Bath & Body Works Plans Amazon Launch | Fast Five Shorts

Bath and Body Works is planning to launch on Amazon early next year.

We've had Bath and Body Works in the show more this year.

I know, I think we have ever.

According to retail dive, Bath and Body Works will start with a small assortment of its evergreen products on Amazon in order to quote, test and learn and quote and build ratings and reviews, according to CEO Daniel Heath.

Heath also said that Bath and Body believes somewhere between six sixty to eighty million dollars of gray market sales are already happening via Amazon and that such sales are both brand dilutive and product dilutive.

Chris, this is also the A and M put you on the spot question.

Yeah, A and M would like to know.

More and more brands are opening up curated assortments on marketplaces like Amazon.

On one hand it's a chance to meet consumers where they are already.

Sorry, where they already shop.

But on the other it raises questions about brand control, margins and what happens to the in store magic.

How should companies be thinking about this trade off?

I think this topic's really interesting.

It is, you're right.

It's interesting to see Bath and Body Works in the headlines again.

I think the AI discussion that we had earlier changes the calculus on this a little bit.

And so for that reason actually, and I've actually was going a different direction when I first started thinking about this headline and then I was like, okay.

From a consistency standpoint though, I think I changed my mind.

And actually I don't like this move, I don't like this move to integrate with Amazon because and I would, you know, I would say the same thing potentially about Bath and Body Works integrating with Walmart because they're both retailers and they're formidable ones at that.

I would be, given that AI is on the scene here, I would be biding my time, investing in my stores as we've talked about a lot.

And I would follow the steps that I outlined above, like, you know what, ready your site for LLM search first because you're going to have to be able to do that and make sure it works.

And then you partner with the right LLM search engine, you know, and you can take your time to decide what that is.

But you find distribution that way, I think first and foremost because if the industry as a whole, if the industry executives listening as a whole take that approach, the really interesting thing about that and to me is that Amazon is going to lose its dominance.

So if you start selling on Amazon, why start selling on Amazon now, wait a few years, clean the decks, scrub the decks, get everything right and then decide what you want to do and how you want to play in this new AI landscape.

Because if you think about it the right way, you can still go to Amazon later, but you could also hurt them in the long run.

And so I think that's important thing to think about here.

So, you know, are you thinking short term, are you thinking long term?

And I think in this case, Bath and Body Works seems like it's thinking short term to me.

I, I think I am thinking about this another way for the same reason, and that is I think it gets a product that requires a beauty product, a fragrance product that's very hard to buy.

It gets it into the hands of consumers without the concern of if I buy this and I'm paying for it on the Bath and Body Works site because they have an order minimum of $35, I'm not going to go through with that transaction because I don't have any security blanket.

And I actually think because of LLM search, I think you have to be on as many platforms as you can.

And I compare it almost to like when you're going to watch a movie on your streaming tv, right?

Like, you go there, you type in the name of the movie.

You don't, you just don't want to pay for the movie.

So what's the easiest way that I can see that movie, that I can get that movie?

And if I have a Walmart plus membership or I have a Prime membership and I can get that Bath and Body Works product delivered to me for free and I can return it for free, like that makes me pull the trigger on a product that if I had to pay or pay a restocking fee when I sent it back or go to a mall to return it to a Bath and Body Works store, like that to me is limiting on whether or not I'm going to go through with that search.

When I'm typing in, you know what's a great fragrance for holiday for me, you know, and tell me what all the products are, what's the highest rated, that kind of thing.

You know, if Bath and Body Works comes up and I get that listing next to it of here are all the places you can buy, here are the, the deals that you uniquely qualify for based on your loyalty programs in each one of these segments.

Like that to me is what's going to drive purchase.

Whereas I think if you're just focusing on your own site and your own traffic, I think you might lose some of those customers.

So that, that's my perspective on it.

But I think it's also a test.

Right.

Like they're just trying this with a few products.

What does it hurt you to just test and learn on this?

Like not, not a lot of, of of lift, I think from Bath and Body Works.

Yeah.

And the great goods number is pretty telling too.

And I'm sure that's happening.

No doubt.

Yeah.

I think the big difference here is I just think the, the adopt, you know, the big question is how quick is the adoption curve really?

Like it's fun to talk about, but how quick is the adoption curve and how much, how many product sales are actually going to go through the LLMs is the big crux of this argument here, I think.

You know, I think that's where you and I are probably differing here is like, I just think you've got time to think this out and be a little more thoughtful and strategic before you start making some of these moves.

Yeah, I mean, I think, I think you can do both.

I think you have to parallel path this.

I think you have to be thinking about it on your own.

Like one serves the other.

So if you're thinking about how your products are showing up on your own site, you, you can simultaneously be thinking about, you know, it's just like when, again when E commerce came online, like we had to think about all of the customer journeys to get to that product to get to your store, whether it was online, offline, curbside pickup, delivery, all of these things.

Like we're in an entirely new phase of that.

And so I think that that is to your point, dependent on each retailer and what their customer strategy is going to be.

But I do think that it's possible to be doing this at the same time and actually very necessary if you're a retailer that wants to, to stay relevant in the next era of, of shopping in this LLM based search way.

Yeah.

And the way I think about it from, from the way.

Sorry.

And the way I think about that from executive perspective is like in the Monday morning meeting I'd be looking at like where are my traffic sources now?

Like am I seeing the tick up in chatgpt traffic that I think I should be seeing or not?

And that's how I'd be using that to gut, to gauge, you know, at what pace am I trying to do this, you know, versus like, you know, is the majority of my sales still come like you had?

We had was it constructor on Right.

The, the conversion gains that they're seeing from just improving your own site traffic flow through LLMs is pretty staggering and, and from their standpoint, far more worth the investment than trying to plug in to chat GPTs as an example.

So that's where I'm like, okay, I'd be watching those, you know, in my morning meeting and then saying, okay, like, let's, let's decide here where we're pushing our bets because we can't do everything as retail executives, we have to make decisions on where to place our resources and.

Right.

Yeah.

And I just don't know that that's mutually exclusive.

I think that, yes, you have to be focused on the bringing in the right partners, like a constructor to help supplement what that experience is going to be on your own site.

But I also think that that work is going to feed the other work that you're doing to serve your content up correctly to the other LLMs, knowing what you know about consumers and how they're shopping on your site, too.