Direct to Consumers or D2C brands are the current flavour of VCs and Entrepreneur. I wrote about the frenemy relationship of Platforms and Brands and more specifically Amazon and D2C Brands in previous newsletters. As per the Business Standard report , Amazon receives orders from 99.3 per cent of India’s pin-codes. An excerpt from Jeff Bezos last letter to Amazon’s shareholders has an interesting advise for all of us- Individuals, Businesses, Communities. D2C brands would need platforms to manage customer experience, customize content, sell and even and facilitate customer service.
Of course, I chose to not be directly on a Social Media Platform to talk about Platforms and Businesses. I do use Twitter and LinkedIN to keep others updated about my views on Running Platform Marketing Life but with you, I prefer a direct relationship via an email every Sunday Evening.
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DTW
During the Week, ShipRocket raised 41.3 Million USD from a bunch of investors including a PayPal subsidiary. They claim to be “India’s #1 eCommerce shipping solution, trusted by over 1 Lac brands and entrepreneurs for lowest shipping rates, widest reach and best customer service“. And they pay special attention to RTO.
Platforms like ShipRocket are fast turning to be the backbone of the D2C brands ecosystem developing in India and rest of the world.
D2C brands need Ubiquity and Virality to rise to the top. Early pioneers like Dollar Shave Club ran an extremely successful and viral campaign featuring their founder and CEO Michael Dubin. If you have not watched the video yet, take few minutes to watch and look at the brilliance of content, use of humour and of course clear communication of value proposition.
It certainly helped that their CEO had experience in advertising and theatre which many other D2C brands may not posses. Of course, we have seen rise of Indian D2C brands led by celebrities and fuelled by their fans and supporters.
For every other brand, use of celebrity influencers platform could do wonders. Instagram and other social media platforms have always been an important part of the D2C brand business. Early on, they were used to get product feedback but then D2C brands realised that people liked posting pictures of their deliveries as well as unboxing on the platform. Use of micro-influencers has led to more peer-to-peer referral sales boom for D2C brands. Many other D2C brands have been able to create personalisation through leveraging influencer and content marketing platforms.
Great Customer Experience is an important consideration for customer retention and subscription business growth. This could include creating and managing online stores, logistics integration including warehouse, inventory and return management & finally customer analytics to ensure brand connect. Platforms like ShipRocket pay special attention to the D2C brand entrepreneur’s pain point regarding RTO- Return to Origin.
In D2C fashion brands, AR/VR and machine learning platforms could do wonders for product viewing and virtual fitting. Platforms facilitating convenient return policies can give customers a much-needed window to engage with brands in this covid pandemic. Brands like ClearDekho started by Shivi Singh IBS Hyd MBA2012 have transformed unorganised optical store market by providing them with latest MarTech, customer access and deeper customer analytics.
To conclude, Platforms can help D2C brands in Analytics, Brand Building ,Customers Acquisitions and off course Distribution.
OTW
Over the Weekend, I reflected on few interesting insights from Jared Diamond’s marvellous take on how geography and biogeography moulded the contrasting fate of Europeans, Asians, Native Americans and others. Guns, Germs and Steel documents proximate and ultimates causes of how we have the world divided into haves and have-nots.
Jared has an interesting hypothesis about the pattern of world history. He posits that an East-West alignment implies that a landmass would have a more similar climate, day length and seasonal variations thus animals, crops, as well as travel and trade, more easily spread across the continents than with a North–South alignment — of the Americas and Africa — which naturally encounters more different climatic zones. This also meant that germs also spread faster across the EuroAsian landmass thus wiping out huge populations over last two millennia. Of course, we made it easier for germs to thrive by building cities which simply had higher population density thus giving more host bodies to the pathogens. Add the Air Travel and we have the perfect conditions for pandemic like Covid19 to torture us in waves.
But I am still hopeful for the future of cities as they are still the growth engines for human civilisation and in fact encourage young people to be in the heart of cities like Hyderabad to stay ahead.
Stay Safe. Get Vaccinated and Encourage Others as well.
I Love You
Shailendra
OTM
Opportunities through MountainSpeak are available with ClearDekho-India's Leading Budget Eyewear Brand & Largest Budget Optical Retail Chain.
In the S5E2 of MountainSpeak , Shivi Singh, Co-Founder of ClearDekho shared during his vision for the company to be customer centric and employees to be problem solvers with frugal mindset. If you are looking for a high paying job, you may want to skip this announcement but if you are looking for an interesting role in a large enterprise in next five years, then get your skills updated while working with ClearDekho. They are at 60 stores now and aim to scale up to 1,000 stores in next five years. This could be the ride of your lifetime.
They are looking for talent in Business Development and Inside Sales. Please send an email to shivi@cleardekho.com or reach out on LinkedIn
Hi Sir,
Really liked your article on D2C brands and how they are evolving.
I came across an article like last week how restaurants are planning to directly approach customers with technology partners like Dot and trying to avoid delivery partners like Swiggy/Zomato, as they are charging heavy commission.
But, having considered this, somewhere some of them who have moved away from Swiggy, aren't that successful in doing it, as they need to invest in delivery boys and also lack in efficiency in delivering the food.
Would love to hear your take on this
Should restaurants directly approach the customers or it's wise to stick with swiggy/Zomato??
Regards,
Nitish Narayanan