This back-to-school season, Zappos is kicking it old-school.
The online shoe retailer has rolled out a ’90s-style catalog to advertise its kids‘ and teen merchandise. The catalog, which was sent out in mid-July to about 700,000 customers who typically purchase shoes for kids, includes product images, games and a shoe sizer.
The catalog is designed to pull on the heartstrings of parents who likely remember growing up in a simpler time before e-commerce reigned supreme, when shopping from catalogs was the norm and an exciting part of the back-to-school experience.
“This is kind of our ode to that nostalgia,” explained Zappos’ chief merchandising and marketing officer Joe Cano in an interview with FN. “We want to make sure that as these elder millennial parents are having their kids go to school, they actually have some fun and have something that they can share with their kids and can create that moment versus being stuck to the screen the entire time.”
Zappos rolled out its first back-to-school catalog in 2019, but put it on pause throughout the pandemic. Now, the shoe retailer has brought back its successful initiative and has already seen a bump in traffic, according to early reads from the company.
In line with Zappos’ commitment to the adaptive category, the catalog also includes adaptive products from brands such as Billy Footwear.
“Adaptive will always be at the core of Zappos,” Cano said. “We want to make sure that someone can find the most amazing pair of shoes on our site, no matter what age or stage they’re at.”
The shoe retailer has utilized nostalgia for other campaigns in the past as well. For its 20th anniversary in 2019, Zappos turned its website back to what it looked like when it launched in 1999 for one day. And next year, Zappos plans to launch a similar series of nostalgia-focused campaigns for its 25th anniversary and is currently in talks with vendors to highlight and bring back shoes that were popular in the 1990s.
“Some of this nostalgia, as you’re seeing across the board, I think it’s resonating not only with parents, but with kids,” Cano said. “If you look at the current trends right now, they’re very much coming back to that ’90s nostalgia, which plays in perfectly with what this catalog represents.”
Other brands have also seen recent success with throwback campaigns. McDonald’s saw a surge in engagement when it offered a Grimace Birthday Meal special in honor of the purple mascot’s 52nd anniversary. Among footwear brands, consumers are increasingly opting for ‘90’s retro styles like the Adidas Samba.
For Zappos, the key is balancing this nostalgia factor with modern elements for shopping ease. For example, the catalogs include QR codes for people to be able to quickly make their way to the Zappos website.
“I want to make it fun and nostalgic, but I don’t want us to try to reinvent what ordering was back in 1999,” Cano said. “I want to make it very seamless.”
The catalog campaign is a part of Zappos’ continued push in the kids category, which involves a broader emphasis on the growing back-to-school business.
“Back-to-school is becoming a bigger and bigger portion for us,” Cano said. “For us, we want to make this a bigger portion of our business as we go forward.”
