Adore Me: Its Successful Move into Wholesale Commerce

Over the past year, U.S.-based lingerie retailer Adore Me, a Victoria’s Secret subsidiary, has expanded its sales mix from direct-to-consumer (D2C) to a wholesale (B2B) strategy to grow revenue and reach a broader customer base.

At DJUST, our team behind a fully headless, unified B2B commerce platform worked with Adore Me to centralize customer relationships, consolidate wholesale channels, and simplify everything from order management to customer interactions.

Trish Seidel, DJUST’s Content Lead and an Adore Me superfan, recently sat down with Ranjan Roy, Vice President of Strategy at Adore Me, to discuss the shift and get his advice for fashion businesses looking to make a similar move.

What triggered the move into wholesale?

One of the biggest factors behind the decision to move into wholesale was our acquisition by Victoria’s Secret last year. Adore Me remains almost entirely independent, but now you can buy our products on VictoriasSecret.com. That already meant wholesale would become a more natural part of the business.

We also saw that customers are getting smarter, and the COVID era created a much more demanding online consumer.

In addition, the idea that brands could shape buying behavior was something online brands pushed hard throughout the 2010s. But now, even giants like Meta, with Instagram Shopping and Facebook Shopping, haven’t been able to dictate how people shop.

With customers, you have to meet them where they are.

Can you walk us through Adore Me’s evolution from D2C to B2B and what a wholesale strategy means to you?

We sold exclusively D2C for many years. We have six physical stores, and we ran small experiments in a few department stores. We had never really tried online marketplaces.

We were also very hesitant to sell on Amazon. But then we saw data showing that one-third of all eCommerce searches in America start on Amazon. So if someone saw a TV ad, searched for our brand on Amazon, and found nothing but saw our competitors, that was a huge miss.

We have an internal strategy called “Adore Me Everywhere” (Adore Me Partout). We have multiple ways to shop, and subscriptions are one of them. When you come to AdoreMe.com, we guide consumers in different directions. There are options.

But where are customers already? Online marketplaces like Zalando, Macy’s, Target, and Amazon are the most natural extension for us, as is wholesale.

So we had to adapt our systems and partnerships to help us plan our strategy and start building relationships with different marketplaces.

What were some of the internal discussions around moving into online marketplaces or B2B wholesale platforms?

Every additional channel increases a company’s complexity from an inventory and fulfillment perspective. For example, do we dropship for a specific marketplace? Do we move inventory to an Amazon fulfillment center?

The incredible level of complexity was one of the reasons we hesitated to pursue this path aggressively.

What convinced you to work with DJUST on your wholesale transition?

We recognized that with the complexity that comes with moving from D2C to wholesale, starting from scratch didn’t make sense.

It’s such a specialized, niche space that working with people who had essentially built the online marketplace world made much more sense for making the transition quickly.

Rather than spending time building and connecting our back-end and fulfillment channels to marketplaces, we can focus on how to advertise in the best possible way. We can decide which products to sell on which marketplaces, how to write descriptions for different marketplaces, and how to actually sell those products to specific audiences.

What’s next for Adore Me’s international expansion?

Whenever you make a strategic change, focus on the best use of your time. That’s the most important thing, especially with international expansion. It’s no longer just about inventory management. Now you also have to manage local regulations, exchange rates, and more.

So when we discussed how to approach international sales, the most logical way was to start on a marketplace. We’re going to launch on Zalando in the EU, then work with partners like DJUST to make the transition as seamless as possible, because we recognize that the opportunity is bigger than ever, but so is the complexity.

What measurable goals does Adore Me have for its wholesale business?

At a high level, it’s about increasing the percentage of overall revenue that comes from B2B wholesale sales.

We also want to understand the economics of each marketplace. Adore Me is one of the few large-scale D2C brands that has been consistently profitable for years, thanks to an obsession with unit economics and acquisition economics.

It’s about defining KPIs to determine what margins to target on each marketplace, what kind of acquisition budgets we’re willing to test, how much discounting we’re prepared to offer, and what types of products to sell.

Unit economics by channel may sound boring, but it’s the most important thing for us.

Adore Me has been a D2C company for many years, and you’re moving into wholesale in a smart, confident, and innovative way. Do you have any practical advice for companies looking to do the same?

First, start with channels whose customer bases don’t overlap heavily with yours.

For us, the clearest opportunity is international, where we don’t sell in some countries, so there’s no overlap. But even in the U.S., we think about which marketplaces have customers with a different economic and demographic profile from our existing customer base.

Second, really think about where you can find scale. For example, platform shopping like TikTok Shop offers potentially massive scale, but no one has figured out how to make it work yet. With Target, Amazon, Macy’s, and online marketplaces, many companies have had a lot of success.

So it’s about balancing where the opportunities are with what’s realistic. Our channel strategy is “quality over quantity.”

In conclusion

By leading Adore Me from D2C to B2B wholesale, Ranjan Roy knows what it takes to execute a new sales strategy successfully. If you’re considering a similar shift, remember to focus on your strengths, decide where your time is best spent, and rely on trusted partners to handle the rest.

Many thanks to Ranjan for speaking with DJUST! Watch the full conversation between Ranjan and Trish here.

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