How Zulily is repositioning value and convenience to help moms maximize time and household budgets.
Since 2010, Zulily has operated on a flash sale model, curating more than 100 72-hour sale events daily, featuring thousands of styles from unique and boutique brands to beloved household names. As shopping behavior has changed — especially now, with inflation at an all-time high, and especially for moms, who drive 75% of household purchase decisions – we are evolving based on their wants, needs and concepts of value. We have evolved to become a more strategic partner for the beloved brands and vendors our customers love by creating a shopping experience that our customers will be inspired to visit repeatedly.
Moms need value and convenience now more than ever. “She needs sites that help make her life easier, not harder,” says Terry Boyle, CEO of Zulily. “Zulily does that through our three key levers: exclusive daily deals, always-on brand names and on-trend styles, and everyday value for all occasions. We can get her exclusive deals on name brands, great deals on everyday essentials and amazing deals on seasonal items to get ready for the holidays.”
Our new features and functionality will create a different kind of shopping experience for moms – and a platform for brands to reach our coveted customer base in a more focused way.
Here’s what’s new and how it benefits you:
An Updated Shopping Experience With More Offerings
We continue to encourage discovery with customer-favorite limited-time deals.
When Zulily was launched in 2010, it wasn’t the first entrant into flash sales, but we were the first one to understand the value and importance of moms. Our business model was a win-win for customers and brands; customers could conveniently access great brands at great prices without having to get in their car and dig through racks and piles of traditional off-price merchandise. Brands were able to sell their off-price merchandise more quickly and discreetly than before while winning new customers to their brand.
But we know she wants more. She wants curated, high-quality items she can trust to combat digital fatigue and endless selection. Our flash sales model has always worked to give moms that sense of discovery with daily deals. She comes to our site to be surprised and delighted instead of feeling she’s being bogged down by a to-do list. We take pride in helping her find that perfect, unique item that no one else has, at a good price.
What this means for vendors:
This model enables us to move inventory quickly and efficiently, in one short-term event, making Zulily a more profitable alternative to other solutions. In addition, vendors can drive urgency and excitement by offering discounts on limited-time deals, so their products sell faster.
We now also offer everyday value with always-on brand names and on-trend styles.
We’ve always offered low prices on a range of popular name brands that moms trust, but now, on-trend styles and category staples from some of our most popular brands are available for the taking, year-round.
Our ability to offer brands in different curated offerings in addition to flash sales means we can be a more strategic partner to brands and their short- and long-term inventory strategy. Along with limited time deals, we are now able to focus on building equity for brands like Carter’s, Vionic and Levi’s to give our customers —millions of moms — the choice of products they want to feature with more pricing flexibility.
What this means for vendors:
Everyday selection enables customers to shop products anytime, which will drive efficiencies and increase sales for your business. Whether you’re launching a new brand or product line, selling in-season product, or moving inventory, we tailor our approach to meet your specific needs throughout the year.
We’re Driving Customers Through the Purchase Funnel by Adding Value
The concept of value has shifted, for moms especially. Our customers are not only looking for ways to save money, but also seek straightforward shopping experiences. We’re answering that call by providing a simplified experience that reduces friction to purchase where possible, and provides service, convenience, availability, affordability and fun tailored to their specific needs and preferences. We launched three new improved customer programs to add value to our customers’ shopping experiences:
- A New Return Policy: All returns, no matter how many items are in the return, will now incur a flat fee of only $4.95; it will no longer jump to $8.95 on the second item. This is a benefit to our customer because she can have more precise insight into her expenses and credits on her Zulily account. This is also a benefit to brands who partner with us because we manage the entire returns process, making it easier to track returns and make things right for our customers.
- Simplifying Shopping: Zulily has now pushed back its sign-in modal, which required the creation of a Zulily account just to browse and shop. We know shoppers want to see what brands and deals are being offered before they provide their personal information to a new company, so we’ve listened to their feedback and are evolving. Customers can now browse most of our site without signing up for an account until they decide to add items to their baskets. We’ll now reserve the modal for a limited set of the truly best daily deals, curation and personalization that add value to a shopping experience.
Better Brand Experiences
Our new simplified shopping experience enables us to better align our brand partners on the consumer shopping journey throughout the year, making us a more strategic marketing channel and way to increase purchase consideration throughout mom’s shopping journey, ultimately helping to build equity for your brand and drive sales for your brand’s business.
“This shift in our business model means that we can solve different business issues for our brands that partner with us, whether it’s pricing flexibility, operational efficiencies, or inventory strategy – from liquidation, to basics and essentials for brand and on-trend styles. Our new merchandising formats enable brands to capitalize on our coveted, addressable market of millions of moms – and that is tremendously valuable,” says John Lohnas, Senior VP & Chief Merchant.
Today, to maximize the time moms have, Zulily is introducing a new everyday experience that features an always available selection of well-priced, quality brand-names and on-trend styles. We launched – Virtual Brand Stores-Within-a-Store – a series of more than 300 curated “virtual brand experiences” that our customers can shop for their favorite brands at any time throughout the year, from BOGS®, Carter’s®, Champion®, Burt’s Bees Baby®, Fisher-Price®, LEGO®, Levi’s®, Melissa & Doug®, SOREL®, Steve Madden® and many others.
Vendors Can Take Advantage of Enhanced Shopping Capabilities
Our new, ongoing efforts to create a more seamless customer journey and user experience also opens up more opportunities for vendors to showcase their brand on our site. By diversifying our merchandising options, we are better able to add value with a more convenient and simplified shopping experience for our customers’ wants and needs:
- More robust shop by category pages that land customers on PLPs (product listing pages) vs. event tiles
- More robust shop by brand pages that land customers on PLPs vs. event tiles
- Refining our site search capability that lands customers on PLPs vs. event tiles
- More robust filtering capabilities on category pages
- New product sort algorithms that weigh newness more heavily
- Revising certain sales event campaigns (such as our Savings Spree and Wow Week closeouts)
As we simplify our customers’ shopping experiences and reduce friction with hyper curation, better search, the ability to shop by brand or by category, to browse customized shops and discover exclusive daily deals – we can further diversify how we reach and engage our customer throughout her journey and make thousands of brands heroes for the day, week or year.
Interested in selling on Zulily? Let’s grow your business together. Get started here.