The Lulus.com re-brand rolled out much like the company’s general approach to most things: quiet and void of any buzz.
The e-tailer has grown relatively organically, started in 1996 as a bricks-and-mortar store in Chico, Calif., before moving completely to digital, amassing a following but largely staying out of the press. It nabbed private equity capital in 2014 — the details of which are undisclosed — and last year added executives in the way of a chief financial officer and vice president of technology to help the company get to the next level.
“We are going through big growth at the company. There’s so much to do,” said cofounder Colleen Winter. “We run as a lean team so we have to prioritize but we’re chugging along. The shopping experience is going to get a lot better.”
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In late May Lulus debuted a more grown-up logo while also improving a number of digital touch points, including the home and product pages across desktop and mobile.
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“It was something that was in the works for a long time and that we had talked about for a few years,” Winter said.
It’s a classy and sleek logo, said Lulus vice president of marketing Noelle Sadler, who joined the company last year from MAC Cosmetics.
The privately held firm, which doesn’t disclose sales, usually sees business peak around the spring before sometimes dipping slightly. That didn’t happen this year, Sadler pointed out.
Overall conversions have increased more than 3 percent since the branding and redesign. They’re up about 10 percent from the year-ago period on mobile alone. The number of people who move from a product page to the shopping cart is up about 10 percent from a year earlier as a result of the re-brand and other back-end improvements.
The emphasis on updating the brand’s image makes sense as the company’s product mix shifts to more Lulus product, a move Winter told WWD about last year. Over 70 percent of what is sold currently on the site is Lulus product. Other brands carried include BB Dakota, RVCA, Billabong, Steve Madden and Chinese Laundry.
“It was about improving the shopping experience across the board,” Sadler said of all the recent changes. “That’s just the beginning, frankly.”
She pointed to continued updates on category pages and further navigation improvements. The company’s also eyeing a loyalty program for VIP shoppers and considering an app.
The loyalty program is still in its early days, Sadler said, but it would incentivize shopping with discounted shipping offers or early access to sales.
“The goal is to reward those customers who have been long-term returning fans of the brand,” Sadler said. “It doesn’t necessarily mean they have to be the biggest spenders.”
The loyalty program makes sense as an extension of the company’s focus on customer service, Winter added.
“It’s more of a personalized shopping experience, more like one-on-one shopping,” she said. “We are known for amazing customer service. We do employ stylists so we’re really toying with the [idea of] how can we take it to the next level.”