Lands’ End, furthering its strategy to expand the distribution of its all-American, classical-style fashion brand through third parties, goes on air for the first time tomorrow with the QVC video commerce selling channel.
Lands’ End last October began selling digitally on qvc.com and has also been selling on amazon.com, kohls.com and at Kohl’s stores. Lands’ End is also said to be working on an arrangement with Target, though details of that were not available.
“There are a lot of customers who really liked our products, but may have reasons to shop elsewhere because of loyalty programs, return policies or shipping policies — but they want our products,” Angie Rieger, senior vice president of international and wholesale for Lands’ End, told WWD.
Lands’ End will start with swimwear on QVC and extend the offer to knits, tops, bottoms and outerwear eventually. The on-air spokesperson for Lands’ End launch on QVC (Friday 10 a.m. EST) will be the brand’s senior vice president of design, David Witkewicz.
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“We are in the process of identifying a couple of individuals to share the responsibilities,” Rieger said.
Lands’ End will also be on QVC on Friday evening at 9 p.m. EST, sharing the spotlight with a couple of other brands at that time.
“The next on-air date will likely be late April or early May,” said Rieger.
Because of its track record of offering extended sizes, QVC, a division of the Qurate Retail Group, was particularly interested in Lands’ End, which offers extended sizes in different categories. Lands’ End creates swimwear in regular, petite, plus, tall and mastectomy sizing and fits. Qurate could also use a lift in revenues, which declined slightly last year at the company.
Additionally, swimwear has become a year-round business at Lands’ End and other brands and retailers, and QVC and Lands’ End have “stunningly similar” customer profiles, Rieger said. “There is a tremendous amount of overlap,” she said, noting the Lands’ End customer is 85 percent female, most of whom are married and with kids at home, are college-educated with high household incomes and love travel, pets, gardening, cooking and light exercise. Baby Boomers are the brand’s best customers, while many new customers are Gen X.
There is a “multiprong relationship” between Lands’ End and QVC, Rieger explained. Lands’ End’s on-air product is bought by QVC, which also does the fulfillment and shipping. On qvc.com, Lands’ End owns its products, the orders come through Lands’ End, which then handles the shipping.
There is some risk with selling through third parties, whether it’s an online marketplace, website or another store. There could be some cannibalization of sales from one channel to another and brands do lose some control over the presentation and pricing of products and how the brand image is portrayed.
Asked about that, Rieger replied: “We do a lot of work to measure and understand potential cannibalizing. We are not concerned about cannibalization to date. We get a tremendous amount of new customers shopping our product in these channels. We are meeting the customer where they are, and introducing a lot of new customers to Lands’ End that we would not have had before. It appears to be a net increase for both” Lands’ End and third parties.
On air at QVC, Lands’ End controls the narrative and the messaging, while on qvc.com, QVC uses Lands’ End imagery and product descriptions, Rieger said.
On the pricing question, “All of our partners use our ticket pricing as their starting point,” said Rieger. “They do have the option to run sales and offers. But we do our best to share with them if we have a large event so we are not competing with each other.”