‘It’s really about quality over quantity’: Pattern Brands’ Suze Dowling on the new roll-up brand playbook

The company — which began as design agency Gin Lane and evolved into a portfolio of DTC brands including Open Spaces, Onsen and Gir — raised a $25 million Series B in 2022 — and has been slowly building out its portfolio ever since.

While other roll-up players like Thrasio and Win Brands Group have faced major headwinds, Pattern has continued chugging along. Its co-founder and chief business officer Suze Dowling, who joined the Modern Retail Podcast this week, attributes this to the company’s focus on its core consumer.

“If you’re working across seven brands in a portfolio, it is helpful to try and find what is the grounding force,” Dowling said.

This shopper is internally dubbed “Mia,” and all of Pattern’s brands — including towel company Onsen and kitchen accessory maker Gir — target “those micro-moments of [Mia’s] day, and how can we make them just a little bit more special,” Dowling said.

By having that focus on one type of shopper, Dowling said that Pattern has been able to remain grounded and focused. “I would challenge [the idea that] for some of the Amazon aggregators — that also had 50 brands, 100 brands — that they were able to find those same synergies in how they operated,” she said.

For now, Pattern has been focused on finding the right brands to buy — as well as finding the best modes for growth. “I’m very excited… [about] trying to make sure we build some mass retail partnerships over the next 12 to 18 months,” Dowling said.

Here are a few highlights from the conversation, which have been lightly edited for clarity.

How Pattern chooses its brands
“A good brand is always a good brand. The nuance within that, and our understanding of that, has certainly evolved. And certainly, our business model has evolved. Originally, we started out incubating brands. Open Spaces is a brand that we incubated. Really, for us, Covid was a pretty big game-changing moment; we couldn’t travel internationally, which meant we couldn’t walk factory floors and see firsthand that incubation process. But we still wanted to expand the brand family. At the time, there was also a lot going on in the space — obviously, Amazon aggregators. We said, there’s some really smart opportunities here. But we also kind of foreshadowed what some of those potential challenges may be for them, and said, ‘Let’s do this instead in a DTC/Shopify manner.'”

Who is Mia?
“We look at who’s kind of the core common consumer that we’re going after. And we have a very clear picture — we call her Mia… And that’s a core common persona. And then there’s a number of personas that are of course supporting. But I think when you think about that in a marketing team, they’re able to say, ‘OK, I really understand Mia, and I understand how to meet her needs. And I’m going to take her on this journey across multiple brands.’ I would challenge [the idea that] for some of the Amazon aggregators — that also had 50 brands, 100 brands — that they were able to find those same synergies in how they operated.”

What’s next for Pattern
“When we raised our Series B, I think we were maybe two or three brands at the time. So we’ve really added to the brand family — in a really careful and pretty methodical-like manner. For us, it’s really about quality over quantity. But it’s been an exciting few years. We have expanded more omni. Coming from DTC, we’ve made some very careful decisions about what to sell on Amazon and kind of started to ramp up part of the Amazon business [and] part of our retail partnerships. And I think, as I look to this year, it’s very much about: How do I really continue to grow the brands in the current portfolio? I’m very excited and kind of gung-ho [about] trying to make sure we build some mass retail partnerships over the next 12 to 18 months.”

Note: An earlier version misspelled of this article misspelled ‘Onsen.’ It has since been corrected. We regret the error.