Kate Spade brings in L'Oréal veteran to lead marketing turnaround
The Tapestry-owned brand names Allison Badea as chief marketing officer as it works to reverse falling sales.
Kate Spade has named Allison Badea, who spent years at L'Oréal, as its new chief marketing officer, according to Retail Dive. The appointment comes as the accessible-luxury handbag and accessories brand continues to grapple with falling sales and what the outlet describes as a long turnaround road, a challenge that has persisted despite several strategic resets since Tapestry took full control of the brand.
Bringing in a beauty-industry marketer rather than a fashion-industry lifer signals an intent to borrow playbooks from a sector that has proven unusually adept at building brand desirability through storytelling, influencer strategy and direct-to-consumer engagement. Kate Spade has struggled for several years to recapture the cultural relevance it held in the 2000s and early 2010s, caught between mass-market accessibility and the aspirational codes that drive premium pricing power. Marketing leadership changes at struggling heritage brands often precede broader creative or product resets, and Badea's mandate is likely to extend well beyond campaigns into repositioning the brand's identity.
The appointment sits within a wider pattern of beauty and luxury executives moving across categories as companies search for growth levers outside their traditional talent pools. For Tapestry, which also owns Coach and Stuart Weitzman, fixing Kate Spade remains one of the group's more stubborn problems, and investors will be watching for whether new marketing leadership can translate into measurable sales recovery rather than another round of repositioning without traction.
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