Stance Inc. wants to make standing in line a distant memory at its retail shops.
The San Clemente-based sock and underwear maker rolled out technology last week that lets customers purchase products with their smartphones without having to download a mobile app or use a separate checkout kiosk—a first in the industry, according to the company.
Executive Vice President of Direct-to-Consumer Paul Zaengle said it’s another step Stance took to make the shopping experience more convenient for customers.
“We put a lot of time and effort into our regular checkout experience, like any retailer, including mobile point-of-sale terminals that our team carries around on the floor, but we think this takes it to a whole new level,” Zaengle said. “In retail, lines should someday be a thing of the past.”
The self-checkout solution was developed by Boston-based e-commerce technology firm Moltin and is available at all six Stance stores. Zaengle said it will also be introduced at stores that open this year. The company plans to grow its retail footprint with half a dozen new stores in Southern California, including at Irvine Spectrum, whose shop is scheduled to open on Aug. 18.
Stance was one of the first brands to disrupt the sleepy sock industry when it launched in 2009, but it’s not immune to challenges facing retailers. The company’s revenue is estimated to be more than $100 million, good for No. 107 on this week’s list of private companies, though it wouldn’t disclose an exact figure.
Zaengle said innovation is part of the company’s makeup but that executives were also thinking about how to translate that into its retail shops.
“We think it adds an element of convenience into our stores that we’re eager to see, [and] we think this is where retail is headed,” he said. “It’s something that we at Stance have been thinking about for a while, and Moltin just turned out to be the perfect partner.”
Ditching the Wait
Customers who want to skip the line can visit go.stance.com on their smartphones, scan the product’s bar code with the camera, and pay for their items with a credit card, Apple Pay or Google Pay.
Zaengle said that to prevent theft, self-checkout customers will be given bags in different colors than those dispensed at the regular checkout. Store associates will also check customers’ receipts before they leave the shop.
“I think of it like the Costco experience,” he said. “It’s a quick look as the customer leaves the store. We specifically designed the receipt so it has a time and date stamp, and it changes colors so you can’t just create a screenshot.”
The self-checkout platform was also designed to integrate with Stance’s inventory-management and payment-processing platforms.
A handful of retailers are adopting self-checkout tools, including Macy’s and Urban Outfitters, both of which started testing it in stores this year, and Amazon took things further by opening a cashier-free Amazon Go store this year in Seattle, but the trend has yet to take off industrywide. For example, Walmart said it would ditch its mobile Scan & Go service last month because of low customer adoption.
Moltin Chief Executive Jamus Driscoll said the issue is that conventional solutions require “a lot of integration and a lot of custom development” that ultimately points a customer to a mobile app or even a self-checkout kiosk, which can still create lines.
“We’ve hit a fatigue on the app side,” he said. “The need to download something to check out when you’re in the store? Well, I’ll just go to the checkout line. We’ve taken away a lot of that friction at the customer level, which is exactly what’s necessary to get the adoption here.”
Stance Senior Vice President of Marketing Noelle Bates said it also gets the company thinking ahead of its tech-savvy consumers, which typically skew younger.
“They don’t want to wait for anything. Standing while an associate folds a product seems almost stupid to them,” Bates said. “They’re thinking they need to download an app, even though they don’t want to do it. This puts us even further than [expectations].”
Cutting down on wait times helps boost sales. Over the past year, 86% of shoppers said they left a store because of long lines, resulting in a loss of about $37.7 billion in potential sales, according to an April study by payment platform Adyen.
Uncommon Thread
Stance was co-founded by Chief Executive Jeff Kearl, President John Wilson, Chief Creative Officer Aaron Hennings, Chief Product Officer Taylor Shupe and Chief Marketing Officer Ryan Kingman.
The founders all had roots in the action sports industry, having held posts at companies such as Oakley, Billabong, Element and Skullcandy.
Some of the brand’s early retail accounts were specialty shops, such as Huntington Surf & Sport and Jack’s Surfboards. Its products are now sold in more than 60 countries and carried at Nordstrom, Bloomingdale’s, Foot Locker and other retailers. Prices range from $10 for a pair of socks to $280 for a Star Wars collectors box set of a dozen.
Stance’s colorful and cheeky designs have pulled in a large following of celebrities and professional athletes, such as Jay Z, Rihanna and Miami Heat basketball star Dwyane Wade, as well as Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who drew attention for wearing Stance’s Chewbacca socks.
It’s also appealed to investors, raising $116 million from firms including Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, August Capital and Shasta Ventures.
But with all the celebrity hype and investor appeal, company executives say they maintain a quality-first mindset.
Socks are tested on-site at its Socks Hosiery Research Engineering and Development lab, where items are put through a rigorous workout to test for stretch, wear and temperature control.
It’s why the company signed a multiyear deal in 2016 as the official sock of Major League Baseball and in 2015 with the National Basketball Association, according to Zaengle.
“There’s a lot of work in the construction and quality and materialization of our sock,” he said. “It blows me away, and once people try them on, they come back for the quality more than anything.”
