red clay
case study
DILLARD’S SELLS OUT 5x FASTER WITH RED CLAY THE CHALLENGE
Since its founding in 1939, Dillard’s department store has been known for its fine clothing and homewares,
particularly among women ages 35 and older. In recent years, however, Dillard’s has successfully attracted 20something Millennial women by expanding their fashion offerings to include younger, hipper clothing
collections. Betsy Parkinson, a creative director at
Dillards, saw this influx of younger shoppers
as a huge opportunity for growth across the
store. Millennial women regularly returned to
Dillard’s each season to buy new clothing,
but barely knew the store had a home
department. The only time these women
visited homewares was to set up their
wedding registries. Drawing these young
women across the store, and keeping them
interested beyond big, special occasions,
could be a huge boon for the company on
the whole. Parkinson wanted to test her hypothesis by
launching a more modern, spring tabletop
collection on the Dillard’s private label
targeting Millennial women. The problem
was, she couldn’t afford to divert her existing
in-house design staff away from reliably
profitable, classic tablewares in order to
develop a small, experimental collection.
Her usual vendors were great at designing
for Dillard’s traditional customers, but didn’t
know Millennials well enough to take on this task. And she definitely didn’t have the time or budget to
source and hire freelance designers on her own. THE SOLUTION
On the suggestion of the company Vice President Bill Dillard III, Parkinson decided to create her new product
line on the Red Clay platform. Since Dillard’s hadn’t created a homewares line for 20-something women before,
she couldn’t be certain what would resonate with this audience; she hoped to receive dozen-or-so initial
concepts which she could use for a social media and email voting campaign, empowering younger Dillard’s
shoppers to weigh in on the new collection. And although she usually shied away from working with
freelancers due to the management involved, she felt confident that the platform could keep her project
streamlined and on-time.
Within 10 days, Parkinson received over 150 new design concepts from 60 designers around the world. The
platform made it easy to browse through concepts, and the quality of the designs made it hard to pick just a
dozen designs. She eventually chose 28 contenders for her social media and email voting campaign. www.redclaydesign.com
THE RESULTS
Votes poured in over the 2-week voting period. Nearly 5,000 Dillard’s guests weighed in, ultimately selecting 2
collections comprised of 12 exclusive SKUs — twice as many collections and SKUs as Parkinson expected to
buy when she started the project. Red Clay also saved Parkinson an enormous amount of time; managing the
project only required a few hours, not a few weeks. Overall, the full design process — including her voting
campaign — only took less than 2 months. Being able to share a large selection of beautiful, fresh designs with the next generation of Dillard’s shoppers
was a great way to increase engagement. “Tapping into Red Clay’s community of designers enables our guests
around the country to be the first to co-create those fresh and bold designs,” said Parkinson. It also proved to
be a brilliant business decision. The designs were so popular that they sold out 5 times faster than the store’s
other collections. Parkinson went on to run two additional homewares projects on Red Clay that year, creating products targeting
Millennials. She spent less time and money developing these products than she would with other freelancers,
and continued seeing high sell-through rates when they went to market.
www.redclaydesign.com