Fashion presented at Eloquia
Source: Eloquia
Walmart sells online clothing brand Eloquii to FullBeauty Brands, marking the retailer’s third divestment of a direct-to-consumer brand this yr.
A big box retailer sold bonobos to WHP Global i Express earlier this month and unloaded Moosejaw to Dick’s Sporting Goods in February. The sale is a reversal of the 2017-18 strategy led by Marc Lore, Walmart’s former head of e-commerce.
The retailer bought Eloquii in 2018 for $100 million, considered one of many digital clothing brands with area of interest and dependable consumer bases. The goal was to expand the net retailer’s range of clothing and household goods with the next margin. Acquisitions would also attract talent that might help Walmart speed up its digital strategy.
“Eloquii has joined Walmart’s portfolio of digital vertical brands to expand our size 14+ women’s range and offer a novel and differentiated product in an underrated but growing segment,” Walmart spokesperson Jaeme Laczkowski said in an announcement. “Because the acquisition of Eloquia, Walmart.com has grown to a whole bunch of tens of millions of things, and we decided the time was right to sell Eloquia.”
FullBeauty Brands buys Eloquia for an undisclosed sum, retaining its co-founder and brand leader Julie Carnevale. Eloquii will join FullBeauty Brands’ portfolio of online plus-size clothing, footwear and swimwear brands with 5 million energetic customers.
“Eloquii could be very data-driven and has great feedback in its business,” FullBeauty Brands CEO Jim Fogarty told CNBC in an interview. “[Eloquii] it’s being introduced to the market in a short time and we wish to learn a bit from it.”
Fogarty plans for Eloquii to be the anchor of what he calls FullBeauty Brands’ “digital mall”. The profitable company FullBeauty Brands has annual revenues of $1 billion, a small portion of the $81 billion total plus size apparel market. Fogarty hopes Eloquii will help him gain a foothold amongst more millennial and Gen Z consumers, which he called “all of the more TikTok, the Instagram generation.”
Following the acquisition of Eloquia, Walmart created a recent brand of inclusive clothing that the retailer will proceed to sell after the divestment.
According to management, Walmart’s e-commerce goals have shifted from increasing the variety of products available to improving digital business funds.
“We are actually in a phase that’s less about scaling in-store pickup and delivery, e-commerce mix and e-commerce [fulfillment center] square footage and more on executing and improving operating margin,” Walmart CEO Doug McMillon said through the company’s investor day earlier this month.
Although Lore left Walmart in 2021 after five years, his contributions have significantly transformed the retailer’s e-commerce business, including order success operations, delivery options to shoppers, and speed. His efforts have increased the variety of products sold online from 70 million to “a whole bunch of tens of millions” today.
Walmart’s online sales now account for 13% of total annual sales, as of the last fiscal yr end, up from 5% in 2019.
There have definitely been a variety of Lore-led businesses that ultimately failed, including JetBlack’s text messaging concierge services and the eventual liquidation of Lore’s founded e-commerce company Jet.com, which Walmart bought for $3.3 billion and which brought Lore to the vendor.
As well as to Eloquia, Bonobos and Moosejaw, Walmart has released Modcloth, Bare Necessities and ShoeBuy in recent times, all Lore-led acquisitions.