The decision to close all its stores in 2020 could have been seen as a rare failure for beloved childrenswear brand Hanna Andersson. But instead, the 40-year-old company turned its new digital-first status into an opportunity to enhance the customer experience by:
- Transitioning store managers into online personal shoppers who offer one-on-one shopping and styling advice;
- Leveraging its newly honed ecommerce chops to launch a resale marketplace that has made Hanna Andersson the most resold childrenswear brand in America; and
- Creating the brand’s first-ever loyalty program, which just one year in already boasts 500,000 members.
The woman behind the curtain of much of this effort is CEO Aimée Lapic, who joined the company in 2022. Her unique combination of experience at traditional apparel retailers — she previously ran ecommerce for Banana Republic while serving as Chief Marketing Officer of that brand — and digital-first tech brands including GoPro and Pandora, has made Lapic uniquely suited to steer this heritage apparel brand toward digital success.
“Companies that put customers at the forefront of everything they do tend to thrive in ecommerce,” said Lapic in an interview with Retail TouchPoints. “Hanna Andersson is this beautiful, 40-year-old heritage brand, and the customers come back routinely year on year — it’s a very loyal customer base. So I got to come to this incredible brand and help it marry what ecommerce can do to drive loyalty with a brand that already had this inherently loyal customer base. I think we have a real magic sauce now of taking the efficiencies, effectiveness and scalability of digital and making it feel very personalized and connected to our actual customers, which is the only thing that really matters.”
Here’s how the brand has done it.
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Creating a White-Glove Experience Online
The first initiative, which actually predates Lapic, is the brand’s digital personal shopper program. When Hanna Andersson closed its stores, the company retained a number of store managers who drew on their former client base and community connections to build the program, which is offered free of charge to all customers.
Hanna Andersson personal shoppers gather client details and then create tailored closets for guests to peruse and shop virtually. They’ll even send out coloring pages for kids to enjoy while mom or dad shop. Parents can text, chat, talk on the phone and/or email with their personal shopper, making it easy to get shopping done despite busy schedules.
“You should see some of the conversations that our personal shoppers have with their clients,” said Lapic. “It’s like pictures of ‘Hey, my daughter loves this swimsuit. Can you find me a cover up that would match?’ Or, ‘My son is outgrowing these pants. Can you find me pants that will match back to what he likes with that softness or durability?’”
Offering such a high-touch service for free could seem like a risky proposition financially speaking, but Lapic said the personal shopper program more than pays for itself by driving incremental sales. In fact, there are some personal shoppers who bring in as much revenue as an individual store once did.
In the last three years, Hanna Andersson’s personal shopper program has quadrupled in size, and it’s now an integral “part of our magic sauce,” said Lapic. “We’ve got an easy-to-shop experience on our website; it’s easy to find what you want, but some moms are super busy, and they don’t have time to shop the site. Working one on one with a personal shopper is even faster, even easier and definitely more tailored, because that shopper knows the sizes they’re looking for, the gender, the colors the children love, all of that. It’s very personalized.”
Leaning into Hanna’s Reputation for Durability with Resale
The next step was the debut of the Hanna-Me-Down resale program in 2023, which reinforces the brand’s commitment to high-quality fabrications, durability and sustainability.
“Our mission is to be champions of childhood,” said Lapic. “We literally put everything through the lens of, is it the right thing for children at this time of childhood? These clothes are durable — you can easily hand them down to your next child or your friend’s child or your cousin. The second thing is, they are made for play. We have little girls running around in tulle dresses, getting dirty and having a great time, and mom throws that dress in the washing machine and it’s good as new. And the third thing is, they’re made responsibly so mom doesn’t have to feel guilty. The quality is so good and it’s so responsibly made that people feel proud to give it to the next child.”
Through the online Hanna-Me-Down marketplace, parents can do just that, earning money or credit toward new purchases in the process. Since launching the program, Hanna Andersson has become the number one resold children’s brand in America, according to Lapic, who proudly points out that 80% of sellers choose store credit over cash — and then typically end up spending 2.2X more than they earned buying new products.
“It really is a circular marketplace, taking what’s best for our customers in a digital environment and putting it front and center,” Lapic said.
Loyalty Program Rewards Members with Early Access to Exclusive Products
The final piece of the puzzle was a loyalty program, which launched in September 2023 and has already gathered a half million members. Like most rewards programs, members earn points that they can use toward credit on future purchases. Hanna Rewards members also have a dedicated personal shopper line, but the real advantage of the program is the early access sales, said Lapic.
Hanna Andersson has been leaning into exclusive collections and collaborations. In the last year, the brand launched a limited-edition collaboration with Gen Z-favorite sustainable bag brand Baggu, as well as limited-edition collections featuring preschooler favorite brand Bluey and holiday mainstay The Grinch, to name just a few. “This is really exclusive product that [rewards members] get to shop first, and many times we run out of the product while they’re shopping it before we open it to the general public,” said Lapic.
Continuing to Build the Hanna Community
Looking ahead, Lapic said the future will be all about continuing to grow the brand’s digital connections with its customers: “We think of every customer as part of our community, but we know that they are all unique,” she said. “What we’re doing is trying to bridge the physical world with the digital world, which is why we have these programs in place to build community, but we’re also listening to what matters to our community.”
That listening happens both through the personal shopper program and via a range of virtual communities, where the brand is able to connect with customers and find out what they want in terms of products, services and collaborations. For the holiday season that will take the form of several double-rewards days for Hanna Rewards members, as well as extended personal shopper hours and a large expansion of the brand’s popular matching pajamas offerings, which this year features 50 different prints.
Lapic also plans to ramp up the collaborations, in particular with more unexpected brands like Baggu, as a way to grow the Hanna community even further. “We’re excited about the growth that these bring to us, because it introduces new moms to the Hanna brand that haven’t really thought about us before,” Lapic said. “Millennial and Gen Z moms are a big focus for us in terms of growth, so we’re experimenting with a lot of different ways to access them.”
Another point of introduction will actually be stores. Despite closing its own locations, Hanna Andersson is slowly returning to brick-and-mortar via exclusive lines for baby boutiques across the country — 37 so far. “We are excited about the growth that that brings to us, mostly because we can show expectant moms and new moms our Hanna-me-down quality and the feel of our product, which is the one challenge with online,” said Lapic. “So we’re in these boutiques and we plan to grow that to connect with all of the brand-new moms that don’t yet know the Hanna Andersson brand.”
