This is an episode of the Glossy Fashion Podcast, which features candid conversations about how today’s trends are shaping the future of the fashion industry. More from the series →
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David’s Bridal has a leg up on other bridalwear companies. After all, “ninety percent of brides are already walking into David’s front door,” according to Elina Vilk, who joined the company as its chief business officer in September.
Still, the 74-year-old business has experienced its fair share of challenges, having filed for bankruptcy last year before being acquired a few months later.
On the latest episode of the Glossy Podcast, Vilk discusses the opportunity she saw at David’s Bridal after working in tech for 20 years for companies including Hootsuite, Meta and Paypal. She also breaks down the pain points of modern brides and the solutions David’s Bridal is developing accordingly. They have big implications for the business, as well as the wedding-planning industry.
Highlights from the conversation, below, have been lightly edited for clarity.
A new approach to wedding planning
“When you think about the bridal experience, you get engaged, you’re so excited, and you say yes. That’s day one. On day one, you’re still pretty excited, you’re calling mom, you’ve probably got that huge proposal — that over-the-top production that’s happening a lot these days — on Instagram, and it’s trending. But on day two, you wake up in the morning and you’re like, ‘Oh, my gosh.’ You feel overwhelmed, and you don’t know where to start. And that is the case for all the brides out there. … When you think about the wedding journey, pre-Covid, you’re looking at a 12-month space. You’re now looking at a 14-18-month planning cycle. There are so many decisions that the bride and groom have to make now, every single day, from what vendors to choose to, ‘Where do I even start?’ … And this is an area that is ripe for disruption. … And by the way, there is a strain on the vendor side, too. They don’t know how to reach the bride. A lot of these are small businesses. … So, how do we really transform this experience so it’s easier for both parties to start moving this along? That’s a big thing of what we’re going to do with Pearl. We’re going to transform the way we do event planning. … And if we do this right, the planning should be as joyous as the wedding day. … You should have fun throughout the process. It’s all a memory. I want it to be just the best time of your life.”
Bringing tech expertise to the wedding industry
“When I was at PayPal – and this was before we had major advances in AI and social — we worked with many retailers across the board. I ran the enterprise marketing world there. And we looked at how to connect the dots between building what we were doing in payments to what was happening in the world. … We saw things like payments changing the paradigm. If I can just pay with my phone and remove a friction point, that’s going to help me move through this process. So that’s basically what I’m replicating here: If we can remove this friction point, great. If we can remove the friction point of choice, great. If we can remove the friction point of feeling overwhelmed, how might we do that? Great. And so, we’re taking out these major friction points and now actually solving them with technology — and it’s not just using technology for technology’s sake. AI is a big word, everyone uses it. But it’s not about AI. It’s just about the functionality that enables us to remove these barriers that exist today.”
Refocusing on inspiration
“We found that almost a quarter of bridesmaids are about to be brides also. So, there’s a huge flywheel — there are opportunities there. And 71% of brides are in this world of inspiration. So [we’re asking], ‘Are we doing enough in the inspiration world?’ There’s a lot more time being spent in the research phase, in social. I think you’re going to see a lot more of that coming from us. You’re going to see a lot more videos. You’re going to see a lot more content coming to bear in the inspiration world — we’re really trying to dominate that entire category where we’ve started to see viral content come out. It’s so she can start to see: ‘What feels uniquely me, and where do I want to go from here?’ And, ‘How do I want to plan my big day, from what I wear to what I do, to those micro, special moments throughout?’”
