“Offering Comfort with Technology”

As Morgan Hermand-Waiche was close to graduating from Harvard Business School, more and more traditional businesses were being disrupted by online entrants. Morgan identified the lingerie industry as a sector with high barriers to entry and extremely limited online sales. He then started Adore Me upon his graduation.

Morgan has several qualities which have uniquely placed him in a position to guide a business like Adore Me into becoming the industry-disrupting force it is now. As a leader, he understands how to recruit and retain unique talent—and more importantly—build an environment that allows talent to thrive. In a business as unique as lingerie, Morgan understood the need to bring in talent—like a former Design Director from Victoria’s Secret—very early in the life of the company, and to allow the product creation team to thrive independently. In the same way, the engineering team has grown into one that is the envy of the direct-to-consumer industry—building a wholly owned logistics center that runs significantly more of its supply chain than most e-commerce fashion brands. The idea of creating Adore Me as a platform allows the talent that Morgan brought into the company to thrive. “We regularly see teammates taking on new challenges and developing new skills—something we believe is integral to continuously adapt as a company.”

According to the steadfast leader, selling a bra online was a unique customer challenge and opportunity when Adore Me entered the market in 2012. “Customers disliked the experience of shopping in a store, but bras are such a personal and complex product. It makes getting the right fit and style a huge challenge for an online entrant,” explains Morgan. “It’s incredibly important to see repeat purchases from customers who know their size, and to provide a stellar customer experience in terms of returns, shipping, and questions.” This is why building best-in-class technology and operations was a priority of Adore Me’s from the first day. Bringing in design talent who understood how to serve customers of all sizes (and style needs) was also imperative from early on. “With these building blocks, Adore Me was able to become the first lingerie brand to bring extended sizing to all its styles,” quoted Morgan. “The most important part was that this was a strategic shift that was driven by customers. We were asked for extended sizes and we saw complaints about a lack of extended sizing across competitors—so we delivered.”

"Morgan understood the need to bring in talent like a former Design Director from Victoria’s Secret very early in the life of a company and allow the product creation team to thrive independently."

Adore Me’s key competitive advantages have been around combining excellence in technology, operations, design, and marketing. Nearly 1/3rd of the Adore Me team work in technology, and they consider themselves just as much a software company as a fashion brand. Over the past decade, several DTC brands were created that effectively outsourced their entire technology stack and supply chain, and invested large capital rounds into branding and acquisition.

“As we’ve built a great deal of our technology stack and integrated it into our product creation and logistics processes, Adore Me has been able to create new ways to shop—like Elite, our try-at-home service that grew tremendously during the pandemic,” says Morgan. “We’ve also launched a Sister Brand Incubator that has a number of brands built off of material and sustainable product innovations.”

One of Adore Me’s biggest achievements has been navigating through the pandemic and keeping the team strong as they operated out of their own homes—all while growing over 60% to $160mm in revenue in 2020 (and continuing to see growth into 2021). While e-commerce was a clear beneficiary of the pandemic, not every company thrived in this way. Morgan understood just how difficult navigating these monumental challenges was going to be, and it took numerous strategic decisions driven by him and his team to achieve success. “These are the points to keep in mind: thinking in a long-term way, creating an environment for your teammates to grow and thrive, working to build your own technology, and creating experiences and products customers love. That’s what drives Adore Me, and they’ve provided incredible growth in a challenging environment—making it an extremely fulfilling journey.” IE