Hello, everyone. I'm Ralph Lauren, the Executive Chairman of Ralph Lauren Corporation. I'm pleased to welcome all of you to our 2019 Annual Meeting of Stockholders and I call the meeting to order. We are happy to gather virtually today. This is a new format for us and one that we believe supports shareholder inclusion as well as our focus on leading with digital.
Thank you for joining us. I will start by outlining our directors' nominees of the corporation this year. They include Angela Arens, John Alchin, Arnold Aronson, Frank Bennett Jr, Joyce Brown, Joel Fleischman, Michael George, Hubert Jolee, Linda Kozlowski, David Lauren, Patrice Louvet, Judith McHale and Robert Wright. As you know, not only am I the Executive Chairman of this company, but like you, I'm a shareholder and I am very happy with our performance this year. We marked our incredible milestone 50 years of inspiration, passion and innovation.
As we celebrate our rich history, we are even more inspired and motivated to continue to build a future for our company. I am so proud of the work our teams around the world are doing to deliver to you. You will shortly hear from our President and CEO, Patrice Louvet, who will share more about our strategy and momentum. But first, let me turn it over to Avery Fisher, our General Counsel, who will lead us through the business items on our agenda.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and good morning, everyone. My name is Avery Fisher, and I am the Executive Vice President, General Counsel and Secretary of the Corporation. Thank you all for joining us today for our 1st virtual stockholder meeting. We are excited that this webcast format allows all stockholders to not only hear the meeting regardless of location, but to vote and ask questions online, enhancing access and participation.
In addition to Mr. Ralph Lauren and our directors, with me today are Patrice Louvet, President and CEO and Jane Nielsen, COO and CFO, who will be available to answer any of your questions at the appropriate time later in the meeting. The agenda and the rules of conduct that govern this meeting are made available to you on the Annual Meeting website as disclosed in our 2019 proxy statement, notice of Internet availability of proxy materials and proxy card. We will conduct this meeting in strict accordance with the agenda and rules and only business matters appropriate for action by stockholders will be considered at this meeting. We ask that those of you who submit questions during our question and answer portion of the agenda, which is towards the end of the meeting, be considerate to our stockholders who may wish to ask a question by asking only one question each.
We will try to get to as many of your questions as possible during the question and answer session, including those submitted online prior to the meeting. Note that this meeting is being recorded and an audio replay with a list of questions received and the company's answers to those questions will be posted on our Investor Relations website as soon as is practicable after our meeting. Please see the agenda and rules of conduct for more information. And for technical assistance during this meeting, please contact Broadridge at 800-586-1548 if you're in the U. S.
Or at 303-562-9288 if you're outside of the U. S. Please also remember that statements made during this meeting may contain forward looking statements, which are subject to risks and uncertainties. To find out more about the factors that could cause actual results to differ from management's expectations, please see the agenda for today's meeting and our most recent 10 Q and 10 ks filings on our Investor Relations website or on the SEC's website. The first order of business is the presentation of the affidavit of Broadridge, who is here conducting our virtual stockholder meeting.
Their representative, Tracy Oates, is acting as Inspector of Elections, having previously taken and signed an oath to that effect. Broadridge has attested to the mailing of the notice of Internet availability of proxy materials to all holders of record of common stock of the corporation as of the close of business on June 3, 2019, which is the record date for determining the stockholders entitled to vote at this meeting and this meeting is being held pursuant to proper notice. This affidavit of mailing and a list of all of the stockholders entitled to vote at the meeting certified by Computershare, our transfer agent, are available for inspection on our Annual Meeting website. The affidavit of mailing and Stockholders' List will be filed with the records of the corporation. I hereby certify that the holders of more than 1 third of all of the outstanding shares of stock entitled to vote at this meeting are participating via the Annual Meeting website or by proxy and that a quorum has been met in accordance with our bylaws and the meeting is able to duly proceed.
We will now review the items set forth in the proxy statement. If you have any questions relating only to these items, please submit now using the Ask a Question option on the Annual Meeting website. If you have any other questions, these will be addressed later in the meeting. The polls are open for voting online during the meeting. Most stockholders have already voted by proxy and we have tallied your proxy vote.
If you've already sent in a proxy, you do not need to vote now unless you wish to change your vote. For those of you who have not voted or who want to change your vote, please vote now by following instructions online. The polls will be closed after we have announced the items to be voted upon and addressed any related questions. Until the polls close, any stockholder who wishes to vote or change his or her vote may do so by following the directions online. The first item on the order of business is the election of directors.
At the direction of the Board of Directors, I hereby place a nomination the following individuals each as set forth in the proxy statement Frank Bennett Jr, Joel Fleischmann, Michael George and Hubert Joly for election by the holders of Class A common stock of the corporation. Angela Arens, John Alchin, Arnold Aronson, George Brown, Linda Findlay Kozlowski, Ralph Lauren, David Lauren, Patrice Louvet, Judith McHale and Robert Wright for election by the holders of Class B common stock of the corporation. Each nominee will hold office until the next annual meeting or until his or her successor has been elected and qualified. There being no other nominations made in accordance with the bylaws, I hereby declare the nominations for directors closed. The second item is a ratification of the corporation's independent registered public accounting firm.
The Audit Committee of the Board of Directors has appointed Ernst and Young LLP as the corporation's independent registered public accounting firm for our fiscal year ending on March 28, 2020, subject to ratification of the appointment by the stockholders at this meeting. Representatives of Ernst and Young have joined us today and are available to answer any questions that you may have. 3rd is the adoption of a ASEAN PAY advisory resolution by the stockholders. In our proxy statement, we have described for you our compensation philosophy and practices and outlined key takeaways impacting executive compensation for fiscal 2019 that demonstrate alignment of the intent of our executives with the creation of value and strong return to stockholders. The 4th and last proposal is the adoption of the corporation's 2019 long term stock incentive plan, a copy of which is available in our 2019 proxy statement.
The Board of Directors recommends a vote for all of the proposals described. If you have a question regarding these proposals to be addressed before voting or if you have a question for the question and answer session at the end of the meeting, please select the Ask a Question option online on the Annual Meeting website to submit your question. We will receive your question in real time. Consistent with test practice, we will take non proposal related questions for about 15 minutes at the end of this meeting. As you know, we also provided an opportunity for stockholders to ask questions in advance of the meeting using www.proxyvote.com.
Out of consideration for others, please submit only one question and we will answer as many questions compliant with the rules of conduct as time allows. Only questions germane to the meeting will be addressed. In the interest of being responsive, questions from multiple stockholders on the same topic or that are otherwise related may be grouped, summarized and answered together. If there are any matters of individual concern or if a question was not answered, please contact our Investor Relations team at 212-813-7868. For more information, please see the rules of conduct.
At this time, any stockholders eligible to vote who have not previously submitted a proxy or wish to change their vote should proceed online now in connection with the voting items as previously identified. Since we received no proposal related questions, I now declare the polls closed on all matters. I ask that the Inspector of Elections tally the votes of stockholders received during this meeting, together with the votes of stockholders voting by proxy. The number of shares entitled to vote at the meeting participating by proxy as reported by the Inspector of Elections are 43,727,000 353 shares of Class A common stock and 25,381,280 shares of Class B common stock. Additional shares voted via the Annual Meeting website will be included in the final number of shares voted and will be available on a Form 8 ks filed within 4 business days of this meeting.
The Inspector of Elections has certified that the preliminary vote in Cali has now been completed. The holders of a plurality of the shares of Class A common stock voting have voted in favor of the election of each of the nominees for Class A Directors and the holders of all of the outstanding shares of Class B common stock have voted in favor of the election of each of the nominees for Class B Directors. The appointment of Ernst and Young as the independent registered public accounting firm of the corporation for our fiscal year ending March 28, 2020 was ratified by a majority vote of stockholders. The compensation of our named executive officers and our compensation philosophy policies and practices were approved on an advisory basis by a majority vote of stockholders. The adoption of the 2019 long term stock incentive plan was approved by a majority vote of stockholders.
The final results will be available on a Form 8 ks filed within 4 business days of this meeting. We have now completed the business portion of the meeting and I declare the business portion adjourned. I will now turn it over to Patrice Louvet, our President and CEO. But before you hear from him, we want to share with you a short highlights reel of some of our key achievements from the last year. And now it's my pleasure to introduce Patrice Loubet, our President and CEO.
Thanks, Avery. Good morning, everyone. And I want to thank you for joining us today for our 1st virtual Annual Shareholders Meeting. I hope you all found that short video as energizing and inspiring as I did. As we look back at fiscal 2019, Ralph and I are encouraged by the progress our teams have made 1 year into our next great chapter plan to return the company to long term sustainable growth and value creation.
In fiscal 2019, our company outperformed on core metrics with several areas of our business delivering ahead of expectations. As we look toward the future, we're focused on scaling our successes, applying learnings and continuing to execute with excellence across each of the 5 strategic priorities we outlined at our Investor Day in June of last year. Today, I would like to touch on some key highlights from each of these areas. First, starting with the win over a new generation of consumers. As you will recall, one of our key priorities is to recruit millions of new consumers into our brands each year.
To achieve that, we've been elevating our brand building content and increasing our marketing investment with a focus on channels that matter most to consumers today, namely digital and social. In fiscal 2019, we increased marketing spend by 13% on top of a 10% increase in the prior year as we invested in a number of high profile marketing activities. These included 2 unique fashion shows that generated record levels of global engagement for Ralph Lauren. Moving on to our 2nd key initiative, energize core products and accelerate high potential underdeveloped categories. In fiscal year 2019, we made progress on our long term plan to drive roughly half of our revenue growth targets to increases in core products and the other half to the expansion of 5 underdeveloped categories.
Our iconic and updated core styles continue to be a key driver of our top line performance as Ralph and the design teams generate excitement in the marketplace. We continue to animate these core styles through the use of print, embroidery, color blocking, graphic polo logos, our polo bear and customization offerings. We've also made notable progress in underdeveloped categories that have significant growth potential across our brands. These include denim, outerwear, wear to work, footwear and accessories. Our performance in denim and outerwear, which are the furthest developed of the 5 categories, was encouraging in fiscal 2019.
Benefiting from an improved product, merchandising and distribution focus, positive sales trends in these categories for the year indicated a strong consumer response to our new initiatives. Moving on to our 3rd key initiative, drive targeted expansion in our regions and channels. We are focused on building a cohesive, brand elevating Ralph Lauren experience across our retail, wholesale and digital commerce presence in key cities around the world. In fiscal 2019, we opened 135 new stores and concessions globally and closed 85 locations. This included 94 openings in Asia with 39 in China, our fastest growing market.
Greater China revenue was up 20% to the prior year in constant currency, representing about 3.5% of our total company revenues. This included more than 30% growth in Mainland China on top of the 25% growth we reported in fiscal 2018 driven by comp growth and new stores. Moving on to our 4th key initiative, lead with digital. Our global digital business including our directly operated sites, departmentstore.com, pure players and social commerce was up 11% in constant currency in fiscal 2019. This was driven by strong performance across all regions led by international.
Our directly operated North America digital flagship returned to positive growth during the year as planned. Comps grew 10% compared to a 22% decline in fiscal 2018 as we lapped our transition to a cloud based platform. Our directly operated European digital commerce sites also showed strong improvement following the move to our new platform during the year. The upgrade enabled numerous site enhancements including our first localized site in the Spanish language. Europe owned digital comps were up 6% in fiscal 2019 despite reduced promotional activity to elevate the brand.
In Asia, we were excited to launch Ralph Lauren. Cn in the fall. This is the exclusive online destination for our luxury labels, men's purple label and women's collection. We also continue to drive strong performance with digital pure play partners across all regions throughout the year. Our 5th key initiative is operate with discipline to fuel growth.
In fiscal 2019, we continued to challenge every cost and improve our efficiencies as we progress towards a mid teens operating margin target by fiscal 2023. Adjusted operating expenses excluding marketing grew 1.4% below our top line growth for the year. Among our cost saving initiatives this year, we consolidated our distribution footprint from 4 buildings to 2 and launched direct to consumer shared inventory in North America. We also renegotiated over 80 vendor contracts to drive a 14% reduction in addressable expenses generating savings without compromising quality. This cost discipline enabled us to ramp up our marketing investment and expand our global retail presence while increasing operating profit and operating margin above our guidance.
Lastly, our teams around the world are focused on bringing to life our purpose of inspiring the dream of a better life through authenticity and timeless style. This influences every aspect of our business, including our work across citizenship and sustainability, on which I also want to provide an update. Over the last 6 months, we've undertaken a focused effort to evolve our strategy and further embed sustainability across our organization. We recently published our 2019 Global Citizenship and Sustainability Report, which details our approach to 1, creating product 2, managing our environmental impact and 3, championing and supporting our employees, the workers across our supply chain and our communities. Citizenship and sustainability are critical topics for our business, our industry and the world.
And you can expect to hear more from us as we deepen the work we are doing in this area. So in closing, this year's results demonstrate our progress on putting the consumer at the center of everything we do, elevating our brands and balancing growth and productivity. Ralph and I are especially encouraged that our teams are engaged and focused on delivering. In fact, this year, Ralph Lauren was again certified as a great place to work in the U. S.
Our annual global employee survey conducted by Korn Ferry demonstrated employee effectiveness above the high performing norm around the world. And just last month, we were proud to be ranked number 47 on Forbes annual list of America's Best Employers for Women, demonstrating our focus on diversity and inclusion. Together with Ralph, our leadership team and our Board, we look forward to continuing to leverage the power of our teams and incredible brands to deliver sustainable long term growth and value creation. And with that, I'll turn it over to Corina Bender Against, VP of Investor Relations, so we can answer some of your questions.
Thank you, Patrice. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. We will now conduct Q and A. The first question submitted through the portal is as follows. Sustainability is becoming a more important topic for both investors and consumers.
What is Ralph Lauren doing to minimize the company's impact on the environment and be a better global citizen?
Thank you, Corey. So we know this is an area that matters to all of our stakeholders, which is why in June, we launched a comprehensive new citizenship and sustainability strategy and accompanying report. We call it Design the Change. Design the change is our commitment to create more sustainable products, reduce our overall environmental footprint across our operations and support and empower our teams and partners around the world. There are 3 pillars to our plan.
1st, create timeless style. This includes sustainable product design, sourcing and traceability and chemical management. 2nd, protect the environment. This includes carbon and energy use, waste management, water stewardship. 3rd, champion better lives.
This includes diversity and inclusion, health, safety and working conditions, community engagement and philanthropy. We also introduced 16 key citizenship and sustainability goals that touch every area of our business and drive accountability across our organization. Key targets we expect to reach by 2025 range from reducing water usage by 25% across our operations and value chain to achieving gender parity within our leadership at Ralph Lauren.
Thank you. We also received a question through the portal on gender diversity on our Board, specifically why are there no women on the Board of Directors?
So we are actually very proud to have several incredibly talented women currently serving on our Board as detailed in our proxy statement. These members include Angela Ahrens, Joyce Brown, Judith McHale and Linda Kozlowski. And Angela and Linda actually joined us about a year ago.
Thank you all for submitting your questions. As there are no further questions at this time, I will now turn the call back to Avery Fisher.
Thank you, Corey. There being no further business, the meeting is adjourned. Thank you all very much for attending our annual meeting and we look forward to connecting with you next year.
Thank you. The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation and you may now disconnect.