A less-is-more ethos is seeping into the retail landscape, as newbie brands from Untuckit menswear to Prose hair care, built on the premise of curated, customized solutions, gain momentum and a shopper following.
Now Allbirds is the latest digital-first darling to step into the spotlight, with the hipster sneaker startup securing about $50 million in funding this month.
Allbirds’ shoe design eschews “flashy logos” and “senseless details.”Allbirds
The brand launched online in 2016 with a single sneaker SKU. Since then, the San Francisco-based firm, with a determinate focus on comfort, minimalist design — “No flashy logos. No senseless details” — and sustainable materials (merino wool, castor bean oil and eucalyptus tree fiber), has sold over one million shoes, largely through word-of mouth-advertising, while preaching its corporate mantra of “better shoes in a better way.”
The strategy has wooed younger, conscious-consumption minded, shoppers, too. “We believe the brand is resonating strongly with Millennials, in part due to its sustainability focus and traceable supply chain,” said Cowen analyst Oliver Chen in a research note.
It’s a sign of the times. “Boutique brands,” including digitally native brands, “are growing in the double digitals,” Chen said at a Retail Marketing Society luncheon this month. These days, “people love small brands,” which speak to Millennials’ and Generation Z’s craving for curation, customization and authenticity, he said.
Be it Untuckit’s single-shirt schtick or Brandless’ single price point, these startups are built on fewer items, fewer hassles or fewer design flourishes, and the implicit notion that their richness is in their very stripped down-ness. Their emergence comes as consumers are deluged with the endless aisle of options online, a paradox of choice that’s unprecedented in the history of retailing.
They signal a backlash “to this disposable culture,” whereby “people [will] look to invest in products that make them and the planet look good,” according to the 2018 Culturescape report from branding agency Clarkmcdowall. “Designers will make sustainability chic … ingredients will be repurposed in inventive ways as we get more with less.”
Albirds Minimalism In A Logo-Driven Sportswear Market
The rise of Allbirds, which has spread beyond digital with stores in New York, Toronto and San Francisco, is particularly noteworthy in the heavily brand and logo-driven sportswear category.
Like Lululemon before it, “Allbirds is one of those brands that comes along every 10 years or so that strikes a nerve with consumers and identifies a need they have, that they didn’t know existed until they saw the product,” said Mark Sullivan, editor of Running Insight, an industry newsletter.
“They have created a product at a look and a price that is perfect for today’s market. One of the reasons that the running-shoe silhouette has been so strong over the last ten years is because it looks great with jeans, yoga pants or even shorts. Allbirds has captured all of that with a chic design that’s easy to buy and easy to wear,” he said.
“They’ve also capitalized on the non-branded aesthetic that’s popular today, especially with younger shoppers.”
Retailers are catering to the ever-burgeoning consumer craving for expressions of their own personal brand in an era of spotlighting one’s bona fides on public platforms like Facebook and Instagram.
That’s given rise to retailers and brands that are designed, even implicitly, on the idea of personalization-via-brandlessness, offering consumers a blank canvas of sorts.
Newbie Brandless offers the promise of high-quality household products in intentionally nondescript packaging at a uniform $3 price point. “At Brandless, we put people first. That means you,” according to the company. “We try to keep it simple, so hopefully you can easily find just what matters to you.”
Prose mixes customized hair-care formulas for individual consumers.Prose
Prose: Customized Hair Care
That could very well be the mantra of Prose, which launched in January 2018. The hair care brand eschews the notion of one-size-fits-all shampoo and conditioner. Prose, whose founders include former L’Oreal executives, customizes three-products based on a consumer’s hair and scalp needs and “hair goals.”
Prose asks shoppers via an online consultation or one with a stylist at a partnering salon, idiosyncratic questions about their hair and lifestyle, from their curl pattern and exercise habits to the climate conditions of where they live. Based on that consultation, its proprietary data algorithms determine the optimum formula for a consumer’s hair goals, drawing from over 75 “active ingredients,” be they fermented rice water for smoothing or hyaluronic acid for fiber repair. The consumer’s customized shampoo, conditioner and mask are then made fresh at the company’s lab in Brooklyn, New York.
Prose is hoping to disrupt hair care with personalized simplicity; as product has been designed expressly for a single consumer’s holistic hair needs, the line nixes the common scenario of “three bottles in the shower that do three different things,” be it anti-breakage, heat protection or hydration, Faith Huffnagle, director of education, told me from the company’s offices in Manhattan’s Soho neighborhood.
The model also protects Prose from the product “diversion” that upscale salon hair care brands have long battled, whereby items come to market via unauthorized vendors, who often sell used product below the suggested retail price.
Prose is formulated for one shopper labeled with their name, regimen and an expiration date, thwarting against resale on the grey market but also cushioning the company from shoppers looking for the lowest price on Amazon, Huffnagle said.
Prose says it’s generated double-digit growth month-over-month since it launched, reaching a seven-digit revenue in six months.
One Trick Pony: Untuckit
Untuckit came to market with a single product: A menswear shirt designed to be work untucked.Barbara Thau
Then there’s Untuckit. The brand wiggled its way into the crowded apparel space with a single product designed to solve a common sartorial problem for men: A shirt that would look good untucked for work, leisure and dressy occasions. Since launching as a digital-first brand in 2011, Untuckit now has 40 retail locations across the U.S. and is embarking on international expansion.
But it’s also branching out product-wise, as are its newbie brethren. Untuckit expanded to women’s and kid’s last year; Prose just added custom hair oil to its repertoire; and Allbirds is looking to spread its wings. “The company sees substantial opportunity to expand within the footwear industry through different styles, new materials and new ways of providing comfort,” Cowen’s Chen said in the research note.