Key Takeaways

• The Rainbow Shops is a Brooklyn-based size-inclusive fashion retailer established in 1935, with over 1,000 locations across the United States, US Virgin Islands, and Puerto Rico.
• In September 2021, Rainbow Shops embarked on a data-centric strategy for its omnichannel commerce, undertaken to support a 900% growth.
• According to David Cost, VP for Digital and Ecommerce at Rainbow Shops, Rainbow Shops “adopted SoundCommerce to solve a specific data unification problem during our e-commerce replatforming. In the process, SoundCommerce became a strategic and company-wide data solution for Rainbow. We now have a cloud data warehouse in place for the long term, aligning our work with our most important success metrics and KPIs.”
• According to ZoomInfo, the top competitors of Rainbow Shops include Cotton On Group, Papaya Clothing, Cato Fashions, and Sussan Corporation.

Introduction

I- Overview of Rainbow Shops

• The Rainbow Shops is a Brooklyn-based size-inclusive fashion retailer established in 1935. Presently, it has over 1,000 locations across the United States, US Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, and its online RainbowShops.com platform, with $1 Billion in revenue.
• According to Bloomberg, Rainbow owns and operates a chain of apparel stores, retailing "dresses, tops, sweaters, blazers, jackets and coat, jeans, skirts, pants, leggings, shorts, lingerie, shoes, hosiery, jewelry, and accessories."
• According to Zippia, Rainbow Shops make about $140 million annually.

• Rainbow Shops promises "affordable Clothing, Shoes, and Accessories for Women, Juniors, Plus Sizes and Kids; 'Fashion at prices you'll love.™'
• The mission statement of Rainbow Shops; "As the Leading Retailer in the markets we serve, we respect and value people, product, and performance to ensure that the customer is our main focus."

 

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II- Digital Transformation Strategy

• In September 2021, Rainbow Shops embarked on a data-centric strategy for its omnichannel commerce, undertaken to support a 900% growth to witness a 44% compounded annual growth rate over six years.
• According to David Cost, VP for Digital and Ecommerce at Rainbow Shops, Rainbow Shops “adopted SoundCommerce to solve a specific data unification problem during our e-commerce replatforming. In the process, SoundCommerce became a strategic and company-wide data solution for Rainbow. We now have a cloud data warehouse in place for the long term, aligning our work with our most important success metrics and KPIs.”
• According to the publication by Yahoo Finance, this digital strategy was adopted to "unify and activate data across e-commerce storefront platforms, balance profitability and customer lifetime value with every action, and take control of turnkey modern cloud data warehouse."
• In November 2020, PR Newswire reported that the company adopted the Kustomer CRM platform to support its efficient and seamless customer experience efforts. Three weeks into the implementation of the strategy, Rainbow Shops witnessed a 60% Abandon Rate reduction, enhanced agent satisfaction, and a modernized customer experience.
• Following this digital intervention, Michael Hoffman, Director of E-Commerce & Customer Service at Rainbow Shops opined that "since adopting Kustomer at the end of October, I feel we are well on our way to providing our customers with the real-time, flexible, and informed customer service they expect during one of the most critical times for retail success. While deploying a new technology so close to the holiday shopping season was risky, it could not have gone faster or smoother and it's already paying off in a big way, keeping both our customers and our customer service agents highly satisfied."
• In 2017, Rainbow Shops deployed a mobile app to leverage deeper connections with its customers, providing an at-home retail experience for customers.
• According to David Cost, VP for Digital and Ecommerce at Rainbow Shops, "launching a mobile app allows Rainbow Shops an opportunity to connect with customers on a deeper level. When a customer installs our app they are raising their commitment to our brand, making it easier for our customers to ‘Shop, Wear and Share’ their #RainbowStyle."

 

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• Existing marketing tech stack: According to G2 Stack cited by Crunchbase, Rainbow Shops uses 22 technology products and services including HTML5, Google Analytics, and jQuery. Additionally, the company deploys over 34 technologies for its website, including "Viewport Meta, IPhone/Mobile Compatible, and Apple Mobile Web Clips Icon."

• According to Invesp, an online conversion specialist for e-commerce platforms, the key challenges associated with the Rainbow brand include "complex online and offline campaigns with long sales cycles, difficulties in improving conversion rates for campaigns across different verticals," and non-existent marketing and development teams constituted to run conversion projects.
• Additionally, in 2020, Kustomer cited that the challenges of Rainbow Shops border on "difficulties obtaining access to customer insights, trapped in siloed data stores, and disjointed systems." These challenges emanate from the Rainbow Shops' decision to adopt Kustomer's CRM platform as discussed above.
• As a result, Rainbow hired Invesp after launching its e-commerce platform in 2012 to find expert solutions. The solutions among others included a "comprehensive conversion audit to identify and prioritize conversion issues, the conduct of a comprehensive data analysis and analytics configuration to track users’ activity on the site, design, develop and run AB experiments on the site, and also track and report results on weekly basis to the team."
• Following these interventions, Invesp delivered a 28% increment in conversion rates within the first six months.

III- Major competitors of Rainbow Shops

• According to ZoomInfo, the top competitors of Rainbow Shops include Cotton On Group, Papaya Clothing, Cato Fashions, and Sussan Corporation.
• Cotton On Group: https://cottonongroup.com.au/. Founded in 1991, this global retail company "provides different brands of clothes and accessories for children, teens, and adults." The company has about 22,000 employees and $4 Billion in revenue.
• Papaya Clothing: https://www.papayaclothing.com/. Papaya Clothing, an apparel retail store, is a subsidiary of Cornerstone Apparel, Inc. The company has over 7,500 employees and $1 Billion in revenue.
• Cato Fashions: https://www.catofashions.com/. Cato is a Charlotte, NC-based retailer of women's fashions and accessories. Cato Fashions has 10,350 employees and $829 Million in revenue.
• Sussan Corporation: https://www.sussan.com.au/. Sussan was established in 1939 and headquartered in Cremorne, Australia. It is a retail company that sells women's fashion in maternity, sleepwear, accessories, and clothing. Susan has about 3,690 employees and $899 Million in revenue.

• In May 2022, SimilarWeb published the top ten (10) competitors for Rainbow Shops' rainbowshops.com, the company's main e-commerce platform. Among the top e-commerce competitors are ashleystewart.com (100%), torrid.com (96%), charlotterusse.com (92%), forever21.com (91%), rainbowsandals.com (90%), and avenue.com (87%).
• The selection of these competitor platforms is ranked according to their percentage similarity scores with Rainbow Shops's site. Ranked from the highest similarity score to the lowest, ashleystewart.com for instance has a 100% similarity score with Rainbow Shops' site.
• These ranking comparisons are calculated based on the sites' traffic and engagement by geography, audience demographics, and marketing distribution channels' overviews. For instance, ashleystewart.com has 70.93% and 29.07% for male and female audiences respectively, compared to Rainbow's 74.03% and 25.97% gender distribution.

 

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• Rainbow Shops hired Brand Burp to commit to a 90% lead generation to its website, increase brand value, and achieve a 120% user engagement and retention, among others.
• The result revealed that the company achieved 6.1 Million followers each on Facebook and YouTube, 212k followers on Twitter, and 31.4k followers on Instagram.

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