Inside David's Bridal's post-bankruptcy turnaround

0:01Melissa Daniels:The best proxy is if we think about how people were talking about AI six months to even a year ago and how people were using it in daily life, I think the same evolution is going to happen here, right? Where most people didn't have any subscription to any AI tools, let's say a year ago, and that's massively shifted to today. I think the same thing is going to be true with Agenda Commerce, where it's going to feel like nothing is changing. And then all at once, it'll feel like it's been here all along. That's Juan Pellerano Rendon, Chief Marketing Officer at Swap, our sponsor on this episode of the Modern Retail Podcast.

0:41Melissa Daniels:Later in the show, Custom Intelligence talks with Juan about the rise of Agenda Commerce, its education phase, and what retailers should keep in mind.

0:58Melissa Daniels:Join us for the Modern Retail Marketing Summit taking place April 20th through 22nd in Huntington Beach, California. Brand leaders from Thrive Market, Coterie, PacSun, and many others will dive into how they're navigating a marketing landscape that's changing quicker than ever. This annual summit will equip you with the knowledge, strategies, and connections you need through our one-on-one meetings, working groups, casual networking, and more. Don't wait. We're offering$200 off with the promo code SUMMIT2026, no spaces. Again, that's SUMMIT2026, no spaces. Go to modernretail.co slash marketing summit to learn more and secure your pass.

1:40Melissa Daniels:Brands and retailers may be eligible for a complimentary pass. Apply on the event page to see if you qualify.

1:58Melissa Daniels:Welcome to the Modern Retail Podcast. It's our show that covers the ways the retail industry is changing and modernizing. I'm Special Projects Editor Melissa Daniels here with Senior Reporter Gabby Barco. Gabby, how are you today? I'm doing great. How are you? I'm doing well. Spring has sprung and I'm excited for so many new things we're doing this time of year. You know, we're getting ready for the Modern Retail Marketing Summit next month. So I'm excited about that. But today I'm really excited about a guest we have on the podcast who has been someone I've talked to for some time and I was thrilled to get her for the show.

2:38Melissa Daniels:Are you familiar with David's Bridal, Gabby? I am indeed. Yes, I am. It's also wedding season, so very timely. It is wedding season. This was timely. Have you been a bridesmaid before? Are you? Yes, I have. But like very to like very chill brides who are like, just go whatever dress you want and show up that day, which is the best case scenario. Yeah, that's been my experience, too. I also feel like I've missed the millennial rite of passage of going like on an insane bachelorette trip. Like that didn't happen for me. No, my friends were like, let's go camping. We just have children. Yeah. No, but I hear so many horror stories and I'm always like, okay, well, that's not me.

3:21Melissa Daniels:But no, I do love, I love like just reading and following just like the wedding industry because I just find it so fascinating. But David's Bridal is such a fascinating company because it's sort of, you know, the face of the American wedding industry. Yes, yes. I mean, it is arguably the longest standing retailer in that industry, at least from a bridal gown standpoint. You know, it's been the national chain for bridal gowns as well as bridesmaids and other formal wear for a really long time. But the company had a really hard time beginning in the 2010s. It wasn't modernizing. And there was a lot of issues, I think maybe with its footprint and its assortment that weren't squaring.

4:04Melissa Daniels:So the company filed for Chapter 11 in November 2018. and then again in April 2023. And then since the spring of 2024, the company's turnaround has been led by Kelly Cook. She's a longtime retail and marketing executive, used to work for brands like Pier One, Kmart, DSW. And we have her on the show today to talk about running a brand turnaround and the challenges involved in that. Yeah, I'm excited to listen to your segment specifically because she has such a non-traditional trajectory to CEO. You don't really see a lot of marketers that move over to this position. But, you know, given the history of David's bridal, it makes sense that they want that sort of like CMO lens maybe to lead the charge because marketing just informs so much of what this category in this industry is constantly doing, right?

5:06Melissa Daniels:Yeah, that's a really good observation. And she said that herself, you know, that the trajectory is rare to land in the CEO role from a marketing background. But when you look at some of the strategies that they've deployed over the last year, a lot of it is really around brand, right? They have a long-form show called Breaking Bridal that they put out. They're doing a lot more with social media. They launched a new affiliate program this January. And they're also doing a lot with AI, both within their own workflows and, of course, on the web page, the customer experience. And we got a fun little scoop in this recording that they're getting their product pages integrated into ChatGPT.

5:48Melissa Daniels:GPT. So when brides or bridesmaids or people looking for formal wear are using a chat GPT service to look up gowns, they'll be more quicker directed to David's products. Yeah, that makes sense, especially because a lot of brides are using AI right now to sort of put together budgets and look up, you know, whether it's gowns or inspiration or anything else for their wedding. So you do want to be at the forefront there. So I'm excited to hear what they're doing on the AI front. I'm curious, was there anything else on the marketing channel front that she said that they're rethinking that maybe it worked four or five years ago, but now we're realizing like we need to modernize a little bit more, whether it's, I mean, the fact that affiliate is new to them is kind of surprising because it's something that a lot of brands have been doing for years now.

6:48Melissa Daniels:So yeah, any other examples? Yeah, that's a really good question. I feel like one of the most tangible things we talked about is how that manifests in store, right? I think as shoppers, we've all had a lot of experiences where we go in a store, we see something we like, oh, they don't have our size. You know, on the bridal side, it is made to order in a lot of cases. Sometimes people are going there and buying their wedding gown off the floor, but the vast majority of the cases you're ordering it. And so one of the things that they've been able to do that they piloted in some of their stores is basically like an in-store iPad, like that can help people find something that maybe isn't in store or complete their look.

7:29Melissa Daniels:So say you're there picking out your dress for prom, you can also then order all of the other things that you want to get with your dress, right? Just doing that from in-store, kind of like an endless aisle. And I thought that was really interesting because she's already in your store. So how are you, you know, taking the initiative there to make sure that she's getting the most that you can provide with for her at that time? So I think they're doing some really interesting things in store. And I'm curious to see what happens next. Yeah, I'm really excited to listen to this, especially because it's so timely.

8:04Melissa Daniels:And they had a few goes now at reinventing themselves. So I'm excited to see what Kelly's vision looks like. Yeah, yeah. She's great with a metaphor too. So a lot of good, a lot of good one-liners in here. It was a great conversation. So yeah, stay tuned after the break to listen.

8:30Melissa Daniels:All right, Kelly Cook from David's Bridal. So folks, whether or not they've been married are probably familiar with David's Bridal just being a legacy brand, right? And, you know, more recently in the world of retail, there were headlines around the company's second bankruptcy, you know, that it had filed this century. Just for purposes of table setting, you know, what's the status of the company right now? How are things? It's going well, Melissa. We are fully engaged in our transformation of aisle to algorithm. Our 5 ,000 dream makers that are at the company are on fire for serving her and implementing our new path forward.

9:13It's a very, very exciting time at David's for sure.

9:18Melissa Daniels:Awesome. Well, we're definitely going to get into some of the strategies that are showing growth and that are getting customers their dream gowns and beyond. But I really want to go behind the scenes with your journey because you were the CMO at David's Bridal before taking the CEO mantle just about a year ago. So when that was your transition, when you were taking that CEO role, what were some of the first challenges that you had to tackle? You're right. I was CMO and then I became CMO and head of IT and then over finance and then finally CEO. And the biggest turnaround we had to make was, as you mentioned, the company had filed in 23.

10:03It did restructuring in 19. And it was tough. It was a tough environment inside. And we needed to really understand how to transform this company into a machine that delivers value for its three key constituencies, which are our customers, our employees, and our shareholders. And it was really an amazing opportunity at this level to sort of reset, along with the leadership, what aisle to algorithm was and is now. And it was an opportunity to really sort of understand what were we good at? What did we do well? How do we optimize? modernize how do we modernize and then quite frankly we didn't have to look that far Melissa because brides were already telling us what they wanted us to do it was just a matter of of putting that together and it was when you're sitting around a table and you're talking about algorithm and you're building this plan and you're like okay this is it we're you know we're doing it it can get a little scary and I told the team I said look sometimes when you're in a dark place You think you've been buried, but you've actually been planted.

11:17And this is our opportunity to plant and bloom and come up with, you know, a new model for David's that shares what we're good at with the world.

11:27Melissa Daniels:What does that term encompass for the company, aisle to algorithm? What sort of strategy is encompassed in there? Yeah, that's a great question. It's really centered around the vision of David's becoming the largest AI-enabled retail media and planning marketplace serving weddings and beyond. That's really what Isle to Algorithm is about. And it's underpinned by building a company that is profitable, that not just survives, but thrives as well. And that nowhere in that sentence did you say selling dresses, which is, I think, what David's title is best known for. That's interesting to me. Exactly.

12:06Yeah. Yeah, it's true. You know, it's interesting, you know, when we really sat down, you know, the mindset was, let's be somebody's shot of whiskey and not everybody's cup of tea, right? And what we're good at, that shot of whiskey is brides and serving her. And we really had three key strengths that we analyzed. One was we had incredible brand trust. That's awesome. And we had brand trust with 90 % of all brides coming into the David's funnel. I mean, most companies would kill for that. That's amazing, right? The second thing that we knew we were good at is we can design and produce some of the most gorgeous brands in the world and gowns and dresses in the world.

12:53And the third thing that we knew we could do is we could provide exceptional value. So So whether that is vendors, partners, our brides, prom, graduation, mothers of the bride, it didn't matter. We knew we had those things together. So we had to build around that and build a strategy that would, again, return this company to profitability. But protect the word trust. That is the number one word used to describe David's from all of the partners that we have is trust. So it was very important that we protected that.

13:33Melissa Daniels:So what have been some of the, you know, weaknesses or challenges? When you talk about the strength, you've got that brand trust and a fairly large audience, you know, coming to David's online or in store. But what were the things where you're like, no, this isn't working that we either have to drop or reinvent? Yeah, so that's a great question because there were some pivots along the way for sure. So one of the things that I learned myself is that we had laid out a pretty aggressive product roadmap for Isle to Algorithm starting April 1st. And it was aggressive. And when I say aggressive, and your listeners will definitely feel this in their bones when I say this, but we didn't have one bolder project in IT.

14:22And a lot of people know what that means. That's like a big, hairy project, right? We didn't have one. we had six and 25. That is a tremendous amount of work, not only on our IT partners, but on our business partners as well and finance and business cases and building out, you know, the change management aside from just building boulders. So one of my lessons learned is about two and a half quarters in. I'm like, oh, let's slow it down. Let's pivot. And we gave ourselves a little bit of a break to just take a pause and then push some, a few of those out into 27. So that, that was probably the biggest thing.

15:05The second thing I learned was really just around talent. You know, talent is everything. Well, it really is. And, you know, talent's kind of like, you know, buying Ikea furniture. You know, if you pick the wrong part, nothing fits and somebody ends up crying. Right. So, you know, so you really, you really, it's, it's everything. And, and it was interesting watching the transition at David's with talent. And, and it's, it was such a big lesson for all of us in the, at David's that we are now rolling out a new training program hiring program and recruiting program starting in April of this year because we learned some really good lessons.

15:53I think the headline is, you know, change management is not for the weak of heart. It's just not, not, not, not with large scale transformation. It just isn't. And it's hard, you know, it's hard work. And I think if I was going to give you one final lesson, Melissa. It was really just celebrating more of the small wins, doing that a little bit more. I, you know, I'm on a quest to do that much, much more in 26.

16:22Melissa Daniels:Yeah. Yeah. I look forward to seeing what's in store for that. There's a lot to unpack there. I'm almost looking at it in two buckets where one is sort of the actual strategies and tactics that are being built and the other's culture, right? And all of these things are changing and growing simultaneously and kind of having to come together. You know, and when you talk about the boulders for IT, I feel like given this charge of being an AI-driven company, that a lot was falling on them. What are some of the, you know, tools or services that that team has stood up that are now paying off in this era of Davis?

16:59That's a wonderful, I love this question because it gets, I'm able to brag about a lot of the people in Davis. So one thing is we had to simultaneously move our data to the cloud, modernize our infrastructure, and launch Shopify, both in e-com and POS. I mean, that is not, you are literally filling up the gas tank, changing the tires while the car is moving 80 miles down the road. And we found an incredible IT leader. His name is Scott Sager. He is so good. And it's his attitude as well as his competency, Melissa. And I would say attitude before aptitude right now. I think we can train aptitude if that's missing, but attitude is everything.

17:48And the willingness to stand up in front of a group and go, look, if cauliflower can become pizza, anything can happen. We can do this. We can do this. And so we implemented Shopify in our new couture stores. That's doing incredibly well for us. We launched Shopify Canada, which we didn't have a commercial Canadian website. So we launched that. We've successfully moved our data to the cloud. We modernized our processes at David's using AI, which has really been transformative for sure. And I can provide that detail if you're interested. But it's just been an incredible journey for our IT partners.

18:34They've done an incredible job, really, really good job for them.

18:40Melissa Daniels:Have you had to sort of soup things up? And it sounds like this was happening. Probably the Shopify integration probably helped. But becoming more omni-channel while still really focusing on growth of e-commerce. Because from my perspective, it seems like there was maybe sort of really two arms of the business and you've maybe tried to bring those together a little more. Yes. And so I can give you a couple of examples of that in context of building a better and more profitable thriving company. You know, when we launched Shopify in our Diamonds and Pearls couture stores, we put smart screens on the walls and that allowed a bride to go up to the screen and see everything in her Pearl planning journey.

19:28and she could actually shop bridesmaids with the planning vision that she already has for a wedding right there on the screen. And because the Shopify platform enabled in Las Isles, she could literally buy everything from the screen, touches the phone to the screen, it goes to her mobile cart and then she can pay. That was an amazing transformation for us. Right now, my store dream makers are like, when am I getting the screen? So, you know, it's been really, really remarkable as far as that's concerned. And the second example I would give you that sort of fuses that all together is that dropship has traditionally been an online strategy, but we're taking dropship to the physical store.

20:18And there's a few reasons why we do that, you know, to ensure that we have a thriving, profitable company. You know, we needed to not just look at revenue and cost and OPEX, CAPEX and all the general things, but we really need to look at, you know, working capital, cash and those kinds of things. And so, you know, the benefit to our guests are she can walk into a David's and see a huge variety of all these different kinds of brands, you know. But to us, bringing dropships slash consignment inside of a store, it takes less pressure off of our working capital, and it allows us to maintain a more profitable business.

21:02So it's looking at everything all around the seams and picking up the covers and taking a second and third look at it just to make sure there's not a way to make it better.

21:13Melissa Daniels:Yeah, yeah. And remind me how big your store fleet is now. So we have 194 stores in Canada, Mexico, and the U.S., including our first store-in-store inside Liverpool in Mexico. Oh, wow. That's exciting. It's always cool when you can have that international added to the company's name, right? You're an international company. We are. We are. It's great. I wanted to, when you talk about the screen, so you've just deployed that in a percentage of the fleet so far, and then you'd like to expand that moving forward? We do. We did it as a test in our couture stores. It was wildly successful. Not only that, you know, not only from the conversion side, Melissa, but we measure NPS, and the NPS score is higher in those stores than it is in Mainline, and our average NPS hovers around 80, so it's pretty darn good.

22:11But I believe the Diamonds and Pearl store is in the 82 range. So the customers and guests love it. Not just that, but our dream makers that work there love it as well.

22:21Melissa Daniels:And then when you talk about the dropshipping, how does that sort of work on a day-to-day basis? Yeah. So it starts with what do we need to do in a... Well, let me ask you, Are you referring to online or in-store? What, the in-store dropshipping, yeah. The in-store, yeah, yeah, yeah. So it really starts with what do we need to serve her? We use a variety of tools to do that. We look at AI data, we look at trend data, we look at forecasting data, but more importantly, we get really good information directly from our stylist in the field to corporate, and we get that every week very fast. In addition to that, we look at all the people that are searching on our website for products and they didn't convert.

23:07So that means they've already made the decision to come to David's. They go to davidsbrottle.com and they put products in the search bar, but they don't buy. That's a really good indication of something we're doing to not serve her properly. And when we use all that data, we said, I'll give you an example right now. We found out yesterday in our meeting from the field and using our data that there is a big trend for Halloween weddings this year. Well, with Halloween weddings, are coming with black wedding dresses, red wedding dresses, and purple wedding dresses, right? I'd love to see it. Yeah.

23:44Oh, yeah. It's great. It's so great. You should see a video about the Nightmare Before Christmas wedding. It was so cute. But anyway, you know, so we're using that now. So now we're working with our partners. Do we have what we need? Is there a partner that sells that? How fast can we get it in the stores? And so that's how fast everything moves. So we dynamic.

24:07Melissa Daniels:Very cool. Yeah. And this is sort of, you're moving at the speed of social media because you're moving with the trends, right? And this is something that I recently reported actually on your really awesome prom strategies this year, really going social first and showing that assortment and making sure that what you're offering in store is sort of, you know, kind of more wide and shallow versus narrow and deep to make sure that everyone can have that personalized, unique dress. I'm curious if there's anything else that you feel like has changed for you all on the social media front, because I feel like I've seen a lot with the launch of your affiliate program and some other changes, but, you know, especially someone with a marketing background, I'm just curious what role you feel like social media has played in this transformation.

24:52Yeah, it really is everything. I would say it's really played three key roles. One is it's gotten the message out to our core brides and prom goers that we have what they're looking for. And there's no better way to do that through social. Now, we haven't gone as far as done AI influencers, which I know some companies are doing. That feels, I don't know. I'd love to know what your listeners think. Tell them to email me, tell their thoughts, but we're still, you know, real humans, real women, real girls, real lady. So getting the message out was number one. Two, turning over the content machine to them is fantastic.