X/Y Retail is helping brands scale with a platform approach to technology.
Suzanne Jeffers, founder and CEO of X/Y Retail, founded the company when she realized that retailers, and especially luxury retailers, were experiencing a post-pandemic turnaround and a lack of innovation. The e-commerce side.
X/Y Retail is an omnichannel platform that helps luxury retail brands manage everything from in-store payments, online orders and returns, in-store customer experiences and mobile customers.
X/Y Retail recently raised new funding and is already driving great value – for example, luxury brand ISAIA has reduced turnaround times from three minutes to one second and improved online order fulfillment speeds by 300 percent.
“I first moved to Silicon Valley from India, as a child, on my own,” Jeffers X/Y Retail Executive. “I love all things retail. I also got hired by another startup. I started a startup and I’m running it, and then I started my own company.”
“It’s a lot of consulting with Fortune 500 companies,” Jeffers added. “I’ve spent a lot of time and money trying to understand retail technology. Big hospitality people all have the same problem. You can throw money at the problem, but if I’m in the store, I’m dealing with five different systems.
“In terms of cloud economics, they needed a platform like AWS, but they couldn’t afford it,” Jeffers said. “I need a Ferrari, but I can’t afford a Ferrari. The Covid-19 pandemic has allowed us to connect exactly the two sides, supply and demand. Covid-19 has enabled our growth online.
For most brands and businesses, customers didn’t return to the store immediately, Jeffers said. Employees have the right to access the information and this enhances the customer experience. However, access to customer data is built into the store.
“Retail today is not what it used to be,” Jeffers said. “A line, not a straight line. I want to buy online and pick up in store, buy online and exchange in another store. You have to find the right platform from the ground up.
Susan Jeffers
A self-described “fashion lover and fashionista,” Jeffers says, “I want a cloud-based system, I don’t want to end up in one state.” This is an eye opener. It’s hard to explain how far behind they are in general.
“Most brands are between $6 billion and $7 billion in revenue,” Jeffers said. “Even Gucci is a $10 billion company. They want to move quickly. Many of the audiences who are coming to see these brands, left before they were born. That’s the challenge many of these brands face.”
Now, X/Y Retail has 30 clients, including “a well-known Italian luxury brand and others. “What we’re taking now is the customer segment, we’re talking about women,” Jeffers said. “ISAIA is a menswear brand, in the same league as Cuccinelli, a $4,000 suit. We brought them to the US market.
“ISAIA couldn’t find anything to fit in his luxurious space. We didn’t know much about the customer. They manage their entire BTB system. They have about 25 stores and X/Y, which says a lot about a new company.
Jeffers said she built X/Y Retail from the ground up. “I wouldn’t say Shopify is the same model,” she added. “If you want to do something, you bring another plugin or another window. If I’m a big brand, what are the options? Everything else is building on top of them.”
“We came in and created this concept,” Jeffers added. “Otherwise, they are. [brands] They are running their back office system from their front office system. We created such a layer in between that communicates the back office and the front office. It’s not like lust, but it’s what these brands want. I am currently sitting in India.
She said she did a lot of babysitting, worked at a spa and taught English as a second language when she moved to Silicon Valley on her own. Jeffers, 40, said: “I had a very difficult time dealing with some personal issues.” “I originally came from Bombay. I didn’t have a huge culture shock. I ran out of money and didn’t want to leave Silicon Valley.
“It could be a huge industry,” Jeffers added. I want to make sure I can be that role model. I am not an engineer. I want to do something for the world. I am very lucky to have a good partner. I had VCs. If we can focus on what we want as women and support each other, we can give young women a chance. I can do what I can do with my company. The head of the Italian office is a 26-year-old girl. We try to give them a chance.”
The company is 3 and a half years old and Jeffers is doing something unheard of in the industry, she created a B2B company. “It’s a platform and that’s why we’ve been able to innovate,” she said. “I want to be a technology partner where they are. I want to talk about this. Brands are not used to spending on technology. 70% of their business is from Neiman and Saks,” said Jeffer.
“The net result of that is you have to make sure your customers are getting smarter,” Jeffers added. “They’re not used to sharing data with brands. They are starting to realize that they are becoming more of a real estate play than a retailer. People go straight to Instagram. Consumers go directly to brands.
“There is a shift in the market,” Jeffers said. “They are going to take a page. [Amazon
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