Singles’ Day (also termed 11.11 Global Shopping Festival by Alibaba) is held annually on November 11 and is the largest global online shopping festival. Our Brand Journeys to Singles’ Day 2020 series profiles 11 brands that are participating in this year’s event. In this final report in the series, we spotlight Allbirds, a New Zealand-founded, San Francisco-based footwear company.

Allbirds: Brand Background

Allbirds was founded in 2016 by Tim Brown, former professional New Zealand footballer, and Joey Zwillinger, a biotech engineer and renewable materials expert from San Francisco. The brand has gained exposure through its celebrity customers, including actors Leonardo DiCaprio, Matthew McConaughey and Emma Watson, as well as former President Barack Obama. Integrating sustainability into its footwear designs from the beginning, Allbirds debuted with its Wool Runner product—shoes made from castor bean oil and superfine merino wool. At the time of its launch, Allbirds received acknowledgement from Time as producing “the world’s most comfortable shoes.” As of March 2020, the brand operates 22 retail stores worldwide. Allbirds entered the China market in April 2019 by opening four physical stores—in Beijing, Chengdu, Guangzhou and Shanghai—and launching online flagship stores on Tmall and JD.com.  

Brand Spotlight

Allbirds endeavors to create shoes based on three key concepts: simplicity, comfort and sustainability. With “Mother Nature” cited as Allbirds’ “muse” on the brand’s website, sustainability has played a critical role in its entry into international markets, as environmental concerns transcend national borders. Alongside the brand’s sustainable principles, it claims to draw its competitive advantage from putting the customer at the center of the business, with its largely DTC (direct-to-consumer) sales strategy. Allbirds also cites keeping close tabs on customer feedback as an important part of its product design and development process. Singles’ Day: Building Brand Awareness  This year marked Allbirds second Singles’ Day. Compared to much of Allbirds’ existing Western consumer base, Chinese shoppers are less exposed to apparel brands featuring sustainability at the forefront of their messaging. At the beginning of 2020, the brand told media sources that its approach in China does not “back away from the sustainability messaging; we just play it a little different in China. We play an educational role.” Allbirds focuses on driving brand awareness and communicating its values to new customers. Singles’ Day represents a critical opportunity for the brand to connect with consumers. Speaking to CNBC alongside Alibaba’s President Michael Evans, Allbirds’ CEO and Cofounder Joey Zwillinger explained that the brand does not do promotions: “We offer an exclusive product that is in line with environmental ambitions,” he said. As such, to capitalize on Singles’ Day audiences and the appeal of limited-edition products, Allbirds launched a special edition of its running-shoe line on Tmall, featuring new fall colors. The brand promoted the limited range on social media platform WeChat as well as its Tmall store. Like every Allbirds product, the special-edition trainers come with a CO2e (carbon dioxide-equivalent emissions) label detailing the carbon cost of making each Allbirds product, before the company offsets the impact. The brand explains that the measurement of the product’s carbon footprint is designed to encourage consumers to be aware of their environmental impact and serve as a motivation for the brand to continually work on minimizing its environmental footprint. As a comparison, the Allbirds website explains, “A standard sneaker has a carbon footprint of 12.5-kilogram CO2e, and the average carbon footprint of all of our products is 7.6-kilogram CO2e.” The Singles’ Day opportunity to cement its brand presence and message of sustainabilityn China, without turning to discounts, appears to have been successful for Allbirds, with Zwillinger reporting “three times brand growth in the Singles’ Day period” as of November 11, 2020. [caption id="attachment_119373" align="aligncenter" width="700"] Allbirds promoted limited-edition trainer colors for Singles’ Day 2020
Source: Tmall [/caption]   Valuing Customer Feedback The Tmall platform suits customer-centric brands as it offers flexibility to control the brand experience and facilitates the collection of customer feedback and reviews and allows brands to make changes to their store accordingly. Allbirds identified demand from Chinese consumers visiting its Tmall store for images of its shoes paired with apparel outfits to get perspective on the whole look. In response, the brand overhauled its online layout to showcase full outfits styled with the different footwear lines. Close customer relationships and agile responses enabled Allbirds to refine its offerings according to local consumer demand. [caption id="attachment_119374" align="aligncenter" width="700"] Allbirds Tmall store before customer feedback (left) compared to the new storefront design based on consumer demand for full looks (right)
Source: Tmall [/caption]   Allbirds has also adapted to the spike in digital engagement amid the Covid-19 pandemic. The brand enables consumers to connect with its customer service agents via video chat to see a look modeled with different color options, as an alternative to visiting stores. Allbirds also leveraged its offline stores to fulfill online orders.