X/Y Retail’s Susan Jeffers Helps Brands Innovate On The Tech Front

Susan Jeffers, founder and CEO of X/Y Retail, founded the company when she realized that retailers, and particularly luxury retailers, were struggling to manage the post-pandemic shift back to in-store as well as facing a lack of innovation on the e-commerce side.

X/Y Retail is an omnichannel platform that helps luxury retail brands manage everything from in-store payments, to online orders and returns, in-store customer experiences and mobile clientelling.

X/Y Retail recently raised a new funding round and is already driving enormous value – for instance luxury brand ISAIA was able to reduce return times from three minutes to less than a second and improve online order fulfillment speeds by 300 percent.

“I originally from India moved to Silicon Valley, as a kid, by myself,” said Jeffers X/Y Retail CEO. “I love everything retail. I also got hired by another startup. I got the startup up and running, and then started my own company.

“It’s a lot of consulting with Fortune 500 companies,” Jeffers added. “I invested a lot of my time and money into understanding the technology of retail. The big hospitality guys all have this same problem. They can throw money at the problem, but if I’m in the store, I’m dealing with five different systems.

“Given the cloud economics they needed a platform like an AWS, but they couldn’t afford it,” Jeffers said. “I need a Ferrari but I can’t afford a Ferrari. The Covid-19 pandemic actually allowed us to connect the two sides, supply and demand. Covid-19 activated our growth online.

Jeffers said that for most brands and businesses, customers didn’t immediately come back to the stores. Employees have access to the data and that elevates the customer experience. But, the access to customer data, was built for in-store.

“Retail today is not what it used to be,” Jeffers said. “It’s linear, not a straight line. I want to buy online and pick up in store, buy online and exchange in another store. You have to have the right platform from the ground up.”

Calling herself a “fashion lover and fashionista,” Jeffers said, “I want a cloud-based system, I don’t want to end up in a situation. This is an eye opener. In general it’s very hard to explain to them how far behind they are.”

“Most brands are $6 billion to $7 billion in revenue,” Jeffers said. “Even Gucci is a $10 billion company. They want to move quickly. A lot of the viewers that are coming to view these brands, came out before they were born. That’s the challenge a lot of these brands are having.”

Now, X/Y Retail has 30 customers, including “a very well-known Italian luxury brand, and , among others. “Now, we’re taking about clientelling, we’re talking about women,” Jeffers said. “ISAIA is a men’s wear brand, in the same league as Cuccinnelli, $4,000 suits. We essentially brought them into the U.S. market.

“ISAIA couldn’t find anything that fit into the luxury space. We didn’t know much about the customer. They manage their entire BTB system. They have about 25 stores and X/Y, which is a lot to say about an emerging company.”

Now, X/Y Retail has 30 customers, including ISAIA and other well-known luxury brands.

Jeffers said she built X/Y Retail from the ground up. “I wouldn’t say Shopify is a similar model,” she added. “If you want to do something, do you bring in another plug-in or bring in another window. What are the options if I’m a big brand? Everybody else is building on top of them.

“We came in and created this concept,” Jeffers added. “Otherwise, they’re [brands] are directing their back office systems with their front office systems. We created this sort of in-between layer that addresses back office and front office. It’s not as sexy, but it’s what these brands are looking for. I’m sitting in India right now.”

Jeffers said she did a lot of babysitting, worked in spas and taught English as a second language, when she moved to Silicon Valley on her own. “I did go through a very rough time when I had some personal issues,” said Jeffers, who is 40 years old. “I’m originally came from Bombay. I didn’t have a big culture shock. I ran out of money and I didn’t want to leave Silicon Valley.

“It can be a great great industry,” Jeffers added. “I want to make sure I can be that role model. I’m not an engineer. I want to do something for the world. I’m very fortunate that I have a good partner. I’ve had VCs. If as women we can focus on what we want and support each other, we can give young women the opportunity. I can do what I can do with my company. The head of the Italian office is a young woman. We try to give them an opportunity.”

The company is 3 1/2 years old and Jeffers is doing something that’s unknown in the industry, she created a platform, B2B company. “It’s a platform and that’s why we’re able to innovate,” she said. “I want to be a technology partner where they are. I would love to have a conversation about that. Brands aren’t used to spending on technology. 70% of their business is from Neiman’s and Saks,” Jeffers said.

“The net effect of that is you have to prove that their consumers are getting much more savvy,” Jeffers added. “They’re not used to sharing data with brands. They’re starting to realize they’re becoming more of a real estate play than a retailer. People are going directly to Instagram. Consumers are going straight to the brands.

“There’s a shift in the market,” Jeffers said. “They’re going to take a page from [AmazonAMZN
]. If you have a relationship with a sales associate in the store, it’s visceral. The model may change. They may not walk out with a shopping bag, but for commodity products it’s game over.”