Objective

Zulily had lost the momentum that made it a breakout e-commerce brand in the early 2010s. The business still had a distinctive model, a treasure-hunt shopping experience built around discovery and limited-time value, but it had become too reliant on products and price promotion. The deeper problem was focus: without a clear sense of whom the brand was for and why those people cared, Zulily risked becoming just another promotional e-commerce site. It needed a sharper growth-audience strategy capable of aligning marketing, merchandising, UX, and customer experience around one compelling reason to shop.

Strategy

The strategic move was to focus the company around an audience we called the Opportunistic Shopper. These were people drawn to the thrill of finding something unexpected, valuable, and time-sensitive. This was not a demographic target. It was a behavioral and emotional lens that reframed the brand. Zulily should not simply stand for products and price points. It should stand for the shopper's emotional payoff, namely the rush of finding the right thing at the right time. We identified the right Opportunity Moments to appeal to this audience, finding the behaviorally-specific times and contexts when communications, offers, and site experiences could be most relevant. That gave the organization a shared language and a more actionable planning system across teams that normally operate with different incentives.

Results

The work rallied Zulily around one clear growth audience and influenced decisions across marketing, merchandising, UX, and customer experience. It helped spur CEO-led initiatives including a price-matching promise and a new loyalty program. Proof that the strategy moved beyond language into actual business behavior. In 2019, the first full year of the initiative, Zulily revenue grew 17% and the customer base grew 24%.