• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, November 18, 2022

Gap’s turnaround efforts resulted in the company reporting sales of $4.04 billion for the third quarter ended October 29, compared with $3.94 billion in sales a year earlier. Companies under its umbrella include Old Navy, and Banana Republic.

The retailer, which reported net income of $282 million from a loss of $152 million in the year-ago quarter, has tapped Tinuiti, a large independent performance marketing firm, to launch what the companies call the “largest apparel storefront” on Amazon.

"It's not just about the Gap customer shopping the products on Amazon, but the Amazon customer finding the Gap," says Emily O’Toole, vice president of retail operations softlines and beauty at Tinuiti.

The Gap will continue to add products, so consumers will see the full range of products. The plan also is to differentiate the official Gap store on Amazon from others that sell Gap products on the platform.

“It will look more like a full lifestyle brand storefront, driven by at-leisure styles, compared with third-party sellers on the platform,” she says.

Gap’s Amazon storefront launched last week with many category pages supported by Tinuiti's Retail Ops and Creative teams.

"It's a tricky place to sell," she said.

A team of Tinuiti employees will support the Gap business, participating in meetings and strategic development, and additional employees who will work behind the scenes doing other functions. The team has worked very closely with Amazon for quite some time to learn the ins and outs of the system and platform.

The search results on the Amazon platform are personalized, she said. The search results on the Amazon platform are personalized. The consumer logs-in and historic searches and purchases influence what they see in queries.

“The machine knows my purchase history and algorithms will create the personalization,” she said. “It will take a while for the algorithm to kick in, but my co-worker and I can type in the exact same words in the search bar and get completely different results.”

Tinuiti’s group also will read reviews to analyze what’s being written about to change bullet points. The team is charged with adding notations based on the reviews such as “this item runs sum, size up.”

Tinuiti’s 2022 Holiday Shopper Study reported that 86% of holiday shoppers plan to use Amazon for online shopping. Ecommerce will become a major part of holiday plans this year, with more than three quarters of shoppers planning to do at least half of their shopping online.

In yet to be published data from Tinuiti's upcoming 2023 Big Bets Report, Tinuiti client spend on Amazon DSP rose 35% year over year (YOY) compared with 24% spend growth using Sponsored Products. The data, per Tinuiti, shows brands are leaning into building awareness and consideration.