STRATEGY

Hybrid's here

Despite the recent spike in Covid cases, stores—broadly speaking—are open for business, but plans to reopen corporate offices largely remain on the fritz.  

Retail Brew spoke to two companies about their return to the office and how their strategy will evolve over time. 

New digs: Fast, a headless digital checkout startup, is growing, well, fast. In 2019, the company had two employees: its cofounders. Today, it’s got ~250 and wants to double that in the next six months.

Recruiting remotely has paid dividends, CEO and cofounder Domm Holland told us: “It was the best decision we made. We wouldn't have been in the company today if we couldn’t do that so quickly. But obviously, once Covid is over, we can’t expect that they're all going to fly and move to San Francisco.” 

• Employees have the flexibility to work anywhere—”from home or from a tropical beach”—but Holland still wanted to give people an IRL option. 

He also wanted an East Coast presence in an up-and-coming city. Hence the location for Fast’s new hub, which opened in July: Tampa.

• “There’s tons of development going on, a lot of affordable housing throughout the area...and so there's just a lot of local talent,” Holland said. “It's a growth city.”
• Holland will work out of the temp space full-time alongside a dozen employees, and the company is targeting the city for a majority of its new hires, and a permanent office. 
• Fast also provides workers with unlimited WeWork memberships.

Setting up shop: Holland’s loose philosophy (right now) is that having around five people in a market warrants opening a WeWork, and with 20, they’ll open a dedicated office. 

“At best, you're going to have about 20% of your local team in the office on any given day,” Holland said. “I think offices are now more experiential as opposed to just a desk [in a] WeWork.”

• The next market Fast is eyeing is New York City, followed by London and Sydney (Holland hails from Australia), as it continues to expand its one-click online checkout offering.

Staggering schedules

Last month, women’s intimates brand Adore Me was gearing up to implement a hybrid work schedule that would have employees come in three days a week and WFH for two. That’s been put on hold because of the Delta variant, but it’s still a model that the company believes will work best, with different cohorts coming in on different days. 

“The original idea was to try to really work on staggering things to allow for social distancing,” Ranjan Roy, the company's VP of strategy, told Retail Brew. “So that's another big thing we think will likely change for the fall—where we stagger across groups.” 

• Adore Me has about 350 corporate employees across NYC, Paris, and Bucharest, Romania.

Fast fashion: For Adore Me, it’s important for employees to meet in person, Roy told us, whether it’s for photo shoots, fittings or collabing on product design. But a total return to pre-pandemic protocols is unlikely. 

“We did find that the office is about keeping people together, building morale, and strengthening teams, but the Monday to Friday, nine to five—that kind of rigidity is not going to be the norm going forward.”—KM 

LUXURY

Watch and learn

Watch it: Chrono24, a luxury watch marketplace founded in 2010, is now a unicorn after raising a ~$118 million funding round earlier this month. 

How? For one, as co-CEO and founder Tim Stracke told Retail Brew, Chrono24’s biggest competitor in this space is eBay, which typically sells watches at lower price points. Also, Chrono24 isn’t exclusively for resale. Sellers, which are largely mom-and-pop shops, can also sell new watches. 

• 85% of transactions through Chrono24 are from professional sellers, whereas 15% are from private individuals. The company carries 3,000+ dealers on its platform.
• In 2020, Chrono24’s revenue grew 50% YoY. While Stracke declined to share specific numbers, he said the company expects transaction values of roughly $2.9 billion this year. 

“People couldn't spend on restaurants, hotels, experiences, and travel anymore. So they were sitting at home and then, as revenge, buying luxury watches,” Stracke told us. 

• High-end watches and jewelry were the second-best performing category among luxury goods in 2020, according to McKinsey & Company, due to their investment value. 

Stracke said this year is even stronger. “People don't buy vintage watches because they can save a few dollars. These are items that are super stable in value that mostly appreciate over time.”

Looking ahead: Chrono24 is profitable and doesn’t need cash to run its day-to-day operations, Stracke said. He told us an IPO is “probably more likely than another huge fundraising round.”—KM 

SPONSORED BY ATTENTIVE

Breaking: During the Holidays, People Buy Stuff

We know, we know—if you’re in retail, being told the holidays are crucial is like being told puppies are cute or rocks are hard. 

But this holiday season, consumers are expected to shop online more than ever before, with e-commerce sales from Black Friday and Cyber Monday alone projected to surpass $10 billion. 

This webinar from Attentive will show you how to ramp up your SMS subscriber base before the all-important holiday season. Rebekka Brown, director of client strategy at Attentive, will discuss how to boost that sub list across channels, plus offer tips for sending automated and one-time campaigns. 

Because puppies really are cute, rocks are pretty freakin’ hard, and the holidays really are crucial. If you join Attentive’s webinar, you’ll get all the info you need to start building loyalty before the purchase-palooza begins. 

Join Attentive’s webinar here. 

SOCIAL MEDIA

Shop ’til you Tok

Tick tock: The time is now. Shopify is partnering with TikTok to introduce product discovery and shopping tabs on the social media app. 

The (quick) details: TikTok Shopping will let Shopify merchants integrate their online stores into their TikTok profiles, creating a storefront on their channel. 

• Shopify merchants will now have more direct access to scale products and potentially reach TikTok’s hundreds of millions of active users. 
• The pilot is available to merchants in the US and UK (with a TikTok For Business account); a group from Canada will be added in the coming weeks. 

Why it matters: While only 4.3% of US e-commerce sales will come from social commerce this year, totaling $36.09 billion, per eMarketer, that’s expected to grow to 4.9% by 2023. 

• Installation across Shopify’s social commerce channels increased 76% from February 2020 to February 2021, according to the e-comm giant. 

One thing brands need to understand to shift from discovery → purchase, Layla Amjadi, director of product management for Instagram Shopping, previously told Retail Brew, is that “it’s okay to be a little bit clear about the sale—and that’s actually what people want.”

+1: Instagram is rolling out ads on its Shop tab globally after a US test this month.—KM

WHAT ELSE IS BREWING…

• Farfetch will introduce a preorder service, partnering with brands like Balenciaga and Oscar de la Renta.
• Nordstrom’s sales, while up from 2020, still haven’t recovered to where they were pre-pandemic.
• Urban Outfitters is moving into resale with its own marketplace, Nuuly Thrift.
• Walmart will provide last-mile delivery—for other retailers.
• Sweetgreen acquired Spyce, a robot kitchen startup.

SPONSORED BY #PAID

Are influencers winfluencing or wincefluencing? No, wincefluencing isn’t actually a thing, but this influencer marketing report from #paid definitely is. Look at influencer performance in Q1 and Q2, engagement rates, benchmark performance data, and how H1 2021 compared to 2020—it’s all here, totally free, no annoying form to fill out. Check out #paid’s H1 benchmark data report here.

SWAPPING SKUS

Today’s top retail reads. 

A peek at the playbook: China’s Anta has plans to rule the country’s sportswear market—plans that could soon make it more valuable than Adidas. (Jing Daily)

Long road ahead: The trucking industry wants to get more women behind the wheel. But it can be a tough sell. (Bloomberg)

Growing pains: Our love of Nutella is transforming Italy’s farmland: “Hazelnut trees are now planted everywhere...and they are sucking up all our land’s resources.” (Financial Times) 

COMMUNITY

On Wednesdays, we wear pink spotlight Retail Brew's readers. Want to be featured in an upcoming edition? Click here to introduce yourself.

Chelsie Arvizu has spent years helping brands like Hint develop their digital strategy. Now, she’s doing it at Ripple Foods, which sells plant-based dairy alternatives, as their director of e-comm. 

How would you describe your job to someone who doesn't work in retail? If you look at how (most) grocery store shelves are neatly organized with pricing and products, I work for customers to have that same experience digitally.  

What's your favorite project you've worked on? Launching a dotcom-exclusive variety pack that had one of each flavor. It ended up becoming one of our top products and it was so fun to hear about customers discovering new favorites.

One retail account we should follow: Mike Black of Profitero on LinkedIn is always on point.

An emerging trend that you’re excited about: Subscription/autofill services. Amazon has owned this market for so long and there is a huge opportunity to build loyalty through this offering.

ICYMI

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

• Foot Locker plans to expand its “off mall” customer base 
• Interest in designer collabs grows as Gen Zers view luxury goods as assets
• TikTok #dorm content is driving a new category of home decor