Kristen Schoenstein, eTail Producer, WBR: All right. As you continue your eTail Palm Springs experience today and tomorrow, I encourage you to think about how you can leverage everything eTail has to offer. Engage with our team, visit our newly revamped website, and take advantage of upcoming webinars and online resources that align with your specific interests and challenges. This is just the beginning. In the coming months, you’ll see these changes really come to life—more touch points, more targeted content, and more opportunities to connect with peers and experts who can help drive your business forward. Thank you for being a part of this exciting new chapter in eTail’s story. Together, we’re not just attending an event, we’re building a community that powers growth year-round. Let’s embrace this journey of continuous learning, innovation, and success. Now, I’d like to welcome to the stage our first fireside chat of the morning: Jill Manoff, Editor in Chief of Glossy and Modern Retail, interviewing Adam Goldenberg, Co-Founder & CEO of Fabletics.

Jill Manoff, Editor in Chief, Glossy & Modern Retail: Exciting times for eTail! I’m thrilled to chat today about how Fabletics is winning with technology in big ways. After hearing great things from Adam in our prep call all week, I’m inspired. Let’s dig in—your tech capabilities. You’ve invested big. Tell me about that investment.

Adam Goldenberg, Co-Founder & CEO, Fabletics: As a fashion company, I think we’ve made some of the biggest investments—over $400 million since inception—into our tech platform. Our technology team is the largest department in the company. We’ve built a completely unified platform that tracks everything about our customer across our e-commerce website, mobile app, POS applications in our 100 retail stores, CRM, even down to the warehouse management system for our fulfillment centers. It’s fully integrated with third-party technologies pushing new capabilities.

Jill Manoff: Would you say that’s your biggest differentiator? And how do you use it to your advantage?

Adam Goldenberg: First and foremost, we have to have product people love. But we combine that with a unique membership model and massive amounts of data allowing us to personalize everything about the customer experience. For example, we have three trillion data records on our customers—we track everything. When people join our site, we learn their size, geography, fashion tastes, then we track every image they see and product they look at to drive personalization. In our retail stores, if you’re a member, the associate can access all your online data. So when you’re in the dressing room, what’s recommended is based on your site wish list. We even keep track of what customers tried on so we can recommend those items online during later visits if they haven’t purchased yet. We also make sure to never show you items unavailable in your size. The entire site experience is tailored to what's actually available for you.

Jill Manoff: Wow, it’s the future—actually, it’s now. Very nice. How many of your shoppers are VIP members?

Adam Goldenberg: We have about three million active customers. Around 80 percent are VIP members, and they generate over 95 percent of our revenue. Even regular retail customers tend to convert into members after their first purchase.

Jill Manoff: You’re really catering to those members and personalizing their experience. Does that translate to marketing as well?

Adam Goldenberg: Yes. Traditionally, marketing was all about segmentation—dividing sales shoppers from regular price, activewear from casualwear fans. Now, it’s all about one-to-one personalization. We gather insights based on customer navigation and their declarations. For example, if someone never goes to the sales section, they get fewer sale-oriented communications and lower discounts, even on big sale weekends, compared to someone who always shops sales. We also notice women spending lots of time shopping the men's section, so marketing gets tailored accordingly. Members logging into our site get a unique experience driven by real-time, customer-specific data, thanks to our incredible data science team.

Jill Manoff: How does the non-VIP shopper’s experience compare?

Adam Goldenberg: It’s pretty similar. Non-VIPs also take our initial quiz and give us data, so we can retarget and personalize their experience. The main difference is frequency—VIPs visit us almost monthly, so we have more data. Regular shoppers come less often, so we have less information, but the personalization level is comparable.

Jill Manoff: One thing you said recently was that video is the future of e-commerce. Tell us more about what that means.

Adam Goldenberg: Absolutely. Seven years ago, Instagram was all static images; now it’s almost entirely video because it’s simply more engaging. E-commerce is still lagging—it looks much like it did a decade ago, focused on images and text descriptions, but nobody is reading those descriptions anymore. Customers mostly look at pictures and read reviews. Consumers now want small, organic, authentic, bite-sized videos. We believe e-commerce should follow suit: every product should have several short videos from real customers, ambassadors, or micro-influencers sharing what you need to know. We started incorporating that last year. This month alone, we had over 40 million video views, up 20 percent month-over-month—expecting to hit 100 million by year’s end. This means customers are spending more time learning about products and making better purchasing decisions. We think e-commerce will be predominantly video-focused in five years. Images will still be there, but video comes first, because people are busy and you learn much more in 30 seconds of video than from reading. We see significantly higher conversion rates when customers interact with these videos.

Jill Manoff: Incredible. How do you decide which videos to show?

Adam Goldenberg: That’s where the technology really shines—identifying which video best correlates to conversion rate and placing that first. Take our Don Pant for men: guys want to know whether to get the slim or regular fit. The first video demonstrates the options, helping them decide quickly.

Jill Manoff: Some of those videos must be created organically. How are you fueling that content machine?

Adam Goldenberg: We have about 5,500 micro-influencers who regularly receive product and share feedback, many of whom have also become video content creators. The hardest part is managing the volume—tens of thousands of videos. So we have a two-person team that categorizes, flags, and directs the best content for use in emails, product detail pages, or social media, as appropriate.

Jill Manoff: Let’s bounce to another topic. Fabletics is growing in the scrubs business—why did that make sense, given you’re known for activewear?

Adam Goldenberg: Partly personal—my wife’s pediatrician asked why we don’t make scrubs. I wondered how many customers were interested. Turns out, of our three million active users, over half a million wear scrubs daily—nurses, estheticians, childcare, food prep, lots of professions. Customers told us, “If you made scrubs, we’d buy them.” So we built a Facebook group with 5,000 scrub wearers who helped every step of the two-year product development journey. Fabrics, styles, and fits came directly from their feedback. Technology also let us identify which 500,000 customers showed specific interest, so we market scrubs only to those who want them.

Jill Manoff: What’s unique about scrub customers vs. your typical activewear shoppers?

Adam Goldenberg: Scrub buyers over-index on activewear purchases. For new scrub customers, 30 percent add activewear to their order, and within 90 days, over half buy Fabletics gear. Our membership program is unified—members get discounts on scrubs, activewear, and casualwear. By offering both categories, we have much higher lifetime value than competitors who only sell scrubs.

Jill Manoff: So is scrubs a growth tool for the activewear side, or do they work hand in hand?

Adam Goldenberg: They work together. Scrubs have been in business just over a year, already a $50 million annual line. New scrub buyers join the Fabletics family, often buying activewear next. Existing activewear customers pick up scrubs as well. That expands both acquisition and basket sizes.

Jill Manoff: Impressive. Do you share goals for that business?

Adam Goldenberg: We don't break out projections, but last year we did $850 million overall and plan to double the business in five years, quadrupling profits. A big part is technology—delivering what customers want at the right price and with smart discounts to maximize margins.

Jill Manoff: How is Fabletics using AI?

Adam Goldenberg: Credit to our COO Meera Bhatia—about two years ago, she started AI task forces in every department. The key is finding people willing to experiment with AI, so every group from accounting to supply chain, marketing, design, and merchandising has an AI task force. Budget is earmarked to support any good idea with executive sponsorship, bypassing red tape. We’ve had over 25 AI initiatives in practice, from writing and QAing code—now over half our code is written by AI—to a 200-page compliance manual for our factories. We make 30 million items a year, factories work worldwide, so AI is now a 24/7 helpdesk for compliance questions, speeding production and freeing staff for new product development.

Jill Manoff: What’s the most outside-the-box thing those AI groups have created?

Adam Goldenberg: The AI compliance helpdesk is one of the most unique. Another big win is using AI to analyze thousands of product reviews and summarize feedback for our designers within a week of launch. Products that score below 90% recommendation and 80% true-to-size get a redesign or are discontinued. This predictive feedback plus consistent fit dropped our return rate to 7% (industry average is 15–20%).

Jill Manoff: Sizing technology is another hot topic at this conference. Is your approach different?

Adam Goldenberg: For brands selling many third-party goods, sizing tech is key since every brand fits differently. For our own brand, we focus on old-school wear testing and actual data. Every product has a license plate identifier, allowing us to monitor return rates by factory. If one factory’s returns are higher, we add more QA. That keeps manufacturers accountable because every item has a specific scorecard.

Jill Manoff: What’s next for Fabletics—besides video and growth goals?

Adam Goldenberg: We love retail. We just crossed 100 stores—101, actually—and will open 20–25 more per year. Omnichannel is huge: omni shoppers are 3.7 times more valuable to us. We open stores where VIPs are concentrated, typically top-grade malls.

Jill Manoff: I realize we’re both from St. Louis. Is it a key market for your fleet?

Adam Goldenberg: We do have two stores in St. Louis.

Jill Manoff: You should. Oh my gosh. Let’s give Adam a hand. This was lovely. Thanks so much.