MaryAnne Morin: Seeking the Next Level

MaryAnne Morin is back in menswear as chief merchant of Lord & Taylor and Hudson’s Bay. After many years focusing on women’s, she’s bringing a fresh and dynamic perspective to the menswear team.

Let’s start with a little background:
I was pre-law all the way through college: I did an internship in the Houses of Parliament in London my junior year; I came back for my senior year ready for law school. I took my LSATs, applied, got in and then felt this need to take a little break. So I convinced my parents, deferred acceptance and negotiated a year off. Once back, I was in the book store the day before orientation pondering my long list of all the books I needed when it hit me that I really didn’t want to go to law school. Thank goodness my parents were able to stop payment on the check. But they weren’t happy, so I needed to find work immediately. I took a job with the executive training program at Lord & Taylor. With a short hiatus on the vendor side and a few years at Macy’s, I’ve been at Lord & Taylor for a total of 22 years.

Do you have any mentors?
Liz Rodbell is such a dynamic leader! It’s rare to find someone who is so well rounded in so many aspects of the business. First and foremost, she’s a product person but she’s also an incredibly savvy business person. She’s a wise marketer and very good at managing interpersonal relationships, both internally and externally. I also learned a lot from Marshall Hilsberg and Gary Kellman in my first DMM job in men’s furnishings. I believe mentors appear at all levels and it’s natural to find them when you look up. But I learn a lot from the more junior people around me. Some might be really good at a particular aspect of the business; others might have a passion that proves contagious.

What are your objectives in your new position as chief merchant?
In the competitive landscape that we live in, we have a couple of different objectives. At Hudson’s Bay, we’re a dominant force in Canada’s retail environment: we’re the big fish. And that gives us opportunities that are not quite the same as on the L&T side. So if I were to answer you in two parts, our goal at Hudson’s Bay is to continue to build on the amazing foundation we already have, to continue to push differentiation, to continue to challenge ourselves to be really good editors, and to anticipate what the next move will be. We do have the luxury of more floor space so we have the opportunity for more breadth, but we don’t ever want to forsake depth. We believe in the editing process, in making strong statements on what we truly believe in. We want to be able to service the customer in all phases of his life: if it’s the professional guy who’s time-pressed, we need to give him an efficient shopping experience for his business wardrobe and also suggest things he can wear on the weekends.

So it’s deciding where we want to play, and constantly asking ourselves what’s new? What’s next? Just as importantly, and this is where we sometimes falter: What do we cut to make room for what we’re adding? It’s always easy to layer on, but how do we get credit for what we’re adding if we don’t eliminate something else? I’m talking about editing within lifestyles, not eliminating entire categories. So being great editors, constantly challenging ourselves without over-assorting, is the key goal at Hudson’s Bay.

On the Lord & Taylor side, we live in tighter real estate, so the editing process is even more important. But we have so much opportunity in menswear based on how this consumer segment is evolving. Candidly, for a number of years our growth in women’s outpaced men’s, so now we’re in a catch-up stage. We’ve made tremendous progress: most people who walk onto our menswear floors on Fifth Avenue are amazed at the changes. We need to push ourselves to continue evolving in this manner, to give more of our branch stores the look and feel of Fifth Avenue in a smaller footprint. As we renovate stores, we spend lots of time talking about the elements that will move our business forward. We’ve always had these conversations in women’s; it’s become just as relevant and important on the men’s side.

What are these elements that will move business forward in men’s?
We’ve probably excelled a bit more in the dress up, classic side over the years so now it’s about understanding this consumer’s total lifestyle. The word contemporary has a certain edgy connotation, but it’s really more about a casual lifestyle. We’re having tremendous growth in shoes; we’ve just scratched the surface in what that can mean. We still have work to do with the selling environment and the sales associates, but in those stores where we’ve expanded men’s shoes, we’re absolutely getting the rewards. So it’s more about figuring out what we want the new formula to be, then tweaking it as we understand what’s working, what isn’t, and what we still need to do. And then pushing ourselves to get to the next level.

Because of Lord & Taylor’s historically strong women’s business, your penetration of menswear is a bit below the department store average. How are you fixing that?
We’re letting it find its own level. We’re trying a lot of different things in a lot of different stores: bigger menswear footprints, smaller footprints where sportswear has more space, where shoes have more space. We want the customer to vote and tell us how to push it.

But to me, coming back to menswear after many years away from it, the real excitement is the types of fashion conversations that are going on today. As the outsider looking in, there’s a fashion component that’s driving current men’s business that didn’t exist in the ’90s. It’s hard to compare where we’ve been to where we’re going because the men’s business is actually evolving faster than women’s right now. It’s becoming more about wardrobing, about guys shopping more like women, which is truly exciting. Of course the media has had a lot to do with it: they’re showing different lifestyles and lots of exciting influences. So we’ll see what the consumer tells us, how he votes, and we’ll constantly tweak the formula. As we renovate stores, we’re able to try lots of different ideas.

What’s a typical day for you?
There is no such thing. Every day is different, every day is fast-paced and dynamic. I don’t have a nanosecond to be bored. You have to thrive on a fast-paced environment to do what we do. And you have to love it.

What’s the most challenging part?
Editing assortments. It’s not easy to have the conversations we sometimes need to have with our brands when something that might have worked five years ago is not working so well today. The good news is that most of our manufacturers are also evolving: they might have had one core brand five years ago, they probably have several in their arsenal today. Often, it’s about the partnership with the vendor: If X is not working the way we’d all like it to work, we can keep throwing money, time and effort after it or we can figure out how we can take it to the next level, to where our customer wants to go. So that’s probably the hardest part: editing down and having those conversations.

What’s the most rewarding?
Well one great thing that’s happened to us in the last few years is the growth of e-commerce. As that becomes a bigger percent to total, it gives us breadth and depth opportunities that we didn’t have when limited by store real estate. There are no constraints on e-commerce, so we can add more styles, more colors, more sizes. We’re in the process of rolling out drop shipping, so we’ll get to the point where we’ll have categories for the guy online that we don’t offer in store. We’re having a lot of those conversations now. For example, we can now service extended sizes that we don’t have room for in-store. The goal, as we try different things online, is to discover categories that we should go after in our stores. The idea is to maximize everything we can online, where we don’t have space constraints, and then add the right categories to brick and mortar.

Another example: I’ve worked in women’s shoes forever; a few years ago we added a small amount of extended-calf business. To our surprise, we’ve tripled the business each year! We get a 95 percent sell-through, and we still don’t know how big is big. And that’s the great thing about e-commerce: we can try things, we can course correct, maximize and figure out how we can bring it back into the store. The great news for us is that we’ve always been integrated, we’ve never had a separate e-commerce team. We’ve grown up fully integrated, which gives us insights and opportunities and speed in the fulfillment process. We can make decisions, particularly in smaller stores, that we’re not going to carry a business, but we can service those customers by fulfilling either out of another store or online. When you talk omni-channel and endless aisle, it’s all about a seamless experience.

A big benefit of being integrated is that Hudson’s Bay and Lord & Taylor were at different points of e-commerce development when we merged. (It was no fault of Hudson’s Bay, but simply that e-commerce in Canada wasn’t at the same stage it was in the U.S.) So we were able to move very quickly to maximize the growth of e-commerce at Hudson’s Bay. And the customer continues to surprise us with what businesses they’re responding to online.

What have you learned from Richard Baker?
Richard is all about innovation: there’s no such thing as status quo with him. He approaches every situation with an open mind; always asking why not?
It’s interesting: when you’ve been doing something a certain way for a while, you obviously view the world through your history. And there have been moments when I’d be listening to Richard in meetings and think, wow that’s kind of out there. But then once I sat back, absorbed and really thought about it, I’d start to think, why not?

Bottom line: Richard has an infectious enthusiasm for the business. He’s pumped up and motivated every single day, always asking what else can we do differently. What else can we do better? How can I help us get there? It’s hard not to be smiling in his presence because he’s so excited all the time. And he has such passion for the business.

What keeps you up at night?
I worry about managing the pace of change since things are evolving so quickly. There used to be some quiet periods in our calendar; these days, other than the week between Christmas and New Year’s, there’s no down time at all. Technology has played a significant role in this: when the customer can shop 24/7, it alters the whole dynamic of our business.

I also worry about building our future leaders. We have to be very cognizant of supporting, training and providing the framework in which young executives can flourish. One of the great things about retail is that you’re usually given a lot of meaningful responsibility at a fairly young age. So I’m always asking: Do we have the right people? Do we have the right teams in place? What else should we do? We’re very fortunate that based on our reputation, we attract great candidates. But how do we keep them happy and motivated?

Can you tell us a little about yourself personally?
My husband and I love to travel. We have a place in Palm Beach, Florida and during the winter we try to escape as often as possible (which this winter with my new job was not too often). As much as I love retail, I love decompressing. I’m passionate about music and use music to uplift my spirits and to calm me down. We are big fans of the great outdoors so I love to be on the beach, hiking, enjoying nature. We live in Westchester and I love the greenery.

Any final thoughts?
I’m working with a tremendous team here: our merchants love what they do and it shows. As much as there’s been significant change, there’s also been longevity, which absolutely helps: we can virtually anticipate each other’s moves.

But the main thing that’s kept me passionate about retail all these years is how it continually evolves. You might argue that this is frustrating because the consumer is always changing on us, but it does keep the job extremely relevant.

It also means that we never stop learning. And I truly believe, and this is a phrase I learned from Gary Kellman when he was GMM of Lord & Taylor menswear, that we must always be students of the business.