Show Notes | Series 2, Episode 4 | Naturecan
About our podcast
Brightpearl’s Lightning 50 E-Commerce Growth Hacking podcast, hosted by Caroline Baldwin, is a bitesize podcast that gets under the hood of highly successful e-commerce brands to discover the key technologies they are using to power growth.
About our guest
Naturecan is an e-commerce retailer of CBD wellness products based in the North West of the UK. Since launching in 2019 the brand now sells direct-to-consumer on a global scale, and focuses on offering safe, effective and premium hemp-derived CBD products, as well as vitamins and minerals. With an impressive 220% YoY growth level it ranked 6th in the Lightning 50 list of UK brands and was the second fastest-growing Health & Beauty brand in Britain. For this podcast, we spoke to Andy Duckworth, CEO and Founder of Naturecan.
Transcript highlights:
● “The globalised product is our goal - to branch into USA, Asia and Western Europe - that’s what I’d say is our ‘secret’, as it were. My other tip is to harness your supply chain - getting your products to the customer quickly, and understanding the quality of your product in-depth, in regards to what is going into it at every stage of the production process.”
● “We focus on people - that’s our customers, as well as our staff and in-house team - and the quality of our product. Those are the two things we pride ourselves on.”
● “Regarding growth, this year we will top 10M in revenue. The growth behind that is strong, so next year we’re expecting a strong boost in growth again. It’s just hitting global markets - it gives you more opportunities for success. Different markets grow at different rates but putting it all together really boosts revenue.”
● “We prepare well in advance for Black Friday, Cyber Monday - so going into the golden quarter we’re well positioned to see growth. We plan for it literally all year round; when it’s over, we start planning for next year’s the following day. You’re missing a trick if you don’t prepare fully for this period so we make sure we focus on it.”
● ”CBD is a strange subset of wellness because Facebook and Google are only just getting used to letting you market it. The more traditional channels are less switched on globally, so we have to improvise. Word of mouth is important, but that only works when customers have used the brand, so I’d consider our customers to be the best form of marketing. Once you’ve attracted customers it’s then vital to continue talking to them via email, informing and educating them about products coming up, etc. to encourage repeat custom.”
● “The North West is a bit of a hub for e-commerce and there’s some great talent coming from up here - it must be what goes into the water in Burnley.”
● “Our biggest challenge was the pandemic - it helped us in general but it does impact your freight costs, for example - moving stock around costs more than it used to, marketing costs more as more businesses move online - but we’ve still managed to cut through. It’s been relatively smooth compared to others so we’re lucky in that way.”
● “We’re using a mix of strong WMS and 3PL software, and excellent integrations to pull stock in - that’s where Brightpearl comes in, as we know exactly where we’re at with stock. Working capital helps a lot, as moving stock costs a lot more these days so having capital helps mitigate that.”
Top takeaways
● Naturecan placed as 6th fastest-growing e-commerce retailer in the UK, and the top brand in the Health & Beauty sector.
● The brand reached a healthy 220% growth rate.
● The tech that’s driven their growth includes a mix of WMS and 3PL and Brightpearl.
● Naturecan puts its huge growth down to having full visibility of its supply chain and maintaining high quality control, as well as breaking multiple global markets.