So we just talked about digitally native vertical brands, let's look now at legacy brands and retailers. Again remember if you go back to that retailing success matrix I showed you. They were very strong and brand, they have a good position because they go direct, so they have a good price position. And now what we're really trying to do is really maximize the customer experience. Legacy brands started out typically in physical stores, and during COVID it was an acceleration to develop their digital strategy. And again these better brands these better retailers who are winners. Anticipated this trend before COVID but COVID just accelerated it. So one of the ones that's done very very well was the number one on the chart that I showed you of successful retailers is LuLu. LuLu was definitely in the right place at the right time but for several reasons. First of all LuLu's product was one that really worked well in COVID. So when you're sitting at home, and you're only seeing your upper half, and you're exercising more at home and whatever. The clothing in apparel that LuLu sells really really caters to this work experience, and to this at home experience. So they were definitely selling the product that people wanted to buy. But their success was not just based on the fact that they had the right clothing for the time, for the unanticipated COVID situation. But also before COVID they had done a very very good job of building up their brand. They had a very loyal consumer who loved their brand, loved their product. And they built up a very strong community around their physical stores. So although it's a brand started in Canada and it's scaled there's many many LuLu source, so it's not a small little store. But each one of the stores was decentralized and the store managers could really adapt the store to the local community. And so LuLu built up not only strong loyalty because their product was beloved by their core customers. But they also built up a presence in the community pre-COVID, where they would have a lot of exercise classes in their stores. They would sponsor local yoga teachers, local running events, and things like that. And really become part of the local community on their key idea of sweat. So it was about movement, exercising yoga running, and very much a community field. Now, of course COVID, when COVID hits you can't have in store classes anymore. And they definitely had to ramp up their digital experience, but they had already anticipated that that was an area for growth. So COVID just accelerated their digital presence. And they made it so a lot of their loyal customers who couldn't necessarily go into the stores right away. Could still find what they would want online. And when they could open the store when regulations relaxed a little bit and people could start going into the LuLu store. They could find what was online, shop online, go into the store to see what the material felt like, see what the fit was like. And then maybe buy it there, or go back online and buy it online. This is the example of this integrated customer experience, which is really what customers are starting to expect. But remember another key part of the LuLu strategy was that community feeling. The community classes, building on the LuLu brand ambassadors that were typically beloved yoga teachers. Or beloved runners in a community. How are they going to reproduce that idea in the digital world? And the way they did it was by acquiring mirror, which is a connected exercise program. One of the very famous programs that did very well during COVID was Peloton. People were buying these exercise bikes, not just for the physical bike, but for the connected community. Peloton has rockstar, instructors and lots and lots of new classes. And the classes are done live and people can feel that sense of community. Well, the same thing is true for mirror, is a connected gym class or yoga class. And now what LuLu could do is integrate their previous communities of local people who love yoga. And work together in classes and work with the brand ambassadors. In physical time they could now do this within this digital environment of mirror. And so they're going to start selling these mirrors at these local, at these LuLu stores. And really working to connect the digital community with the physical community. And creating for sure and integrated omni-channel customer experience. So this is an example of a physical retailer, who got up to speed in the digital world. As opposed to the digitally native vertical brands that did it the opposite way. And growth from LuLu is now going to come from bigger and bigger expansions into the digital world. They're going to grow their men's product line, and they're also going to go global. Nike also did very well during COVID, again they had the right product at the right time for the pandemic. But they also made an aggressive move which they had started before COVID, to direct to consumers. So I somewhere along the time of COVID or I'm not exactly sure of the timing. Nike started to reduce their selling of products through wholesalers. They got off amazon, they used to be on amazon, they took themselves off of amazon. And they reduced all of their wholesale premise to wholesalers, Foot Locker and and Dicks. And the rest of it Nike is going to sell direct, so they'll sell through their apps, they sell through their digital store. They're predicting eventually 50 percent of Nike sales will be online. They'll sell through their different types of stores, they have big beautiful Nike flagship stores. And then they have smaller versions of those stores and they're building out their stores. And they also have this concept of a live store, which is very much community focused. So you have to be a member of the Nike loyalty program, you go into the store and then they have their data, your data. And they can customize each of these live stores to the members that frequent the store. So the people who go into the store as you go in and log in with your app, Nike learns what it is you like from your online behavior. And the physical store matches what the customers want who are coming into that store. So these stores are very much community based, based on what customer is like. And Nike is really really building up this direct to consumer strategy in an omni channel way. Or in a three channel way, through their apps, through their physical stores, and through their online presence. You're also seeing Footlocker commit to an omni-channel strategy and really commit to building customer experience. For their core customer. Footlocker has decided to really capitalize on the youth. And so they've built customer experiences in their physical stores, that cater to what they're young athletes are really looking for. And they're building their stores in the communities where their core customers are, and deliver customer experience to that. And they also combine this with a very strong online presence connected through the app. And again, really building customer focus, customer experience, that's omni-channel. And just one other example or a couple more examples. But the two examples I'm going to use here are the examples that I used in developing the success matrix, Italy, and Sephora. We're stand out retailers when I wrote the first book on 2017-2018 on the retail apocalypse. And I really pointed out how Italy and Sephora were retailers that we're doing very well. Building on a pleasurable customer experience. Now, that pleasurable customer experience in both of their cases was very high touch. So how did these retailers start to understand the world as it change as a function of COVID? So Italy was started in Italy in 2007 and it went around the world, that was really associated with the slow food movement. And it was connected with many small scale food producers. Who in some sense the Eataly store was a platform for these small scale food producers to get their product to end users. There was a lot of fresh product in Eataly establishments, there were restaurants, there were cooking schools. It was a phenomenal experience. It drew both people who were native to the city that the store was in, and it drew a lot of tourists. It was a phenomenal customer experience. Each of these huge huge stores were built out differently to fit the space that they were in, and to fit the cities that they were in. So they had different floor plans. But typically there was grocery store, cooking schools, and lots of different restaurants that use the fresh product. It was a universe that really made sense and work together because. If you're selling grocery a lot of times you have grocery that starts to go bad and it perishes essentially. And you can't sell it anymore. But if you have restaurants on premise before the food gets to ripe. You can put it into the restaurants just at the peak of ripeness in some sense. And you can save costs because you don't have to throw out product, you can't sell anymore. And you can get it right before that situation, use it in their restaurants. And it's really a good synergy between the restaurants and the food store. And add to that a cooking school which educates consumers on how to really appreciate fine tasting food and gourmet product. And you have a universe that really worked well together, and you're creating an amazing customer experience. Come COVID and of course some of these products now and these environments were in some sense you could still shop for groceries. Some of them was considered perhaps essential retail. But you're keeping social distance, you can't use the restaurants anymore, it's much more difficult, a lot more constraints. And so Eataly had to really ramp up their online presence. They joined with a platform to get better web. They didn't use Shopify they used one called Mercado I think. Where they really build up their web presence. And making sure they had the websites you needed and the online digital background that you needed. And they partnered with instant cart to get delivery going. They had more dining outdoors. So they built out their outdoor space so that they could adhere to the requirements of COVID. And so here's a situation where you're taking a very very high touch phenomenally pleasurable successful in store experience. And pivoting to the requirements of COVID, by substituting digital when you needed to, substituting delivery when you needed to. So you're taking the place of consumption, rather than being in the store. You're using delivery services to bring that into inside your house. And you're using your out sorts outside space to adhere to health requirements. But the point is it's the customer experience that's really driving the customer loyalty. You also saw pop-up stores come up during Halloween of 2020 and COVID, Spirit opened up their Halloween stores. And you might remember that Halloween 2020 was very different than Halloween any other year. But the excitement of Halloween was still there. The candy stores, the candy manufactured contributed to this fun experience. Spirit produced the costumes you needed, and people just figured out a way to maintain the customer experience. Within the confines of the constraints that COVID was was providing. And the really big idea here is that customer experience is enough. And you can do things especially if you work with pop up stores, they're very temporary. You can do things at certain times and in certain ways to make sure you deliver a really unique and valuable customer experience. And a lot of that is what modern retailing is going to be about. And just to finish with Sephora which was a home run retailer when I wrote my first book. One of the big success stores are coming out of the retail apocalypse. And they come right into COVID, and now they're high touch experience has to be adapted. Because of the COVID and because you can't touch products and you can't use the cosmetics in the way that you did before COVID. But Sephora was really in very good shape because they always had a very strong digital presence. And they had a very strong loyalty program. And so they could capitalize on their digital knowledge of their customers. And develop, buy online, pick up in the store procedures. They could go into that very quickly because they were very much omni-channel, their online and offline was connected. They also had a very strong two way conversation with their customers, so they knew what the customers wanted. And because before COVID, they had such a strong presence online. They weren't hurt by the fact that there was some restrictions in their physical store. And they are now building out stores, building in-store tech, really building more augmented reality. To replace the high touch beauty experience that was in place before COVID, now we're doing more of it through augmented reality. And they're really connecting their online present their app with their store. So they can move very quickly and to buy online, pick up in the store with their app. They can move very quickly, they're frictionless payment. They had already started using augmented reality. And so this is an example of a retailer because they always understood the importance of customer experience. And that means getting data directly from their customers, so they can understand what customer preferences are. They could pivot when COVID came around. And they have very strong customer centered omni-channel experience for the customers. And they keep those loyal customers loyal.
