Jack DeFuria, Chief Digital Officer and Co-Founder of Parade, joins the show as he talks about founding Parade while in college with his co-founder, Cami Téllez, how Parade approaches their brand, and the pursuit of building America’s next great underwear company. 

What is Parade?

• Parade is a women’s underwear brand focused on ages 18-30.
• They were able to connect with potential customers in their target market very early on digitally using Facebook groups, sorority group chats, etc. and used other digital tech to promote their brand like setting up a Twitter bot that would reply to any tweet with the hashtag #botcottVS.
• Parade has always been ‘community-first’ in their product development strategy - by product being directly shaped by community feedback.

Gen Z: The Psychographic

• “I think that Gen Z is really more a psychographic than it is a demographic.” - Jack DeFuria
• Parade’s customers grew up not only on the internet, but on their phones. Their internet was much more spatial, intimate, and focused on self-expression.
• On eCommerce growing more spatial and intimate: “We see Instagram as what the shopping mall was to the previous generation.” - Jack DeFuria
• Parade, being inclusive, features sizes XS through 3XL in every single product and even has changes to the models shown on their website with any given size chosen.
• Sustainability and social good play a part in maintaining the Gen Z ‘psychographic’ as well: all packaging is compostable and biodegradable, and 1% of profits are donated to Planned Parenthood.
• Partners of Parade have included organizations that have similar ways of seeing the world: Feeding America, GLITS, The Loveland Foundation.

Investors and What Parade Has Learned

• Investors of Parade originally helped craft DTC 1.0: “Working with industry leaders and operators who have done it before has been extremely powerful for us. When we look at our vision for the category and where we see ourselves in the eCommerce landscape, where [our investors] brought categories online for the first time, we see our challenge as reimagining what a value brand looks like and distributing it through the internet.” - Jack DeFuria
• “One of the most important things [we’ve learned] is the value of authenticity and staying true to who you are, especially during periods of really fast growth.” - Jack DeFuria
• Hiring new employees and adding to their products during their first year of business and during a global pandemic, Parade has a singular mission to staying authentic and honest with their self-expression.

Links

Check out Parade’s website

Check out our Nine by Nine report, which features Parade

 

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