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 →
On this week’s Glossy Podcast, Scott Lux, global evp of e-commerce, technology and innovation at Esprit, discussed his role in the brand’s current attempt at a comeback in the U.S. market — Esprit had its heyday in the states in the 1980s.
According to Lux, Esprit’s local strategies include getting in front of target customers, getting consumers to engage with the brand, and allowing consumers to shop wherever and whenever they’d like. But, he acknowledged, “retail is hard,” and “e-commerce is expensive.” Edited highlights from the conversation, below, have been lightly edited for clarity.
‘Technology has to operate in the background’
“Most of the focus lately has been around technology and data, because those two components have become more complex and more expensive. But I think that’s the key unlock for any brand to be successful today: You have to own your own data technology. And the tricky part for a lot of brands is that we’re not technologists first. So what does it mean to be innovative and drive technology? Because, at the end of the day, the product and customer have to be the heroes. And from my perspective, technology has to operate in the background instead of being pushed to the forefront. And I think that’s been a big shift we’ve seen with retail over the last five or 10 years. If we were chatting 10 years ago, we questioned how much digital to put in front of the customer and in-store, because [the theory was that customers] want a digital e-commerce experience wherever they are. And we’re finding that’s not the case. So that’s where my focus has been: behind the scenes, trying to enable our channels to be successful. That includes channels around e-commerce and wholesale and, obviously, our retail and physical brick-and-mortar channels.”
The cost of selling online vs. in stores
“I would say digital [retail] is almost more expensive now than physical [retail], just because of cost of media. Going back five or 10 years ago, it was that very conversation: “Drive to e-comm. That’s our lower-cost channel. It’ll be cheaper.” But what you’re looking at now is the cost of shipping is expensive, the environmental consequence of it, there’s the cost of media, all the technology you need to run your digital ecosystem, all the partners are expensive, talent and staff [are expensive], … So, in fact, it’s probably become one of the most expensive channels to operate, especially compared to retail, not to mention wholesale.”
The current value of AI
“We’ve actually been using AI for quite a while. If you go back to machine learning, which is a variation or early part of AI, we’ve been using that for personalization. Our data science team has been creating models that are used to help drive product recommendations and for image identification to help with our product catalog. So those were some of the early-stage uses. Before you can make significant leaps forward, you have to have that strong, clean data foundation and data governance. We’ve seen a lot of talk lately around data and quality of data. … For me, [our approach to AI] is a combination of getting our infrastructure correct, having strong data governance, and taking a bit of a wait-and-see approach and not pushing as far as possible to say, ‘AI is going to take over everything.’ But we’re [exploring] where can we leverage it from a consumer standpoint and to drive internal efficiency, as well.”
