Rothy’s is starting 2026 with another executive overhaul.
In January, Dayna Quanbeck, the brand’s president, finance and operations chief, will step in as chief executive, replacing Jenny Ming who will return to her position as a board member.
Ming, a former Gap executive who joined Rothy’s board in 2022, replaced co-founder Stephen Hawthornthwaite as CEO in 2024 as Rothy’s business contracted, with sales falling 1.4 percent year on year in 2023.
Quanbeck, on the other hand, is taking the top job during the shoemaker’s prime. In 2024, the company’s revenue jumped 17 percent to $211 million as it successfully won over Gen Z customers. In the last year, the brand opened 10 stores in the US, entered wholesale with retailers like Nordstrom, Liberty London and Le Bon Marché and hosted events with plugged-in creators like Substack writers Emily Sundberg and Erika Veurink.
“I feel very lucky to be stepping in as a CEO, having been able to do this alongside a very experienced CEO for a period of time,” Quanbeck, who joined Rothy’s in 2019, told The Business of Fashion. “I feel very prepared, and I can’t imagine a more organic way to take this job.”
Quanbeck’s brief as chief executive is to extend Rothy’s winning streak. It helps that in her previous roles, Quanbeck was instrumental in many of the initiatives that brought the brand out of its post-Covid slump, such as growing the company’s brick-and-mortar presence as well as its wholesale business, which tripled in 2025. Rothy’s sales jumped 16 percent to $154 million in the first nine months of the year, and its net profits increased 86 percent to $4.5 million.
Looking ahead, Quanbeck plans to beef up Rothy’s brand awareness by forging more wholesale partnerships, opening additional retail locations (there are plans for at least 10 new locations in 2026) and expanding internationally. Rothy’s will host its first pop-up in Asia in the first half of next year, Quanbeck said, and plans to push its ancillary product lines, such as men’s and kids, by introducing new silhouettes and prints and patterns and entering category-specific retailers, she added.
“I can imagine doubling the business, and then doubling it again, with what’s ahead of us in the US and globally,” Quanbeck said.
Quanbeck also helped Rothy’s weather tariff uncertainty by adding manufacturing partners in Vietnam and Indonesia to supplement the factory it owns in China, where it previously made all its shoes. Her next challenge is replacing herself as finance and operations chief. But Quanbeck’s already making key executive hires. The company will welcome its first chief technology officer in January to modernise its operations in the age of AI.
“We were really specific about bringing this leader in now because now is the right time to level up,” Quanbeck said. “It’s really thinking differently about how AI grows your brand and makes you stand out as a category leader.”
