All right, good afternoon, everyone. For our next presentation, we're excited to have a.k.a. Brands, and presenting from the company is Ciaran Long.
Thanks, Cody. Hello, everybody. I'm Ciaran Long, the CEO of a.k.a., and looking forward to talking to you all today about our business, our brands, and how we're going to market. First, a.k.a., we're a portfolio of brands really focused on that next generation of consumer, and doing it now in an omnichannel way across predominantly direct-to-consumer, and now into stores and wholesale as well. Really doing it with a differentiated operating model, and the core components of that are what we would call test and repeat, or data-driven from a merchandising perspective. We lean heavily on influencer marketing, and then asset light as we think about technology or back-end operations, and we really feel that's setting us up to be an accelerator of these brands. Three of the brands started in Australia.
We're bringing them to the U.S., scaling them in the U.S., but also an opportunity, as we see opportunities out there, to bring more brands into the portfolio and leverage the different operations that we have. So today, we've four brands. Our largest brand is Princess Polly. It's about 50% of the overall portfolio, focused on that teen, college-age consumer that's addressing them for kind of being out and about, and Culture Kings, a very different brand. It's focused on the streetwear space, and really that collision of sports, music, fashion, and doing a lot of retailtainment across their business, and the next is the Petal & Pup brand, focused on that female consumer, their next stage of life, more accessible from an aesthetic perspective.
And minimul, more of, again, in the streetwear space, predominantly focused on the men's side, more on kind of runway-inspired product, but bringing that in an accessible price point. And so just to talk a little bit deeper about our four brands. So first, Princess Polly, as I said, about 50% of the portfolio, focused on that teenage, college-age consumer, and really for us has kind of led the way in that data-driven, test and repeat merchandising approach. And for them, it allows them very much to be on-trend at all times and focused. That's what that consumer wants, on-trend fashion. Princess Polly started as a direct-to-consumer business. We've now taken them more omnichannel. We've just opened their 11th store in the U.S. and seeing a lot of success there, and feel there's a huge runway of growth and opportunity for Princess Polly, particularly in the U.S. and internationally.
Petal & Pup brand , our second women's brand, more focused on a slightly older consumer in that 25 to 40-year-old, is in a different stage of life. So the product here is also different, more about being out there at going to weddings, bridesmaids, and all the different activities for that consumer in that different stage. Interestingly, this brand, we started scaling in a slightly different way than Princess Polly. It's been pretty much exclusively a direct-to-consumer brand, although starting in about March of last year, we put some of their product on different marketplaces. So we started testing product on Nordstrom.com. So really good success there. And then with Nordstrom, did an in-store test for the Petal & Pup brand in October last year across about 20 doors.
In March of this year are now in all 93 doors across Nordstrom with the Petal & Pup brand, and seeing a lot of success there. Culture Kings, as I mentioned, more focused on that streetwear space, that male consumer, and very much that collision of music, sports, fashion, so in that space, Culture Kings is about 50% of what they sell are their own first-party brands, so the likes of Loiter, Carré, and Saint Morta that they have developed in-house themselves and are bringing them to market predominantly through Culture Kings.
We also have product from third-party brands. Think of the New Era, ASICS, Nike, people like that. And even within that 50%, a lot of that product is exclusive to the Culture Kings business. The hats that we sell from New Era, you're not going to see them in other retailers. Very much kind of store exclusive to us.
All of that allows us to be very differentiated. Culture Kings have about 10 stores, eight in Australia where the brand started, one in New Zealand. We opened a store for them in Las Vegas in November 2023. Really a flagship store, introducing them to the U.S. It's in the Forum stores in Las Vegas. It's a store like no other. If you get a chance to go there, you should. It's got a half basketball court inside the store. There is a recording studio. There is a fully licensed bar, which is extremely difficult to get for a store, even in Las Vegas. There's also a secret room where, if you're buying enough product for them, you can go in there. It's kind of select access only, and it's all for one-of-one product that they have developed in collaboration with other people.
And really, Culture Kings using that space in Vegas for, obviously, selling product. It's great for sales. It's a profitable store for us, but also for a lot of the marketing activations that they do, that we do in the store, and then amplify online. So we've done fantastic events with the WWE. Around the Las Vegas Grand Prix, we've had McLaren cars, the full Formula 1 car in the store, bring in the drivers, do activations there with customers, and also sell exclusive products that we've developed with McLaren and Mitchell & Ness to sell online. And really, Culture Kings, that retailtainment for them, allowing them to differentiate not just in the retail space, but certainly online as they look to introduce their brands to the consumers.
Then minimal, as I talked about, more runway inspired on the streetwear side and very much from an accessible price point perspective. They're one of the top-selling brands on CultureKings.com in the store in Vegas for Culture Kings and also do a nice business online. How that brand has been going to market, a little bit different than the others. I would say for them, they're kind of leaning where they kind of lean in on the influencer space is more with the athletes that you'll see here. So doing a lot with NBA players, NFL players, and those players wearing their product as they kind of go into games, leave games, and kind of that's allowing them to amplify, kind of take that content, amplify it online, and show it off to their consumers.
So let me jump a little bit to kind of the operating model that we have, which we feel is very different from what's out there in other places. And I think, look, four key tenets of that. Firstly, data-driven from a merchandising perspective. And that allows us, like I say, to be on-trend. You're constantly introducing newness to the customer. And for a brand like Princess Polly, they'll introduce probably 100 new styles each week, but maybe only going 100 units deep in any one of those styles. As they see the performance of the products, be it conversions, sell-through, customer engagement, as they see that product, very quickly they'll decide if they're going to buy back into that product at higher unit numbers or just let what they've bought kind of at that initial test run out.
That allows them. You're taking much less inventory risk, much better gross margins, and also from a marketing perspective, being on-trend will help there as well. On the marketing side, very much social media-led. And so that for us is developing our key set of social media influencers that we work with. We do all of that in-house, all of the outreach, all of the management of those influencers. For us, not really. We don't really work with mega influencers. We don't work with the household names. We look for the smaller influencer, and we feel they're much more authentic to that customer we're going after. They're also obviously kind of more economical to work with and just give a much better balance as we look to kind of continue to go to market there.
And then for us, I would say over the last kind of couple of years, have evolved the strategy now to meet our customers wherever they are. We'll talk more about that in a minute, but leaning into stores, leaning into wholesale, and that focus of if there's a good relationship that is brand-enhancing for us and the right economics, we'll do it. And then, as I talked about, from a technology perspective and operations, very much asset light and a flexible model. So we sit on Shopify from a technology stack. We outsource our distribution centers to a 3PL, and that allows us, as we think about kind of investing in the business, to put it into growing market share, growing brand awareness, and going after the growth opportunities we have with this brand.
I'll just go a little bit deeper on the test and repeat and data-driven from a merchandising perspective. A little bit of numbers. I think for us, in any of the brands, you're testing about in any one week kind of or over a period of time, about 15% of your sales are coming from new product. That's new product that you would drop in any particular week and will run for a period of time. As you see success there, you're buying back into that style, and you continue to hold that style over a period of time. For us, some of our styles, we've had for a number of years at this stage. You're continuing to build those cohorts of winners week after week that continue to work just day after day in the background and build that really strong, big replenishable business.
And then obviously, look, some of what you're buying upfront, you don't see the success you want. You need to move through that inventory. That for us is great product that we use in our marketing activations or for your customers that are more price-sensitive looking for a deal. So you get a really strong loop there of continuing to bring in new product, great for marketing activations, and build those cohorts of winners that gives you just a really strong performing business with great gross margins. And as you can see there in one of the examples that we have, you find a great style, you find a great silhouette, and as you're testing new product there, you're using that same kind of knowledge that you have with a silhouette that wins and maybe moving into different colorways, different patterns.
So again, even though you're testing new product, you understand the success that that kind of is built in and kind of really helping you kind of accelerate in the go-to-market. And then look, I suppose as we think about these businesses today and the brands that we have, great merchandising, great marketing are core to what we do. From a marketing perspective, these brands have been built on social first, with that very much developed this influencer marketing and how we talk to the customer is very much based on that authentic relationships we're looking to build with them online. Brands are all doing it slightly differently. Princess Polly, Petal & Pup, very much influencer-led first, those small micro-influencers where we've really authentic relationships with. And you're constantly evolving those influencers that you're using. So for us, we can measure the ROI on each influencer on a daily basis.
So as you see ones that are successful, you keep working for them. If they're not, you'll move on to somebody else in your pipeline of influencers that you have. And kind of dipping into that kind of pipeline of new influencers that you have also allows you to be very much on point for those new customers that you're trying to bring into the brand and being authentic for them. So really helps you as well in making sure you don't age up with your customer. And just long term, we feel that's very important for the health of these brands and these businesses.
You'll see on some of the imagery here, we have started doing a little bit more beyond that kind of traditional for us influencer performance marketing, a little bit of out of home now as we are kind of expanding into different channels and talking to the customers in different ways. And I would say Culture Kings as well, doing probably the most for us from a brand perspective and doing that in collaboration really with world-class brands, be it kind of McLaren, WWE, the UFC, and really those marketing activations that we do in the store for them, amplifying it online, really giving us that authentic voice to talk to their customer. Next is just the omnichannel approach that we have. We opened the first door for Princess Polly in September 2023 in the Westfield in LA. Saw some really nice success there.
One of the key things for us was just how many new customers we were introducing to the brand. We were able to measure that. About 30% is what we've seen are new to the brand. That has continued as we've opened more stores. We're now up to 11 stores for Princess Polly in the U.S. You can see kind of in that, predominantly in the Northeast and the Southwest, we're going to continue to open stores. We feel there's a tremendous opportunity for the Princess Polly brand. We see that, look, these stores are very much for us. We're focused on sales and profit delivery in the stores. We also see that they're great for introducing new customers to the brand. We've seen, like I said, about 30% of the customers coming into the store are new to the brand.
We've also seen a halo effect to the online business within the region of where we've opened stores, and we're measuring that on a five-mile radius, on a 10-mile radius. And so all of that continuing to give us confidence to open more stores for Princess Polly and looking to open probably eight to 10 next year. And for us, very much focused on we have a lot of data from our e-commerce business to know where our customers are, which cities they're at. And that allows us to be very focused as we think about locations, picking the right mall, picking the right location in the mall as we look to kind of build this brand for the long term. And I think with it, we are making sure that as we kind of open these stores, roll out these stores, we're investing to have quality stores, high-quality stores.
We do see the Princess Polly consumer is probably more on the upper-income side, and I think with the model they have, the profitability that we have, we feel that there's such long-term opportunity here. We are investing certainly in high-quality stores, modeling them all to have a payback of two years or less and seeing that that is certainly there.
I would say all the stores we've opened so far are kind of running ahead of plan from a sales and EBITDA perspective, and so kind of really happy with the performance and the continued opportunity we have, and then just on the wholesale side, some visuals here from Petal & Pup in Nordstrom. I think the Petal & Pup brand, as I mentioned, was the first to test probably the wholesale channel for us, putting product on Nordstrom.com, saw great success there and moved into all Nordstroms at this stage.
I think just we're really impressed and Nordstrom extremely happy with such response that they're having from their consumers. If you think of the speed that we've gone from testing a small number of products on their online business to now being chain-wide in less than 12 months later, I think that kind of speed probably shows you how good that brand is inside there. We did some shop-in-shops with Nordstrom in that kind of May-June period and saw great response there. I think shows us just the opportunity that the Petal & Pup brand has. The Princess Polly brand is now in all Nordstroms as well and I think continuing to lean into that wholesale opportunity.
It's really nice, I would say, great for brand awareness from a customer perspective, but also developing a lot of inbound wholesale leads for us as well, and I think big opportunities that we can execute against, and then for us, just look at our kind of long-term growth strategies. We're very focused on the U.S. at the moment and the opportunity that we have. We feel with the continued growth that we're demonstrating from a direct-to-consumer perspective, but also the growth as we open up these new channels. We've got a long runway ahead for all of these brands and continue to demonstrate that we have expanding addressable market. We also know there's opportunities from an international perspective. We ship product internationally at the moment from LA, so pretty long lead time there.
We are getting inbound requests to say, "When are we coming to different geographies?" So, you know, there's opportunities there. And also from an acquisition perspective, we certainly have a platform and operating model that can help accelerate brands, and we're very focused on accelerating the next generation of brands. We feel there's opportunities there, although I would say at the moment, very focused on getting after the U.S. opportunity that we have.
And then a little bit just financials from a Q2 perspective. It was great to see overall growth, 9.5% on a constant currency basis and really continuing to show the opportunity we have, up 14% from a U.S. basis. And that's continued that trend of just really strong double-digit growth in the U.S. Back to growth in Australia was nice to see. We've gone through a journey there of moving the brands onto that test and repeat model.
That's taken some time. And look, great delivery of gross margin, EBITDA, and continued performance really across the portfolio from sales, margin, EBITDA, cash flow, just really, really strong in Q2. And for us, from a Q4 or full-year perspective, looking to do $608-$612 million this year from a sales perspective, $24.5-$27.5 million from an EBITDA perspective. And really, I think for us, look, continuing to go after the growth opportunity we have with these brands. They're all early in their life cycle, and we know we've got a long runway and an operating model here that generates profits, generates cash flow, and we can certainly keep going after it. So that's it for me. Happy to take questions.
Yeah, we've got a couple of minutes for Q&A if anybody has any. Go ahead.
What's the main driver of lack of earnings per share falling out of the bottom line?
Sure. So look, all of these brands we purchased at some point. So there is really, I suppose, the amortization from the intangible assets that we've had from those acquisitions is probably a big flow-through on the P&L at the moment. We're kind of getting behind that, which is helpful. That's probably one of the main drivers. And then look, we need to get, I would say, good performance in Q2 and kind of how we're doing. That's even Q2 has been somewhat clouded by the tariffs and kind of the changes that have been going on there. I think as we get past some of those and just add a little bit more scale, we certainly see that we can get to EPS positive pretty quickly.
Maybe just one for me.
Can you talk about what you're doing on the sourcing side to hopefully mitigate tariffs, and how does that roll to pricing?
Yeah, I think, look, obviously a huge amount going on in the area, and we've talked about in the past, we were predominantly sourced out of China, so we've had to take some pretty quick action. We took a three-pronged approach to it. We firstly went back to our existing vendors and asked for discounts and got those, and good to see that, and when the very early in the tariff situation, we thought that would be enough. Obviously, a lot has changed. We've been working since November last year on diversifying out of China, and for us, finding suppliers that can do that test and repeat model is quite difficult. It's a quite unique model, but we found a global partner that we can work with.
We have moved production predominantly out of China. And I think the way kind of all the macros is kind of continuing to be pretty dynamic, we're focused on very much being dual-sourced at this stage. We will continue to have some product in China. It just makes sense to have it there and certainly more out of China. And then we took pricing actions back in May and really focused on the U.S. business where we felt strategically we had opportunity to take price. As I said, we're fortunate that pretty much all of the product we have is exclusive to us. So we feel that gave us opportunity, took price in May, and I feel, look, with our model bringing in that newness constantly, I think we're probably one of the earlier ones to be impacted or quickly impacted by the tariffs.
But I think with the actions we've taken, we'll be past it all very, very quickly.
Got it. Thank you. I think we're at time, so appreciate your time on this.