Vince at Noble Capital Markets: Navigating Challenges in Luxury Fashion

On Thursday, 09 October 2025, Vince Holding Corp (NYSE:VNCE) participated in the Noble Capital Markets Emerging Growth Virtual Investor Conference. The company presented a cautiously optimistic outlook, highlighting successful cost-saving measures and strategic initiatives, while acknowledging challenges such as tariffs and market competition.

Key Takeaways

• Vince achieved $10 million in cost savings through a transformation program.
• The company plans to reduce its reliance on Chinese sourcing from over 60% to 25% by the end of 2025.
• Long-term debt has been significantly reduced from over $120 million to approximately $31 million.
• Vince is investing in marketing and technology to boost brand awareness and operational efficiency.
• The company is exploring international expansion, particularly in Europe and Asia.

Financial Results

• Vince’s transformation program delivered $10 million in cost savings.
• Cost of goods sold (COGS) was reduced by optimizing shipping and decreasing direct and indirect costs.
• Long-term debt was reduced from over $120 million to about $31 million, strengthening the balance sheet.

Operational Updates

• Vince is diversifying its sourcing strategy to mitigate the impact of tariffs, aiming to decrease reliance on Chinese goods to 25% by 2025.
• The company is sharing the tariff burden through strategic price adjustments across factories, Vince, and consumers.
• Vince operates as a dual-gender brand, competing with peers like Rag & Bone and Theory.

Future Outlook

• Plans to reinvest in marketing, particularly in Q3, to enhance brand visibility ahead of the holiday season.
• Investment in technology, such as dropship capabilities, to support product categories and operational efficiency.
• Exploring growth opportunities through international expansion, with a focus on Europe and Asia, following success in London.

Q&A Highlights

• Vince has no outstanding warrants and manages a cash balance to minimize interest expenses.
• The company is considering leveraging its platform for other brands through potential licensing agreements.

The conference call highlighted Vince’s strategic efforts to navigate industry challenges while positioning itself for future growth. For more details, readers are encouraged to refer to the full transcript below.

Full transcript - Noble Capital Markets Emerging Growth Virtual Investor Conference:

Michael, Analyst, channelcheck.com: Profitability. I think there’s more to come. I encourage you to take a look at our research report on the company on channelcheck.com. With us today are Brendan Hoffman, the CEO, Yuji Okumura, CFO, and Akiko Okumura, the Chief Administrative Officer. This will be a fireside chat, and I will kick the discussion off asking questions to provide some context to the company and to dive into its business strategy. Hopefully, I will address most of your investor questions. If you have questions, please feel free to type those in a box at the bottom of your screen, and I will get to as many of those as I possibly can. With that, let’s get started. Let’s just talk a little bit about the fashion industry itself and about your competitive position in that fashion industry and maybe give a little context about where you fit into that industry.

Brendan Hoffman, CEO, Vince: Yeah, sure. Thanks for having us, Michael. The fashion industry is ever-changing. Vince has been around for 25 years now, you know, and we think we’re the preeminent player in the contemporary luxury apparel market. Vince is really known for its kind of quiet luxury. We deal a lot in kind of upscale essentials, you know, cashmere sweaters, silk blouses, leather jackets, denim. I shouldn’t say mostly, but a big part of our consumer base is a luxury customer who shops brands like Theroux and Cucinelli and Loro Piana and sees Vince as a value. You know, our competitive group is brands like Rag & Bone, Theory, Veronica Beard. We are a dual-gender brand. While we are a bigger business in women’s, we’re a full men’s line as well.

Very pleased with where we sit and our ability to kind of navigate up and down depending on the way the world is going.

Michael, Analyst, channelcheck.com: I alluded to this in my opening comments. You’ve embarked on a strategy to improve the fundamentals through reduced discounting and increased operational efficiencies. With the backdrop of increased tariffs in the latest quarter, the benefits of this strategy were really evident. You had a remarkable improvement in cash flow in the latest quarter, beating my expectations. I was wondering if you can just describe where the company is on its journey to improve the fundamentals at the company and maybe just describe what inning are we in, if I could use just a baseball metaphor.

Brendan Hoffman, CEO, Vince: Baseball metaphor is a little raw right now considering the Yankees’ performance last night, but we’ll take it for what it is. I’m in a unique position where I was the CEO here from 2015 to 2020, left for a few years, and came back at the beginning of this year. I’m able to see it through the lens of the company I left, which was on the upswing into COVID, to the company I rejoined six or seven months ago. Both the evolution of the brand, Vince, and the evolution of the team, which is largely the same team that I left five years ago, I say I’m both insulted they’re still here and now quite gratified because they’re five years more mature, more seasoned.

The way where they were taking the business in 2024 through their transformation program, which Yuji can talk a little bit more about, had us set up for a terrific 2025. We were very bullish coming into the year, starting to make some investments, particularly around marketing and store renovations that had been held off for the last few years. We got hit with tariffs. In early April when that happened, especially initially with tariffs in China being 158%, that was an embargo and really forced us to kind of paralyze us and most of the industry for a couple of months.

If anything, it showed me just how right I was in coming back because I just saw the quick action of the team to all aspects of the organization to figure out how we manage tariffs, preparing for the worst, which at the beginning was we can no longer do business in China because it’s basically an embargo. During those few months, the team, boots on the ground, very quickly diversified our sourcing base. At the time, we thought maybe China was going to be completely shut down and look to other parts of Asia. Where we stand now, obviously with the moving tariffs, is China is still obviously viable given the way tariffs have been situated. We can’t have any one country be too much of our sourcing base.

We are much more diversified as we end 2025 than we were entering 2025, which I think provides us a lot more flexibility. In terms of your question on the innings, I would say as we were entering 2025, given all the great work in 2024, maybe we were in the second or third inning. We were still very early on, but with lots of opportunity in front of us. Tariffs forced us to kind of pause. To use your baseball analogy, there was a bit of a rain delay. We focused on shoring up what we need to shore up for tariffs.

Over the last two months, I’ve been able to get back, playing ball again and thinking about not only opportunities to continue to drive efficiencies by taking out costs and improving our markup, but looking for other growth avenues and revenue streams, which was what attracted me to come back to Vince seven or eight months ago. I’d still say we’re in early innings, but really optimistic about what the final score will be.

Michael, Analyst, channelcheck.com: Your team did an amazing job. Part of the efforts to drive efficiency was through the transformation program. What changes or what areas were in focus with respect to product cost and changes in optimizing logistics?

Brendan Hoffman, CEO, Vince: Yeah, I’m going to let Yuji take that since he was really the driving force behind that.

Yuji Okumura, CFO, Vince: Yeah. Last year we embarked on a transformation journey where we set ourselves a goal of saving $10 million over the course of the year, and we’re very happy that we achieved that. As part of that, certainly lowering our product cost and the COGS focus was certainly one of the initiatives that was in play, reducing our direct costs as well as both indirect costs as well from looking at air and boat shipping methods. That’s the cost reduction sort of component. There’s also looking at our promotionality, how much discount we were offering, what was our promotional calendar look like. Restrategizing that was part of the 2024 efforts. We also had a decent amount of SG&A and cost savings initiatives that were baked into the 2024 program.

Michael, Analyst, channelcheck.com: Gotcha. Brendan, I’d like to go back to, you talked a little bit about the tariffs and the trade policy. Obviously, trade policy shifts have kind of created some ripples across the spectrum of sourcing and manufacturing. Can you outline the risk that you see from specific countries? You mentioned that you had a shift away a little bit from China, whether it be from sourcing or manufacturing, and what are you doing to mitigate those risks now?

Brendan Hoffman, CEO, Vince: Yeah, so, you know, we went through a bit of this during the first Trump administration, you know, when he first implemented tariffs. I was at Vince and I went down to Washington to testify about the impact it would have because China, for brands like ours, are just so unique in their ability to bring this product to market, not just because of the cost advantages, but just because of the technical skills they have. When tariffs hit this time and them being so severe, I think the difference was they were so extreme that when our team went to China and Asia to meet with our partners, unlike six, seven years ago where there was still pushback on resourcing out of China, this time everybody realized we had no choice at 158% tariffs. Fortunately, our partners in China stood up sister factories in other parts of Asia.

Not only stood up those factories, but staffed them with some of their expertise. Very quickly that gave us comfort that the quality, which is not something we can ever compromise on, wouldn’t be at risk. Now it’s a little bit like whack-a-mole with the tariffs changing so much. You know, again, as I mentioned, I think the sound strategy is just not to be overly penetrated in any one country. Where we were going to be north of 60% China in 2025, we’ll end about 25% in China. Then balanced, not just throughout Asia, but South America and other parts of Europe as we look for new places to source products. I think that’s a much healthier place for us to be. The tariffs, even though we’re not 158%, are still meaningful, obviously.

The burden has been really shared between the factories working shorter, us working a little bit shorter, at least in 2025, and then strategically passing on some price changes to the consumer. I think we benefit from being in the contemporary luxury space where we have some room, if done smartly, to raise some prices to protect margins. As I mentioned on our earnings call a few months ago, last month, when the department stores came to market and saw the price changes, we were really pleased that while nobody likes to see them, they still felt we held our value proposition compared to our peer brands as they were raising prices too. Those price changes are just starting to hit the market in the back half of the year. So far, pleased with the response.

There is still some risk as we get closer to holiday in terms of how those price changes will fully be embraced. On the other hand, it’s an opportunity because we have to sell less units, and if we’re able to maintain our unit sales, there’s more upside in terms of the overall revenue. It’s certainly not something we’re looking forward to having to deal with, but feel really comfortable and confident and proud of the way we’ve handled it over the last five or six months and setting us back up for future success.

Michael, Analyst, channelcheck.com: Yeah, John, certainly we’re putting out some fires and at the same time delivering on some really strong results. I was just wondering in terms of now that we have more clarity on these tariffs, you mentioned in your last earnings call you’ll be beginning to invest back into your business. I was just wondering if you can maybe add some color on your plans for the second half.

Brendan Hoffman, CEO, Vince: Yeah, fingers crossed, we have clarity on the tariffs. Who knows if they go up or down, although we’d be very happy if they went back down. We did say that on Q2 on the earnings call because, you know, again, we felt like we had put a mitigation plan in place that allows us to be much more nimble regardless of where the tariffs end up. As I said earlier, we had entered the year with the ability to invest back in the business. A lot of that’s around marketing. Given the challenges over the last few years, we really haven’t been able to invest in top-of-funnel marketing, really brand awareness marketing. We had started to do that at the beginning of the year and then paused that during tariffs.

I think part of our success in Q2 in our retail stores, which we alluded to on our earnings call, was because we had done some of that top-of-funnel marketing. That usually has a bit of a lag effect. As we entered into Q3, feeling a little more confident, we have cautiously added back in some of that top-of-funnel marketing, which should pay off as we get closer to the holiday season. For example, if you’re in LA and go down Sunrise Boulevard, you’ll see a couple of huge Vince billboards. We’re excited to be able to bring that to life and hopeful we can expand on that. We’re also making some investments in technology, specifically around dropship capabilities for us. The reason that’s, and so what that means is we don’t have to own the inventory.

We can just have it be sent from the manufacturer directly to the consumer. Where that most specifically comes into play for us are through our licensees, which are expanding under our partnership with Authentic Brands Group. As they have licensed out things like handbags and men’s tailored clothing, we can showcase those on our website, but don’t have to take the risk of inventory because of the dropship technology that actually goes live next week.

Michael, Analyst, channelcheck.com: I’m a fan of fashion, not that I’m always fashionable, but I know for you, the second half is historically important. You know, the season is coming up. I was just wondering if you can maybe just talk a little bit about the plans for the holiday season and any new products, styles, colors, and things that we should expect from Vince this season.

Brendan Hoffman, CEO, Vince: Yeah, as you said, I mean, like for us and all retailers, this is where we make our money is the back half of the year. Being here in New York where it’s 60 degrees out is a much better place to be than on Monday when it was 82 degrees out because we’re trying to sell sweaters and leather coats. The weather certainly helps. In the back half of the year in terms of product, it’s just an evolution of what we’ve been doing. Some new novelty on some of the stuff we’re known for, like boiled cashmere, our silks, and our knits that have different finishing details than they had in the past. I would say that’s the biggest evolution I’ve seen in the product having been gone for five years.

I think one of the great strengths Vince has and one of the things that attracted me back, as I mentioned, was the continuity of the team. Nowhere is that more important than in our design and production, bringing product to market. We’re a product-first company, obviously. That team has been together now for seven years, having lived through when we’ve had to make changes there. You end up in a year and a half limbo as new product is brought to market and kind of keep your fingers crossed that you’re going to hit the mark. We don’t have that concern because of the continuity of the team. The danger could be that the product gets stale.

I think it’s doing just the opposite here with Vince, as they’ve taken what we do well and just added some touches to it that just make it seem look more sophisticated and give the consumer another reason to buy. As we enter into the back half of the year, optimistic, cautiously, as I always say, that both in our wholesale accounts with the majors like Nordstrom and Bloomingdale’s, as well as our stores and e-commerce, that the customer is going to continue to react favorably.

Michael, Analyst, channelcheck.com: Brendan, I was kind of hoping that you were going to tell me what color Vince’s sweater I was supposed to wear to my cocktail party, you know, my Christmas cocktail party. You know.

Brendan Hoffman, CEO, Vince: You can never go wrong with black, but you know, we also have some more pop colors that are a little risky for me, so I usually stay in the darker neutrals.

Michael, Analyst, channelcheck.com: All right. More importantly, I was just wondering if you can just talk a little bit about your customers. Obviously, we’ve been going through this turbulent economic environment. I was just wondering, how are your customers reacting to the current economic environment?

Brendan Hoffman, CEO, Vince: Yeah, so if you’re talking about the trade, our department store customers specifically, I’ll use the word cautiously optimistic. I probably use that word for 33 of the 35 years I’ve been in this industry. It’s nothing new. It’s just different reasons for that caution or optimism. I will say specifically to Vince, all the major department stores are very bullish on the brand. We’re very pleased with our order book, very pleased with the way it’s selling at the register. Men’s is a growing category for us. We’re very proud of being a dual-gender brand. We’ve grown to all doors in both Bloomingdale’s and Nordstrom. Not just being in all doors, but the way we’re presented in these doors.

It’s, from five years ago, noticeably different the way that they’ve expanded our presentation to where the consumer really feels like they’re shopping Vince as opposed to maybe just some key items. The industry’s been shaken up a bit by Saks Global and the merger between Neiman’s and Saks. We feel positive about the opportunity there as well. I have a long history with Richard Baker, having run Lord & Taylor, and we have a very close relationship with the Saks and Neiman’s team. We’re all part of the same Authentic Brands Group carve-out of ABG. I feel like there’s opportunity there and are optimistic that they’ve shored up a lot of their capital needs and that as we look into 2026, that’s going to be a growth opportunity for us as well.

Michael, Analyst, channelcheck.com: I want to take a little bit of a break here and just remind investors that feel free to go ahead and ask questions, you know, and type those in the chat box if you have questions. If not, I’m going to go ahead and continue to ask mine. Brendan, I was wondering if you can just talk a little bit about your plans for future growth. You know, I know that you had talked a little bit about your previous calls about opening domestic stores and international expansion and maybe even talk a little bit about acquisitions.

Brendan Hoffman, CEO, Vince: Yeah, so I think the thing that’s really exciting from my standpoint is that Vince is we have a couple of paths now we can go down. Where five years ago, six years ago, we were only talking about Vince. Now we think we have great opportunity in Vince. As we expand some of the categories we’re known for, as Authentic Brands Group comes in and licenses out some additional categories, as I mentioned earlier, which we get 25% of the royalty stream, but also the opportunity to showcase that product in our direct-to-consumer vehicles, as I mentioned, as well as just expanding the brand recognition through these other categories. We just opened up two stores domestically in the last six weeks, one in Nashville and one in Sacramento. I think as we look at our domestic store base, that probably won’t change materially over the next few years.

We have close to 50 full-price stores and about 14 outlet stores. We’ll continue to look to open up some stores, but there will probably also be stores as they come up for renewal. If we can’t get better lease terms, we might look to close or rationalize. I would say that that’s not going to be a big change. Internationally, I think there could be some room there to open up some more stores. We just opened up our second store in London earlier this year, and it’s doing great. I think it’s giving us renewed confidence to look at other gateway cities throughout Europe and maybe Asia and see if we could open up stores that not only pencil out from an economic standpoint, but provide us more brand recognition. We’ve always had an international business.

We have a showroom in Paris, but as I benchmark us against our peer group, we have some more opportunity there. I think there’s lots to be excited about for the Vince brand, but then I think equally as exciting, and one of the things that drew me here was using our platform for other business opportunities. I don’t necessarily want to say acquisitions because we’re not really in the market for acquisitions, but what we are in the market for in conversations pre-tariffs and now is how we can use our platform, whether it be our design, production, sourcing, store base, back of house, for brands that we could be a licensee of. Natural places with Authentic Brands Group, our partner there, and whether it’s brands that they currently have that need some capabilities or brands that are out there in the market looking for.

We’re kind of their luxury partner when it comes to apparel, and we have a great relationship there. I think that’s another revenue stream that hopefully we’ll be able to add some clarity to as we put tariffs behind us and can focus on some more growth opportunities.

Michael, Analyst, channelcheck.com: I was going to put a little bug in your ear. I was kind of hoping that we were going to get a Vince outlet in Orlando. You know, we do get a lot of international visitors here, so can kind of build that brand. Just put the little bug in your ear.

Brendan Hoffman, CEO, Vince: We had a Vince Orlando store when I was here the last time, and we just got priced out of the market because it just got so expensive due to all the traffic. I’ll be down there in a few months, and we’re going to kind of tour the outlet markets because it’s a great, as you know, it’s a great outlet market. That’s not impossible, but that would happen sometime in the future.

Michael, Analyst, channelcheck.com: All right, let’s do lunch when you come in. Just kind of continue on. Let’s talk a little bit about the balance sheet. I don’t really think that the company gets enough credit on how well you’ve strengthened the balance sheet over the past few years. Maybe if you can just spend a little bit of time kind of reminding some investors that might be new to the story where you’ve come from and how the balance sheet is in a much better spot than it has been in the past, and maybe some of the actions that you have taken and how you’re feeling about the balance sheet today.

Brendan Hoffman, CEO, Vince: Go ahead, Yuji.

Yuji Okumura, CFO, Vince: Yeah, just over probably two and a half years ago, we were probably carrying approximately $120 million or over $120 million in long-term debt balance. Those were two term loan debts, and we always had a revolver. Through various transactions, whether it was the Authentic Brands Group transaction or some of the change in control event, and through our efforts, at our latest earnings, our long-term debt balance is now at $31 million or so. We were able to reduce our debt by a significant margin. When you look at the makeup of that $31 million, really $7 million or so is a term loan, and the rest is all related to revolver that obviously goes up and down depending on our business needs.

When you look at our cash balance, it’s not a high cash balance, but that’s somewhat deliberate in nature where whenever we do have some excess cash, we do pay down our revolver debt so that we don’t incur our interest. We have decent availability in that respect, and we’re very happy with where we are in our balance sheet structure. We believe we made progress in that regard over the past two years.

Michael, Analyst, channelcheck.com: Terrific. It looks like investors are pleased with the questions I’m asking. I’m going to squeeze one more in here. Let’s just talk a little bit about capital allocation, kind of following on your comments on the balance sheet. What are your thoughts in terms of returning capital to shareholders in terms of stock buybacks or dividends and, you know, things like that?

Brendan Hoffman, CEO, Vince: Yeah, go ahead, Yuji.

Yuji Okumura, CFO, Vince: Yeah, I mean, depending on our growth strategy and how we want to raise capital, we will certainly look into some of those stuff. Obviously, we are currently, it really drives depending on our needs. In terms of funding and our growth in our internal Vince business, for now, we are able to manage that through our own available liquidity and our capital structure. We’re not too focused on the change related to that. From shareholders, from like dividends and perspective, we don’t have any potential plans in the immediate future.

Michael, Analyst, channelcheck.com: Okay. I have a couple of questions that have come in here. A couple of questions here are asking, do you have any warrants left?

Brendan Hoffman, CEO, Vince: No, we don’t have any outstanding warrants.

Michael, Analyst, channelcheck.com: The other question is, how much debt do you have left?

Yuji Okumura, CFO, Vince: Like I said, we have, you know, $31 million in our long-term debt. $7 million is with our previous majority shareholders on capital. We have a PIK interest debt with them. Outside of that, it’s all our asset-based lending revolver debt.

Michael, Analyst, channelcheck.com: We’re coming up against our allotted time here. In closing, I really want to thank the management of Vince today and taking the time to present to us. I also wanted to thank them because obviously the stock has performed well. At the same time, I wanted to remind investors that I believe that there’s still a large pathway for growth here. Don’t be shy about buying the stock, even though the stock has gone up. In my view, I think that there’s still a lot of upside with this story. I would encourage you to take a look at our research reports on channelcheck.com. With that, thank you for participating in our conference, and thank you for listening to the Vince story. Thank you, guys.

Brendan Hoffman, CEO, Vince: Thank you.

Yuji Okumura, CFO, Vince: Thank you.

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