Within the wake of mass layoffs and a volatile job market, many CEOs say making cuts and restructuring decisions will be tough.
But for Levi Strauss CEO Charles Bergh, there’s nothing tough about it.
In a recent interview with CNBC, Bergh claims that he fired greater than half of the highest executives at the corporate when he took over in September 2011.
“The best approach to change the culture is to alter the people. I had 11 direct reports, and in the primary 18 months, nine of them were gone,” Bergh told CNBC in an interview.
Profile shoot of Charles V Bergh, President & Chief Executive Officer of Levi Strauss & Co. (Getty Images)
When Bergh took over as CEO, the corporate was attempting to resonate with younger buyers.
“The corporate’s performance had been really erratic for greater than 10 years,” he said. “One yr the revenues would go up, however the profits would go down. The subsequent yr, they’d fix the profits, however the revenues went down.”
But as Bergh implemented changes to the corporate’s business model, he told CNBC that his biggest regret was that he didn’t let enough people go soon enough.
“My biggest regret is that we didn’t lean into a few of these great leaders, and we lost some because I held on to anyone longer than I must have,” he said bluntly.
Bergh is about to step down as CEO next yr. He can be succeeded by former Kohl’s CEO Michelle Gass.
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Levi Strauss is coming off a rougher-than-expected Q2 2023 after reporting a high drop off in wholesale revenue and soft sales in its U.S. market.
Overall sales were $1.34 billion, a 9% decrease from the $1.47 billion in sales the corporate saw at the identical time last yr.
Levi Strauss was down just over 18.6% in a one-year period as of Wednesday afternoon.
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