Its signature blazers have gone viral, it sold out in its first week on Shopbop, and its SS24 campaign featuring English football player Lucy Bronze in denim separates was a brand match made in heaven. Joining ALIGNE in 2022, CEO Ginny Seymour has mapped the blueprint for direct-to-consumer to global omnichannel success in just two years.
So, how did ALIGNE set the brand up for exponential growth while staying in control? Discover Ginny’s strategies, steps, and processes that ALIGNE undertook to scale from a DTC brand to omnichannel success with a global presence, without compromising the customer experience or the brand DNA.
Leading with DTC
How to deeply understand your customer
With her extensive background as a buyer for multi-brand retailers and wholesale channels, Ginny knew firsthand that cultivating brand relationships with a department store customer is an arduous process. Cutting out the middleman in the beginning stages is the key to building customer relationships and fostering loyalty.
“I wanted to hear what they were liking, what they weren't liking. I wanted to be able to make mistakes and quickly correct them, and I needed to do it through the lens of me knowing what ALIGNE was. And if you start with wholesale, you know what the wholesaler's customer is, but you're not the end consumer.”
- Attain customer insight before scale: Launching DTC first gave Ginny direct access to customer behavior, preferences, and feedback. This is critical for refining product and brand positioning before introducing third-party buyers.
- Test and learn: The DTC model allowed space to experiment, make mistakes, and quickly correct them, which is harder in the wholesale model due to longer feedback loops and without a constant stream of data.
- Obsess over customer data: Ginny reviewed order data nightly to stay intimately connected to customer behavior, where these initial insights can help to refine the product, fit, and style direction.
- First-hand market discovery: Ginny found that only after a year and several iterations did they land on a key product (the “Daphne” blazer) that ALIGNEd with the brand vision and resonated with the customer.
“That's when I kind of knew exactly who the ALIGNE girl was and what I had created and what I wanted ALIGNE to be.”
Entering wholesale
How to maintain brand identity
Develop strong brand DNA first: Entering wholesale requires the brand to know who they are, and what they stand for in a saturated fashion market. Ginny turned down wholesale requests for 20 months until she felt ready. Instead, her focus was on developing ALIGNE’s signature DNA, which she eventually defined with the ALIGNE 2.0 collection. Moving ahead too early with wholesale requests would’ve risked brand dilution.
“When they ask for exclusives, I feel I can say no because I know whether it's ALIGNE or it's not ALIGNE. That's different for wholesalers, who love color, who love print. I could easily have all these colorful striped print things in the collection… now I can say, you know what, that's just not us.”
Lead with brand identity over revenue: ALIGNE intentionally designs its wholesale relationships to be customer acquisition tools, not just sales channels. By viewing these partnerships as brand marketing channel rather than a revenue stream, omnichannel becomes a seamless extension of the DTC experience.
“It's not about chasing the revenue, it's about gaining new customers, customer acquisition, and just growing our footprint as a brand. They don't know ALIGNE. They know whether they're a Shopbop customer, or they're an Amazon Prime customer, and they get the benefits from that.”
Define market positioning: ALIGNE positions itself between fast fashion and premium contemporary to own a specific, underserved price and style segment, and double down on it in both its DTC and wholesale channels. According to Ginny, this space mirrors the “old-school contemporary” price point and quality from 2005, focused on 30–50-year-old women wanting quality, modern tailoring at accessible prices.
Launch wholesale with a core collection: Ginny led with core items she knows will sell, like the blazer that local consumers had already recognized as ‘the ALIGNE blazer’. This ensures a high chance of sell-through, fewer fit issues, and bolsters a stronger brand perception.
“I want that continuity of handwriting across where customers see it so they can start recognizing who ALIGNE is, because that brand value is really what you're trying to grow.”
Expanding into the US
How to protect growth
Use sales milestones to trigger expansion: ALIGNE set a clear benchmark that once US sales hit 30% of total revenue, the brand would open a US warehouse. This ensured that the business’s operational investment was driven by demand, not assumption.
Build presence step by step: Based on Ginny’s ethos of starting small when it comes to the US specifically, ALIGNE’s expansion began with shipping to the region, followed by local content, allowing organic growth and demand before investing heavily.
“I think you have to start small with the US,” says Ginny. “We tested that the demand was there. But we made sure that there was the demand there and then slowly took the steps to support that.”
ALIGNE’s steps on the expansion ladder:
- Opening a local warehouse
- Fostering ALIGNEd partnerships
- Creating meaningful collaborations
- Opening a pop-up store
- Investing in omnichannel
Localize merchandising selectively: Despite regional preferences (e.g., U.S. prefers structured fits; U.K. prefers oversized), ALIGNE chose not to run two separate fits to maintain a unified global identity. Instead, they localized color and assortment depth, while using digital tools to better manage regional size curves and return rates.
“I think using AI tools that can help separate your size curves, can help you kind of anticipate what that's going to look like. We don't want to run two fits. We're still only two years old.”
Use omnichannel as a fit tool: Pop-up stores and physical touchpoints aren’t just for cultivating brand moments - they're tools to solve fit issues and return rate challenges, allowing customers to try on products in person, and educating consumers on UK vs. US sizing conversions that can’t always be properly navigated on the website.
Use data tools to determine market-specific allocations: ALIGNE uses Style Arcade as a critical tool for the entire team to ensure visibility across markets, distinguishing regional differences in fit and demand, and for smarter allocation and size curve planning.
“We've been an adopter of Style Arcade from the very beginning to have that visual tool for our entire team. Everyone in our organization logs in weekly, so we can see very clearly and very easily what's working in both markets.”
Choose 3PL partners based on growth stage: Instead of choosing a robust warehouse known for its order processing velocity, Ginny opted for a flexible, collaborative 3PL that could grow with the brand. She prioritized alignment with current operations (e.g., relabeling, hanger support, box sizes) and willingness to support evolving needs from DTC to pop-ups to wholesale.
“We had a realistic, internal view of where we were at, how we wanted to operate. And once we knew how we wanted to operate… then we had to find a warehouse that was smaller and gets that flexibility, rather than getting the biggest warehouse that was really going to be inflexible.”
Develop market awareness and team culture: Ginny emphasizes the importance of being on the ground in a new market to gather real-time feedback, build relationships, and develop a local team culture from the ground up.
“At the end of the day, you always know who your brand is and you know what your brand stands for,” said Ginny. “I think sometimes we try to adapt, but the early interest you have in your brand in a new market, if it is about global growth or a new market growth, is based on who you are.”
“I think it's easy to get swayed by other people wanting you to be something else or thinking you should be something else, but just trust your gut that you've built something that people want.”
For the full in-depth discussion of ALIGNE’s trajectory, watch Ginny Seymour and Style Arcade’s Morgan Polinelli in the Perfect Aligne-ment: DTC to Omnichannel Webinar.
PHOTOGRAPHS: SILVIA OLSEN
