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In the late 2010s, at the height of the direct-to-consumer boom, Framebridge founder Susan Tynan was green with envy. Many other venture-backed startups from the eralike Casper, Away, and Glossierwere growing much faster than her custom framing business. While these other buzzy brands focused on acquiring customers and growing revenue, Tynan was using her $81 million in venture funding to tackle more arduous operational issues, like building factories and hiring hundreds of craftspeople to make frames by hand. Eleven years into the business, Tynan’s slow, steady approach to growth is paying off. Framebridge now has 750 employees, 500 of whom work at the company’s four factories in Kentucky, Virginia, and Nevada. Meanwhile, its brick-and-mortar footprint is growing rapidly, with 10 new stores opening last year (it now operates 40 physical stores) and more planned. Tynan says that by investing in Framebridge’s infrastructure early on, she built a moat around the business that has allowed it to ward off competitors. And now the company is in a position to scale rapidly, actively looking to expand its network of brick-and-mortar locations, possibly into the hundreds. Meanwhile, many DTC startups that Tynan once envied are fending off challengers that have created similar products, from mattresses-in-a-box to design-forward luggage. “Framebridge was a hard business to build, but that’s why it’s impossible to replicate,” says Tynan. “We’re now reaping the benefits.” The DTC Boom and Bust Today you’ll find a custom framing shop in most towns: By one estimate, there are more than 15,000 in the United States. But custom framing is notoriously expensive and takes a long time, which turns off many consumers who are happy to settle for a cheaper prefabricated frame they can buy from Michaels or Amazon. As Tynan studied the framing business model, she found the industry laden with inefficiencies. Most frame shops are owned by a single person. Since the store can’t afford to keep hundreds of mats and frame options in stock, it will order the components only once the customer has made their selection. Buying in such small quantities is expensive; its also time-consuming to send out for these pieces and construct the frame in-store. Tynan, who started her career as a tech executive, decided to launch Framebridge because she believed she could make framing cheaper, faster, and more convenient. Like many other VC-backed DTC startups, Framebridge was meant to disrupt a dusty industry. But Tynans business model was far more complex than those of peer brands of the 2010s. Startups like Casper and Away, which redesigned common consumer products, worked with overseas factories to make them, then sold the products online. Framebridge, by comparison, needed to build out a complex logistical operation to create custom frames at scale. This would involve setting up factories in the States and hiring artisans to build custom frames. In 2020, Graham Holdings Co. (GHC) acquired Framebridge for an undisclosed amount, giving Framebridge’s investors a payout. The sale meant that Framebridge had a deep-pocketed holding company that would allow Tynan to keep investing in factories and other infrastructure at a time when many other DTC operations were seeking out ever-larger sums of VC capital or exploring an IPO. Taryn Jones Laeben, who served as the chief commercial officer of Casper until 2018 before founding the VC firm IRL Ventures, believes Framebridge owes its success largely to one unique factor. “What makes Framebridge special is its supply chain,” she says. “Businesses that survived the DTC era are the ones that are truly differentiated. But investing in factories is complex because it is capital intensive and prevents you from being nimble. For Framebridge, it has clearly paid off.” While GHC, which generated $4.7 billion last year, does not break out revenue for individual companies, its annual report noted that “Framebridge posted real growth in 2024.” That said, the report described Framebridge as an “investment stage business” that is not profitable yet. The upshot is that its much harder to copy Framebridge’s business. Over the past five years, many DTC brands have struggled to acquire new customers, partly because a wave of competitors have popped up. Away is now competing with Monos, July, and Antler. The beauty and mattress industries have hundreds of direct-to-consumer players. To gain market share under these conditions, brands must continue pumping money into marketing and advertising. But no other companies have yet been able to replicate what Framebridge is doing. The Moat In 2014, the Framebridge website went live. It allowed customers to send in art or upload digital photographs to be framed and delivered back to them. It seemed like a simple service. But Tynan had spent the previous two yearsand $3 million in seed fundingto build out a factory in Richmond, Virginia. She hired a team of expert framers as well as some people from other creative professions who enjoy the work of framing. “I found someone who sold mantles on Etsy,” she recalls. “He loves using his hands.” Framebridge orders large volumes of framing materials, which allows the company to charge less per frame than the average neighborhood framer. Small frames start at $50; larger pieces, like an 18-by-24-inch frame, cost $155. (This is roughly half of what my local frame shop in Boston charges.) Framebridge’s concept resonated with customers, especially digital-native millennials who were already ordering everything from mattresses to house plants on the internet. Within three years of launch, the company had generated $58 million in revenue. Laeben, the VC investor, says Tynan was smart about how her startup used its $81 million in VC capital. While many brands of the era were investing in customer acquisition, Framebridge was focused on infrastructure that would give it longevity. “They spent their money on durable, defensible strategies as opposed to acquiring customers on social media who might not even purchase from the company again,” she says. “Looking back, customer acquisition was basically like lighting money on fire.” Many investors would not have been satisfied with Framebridge’s pace of growth, Laeben points out. “DTC is a very broad category. There are many sectors wher it makes sense to grow slowly and profitably, but this means being aligned with your investors on what your goals are, she explains. As Framebridge grew, Tynan recognized the many benefits of having physical stores. While its possible to visualize frames on the companys website, some customers simply want to see what the materials look like in person. More crucially, there are people who want to do business at a physical location where they can bring their expensive art and irreplaceable, precious keepsakes in person, rather than sending them through the mail, where they could be damaged or lost. So in 2019 Framebridge opened its first two stores in the Washington, D.C., area, and quickly began opening others in major cities such as New York and Boston. Tynan also decided to buy a fleet of trucks to transport people’s items from the stores to the factory in Virginia. This is another complex, expensive part of the businessbut one that Tynan believes strengthen’s her company’s “moat,” making it even less likely that a competitor will spring up. “If [customers] were going to send in their baby blanket or an antique family photograph, they needed to know it wouldn’t get lost,” Tynan says. “It was important to customers that their things remained in our chain of custody throughout the whole process.” The Framebridge store footprint is much smaller than a traditional frame shop, since no actual framing happens on-site. The stores sometimes serve simply as a way to introduce people to the brand. Framebridge often hosts in-store events, offering free portrait sessions or photos with Santa during the holidays. While some DTC brands saw retail stores primarily as a marketing engine, Tynan thought it was crucial that Framebridge learn how to run these stores profitably. “This wasn’t a pop-up strategy,” she says. “As a startup, you want to test a lot of things, but if you test them halfway, you don’t know if they’re actually going to work. So we put our best foot forward with these stores.” The Future of Framing Today, Framebridge still doesn’t have a major competitor that does what it can do. Instead, its biggest source of competition is the traditional, neighborhood frame shop. But Tynan says her goal isn’t to put these places out of business. She points out that Framebridge has a particularly modern, millennial-oriented aesthetic that isn’t necessarily for everyone. And store associates are trained to point customers to other framing shops nearby if Framebridge doesn’t have what theyre looking for. “We have a curated assortment of frames,” Tynan says. “We have a point of view.” Still, she believes there’s a lot of room to grow. Given how expensive custom framing has been in the past, few consumers create bespoke frames for their art. Most just buy premade frames. By offering less-expensive options and offering customers the ability to make selections online, Tynan hopes that Framebridge will appeal to people who might never have thought to custom frame their keepsakes or art before. “In many ways, she says, we’re only just starting to scale.”
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E-Commerce
As a community organizer in New York City, Sharifa Khan spends a lot of time visiting food distribution hubs, community gardens, and local shelters. While speaking with community members, she often encounters the same issue: people want to get involved in volunteering, but theyre not sure where to start. So, Khan decided to make a tool to address thatand it couldnt have come at a more important moment. Dora.nyc, short for Directory of Resources & Aid, is a new website dedicated to compiling New York Citys mutual aid offerings into one easy-to-understand resource. Its designed both for those seeking aidlike food, housing, and immigration servicesas well as those looking for places to offer help. The website was created through a collaboration between Khan, who runs an organization called Hope Altars; Cornell PhD student Johan Michalove, who builds digital mutual aid tools through a project called Mutua; and the NYC Resource Library, which compiles lists of local mutual aid resources. [Screenshot: dora.nyc] The website comes as the government shutdown has led to a pause in the SNAP food aid program, which provides food stamps to about one in eight Americans. This month, millions of low-income Americans have been left without the full benefits that usually help them afford basic necessities. Now that the shutdown has ended, SNAP funding is set to resume, although it’s still unclear how quickly recipients will receive their benefits. Dora.nyc offers New Yorkers a clearer picture of where aid is availableand, Khan and Michalove say, its a concept that they think other urban areas could replicate. Asiyah, Community Activist [Photo: Bryce Lacy] How to use dora.nyc The dora.nyc pages UI, designed by Michalove, is organized under two main categories: space and time. On the top of the site is a map of NYCs five boroughs with markers for resources across the city. Resources, in this case, are defined as any kind of aid with a permanent presence in the area. These markers are color-coded by category, like distribution hub, shelter, housing, elder care, community fridge, and more. Users can navigate the map by region and click on any of the markers to learn more about the associated resource. The bottom half of the map is a calendar, organized Monday through Friday, that lists food distribution events by place and time. This part of the website includes recurring food distribution events, but can also feature one-off pop-ups or services that take place on an irregular schedule. [Screenshot: dora.nyc] Like the map, the calendar section is color-coded by region, and users can filter it by their local borough. Michalove also added an AI-powered search feature that lets users enter queries in plain language, like, Where is there food near me or Where can I find a shelter in Brooklyn, to easily find resources that match their needs. Anyone who would like to add a new resource or food distribution time to the website can do so via a set of forms in the top right of the site, which are individually vetted by Khan. When you’re already stressed about needing access to food, and theres the added stress of figuring out where to go, this can alleviate that one factor, Khan says. That is actually something someone mentioned to me directly. They said, When I was struggling to find distro sites, I wish this tool existed. Dora.nycs premise may seem simple, but the websites genius is its ability to condense information thats historically been shared more disparately. [Photo: Bryce Lacy] Why dora.nyc’s premise makes so much sense Khan and Michalove have been working on dora.nyc since the summer, but sped up their development process when they heard the news of the SNAP shutdown. The idea initially came when Khan realized that information about food distribution and other mutual aid events was primarily being shared through social media posts or WhatsApp group chatsspaces that some community members, especially older folks, might not have access to. I think a lot of times, we assume that everyone has the autonomy to put those pieces together, Khan says. That really does neglect a ton of factors that people are facing on a personal basis, like socioeconomic factors that are impacting their capability to go out there and find places to volunteer, for example. Khan and Michalove pooled both her experience in community organizing and an existing list of resources from NYC Resource Library to build dora.nycs foundational database. Eventually, Khan says, she hopes to use dora.nyc to help different shelters across the city share resources among themselveslike, for example, if one food distribution site ends up with extra food items, those might more easily be sent to another site in need. [Photo: Bryce Lacy] So far, Khan has already heard from one site that a visitor found them through the dora.nyc map. Shes also helped several older community members, who may not have access to social media sites like Instagram, to add dora.nyc to their bookmarked websites. Ive shown aunties, specifically my Caribbean aunties, how to use it, and you can see the delight on their faces, Khan says. Michalove and Khan agree that the model could be replicated in other cities, if local community organizers can establish an adequate vetting process for proposed sites. When you make the goodwill visible, it gives people a direction toward how they can organize and help, because they see, Oh, there are so many community fridges, maybe I could add one to my neighborhood or do a distro where I’m located. It gives people more of a focus toward how they can contribute.
Category:
E-Commerce
Theres a new sheriff in Bentonville. Today, Walmart announced that John Furner will become the companys new CEO and president, effective February 1 next year, succeeding longtime boss Doug McMillon, who is retiring. McMillon has been at the helm of the retail giant since 2014. Prior to becoming CEO, he led Walmarts international division for four years, after leading Sams Club, a Walmart subsidiary, between 2005 and 2009. Serving as Walmarts CEO has been a great honor and Im thankful to our Board and the Walton family for the opportunity, McMillon said in a statement Friday. Why is McMillon retiring? This is the right time to retire because the companys in such great shape, and John is more than ready to lead this company through another set of transformations, McMillon said in a separate video message, filmed alongside Furner. Walmarts team also tells Fast Company that previous CEO transitions have followed a similar pattern. Specifically, they were announced in November and followed a sequence: a successor was named, the transitions started at the end of the year, and the outgoing CEO remained on the board for a period of time in an advisory capacity. McMillon said he believes the company will be in good hands when Furner takes the reins. Ive worked with John for more than 20 years. His love for our associates and this company runs deep, McMillon said. Hes uniquely capable of leading the company through this next AI-driven transformation. Hes a merchant, an operator, an innovator, and a builder. I know that our future is bright with his leadership. A tenure marked by growth and technological change Walmart has made notable strides under McMillons tenure, including investments in the companys workforce by increasing wages and expanding employee programs, and more recently, embracing AI by partnering with OpenAI to allow new ways for customers to shop and interact with the brand. It also went under a small but ambitious rebrand this year, the first in decades. Furner is currently the president and CEO of Walmart U.S., a role hes held since 2019, and is responsible for 1.5 million employees and roughly 4,600 stores. He started at Walmart as an hourly associate in 1993, working his way up the corporate ladder. As we enter a new retail era fueled by innovation and AI, our purpose and our people will continue to guide us, Furner said in a statement. Walmarts stock fell around 3% during premarket trading on Friday after the news was released. Year-to-date, shares are up around 14%, and they’re up 104% over the past five years. Walmart will is expected to release its latest earnings numbers on November 20.
Category:
E-Commerce
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