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Physical retail strategies have become integral to the growth of direct-to-consumer brands, as they seek out customers they can't reach online. Members of the first generation of DTC, like Warby Parker and Casper now have aggressive store expansion plans. Home goods brand Parachute is one such brand that's undergoing a rapid physical expansion.
It’s Tim Armstrong’s belief that everything, eventually, will be direct-to-consumer, and he sees the issues currently burdening the DTC category as symptomatic of a burgeoning industry trying to grow up. There will be a tech-like shakeout, yes, but the successful brands in the space are rewriting the rules of how consumer companies develop product and market to customers, because at their cores, they actually know who their customers are.
As Ro, the parent company of telemedicine brands Ro, Rory and Zero, looks to diversify its marketing mix, the company is looking to partner more with institutions that its target audience already trusts. Earlier this month, Roman, its men's focused brand which sells generic hair loss and erectile dysfunction medication over the internet, announced that it signed a multi-year deal with Major League Baseball to sponsor its television and digital media coverage around Father's Day.
Outdoor Voices' vp of technology Kevin Harwood discussed Outdoor Voices' in-store strategy, what kind of results it has seen from Instagram Checkout and how the brand is thinking about investing in mobile and personalization.
In the past, Foot Locker had to figure out how to market products from companies like Adidas and Nike after it had already been created. Now, CMO Jed Berger and Foot Locker are working more closely with vendors to develop product exclusively for their stores, using customer data and insight from Berger’s marketing team that its vendor partners don’t have access to.
For custom apparel brand Indochino, the preference for proprietary extends beyond its products. The 12-year-old, Vancouver-based business does most of its media buying in-house, and has for most of the company's history. In 2017, it built its own attribution system to better determine the effectiveness of different marketing channels and unite online and offline data. And it operates off of its own proprietary point-of-sale system that it's installed in all 45 of its showrooms across the U.S. and Canada.
Seventy-three percent of shoppers now use multiple channels to research and shop before making a purchase. And 90 percent expect consistent interactions across all of those channels.
Party City’s annual October Halloween pop ups have been scaled back by about 90% this year. It also plans to hired 20% fewer seasonal workers. The party supply chain's decision, which counts on the holiday's sales for 20% of its annual revenue, could signal a similar fate for other seasonal pop-ups this year.
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