Children's clothing brand Carter's is undergoing a revamp to better align with the new generation of parents as its namesake company tries to recover from sluggish performance in recent years.
The rebrand, announced Tuesday, includes a new logo and marketing campaign that Chief Marketing Officer Sarah Crockett told CNBC aims to keep the 161-year-old company relevant with its core customer.
"We recognize that the market difference of our parents in the communities that we're serving is significant," Crockett said. "We had an opportunity to really tap into the values that parents are bringing into the household."
Carter's largest brands include its namesake banner and OshKosh B'gosh, which are sold in standalone stores around the U.S. and in retailers including Walmart, Target and Amazon. The rebrand comes as the overall company has shrunk its store footprint and laid off some employees over the past year to try to reposition itself for growth, especially as the market for baby and kids clothing has grown more competitive.
Wall Street has taken note of the company's issues. Over the past three years, Carter's stock has plunged more than 50%, bringing its market cap to around $1 billion.
For the full 2025 fiscal year, Carter's reported adjusted net income of $126.1 million, down sharply from $210.7 million the year before. Last year, then-CEO Douglas Palladini said elevated product costs, higher tariffs and additional investments "weighed meaningfully" on the company's profitability.
Last October, Palladini said Carter's was eliminating 15% of its corporate workforce and shuttering 150 North American stores as leases expired in an effort to "rightsize" the company.
Since then, Carter's has started to show more bright spots. And the rebrand aims in part to capitalize on the momentum.
In the first quarter of 2026, the company reported a 10.5% increase in U.S. comparable sales and an 8.1% jump in net sales. Shortly before it reported those results in May, Carter's announced it was hiring Sharon Price John, formerly the CEO of Build-A-Bear Workshop, to lead the company as it tried to regain strength.
In June, Wells Fargo analysts upgraded Carter's from underweight to hold, saying that while the retailer's performance "isn't perfect," the changes the company was instituting were "driving fundamental improvements."
Price John told CNBC the struggles Carter's went through before she joined the company were par for the course and a "natural evolution."
"Like any company at our scale, you're going to have a pretty standard process of evolving your retail footprint, and in many ways that's just exactly what the company's doing, which is the right thing to do," she said.
"That is just running a business," she added, saying she doesn't believe Carter's has lost its connection with the parents who buy its clothing.
The positive signs appeared to continue during the retailer's second quarter, part of which Price John oversaw. During its most recent earnings call, Carter's said it grew its new customers, including Generation Z shoppers, which it said rose by a mid-teens percentage.
For the full fiscal year, the company said it expects net sales to climb between 2% and 3%. It also said it received roughly $128 million in tariff refunds, after costs from those duties posed such a challenge to Carter's in the prior year.
Still, Price John said on the late July call with analysts that there was "more to be done."
With the new rebrand for Carter's, Price John told CNBC the company is tracking an evolution of its core customer base of parents that is more dramatic in this generation than it has been in 25 years.
Gen Z is expected to account for a major portion of new parents over the next few years, according to Carter's, making the population even more crucial to the brand's business.
Crockett, the CMO, told CNBC the company is taking note that Gen Z parents often encourage their children to make their own decisions about what they wear rather than mirroring their own fashion choices onto them. Those parents and children are also heavily influenced by and crowdsource decisions from social media, she said.
The rebrand and marketing campaign will attempt in part to cater to those tendencies.
"This provides a whole new set of tools for us to really leverage in connecting with today's parents and caregivers, and this is a large mission, a large brand promise that we will always be in pursuit of," Crockett said.
At the same time, Crockett and Price John said the revamp of Carter's namesake brand aims to lift the performance of the broader Carter's Inc. as well. The rebrand will roll out across Carter's channels in 2026, with additional retail and packaging elements in 2027, according to the company.
"This is time, because brands evolve. They have to. If they don't evolve, they're left behind," Price John said.
