David Cost

Rainbow is the billion dollar retailer with 1100+ stores that many people don’t know. The current owners bought the business in the early 1980’s when it was a small 20 store chain. They have grown it to its current size without spending any money on marketing. Rainbow has a strong presence in the urban communities it serves. I was hired to accomplish two things. First, grow an existing ecommerce business from less than 1% of sales to 7-10% of sales. Second, build a marketing capability to introduce and extend Rainbow beyond its brick and mortar footprint. Rainbow has no intention to open stores in suburban malls but we would like to compete for those customers digitally.

Ecommerce

• P&L responsibility for ecommerce business
• Report to owners
• Grew the ecommerce business over 70% in the first year
• Led a redesign of the Rainbow website that resulted in a 30% increase in conversion rate
• Launched native apps for iOS and Android
• Added the capability to ship internationally utilizing Borderfree
• Expanded product assortment to include lingerie, kids and school uniforms
• Managed startup of new warehouse and order fulfillment operation

Digital Marketing

• Email and SMS

– Doubled the size of our email list in the first year

– Developed a program to collect mobile numbers and email addresses from brick and mortar customers via SMS

• Social Media

– Improved customer service via social on all platforms by utilizing new in-house customer service group

– Run weekly contest supported by in-store signage to incentivize customers to submit photos of themselves #RainbowStyle

– Feature User Generated Content (UGC) on website by utilizing technology from Pixlee

– Publish video from fashion photo shoots on SnapChat