It would appear that Levi Strauss’ sustainable business model is working in its favor. The distinguished denim brand has closed another upward year and strengthened its top management. The U.S. fashion retailer, which specializes in denim, closed the 2022 fiscal year, which ended Nov. 27, 2022, with revenues up 7% to $6.169 billion.
Following the results, the company announced the appointment of a new chief financial and growth officer, a newly created position to be filled by Harmit Singh. Its net income came in at $604 million in FY2022, up 3%.
For fiscal 2023, the U.S. company has lowered its estimates. Now, the company expects its sales to grow between 1.5% and 3%, to between $6.3 billion and $6.4 billion. The forecast includes a two hundred basis point cut in its growth because of the impact of exchange rates and the suspension of the company's operations in Russia.
Renowned cultural icon, Levi jeans came under the environmental spotlight because of the thousands of liters of water required for denim production. The company that invented them at the end of the 19th century is now in charge of giving them a second life, literally and figuratively.
New Leadership for Further Growth
Harmit Singh, who has been at the top of Levi Strauss for a decade, assumes the position of chief financial and growth officer of the company with immediate effect. The executive has been, since January 2013, vice president and group chief financial officer.
Previously, Singh worked at large service companies such as Yum! Restaurants, Pepsico Restaurants, Pizza Hut and Hyatt Hotels in finance. The executive is responsible for orchestrating Levi Strauss' latest growth plan, launched in June 2022 with the goal of reaching sales of $10 billion by 2027.
Last week, the company named a new chief digital officer, Jason Gowans, who will assume his position on February 6th. The executive, who joins Levi Strauss from department store group Nordstrom, will help boost the company's strategic plan, which has digitalization as one of its core focuses.
Sustainable Values
At a time when every year some 4,000 million denim garments are manufactured in the world and the production of each pair of jeans requires thousands of liters of water, pioneering firms in the sector such as Levi's go a step beyond the call of attention to consumers and their buying habits to deploy various initiatives that advocate sustainability from all prisms.
On a whole, the company has introduced a new industry standard for water recycling and reuse in garment manufacturing for its supplier factories around the world. To achieve this, the company worked with one of its suppliers in China to build a system that can recycle all the water used in the finishing process. In addition to using GOTS and Organic Content Standard certified materials, as well as Supima cotton.
From the firm's innovation and development laboratory, Levi's WellThread, they have created a revolutionary natural indigo of vegetable origin -the darkest shade ever produced-, as well as dyeing techniques that require less water and chemicals. In addition, the Wellthread collection is designed to be recycled in its entirety, from zippers to seams to wash labels, everything is made from 100% cotton so that nothing is thrown away and these garments can be given a second or third life.