Draper James cut back on promo days and started telling its story at full price instead — and watched AOV and margin both climb. Piper Parsley, VP of E-Commerce and Brand Marketing, breaks down how affinity-based partnerships, conversational search, and full-price discipline are reshaping how the brand shows up for its customer, both on her own site and inside the AI tools now doing her shopping for her.
Behind the Expert
Piper Parsley has spent her entire career in digital, starting on the agency side in media planning and social before moving to the brand side — first in footwear at Marc Fisher Footwear for almost five years, then children's wear at Appaman for four years running the digital department, then back to footwear at Ecco, the global Danish brand. She's been at Draper James for almost two years, where she oversees both e-commerce and brand marketing and creative — an unusual pairing that lets her connect functions that are often disjointed elsewhere. A Midwesterner who was a fan of the brand before joining, drawn to the overlap between Southern and Midwestern hospitality, Parsley now helps steer Draper James's expansion from a ready-to-wear apparel label into a full lifestyle brand.
The Quick Hits
- Filter partnerships by genuine customer affinity data, not by a partner's reach. Draper James's collabs (a Nashville hat company, an outdoor furniture brand) work because they match categories the customer has already shown interest in — travel, gardening, hospitality, pets.
- Measure a brand partnership holistically. Sell-through matters, but so does the "buzz and demand creation" data a pure conversion metric misses: prospecting signups from teasers, click-through on ads and email, and press pickup.
- Full-price storytelling is a deliberate margin strategy, not just brand purity. Cutting back promotional days grew AOV and margin without losing the customer, while specific calendar moments still lean hard into promotion.
- AI-driven brand discovery is a new skill, not a rerun of SEO. Beefing up PDP FAQs so an AI assistant has something direct to quote back is now a top priority, distinct from the old instinct to distill product copy down to the shortest possible read.
- AI is a personal productivity multiplier, not a replacement. The operating rule: AI won't replace people, but people who don't know how to use it will be replaced by those who do.
A true lifestyle brand
Reese Witherspoon founded Draper James in 2015, naming it after her grandparents, Dorothy Draper and James Witherspoon. The brand carries Southern hospitality and values, evolved for the modern woman Witherspoon has become — a wide range of sizes, an expanding set of categories (including a pet line, reflecting her own love of dogs), and a real commitment to being a lifestyle brand rather than a single-category label wearing that phrase as marketing.
That authenticity shows up physically too: the flagship on Nashville's 12 South has become a kind of "DTC Alley," alongside brands like Reformation, and Draper James recently opened a second store in the Woodlands outside Houston.
Partnerships with a filter
Parsley is explicit that Draper James doesn't do transactional brand partnerships — reach alone doesn't get a brand in the door. The filter is whether the category is something the customer already cares about, based on data showing affinities for travel, gardening, hospitality, and pets.
Two examples: a collaboration with Rustler Hat Co., a female-founded Nashville custom hat maker, which sold out multiple times and has been replenished; and a line with Pollywood Furniture, which makes porch swings and rockers out of recycled plastic milk jugs for ocean conservation — a natural fit for a brand built around Southern front-porch culture. Draper James's consistent visual identity (bright, cheerful prints, always a stripe or a gingham) makes these collaborations easier to design into, rather than forcing a fit.
Measuring what a partnership actually returns
Parsley's measurement approach for partnerships is deliberately holistic rather than sell-through-only. Sell-through is the baseline — a buzzy product that doesn't move won't get a repeat — but she also tracks demand creation before launch (signups driven by teaser content), click-through rate across paid channels and email/SMS, and whether press picks up the collaboration, which she reads as a signal of real synergy and credibility.
Full-price storytelling
About a year into a new CEO's tenure (Jeanie Yoo, who came from a brand-building e-commerce background), Draper James made a deliberate call to cut back promotional days and become, in Parsley's words, "a full-price storyteller." The result: a positive impact on margin and a big increase in AOV, with the customer still showing up — proof that the brand didn't need to discount its way to volume.
Parsley ties this discipline directly to LTV and clienteling — favoring small, personal gestures (a handwritten note about new arrivals) over constant promotional email, on the theory that a customer who buys at full price is a more durable customer than one acquired on the steepest discount.
Brand discovery in the age of AI
Parsley is focused on agentic and AI search specifically as a brand-discovery tool — she wants Draper James to show up when a customer describes a need in natural language to an AI assistant rather than searching a retailer directly, and she's explicit that this is a different skill than traditional SEO, not a rerun of it.
Beefing up PDP FAQs is one of her top priorities this year for exactly that reason — AI tools rely on users asking questions and brands providing direct answers, which is close to the opposite instinct of the old rule to distill product copy down to the shortest possible read for time-pressed human shoppers.
Where AI actually helps
Beyond discovery, Parsley uses AI as a personal thought partner — drafting product copy and A/B email subject lines, and even mocking up whether a photoshoot concept she's imagined actually exists somewhere in the world, saving hours of location-scouting research. The goal is freeing up time for the parts of the job that are genuinely irreplaceable: sitting face-to-face with partners, licensees, and brand ambassadors.
Sound Bites
- “A lot of brands, even single-category brands, will call themselves lifestyle brands and they're not. It's really refreshing being a marketer on a brand that is a true lifestyle brand, and it fits the lifestyle of how she grew up and what she believes in.”
- “We're really careful about making products and brand partnerships that she would be excited about. Every category that we're launching this year checks a box of an affinity that our customer has based off of data.”
- “Just as important as sell-through is buzz and reach and that demand creation... it's not one or the other.”
- “It's really important to show the customer the value of the product and the brand. There are certain times of the year where it makes a lot of sense to be promo-heavy, and by all means, when that happens, I'll be the loudest person out there. But for the remainder of the time, full-price storytelling wins.”
- “If she's saying, I have this bridal shower to go to, I want a yellow dress with white flowers, a midi, sleeveless — there's no reason we should miss out on that sale if we have that product. Optimizing your PDPs with frequent FAQs is going to help you show up more organically in AI search as a brand discovery tool.”
- “I personally don't feel like AI is going to replace people. I think people who don't know AI are going to be replaced.”
The Chord take
The throughline across partnerships, pricing, and AI discovery is the same: Draper James does the patient, structural work of understanding what its customer actually wants, and that work is what lets it skip the shortcuts everyone else reaches for. Partnerships get filtered by real affinity data instead of chasing reach; pricing leans on full-price storytelling instead of a promotional treadmill; and AI discovery gets treated as a new skill worth building — PDP FAQs that answer real questions — instead of either panicking about it or ignoring it. None of this is exotic. It's the same discipline that shows up in Chord's own thesis: brands that invest in understanding and structuring what they know about their customer are the ones that get to be selective, patient, and still show up exactly when it matters — whether that's in a customer's inbox or inside someone's conversation with an AI assistant.
Put it to work
- 1Filter partnership opportunities by real customer affinity data, not just a partner's reach — check whether the category is something your customer has already told you they care about.
- 2Measure collaborations holistically: track buzz, prospecting signups, and press pickup alongside sell-through, not sell-through alone.
- 3Audit your promotional calendar. Could you shift toward full-price storytelling most of the year and concentrate discounting into a few disciplined, deliberate windows?
- 4Start building out PDP FAQs and richer product content for AI-assistant discovery now — it rewards direct answers to real customer questions, not distilled marketing copy.
Full transcriptShow ↓
Bryan Mahoney
Hey everyone, thanks for tuning in to another episode of the Brilliant Commerce Podcast, where I get a chance to sit down with some of the brightest minds in commerce and unpack the secrets behind our industry's most iconic — and, as I like to say, soon-to-be-iconic — brands. Today I'm joined by Piper Parsley, VP of E-Commerce and Brand Marketing at Draper James, a brand that easily makes it onto my list of next-to-be-iconic brands. Piper, thanks for being on the pod.
Piper Parsley
Thanks for having me, Bryan.
Bryan Mahoney
Where am I finding you today?
Piper Parsley
I'm in New Jersey, and our office is based out of New York City.
Bryan Mahoney
Headquartered there since inception?
Piper Parsley
Yes — corporate headquarters are in Midtown, and then we have flagship stores in Nashville.
Bryan Mahoney
How long have you been at the company?
Piper Parsley
It'll be two years in May.
Bryan Mahoney
Your background's super fascinating — I've done a ton of work in brand and PR, but take a couple of minutes and give me your story and what led you to Draper James.
Piper Parsley
I've been in digital my entire career. I started on the agency side in media planning and social, so I had that foundation of digital-first — understanding what it meant to drive traffic to various sites and really understanding those KPIs. Once I felt it was time to make a change, I knew I wanted to go to the brand side. Footwear was my first brand — I was at Marc Fisher Footwear for almost five years, worked on all the brands there, then pivoted into children's wear. I was at Appaman for a little over four years running the digital department, then got back into footwear at Ecco, the global Danish footwear brand, and then found myself at Draper James. It's been great — I've always been a fan of the brand, I'm from the Midwest, so I've been familiar with it, and we share a lot of similarities in terms of hospitality and joy — those Southern and Midwestern traditions. It seemed like a really perfect fit. At this brand I not only oversee e-commerce but also the brand marketing and creative, so it's nice to have your left and right brain work together. A lot of times at a company those places are a little more disjointed, and being able to connect the two has been really fun.
Bryan Mahoney
It's one thing to love the product you're creating, but another to really feel those brand values — like, this is a brand I want to be friends with. If you're in charge of brand, it's nice to show up for work every day really proud of the company you're at.
Piper Parsley
Exactly. And Reese, as the founder, has always been an icon. I grew up watching her in amazing performances, but also learning and following the other aspects of her career, including finding Draper James and understanding why she founded the brand — it made me love her and the brand even more. She founded it because she wanted to create a beautiful line for women who wanted to feel joy and pretty, nothing too fussy, nothing too precious — women put it on and they're like, yes, I feel great in this. It's an approachable, friendly brand, and you feel that the second you walk into any of our stores. We have two stores in Nashville — one on 12 South, our flagship, one of the first big retailers down there, and it's really blown up over the years — and we recently opened one in the Woodlands, outside of Houston, Texas.
Bryan Mahoney
Yeah, 12 South has become a little bit like DTC Alley — a lot of really wonderful brands are there. I'm seeing more and more of these places.
Piper Parsley
Yeah, Reformation, exactly — there's a lot of digitally native brands that have pivoted to retail, and you'll find a lot of them down there on 12 South.
Bryan Mahoney
That's one thing a lot of these digitally native or DTC companies have figured out — having a physical place where your customers and your community can go is a really powerful aspect of brand building. I want to be able to go touch and feel the product and see other like-minded customers there for a lot of the same reasons.
Piper Parsley
Exactly. You'll walk in and out of various stores on 12 South and get a completely different vibe and feel, and it matters — there's only so much of that you can do online. We've come a really far way in terms of user experience and personalization, and with AI you're just going to get more of that, but nothing competes with opening the door and hearing the soundtrack of Draper James and hearing our incredible retail staff greeting you — 'hey y'all, let me know if there's anything I can do.' You instantly feel that warmth and friendship to the brand, and that's hard to replicate online.
Bryan Mahoney
I think it's impossible. We're five, six minutes in and you've already said AI — I try to keep that until the 20-minute mark, so we're ahead of schedule. But I want to go back for a second — you buried the lead a little bit when you said Reese, meaning Reese Witherspoon. Maybe give us a little more of the brand story — for those discovering Draper James for the first time, what makes you all unique?
Piper Parsley
Our founder, Reese Witherspoon, launched this brand ten years ago — we're coming up on our 11th year, which is so crazy. She launched it in 2015, and named the brand after her grandparents — Dorothy Draper and James Witherspoon. She's always been really close to her family, talks about it in interviews all the time. She knows her roots are in the South, but she's developed this line that carries those Southern values and personality traits, evolved for the modern woman she is today. So the line has something for everyone — we carry a wide range of sizes, ready-to-wear, and we're getting into a whole bunch of different categories that fit the woman she's become. She's a big animal supporter, loves her dogs, and we launched a pet category a little over a year ago that's expanding and growing. As we get into other things she and our customers are interested in, we dabble in it — that's what's great about the brand, it's a true lifestyle brand. A lot of brands, even single-category brands, will call themselves lifestyle brands and they're not, and it's really refreshing being a marketer on a brand that actually is one.
Bryan Mahoney
That's awesome. I'm curious — you're on the record as a big believer in partnerships. Thinking about storytelling and what it means to be a lifestyle brand through the lens of partnership, do you have a filter or criteria? I imagine a lot of brands want access to Reese. How do you decide what's additive to the story you're telling as a lifestyle brand versus just a transactional partnership?
Piper Parsley
We don't do any brand partnerships with the lens of just transactional. We want to make sure any brand that approaches us, or that we meet organically, is a category our customer cares about — even if it's a brand or partner with massive reach, we're really careful about making products and brand partnerships that she would be excited about. Last year we did a partnership with a female-founded brand — we like to carry that red thread Reese has set across all her businesses, supporting women and women founders — we teamed up with Rustler Hat Co. in Nashville, a fantastic company that does custom cowboy hats, truckers, other accessories, t-shirts, fun stuff. It's become a great tourist destination down there. We did a line because we knew it would give us that community aspect in Nashville, where our heart is, and it's sold out multiple times and we've replenished. That's an example of a smaller brand we were psyched to work with. We have a handful of collaborations launching this year I can't say anything about yet, but definitely sign up for emails or follow on Instagram, because those are the first two places we announce things. Every category we're launching this year checks a box of an affinity our customer has, based on data — we know she's interested in travel, gardening, hospitality, pet — and as opportunities come across the table, we make sure it's a fit and then have a lot of fun working together. Another one we launched last year was Pollywood Furniture — our customer and Reese, in the South, love a good front-porch moment, so we have a porch swing, rockers, gingham and stripe cushions. Pollywood makes all their furniture out of recycled plastic milk jugs to help ocean conservation, so that was a no-brainer for us too. Definitely be on the lookout for what's coming.
Bryan Mahoney
I will be on the lookout. So for someone in charge of growing the business and recruiting new customers, it sounds like partnership is a wonderful lever. Is it fair to say being a lifestyle brand makes partnerships a more natural acquisition and expansion vehicle?
Piper Parsley
Definitely, because there are more places you can layer into, taking a step back and seeing the full lifestyle of Draper James — not just the product, but picturing her and what she does day to day. There are correlations between categories because you could use more than one at once in your everyday life — it's effortlessly woven in, whether pet or furniture or sneakers, you'll do it in a Draper way. We have an iconic look — print-heavy, but bright, cheerful prints, not moody — there's always going to be a stripe and a gingham, evolving season over season. That's what's fun, because people say, I have an idea, let's take our product but use your print, and it becomes a natural, organic tie-in.
Bryan Mahoney
Putting your e-commerce or performance-marketing hat on for a sec — these partnerships are a blast, you get the launch and the excitement, but how do you measure it without taking the fun out of it? What data tells you this one was successful, let's do more of these?
Piper Parsley
The obvious one is sell-through — you can have a product everyone thinks is great and buzzy, but if it doesn't move, you're probably not doing it again. But just as important as sell-through is buzz and reach and demand creation — seeing who signs up because we tease something is coming, that prospecting response to teasers, click-through rate on ads across Meta, Pinterest, PMax, and on emails and SMS talking about the collaboration. And press — when press picks it up and posts about it, that shows real synergy and credibility with the collaboration.
Bryan Mahoney
So it's a really holistic approach to measuring that data.
Piper Parsley
I think that's important, because it's not one or the other. You could put some in the category of, this was brand building and our sell-through wasn't as quick as the previous one, but we grew our list by a lot in the lead-up, or the buzz was really great — which must be nice, being able to talk to your customers about something to look forward to across those channels, versus just, hey, we're on sale again, here's another promotional email. Balancing that storytelling with the lifestyle is a fortunate position to be in.
Piper Parsley
Exactly. And that actually hits the nail on the head with our strategy last year. From an e-commerce standpoint, we got a new CEO about a year ago in October, Jeanie Yoo, who comes from a big brand-building e-commerce background as well. It was great to sit in a room and say, okay, new year, what are we going to do — and one of the first things we talked about was cutting back on promotional days, knowing that could impact some conversion, but what was more important was being more of a full-price storyteller and much less of what you were just describing. What we saw was an incredible positive impact on margin and a big increase in AOV. The customer was still there, and it proved you don't have to result in that. There are certain times of year where it makes a lot of sense to be promo-heavy, and by all means, when that happens, I'll be the loudest person out there with the brightest colors and the biggest offer — but for the remainder of the time, it's really important to show the customer the value of the product and the brand.
Bryan Mahoney
I don't think we talk about this nearly enough as an industry — this discipline, because it's always easy to go on sale. You can't be the only one not on sale when the whole internet is on sale, you've got to meet the customer where they are. But at other times, if you can do things that are authentically about building the brand and do that hard work, you can build a healthy business. We used to talk a lot about arbitraging the amount we could spend to acquire a customer plus the promo we could apply — and we sort of lost the soul of what it meant to be a brand. I hear from more and more commerce and brand leaders about the importance of being disciplined and making those investments so the customers you're acquiring are customers for life. I'd imagine a customer acquired on a full-price purchase is, over time, a better customer than one who came in on the deepest discount.
Piper Parsley
Exactly. And really focusing on the LTV of your customers and figuring out how to woo the existing base that's already hooked — that involves clienteling, which is very important, because in this fast-paced, digitally native world we live in, a little bit of that goes a long way. If you're a brand a customer loves and shops a lot, and they received a handwritten note in the mail saying, hey, we have new pieces we think you'd love, we hope all is well — would you be more inclined to spend more and feel like you had a true relationship with the brand, versus not getting those clienteling VIP concierge moments?
Bryan Mahoney
Absolutely. The brands I love and support are ones I'm proud to be loyal to — I've been loyal to some for a decade. I was in New York for NRF recently and there was a lot of buzz around the agentic shopping protocol, but when I get commerce leaders around a table and we really talk about what it means, what I typically hear is, it's just another channel, and we're worried about how our brand shows up on top of these channels where we don't own the relationship with the customer, where we have a little less control. Do we expect a customer who's already ours to just go on autopilot and let an agent buy the next piece of clothing? Probably not. So I'd love your point of view — how are you thinking about agentic shopping specifically, is there a role for it in Draper James's future expansion?
Piper Parsley
Yes — for me I'm hyper-focused on it from a brand-discovery standpoint. If you look at how people are using AI, with OpenAI being the biggest gateway drug to AI use right now, we want to show up alongside our competitors when she's saying, I have this bridal shower to go to, I don't know where to find this, but I know I want a yellow dress with white flowers, a midi, sleeveless. There's no reason we should miss out on that sale if we have that product. Optimizing your PDPs with frequent FAQs helps you show up more organically in AI and search as a brand-discovery tool. If I can nurture my existing clientele with personalization while also leveraging agentic search as a discovery tool, I think it's only going to help us have more of those relationships in the future.
Bryan Mahoney
Is that any different from the work you've done over the last decade on SEO, or does it feel very different?
Piper Parsley
It's different. We all have a good understanding of how to increase SERP scores and show up in top organic results on Google, but it's a completely different methodology to show up in AI search tools and understand what they need in order to suggest your brand — it's a muscle we haven't flexed yet. Starting with understanding how the AI tool works, knowing they rely heavily on users asking questions and brands providing answers, so beefing up the FAQs on our PDPs is one of our top priorities this year, because it's a quicker way to compete in that space.
Bryan Mahoney
That's cool, I hadn't heard that yet, so that's super valuable. What about the effectiveness of content about Draper James that lives outside your own channels — say if someone's asking about a bridal dress and people are talking about it on Reddit, has that had any impact?
Piper Parsley
Not so much on Reddit for us — I know what you mean, though, in other forums. Facebook, our customer is still there to an extent. We also use influencers as a way to solve problems, like, hey guys, this is what I'm packing for my friend's wedding — showing that we have dresses for every occasion, which is a top category for us. Leaning into content creators who need dresses for various occasions is a great way to be top of mind. Same with ShopMy — a tool that helps us not only find creators already talking about us, but find creators wearing our competitors, reach out, build relationships, and invite them to be a Draper James ambassador. They take that and post it to their audience, so they can talk about what we have in a way their audience relates to, as opposed to specific questions on other channels. I feel like the industry moves so fast, we're already behind in a lot of ways. I'm also a huge believer in not doing everything okay, but doing a few things really well — that doesn't stop us from figuring out what else is out there and keeping our finger on the pulse. I believe there's a space for Draper James on Substack, and that's something I've started planting the seed about — you test different things and see where you get the best response.
Bryan Mahoney
It brings me back to discipline — you can't be everywhere all at once if you can't show up authentically, with your voice, where your community is. I like this idea of AI for discovery. Have you given thought to using AI on your own site to help with discovery — as this becomes the paradigm customers are used to, once I get them there, can AI be helpful as a personal shopping assistant?
Piper Parsley
Yes, absolutely — that's something we're looking into, specifically to make search more human. I try it on competitor sites to see how conversational their search results are, and some understand what I'm saying and some don't unless you type exact keywords. It seems archaic to have search that just matches product title and description words, when we have tools now that understand — I should be able to type 'Audrey Hepburn style little black dress' and it should understand that stylistically, unless the copy literally said 'giving Audrey Hepburn vibes,' it's not going to show up unless they're leveraging these tools. I'm sure everyone feels like they're just trying to keep up because every day there's something new, but it's on the roadmap, and Jeanie, our CEO, is really big on testing, which is the best way to learn. Last year we tested CTV, and it worked great not just as a prospecting tool but for retargeting and getting the customer to come back — the AOV on the retargeting campaigns for CTV was close to 1.5 times bigger than other platforms. That was a huge win, and no one knew.
Bryan Mahoney
Take the wins. I think you have to have discipline, but also courage and the willingness and culture to go and experiment, anchored in strong brand values — we're going to try these different things, but in a way that feels right to us. We've got a couple minutes left — we've talked about AI for discovery, and outside your channels there's curiosity about making search on your own site better. What about behind-the-scenes operations — have you stumbled on any tools, AI or not, that are making your team's life better?
Piper Parsley
Yes, for sure — being able to leverage tools like ChatGPT when you have a bunch of product copy to write, or to give specific directives on subject lines and preview text for emails, giving two different types so we can A/B test. What I think is, I personally don't feel like AI is going to replace people — I think people who don't know AI are going to be replaced. It's all about understanding how the tool works and how to do the inputs. I've been in a relationship with ChatGPT for years now, and it knows what I'm doing at Draper because I'll say, okay, I have a concept for a photo shoot, does this place I just made up in my head actually exist anywhere — and it'll pop up three cities and give me hotels or landmarks, and I'm like, great, you just saved me hours. That's where it helps, because I want to spend my time face-to-face with our partners, our licensing partners, our brand ambassadors and collaborators, not behind a desk coming up with stuff I could use these tools to help me be more efficient with.
Bryan Mahoney
It gets you back to the place you want to be, which is building brands and creating connections. If I can hire interns or agents away to do some of those rote tasks that are done well but that I'm still going to art-direct, then I'm winning, because it means I can spend more time on exciting partnerships, and that ultimately moves the brand forward, versus using AI to just crap out a bunch of things that aren't going to build the brands of the future. That's what I'm excited about.
Piper Parsley
Right, same, agreed.
Bryan Mahoney
That's probably a nice place to stop — AI is not going to replace us, but you can be replaced if you're not great at AI. Piper, thank you so much for joining me today. I can't wait for the next time I'm in Nashville, I want to go check out the store, see that greeting, and get to know the product a little more.
Piper Parsley
That's true, you have to — it's a special place. Well, thank you so much for having me, Bryan.
Bryan Mahoney
It's a pleasure.