David’s Bridal is staking its future on being a source of customer inspiration.
While the wedding gown market is valued at $4 billion, the entire wedding event industry is worth $62 billion, according to Kelly Cook, who took on the role of CEO Tuesday. Cook is leading the company as it shifts toward an asset-light model with an emphasis on guiding brides through the wedding planning process.
“Our brides want to come to one place for 18 months and do everything they need to do,” Cook told CX Dive. “And believe it or not, there are over 300 tasks associated with a woman planning a wedding. When she gets proposed to, she's excited for 15 minutes — and then panic sets in.”
David’s Bridal aims to ease the stress, and the retailer will lean on its existing CX tools, including the Pearl by David’s planning app and the Diamond Loyalty rewards program, to enable the pivot. The company will invest in AI and other technology to further enhance its capabilities in its “Aisles to Algorithms” strategy.
The changes will help David’s Bridal keep up with a customer who wants experiences that are better and faster with more choices and rewards, according to Cook.
“Our job is to be supremely focused on every aspect of her evolving needs and changing and twisting the dials of the company to ensure that we're continually evolving that experience for her,” Cook said.
Personalization is a one-stop shop
Convenience can be a blessing for busy brides. David’s Bridal aims to be a place where a wedding party can find a tuxedo for the groom, jewelry for the bride, and swimsuits for the couple’s honeymoon all through one platform.
David’s Bridal is onboarding a backlog of vendors onto its Pearl by David’s platform to offer these options and more, according to Cook. However, a wedding is a complicated thing, and rarely will two brides have the same styles and decorations in mind.
David’s Bridal digs into first-party data provided from its Diamond Loyalty program, which has information from almost 3 million members, to help inform its content. On an individual level, the company offers customers quizzes and personalized Pinterest boards, and draws on the search terms customers use on the site.
“We actually have the bride, not somebody like the bride,” Cook said. “We actually have her in our ecosystem, and we marry that first-party data to the content that she is viewing.”
The combined data is used to serve brides and their wedding parties relevant content that matches their interests through the Pearl Media Network, which includes podcasts, social media content and streaming TV.
For instance, if a bride tells the company she’s planning on getting married at a beach, David’s Bridal will serve her content about the right shoes to wear, the right dress code for guests, and tips for budgeting a destination wedding, according to Cook.
The company connects the customer’s interests with the right content through AI. The company has been working with the technology for two years, and over 90% of email and text communications currently contain AI components, according to Cook.
Stores still play a role
While David’s Bridal is moving toward an asset-light model, stores and employees still play an important role in the overall strategy. Brick-and-mortar locations offer brides a chance to see how her selections look in real life.
All of the bride’s relevant information is available to David’s Bridal’s stylists when the customer comes in for her appointment, helping them better serve the customer.
“That is a crucial interaction, because the last thing a bride wants to do when she gets to her appointment is recap all of the things that she's already told us,” Cook said. “So we assemble it into bite-sized, snackable chunks, and we walk her delicately through that selling process.”
However, the in-store experience goes beyond details the bride has already provided. The retailer encourages brides to select their favorite wedding dresses before their visit, but 60% of the time the customer ends up choosing something else, according to Cook.
David’s Bridal plans to build on the in-person experience with Diamonds and Pearls, a couture store concept that is expected to enter the testing phase in the coming months. Diamonds and Pearls will feature augmented reality touchscreens that help the bride see how her bridal party’s dresses would look in her preferred wedding setting.
“When she's in the appointment, she is so stressed about the dress and the photos,” Cook said. “What's going through her mind is, ‘These pictures I'm taking at my wedding are going to last a lifetime. I'm showing my grandchildren these pictures.’”
If the AR touchscreens receive good feedback from customers and stylists, David’s Bridal will roll out to additional stores
