Kevin Tighe and Beachly — Blue Startups Alumni Spotlight
Beachly is the leading subscription retailer of beach-inspired apparel, accessories and beauty products. Today we caught up with Kevin Tighe, CEO and Founder of Beachly, and a Blue Startups Cohort 9 graduate. He updated us on some of the exciting recent developments at Beachly, including the launch of Beachly Beauty, the opening of a brick-and-mortar location in Carlsbad, and plans to expand into complementary active and outdoor markets. Beachly is also about to open a new funding round.
Can you start by giving us a 2021 recap?
2021 has been a year full of successes as well as challenges. Our revenue growth this year is solid — we are up 30% year-over-year, and we’ve been focused on getting ready to expand our brand. To do that, we launched Beachly Beauty into beta, a subscription focused on clean and cruelty-free beach-inspired beauty products delivered monthly and quarterly. This is a great brand extension to our current Beachly women’s subscription.
In August, we opened a boutique in Carlsbad Village, another big milestone. Our goal here is to get our toes wet when it comes to retail, which is another place where we see a lot of opportunity, as it can really complement our subscription and ecommerce business. We’re using it to monetize excess inventory as well as carry smaller amounts of in-line inventory from the brands that we work with. We’re going to run that store for about a year as a test and then decide what we want to do in the retail space afterwards. In terms of our team, we’ve grown to 18 full time and part time workers. Our home base is still here in Oceanside where we have a core team of ten, and then a handful of remote workers in the U.S. and a few overseas in the Philippines.
Was a brick-and-mortar establishment always a part of the vision?
At the end of last year, I looked at where we wanted to take this business and I laid out a vision where the name Beachly became Beachly Brands. We’re taking an omnichannel approach to building a portfolio of subscription, direct-to-consumer and retail brands rooted in beach, outdoor and active lifestyle. I think brick-and-mortar retail was to be part of the plan eventually, but we saw a great option to get a short term lease near our office. Typically, it’s a 3–5 year lease and an expensive build out, so we acted on a unique low risk, low investment opportunity. It’s something we’d be more likely to heavily invest in at a later stage, or after we close additional funding, but it’s a great way for us to start learning about the retail market and see how it can complement our current business.
The need to be omnichannel became even more important this year. Since Apple rolled out the iOS 14 update in April of this year, ecommerce brands are seeing very volatile performance on platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Google because of new privacy regulations. There’s been a major call to arms to figure out how to adjust your business model, data, and marketing strategies to accommodate these changes. It’s very complex and a very real shift in the digital marketing landscape that probably is not going to return to normal; the brands that are smart about it will be fine, but it has definitely thrown a monkey wrench at the business. The need to be omnichannel is extremely important, even more so now than before.
Can you talk about pivots you’ve made since graduating Blue? Were any of these pivots unexpected?
When we were in Blue we only had our men’s brand and we were called Surf Shop Box. Women’s was on our hit list and part of the ideation phase when we started. We launched our women’s subscription about a year after Blue and now we’re 90% female focused. We will allocate resources back to men’s as there has been good opportunity in the men’s market in the last two years, but we went from all men’s to almost all women’s. It was unexpected how big the shift was.
Looking towards the future, we always wanted to expand into complementary active and outdoor lifestyles, and that is still in the cards. One thing that’s really important to us now is building out our own brand. The idea was part of the strategy back when we were in the program, and we’re really working towards it now. It’s really important because it helps you control the supply chain and not be completely focused on retailing other people’s brands. You build much more IP as well, which will garner a higher valuation than if you’re strictly a retailer.
Can you elaborate on the specific complementary markets you plan to expand to?
I have some that I’m targeting but we’ll run tests to see where we might find product-market fit. The leisurewear market is a big one — whether you want to call that yoga or healthy active living. The country lifestyle is another one. If anyone has been watching the show Yellowstone, it’s been a big phenomenon. There’s been a major shift of people moving out to places like Utah, Montana, or Idaho, embracing this aspirational ranch lifestyle. Cycling and mountain biking are sports you can group in. I believe there’s a big opportunity there. The way we see it, there are multiple niches: Beachly is kind of like California/Hawaii lifestyle, and we’d create another focus on the Pacific Northwest — hiking, mountain life, snow sports, all those categories belonging to those different regions.
How do you plan to allocate your current round of funding?
With this round that we’re about to open up, we’re leaning into growth with the current business — growing our women’s, allocating resources back to the men’s, as well as continuing to explore Beachly Beauty. Then we’re growing and replicating the model in these complementary markets and launching our own suite of house brands. I really want to do this through strategic acquisition where we can find emerging brands that have a lot of potential, acquire them at an early stage and help them grow — in addition to developing our own brands. We’ll likely do a combination of the two. And then on the back end, we’re working on supply chain consolidation and operations upgrades to support our business model: customer data platforms, enterprise resource planning tools, things like that which are really expensive but will help the business scale.
To learn more about Beachly, or for info on the latest funding round, contact Kevin, or visit: http://www.beach.ly
