Today,
the company has over 120 different designs for men’s shorts and swim wear, including
designs known as the Pina Quadlatas and the ‘MERICAs, “That kind of web copy,
and the company’s unabashedly fratty branding, has earned Chubbies legions of
loyal customers, including millions of Facebook fans. Even former President
George W. Bush owns a pair,” (Colao, 2014).
The retro and fraternity
inspired men’s shorts is also not the only product the company has in stock today.
With a steady growth curve, Chubbies now has created a line for women’s shorts and
swim wear as well as men’s shirts, windbreakers and sweatshirt tops. The
ecommerce retailer also opened their first physical retail store earlier last
year in San Francisco. The manifesto for the brand found on the company’s
website, which can offer an important insight into the customer appeal, still
enforces however that the brand image and company purpose remains built around
the shorts merchandise:
To
us, pants are a necessary evil - built for the work week because your boss just
doesn't get it. You see a Chubster in pants or cargo shorts and he looks like a
fish out of water; a radical fish that's probably krumping on the beach, but
nonetheless OUT OF WATER. But this exact passion for shorts is why Chubbies are
so righteous. We don't do pants. We don't do cargos. We don't do capris. We do
shorts and only shorts. We have put painstaking effort into these shorts. We
have engineered them for the toughest shorts critics - ourselves. (“The
Manifesto,” n.d.)
Even
with a legion of followings on social media and what is known as a growing “Chubbies’ Community,” the Chubbies brand still
faces stiff competition with large scale brick-and-mortar retailers like Gap
and the Vineyard Vines brand. However, it is the way the brand has managed
their presence online and their customer tracking that has largely made this
startup stand out from the very beginning. Chubbies put into practice a popular
online sale promotion that is hosted annually in July and can be compared to, “a
summertime version of Cyber Monday,” (Kosoff, 2015). With this annual online
promotion known as the "Fourth of Julyber Monday,” the company expects to
produce over $1 million in sales on this day alone. The website today has a
video tutorial where customers can view information on the upcoming 4th
of July sale.
The
Chubbies brand also has a unique customer loyalty program that was recently
automated last year to reward customers with gifts for first time purchases.
Since automating their program, revenue from repeat purchases has increased
70%, “Chubbies, which doesn’t disclose its revenue and declined to give order
volume numbers, has used the automated system to cycle through 200 gifts aimed
at rewarding customers’ first and subsequent purchases, up from the two gift
options it offered for the past four years,” (Guy, 2016). Chubbies worked with ecommerce
design firm Rocket Code to set up the program that runs on Stich Labs software
to continue putting gifts and notes into customers’ orders. The programming
interface automatically tracks who receives the gifts, “In Chubbies’ case, the
API connects customer orders that come in through Chubbies’ e-commerce
platform, Shopify, to the retailer’s third-party logistics provider. The API connects
multiple pieces of software. It lets us test new gifts, change gifts when we
want, add a certain gift in a customer’s first order, a different gift in the
second order and keep updating the gifts,” (Guy, 2016).
The
Chubbies brand also has a unique customer loyalty program that was recently
automated last year to reward customers with gifts for first time purchases.
Since automating their program, revenue from repeat purchases has increased
70%, “Chubbies, which doesn’t disclose its revenue and declined to give order
volume numbers, has used the automated system to cycle through 200 gifts aimed
at rewarding customers’ first and subsequent purchases, up from the two gift
options it offered for the past four years,” (Guy, 2016). Chubbies worked with ecommerce
design firm Rocket Code to set up the program that runs on Stich Labs software
to continue putting gifts and notes into customers’ orders. The programming
interface automatically tracks who receives the gifts, “In Chubbies’ case, the
API connects customer orders that come in through Chubbies’ e-commerce
platform, Shopify, to the retailer’s third-party logistics provider. The API connects
multiple pieces of software. It lets us test new gifts, change gifts when we
want, add a certain gift in a customer’s first order, a different gift in the
second order and keep updating the gifts,” (Guy, 2016).
Another
portion of the online site that is a stand out for customers would be the
interactive help desk and facts about the shopping experience. When entering
the help desk the customer is presented with an easy to use search bar and also
readily available portals for help and information such as facts on Julyber
Monday, Shipping, Placing Orders, and even a quite random yet brand relatable
section on Dad Jokes.
Although the brand has
proven customer engagement, a large social media following, a high regard for
catering to customers through their ecommerce purchasing platform and a new age
software program in place to track customer orders and activity, their SEO
efforts may be lacking. When performing a search on the key phrase “men’s
shorts” in Google, the Chubbies brand did not even make the first four pages of
the Google search. The search phrase of “men’s swim shorts,” also did not
produce results on Google. A known competitor however, Vineyard Vines, did
populate on this search in the second page of Google results. Vineyard Vines is
a well-known brand and after finding it listed on the second page, I am led to
believe that popular brands such as Vineyard Vines and now Chubbies, relies
more heavily on customer awareness through social media efforts and word of
mouth popularity.
Upon further research into the Chubbies brands SEO and analytical
efforts, a report on their Alexa traffic ranking (a combined measure of unique visitors
and page views) shows their US ranking to be 13,304. For a comparison, Alexa
traffic ranks Gap at 147. An SEO audit of the company shows that the Text/HTML
ratio is at 12% which is relatively low. A total of 59 different links were
found on the site, 50 of them being internal and linking to contact
information, the cart etc., while the external links mainly linked to social
media sites. Chubbies also does not use meta keywords, yet this can be viewed
as a positive effort being that meta keywords no longer help SEO efforts and
are considered by most a black hat practice,“…Meta tags, for instance, have a
negligible SEO value and don’t influence a company’s position in search engine
results,” (“Reasons Why You Should Stop Using Keywords Meta Tag,” 2014).
Overall Chubbies has proven to be a well-known and highly
engaged brand with its customers. It is unclear at this point in their young brand
life whether they need to focus more on SEO efforts, as they already have such
a uniquely successful platform and strong following for a 5-year-old company. Yet
for the potential customers who do not know of the brand, this is where SEO
practices can become imperative. In my opinion relying on popularity methods
and social sharing is simply not enough. Chubbies needs to tie in more on site text
and product keywords in order to better optimize visitor searches. At the very
least the key phrase of “men’s shorts” should yield a result for Chubbies
within the first two pages of a Google search. Chubbies is tracking their
customer orders and monitoring their revenue and retention rates, yet where are
they promoting their brand online other than through their own channels? An
analytical tool I would therefore recommend for the company in the future would
be ChartBeat, a real time solution that monitors traffic, where it is coming
from and when and where it is leaving from. With this information, Chubbies can
further make an informed decision on what keywords would be best used for SEO
and possibly venture into using Google AdWords or additional advertising
methods depending on where the traffic is entering the website from.
References:
Ali, F. (2016, June 15)
How Chubbies uses social media to build its brand. Internet Retailer (Online)
Retrieved from: https://www.internetretailer.com/2016/06/14/how-chubbies-uses-social-media-build-its-brand
Colao, J. (2014, May 6)
Meet The Stanford Bros Conquering Men's Shorts: Inside The Frat-Empire Of
Chubbies. Forbes (Online) Retrieved from: http://www.forbes.com/sites/jjcolao/2014/05/06/meet-the-stanford-bros-conquering-mens-shorts-inside-the-frat-empire-of-chubbies/#179b5cc0727a
Guy, S. (2016, May 17) Men’s
casualwear e-retailer Chubbies boosts its loyalty game. Internet Retailer
(Online) Retrieved from: https://www.internetretailer.com/2016/05/16/mens-casualwear-e-retailer-chubbies-boosts-its-loyalty-game
Kosoff, M. (2015, June
20) This startup is getting frat guys across America to wear short shorts — and
they love it. Business Insider (Online) Retrieved from: http://www.businessinsider.com/chubbies-founders-on-why-they-started-a-mens-short-shorts-company-2015-6
N.A. (n.d.) The
Manifesto. Chubbies (Online) Retrieved from: https://www.chubbiesshorts.com/pages/manifesto
N.A. (2014, January 5) Reasons
Why You Should Stop Using Keywords Meta Tag. Cohlab (Online) Retrieved from: http://cohlab.com/blog/stop-using-keywords-meta-tag.html
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