Zoom Cocktail Hour with Chris Griffin, CEO of LRG Online

Retail Insider, in partnership with Novomind, held its latest ‘Zoom Cocktail Hour’ with Chris Griffin, CEO of LRG Online, who detailed how he is building out Secret Sales as the largest discount-only, branded product site in the world.

Since buying the Secret Sales business he has repositioned it away from a flash sales site to being a regular online marketplace with the focus on brands selling lines off-price. Since launching in March, 200 brands and retailers have been attracted to the site, with the offering growing from an initial 8,000 SKUs to a current 300,000. This is forecast to grow to 500,000 by the start of Q2.

One of the early clients was Superdry, which Chris knows very well because in the early 2000s he sold his business 888 Clothing to the company after it became a meaningful force in selling Superdry products online. It was while at Superdry that he developed Anatwine.

The tech solution provided a full e-commerce capability to 65 of the top 100 global brands in fashion, apparel and sportswear, delivering them treble-figure like-for-like incremental sales. He sold the business to Zalando in late 2017.

Watch some of Chris’ insights here.

Senior executives from the likes of JML, Carnival, Running Bear, Foxtons, Rank Group and Pure Electric heard how Chris is working hard at attracting more brands to Secret Sales – with the target being lower-middle to top-end – as it not only enables them to sell their off-price goods but is also a proven route to attracting new customers to their full-price ranges.

He also told the senior retail executives on the Zoom call how the plan is to launch six international sites this year and to grow the beauty offering. Another interesting area is the market for recycled luxury items, with a small number of accessories currently being listed on the Secret Sales platform.

Although the opening of physical shops, to showcase certain brands, had been an original consideration Chris confirms that this is absolutely not in the plans anymore and Secret Sales will remain online-only.

Retail Insider would very much like to thank Chris Griffin for sharing his experiences and insights and also to Novomind for its much valued support of this latest series of Retail Insider Zoom Cocktail Hours.

For details of the next two Cocktail Hours events please click here.

Glynn Davis, editor, Retail Insider