eTail West Briefing: KiwiCo’s retail expansion, eBay’s fashion plans and the quotes of the week

The jump from direct-to-consumer to retail shelves is a big transition for any brand. But after six months of sales at Target and Barnes and Noble, toy and play brand KiwiCo has found initial fears of cannibalization have yet to come to pass.

Lisa Hom, chief product and merchandise officer, told Modern Retail during eTail West this week that the brand is sticking to its playbook of offering a tightly curated assortment of popular products at its mass retail partners as it continues to expand its online assortment. 

It also uses a similar strategy on Amazon, where it’s sold since 2022, and finding that it’s bringing in more customers without much — if any — additional ad spend. That’s thanks to ongoing marketing efforts that were already supporting the DTC business. “They see the ads wherever they are — TikTok, Pinterest, Facebook — and then see it again in retail stores,” she said.

What’s more, Hom said, “We had specific products that were going viral on ads, and so people were going to Amazon and looking for our products. They were typing in ‘Domino machine, KiwiCo.’ And so we knew we were losing a lot of sales from just not being where customers were shopping.”

KiwiCo’s experience going wholesale is a reminder that today’s shoppers expect brands to be omnichannel and show up wherever they are. But that can be a difficult expansion to manage. Several brands that spoke anonymously with Modern Retail during the eTail conference talked about their hesitation to jump to Amazon, whether for fear of losing out on sales or diluting the value of their brand. 

At KiwiCo, Hom said the company had previously stopped itself from jumping to wholesale out of fear that it would lose sales. 

“That direct-to-consumer relationship was so valuable, it was hard to let that go,” Hom said. “And the fear of cannibalization — losing that customer to an Amazon or a Target — was the debate we constantly had.”

KiwiCo was founded in 2011 and developed a profitable, nine-figure DTC business by the time it inked its Target and Barnes and Noble deals. It started selling STEM-oriented products for children ages three to eight, then expanded into more kits for older kids and early learning toys for infants. What finally changed, Hom said, was that awareness of the brand had grown so much online that it made sense to make products available beyond its owned channels. 

“Instead of us spending the advertising dollars trying to get everybody to come to our site, now we’re meeting customers where they’re already shopping,” she said.

But in retail, shoppers tend to be more impulsive than ones who may be searching and stocking up online. Those shoppers are also often looking for something specific, like a space-themed product or something to use outside during spring break.

That’s why, at retail, KiwiCo’s strategy is to focus on selling items that can appeal to a range of audiences at approachable price points. Popular products include its domino machine for $29.99, and its crystal ombre soap-making kit for $34.99 at​ Target. Hom said some of these buys are fueled by people who’ve learned about the brand over the years or seen its products while cycling through social media communities like MomTok. 

“That brand recognition hopefully is there, and paying off.” –Melissa Daniels

5 minutes with …

Alexis Hoopes, vp of fashion at eBay

In discussion with Modern Retail, eTail West speaker Hoopes discussed the state of fashion resale, the growth potential for the category and the greatest challenge facing all retailers today. 

“Recommerce is growing incredibly fast. Customers are engaging, brands are engaging, retailers are engaging — and we’re here trying to power that whole ecosystem. …

When somebody sells, they’re more likely to buy; there’s this amazing flywheel between the buyer and seller experience, so we’re always trying to engage sellers and make it easy. …

AI is empowering so much of what we do because we have so much selection and so much data. It’s helping sellers sell [by driving product descriptions, for example] and helping with the discovery of great products — one of the AI innovations we have is called Shop the Look, which browses all of our products available for sale and turns them into AI-generated outfits. If you’re looking at a T-shirt, for example, it will show it styled with shoes and jewelry, providing outfit inspiration. …

We want to become the destination for pre-loved branded fashion, and certainly premium and luxury are great places for us to play — we have a lot of selection and a lot of buyers and sellers actively participating in that area. We’ve put a lot of investment into authentication and ensuring [eBay] is a trusted place for [luxury] buyers and sellers. …

There are a lot of motivators behind why a buyer engages in recommerce. Certainly, value is a component. There are also those customers who are really into putting their own personal style together — “vintage” has become one of our top search terms. … And then there are our luxury customers who just want luxury — it may be something for less, or maybe it’s a really coveted item that’s hard to find in the primary market. …

We are partnering with brands in a lot of different ways. We recently partnered on some runway collections, but we also have relationships with brands like Adidas, where they’re selling on our platform. And we have a relationship with Certilogo, which [supports brand adoption of] digital product passports. …

Recommerce is certainly a big area for Gen Z. They are thrifting and buying and selling constantly. It’s very different from past generations that went to the mall and to a brand’s storefront and bought. For the younger customer, recommerce is a way of life. …

Bringing pre-loved into the heart of fashion through in-person activations is a big part of what we’re focused on. … It’s about making eBay top-of-mind among customers who are thinking about fashion. …

The latest thing we’ve been building is eBay Live. Having live shopping in fashion unlocks this piece of community that is so needed and has been missing in e-commerce. …

The customer demands change, and being able to respond to that while also taking care of the fundamentals is the greatest challenge — for every retailer.”

Overheard

“It’s about taking tons of swings.” One e-commerce executive Modern Retail spoke with said the reason their brand is finding success with digital ads right now is because they’re investing more into it and trying new things. From Reddit ads to throwing thousands of assets at Meta, the brand is finding that they are getting returns when they’re trying new strategies. The catch is that not all companies have the resources to make this strategy work — but the ones that can invest more tend to get the most payback. 

“It’s a really weird time to be in this business.” A digital officer for a personal care brand said what many others were thinking or implying as they chatted with their counterparts. With the uncertainties of tariff policies and the price increases customers could tolerate, companies are becoming more cautious about where they are putting their dollars. But at the same time, they have more data and tools than ever to help them find their customers and understand what they want, for how much and in what delivery method. Weird, indeed! 

“Chat GPT definitely wrote that.” One CMO quipped this one on stage after the moderator read their bio. All jokes aside, many professionals who attended eTail were more than happy to share how they’re using generative AI to make their workload more efficient or try new creative approaches. Some executives were excited about the prospect of how AI can help them create advertising assets, while others felt more strongly about its potential uses for translating large data sets. In any event, we’re past the point of dipping our toes in the water, and AI tools are filtering in through all parts of the e-commerce industry.

Quotes of the Week 

“When we were starting out, the only people who really cared about sustainability and supporting the circular economy were millennial hipsters. Today, it’s increasingly important to everybody.” –Gregg Brockway, co-Founder and CEO of used and vintage furniture marketplace Chairish 

“Now that we are omnichannel, it’s a challenge to determine how to grow across all respective channels and all retail partners. The benefit of advancing to different categories is that there are shoppers for different categories at different retailers. We have a different consumer profile for our DTC business than we have at Sephora, than we have at Nordstrom, than we have at Amazon. So, diversifying and defining the channel purpose for each retail partner — and aligning the [product] assortment and expansion and how we’re marketing so that we’re also benefitting all channels — is [important]. Beauty is competitive, so we need to stand out from the crowd. We’re working to build awareness, but in the Nécessaire way.” –Calvin Lammers, svp of digital and media at body-care brand Nécessaire