DTC Fashion Brand Balances Demand From Stilettos and Pumps, to Slippers and Sweatshirts

The other shoe literally dropped when the pandemic hit and most people remained home as women stopped wearing fancy footwear in favor of socks and slippers. That was a tough blow to all shoe sellers. But the challenge was particularly acute for JustFab, the direct-to-consumer monthly shoe subscription brand that relies on women’s love of fast fashion to drive sales. JustFab’s pitch to consumers is its commitment to trends, which it demonstrates via highly personalized content. Users fill out a survey about their lifestyle, size and style and are then served shoes and apparel geared toward those selections. So when the world went into lockdown, JustFab relied on its relationship with customers to learn how their needs changed. It was a vital aspect of surviving the pandemic since JustFab has more than 2 million active subscribers globally. They’re known as “VIPs” and have the option to purchase highly discounted, on-trend shoes monthly. For instance, a $40 shoe becomes $18 for a VIP. Subscribers who don’t want to make a purchase, must log into their account and hit skip by the 5th of each month; if they don’t, they’re charged $39.95, which is credited to future purchases. Occasional JustFab customers can make one-off purchases at full price, which hover around $45. CMO Daria Burke had only been on the job a few months before the world went into pandemic lockdown and the staff started working remotely. She recently spoke to Adweek about how JustFab, which started in 2010, leveraged its ecommerce expertise at a time when consumers were moving to online shopping in droves. Burke also spoke about JustFab’s integrated organizational structure and how the lack of bureaucracy enabled the team to give “her"—the customer—exactly what “she” needed during the pandemic. Adweek: Who is the typical JustFab customer, particularly the subscribers? Daria Burke: Our woman loves shoes. She loves trends. Fast fashion isn't fast enough for her. We have a broad age range, although our sweet spot is women in their 30s. She's really into looking great and doing so at wallet-friendly prices. This is the woman who perhaps has children, and she needs to be comfortable because she's on-the-go and has a more active lifestyle. Daria Burke, JustFab CMO How do you convince consumers to commit to a monthly shoe subscription?First-time VIP members get a welcome offer—their first pair of shoes is $10. We know that when she tries it, she’ll love us. Also, we designed it with flexibility in mind. She can skip as many times as she wants. What was your strategy during the height of Covid, when most women were wearing slippers, socks and sweatsuits?Follow the data and pivot. We had no idea what demand was going to look like, so we reached out to customers on social media and said, ‘What do you want to hear from us? What do you want to purchase?’ People were looking for optimism, especially in the early days where there was so much uncertainty. Before the pandemic we had a series of quarterly events called Meet the VIP, where we would meet in-person and show her merchandise for an upcoming season to get her perspective. It was very tactile and fun. We didn't want to lose that. So we took to social, predominantly Instagram since we have a very active and engaged audience there, and polled her about what she wanted to purchase, and in what colors, fabrics and silhouettes. That's really helpful data, particularly as we're working out towards the future. We also had virtual focus groups and surveys at scale on different merchandise and trends in fashion. So it helped us keep a really good pulse on what was going on. What did you learn from talking to customers? She was absolutely buying cozier styles of apparel and footwear. She was purchasing slippers. She was purchasing sneakers. She was getting slip-on styles. Leggings. How did you handle that from a supply chain management perspective, particularly since apparel is a much smaller portion of the business. The credit really goes to our merchandising team, who saw what was happening and was able to chase into the styles she was wearing both in footwear and apparel. We were able to pinpoint very quickly where we saw the customer going. Being a DTC brand gave us agility and a leg up because we were able to make changes quickly. Apparel is a much smaller part of our business, roughly one third of our business comes from apparel. But we were able to grow in key areas in apparel and continue to see that growth sustained. Our organizational structure and business model are also significant parts of that. Having brand and performance marketing under me, allows my team to weave in and out where we need to. To have brand marketing, creative, loyalty and retention and customer acquisition, sitting harmoniously together makes a huge difference. For example, if we see a post on organic social getting a lot of engagement and driving significant traffic to the site, we can pivot very quickly and drop that into our paid media strategy. Similarly, if we see she's now searching for heeled sandals or pumps, we can use that to inform where we go next in our customer acquisition efforts. I worked in fashion and retail and their structure wasn’t set up like this. So it took a long time to get an approval or to even know who to go to to get something created. One of the biggest challenges was shippers weren't prepared for the demand so there were delivery delays. To deal with that we extended our return window and focused on communicating the issues to customers. Are you able to take a breath as restrictions ease and more people are getting vaccinated?The team did a brilliant job and for us to be able to end last year on such a strong note, at a time where people weren't wearing shoes at all, was very much a highlight of the year. 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