I have thought long and hard about what exactly I would want to write about Sundance Catalog so that anyone who is looking to start at this company is aware of the changes.
First off, Matey Edros is no longer the CEO. Glassdoor has not updated this Laura Barrett. Laura was the CEO of Soft Surroundings, which filed bankruptcy in 2023, and closed ALL stores. That is the fact.
Sundance Catalog was an amazing place to work. While there were many opinions and too many “cooks in the kitchen” at some point, we had the strongest year ever in 2022. The downfall was that opinions were not based on fact, and the balance of newness and repeats was not good. This would have changed had the company not hired certain people and let the new leadership take over.
Sundance did have such a strong sense of brand, and of the consumer, the leadership knew exactly who the person was.
Lots of leadership changes, Matey Edros retired, and Ken Ragland brought Laura Barrett into the position of CEO. Ken once made a statement that he “had never had a company fail” when he was hired on to bring it back to life. When that statement was made, I knew Sundance was about to be that company that DID fail. He also once said that he is the boss, and he gets to call the shots. He also said in a town hall meeting, that he gave the warehouse people a $2/hour raise and that was “a lot for them”
His single worst decision he has made was bringing Laura Barrett into the company.
Under Laura’s direction, pure chaos has happened, with direction changing at any given moment. She axed the entire Merchant team and moved the Visual Merchandising team into Merchant roles. To further explain this statement, she took people who are in charge of making the store visually pleasing and put them in an analytical role.
She once said she did not know the difference between a Merchant and a Buyer. She also said “oopsie” when she did not make the Holiday catalog whimsical enough. When a very important VP quit, she told all the direct reports that they had to manage their own work-life balance. That it was “our responsibility to make sure we had enough work-life balance”. While yes boundaries are important, however, the mental health of every employee is majorly based on the person they report to. We had one video go VIRAL on TikTok, and she was more concerned about the financial impact of that TikTok, than realizing that TikTok in itself helped bring brand awareness to the company to a younger audience, something you cannot simply put a $ behind.
She also started to hire many people from Soft Surroundings, ALL who were able to work remotely and when they did come into SLC, stayed at the most expensive hotel in the city. While everyone else lost their WFH privilege, the new hires were able to be 100% remote. Note that the company for a while did Tues/Wed/Thurs in the office, which was ideal. Then they made sure everyone came in on Mondays. And Fridays were WFH, however, this was rarely honored.
She hired a 3rd party marketing team to do the Holiday catalog. It lacked character. It was giving that term “BLANDING” where all brands start to look alike. The catalog could have been anyone, it was not distinctively Sundance Catalog that every customer knows and loves. She did zero A/B testing and just went with the changes. Our customer is 55+ she is not looking for that much change in a brand that she has loved and admired for decades.
Additionally, she hired a consultant, who has gone back to 2012 styles and added hundreds of thousands of dollars in old inventory items that will be weeks late in delivery for the season. He refused to read the line plan that Merchants had worked on, and then regurgitated ideas from Merchants and took it as his own. He has no one checking his work, and he is just adding, adding, adding, buying, buying, buying. He would make statements that it was a mistake to not repeat an item, however, he did not do his homework to see that yes it was repeated, just a new name and style number. This happened so many times.
Laura Barrett also did with at Soft Surroundings, hired the consultant to revamp the company, however, it was the downfall of the company and ended badly. She is repeating her same steps in hopes it works this time. Both Laura and him do not have the taste level to help bring back Sundance from the grave. Laura once said that Navy was not a strong color for people and she did not like it, she just preferred black. Lo and behold, Navy has a rise in color this season.
There is a certain VP who has also NOT helped with the work environment. He is quick to blame other departments, talk terribly behind their backs, and not accept when he is wrong. He once told a female employee that she “needed to smile more”. In addition, he tended to quickly pivot from one direction to the next, without explaining why there was a pivot which confused people reporting to him for a certain direction. In any meeting or email that I was on with him, he never made a concrete decision. But he was happy to walk around the office all day and chit-chat about anything but work, while his team and others were working late to just meet deadlines. He had one employee who worked late every single night, 730-8 pm, but I saw him glance at his watch when she walked at 9:10 am. Every meeting he had he saw as an opportunity to give an Excel lesson, rather than looking at his team's work beforehand so he did not waste other people's time. He wants everything to go on discount or sale within weeks of the product's initial launch. The site has now started to feel like a discount site, rather than providing quality items. He was quick to do the blame game, blaming other teams for mistakes, rather than doing any sort of root cause analysis.
Sundance had so much potential to be the best brand out there. The marketing and socials are severely lacking, and the fact that it took begging to get approval to send products to influencers is sad.
Bring back Matey Edros or someone who has taste, knows the customer, and is willing to learn from the people who have been there for years. Sundance has lost so many strong employees who had been there for 10+ years. Laura will run this company to the ground, just like she did with Soft Surroundings. Should we go ahead and change the name to “Soft Sundance”?