Fabletics is in the midst of a significant growth plan. The brand is aiming to increase its current annual revenue from $900 million to over $1 billion in the next two years and double its revenue over the next five years. As part of that plan, it’s launching in wholesale channels like Nordstrom and continuously opening new stores of its own in markets like Idaho and San Diego.
According to Carly Gomez, Fabletics’ CMO, every part of the company’s growth strategy revolves around its members. With over 2.5 million members and seven new countries served this year, Gomez told Glossy it’s paramount for the brand to stay intimately in touch with what its members want.
At the Glossy E-Commerce Summit last week, Gomez told Glossy that Fabletics has instituted multiple programs to keep track of what customers want. The first is a “Meet the Member” program, where each month the team meets with a real Fabletics member and interviews them about their shopping habits and perception of the brand. These meetings happen either in person at Fabletics’ HQ in Southern California or virtually. The members are offered gift cards for their participation.
“Recently, we started sitting down with them and actually going on the site journey with them,” Gomez said. “We watch as they go through the site and shop and ask what’s resonating: ‘How did you feel about this?’”
In addition, Gomez said every Fabletics employee spends one day a year working in one of its retail stores. Observing customers and interacting with them in person offers great insight into how they’re actually shopping and interacting with the brand, she said. The in-person facetime with customers offers a depth of detail that macrodata can’t give, she said.
These interactions have been most helpful in refining Fabletics’ brand identity so Gomez’s team can decide what is and is not a fit for the brand, including what trends to jump on. Gomez pointed to an example of Kendrick Lamar’s flared jeans at the Super Bowl as a moment she wanted to get in on but knew it wasn’t the right fit for the customer. Meanwhile, the butter-yellow trend is a fit for the Fabletics customer, who tends to like bright colors. The team was able to quickly merchandise against the trend accordingly.
“We get so much data every day, but you don’t often have the person the data represents sitting next to you, who you can ask questions,” Gomez said. “It personifies the data, and you can go much deeper when you’re talking to them.”
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