DTC brands are sitting out the first wave of store re-openings in Texas Direct-to-consumer startups have been thinking for weeks about how and when they want to re-open their stores. But as the time has come to re-open stores in some states, no one has any better idea of what the right path forward is than they did six weeks ago. Last Friday,...
- ‘Reminded me to be more human than ever’: DTC founders face leadership strains as crisis drags on
For many direct-to-consumer founders, it's been six weeks of extreme highs and lows -- some companies have recorded simultaneously some of their best and worst sales days within those same time periods. But even companies that have reported record sales haven't been immune from having to lay employees off. As...
- Lower advertising costs present a double-edged sword for DTC brands
In some ways, it's starting to feel like the early days of the direct-to-consumer boom all over again. A startup's website is once again its most important sales channel, as stores remain closed. Startups are having to operate with as small of a team as possible. And Facebook is once...
- Looking ahead, DTC brands start scenario planning for store re-openings
Right now, direct-to-consumer startups have to hope for the best but prepare for the worst, and nowhere is that more evident than within their brick-and-mortar divisions. Most of the executives I spoke with this week said that they don't anticipate being able to re-open their stores until the summer. "I...
- For DTC brands, this was meant to be the year of profitability
A month ago, I was talking to the founder of a one-year-old direct-to-consumer startup who was out fundraising. The founder told me it was a weird time to be fundraising. The coronavirus outbreak was just starting in the U.S, and some investors were already starting to get hesitant about deploying...
- As the DTC reckoning accelerates, founders turn to each other for advice and sanity
The reckoning was a while in coming. It just wasn't expected to come like this.
‘It lost its consumer’: 4 takeaways from Forever 21’s bankruptcy filing Many malls in the U.S. are about to lose yet another brick-and-mortar tenant, as Forever 21 filed for bankruptcy earlier this week.
How Steve Madden built up its e-commerce business More than 80% of Steve Madden's revenue still comes from wholesale. But that doesn't mean that the footwear retailer can totally ignore its e-commerce business. "If someone discovers your brand at Nordstrom, the odds are very good that they will [eventually] come to your site," said. Jeff Silverman, president of...
How DTC brands are navigating multi-touch attribution, explained As direct-to-consumer brands grow up and spend more money on traditional marketing channels, figuring out how effective each of these marketing channels are becomes a much more challenging process.