Businessweek Extra - Jerome Griffith

over at Land's End. He's got a long history in the world of retail and fashion and he is pulling out every lesson he's learned to deal with this pandemic and the new world order. When it comes to the consumer check it out. I think what we've seen so far is well, I think everybody's been hearing about over the last several months, is demand online UH continues to grow. UH. It's been a big plus for consumers who are working from home to be able to water products in as

opposed to going out. We see slow traffic and stores. We've reopened the few stores that we have over the last couple of months. UH, and we think that going into the back part of the year, online business should still stay strong. Yet we have a business to business UH uniform business that we have called Leo Lands and Outsiders, which I think is going to continue to be somewhat challenged over the quastion next few months. A lot of our customers are travel related and most of course you

know that that's been a tough business. But there has been a run up in the stock obviously over the last few days, with people expecting us to have a decent results for the quarter. I'm glad to get a chance to talk to you again because we can delve into a lot more over the next two segments. And I guess just to take a step back for a second, like how has your world changed in the last six months and sort of how do you view it over the next six to eighteen months, sort of as we

move towards a vaccine and some kind of normal. I think that the where our world has changed has been a little bit topsy turvy from you know, we had said earlier in March when demand really shrunk, to April recovery and then May June and through the rest of the summer being relatively strong. So we've had to go back and relok at projections for a lot of our items and and increase UH quantities that we were ordering because we think that the holiday seasons every big and

what we thought it was. I think one of the things which is a concern for us is that all of the carriers that are carrying packages today to homes, they're really stretched. So if you look at the big three of USPS and fed X and UPS, UH, you know, every day is like Christmas for them. So we're doing a lot of work with our partners to plan for what the holiday season is going to look like, which is something that does have us, UH, you know, a

little concerned, and they're going into next year. One of the things that we've seen over the course of the last couple of years is our product people who have continued to refine and improve what the quality and the look of the products that we're selling, and we see

a lot of increase demand. I think he Goes probably saw the UH numbers that we're seeing with new customer acquisition, which was up about thirty percent last quarter, and then the large rebuy rates that we're having from our customers. Are active customers tend to be around New customers are around thirty which are pretty great numbers for the industry. Uh, and we see that continuing. Yeah, it's interesting, you know, Jerome to think about buying patterns and and even for

lack of better terms, sort of wearing patterns. And I've joked on this show before that when I wear a colored shirt these days, my two year old sort of looks at me funny, like, what are you doing? Like you're a T shirt guy now. I mean, the last time I put on a dress shirt, I have a hard time remembering. I mean, are you seeing you know, sort of a real change in the way people dress that seems to be, at least for a certain category,

just a market change here. Absolutely, people are looking for comfort. They're working from their homes. Not everyone's home was actually shet up to be comfortable for them. So you see people ordering comfy clothes, something that looks good on top, but it's a little bit more casual on the bottom. Uh. You see people ordering lots of stuff for the home

as well. Our home business has been extremely strong because kids have been coming home tore loosed with mom and dad and people are getting together, so people are retooling what their lives are. Our dress shirt business and we sell a lot of dress shirts with monograms on them. That's been a little depressed for us the last several months, as has uh some of our dressed pant business. But when you look at the lion's share of our selection,

it's really casual clothing. And when you get to knit tops and loungeware and pull on pants and sleepware, it's it's really bit of being dress. I should point out as a Jason is home, he's showing off his super cool black T shirt. Are you wearing shorts? Is that with that? Jeans every day? Jeans and T shirt every day, like every single form day, that's the uniform. So in this environment, UM, I'm curious as to how you plan

because there's a bit of confusion as too. If you know, Jason's going to wear dress shirts and dress pants again in the next two years, you know, and even if things open up, if you still will, how do you plan for that? Um. We spend a lot of time looking at trends and analyzing trends. We also use artificial intelligence for a lot of our basics in order to make smarter decision because how much you're going to be purchasing and you know, inevitably you run out of stuff

or you have some overstops and the two things. But I have to say that the guys have done a pretty good job making it through spring and summer, and we've relooked at what we think Fallen Winner is going to be. But things that will screw up I think that you just didn't think of or can't plan for, Like you know, if if we have seen this when certain states have spikes and COVID demand goes down. So over the summer, when you saw the southern states Florida, Texas,

California have spikes, you saw the demand go down. As you see the spikes start to recede, demand goes back up and supply chain issues. Anything that you've run into in a meaningful way up to this point, and what's the status now. We knew several months ago that we were going to have some of our full deliveries a couple of weeks later, of which we were prepared for and I've dealt with. But generally we've divested ourselves of

being reliable upon anyone country or anyone factory. So what we've seen is pretty good deliveries and expect that into the back part of the year. UM but again, you know, I can't stress enough. It's not really the supply chain coming in. It's going to be deliveries on the other on the other side. Yeah, it's gonna be on the other side, right right, all right, Jerome, I gotta bring something up. Alex Steel and I we're just talking about

it in our chat. You were the president of J Peterman and I just think that is the coolest thing ever as a longtime Seinfeld fan, Like, did you really dine out on that at cocktail parties? That must have been amazing. It was kind of amazing. I've been living in London for several years prior to that, and to be honest with you, I did not know the Sidebell connection. And when they recruited me to come to Kentucky, it was just the coolest thing. Human was an awesome person,

an awesome guy. Yeah, loves him a lot, But unfortunately the business model was not really set up for success and it was a short lived stint for me, right, Yeah, No, I mean the whole backstory. I mean, as I was researching you, like, I went down a whole rabbit hole of like everything that happened with J. Peterman. It was really interesting. All right, So with that is a side note. You have had a really interesting career working for a Spree, working for The Gap, working for Too me Um and

Tommy Hill figure. I mean, you've seen sort of retail and fashion in a number of different iterations, and I wonder what you make of this moment. I mean, we were talking about sort of the lifestyle changes that were undergoing. But when you think about the disruption in retail and travel and hospital all those things that that you've had as touch points throughout your career, how do you sort of sent this is at all right now in this kind of amazing time. It's very serendipitous. I started retail

when I got graduated college in seventy nine. I went to work for Lord and Taylor and work their ten years. Lord and Taylor famously did not use computers. We handwrote every sales check. So that was the eighties for us. Now take take it from there to today. AI is a big part of our business. So I've seen a lot of change over the years. And my advice to anybody coming into the industry or working in the industry and working their way up is do not get stuck

on any one thing. You always have to be looking for the next thing that's coming out there, or you will get left behind. Yeah, I that you're still a retailer. Are you ai technology company? Uh? You know, I don't know if you call it retail anymore. I tend to look at us more as a tech company because of the amount of money that we put into tech, the type of people that we hire, the emphasis that we

put on technology and the evolution of technology. Um. Whereas you know others might look and stay able to your retailer, how am I retailer? We only have one stores of all my businesses, I want to click. And so when you look at the carnage that we have seen in more traditional retail, you know the idea that Gap is closing its flagship store in San Francisco, and at the same time you see another well known name and retail We were talking with one of our internal experts about

this earlier. You look at the success of a Lulu Lemon on the other hand, which obviously has a retail footprint and has really ramped up e commerce as well and leaned into a lot of the trends that that we've been talking about. What's the winning formula at this point, there's still much opportunity out there. I think you have to look at where the customer is going. The customer is in charge of their future. They have so much

information at their fingertips, they have so much choice. The customer really decides what it is that you're going to be doing. And when we talk about being a customer center company, we think of everything from what's the customer going to want? What's the customer to like from this? And I know a lot of companies talk about doing that, but not a lot of companies actually do it. I think there's a ton of opportunity out there right now.

There's so much disruption in the marketplace that there is a lot of opportunity for the people that think right and are bold. Does that mean you're gonna buy some stuff? I didn't say that one way or the other. Then, Uh, we need to hint that there's you know, there's some opportunity out there, etcetera. Not something that necessarily here right now in the retail quote tech retail landscape. UM, walk me forward in a few years, like what do you

think your business looks like? Uh? You know, I think we continue to evolve. UM, I might have mentioned earlier, just a year ago, you can only buy land things on Landing dot com and in a few of our Landing stores. Today you can get it on Amazon, you can you'll be able to get it on Coals and we'll look to do a couple of things. We'll look to expand in the third party marketplaces. H Coles is a great example, but there's lots more out there, and

we're doing that domestically and internationally. And we're trying something which is a little bit different as well, with the investment in our enterprise order management system. We have the ability to bring other people's products under our website. So last year we tested at a Christmas time with one company. This year will have about twenty different companies selling their products on our website. And it's all stuff which is complimentary toil My. Nothing that's a head a head to

head competitor. And I think from the research that we've seen, you know, our customers looking for ease and simplicity, So they're happy with our website because we convert extremely well and they're excited to see other products on the website to add to the basket. Jo I'm just the last question for you only about a minute left. What role

are you seeing in terms of social media? I mean, I think about I have sort of sold myself out as an avid T shirt buyer, Like the amount of T shirts I buy through like Instagram and things like that is embarrassing to a met But I do wonder. And I'm an old guy, you know, I I have to think that for a younger generation, there's a whole lot of that that's driven on the social side. We were late to social media, you know. I I would

fault us for that. Having said that, though you know, a lot of our new customer acquisition comes from earned search and paid word search. Um, we we see huge increases today in social media where we are, and we think that we can lean into it a lot more. I think it is more important than what people continue to think. I would say a year ago, he would say how much bigger is the Internet actually going to get? Well, right now with covid, you can see how much figger

it's going to get. And I think you have the same opportunity with social media. You think it's it's very prolific as an now that I think there's a lot of ways for it to grow and that's lands End CEO Jerome Griffiths talking with me and Alex Steel this week. It coincided with their earnings report, but he took it much wider. Talked a lot about his own history and how he's applying those lessons to man. This time it

continues to be, I'll say it, unprecedented. Well, you've been listening to Bloomberg Business Week Extra, be sure to tune into Bloomberg Business Week Radio Live Money through Friday at two pm Wall Street Time on Bloomberg Radio. I'm Jason Kelly, and this is Bloomberg