Growing ThirdLove To Try Out Brick

The disruptive lingerie retailer ThirdLove is set to open its first ever physical store later this year, introducing its Fit Finder” technology to bricks-and-mortar for the first time. The startup, which launched in 2012 and positioned itself as a body-positive bra option, will open a temporary boutique in Manhattan's SoHo district—a 10-minute walk from the nearest Victoria's Secret—where it will cull data from customers on their shopping and dressing-room preferences.
For ThirdLove, now may be the best time to grow in light of difficulties at rival Victoria's Secret With that in mind, the intimates brand is pursuing every strategy, from opening stores in select markets to bringing on board creative agencies, to bolster its marketing and branding efforts.



Yet this past April, its parent company, L Brands, was downgraded from "stable" to "negative" by Moody's Investors Service due to "deteriorating operating margins and negative comparable store sales at Victoria's Secret for the past 10 quarters." The downgrade came after a smattering of negative stories about the leading lingerie company and the retailer's apparent reluctance to back away from an oversexualized image.
Compare that to the in-store experience of the cold bright dressing room,” Cohen says, with a stranger measuring you, poking and prodding you.” ThirdLove uses that data to recommend the best size and style for purchase — and, ultimately, to create better products for all its customers.

Over at Vox, reporter Zoe Schiffer has an interesting story about ThirdLove, the upstart bra company that positions its lingerie as by women, for women.” Turns out that contrary to its feminist public image, actually working for the company seems pretty awful: employees complain about a bunch of things, including low pay, shitty benefits, and a co-CEO that bullies them.
We've always approached bra and underwear shopping by browsing sales, asking friends for their favorite brands, buying a nude strapless bra in a bridesmaid-induced panic, and simply snapping up anything cute that caught our eye in a moment of shopping weakness.

None of us really agreed with it from the beginning.” Plus, the company had just come out with another campaign celebrating women's individuality with the slogan To each, her own.” It was like ‘what if a woman wants to be in the show or watch it, why are we telling them what to do?'” a source we'll call Kate said.
Zak and Spector are aware of the issue of privacy, an obvious concern as more women are finding photos of themselves leaked on the Internet. More than 14 million women have taken the quiz, and the company has sold four million bras, according to a statement.

For our ThirdLove bra and underwear review, we tried out a half-size smaller and larger than our normal size. One of its major innovations was developing half-cup sizes, since the brand's data found that 37% of women did not fit neatly into the traditional range of cups.
The brand's commitment to diversity — offering half-cup bra sizing and promoting body positivity in their advertising — has helped them dethrone the once dominant Victoria's Secret. We're their first love.” This comment was widely—and fairly—interpreted as a jab at David Spector, which, as Vogue added in an aside in their interview, has gotten an investment from a former Victoria's Secret CEO.