Xcel Brands Inc. today launches a new virtual business style for Longaberger, transforming the classic multi-level platform of the craft and craft company acquired in 2019 into a peer-to-peer company. Social trading network with expanded categories of housing and lifestyle.
“The purpose is the world’s largest social trading network,” CHIEF Executive Robert D’Loren said in an exclusive interview. “This can be a billion-dollar platform over five years. This can be replicated all over the world. That’s the purpose.”
“Mathematics is interesting, ” said D’Loren. “The average member stylist has traditionally generated about $6,000 in sales consistent with the year. This stylist can have six or seven other people under his command, earning $6,000. With another 20,000 people, $120 million would be generated and another 100,000 people would form a $600 million business.”
There are also social industry market giants like Etsy, which recorded $4.97 billion in gross goods sales in 2019, and paying Poshmark $2 billion to its dealer network in September.
The key to climbing Longaberger will be the army of internal and life stylists that D’Loren hopes to hire. They will be provided with traditional virtual demo instances with SMART Web generation in the form of a traditional marketplace that will be temporarily attached to their social media accounts.
“We were going to bring back 3,500 participants and the expansion is rapid,” D’Loren said of the sales associates. “The retail, hotel and catering sectors have many other people out of work.”
Home and life stylists belong to the communities in which they live, and D’Loren counts on them to expand Longaberger’s customer and support base.
“They’re friends and family,” he says. “They know you and know how you live. Before buying the company, the “super “house and life stylists earned an annual source of income of more than $1 million a year. You can see where this can be just an opportunity for the record 51 million new unemployed to channel their national contractor. »
Longaberger’s sales program was designed with minimal investment for stylists and a transparent platform. For an annual payment of $49, the program grants a 20% marketing refund for all sales, 20% off non-public purchases, and a 5% reduction in sales of new stylists recruited to enroll in the team of an existing stylist.
“The difference lies in our visitor acquisition process,” D’Loren said. “We don’t bid for Google search words and do not rent influencers to communicate and advertise our product. Our influencers are our stylists.
“Our competition has low visitor acquisition prices of 12% -15% to 25%,” D’Loren added. “We rely on the network to take Longaberger visitors to virtual platforms like Facebook and Instagram.”
Founded in the early 1970s through Dave Longaberger, the family business circle produced sturdy and aesthetically pleasing maple wood baskets, like its iconic picnic model. Beach baskets with skates are designed to store, serve, organize and involve bread, cakes or waste.
Xcel moved Longaberger to new products such as tables, cutlery, bedding and furniture, which D’Loren describes as a cross between Restoration Hardware and Crate and Barrel.
“We have a wine club on the way,” he says. “We’ll have a marriage record. Space has been connected with well-being. We recognize that if we take a little more care of ourselves, our quality of life can improve. We’ve added skin care and wellness elements that make sense. There are about 800 stock control sets on site. This has happened in the last 3 months.
The friends of Longaberger products are also available, including Dockside Market lemon biscuits, Moser Glass cake displays, Judith Ripka’s fine jewellery and Gibson and Dehn scented candles.
At its peak, Longaberger had sales of $1.3 billion and 8,000 workers at its headquarters in Newark, Ohio, designed to look like one of its baskets. The founding circle of relatives in 2011 sold the company to a personal equity company. Longaberger embraced Chapter 11 of bankruptcy coverage in 2016. Xcel owns and manages the Longaberger logo through its majority stake in Longaberger Licensing LLC.
“The challenge that the chains of origin were not fast enough,” D’Loren said of Longaberger’s decline. “By the time the products arrived in the stores, the influencers were no longer interested.”
Because Xcel is a customer media and product company, concerned about design, production, marketing, wholesale and direct sales to customers of its brands, it sees the company as the prism of entertainment.
“The subscription of intellectual assets is an entirely new business model,” said D’Loren on Xcel, which was introduced in 2011. “We saw Longaberger as a possibility to disrupt multi-level marketing activity with industry and social media that didn’t exist. board of directors in 2006. »
D’Loren stated that he looked beyond the MCNs [multichannel networks] that produce brief episodic emissions incorporated into the products. “It just wasn’t working,” he said of the MCN. “We believe that Tik Tok is the way to do it. We believe it is social commerce, other people who combine with a social purpose.”
Xcel CEO is based on an image reflected in marketing and entertainment that includes Michael Francis, a former marketing director of Target, who is a Walmart representative, and Jim Fielding, co-founder of ThenWhat.
“Think of life, ” he said. “We both stick to our own path both one and two days. What we have in common is that we start at home, where we feel more comfortable. We need to make life at home as productive as we can imagine and give our visitors more free time. If [our stylists] can do it through social media, we will give both one and both what they need, when they need it.”
I have been a journalist for 30 years, as editor-in-chief of W magazine, and for 17 years, as editor-in-chief of WWD. I write about