2PM - New: Four Trends For Fashion's Future

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When you think of Vuori, Psycho Bunny, Faherty, Johnnie-O, and Bombas, you think of their rare growth trajectories. None of the brands were first-movers; they each had stiff competition form incumbent retail brands and better-positioned DTCs. But something set them apart from the rest. Here’s an example of how many of these brands work against the typical best practices associated with the segment:

Tucked away in suburban Ohio, a small boutique features a number of brands, none of which are native to the midwest. One trip around the Trevor Furbay boutique in Dublin and you’ll find Faherty, Johnnie-O, and Vuori among others. For smaller formatted stores like this one, it’s rarer to find modern brands of the caliber of those mentioned. For the brands, this type of distribution is a lot of work for relatively little revenue. To a brand of Vuori’s size, this could seem like a waste of time and energy. But for brands like these, who’ve excelled in the art of finding customers where they are, there is no such thing as an account too big or one too small.

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Can mystery boxes save fashion retail?

Enter the designer “mystery box,” an e-comm innovation that the ESSX team thinks might save retail (at least in their corner of the LES) from fashion’s discount death spiral. ESSX is backed by Scarce, a service that packages an assortment of overstock and end-of-season designer goods and sells them to customers at a discounted rate. A Scarce “staple streetwear” box, which might include a mix of brands like Amiri or Off-White, sells for $398 and can have a value of up to $1,000.

Editor's Note: No, but it's a solid concept used by companies like Firstport, Rowing Blazers, and Heat.

How Allbirds lost its way

Excerpt: The effort failed to attract enough younger customers, partly because many of the company’s products, such as its colorful ballet flats, tended to skew older. As one insider put it, Allbirds wasn’t going to convince kids in downtown Oakland, Calif., to ditch their Air Jordans when it was selling ballet flats.

Zuckerberg understands advertising, the Threads advantage

Excerpt: Unlike previous competitors, which essentially had to start from scratch, Threads is built on the Instagram platform, and has made it easy for Instagram’s 2.3 billion users to set up accounts and migrate their followers. Twitter’s greatest competitive advantage, as with any successful social-media platform, has been the network effect created by its huge user base: People, after all, want to be where other people are. 

Everyone's setting up shop in fancy hotels

A. Excerpt (Linear Commerce): At the beautiful Ritz-Carlton Laguna Niguel on the coast of Orange County, for instance, guests can book personal shopping and styling appointments at the on-site Fifth Avenue Club, an unassuming suite-turned-boutique where all merchandise is curated specifically for each client. [...] "I think it's kitschy and fun," says Sporty & Rich founder Emily Oberg of the appeal of hotel collaborations.

Any company can build an entertainment empire

B. Excerpt (Linear Commerce): All brands can do this. The future lies in harnessing the power of premium storytelling and expanding brand universes to connect with consumers on a deeper and more genuine level. As the entertainment and media landscapes evolve, brands must adapt and seize the opportunity to make entertainment—not advertisements—to maintain their esteem in the hearts and minds of consumers. 

Updated For July 16: 802 brands covered. Today’s breakout is the top of the supplement category, there were a number of big risers. Of them, Onnit jumped 101 spots and Soylent improved by 85. Shopify is being used by a third of the list which underperforms in comparison to our data on platform penetration: Shopify 73.5% of the list, Custom is 18.2%, WooCommerce is 3.28%, Salesforce is 1.26%, Magento is 1.14%, SpreeCommerce is 1.01%, Squarespace is .5%, and BigCommerce is .379%.

70 eCommerce stats and trends for 2023

Excerpt: The change in the customer buying experience from in-person to online shopping characterizes this new era of retail. Customer loyalty has collapsed, with consumers switching brands at unprecedented rates. These stats speak for recent changes in customer behavior.

Amazon helped pay for out-of-network Prime Day ad costs

Excerpt: This year’s event was the first mostly untarnished by pandemic-related logistics issues like supply chain shortages, and Amazon capitalized on the number of brands eager to get back into consumers’ baskets. Programs like the out-of-network advertising subsidies will help Amazon build relationships with brands that could get them to focus even more heavily on the event.

Advertisers warily embrace A.I.

Excerpt: Major advertising companies say the technology could streamline a bloated business model. The ad group WPP is working with the chip maker Nvidia on an A.I. platform that could, for example, allow car companies to easily incorporate footage of a vehicle into scenes customized for local markets without laboriously filming different commercials around the world.

Audience buying is helping brands connect with their market

Excerpt: Another advantage of audience buying is allowing advertisers to streamline their advertising efforts. By targeting specific audience segments, they can concentrate their resources on platforms, podcasts, or time slots that are popular among their target audience, helping to maximize reach and impact and generating better results from the ad campaign.