Stefan Larsson
Chief Executive Officer at PVH
Thank you, Sheryl. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining our call today. We had a strong start to 2023, delivering performance ahead of expectations for both the top and bottom line, driven by our disciplined execution of the PVH+ plan. We grew first quarter revenue up 5% in constant currency and up 2% on a reported basis despite the challenging macroeconomic environment.
Looking ahead, we are reaffirming our guidance for the full year, reflecting the confidence we have in our ability to continue to execute with impact, while being prudent given the choppy macro. We are well positioned to deliver solid top-line growth, in addition to double-digit EPS growth, at the same time, making strategic investments in areas such as marketing, the shopping experience and the supply chain to drive long-term brand accretive growth.
I'm starting to see leaders all around the company leveraging the clarity of direction from the PVH+ plan and drive progress in their areas, progress that is repeatable and scalable. And some of it contributes to drive the performance here and now, and some you will see the results come over time. But as a leader having done this a few times, I know that when I see my leaders, whether it's significant product and marketing improvements in Calvin, igniting the influencer marketing and D2C for Tommy North America or a new global brand campaign for Tommy connecting back to the brand's DNA or supply chain improvements globally or a new level of cost efficiency work led by our finance team, then I know that we're underway to transform this company.
I feel very good about how we deliver on our near-term commitments, while maintaining a strong focus on our long-term vision to build Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger into the most desirable lifestyle brands in the world and position PVH as one of the best-performing brand groups in our sector. Our PVH+ plan guides us on this journey and is centered around five key growth drivers: the first is winning with product; the second is winning with consumer engagement; the third is winning in the digitally-led marketplace; the fourth is developing a demand and data-driven operating model; and the fifth is to drive efficiencies and invest in growth.
Let me start by sharing an update on how we deliver against each. Everything starts with winning with product. It's the most important part of the brand promise, driving brand desirability and building consumer loyalty over time. Having the best product in the market gives us pricing power and drives margin expansion. In the first quarter, we made significant strides here. We continue to advance our category offers [Phonetic] and deliver double-digit growth in key hero products, such as the 1985 Polo program for Tommy and the Modern Cotton Underwear program for Calvin. These bestsellers are examples of products that are essential to the consumers' wardrobe.
Even though we are already driving increasing strength in hero products, we're just in the beginning of tapping into our full potential. We then win with consumer engagement by connecting our hero products with culturally relevant aspirational talent. This comes to life in three ways. First, we develop cut-through brand campaigns every season; second, we ignite the power of our influencer engine; and third, we elevate the consumer experience at every touch point. In Q1, you saw this executed really well in both Calvin and Tommy, generating very strong consumer engagement with billions of impressions across both brands. I'll share more specific proof points in my brand update in a moment.
What I want to emphasize here though is that these campaigns form a powerful brand halo and ignite our talent and influence ranging globally. As we shared with you last quarter, we're stepping up our investments here in a very targeted way. In addition to increasing our strategic investments in marketing, we are enhancing the brand experience across all consumer touch points to win in the digitally-led marketplace. For the quarter, on a constant currency basis, we drove double-digit growth in our D2C businesses, which included double-digit growth in our stores and high single-digit growth in our own and operated e-commerce.
Overall, we are focused on driving our direct-to-consumer offense, while at the same time deepening our relationships with key wholesale partners. We continue to make early progress towards building a demand and data-driven operating model that connects the planning, buying and selling of inventory much closer to demand. In the quarter, we executed excellent on-time delivery performance, shortening transit and production lead times and improving forecasting and buying.
We're getting closer to the consumer with a more responsive replenishment model that ensures that we're never out of stock on core essentials and hero products already in Q1 driving significant comp increases in many of those products. As we're investing to fuel growth, we also remain focused on driving cost efficiencies and improving our overall cost competitiveness. We continue to make progress to align our organization to the PVH+ plan through the cost actions we have shared previously.
Next, I'll share some highlights that demonstrate how we are connecting our brands with the consumer and driving brand desirability around the world. Starting with Calvin Klein, we generated some of the highest consumer engagement in the history of the brand, driven by the most impactful version of our Calvins or nothing campaign to-date. The campaign on its own had incredible impact, 1.7 billion impressions across PR and social media. The brand trended for multiple days on Twitter and expanded its social following with 1.6 million new followers, and we saw significant increases in traffic to our own and operated e-commerce sites. This highly successful campaign was developed around our core principles of creating cut-through campaigns, igniting our influencer engine and elevating the brand across every consumer touch point.
We expanded our already strong brand ambassador group for the spring campaign, which included Kendall Jenner, Michael B. Jordan, Jennie Kim and the introduction of Jung Kook, who is a massive K-pop star. When we last spoke, Calvin had just announced Jung Kook as brand ambassador. Consumer reaction has been incredibly strong globally with a plus 39% increase in site visits across all regions and a visible lift in sales, which were up 150% compared to the weeks prior to launch.
In China, the denim shirt he wore sold out on Tmall in just 30 minutes. We also had the highest reaching post of all times of social with our campaign video on Instagram generating 21 million in reach. The brand also recently launched Jennie for Calvin Klein, a unique limited edition capsule collection designing partnership with Jennie Kim of Blackpink. The collection is focused on Jennie's personal take on hero products and style essentials in denim, underwear and other key categories. Together with the cut-through campaign that ran globally, it generated nearly 700 million social media impressions, along with key products that sold out within two days of release. And we grew our consumer base with 65% of consumers being new to the brand.
For Tommy, with its unique DNA of Classic American Cool, the brand continues to drive strong visibility and relevance among target consumers, generating approximately 5.5 billion impressions and 56 million social engagements globally during the quarter. Our Classics Reborn Spring campaign celebrates the brand's style icons made relevant for today and it's really cutting through with consumers.
Across APAC, for example, our collaboration with pop culture sensation and singer, Henry Lau, helped drive Polo shirt sales up 68% year-over-year during the campaign period. Our collaboration with Shawn Mendes continue to drive brand heat globally. Personal appearances by Tommy Hilfiger and Shawn Mendes in London, Berlin, Milan, Mexico City resulted in huge crowds, day-long lines at the stores and an elevated consumer experience.
For summer, we're focused on high visibility collaborations to celebrate key consumer models as part of our long-term partnership with the Mercedes-AMG Formula 1 team, the brand co-created a capsule collection ahead of the Formula 1, Miami Grand Prix in collaboration with Awake New York. The collection combined Awake Street style sensibility with Tommy's signature prepostetic. The campaign featured talent like Lewis Hamilton, George Russell and Mick Schumacher and was amplified by multiple aspirational influencers. The capsule was one of the best performing of the year with a 62% sell-through in the first week.
We are also excited to share the news about our upcoming collaboration with Disney, connecting Disney's iconic characters into the world of Tommy Prep. We are thrilled to be part of Disney's 100th year milestone anniversary and look forward to celebrating with consumers worldwide with a special focus on Asia.
Now, turning to our regional performance and how we are connecting our brands and executing the PVH+ plan across each region, starting with Europe. We continue to fuel our strength and delivered mid-single-digit year-over-year growth for the first quarter in euros, adjusted for our Russia exit on a significantly bigger business done pre-pandemic, a testament to our team's execution in the face of a continued challenging macro backdrop.
We are further strengthening brand desire and our leading brand positioning in Europe for both Tommy and Calvin through hero products and cut-through campaigns. For Tommy, our 1985 program now represents over 25% of the total Tommy men's apparel business, up 70% year-over-year. We're driving strong sell-throughs and higher AURs in key categories such as polos, shirts and sneakers and remain focused on expanding our strength in outerwear. At the same time, we continue to grow Calvin through building out and commercializing our hero product franchises in underwear and other key lifestyle categories, which are delivering higher AURs and double-digit growth.
When we look at our forward wholesale order book, adjusting for Russia and improved delivery performance compared to last year's supply chain disruptions, we continue to expect our shipped order book for fall to be up low single-digits. And as we have mentioned before, we are well positioned to capitalize on stronger demand through our never out-of-stock programs. Looking ahead, we will intensify our execution of the PVH+ plan to continue to further strengthen our market position in the region.
Moving on to Asia Pacific. We delivered a very strong start of the year by leaning into our hero product strategy and connecting our brands to impactful and regionally relevant talent. Our execution drove more than 25% revenue growth on a constant currency basis with strong growth across all countries, including China, which was up more than 40% in local currency as COVID restrictions lifted and our consumers came back strong. We also saw continued strength in Japan, Korea and Australia. We continue to amplify hero products and excite with newness to drive key category growth. In the first quarter, our hero product again outperformed with higher AURs and expanding gross margins.
We continue to strengthen our brand awareness and build desire through cultural icons such as Jennie Kim and Jung Kook, as I mentioned earlier. Our brands have premium product positioning in the region, and we see a clear opportunity to grow further across all markets. We continue to make strategic investments to increase overall brand awareness, especially in China, where both Calvin and Tommy are underpenetrated. We are creating a consistent and seamless experience, no matter where the consumer shops in the marketplace, with the largest growth opportunity being in digital.
We launched on Douyin last year to cover even wider audiences across China, and we are now continuing to expand our digital footprint by launching on the rapidly growing Douwu platform, targeting Gen Z consumers in top tier cities. Looking ahead, following a successful Labor Day and International Women's Day in the first quarter, we are now gearing up for a strong 6/18 and Chinese Valentines Day, with each of these events supported by unique product capsules.
Turning to our business in North America. We continue to make great progress in building the foundation for sustainable, increasingly profitable and brand accretive growth. We are winning more with the domestic consumer and getting good traction from our execution, leading to outsized growth in our direct-to-consumer business. We drove double-digit comps in D2C stores and e-commerce and we improved our ability to match inventory to demand.
Let me share some exciting proof points. For Tommy in Q1, we drove 25% year-over-year increases in key categories such as knits, sweaters and wovens. Global best sellers now represent approximately 85% of our assortment, up from 35% last year. Polos were once again the number one category with higher AURs as we are elevating these key essentials. Similarly for Calvin, across channels, we are better matching key hero products with elevated marketing content, and we had stronger than expected performance in D2C e-commerce.
For both Tommy and Calvin in North America, we're starting to significantly improve how we plan and allocate our inventory, leveraging advanced analytics to ensure that the right product goes to the right stores at the right time to drive better availability and margin expansion. Beyond D2C, we also drove progress with key wholesale partners in the quarter, working very closely to improve Calvin and Tommy's presentation in top doors and drive consumer demand by sharpening our category offense and leaning into our hero products. Looking ahead, we continue to see significant opportunity to unlock our full potential in the North America region.
In closing, across the company, we continue to take big steps in our disciplined execution of the PVH+ plan. With a strong focus on all that is within our control, I feel very confident that we will continue to deliver further building on the traction we have across both brands and all regions, while successfully navigating the choppy macro. Last quarter, I highlighted the strength we are building in the leadership team and how I see talent as the key driver of the PVH+ plan. And just last month, we brought together our top 160 global leaders in New York to share progress, proof points and learnings from the first year of our PVH+ execution under the theme of Dream and Deliver.
It was so powerful to see our top leaders together, not only being fully united and committed to our vision, but also being clear on how to achieve it, and seeing so many of them sharing on stage many examples of what successful execution looks like. As I continue to travel extensively with our teams in the markets globally, what's crystal clear to me is that no matter where in the world I go, there is incredible strength and untapped growth potential for both Calvin and Tommy.
I often start my meetings with our team sharing my perspective that over 90% of our potential is still ahead of us. And I want to thank all our teams globally for being so engaged and so committed to go after it, executing another strong quarter together where we keep building on the momentum.
And with that, I'll turn the call over to Zac to discuss the financials in more detail.
