Women in Retail Leadership Circle (WIRLC) recently released its 13th annual Top Women in Retail report. The valuable resource highlights female executives who impressed us as well as colleagues from the industry. 2023 Top Women in Retail honoree Janice Tennant, chief marketing officer at Merrell, is one such example. Here’s a sampling of Tennant’s interview featured in the report:

Women in Retail Leadership Circle: Tell us briefly about your career journey and your role at Merrell.

Janice Tennant: I’ve been a career consumer marketer working on consumer-loved brands like Tropicana, Quaker Oats, Huggies, and Kleenex. I started my career at PepsiCo working in traditional brand management and from there moved into various disciplines of marketing, from new product development to equity communications. 

One of the most formative parts of my career was working in shopper marketing, where I called on key accounts like Target, Walmart, and Publix. During this time, I developed a greater appreciation for the importance of marketers to understand the consumer’s journey from the moment they enter a category to the moment they make a purchase. When I moved to Wolverine World Wide to take on the chief marketing officer role at CAT Footwear, this became even more critical as we had to think about our global retail footprint.  

Having been at Merrell for the past two-and-a-half years, I lean on a lot of these formative experiences as we think about reimagining the future of Merrell at retail. What has changed is the importance of having an omnichannel, digital-first approach. The other element that’s critical is how you’re bringing the full brand to life at these consumer touchpoints, especially as it relates to your brand’s driving purpose. In today’s consumer landscape, you have to win them over with their hearts. There’s no easy answer to this, and it’s the part of my current role that I enjoy trying to figure out with the team. 

WIRLC: When you joined Merrell in 2020, you realized the lack of representation of women in outdoors spaces. Since then, you’ve made it a mission to make the outdoors more inclusive for both women and people of color. What programs have you put in place to move this goal forward?  

JT: With a degree in physical health education, it has always been important to me to get more people active and outside. When people get outside, we know they’re better emotionally, mentally and physically. In fact, just 15 minutes a day outside can help reduce stress and lower blood pressure. The challenge we’ve seen and recognize is many communities don’t have access to outside spaces as there are still many barriers.  

When I took on my role at Merrell in 2020, it was important to me to eliminate some of those barriers. But before we could do that, I felt it was important for our brand to have a deeper understanding of the barriers people were facing, which led to the development of the Inclusivity in the Outdoors Report. The global report is a study of multinational perceptions of inclusivity in outdoor spaces, and why women, BIPOC, and LGBTQ+ communities feel they cannot and do not belong.  

This research was one of the driving reasons behind why we launched the More Less campaign. It was a celebration of how women can leverage the outdoors to overcome physical and mental challenges, especially as more than 53 percent of women saying their stress levels are higher than they were a year ago and almost half feeling burned out.  

We’ve even incorporated our findings into the way we think about our customer experience at Merrell retail stores and how we interact with people from these different populations to make them feel supported and encouraged when making purchases to get outside. Many people’s first step before the outdoors is retail, and their experience there can impact their overall likelihood of coming back for more. Our findings will continue to help guide many of our efforts for 2023 and beyond, and we encourage anyone in our industry to go to our website and download the report. We want as many people as possible helping to solve this important social issue. 

WIRLC: You also pushed forward an aggressive digital and direct-to-consumer strategy at Merrell, developing a strategic road map that grew the brand’s e-commerce business within a year. What are your success secrets?  

JT: People begin and end their journeys with brands online. Fundamentally, this is the reason why we knew we had to change the way we approach building a modern Merrell brand. 

Now, everything is digital — from how we test our products with consumers to understand their unmet needs to how we think about showcasing our products in places where they’re consuming information about how to get outside, whether that be Instagram, TikTok, or review sites.  

The key to doing this well is building cross-functional collaboration into each process. The digital space moves so fast that agile collaboration becomes imperative, and we’re building new systems and processes to support this. 

WIRLC: You’re a founding member of the Black Executive CMO Alliance. Why did you launch this group?

JT: I joined the Black Executive CMO Alliance because I feel strongly about paying it forward to the next generation to help increase representation at all levels of our organizations and to reflect the consumers we serve. It’s also been incredibly helpful professionally to connect, learn and grow from the Black marketing C-suite executives across multiple industries who have a shared experience.  

As a group, we were driven to launch this alliance as we’re profoundly aware of the inequality and seeming indifference that excludes Black employees from the C-suite and leads to a lack of corporate board diversity. As members and allies, we feel an obligation to create a navigable path for Black marketers. By building a bigger, better pipeline, we will prepare more Black talent to advance in their careers and increase their value and contributions.  

WIRLC: How would you describe your leadership style, and how do you motivate and inspire your team?

JT: I’ve adopted a coaching leadership style. Growing up, I played a lot of sports, and I learned early on that when you play a sport your coach can’t run your race for you, but she can give you great advice, feedback and exercises that help you grow and prepare you to perform. I take that same approach with my current teams. I spend a lot of time focused on empowering them to build and drive the best strategies, while investing time in developing their skills as marketers and as business leaders.    

I’ve often received recognition for being a champion of innovation. I ask my team what we can do bigger, better and faster each year. This requires a deep level of curiosity and constantly studying where trends are going and how consumer behavior is shifting. 

WIRLC: What are you most looking forward to in 2023, both personally and professionally?  

JT: I’m looking forward to building off the momentum and brand heat Merrell had in 2022. We were recognized as the Footwear News Achievement Awards Brand of the Year for our efforts in promoting a more diverse vision of the outdoors. Yet there’s so much more for us to do and we’re ready to tackle it head on. 

Personally, I’m excited to spend more time outdoors with my two boys traveling and exploring this upcoming summer. 

Read more interviews from our 2023 Top Women in Retail report by downloading it here. Want to connect with women leaders like Janice? Apply to become a Women in Retail Leadership Circle member today!