Most senior marketers arrive at the intersection of brand and revenue through strategy or performance. Garth Weber arrived through design. A career that started on the Nike ACG product team, ran through adidas global brand, and included building Wilson Sporting Goods’ first branded retail stores from scratch before landing him at Duluth Trading Company in a role that has since expanded to cover brand, marketing, eCommerce, and customer insights simultaneously.
That origin matters at Duluth in ways it might not elsewhere. The brand has run on illustrated advertising and product-first humor since 2009. It built a loyal customer base on the strength of workwear functionality delivered with a specific Midwestern irreverence, and it did so almost entirely through direct channels. Weber’s job is to protect that equity while modernizing the infrastructure underneath it, moving a brand that built itself on catalog and linear TV into a mobile-first, omnichannel experience without breaking what made it work.
That tension sits at the center of Weber’s work. In this conversation, he talks about what it means to own both brand and eCommerce at the same time, why the most strategic thing a marketer can do is learn to speak the language of the enterprise rather than the language of marketing, and how Duluth is using creative risk as a growth lever while the business looks to simplify.
You’ve been in this role for about two years, and your portfolio has expanded to include eCommerce and customer insights alongside brand and marketing. When you describe what you own now, how do you explain it?
I describe my role as a hybrid: I need to operate both as a retailer and a brand builder. Moving into the SVP CMBO role overseeing digital storefront revenue ($330M+) fundamentally changes one’s lens. It forces you to succeed at the intersection of brand strategy and quarterly performance, meaning the work has to hold its own in a boardroom conversation about P&Ls just as well as it has to stand up to a creative review. You have to connect the art directly to positive business outcomes, even when those connections aren’t as obvious as in-quarter topline growth.
What’s the hardest thing to get right when you’re accountable for both brand building and eCommerce performance at the same time? Where do those two things pull in opposite directions, and how do you navigate it?
Managing the friction between the legacy playbook and our modern requirements. Duluth built its equity on direct mail and linear TV—those channels work, but they are often too expensive to maintain at scale compared to newer, more efficient digital tactics. The challenge isn’t abandoning them; it’s figuring out how to transition into a mobile-first, omnichannel experience without breaking the brand. My job is to break down the silos between creative, media, and digital. If everyone isn’t chasing the same metrics, you’re just fighting yourself.
Duluth has a very specific customer — the Modern Self-Reliant American — and a clear sense of humor that belongs to the brand. How do you grow the audience without softening what makes the brand work?
You double down on authenticity, not technique. You don’t try to sanitize Duluth for a general audience. With campaigns like “Butts Up,” we focus on the problem we solve—workwear functionality—and deliver it with our own sharp, irreverent voice. If you try to force the brand to fit a TikTok or Instagram trend, people see right through it. Stay true to the product truth, and the audience will find you.
Video courtesy of Duluth Trading Company
The underwear campaign launched this year makes a real strategic argument: that a category entry point can also be the sharpest expression of what a brand stands for. Can you walk me through how that logic works, and a decision in the last year where you had to defend that kind of thinking internally?
It’s a perfect example of a Duluth brand DNA story masquerading as a product benefit story. Duluth is a brand built on solving actual problems for customers, and underwear is a relatable place to prove that. It’s not just a funny ad—it’s a trial and conversion driver. When I have to defend that kind of work to the board, I don’t talk about “brand awareness.” I talk about brand fit and mobile conversion rates. We show the data—pushing CVR above 4% across all categories, not just underwear—and prove that the creative work isn’t just “fun”; it’s strategic and builds the business.
You came up through design and creative before taking on broader marketing leadership. How much does that origin still shape the way you approach the work?
My experience as a creative is the foundation for everything that’s come after. I always believed I was using creativity to solve real business challenges. In order to do so, I needed to understand the business challenge before I could apply a creative solution. It’s the same approach I use today. It also is the way I build teams; I look for problem solvers with creative, marketing and analytical talents. I’m a firm believer in: if you focus on solving challenges in unique, even unexpected ways, growth will follow. I’ve found it to be much more successful than chasing growth with creativity.
You’ve talked about building a shared language with finance around brand investment, moving from intuition to something more forecastable. Where are you in that work, and what’s still hard to translate?
We’re making progress by tying every creative and marketing effort to a measurable number, whenever possible. We’ve spent a lot of effort triangulating marketing signals, current trends, and historical markers to forecast what we think will happen within a specific month or quarter. That’s how you get finance to listen. The hard part is the longterm play—brand equity, trial, awareness, etc.—because those metrics don’t move as fast as a monthly sales report.
There’s a lot of conversation about AI transforming marketing. Where is it actually showing up in your day-to-day work at Duluth, and where do you think the reality still lags the conversation?
The current reality is far less “magic” than the hype. Right now, it’s showing up in optimization projects to streamline workflows, increase speed to market with concepts, and further analyze results. We are using it to build “bones” for new pathways, but it isn’t a replacement for brand stewardship. The conversation lags because people expect a silver bullet, whereas, for us, the reality is just better, faster tools for execution.
You’ve been explicit that building a creative culture requires tolerating failure. What does that look like in practice, and how do you hold that standard when the business is under pressure?
It means encouraging the team to “get hungry” and take risks, even when things are challenging. Failure is a requirement for growth; if we aren’t testing new platforms or trying new methods and approaches, we aren’t evolving. I hold the standard by holding the team accountable for growth—if we’re not failing, we’re not pushing. If we fail, we learn, and we adjust. But I also shield the team so they have the room to experiment without the fear of being crushed by short-term pressure.
Looking ahead a few years, what do you think will look genuinely different about this role? What do you think stays the same regardless of how much the tools and channels change?
What stays the same is the need for brand authenticity—that is our North Star regardless of the tool. What will be different is the speed of execution and the level of data-driven forecasting. The job will increasingly be about orchestrating that “shared promise” between brand, customer and business as the technology shifts. Marketing is still about emotionally connecting with people. They are the ones who fall in love with brands.
What’s the advice you find yourself giving most often to marketing leaders who are earlier in their careers?
Learn to think about the enterprise as a whole, not just about brand or marketing. It’s easy to fall in love with a campaign or a strategy, but sometimes the right move for the business is for marketing to be a support function, not the driver. You have to be willing to leverage your strategic vision for what the enterprise actually needs to succeed at that moment—whether that’s loyalty, operational efficiency, or margin protection. If you can only speak “marketing,” you’ll hit a ceiling. If you can speak “enterprise,” you’ll build trust and have a seat at the table.