “healthy” revenue mix look like to you across membership/DTC, retail stores, and wholesale over the next three years to five years?
Meera Bhatia: Rather than anchoring to a specific revenue mix, we’re focused on building a balanced, resilient business rooted in how our customers want to engage with Fabletics. Our DTC business is foundational; it’s where we built the brand and how we maintain a deep, direct relationship with our VIP members. At the same time, our retail stores have proven to be a powerful growth driver, enabling customers to touch, feel and experience the product while introducing Fabletics to new audiences. And wholesale plays a complementary role, extending reach and brand awareness in a disciplined way. As we continue to grow and scale, our priority is an integrated ecosystem where DTC, retail and wholesale reinforce one another, driving customer acquisition, retention, and long-term, sustainable growth.

WIRLC: What has genuinely improved for women and women of color in tech/retail leadership over the past decade, and where is there still room for improvement? 
MB: My path to retail was neither linear nor traditional. I earned a degree in mechanical engineering at a time when women, especially women of color, were rarely more than a single voice in the room. While I’ve certainly seen progress since then, there’s still meaningful work to be done. We’ve seen increased representation of women and women of color in entry- and mid-level roles, but they remain underrepresented in true decision-making positions. The next phase of progress isn’t just about getting a seat at the table; it’s about having influence once you’re there and being trusted to lead complex, high-impact parts of the business.

WIRLC: What bold leadership move has had the biggest impact on your team in the past year?
MB: 2025 was a year of significant change in retail as macroeconomic forces reshaped our industry in unprecedented ways. Those shifts required us to rapidly reprioritize and refocus, accelerating decisions that typically take months or years and that impacted nearly every team. One of the most meaningful leadership moves I made was to personally lean into AI adoption as a way to support our people through uncertainty and unlock their ability to move quickly in these situations.

We focused first on education and transparency, helping teams understand not just how to use new tools, but why they matter. In doing so, we surfaced a real divide — not in capability, but in confidence. Once teams felt empowered to experiment and apply AI in their day-to-day work, momentum quickly followed. That insight is now shaping our next phase: holding leaders accountable to ensure every employee feels equipped, supported and included as the pace of change continues.