{"id":611155,"date":"2026-07-30T05:49:30","date_gmt":"2026-07-30T05:49:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/611155\/"},"modified":"2026-07-30T05:49:30","modified_gmt":"2026-07-30T05:49:30","slug":"ceo-pay-soars-in-fashion-and-retail-amid-industry-challenges-for-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/611155\/","title":{"rendered":"CEO Pay Soars in Fashion and Retail Amid Industry Challenges for 2025"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tStorytelling is an essential part<\/a> of fashion.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tBrands live and die by how they\u2019re presented and how successfully they can romance and communicate with the consumer, who ultimately wants some bang for their buck.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tTurns out, there\u2019s a lot of storytelling in C-suite pay as well. <\/p>\n

\n\tThe job of running a large, publicly traded retail or fashion company is not getting any easier. Tariffs, AI, rising gas prices and competition for consumer attention all keep chief executive officers on their toes.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tBut they\u2019re paid pretty well for it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tA WWD study of executive pay at U.S. companies found 23 executives with compensation that tallied more than $10 million last year. As has historically been the case \u2014 and in keeping with corporate America at large \u2014 it\u2019s a pretty homogeneous group of 18 men and five women.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tLeading the pack were Nike<\/a> Inc. CEO Elliott Hill, who rejoined the company in 2024 and logged total compensation of $36.3 million; former Walmart Inc. CEO Doug McMillon at $29.2 million and TJX Co.\u2019s CEO Ernie Herrman at $26.6 million.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\n\tThe pay at the top has continued to grow. It always seems to wow \u2014 and is often questioned. <\/p>\n

\n\tBut CEO pay also has its defenders.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThese are the people who are working 24 hours a day, working seven days a week,\u201d said Les Berglass, CEO of executive search firm Berglass + Associates, of fashion CEOs overall. \u201cThese are the people I work with. I know how hard they work.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSome of the regular pay increases stem from how boards set CEO pay. For instance, companies often compare their executive pay to what leaders are paid at rival companies and aim to be middle of the pack. Over time, that pushes the average pay checks up.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s built in,\u201d Berglass said. \u201cIt\u2019s part of the machinery. I feel the same way about compensation as I do \u2014 and I\u2019m a New Yorker \u2014 when I go in and someone\u2019s charging me $75 for a drink.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tSome things are just expensive. <\/p>\n

\n\tBut the numbers are better understood with nuance and context.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tOverseeing any of those top companies is a big job. Collectively Walmart, TJX and Nike<\/a> have a market capitalization of $1.1 trillion.\u00a0Not quite an AI or tech valuation, sure, but it\u2019s still a big number.<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd the top-line pay numbers reported to shareholders in the company\u2019s annual proxy statements value the stock awards as if they were paid out the day they were granted. In reality, the value of those awards depend on whether CEOs hit their targets, actually get the shares and how the stock responds.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhen we look at these numbers, it\u2019s not necessarily cash in the CEO\u2019s pocket,\u201d said Kyle Eastman, partner at Compensation Advisory Partners. \u201cThere are equity components, there\u2019s an annual incentive component. And when public company shareholders scrutinize CEO pay, they don\u2019t object to the number.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhere they object is where there\u2019s a big number and no story behind it,\u201d Eastman said. \u201cWhat shareholders are looking for is pay that is justified, that\u2019s got a good rationale.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBoards set CEO pay and are subject to shareholders putting pressure on them to explain the big paychecks, although it\u2019s very unusual for directors to be voted out for overpaying.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe story [the company tells shareholders] might be, \u2018We performed well financially. Our share price performed well,\u2019\u201d Eastman said. \u201cAnother component is what\u2019s the competitive market doing? Companies talk about their peer groups and where they intend to position pay relative to peers. That\u2019s all part of the story behind the headline.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tAs usual for such a creative industry, the storytelling seems to be pretty good.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tChan Pedris, managing director of compensation and governance advisory at ISS-Corporate, said CEO pay in the S&P 500 grew 5 percent on average to $17.5 million last year.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tTaking away the S&P 500, eliminating the biggest companies, and looking at the rest of the Russell 3000, pay inched up 1 percent to $5.6 million.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tFashion and retail is somewhere in the middle.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThe consumer durables and apparel sector \u2014 including companies like Tapestry<\/a> Inc. and Ralph Lauren<\/a> Corp.\u00a0\u2014 saw average CEO pay rise by 4.5 percent to $8.4 million last year, according to Pedris. Over the past five years, that translates into a 23 percent jump.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of tension between paying for performance and also the public perception because it\u2019s an industry where you can touch the end product,\u201d Pedris said of fashion. \u201cYou can touch the end product, it\u2019s tangible, and we are talking about very labor-intensive industries. So when companies have things like layoffs or store closures or weak performance, you still keep reading the headline about executive pay rising.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThing is, there are also a lot of other headlines that boards and CEOs have to contend with.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThey\u2019re facing a lot of challenges in terms of transformational goals, digital execution, and trying to create shareholder value at the same time, while also being faced with a lot of pay level challenges and workforce issues and store closures and so on,\u201d Pedris said. \u201cThere\u2019s quite a few things that CEOs need to wrestle with. And I think more and more, you\u2019re being paid for dealing with a lot of the uncertainty that\u2019s ahead.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe pay needs to be sold to all the stakeholders of the company,\u201d he said. \u201cThe boards obviously need to do a good job of communicating the rationale behind the pay and as to why CEOs are being paid this much.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\n\tNike\u2019s proxy statement, which sets up issues for shareholders to vote on at the annual meeting, offers a good example, especially since Hill ranked as the highest-paid CEO in U.S. fashion and retail last year.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cOur philosophy is to \u2018pay for performance,\u2019\u201d the company said in the regulatory filing. \u201cAs a result, executive compensation is highly incentive-based and includes, among other elements, a mixture of variable cash- and stock-based compensation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIn total, 92 percent of total target annual compensation for our CEO is at risk,\u201d Nike said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThe other 8 percent of guaranteed pay is a still hefty sum at $2.9 million. That\u2019s about 60-times the $48,695 that the median Nike employee made, looking at the global workforce of 76,600, according to figures in the proxy statement.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tNike, of course, is a work in progress<\/a>. If Hill, who\u2019s still relatively new to the job, can get the company back on track, it will be a good day\u2019s work.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tCEO pay might just be one of the things that remains controversial, a source of derision, of comedy, of envy and more.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tBut sometimes the system works in its own way.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen Matthew Vnuk, another partner at Compensation Advisory Partners, ran the numbers of WWD\u2019s pay study for a deeper dive, he found that the two CEOs at the top of the list with the biggest increases in their actual realized pay also had the best performing companies, at least when accounting for one- and three-year total shareholder return and gross margin.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tTapestry<\/a> Inc. CEO Joanne Crevoiserat led the list with \u201crealized pay\u201d of $12.6 million, a 216 percent increase. That includes the actual salary paid, actual cash bonus and the value of stock options that were exercised or vested during the year, plus any perquisites.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tNumber two was Ralph Lauren<\/a>\u2019s CEO Patrice Louvet, who realized pay of $46.2 million, a 179 percent rise.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tShareholder return is up about 200 percent over three years for both companies.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tClearly, the Tapestry and Ralph Lauren boards feel their CEOs are performing.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cOne of the things we also see boards spending a lot of time on right now, and they\u2019re talking about is are these CEOs getting it right?\u201d Vnuk said. \u201cIt\u2019s not just on revenue and operating income and total shareholder return, but also when the boards are looking at the team and the team they\u2019re developing. There\u2019s a great opportunity at some companies to link the broader annual CEO performance assessment with annual pay decisions to incorporate more criteria into what is impacting pay directly than just two or three metrics.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Storytelling is an essential part of fashion.\u00a0 Brands live and die by how they\u2019re presented and how successfully…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":611156,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[178],"tags":[79,18,236,19,17,45319,30695,258003],"class_list":["post-611155","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entrepreneurship","tag-business","tag-eire","tag-entrepreneurship","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-nike","tag-ralph-lauren","tag-tapestry"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/117007363456972298","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611155","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=611155"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611155\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/611156"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=611155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=611155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=611155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}