Transcript
Retail Industry Analyst (0:00)
Bath and Body Works is planning to launch on Amazon early next year. We've had Bath and Body Works in the show more this year. I know, I think we have ever. According to retail dive, Bath and Body Works will start with a small assortment of its evergreen products on Amazon in order to quote, test and learn and quote and build ratings and reviews, according to CEO Daniel Heath. Heath also said that Bath and Body believes somewhere between six sixty to eighty million dollars of gray market sales are already happening via Amazon and that such sales are both brand dilutive and product dilutive. Chris, this is also the A and M put you on the spot question. Yeah, A and M would like to know. More and more brands are opening up curated assortments on marketplaces like Amazon. On one hand it's a chance to meet consumers where they are already. Sorry, where they already shop. But on the other it raises questions about brand control, margins and what happens to the in store magic. How should companies be thinking about this trade off?
E-commerce Strategy Expert (1:01)
I think this topic's really interesting. It is, you're right. It's interesting to see Bath and Body Works in the headlines again. I think the AI discussion that we had earlier changes the calculus on this a little bit. And so for that reason actually, and I've actually was going a different direction when I first started thinking about this headline and then I was like, okay. From a consistency standpoint though, I think I changed my mind. And actually I don't like this move, I don't like this move to integrate with Amazon because and I would, you know, I would say the same thing potentially about Bath and Body Works integrating with Walmart because they're both retailers and they're formidable ones at that. I would be, given that AI is on the scene here, I would be biding my time, investing in my stores as we've talked about a lot. And I would follow the steps that I outlined above, like, you know what, ready your site for LLM search first because you're going to have to be able to do that and make sure it works. And then you partner with the right LLM search engine, you know, and you can take your time to decide what that is. But you find distribution that way, I think first and foremost because if the industry as a whole, if the industry executives listening as a whole take that approach, the really interesting thing about that and to me is that Amazon is going to lose its dominance. So if you start selling on Amazon, why start selling on Amazon now, wait a few years, clean the decks, scrub the decks, get everything right and then decide what you want to do and how you want to play in this new AI landscape. Because if you think about it the right way, you can still go to Amazon later, but you could also hurt them in the long run. And so I think that's important thing to think about here. So, you know, are you thinking short term, are you thinking long term? And I think in this case, Bath and Body Works seems like it's thinking short term to me.