• by Sarah Mahoney , Staff Writer @mahoney_sarah, August 29, 2022

Adore Me keeps making shopping more social as it invests in livestream commerce. The company finds that using its own experts is what makes the experience extra engaging.

Marina Addams, channel marketing manager, recently spoke at MediaPost's Brand Insider Summit/Retail in Lake Tahoe, California. Here's how the brand, launched in 2011, keeps connecting with its lace-loving audience.

D2C Insider: First, tell us a little about Adore Me.

Marina Addams: In brand personality, we like to think of ourselves as yellow. She's fun, carefree, somebody you would consider a spirited wing woman. She's the kind of friend who is supportive, not judgmental. Our slogan is "Here for it," and that sums us up: Whatever you want to do with our lingerie and clothing, we're here to support you.

D2C Insider: What's your core customer like?

Addams: Our sweet spot is women between 24 and 45. Many pay as they go, but our most popular offer is our VIP membership program, with a monthly recurring charge that gets turned into store credit. And there's a relatively new offer called Elite. You take a quiz, and we curate a box for you, with a $20 stylist fee, which goes toward purchase. It's like Stitch Fix.

D2C Insider: What's your most effective marketing channel?

Addams: It's still Facebook and Meta. We are active on paid social Facebook and Instagram.

D2C Insider: How about TikTok?

Addams: It's growing. We started advertising on TikTok a little over a year ago, and it's becoming our most promising new channel. We also do a lot on Google with search, and periodically with YouTube. We've been active on Snapchat and Pinterest as well.

D2C Insider: You're committed to live shopping, where the customer signs on to a live presentation at a particular time. What's that learning curve been like?

Addams: The very first one was a big production. Then we tried a few with different outside partners. Then we said, "what if we tried to replicate that internally? Could we do it better than outsiders? More efficiently?"

And we could.

We have a social media team already accustomed to speaking to our customers. They know how to engage the audience in a way that makes people stick around.

It's a lot easier to genuinely speak about the product when you work with it every day and are excited about it. When you hire somebody from the outside and give them talking points, they still don't know the intricacies of the brand.

We often feature our designers, too, who talk about everything from the color story to how a product goes from a design on paper to a finished bra. It's extra engaging.

D2C Insider: How significant a factor is live shopping in your overall mix?

Addams: It's been 12 months, so we've already proven it's something we want to continue investing in. Now, we're trying to figure out how to optimize it and then how we can scale it up.

We are doing it multiple times a month, which means we're starting to understand how to make it successful. It's not a huge revenue driver, but it's a space that's so innovative and new. We want to be one of the first in the industry to say we're succeeding here.

D2C Insider: Adore Me was an early pioneer in size inclusivity. But the body positivity movement has become so popular. Now, many brands are size-inclusive. How does that affect you?

Addams: It makes us happy! It's good to see so many companies making inclusivity mainstream. We think it's how women's fashion should be approaching marketing and branding. And we're still pushing it forward. Lots of companies, for example, carry plus sizes. But they don't offer the same bra in all sizes, and we do. We'll create one style and have it in the full range of straight and plus sizes. That was a differentiating factor when we first started, and it's something we still do today.

D2C Insider: Let's talk about comfort. Aerie, which has led the way in bralettes, has changed this conversation–but so has spending the last few years in yoga pants.

Addams: We make lingerie -- it's sexy and visual. There's no connotation of comfort. But we also offer classics, like the T-shirt bra. And it may not be at the forefront of our branding, but since the pandemic, we've seen a huge shift toward comfort, like with leisure and loungewear. It's become a fast-growing category.