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As the resale market grows, it's ushered in a wave of startups that see a lucrative opportunity in helping retailers navigate the secondhand apparel space. Some marketplaces that started out as peer-to-peer are striking more partnerships with brands and retailers to increase revenue, while at the same time trying to direct traffic back to their own site. Another startup called Yerdle, which last week announced it had raised a $20 million round of venture capital financing, has created a white label service that retailers like REI, Eileen Fisher and Patagonia have used to build resale services that pull from their own inventory.
As eBay looks to install new leadership, its struggles have made clear just how difficult it is for alternative marketplaces to win over both sellers and shoppers thanks to Amazon's dominance. On Wednesday, the company's CEO, Devin Wenig stepped down after five years. The company named CFO Scott Schenkel interim CEO as it looks for a replacement.
Big-box retailers are starting to make bigger pushes into health care to target older shoppers. This week, Best Buy announced that it hired its first chief medical officer and announced at an investor meeting its plans to ramp up services like remote monitoring of seniors. Last month, Walmart began piloting a new standalone health care clinic in Georgia that offers primary care and mental health services.
Rakesh Tondon, CEO of clothing and accessories rental provider Le Tote, said that his company's decision to acquire Lord & Taylor for $100 million was driven primarily by technology. Speaking at the Evolving E e-commerce conference in New York City on Tuesday, Tondon said that Le Tote was initially in talks with Lord & Taylor to open up Le Tote boutiques in some of its stores, as well as license its technology stack to Lord & Taylor, when reports broke that parent company HBC was looking to sell Lord & Taylor.
Shopify's list of competitors keeps growing, as other businesses see how valuable of customers early-stage, fast-growing e-commerce startups can be.
Big-box retailers Walmart and Target have been among the most aggressive in adding a variety of delivery options to match consumer expectations that have been set by Amazon. But now, with the holiday season approaching, department stores are also taking more aggressive steps to prove to shoppers that they too can win on fast delivery.
Multi-touch attribution has become the attribution method of choice for brands, especially direct-to-consumer ones, once they start advertising on more channels than just Facebook and Google. But switching to a multi-touch attribution model isn't as simple of a switch as transitioning from one software vendor to another. It is often a months-long project, that requires close communication between a brand's marketing and data science teams.
As Facebook and Google ads, the bread-and-butter of many direct-to-consumer brands' customer acquisition efforts, become more expensive, there's also been a rise in companies eager to give money to cash-strapped DTC companies -- for a fee. One of the most prominent of these companies is Clearbanc.
On Wednesday, Foot Locker is launching Greenhouse, a new incubator for emerging brands. Greenhouse will live as a standalone shopping app, where it will release limited-edition product drops in partnership with select brands and designers. Greenhouse is one of a number of ways that Foot Locker is trying to reinvent itself as a destination for more than just athletic gear.
As J. Crew's denim-focused brand Madewell prepares to go public, it will be depending upon its loyalty program to fuel customer retention and personalization efforts, which the company thinks is key to driving more direct-to-consumer sales.
As Gap, Inc. prepares for a future without Old Navy, one of the ways it's looking to fuel growth is by taking Athleta, which has been one of the few bright spots in its portfolio, overseas.
More than 80% of Steve Madden's revenue still comes from wholesale. But that doesn't mean that the footwear retailer can totally ignore its e-commerce business. "If someone discovers your brand at Nordstrom, the odds are very good that they will [eventually] come to your site," said. Jeff Silverman, president of global e-commerce for Steve Madden.
As direct-to-consumer brands expand into new categories, they're starting to hire more marketers with a special focus on retention, whose goal is to win over more business from repeat customers. Brands that currently have openings for retention marketers at various levels include Brooklinen, Care/Of, Peloton and Prose.
Target's Cartwheel rewards program has for the past several years been pointed to as one of the most successful loyalty programs from a big-box retailer. Yet, late last year, Target announced that it was testing a new loyalty program called Target Circle, that would replace Cartwheel. The new loyalty program is meant to bridge the gap between Cartwheel, a digital couponing app that was free, but still geared towards diehard Target shoppers, and Red Card, Target's private label credit card.
Target reported better-than-expected earnings results, and its stock has been soaring. Much of its recent success was thanks to its growing private label program, which gave the retailer better margins. The question remains whether the company can sustain this momentum as it scales more lines.
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