What it takes to build a true lifestyle brand

0:01Mandy Fry: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.

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

1:05Hello and welcome to the Modern Retail Podcast, our show that covers the ways the retail industry is changing and modernizing. I'm Special Projects Editor Melissa Daniels. This week, our team of editors were in Huntington Beach, California for our annual Modern Retail Marketing Summit. We brought together CMOs and marketing leaders from all kinds of brands and industries to talk about best practices, challenges, opportunities, and just what it means to work in marketing these days. I walked away with a ton of food for thought. We had lots of small group discussions, plus onstage interviews and presentations.

1:40Hot topics included creator and affiliate marketing, brand storytelling, and of course, AI. I noticed lots of folks trading numbers for future catch-ups and even brand collaborations, which was awesome to see. And I even got to meet some listeners of this very show in person, which was a real treat. Today, we're giving you a sneak peek into what we talked about at the event. In this episode, Executive Editor Anna Hensel interviews Mandy Fry, the president of women's lifestyle brand Z-Supply. They get into the brand's evolution from knit tops to a full line of women's apparel and their focus on distributing to boutiques for a curated, exclusive experience.

2:19experience. And they talk about what it means to be a lifestyle brand, a term that gets thrown around a lot and can be interpreted in a few ways. With that, here's Ana and Mandy.

2:38What we're going to be digging into in this podcast is what it takes to build a lifestyle brand, because I feel like every brand wants to be a lifestyle brand, but tangibly, what does that mean? So we're going to be digging into that more. And with me, I have Mandy Fry, who is the co-owner and president of Z Supply. So Mandy, please join me on stage. So first of all, for those who aren't familiar with Z Supply, can you give us a rundown of what the brand is, kind of who your target customer is? Absolutely. We are Z Supply. We are actually based right here in Orange County, down the street in Costa Mesa.

3:15And what was started out as an elevated basics line when When it started in 2013, it was just t-shirts, has now turned into a women's lifestyle brand. We have everything from ready-to-wear to loungewear, activewear, and even eyewear. Simply put, we are that brand that we want to become your go-to, your everyday. It's effortless, it's easy, it's casual, and it's comfortable. Okay. Bit of a tall task there, but you guys have succeeded at doing all of that so far. So what we're digging into today is what it takes to build a lifestyle brand. And again, I said this at the beginning, but I think it's one of those terms, every brand wants to say they're a lifestyle brand.

3:58But tangibly, what does that mean? So in your mind, what does it mean to be a lifestyle brand? For me, a lifestyle brand is something that truly integrates into a customer's lifestyle. It's what she wants to go to for those, not just for a moment, but that every day she wants to reach for it time and time again. And when I sought out to turn what was once just a t-shirt brand into a lifestyle brand, I knew that I wanted to meet her at every moment of her day. I wanted her to reach for it. I wanted to wake up with her in our loungewear. I wanted to go to school drop-off with her. I wanted to work out with her.

4:32I wanted to go to work with her. I wanted to go to drinks. I wanted to travel. And ultimately, I also wanted to be the brand that when she got home after a long day, she couldn't wait to put on her Z-supply. So comfortable, relaxed, and effortless. And when you become a part of your customer's lifestyle, when you're thinking about her first and you fall in love with her and her life, I think it just evolves organically and naturally. And over the last six years of being there, it's happened. We've turned into a lifestyle brand. And it's not just coming from me. We have 3 ,000 retail partners throughout the US.

5:08And that's what they tell me. You are our go-to. You are our lifestyle brand. our customer comes in asking for you and wants you to be a part of her every day, not just her moments. Got it. So you mentioned you've been with Z Supply for about six years. What was the state of the business when you joined? Yeah, so when I joined in 2019, I honestly thought I was retiring. I had sold my previous brand and I was looking to be a stay-at-home mom for the first time in my life. But the two founders of Z Supply, Greg and John, are amazing. They called in 2019 and said, we'd love for you to come in and just take the brand and go and go for it.

5:51We don't know what you're going to do with it, but we want you to come all in and be a partner with us and lead the business. So in 2019, as I mentioned, it was just t-shirts. And coming in, I realized, oh my goodness, there's already such a beautiful, loyal customer here. although small. It was very loyal. It had amazing fabrications. And I was like, oh, we can turn this into something big. And it was just that gut feeling. And a lot of times, especially as women, when leading businesses, a lot of it goes on gut. And I just had this gut feeling that this customer would come with us and everything we would add and implement into the brand, she would go with us on this journey.

6:30So the first category I launched was February of 2020. we launched loungewear. Right time, right place. Yeah, it's amazing. Never would have known. Right. It truly is amazing sometimes the power of making the right move at the right time. Yep, absolutely. Timing is everything. And it was this unlock into the blueprint of what would become the way we would launch all other categories. And from there, we expanded into dresses and wovens and sweaters. The list goes on. We leaned into summer. We leaned into travel. We leaned into everyday moments and what would become an essential classic wardrobe for her with seasonal staples.

7:14Not everything worked, though. Yeah, which we'll get into. But I'm curious first, what made you decide to go to loungewear in the first place? What made that the first category you expanded into? Well, in 2018, it was a really trendy category. I don't know why, except I think brands were just reaching for what else they could add to their assortment. But there was also these new brands popping up that were creating this loungewear, this idea of in and out of home. Yeah. And I just loved the idea of this trend. And I saw that we had amazing fabrications to work with already. And I was just like, let's, she wants to feel more from Z Supply and she loves the feeling she feels from our t-shirts already.

7:59So let's take these fabrics, let's expand upon them and let's give her something that she can feel good in and out of home. And so loungewear, again, part of it was trend, but part of it was gut and launched it February, 2020. And like I said, it was the blueprint to what would become the real key to our growth as we launched every other category. Yeah. And so then from there, how did you decide what other categories to go into? Because I definitely see the connective tissue between like knit tees and loungewear, something that like feels very good. But I'm curious, you know, like resort wear or other things, like what's the through line through into those expansions?

8:43Yeah. The through line would be, what can we create that will become her head to toe look? What can we, how can we create a wardrobe? How can we become her capsule collection? How can no matter what has happening in her day, she opens up her closet and she just wants to reach for Z Supply. She's in a hurry. She wants, she doesn't know what else to wear. She wants to feel comfortable, but she wants to feel put together and on the go. So that is when I started doing, okay, let's do dresses. All right, will she take sweaters from us? Will she take jackets? And we just started doing one after another, including activewear and then eyewear.

9:17My husband's been in the eyewear business for 30 years, and it just felt like a really natural progression. I absolutely love sunglasses. Yeah. So it felt like just a great fun accessory to lean into when we came out with, I mean, we have like 50 SKUs, and they're at an amazing price point. and they're 100 % polarized and amazing quality. So being able to give her that, again, quality, that comfort, that ease, no matter what type of category we're launching, that connectivity is super important. Yeah, I love the way you described it because it's like, okay, what other piece can we add onto her wardrobe?

9:53Can we convince her to get a dress from us, to add a jacket to her ensemble, to add a nice pair of sunglasses? were there any of these category expansions that didn't work? Yes, there was one. And I have a 14-year-old daughter. And at the time, she was about nine. And I was like, oh, we'll give her this amazing fabrications and these silhouettes that she wants to live in and go to school in and then go to sleep in. And I quickly realized the customer, that's not how she shops for her kids. She will not pay the price. And it was a real hard learning lesson because I tried year over year and realized our customer will not pay the price.

10:35It has to be about product, but at the end, it's not only about product. There has to be value there. And the value for the price, she just wasn't willing to spend on her kids like that. Yeah. And what is the price range for your products? And I know it varies depending on the category. Yeah. We have a wide range of customers and we have a wide range of price points. We have a$38 tee all the way up to a$250 jacket. So it's a wide range. And within category, there is a range. So we have good, better, best. Yeah. I'm curious with this idea of being a lifestyle brand and, again, expanding into more categories, how have you had to change your marketing because of that?

11:19Because this is an audience full of marketers, and I'm curious what kind of language you had to use differently in ads. How do you give all these new categories love in your marketing funnel? Yes. As our product assortment expanded, we had to evolve our marketing right alongside of that. And so going from teas and essentials, where we were just marketing item after item after item, we became this lifestyle brand. And within the lifestyle brand, we had to start storytelling. And that's where it really got fun. I know that's a key hot topic of storytelling, but as you begin to build her wardrobe and you begin to create pieces that are going to take her through all these different moments in life, it was just so much fun to start expanding our marketing and our storytelling to, hey, can you imagine yourself in this world wearing these items, whether you're traveling, whether you're going to a warm weather destination, whether you're going to school drop-off, whether you're lounging at home and storytelling and really being able to give her a visual of what it feels like to see her in her life wearing Z-supply.

12:27And what creative investments did that require? Because one of our earlier speakers, Thorne, she was talking about as we moved into more lifestyle imagery, we hired this new creative agency. I'm curious what investments you had to make to kind of get those visual assets that really sold this lifestyle. Let's see. Anyone who comes and asks me about starting a brand, my first thing I say to them is, do you have a lot of money? Because it takes a lot of money. It's one thing to start small and from the ground up and just little bits by little bits, and it's possible, and I've done it, and it's amazing.

13:07But when you want to scale at a large scale, and you want to produce content that's reaching a broad demographic and sell into retailers across the US and Canada that are wide and deep, you have to have a lot of talent, and you have to have a lot of funding. And the first thing I did, when I came in, there was about 40 employees. And I just started going, OK, what do we need around me? Who can I build around me? What kind of talent can I attract and bring in? Brought in a lot of people from my past, which are still there today. And that's an amazing journey. Brought in a lot of new young talent.

13:45And then brought in really seasoned veterans at that C-suite. And we started, we brought in our brand agency from outside inside. We brought in our marketing agency from the outside inside. Our e-commerce agency that we were doing all of our digital marketing through, we brought that inside. Those have been huge peak moments to really stop the agency work and bring everyone in house. Today, we have about 130 employees, and we're all firing on all cylinders. That is the goal, to all be on the same trajectory, going in the same direction. But it takes a lot of brand resource, takes a lot of money, it takes a lot of people, but ultimately, you've got to have really strong talent.

14:27Yeah. Yeah, another one of the hot topics at this conference is, how do you make your CFO your best friend as you're trying to make some of these bigger investments. Luckily, I have that. Yeah. But another thing I'm curious to ask you more about is because you mentioned fabrication is really key to your products. And it sounds like people love the way it feels. They love to touch it. So how do you talk about that in your marketing? And then how do you give people opportunities to really test and feel the product? Yeah. So when we work with influencers, as an example, one of our key points is you have to talk about the fabric.

15:06You have to feel it. You have to spend some time in it, and then you need to be able to speak to it. So digital, you can only tell a fabric story so far, and it's a little bit harder to do. That's why in-person experiences are so important. So our retailers are our biggest and best source of marketing. Having retailers across the U.S., that is how most of our customers find Z-Supply. They walk into a store. They see our product. They can feel it. They can see the quality. They can try it on. And that is those really important in-person moments. In addition to that, we are expanding into what we call shop collectives.

15:44So we are creating shops within shops and boutiques are a bit new to this, but you can walk into 30 retailers right now across the U.S. and you will find a Z Supply store within a store. And that is our way of creating those moments where you can see the brand all hanging together and she can experience the brand, touch and feel it and see our quality. We're also expanding that into Bloomingdale's. We'll be doing Shop and Shops this year, and we have plans to open about six more Shop and Shops. So reaching above 40, and we'll continue to evolve from there. So you work primarily with boutiques, and I'm curious.

16:21I imagine that was a conscious choice, but what has led you to work mostly with boutiques? Yeah. From the beginning, it was a real intentional decision to prioritize independent boutiques as our core wholesale channel. Really important. That was our focus. It continues to be a focus. All these retailers has been the network and the foundation to our growth. And we've always believed in supporting small businesses. That's honestly one of my favorite parts of Z Supply, is I get to work with small business owners across the U.S. These are like phenomenal women who just build from the ground up, who are living their dream life.

16:57They're growing their dream business and they show up to our trade shows season after season and you can count on them and rely on them even through the pandemic, through the tariffs, everything we've been through in retail, all the headwinds. These boutiques, I could count on one hand the number that have closed. I mean, it has been phenomenal to see them progress and work through all the headwinds that they've experienced on the retail end. But we love our boutiques and we love partnering with them. And as I mentioned earlier, it's our best source of marketing. But we're in it for long-term relationship building.

17:36We protect our boutiques five mile radius. If there is a opportunity just down the street, we most likely, if not, can say always say no because we're in it for the long-term. We're in it for the long play and we're not in it for short-term. growth. And so in that, we very carefully have opened up our distribution into a bigger retailer, Bloomingdale's. We continue to say no to the other mass retailers. Few reasons. One, we do not want to compete with our small boutiques. Two, we don't go on sale ever. Never have, never will on our own website. And mass retailers, they put you on sale. Bloomingdale's, I happen to have a great relationship with the head honcho there.

18:20And we're on the list. Chanel, Z-Supply, don't put them on sale. And so while we have that great relationship and she's there, we continue to trust that we can build our business healthy with them. And it's also, most importantly, those Bloomingdale's locations that we've chose to be in, they're in locations where we don't have other boutiques. And so we're not competing with our retailers. And our retailers, if 3 ,000 boutiques were here with us today, they would all tell you, we love Z-Supply because they are not coming after our business. They're so concerned with our own small business, and they want to help us grow, and they're giving us every tool that they can, and they're creating a brand that our customers are coming in as a source of discovery.

19:02Yeah, it definitely just goes back to the basics of how to be a good partner, which I think people inherently know, but it's very easy to fall into the trap of making those short-term decisions that will dilute your brand. Yes, you have to have the long-term, long game. Yeah. How do you choose which boutiques to partner with? It sounds like trade shows. I'm wondering if word of mouth now just drives a lot of your new partnerships. Yes, word of mouth for sure. We have sales reps in every territory on the ground. That's something that's unique to the contemporary women's market. We don't work with showrooms, although we have our own showrooms, Dallas, Atlanta, New York, LA, but we don't work with showrooms.

19:48Our reps are on the road pounding the pavement, as I like to say, and they're going in and out of these towns across America, and they are looking for business and looking to grow our relationships and our brand within the current business that they do have. And so word of mouth, but definitely at trade shows as well, we see about 200 plus accounts, every coterie in New York, Magic in Las Vegas. And they're retailers now. It's fun. It's fun to watch them walk up and say, hey, I've heard about your brand. I saw your brand. And often we have to turn them down because we're busy supplies in a lot of boutiques.

20:29So we have to be careful and protect the distribution. Yeah. So I think it's very clear from this conversation, like you're taking a very long-term view in building your brand. And I'm just curious how you think about like which apparel trends it like makes sense to jump on and which ones it doesn't. Because I just, you know, in fashion where things change very quickly, I imagine it's very easy to feel like we need to jump on this. So kind of how do you think through that? Yes. I mean, we're unique in that way. There are many brands that have to chase trends, and that's what they're about. But when it comes to trends for Z Supply, we're very disciplined.

21:06And we don't chase every trend for volume. We really look at it through the lens of our customer, and we say, would this be right for her? Would this be something that she could feel good in and that she would wear season after season, not just for this one moment? And then we look at the trend and we say, can we interpret this in our own way with our fabrications and our own DNA? And will this feel timeless? Will this feel comfortable? And if the answer is yes, then we go with the trend and we put it in through our own lens. But if it's no, then we move on and we don't feel that pressure of capturing every trend.

21:43And then this discipline, I feel like this is the unlock. The discipline that you have to have when scaling your business through product is you have to have the discipline. Because if you do and you really keep your team all disciplined, going in the same direction at the same time, you can scale. And it's helping us scale very quickly. We'll hit$200 million. Great. What would you say are your priorities for 2026? We are going to continue evolving our lifestyle brand through all the different ways I mentioned. We're going to continue getting better at it. We're going to continue expanding through adjacent categories that make sense for the brand through the lens of our customer with that fabric first quality mindset.

22:27And then we're going to continue to build immersive retail experiences through expanding our shop collectives. And who knows, Z-Supply Retail might be on the horizon. Yeah. And we're just going to focus on any way that we can bring our brand to life in tangible ways where the customer can touch and feel it and experience it. Great. Well, I'm excited to see where Z Supply is next year, five years from now. I'm sure you'll be around. Thank you so much. All right. Thank you. Appreciate it.

23:02Thank you for listening to this episode of the Modern Retail Podcast, a show by Digiday Media. If you haven't already, please subscribe and head to Apple Podcasts to leave us a review and a rating. If you want more from Modern Retail, you can find us at modernretail.co. You can find me, senior reporter Melissa Daniels, on LinkedIn and Blue Sky. and you can also subscribe to our LinkedIn newsletter at the Modern Retail Profile. We'll see you next week.