Meet The Man Behind The Rise of Victoria’s Secret PINK

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“I would get to work on store design and construction; I would get to help shape the strategy and build the organization; I would get to do a whole bunch of stuff that I would never get to do if I were in a really mature business,” he said.

In addition, like the chairman, Dent also noticed PINK’s potential. “Girls were having this really interesting reaction to the aesthetic of the product,” he said. “It had the characteristics of a brand as far as our customers’ interaction with it way before it was really prepared to be a brand.”

Interestingly, Dent was able to apply the training he received at Ford to his position with PINK. At Ford, employees were mandated to work in a variety of functions so that when they reached a senior level, they were familiar with the system.

“Their philosophy was you weren’t just going to be a numbers guy,” said Dent. “If you work with a plant, you will work in a plant on the line, so one day when you’re an executive, you’re not talking about what you’ve heard. You would know because you’ve been there.”

Dent used this philosophy at PINK when he worked in a store for three weeks. Though he wasn’t mandated to do so, Dent felt it was necessary in order for him to understand the implications of the decisions that he would later make in his executive position, which, he believes makes him a stronger leader.

Throughout his tenure at PINK, Dent has played a critical role in negotiating multi-year exclusivity deals with the National Football League (NFL), Major League Baseball (MLB) and the Collegiate Licensing Company, a deal that created a collection of hoodies, football tees and totes that features the names and logos of 60 universities. Originally, the university collection did not include historically black colleges and universities.

In mid-2008, a sophomore at Howard University named Amelia Reid voiced her dismay to Victoria’s Secret that HBCUs were absent from the university collection. She initiated a Facebook group called “HBCU Ladies Wear Victoria’s Secret Pink Too.” Dent reached out to Reid to verify that a HBCU line was in the process of being created, for which he was pushing; that fall, the collection premiered starting with five schools: FAMU, Howard, Hampton University, North Carolina A&T University and Southern University.

Inside the company, not many were familiar with the term HBCU, according to Dent. “I wanted to bring this idea to HBCUs because there hadn’t been a retailer of our scale and size willing to put this energy and effort behind anything that had to do with HBCUs,” he said.

Though proud of his accomplishments professionally, the husband and father of four is most passionate about volunteering as a group mentor for Expanding Visions Foundation. Expanding Visions is a Columbus, OH based non-profit dedicated to mentoring inner-city males ages 12-18. “The PINK position gives me a platform to do a lot of good,” he said. “I always tell people when I die and go to heaven and have my first face-to-face conversation with God, I’m convinced that he’s not going to care about how many bras, panties and hoodies I’ve sold. He’ll care about when I was in this position what did I do to help other people.”

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