DTC Collective Director Advocates For Digital Future

As senior vice president of marketing for retail technology platform Bluecore, one of the best parts of Sherene Hilal’s job was gathering key retailers once a year to download what they needed and then figuring out how her company could help. The annual event was so useful that she started to wonder how it could happen more frequently. And in that process, an idea was born.

Hilal and Bluecore are now heading up a new trade group called the DTC Collective, which was formed to advocate for what Hilal says is the digital-first future of retail.

“I think the concept of direct-to-consumer has been overweighed with brands that aren’t doing well right now, and which were focused so much on acquisitions that they didn’t do anything to keep customers,” she said. “We saw a huge opportunity to build a community, with brands like Nike and Under Armour and other huge, established retailers who have had a DTC methodology for decades. Our belief is that it will be a digital-first world. It will be accelerated by two to three years, which means a 50-50 split in the next 12 to 18 months for a majority of the top retailers.”

That’s a bold statement – but it’s backed by an impressive roster of DTC brands and their correlating key executives. Since coming out of the gate on July 20 with 12 members – including representatives from Google, QVC, Brooks Brothers, Estee Lauder and Lane Bryant – the group has added about 40 more members (names not yet announced). Now, Hilal wants the group to include some of the names that have spent the past year – and the pandemic in particular – ramping up their digital capabilities, while adopting a realistic outlook about what she sees as the digital-first future. Among the companies she would like to see join: Nike and Home Depot.

Although the Collective was launched as a “think tank,” Hilal is more comfortable with the term “advocacy group” as it moves forward. That’s because at the bottom line, she said, the members are advocating for consumers. It’s the consumers, she explained, who will be the beneficiaries of the digital shift, and they need to build their confidence in order to get the best selection and service from digital channels.

Among the issues that Hilal and the Collective will tackle is one that retailers have avoided: projections for the holiday season. In one of the refreshing additions to the conversation around holiday 2020, the Collective blog has drawn out some predictions from some of its key members.

“We believe holiday 2020 will continue to see less in-store shopping and even more online shopping than 2019,” noted Ann Marie Resnick, VP of marketing at Hammacher Schlemmer. “Our sense is that due to COVID-19, extended families will still not be traveling, and most likely will not have as large holiday gatherings as in prior years. Buying may happen earlier, as we assume there will be an increase in ‘ship-to’ orders as well as in gift wrap orders. Inventory levels will need to be strong, as holiday shoppers may not be as forgiving as they have been so far due to COVID-19 causing low stock levels, as well as late shipments due to overwhelming activity levels (YoY) for FedEx, UPS and USPS.”

Hilal agrees that retail stores will not carry the weight of holiday 2020. But her belief does not extend to some of the companies that have filed for Chapter 11, which will need to lean on in-store sales to move inventory and prove their worth to investors. It does take into consideration the length of the holiday season.

“The interesting thing about holiday is that it started as a weekend and then it was a month, and now over the past four or five years, it’s become almost a quarter-long affair of discounts and promos and flash sales and satellite sales and store sales,” Hilal said. “I think it was already dissipating from an event to a sales strategy for these retailers. And because a lot of the brands we’re working with are already seeing breakthrough digital performance, I think they’ll use it as a chance to introduce people to more of their products rather than discounting and trying to drive traffic. I’d rather see retailers focus less on the ‘doorbuster mentality,’ and more on trying to train people to interact with their eCommerce sites.”

The Collective started from Bluecore’s annual in-person meeting, which they had to host virtually this year. That meeting was intended to consider the issue of marketing in a cookie-less world. Google has said it will sunset its digital tracking pixels over the next year due to privacy concerns. Although that issue was blown out by survival concerns brought on by the pandemic, it will ultimately be reconsidered and also supplemented with more events and research from the DTC Collective.