Modern Retail Podcast: What it takes to construct a real way of life model

In this episode of the Modern Retail Podcast — recorded stay on the Modern Retail Marketing Summit in Huntington Beach, California — Mandy Fry, co-owner and president of Southern California-based attire model Z Supply, talks about how she constructed Z Supply right into a full-fledged way of life model. 

For Fry, constructing Z Supply into a way of life model meant, initially, increasing the corporate into new classes. Fry joined Z Supply in 2019, roughly six years after the model launched. At the time, Z Supply solely carried T-shirts.

 Fry determined to first launch loungewear. At the time, “it was a really trendy category,” Fry stated. And provided that many shoppers stated they preferred the smooth really feel of Z Supply’s T-shirts, loungewear was the following logical step. 

The loungewear launch got here at a really fortuitous time: February 2020. The success of loungewear gave Z Supply to enter new classes like jackets, resortwear and even sun shades. 

But constructing Z Supply into a way of life model required a mindset shift. As Fry put it, constructing a way of life model is all about assembly your core buyer “at every moment of the day.”

“I wanted to wake up with her in our loungewear. I wanted to go to the school drop-off with her. I wanted to work out with her, I wanted to go to work with her, I wanted to go to drinks, I wanted to travel [with her],” she stated.

The episode additionally will get into: 

• What new class launches didn’t work
• How Z Supply needed to shift its advertising technique to place itself as a way of life model.
• Z Supply’s retail distribution technique (the model sells by roughly 3,000 boutiques) and why it has largely stated no to massive retailers up to now.