Branded Online Inc., a 9-year-old marketing company that helps fashion-focused retailers grow their e-commerce operations, is finding beauty in the offline world—a new office complex in Tustin to be specific.
The Costa Mesa-based company is set to nearly triple its local office space after inking a 20,432-square-foot lease at the soon-to-open Flight office campus, Orange County’s first substantial ground-up creative office campus.
Branded Online is the second notable lease reported at Flight, whose first phase of construction—which includes eight buildings totaling about 470,000 square feet—is wrapping up work.
A Greenwich, Conn.-based coworking company, Work Well Win, has also leased space at the project, which will become Tustin’s largest office campus upon its build-out.
Branded Online co-founder and Chief Executive Jan Nugent said the move to Tustin will help Branded Online bring a good portion of its 170 employees spread across three offices under one roof.
“We just thought that the campus was really beautiful and fit our personality,” Nugent said. “The whole point is a more compelling space for our employees and to bring on new folks.”
Employees at its L.A. office will move to Tustin while its third outpost in the Inland Empire will retain its employees.
The company will be taking up the top floor of the four-story office at 1775 Flight Way, according to brokerage data.
It’s currently based in an older office building along 17th Street in Costa Mesa.
Fashion Brands
Branded Online is a place where retailers outsource their online needs, anything from a new website to an online store to fulfillment.
In the past year, the company has launched the websites for Frye Co., Juicy Couture and Bebe. It also signed a deal to work with Elie Tahari and Blank NYC this year and is currently in talks with several other prominent brands it couldn’t publicly disclose yet.
Branded Online officials said the new creative office headquarters—not far from the blimp hangars at the city’s former Marine helicopter base—will be a more welcoming location for its growing roster of clients.
E-commerce Director Arnold Randall, who’s spearheading the interior design of the office, said it’ll be a creative space with each business division such as marketing and technology having its own “neighborhood” designed to fit their needs and style.
“We definitely want to focus on comfort and experience,” Randall said. “We want people to feel like this is their home away from home, which for a lot of people it is. They’re working here a lot and we want places to de-stress and feel unique.”
“This is an expansion and relocation for them, and we’re excited to have them as a tenant,” said Parke Miller, executive vice president for the local operations of Lincoln Property Co., which is heading the development of Flight.
The move in should happen this summer, he said. It’s “one of the most premium spaces” at the new development in terms of design aesthetics, according to Miller.
Shopping Cart
Nugent founded the company in 2010 with Chief Financial Officer Geoffrey Van Haeren, raising about $8 million total from investors such as AME Ventures, Iron Gate Capital and Hillcrest Venture Partners, according to regulatory filings.
The two were previously executives at Commerce5 Inc., a provider of e-commerce services for the manufacturing and consumer electronics market for companies such as Sony Electronics Inc. and Western Digital Corp. Commerce5 was acquired in 2005 by Digital River Inc. for an estimated $45 million in cash.
The partners took their 20-plus years of experience helping tech firms launch and manage their e-commerce portals to the fashion world. They’ve helped more than 50 companies such as sunglasses label Spy Optic and Honeywell’s footwear business, which pulls in about $300 million in annual sales, scale their online operations.
Clients are able to choose from a portion or all of its services, which range from fulfillment to web design or AI-based traffic management.
Branded Online’s services help its clients consolidate the amount of third-party firms involved in their digital business.
For example, its partnership with apparel brand Blank NYC will be to manage its fulfillment across wholesale, drop-ship and e-commerce. It also built the company’s website “from the ground up” helping it “experience over 100% growth in the first year with a conversion rate up over 50%,” according to Branded Online.
Larger clients with established e-commerce channels can utilize its software to optimize their website and manage consumer data.
Retail chain Bebe, which shuttered its 175 stores two years ago during the height of the so-called “retail apocalypse,” transitioned to an online-only model. Branded Online helped introduce its new website with an enhanced loyalty program in January.
“In fewer than 60 days, we were able to complete the custom integration with our legacy systems and launch the newly developed online shopping destination, featuring a completely transformed customer experience,” Joey Gabbay, Bluestar Alliance LLC chief executive and manager of BB Brand Holdings LLC, which runs Bebe, said in a statement.
Nugent said it typically works with brands that have annual revenue between $20 million and $600 million, with online sales between $2 million and $60 million.
It keeps the doors open for startup brands with big potential, such as Yeezy, the fashion label of rapper Kanye West.
“Yeezy was very small, but we knew it was Kanye’s so that would [make it] explode,” Nugent said.
Checking Out
The company has been able to compete with e-commerce platforms like Shopify and Amazon, the latter also offers fulfillment services for companies.
“We’re much more cost effective and we understand and are friendlier to the brands than Amazon,” Nugent said.
Van Haeren added that there’s no conflict since unlike Amazon, it doesn’t sell goods under its own name.
“Amazon will see the sell through [a product] and say ‘I’m going to buy it from you at wholesale, and I’m going to sell it and I’m going to make more money,’” he said.
The partners said they want to expand into helping brands in the beauty, health and wellness space.
He said its Tustin headquarters will help drive its competitive edge as it looks to recruit top talent from engineers to creatives. It could even help when it comes time to bringing in potential clients.
“When brands come visit us, having a cool shiny space where they feel like we know them and understand them—that’s a big part of the story.”
