Only a retail radical would have the vision to transform the nation’s largest big-box store known for everyday low prices and its slogan, “Save money. Live better.” into a fashion destination. That’s exactly what Denise Incandela, EVP of the Walmart U.S. Fashion Division has been able to do over the past seven years.
With an undergraduate degree in finance, an MBA from The Wharton School, and early training on Wall Street in investment banking, consulting and in the luxury sector at Saks and Ralph Lauren, she brought disciplined business acumen blended with expertise in the luxury zeitgeist to reinvent Walmart’s fashion positioning. Walmart describes Incandela as having, “The strategy and vision that has propelled Walmart’s reputation as a fashion destination, helping democratize access to stylish, quality apparel for Walmart’s 140 million weekly shoppers. She is a trailblazer who rose through the fashion industry ranks with leadership roles at well-known retailers and brands.”
Denise Incandela has always been an analytical thinker and says that a successful retailer needs both left- and right-brain thinking. This dual perspective is a skill that has enabled her to bring together talent spanning the mass and luxury retail worlds to work as a team to elevate the Walmart fashion experience.
She joins the 2024 roster of Crave Retail Radicals including Fran Horowitz, CEO of Abercrombie & Fitch, John Venhuizen, CEO of Ace Hardware; Sumit Singh, CEO of Chewy; and Michelle Crosson-Matos, CMO at Ulta Beauty. Each of these five retail radicals has the foresight, innovation, and unconventional thinking to drive their brands and the industry at large forward to exceed customers’ expectations. They drive major transformations within their respective retail brands as game-changing legacy retailers and DTC marketplace disrupters.
The Walmart Fashion Scene
Denise Incandela oversees fashion at Walmart’s 4000 stores and online. Her unique ability to bring Walmart into the fashion and style conversation is the result of seven years of building a runway and then propelling the business to impressive financial results. During her tenure, each of the six fashion brands clocked in at over $1 billion in sales, including four private brands that make $2 billion. As Incandela says, “We have transformed Walmart’s fashion business through winning assortment strategies that change customer perception. We’re on a journey to democratize fashion, offering style and trends at an extraordinary value as we relentlessly focus on helping people save money and live better.”
Walmart continues to exceed expectations. Sales for last year were up 6 percent while inventory turnover increased from 8.2 percent in 2022 to 8.9 percent in 2023. The return on assets was 6.1 percent, the highest since 2020. Gross margin was 24.4 percent which is 2 percentage points higher than the discount sector.
Denise Incandela, A Critical Thinker
Denise Incandela admits she has always been an analytical thinker and adds that a successful retailer needs both left- and right-brain thinking. This dual perspective is a skill that has enabled her to bring together talent spanning the mass and luxury retail worlds to work as a team to elevate the Walmart fashion experience. She explains that the journey started with overhauling and expanding the assortment and communicating the message that Walmart takes fashion seriously. She has said any transformation needs to start with fact-based insights and intelligence, and research revealed that 80 percent of the Walmart customer’s fashion spend was in higher-end retail. As she says, “We weren’t serving the customer’s closet.”
Testing is a proven strategy to confirm new fashion by giving the customer a voice in making fashion choices. With 4000 stores and 140 million in-store and online customers visiting Walmart weekly, this is a fertile proving ground. Incandela says they first test new offerings online, then based on the results, distribute them to 50 test stores. If the results are scalable, they are moved to Walmart stores. She says, “The goal is to make Walmart the #1 fashion destination for our customers both in-store and with the endless aisle of our digital marketplace.”
Innovation and Transformation
Denise Incandela says that creating a culture of innovation is key to success. “I love transformation and innovation; it’s the most exciting part of what we do as leaders. The best ideas come from the team, so to drive transformation and innovation, I try to foster an environment where creativity, empowerment, experimentation, and collaboration can thrive.” She adds that she is focused on four key areas that support transformative change. “First, setting a clear business vision that drives transformation and innovation. Second is creating a culture of empowerment, customer obsession, collaboration, drive for results, and accountability and measurement. For example, empowering the team to make decisions and explore new ideas. Next is ensuring we are working together, including our cross-functional partners, to solicit, drive and test the best ideas. And finally, relentlessly piloting, measuring and iterating.” She believes that the ideal way leadership can support a team is to “remove roadblocks in their way and celebrate and recognize team contributions, especially experimentation and risk-taking.”
Matthew Cyr, CEO and Co-Founder of Crave Retail says, “What excites me most about Denise Incandela’s impact at Walmart is how she’s rewritten the rules of retail. She didn’t just bring fashion to America’s largest retailer — she created an entirely new model for scaling style through technology. Her methodical approach to testing and learning shows that even the biggest ship can turn fast when you have the right navigator. There’s a reason Walmart is in the Fortune 1. Leaders like Denise understand that boldness and precision aren’t opposites, they’re prerequisites.”
A Retail Radical’s Journey
Denise Incandela says, “From the beginning, the mission has always been to make Walmart a destination for fashion by offering great style and quality essentials with an engaging shopping experience – all at an extraordinary value.” Based on the research, her team has grown the assortment by investing in Walmart’s private brands, bringing in new national brands, and extending brand offerings through the online Marketplace. Denise Incandela also shortened the product lifecycle to stay current with trends. As a result, the new assortment mix provides more stylish, high-quality fashion that resonates with both existing and new customers. The Walmart unlock for success? Maintaining a sharp price point and filling a price gap in the market.
What is she most proud of? “Within Fashion, we want to be our customer’s first choice for fashion and position Fashion as ‘the halo’ for our Walmart brand and stores. To do so, we have been focused on three strategic initiatives and I’m incredibly proud of the progress across each of them: significantly elevating and expanding our fashion assortment to better serve our customer’s closet needs; enhancing our fashion shopping experience, in-store and online; and broadening our customer reach and changing perception of Walmart Fashion.”
The transformation is led by an integrated strategy to address customers’ lifestyle needs. She says, “We have relentlessly added new national brands — thousands of new brands our customers want, like Reebok, Chaps and Jessica Simpson — through owned inventory. And we have expanded our endless aisle through Marketplace, like Michael Kors and StockX, with its assortment of coveted, pre-verified sneakers.” Stylish, high-quality private brands are also part of the mix with Sofia Jeans, Free Assembly and Scoop. She adds, “Partnering with celebrities and fashion authorities like Sofia Vergara and Brandon Maxwell helps to better serve customer’s lifestyle closet needs at extraordinary price points.” Denise Incandela also hired design teams in New York to build cohesive brands with better quality, aesthetic and fit, and with a brand purpose and brand DNA. As she says, “We are moving from labels to brands.”
Accelerating store redesign rollouts (600+ “stores of the future” and counting) offers an enhanced fashion shopping experience designed to encourage browsing, discovery and inspiration. The store redesign “makes the product the hero,” she adds. The new store format creates an inspiring browsing experience that enables discovery and outfitting suggestions. It also removes clutter by eliminating 10 percent of the racks and inventory, creating wider aisles, and improving lighting and fixtures.
To improve the online experience, they have introduced new features like Complete the Outfit, Virtual Try-on and Shop with Friends, Brand Shops and fit technology making online shopping more seamless. As Incandela says, “We are continuing to democratize fashion, giving our customers access to quality style at extraordinary price points, no matter how or where they choose to shop at Walmart.”
Radical Thinking
Being a disruptor is radical thinking with a purpose. Denise Incandela says, “I love disruptive thinking and believe it is crucial to being competitive in a rapidly changing world. I get energized thinking about how the macro environment is changing, and/or customers are shifting the way they shop, and what we can do to serve customers in new ways. Disruption enables breakthrough ideas, allows us to lead market dynamics, and redefines standards. Retail is always changing, and disrupting within this context is exciting and, frankly, why I do what I do.”
What does the future hold in store? Incandela says, “Walmart is a people-led, tech-powered company. I believe the mass retail market sector will continue to be highly influenced by digital transformation and consumer-centric innovation, as well as sustainability. The integration of AI and machine learning can revolutionize inventory management, personalization (assortments, dynamic pricing), and customer interactions (virtual reality). To win within this context, we have to learn how to quickly adopt new technologies and be prepared to respond to consumer preference shifts real-time. It’s incredibly exciting how quickly things are changing now.”
Denise Incandela believes that beautiful clothes should be accessible to everyone, regardless of price. She wants customers to think of Walmart as a place to buy affordable, cool clothes along with groceries. Walmart is taking a page from Le Bon Marche, Selfridges and Harrods, among other venerable European retail icons, to offer customers the unique opportunity to make Walmart the destination for value-minded shoppers who don’t want to sacrifice style for price. The democratization of fashion is well underway with Denise Incandela’s radical vision leveraging her seasoned fashion expertise with proven results.
