Allbirds Avoids Walking in Meta’s Shoes

Lately, there’s been a lot of hand-wringing about how Apple’s mobile privacy changes—which recently blew a hole in the finances and stock of Meta, Facebook’s parent company—may also affect lots of other companies that have benefited from relatively cheap advertising on Facebook. Earlier this week, Ben Thompson said in a post on his Stratechery blog that the changes could hurt Shopify, the e-commerce arms merchant. But today one of Shopify’s best-known customers, shoe merchant Allbirds, reported holiday-quarter results that suggested some direct-to-consumer retailers might avoid the shrapnel from Apple’s privacy changes. 

Allbirds reported that its revenue for the fourth quarter rose 23% to $97 million, even though its marketing expenses for the period fell 22% to around $19 million. In a call with Wall Street analysts, the retailer’s chief financial officer, Michael Bufano, said Allbirds has a diversified set of advertising channels. For one thing, it’s got a chain of brick-and-mortar stores that act as a marketing vehicle. Bufano added that Allbirds isn’t overdependent on Facebook, which is the bigger point here.