Good day, everyone, and welcome to Kontoor Brands' 1st ever Investor Day. While we wish we could be with you all in person, we are really excited to virtually share the next phase of the KTB story, catalyzing growth. Before I take you through today's schedule of events, I want to remind everyone that today's presentation and the accompanying material include forward looking statements. For information on factors that could cause our actual results to differ materially from such forward looking statements, please refer to today's materials as well as our most recent annual report on Form 10 ks filed with the SEC and our subsequent filings with the SEC available on our website. Today's presentation and accompanying materials also include non GAAP financial measures.
Reconciliations of GAAP measures to adjusted amounts can be found in the supplemental financial tables in the appendix to today's presentation. These tables identify and quantify excluded items and provide management's view of why this information is useful to investors. Finally, we are web testing today's presentation, which can be found within our Investor Relations section at our website atcontourbrands.com. After today, this presentation will be available on our site for the next 90 days. Over the next few hours, you will have the chance to hear from a broad and deep collection of leaders across the organization.
Let me now take you through our agenda. 1st, we will communicate our updated strategic vision that will guide our next 3 year path. You will hear from our President and CEO, Scott Baxter, as well as our Global Brand Presidents, Tom Waldron, Wrangler and Chris Waldeck, Lee. Next we will highlight our growth catalyst, where we expect to derive sustained accelerating revenue growth over the next 3 years, including detailed building blocks of key growth areas. In addition to where we intend to grow, we will then take you through how we will grow, our investments in select TSR bolstering growth enablers will support these strategic growth initiatives.
To summarize how the strategic playbook comes together to fuel accelerating fundamentals, increasing cash flow optionality an evolving targeted TSR algorithm, our CFO, Ruston Welton, will provide our 3 year financial strategy and targets. After our prepared remarks, we will host a question and answer session. All in, we expect the presentation to last about 2.5 to 3 hours. As you can see, we have a full agenda. So let me now turn it over to our CEO, Scott Baxter, to take you through Contour's strategic vision of catalyzing growth.
Thank you for being with us today and for your continued interest and support of Kontoor. As Eric said, we do wish we could host this event live, but we look forward to seeing you all in person hopefully very soon. I will provide insights into our strategic vision in a moment. But first, I want to share a quick video that brings our evolving Kontoor journey to life.
Across every generation, Denim has reinvented itself while remaining authentic. Jeans are in our jeans. And while jeans are at our core, we believe all apparel should have a higher purpose. At Kontoor Brands, we keep pushing towards that purpose while being true to ourselves to be the common thread that inspires people to live with passion and confidence, we believe Wrangler and Lee clothing reflects the people who stitch them. Like the clothing we produce, our team is honest, inclusive, hardworking and made to last.
From our it's about harnessing innovation to strengthen our
communities and protect our planet.
Few companies get a chance to create something that stirs emotions and serves a greater purpose. Products that excite others and make them proud to wear the name.
Almost 2 years ago to the day, we established Contour as an independent publicly traded company. A lot has transpired over these past 2 years, from global trade conflicts to the COVID pandemic to disruption of global supply chains, yet our incredible teams around the world have remained focused on taking care of one another, leading into our values and on executing with excellence, all while evolving our purpose led strategies with great agility to position Kontoor for future success, and we are really excited to share with you today the next phase of our path, what we are calling catalyzing growth, we are embarking on a transformational period in our company's history, where a powerful combination of factors should continue to drive superior returns for all KTV shareholders. The math is pretty straightforward. We intend to fuel our fundamental model, driven by key revenue growth catalysts and fueled by investments in critical growth enablers, which combined with increasing cash flow optionality equals an enhanced TSR model. Before I lay out our strategic vision for Horizon 2, let me level set you a bit and walk you through the strategic actions we set out to accomplish during Horizon 1.
The first 18 to 24 months as an independent company and how we have delivered against those goals. 1st, we've created a foundation for longer term profitable and sustained growth by executing on decisions to simplify and streamline our operations and migrate to a new global technology platform. Next, we've driven gross margin expansion, including triple digit increases in each of the last three quarters, as we earn our way to investing in the business. In addition, we've remained laser focused on cash generation that enabled us to maintain liquidity, navigate the pandemic and execute on our capital allocation priorities, while continuing to invest in the business. In paying down debt and delevering the balance sheet, we've substantially derisked the business and positioned KTV for greater cash flow optionality moving forward.
Although we had a brief 2 quarter suspension of the dividend at the height of COVID, we've remained committed to paying a superior dividend and have averaged a mid single digit yield since the spin. And finally, all of these actions have come together to deliver substantial upside to our total shareholder return targets, I'm proud of these results, but we are just getting started. As we said since we went public, sequencing matters. For the evolution of our model, fundamental algorithm and targeted TSR, we are in the midst of transitioning from horizon 1 to horizon 2, which we expect will see continued margin gains. However, we anticipate that incremental investments will also catalyze the top line, delivering on expected virtuous cycle of growth that we've often discussed.
This combination should drive accelerated fundamentals. From a capital allocation perspective, we expect Horizon 1 priorities solely focused on the dividend and delevering of our balance sheet we'll open in horizon 2 with greater cash flow optionality to augment organic gains, leading to a higher targeted TSR over time. Over the last 2 years, we have attempted to consistently communicate our strategy to drive more profitable and sustainable top line growth over the long term. With 2 consecutive quarters of growth under our belt, we are ready to step on the gas. We are focused on the following four areas to catalyze revenue growth.
1st, enhance and accelerate our core U. S. Wholesale business. 2nd, diversify our product mix through category extensions, amplifying outdoor, workwear and T shirts. 3rd, thoughtfully expand our reach around the globe, prioritizing opportunities within the China region.
And 4th, elevate our direct connection with consumers throughout channel expansion, focused on evolving our D2C and digital ecosystem. Diving a bit deeper within each, first, we must continue to build on our core business. Today, we will outline our strategies for how we expect to continue to gain share and grow in our largest market. Next, we will outline our strategy category extensions in our outdoor, teas and workwear businesses, this critical initiative allows us to continue to evolve and diversify our lifestyle offering in an authentic manner that is true to our brands. Today, approximately 75% of our business is U.
S.-based, and we believe we have tremendous opportunity to continue to globalize these iconic brands. We have made critical investments since becoming an independent company in both Europe and Asia to upgrade our capabilities in these critical markets. Today you will hear from select leaders in our international markets that provide great examples of how new leadership is driving transformational change across our global positioning. And finally, as we have discussed on numerous occasions, we are under indexed in our D2C and digital businesses. We believe leading with digital is the most capital efficient model and we've been making meaningful investments in talent, technology and demand creation in this important channel.
In fact, we hired our 1st Head of Global Digital in 2020, and you will hear from him in a bit on how we intend to distort growth in this accretive channel. Before moving to our enablers, I want to highlight that we are already beginning to see the early returns from our initial investments in these areas, and I'm very excited about the opportunities ahead. And in support of these long term growth opportunities, we want to walk you through how we are investing in accretive enablers, and we will highlight 5 of these today. First, it all begins it ends with product in our business. And we have hired our first ever Head of Global Design for the Wrangler and our first Head of global design for the Lee brand in the collective 200 year history of the brands.
You will hear from those leaders today and how they are transforming the brands in the marketplace with elevated global designs and provide a little more insight into our design process. Next, we will outline how product and manufacturing innovation with a sustainability thread differentiates Kontoor. Beyond our current innovation pipeline, we will also provide a glimpse of how we are exploring next generation technologies to continue to propel our brands, our operational strength is underscored by our global supply chain, where we will walk through why our own manufacturing is a competitive advantage and how we are working with our supply partners to improve service and agility and how the tools we are putting in place should enable us to drive future productivity gains. To win in the market, we will have the right talent and culture in place and we have been investing heavily in this space. Today we will outline our journey to be an inclusive, growth minded, high performing culture filled with passionate, authentic and high intensity individuals who are each valued for their contribution.
Finally, you will hear from our marketing leaders about how they are activating our brands in the market, as we have mentioned, we have significant opportunity to amplify our demand creation efforts and are beginning to further distort our investments here, I'm really excited to share our evolving representation of the brands with you today. Brand expressions that I'm certain will differ from what you have seen in the past, a proof point on how we are investing in the business. Each of the leaders you will hear from today on the key growth enablers is new to their role and or the business since we established Confor. The investments we have made in talent and other areas are producing early returns, and we expect these investments should continue to yield improved performance across our business. Rustin will take you through more detailed thoughts, but we are increasingly well positioned to augment our core organic strength with TSR bolstering capital allocation strategies.
As we optimize our capital structure, we now have a greater optionality to continue to reinvest in our businesses, pursue strategic M and A, evaluate our dividend level and or initiate a share repurchase program. Given the strong cash generation of our business, we expect to have multifaceted optionality, meaning it doesn't have to be either or as we consider these options, but we will more likely be executing a combination of these alternatives. So how does our accelerating fundamental model and increasing cash flow optionality come together? We believe in a very powerful way that supports us increasing our targeted long term TSR to greater than 15% annually. Ruston will take you through the detailed components of this new TSR a bit later.
Thanks again for joining us today and I will speak with you all a bit later. Now our global brand leaders, Tom Waldron and Chris Waldeck will take you through the Wrangler and Lee brand strategies. Tom?
Thanks, Scott. Let me start with a bold, but proper statement. Wrangler is currently experiencing momentum globally like we have never seen in the brand's 75 year history. Today we will share with you what is driving this momentum and more importantly, what we believe will fuel accelerating growth in the years to come. As Scott mentioned, our journey since Kontoor became an independent company has been broken into 2 horizons and we are now transitioning from a from a successful horizon 1 into horizon 2.
In horizon 1, we focused on optimizing and globalizing the Wrangler brand, creating a healthy foundation off which to build, prioritize strategic investments in product, talent and demand creation across the globe, we have been critical building blocks during this period. First within product, everything we do at Wrangler begins and ends with product. And under Kontoor, we have had the opportunity to significantly accelerate and elevated product design and innovation. This enhanced brand expression is represented around the world from our Fred Siegel collection in LA to our Western line in our pop up store in Austin to our recent launch of the Wrangler brand in the China market, one global product design architecture with local nuances. It is a very different and superior product development process and go to market strategy for the brand.
From a talent perspective, we believe we have a world class team in the areas of design, marketing, product development, sustainability, innovation and digital, focused on transforming Wrangler into a global cohesive power brand, I am really proud of the progress we have made. Today you will hear from many of these great leaders on how they are driving significant improvements, setting the stage for a sustained long term growth. In terms of demand creation, we are now creating global campaigns rooted in our heritage and in incredibly authentic but relevant way that connects emotionally with our existing consumers and as important brings the Wrangler brand to new consumers. Campaigns with new brand ambassador, Georgia May Jagger, as well as key collaborations with culturally relevant assets, such as Stranger Things' Bob Marley and our upcoming collab with Billabong, all demonstrate our commitment to driving brand awareness and reaching a younger, more diverse consumer base. And finally, we continue to distort demand creation investments into the highest ROI areas with a digital first mindset.
So as we begin to transition into Horizon 2, all of these strategic investments across product, talent, demand creation set the stage for Wrangler to accelerate healthy brand growth. Let me be clear, we have to keep winning in the core U. S. Wholesale market and amplifying investment in these very areas we just discussed, allowing us to do this as evidenced by significant share gains we've seen over the last year. We have a lot of momentum in the U.
S. And we are really well positioned with a best in class retail partner that we believe will be structurally winners coming out of the pandemic. Coupled with category and channel diversification, we see opportunities to drive sustained growth in our largest market. And of course, we are driving accelerated channel diversification in the U. S.
With accelerating growth in digital as well as new points of distribution, including outdoor, specialty and sporting goods with our outdoor ATG line, as well as more premium price points with distribution from our modern collections. And we expect geographic expansion we'll provide further diversification across our portfolio with meaningful white space opportunities. New business development in Europe, including our new ATG programs with Dressman and Cubis are allowing the brand to navigate near term challenges while positioning the Wrangler brand for longer term success in the region when conditions normalize. And certainly, our recent launch of the Rango brand in China represents a transformational opportunity. With a digital first go to market strategy in the region, we are really pleased with the early results and the brand is resonating with Chinese consumers beyond our expectations.
And finally, the Wrangler brand has significant new category growth potential, notably outdoor, work, t shirts and female. You will hear greater details from our team leaders and how we are aggressively pursuing these opportunities. Underpinning
all of
this brand health, we have a unique authentic global brand position. Let me share a short video that we think brings this new global Wrangler view to life.
Let us start by saying thank you. Thank you for putting your trust and confidence in Wrangler, the authentic Global brand that has been on this beautiful precious earth for over 70 years. Thank you for believing in a brand that aims to empower everyone with the confidence to thrive in new frontiers, a brand that stays true to its values and always acts with integrity. We believe in the value of hard work, which allows us to play even harder. Wrangler is the inclusive brand it leaves no one out.
Nearly 75 years as a global cultural icon has taught us to keep learning, to put our consumers first to help them be their best. Our innovative, sustainable, purpose built products are really a connection to something bigger, something more meaningful. It's our values, what we stand for that make us stand out. Wrangler jeans are tough enough for a life well lived, for a life that inspires others and leaves a classic Timeless impression, because you only get one ride, one shot, one roll of the dice, we're making the best of this thing called life. Thank you for joining us on this journey as we stay strong
So how does all this come together with healthy, accelerating and accretive growth? Over the next 3 years, we anticipate high single digit growth for the Wrangler brand, dollars 300,000,000 of new business that we expect to be catalyzed by share gains in our core U. S. Wholesale business, augmented by geographic, channel and category expansion. I'd like to now hand it over to Chris Waldack to take you through globally.
Thanks, Tom, and thank you all for joining us today. I couldn't be more excited to share with you how the Lee brand has significantly transformed over the last few years. If you have a chance to watch the entire presentation today, I believe you will be blown away not only with what we've accomplished to date, but more importantly, what our teams are doing to catapult the Lee brand to step function positive change going forward. Lease fundamentals are now well positioned for sustained profitable growth and our brand momentum is accelerating as we elevate and engage with new consumers around the world. To arrive at this position of strength during Horizon 1, we've driven the most significant transformation in our brand's recent history.
We repositioned our global business model, optimizing our distribution strategy and established the foundation for sustained TSR accretive growth, we prioritize strategic investments in quality of sales, design, talent, innovation and product development, and we're seeing the early returns on this investment in the form of healthier brand metrics, market share gains and new elevated distribution. Starting with our quality of sales investments, as an independent company, we can focus on cleaning up challenge points of distribution to drive improved brand health, higher AURs and enhance profitability, and we're seeing the return on our investments, and I'm particularly proud of this proof point. Over the past 8 quarters, the LEED brand has delivered significant gross margin expansion, a great testament to our organization's TSR mindset. And as you know, this provides the oxygen in our P and L to reinvest back into the brand. As we think about our investments in innovation, we launched our global sustainability platform for a world that works and partnered with H and M on an incredibly successful global collaboration grounded in our shared sustainability goals that allowed us to reach new and younger consumers, in many cases for the first time.
We also have extended innovation across categories, including Body Optics, MVP, as well as Jade Fusion in our international markets. We now have the opportunity under Kontoor to leverage regional innovation platforms globally and importantly at scale. And we've accelerated our investments in demand creation with a key eye on the consumer, leading into digital and social, while investing in traditional media, but in untraditional ways. And what really excites me is the level of influencers, celebrities and global brands that are interested in global collaborations, we think this is an amazing indication of our brand's evolutionary path. You will see throughout this presentation how this organic brand heat is taking form.
As we shift from stabilization in Horizon 1 to Horizon 2, we will further amplify our new global brand positioning, Style Crafted With Purpose, to drive long term sustainable growth across channels, categories and geographies. Now that we've taken action with respect to quality of sales, we are well positioned to drive growth in our core U. S. Wholesale business. Let me be clear, we believe Lee is significantly underpenetrated today and we have opportunities to propel growth in our largest market through investments in elevated design, product innovation and demand creation.
These investments are giving Lee permission to enter new points of where Lee has not historically played. These very investments also afford increasing permission for the Lee brand to play in elevated wholesale distribution channels such as Premium Specialty, something we actually have an incredible amount of experience in given our premium brand positioning in international markets and can now leverage domestically as we reposition the brand. And as you would expect, this channel diversification also leans heavily into our digital platforms, where we seek to transform our own.com to an accretive brand platform and purveyor of our Pinnacle products. This digital focus allows us to develop a direct connection with our consumers, a powerful component of Lee's repositioning strategy. From a geographic perspective, while the Lee brand enjoys a leading share in China today, we still have significant runway for meaningful margin accretive growth.
We will increase our footprint beyond Tier 1 and 2 cities and we'll be opening our e commerce presence to new diversified e commerce platforms. And finally, we will look to extend the Lee brand into new categories with the opportunity to mash up categories and create new usage occasions. Athleisure is a great example of this, the combination of leisure and athletic performance. With the shift to flexible work, we see a new more modern business casualization and casualization in general, and this pivot creates a significant opportunity for Lee, mashing Lee's legendary comfort and fit and uncompromising style as consumers transition back to society from the stay at home sweats, thus creating an incremental new category, we call it work leisure. It's your off duty wardrobe combined with elevated fabrics and sophisticated designs, engineered with Lee's legendary fit and comfort, we are ready to answer what's next.
Lee is style crafted with purpose. Let me share with you how we bring this to life.
What gets you out of bed in the morning? What's your purpose? For all of our employees around the world at Lee, it's to continue the tradition of building legendary products that inspire legendary people. Meet the next generation of Lee where Style crafted with purpose meets culture and every day is a new opportunity to build, create and amaze our consumers. They say luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.
Well, we've been preparing for this moment all our lives. We've got a strong feeling about the future. It's our time to stand up, stand out, stand together,
Let me close with this. We are extremely confident with the path the Lee brand is on. Our teams are committed to continuing to accelerate accretive top line growth. As we think about Lee's global trajectory, we expect low teens growth over the next 3 years. The brand is now positioned to drive share gain and incremental growth in the core U.
S. Wholesale market, in addition to TSR accretive growth in the form of geographic, channel and category expansion. Thank you again for your interest in Kontoor and I'm going to turn it back to Scott Baxter.
We will now take you through our growth catalyst, where we intend to focus our growth over our next few years. To kick off the section, Bill Lynch we'll discuss our lead U. S. Wholesale strategies. Bill?
Thank you, Scott. Today, Jenny and I will talk to you about our first growth catalyst for Kontoor, accelerating the core U. S. Wholesale business. Let me start with Lee.
I'm thrilled to have the opportunity to discuss our Lee brand developments within our U. S. Wholesale business. I will take you through the following key areas. 1, how we've taken decisive brand accretive actions over the last few years to set the foundation for healthier long term growth.
2, how we've implemented strategic initiatives to grow share within our existing points of distribution and 3, how we are driving new business development, including progress to date, as well as incremental opportunities ahead. During Horizon 1, the Lee brand has been acutely focused on repositioning the business and establishing the foundation for sustained profitable growth. Since becoming an independent company, we relocated Lee's headquarters from Kansas City to North Carolina. And this wasn't just a physical relocation, but a catalyst to transform an operational mindset, one hyper focused on quality of sales. Given Lee's historical exposure to more challenge points of distribution within the U.
S, this was a significant change from how the business was traditionally run. Investments in demand creation are a bit easier to conceptualize, but investments in quality of sales are a bit harder as the ROI has a longer tail, but now under Kontoor, we know this was the exact right investment required for the Lee brand. We implemented a disciplined segmentation strategy as the foundation for diversifying our distribution. This disciplined focus on profitability and brand health proved to be a valuable asset as the COVID pandemic developed. In the U.
S, Lee has delivered our 8th straight quarter of gross margin expansion. This improvement is a testament to the team's new mindset and approach to the business. And as we pivot from horizon 1 to horizon 2, we are focused on brand health and long term TSR accretive growth. And we expect to deliver against these goals through share gains in existing channels augmented by new business development. Let's start with how we intend to take share.
We are expanding our footprint with best in class retail partners across both male and female categories, leveraging premium international brand positioning and innovation platforms to elevate our domestic offering. As a great proof point for 2021, we have added a significant amount of doors across multiple tiers of distribution. Of equal importance is to drive conversion. As we expand margins and increase revenue, we are creating the oxygen in our P and L and we are investing in the Lee brand at higher levels than ever before. You are already starting to and will see us accelerate through our innovation platforms, collaborations and full funnel demand creation from consumer acquisition to conversion.
Bridget will be taking you through this in a much more detailed view a bit later, so I don't want to steal her thunder. We are also laser focused on driving new business development. With our newly expanded footprint in Walmart to our new premium points of distribution, we have the permission and significant runway for further door category expansion in both male and female products by leveraging segmented global innovation platforms and style right design that you will see more of from the team later today. I believe success breeds success and we have our foot on the gas pedal with our new business development efforts gaining momentum as brand health and market shares improve. We have also doubled down on our investments in digital.
Since the spin, our digital wholesale business has significantly accelerated with our key domestic partners such as Amazon, walmart.comandkoles.com, we have and will continue to disproportionately invest to drive revenue gains through 2023. And more importantly, connect with our consumer in a relevant way where and when they shop. In summary, this is a brand that has needed investment in the past and with our focus on quality of sales and brand health in Horizon 1, Lee is now positioned for margin accretive growth through 2023. Now let's turn to how the Wrangler brand will accelerate the wholesale core. Jenny?
Thank you, Bill. I'm thrilled to have the opportunity to share our core U. S. Wholesale strategy for the Wrangler brand with you today. Based on long standing relationships with best in class retail partners, Wrangler has an advantaged core U.
S. Wholesale foundation off which to build. First, this wholesale business has a clear product architecture that allows us to span across both retail channels and price points. 2nd, we focus our wholesale business on winning with the winners and leveraging key accounts to maximize success. Thirdly, we have a unique positioning within the apparel landscape, which creates meaningful white space opportunities for growth and strong brand equity.
And lastly, the Wrangler U. S. Wholesale business is comprised of a diverse product portfolio centered around denim longs, but spanning many product categories. However, even with Wrangler's strong domestic core wholesale business we've built to date, we have great opportunity for continued growth. To further accelerate the wholesale core, Rango is focused on 4 key strategic enablers to drive top line growth.
1st, taking share in existing distribution 2nd, developing new business 3rd, category extensions And 4th, channel diversification. I'll click a bit deeper into each of these 4 enablers to explain how they will unlock domestic top line growth for the Wrangler brand. 1st, to accelerate the wholesale core, we must take share in existing distribution. This starts with investing in continuous innovation, which we've been doing from the brand start nearly 75 years ago. Innovations from performance in our outdoor line, all terrain gear, to durability and versatility of our new workwear program, to continued Sustainability from our rooted collection.
Wrangler is investing in technology platforms to help drive share in our U. S. Wholesale market. Next, to build upon our innovation strategy, we're investing in strong demand creation to help us acquire new customers, elevate our brand's presence in retail, drive our digital ecosystem and capture share in key lifestyles like Western. These demand creation activities are centered around high ROI investments that will help us take share and grow the brand with both new and existing consumers.
And finally, we will leverage our best in class supply chain and specifically our owned manufacturing to drive speed, scale and flexibility. Although these tactics are not new for the Wrangler brand, we are amplifying investments in these focus areas to grow share in existing distribution and build our core wholesale business. Wrangler is also focused on unlocking our 2nd strategic enabler, New business development. We must penetrate new channels with clear product strategies that deliver new business in the premium, specialty, sporting goods and club channels, for example. We are also focused on accelerating digital wholesale, which has shown great success as seen in our strong year over year increases.
To build upon this momentum, we are distorting investments in both digital marketing and digital asset development to fuel the fire. And lastly, our elevated design provides increasing permission to play in premium channels. For example, our exciting partnership with Georgia May Jagger has brought in new female consumers that drives brand heat and it cascades across points of distribution. All of these avenues of new business development help us further grow top line results while expanding the brand's footprint. That leads to the 3rd strategic enabler, which is category extensions.
The Wrangler brand has a tremendous opportunity to accelerate growth in categories where we're under penetrated and best complement our core Denim's bottom business. These categories include woven tops, tees and jackets, which are all areas of strength for the brand. In addition, we are focused on growing faster in new categories where the Rango brand has both the permission to play and the ability to reach new consumers. These categories include outdoor, highlighted by our ATG line, workwear, female and tees. Accelerating the wholesale core through category extensions helps us expand retail space, gain new consumers and build upon the lifestyle nature of the Wrangler brand.
A bit later today, we'll dive deeper into each of these new categories. And our final strategic enabler to accelerate this wholesale core is channel diversification. As discussed earlier, our investment in innovation, demand creation and supply chain will help us grow thoughtfully in our existing channels like Mass or Western, however, we believe our amplified investments in these key enablers will support outsized growth in new distribution like premium, specialty, sporting goods and digital. With all 4 strategic enablers working together, we expect to build upon Wrangler's wholesale core. And our results today are certainly proving that our focus investments and strategies are working.
According to NPD, the Wrangler brand is a market share national brand leader across men's denim, men's casual pants, men's woven shirts and men's casual shorts. And the brand is taking share in the U. S. Wholesale market as evident by the growing market share results in men's jeans and casual pants. I hope it is clear that the Wrangler brand has both momentum and opportunity.
We will continue to propel Wrangler forward and accelerate our wholesale core business as a key growth catalyst for Kontoor. To summarize across both Wrangler and Lee, within our largest core U. S. Wholesale business, we intend to not only defend our share, but also continue to invest behind critical enablers, such as design, innovation, demand creation and our world class supply chain to drive enhanced growth. We expect incremental opportunities in digital, wholesale, category expansion and channel diversification should augment this core.
While distorted growth in other areas such as international and owned digital should likely result in our U. S. Penetration to mix down over the next few years, we believe this diversification is a healthy dynamic as we mitigate concentration risk, while layering in growth within accretive channels. However, we want to be clear, we intend to grow our core U. S.
Wholesale with a high single digit to low double digit CAGR in 2021, followed by an anticipated low single digit CAGR in 2022 to 2023. Now to take you through how category growth will amplify our core positioning, Jimmy Schaeffer.
Hello, everyone. I'm excited to have the opportunity to speak to you about Kontoor's big category growth drivers as we enter into Horizon 2 and begin investing to unlock growth, there are 3 key areas where we see large untapped opportunities they represent significant incremental revenue upside, outdoor, workwear and T shirts. Let's dive in a little deeper to discuss the potential. Between these three categories, there is an approximate $145,000,000,000 in addressable market globally. We are gaining incremental share in the outdoor and workwear spaces, leveraging our value model with intense focus on creating competitive advantage by delivering exceptional products with our best in class supply chain.
And while we are relatively new entry into the T shirt space, it's hard not to recognize the potential opportunity given the size of the market and the direct adjacency of the category to our well developed denim and woven shirts businesses. Now, let's double click into the key drivers within each category starting with outdoor. This quick video provides a great have Wrangler All Terrain Gear or ATG's positioning and target consumer.
All terrain gear from Wrangler. Rugged durability, superior function, protection from the elements, worn by those who share our love of the outdoors. The urban athlete seeks any opportunity to be active and needs apparel that can take them from an afternoon hike to a night out with friends. The athleisureist finds connection and peace outdoors. They want to unplug and enjoy the moment in gear that offers comfort and functionality.
The aspirational core has adventure in their blood, even if it's the occasional weekend getaway. Rising to the challenge will consumer wants gear that can withstand the elements and still look great anywhere, that embodies the boundless spirit of the outdoors and the everyday adventure of life, gear that helps them be free and connect with themselves, each other and this great land right
We've pinpointed our consumer target and believe we have established a brand positioning and value equation that is a true white space in the market. And now with our target consumer in mind, we're going to invest to build brand awareness and further advance our ambitious growth plan. We also have some exciting new product extensions already beginning to flow into the market. One example is our ATG women's collection, which is launching in stores and online globally this year. This collection is built around her lifestyle with pieces that transition easily from any outdoor activity to a day around town.
Key item looks range from performance outdoor to athleisure, all built with our unwavering commitment to great fit and functional design. We are also bringing new categories to market via licensing relationships to aid in rounding out the lifestyle collection. In terms of distribution opportunities, there remains significant runway for ATG to extend distribution across domestic outdoor and sports specialty retail. As evidenced by our recent launch and expansion at Shields in the U. S, we continue to believe our product quality and value equation is well suited to capture new business within this channel.
We have also seen strong demand for our outdoor products in a number of global markets. We are just beginning to unlock the potential of ATG in Europe, Asia and South America, in 2022 via a combination of own distribution and licensing relationships, we plan to have ATG distribution in 5 out of the 7 continents. Our growth will also be driven by placing an intentional focus on consumer driven innovation around key wear occasions in the category, we are really excited to share with you today a new outdoor collection designed specifically for the rapidly growing fishing segment, WranglerAngler. This collection will launch next year and demonstrates how our design teams are delivering against wear occasion based consumer needs that differentiate our products from the competitive set. Given the dramatic growth in the number of consumers taking up recreational fishing, in combination with our functional design and accessible price points, we plan to be the go to apparel choice for fishing gear for men and women.
We look forward to sharing more on the Wrangler Angler launch with you in the coming months. Now let's transition to workwear and discuss the key elements of our strategic growth plan in this category. Based on our industry tracking, recent growth in the workwear market has been outpacing the total apparel industry. The market performance combined with our already strong brand equity among consumers in this category make workwear an attractive target for investment that we believe will yield strong returns. First, we see a clear opportunity to extend into additional tiers of distribution with effective product segmentation.
Given the core DNA of the Lee brand, the sustainability platform for a world that works and the utility trends we see playing out in the fashion market, we are securing new opportunities for Lee to develop business in higher tiers of distribution, leveraging workwear looks like the ones found throughout Lee's 130 year history. Wrangler is also leveraging its heritage with the upcoming Casey Jones capsule collection, featuring reimagined fashion silhouettes inspired by workwear looks from the archives. In the specialty and farm channel, we continue to see strong organic growth opportunities for our Wrangler Rigs product line. These retail segments have shown resiliency throughout the pandemic and we believe we can continue to see strong returns in this tier of distribution as we launch new products for men and women. And finally, following our comments from our Q1 earnings call, we are excited to announce a significant new program with Wrangler Workwear.
This product line recently launched in a major mass market retailer with plans to expand in over 2,000 doors by year end, this is a great testament to how additional investments in category expansion are generating incremental business development opportunities for our brands. With recent disruptions in the industrial workwear market, we also see an opportunity to gain new business in this distribution channel. We believe compelling trends in the oil, gas and electrical markets could develop, supported by potential investments in domestic infrastructure, innovations like Wrangler flame resistant or FR industrial grade products give workers exceptional comfort and great casual looks while providing superior on the job protection. These products paired with large scale industrial contracts could create solid growth opportunities for Kontoor in the coming years. And just like with outdoor, innovation around the wear occasion is absolutely central to our design focus for Workwear as we strive to create products that differentiate themselves on the basis of functional performance, our workwear design team is also driving more efficient ways of working as we transition to digital product creation.
As part of this initiative, we are converting to a virtual design model, leveraging 3 d prototypes across a wide range of internal and external go to market interactions. These 3 d prototypes are elevating our marketing assets, enhancing our fits, facilitating virtual consumer interaction and product feedback and driving a more cost and time efficient go to market process. The final category to dive into is T shirts. As mentioned, it's easy to appreciate the opportunity represented by this category given its enormous size. And of course, what goes better with your favorite pair of jeans than your favorite T shirt, there are 3 key areas where we are attacking this opportunity logo tees, lifestyle teas and licensed plus collaboration content.
Given the rising levels of brand equity behind both Lee and Wrangler across ages and genders, now is the time to amplify investments in logo tees. We've seen this market continue to accelerate over the last several years and believe our new and loyal consumers are looking to become more visible brand ambassadors who prominently display our brands on their logoed apparel. We also recognize that younger consumers are actively seeking out responsible brands. We believe our sustainability platform and social initiatives our key proof points in establishing a new generation of brand advocates. 1 of the largest opportunities we see in this category is in lifestyle graphics.
T shirts provide a canvas for us to emotionally connect with consumers with graphic art that emphasize their unique personalities and showcase aspects of their self identity. Given the strong brand heritage of both the Wrangler and Lee brands, we believe there are clear pathways to create lifestyle graphics that will resonate with current loyalists and attract new consumers. And finally, with licensed content and collaborations, there are opportunities to extend our brand's relevance into new spaces and markets. As we have experienced with our recent Wrangler Bob Marley, Stranger Things and Rick and Morty collabs, as well as Lee's H and M, Coca Cola and A LIFE collaborations, graphic t shirts are the primary vehicle to quickly scale these partnerships. Additionally, licensed and partner affords us opportunities to sit at the center of cultural moments and movements, creating deeper bonds with our diverse consumer base around the globe and extending brand connections, investing in each of these content pillars creates assortment fluidity, shifting seamlessly across macro trends and maximizing consumer engagement, when combined, these elements create a powerful array of graphic options to pull new consumers into the franchise as well as drive stronger affinity for our brands with existing loyalists, I am thrilled to announce we have recently gained new U.
S. Wholesale distribution in graphic tees across both Lee and Wrangler for the second half of twenty twenty one, these initial programs will enable us to refine our model and gain valuable learning on consumer preferences as we continue to scale over the next few years. You will hear more about these new offerings in the coming quarters. As you can see, we are entering Horizon 2 with strong momentum. With continued targeted investment, we see outside returns in the top and bottom line across these product categories.
We expect to double our category revenue across outdoor work and over the next 3 years, adding approximately $200,000,000 of incremental business. This would take penetration of these categories from 9% currently to roughly 15% by 2023. I'd like to now turn it over to my colleagues in Asia, John and Christy, to take you through how we expect growth will manifest in the China region.
Thanks, Jimmy, as the opportunity in the region is significant. I'll first take you through our China strategic vision and then Christy will provide color on our go to market strategies and demand creation platform for the region. Before I get to our go forward strategies, I think it would be helpful to first level set you on our China business as well as to see how far we've come. Perhaps for those of you who have viewed our Lee business through a U. S.
Lens, you may be surprised to know but the brand maintains a premium lifestyle offering in the China market with elevated price points. As an example, we sell select jeans at over US230 dollars Kristi will walk you through more details, but we love how the LEED brand is positioned in the market. Despite this positioning, prior to becoming an independent company with Kontoor, there were definitely some increasing challenges. In short, and consistent to what you've heard from many of my colleagues already today, our China business lacked investment. I'd like to focus my comments on what we have been able to accomplish in China since becoming Contour.
Our digital team is led and staffed by e commerce experts. The 3rd party operator now functions seamlessly as an integral part of our operation. We work very closely with them monitoring performance and take their inputs to our strategy very seriously. We have built strong relationships with the management teams of our online platforms. We have relaunched X Line, strategy, we are launching new Pinnacle store formats to further elevate our brand image in the market.
We are also increasingly focused on franchise excellence. This means we work closely with our partners to optimize their business performance. Our own brick and mortar business is back into growth mode. So what does the return on these investments look like? As evidenced by our accelerating performance, we believe it's a solid ROI and we are only just getting started.
Looking at our quarterly comparable growth by quarter, by channel, you can see clearly pre spin all channels were consistently in decline or very low single digit growth. Quickly post spin growth came back in digital and more modestly in the brick and mortar channels. The COVID-nineteen pandemic obviously heavily impacted our brick and mortar channels from Q1 2020, although digital continued to grow. The declines in the brick and mortar channel began to level off in Q3 2020 and digital continued to increase significantly. By Q4 2020, all channels were again growing and Q1 has been very strong and not just versus 2020, but also 2019.
So having stabilized the business and returned all channels to robust How do we leverage this momentum? And where is our focus going forward? First, with respect to Lee, we are in a leading position in the market and we will look to further strengthen that. Specifically, amplifying investments in digital will remain a key part of our strategy, which we expect should support healthy sustained growth over time. We anticipate our owned full price brick and mortar channel should grow, supported by both comp growth and new door openings over time, particularly as we invest in extending our reach beyond Tier 1 and 2 cities into Tier 3 and 4 markets.
With respect to our wholesale business, we continue to focus on partnering with best in class retailers that are healthy and ready to expand again. Turning to Wrangler. As you all know, we are in the midst of just introducing the Wrangler brand to China. We couldn't be more excited about tremendous opportunity to bring the Wrangler brand to life for the China consumer. We executed a very successful soft launch in December 2020, we have a digital first go to market strategy and we are really encouraged as results have exceeded our expectations are nearly all metrics.
Really important to note is how we are able to leverage our 2 decades of experience, learnings and infrastructure through operating Lee in the China market, allowing us to most effectively deliver Wrangler long term success in that market. All early signs provide great proof points that we have a winning formula to date. But as you've heard from our leaders on prior earnings calls, we will continue to take a measured approach to scaling Wrangler in the region. In 2021, we intend to establish a healthy foundation for long term success. But as you'll see a bit later in our 3 year plan, we do expect investments to promote a positive build in 2022 with greater opportunities to scale and accelerate in 2023.
Lastly, but certainly not least, one of these critical investments in support of our growth plans is demand creation. On this subject, I will now hand over to our Marketing and Product leader, Christy Kilmartin.
As John discussed, today in China, Lee is positioned as a premium denim based lifestyle and streetwear brand offering full head to toe solutions for style savvy youth. A few highlights for those who are not familiar with Lee in China. Our medium price point for jeans lands at the equivalent of US150 dollars and tops out around 230. Our premium retail footprint of around 6 70 doors allows us to control the brand proposition all the way to the final consumer. And we're growing fast.
Using online data as a barometer, we're substantially outperforming our competitor set over the past 24 months, Tmall has awarded us as a Jeanswear Category Captain, an honor bestowed upon the leading brand in their segment. We're a preferred partner of Via, China's live streaming shopping queen. Her live streams for Li often draw audiences above 20,000,000 viewers and direct hundreds of thousands of unique visitors to our Tmall site, validating our brand to new consumers and resulting in exceptional sales results. But China moves fast. Growing up in a hyper fast environment, the modern Chinese youth expect to have their needs met when and how they want it.
They're increasingly sophisticated, they're worldly and confident to rock their own style. They're demanding with an acute sense of value and a very strong thirst for what's next. Today, there's no shortage of brands working hard to win the Chinese consumer and increasingly, they're local brands. 10 years ago, local brands were the lesser alternative to Western brands, but no longer. They know the consumer, they're fast and they're great value for money.
Formidable, yes. Insurmountable, no. As an international brand, Lee is best placed to compete. If you took a blank sheet of paper and you design the model to compete most effectively, it ended up with something that looks like what we have in the local market already. Our geolocal strategy is an integrated 6 point plan that's driving our growth today and sets us up for the future.
Our product and marketing insights and execution are driven in China for China. Our product is inspired by the way young Chinese live their lives. Localizing the global Stand Tall marketing campaign with A List celebrity Eddie has delivered 340,000,000 views to date, put 6,600,000 unique visitors into our Tmall store and added almost 250,000 fans that we can speak to directly. Our hyperfast product creation calendars allow us to read and react on the same terms as the local brands, even faster in the case of the Express program, which gives us the ability to read and react or to replenish winners within 19 days for basic tees and sweatshirts. Our ability to address innovation and elevated styling demands from the discerning Chinese consumer it's a strong competitive advantage that keeps our AURs higher than our key competitors.
A great example of this is our cooling platform where we've built a good, better, best product and technology architecture, allowing our retail staff to engage consumers in benefits led conversations and upselling to higher price points. Celebrities drive brand aspiration as they do in the West. However, they play another important role in China in helping build trust that the brand is the genuine article, a little like Twitter's blue tick of authenticity. We invest in A list celebrities and top level influencers to drive premium positioning and remain salient with consumers. We work with the world's biggest brands and IP partners to continually put new consumers into the top of the funnel.
With powerful stories told across all channels, we see strong uplift in sell through and conversion rates. Driven by the rising middle class, China's expanding mall footprint is full of optimistic consumers willing to spend on the right propositions. Today, we have more than 6 70 premium doors in the best locations with a plan that approaches 1,000 doors by 2023. To do that, here's a sneak peek at a new store concept that elevates our point of sale even further. Turning now to Wrangler.
China is the quintessential whole new rodeo. And while there aren't many cowboys in China these days, there's a whole lot of cowboy cool. Wrangler's DNA of courage translates strongly, whether you're riding rough stock in Vegas or motorbikes in Nanjing, that courage you need to summon when it's go time is universal. It's the red thread that pulls the brand together across the world. And here's how the world's first by staying laser focused on the important Chinese tastemakers, the right influences, the right media and the right events, we will unleash Wrangler's heritage to a whole new audience.
To that end, we launched at Intersect, a new youth event that sits at the intersection of fashion and culture with a dazzling and heroic brand experience booth. At the same time, we launched online with Tmall with high energy imagery, models and great design and we leveraged our relationship with Via to start live streaming and consumers are voting with their wallets. In the 2 events to date, we've sold 5,000 jackets and 8,000 logo tees in a matter of seconds. We invested heavily in a top tier seeding program to put the W on the right celebrities and influencers, creating huge buzz with their followers and creating new fans of Wrangler. As we seem ahead, we're committed to building strong brand equity through heavy media support, ongoing top celebrity and influencer seating and a regular live streaming schedule.
In addition, we'll open our 1st D2C stores in top locations with a brand new youth retail store concept. It's early days with Wrangler, but we're excited by consumers' responses and we remain very confident that we'll deliver on the steep growth curve we've set for ourselves. And John will now take you through these ambitious multiyear targets for our China business.
Let's take a look at our outlook for China over the next 3 years. We expect to deliver a CAGR of 25%. This will mean doubling our revenue versus 2020 and approaching 1,000 brick and mortar doors. In terms of our overall share of business within Contour, we will be at 10%. All of this will be gross margin accretive to Contour.
Over the last 2 years, since we've become a standalone organization, we have stabilized the business and returned to profitable growth through a combination of operational improvements and brand investments, the next chapter of Kontoor in China will see us build upon to deliver significant sustainable growth on both top and bottom lines. Let me now send it to Chris Reid, who will take you through
Today, I'm excited to talk with you about the digital evolution at Kontoor and how digital is and will be a critical component of our catalyzing growth strategy, I'm going to discuss the following key points. First, the evolution of consumer needs and expectations that we see occurring in the marketplace. 2nd, the opportunities going forward to enhance the branded digital shopping experience and own the consumer relationship. 3rd, solid proof points that our investments are yielding strong early results. And 4th, how we intend to drive more profitable growth for Kontoor.
Let's take a look at the current landscape. The digital evolution already moving at an accelerated rate in recent years has seen a step function change by the pandemic, and that's meant increases in new consumer adoption of digital channels, increases in social engagement, mobile commerce and interactive content consumption. The consumer today is more knowledgeable, demanding, empowered, collaborative, interactive and mobile than ever before. As I'll discuss today, we're investing in this opportunity to meet our consumers' needs and drive growth and profitability through digital engagement, and we're taking a holistic approach. The consumer shopping journey takes place in a broad and dynamic ecosystem across content, search, shopping and social media, each part of the ecosystem is an important contributor to our So as we invest in digital channels and capabilities, we look across the ecosystem and how each touch point can drive improved results across channels.
In our owned e commerce channel, we believe we can deliver the pinnacle expression of our brands, deeply engage consumers in our brand experience, own that relationship and build brand loyalty and advocacy that benefits all of our channels, including wholesale and partner retail. So with a particular focus on owned digital, in order to acquire new consumers, build brand loyalty and drive even better profitability, we're investing in our digital vision, which is to maximize consumer spend in our e commerce ecosystem by creating brand building, value adding digital experiences, so more people love to engage with our brands and buy our products. Now, we believe the key to success is taking a consumer centric approach with data driven decisioning, agile responsiveness, so we can best capitalize on emerging opportunities in the market and deliver a seamless personalized shopping experience that makes it easy and frictionless to do business with us, deepens the brand experience and brings the consumer back with greater velocity and frequency, and we have a lot of opportunity. Looking at our penetration of owned e commerce to total Kontoor revenue. In 2020, we made significant progress on growing our global owned e commerce penetration to the total business, up 200 basis points from 2019 to 5% in 2020.
But if you look at our peer benchmark, which includes other denim and apparel brands in our space at over 20% penetration, you can see that we remain highly under indexed. While we only show global penetration, I did want to provide some regional color on our digital platforms. In Asia Pacific, which has certainly benefited the Lee brand digital penetration, we're well on our way with our Tmall business and live streaming events, but we continue to see significant growth ahead as we further drive our premium position in that marketplace. In North America and Europe, we have opportunity to increase penetration and profitability, and that's exactly what we're aiming for through investments and our digital roadmap, let's take a look at the type of investments we're making. We made strong progress over the back half of twenty twenty in the Q1 of 2021, and it shows in our results and momentum, but we're just getting started.
Let me share with you where we are today and where we're heading in digital commerce as we pivot to Horizon 2. 1st, Foundational investments. Horizon 1 has been about capabilities enablement, quality of sales and rapid improvement of the path to purchase. We moved to our new market leading e commerce platform Salesforce Commerce Cloud. We invested in digital talent to build out our team.
We fortified e commerce performance marketing and demand generation capabilities. And really important, we've implemented site enhancements to improve the path to purchase and improve the quality of our content, while laying the groundwork for improved data and analytics. Our Horizon 2 investments are about delivering data driven, loyalty building, pinnacle brand experiences to our consumers, we're investing in personalization of shopping, social commerce, targeted CRM and loyalty, further enhancements in delivering a more elevated platform with reduce friction across the digital ecosystem, ensure our consumer can shop when, where and how they prefer. And lastly, advanced analytics and insights as well as augmented and virtual reality branded experiences will be upcoming areas of development on our path to digital excellence, as we continue to invest, we're shifting our branded consumer engagement from transactional to experiential. Let me share a few examples.
We're investing in delivering improved consumer led platforms and recent efforts across our sites create a brand enhancing experience for the consumer that goes beyond price promotion and ease of shopping. Community and sustainability campaigns such as our Rooted campaign are one example. Another is enhanced delivery of product launches and reissues with improved editorial and point of view. And also collaborations with popular shows such as Rick and Morty that tie into our brands and extend our reach to new consumers. We're also leveraging social media and driving a seamless interconnected shopping experience across channels.
For example, from social site, here you can see our Georgia May Jagger campaign for our heritage collection, driving from social to our site with a unified experience it keeps the consumer engaged all the way from initial point of inspiration through to point of purchase. And we're also inviting user generated content and influencers as content creators to further extend our reach to new consumers and to amplify our brand experience with authenticity. We believe this organic content and the integration of this organic content into our commerce path further drives brand enhancing growth. So how does all this translate? Our investments in digital are working, as you've seen in our sequential improvements in growth last year and into 2021, further driving our penetration of digital sales in the business.
But we're early in the game, and we have so much opportunity ahead of us, looking forward through 2023, we have a goal to double penetration from 5% to 10% of sales and deliver a 40% CAGR while delivering gross margin accretive system. As we've discussed, we expect that our amplified investments should support this accelerating growth. To close, digital is a key strategic focus and a significant accretive growth opportunity for Kontoor, we are seeing solid returns on our investment in digital already, but we'll continue to amplify our investments to distort future growth. Thank you for your attention today. And next we'll hear again from our CEO, Scott Baxter.
So you've just seen where we expect to grow. Now our teams will walk you through how we intend to grow with investment in TSR FOLCERING Growth Innovations.
Thank you, Scott, and thank you all for joining us today. My Wrangler partner Vivian and I will take you through our 1st growth enabler, product and design, because we all know in this industry, Gains and ends with incredible product. Welcome to the new Lee. We have been on a journey and a lot of incredible change has happened since Contour has become its own independent company. I've been in the incredible position to help lead the global design team through a creative vision process that unifies the globe around 1 North Star, legends born here.
It's the foundation from which all of our products are crafted. We didn't set out to make history, but that's just what we did. From our iconic product to our famous fans, we bore the legends of yesterday and are designing for the legends of tomorrow. Pulling in technology of tomorrow, we leverage laser and revolutionary 3 d design tools to unlock creativity and drive innovation, amplifying the brand heat with pinnacle collaborations and absolute world class design, we clearly articulated how our North Star comes to life in our products through our shared filters and aesthetic characteristics, ensuring that each product we design with our brand elevating collaborations has the DNA of a lead legend. What is a lead legend?
It has timeless heritage, smart utility, rich character, crafted comfort and of course, incredible curated trend. I could easily talk about our legendary beautiful product for hours, but I think it's time to let the product do the talking. Take a look at what style Crafted with purpose looks like. How beautiful and incredible is that? So exciting.
We're on this incredible journey. We're happy you're with us. I'm going to pass this off to Viv, my partner in crime in Wrangler, so she can walk you through all the great things that are happening over there.
What you just saw here was Wrangler's 75 years flashing before your eyes, 75 years of historical relevance and magical moments. We honor our path while leaning into the future. For us at Wrangler, it all begins and ends with product. What I'm going to bring to you today is a little sneak peek of our design process and how some of our amazing product stories come to life, a design force needs a creative environment. We have the privilege to be in this creative space at Revolution Mills in North Carolina, which was opened originally in 18/98 as the 1st flannel mill in the South, this open collaborative environment enables us to bring to life product stories all rooted in our creative vision.
Now let me share with you how this creative force brings to life our biggest product platforms. The Wild West is our DNA. Our Western product is rooted in this core ethos, authenticity, durability, strength, all grounded in function. It is the premise of how we design and the heart and soul of the Wrangler product. We've established a mark in Western.
This is our cowboy cool story, which comes to life with amazing product, the spirit of the West defines our core and inspires our next generation of consumers, those who identify with the energy and the attitude of the West, but want more fashion in the clothes that they wear. Let me show you our latest modern product. Here I want to focus on how design comes to life from concept to consumer, starting with the design functions, the concentration on fabric, the attention to detail, our 7 unique icons, the fitting of every product on live models for feedback on fit and functionality to evaluating every lay down to ensure the wash and finish selection is its best. The authenticity of our Western heritage is a halo for the contemporary consumer who is not a literal cowboy or cowgirl, but aligns to what the brand stands for. Our rich archives provide a foundation for how our modern product stories come to life.
Our focus, of course, is denim, but we are more than denim. Wrangler was born for the Blue Bell overall company. In our archives, we unleashed the incredible workwear called Casey Jones, which we brought to life with a contemporary modern take, drawing from this rich heritage. This is one way that we will drive this opportunity, focusing on cargoes and utility worker styles, whether they be functional or on the pulse of trend. The wide open spaces of the west inspired the belief here at Wrangler that we are all greater outdoors.
So let me share with you Wrangler ATG. The product name All Terrain Gear speaks to the engineering to deliver comfort, versatility and purpose. Here we focus on choices of desirable fabrics and color to create beautiful product. Let me share with you the new product from 3 different categories addressing growth opportunities in the outdoor space. 1st is what I believe to be the most comfortable pant in the world, our new forwards pant, utilizing 4 way dimensional stretch fabric.
2nd is our WranglerAngler for both male and female, designed to be both highly functional and fashionable, this innovation in fabric and fits fills the space in the market that is a natural extension for our traditional consumer, but always attractive to a newer, younger consumer looking to play with trend in a price white Right. Lastly, our new female ATG line designed to go from yoga studio to the great outdoors. Here I'd like to share with you the capsule collection developed for our launch in China. Our specific efforts to win in China started with a capsule collection designed for the youth of the market. The design intention is focused to excite, delight and capture this consumer.
This is where the Wrangler Wow product comes to life satisfying the consumer who demands leading trends. Lastly, because it all starts and end with product, I should let the product speak for itself. Now I want to introduce Jeff Fry, who leads our global product development,
Thank you, Bith. Product is the foundation of our ESG goals and why we innovate. Today I'd like to walk you through 4 strategic areas within our innovation platform. 1st, we will discuss how Kontoor defines innovation and sustainability. Next, I want to explain our product innovation platforms currently in market, specifically outlining their materials, functionality and performance.
3rd, we will review Kontoor's exploration of future disruptive innovation technologies. Lastly, I'll review how we believe advances in product development distinguish Kontoor from our competition. At Kontoor, innovation is harnessing science and technology to influence buying decisions, detect patterns and predict trends, innovation spans both technologies and advanced manufacturing capabilities. We believe, done correctly, this work drives category extensions, provides our consumers with new products and elevates brand equity. Starting with sustainability, we define sustainability as the dynamic process of continual improvement.
We focus on our people, our products and our planet. We believe if you can't measure it, you can't manage it. And therefore, we are hyper focused on understanding and improving our baseline. As both a manufacturer and retailer, Kontoor uniquely understands the beginning to end impact of our products. Our goal is to sustainably impact all styles in our portfolio, through extensive research of apparel lifecycle analysis, we believe that we understand the factors which have the greatest influence on product sustainability.
With our bias for action, last year we announced our first global sustainability goals focused specifically on those factors. These ambitious goals address the environmental and social impact of our operations, supply chain and people. We plan to establish a science based target for carbon emission and plan to save 10,000,000,000 liters of water by 2025, we strive to power our operations with renewable energy. We're also working towards our goal of sourcing 100 percent sustainable raw materials and using only preferred chemistry, we believe achieving these goals should help Contour on its path to becoming a carbon neutral company, improving the environment while simultaneously supporting more profitable growth over time. Kontoor Innovation and Sustainability has been working for years to conserve water throughout the denim supply chain and to keep garments out of landfills, we are also innovating to use natural materials to make durable yet soft products.
We believe that innovation is the desire to transform how we dye our fabrics has led to industry leading water saving. Our IndieGood program employs technology that eliminates 90% of fresh water requirement compared with conventional dyeing. Innovative technology like foam dyeing and advanced water recovery systems make that possible. Contour's attention to circular philosophy keeps garments out of landfills. One such process is Infinna, which has the possibility of infinitely regenerating garments, whereas traditional technology can only recycle garments a limited number of times, while cotton remains a key raw material, our team is pioneering with alternative natural substances that can be blended with and spun into yarn, one exciting example is hemp.
This super sustainable fiber blends beautifully with cotton and increases strength, Color retention and garment durability. In collaboration with Panda Biotech, we are scaling the United States production of cottonized hemp. We believe that this partnership can position us to rapidly respond to the growing demand for high quality, environmentally friendly apparel. A recent breakthrough broadens the potential of K Pop, a silky fiber harvested from tropical trees without having to cut down the trees. Yarn spun with cotton and kapot blended fibers can provide increased water resistance and heat regulation.
For decades, our industry has depended upon synthetic fibers to deliver the stretch and comfort that consumers enjoy. Kontoor is exploring how to replace synthetic fibers and yarn with natural rubber that creates flex, recovery and wash durability. As it scales to mass production, we believe that rubber could usher in a new era of earth Friendly stretch. By embracing nature, Kontoor is working hard to demonstrate that innovation doesn't need to be artificial to make an impact. Over the past few years, and particularly during the pandemic, we believe consumers are searching for clothing that are both comfortable and stylish.
Our team has delivered multiple innovations that combine comfort and styling. Through research and development, we believe Kontoor brings ideal fit, all day comfort and flattering lines to our products. Consumers today demand their closed look and feel good, enabled by our focus on research and development, we believe that Kontoor delivers products that combine aesthetic, comfort and performance. Developed for our Asia market, denim refreshment is a process that infuses our yarn and natural jade particles to help keep our consumers cool and dry, demand for this award winning technology is growing globally, in our view, due to its ability to provide both comfort and flexibility. A new ink technology being explored by Kontoor can now be applied to apparel that targets the body's hotspots to rapidly cool the wear, streetwear and athleisure products have established the new base for comfort, stretch and recovery in the apparel industry.
Kontoor is aiming to enhance this baseline by developing next generation fabrics based on new knit innovations that provide two way stretch for casual products, embedding this application into durable workwear may be one of our next focus areas. We believe that new technologies allow us to meet consumers' needs for ideal fit, all day comfort and attractive lines, Body Optics is a recent development that uses design science to flatter the wearer's body. These flattering aesthetics are through nano laser shading, calibrated pocket placement and leg lengthening micro stitching, Contour's patent pending Smart Stretch Technology aims to end jeans' biggest problem, bagging and sagging. Treating garment zones with structuring finish provides high they want contouring and durable fit. Kontoor Innovation infuses fashion with technology in an effort to deliver our promise to inspire people to live with passion and confidence.
We believe today's consumer is technology focused, data driven and aware. Therefore, we have leveraged breakthrough scientific research that will allow us to provide functional led performance apparel that enhances the consumer lifestyle. As Jimmy Schaeffer shared range of durable, weather resistant garments for outdoor activities, our cutting edge research has produced new layer fabrics that provide warmth without bulk, puffer jackets are being insulated with biosynthesized corn based fibers and ATG Eco garments are created from recycled nylon. Envisioning the future of apparel requires a relentless pursuit of new ideas. Our or a single customer, we're exploring smart apparel, clothes that are linked to a phone or watch capable of changing shape and color at the press in a future where your apparel is strong enough to stop a bullet, but is exponentially lighter weight than any garment ever produced.
At Kontoor Innovation, we're doing more than imagining with our exploration of Graphene, a Nobel Prize winning wonder material that has the possibility to significantly to smart technology, Graphene truly is a super material and Kontoor Innovation is at the leading edge of exploring its powerful properties that could help revolutionize the apparel market in the future. We're working hard to make the impossible Innovation is not an independent pursuit. It requires collaboration, partnerships across the globe with suppliers, academics, inventors, designers and stakeholders provide the fuel drive our efforts to improve our products for our customers and for our planet every day. Our sustainability, innovation and product development teams have come together to create the development and manufacturing process of the future. This drives our product value proposition, building products that makes consumers look and feel good, while working to minimize the environmental impact.
Our North Carolina Innovation and Sustainability Research Lab is not only where we discover, it's where we scale and that's what's fueling our ability to redefine how we work in the future of our industry. Our designers are inspired by the breakthrough technologies, materials and new products developed here. Moreover, they are thrilled by our research and that aim to minimize our environmental impact, when the idea is ready to come to life, whatever the idea, we can make it happen often in a matter of hours, minutes from our Innovation and Sustainability Lab and our global headquarters is one of our 3 global development centers. Our designers and pattern makers work diligently creating in 3 d. This enables them to gain inspiration anywhere and everywhere.
Virtual design can also significantly reduce the environmental impact from the design ideation process. It minimizes the need for numerous trial and error physical samples. This gives us speed and a much lower carbon footprint. Our development centers are basically small scale versions of our factories with the ability to cut, sew and finish products to perfection with relatively minimal environmental impact, because of the connection to our factories, we don't just develop products here,
we develop processes and
systems that save time and resources. Processes and systems that save time and resources. For example, it was the engineering and technology developed here that enables us to assemble a pair of jeans in what we believe to be significantly less time than the average garment manufacturer. We have 3 product development centers, North Carolina, South China, Bangladesh. Our development centers are a microcosm of our larger to be some of the most advanced water saving technologies in the world like lasers and ozone.
Also they are equipped with advanced Waste water recycling technologies. After we create in 3 d, our designers develop the aesthetic of the product. Often in our That can involve a 2 week trip around the world, visiting factories, experimenting with chemistry, taking a lot of time, creating waste and carbon emissions, we use technology to do this work virtually. Within minutes, we can send virtual designs to our lasers to recreate actual production, bringing technology and science together with consumer insight, we create and discover processes and work to build more sustainable products. Moreover, we believe if you can't measure it, you can't manage it.
Therefore, we continue to enhance our focus on metrics and reporting to drive our improvement. Sustainability and innovation at Kontoor Next, Karen Smith, who leads our supply chain, we'll share how our team and process turn commercial ready development into quality apparel for our customers. As you can see at Kontoor, we do the right thing. From ideation to manufacturing, we use technology to enhance the quality, cost and speed combined with Contour's talented team, we believe our sustainable innovation drives unique value for all stakeholders.
Thanks, Jeff, and good afternoon, everyone. I'm excited to build on what Jeff just outlined and take you through why we believe our best in class global supply chain has been and will continue to be a distinct competitive advantage for Kontoor. I'm going to focus on 3 areas today, starting with what makes our owned manufacturing a competitive advantage, which we've talked a lot about since becoming an independent company. Next, how we're working with our source vendors to improve our service and agility. And finally, I'll talk a little more about the tools we're putting in place that will help enable us to drive productivity, bring great product to market faster and optimize our inventory.
So let's start with our balanced approach to manufacturing. During 2019, we produced about 160,000,000 garments with approximately 60% sourced goods and 40% internally made in the Western Hemisphere. Our differentiated supply chain model allows us to leverage lower cost sourced production for initial deliveries and manage size balancing, chase demand and replenish key programs with shorter closer to market lead times within our internal manufacturing has allowed us to better manage the demand volatility we've seen since the start of the pandemic and service our accounts and our consumers well through this challenging time. We also dual source key programs across hemispheres to enhance business continuity and that diversification has been critically important for us as COVID spread around the world and impacted global supply chains. Now let me dive a little deeper into the technology and innovation that amplifies our owned manufacturing competitive advantage.
Our advanced manufacturing processes and proprietary equipment allow us to support our business with speed, flexibility and margin enhancement. It starts as we connect the design digital design and development Jeff just spoke about to our advanced fabric utilization technology, which has reduced select processes in production from days to minutes and enables our asset light support model. We then step into our sewing facilities, which utilize proprietary technology platforms and our combination of progressive bundle and modular sewing lines. In the progressive bundle lines, we drive efficiency with our long run, higher volume programs and our modular lines support lower volume, higher make, higher margin products that represent the pinnacle expression of our brands. Our modular lines are also fast and flexible, result in fewer irregulars and have shorter lead times.
This is critical to support Read and React programs. As an example, our internal modular lines can produce and deliver denim jackets in under 3 weeks compared to up to 20 weeks out of Asia. We complete the product with state of the art washing and laser finishing technology. Our use of enzymes and ozone in our wash process has allowed us to significantly reduce our environmental impact. And speaking of water, we've greatly reduced our use of fresh water in our wash process.
Our Torium facility uses more than 90% recycled water and we're moving towards the greater use of secondary effluent that will bring our freshwater use close to 0. As you know from our sustainability goals, we plan to save 10,000,000,000 liters of water by 2025 and we're well on our way to achieving this goal. Lastly, we process millions of jeans using our state of the art laser finishing technology, which we've utilized for many years and continue to enhance over time. This equipment allows us to process a garment 40% faster while creating beautiful trend right product for our consumers without using harsh chemicals. So tying all that up, reduced processing times, better materials utilization, drive quality and speed to market for our business.
So moving over to our source manufacturing. The strategic consolidation of our vendor base continues to be a key element of our long term supply chain strategy. We expect to tighten our vendor base over the next few years as we work to build strong partnerships, reduce complexity and facilitate the transparency that is so important for all supply chains today. Also essential is sharing this experience and knowledge we have from our owned manufacturing with our vendors to help them gain efficiency, we collaborate and innovate and as appropriate we share this knowledge with our vendor base and that's helped us build strong partnerships. We also have a robust sourcing a responsible sourcing platform that focuses on 4 pillars of work: Worker rights and safety, product stewardship, environmental sustainability and worker and community development.
The last big advantage I'll talk about is our new global ERP and planning platform. We're in the early stages of what is a tremendous shift towards using data analytics to improve speed and agility within our supply chain. For the first time, Wrangler and Lee brands will be on one global ERP and planning platform using consolidated global data tools and processes, the benefits are numerous, but I'll 0 in on a couple of the biggest. In the past, our ERP platforms meant we had multiple regional style numbers for the same product. Now, we have a single global style number.
And as simple as that may sound, it's the unlock for making smarter, faster decisions and reducing the complexity in our supply chain. We have a targeted goal to reduce our global SKU profile by more than 20% and put more focus on SKU rationalization and productivity. Global Styles will also help us aggregate global demand signals more quickly, consolidate our production needs and increase the size of our production runs to reduce lead times. Lastly, we'll use predictive analytics to get closer to our consumer needs and trends, which will help us drive the best demand signal. So the end game here is better service and higher quality of inventory.
We've done an amazing job since becoming an independent company of putting strong fundamental processes in place to address aged, distressed and excess inventory. We successfully reduced our first quarter 21 inventory by $169,000,000 versus Q1 'nineteen and $139,000,000 versus Q1 'twenty. Using our new tools though, we can automate these processes and focus on the analytics making smarter, faster decisions to optimize our inventory and continue to drive cash flow for our business. To wrap up, we're transforming to a synchronized data driven global supply chain that can identify and quickly respond to customer and consumer demands and optimize our inventory, our advanced manufacturing and source partnerships allow us to build more agility and into our supply chain, continue to reduce our lead times, improve our speed to market and further our ESG initiatives. And one final comment.
I hope this sets stage for my colleague and talent leader, Jen Molinaro. I'd like to recognize what we consider the secret sauce inside our global supply chain and that is our people. We have almost 10,000 dedicated passionate supply chain associates around the world. From our consumer relations and customer service teams through our operations, manufacturing, sourcing, distribution and logistics experts, we are always focused on continuous improvement and great service. Our people are amazing and our success to date reflects how our teams across the globe live our purpose, mission and values.
Thank you, Karen, and I couldn't agree more. As an outcome of being focused on our common purpose, we are achieving results. And before I share more, I'd like to say thank you to all the employees that have gone beyond the day job to support our cultural efforts. Because even though I'm the one sharing this update, our talent progress has truly been a collective effort. And so for that, to my global Kontoor colleagues, my sincere thank you.
We know that purpose driven companies who truly embed purpose in every action aiming to leave an enduring impact on people's lives. Increasingly, candidates, consumers and all of our stakeholders are looking to engage with companies that help them achieve their purpose and goals, which is what Contour's purpose is all about. We are the common thread that inspires people to live with passion and confidence. At Kontoor, and with intention weave our purpose and values into everything that we do. Building on a foundation of trust with our stakeholders, we have reset both our business and our cultural strategy to meet the evolving challenges of today.
We aspire to build not just a high performance culture, but a growth culture. And this for us means a focus on both purpose and profit. It's about doing the right thing even when it's hard. It's about believing that when we act as one team focused on an ambitious goal that we consistently deliver. It's about embracing our differences and taking care of each other and our stakeholders.
As we believe by amplifying our purpose, mission and values, we will exceed our business outcomes. We tested that belief and came through an incredibly challenging year with amazing momentum. Authentic purpose driven companies on average produce higher market share gains and grow 3 times faster than their competitors. And as you've heard us discuss today, this is translated to market share gains across both brands at Kontoor. In October of 2020, we conducted a global engagement survey in which 87% of those who responded did so favorably to our engagement category, indicating that our employees are proud to work for Kontoor, plan to stay with us, would recommend our company to others and have a personal sense of accomplishment in their work, we outperformed industry benchmarks by 5 points on engagement and beat the benchmark across most of our other survey categories.
The engagement survey notably highlighted a few additional critical elements to our approach throughout the year. We discovered that the protocols and the new policies that we put into place to manage the pandemic made our employees feel safe and garnered trust as we put their health and well-being first. Our employees also noted the launch of our sustainability report in September of 2020, which established our long term goals and showcase our aspiration to be a leader in sustainability. And finally, the Survey indicated our employees commended our inclusion and diversity efforts to date and the launch of our IND strategy in August of 2020. As the call for social justice rose around the world, Kontoor acted quickly and decisively to lean in, to learn, to listen and to partner with our colleagues around the world.
And while we had been collaboratively working on our IND platform for the first half of twenty twenty, we paused and pivoted to adapt our strategy based on what we were hearing and learning from our employees last summer. So with global participation, we centered our strategy on 4 strategic pillars. And within each pillar, we have clearly articulated activations and goals. For workplace belonging, we activated a number of initiatives in 2020. Our engagement survey referenced prior is one of them.
We also expanded our reach and activations of our employee resource groups and we launched a number of learning initiatives intended on creating an environment in which all employees feel heard, valued and have the opportunity to reach their potential. In 20 21, we will launch a formal mentoring program with accountability at the senior levels to mentor diverse talent. And we intend to continue to build our skills and our capabilities, our awareness and our empathy and emphasize the criticality of belonging at Kontoor. The workplace diversity pillar is about improving our representation, but it is also about how we attract top talent to the organization. In 2021, we are implementing a new recruitment platform that will completely transform the way we engage with candidates and enable us to showcase our culture in new and different ways.
Within marketplace equity at the end of 2020, our brands dove into an IND study focused on our marketing efforts. And as you would expect, we found areas of strength and areas of opportunity. But with that clarity, we are committed to continue the diversification of our demand creation platforms for both the Lee and Wrangler brands as we extend our reach to more and more consumers. And while all of our strategic pillars are important, sustainability and accountability is where and how our commitment truly becomes embedded into how we operate. In 2020, we established both regional and global IND councils to govern and oversee our strategy and our progress.
This year, we embedded accountability through our performance management process by adding specific objectives and elevating competencies related to inclusion for all of our employees. Our strategy is only part of the equation. It takes each and every one of us to bring this strategy to life. So let's take a look at how that happens here at Kontoor.
A pair of Vans, jeans, a shirt, a jacket, Different threads to be made whole. More than a garment, it's our
In August of this year, we will reflect on our 1st full year of execution against our IND strategy, and we look forward to sharing more about those details and about our progress at that time. As you've heard throughout this presentation, as Kontoor transitions from horizon 1 to horizon 2, we are increasingly focused on establishing a growth culture across our organization. This involves an evolution of many tenants with that new growth mindset leading the way. It will be a transformative process centered on empowering strategic discipline in every decision we make. But what will not change is our commitment to taking care of each other each and every day.
With our employees' commitment, with clarity and conviction of our purpose driven strategy, we will continue to invest in areas that have been proven to lead to an inclusive growth culture and exceed our business outcomes. And although we cannot predict what the coming months or years will have in store for us, we are optimistic and prepared to face them together because we are Kontoor. If employees living our purpose are Kontoor's internal expression of our strategy, our demand creation leaders are working hard to bring purpose to life through our brand's global vision. With more on that over to Holli.
Thanks so much, Jen. I'm excited for the opportunity to speak with you today about demand creation for the Wrangler brand. Since we've become an independent company, our focus has been on elevation and amplification, elevation in design and global communications and amplification in the energy and ways in which we are connecting with consumers. For us at Wrangler, Elevation starts with a clear creative vision. Our creative vision has created a shared goal across the global organization.
It is truly our creative North Star. As you know, the brand has been under invested in. We are doubling down to magnify volume of the Wrangler brand and amplify our voice in the marketplace. Cowboys are the original American heroes. The Wrangler brand owns Cowboy Cool.
It's what sets us apart from the competition and gives us a unique creative point of view. We bring Cowboy Cool to life for today's rock stars, riders and real heroes. Cowboy Cool becomes the creative impetus for how we show up across the globe. It's an attitude and an ethos that's far bigger than any geography or gender and allows us to cross borders and lifestyles to resonate with many audiences around the globe. Cowboy means something much more than boots or a hat.
It's a set of values that guide how you show up to live life every day. At the heart of that value system is courage. We believe that Wrangler Jeans are made for life lived with courage, and it's the foundation for all of our recent global work. In 2019, we launched Wear With Abandon, where it was about the energy and anticipation and the moment before courage kicks in. This fall, our new global campaign celebrates the joy and reward of living a life filled with courage.
Evolution and amplification of how we come to market takes courage. We know we have to do things differently. This includes investment in the creation of our assets from our new photo studio to the creative partners we entrust to bring our campaigns to life, we are leaning in across the globe to elevate how we show up in the world. And the work is paying off driving strong engagement and bringing new younger consumers into the brand while fostering greater loyalty among the core. With regards to our media investments, we began shifting dollars out of lower returning traditional mediums 2 years ago.
Distorting investment in digital platforms, we we recognize the need to go where the consumer was naturally creating energy in the marketplace. We've seen incredible return from our social media, both paid and organic, bringing this discipline in house coupled with the additional investment in digital across owned and wholesale channels has transformed our ability to connect with consumers. Investment in media and our partnerships has allowed us to expand our focus to include a broader base of consumers, including female. In the first half of 'twenty one, we launched 2 female focused campaigns. In March, we launched our global female fit portfolio featuring Georgia May Jagger.
And in April, we launched ATG Female in both the U. S. And Europe. Our collaborations and partnerships have created a lot of buzz and excitement in the marketplace, partnerships like the one with Netflix's Stranger Things and our collaboration with Billabong set to launch in time for back to school have both wholesale customers and consumers thinking about the Wrangler brand in a new way. Let me bring this to life for you in a video that showcases just some of the things we've been doing since we became an independent company.
The last 2 years have really been about energy, creating it for the brand or tapping into the energy that's happening in culture, and we plan to keep the energy high as we roll right into 2022, if you know anything about Cowboys, you know they like to party. Next year is our 75th anniversary and we couldn't be more excited to party with all of you. I'd like to thank you so much for your time today. Please let me introduce Brigitte Stevens, Senior Marketing Director for the Lee brand.
Thanks, Holly. Lee hasn't just stood the test of time, we helped define it. Since its inception, the Lee brand has been at the heart of industrial revolutions and cultural revelations. And that momentum continues today as we reinforce our brand's positioning style crafted with purpose. Our legendary products are made for the legends who wear them.
Whether you wear your Leighs posing for the cover of In style, launching your next album or walking the red carpet, legendary looks good on you. And we will continue to fuel the brands with a keen eye on the consumer, meeting them where they are by leaning heavily into digital media and investing in traditional media in untraditional ways. Let's take a look at how this comes to life for our lead consumers. The magic of Lee is the adaptability of the brand to be expressed through regional lenses, driving local market relevancy and Lee's global momentum is undeniable. So the question was not how do we create a single interpretation of the brand, but rather how do we globally unify Lee while avoiding uniformity, building a brand that weaves together all regions with a common thread, stitched together by our values of unrelenting optimism, youthful energy and fearless confidence, leveraging our American roots to build global legends.
For some time, the Lee brand has been quiet, but that is all changing. And I'm here to tell you, we are about to get loud. Perhaps the most important investment you can make is in the stories you tell and it's been a while since we turned the page in our book and we've got a lot more to say. So we engaged Mark Seliger, the photographer who defined a generation with his legendary work at Rolling Stone to bring Lee's next chapter to life. I can't wait to show you what's next.
Well done, Holly and Richard. Welcome to the new Wrangler and the new Lee. I hope you are as excited as I am by the opportunities for our brands, growth catalysts and enablers that the team outlined today. Thank you so much for joining us. It's my privilege to summarize how we expect the combination of our accelerating fundamentals and increasing cash flow optionality coming together to support an enhanced TSR for Kontoor Brands.
Before we jump into where we are going, let's level set on where we are. Scott covered this slide at the beginning of the session, I won't go through the components again. However, I want to emphasize 3 points as we look to the future. 1st, our operating model has been resilient. In times of uncertainty, we believe consumers migrate to trusted, quality, value oriented brands like Wrangler and Lee.
We didn't envision a global pandemic at the spin, but we quickly pivoted to maximize our financial flexibility and demonstrate our resiliency. Second, we've delivered on our commitments, improving fundamentals and generating cash our horizon 1 capital allocation priorities. Our progress in paying down debt opens up additional future cash flow optionality, as I will outline shortly. Finally, we significantly exceeded our total shareholder return goals with an average 33% annual return during our 1st 2 years compared to our annual goal of 8% to 10%. We're pleased with our progress in Horizon 1, but believe we have significant opportunities still in front of us, as you heard throughout today.
And as we pivot to Horizon 2, we believe Kontoor's agility and focus on execution will continue to drive strong results. Let's take a look at a summary of our financial targets and discuss how we envision the cadence over the 3 year period. In 2023, we are targeting revenue of approximately $2,700,000,000 with a mid teen operating margin and EPS of $5 plus per share. Strengthening fundamentals are also expected to support robust cash generation. We will step through each of these components in more detail in the coming slides, but I'd like to provide a bit of shaping of our expected trajectory.
In our Q1 earnings release, we raised our outlook for 2021 and our revised figures are reflected here. As we think about 20222023, we would expect an acceleration over the time period as we execute against our catalyzing growth strategy. Looking at revenues, as we communicated when we raised guidance, we expect low teens growth over 2020 this year. We then anticipate a mid single digit CAGR over the remaining 2 years to reach approximately $2,700,000,000 in revenue in 2023. The 2021 growth rates are impacted by the COVID operating environment in 2020.
Accordingly, many have asked how our 2021 outlook compares to our 2019 results. So let me unpack the revenue a little more on the next slide. As a reminder, we made a number of proactive strategic decisions in 2020 to reduce our U. S. Outlet fleet by approximately 40 doors or roughly half the fleet, discontinue sales of non Kontoor branded products in our U.
S. Outlets and transition India from a direct to a licensed business model. As we have talked about, these were absolutely the right things to do for our business and our brands. Collectively, the cumulative impact of strategic exits represented approximately $200,000,000 in 2019 revenue. But also as the slide illustrates, we entered 2021 with great momentum.
And in fact, we expect current year revenue to be above 2019 levels, excluding the impact of these strategic exits. We have been and will continue to invest in our brands and capabilities to drive top line growth, we are confident and excited about the strategic growth catalysts the team outlined earlier today, and we believe they will drive the majority of our growth over the 2022 2023 horizon. It's important to note that these aren't new unproven initiatives. Our initial investments to date are producing early returns. For example, on our Q1 earnings call, we indicated our U.
S. Digital wholesale business increased 132% and our usowned.combusinessincreased70% versus the same period in 2019. In addition, our China business in the Q1 2021 increased 20% in constant currency versus the same period in 2019, we are now ready to accelerate. I won't go through all the numbers on this slide, but I do want to emphasize a few key takeaways. 1st, investments in the key enablers such as demand creation, innovation, technology and talent that you heard about earlier in the day are expected to fuel the growth.
2nd, distorting growth in under indexed accretive drivers like digital and international expansion is expected to expand margins, enable further investment and establish a virtuous cycle of growth. Finally, as a reminder, we are in the early stages of our journey. Accordingly, despite the significant progress we are projecting in our geographies, channels and categories over the next 3 years, we anticipate remaining under indexed in these structural growth areas with continued white space opportunities over the long term. We recently raised our gross margin outlook for 2021 and now expect a 230 basis points to 2 70 basis point improvement, up from the previous outlook of 150 basis points to 200 basis points. In fact, our Q1 2021 gross margin exceeded 46%, nearly a 300 basis point improvement from our previous highest margin quarter post spin and offers an early proof point of the opportunity.
Looking ahead, we expect the margin recapture from restructuring and quality of sales efforts to support the rebasing of our gross margin structure, importantly, the structural improvement we have seen over the past several quarters should continue. As we have discussed for some time, the structural benefits from mix, including distorted growth in underpenetrated areas like digital and international should drive incremental gross margin expansion above prior peak levels. And we see continued opportunity for proactive margin supporting initiatives such as the SKU rationalization Karen discussed earlier today. As we discussed on our most recent earnings call, we are not immune to macroeconomic factors, such as rising input costs, but we believe we are well positioned to mitigate headwinds given our company specific levers, including accretive mix in the digital and international, coupled with mixing up of AURs and select strategic pricing where appropriate. Following our significant gross margin expectations for 2021, we anticipate the 20222023 gross margin improvement to be modestly more weighted to 2023 as digital and international opportunities scale.
Since the spin, SG and A investments have largely been focused on elements including the ERP to drive efficiency and talent to set the stage for the growth enablers. We expect the combination of leverage from top line growth, gross margin expansion and SG and A efficiency gains with incremental identified opportunities arising during the pandemic to enable amplified strategic investments, while continuing to improve operating margins. In terms of strategic initiatives, we will continue to invest in our brands and capabilities, with a focus on TSR accretive areas such as demand creation, digital and international. Given our total shareholder return focus, all investment decisions will continue to be made based upon projected returns. As we have said from the beginning, gross margin expansion creates oxygen to reinvest into the business while improving operating margins, accordingly, we anticipate operating margins to grow to the 15 plus percent range by 2023, we anticipate our earnings per share growth to be north of 40% in 2021, with a mid teen TEGR over the remaining 2 years, earnings per share is expected to be $5 plus in 2023.
Delevering the balance sheet to de risk the model and improve our flexibility has been a significant focus in Horizon 1, particularly in light of the global pandemic. We have reduced net debt by 335,000,000 since the span and have made $575,000,000 in debt repayments over the past 4 quarters. Combined with improving EBITDA fundamentals, we finished the Q1 of 2021 with a net leverage ratio of approximately 1.7 times, we are targeting a net leverage ratio in the 1 to 2 times range on a long term basis and we anticipate repayments going forward, we'll moderate as we reach optimal levels. With an increasingly optimized capital structure, we hope this slide drives home how much we believe cash flow is instrumental in creating optionality for future TSR accretive actions. Cash generation remains a focal point for Kontoor and opens up significant flexibility as we move through growth plan, we expect approximately $1,000,000,000 of cumulative cash from operations over the 2021 to 2023 period.
We expect a strong cash generating nature of the business will position us to pursue a multi dimensional capital allocation strategy concurrently, similar to how we've been investing in strategic initiatives during Horizon 1, all while paying a superior dividend and aggressively delevering the balance sheet, even during a global pandemic. With strong cash generation, let's look at how our capital allocation and optionality has evolved. At the center of our graphic and core of our focus is funding our strategic initiatives. As you have seen since we've become an independent company, we are committed to making the necessary investments to fuel the long term health of our business and we will continue to do so. Accordingly, we will always look to fund our strategic initiatives first.
In Horizon 1, we were focused on foundational capital allocation priorities and those will remain key in sustaining the Contour investment thesis. And as we just discussed, paying down debt to increase our flexibility has been a clear focus in an area in which we have made substantial progress, paying a superior dividend has also been foundational to our investment thesis and remains an element of our targeted total shareholder return model. Of course, given the uncertainties of COVID around this time last year, our credit agreement amendment required the suspension of the dividend for the 2nd 3rd quarters of 2020, and we reinstated payment of quarterly dividends during the Q4 of 2020. We are committed to maintaining a superior dividend and I will outline shortly how this is envisioned as a key component of our TSR algorithm. As we pivot to Horizon 2, we have the ability to add powerful optionality to augment our organic foundational capital allocation elements.
One new option in the consideration set would be to introduce a share repurchase program, affording the opportunity to make strategic and opportunistic share buybacks depending on market conditions. Finally, we absolutely believe strategic M and A could be an attractive option to bolster our TSR model. Therefore, I wanted to provide some preliminary high level thoughts around criteria next. As we think about the option of future potential M and A activity, our screening will focus on the criteria outlined here. As you would expect, we would evaluate any potential targets for the impact on our near term and long term total shareholder return algorithm.
But to be clear, our approach would be consistent with our organizational discipline to focus on generating and maximizing sustainable TSR, we would expect to pursue growth oriented opportunities in our sector that are complementary to our core strategy and offer potential to expand in accretive channels and geographies, we would also look to targets that could leverage and or enhance our model and capabilities to realize full potential for Kontoor. Finally, fit is a critical element in the success of any acquisition in any potential target would need to be consistent with the Kontoor ethos. So, as we have outlined today, we anticipate fundamental improvement will drive an enhanced and evolving algorithm over the next 3 years that coupled with powerful cash flow optionality will support delivering on our targeted TSR of greater than 15%. We've always expected that our TSR algorithm would evolve and we anticipate it doing just that, with fundamentals driving a greater contribution going forward. This view is reflected in our new elevated targeted TSR model as well as within the components, with mid to high single digit margin expansion and mid single digit revenue growth fueling the fundamental acceleration over the next 3 years.
This organic fundamental improvement is expected to be augmented with a low to mid single digit dividend yield that affords a compelling organic mid teen targeted TSR prior to potential additional shareholder friendly actions from any share repurchase, M and A or multiple expansion opportunities, I'd like to conclude by summarizing our 2023 financial targets and thanking you for your time and interest in Kontoor Brands. As you have seen today, while we have made great progress over the last 2 years as an independent company, we are excited about the significant opportunities ahead in Horizon 2 with a pivot to fundamental growth, which coupled with an increasingly powerful cash flow optionality setup to support an evolving and elevated TSR algorithm that should yield meaningful returns for all KTB shareholders.
Thank you all so much for joining us today. We will now open it up to take your questions. Hi, everyone, and thanks again very much for joining us today. Before I kick it off to your questions that we've been taking over the last couple of hours, I do want to introduce our Kontoor management team, 1st in the center, we have CEO, Scott Baxter. To his right is Ruston Welton, our CFO continuing is Tom Waldron, Global Brand President of Wrangler and to my left is Chris Waldeck, Global Brand President of Lee.
A lot of questions, very much appreciate the interest. I do before we get into specific questions, Scott, I want to get your take on what you view is the biggest takeaway that you would like for folks to come away with from the day.
Well, a couple of things before. First, I'd like to thank everyone for joining us and taking time out of your busy schedules. It's really important to us that you really heard our story today and Heard it from all these terrific leaders. A couple of things. 1, don't know if you folks know this, but today is 2 years in one day from the time that we became a publicly traded company.
So the timing of our Investor Day today is really timely. So we're really appreciative of that. But I come away with it, I think, if you think about everything you heard today, this is not the same old Wrangler and Lee. We are a much different company. We've kind of finished horizon 1, we're gliding into horizon 2.
I see tremendous opportunities still in our core. I see big, big white space in categories, channel expansion, geography, and then I sit back and take tremendous pride when I looked at and spent all this time with our folks and we went through and did these presentations and see the leadership that they have shown and the tremendous amount of talent that now sits in this organization to go ahead and reach our objectives, you can't do it without people, but I think each and every one of you saw today the amount of talent that we now have at Kontoor Brands. And then I think if you think about our opportunities, you think about the enhanced capabilities that we're now bringing to the table and our powerful cash flow and the optionality that we now have as a company, that's a pretty powerful combination. So as I sit here today, Eric, a tremendous amount of pride in this organization.
And I think a great segue to that is a follow-up, I think, for both you, Scott, and Ruston. We've laid out quite a few areas of growth opportunities. How will we prioritize? Do we have the bandwidth, the resources, the infrastructure currently in place to deliver.
As I think about it and I get a top down view of the whole organization, we don't have to pick and choose very specific ones because we are in a position that we can do multiple things. I think each and every one of you saw it today, we've got a lot of talent here and they can do multiple things. And these are people that need big challenges to go ahead and get excited about their work. So we have a lot of things that we're doing. We have a lot of talent that can handle that.
But as I look back at all the opportunities we have, we can do multiple things. We're afforded that because of the optionality that we have as a company. The things that we've done in Horizon 1 to position this company to have options, the talent that we've brought in and the ability to now to go ahead and play in a really big global field and that feels really good from where we are and where we were 2 years ago to the day. Ruston? Thanks,
Scott. It's my pleasure to join you today and to build on Scott's comments. So from the time of this spend, we've talked consistently about how sequencing matters. And the first phase of that sequencing was really optimizing the foundation. You saw us take a number of actions to streamline the efficiency of the organization and to really set up a solid foundation upon which we can build.
Some great examples are from a technology side with a global ERP project that we've embarked upon. Certainly, you Saw today a lot of our new talent, as Scott mentioned, that we brought into the organization to build those capabilities and set that solid foundation upon which we can grow from. And so we're really excited. Obviously, we're a total shareholder return shop and every investment we look at, we run through that lens and make sure that the shareholder is in the best interest and in our minds as we're making those decisions, but like Scott, I feel really good about the foundation we've established upon which we can grow.
And this next question comes from Aaron Murphy with Piper Sandler. And this is for you, Tom. Can you please discuss the new Wrangler Workwear program? How should we think about this program currently versus the plan to build?
Yes, of course. Since then, we have been absolutely laser focused on new business development. And this Workwear program is a perfect example of how hard the team has been working to land new programs, we'll be in close to 2,000 doors in a key U. S. Retailer and it is a great Example of how we're using category extension to diversify the Wrangler brand beyond the core men's basic business bottoms.
That's great. And then the follow-up here is actually another category as we think about and that's that we're clearly going after the outdoor space, and more specifically, this question goes to our announcement today of the WranglerAngra line, and how we should expect this program to develop, what the distribution might
Yes, of course. We couldn't be more excited about this opportunity and the white space that the sports specialty the side of the business brings to us. We launched Wrangler ATG a few years back and it's been absolutely resonating with our core consumer and new consumers and then as we thought about what's the natural extension when we talk to our consumers, our consumers, our core consumers love fishing and it's the perfect match. And so as we think about bringing beautiful product to life that's innovative and sustainability with both WranglerAngler and ATG, we're really certain that we're going to capture a lot of share in the Sports Specialty side of the business.
And then, Chris, for got a few questions on this, just as we think about the Lee brand pivoting from what has been a period of stabilization to one of growth as we enter into Horizon 2, maybe just elaborate a bit of that process and what we see.
Yes. No, Eric, thanks. I'm really pleased with the The trajectory of the Lee brand, Horizon 1 was all about stabilizing, focusing in on quality of sales and really reinvesting back into our brand. And we feel like we have significant runway to expand as Tom talked about with a focus on new business development and as we pivot here into Horizon 2, drive growth, but drive growth, it's TSR accretive growth for the brand. And we feel like we have a lot of opportunity.
We're well to do that, and we're excited about the future for the Lee brand.
And then pivoting a little bit for Scott and Rustin. Discussion is out there a lot quite a bit these days as it relates to inflation, maybe just discuss the potential impacts we're seeing it.
Sure. As we think about the bigger and broader macro environment, for us, we think about what we can control. Great leaders, great companies control what they can and then they make a difference during difficult times. So if you think about Kontoor Brands right now and how I think about Kontoor Brands with all of our folks is that during this time, we're going to innovate, we're going to design, we're going to go ahead and create really special marketing programs, we're going to collaborate with others, we're going to do things that are game changers to go ahead and draw more consumers into our products and our businesses across the globe. We're going to go ahead and make changes.
We're going to make waves. We're going to do things that are going to make us proud and they're going to be game changers going forward. And I'll tell you, there's big opportunity with all the investments that we're making in the business and how we're investing behind these brands, in difficult times, consumers go to who they trust. And we've been here for a long time, over 200 years combined. And the consumer is coming to the Wrangler and the Lee brand because they trust our brands, we have tremendous value, we make great product and we have really good distribution, you've heard me talk quite a bit in the last couple of years about how our products are distributed and how I've thought and Chris and Tom have thought about a broader opportunity from a distribution standpoint that will only help us during this very difficult time, but we'll be just fine and we'll continue to innovate as we go forward.
Justin? Yes. Thanks, Scott. Scott touched upon sort of the commercial aspects how we
think about inflation, maybe I'll talk a little bit more about gross margin. You've heard me repeatedly say, we're certainly not immune to some of the macroeconomic factors that are out there, we've been actively monitoring and working to mitigate rising input costs. And we think we've got some very company specific items that allow us to better mitigate some of those costs. And so Scott touched upon a couple of those on the commercial side, certainly we remain under indexed in accretive channels and markets like digital and like China, and we're continuing to invest strongly there. You heard us talk today about really investing in innovation and developing that segmented product line to reach new points of distribution, which is allowing us to mix up from an AUR perspective.
And then finally, you've heard us we talk about quality of sales initiatives, the ERP Phase 2 cost saves and a SKU rationalization that Karen talked about today as well. So all of those help us mitigate some of the pressures. Just from a gross margin perspective, just to remind everybody, we expect 2021 gross margins to improve 230 basis points to 2.70 basis points relative to the adjusted gross margin in 2020. And then in 20222023, we said that we expected an average annual increase on gross margin of approximately 100 basis points. That will be a little bit modestly weighted towards 2023 as these investments in things like digital and international continue to scale.
Harry?
Yes. All
right. This one comes from Adrian Yang at Barclays. This is for Chris. With Lee's product specifically designed for the Chinese market, are there learnings from the premium positioning in the region that can be translated to new launches in other geographies or the elevation of the brand in North America. Yes.
Thanks, Lee has enjoyed for
the last 25 years premium positioning in China, and that's really all been based on innovation and really being close to our consumer. Think John and Christy did a nice job today of stepping you through our strategy and how we're investing in that behind digital, behind influencers and really driving that demand creation. And as Ruston said, we feel like we're significantly under indexed still in China for the Lee brand and have a lot of runway to go and we're starting to gain that momentum, but more importantly, just as we think about innovation and being able to bring those to Europe and to the U. S. And to our other markets, in addition to our premium positioning, some of the things you saw that Christy showed you around our retail stores and what those look like, really fantastic and we're excited about that.
The other thing too is just that deep knowledge of the consumer is going to help us out with the Wrangler brand. And as we launch that and as we invest behind that brand, it's really going to help us. And so, Tom, I don't know if you want to move up.
Yes. No, totally. We are So excited about the launch of the Wrangler brand in China. As you know, we took a very measured approach. It was very digital first, but in our future as we move forward, there will be a brick and mortar component of this.
But what I'm most excited about is how the brand is resonating with consumers both from a product in a marketing standpoint and the amount of confidence that I have in that team over there and the work that they've done with the Lee brand over the years, it's a home run for Wrangler. We are really excited about that. And we know we're going to be a big part of this big growth In our future, 25 percent CAGR over the next 3 years, and we know Rango is going to be a big part of that.
Maybe taking it a little bit more broadly, this question comes from Jay Sole at UBS. We talk a lot about investments in innovation, in talent, in infrastructure, I think for Scott and Rustin, just as we think about the magnitude of demand creation increases, how should we think about the EPS flow through versus an accelerated rate of that demand creation spend?
Yes. So I'll kick it off and send it over to Ruston. But as I think about our demand creation, if everyone just kind of follows us along in our journey, these brands were underinvested in for such a long period of time that the consumer is waiting for us to do something, waiting for us to bring energy and excitement behind these brands, and we've done that, and we're continuing to do that. I think the most important thing, the most important thing is the say and the do. So we bring that demand creation, we bring that energy and excitement and you see the acceleration of the brands.
You see the consumers reacting right away. You saw today throughout our presentation all the great programs that are happening right now, globally, I would say, in our business to go ahead and open up these channels of opportunity that we see that are very, very early stages. Ruston can talk a little bit more about some of the financial parts of that demand creation.
Yes. Thanks, Scott. So we've talked about sequencing matters really from the beginning, and this is a great example, and I just had a chance to step back and talk a little bit about how we're viewing this. Right after the spin, we really got after expanding our margins and that's really critical for our model. That provides the oxygen into the P and L that allows us to earn our way to investing behind these brands.
And really while improving operating margins, which is really critical, as we think about demand creation, we've put a lot of foundational pieces in place since the spin. You saw that in talent and capabilities today. And as Scott really kicked off with, this is a new global brand positioning for Wrangler and a new global brand positioning for Lee. And hopefully you really took that away from the session today, we see demand creation continuing to be a key investment area for us moving forward. I won't dimensionalize exactly where we'll go with demand creation, but I do want to emphasize a point Scott just made.
We remain under indexed relative to a lot of our competitive set in terms of how much we're investing in demand creation. And again, we see that as a key investment area for Kontoor moving forward. Eric?
Yes. So this also follow ups just in terms of the investments we're making behind demand creation, innovation, it also comes back a little bit to the inflation question, which is just our pricing strategy. Rusty talked about mixing up, right, as more as we invest behind those, but maybe for Scott and Rusty, just talk a little bit broadly as we think about pricing.
Yes. As I think about pricing, you have to think about the fact that the consumer is going to want to migrate to the brands that they trust. And I talked a little bit about that earlier. And I think it's incumbent upon us and you saw it today that we have to create that excitement, we have to make sure that we're innovating. And when I Talk about innovation.
A lot of you folks have heard me say this before. It doesn't have to be the home run every time. It has to be that single and double. So what I'm saying is you have to give the consumer an idea and an opportunity to go ahead and purchase your product because they see something that they like it's something that they will pay more for. And we're doing a really nice job of that because we're looking at everything through the consumer's eyes right now.
So it puts us in a really good position. But I think there's another underlying factor that's really important for our company. It's the global nature of the business that we're building. We were very centric in North America before, but now we're expanding across the globe. And with that comes these huge pockets of opportunity in categories and channels.
And because of that, it gives us opportunity. And then I also think about the fact that we have this really big structural core that is underdeveloped globally, so it gives us that opportunity also. And remember one other thing about these periods in time, the consumer is going to go to a brand that they value and trust that also can be purchased in multiple channels. And with the spin off that we did, we brought the brand to additional consumers and we've brought the brand to multiple different channels, puts us in a really good position going forward.
Yes, I think Scott really hit upon The critical elements, it's again that trusted quality made value oriented nature of our brands. We, as we look at pricing and consider pricing in the marketplace, are always looking at delivering a compelling value to the consumer. And that compelling value to the consumer is really driven by innovation, which you heard a lot about today and demand creation with the strength of our brands. And then everything is underpinned by that solid supply chain that we have and our ability to service the market. And so that's how we think about delivering that compelling value to consumers.
Eric?
So we've talked a bit about channel excuse me, category growth with Tom and Chris, we've talked about geographic with China. This next question comes as it relates to our digital ecosystem and evolution, maybe just open up for all Scott and just both the opportunities as we see them as well as the potential impacts from a margin structure.
Sure. I can start and I think everybody probably has a comment here too. So I'll keep my comments a little brief that I think it's really important to hear from Chris and Tom here. One of the big opportunities that we had as an organization was digital. We hadn't invested in the platform, we hadn't invested in the people, we hadn't invested in the product.
And it's been amazing to me to see that we went out and hired a world class leader. That person has built a really, really great team. We've gone ahead and developed the product. We're talking to the consumer in a really intelligent way now. And then on top of that, Joe and team have put us in an enviable position from a platform standpoint.
So now we have the right technology coming into play. You bring all those factors together and you've got success. And all of that combined with the demand creation work that we're doing with our brands is driving people to accretive channel for us that we absolutely have permission to win in, but I see it at the very, very infancy stages with a really, really big opportunity. Gentlemen?
Yes, I'll jump in here. When we think about digital, I love the way that Chris and the teams are thinking about it holistically, it's not just about our own.com, it's about wholesale.com and most importantly, it's about creating beautiful stories, great storytelling from the demand creation side that all feeds in that makes this really nice story and it is paying off in a really, really big way, but make no mistake, we are in the beginning stages of this, but what we're seeing come through very rapidly from the investments that we're making and we're going to continue to do that, we're super encouraged.
2 examples for you too, just as we think about where we're investing and how we're focusing on digital, both in China. When we talk about our brand campaign around Stand Tall, leveraging key influencers, bringing that to life and generating over 350,000,000 views around our campaigns there. So it's really important that we're connecting with that consumer where that consumer is and where they're looking to transact and the team over in China is doing a great job of that. But also, when we talk about bringing product to market fast and really reacting to what the consumers are doing, our team, Betty and Vivian, who you saw earlier, they design digitally and it allows us to work globally in a totally different way than we did before, designing quickly, designing at the Speed that the consumer wants the product out there. And so really when we think about digital, it's how we connect with consumers, but it's also how we're all working together and how we're bringing products to life and that's probably as much innovation as it is design and digital.
Yes, I think Chris really and Tom and Scott really hit it well. Maybe the point that I would emphasize, not just with digital, but with all of our growth catalysts that you saw today, is there early proof points that are out there? Chris showed that chart that showed the trend over the past several quarters on our digital progress and really talked about it being early days. So again, even with the target of going from 5% to 10% penetration, still significantly under indexed and really an accretive channel for us moving forward. So continuing to make the right investments there, but really early in our journey and excited about where we're going.
Eric?
So this is a follow-up on another enabler of where we're investing and great to see this that this individual was pleasantly surprised to see the breadth of our innovation that's out there and a little surprised by maybe what we haven't shown. Maybe just again open to folks in terms of speaking to now the incremental investments we're making behind innovation and sustainability.
Well, I'll start and then we can go jump in. I think the really important component here is that when you don't invest behind a brand and you don't have innovation for a long time, there's opportunity. And we look at it as very early stages, there's a really big white space from an opportunity standpoint to go ahead and continue to do that. I think the other thing is when you really start thinking about it from a macro standpoint, you think about it from a global standpoint, and we have really successful businesses around the globe, you can bring those really great ideas and innovations from Asia, from Europe, from North America into those other marketplaces. And now that we have a global consumer, they're able to adapt really quickly and they expect it from us globally.
So I think those are some really important components in addition to the fact that we've got some really intelligent people working on some pretty cool One of
the real enablers to that, Scott, is and Karen talked about it, is just our ERP implementation and being able to have one global range, one item number, one SKU that we can leverage all around the world is really an unlock for our teams. And the question was earlier asked about we'll be able to innovation around the globe and some of the cool things we're doing with Jade and other in China, taking that around the world is a real unlock for our teams. So I think you're right. It's really those different elements coming together at a great time for us as we go into horizon 2 in this growth mode.
And remember, we're a company that doesn't just innovate in product. When you own your own manufacturing and you have your own supply chain, we innovate very strongly in that supply chain, Karen leads a really big group for us, very successful and brings a lot of intelligence and leadership on how we're going to do things going forward to be difference makers around sustainability. And I love the way the teams
are thinking about innovation, because we're innovation from the core with our existing product, but as importantly, we're putting innovation as the unlock for new categories to give us diversification. And so WranglerAngler is a great example of that, Wrangler ATG, the Wrangler 4 way dimensional stretch, those are all wonderful examples where this is opening up the brand to new consumers and getting us into new distribution and on our own DTC in terms of reaching new consumers In a very emotional way to solving problems for our consumers.
Yes. And I would just add to that, Tom. That's exactly what I was going to say. I love the fact that they're natural extensions for where the brand should go. You look at like Jimmy talking about that Wrangler ATG program and that is so core to the ethos of the Wrangler brand, it's just a natural extension.
And so, us making those investments now to really extend those brands and to your point, Tom, really make them available to consumers is really, really powerful for us moving forward.
I think it's a perfect segue. And Scott, you said not just innovation in product, but innovation in manufacturing. Kontoor has long been known for its supply chain, its strength is a competitive advantage. But the question is twofold. 1, just incrementally, what are we investing?
Obviously, the ERP, maybe an update there, Ruston. And then just from that sustainability perspective, what we're doing from a supply chain perspective.
Yes, maybe I'll start with the ERP and just kind of provide a quick status update. Karen certainly talked about some of the implications and uses of the ERP in the supply chain world. We just went live in the at the beginning of the second quarter in our second region around the world here in North America and are continuing the implementations in our final region as we go into the back half of twenty twenty one this year. So it really does enable things. Chris talked a little bit about kind of opening it up to have a global product line.
And then certainly we see efficiency opportunities that are there as well in terms of cost saves. So maybe I'll turn it over and Scott, I don't know whether you want to talk about sustainability?
Sure, sure, a little bit. We take it real seriously. We have a team that's focused against that. It's in every single part of our business, one of the things that's critical to us is when you own your own manufacturing, it becomes a really critical enabler. And having that sustainability lens for us is really important, I was really particularly proud of the organization and that we were able to put out our 1st sustainability report this past year, being a very new company and having that kind of focus and being able to put that out in a very short period of time, I think it says a lot about how we think about sustainability going forward.
And if you could be around us and see how we think about it as a team, it is a leading enabler that we talk about, spend time on And much more to come from our company on that in the future. Anything, Dan?
All right. So we've got a little bit a couple of follow-up questions from Sam Poser at Williams, first as it relates to demand creation, just
how much should
we think about in terms of supporting the near term revenue opportunities versus the long term brand health? How do we view demand creation as a percentage of sales progressing over time?
So let me start and then I think everybody can kind of chip in a little bit. How we've thought about demand creation at this company is, I think, really intelligent. So you think about what Bridget and Holly are doing. We're building brands for the long term. We're building global strong brands that are going to stand the test of time.
We're bringing new consumers into our franchise and we think about things with a very, very long lens. We're not in this for the short term hit. We're not in this for the big splash and the impact. We're in this to go ahead and build loyalty and we want our consumers to have passion. We want our consumers to love our brands and we want our consumers to trust our brands.
So if you think about how we're doing this and how we're going to do this going forward, think about the long term, think about passion, think about real intelligence and think about building a broad global consumer base that really loves our brands and that has real meaning to them, real value to them and how they use our brands in their life and how they use their brands each and every day. Anybody else? Yes,
I would add just maybe before we hear from Chris and Tom about the brands, just again, the last two years has really been about establishing that foundation upon which to build. And again, you heard from Holly and Bridget today, our leaders in Christy Kilmartin in China coming in and really building that talent and capabilities to really establish that new vision for the brands and the energy behind those, and hopefully you saw a very different representation of the brands today and I think with that solid foundation, we are now ready to accelerate. So maybe Chris, Tom?
Yes, absolutely. You heard From Holly on the Wrangler side, and she's doing such a terrific job in her global team to come up with an equity campaign that when Scott you talk about there's sort of that upper funnel and lower funnel, you have to balance it. You got to drive business down here, but it really comes down to making sure we're driving our brand equity for the long term with incredible campaigns that are global in nature and we launched our first global campaign 2 years ago, and we're in the process of shooting our new one in the next couple of weeks here, and we're looking forward to sharing that with you in the coming months, so really exciting stuff, really exciting time for the Wrangler brand, but we do think long term when it comes to brand equity and brand health.
Yes. On the lease side of it, Horizon 1 has been about really establishing that foundation, establishing that foundation for profitable growth, putting the oxygen back in the P and L, so we can invest back into the brand and the lead brand really has needed that investment behind it. And we're at a point now where and you saw some of what Bridget and what Christy took you through today and even Betty on the product side, really an exciting Lee brand and it's not your grandma or grandpa's Lee brand anymore. And bringing that to life is what we're focused on now, but in the long term, both in a product and the stories we tell to the consumers out there. So it's the investments needed, but it's something we're thinking about both short term, but really long term with us.
So Eric, one quick comment before we shift to another question. If I'd ask everyone to just think back in history and think about the fact that Lee and Wrangler were real leaders and demand creation product innovation, whether it be the unionals, zippers, the first ever cowboy cut jean, and then we went through a period where we weren't and that's why we spun off. And if you think about what you saw today and if you really sit back and think about what you've seen in the last 20 years and the differentiation in the short 2 years, that's something to get excited about. So if you can just encapsulate that 2 years and now envision what's going to happen over the next 5 years and what we have in store for all of you and all of our consumers across the globe, it's pretty exciting.
So these last two questions really hit on while it appears we've got accelerating fundamentals, seems to be some interest just around the increase in cash flow and capital allocation optionality. Maybe first, Ruston, for you, which is with our new targeted long term net leverage ratio of 1 to 2 times, it appears we've reached an optimal range for your capital structure. How should we think about further debt pay down versus other capital allocation opportunities?
Yes. Thanks, Eric, and thanks for the question. Certainly, we have been prioritizing paying down debt to maximize our financial flexibility, particularly over the past year, and we're really proud of the progress we've made. We've reduced our net debt by $335,000,000 since the spin. And we ended the Q1 at about a 1.7 times net leverage ratio.
So as Eric said, we did share today that we're targeting on a long term basis between 1 and 2 times on a net leverage perspective. And with those improving fundamentals and that increased optionality, we expect the fundamentals to improve that will drive further improvement in that ratio as well. So certainly as we reach more of an optimal level, we would expect our repayments to moderate and it really opens up that optionality for future cash flow and how we can use that cash flows as an organization.
And I think that's a great way to end, maybe start with Scott and Russ and it's just seems like we laid out quite a bit of options, right, of that cash flow in capital allocation, maybe just think about how we're prioritizing, if it's and or either or how we think about it?
Yes. I think if you think about great companies and great businesses and you look back over time, one of the things that a really smart company does is they don't put themselves in a position where you have to do one specific thing. There are times in the evolution of a company where it's more important to do something rather than something else. But what's really important for a company is that they have the options. What's really important for a company is that they're generating enough cash that their brands have that kind of momentum that they can reinvest back in their business, but they can choose at that specific moment in time what is the most important way to return to their shareholders, increased whatever it may be.
Are we going to pay down more debt? Are we going to make an acquisition? Are we going to go ahead and invest more back behind these brands? Are we going to increase our dividend? We have all those options in front of us, which is really an enviable position for any business leader for this company to be in, and we're just getting more powerful and stronger over time as we continue to generate more cash and grow these brands.
So look for more of that from us. Yes.
And I would just add to Scott's comments. I mean, I think optionality, particularly in today's really uncertain operating environment is
really critical. And we worked hard to pay down
the debt and make progress and we worked hard to pay down the debt and make progress there. We're continuing to invest in the brands as you've seen and really love that strong cash generating nature of our model, which you saw is expected to yield a cumulative approximately $1,000,000,000 in cash over the next 3 years. And so to Scott's point, it really affords that optionality and the ability to take a multifaceted approach as we're really looking at those capital allocations, we've said that we're going to continue to look to fund our strategic investments first. The foundational elements we had in delevering the balance sheet and paying that superior dividend from Horizon 1 remain and then you add on that optionality that we laid out as the possibility around share repurchase or strategic M and A. And we think coupled that powerful combination of that organic 15% plus targeted TSR and then the potential possibilities of additional shareholder friendly investments like share repurchase or strategic M and A is very powerful.
Eric?
That's great. Thank you all again very much for your support in the KTB story, very much for your really thoughtful questions today, I'll turn it over to Scott to close.
Yes. Again, I just want to echo Eric's comments. Thank you very much. Thank you for, 1, your investment in our company. Thank you for your interest in our company.
And thank you to all of our global employees around the world and all that you do for us each and every day. You're the difference in this company. We'll look forward to seeing you again real soon and thanks again.