SUSTAINABILITY

Reformation’s No Longer Neutral

Reformation says its slip dresses are the most “sustainable” clothing option out there—second only to wearing nothing at all. Still, it found places to clean up its climate commitments.

The details: Reformation told Retail Brew that it will be “climate positive” by 2025. That’s a new term for you and me both.

• Kathleen Talbot, Chief Sustainability Officer and VP Operations at Reformation, defined climate positive as “going beyond net zero carbon emissions to actually create an environmental benefit, by removing more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere than we emit.” 

The directives: Talbot told me the brand studied every step in its supply chain to identify where emissions are largest. Then it ID’d three investment areas: further reducing emissions, insetting (a process of expanding renewable energy in the direct supply chain), and producing garments with regenerative fibers. 

• “Within apparel, [...] the area we can drive the most impact in is raw materials sourcing and material processing,” Talbot said.
• But regenerative farming for apparel is still in its infancy—meaning that Reformation considers progress here to be sourcing 10% of its collections from regenerative fibers. Talbot added, “[I]t’s going to take time and some investment from us and other brands to help scale these methods.”

Is this a greenwash?

There’s cause for skepticism when brands announce in-house sustainability efforts. Brands don’t use a unified definition of sustainability, so it’s often unclear whether items with the label are truly better or worse for the environment.

• Meanwhile, at U.S. and U.K. online retailers, clothes and accessories labeled as “sustainable” have quadrupled over the past four years, per data from analytics firm Edited.

Retailers from LVMH to Amazon have entered the green chat primarily by offsetting their emissions—which doesn’t always have a clear-cut impact. So from Reformation’s POV, “we have the responsibility to set the bar high and let others know we need to do more than buy offsets,” Talbot said.

Going public: Reformation will hang all its laundry from the climate positive plan out for other brands (and shoppers) to see starting in 2021, with quarterly updates. 

• “The goal is to share all lessons learned to accelerate this sort of commitment across the industry,” Talbot said, calling the plan a “proof of concept” for peers.

Zoom out: Reformation is overhauling many processes to promote transparency this year. Reformation's former CEO Yael Aflalo stepped down following accusations of racism in June; a third-party investigation did not find evidence that her behavior toward employees was racially motivated. The brand has since added diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) stats to its quarterly sustainability reports. 

E-COMM

Shopping Goes Down in the DMs

Every app can become a commerce engine if you just believe. WhatsApp, the global messaging platform owned by Facebook, believes: so it built a cart feature for its business accounts. 

How it works: WhatsApp’s roughly 2 billion users can browse brand catalogs within a chat, then send an order of multiple items to the brand via message. 

Why DMs? “People today don’t want to call a 1-800 number and wait on hold, or send an email and not know whether it’s been read,” Ajit Varma, head of business products at WhatsApp, told Retail Brew. “They want to send a message and get a quick, personalized response.” 

That dynamic has played out across e-comm during the height of the pandemic. In Shopify’s Future of Commerce report, merchant sales attributed to its chat function, Shopify Ping, increased 185% from March 16 to July 1. 

The WhatsApp advantage: Habit. By itself, 175+ million people already use the app to message with businesses. 

Plus, it’s one-third of a growing commerce machine. Parent company Facebook has rolled out shopping tools for its namesake platform and Instagram throughout 2020. It’s also set to acquire the customer management system Kustomer for $1 billion—smoothing out inquiries across its banners.

SPONSORED BY ITERABLE

How Do You Connect With Customers?

Drawing a blank? We thought so. That’s why we’ve teamed up with the growth marketers at Iterable to help you build long-term, meaningful relationships with your customers. 

In our article, we hit all the major points—personalization, data, and individualization—that can mean the difference between a one-and-done transaction and a fan for life. 

While a bunch of advice is always great, we’ve made sure to give you actionable tips that you can start implementing pretty much immediately.

And since Iterable was there to help us with said actionable tips, you can be sure they’re some of the best nuggets of retail wisdom around. 

So take a look at our article about creating and retaining retail relationships, executed with Iterable, right here.

APPAREL

At Last, an Upbeat Apparel Story

Stitch Fix earnings told us what apparel retailers have wanted to hear for months: Shoppers are finally getting all dressed up, even with nowhere to go.

On Monday, Stitch Fix reported that active clients grew 10.2% since Q3 of last year, to 3.8 million total. And those new sign-ups, along with revenue and profit growth, exceeded expectations: On Tuesday, Stitch Fix shares rose nearly 40%. 

• Those results encapsulate the highest number of first “Fixes,” or styling solutions, Stitch Fix sold in a single quarter.
• For shoppers, it’s partially convenience, partially personalization: Stitch Fix adjusts its recs with every shopper interaction.

For those of you without an algorithm...There’s reason for optimism, so long as you’re embracing the rise of cozycore. Moody’s Investors Service anticipates that apparel retailers’ profits could increase between 70% and 90% in 2021. 

• The firm anticipates that “casualization” will continue, benefitting the Nikes of the world while forcing the Men’s Wearhouses to adapt.
• But Moody's analysts noted that the U.S. is still over-retailed, and more store closures are imminent.

WHAT ELSE IS BREWING

• Lowe's anticipates 2020's home improvement trend will extend to next year.
• The FTC is suing to block P&G’s acquisition of Billie.
• Gap will close its Chicago flagship in 2021.
• Zappos is expanding its program for shoppers to buy single shoes or mixed-size pairs.
• 400 million sq. ft. That’s the warehouse space CBRE expects retailers to need in the next five years just for processing returns. 

SPONSORED BY SALSIFY

In the land of ad spend, product content is king. To thrive in today’s e-commerce climate, you need to look at what your customers are, well, actually looking at. So the marketing minds at Salsify created this nifty report analyzing PDPs and ad performance across millions of products. Their findings? Better content greatly improves conversion and ad spend efficiency. Read the full report right here.

COMMUNITY

It’s time for our segment highlighting the best part of Retail Brew: you, the readers. If you’re ready for the spotlight and to connect with 148,000+ other retail industry pros, fill out our quick nomination form.

Chloé Chanudet joined Adore Me as an intern in 2013 and worked her way up to CMO. She gave Retail Brew a look at the c-suite life below.

How would you describe your job to someone who’s not in retail? Being the Chief Marketing Officer of a lingerie and fashion brand would've seemed glamorous to me prior to entering the professional world. In reality, I spend the majority of my time in Google Data Studio, vetting attribution models, and calculating all sorts of acronyms like ROAS (return on advertising spend) and ROMI (return on marketing investment).

Favorite project you’ve worked on: We did a major rebrand last year, working with the agency Grey. After years of heads-down growth and firefighting, it was an amazing chance to really reflect on the brand and team we had built.

Favorite retail follow: Sapna Maheshwari.

Pick two brands to make your ideal retail collab: Momofuku x Adore Me. I'm not sure what exactly that would look like, but it'd be a dream.

SWAPPING SKUS

After 70 years and global circulation, Ikea will no longer publish its door stopper of a catalog. I gathered today’s reading list in honor of the “emotional” decision.

• Ikea’s announcement is the end of retail’s largest publication—but it’s not necessarily the end of the advertising form. (Pymnts)
• Usually, catalogs highlight one retailer or brand. So why did 20 separate companies band together for a single holiday mailer? (Retail Dive)

ICYMI

Catch up on the Retail Brew stories you may have missed.

• Unilever Bets on Home Fragrance with New Walmart Line
• Quip’s Oral Care Suite Now Includes Consumables
• Barnes & Noble Is Thinking More Like a Local Bookseller

KFC TRIVIA ANSWER

KFC published a romance novella called Tender Wings of Desire in 2017.