Most product categories have several pillar retailers that rule the vertical. Think about apparel, furniture, grocery and even more niche segments like home improvement, crafting or office supplies — it’s easy to name multiple major retail banners serving each of these categories. But when it comes to weddings — for which services alone brought in an estimated $182.56 billion in the U.S. in 2023 — the retail picture is very different. There are certainly big brand names associated with specific products like jewelry or dresses, but when it comes to a go-to chain for weddings, there’s only one in the U.S. — David’s Bridal.
This isn’t just anecdotal. According to Elina Vilk, Chief Business Officer of David’s Bridal, the retailer “has effectively 90% of the entire market of brides,” she shared in an interview with Retail TouchPoints. “Even if you’re a couture bride looking for a high-end gown or you’re on a budget and [planning] to get something on Amazon, at some point you’re going to encounter David’s Bridal because of the way people consume media in and around their wedding. It’s the most-known brand; we’ve got 97% unaided brand understanding — that’s just massive reach.”
Which is why the company’s second bankruptcy in early 2023 was such a shock to the ecosystem, and felt to many like the final straw. But once again, Chapter 11 wasn’t the end for David’s Bridal, and this time around it’s beginning to look more like a fresh beginning.
Since negotiating its sale to CION Investment Corp. in July 2023, David’s Bridal has been on a transformation tear that has included a slate of leadership changes, expansions to its loyalty program and the launch of both a resale program and wedding planning platform. The retailer’s latest move is perhaps its biggest yet — in December 2024, David’s Bridal acquired the wedding media brand Love Stories TV (now rebranded as Love Stories by David’s) and launched the Pearl Media Network in tandem.
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As David’s looks to put its troubled past firmly in the rearview, Vilk believes that mapping out a path to “strategically scale” will be the key, and the company’s new media network is central to that strategy: “David’s had a lot of eggs in one basket,” she said. “Now we’re doing a B2C and a B2B move — that provides a lot of longevity. You’ve got the audience and now you can maximize the reach of that audience, which allows you to strategically scale throughout.”
Vilk — who joined David’s in August 2024 after stints at Meta, PayPal, Hootsuite, Visa and a range of other tech companies — was an unorthodox choice for the role of Chief Business Officer at David’s. But with the launch of Pearl Media Network, Vilk’s background in tech and media suddenly makes perfect sense. “It’s interesting — me, with 25 years in tech, joining a 74-year-old traditional bridal house,” she said. “But coming in, the thing that I saw right away — which as a media person had me salivating at the mouth — was the audience that they have. My major focus is Pearl Media Network, because the digital transformation of David’s is happening right there. It’s really about making David’s a tech company now and bringing in the B2B aspect, tapping into this audience and maximizing it.”
Here’s how David’s plans to do it.
Reaching Consumers at the ‘Household Formation’ Moment
In addition to David’s wide audience reach, it has another major advantage — the demographics of that audience: “I call this the time of ‘household formation,’” explained Vilk. “You’re cohabitating with your partner, and you’re making not just your wedding decisions, but every decision. What toothpaste is now going to be our toothpaste? What mattress are we going to sleep on? What car are we going to buy?
“So, we’ve got 90% of this audience from a media landscape, and they’re making the decisions for the rest of their life,” Vilk added. “And it’s first party; [advertisers aren’t] rebuying this audience from a Meta, they’re coming directly to us. Put all that together, and we are selling them and attracting them at just a fraction of [the scale] we could be.”
Of course, the thousands of both large and small businesses that fulfill all the various needs associated with a wedding are low-hanging fruit when it comes to advertisers (and there are a lot of them), but as Vilk points out, David’s also presents a unique opportunity for non-endemic brands. It’s the holy grail of retail media and one that most of the established media networks are still chasing. What better time for a mattress or car or real estate or travel brand to enter a consumers’ life, and establish what could become lifelong loyalty, than at the moment when a young couple is establishing their future together?
And Vilk sees one other big advantage in David’s arsenal: “One of the things that I think is our moat, in addition to the audience, is our stores,” she said. “I visited some David’s stores recently and most of the people I met were there 10 years-plus, they are regarded as gurus in the wedding journey. In fact, I’m tapping into them to do a lot of the planning work for our apps. [That expertise allows us] to fuse traditional and technical by bringing the human story into it.
“The people who work at these stores are incredible — I was there with a bride, and with two questions [the salesperson] nailed what her dress was,” Vilk added. “It was insane, it was such a moment, and [it got me thinking], how do we recreate that? How do we build that into everything we do? In the digital world you tend to err toward digital [solutions], but you can’t underscore enough the human component in this industry.”
How ‘Love Stories’ Enables Immersive Media Opportunities
Bringing in the human element of weddings through a digital platform is exactly where Love Stories TV comes in. It’s a bold move for a retailer to buy a media brand, but Vilk said it had a lot to do with “the right opportunity at the right time.”
“It’s really important that we solve the problem not just for the consumer, but also for the B2B [customer],” she said. “The B2B problem we’re solving is reaching the right audience at the right time in a way that’s really immersive, and that’s why Love Stories was really important.”
At the outset, Pearl Media is launching with a website-based ad spot that will allow brands to appear within users’ search results. “A fun fact about women and dresses is that we scroll through sometimes more than 40 pages, which was what inspired this concept of an ‘e-spot,’” explained Vilk. “The e-spot is an ad unit that we’re putting inside the scroll. As you’re scrolling through David’s website you’ll see hundreds of thumbnails of dresses, and some of those thumbnails will be bigger; that’s the ad unit.”
Advertisers also will have more immersive opportunities through the Love Stories integration, including branded videos, product placements, video end cards, podcast ad spots and integration into email content. The Love Stories team is well-equipped to handle these kinds of opportunities, having already done some of this kind of work prior to the acquisition.
For example, an advertorial created with the Hawaiian wedding destination Kualoa Ranch saw an entire love story filmed at the resort. And Love Stories’ content also will soon begin to appear in new places, including the David’s website and on screens in David’s stores.
The Big Picture: A 360-Degree Offering for Brides and Brands
Much of the work David’s already has done to ramp up its consumer-facing offering also will fuel the reach of Pearl Media — in particular the retailer’s revamped Diamond Rewards program, which now extends beyond the bride to the entire wedding party, and the company’s new wedding planning platform.
Soon both of these programs will have a single login, which will allow deeper integration between the two. For example, brides will be able to earn Rewards points for completing planning activities via Pearl. The company also hopes to launch a branded credit card that ties into these platforms in the near future.
“The idea behind Pearl Planning it is to make life easier and put everything in one spot,” said Vilk. “Our vision is to make [planning a wedding] completely stress free, because the wedding planning isn’t just dealing with 14 vendors. We’ve actually counted it and you’re doing more than 100 different things.”
With so many exciting initiatives in development at David’s, Vilk said the toughest part of her job now will be not getting sidetracked. “You have to say no to a lot of good ideas to stay focused and be rigorous in your planning and vision,” she said. “[That means knowing] what your EBITDA looks like across all of these ideas. It’s not just about the revenue side, [you have to consider] what is happening with margin. Investing in things like media helps you on the margin side, too. The strategic scale, focusing on margin-rich opportunities and saying no to a lot of really good ideas, or saying ‘I’ll do this later,’ is what we have to really focus on.”
