Episode Details

Main Takeaways:

• Brian and Phillip are joined in today's episode by guest host extraordinaire, Ingrid Cordy, the Vice President of Global E-Commerce and Consumer Experience at e.l.f. Cosmetics.
• The direct to consumer industry is taking a shift towards profitability, and significant changes are happening to accompany it.
• Why are smaller companies expected to innovate and scale entire categories?
• Larger and more established brands are no longer the most relevant in the spaces that they helped define.

Future Commerce at Shoptalk: What Are the Details?:

• *Disclaimer: **Shoptalk was rescheduled for September 14-17 due to concerns regarding the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak. *
• Ingrid will be speaking at Shoptalk regarding technologies within omnichannel, and she will also be doing a Future Commerce recording.
• There is a whole crew of amazing women that will be presenting at Shoptalk on behalf of Future Commerce.
• What are some topics that you hope will be covered at Shoptalk?

The Profitability Shift: The End of an Era?:

• Recently, it was announced that founder Ty Haney is stepping down from her role as CEO at Outdoor Voices.
• Despite getting their name out there and establishing themselves as a leader in the athleisure space, the company was losing two million dollars a month.
• With as much innovation and inspiration that has been shown by direct to consumer brands, we are going to start seeing people expecting profits.
• You can do a lot of things right (like Outdoor Voices) and still have trouble reaching profitability.
• Do customers only want to live their lives with products in their periphery, and have the recent trends of content channels and customer experience just been fads?

A Shift In Perspective: Ego Shifts Over Time:

• Is it egocentric to think that your brand is changing the world and bringing people together?
• The concept of luxury and the aspirational point of view that comes with it has changed from living the lifestyle of your dreams to thinking that we are saving the world and acting differently.
• There is a bit of delusion in both of these viewpoints, but that delusion is necessary because we need to aspire to something.
• There is a lot of pressure on a brand when you are venture-backed to grow at an exponential rate that might not be best for the brand as a whole.

Real-Life Comparisons: Comparing and Contrasting:

• Every single thing that is driving the economy stems from our current unchecked spending culture.
• For comparison, what is it that lululemon is doing that Outdoor Voices is not when it comes to being profitable?
• In the case of Amazon, they invested in infrastructure in their growth stages that allowed their business to run better as opposed to high spending in regards to its content production.
• Private Equity knows to build businesses that have profitability while still considering growth and scale.
• Has the era of retail owning fashion and apparel companies come to an end?
• Brandless is ceasing operations after less than three years in business.

Looking Back to Look Ahead: Predicting Trends