How Curated Co-Retail Creates Cross-Brand Synergies

0:00This show is brought to you by the Global Talent Co, a marketing leader's best friend in these times of budget cuts and efficient growth. We help marketing leaders find, hire, vet, and manage amazing marketing talent for 50 to 70 % less than their U.S. and European counterparts. To book a free consultation, visit globaltalent.co. Hey, everybody. How are you doing? My name is Andres Figueira, and I'll be your podcast host for this episode, which is brought to you by The Global Talent Company, connecting top remote professionals from Argentina, South Africa, and all over the world with leading tech companies worldwide.

0:37So if your team is looking to hire world-class talent, head over to theglobaltalent.co and see how we can help. And today with me here is Tobias Tanner, the founder of DLE Magazine, which is a co-retail experience that presents a lifestyle design-oriented community of brands, partners, products, activities, and events for your engagement. So without further ado, it's a pleasure to have you here, Tobias. Good to be here, Andres. Thanks for having me. Great intro. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. And well, besides that intro, since the audience will be listening to all of this, Tobias, would you mind telling us a little bit more about yourself, about what Le Magazine is, what it represents.

1:20Yeah. So short, sweet and simple myself, I'm an American living in Berlin. So I've been based here in Berlin since 2009. And when I first arrived here, part of my job was running a creative consultancy, helping lifestyle design brands enter the German market. So everything from trend tours, trend analysis, pop-up shops. And one of the things that we realize as Germany is a diversified market, so the mindsets of Berlin is very different from Munich, which is extremely different from Hamburg, etc. It's not like a one-stop shop nation like London or Paris, you know, or New York from that perspective.

1:53So we realized that a lot of our clients, they needed to be in physical just to understand who their consumer was. So we got into sort of process in 2019 with the first sort of beta test, you might say, of the co-retail model and step-by-step sort of involving it. And that brings us to where we are today. And in that sense, Le Magasin, where we are today, as a co-retail platform, we make it much easier and much more affordable for brands to be in physical retail. But then also, at the same time, we give them full control of their sales. So it's a beautiful sort of turnkey solution. And we have been focusing on developing in high profile, high traffic destinations where our brands want to be.

2:33And then on the consumer side, as the model is B2B2C, giving them that excitement and sort of discovery of maybe new things they've never seen before or products that maybe they've only seen online. So taking that box of experience for consumers. So a lot goes behind that, but that's it in a nutshell. Yeah. Okay. That's so cool. And Tobias, could you give us a little bit further context regarding what co-retail is in case anybody hearing is not sure what that means? I think co-retail from our perspective is sort of shared spaces. So much like you have the movement of co-working. I mean, I think now a lot of people understand the benefits of a co-working model.

3:09Apply that model to retail in the aspect that, you know, there's an infrastructure. So for example, we provide the staffing, the location, and all of that overhead for the brand so that it's a plug and play solution for them. But they're also benefiting from a shared space. So everything from the marketing to the consumers that come in, engagement, etc. So shared spaces, you might say. Okay, okay. That's amazing. And I imagine this must be appealing to brands in the fact that maybe since it's a co-retail space, they get a bit more traffic due to people visiting other stores within that same area, right?

3:43Is it like improves the traffic for everybody? Yeah, yeah, I definitely would agree with that. And, you know, at this stage, we've done a few of our own shops, but our last edition was in Stockholm in Sweden with Nordiska Kompagnett or NK, which is very much prestigious luxury department store in Stockholm. And I found that that was an interesting sort of model. We did nine months with them there as a win, win, win. So they were able to offer fresh content to their existing loyal audience, attract new audiences as well. then of course for our brands who would not want to be positioned in a luxury department store and probably have access faster than if they had to go the traditional buyer route themselves.

4:21And we're also able to elevate the Le Magazine names by taking advantage of that built-in beautiful, you know, robust audience and heritage of that name. So that's sort of the pader that we have hit and we want to go further further that along in terms of working with high profile, high traffic destinations. And I think the pain point that we're helping to solve, particularly if you look at a lot of direct-to-consumer brands. So Andres, we've worked with about 250 brands to date. A lot of those focused on direct-to-consumer. You know, direct-to-consumer online, that's a whole different beast than physical, but physical definitely is looking that much more attractive, especially as the cost of acquisition online is getting more expensive, and maybe the region is declining in a lot of cases.

5:02But you may not necessarily, if you're specialized with direct-to-consumer, you may not want to have that headache of taking on a shop and the lease and everything that goes with the physical retail game. So in that sense, again, we're making it a lot easier for brands to sort of test physical spaces in ways that maybe they have not thought before. And it's also part of our growth of our distribution strategy. You know, we've been talking with summer brands and so some of the markets that we're looking to go to, and maybe they've not thought about being positioned in those markets before. So if we can be there for them to have that awareness in new markets, then, you know, it's a great value proposition to offer.

5:38Okay, of course. Now, I totally understand that. And do you guys have like a certain framework for deciding which markets a brand should enter next? Like, do you advise them in that sense? Yeah, you know, our growth this phase has been in Berlin with our own stores and the first exit of the German market into Sweden last year with NK Department Store. So as we grow this year, it's been a foundational year for us. So we've been working on our team in as well, we're doing a pre-seat round right now. So a lot of this work has been looking at where do we grow next in terms of our partners, our property development partners, both sides of the pond in terms of Europe and North America, as we are a Delaware Corp with a German subsidiary.

6:20So we are in this point developing the strategy of growth of where our brands are going to go. And that is a constant conversation that we do have with our brands and partners as well. So it's pretty exciting right now that we're in a phase of sort of shopping for prop dev partners that can benefit from a model like ours. Okay. No, yeah. I imagine it must be really exciting. And I figure that maybe not mainstream brands or very big ones must be looking into having a spot within a magazine store, but these smaller brands that are starting up, it must be so good for them to be able to get that exposure.

6:53Yeah. And you know what's so interesting? I mean, we're focusing on certain trends and I'll tell you about one of them, but in light of what you just mentioned, we're seeing that physical retail is definitely becoming more about experiences. So, you know, we know we can buy everything online. The God bless the Amazons and the Alibaba's and all of those brands are the world. You know, but that's not going to go anywhere. That convenience is here to say, but we as human beings definitely want to go out. You know, we want to be social. We want an aspect of community. I like to say again, that aspect of retail therapy, of discovery, that's here.

7:25And we've seen that post COVID, you know, with the movement of the growth of membership, everything, you know, longevity, wellness clubs to even dog park clubs, you know, and private members clubs growing. So there's a boom and sort of a desire for people to be in physical. And I think one of the growth challenges that retail will continue to evolve into, let's say, is the fact of less just about transaction, but more about experience. And so, for example, we have created a concept. We work with lifestyle and design brands about eight different categories from fashions, interiors, cosmetics, et cetera, etc.

8:01And one of the things that works always well for us, one of the categories is spirits. But we introduced, because there's a movement sort of driven by millennials and Gen Z of people drinking less and less alcohol. So we created a program that we call the Dry Bar that highlights non-alcoholic spirits, wines, and beers. So imagine on Saturday, we have a mixologist who has worked with all of our brands and our partners such that there's a mixology experience. You sit on down to the bar and you're trying different non-alcoholic cocktails, et cetera. And as there's the retail component, you can buy what it is that you're trying.

8:36That has become such a huge hit. I mean, we launched that for Stockholm last year, and it's something as a centerpiece of our experience that creates sort of engagement, cross-brand synergies for events, et cetera, and that sort of halo effect of a do-good movement. I mean, literally people of all ages who have come into the dry bar portion of our program have said, you know, I've stopped drinking or, you know, my wife is pregnant right now, or I'm driving and I've got to go to this event, or we're having a wedding, but you know, the groom and bride, they don't drink, so we need alternatives. So there's been a huge, huge awareness of opportunity.

9:09So we see that as something that as a trend, we're going to push forward, but also as a great opportunity to introduce customers to some category that's really growing and very fascinating right now. Okay. Wow. That is such like a noble thing to do and just create a dry bar and offer mocktails. It's like all the benefits of sipping a drink without the downside of actually getting drunk. It's amazing, okay? There you go. So you can have a mocktail on Tuesday afternoon without any guilt. Exactly. I think the elimination of the guilt there is like the best part. And Tobias, we looked at your LinkedIn and we saw what Le Magazine is and we've noticed that you've lived and worked across, as you mentioned, New York, Geneva, Berlin.

9:51How have you noticed that consumers' expectations differ between these different markets? That's a beautiful question. Wow. You know, I think in terms of, let's say, European versus North American sensibilities, I have noticed is that U.S. is definitely much more transactional. It moves much faster. You can really introduce a lot of concepts and people are very open. I would say in EU, you know, consumers are a little bit more reserved. They want to understand the backstory. I think there's sort of more of a depth of sort of understanding and also in terms of our consumers sort of a quality and sort of the heritage of which it comes from.

10:29So maybe not moving as fast here, but there is, you know, in a sense that if you really are able to capture the minds and hearts of a consumer, then you've got them and they're going to be loyal. So both sort of mindsets are very, very interesting. And as well, you know, in terms of our growth goal, we want to take Le Magazine, not only building our distribution network here in Europe, but we are planning for being in the United States. I can't announce sort of our first project there, but at some point in the next 12 to 18 months, we're going to be doing a project in the States. So we're super excited about, because the opportunity from brands on both sides of the pond are going to be able to sort of benefit and play with the distribution network of reach to new audiences and consumers as well.

11:09Okay. Oh, nice. Congratulations. I really hope you guys get to expand in the US. So cool. So cool. And when you mentioned that, yeah, the US is more open to new things, But I also imagine that if the European market's a bit more difficult to crack, if you do, they will be more loyal than the always trending in the US that I feel like people get this fever about something and it's quickly then dropped and they pass on to something else. Is that something that you've noticed happen as well? Yeah, definitely. You know, I think, but as well, you know, trends with our TikToks and Instagrams, etc. We all over the world, we get the trends, you know, straight away now.

11:45So there is really no difference from that perspective. But what I think is interesting, especially brands, you know, if you're going to enter the U.S. market, it's on one hand a very straightforward approach. So most of my brands, when we talk about being in New York, they all want to be in New York. They want to be in New York. You know, they want to be in those big capitals. But then, you know, there's also the brands that think secondary. They want to be in secondary markets like a Chicago or Dallas or whatnot. But we know that there's huge money in those markets and maybe not as much variety as you would have in L.A.

12:16and New York. So those audiences are very, very appreciative as well. So there is a prog approach, but, you know, a lot of special European brands in New York, L.A., that's where they want to go, you know, as first point. Now, the opposite in terms of the EU, you know, we've been talking with some really interesting direct-to-consumer brands with seven-figure monthly turnovers in the U.S. that are super exciting and very nice marketing budgets. When it comes to the EU, a lot of the strategy of brands across many sectors is to go to the UK first for the commonality of the language and sort of similar aspects of culture.

12:50It's very easy to enter the UK, of course, but then starts looking at the rest of Europe. And, you know, it's such a diversified market that it's not really a one-stop shop. And the particularities of, say, maybe the French market are extremely different from the Spanish, which is very different from German, etc. So it takes a little bit more effort to crack the nuts of the EU as a whole, because you need a lot of specialization in entering this market here. So one of the things that we've been talking about as we look to expand our distribution network of marketplaces for our brands, our member brands, is that turnkey solution.

13:23So again, you know, I really have to think so hard in terms of touching down in Paris. And if the magazine Paris, I'm coming in for fashion week, I can have a place to engage with customers, post my meetings for distribution or attract new agents, spend a Saturday in the shop and do an engagement, but then also understand that mindset. And I've just paid my membership fee rather than having to even open a pop-up or open a store, et cetera, et cetera. So that's kind of the value proposition of sort of dreaming because it's in a marketing spend at the end of the day that our brands spend with us.

13:52But that's sort of the pipeline dream of what we want to be able to offer as a service to our brands that were with us. Okay. No, and actually while you were mentioning like within your answer right now, it actually leads into my next question, which was, I know you're focusing on creating a community and not like stores per se, how does the storytelling change when you're trying to create a community in multiple cultures? Like you mentioned, it's different for France, for Spain, for England or whatnot. Yeah, that's a beautiful question. And I think that speaks to our stage of growth right now.

14:24I mean, we still are very much in early startup phase. And with, of course, with ambition to become a beautiful enterprise with global, you know, marketplaces, But at this stage of growth, we are focused specifically on lifestyle and design brands across our categories because those type of brands we understand very well, but also the type of clientele that comes through our door, you know, we can speak to them. I think we do physical experiences very, very well. We are not yet at the stage where we are doing sort of the online experience extremely well yet, but we have a strategy for becoming omnichannel.

15:01So we really have focused with these past editions on the physical retail experience and having that sense of discovery and engagement with consumers. So we've gotten that down well. But I think what's core and important about that, no matter where we go, and again, we've worked in two different complete cities, two different complete cultures, is that sense of sort of immunity. If we continue to do an engagement, gauging approach that, one, I believe that whatever customer that walks through the door, they've got to have that hello. You know, they've got to be well. My university days when I was home in California in the summer, I always worked at Nordstrom selling shoes and they really taught us excellent customer service.

15:39So that's something that's always stayed with me. And I kind of teach our staff as well to welcome people because there's nothing worse when you walk in the door, no one even acknowledges you or even look at you. You don't want to spend money in that type of environment. Think about it. It's true. It's true. We don't like that at all, that we're not snobby in any way. We're super welcome to meet you in whatever level a customer wants, because it's kind of like an experience when you come in as you're discovering and seeing brands and products and concepts you've never seen before. A lot of people.

16:06So there's kind of that, let's say, the museum or the gallery experience where there's the information about the brands and the products. And, you know, our staff are all knowledgeable about them. So the consumer can engage in whatever level they don't want to be bothered. That's fine. But if they do, we're here for them from that perspective. But then also sort of building a community of practice around the experience. So not only do we represent lifestyle and design brands, but when we build our spaces, we involve different corporates as well. And we have sort of about 10 different categories of everything from, of course, the food and beverage.

16:37We always have a beautiful champagne sponsor. I think Piper Heitzig was our last one. So that's important. Of course, the non-alcoholic is there, but we got to have the alcohol for celebration. I love it. I love it. One of our oldest clients, San Cosby Mezcal. I love Mezcal. and they're such a great brand. So they've been a sponsor for us, of course. We've worked with Diageo, et cetera, et cetera. So from that to mobility, Samsung has been one of our lead corporate partners, taking care of sort of our interiors and our screens. We had a beautiful frame TV for our last lounge to HelloFresh to a flooring company.

17:11Amazing. Recycled PVC flooring company in Sweden called Bologna, et cetera, et cetera. And when you think about a great sporting event, you know, why would Samsung sponsor the FIFA World Cup or the Olympics? Well, it's for that exposure and awareness, but then also being associated with a great movement. So we take that approach with the community of practice that we build, because there's a lot of synergies that can be built. And we host a ton of events in our spaces so that we sort of march through a lot of different communities. And what we've noticed, particularly with our last edition, that we would have once a month events where some of the brand donors could come together and as well, some of our VIP customers.

17:49But there's a lot of beautiful synergies. and we were starting to see synergies amongst our brands themselves. So planning their own pop-up stores or even doing collaboration products. So I think there's a certain excitement, you know, in terms of where we're going as not only a Corrito platform servicing our brands and partners, but also creating a community of amazing brand owners. So, you know, if they can benefit and grow with each other, you know, when they're going over to the States for our first campaign, you know, who needs support there? Maybe we're all joining together for the 3PL solution and logistics that's bringing everybody together, which I think we will do.

18:23But you get my point. So if we as a community continue to grow, then I think we become sort of a exciting members club at the end of the day, which I can expound upon sort of that. I love how you're describing this because I just feel like you're creating a little commercial habitat that these owners are getting to know each other. And it's this mutualistic relationship now that they're like, yeah, it's a win-win situation if we do a crossover with our brands or whatever like that. So it's cool that you're able to provide that space for them. And yeah, from all I'm hearing from Le Magazine, I feel like it's not just the objective of selling the store's products, which you guys is the real goal.

19:02So how do you measure success when trying to build a lifestyle community? Absolutely. And at the end of the day, you know, when we pitch our brands on the sales calls, I mean, look, this is a marketing spent at the end of the day for the physical. And we are here to solve whatever the marketing KPIs that the brands may have. Some brands want to use physical retail for exposure to new audiences. Some of them just want to test markets to understand how their products do in certain environments or feedback, you know, a lot of good feedback in terms of the clientele, the customer that's walking through the door.

19:36So each brand has a different sort of marketing metric that they want to achieve. And our job is really to help them to achieve that. So that's a big focus of sort of where we are providing service for them at the end of the day. Okay. Okay. Now that's amazing. And do you feel like you have to work on maintaining brand consistency while allowing for cultural customization, depending on where the magazine is going to be located? Yeah. You know, I think the challenge that we've had this for, I mean, Berlin, I don't know if you're spending much time in Berlin, Andres, but I had the pleasure of going, but when I was like, what, eight years old, so it's been a while.

20:13Come on back. This is probably, in my opinion, one of the most dynamic capitals in Europe today. It, you know, historically, a lot has happened here. Since reunification, the city has sort of rebuilt itself. And there's a lot that's happening here. You know, since I've lived here, it's become a foodie city. When I first hear, there was a new restaurant launching every three months and we all had to go because it was new and exciting. But there's so much variety of cuisine of food here that was not here before because people from all over the world have come and called Berlin home and have taken steak to the city.

20:46So it's super exciting. It's super vibrant, great startup city, especially to have your team based here. So there's so much going on. And it skews, of course, a lot more youthful culture, nightlife, et cetera. Everything is here. Great place to study. Stockholm, much more reserved, much more conservative, but also a dynamic, stylish, wonderful community, great people. So we were questioning, okay, what is it going to be like the mix, you know, when we get to Stockholm, obviously a lot more Nordic and Swedish brands participated than maybe down here in Germany. But nonetheless, what I found very, very interesting, it didn't really matter about this, let's say the brands that were involved, because we already took a sort of curated approach to the Lifestone to design brands that we will take on.

21:31We do not take every brand into our program. We're very selective. And of course, we want to know the brand and understand them. So there's also, let's say, the interview process that we go through. So that's important for us because what our job at the end of the day is to make sure that we have an amazing experience for the consumer that walks through the door. So we keep a high benchmark with that. But what was interesting for me to see is that regardless of the audience, because I would say our audience is in our doors in Berlin are between 25 and 45 on average. In Stockholm at the department store, which has a decidedly older audience, it was 70 % female.

22:11And majority of that mix of consumer that walked through the door, I would say on average was about 35 to 65, which it skewed a lot more older. And in Berlin, the mix is a little bit more mixed. So about 60 female, 40 % male, somewhere in there. So interesting is that regardless of the mix of the brands, the curation in both of them, I would say they were pretty similar in style of the brands that were there and the experience. Both audiences love the mix and we would get, I was very actually humbled at Christmas time, standing at the cash register with our retail staff. No one knew who I was.

22:49And I remember one lady walking to the register and she was talking to a consumer behind her because it was at Christmas shopping line. And she was saying, you know, I love this store. I stop in every few weeks, you know, I got that, what you're buying now for my daughter. I love that brand over there, et cetera. And I was just like, wow. And we would get that quite often that people just say in both locations, I love this curation. I love this store. So if we continue to do that well, I think we can transcend borders because we speak to a certain type of consumer that's looking for quality, that's looking for things that are new and they want to be inspired.

23:19So that's our goal on both ends of the business model. Okay. Okay. So the common denominator here is the specific consumer that you're tailoring to with like the stores you accept into the magazine and the people they bring due to their own audiences. So, okay. And do you have any recent campaigns, Tobias, that you did and it drove to strong results or something like that, that you could walk us through just to like maybe give some experience and examples? Absolutely. And as mentioned for us, we see working with high profile, high traffic destinations as a win-win. So again, for the department store being able to offer fresh content to their existing customers, for the brands having access to a prestige account and being in a high profile destination, and for us raising and elevating our name.