The retail landscape is drastically changing. It’s not about products anymore, but about the experience, brands can offer through a physical location. However, most startups don’t have the budget to create their own physical store. Meet Bulletin, a store like no other offering multiple brands the chance to showcase their products at a low cost in high traffic locations in New York City. Curated for women, by women.

After hearing about Bulletin from multiple friends and entrepreneurs alike, we had to reach out and get up, close and personal with the founder, Alana Branston. “I grew up in an entrepreneurial household where both my mother and father had their own business. My father ran a vintage car dealership and my mother was a freelance photographer.” Before starting Bulletin, Alana had dabbled in the #bossbabe life via selling belts made out of ribbon in college as well as starting a company prior.

“I wanted to work with emerging brands and build an e-commerce platform in which we would sell curated products.”

Sounds similar to Bulletin? Well, it was. The early seeds of their business were planted long before Bulletin came into being. However, by being an e-commerce only platform, Alana struggled with maintaining customer satisfaction and experience since vendors wouldn’t deliver on time (yeah, it was a drop ship model). In return, this would hinder her brand’s reputation in the market. By not being able to scale the business and the on-going lack of inventory control, Alana decided to close shop.

“I used to work at Contently (content marketing startup) and met my co-founder Ali Kriegsman sitting right next to me at the office. Together, we would pitch the wonders of content marketing to retail brands to show how it improved their sales.” Hence, the original concept of Bulletin was derived from creating an online shoppable magazine in which customers could read about cool brands that were hyper curated (kind of like RADICHE) and shop their work.

“We spent a lot of time making the website look beautiful with our imagery and would release each issue under a theme. However, we did not have much funding so we were not putting a lot of money behind it. We applied to Y Combinator in 2015 and that’s when the major shift happened for us.”

The Pivot

Alana got into the Y Combinator Fellowship which was an experimental program for early-stage startups that ran for only two years. “Once we got into this program, we quit our jobs, received a seal of approval and got a $20K grant. We also ended up getting into the core program in 2016 and moved to San Francisco to revamp our business model.”

What did you learn from Y Combinator and how valuable was it for where you are today?

“Our main problem was how do we grow our online marketplace? YC was really good at giving us direction and encouraging us to scrap our original idea. Had we not done it, we would have probably still be stuck on creating online content linked to shoppable brands. We got great advice such as go and talk to all the brands you sell for and ask them what they need help with and what they are struggling with as a business? And what we kept hearing was that accessing physical space was a really big problem and brands wanted to be able to tap into this ecosystem.”

“Fast forward to April 2016, we shut down the online marketplace and started to provide a physical space for brands to be in. We rented out parking lots, warehouses, and literally anything over 10,000 square feet.”

Alana and Ali were engaging in these physical marketplaces every single weekend from April to October 2016 until they finally stumbled across a more permanent store in Williamsburg, where you can still visit their original emporium.

The Branding

Bulletin went through a rebranding in April 2017 after they finished their YC program which was also during the election period. Most folks were anti-Trump which sparked the idea to create a retail concept that empowered women on a daily basis. “We wanted our store to have politically led products and a political message (products made by female founders for women). Once we relaunched the Williamsburg store with a consistent message and brand, our sales spiked because now we were mission-driven.”

With e-commerce brands like Everlane opening up their own retail stores, we asked Alana where do you see the future of retail heading?

“I think that experiential is going to be huge! With Amazon and e-commerce brands in general, you need to build a store knowing that customers are able to buy the same merchandise online so you have to add in an X-factor (the experience) which gets folks to visit your store. This could be community-driven events, store design, etc. The days of building a standard retail store are over.”

Prior to starting Bulletin, Alana had previously worked at 3x1 Denim brand in which she learned a lot about transforming the average retail model to incorporate a more experience driven one. 3x1 has their notorious store in SoHo with a factory hidden behind a glass wall, where customers can customize and create bespoke denim pants.

The Advice

Don’t hold inventory and don’t drop ship! Create a business model based on consignment.
Got an idea? Start out while you still have a full-time job and build the groundwork of your company before quitting.
Try to get into an incubator or receive funding from friends and families to validate your business model.
If you keep trying and keep going, something will emerge.

Interested in selling your products with Bulletin? Contact us and we can put you in touch!

Photo courtesy of Bulletin.