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It can get boring writing about how challenging the fashion landscape is at the moment — people aren’t buying, governments aren’t helping, and a lack of long-term thinking has led to a series of natural disasters that impede the already suffering supply chains. What is a joy in this job, however, is getting to speak to entrepreneurs about the business strategies they invent in response to these challenges.
Like Rains co-founder Daniel Brix Hesselager, who recently took on the CEO role at his own company, in order to implement a complete corporate overhaul in just six months. The first expression of this transformation is evident in the new Rains store at Leidsestraat 15 in Amsterdam, which is being celebrated today. I got on a Zoom call with Hesselager and Rains brand marketing director Joshua Bredehoeft to talk about the rather demanding journey they are on.
Vogue: Lots of change at Rains. Tell me about the decision to step into the role of CEO, Daniel.
Daniel: Philip Lotko, Kenneth Davids and I founded Rains in 2012. We brought on Jan Stig Andersen as the first external CEO in 2017 and Steen Borgholm was CEO from 2023 until recently. But I’ve also always been very close to the business development side from the very beginning. So this isn’t necessarily about me stepping in, it’s about the transformation that we are implementing at Rains right now, which has retail expansion at the centre. It’s rather comprehensive, and it’s being implemented in such speed that only an owner can take full responsibility for.
Vogue: What is the transformation?
Daniel: We are turning the company towards a 360-degree retail model. It covers everything from assortment, supply chain, logistics, marketing, store footprint, retail design… It’s across more or less all brand touchpoints. Obviously, the marketplace now is unpredictable and anything can happen — from Covid to a ship blocking global trade in the Suez Canal. And all these external factors affect the business, our customers and in the end, our own progress.
We needed to take control, and we decided to do it by way of a model in which we can control retail. And to control retail, we need to offer a concept and a universe that is relevant to a broader audience throughout the year. What we have basically done is we’ve gone from two main seasons to four seasons and 12 deliveries. We believe that monthly drops can spark curiosity in the consumer to further explore the brand. In connection to that, we have expanded the product range from being mainly outerwear and bags to a full lifetime concept that includes ready-to-wear, home decor, footwear, skiwear and activewear.
So this is not only a matter of building retail as the main revenue stream, it’s also about creating a universe for customers to buy further into the brand. The limitations of how we have done things previously has always been that customers buy two, three, four, five items. They love Rains, but they cannot go deeper because how many backpacks do you need? How many rain jackets?
Vogue: The last time we spoke about your business was in January, and I also saw you at your show in March. You were still operating within your old structure then. So all this change has taken place in six months?
Daniel: Yes, the shift from concept to presentation and experience has been implemented in less than half a year. And it could only happen with me making decisions that were not only based on data and historical development, but based on our gut feeling about where we want to go.
Vogue: You are turning this around fast, but how long have you been thinking about it?
Daniel: Quite some time. I also had those conversations with the previous CEO, and we did implement a strategy focused on a retail mindset. But the reality is that creating a retail mindset would take a very drastic change throughout the company. And those decisions and strategic initiatives need to be taken by those who take the full responsibility. So I had to do it myself.
Vogue: What is a retail mindset?
Daniel: A retail mindset is where you change from considering what your wholesalers need, to what the consumer is requiring. It’s a very different viewpoint. So you build up the creative processes and your marketing strategy towards the consumer rather than the traditional wholesale seasonal structure. Obviously, different brands are born from different perspectives. Some are born from consumer demand, some from a marketplace. We were conceived as a brand for wholesalers — that’s how our structures have been built and how we’ve been progressing until now.
Vogue: Does that mean you’re pulling away from wholesale, or are you just adding to your DTC?
Daniel: No, that’s not the purpose. We are obviously going to expand in retail, but we also expect that this mindset and this change of our concept will benefit our wholesalers significantly. Over time, we have consolidated our activities more around key accounts because we wanted to service them better. We want to work on specially made units in collaboration with our wholesale partners, which allows us to offer different assortments and have a more sufficient brand presence.
We still consider these to be very important for the future. So we’re going to stick to the model we have and the share we have of 50 per cent owned channels and 50 per cent external. We just need everything to grow alongside; and to do so, we are offering an assortment and a brand and a universe and a structure that will benefit everybody.
Vogue: So you’re doing a lot more. How are you making that happen structurally?
Daniel: To start with, we doubled our design and product development teams instantly — we invested tremendously into the organisation. Secondly, we have restructured the whole supply chain to support 12 drops instead of two main deliveries, which is rather complicated as we have quite an integrated and vertical setup. That means we own the entire value chain. Because we have a joint venture in China with Rains-exclusive factories and global ownership of our stores, we can manage the whole process from product creation to consumer experience. This change allowed us to upskill and update our processes to welcome a broader assortment and enhance delivery accuracy.
On top of that, we’re also looking at our retail presence. The stores are currently too small. They need to be redesigned to showcase a full lifestyle experience, which means we will need to roll out a new concept across all of our stores. We also need to relocate quite a significant amount of them, and every time we’re expanding, the footprint will be more significant. So we soft opened the first store within the new concept in Amsterdam last week. It’s a 140-square-metre footprint, with a completely new decor concept, covering all these new categories coming from rainwear, outerwear, accessories, bags, footwear and ready-to-wear.
Vogue: The actual launch is today. What’s that going to look like?
Joshua: We have a big community focus already, but especially going forward. We have different layers of how we approach that; but for these big openings, we really want to come with a splash. There will be 150-plus people joining us at the store, and it will be a total blowout celebrating the space, the community and this new version of Rains. But beyond the party, this is the first time we are celebrating a store more broadly. For instance, we just did a pop-up with De Bijenkorf, as well as a community bike ride. And alongside that, we did some out-of-home advertising, which has been a new investment for us. We’ve never done OOH for a local store opening before. So this is our take on a city takeover.
Vogue: Why are you starting with Amsterdam?
Daniel: It’s a matter of timing. Amsterdam was in a situation where they needed a stronger, broader presence. We’re also going to open new store formats in Stockholm and Hamburg before the end of this year.
Vogue: Can you tell me a little bit about the store design?
Daniel: We created it with a Stockholm-based agency called Stamuli, and the owner is actually of Italian background. He did our first store in Shanghai and our Madison Avenue store in New York. He’s brought in some warmth and a new perspective to our retail design. The Amsterdam store reflects both the cold Scandinavian minimalism in materials and expression, but also to a certain extent, it has that Southern European touch to it. I really like the contrast of these two things, which I believe is rather obvious in the store.
The store is divided into zones, considering the different categories. At the centre of it are these ceiling mounted LED screens, which will be our way of communicating different moods relating to the weather. It’s a very experienced-based store and the materials we used give a premium feel to a relatively democratic concept.
Vogue: How long until this new phase for Rains is completed?
Daniel: It will have been comprehensively introduced in the first half of next year — across our products, marketing and retail. So we are implementing it all at a high pace.
Vogue: That’s really ambitious, Daniel. How does it feel on a personal level?
Daniel: To a certain extent, it’s rather satisfying, but obviously it puts a huge pressure on everybody involved. We’ve taken some years to consolidate and build a strong foundation from a business perspective, so I believe that we have the strength to do it. Still, as I mentioned before, a lot of the decisions have been made based on what we believe to be right, rather than sales data. And that obviously comes with huge pressure on the decision-makers.
Vogue: It’s your house after all. Where does your co-founder Philip Lotko stand in all this?
Daniel: We are really aligned and Philip remains at the company in his role as co-founder and business developer, with a focus on outbound activities, either connected to marketing or brand development, and expansion into new markets. We built this brand together based on a relatively simple business model, but to progress, we needed to rethink. I think it’s very much a characteristic about our industry, the need to consider yourself all the time. I believe in this new vision and that we will see a totally different Rains on the other side. It will allow us the preconditions to grow, even though the market conditions are difficult.
Vogue: How do you make a team follow you on such a demanding journey?
Daniel: It’s a matter of having a shared dream and knowing that everybody is involved in shaping this new universe; that everybody is important. What we are doing is challenging, because the consequences cannot be predicted or planned, and you need to be able to handle them instantly — and you need to be good at navigating in a bit of chaos. To take quick decisions, but also to take everybody very seriously.
Joshua: Daniel has this ability to put something up in his brain and organise it in a way that not everyone can do. Whether he’s designing a product or an organisation, he’s able to map that out in his brain and then get it onto paper for people to understand. There is always a coherent plan that gets pushed forward. Clarity is not only informative, but it actually allows space for people to contribute and create together. Without that directional force, trying to do all this in six months would be insane. But when you have a clear direction, a six-month timeline is possible.
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