AllBirds Needs Distribution Not Resale

Yesterday Allbirds announced that it launched a new resale program, powered by Trove.

Let's get beyond the PR for a moment and focus on the profit.

Do we think Allbirds is saying that our $100 shoe is too high-end for consumers, we need a $60 entry point?

This seems crazy. Let's dismiss this.

or ... We don't care about profit.

You buy the $20 shoe from consumers, sell it for $60.

That's $40 left. Let's say 10% overhead, that's $36 left. Let's say $5 per item handling, that's $31. You need to ship it now, potentially twice? Let's say $15. Let's hope the consumer is in a store, oh wait, they only have 3 locations for this trade-in.

Now your net is $15/shoe.

Probably there are costs I'm leaving out. That's a lot of shoes to make an impact on their bottom line.

Which consumers outside of Tri-State and LA/SF truly know about AllBirds?

Hardly any. And I say this owning a few pairs :)

AllBirds big problem by far is distribution, and slowly opening their own stores is not fast enough when they are better alternatives like being in Walmart or Target. If they were owned by private equity right now, you don't think they would be in Target like tomorrow?

#allbirds