355 | Segmenting Smarter to Scale Sustainably | with Jon Pundyk

Jon Pundyk is a Dartmouth MBA, P&G brand manager, and a Booz-Allen strategy consultant. He’s been in Glamorise for 35 years. Glamorise is a size-inclusive lingerie brand that designs bras for curvy women. Founded in New York City in 1921, Glamorise is one of the world's oldest bra manufacturers, and it has been size-inclusive since their inception.

In This Conversation We Discuss:

• [00:28] Intro
• [00:53] Learning the fundamentals of consumer marketing
• [02:01] Climbing the ladder one title at a time
• [02:17] Pivoting a century-old business online
• [04:01] Transitioning from wholesale to direct-to-consumer
• [07:33] Balancing wholesale partners with D2C growth
• [10:08] Stay updated with new episodes
• [10:18] Investing ahead for scalable D2C growth
• [13:43] Sponsors: Electric Eye, Freight, Taboola, Next Insurance
• [19:16] Collecting data before knowing how to use it
• [20:25] Leveraging legacy brand recognition online
• [23:05] Relying on product quality to drive loyalty
• [24:08] Driving growth through actionable data insights

Resources:

• Subscribe to Honest Ecommerce on Youtube https://www.youtube.com/c/HonestEcommerce?sub_confirmation=1
• Plus size bras & lingeries for full-figured women glamorise.com/ 
• Follow Jon Pundyk linkedin.com/in/jrpundyk 
• Schedule an intro call with one of our experts electriceye.io/connect
• Turn your domestic business into an international business freightright.com/honest 
• Performance beyond Search and Social discover.taboola.com/honest/ 
• Tailored business insurance. Zero hassle. Big savings nextinsurance.com/honest/ 

If you’re enjoying the show, we’d love it if you left Honest Ecommerce a review on Apple Podcasts. It makes a huge impact on the success of the podcast, and we love reading every one of your reviews!

Transcript

Chase Clymer

How do we accelerate our own sales through our own.com and not alienate our wholesale partners and make them mad because we don't want to see that go away?  

Jon Pundyk

Yeah, it's a challenge and you have to have some candid conversations. But the reality is that consumers expect the brand to have a relationship with them, any real brand. And our customers have come to accept and understand that.

Chase Clymer

Honest Ecommerce is a weekly podcast where we interview direct-to-consumer brand founders and leaders to find out what it takes to start, grow, and scale an online business today.

Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of Honest Ecommerce. Today, I'm welcoming to the show Jon, who is the CEO of Glamorise, a 103-year-old bra company that has exclusively focused on curvy women since 1921. John, welcome to the show. 

Jon Pundyk

Pleasure to be here.  

Chase Clymer

Awesome. So first, let's talk about your career in commerce in general and how you led yourself to now the CEO of Glamorise? 

Jon Pundyk

Sure. I started a long time ago at Procter & Gamble as a brand manager, which is a fantastic training ground for dealing with consumers and how to meet their needs and just the basic blocking and tackling of marketing. And it was a great education. From there, I went to a fancy consulting firm where I worked on basically Fortune 500 retailers.

And it was about growth strategies. And that was a totally different perspective because it was really about strategic questions and then how do you execute against them at scale. So that was a great, great background. I then was recruited into this small business, Glamorise, which at that point was a mere 70 years old. And I started not as a CEO, not even close. I had to learn a lot before I could run the place. So I came in as a general manager and that was 35 years ago. 

Chase Clymer

That's amazing. And then how many titles do you think you had along the way? 

Jon Pundyk

3 or 4, I guess. Starting with that general manager title and then  slowly  sounding better and better. And then probably 20 years ago, I became the CEO. 

Chase Clymer

That's amazing. Now, what was fascinating to me about when we met and the conversation that we're going to have today is just talking about how does a 100 plus year old company pivot and begin to accept and use direct to consumer and just the internet and selling things online, which didn't exist for three-fourths of the company's existence.  

Jon Pundyk

Right. In retrospect, it all makes sense. The company started as your base in 1921. There was mom and pop retail and there were department stores and we were in all of those things.

Somewhere along the way, say in the late 60s, early  0s, the management of the company began to understand that retail wasn't serving our consumer well, and wasn't a good experience for her. The retailer didn't care about the curvy woman. She didn't serve her well. And the whole shopping experience was terrible. So they initiated a push into catalogs.  

And at that point, catalog was a growing segment. Just like the internet became a thing, catalogs are the thing. And we were in it. And we were in the top 20 catalogs in the world. And that was the Sears catalog and JCPenney and catalogs all over the world. Auto catalog in Germany, JD Williams in England.  

The top 20 catalogs world, we were in all of them. And we actually got out of retail, which took a lot of bravery because they shrunk their business. They said it wasn't good long term. They shrunk their business and moved into catalog. The catalog business went very, very well for a very long time. When I came, it was still a catalog-based business global. And the internet wasn't quite yet a thing.  

Chase Clymer

Can I ask a question? 

Jon Pundyk

Sure.  

Chase Clymer

With this catalog-based business model, were you guys  still like pickpacking and shipping and fulfilling these orders direct to consumer? 

Jon Pundyk

No, it wasn't at all. It was a wholesale business. So it was really from a logistics point of view as a wholesale business. We send big boxes of stuff to our customers and they would take care of all the logistics. But what was interesting about it was the mentality that I didn't bring it, they had it already, as they wanted to be a full service marketing company. They didn't know that's what they're doing, but that's what they were doing. So they would do photography and copy and ad setups and everything so that the customer, not the consumer, the customer would get a package.

Here's how you sell the product in every way. Which if you think about it, was a great cultural setting for what it evolved to being an internet seller. So we had no direct shipping to consumers at that point. And we kept away from that for a very long time. So they did catalog for a long time. When I first came, it was a catalog business. At that point, it was a fight for distribution. We're spending our time trying to get products placed in catalogs.

That was job one, was getting distribution. When the internet started to show up, it made sense to us as catalog players, the internet seemed to us to be like a big catalog. Just being simple about it. So we reached out to these folks and fortunately, one of the early people we reached out to was Amazon. And we were a very, very early apparel player with Amazon. We were probably one of the first.

Maybe the first intimate apparel player with Amazon. And in the first year, I think we sold $17,000 worth of product. We sold that in a few hours yesterday. And Amazon was a great education for us and a great entry into understanding the internet. And we learned a lot about data and a lot about marketing consumers in a different way, in a digital way from that.

It took us a pretty long time to go from that to being D2C. We had the old school, I had the old school mentality that we shouldn't compete with our customers. And  so we didn't, we had a website early, very early, but it was purely informational. And then we would refer our consumers to our customers. 

What changed was it became pretty clear to me that the consumer wanted a relationship with the brand. And we were not fulfilling the relationship with the brand by not allowing her to buy from us. And we could be in the market without competing with our customers. For example, we wouldn't be the lowest price seller of the product. And we would be the foundational space for the brand to express its key values to our consumer and to relate to the consumer. 

So that this will sound very late to the party and it was. That happened strategically. We started discussing it in 2018 and 2019. We started putting the components in place, building the tech stack and bringing the people, the whole team to do this. We launched on January of 2020, the new.com. 

Chase Clymer

That's a very interesting time to launch. But before we get there, I just want to highlight and make sure that the listener is understanding because you're using the words consumer and customer. And so when I'm hearing this and just having this conversation with you, when you're saying customer, you are almost meaning wholesale partners. 

Jon Pundyk

Yes. So Amazon is the customer. 

Chase Clymer

Yeah.  

Jon Pundyk

And Mrs. Smith is the consumer. 

Chase Clymer

Exactly. Exactly. So you were trying to find ways as you start to accept that the future is direct-to-consumer, we're going to have to get there. And this is a challenge that I have not only heard from you, but from many legacy– if I would call it brands– like, how do we accelerate our own sales through our own.com and not alienate our wholesale partners and make them mad because we don't want to see that go away? 

Jon Pundyk

Yeah, it's a challenge and you have to have some candid conversations. But the reality is that consumers expect the brand to have a relationship with them. Any real brand.

And our customers have come to accept and understand that. And we don't, we compete fairly with them. We don't price them below them. We don't offer things via our site that we don't offer to them. So it's a very level playing field. And our basic view is we want to be outlet agnostic as a brand. I want our consumer to shop wherever she wants to shop.

And if it's Amazon, I'm happy. If it's Nordstrom, I'm happy. Macy's, I'm happy. And if it's Glamorise.com, I'm happy. And I don't play favorites with anyone. She needs to shop where she's most comfortable and happiest. And that's our ethos. And we express that to our customers and they get it. So at first, I was probably overly old school. And it probably held us back, which is probably why we were so late to the party in selling to the consumer in earnest. 

But fortunately, we've got a little lucky on the timing. Obviously, in 20, the whole world changed and DTC became essential. We hadn't built this, it's pure luck, if we hadn't built the stack and had the people here, it would have been very, very difficult. We were able to blow through our two-year goals for dot com within 4-5 months of 20. 

Chase Clymer

Hey everybody, just a quick reminder. Please like this video and subscribe if you haven't. We're releasing interviews like this every week, so don't miss out. Now back to the interview.

Chase Clymer

Obviously, you launched the site during when the world goes into a lockdown, everybody moves into direct consumer. But I still think there are some learnings that you guys had to figure out as far as responsibilities and  owning your own direct consumer channel comes with all these challenges. Demand generation, fulfillment.

How you're going to route all this stuff around. Customer service. These are things you did not have in place with the traditional  wholesale customer-partner relationship you were doing before. 

So you mentioned it. The conversation started 2 years before. What did you guys maybe over invest in making the move into direct consumer and what did you miss the mark on or maybe not invest as much in as you should have and learn rather quickly with obviously the volume that you did?

Jon Pundyk

That's a great question. I would say there are two things. We built the business to scale and a 100-year-old business, you think long term and you build long term. So we built the platform and the people. We were way overmatched to the size of our anticipated business. 

And from a business point of view, we got lucky in that we scaled into it very, very quickly. But we had already made the investment. We were okay. It wasn't like, “Oh, how do we get there from here?” It was planned to be a major business. You just got there quickly. 

Chase Clymer

You were planning to over invest and it was an investment. These weren't expenses. This was an investment. 

Jon Pundyk

Yeah. I mean, a 100-year-old business, you have to plan. Everything must be scalable. And actually, sometimes it takes us longer to do things because we're building for the long term. So when we brought in the team that we brought in and we built the techs act we built, we overbuilt it. Saying, well, “We want to do this right. We want to do it once and we were lucky there.”

Where we got caught out, I would say, we underestimated our customer service needs. And that took us a while to catch up on. We did an adequate job, but not a brilliant job. And we think it should be a white glove approach for our brand and our company ethos. So it took us probably a few years to get that right, to be quite honest.

And then I would say the other piece that is we only got right now, five years later, is our analytics stack. We switched to all in-house and we built our own analytics suite. it took us, the 2.0 of this stuff we built launched in February of this year. 

So it took us five years to get it the way we like it. And it's been transformative, having the right tech in the way that we want it with the data we need. And we have 200 million lines of data that we have collected across all of the feeds that we have, which is our customers, our consumers, customer service, and a bunch of analytics we do. 

And that 206 million lines of data are structured and managed. And that gives us incredible insight into our consumers. We have a whole team of data people that help us manage that process all in house. 

Chase Clymer

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Chase Clymer

Especially with that data not being something you had, be it five years ago. 

Jon Pundyk

Right. We were storing it and not using it because we were smart enough to realize this is a valuable resource. And so we were just collecting it, but we didn't have a proper way to deal with it. And now we do. So we have five years of history across all of our channels. And we also became ISO certified for PII. 

So that we were, I mean, this is actually something that occurred to us. We were gathering all this data and particularly, I was being uncomfortable about data security. So we started about three years ago, two different ISO certifications for data security and PII.  So we're at a very high standard on all of that, so that we can use this data and still feel comfortable that we're being safe and respectful of people's privacy and hopefully not ever have any issues with it. 

Chase Clymer

Yeah, that's amazing. Now, I always am curious about just having that  brand recognition of these legacy brands as they pivot into accelerating their own dot com sales. How much noise did you have to make to let people know, we're selling on our own website now? And was there a halo effect of it being a brand that does have. At this point, it had 100 years of history behind it. 

Jon Pundyk

It's actually really interesting. Early on, it was easy because organically, we had an installed base of consumers and she was looking for us. So quite honestly, she would search, got incredible super cheap organic search and organic sales. So but once you kind of hit the organic base, then it actually becomes hard. So early it was easy and then later became more difficult with all the challenges that every DTC has about cost of acquisition and everything else. 

And we do have an advantage in that we have broad distribution among Amazon and all the major online retailers. So consumers are used to seeing us online. So her cross shopping behavior was a benefit, but we had to let her know we were there. We did all the usual things to make that happen.

The thing that we have going for us as a business, and we can't take any credit for this, it's just the inherent nature of our business, our consumer is incredibly sticky. She's problem solving. A curvy woman, bras are difficult for all women. I don't know how much you know about bras, but getting the right bra is a lifelong quest for every woman. And our curvy women, it's doubly so because they have special needs based on their body type.

So, when she finds a solution, whether it be us or anyone else, she's extremely loyal to it. So, in our case, when someone finds a Glamorise bra, solves their problem, she's going to stay with us. So, as you know better than I do, the issue  for a lot of DTC brands is you pay a fortune to get someone and then you have to pay again. that lifetime value and CAC and all that math doesn't work.

But for our consumer, it works. Because when she finds us and we've solved her problem, she's staying with us. And that's a huge plus. 

Chase Clymer

I think that you can take credit for that though because your product is solving their needs. It is  doing what they want it to do, which is basically you have a great product. And think the secret to having a successful business is having a great product. 

Jon Pundyk

I agree with you. But I do think the category that we're in is fortuitous. You can have a great product that's fashion driven and that consumers love and it does everything right but it's fashion. So, it changes. So, even though you've done everything perfectly, you got to win her again the next sale and we don't. We have to win it every time but not in the same way. Once we've solved her problem, she's predisposed to come back to us or one of our retail partners and buy our product again. 

So the brand is tricky. As smart as we all like to think we are. The key to our D2C business is the loyalty of our consumer. And that makes all the difference in the world. 

Chase Clymer

Absolutely, John. Now, is there anything I didn't ask you about today that you think would resonate with our audience?  

Jon Pundyk

The one thing I would say is in our new data suite, which has been absolutely transformative for our business. I'm a long-time data observer. Anytime you see a hockey stick, you don't believe it or there's something weird going on or there's another curve you need to understand to understand what's causing it. We actually hockey stick this year. Our new to brand sales are up 40%. 

Our business is up in the high double digits. I mean, this business is really exploding. And it's all because of the data that we're reading and understanding who's coming to  the site and why and what moves them there and what do they do once they get there.  

And breaking out meaningful to us segmentations so that we're spending money against the right consumers. And that has absolutely transformed our business. It's like nothing I've ever seen. It's like a light switch. And so I would just encourage people to think really hard about  how they want to analyze their business and line it up with what you can control. 

I'm always in business not being able to do anything that's of no value. But we lined it up against the leverage we could pull. And now we can adjust how we spend and where we spend to deliver consumers to our business. And it's been really fun. 

Chase Clymer

That's amazing. Now, obviously, we just talked at length about the quality of the product. And if someone's listening, they want to go check out the product, where should they go? What should they do? 

Jon Pundyk

Shop at your favorite place. But Glamorise.com is a great place to start.

Chase Clymer

Awesome. John, I cannot thank you enough for coming on the show and sharing all those insights with us. 

Jon Pundyk

It's [a] pleasure to be here. I always love talking about the business and I appreciate your curiosity about what we do.