<\/p>\n
\n\tFew retailers have been as aggressive as Bloomingdale\u2019s in launching new formats for growth.<\/p>\n
\n\tBloomie\u2019s, the contemporary-oriented, scaled-down version of the Bloomingdale\u2019s department stores, opened its first door in August 2021. Bloomingdale\u2019s marketplace launched in September 2022. Last year, the Little Brown Book clienteling program and a baby registry were introduced. And in February this year, a \u201cpartner intelligence platform\u201d to strengthen partnerships with vendors by giving them greater information on customer shopping behavior began beta testing.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cWe\u2019re a multicategory, multibrand, multigenerational, multichannel, multiformat retailer. That\u2019s a true advantage,\u201d said Rachel Abeles, Bloomingdale\u2019s senior vice president of customer and revenue growth.<\/p>\n
\n\tAmong the team of executives leading change and growth at Bloomingdale\u2019s, which hovers around $4 billion in annual volume, Abeles has a broad range of responsibilities including real estate, the loyalty program, marketing, AI, customer strategy, data science and analytics, and the technology side of the dot.com business.<\/p>\n
\n\tShe joined Bloomingdale\u2019s straight out of college 14 years ago as an intern, became the designer shoe buyer and spearheaded an overhaul of the 59th Street flagship\u2019s footwear business by relocating two shoe floors into a bigger, impactful one occupying the majority of the fifth floor. \u201cWhen you run a project like that, you actually see how it all comes to life for the customer. It gave me insight into the truly operational side of the business,\u201d Abeles said.<\/p>\n
\n\tShe rose to chief of staff to the Bloomingdale\u2019s chief executive officer, and later moved into her current position.<\/p>\n
\n\tIn the following Q&A, Abeles discusses Bloomingdale\u2019s priorities, emerging formats, and what the future holds.<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\tRachel Abeles<\/p>\n
\n\tWWD: What are Bloomingdale\u2019s big challenges?<\/p>\n
\n\tRachel Abeles: We have to make sure we have the clearest picture of our customer, how they\u2019re transacting with us, and how their perspective is changing. It\u2019s important for us to make sure the clarity of our brand message and what we stand for are really crisp. We have to make sure our curation and our point of view are super clear. And we want to make that discovery really seamless and the path to purchase as frictionless as possible. How do we focus on things that absolutely differentiate us?<\/p>\n
\n\tWWD: How is the Bloomie\u2019s format performing and what\u2019s its future?<\/p>\n
\n\tR.A.: It\u2019s performing really well. It\u2019s a profitable model and a core part of how we see expanding across the country. We\u2019re using data to inform site selection, looking at how and where our known customers and target customers are shopping, what they\u2019re shopping online, and where our customers are underserved in markets [lacking] convenient access to highly curated fashion. We are very committed to growth and intend to see another roughly 15 of these [in addition to the four operating] in the next five years. First and foremost, we are investing in our existing fleet. There are a number of doors [receiving] outsize investment to bring the full Bloomingdale\u2019s experience to life. But it is also true there are customers actively shopping us online without access to a physical expression of the brand. Bloomie\u2019s is this highly curated, contemporary fashion convenience store, a neighborhood spot. And convenience doesn\u2019t mean less. It just means the access is there, and the products are there, highly curated. Once they shop this small-format store, they shop more in our other channels.<\/p>\n
\n\tWWD: Why did Bloomingdale\u2019s launch the online marketplace? With its wider assortment, does it blur what Bloomingdale\u2019s stands for?<\/p>\n
\n\tR.A.: Marketplace is just another tool to curate our digital assortment. It\u2019s an enabler to fully round out our existing merchandising vision by category. In some cases, it gives our team the ability to test and learn. But we hold ourselves to the same standards [of curation] on marketplace.<\/p>\n
\n\tWWD: What new categories has marketplace brought to Bloomingdale\u2019s.com?<\/p>\n
\n\tR.A.: The pre-owned luxury component is on the marketplace. We have also touched upon the electronics space. Then we\u2019ve used marketplace to expand and support the baby registry experience. Obviously that\u2019s a sku (stock keeping unit) intensive business. But again, the marketplace is not a core extension. It\u2019s kind of a platform to test. Whether [a product] is owned, leased, consignment, drop ship or marketplace, it\u2019s really about the Bloomingdale\u2019s curation and making choices about what merchandise to offer our customer. It\u2019s less about the business model.<\/p>\n
\n\tWWD: Digital accounts for 38 percent of Bloomingdale\u2019s volume. Is that high for the industry? Where do you see it going?<\/p>\n
\n\tR.A.: We are in the directional ballpark of businesses like ours. As we continue to grow the totality of our business, we see it growing in a balanced way, meaning digital will continue to stay around that contribution of the business. We\u2019ve seen double-digit growth in digital, year-over-year.<\/p>\n
\n\tDigital plays a critical role in the acquisition of new customers. It\u2019s online where most customers are likely meeting our brand for the first time. Then, it\u2019s our job, through unlocking the power of our data and the connectiveness of our experience, to drive customers to our stores, because it is where we believe that humanity, relationships, the right experiences, come to life. Talking to human beings, feeling the product \u2014 this yields higher engagement, higher lifetime value and greater frequency of visits. We believe stores are the fullest expression of our brand. So that\u2019s how we see the channels working in concert together.<\/p>\n
\n\tWWD: How are you improving the website?<\/p>\n
\n\tR.A.: First, we\u2019re using AI-driven tools for data augmentation to make sure all of the incredible products our merchants have curated are discoverable, both offsite and onsite. We\u2019re spending a lot of time making sure we have not just the base but the augmented data enrichment for delivering a relevant experience to consumers traversing our [online] experience and that we\u2019re discoverable in the most productive ways offsite. Second, we\u2019re injecting more personalization across our digital experience, but also ensuring that browse and search results are relevant to consumers. We\u2019re developing a curated \u201cfor you\u201d section on the Bloomingdale\u2019s app later this year, really tailored to the individual.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe more consumers start to engage with chatbots, LLMs and prompting, how they write queries changes quickly, from searching for a black dress to [requesting] suggestions on a floral dress at different price points and aesthetics. The consumer is learning how to converse with digital platforms, so we\u2019re studying how consumer behavior is changing and will be experimenting with different generative solutions throughout the back half of the year. We\u2019re trying to be very smart and surgical. Putting noise into the customer experience is not the answer. We are not looking to [add] more friction. We\u2019re looking to test different ways to aid the consumer looking for help, and that\u2019s where we will double down.<\/p>\n
\n\tWWD: With AI and new technologies, are you limiting or increasing the messaging to consumers? They\u2019re already being bombarded.<\/p>\n
\n\tR.A.: That\u2019s a very good question. It\u2019s something we\u2019re studying. The orchestration of messaging is critical to speaking relevantly to consumers. That means the right frequency, the right time of day, the right message through the right format. We\u2019re experimenting to make sure we\u2019re doing what\u2019s right by the consumer. We will build these mechanisms [so] we don\u2019t deliver just more, but more that\u2019s relevant. We actually have quite incredible data \u2014 structured, architected and augmented \u2014 to do these things. It\u2019s about making sure we\u2019re laser-focused on the customer and relevancy.<\/p>\n
\n\tWWD: With curation, does the website mirror what\u2019s in stores?<\/p>\n
\n\tR.A.: Curation happens by channel and location. There is a core assortment across channels and across stores, and then localization happens. How a brand shows up in Northern California versus Florida versus the Northeast looks different. It may be the product themselves, the color or fabrication that evolves the digital experience. We do not see [the website] as an endless aisle. It\u2019s highly curated. We are mindful that in many cases, we may have an expansive assortment online, but it\u2019s not expansive for expansion sake. It\u2019s to make sure that if the productivity, traffic and demand are there, we have more optionality to expand the assortment. It\u2019s not a hard-and-fast rule. Our merchants are using data, and honestly, taste and instinct, to determine what\u2019s right by channel.<\/p>\n
\n\tWWD: Why did you launch the Little Brown Book advanced clienteling tool?<\/p>\n
\n\tR.A.: We believe our selling teams in the stores are the most powerful CRM agents. CRM is often [associated with] email, text, and push that\u2019s automated. That\u2019s a core part of how we\u2019re engaging and keeping continuous conversation with the consumer, but we believe humans are that competitive advantage. So by starting to put AI into the business, we\u2019re creating enriched customer profiles for our selling team in an intuitive, user-friendly application on their phones backed by powerful data, so they can see what their clients bought, what interests them, [even] their birthdays. It\u2019s a real tool to better understand clients and for thoughtful outreach. You will see more AI-driven solutions using the power of our data for enriched client profiles\u2026Based on browse behavior and purchase history, we\u2019re using AI and data to reach out to clients on such things as a collection that just dropped or an amazing leather jacket.<\/p>\n
#Driving #Bloomingdales #Curation #Innovation #Experimentation<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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