In The Room with Heidi Zak
In the Season 3 finale of The Room Podcast, Madison and Claudia sit down with Heidi Zak, CEO and Co-Founder of ThirdLove, a multi-generational women’s lifestyle brand focused on elevated essentials across bras, underwear, loungewear, and much more. ThirdLove’s products are designed to support women feeling effortlessly comfortable and confident. ThirdLove is also the third largest underwear and bra retailer in the world, which is a true testament to how its unique model truly disrupted how consumers shop for bras and other essentials.
This week’s key themes include what fundraising looks like for non-software businesses, finding product market fit and innovating on distribution, and the future of e-commerce. Let’s open the door.
Season 3 is sponsored by our friends at SVB and Cooley.
Key Theme 1: Fundraising for non-software companies
To date, ThirdLove has raised a little under $70 million dollars from a range of investors, including NEA on the fund size to Katie Couric as an angel investor. While she has found great success, the funding process for Heidi was not always easy, and she advises first-time founders to stay encouraged as they go through it. In the seed round, she tells founders that investors are investing more in the people who will stay persistent and passionate even when things go south. After the seed round, she says that founders will have a better understanding of the process, and it becomes more about the data and finding the right match.
Key Theme 2: Finding product market fit and innovating on distribution
ThirdLove is now one of the largest revenue DTC brands that doesn’t have either wholesale partners or other methods of distribution. In 2015, ThirdLove introduced a program called “Try before you buy,” allowing customers to try out a bra free for 30 days. If the customers love it, they keep and pay for it. If not, they send it back with no charges. This program allowed ThirdLove to de-risk the situation of buying bras online for a customer who wasn’t accustomed to such a process. This crucial marketing distribution decision ultimately allowed ThirdLove to scale. While the strategy of trying before buying was risky in terms of the customer keep rate, Heidi was highly confident in ThirdLove’s quality products. Heidi advises founders to really nail down the issue their company solves and focus on articulating the solution well.
Key Theme 3: Future of e-commerce
With the e-commerce space continuously changing and growing, Heidi shares some of her thoughts on what the future of e-commerce looks like. First, the way companies connect with their customers will increasingly focus on the one-to-one relationships, exemplified by the trend of moving contact from email to text messaging. Video chat is another up and coming trend that will help with the more personal relationship building, similar to the one built with shopping in store. Lastly, Heidi believes that live selling, similar to the QVC channel, will be more prevalent on websites.
Thank you so much for joining us for another season of The Room Podcast. The episode with Heidi Zak is now live on all podcast streaming platforms. Enjoy!
