At the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, Ken Ohashi was tasked to bet against the trend. He joined one of the most iconic - albeit just bankrupted brands in America - and took it back to the heights of the Fortune 500.
How? By diving into the brand’s archives and returning it to its roots. He was determined that when the world opened again, they’d do it in a classic Brooks Brothers suit that would tell a story as old as the brand itself:
“It was a moment of both excitement and probably sheer terror about what was up at, what we were up against. So we just, we just got cracking immediately”, Ohasi tells Fortune.
But, with over 25 years of experience in fashion and retail, he has taken the over 200-year-old brand to boost sales to nearly $1 billion by the end of 2023.
He was appointed Brooks Brothers CEO after the brand was purchased by a joint venture between Authentic Brands Group and Simon Property Group.
Brooks Brothers is an iconic American brand, worn by 41 out of the 46 presidents to date, Ohashi points out. Taking on the challenge of a business in terminal decline – his job was to reboot Brooks Brothers for a fast-changing consumer.
And here, Ohashi bet against the trend again. Even though it’s now been debunked in several studies, the ‘go woke, go broke’ discussion, whether in the form of coordinated anti-Pride and now DEI backlashes, has been in full roar since he took over the firm.
But under his leadership, going back to the company’s roots meant a deeper look at what the brand means to its customers today.
The first point of call was to create a clearly communicated value system,building a new team and culture. His strategy: once everyone is living and breathing these new values, it will permeate throughout the brand. Ohashi believes in a new age, consumers place a value on what brands stand for:
“We’re a brand that was the definition of what success looked like in the world. We were with our customers at their first job, promotion, wedding.” So he redefined what success looks like because “what success looks like in America and across the world is very different today”.
His approach to this new vision is to lead by example.
Becoming a parent changed Ohashi’s life. Today, he lives in Brooklyn with his husband, Adam Freed, and their two children, and he does not shy away from being one of the few openly-out CEOs on the Fortune 500.
He came out early in his career, in the comfort of a diverse fashion brand and “hasn’t looked back since.” Carry that forward to today, even in countries he works in where cultures don’t always look fondly at gay people, he isn’t afraid to correct people when they make assumptions about his family.
“I remember, after having my boys, I thought to myself, I would never lie about our family structure or who I was in the world, because I never want to set that example for them. Our family structure isn’t anything less than anyone else's.”
This focus on values, internally and in consumer-facing marketing, is part of what Ohashi sees as part of the brand's secret sauce. He speaks in detail about the value of making work feel like a place where you can show up as your whole self, a concept he has also applied to the brand’s products.
