Sara Lebo (4:08)

Kristin, do you get to go to Coachella next month?

Kristen Darcy (4:10)

I do. I think I'm gonna go for a day or two. And it's funny because someone on my team said we need to plan, you know, our looks for Coachella. And I'm thinking, oh my gosh, A, I've never been to Coachella, believe it or not, and B, I bet there's definitely a Coachella vibe and we'll see how I can translate the True Religion way.

Susie David Canyon (4:32)

I was gonna say, I didn't realize that you're a 20 year old brand. I feel like True religion has such a strong branding. I mean, originally in the jean space that I would have thought you were a much, much older brand. What I find really interesting from a merchant old life perspective is that you actually have a name for chasing trends for how do you get around it to make sure that you are ahead if not on trend, but testing it before you release it wide. Does that work with your distribution partners.

Kristen Darcy (5:05)

As well from a wholesale perspective? You know, they're buying. I mean, we're showing our wholesale partners holiday 2025 right now. So it's a little bit more of mainline. We typically do the most chase volume with our D2C business units. I think what's interesting is when you look at D2C, we're really, really proud that our digital business in total is going to make up almost 50% of the total this.

Sara Lebo (5:35)

Wow.

Kristen Darcy (5:35)

We have almost 10 million people in our databases. And that is continuing to grow as we both continue to drive loyalty, of course, but then bring millions of new consumers into the brand. And it's funny, you know, you talked about us being just like a 23 year old brand. And I think what's fascinating from my perspective is a lot of people say, how does all of the marketing feel so authentic? And it's because 23 years ago, the Black Eyed Peas rapped about the brand. Believe it or not, you had Venus and Serena Williams wearing us. And we looked at this timeline between 2002 and today, and there was persistent hits throughout music, sports culture, more broadly of people talking about us wearing us. And I think what's so interesting is that momentum just has continued to build, particularly as we've improved product both in men's and women's over the last couple years. We've grown the women's business. So huge improvement over the last few years. And then the last is all of that organic love now shows up in somebody like Timothy Chalamet wearing us organically.

Susie David Canyon (6:45)

Oh, I saw that.

Sara Lebo (6:47)

Yeah. This is interesting to talk about because like 2002, the Williams sisters and the Black Eyed Peas, that's like the most successful you can be as a brand. And this is also like tale as old as time, especially in urban categories. I know that Tommy Hilfiger's story was that they sent merchandise specifically to different rappers and Snoop Dogg ended up wearing the product on snl and that's sort of how it ended up blowing up. So that especially makes sense in your category, in the urban lifestyle category. That brings me to a recent campaign I saw on your Instagram the other day. I saw Sexy Red, which is a rapper I know for her song that blew up on TikTok Ski was in your campaign. Now my guess is most of our listeners have no idea what I just said. Like that all sounds like Gen Z gibberish. So my question based on that is how do you expand to younger customers by having people like Sexyy Red wearing the brand without alienating consumers who are like, who the heck is that?

Kristen Darcy (7:50)

Yeah, it's such a good question. Sexy's amazing. And maybe I'll start with the why. So you know our customer loves Sexyy Red. We know that because we're constantly reading all of the comments in social. And while people have been really excited about some of the other faces over the last couple of years that we've partner, we do get a persistent thread that says, what about Sexy? Where's Sexy. And so we were really excited. I spoke with her personally when we reached out, and the first thing she said to me is, why did you.

Susie David Canyon (8:25)

Wait so long to call me?

Kristen Darcy (8:27)

I'm like.

Susie David Canyon (8:28)

I was like, because we wanted to.

Kristen Darcy (8:30)

Make sure that we had the right campaign, the perfect campaign for you. And, you know, rumor has it she has spent thousands of dollars. So not just through gifting, she has spent thousands of dollars on. And when we launched Owner Tru, that's our new brand platform in February, we thought coming out of the gate with Anita, the global Brazilian pop superstar, would be amazing. We thought then, and that actually expands us to attract new customers. You know, particularly Hispanic customers are really interesting to us. We think there is a huge opportunity there. So Anita was right out of the gate. Yg, a West coast rapper, followed about a week, two weeks ago. And then Sexyy Red actually is her launch week. She just launched on Tuesday. So it's that push and pull between how do we go after this wide breadth of new consumers through somebody like an Anita, and then how do we deliver what we know our core customer really wants? Which, like I said, through the social comments alone, was a. Was a Sexy Red. I want to talk really quickly about some of the initial success out of the gate with Sexyy Red, and then I want to back up and answer your question a little bit more broadly about bringing in younger customers. So Sexyy Red, like I said, launched on Tuesday. We did not spend any more on that advertising, creative and paid media. We basically rotated her in to some of the other messages we had in market. Said that because people were so excited to see her in True Religion officially now a long time coming. We saw an increase in website traffic the day of launch by 6, 70%, which is phenomenal. We saw sell through of some of the looks increase immediately right out of the gate. So the product that she's actually wearing, we saw a spike, of course, in sales online that day. We are up double digits this year, which is phenomenal, given it's a really. And that's by way of sales, given it's a really tough retail market out there. So these partnerships with the right faces at the right time definitely correlate to not only interest, but traffic and sales for us.

Susie David Canyon (10:44)

And I think that's the key, right? It's the key is as a brand, staying authentic to your roots, which for you guys was music and entertainment and sports and culture, and making sure that in that authenticity, you're using your core product so that you don't alienate your core People and your usual consumers, but you bring in new ones to sort of raise awareness. They do a little bit of research. We know everybody's doing research on TikTok. And then all of a sudden you've increased the number of people that are.

Sara Lebo (11:12)

In your fold, especially with a consumer that's already in the product. I mean, that's the most authentic thing you can do is find someone who's already a fan of the product.

Kristen Darcy (11:21)

That's exactly right. And I think that's why it does feel. It continues to feel so organic. You know, we had another recent organic hit, actually. Playboi Carti released a new album. It's already trending, and this happened only, I think, a week ago. He also released a music video as part of that album. And he is wearing head to toe True Religion, literally head as part of.

Sara Lebo (11:47)

A campaign or just organically on his own.

Kristen Darcy (11:50)

Totally organically.

Sara Lebo (11:51)

Cool.

Susie David Canyon (11:51)

You know what I also think is really helpful? It's that you have the same silhouettes in jeans with a twist, right? So, like, you go. We go from skinny to bootleg, but at the end of the day, it's still all the same sort of core product with glitter, without glitter, cameo. And so your core, perhaps 20 years older than when you first started, is still buying that. Because jeans, although there are so many more brands in private label, is something that people feel a really strong emotional connection to. And once you found that IT style, then that's all you're buying, basically. So it's really hard to get attention by a different brand. So that you guys are in the moment capturing new customers that are younger is amazing.

Sara Lebo (12:35)

But I'm curious about how that doesn't alienate old older consumers, how that doesn't alienate someone who it was a fan of the brand 20 years ago and has no clue who Sexyy Red is.

Susie David Canyon (12:45)

Well, as that potential customer, let me tell you, I didn't even know there was that campaign. Right? True Religion. The brand is not hitting me with that campaign where I am.

Kristen Darcy (12:54)

Right.

Susie David Canyon (12:54)

So they're only hitting people in that aged area that know that rapper or pop star, whoever, in a place where they're already there. So you're meeting your potential new customer where they are, and you're leaving people like me who are buying your brand potentially for Bloomingdale's of the World to tell me more about your new stuff. You know what? I think that's probably how you're not alienating your core customer.

Kristen Darcy (13:16)

That from a distribution standpoint for sure. Although we're seeing both kind of Returning and new customers shopping. Our digital channel being trueligion.com or they're shopping through the app. And I think it's because the other part of the marketing strategy, you know, that we haven't talked about yet, it's called Team True. So Team Tru is an always on influencer program of now almost 100 people. And those people are really diverse. They're men and women. They range from college athletes. So we partner with a lot of nil partners, frankly, you know, to people that are in their 20s and 30s who are musicians, fashion stylists. We have the first ever NFL fashion stylist who's on Team True.

Sara Lebo (14:04)

Kristin, what's your sweet spot there in terms of follower count? Are you looking at bigger creators or smaller ones? A mix.

Kristen Darcy (14:10)

It's a great question for Team Tru. It's everybody from, I think on the low end, 20,000 followers all the way up to, believe it or not, 5 million.

Sara Lebo (14:20)

Okay.

Kristen Darcy (14:21)

Pro athletes, WNBA, NBA, NFL. But again, you're able to attract both younger and older consumers through this Team True program that's always on because of the diversity of people that we have in that program.

Sara Lebo (14:37)

Yeah, that makes sense. I was going to ask how you as a brand are able to participate in trends online without seeming out of touch, but it seems like that's the way is instead of the brand participating in TikTok trends, you have your creators participating in them on your behalf.

Kristen Darcy (14:53)

We do that. I think we also, we look at trends that fit our DNA. So music, fashion and culture. And here's an example of something that we, you know, we created or co created, I should say, in partnership with Dudette with a sign. For the Megan the Stallion campaign, we had Dudette with a sign walk around, of course, with a brand message. And here's an example of us sort of riffing on a trend. The sign that said brat summer demure fall. And it had crossed out both of those and we know both of those were trending and then it said hot girl holiday. And for those that know, hot girls are what Megan thee stallion sort of calls herself and her followers. So that's one way of us kind of riffing on the trend that we're seeing the other way that we're trying to be authentic, particularly on TikTok. And we do have someone whose sole full time job it is to grow the followers in that channel and also create TikTok specific content. So there you'll see our content is music driven. It's fashion in motion. We're trying to create Cultural connections. So tapping into nostalgia and cultural moments that resonate with our audience, tapping into community and creators, as is the case with Team True. And there's really no hard sell in that channel unless it's a very specific paid media ad. We're focusing on engagement and storytelling rather than being overtly promotional there. And, you know, the big takeaway is focusing on that heritage and brand collaborations and campaigns. We've seen almost triple digit follower growth over the last year, let alone the last six months. The engagement rate across all of our social content in Organic is above industry average. And what that says to me is the team is doing an incredible job of being really authentic, frankly. And the way that we're engaging there.

Susie David Canyon (16:51)

I'm all in on that. On the, you have to be authentic to who you are as a brand, otherwise you're not going to win and you're not going to get new customers or keep your customers if you, you know, if you're selling them something that you're actually not what I am interested in as well. So that's on the marketing side, but that authenticity also start, you know, maybe even starts with the product and making sure that your product is on brand and sometimes the like. When I think about trends, because I was on the merchant side, I always think about the fashion trends, not the like TikTok trends, but like, how do you make sure that you can continue to grow outside of the denim category and that your core and new customers are ready to grow with you in that space.

Kristen Darcy (17:35)

So Michael Buckley, who is our CEO, brought in a head, a new head of women's design. Now about two and a half years ago, she has grown the women's business, you know, double digits in a very short amount of time. So now she oversees both women and men's product design design. And I think she does a great job, whether it's denim or activewear or varsity jackets or baby tees or short shorts. No matter what the kind of product category, what is core to us are design elements that we know our customers want. So we know they love the thick stitching. They love, you guys can see it. But they love the logos across the board. So that is always front and center. The product design is really, really bold. We know that. You know, on the women's side, she likes faux fur, she likes glitter and rhinestone embellishments. We know for the guy, he likes patches, for example, he loves our graphic tees. So I think, you know, number one, we start with this incredible product assortment that is both what, you know, like Those fits from a denim perspective we talked about earlier. And then you come to us and you discover this wide world of so many other product categories that we have. We put sexy red and this incredible pink leopard active set. So that is out in the world in paid media, for example. So the awareness that we play in all of these other categories is there. And then from a marketing perspective, obviously there's a ton of science happening under the covers every day where if we know that you bought a pair of jeans, we're going to retarget you, let's say an email and SMS and suggest a tee that works with those jeans.

Sara Lebo (19:25)

Yeah.

Kristen Darcy (19:26)

Or just, you know, a hoodie for example, that might work well with, with what you've already purchased. So cross selling and upselling is happening on a personalized level at scale too.

Sara Lebo (19:37)

Yeah, I think that's really important and that's also why it's so important that your loyalty program has been a success is so that you have that information to retarget those as consumers. Something that you said to me, Kristen, when we were prepping for this that I wrote down is you can performance market a brand to death. And I think that really speaks to what you were just talking about, which is that you're retargeting existing consumers of course to expand their basket size or to get them to come back. But from a top down brand perspective, it seems like you're not super focused on performance marketing.

Kristen Darcy (20:13)

Br I think that is one of the levers that we're able to use to drive the incredible sales performance. But it's not sacrificing brand. We are investing in, you know, faces and partners like Anita YG Sexy. We're investing in upper funnel marketing for each of you know, those elements of this campaign. So we're running, you know, streaming video, we're running streaming audio, we're running a lot of upper funnel campaigns in addition to the performance marketing. And what we've seen is a direct positive result on the business. You actually see the efficiencies in paid search, which is obviously, you know, a very solid performing sales channel for many retailers. But you see the efficiency in that. You see the efficiency in direct URL type in, you see the efficiency in organic search, all of those pop as traffic sources and sales sources when we have the investment in upper funnels. So here I am not worried about us performance marketing the brand to death because we are properly activating the campaigns at every layer of the consumer's journey. The upper funnel, the mid consideration and then the lower funnel and they all work together.

Sara Lebo (21:32)

Well, that makes sense. And I shouldn't have said you weren't focused on performance marketing, but that you are invested just as much in the brand.

Susie David Canyon (21:39)

I was just going to add that if you don't have all the different tiers, they all work together. Right. And we know that consumers are not shopping linearly anymore and they're getting input about a new brand that they didn't know or about a product that the brand they love all over the place. And so if you don't evenly split your time in whatever that looks like for your brand, because every brand is a little bit different or every product category, I should say is a little bit different, then you're gonna lose. And so it's not just about that last piece, but it's also catching them as they're learning about something they didn't even know they wanted, which is usually the brand campaigns.

Sara Lebo (22:13)

Yeah, we're almost out of time. I'm gonna put you both on the spot with a question before we close out, which is Kristen and Susie, both of you have mentioned tons of different KPIs on this call. We talked about URL type ins. We talked about engagement on TikTok. Do you guys think that there is an underrated KPI that retail marketers should be looking at?

Susie David Canyon (22:37)

It's so important to realize that every retailer and brand is measured on comp, sales and margin. But I think what is under measured is the halo effect of a campaign. And so like you might be showing jeans because we are true religion. But I mean, like I actually didn't realize that you and I would say I'm an actor, active buyer. I didn't realize that you have activewear. And so I think the idea around activations and pop ups and other sort of experimental sort of experiences that are happening don't get enough credit because that helps you learn about the brand in a bigger way. And other products that, you know, I might not be in the market today for activewear, but now I saw the, the person wearing it on Instagram or wherever she was, I don't even know her name. Red, sexy red, sexy Red. And, and you know, now next time I need a pair of yoga pants, I might go to true like without Eve. And you can't measure that. But I think it's a really important component.

Kristen Darcy (23:36)

You know, I think one of the most underrated metrics is actually engagement and of course sentiment, but engagement in social. And I say that because, you know, we have not quite a million followers, which is wild to me. We're working on that. But not quite a million followers on Instagram. And, you know, I think you could be fooled by thinking that if you had 10 million as a brand, that metric is incredible. And you know that that's a great number by way of organic reach. But the metric underneath the follower count is engagement.

Sara Lebo (24:20)

Yeah.

Kristen Darcy (24:21)

So the first question you asked out of the gate, how do you build and keep a loyal following? It's by engaging with them in channels where they're spending their time and they want to build a relationship with the brand there as well. So whether that's TikTok or Instagram or some of the others, I'm really, really proud that when you look at Instagram, our engagement rate is 6 to 8%. Industry average is 1 to 3.

Sara Lebo (24:47)

Yeah.

Kristen Darcy (24:48)

It says is that people are coming to the page and they're not cast of followers. It means that they're signing up to be a follower and then they're coming back and then they're commenting, they're saying, where is Sexyy Red? They're saying, when we launched her. Oh, my gosh, finally, you know, this is your moment, Sexy. We're so excited. So I think that element really leads to brand love. So mine would be engagement and social.

Sara Lebo (25:13)

I love that answer. And I think that's also really important for picking creators you're working with is not just looking at who has the following, but who has the following with engaged followers, especially because they can be less expensive people to work with. If someone has 20,000 followers but they're mostly engaged followers, they're probably a cheaper buy than someone with 15 million followers, and you might get the same sort of engagement. And also I keep hearing brands talking about what kind of engagement they're getting on social. I love seeing brands looking more at shares because I think that getting in the group chat is vital, especially if you're a brand with such a strong identity as true religion.

Kristen Darcy (25:53)

You're exactly right. Totally with you.

Sara Lebo (25:56)

Okay, we'll end on Kristen telling me I'm exactly right because I think that's the perfect end point. Thank you so much for joining us, Kristin. This was excellent.

Kristen Darcy (26:05)

Thanks for having me.

Sara Lebo (26:06)

Thank you, Susan.

Susie David Canyon (26:08)

Thanks so much for having me.

Sara Lebo (26:09)

Thank you to our listeners and to our team that edits the podcast. Good production is in their genes. We'll be back next Wednesday with another episode of Reimagining Retail, an emarketer podcast. And on Friday, join Marcus for another episode of the behind the Numbers show.