JOOR CEO on Fashion’s Supply Chain Shift, Tariffs, and Retail Tech Trends | Spotlight Series

Foreign.

Welcome to the latest edition of the omnitalk Spotlight series, the series that highlights the people, the companies and the technologies that are shaping the future of retail.

I'm one of your co hosts for today's interview, Anne Mazinga.

And I'm Chris Walton.

And Chris, today we get to have one of our favorite retail industry experts on the show.

I could not be more excited.

It's been a minute.

Welcome back Jore CEO Kristen Sevilla.

We're going to get her firsthand advice on how the fashion industry should be taking on all the uncertainty happening in the market right now.

Kristen, we've been wanting to have you on.

Welcome to the show.

We're so excited to have you back.

Thank you both.

You know, I've been looking forward to this for weeks when we decided to do this together again.

So thank you.

Thank you.

Yeah, it's been, it's been a good number of years since we first had you on.

I think you, I think the last time is in the, during the pandemic and it was, I mean, Kristen, it doesn't feel like there's that much going on though.

Right.

Like, I mean, you know, it's been very easy since then.

Right.

There's not, there has, not much has changed really.

But anyway.

All right, so in seriousness.

Well, for those that maybe weren't, you know, around and listening to Omni Talk five years ago and I don't know what was wrong with them if they weren't, but you know, that are maybe listening now, tell us a little bit about your background and also about George role in the fashion industry, what it does.

Sure.

So I'm CEO of JOR for over eight years now.

Our original background relates a lot to Chris.

Actually.

I was a buyer.

My first buying job was beach, just like Chris.

I think you were at Target and I was at Macy's.

Oh my God.

Yes.

So speaking in terms of that, let's talk about how JOR digitizes wholesale.

So essentially any buyer out there knows wholesale, if you don't use a platform is very manual.

You are going to trade shows, you are going to showrooms, you, you are working off of paper, line sheets, Excel spreadsheets and you have a lot of manual back and forth processes for drop styles, quantities, colors, skew.

So what your does is full on digitalization of that process.

It's a platform that allows the entire process, imagery, style, numbers, quantities, to be collaborative and, and digital between buyers and brands.

Right.

So everyone's working off the same sheet of music basically.

That's, that's exactly which is one of the big value points of digitization in general.

Would you agree with that, Kristen?

Totally.

It's about real time updates and real information passing.

You know, gone are the days of losing value because you dropped a style and the buyer didn't know about it.

And then the good ship open to buy is reduced and you didn't even realize that JOR solves problems like that.

And Kristen, who do you work with?

Like are you, are you basically facilitating this for enterprise grade retailers?

Are you facilitating it for, for people that are on the Shopify platform?

How does all, how does that, all that work?

Yeah, it actually runs the gamut.

We have 14,000 brands in the network and 670,000 unique buyers in the network.

And it ranges from the independent department stores around the globe as well as the sorry large department stores and from brand perspective, enterprise down to SMB.

So we really solve for the industry and fashion, all sizes of businesses.

Well and Kristin, I remember when we talked to you during the pandemic speaking of digitizing fashion, I remember when you rolled out like digital showrooming.

Like instead of having to do these runways and things that were not happening, everything got canceled last minute because of the pandemic.

You were like we've got to solve for this.

We're going to figure out how to do this virtually so that the shopping, the buying, all of these interactions can still happen.

I'm curious right now as you look about, look to like where things are going, what's what these independent retailers and, and brands are prioritizing, what is kind of jaw working on at the moment that you feel like is really unique to JOR and kind of providing that, that leveled up experience for the buyers.

And sure, sure, a couple of interesting facts and again we're a platform that process hundred billion dollars in wholesale gmv.

We get a tremendous amount of platform data that's very, very telling as you can imagine.

One shift that I want to speak to is the rise of the independent retailer.

The reality is if you go back to 2019 on our platform and the GMV continues to grow every year.

So this isn't a situation of shrinking GMV in that same growing GMV mix.

Independent retailers have moved from 47% of GMV in 2019 to 52% last year to 62% this year so far and it's at the decline of the department store.

So what you're seeing is this powerful new distribution channel of these independent boutique retailers globally.

And that's a very dynamic shift for how this industry used to Work.

And Kristen, explain that a little bit more.

So are those independent retailers, for lack of a better way to put it, are they mostly digital in nature or are they digital in stores or both?

Is all this growth coming from the digital side of the business then, relative to the stores?

I think what's happening is the department stores I think everyone knows is struggling.

I think that you guys talk about that very, very often.

So they've been buying less and they've become less important.

The digital role that your plays is we make really easy for brands to manage thousands of independent retailers that could be worth the same volume as your department store business.

When I used to ask folks, why don't you do these small retailers around the globe?

They used to say, well, how do you manage this?

And I say, well, let me show you.

So that's been a big shift.

Digital has been a big reason why people can manage that business, you know, which has really driven this change.

So.

Got it.

So what you're saying is it was kind of a latent opportunity for a long time, that technology is now unlocked?

Absolutely.

And I think what's most exciting is JOR is the leader empowering these independent retailers to shop with brands.

But you also have another leader in the space called Shopify that we all know that is doing a very good job with POS solutions in these for these stores as well as hosting their websites.

So a unique launch that's happening momentarily.

We're going ga this month for JOR is a Shopify integration which essentially allows these small retailers to not only log into JOR and do all of their wholesale buying for all the brands that we have, but to then automatically sync that data to their Shopify POS and their Shopify websites, really creating a true, complete digital situation, which is super exciting.

Yeah, that makes sense.

And it taps into that latent opportunity even more and gives you a good positioning in the marketplace too, given what we know about some of.

Some of your competitors as well.

All right, so I tease at the outset, you know, that there's.

There's not a lot going on which couldn't be further from the truth.

Like, there's just so much change going on, so much uncertainty.

I think the running joke it's Shop Europe is the only certainty is uncertainty at this point.

So.

So what is your advice for retailers and brands amid all this uncertainty?

How should they operate in a way that, you know, keeps them more agile and makes it easier for them to adapt to all this change?

Yeah, I think what I can tell you is that based on our data we have so many blueprints of success or where the industry is going.

And I think not.

I think I know that the industry likes to know what others are doing because everyone in the industry is your competitor.

So we have a few things that are happening that are pretty drastic that folks should pay attention to.

One is in Newstad and it's one of my favorites which is with the introduction of the teemus of the world and the Chinese of the world, fast fashion.

You had an industry that for years and we have the data for five consecutive years very consistently.

The time from shipping from order creation to shipping was 240 days.

So you placed an order in our industry.

I know Ann shaking her Head and 240 days later those goods were hitting selling floors.

That was the lead window that was being asked for.

Interestingly last year it dropped to 84 days.

So it feels like they started to drink the Kool Aid and really improve those shipping windows.

This year I don't want to share the stat quite yet because the year is not nearly over, but we are seeing even a greater reduction to the 84 days.

So I think learning number one, if you aren't tightening those shipping windows, you're missing an enormous opportunity.

You have got to be closer from production to shipping.

Well, and Kristin, what other trends have you seen as a result of kind of the, the movement in the industry from Shein, from Temu?

I mean how are brands responding to this?

Not everyone can produce on these short timelines.

So I mean I know that some, some brands are looking at, you know, finding new partners, especially with things like, you know, the economic changes and uncertainty between certain countries and our is here in the US like what are you, what are you offering at your.

For some of these, these independent brands so that they can really kind of stay competitive with the, with those, those fast fashion players.

Yeah, I mean I think number one just a trend we're seeing them do is they are making their assortments more curated.

So and part of this I know we'll talk about a little bit about, about the, the tariffs, but they're making their assortments more curated now and there's definitely a focus on evergreen styles where they have stock.

Right.

That's newer for this industry.

Right.

But that's also because the retailers are showing less risk as well in what they're choosing to buy.

They're not being as creative, which is not a great outcome of what's going on in the market right now, to be transparent.

But that is a trend we are Seeing we're able to track size of collections and we're seeing that that is coming to a smaller, more narrow and focused distribution.

And what kind of tools are there at your.

For them to.

To use in order to kind of help that.

Because I imagine it's.

It's difficult to get a sense of like, where should we cut?

What.

What's going to be like Evergreen.

And then how do we manage those relationships too, with some of the partners that we're using for production and kind of what the buys might be.

Yeah.

So we give you, you know, we're a data company at our core, and so you're able to see the data of all the buying trends.

You're able to see what's selling, what's not selling.

And by selling, I don't mean the consumer selling, I mean the wholesaler is buying from you.

So you know, what items you should go forward with.

Okay.

What items you should cut.

And if you choose to cut them before they ship, because you're on a platform, you're able to notify very easily.

We're not making this.

Now, I know people have.

Have chosen this, but we recommend this instead.

And when a buyer says, oh, I accept that change, you've auto changed those orders so that you've lost.

No open to buy, but you've been able to keep that narrow assortment.

Okay.

And that gets back to what Chris was saying about working off the same sheet of music, I think too, where everybody's kind of working off the same.

Data to a collaboration, Correct?

Yeah, it's kind of one of the key principles of digitization, really.

So, Chris, I want to make sure I go back to.

So, so you're saying people are curating their collections more is that it's essentially because they're just betting on what they think is going to work, what they have tried.

And true data telling them they've sold year over year, which is kind of a risky game in the fashion business, right?

It is a risky game in the fashion business, but that's what we're seeing.

And I think the tariff situation is obviously weighing in on this as well.

Okay.

You know, bringing in more merchandise, more different merchandise, and having this tower of problem.

It just has them focusing, you know, things are going to cost more if this all works out and goes through.

Right.

So it has them focusing their assortments on the winds, the shore winds.

And it's not great because what you're seeing is the fun colors that a lot of people used to bring in less of those.

Right.

Higher risk.

But what we're advising them actually, is strategically, you actually can raise prices on those new colors more so than what folks are used to.

Oh, that's.

We're saying don't cut too narrow, because if I'm seeing everyone cutting narrow, you're going to be different if you bring in that bright green item.

And you could probably charge more for it and be okay because there's not going to be a lot of it in the market.

This is the kind of help that JOR can give you to strategically buy and raise those prices.

Is there anything else they should do in regards to tariffs that you're seeing as well?

Cause, you know, tariffs seem to be the talk of the town at pretty much every conference we go to.

Yeah.

So we published this really exciting white paper, which we can.

You can find on JOR.com at the end.

But essentially we found a lot of information not just from survey data, which is embedded in our platform, where we're able to survey people as they use us, but also transactional platform data of what's actually happening.

So from our white paper, we're seeing some interesting outcomes that are probably counterintuitive to the purpose of these tariffs.

So, number one, probably no surprise, about 85% of brands are telling us that they are going to increase their prices.

They're going to pass these increases off to the retailers, who are also telling us they're going to raise their prices and.

And pass it off to the consumer.

So price increases, assuming this works out the way we think are in our future, for sure, they gave us an estimate of what they think they're going to increase their prices at, and that's something that JOR will be able to check in a few months when the tariffs actually go into effect.

Their estimate, on average, which was funny, was the same for brands and retailers, was 20%.

What I will tell you is, in the platform, we're not seeing much yet.

We can run the data, as you can imagine, actual orders placed every single month.

And I think May versus April was only 3%.

So nothing really has happened yet.

However, we don't know what the tariff prices are.

Or do we?

I don't know.

Yeah.

When they're going to happen?

Do we?

I don't know.

You would know better than we would, Kristen.

Exactly.

So we are going to watch it and we're going to be a really great resource, but meant to be in a helpful way because, again, the whole concept of you don't want to be more expensive than everybody around you.

So our ability to tell People, every month, this is what we're seeing.

Right.

You can kind of get yourself in line and know how high you can go.

Right.

So it's super exciting.

But I think what's really interesting out of the survey is that it's really going to hurt American brands.

We have 85% or, sorry, 76% of non US retailers telling us that they're not going to buy, they're not going to buy.

So it's not great where this is going to land for them.

Yeah.

The funny thing for me too is when you think about 20% as the number, that kind of feels like the convergence to the meat of me just putting my thumb in my mouth and putting it up against the air to see what the, where the wind's going to blow because none of us know what the heck direction where did it come from.

It was so funny that it was so it's like, yeah, so we're going to be the ones who chew that up and we're going to, you know, publish it and let everyone know what's really happening in the industry.

So we're eager to see July when, when this is supposed to start.

So Christian, that, that, that talks about like the, the, the way the market's responding to, you know, items that they're procuring for the future.

What about the situation in regarding to like selling through current inventory or your current stock?

Is there anything retailers need to think about in regards to that?

Yeah, I mean, bottom line, that's going to be your cheapest inventory.

So one of the things Drawer is doing to help is we're launching an event called Ready to Ship Style.

It is our first ever ATS Available to Sell event where any brand who wants to participate that's a JOR member can put a line sheet, so to speak, of inventory items with inventory on this event and global retailers, at no cost to them will be able to log in.

Now what's interesting is if the tariffs go into effect because this event's launching June 24, if the tariffs go to effect in July, you can buy from your own region.

Right.

You can kind of see where inventory is available and this will really help stores who, you know.

I think the industry has pointed to this problem, but a lot of boats either stalled or turned around.

So there are going to be inventory problems.

So George sort of saw this as a solve of.

We know some of you have extra inventory.

We know a bunch of these retailers are going to be a little short when it comes to the coming months.

Let's look at what you still have.

And by the way, these aren't bad goods, these aren't markdowns.

It's just what they have in stock that they can ship immediately.

So that's what this event is about.

We're very excited about launching this first, first ever event.

Well, that's so exciting.

And it's all it almost.

Kristen reminds me of something that we're used to seeing in the consumer, like platforms like this where it's like, hey, we've got these things available, like come and get them.

It's like a flash sale for in this, the brands and the wholesalers or the wholesalers and the retailers.

One other thing that you've told me about, and I want to make sure we cover for our audience listening is really talking about with all of these, these market constraints that we've discussed.

You know, it's also going to be really important for retailers to make sure that they have a unique kind of collection or unique assortment, especially in their own region, as you mentioned, if that's a requirement given, given potential tariffs and things.

So how, how are you at Jore kind of leveraging your platform to help kind of match up or be the tinder for these, these brands and these retailers to kind of find one another?

Yeah.

So we launched a new product in February of this past year called JOR Discover.

And the purpose of Jor Discover is that it is a prospecting and matching tool.

So when you look, when you, when we spoke to brands about how they grow their distribution, especially now that the independent retailers are such a large important piece of here, they describe to us a very once again manual process of searching Google and trying to find data.

But the reality is the data for these independent boutiques doesn't really exist.

There's not a lot about them out there.

So Jor spent a few years building up this database of independent global boutiques.

Items like categories they carry, brands they carry.

Which really helps you figure out, hey, my brand's like that brand price points they carry, aesthetic of the, of the boutique, the actual buyer you want to talk to.

And we populated all of these, these profiles to enable matching and AI to be utilized to truly bring together these parties so that you as a brand can narrow down your distribution to an exact region.

If you're in the States only and you currently do really well in New York, but you think that you would also do well in Atlanta, go find the boutiques in Atlanta that match your price point esthetic categories and then you can, you can reach out to them and the reach out itself is an AI tool as well.

We purposely don't let you do folk reach out sending the same message because that gets no response.

But the AI tool does what, how we're all using AI.

Say you're a sustainable brand.

When you use the AI outreach tool.

A, it's beautiful.

It already, it pulls in automatically your beautiful imagery, your, your style line, sheet, pricing, all of that.

And then it says things like, hi, I see that you are a sustainable retailer.

We're a sustainable brand and here's why we'd be great for you.

Right?

And then you either edit the draft or just use it.

And then you can go in multiple to a ton of retailers.

And what you see from this tool, which I think is super exciting, is the, the prospecting success rate is nine times better than cold outreach.

But even more exciting is that the repeat business rate of these connections is 78%.

So you can expect a reorder 78% of the time and not just one order, but five in the first year.

Wow.

And that's, and that's like you said before, like you know, five, ten minutes ago, that's just all growth basically.

That's just latent untapped growth.

If you can get that recurring one question brings up for me is how do you, how do you, how do you audit the veracity of the claims of the retailers?

Like these are the brands we carry.

This, you know, this is, this is what we stand for, that type of thing to give them the confidence to do business with these folks.

I have all the orders, right.

I have 100 billion.

That's why.

So I have all the question.

So thank you.

So they place orders on jor and that's how we were able to populate.

And we, we populate all the time, by the way.

This is a growing database.

We on average add 40,000 new SMB or independent retailers a year by brands bringing them in.

But it's the orders that is the real thing.

Because this is not.

You can't scrape where you're getting this from.

No, you can't.

Right.

That's the unique value proposition of jor behind a login, behind a firewall.

Jore has gotten this data and populated these.

It gets more data and more answers.

Right.

And it gets better and better each time.

So Kristen, one thing that you got me thinking of while we were having this discussion too.

Is there anything that's changing on the JOR platform when it comes to how customers are searching for searching differently using tools like Perplexity or Chat GPT to Find some of the products.

Are your, are your brands thinking about how they're pitching data inside the platform to retailers in a different way at all yet?

Or is it still so focused on just availability trends and getting the like right product to the right retailers?

I mean the, the latter is always most important to them.

But I will make a note on GPT, which is kind of related to J itself.

We are seeing a huge increase in people just finding jor because of ChatGPT.

Right.

So that's like a huge change.

Right.

Google used to be the big channel SEM, all that stuff.

So first and foremost just getting into Jore, whether you're a brands or retailers and we rank very well, which we've worked on.

But essentially if you say I'm looking for new wholesale partners, jor, we're coming up getting into the funnel there as far as AI usage, we've embedded it in for them, which is this whole.

When you're doing the outreach, we're saying don't type this yourself, use AI polished words to do this outreach, but personalize, you know, put in the personalized facts or we, we pull it ourselves and we can really give them good outreach tools.

Chris, what's the order of magnitude on that change?

You're the first person that we've talked, we've, we've.

And I've always thought what you said anecdotally, I mean just as I go to Kentucky Derby and I sit with my friends and they're all typing things into chat GPT on what horses to bet, it's like, oh my God, everyone's using this.

But you're the first person that's actually said it to us on a podcast where they're seeing a market difference in, you know, people finding juror through that, that interface.

Is there any order of magnitude of pre and post like that?

I mean it used to be nothing.

Yeah.

A year ago I didn't even use it.

So like I use it.

I, you know, Gemini, I use Gemini.

But same idea.

We have noticed now, like once a week at least we are getting a new lead, for example from either ChatGPT or Gemini.

And that was out of nowhere.

Like, you know, it was always Google, Google, Google.

And I think last week alone, I think there were three last week.

And my sales team gets very excited like, oh, this brand told us that they put into ChatGPT the best wholesale solution and we came up first and we're like, that's awesome.

So we are leaning into that because we see who our users are and understand Very much that there's going to be a shift here and we have to be and rank there as well as we rank in other places.

But it's, you know, one or two a week is a lot.

That's a lot.

I mean, of deals to come through that way.

Yeah, and that's smart too, because I got to think the people that are most acclimated to wanting to use your solution are probably people that are, you know, trying to use those platforms as well.

So that makes a ton of sense.

Well, that was awesome, man.

This, this time just flew by.

I was, we were like going, you know, just throwing questions off the top of the head and walking into things that I had no idea to expect.

That was great time for sure.

Ye.

Yeah.

So.

So if people want to get in touch with you, you know, get more information on JOR from ways other than just putting it into chat GPT or they want to download the white paper, what's the best way for them to do that?

But anyway, sorry.

But yeah, jor.com obviously we're always there for free consultations of your business to really show you use cases of JOR and how we can help you.

I'm also available.

Kristin Savilla on LinkedIn always can reach me directly as well.

But yeah, we would love to help anybody, including, by the way, I meant to mention D2C brands who don't do wholesale at all.

We have a lot of those who come to us in the past year and we can help you in a consultative way.

Enter wholesale as well for those brands which are many who are looking for new distribution channels.

Imagine there's a lot more of those since the pandemic too.

Yes, there is.

Yes.

Well, Kristen, thank you again so much for taking the time with us today.

Make sure to check out jor.com and we appreciate all of you who have been there listening in and as always, on behalf of all of us here at Omnitok, be careful out there.