Stance Inc.’s bricks-and-mortar portfolio has expanded to six—all carefully curated locations. The San Clemente-based sock and underwear manufacturer last month opened a store at the Fashion Place Mall near Salt Lake City, a traditional shopping center that’s anchored by Nordstrom, one of Stance’s many wholesale partners.
“Direct-to-consumer is where newer, up and coming brands are being successful,” said Lifestyle Category Director Garrett Turk, adding that the company is testing “different markets, in terms of how people shop.”
“Is it a pop up (store), a walk-by, is it mall-based, or is it an outlet mall?” he said. “[We’re seeing] how successful each of these models are, which will direct us where we go in the future.”
Stance’s flagship store, in New York’s SoHo district, is in a stand-alone location, a former knit glove factory that operated in the early 1900s. It features glass panels in the floor that allow customers to watch “artisans bring custom socks to life,” and serves as a hub for the brand’s promotional activities. Turk referred to it as “not-revenue making,” citing high rent there. “It’s all eyeballs, marketing. It’s not about making money.”
Its Disney Springs location, meanwhile, “has been going absolutely bonkers,” he said. “There’s tons of foot traffic.”
The store opened in December about five miles from Walt Disney World in Orlando, and was designed in partnership with JPS Designs in Costa Mesa. The company also worked on Newport Beach-based Urban Decay’s flagship store at Fashion Island.
Stance’s three other locations are in outlet malls—Seattle Premium Outlets, Sawgrass Mills in Sunrise, Fla., and San Francisco Premium Outlets in Livermore—and are all about “controlling our excess inventory,” Turk said. Missing from the lineup is Stance’s hometown Outlets at San Clemente.
Other D2C
Stance, whose international reach now includes about 40 countries, also redesigned its website last year and is getting ready to launch subscription-based purchasing.
“It’s something that we watched a lot of people do, and it seemed like it made a lot of sense, but logistically we just didn’t have the infrastructure to do it the right way,” Turk said.
The brand already collaborates with San Francisco-based Stitch Fix Inc., an online personal shopping service whose stylists often include Stance socks among the five outfits they assemble. Consumers buy what they like and send back the rest, and can also subscribe to regular deliveries.
“We do a substantial business with them,” Turk said. “The sock component has a very, very low return rate because they’re socks, it’s a commodity item.
The direct-to-consumer efforts are financed by a $30 million Series D funding received in April 2016 and led by Mercato Partners in Salt Lake City. Other returning investors were August Capital, Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers, Menlo Ventures, Shasta Ventures and Sherpa Capital. Stance, which according to Business Journal estimates last year posted $200 million in revenue, has raised about $116 million since Aaron Hennings, Ryan Kingman, Taylor Shupe, Richard Alden, Jeffrey Kearl and John Wilson founded it in 2009.
“[The] wholesale model is always going to be a big component of our business, but we’ll be very focused on growing our direct-to-consumer platforms,” Turk said.
Perhaps Stance executives are finding inspiration in footwear and apparel manufacturer Vans Inc. in Costa Mesa—it reported $2.3 billion in revenue last year with direct-to-consumer channel up 25% in its most recent quarter while its wholesale declined at a low single-digit rate.
Marketing
Stance plans to reinvest in “magalogs,” a cross between a magazine and a catalog that proved successful during the last holiday season—its busiest time of the year. The print mailer performed “way better than our SEO search or anything like that, which was really surprising,” he said. “We’ll definitely go that path, but this time we’ll have two different covers—one for the network that’s already loyal to the brand, and another cover for the general audience.”
It’s also continuing as the official Major League Baseball sock, a multiyear deal it struck last summer.
The brand’s logo, however, will no longer grace National Basketball Association players’ uniform socks—Nike Inc. will take over next season, as Stance didn’t renew its two-year agreement.
“We knew that Nike was going to offer much more than us,” Turk said, adding that the brand has another three years on its NBA license for the lifestyle category of off-court merchandise.
Locally, Stance is adding to its headquarters in San Clemente—it designs its clothes here and manufactures in China. The company plans to move its staff from across Avenida La Plata to a building that’s adjacent to its main office.
