#50 The Least Boring Weekend Newsletter

January 01, 2022 • Estimated Reading Time: 12 minutes

Good Morning readers! ☕

While writing this newsletter, we happened to notice that it is our 50th newsletter, and it is being published on the first day of the year. 🥳 What could be better? Love the coincidence🤯

Almund wishes everyone a happy new year! We hope 2022 is an amazing chapter in your life! 💃

D2C x CRYPTO

Ralph Lauren inaugurated its newest storefronts in December, bypassing large metropolises like Milan, Tokyo, and New York in favour of an exciting new location: Roblox's online world, which has 47 million daily active users( That’s crazy🤑). 

It loaded its virtual stores, which are open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and accessible to everyone in the world with just a few clicks, with virtual puffer jackets, chequered beanies, and other throwback ski wear ⛷️ for the winter season🥶, all for less than $5.

As ridiculous as it may sound, the metaverse is being heralded as a new goldmine, with Morgan Stanley expecting a $50 billion-plus opportunity for the luxury market in the next decade.

For starters, it's a way to appeal to the next generation of customers, notably Gen Z

(The gen z’s got real lucky here), who are digital natives who have grown up spending a substantial amount of time online.

When an object is resold, it can get royalties👑 . This is accomplished by encoding terms in a blockchain-based "smart contract," which will power the metaverse. But why would anyone pay real money for clothes that don't exist? ( I mean yeah, why would we?)

If you spend a lot of time online, your avatar is definitely important to you. 

Designers will have more leeway to experiment. A jacket🧥 can be on fire, made of water, or change colours during the day or depending on its owner's emotions in the metaverse.

It might also provide a new mechanism for firms to test items, allowing them to launch the first in the digital realm, receive feedback, and analyze demand before selling them in the physical world🌎 . Customers who enjoy the digital version may be able to order the physical version by pressing a button. ( Amazing, right) 😍

To be fair, there's still a lot to sort out in the metaverse, and detractors believe that it'll never catch on. In the meantime, the world's most prestigious fashion houses are taking it seriously and acting rapidly. ( Let’s see how they kill it) 🥳

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LOOKING BACK AT 2021

So here we are again. A pause of a year, 2020, followed by a year of recovery, 2021, was a pivoting point in everyone’s lives. Every business owner, by now, has realized the importance of a brand’s digital presence. D2C platforms and marketing are the need of the hour. But what’s more important is the need for change, especially when running a business.

With the constant, unwavering threat of the pandemic still creeping on us, businesses have learned to embrace change; we all lived through Holly Black’s words—changing is what people do when they have no options left. 

Change in businesses allows for new opportunities, exploring unknown avenues, and perhaps, better results. But if there's still something holding you back from bringing about the much-needed change in your business, let us help you out. 

🙏🏼 Your Customers Need You Now More Than Ever

E-commerce is now the most successful business model to have ever existed. With global sales rising every year, it is evident that customers are constantly looking to bridge the gap between themselves and the brands they choose to engage with. So, if you’re not ready to have them interact with you online, your competitors will. 

👥 Customers' Needs Constant Change

Don’t you lie now—we’ve all attended office calls and important meetings while cooking, doing laundry, or perhaps, in bed. With day and night, weekdays and weekends blending into one, your customers are similarly looking for you. Two years ago, they would’ve visited your store when you were open but they now expect to find you when they shop at 3:00 AM on a random Wednesday. 

As time passes by, your business has to be ready to evolve to meet your customers’ growing needs and requirements when it comes to services and products. 

🖥️ It's The Era Of Complete Digitalization

It’s 2022, people! Your customers are no longer going to ring you to put forth a complaint, putting them on hold for a query is simply not an option, you may lose them if you don’t make it easy for them to checkout with the items in the cart. With digitalization, everything is quick, seamless, and online. Hence, having a functional website, useful resources to help your customers through their user journey, and adequate 24x7 customer support is the crux of a successful D2C business.

🏆 Customers Care More About The Brand Now

Customers worldwide seem to care more about the brand, what they stand for, and their background. 83% of the millennial and Gen Z customer pool think that brands can change society and that’s why they spend more time researching about you before they make a purchase. 

Having an online presence allows you to maintain a social image aligning with your brand value to be accessible and approachable to this giant pool of potentially loyal customers.

💬 Be More In Touch With Your Customers

Your brand’s online presence ideally would stretch across channels, ranging from various social media platforms to websites to forums. This allows your customers to interact with your brand through multiple channels regardless of the time difference, geographic location, and background. This socio-virtual intimacy allows you to create positive customer relationships. 

🤝🏼 Gives You Opportunities For Collaborations 

Establishing an online presence opens you up to collaborations and influencer marketing. 

71% of millennials (who make up to 21% direct to consumer purchases=buying power worth a trillion dollars) refer to social media at least once a day and 50% are willing to buy from a brand that supports social causes. And this is your window of opportunity. Through well-curated UGC content and collaborations with the right influencers, you can gain traction from the right audience at the right time to convert them into loyal customers. 

🧐 Encourage Innovation & Development

Shifting into a D2C space can be intimidating and challenging but that’s about it with the downsides! Change in your business gives your employees a chance to learn, grow, and develop their skill set. It stirs in creativity and utilizes your employees’ untapped potential. 

And that's where we stop with words. Wish to take a look at some of the brands that adopted the D2C business model recently? 

#1 Gillette

Gillette started a D2C subscription allowing people to subscribe to a starter kit. It comes with incentives such as additional products, loyalty rewards, and free orders. 

#2 PantryShop.com

When Pepsico realized that people are shifting to shopping for daily needs online, they created PantryShop.com which hosted pre-made bundles across various categories such as “Snacking”, “Workout & Recovery”, “Everyday Pantry”, etc. 

#3 King Arthur Flour

To keep up with the demand for flour across the country, King Arthur Flour made a sharp turn to play in the D2C arena in 2020. They saw a 260% increase in website traffic and a 200% rise in e-commerce sales. 

As you can see, not every brand entered into the D2C industry for the first time. They simply embraced change; from a shift in their process to changes in their product delivery system to developing a new subscription model—the only constant here is change. 

So, are you willing to try something new this year?

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WHAT’S COOKING, HUH?

2021 Year in Review – Reflecting and Projecting What’s Ahead For Retailers in 2022

Before the pandemic, most of the major big-box retailers made significant omnichannel expenditures. As a result, they were well-positioned to make quick adjustments throughout 2021. 

The upward trend in home improvement that began in early 2020 has persisted. Beginning in March 2021, foot traffic in the home improvement market climbed for nine of the twelve months, outpacing the already excellent 2020 data.

In 2021, the direct-to-consumer (D2C) story drew a lot of attention for two reasons. It is related to mature brands' efforts to manage their brand and distribution points. 

The maturation and monetization of an endless stream of digital-native businesses, many of which were gaining traction in 2021, is the flip side of the direct-to-consumer tale. 

Some of these D2Cs were making attempts to offer their products offline and raise funds. As stores evolve from transactional to experiential, retailers will need to be pushed out of their comfort zones.

Customers are more concerned with brands than with channels. As media has effectively merged into retail, retailers, and brands must transform their stores into media outlets. 

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TOP READS FOR THIS WEEK

🍲 Food52 to acquire Schoolhouse for $48M

🤑Ex-Snap employees raise $4.3M for conversational commerce startup Whym

💲Nucleus Genomics announces a $3.5M seed round for a fresh take on genetic tests. 

🛍️ Shopify Merchants Can Now Create and Sell  NFTs

⭐Facebook’s new website lets fans buy ‘Stars’ without paying the app stores’ commissions

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In need of a  job? We’ve got plenty awaiting you!

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CHOOSE SUCCESS below and have a great week! ‘Get that D2C business runnin’.