Lands’ End Sees 71% Increase in Customers

nice to have you here on Bloomberg. How are you good, Carol? How are you doing doing okay? Hanging in there after what's been, as you know, a crazy year. Tell us about the past year and the impact that the pandemic has had had on you and your team and on

your business. Well, obviously about a year ago when we went into lockdown, it was real shock for everyone, and you know, we shut doors and and furlough folks and took salary reductions very quickly, and we're able to try and adapt to whatever the new normal was going to be. Our demand went down in March last year, but very quickly reb ounted in April and then went on a

tear for the rest of the year. You've seen a lot more consumers shopping online, and uh, most of those consumers have been coming from Gen xers and baby boomers who have not been comfortable shopping online before, and since our business is an e commerce business, we've been the recipients of a big increase in demand and a big increase in new customers. We're just this past quarter report increase in new customer acquisition and retaining them over into actively.

So yeah, we've we've been seeing some some really good numbers and I've got to say our troops have been extremely resilient. The folks that work in our facilities in Wisconsin have been just just great to work with and we've seen some really great performance there. Everybody's been working from home. We've been designing lines from home. We've been using three D design, we've been using architectural boards or designers can share ideas back and forth while working remotely.

And what we've actually found is we've done a really good job. We've been extremely efficient. Um our folks are very happy working remotely, and as we get ready to return to the office in September, we're going to see a pretty liberal hybrid work environment where people are being just as creative, if not more creative, and coming up with great new ideas for us to continue to move

the business forward. That is really fascinating because it's in contrast to really what we're seeing in the financial community, where there is it feels like a real big push to get everybody back to the office. Does it mean, though, to them that you guys might give up some real estate space because you just won't need it. No, we own all of our real estate in Wisconsin, so there's no sense to give anything up. What we might do

is repurpose some of it. Uh, And we're thinking about that, but no, generally, Uh, we'll have people coming back into the office on on a hybrid schedule, and we may move people from one building to another to make it more efficient. But that would be about it. So when you talk about repurpose, does that mean you might rent it out to other folks? Um, we could. We haven't made it that far yet. We're still in the thinking stages right now. All right, So talk to me about

retail trends. You said that you guys had a lot of new customers actually come on. What were people buying during the pandemic, and what about those trends if they were different from pre pandemic levels. Do you think stays with us? Going into the pandemic, we had already had a tagline for marketing purposes that said, let's get comfy. The most important thing to our consumer is comfort and

fit and fabric. And while that was performing extremely well going into the pandemic, as we went through the pandemic, the the requests were Knitwear Lounge, where Sleepware, Home Bedding, Bathhouse really went through the roof. I would say the only thing that was more of an anomaly for us was the quick increase in home. But generally people come

to us for comfortable clothing. We are known as a very casual brand, and we've seen the demand not only continue to increase through the pandemic, but as we're coming out of it, it continues to stay very strong. We think that as people return to the office, you know, the newfound comfort world, they're not gonna want to give it up. We found that our employees don't want to give up the freedom that they have and they don't want to give up the comfort, and this is what

we're hearing from from our customers. As well. Yeah, that's kind of interesting. UM, but I agree, I see it even in colleagues who come back. I mean, I walk into para genes. I don't know that I used to do that, even if I change at work into kind of on air clothes. It's just our mindset has changed, and I think about what I really need. Uh. What about the supply chain? How did that work throughout the pandemic, or how has what happened during the pandemic maybe changed

how you want to do it going forward. Well, I think from our manufacturer standpoint, they've done an amazingly good job. People have have pivoted very quickly with either gearing up or gearing down production. And some of them had a hard time with with COVID. Some people had to close their plants because of heavy COVID cases. But generally they've been able to manage it relatively well. Where we've seen

problems is really getting goods into the country. The pork congestion has just been really terrible on the West coast, and that tends to add literally weeks to the supply chain. In addition to that, you've seen increases in pricing uh coming into the US, and then from your hubs getting deliveries to consumers. That's also been been increasing in price. And probably the scariest thing that's that's been happening is

a lack of labor market. Um. People are happy to stay home and collect unemployment versus going out and getting a job in a pretty hot economy. Let me get back to lands En CEO Jerome Griffith, still with us on the phone from Long Island. The company reporting earnings earlier today, beating estimates, raising uh, their outlook for the next fiscal year, and uh, just talking about the business in killer. The stock has been on quite a run,

up thirty seven in the past nine days. Hey, Jeroan, one thing I did want to ask you and Charlie Pellett just talked about a m C. We have been all obsessed a little bit with these meme stocks that have been on a tear. Your stock has had quite a run in the last nine days. As I said, almost up about fort here. I was reading some things that some are speculating that Land's End stock is getting caught up in the meme stock trading. What do you say to that? Because the stock was up sevent yesterday

before earnings and it was hard to make sense of why. Um, what are your thoughts on this? And I'm curious if you're getting questions about this. We have a smaller float, so you'll see when it comes to announcement times around the quarters, you'll see some pretty volatile swings in and out of the announcement date. But generally, no, I wouldn't think that we're a meme stock at this point in time. Okay, So not worried about getting caught up in the craziness

of it. I'm not worried about it now. Okay, So let's talk a little bit more about the business because there's a lot of stuff that it's interesting going on. First of all, one thing I want to ask you. You You mentioned uniforms before. That's a big business. I bought uniforms for you for my daughter, uh for school. Um, I'm assuming that business did it stop completely or fall off a lot in the past year, and it fell off pretty pretty far. A couple of parts of the

business were tough. Obviously, the school part of the business was very difficult. And then in our national accounts, we have an inordinately large relationship with the travel industry, so we do Davis rented cars, Hampton Ins, Delta Airlines, American Airlines and and that was challenge. But what we've seen coming into the back part of is a much faster

than expected recovery. Uh. The area that's still challenged in the uniform business is really the small medium sized businesses and that's going to be dependent upon the economy as we run through to come back. But is it getting back to or close to pre pandemic levels from what you're seeing accounts, Yeah, yeah, it is. We think that the schools and this will be back to pretty much normal by by this year, and then the national account

business depending on the back part of the year. But we see that going much faster than what we had anticipated. So talk to me about this third party marketplace for sellers um interesting and is this a way go ahead. We brought the technology in last year and formally launched the marketplace in the fourth quarter of It performed very well for us over the holiday season, and what we've done has gone out to many other brands in areas

that produced product that we really don't make. So we're looking at additional home products like furniture and home whears, things like that, additional shoes, and then accessories, jewelry, scent, beauty and bring margin. That's higher margin business. Right. Well, it's a good margin business for us. And what's great, it's a low risk because we take the information put it all up on our website, but then manufacturers are dropping drop shipping for us going directly to the consumers.

So it gives the consumer when they come onto our website a much broader range of products the shop that they're looking for, and it's really de risking it for us. Jerome, how big a business could that be for you, guys, especially if you don't have the overhead of the distribution like Amazon does. How big of a business could it ultimately be for you? It could be tens to hundreds of millions. But we're still in the in the point right now where we're sizing it. We're bringing on many

more brands as we speak. We expect to be well over sixty brands by the time that we get to holiday this year, and continuing to grow that and scale it over the course of the next few years. Hey, one last thing, partnerships Draper James reads Witherspoon. How important is that to um kind of you know, keeping the brand relevant if you will. Just great for the buzz, and what better than that is it's been great for

the bottom line. We've been really pleased with the results that we saw last year and then again this spring. In fact, we're expanding our partnership with them in the back part of the year with the home furnishings and sleepwear. Yeah, and we've got some other exciting news coming down the pike, which we'll be able to talk about in the quarter or two. So we're working on some other fun stuff. Well,

promise me you'll come back, because I'd love you. Guys have your hands with so many different things and it's just a great snapshot of what's going on. So I hope you'll come back and talk to us about that news. Okay, Hey, be well, I really appreciate it. Jerome Griffith, he's the land End CEO, joining us on the phone from Long Island. As I mentioned, uh, the company has really been making some changes. I talked about this third party marketplace that

they are putting out. They talked about that earlier this year. In the stock as I mentioned, up almost in the past nine days alone, up about forty percent so far this year,