Dive Brief:
- After announcing its plans to expand into wholesale earlier this year, Allbirds has added another partner: Nordstrom.
- Beginning June 1, Nordstrom will carry men’s and women’s styles for Allbirds in select stores and will start selling products on its website later this summer, Chief Brand Officer Pete Nordstrom said on a call with analysts last week.
- Earlier this month, Allbirds announced Zalando in Europe and Public Lands in the U.S. would be its first wholesale partners.
Dive Insight:
Allbirds is quickly adding to its roster of wholesale partners as it looks to raise awareness around its brand.
When the DTC brand initially announced its intentions to expand into wholesale, co-CEO Joey Zwillinger said the move was largely due to the fact that Allbirds remains “unknown” to the majority of U.S. consumers.
Several DTC brands in recent years have begun selling through other retailers as a way to lower the high costs associated with acquiring customers almost entirely online — which can oftentimes hinder profitability — by serving as an additional marketing channel.
While Allbirds has long operated its own stores, the brand still struggles under losses. In its most recent quarter, the brand reported net revenue increased 26% from last year to $62.8 million, while net loss also grew, by over $8 million, to $21.9 million.
Zwillinger in February said the brand would be selective around which retailers it would partner with, describing them as “premium locations” that would be “very brand additive.”
Adding Nordstrom to its list of partners doesn’t come as a surprise, though. The department store in 2018 featured Allbirds in its “Pop-In@Nordstrom” concept, an ongoing series of pop-up shops with rotating brands.
Nordstrom has made clear the value it sees in DTC brands. In 2012, the company led a $16.4 million minority investment into DTC menswear brand Bonobos. In the years since, the department store has formed partnerships with other digitally native brands like Thinx, Away and Kim Kardashian’s shapewear brand Skims.
