把日常穿衣做成4亿美元生意：Veronica Beard创立16年后主动放慢开店，先补配饰这一课

If you’re a woman in the US, chances are you’ve had an item from Veronica Beard in your closet, at one time or another. Perhaps you got one of the brand’s famous Dickey blazers for your first job. Maybe you wore a dress to graduation, or reach for a pair of Veronica Beard loafers on the daily.

Sixteen years into founding their eponymous brand — the founder sister-in-laws, Veronica Miele Beard and Veronica Swanson Beard, share a first and last name — have established themselves as a mainstay in American fashion. Veronica Beard has 52 stores in total (46 across the US and six globally). It’s evolved from offering a single product — the signature Dickey jacket, which comes with removable underlayers — to a full wardrobe, from work attire and eveningwear to shoes and belts. The duo has weathered New York fashion’s ups and downs for nearly two decades, and were finalists in the 2013 CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund (CVFF).

But Veronica Beard didn’t hit $400 million in revenue by billing itself as a capital-F fashion brand. Instead, the Beards have built a brand that caters to the everyday American woman who wants to look and feel good. “Fashion has always catered to the two [US] coasts. But there’s a huge country in the middle where there are women who have cool things going on, amazing jobs, are badasses, who need to get dressed and they need clothes,” Swanson Beard says. It’s a profitable business, and one that has enabled the brand to remain founder-owned for over a decade.

As the label has grown, so has its base. The founders now think of themselves as catering to three generations — all of whom, they say, are busy and have places to be. (The brand’s biggest demographic is women aged 35 to 50.) Veronica Beard wants to give its shoppers the easiest route to styling, dressing and shopping. “We always say we want her to be in and out and doing what she loves to do,” Swanson Beard says. “Some women love shopping and love fashion — and some women really can’t stand it. You’ve got to serve both.”

It’s the women who aren’t obsessed with fashion who keep coming back, because they look to the brand for direction, she adds. This wardrobing logic is where Veronica Beard’s price-value proposition factors in. Blazers sit around the $700 to $800 mark. Most jeans are under $400. Sweaters are in the mid-hundreds. It’s not cheap, but it’s cheaper than a lot of contemporary alternatives.

Over the past 10 years, Veronica Beard saw a period of significant growth, with a quick succession of store openings, product category launches and expansions. In 2025, the brand opened eight new stores (Seattle, Somerset, Short Hills, Philly, Aspen, Plaza Del Lago, Palo Alto and Montecito); in 2026, another five (Raleigh, Jackson Hole, Paris, Princeton and Kansas City). Now, Miele Beard says, the pair have been playing catch-up — and are keen to slow down a little.

“We opened a lot of stores and now we have to catch up with what we’ve done. We’re traveling to all these places and reinvigorating the product and really taking a look at our brand message and these different categories — we don’t want to get too dumbed down with too many things and not do it well,” she explains.

The founders are not keen to propel growth too quickly — they don’t have a private equity firm to answer to (they have outside investment from minority investors including Andrew Rosen and Lew Frankfort) — but they are eager to remain laser-focused on product, and cultivate strong relationships with the brand’s existing base while planting seeds in new markets, from Kansas City to Paris. “The bigger we get, the more measured we want to be about growth,” Swanson Beard says.

The pair are especially cognizant of this in an era where AI is helping brands fast track. “This AI generation is something that we have to really mind with the growth, because there are a lot of brands that compete with us that are now catching up,” Miele Beard says. “It’s not that we have to be bigger, we just have to have our stake in the ground, be better and be aware. It’s not like, ‘Oh my gosh, we got to $400 [million], now we’re going to $600 [million].’ We want to be on a managed growth path, catch up with ourselves, and smell the roses — because we’re profitable and still very much in control.”

Up close and personal

Since Covid, Veronica Beard’s business has shifted from majority wholesale to a fairly even three-way split between wholesale, physical retail and e-commerce.

This shift propelled growth — not just because the margins are better, but the insights are too. “The feedback loop is so much shorter,” says Swanson Beard, who views the brand’s store fleet as a kind of test lab. “Category expansion was easier because there’s more agency to try things. Does jewelry sell to our customer? Yes. Do belts sell? Yes.”

It’s taught the founders to be more nimble in a constantly shifting environment. Not everything they’ve tried has worked, however. “We wanted to get the right sneaker because sneakers were so hot in the market and it took time,” Miele Beard says. Eventually, the Valentina sneaker took off. Now, they’re reacting to the shift from structured to softer handbags.

To understand what customers want, the pair are now meeting more of them in-person. “Veronica and I built this business by traveling to our customer, meeting people, building community and building a feeling, which is not touchable by AI,” Miele Beard says. “This fall, especially, we’ve been traveling so much, going back to our roots, seeing the customer again after some time.” Leaning further into direct-to-consumer (DTC) has also enabled the founders to introduce lower price point items, which, they say, are performing well. “We’re seeing a lot of action in all the different levels.”

The founders also stay close to their customer by participating in things they care about, referencing the brand’s multi-million-dollar VB Gives Back program. Sometimes, they’ll host events for causes — like breast cancer research — and leave with new customers at the same time. “She comes to us in a different way,” Miele Beard says. “Maybe she’s not the biggest fashionista, but she’s like, ‘Wait, if I just bought this suit or if I just bought this set, it’s a one and done, it’s very easy dressing.’ She’s a customer for life.”

The full wardrobe

The goal is to outfit the Veronica Beard customer from head to toe — even if she’s not actually wearing the brand all at once. Swanson Beard offers the brand’s $798 collarless satin tailored jacket and matching pant as an example. “It looks very trendy, but it would look amazing on a cool girl in the West Village and on Mrs. Herrera uptown,” she says. “I love the idea that that jacket could be worn with old Levi’s and a great flat loafer, and then you could wear the pant with a big chunky sweater. It can be styled for so many different kinds of people.”

Beyond the clothes, Veronica Beard is embarking on a refresh in the accessories department, as the founders continue to introduce categories, with the view of giving shoppers more entry points.

The brand recently hired Cristina Gómez Quintana to design its bags, who until last year was head of Marc Jacobs accessories design for 12 years, and was at Loewe before that. “She is going to be transformational to our business,” says Swanson Beard. Miele Beard agrees, adding that, if accessories take off as they hope it will, it will be the second biggest growth vehicle for the brand. (The first remains ready-to-wear jackets and blazers.)

Accessories as a category are proving promising. Shoe sales — from boots to heels — are soaring. Belts are doing well, too. The founders put it down to Veronica Beard’s customers trusting the brand to be their go-to.

Even as the pair build out Veronica Beard’s offering, they’re constantly thinking about how this comes back to the brand’s specific wardrobe. “As we built out the different categories, how are we incorporating Dickeys and outerwear?” Miele Beard flags. “How are we becoming a resource for her jeans, for her footwear, her accessories and really complimenting the Veronica Beard uniform with these different categories and this expansion?”

An American legacy brand

All of this growth and expansion is with the view of establishing Veronica Beard as an American legacy label. “We want to be considered one of the most important American brands globally,” Swanson Beard says.

Part of this, ironically, involves going abroad; the founders are planning lots of international travel over the next five years. Veronica Beard opened its first London store in 2022, followed by a second in 2024. Paris came in June 2026, bringing the brand’s European store count to three. Opening international outposts has exposed the brand to a more global audience, she says.

Its newest London stockist, Harrods, has opened them up to more Middle Eastern customers, while Paris has a strong Asian consumer base, which offered useful consumer research before branching out into their first Korean stockist (they recently got back from Seoul). “Koreans love tweed, baggy jeans and oversized jackets. It’s a little different from the American girl living in Palm Beach, for instance,” Miele Beard says. They’re now developing a petite line, too.

But it also means planting deeper roots at home, including its recent Kansas City opening. “We’re one of the only tickets in town and it’s hopping,” Miele Beard says. “Why didn’t we do this sooner?” The smaller cities can be beneficial, she says, pointing to fast-growing hotspots like Scottsdale, Charlotte and Charleston.

The legacy piece of the puzzle, the pair are confident, comes with brand loyalty, which is strongest when discovered by word of mouth. Miele Beard recalls a recent conversation with The Correspondent writer Virginia Evans. “She was talking about book sales and how if somebody tells two people about a book, it spiders out. It’s the same for us — the word of mouth from somebody that you actually respect and trust matters most.”

More from this author:

From Industry Affair to Content Machine: The Evolution of the Re-See

Consumers Want Freaky Shoes. Brands Are Stepping It Up

In the Queue for John Galliano’s Zara