The Weekly - June 16, 2020 - 8

The Pulse
# W E A R E C O M M U N I T Y

To watch
the full interview
with Carly
Gomez, click on
this photo.

Footing the Bill

Vans has stepped up during the COVID-19 crisis to support small businesses that got hit hard.
VP of Marketing Carly Gomez tells us how and why. By Bevin Wallace
Name: Carly Gomez
Company: Vans
Title: VP of Marketing,

Americas
Location: Costa Mesa,

on the Vans website, with the
proceeds going back to the
local shops. As of mid-May,
the program had grown to
include 160 retail partners.

California
Founded: 1966
The Downlow: When the

pandemic started, the people
at Vans quickly realized that
small businesses were going
to be disproportionately affected by it, and started looking for ways to assist them.
The Foot the Bill program
(vans.com/footthebill) began
with 42 small businesses-including restaurants, skate
shops, and music venues-
that aligned with the Vans
brand. Through this customization program, the small
businesses come up with their
own shoe designs, which are
then manufactured and sold

Typically, we would have said
we can't get this done in a
year, but we were able to

pull it off in a week.
It was definitely very collaborative. The designs are

representative of the ethos
of what the shops or restaurants come from. So each
one of them is unique, and
they were all designed by
each of the small businesses.
You feel like you're doing something to support them, but

you're also kind of like a walking billboard for them as well.

8 THE WEEKLY / OUTDOOR RETAILER SUMMER 2020

There are so many good
things that are coming out of
this-those partnerships and

brands stepping up and using their voice to give back.
That's been such a powerful message, and something
that I've been inspired by.
These things take months-if
not years-to formulate. So I'm

impressed with how quickly
we've been able to make this
thing come to life. It's such
good learning for us to be
able to make an impact in
such a short amount of time.
Brands are quickly pivoting
and saying, what else can we
do? What do we have in our

arsenal that we can do to
help? That was one of the
things that allowed us to
move so quickly. We were

looking at the things we have
and were like, we can utilize
our custom platform to push
this messaging now.
Can you imagine ever saying, oh, we're going to create
content from our living room
and put it out? It would've

been like, that's crazy. But
now we see Saturday Night
Live being broadcast from
home and so many brands
putting together content
from their kitchens.
We're going to fi gure out
the evolution of this. Once

everybody goes back outside, that doesn't mean our
support ends. We're just
going to figure out how we
take this and build on it.
This has opened up realms
of possibility.

https://youtu.be/7iJVhLk3nIE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7iJVhLk3nIE https://www.vans.com/ https://www.vans.com/ http://www.vans.com/footthebill

The Weekly - June 16, 2020

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