How David’s Bridal Helps With the Entire Wedding Journey | Reimagining Retail

Suzy Davidkhanian (0:00)

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Hi everyone. Today is Wednesday, September 9th. Welcome to EMARKETER's weekly retail show, Reimagining Retail, an EMARKETER podcast made possible by Verve. This is the show where we talk about how retail collides with every part of our lives, and I'm your host, Suzy Davidkhanian. On today's episode, we're talking about a unique challenge in Bridal. How do you grow when if all goes well, your core customer only needs you once? Joining me from Texas is podcast regular, Sky Canaves. Hey, Sky.

Sky Canaves (1:03)

Hey, Suzy. I'm so glad to be here.

Suzy Davidkhanian (1:05)

We're so excited to have you and our special guest, Elina Vilk, President and Chief Business Officer at David's Bridal, joining from Florida. Hey, Elina.

Elina Vilk (1:14)

Hey, everyone.

Suzy Davidkhanian (1:15)

So nice to see you again. We're so excited to have you. Before we even get started, I thought we could do a very quick speed intro in 30 seconds or less. Tell us what you do.

Elina Vilk (1:27)

Well, I work for Pearl and David's Bridal, and I'm really, really deep in all things growth across both business lines. And in particular, the Pearl business line, driving forward the entire wedding journey via AI for the customer, merchandising, marketing, our e-com business and more.

Suzy Davidkhanian (1:50)

And we'll talk a lot more about Pearl, but that was a great overview. So tell us in a few sentences, what is your favorite, you get to pick, book, podcast, TV show right now?

Elina Vilk (2:02)

Oh, that's a hard one. So I'm rewatching Heroes. I watched it so long ago, and I just restarted watching that with my son.

And I was just kind of, you know, with everything that happened, Hayden, and everything recently. And I'm kind of a sci-fi nerd. I don't know. I think I feel like maybe a few of us are on this call. And my favorite movie of all time is probably The Matrix. But like looking back at Heroes, the character development and the discovery almost feels like you're doing it for the first time again. So that's really fun. And it does kind of connect back to a lot of what we're like, the way people discover things. I think we can learn a lot from cinematography and the film world and storytelling around the discovery and how you can really get into the minds of the humans involved in the different character developments.

Suzy Davidkhanian (2:51)

I love that because I'm almost done binge watching what I've been currently watching. So that is going to be next for me.

Elina Vilk (2:57)

Yeah. You got to text me on that one. So absolutely well.

Suzy Davidkhanian (3:00)

So back to weddings, it's a big business. The dress is only the one piece of a much bigger ecosystem from venues and hotels to flowers, photographers, planners. The couples really have to make hundreds of decisions leading into that big day. But for Bridal, there's also this really unusual retail challenge. If everything goes according to plan, you're not trying to get that bride to come back and be a repeat customer. So growth really does come from finding credible ways to solve more of her needs while she's planning the wedding.

Today, we're going to talk about how you earn the right to expand beyond your core business, how do you cut through the noise in an already crowded marketplace, and how do you use your customer insights to figure out where to go next. But before we dive in, I thought maybe we could start with, is there someone in your orbit planning a wedding right now? And if yes, what do you think looking in is maybe the most stressful part?

And I can start, it's someone in my extended family and so I'm very close to her. And there are lots of stressful things, but I think the most stressful so far has been thinking about a venue not in your local city that fits the number of people that you want to have. And then figuring out all of the other components, which is why, of course, I plugged Pearl and was like, you got to start, you got to use it and she's loving it. But we'll definitely talk more about that. Sky, is there someone in your world?