🔒Nic + Zoe makes women’s issues part of its brand

When Kamala Harris was sworn in as the country’s first female vice president, the Natick-based women’s clothing company Nic + Zoe celebrated the milestone on Instagram.

Earlier in January, when the Boston Red Sox named Bianca Smith the first Black woman to coach a baseball team in its minor leagues, Nic + Zoe was there on Facebook.

A month earlier, the company was touting Sarah Fuller when she suited up for the Vanderbilt University football team to become the first woman to score in a major college football game.

One of its Pinterest boards, called The Future is Female, is dotted with women anyone might recognize as influential and motivational: Jill Biden, Michelle Obama, Meghan Markle and Oprah.

Nic + Zoe, in its own words, is a fiercely female clothing brand.

These days – as the company has grown to 11 locations, has more female firsts to celebrate and is increasingly outspoken about it – Nic + Zoe is finding its customer base values the fact it highlights womens’ accomplishments and aims to inspire others. 

“It’s really about the product. It’s about everything that we do that’s in service to our customer, and our customer is a smart, busy, multifaceted, interesting woman,” said CEO Susie Mulder.

Resilience pays off

The company was founded in 2006 by Dorian Lightbown, who named it after her two children. She had professional experience in fashion and design, and worked for big companies in the field. While a single mom, she decided 15 years ago the time was right to give her own label a try.

For eight years, Nic + Zoe was sold wholesale at national stores including Bloomingdale’s and Nordstrom, along with smaller boutiques. Some retailers were quick to sign up with Nic + Zoe, and others took some convincing.

“Resilience is an important skill,” Mulder said of eventually getting more places to agree to stock the clothing.

In 2014, the company had an opportunity at Boston’s Prudential Center to open a pop-up storefront to try its own hand at retail. There was a major difference between selling clothing to a vendor, versus operating a storefront with the company’s own branding above the door.

It worked. In a short time, Nic + Zoe found its first permanent storefront at The Shops at Chestnut Hill in Newton.

It had bad luck with timing, but already had three stores underway opened during the pandemic last year in New Jersey, Virginia and outside Denver. The pandemic has left little room for specific goals, but Nic + Zoe plans to keep growing in the coming years, particularly in warmer-weather areas.

Finding its voice

Mulder joined Nic + Zoe in 2012 from McKinsey & Co., where she worked in the international management consulting firm’s retail and consumer practice for more than a decade. She serves on the board of the Chicago food giant Kraft Heinz and Sally Beauty Holdings, of Texas.

It hasn’t required a resume full of experience for Mulder, Lightbown or their team to decide in more recent years to play up Nic + Zoe’s priorities.

“There isn’t a lot of debate,” Mulder said of the company’s consideration of how or whether to post about such topics, which can sometimes verge on the political. “It’s a natural extension of who the customer is and who our founder is and who our leadership team is.”

Still, that outspoken bend comes up a lot, said Michele Honein, Nic + Zoe’s senior director of marketing and content. The company wanted to find one topic in particular to support and easily landed on female empowerment.

“It was easy for us,” she said. “It’s something we talk about all the time … Our consumers are really tapping into this.”

Customer support

Nic + Zoe isn’t the first, and certainly not the highest-profile, company to make its social views clear.

Nike famously launched a branding campaign with former professional football player Colin Kaepernick after he ignited controversy by kneeling during the national anthem in protest of racial inequality. Dick’s Sporting Goods and Walmart stopped selling some guns and ammunition, starting a backlash against the companies for seeming to wade into a hot-button political topic.

More high-profile CEOs spoke out last year amid racial tension, and even more in January when a mob stormed the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to stop President Joe Biden’s election certification by Congress.

Exactly half of adults in a 2018 Morning Consult survey said they found it at least somewhat important what stance a company has on a political or social issue. Nearly as many said they’d want a share of revenue from their purchases to go to causes they believe in.

Marketing today increasingly revolves around building relationships with customers, said Sandra Rahman, a marketing professor at Framingham State University. It’s a movement in marketing long in place, and one that was made far easier with social media.

There are risks for speaking out, but also for not, Rahman said. A company like Nic + Zoe might be expected to be outspoken on women’s issues, or the outdoor clothing company Patagonia on the environment, she said.

“It depends on who’s getting your message and what you’re saying,” she said.

“They want the product and the ethos,” Rahman said of customers demanding companies have a stand on societal issues. “For a brand to be successful, they need to stand for something, not just have a nice product at a nice price.”

For Nic + Zoe, Inauguration Day has passed, but the company will have another chance soon to celebrate: Presidents Day, which it’ll mark as Madam Presidents Day. It plans to celebrate female CEOs everywhere.