Thank you for joining us today. Great to be here. Glad. Thank you. Before we get started, I would like to point out that the company's safe harbor statements can be found in the Events and Presentation section on its investor relations website, including information about its upcoming earnings release next Wednesday, June 12th. Because the company's in a quiet period, we thought we would focus on this summer's rollout of Project Restoration. Jackie, let's begin with how Vera Bradley got where it is today, and then let's dive deeper into Project Restoration. Of course. Well, I'd first like to tell you a little bit about Vera Bradley, Inc. We're composed of two leading consumer brands, Vera Bradley and Pura Vida, whose mission is to empower people to be bold in their pursuits and brilliant in their self-expression. So what does that really mean? That means a lot of focus on product, both design and photography. Our products are all designed and sourced in-house, and that's in Fort Wayne, Indiana, for Vera Bradley, and La Jolla, California, for Pura Vida. And there's a lot of similarities between these brands that make them perfect fits for our portfolio. First of all, we're omni-channel, both omni-channel direct marketers and wholesalers. We have robust e-commerce sites, 125 full-line and outlet stores across the country, and Amazon distribution. We have a debt-free balance sheet, strong cash generation for both brands, which has allowed us to pursue a plan to get back to consistent growth. And for both of these brands, we're really looking at a talented specialty retail teams and significant white space for growth. As you look at... Just focusing on Vera Bradley in particular, which will be the majority of our conversation today, there's really kind of three unique phases that the company has gone through. And the company began in 1982 when Barb and Pat were out traveling, and they were just unimpressed with the drab and inexpressive nature of handbags and travel bags that they were seeing as they were traveling. And so they set their minds to really fulfilling a need for self-expression in all kinds of travel accessories. That led to almost 20 years of growth for the company as they traversed a lot of different milestones in the company's life and lifespan, reaching $1 million in 1986, which, by the way, that's in 1986 dollars. It's not in 2024 dollars, obviously. Culminating a number of years later, being available in all 50 states through wholesale and retail partners, and culminating near the end of this era with really having a very strong visual merchandising program available for their retail partners. Then, in 2026... Sorry, 2006, the company launched verabradley.com, and this really began an era of direct-to-consumer focus. It was followed a year later by opening the first brick-and-mortar store in Natick Mall in Massachusetts, followed a couple of years later by its first outlet store in the Chicagoland area, followed a year later by an IPO and continued retail expansion and growth in, various aspects of direct-to-consumer business over the following, what became a nearly 20-year span of time as well. Then, in 2022, Jackie was brought in by the board of directors to elicit a wholesale, or perhaps better said, a comprehensive business transformation that has been called Project Restoration. There's been a tremendous amount of work that we have been working on for the last a little over a year and a half now. We're on just the edge of this becoming a much more public-facing project for us as we start to roll out these things in July. I think as you think about, there's lots of different things. We'll talk a number of these things. But perhaps one of the most important initial ones was really a change in the leadership team. As Michael said, this has really been foundational to the support of, of Project Restoration. Like, this executive leadership team, we're specialty retail growth and turnaround experts. We each have over 30 years of experience in, managing specialty retail businesses. I started my career with May Department Stores Company and then continued my retail journey as a merchant leader at high-end childrenswear brand, Hanna Andersson. Then I went to Harry & David in a variety of leadership roles in merchandising and supply chain. And then finally was president, most recently, at specialty home decor retailer, Grandin Road. I joined about 18 months ago as the CEO, and, you know, one of the most significant accomplishments, and really the foundation for Project Restoration is the hires that we've made on the executive team and further in the company. I've hired an outstanding team starting with Michael Schwindle. He has over 15 years of deep consumer retail experience as a CFO. His brand experience includes accessory and jewelry retailer Claire's, as well as Fleet Farm, Musician's Friend, Harry & David, Home Depot, and Limited Brands. Alison Hiatt joined us as CMO after an impressive full-funnel marketing career at leading retailers such as Amazon, Starbucks, REI, Banfield Pet Hospital, and finally Salt & Straw. Mark Dely is our CAO, and has been with the company since 2016, and his prior experience includes a history in both law and retail, including Fred's and ServiceMaster. So in bridging to a more detail about Project Restoration, this is really a comprehensive view of mostly the front end of these two brands. Again, we're gonna really talk about Vera Bradley today because we're a little over a month from our launch of Project Restoration. But it really encompasses four pillars. And I'm gonna talk about those a little bit more in detail in a minute. But this is really how the executive team approached the transformation that we've been working on for the last 18 months. It's really the kind of front end of brand, customer, product, and channel. And again, I'm gonna talk about those in more detail in a minute. But we also have some foundations here that are really strong and unique that Michael's gonna talk about as well. Yeah, there's really kind of four key foundational elements that kind of sit underneath the pillars and all the work that we've been doing. The first is just having a strong business discipline. As we've come in and started to make a lot of changes in the business, this is kind of an underpinning that is behind everything, and this is a key tenet behind driving a much improved profit performance this past year. Just is really driving discipline into everything we do and every aspect of what we do. I think that both Jackie and I have been really pleased at how well engaged the entire organization has been in this effort as well. There's a lot of effort here. You can imagine driving this kind of a change, a substantial change. We'll talk a lot more about this as we go through this. It's a very substantial change in how the business does just about everything. This is all in parallel with running the business every day, because you have to continue to run the current business while you're also transforming it. Maybe a little bit akin to kind of trying to change the tires on the car while you're in motion going down the road. It's a significant amount of effort there, and we've been really pleased with how well the entire organization is engaged in this. We have a very strong balance sheet, and we are unabashedly conservative about this. I think everyone out there can name retail names of people who got a little bit aggressive in the last 5 or 10 years with their balance sheet and paid varying degrees of price for that. This has been a strong tenet, a very conservative fiscal policy has been a strong tenet of the organization and prior management teams as well. We're unabashedly conservative about this, and will continue to do so. And then lastly, this is an organization that has a very strong, robust technology platform. We've had to do a lot of work in refocusing that platform to support specific aspects and areas of Project Restoration, but this is a really strong underpinning that the organization already has. And so as you think about Project Restoration, you know, we could just articulate kind of an architectural view of this. Think about this from a timeline and a process perspective; this has been underway for a year and a half now. It begs the question like, "Well, why does it take so long?" Well, it takes so long because some of these processes that are behind the scenes are actually very lengthy in nature; the longest of which really was product redesign, and this was one of the first things that Jackie focused on when she joined the company. If you think about product design, you're reassessing the product design team, the standards, the brand expressions, all the things that make up the product and make the product unique. When you have to reassess the processes and organization behind that, then you make changes to that. That then leads to new product design, which then leads into sourcing cycles, which then leads into procurement cycles, which then leads to products actually arriving in stores and online. When you stack all those different discrete processes together, you do end up with about 18 months process. We're working hard to narrow that down and to slim that down, but that has been the single longest pole in the tent of getting this process underway and getting it into a public-facing mode. We also, as I mentioned a moment ago, we took a look at the technology, and how does the technology then support this new way of doing things? And as an example, we redefined how we approach our online outlet. Previously, it was a flash site. It was on, then it was off, then it'd be on again, then be off again. And so we have redesigned that site to be an always-on outlet, and we're working to get it fully aligned with our physical brick-and-mortar outlet channel as well. And getting those, not just aligned in terms of product, but also aligned in terms of being able to do things like buy online, pickup in store, and other kinds of, you know, things that today are pretty much table stakes in the retail sector. We've also been looking at redesigning our merchandising processes, not just product design, but also the merchandising processes that get into the visual merchandising within stores and online, as well as the inventory processes that support all of that. And we've made a number of structural improvements that will start to deliver results in varying phases as we move into the future. Lastly, especially as you start to approach the public-facing side of this, we have commenced store remodelings. Part of the change in the brand expression is changing the storefront and changing the customer experience in the store as part of having a new experience with our product as well. And so those have started, and those will complete in the fall. Now, as we approach mid-July, this is where all of our products start to actually land in stores and online. Where, as I mentioned before, we're super excited about this. There's a lot of great products that are out there. We have had the opportunity to expose the new product assortment to a number of wholesale partners, as well as a few other select groups, and the results, or the feedback has been nothing less than enthusiastic and wildly enthusiastic in a lot of cases as well. So we're very excited about that, and as we launch these new products, there's gonna be a new marketing mix that's gonna come with that. There's gonna be a lot more emphasis on top-of-funnel, there's gonna be a lot more emphasis on new customer acquisition, and there's a lot of exciting things that will be coming on in September and later this year, including a celebrity influencer, that if I said the person's name, Jackie would hunt me down and kill me. So I'm not gonna do that. But we're super excited about a lot of things that are coming down the pipe very, very quickly. I was gonna ask, Jackie, if you had a minute. Sure. Because frankly, from the outside, it looks like you got a lot done in a short period of time, frankly. I mean, 18 months is, is a pretty good turnaround, 'cause you're running a turnaround parallel to, you know, doing all this tweaking... Not tweaking, but re-strategizing of the, of the marketing. So how did that work? Was project restoration completely your project, Jackie? And then was the turnaround underway when you got here, or did you engineer that as well? So, Doug, it's a great question. Project Restoration is really my plan and the management team's plan. We were able to kind of quickly put that in place. I mean, it was really by directive of the board. That's really the reason that they hired me, and then I brought in the people that I did to do this work. Because, you know, we knew that we had some heavy lifting to do, and just to be able to drive consistent growth. That's just been, you know, the top line has not been moving, and this is really what we're designed to do. So the Project Restoration was my first effort to align the company to really move forward and to look at how we were gonna do that. And I have to say, you know, again, hiring a team, an exec team, who was just excited about doing this work, and then with just great leadership, you know, being able to engage people in the organization. We have an amazing team, again, in both Fort Wayne and La Jolla, but we're really talking about the Fort Wayne team today because of the Vera Bradley. But just an amazing culture and amazing people who were willing to, you know, get in there and roll up their sleeves and get this done. So I appreciate you saying that. 18 months, we have gotten a lot done in 18 months. We're just ready to, you know, tell you more about each of these pillars and what everyone will experience here, starting next month. And just a quick follow-up, and I'll let you get going, 'cause I wanna hear more. But, you're back to generating free cash flow positive, in the most recent fiscal year. Your balance sheet remains pristine. Are your margins back to where you want them, or is there still some work to do on that front? I think our... We're looking from a long-term, you know, at a long-term view of margins, and we still think that there's some room in margins, for sure. Okay, great. That's helpful. Now, let's hear more. Starting out with the brand, this is, you know, the first pillar that we looked at and probably the first place that we focused on. And we're gonna talk a lot today about all the things that are changing. What I wanna emphasize here is that what is not changing is just what's unique and distinctive about this brand that has been beloved by millions of customers for 40 years. So, this was a real challenge for us to take our distinctive and unique positioning, which we believe is absolutely a competitive advantage, and make it more modern and appealing to today's customers. So, we are really enhancing and modernizing what this brand is about, not changing it. So, and I think that's a really fine line, and one that we spent, as a team, a lot of time on, a lot of data, a lot of interviews, a lot of understanding our existing customers, and reaching out to our new targets, and saying... Trying to understand what the brand meant to them now and where we had white space. So, you know, the one thing that we know is that women know us. Our brand awareness is high for the size of the company, and we're taking advantage of that. You know, as we did our research and data mining to determine where we could play, it was clear that we're recognizable for our color and pattern, but over time, we believe, and what customers told us, is that we kind of had become less distinctive. So really, if you kind of working back to our mission for the company, you know, to be bold in our pursuits, you know, we had strayed from that mission a little bit. So, so we had really had to look very hard at our brand expression, and, and say, "You know, what, what needs to change and what doesn't need to change?" And, and some of what needs to change here, and you'll see the, on this slide, is a little bit of a peek of, you know, some of the, the joyful customer images that, that you'll start to see more of, next month. But, you know, it, it's about imagery, it's about, you know, the, the investment and experience in our stores and on our website. All of that is, is, is going to be refreshed as, as a part of our new brand expression. We also, Michael already scooped me and said, you know, we also have some surprises coming with a celebrity influencer, some new wholesale partners, media investments. Really, and I can't contain the excitement that I have, the executive team has, the board has, the company has, for our new reintroduction here. It's really special. But again, you know, this is a 40-year-old brand. This isn't, you know, a brand that just sort of, you know, was introduced to the market five years ago. I mean, this is... We have emotionally connected customers. We have people who are just have been loyal to the brand for their whole lives, and so we're really looking forward to delighting them, as well as bringing on a whole bunch of new loyalists. So if we go forward to the customer, you know, we're really fortunate in this brand that we have a multigenerational customer. Our customer base is really well-balanced, and not a lot of brands can say this. It's really well-balanced from age 18 to over 65, and we'll keep that healthy balance. We hear so many stories, customer stories, of it just really emotional memories and connections to the brand through their mom, or through their grandmom, or, you know, just, friends or, you know, great times in their life that the brand was there for them. And that's something that's really important and, again, a pretty strategic advantage for us. So, even though this multigenerational customer is, you know, is part of our makeup and who we are, one of our most active and desirable segments is women between 35 and 54. It's a big group. It's always been a big group for us, but we can do a better job of talking to her. So, when we do talk to her and plan to market her, this slide, I think, is - it shows both digitally and through top-of-funnel efforts like magazine, catalogs, PR, we're segmenting her in many ways, using both demographics and psychographics. So if you look, you know, this slide shows what, you know, the potential of women that we could target, where we've sort of used our demographics and psychographics to say, you know, there's maybe 42 million of her. And this intuitive creator, who, this is, again, a definition of ours based on combined proprietary psychographics and demographics, there's 20 million of her. And then, you know, along the lines of whether... You know, we have two assortments. We have a premium assortment, and then we have a more value and outlet assortment. So if we look at all of these women that we could potentially target, where do they fall along this continuum? There are, you know, a lot of segments that help us identify or target her based on these continuums. So, you can see, you know, it's everything from quality liner to curator to, you know, gifter, versatility seeker. These are kind of in-house terms, but it does kind of help us understand who we're targeting, what products we should target, what line we should target. This is not a, you know, sort of a broad-stroke effort. This is a very concentrated effort to get these new customers based on not only our history but who we think we can market to that we haven't traditionally. It's a very sophisticated approach, and it's fully supported by the customer data platform we invested in a few years ago. You know, Michael said at the beginning that this is a competitive advantage for us. The systems and that we have in place, and particularly our customer data platform, which is very advanced, and so we've used all of that and used the data that we have to be able to develop these segments. So, again, really, even though we've got this multigenerational customer, 35-54-year-old women is really where we're targeting to increase our customer count. So onto the product, and this is a little bit. Some of these photos are a little bit of a peek of some of the new styling that we're launching next month. Really, we've redesigned for a modern customer while retaining classic Vera Bradley elements. What I'm most proud of is that the team accomplished here is the elevation of materials without price increases. Our pricing is very competitive. That's obviously very important, especially right now with you know, everyone knows kind of what's going on. We see consumers trading down in almost all areas of their life to help their dollar go farther. And we believe that we are offering a better product for very similar retail. You'll see prints and color and styling that's recognizable, but with improved shapes, better fabrics that are softer, and a new product pyramid that has really special offerings at the very top that we haven't offered before. It's a comprehensive approach to our product, but still unmistakably Vera Bradley. Anyone who you know who has had the advantage of seeing the whole assortment has just been delighted by how we have been able to modernize but still keep the true roots of the brand. So, leather as a fabric is a big expansion for us. So we used to have a pretty big leather business back in 2017 and a couple of years before that. We've been testing a reintroduction over the last six months that's performed extremely well. So we're expecting some significant growth in this program. This is, you know, just an area—you know, most women we know have leather handbags. I mean, we've known—we've been part of the cotton fabrication category since we launched. I mean, that's what we do, and we do really well, and we'll still have a lot of that, but we know that leather is a place that we can play as well. So... And finally, an issue in our product assortment is that over time, our premium and our value lines have become too similar, so we've differentiated them for this launch. The result is really much more choice without an increase in SKUs, which we believe is gonna help us attract new customers. So, we had, you know, cotton. Again, I just referred to cotton. It's a, you know, it's core in our product assortment. We had cotton offerings in our premium line. We had cotton offerings in our value line. A lot of times, customers told us that, you know, the overlap in prints and look was... it was very similar. So, right? But in that- in those cases, you know, where do you go? You go to the lower price. So we really have taken great care to differentiate these lines so that the customer really has more choice, and they can see a true benefit and value in each of the assortments in both the value and the premium channel. And then finally, for channels, this is really an omni approach. Vera Bradley started as a wholesale business. We really started selling to wholesalers, and we've migrated over time to be a true omni-channel retailer. We're building a balanced multi-channel structure for the future. We've seen growth in e-commerce. That's really our digital-first focus is where we're spending a lot of time these days. Better customer experience is what you'll see for our launch, as well as clear store and online, offline channel continuity. In our brick-and-mortar retail segment, we've really improved our operating discipline in the stores in the past few months, and we'll begin to open full-line stores again soon. So very excited about that. We're doing remodels as well in our existing stores, and then have a path to new formats and markets and store relocations. And then finally, you know, wholesale, kind of where it all started for us, we have new products rolling out to existing wholesale partners that has been extremely positive response, as Michael mentioned earlier. We're adding new brand, right, wholesale partners, and we have this robust Amazon business. So, all three parts of this wheel are working, and, you know, we've planned them in a way that is much more balanced. All of that said, we're just getting started, and this is the first step that will drive growth for the future, and it's really, I think having this four-pillar structure and approach has allowed all teams to get behind what we're doing, and so, you'll see a very integrated launch for this brand, again in the middle of July. All right. Well, as you step forward, you know, you think about this summary, the financial results and what are we focused on? We're focused first and foremost on delivering stable sales and margin growth. This is gonna be a function of the various pillars that Jackie's already talked through here, underpinned by a strong business discipline and being very disciplined in everything that we do. Watching what we do, why we do it, and how we do it, and being, you know. The there's a phrase that's out there, "Retail is detail," and this is about being very detailed about everything that we do. And that will- the combined, these will help us deliver a more stable sales and margin growth trajectory. Second, as Doug, as you asked earlier, continued cash flow generation. This is a business that has consistently generated strong cash flow for the size of its business repeatedly year after year. Since the pandemic, we have continued to see growth, overall growth in our cash flow generation. We expect to continue to see that, as we'll talk about the guidance we previously issued, this coming year, the net cash flow generation, this is a free cash flow definition here, but our net cash flow definition, our delivery for this year, as we guided previously will be down a little bit, but that is due to primarily incremental investments associated with Project Restoration, launch activities, remodeling stores, and so forth, that are unique to this year. Unabashedly strong balance sheet. That is... This is, you know, Jackie and I have talked a lot about this with each other and with our board. This has been a core tenet of the business, and we will continue to deliver a very conservative fiscal policy and philosophy that will continue to maintain a strong balance sheet with strong cash flow generation, and we will continue to have 0 debt. That is what we're focused on. And then lastly, we see a long-term potential, as Jackie said. You know, through modernizing our assortment, again, strong business discipline, as well as a business footprint that was actually larger in prior years than it is right now. We think that points to strong growth potential for this business in the future. As we previously guided, and because of where we are relative to our upcoming earnings release, we're not providing any updated guidance here. This is the guidance that we provided on March the 13th in our prior earnings release. At that time, we anticipated continued economic and pre-transformation headwinds for the first half of this year, followed by anticipated business acceleration in the second half of this year. At that time, we guided to $0.54-$0.62 of earnings per share, and that would compare against last year's actual earnings per share of $0.54 when you adjust it for the 53rd week. Last year was a 53-week year, as opposed to a normal 52-week year, and there was a small incremental EPS lift from that 53rd week. So as we think about this as an opportunity for investment, we see a number of reasons to be excited about Vera Bradley. First of all, the trailing 12-month results of our business do point to an inflection point in both the fundamentals as well as, as our operating prowess. We have spent a great deal of time about being very disciplined, said that a number of times here, I'll say it again, about what we do, why we do and how we do it. And that has had a meaningful impact on our operating results and will continue to influence our operating results in the future. This is a 40-year-old brand that is poised to take advantage of both existing trends, as well as the modernization of our product, our branding, and our marketing, as Jackie has talked about here. We're super-duper excited about the near-term execution of Project Restoration. We have been ducks paddling furiously in the background for quite a few months now, and we're excited about the fruits of that labor getting out into the public-facing view and hopefully seeing everybody as excited about what we've been doing as we have been in the meantime. We've been making strategic investments in our stores, in our e-commerce capabilities, and our customer data that will continue to underpin everything that we do. And then lastly, one last time, you know, a strong and improving balance sheet as we continue to fine-tune our merchandising and inventory management processes going forward. So we're super excited about Vera Bradley. We're super excited about the stage that we're at, and we hope that everyone else has walked away with a sense of that excitement here. Yeah, can I jump in real quick here, Michael? 'Cause Absolutely. Sounds like you have capital spending elevated with Project Restoration being rolled out, no debt, back to free cash flow. So looking forward in the out years, what are you, what are your uses for free cash flow? Is there gonna be more spending coming down the pike in other projects? Do you have a dividend and stock buyback policies or, what's the outlook for acquisitions, just, you know, use to free cash flow? Yeah, I think that's a great question, and as we look forward, there's a number of different avenues forward. You know, some of them are fairly capital consumptive, such as opening stores is a fairly capital consumptive activity. Others are a little bit less. There's certainly, you know, M&A opportunities are always out in the marketplace at one point or another. So we're not providing any guidance on any of those directions at this point in time, but we do think that there's a lot of great opportunities ahead for us. Okay. Thank you. We're coming up on time here, so I just wanna take an opportunity to thank you, Jackie and Michael. We appreciate you joining us today. Thanks everybody for participating in our conference. To learn more about Vera Bradley, please visit the investor page on their website, verabradley.com. Please note that the views expressed in this fireside chat may not necessarily reflect the views of Water Tower Research, LLC, and are provided for informational purposes only. 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