Everybody, I'm Jay Sole, UBS' Retailing Department Stores and Specialty Softlines Analyst, and welcome to the UBS 2026 Global Consumer and Retail Conference. Really excited that you're here. Before I go any further, I just want to get the disclosure statements out of the way. As a research analyst, I'm required to provide certain disclosures relating to the nature of my own relationships and that of UBS with any company on which I express to you at this event. These disclosures are available at www.ubs.com/disclosures. Alternatively, you can please reach out to me, and I can provide them to you after the event. Now, with that, super excited to have Revolve here with us today. Jesse Timmermans, who's the CFO of the company, is here. He's going to give a presentation, and then we'll go into a Q&A session.
Without any further ado, Jesse, I'm going to turn it over to you.
All right. Thanks, Jay. Thanks for having us. Thanks for giving us the coveted 8 A.M. slot. Lots of exciting things to talk about, a lot going on at Revolve, so we'll get right into it. We'll kind of hit first who we are and what we've built. Second, we'll touch on most recent results. Third, and most importantly, where we're going over the coming years. Forward-looking statements. We are a leading fashion destination for the next generation consumer. If you rewind, Mike and Michael, who are still our co-CEOs today and very active in the business, got into the business over 20 years ago. Neither Mike or Michael were fashion guys. Arguably, one is still not a fashion guy. They had to rely on data from day one to make their decisions.
This is everything from data-driven merchandising to actually building essentially the entire ERP inventory management technology foundation from the ground up, all internally developed. This is very important, especially as we look ahead into this new world of AI and just really what that's built and really ingrained technology in the DNA of our culture. That is combined with a very powerful marketing engine and really addressing this next generation consumer and really connecting with her in a very special and different way, very authentically. We have global reach and consumer appeal, and all of this combines for a very profitable and capital-efficient business model. We operate in a very large and growing global market. Over $700 billion market in the US and several times larger internationally. About 20% of our business is international today.
Like I said, we serve that next generation consumer. The Gen Z and millennial share of household income is increasing, and we are squarely focused on that next generation consumer, who we feel is still largely underserved today. How we do this? Through two complementary retail segments. First, we have Revolve, which is 86% of the business, and that's complemented with FWRD, because it is very complementary. If you kind of look down the line where they're similar and where they're different, where they're similar, very curated and the powerful marketing engine. Where they're different is largely in the assortment, where Revolve is focused on fashion apparel, dresses, event wear, complemented with FWRD, which is skewed more towards handbags and accessories. We think it's very complementary in that it's a very similar customer. Revolve skews a little bit younger.
Forward skews a little bit older. We know that if the Revolve girl is buying a $300 dress, she's complementing that with a great pair of shoes and a handbag from Forward. We think there's a massive opportunity to continue to increase the overlap between Revolve and Forward and really tap into that 86% of the business that is Revolve and move her to Forward for those other accessories and handbags and such. More and more, we are cross-listing inventory across both the Revolve and Forward sites. If you think about Alaïa, one of our more premium brands on the Forward side is also listed on Revolve or on Forward.
We'll talk about a recent brand launch that we had just last week, Revolve Los Angeles, that is listed on both Revolve and Forward. We think there's a massive opportunity here to continue to integrate these two platforms from a consumer perspective and in physical stores. Both of our stores, Aspen and Grove, have both Revolve and Forward offerings in them. We have a long track record of profitable growth. The combination of that powerful marketing engine and really touching this next generation consumer, combined with a very capital-efficient business model, the founder-led mentality has led to very consistent growth, and not just growth, but profitable growth. If you look at the 16-year CAGR, 13% net sales CAGR, and a 9% both adjusted EBITDA and net income CAGR.
Net income is important, both from a GAAP basis and non-GAAP adjusted EBITDA, both profitable. This has led to significant market share gains over time. 16% CAGR over the last 9-ish years versus 13% for the ecommerce market and 2% for the overall market. Taking share, but still a long ways to go. We still feel like we have very small penetration in the overall market in the U.S. and then even smaller globally. That stands out, that long track record of profitable growth, and again, not just adjusted EBITDA, but GAAP profitability and free cash flow, one of the only among our set of peers to have both of those. What are the key metrics driving our performance?
If you kind of double-click on that long-term track record of profitability, number one, it's active customers. We have a very strong base of active customers, 2.8 million today and growing very meaningfully, 13% CAGR. We had a 6% increase in active customers this past year. That customer buys at full price. She is coming to us for discovery, for finding what's new. She's not price comparing. More often than not, she is going not to a brand page, but for what's new or our different shops on the site. It's very much a discovery and a full price play.
It's a premium ticket, so a $300 average order value, which really sets us apart and especially differentiates us from the very crowded low price point players out there. Our customer-first mindset, very important, especially as we think about loyalty, and we'll get into that in a minute. From day one, Mike and Michael knew that if we wanted to make this successful and really replicate that physical shopping experience, the home needed to be the dressing room. Again, day one, free shipping, free returns. We were one of the, if not the first to offer that, and that's been critical to our customer experience. That customer experience just continues to get better and better.
While others are pulling back and making it harder to return, slowing shipping, not shipping on time, multiple boxes coming for a single order, our customer experience gets better and better. Our CSAT score continues to increase, and now over a third of our deliveries happen in 1 business day, exceeding our days-day business day promise. That's earned our customers' trust. If we think about how that plays out, about 56% of our active customers today are existing customers. Very, very significant portion of our customer base is an existing customer, and she's very loyal. That 56% of customers place 81% of the orders and represent 83% of net sales.
Not only does she come back more frequently, representing that 81% of orders, but she buys at higher average order values over time. After you get past the initial one-year drop-off that's typical in e-commerce, year two and beyond, we have over 100% revenue retention, which blended results in that 89% revenue retention overall. Our cohorts are very consistent over time, and we have 20 years of data to look at this. Of course, there's been some volatility given COVID and rebound, et cetera, but if you normalize for all of that, it's been very consistent over time, and it continues to get better.
Our net sales per active customer is increasing, our orders per active customer are increasing, and part of that is the customer experience that we offer and her trust in the brand, and then also category diversification that we'll get into a little bit later, where we're giving her more and more reasons to come back to the platform. Maybe Jay's favorite slide, AI. This goes all the way back to founding, and again, Mike being an engineer, Michael being a business analyst, everything built from day one on technology, on data. Even before this last 18 months of AI evolution, using machine learning, again, relying on the data. We have a very rich set of data, that's been built over 20 years.
We have up to 60 attributes on each piece of clothing across that 2.8 million active customers. Gives us a very rich set of data to rely on. AI is not just a buzzword. It's not just one area of the business. It really permeates throughout the business. If we think about from the front end and the customer, website experience, we developed our own internal search algorithm that displaced the third-party provider that we were using, and it performed better. Not only did it perform better, but we're not paying $ several hundred thousand to a third party to use that internal search functionality. Also using AI for discovery on the site, different shops and curation, using a virtual styling tool on the site.
It starts all the way from that customer experience site experience and then into marketing, using AI and marketing to expand the reach within one of our largest channels, using AI to suppress marketing to some of our high return rate customers. Not only are we getting better marketing efficiency, but also reducing return rates. Then some of our processes, kind of those midstream processes like own brand development, using AI to speed up the design process. Using AI to create different variations within that design process, so it doesn't have to go back and forth in samples and different sketches. We can move faster. Then all the way to the back office.
Using AI for customer service, translating voice to text to better mine the data, better call routing for customer service inquiries, which plays out in customer experience. All the way to the finance function, where we're using an internally developed AI functionality to ingest invoices and process the payables. It really is across the board, and it is both, I guess, maybe three benefits. One is conversion and revenue, if you think about the website enhancements. Two is efficiency. We are getting efficiencies if you look at some of those back office enhancements that we've made.
Some of it is just increasing speed and velocity and output, if you think about the own brand design function or using AI in some of our marketing and editorial processes, where we are spending 25% of what we used to given AI, but our output is 6 x larger. Very important, and a long ways to go. It's moving fast, and we are fully embracing it. I think the key differentiator for us is having that, again, that technology DNA just ingrained in the culture and an entrepreneurial mindset, the founder-led mentality that the team has to really embrace this and moving faster than we think anybody else in the sector. Cash flow. We'll kind of flip to balance sheet and cash flow here for a minute. Very strong cash flow over time.
We generated $59 million in operating cash flow last year, $46 million in free cash flow. That has led to a very strong balance sheet, over $300 million in total cash at the end of 2025 and no debt. Very important, especially in times of disruption like this, where we can leverage our balance sheet to invest in things like AI, and we can stay on offense and increase and improve the customer experience while others are pulling back or invest in marketing while others are pulling back. We tend to thrive in times of disruption and innovation, and this is a very opportune time for us to invest. With that, if we think about capital allocation priorities, number one, again, I'll go back to the founder-led mindset. Mike and Michael still own 43% of the business.
They're still very active in the office every day, grinding, more energized and excited than ever, given all the opportunities we have in front of us, and that permeates throughout the organization. Number one capital allocation priority is back into the business. That's where we think we have the greatest ROI opportunity. If you look at last year, a lot of investments in the back, kind of behind the scenes to build for a lot of what's to come in 2026. That was all the way from a little bit of marketing and then also within that G&A line item. We didn't get leverage in G&A in 2025, and that was largely due to the investments we've been making in AI and then in own brands, gearing up for some exciting launches that we have up ahead.
Number two priority is thoughtfully evaluate M&A opportunities. We think there is a lot of opportunity out there. At the same time, we're very disciplined on this front, but we do look at a lot of things. Very disciplined, but we do think there's opportunity there. Number three is return of capital. How are we doing on these capital allocation priorities? Number one, investing in the business. I mentioned some of these things, AI, category expansion, own brands. We think there's a massive international opportunity, and we'll get into more of these later. Physical retail, we think, is a massive opportunity. We opened a store in Aspen about two years ago and just opened our store at The Grove in L.A. about two months ago. Still 60% of the retail dollars are flowing through a physical door today.
This next generation consumer seems to be coming back and really thriving in that in-store experience. We do see an opportunity there to expand physically. Number two, on evaluating M&A investments and partnerships. I would put partnerships in this bucket as well. We did make a minority investment in a brand earlier this year, that really supports our category diversification initiative. We are partnering with Cardi B in a joint venture to launch a beauty brand, that is launching shortly. Just a couple examples of our kind of M&A and partnership opportunities. Number three, return of capital. We do have a buyback plan in place. We've deployed $44 million of the $100 million plan at very attractive prices.
Our average is just over $14 versus the stock price, whatever it is today, or $26 towards the end of February. We'll touch on our most recent results. We had a very strong fourth quarter and entered 2026 on very strong footing. In the fourth quarter, double-digit top-line growth. The great thing is that this top-line growth wasn't just one area, it really was across the business. 10% overall, double-digit across both Revolve and FWRD and both domestic and international. We also saw great category diversification. Beauty was a standout at 43% growth. Our fashion apparel grew at 11%. Within fashion apparel, outerwear was a standout. Really showed the progress we've been making on category diversification.
We expanded gross margin both for the quarter and the full year about 90 basis points for the full year, despite a lot of headwinds this year, of course, given tariffs and a lot of the challenges out there where others have seen contracting gross margin, we like actually expanded gross margin. Then had leverage across most line items on the P&L, which resulted in a 44% increase in adjusted EBITDA for the quarter and 35% for the year. Again, in a challenging year where others are struggling, we've seen bankruptcies, the tariff pressure actually delivering a 44% increase in adjusted EBITDA was phenomenal. Then I mentioned 2026 is off to a great start. We saw 16% growth for the first seven weeks of the year.
There was some comp dynamics there as we're comping the L.A. wildfires from last year. Despite that, the two-year growth has maintained pretty consistently through the fires and then exiting that fire comp. If you look at our two-year growth and kind of normalized for a lot of those comps, we are at about 15% two-year growth in Q3. That accelerated to 26% in Q4. Again, really great progress for the first seven weeks of 2026. I can't not mention all the disruption and turmoil out there in the luxury industry and how that compares with how we're doing on the FWRD side of the business. You all know about the Saks and Neiman bankruptcy, this most recently. This really started several years ago with Farfetch, Matches, we had Ssense, LuisaViaRoma.
A lot of turmoil out there in the luxury industry that we think benefits us. There's one report that says there's $500 million-$1 billion up for grabs in this luxury sector. While others are going bankrupt and struggling and pulling back on inventory buys, pulling back on customer service, cutting heads, not paying bills, FWRD grew 14% in this most recent quarter and delivered a 33% increase in gross margin. We think this is a very opportune time to invest in FWRD. We've been making those investments. We've seen brands come to us. Both from a brand expansion opportunity and then also marketing. We've been increasing our marketing on the FWRD side of the business.
We just named Rosie Huntington-Whiteley as our fashion director on the Forward side of the business, which resonated really well with both brands and customers. Forward is performing really well in store, and our personal shopper program has been really important in that growth. This is really focused on that high-value customer, that VIP clienteling. That business grew over 100% in 2025. A lot of opportunity in the luxury side for Forward. Now, the most exciting part where we're going. Five key priorities. I would say outside of number one, there's really no one that's more important than the other. If we go through these, number one is increase the customer base. That's where we see the most opportunity, still 3% penetrated in our core demographic.
Number two, broaden our product offering. Number three, grow international sales. Number four, expand own brand mix. Number five, invest in physical retail. We'll hit on each one of those here. Number one, increase our customer base. As I mentioned, we think we're about 3% penetrated in our core customer demographic, and that is on a customer basis. If you look at females age 18 to 44 in the U.S., we are about 3% if you look at our active customer base. Also, if you look at our revenue of just over $1.2 billion compared to that $700 billion TAM in the U.S., less than 3% penetrated. If you don't believe any of that, you can look at comparative active customer numbers for some of the peers out there.
Even if you just pick one, Nordstrom at 30 million active customers versus our 2.8, there's a lot of customers up for grabs out there. Again, back to the luxury point where others are pulling back, customers are frustrated, brands are frustrated. We see a huge opportunity to continue to expand our customer base over time. That's the number one priority, number one ROI, number one investment. We are investing in marketing this year, largely behind a new own brand launch that we'll talk about. That's also a halo for acquiring new customers and really expanding our customer base. Category diversification is an important part of this, so a lot of opportunity there.
Number two, I mentioned broaden our product offering, and increase loyalty and really tap into more aspects of her life, and give her more reasons to come back, increase that retention, increase the frequency of orders. This is across a number of different segments here. Beauty, number one, is about 6% of the business today in the fourth quarter, 5% in 2025. We think that can be double-digit percentage of the business that grew at 43% this past quarter. Phase I for beauty was really getting the selection right. Beauty is very similar to the overall Revolve business, where it's very much about curation, emerging brands, what's new, and giving her that kind of discovery.
We feel like she's getting bored with some of the other players out there, so really giving her that engagement and discovery on the Revolve and FWRD platform. Number two I'll hit on is men's. Men's, we feel like, is a huge opportunity in that customer is very underserved today in this demographic from a multi-brand perspective. So we think there's a big opportunity here in men's. The combination of beauty, men's, and home grew at over 2x the overall growth rate of our overall business in Q4. Similar to beauty, phase I is really getting the brand assortment right and getting that curation right on the men's side. Made great progress there, brought in a new leader about two years ago that's really developed the men's assortment.
Phase II on both beauty and men's is now start to market and really improve the site experience for both of those segments. Even within our core, that core female customer, we see a lot of opportunity for other aspects of her life. I mentioned outerwear, but there's also essentials, the Monday through Friday attire, more basics. Active is another huge opportunity. A lot of opportunity here that feeds into own brands. I'll skip to own brands because we do think that own brands complement this category diversification through development of both new own brands and then also expanding the assortment within our existing own brands. Some examples here, new brands like Sofia Richie we launched about a quarter ago. This is SRG partnership with Sofia Richie.
More, I guess you would say kind of more of those kind of, I wouldn't say essentials, kind of elevated essentials, not necessarily event wear that Revolve is known for. Additional categories within our existing brands, for example, Helsa. We also have a huge opportunity internationally. This past quarter, we designed, developed, and sold a own brand, our first own brand within China. This brand was designed specifically for the Chinese customer in China, both from a design and fit perspective. It was developed and manufactured in China. It was fulfilled from our Hong Kong warehouse, and sold via live stream. We had 100,000 viewers on the live stream. Because it was designed specifically for this customer, a very low return rate.
Not only was it great customer acquisition tool, but very cost-effective and efficient given that the return rate was much lower than our overall return rate because of that design element, and then also fulfilled all within the country. We see huge opportunity here for doing more of that. Then just a few days ago, we launched Revolve Los Angeles, our first namesake brand. This is what we think will be very transformational. We are investing marketing behind this in 2026. It's not just about this one brand, but we think it really provides a halo for the overall business. It really started with kind of the relaunch of our reimagined logo back in December of 2025. It was redesigned, reimagined the logo that fed into this launch of Revolve Los Angeles with this first launch.
That will be followed by several more launches. We think it's really exciting, both from a category expansion opportunity, also from a brand halo opportunity. You know, people are asking why now, and what is this? More often than not, when you talk to a customer on the street and you ask her what brand she's wearing, she doesn't know. She just says Revolve. That told us there's a huge opportunity to create a Revolve namesake brand. Also, if you look at the add to cart, 95% of the add to carts don't come from a brand page. They come from whatever funnel she's going through for discovery, whether it's one of our shops or searching for what's new, or one of the kind of curated selections that we have. Huge opportunity there. More to come.
A lot of investment behind this in 2026, and a lot of the groundwork has already been laid behind the scenes in 2025. We'll go back to international. Huge opportunity internationally. If you look at our 21% penetration internationally for us versus the 78% overall for the market, we have massive opportunity to grow internationally. Phase I of international was really get the customer experience right, from shipping to payment methods. Phase II is really getting the merchandise right and starting to really market to market, for that international customer. A lot of opportunity here. China is a massive opportunity. I mentioned the own brand launch that we've had there, where there's more to come. Also leveraging these channels specific to China.
For the rest of the world, social media marketing is largely consistent. It's very different in China. Partnering with the Tmall's, Douyin's, Xiaohongshu's of the world to really engage with that customer in the way that she shops. Physical retail. We say prudent expansion into physical retail because we acknowledge that we are very good at online. We've been doing online for 20 years. We have not built the retail muscle yet, but we're getting there, and we're getting there fast. We opened Aspen two years ago, like I mentioned. We opened The Grove just over a month ago or two months ago. A lot of opportunity here, but again, being very prudent and disciplined about our expansion. We also acknowledge that Aspen and Grove are two very unique destinations.
Aspen is a very affluent customer. Nobody's from Aspen that's shopping at the store, so it's hard to get a good read on the halo effect from that Aspen store. Very low traffic, but very high conversion, high price point. So very productive store, but also a very unique store. We have The Grove, which is higher traffic, lower conversion. Skews a little bit more Revolve, a little bit more towards that premium price point versus the luxury in Aspen. So after we get a few months of experience and data from both of these destinations, we'll start to learn more and push the accelerator down. That said, we're not holding back on talking to landlords. The Grove has been a great example of landlord recognition.
Rewind six months ago, we're talking to tier one landlords around the country, and they had no idea who Revolve was because they're physical people. They think in the physical world. They didn't know about Revolve, which is predominantly online. After opening The Grove, they're now coming to us all of a sudden with space open. We are in active discussions with landlords. These things take time, but we could reasonably see one, two more stores in 2026. As I mentioned, there's still a lot of dollars flowing through physical doors. This next generation consumer is seeming to now kind of be back in store and really embracing that physical experience. What we're seeing so far is that the stores are a great source of new customers. We're also seeing great productivity from our own brands.
Own brand mix is skewing higher in store, not just from a mix perspective, but also from a sales versus inventory productivity perspective. The return rate is a fraction of that of our online sales. A huge opportunity here as physical stores expand to reduce our return rate, which provides significant leverage on the P&L. With that, I'll open it up today if you have any questions.
We'll see if any questions came in on the iPad here, but I'll start with just one question because, you know, Revolve Los Angeles is a big initiative for this year, and, you know, you touched on you're making a lot of investments. Can you just dive in a little bit and tell us a little bit about what the big picture plan is, you know, beyond this year? Like, where do you see that going? Obviously, putting a halo over the entire Revolve brand, but on that.
Yeah. Yeah. We are super excited about this. This has been, I would say, years in the making. We've thought about this for years. We thought now is the right time, given all the investment we made in our own brands platform, the expansion that we've experienced there. Like I mentioned, when you talk to somebody on the street, they don't know what brand they're wearing. They just think it's Revolve. That told us we have the brand power to launch a brand with the Revolve name. Then also that add to cart rate stat that I mentioned, where 95% of the add to carts are coming not from a brand page, but from discovery. All of that said, we thought now is the right time.
There's also a lot of, again, opportunity and disruption in the market. Putting a lot of marketing behind this because we do think it is transformational for the business. This is the first launch. It is very elevated. I don't know if you've seen it on the site. We've already had several of those styles sold out. This will be followed by a number of events and then also several more drops, I think three more drops this year, that really kind of double down on our category expansion opportunity. We think it's huge, both from a new customer acquisition, halo effect for the overall business, cross-listing between Revolve and FWRD, and then that just that expanding more categories and going deeper on own brands.
Okay. Sounds pretty exciting.
It is. Yeah. We're super excited.
All right. Now maybe, I don't see any questions on the iPad, so we can do just show of hands if you want to ask a question. If anybody's shy, I'll ask one more, and then hopefully everybody can start raising your hand. One thing that I find interesting about the company, and you put the slide up about, you know, the consistency and the growth rate, high growth. Was it over 16 years? It was 16% over the. You know, historically, Revolve is a company that really focused on women's dresses. That was like the main category. That's sort of thought of as a very fashion-sensitive category, a volatile category, a category, you know, depending on trend and getting trend right, which is not easy to do.
I guess if you didn't know that about Revolve, if you didn't know what Revolve does, and you just looked at consistency of the growth, you would never guess it was in such a fashion-forward, fashion-sensitive category prone to volatility. The question is, like, you know, how is it that the growth has been so consistent, yet you play in such a volatile category, right? Because that's sort of a, it's a pretty good trick, right? Like to be able to grow consistently and be profitable and generate cash flow, but yet play in such a fashion-sensitive space.
Yeah. Yeah. It's a great question. I think it comes down to maybe two things. One, again, is Mike and Michael still owning 43% of the business, very founder-led, owner mindset, and growing at the right pace. I think that's really important. Investing in brand is, has been important. About 25% of our marketing goes to brand marketing. You can't see a direct like day one ROI like you can on digital performance marketing, but over the years, you really build a strong brand and that loyalty with the customer. I think that's number one is that founder-led mindset, investing in the brand, really building a brand, and growing at the right pace, and not kind of hack at all costs or acquiring customers at all costs, but staying profitable and building a strong balance sheet.
Number two is the data and technology component. Again, from day one, Mike and Michael, again, they were not fashion guys when they started the business. They had to rely on data to make their decisions. Everything from day one was homegrown, internally built, data-driven merchandising. To your point, it's a very volatile category. Styles come and go, trends come and go. To be able to manage inventory and cash flow so well and grow so consistently is really remarkable, and it really comes down to that data-driven merchandising. We will buy very shallow initially, and then we can read how those products are working, how those styles are working, and then reorder into those products really quickly.
Not only from a reorder perspective, but even the new styles are not necessarily new because we have up to 60 data points on each piece of clothing. So we know from our 100,000 styles on the site and 60 attributes on each piece of each one of those styles, what style and what attribute is working. So we can kind of piece together different attributes across different, not even dresses, from dresses, pants, tops, figure out what trend is working, and then buy into that for the new inventory. Of course, the better the new inventory is, the better the reorders will be. About two-thirds of our inbound incoming new inventory is reorder. So that kind of tells you that ratio between, you know, that shallow initial buy versus the kind of the overall.
Let me ask you, I'll follow up, and then I'll put it to the audience. How much does the success over the last 15, whatever, 20 years inform us about the potential to maintain, you know, consistent, stronger, not necessarily the same growth rate every year, obviously, but I mean, just a good growth rate? Because it sounds very clear. I mean, 60 attributes, identify trends, reorder quickly. Has the business model had to evolve over time, like just change based on the consumers going here and going there? In other words, has what the company's done over the last 15 years, is that... Do you see that, like just the process and the way you analyze the business, the way you follow the customer, is that durable? Is that consistent? I mean, does the
You know, do you need to rebuild, you rebuild the operating model every year just based on the way the world is changing, or is it like pretty consistent? There's some fundamental first principles that are just applied all the time, which is going to help drive growth.
Yeah. Yeah, I think both. I think you have those first principles that will always be there, and then you have things like AI that comes about that really accelerates those first principles. I'll use maybe our markdown algorithm as an example. We made huge gains on gross margin this year using AI to influence our markdown algorithm. As I mentioned, over 80% of our sales are at full price, but for that 20% that is on markdown, the markdowns have been algorithm-driven, both from a kind of a velocity and how fast you mark down and then how deep the markdowns are. This has been data-driven using machine learning, and now with AI, we're able to really just supercharge that process, which resulted in, again, significant gains on gross margin.
That's when we're first principles, the core is there, but using new technology to really emphasize and supercharge. I think that will be the case going forward. The core will be there, and then we'll leverage new technologies to really stay ahead of the others.
Okay. Now I want to just take advantage of all Jesse's time. Anybody. Joe, any questions anybody wants to ask? Go ahead. I know it's early in the morning here.
If we accelerate stores, it will be margin accretive and top-line accretive. That is our goal, and that's our baseline is it has to be top-line accretive and bottom-line EBITDA margin accretive. Now, there is some overhead that needs to be built, and we've made some of those investments in 2025, and that's some of the investments that went into G&A, where you don't see the G&A leverage in 2025. Hired a head of retail and now kind of supplementing that head of retail with dedicated buyer, dedicated planner, visual merchant, and things like that. There is incremental CapEx. You saw an uptick in CapEx this past year. A large part of that was The Grove.
The Grove, we really wanted to make a splash with The Grove to really set the stage and build those, kind of set the precedent with landlords across the country and the world. I wouldn't expect CapEx for future stores to be to the magnitude of The Grove store, but there will be, more CapEx than there has been in the past with the stores. Yeah, still very small. We haven't quantified it yet. Again, we want to get some experience under our belt with The Grove and get a couple seasons under our belt before we get too granular on the specifics around the stores. But still small today, but very productive on a store-by-store basis thus far.
Maybe, Jesse, I'll throw it in there about FWRD, just because I think, you know, you mentioned gross margin, a lot of improvement in gross margin with AI last year. A lot of improvement in gross margin going forward. I think a question that I think comes up for investors is like, how'd you do that? Can you maintain that growth rate, that gross margin going forward?
A large piece of that FWRD gain was the markdown algorithm improvement. Really improved both the full price mix and then the markdown margin within FWRD. That said, there was also other inventory improvements that we really got FWRD inventory right size this past year after a lot of volatility from COVID, and then coming out of COVID, and then the hangover after COVID. We're kind of now normalized. We're about 42.5% margin on the FWRD business. We think that's a good place to be. We've been higher, we've been lower, but kind of in that low- to mid-40s% is a good healthy place for the FWRD business to be.
That is lower than the Revolve business, largely due to the product mix, where FWRD does skew more handbags, shoes, accessories versus that higher margin dress category. Those categories also have a lower return rate, and FWRD carries a much higher average order value. By the time you get down to contribution margin, it's plus or minus neutral to the, kind of relative to Revolve.
Got it.
Yeah. Number one is invest back into the business. Mike and Michael being founders, still owning 43% of the business, very long-term mindset, very aligned with shareholder interest in building that long-term value. That's number one. You saw that in 2025 with a lot of investments in G&A, which on the physical stores, and then also really building behind the scenes, the own brand team and process ahead of this launch that we had this past week. A lot of investments in kind of back office and support in 2025. Then in 2026, a lot of investment in marketing both for the specific own brand launch, Revolve Los Angeles, but then overall halo, and then also beauty and men's.
A much smaller portion of that marketing spend, but more emphasis on beauty and men's in this coming year. That's number one. Number two is thoughtfully evaluate M&A. We look at a lot of things. We think there's a lot of opportunity out there, but we are very disciplined when it comes to that. We made a minority investment in a small apparel brand earlier this year that really emphasizes our category diversification. Also a partnership with Cardi B to launch a beauty brand that is launching shortly. More of that to come, but again, very disciplined and opportunistic, I'd say. Number three is return of capital via our share buyback plan. We have a $100 million authorization. We've deployed $44 million of that at very attractive prices.
That's kind of number three and a backstop to the first two. Yeah. Yeah. We think agentic commerce is an opportunity for us. We are seeing a significant increase in traffic from LLMs, and other players out there. Very small piece of the overall pie today, but growing very rapidly. We're also experimenting and testing with more agentic features on the site, surfacing the most relevant Q&A, and also testing more, you know, call it chatbot technology, where she can really engage with the site. We think it's an opportunity. Again, given our technology DNA, our innovative culture, we will fully embrace it.
you know, I think if you look back in time and all the other kind of innovations and disruptions that have taken place over our 20 years, we've been able to capitalize on these and take advantage, I think, you know, faster and better than others. Yeah. Yeah. On average, because it is, it does fluctuate quarter to quarter and month to month, but on average, over the course of the year, about 25% of our marketing goes to, I'll put it in brand marketing. that's both events and influencers. events being things like Revolve Festival that's coming up in another, I guess, only a month away now. then more events coming and kind of influencer type marketing around this Revolve Los Angeles brand in this coming year.
If you look at the marketing guidance that we gave for this year, a pretty meaningful step up from last year. The vast majority of that is in the brand marketing bucket. And that actually brings us back to our historical average. The last two years have been very efficient on the marketing side, specifically brand marketing. Two years ago, Michael challenged the team, the brand marketing team, with getting more efficient on festival. This is a great example where we cut the festival from two days to one day. The budget was half of what it was the year prior, and we generated more press and social media impressions as a result. That was in 2024. 2025 challenged them with getting even better, and they did the same. Cut the budget again, delivered more press and social media impressions.
The core of the brand marketing has gotten really efficient, which now gives the opportunity with that strong foundation to invest this coming year, both again specifically for the Revolve Los Angeles brand, but again, overall halo effect for the brand. We think it's going to be very meaningful. Then beauty and men's, why now? It's actually been building for quite some time. I think we launched beauty in 2016. It's been a slow build. During COVID, it spiked to, I think, you know, over 6%, maybe higher percentage of the business, given the shift in kind of what she was looking for during that COVID time. But a great example of how we were able to pivot given that time in our history from dresses and event wear into beauty and other categories and really serve her needs.
Now for 2025, it's about 5%. We think now is the right time. We've invested in leadership there and really building out the assortment, and that's phase I. Now we'll start to market. I think another reason is there's some, you know, I would call it fatigue out there with the existing multi-brand beauty players. We think, you know, having a very curated kind of that Revolve discovery emerging brand offering for the customer is really important. Also in-store. It works really well in-store, so it's all kind of coming together. Men's, again, we've had men's over time, just more recently in the last couple of years, invested in leadership there, really getting the brand assortment right.
I think also having the brand power that we've built over the last 20 years also, you know, just having more scale really helps enable that investment. I think that male customer, that next generation male customer is largely underserved from a multi-brand perspective for this, for this aesthetic.
I think that's a great place to stop. Jesse, thank you so much for your time. Everybody, thank you. Revolve. Thanks, everybody.
Thank you.