Wolverine brand reportedly finished 2025 a little better than the company anticipated entering the fourth quarter, with revenue down 10.5 percent to $55.8 million for the quarter. Wolverine is the leading brand in Wolverine Worldwide’s Work Group, which also includes Cat Footwear, Bates and Harley-Davidson brands.

Work Group revenues fell 11.3 percent (-11.7 percent cc) year-over-year to $134 million in Q4 2025. For full-year 2025, Work Group revenues declined 7.3 percent (-7.4 percent cc) year-over-year (y/y) to $422.2 million.

“As we shared in November, the brand’s performance has taken longer than anticipated to turn around,” shared Chris Hufnagel, president & CEO, Wolverine Worldwide, Inc. “However, I believe we diagnosed the challenges and appointed the right leadership to effectively run a better brand and business moving forward. I am encouraged by both the progress we have made recently and the barely early results we are beginning to see in the marketplace.”

Still, the Wolverine brand came up short against its Work Group brethren, declining 9.0 percent y/y to $175.7 million, but did outpace the Work Group consolidated revenue decline in the fourth quarter with a 10.5 percent y/y decrease to $55.8 million.

“The product pipeline, which candidly had become tired, has improved,” he said. “The team focused on developing more trend-right silhouettes to resonate with evolving consumer preferences, boosting innovation to strengthen more premium product offerings, and architecting better segmentation in the marketplace.”

Hufnagel said the team focused on “developing more trend-right silhouettes to resonate with evolving consumer preferences, boosting innovation to strengthen more premium product offerings and architecting better segmentation in the marketplace.”

“The Rancher collection, with the Rancher Pro at a premium price point, has enabled the brand to capture opportunity in the important Western Work category and drove significant growth at U.S. retail in Q4,” the CEO continued. The Infinity System, labeled as the brand’s “pinnacle expression” of its performance comfort technology, launched mid-year and reportedly performed well in the back half of the year.

“As a result of both new innovation and newfound strength in core offerings, the brand began to take back market share and work boots in the fourth quarter, our strongest quarter of share gains in nearly five years,” Hufnagel noted, but did not provide additional data to support the claim.

Looking Ahead
In 2026, Hufnagel said [Wolverine] the team plans to build on its momentum, further bolstering the brand’s premium assortment with the Loader franchise, extending its Western Work offering into lifestyle with the new Wheatland collection, and expanding its Infinity System technology with new iterations of the Alpha Infinity.

Hufnagel said the Wolverine brand is stepping up its demand creation in 2026 as well, reportedly “investing up and down the marketing funnel.”

To expand its reach, the brand reportedly partnered with country music recording artist Jordan Davis throughout 2025 and served as an exclusive presenting partner for Season 2 of the Paramount+ series, Landman. The partnership reportedly “helped deliver tens of millions of impressions for the brand and drove new consumers to wolverine.com.” The brand also reportedly enhanced its presence on social media.

“We are actively collaborating with influencers to support programs like the launch of the Infinity System and Landman and have initiated a host of additional in-store Landman activations with key retailers,” Hufnagel shared. “Encouragingly, the brand saw increases across key brand health metrics to close the year.”

The CEO continued, “With the product beginning to check and marketing efforts amplified, Wolverine’s focus is now on recalibrating the marketplace, balancing inventories at retail and better aligning distribution to the brand’s more premium leadership positioning. We expect this recalibration will take a couple of quarters, but we are seeing good progress as we enter the new year and anticipate Wolverine will deliver flat revenue in 2026 compared to 2025.”

Outlook
Wolverine Worldwide CFO Taryn Miller reported that the company’s Work Group revenue is expected to be approximately flat year-over-year in 2026.

“Within the Work Group, Wolverine brand revenue is expected to be approximately flat year-over-year in 2026, with performance anticipated to improve in the second half of the year as the brand continues to recalibrate the U.S. marketplace and the benefits of improved product and marketing build throughout the year,” she explained.

Image courtesy Wolverine Brand/Wolverine Worldwide, Inc.

***

See below for additional SGB Executive coverage of the 2025 fourth quarter and full year for Wolverine Worldwide, Inc.

EXEC: Wolverine Worldwide Hurt by Q4 Work Group Decline as Active Group Posts DD Gains

EXEC: Saucony Tapped into Both Performance and Lifestyle Sales to Drive 2025

EXEC: Merrell Brand Celebrates 40 Years with a Solid 2025 but H2 Gain Lags H1 Growth

EXEC: Sweaty Betty International Expansion in 2025 Partially Offset by Reset in U.S. Market