RESALE

Ready, set, resale

On Tuesday, Retail Brew hosted the latest edition of our event series, The Checkout, with a conversation about the resale revolution and its impact on sustainability. Katishi spoke with Pooja Sethi, ThredUp’s SVP and GM of Resale-as-a-Service, and Marcus Shen, B-Stock Solutions’s COO.

The gist: To make resale a successful and sustainable part of operations, it has to be convenient for retailers and shoppers, according to Sethi and Shen.

Click here to watch the full event replay, and keep reading for the top takeaways.

Reuse, recycle, resell

Secondhand was a trend before Covid, but the pandemic accelerated the market’s growth. It’s expected to double to $77 billion by 2025, according to a recent ThredUp report.

• Shen said B-Stock saw a 50% YoY spike in inventory and merchandise sold on the B2B marketplace platform.
• ThredUp also saw increased supply, as people cleaned out their closets while stuck at home. 

One reason resale has caught people’s attention (and wallets)? Consumers don’t want to waste time, money, or the planet’s resources, Sethi said. “We saw that people were seeking value [and] we saw the opposition to environmental waste.”

• 33 million consumers shopped secondhand for the first time last year, Sethi noted. 

Count us in: Retailers are eager to get involved, as part of their broader sustainability efforts. Sethi said ThredUp has seen a big increase in brands looking to get into the resale game over the last year.

• This week, Madewell and ThredUp announced their new denim resale program, which accepts pre-worn jeans in exchange for $20 credit toward a new pair. 

Sethi and Shen agreed that to get more buy-in, it’s crucial to make resale convenient for both the retailer and the consumer. 

“It's a more competitive market than it's ever been. Optimizing inventory management and making sure things are moving out of their warehouses quickly...making the best use of their resources is mission critical,” Shen told us. 

• B-stock uses an “ecosystem of partners, whether it's logistics [or] handling,” to “loosen the burden of ‘doing the right thing’ around sustainability.”

Get green

While retailers and brands are keen on minimizing waste, they want to maximize profits too. 

“Ultimately, it's the time value of money,” Sethi said. Companies have started to see resale as a growth channel in a larger omnichannel strategy. 

• “It’s not just the right thing to do, it also makes money for the brand,” Sethi said. “That is what will drive innovation.”

Looking ahead: “The categories will get broader,” Shen said. “Businesses will attack [resale] in categories outside apparel,” pointing to consumer electronics, home goods, and furniture as the future of the space.—JG, KM

STORES

New fit

Bed Bath & Beyond is undergoing a renaissance of sorts, and its stores are integral to its new vision. Yesterday, the company unveiled its remodeled Manhattan flagship.

Brand loyalty: The 92,000-square-foot store is designed to highlight several new private label brands Bed Bath & Beyond has introduced this year. 

• Simply Essential, Wild Sage, Nestwell, and Haven are all featured prominently throughout the flagship. For good reason: Over the next three years, the company intends to triple sales from owned brands to 30% of total revenue.  
• Joe Hartsig, Bed Bath & Beyond’s chief merchandising officer, told Retail Brew in May that stores would be outfitted with vignettes surrounding different areas of the home to market their new brands—a strategy that makes it easier to navigate the store.  

“If you remember in the old store, we were actually off to the exits, so you’d zip in and zip out,” CEO Mark Tritton said during a tour. Now, the team wants people to explore and “zip around” instead. 

Compared to the prior location, the new flagship has 44% fewer SKUs and 40% less inventory, Tritton said. 

• That has made room for more “experiences,” such as a SodaStream Bubble Bar and Casper’s first shop-in-shop. 

Go beyond: BBBY will spend $250 million over the next three years to remodel 450 stores. Tritton said the company is open to more shop-in-shop partnerships like Casper for future remodels where it makes sense to do so. 

• There’s “less space in the suburban stores we operate,” Tritton said, “but we’re always looking for diverse opportunities.”—KM

SPONSORED BY ROUTE

E-commerce Meets E-connection

Here’s something that shouldn’t come as a surprise: People are craving connection more than ever. You know what else isn’t a shocker? It’s getting tougher to build that bond between shoppers and your brand.

But universal problems tend to inspire collective solutions—and that’s precisely what will be happening at Route Connect on August 5.

To home in on what’s working, what’s not, and what the future holds, Route Connect is bringing the best e-commerce minds together for a night of intel and innovation.

We ran out of stationery and wax seal stamps, but you are ~cordially~ invited to witness the industry’s best and brightest—like Sara and Erin Foster of Favorite Daughter—as they dish out exclusive know-how, actionable insights, and tangible strategies.  

Registration for the virtual event is free—but you’ve also got a chance to be there IRL. Five lucky registrants will be selected to join in NYC, all expenses paid.

Sign up before July 27 for your chance to win.

TECH

Get that funding

Talk is cheap. Tech is $$$. Retail tech funding reached a record $31.5 billion in Q2 2021, according to a new report by CB Insights. That’s an increase of nearly 4% from the previous quarter.

• 2021 funding is predicted to more than double the retail tech investments for each of the last four years. 

Why? The pandemic led to labor shortages, supply chain issues, and heightened demand. Tech, retailers hope, can help fill in some of the gaps.

• Funding for supply chain and logistics tech (think: tools for warehouse management and delivery) increased to $9.6 billion, up 13% from Q1.

In-store tech spend climbed 46% to $3.3 billion as consumers returned to IRL shopping. Meanwhile, tech-enabled loyalty and rewards funding rocketed almost 60% in Q2 to $413 million, as retailers aim to make the most of consumers’ new app habits. (Gap just announced its revamped programs to turn customers into “lifetime loyalists.”) 

Trend watch: Amazon roll-ups are rolling in it. Companies that acquire and scale the platform’s third-party brands racked up $1.2 billion in funding in Q2.

• Over the previous two years, 10 to 15 of these startups together raised at least $1.5 billion, Forbes reported last November.—JG

WHAT ELSE IS BREWING…

• Zomato, an Indian food delivery unicorn, saw shares soar on its first day of trading.
• Instacart is partnering with Fabric to create automated fulfillment centers.
• Taboola snapped up Connexity, an e-comm ad tech company, for $800 million. 
• Crocs sued 21 businesses, including Walmart, for ripping off its classic clog.
• McDonald's pledged to increase spending with diverse suppliers to 25%.

SPONSORED BY BAZAARVOICE

Dope visuals mean dopamine. The human brain is more likely to react to striking visual content. That split second reaction can mean acquiring a new customer—or not. Bazaarvoice is hosting a webinar on how to create content that stops mindless scrolling, inspires consumer trust, and gets people shopping. Watch the webinar here.

SWAPPING SKUS

Today’s top retail reads. 

Filling gaps: Thanks to TikTok, Gap has started to attract Gen Zers. (Refinery 29)

Cover up: JCPenney is putting more emphasis on its beauty business as longtime partner Sephora moves to Kohl’s. (Fortune)

Let the games begin: Despite the unique circumstances surrounding this year’s Olympic games, apparel brands are still clamoring to get their names in front of global audiences. (Business of Fashion)

FROM THE CREW

Can We Circle Back on Meetings?

Bottom line: Most of them stink. And most of them are unnecessarily long or inefficient. That’s why Morning Brew’s cofounder and executive chairman, Alex Lieberman, is sharing 6 Steps for Successful Meetings on his podcast, Founder’s Journal. You’ll learn when it’s actually time to have a meeting, when it’s not, and how to get the most out of them. Listen to Founder’s Journal here.

ICYMI

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

• Most Americans favor faster shipping over shopping sustainably: survey
• Convenience store startup Foxtrot announces nationwide expansion
• The fall of Manhattan’s Astor Place Kmart

FRIEND OR FAUX?

Three of the stories below are real...and one is most definitely not. Can you spot the fake? 

1. Subway launched a website dedicated to defending its allegedly fake tuna.
2. Bad Bunny collabed with Adidas and Cheetos on an apparel line and scholarship fund.
3. Customers are waiting as long as 30 minutes for Costco’s recently returned free samples. 
4. Travis Scott is giving fans a chance to win limited-edition Cacti merch on Uber Eats.  

Keep reading for the answer.

FRIEND OR FAUX? ANSWER

No, even we wouldn’t wait that long for free samples at Costco.