Cover Story : Apparel and the City

Hip, urban brand Brooklyn Industries prospers with a redesigned website and retail expansion strategy

June 2010 By Joe Keenan

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We're not in Kansas anymore. Such could be the slogan for men's and women's apparel and accessories retailer Brooklyn Industries. Headquartered in its namesake New York City borough, the cross-channel merchant exudes a decidedly urban vibe. From the clothes it sells to the stores where those clothes are sold, Brooklyn Industries caters to the active lifestyles of its city-dweller, 25-year-old to 35-year-old demographic.

With 14 retail stores — 10 in New York City and one each in Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia and Portland, Ore. — an e-commerce website and annual sales approaching $25 million, Brooklyn Industries has grown significantly from humble beginnings. Co-founded by artist turned entrepreneur Lexy Funk in 1998, Brooklyn Industries' roots are as a wholesaler of recycled billboard messenger bags, operating out of a dingy factory in Brooklyn.

The company opened its first retail store in 2001 in Brooklyn's Williamsburg section, an area known for its vibrant art community. And in 2004, Brooklyn Industries became a true multichannel retailer when it launched its e-commerce website. That was just the start for this eclectic brand, which has posted sales gains of 25 percent-plus in recent years.

Relaunched Site Yields Dividends
While Brooklyn Industries was growing, it was also becoming paralyzed by its own success. To wit, its website frequently crashed because it didn't have the back-end platform to handle the amount of orders it was generating, particularly after email blasts. In addition to back-end issues, Brooklyn Industries wanted more maneuverability with the front-end design of its site — e.g., the ability to change the look and the feel of the site on a seasonal basis, more control over imagery, and so on.

With aggressive retail growth plans in the works, Brooklyn Industries knew an upgraded website was paramount if it was to sustain its growth. So in 2009, it went in search of a new e-commerce solution, settling on WebLinc's Direct platform. Launched in the first quarter of this year, the redesigned site offers Brooklyn Industries improved product views, including rollover zooms; fit guides; customized product reviews; and expanded social media integration via a blog, Facebook and Twitter, among other functionalities.

"Brooklyn Industries grew out of its prior platform," says Darren C. Hill, co-founder and managing partner of WebLinc. "The customer's user experience was limited. Brooklyn Industries wanted the new site's quality and appearance to accurately represent the brand and store experience."

Lexy Funk, Brooklyn Industries' co-founder and CEO, said the company evaluates its website in three-year time frames. "We looked at the next three years and said, 'There's no way it's going to be able to support the growth we're seeing in our company and the growth that we expect to see online, so it's time to make an investment in a new architecture and a new way.'"

That new way is reflected in better integration between Brooklyn Industries' retail stores and website. When seasonal merchandise is flowed into its retail stores, new photography is placed behind cash wraps and display windows. That same photography and lifestyle imagery goes onto Brooklyn Industries' homepage. Other examples of its integrated retail approach include landing pages featuring top-selling products from its retail stores; sending three to four email blasts per week promoting retail best-sellers; and remerchandising its website each week with what's on the front tables in its stores — best-sellers, hot trends, new styles.

"There's a lot of synergy, where they're [Brooklyn Industries' retail stores and website] actually showing the exact same imagery and campaign," says Funk. "We don't see them as different channels."

Brooklyn Industries' website is also now integrated with the point-of-sale system in its brick-and-mortar stores. This has helped to better manage inventory levels, saving time and money. Previously, employees had to manually replicate orders and inventory, which wasn't sustainable given the company's growth.

Investment in a new e-commerce platform has paid off for Brooklyn Industries: site traffic is up roughly 30 percent year-over-year since its launch, and units per transaction and average order value have grown as well. The retailer has also taken advantage of the site's capabilities to test new and expanded product categories, such as jewelry and shoes, which have generated new revenue streams.

Social Media Advancements
As a small company with limited resources, Brooklyn Industries prefers to take a wait-and-see approach when it comes to investing in new technologies. Apparently social media has become mainstream enough for it to take the plunge. With a Facebook page, Twitter account and company blog — all prominently linked to on Brooklyn Industries' homepage — the retailer has at least dedicated the time, if not the big bucks, to the trendy social channels.

Not unlike many other retailers, however, Brooklyn Industries views its social media efforts as more than just a means to generate sales. They serve as a tool to foster brand awareness and brand loyalty, too. Of course Brooklyn Industries isn't turning away sales driven via social media — in fact, revenues coming from Facebook and Twitter are growing more rapidly than other networks coming into the brand — but the amount of effort and resources it's put into social media hasn't justified the revenue it's generated in return.

"If you were to look at it similar to pay per click, you probably wouldn't do it because we're making hardly any money," says Funk on Brooklyn Industries' social media efforts. "Some, but not enough to justify the amount of time we put into it. But it's really about brand loyalty, building a community and speaking to that community about our brand and what we're doing."

A recent Twitter campaign coinciding with the opening of Brooklyn Industries' Philadelphia store this February exemplifies the dual purpose of the retailer's social media efforts. For 13 straight days at 2 p.m. EST, Brooklyn Industries tweeted a unique code. The first person to go into the Philadelphia location with that code won a free tote bag. The campaign was extremely successful, helping Brooklyn Industries build a community of followers in a new market, while at the same time driving in-store traffic.

Brooklyn Industries actively seeks feedback from consumers on its social media sites, from what they think about a product to their thoughts on a marketing campaign. It's all done in an effort to create an ongoing dialog with customers and prospects. And their feedback isn't disregarded; Brooklyn Industries listens and responds.

This March, for example, Brooklyn Industries launched a marketing campaign promoting its spring apparel. While the campaign was a success commercially, the company quickly learned from fans on its Facebook page that it wasn't perfect. A number of people commented that the female model used for the campaign was too skinny. So Brooklyn Industries took that feedback into consideration when it planned its April campaign: Employees from inside the company's headquarters were photographed, and a half-Nigerian, half-Thai model was used.

"That was done as an expression of diversity, both in terms of body types and people from different backgrounds and places," recalls Funk. "That's an example where something that's even vaguely negative can be turned into something very productive."

Committed to the Environment
Entrenched in Brooklyn Industries' culture is a commitment to the environment. That commitment is reflected in the company's retail stores and headquarters, which are powered with wind energy. A strong believer in "upcycling" — creating useful products from waste materials — Brooklyn Industries' stores contain warehouse pallet wood that serve as wall fixtures; reconstructed vintage tables used to display products; and window displays featuring recycled materials such as handbags and clothing from previous seasons.

The company communicates its sustainability efforts to consumers via its blog, press coverage and signage in its stores, which inform shoppers about what upcycling means to the brand and what's upcycled in that particular store.

"Because our first product was a bag made out of recycled billboard material — that's how we got into the clothing business — we believe that that's very much a part of our roots and something we want to express to our customers," Funk says. "And as an organically grown company, we don't have a lot of extra money to spare, so we try to do things in very logical, reusable ways. If we're building a window display and don't have a big budget, we use materials that already exist, whether they're being thrown out or are old materials that we used to have. That way we can become very sustainable."

Expanding its Retail Horizon
While many retailers last year were fighting just to survive the worst economic environment since the Great Depression, Brooklyn Industries was busy investing in its future. Taking advantage of an abundance of unoccupied retail space to negotiate lower lease rates, and the fact that landlords no longer could afford to push aside smaller retailers in favor of larger corporations, Brooklyn Industries opened four new brick-and-mortar locations (Portland, Ore., New York City, Philadelphia and Boston) within the last 16 months.

This isn't to say that Brooklyn Industries wasn't affected by the recession — original plans to open 50 stores in five years have been scaled back. But the company made a strategic decision that in order to keep on track with its growth path, and keep the same amount of people employed in its back-end office and design, production and merchandising teams, it needed to expand its top-line revenue.

Knowing that same-store sales growth wasn't likely during the recession, acquiring more stores and modes of distribution (i.e., investments made online) became the answer. In addition to growing retail sales in new marketplaces, Brooklyn Industries forecasted online sales spiking in those cities due to increased brand exposure.

"As Brooklyn Industries grows to markets outside of New York, its e-commerce site is the No. 1 marketing tool it has to educate potential customers about its brand and merchandise," says WebLinc's Hill.

With a strong presence already established in New York, Brooklyn Industries looked to other marketplaces to set up shop. By tracking where internet activity — i.e., sales, email and e-newsletter sign-ups — was occurring on a weekly basis, the retailer was able to identify marketplaces where it felt it could be successful. That's led Brooklyn Industries to the Pacific Northwest and Midwest with stores in Chicago and Portland, Ore., as well as strengthening its presence in the Northeast with stores in Boston and Philadelphia. And its expansion isn't done yet: Other markets that show potential include the Pacific Northwest, namely San Francisco, Seattle and Vancouver, British Columbia; Los Angeles; Austin, Texas; and Washington, D.C.

The selection process will focus on cities. "That's really where our customers are," says Funk. "Our concept, which is live, work, create, is a lot about living, working and creating in an urban environment. For us, that's our niche: Speaking to that more creative, more artistic customer who's coming to cities."

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