The Glossy Podcast

In a three-week period shortly after the pandemic outbreak, Richer Poorer sold three times as many sweatpants than in all of 2019. That was a small part of an overall trend for the basics clothing brand: The first five months of 2020 have greatly boosted online sales, transforming it into an e-commerce business first and foremost. "We essentially had to kind of rebuild and restructure our team overnight to now go, 'OK, we're a DTC brand,'" the company's CEO Iva Pawling said on the Glossy Podcast. Richer Poorer had already been planning to gradually shift to a focus on e-commerce over wholesale. The plan was to grow direct sales to 40% of revenue in 2020 and reach parity next year on the way to a primarily DTC model. Now, Pawling estimates e-commerce is set to make up roughly 75% of the company's bottom line this year. Pawling said that a pivot in branding, already underway before the pandemic struck, has helped the company pitch its products as right for the moment. "We very much had rebranded under this beli