George N. Derhofer of Greensboro, North Carolina, has been named to the Board of Directors of the Saint Benedict Education Foundation, based in Latrobe, Pennsylvania. The foundation helps raise funds for scholarships for students attending the international Benedictine university in Rome, Sant’ Anselmo.
Derhofer has more than 30 years of executive general management, financial and supply chain management experience in fast growing entrepreneurial and multi-billion globan businesses. He has a direct profit and loss responsibility for diverse apparel businesses with revenues ranging from $200 million to $1.6 billion, and global operations and technology responsibility for a $7 billion apparel company with 50,000 employees in over 100 countries.
Derhofer has served as a top five executive and operating committee member leading VF Corporation, the world’s largest publicly held apparel company, to five record years, $3 billion in revenue growth, more than $700 million in annual cash flow and cumulative total shareholder returns (TSR) of over 100 percent. He has been a key member of the senior team that led the strategic transformation to a global lifestyle company with 50-plus leading consumer brands, including The North Face, Vans, Wrangler, Nautica and the NFL. He has participated in more than a dozen acquisitions and multiple divestitures to aggressively change the business mix and growth trajectory.
Prior to joining VF in 1994, he served as CFO and senior executive for publicly held, fast growing consumer goods companies. He helped grow the frozen novelty business from $800,000 to over $60 million, making the Klondike bar number one in the U.S market. Total company sales increased from $10 million to $180 million through core growth and multiple acquisitions followed by record profitability. He also helped grow Nutmeg Mills licensed sports business from $45 million to more than $185 million with fourteen consecutive quarters of record sales and profits, hitting or beating analyst projections. During his time there as executive vice president, treasurer, and chief financial officer, the company signed new, exclusive, game-changing deals with major sports leagues, achieved #2 company stock performance on the New York Stock Exchange and was sold for over $350 million to VF.
After graduating from Saint Vincent College with a bachelor of arts degree in accounting in 1975, he began his career as a staff accountant for Arthur Young and Company, Pittsburgh; served as assistant controller of Condec Corporation, Conval Penn Division, McKeesport; and was senior vice president, treasurer and chief financial officer of AmBrit, Inc., in Clearwater, Florida. He is on the business advisory board of Saint Vincent College.
He and his wife Gail have two sons, Garrett and Grant.