2 BRANDS BETTER THAN 1?
As an avid shopper - both online and in real life (yes, I’ll admit it - it’s not as if it was a secret), I’ve quickly gotten on the whole online sample sale bandwagon.
gilt.com
hautelook.com
ruelala.com
ideeli.com
salemail.com
thetopbutton.com
onekingslane.com
the list goes on…
Online discount “invitation only” retailing has taken off with a bang (and a chunk of my monthly paycheck!)
So recently when one of the original sites - Gilt Groupe - launched a new sister site, Gilt Fuse, I obviously took notice.
The two sites are quite similar - same business model, relatively similar merchandise selection (ha, obviously I would know this). The difference is that Gilt Fuse is geared towards a younger, slightly more fashion-forward, exclusively female audience, whereas Gilt Groupe is slightly more mature, more expensive, male and female friendly.
While the success of the Gilt model is undeniable (“the company has quintupled its membership in the past year, with 1.3 million registered members in the US and more than 200,000 on its five-month-old Japanese site. Company revenue for calendar year 2009 is expected to be in excess of $150 million.” - MSN Money), I wonder about the strategy behind this recent brand extension.
In the early stages of building a brand, I’m not convinced it’s a smart move to immediately take that equity and split it in two.
Objectively speaking, it takes double the resources to build double the brands. Subjectively speaking, as a loyal Gilt Groupe member, I think it was a strategic misstep - asking customers to go to two different sites to accomplish the same task is confusing and defeats the whole purpose of an online sample sale - efficiency, ease, speed.
Well, I’m curious to see how it all pans out… and no, it hasn’t stopped me from signing in every day at noon (and spending way too much on clothes I don’t need), but that’s an entirely different issue!
(Marissa Vosper)