How To Keep The Cohesion of Your Brand & Messaging When Going from D2C To Retail

In this episode of the 7 Figures and Beyond podcast, Greg Shuey interviews Alex Vailas, Senior Vice President of Brand Marketing for Dyper.com. Alex discusses her background and the rapid growth of Dyper.com, a plant-based diaper company, over the past five years. Initially focused on direct-to-consumer (DTC) sales through their website and Amazon, Dyper.com has expanded into retail, including major stores like Walmart and Whole Foods. The conversation centers on the challenges and strategies involved in maintaining cohesive brand messaging while transitioning from DTC to retail.

Alex explains that a significant challenge in the transition to retail was adapting their packaging for the retail environment. Their initial packaging, designed for online sales, did not effectively communicate the brand’s value proposition on store shelves. This led to confusion among consumers, who often misinterpreted the brand name and doubted the efficacy of their eco-friendly products. Through quick adjustments and extensive consumer research, Dyper.com rebranded their packaging, emphasizing their name and product benefits more clearly, which improved brand recognition and trial rates in retail stores.

Greg and Alex also discuss the importance of consumer research and strategic planning in making the leap to retail. Alex emphasizes the need for both quantitative and qualitative consumer insights to understand how packaging and messaging resonate with shoppers. She also highlights the necessity of benchmarking brand awareness and consideration before entering retail to measure the impact accurately. Moreover, aligning organizational goals and ensuring clear communication within the team are vital steps in maintaining brand cohesion across different sales channels.

The podcast concludes with a discussion on the importance of personalized customer experiences and the future of retail. Alex notes that while retail offers significant growth opportunities, DTC channels have the advantage of providing a more personalized shopping experience. Dyper.com's development of an app tailored to the needs of their customers is an example of leveraging technology to enhance engagement and retention. Looking ahead, Alex predicts that retail will continue to grow due to its price advantages, but DTC will remain strong due to its ability to offer unique, personalized experiences. She advises brands to carefully strategize their retail entry and prioritize maintaining their core values and customer focus.

Episode Links

Greg Shuey LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/greg-shuey/

Alex Vailas LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexandra-vailas/

Dyper.com: https://dyper.com/

https://www.stryde.com/how-to-keep-cohesion-of-brand-d2c-retail/

Transcript

Launching E-Commerce Brand Into Retail

Speaker 1 0:00

It doesn't matter what kind of e-commerce brand you're building. You still need a rock-solid way to grow and scale your company like clockwork. Welcome to 7 Figures and Beyond an e-commerce marketing podcast for D2C brand owners and marketers, looking for best practices that include proven strategies and tactics to grow an e-commerce brand to 7 figures and beyond, bringing 18-plus years of marketing experience as an e-commerce brand owner and e-commerce agency owner. Please welcome your host.

Greg Shuey 0:26

Greg Shuey. Hey everyone, welcome to episode 29 of the Seven Figures and Beyond podcast. I hope everyone is having an amazing day today. I'm really excited for today's guest. Her name is Alexandra Vailas. I had to ask her that before we started because I knew I was going to slaughter that.

Alex Vailas 0:46

He crushed it.

Greg Shuey 0:47

Great job and in fact, I did slaughter it on the last episode when I was introducing you, so I'm glad I got it right this time.

Alex Vailas 0:55

Noted All good.

Greg Shuey 0:58

So good. She's from dyper. com D-Y-P-E-R not the traditional way that you spell diapers so we're excited to hear her story today. And if you haven't heard of Dyper. Diapercom, you've either probably don't have babies in the house or maybe you've been living under a rock, but they are a fast-growing diaper company. Obviously, di dyper. com, diaper and wipes, and they are pretty innovative in that they use plants to make their products. Customers rave about their brand, about their products. So if you have babies in the house I don't have babies in the house anymore If you do, you should go check them out today and probably buy some and see what they're all about.

Greg Shuey 1:50

Today we're going to be talking about how to keep the cohesion of your brand and messaging when you make the jump from D to C into retail. A lot of the brands I'm talking with right now are very interested in getting into retail. They've kind of cracked the DTC spot. They've gotten into Amazon and they're starting to do well. They're tapping into other marketplaces, but they're also looking at ways to get into retail in order to expand their footprint and grow their revenue. So it's going to be a really fun discussion. I'm excited to be able to learn today, because I don't know a whole lot about retail, so I'm super pumped. Alexandra, thank you for taking some time out of your busy schedule to be with us today.

Alex Vailas 2:34

You're welcome, glad to be here, and yeah, I think that this is going to be a. I mean, I wouldn't say I'm too, we're too different. We started com Amazon, then retail, so there you go. Looking forward to share our story.

Greg Shuey 2:48

It's going to be good. So before we jump in, would you just take a couple of minutes to introduce yourself to our listeners? Share a little bit about your personal story and how you've gotten to where you are today.

Alex Vailas 2:59

Of course I'd be happy to. So my name is Alex Vailas and I'm the Senior Vice President of Brand Marketing for Dyper. I have been with the organization for three years and when I came to Dyper we were primarily just Dyper. com and then had a small presence on Amazon and now we are a big omni-channel brand.

Greg Shuey 3:21

In just three years. That's awesome omni-channel brand.

Alex Vailas 3:23

So I'm very, very In just three years. That's awesome. Yes, and we're five years old Cool, total, so fast, fast growing brand. Absolutely Before Dyper, I worked at an internal agency. I led a content studio for road trippers or Thor Industries owned us. We were a studio that supported all the different RV subsidiaries that Thor owns so Airstream, jayco, keystone. I led all the video and photo production and storytelling and really focused on connecting with consumers and trying to share why camping is such a wonderful experience and to invest in it.

Alex Vailas 4:05

And before that I was on the influencer marketing side working for an influencer marketing agency that service Kroger and Ralph's and Frives and Smith's, as you're probably familiar, greg. And before that I was a content creator and influencer that helped pioneer really the industry at the forefront. Before it was even a word at a million followers back in 2010. And I didn't really know what to do with them yet. And then quickly got into affiliate marketing and got into white label content, created content for target home Depot all sorts of people and kind of built a business as a as a creator.

Alex Vailas 4:44

So I have had a uh, maybe a uh untraditional, non-traditional path to being a VP of brand and at the same time, I think it's one of the most relevant things to understand influencer marketing, to understand affiliate marketing, to understand the consumer and connect with consumer in very authentic ways, especially content creation and making sure that your content is truly engaging, because that's huge for D2C. So, yeah, that's my story to brand, but I will say venturing into retail. I didn't have any experience doing that, so we're all learning together here. It's been fun.

Greg Shuey 5:31

The school of hard knocks. I love it.

Alex Vailas 5:33

Yeah. That's cool I would say most DTC brands. That's the school they go to. What do you say?

Greg Shuey 5:40

I would agree. You know, one of the words I like to use these days is brands are built by product visionaries right, and so they're hard knocks in terms of being able to build and grow the brand online. Because they don't know marketing, they're trying to figure it out. So that's awesome, very, very cool journey and I love for anyone listening thinking like how do I, how do I climb the ladder Right? Like you said, very untraditional and I love that. That's how things are. Today is like you can go build a lot of experience, a lot of different ways and and you can use that experience to just get the next role and then the next role and just kind of climb that ladder. I love it, that's awesome.

Alex Vailas 6:25

Yeah, I think the key is adaptation and being resilient and willing to learn and remaining curious.

Greg Shuey 6:34

I love it. Curiosity, one of our core values here at Stride. I love that so that's awesome. Yeah, cool, cool. All right, you ready to jump in?

Alex Vailas 6:44

Let's do this.

Greg Shuey 6:45

Cool, cool. All right, you ready to jump in? Let's do this. Cool, cool. Like I mentioned, more and more brands I'm talking with are really interested in getting into retail. Why do you think that shift is starting to happen and folks are getting more excited about the opportunity and aggressive?

Alex Vailas 7:02

Yeah, I think there are a lot of reasons why I think, with the DTC, if you've hit your ceiling, or you feel like you've hit your ceiling, you've tried all the, you're pulling all the levers You're not really seeing that growth. You're seeing it slow. You've already expanded to Amazon and you're you're doing well there. So you're seeing opportunity, you're seeing positive results, but you're seeing a slow in growth. You think, okay, I want to expand and see what, who else, I can reach. I think there's a level of awareness that comes with retail. Obviously, there's a level of legitimacy of wow, you've really made it when you enter retail.

Alex Vailas 7:42

Right, and so I think a lot of founders want to see that moment for themselves. I mean, it's true, it's accessibility, especially if you get into a retailer like Walmart or Target. You're trying to create accessibility for your consumer and that's what your hope is, hopefully, as someone that's passionate about your product. I think that for diapers specifically and I do think that it's different depending on what type of product you are For diapers, the consumer research and behavior is that over 50% of all diapers are still sold brick and mortar between Target and Walmart alone.

Alex Vailas 8:26

So when you look at that just from a strategic perspective as a business owner, you think, well, do I really want to just keep my business D to C? There's only going to be so much growth I can hit. And then you're facing retention and all of that. So the next step for us was retail, was retail. If we really really want to challenge the category and grow and and stay, this was our next step. Now, how fast we did that, that was probably, uh, maybe maybe too fast, maybe a little bit, but we did it. Um, I don't know if we would do it again that fast, but uh, I should say we.

Alex Vailas 9:05

We went from. So we had diapercom and then we went to Amazon, but we also went into thrive and grove. So we had a couple experiences. You know, working with what does it take to launch under other online retailers interesting, took learnings there. Then we went to Whole Foods and had a small test market in Texas and those launches also helped, informed us for Walmart and then we went into Walmart. So just to give like a couple of steps in between, it wasn't straight from Amazon straight into Walmart.

Greg Shuey 9:43

Got it Cool, very cool. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense with brands starting to slow their growth or starting to plateau and I think you know every brand's different, right, and so I think for a lot of brands, there's still unlimited potential, but they're also still looking to expand their retail footprint. For your product specifically, like you mentioned, a huge percentage are still buying in store. I mean, I think back to when I had babies eight years ago. I don't think we would even consider buying diapers online, right. It's like holy smokes. We're almost out of diapers. We need to run to Target really quick, right.

Alex Vailas 10:22

Exactly. That's still the behavior today, even with Amazon.

Greg Shuey 10:27

Yeah, I mean, even with free two day shipping you can run out of diapers pretty quick in two days.

Alex Vailas 10:32

Exactly, especially with newborns. Yep.

Greg Shuey 10:36

Got it, okay, awesome. So what are some of the biggest challenges that brands face when trying to make that jump from D to C into retail?

Alex Vailas 10:48

Well, we faced a lot of challenges, so when we just to give a little more clarity in the diaper category, of course you have duopoly, you have Huggies and Pampers, right?

Greg Shuey 11:02

Sure.

Navigating Brand Alignment in Retail

Alex Vailas 11:02

And then you have all these tiny little brands that are on um, com, and then a couple you have Hello Bello and Honest Company in there, and then there's us, along with a couple, like you have a private label, walmart's private label, and um. And so when we were chosen to enter Walmart, it was really, you know, they were very excited because we were this sustainably focused brand. Walmart cares a lot about sustainability and they want to offer their customers different things, but one of the when you think about Walmart and who they are and who they service, they service people who are focused on value, but we were premium brand. That's how we entered and that's that's our DTC business. We didn't have another product line to go to Walmart with. They wanted that core product. And so then it was the economics of how are we going to make this premium product and meet the margins and the desires of Walmart and to meet the customer, which is the number one purchase driver, is price. So we thought, okay, we're going to try this, we're going to do our best, this is our shot, and we just got to figure it out.

Alex Vailas 12:20

So we went in with the same packaging that we use DTC and we put it on shelf and gosh that is. That was a mistake, because when you're online, you don't think about shelf presence and what you know. We didn't have time. That's another thing. It's it's it's not like we were super strategic. We're this tiny, nimble team on DTC and then we just decided to go into the largest retailer in America and at the time our packaging said in big, big letters bamboo diapers, diaper. In small letters. So then everyone thought our brand was bamboo diapers. And the other thing that we didn't spend a lot of time doing is really understanding consumer, doing consumer insights, and there is a strong correlation between people thinking that eco products and bamboo products aren't going to be as effective. And efficacy is crucial in a diaper I mean anyone who has changed a diaper it has to work.

Greg Shuey 13:22

Yep.

Alex Vailas 13:23

So we didn't have a lot of brand awareness and understand. Consumers didn't know who we were, and then the first thing that they learned about us was we were bamboo diaper brand. So right when we entered retail we realized, oh shoot, we need to change our packaging. So it was hard. But one of the things that in that process we realized was, as we were switching over our packaging, we made the changes and we did it really fast and I'm really proud of that Came out with Simply Kind diapers diapers, simply Kind diapers and made our name really big on the package. We also did a big rollback that drove trial that finally got people to try our products and yeah, that was hard on hitting our bottom line but it was actually one of the wonderful upsides because we drove trial, which is exactly what parents need to know if they like it yeah, especially if it's a new brand and then they loved it and then our brand awareness just shot up.

Greg Shuey 14:20

Got it. What I'm hearing is that one of the big pieces of going into retail is taking a step back and doing some additional customer research, because that would have helped you be able to overcome those issues a lot quicker. And I think it's critical for brands to be able to do customer research both for their DTC like we do a lot of customer research here to be able to help understand why they buy, how they, you know, use their internet to research how they make purchase decisions but also need to do that from a retail side as well. Would you agree?

Alex Vailas 15:03

I'd absolutely agree. I would say both quant and qual because you want to get some of those thoughts on, especially on the packaging side. I think that benchmarking also, so that you know getting those benchmarks on brand awareness, brand consideration, recent purchase, all those to benchmark it to then see how retail really lifts everything, because it starts getting muddy, especially when you have one product that you're selling on amazon, you're selling on diapercom you're selling on Amazon, you're selling on diapercom, you're selling on maybe a couple other wholesale accounts and then Walmart, and you're just wondering where?

Alex Vailas 15:47

what is driving the growth?

Greg Shuey 15:49

Yeah, yep, a hundred percent. And all channels lift, all boats right, like what's what's the saying there? A rising tide lifts all ships. Is that what it is what's?

Alex Vailas 16:02

the saying there A rising tide lifts all ships. Is that what it is?

Greg Shuey 16:05

Yeah, that's it. People will buy in retail and then they'll go check out your brand and maybe you offer something different on your website and then they'll purchase there and the attribution is super hard, but, yeah, for sure, cool. So once kind of you get into retail channels, how should a brand set themselves up and ensure that their messaging stays consistent across both D2C and retail channels?

Alex Vailas 16:32

Yes. So I think this goes back to the point that we just made also slowing down, not just to do consumer insight work, but slowing down, which I know it's so hard when you're a tiny company.

Alex Vailas 16:46

It's so hard, but you have to come back to your. Why your mission, your values? Did it change? Because just think about us as human beings as we grow, we change and our values change in different seasons of our lives. It doesn't mean that you don't. There's a lot of things to value, a lot of great things, but you can't value everything at a hundred.

Speaker 1 17:09

Yeah.

Alex Vailas 17:10

Did your brand values change? Are they now more about accessibility, which would then mean that price is a big, important part of your messaging, and, considering that we chose to go with Walmart, you know, is it? Do we remain true? And not that we, uh, are selling out or anything, but when you, when you think about leading constantly with plant-based, plant-based what is, people didn't understand what that meant. They couldn't digest that and realizing, okay, though, that that was a core value. Perhaps how we say this needs to be different, especially when it comes to on shelf experience.

Alex Vailas 17:49

And so some of our brand language needed to change in order to resonate with that. Two second glance with a screaming kid in a cart. You know how are you going to make sure you're connecting with the shopper in a cart.

Alex Vailas 18:02

You know how are you going to make sure you're connecting with the shopper? Did your brand colors and how you stand out in the category? Thankfully, we chose yellow. I can't say that was a decision that was very thoughtful as in from the retail perspective, but thankfully there wasn't a yellow box there. Sure there might be another brand on the shelf right now, as people are listening or thinking, oh, I got to get into retail. Well, I really hope that there isn't another brand that's the same color as your product, because that's going to be a challenge.

Greg Shuey 18:30

So go walk through the aisles and see.

Alex Vailas 18:34

Yes, huh, interesting. Walk through the aisles and what are your value props? What are your reasons to believe? How are they different from your competitors?

Alex Vailas 18:45

Look, spend time understanding your competitive landscape as it relates to retail Online. It's so much easier. I think I don't know if everyone would agree, but I have an easier time telling a story because if you think about the funnel, they're probably reaching something at a top of the funnel a story, a customer experience testimonial, something that brings them in. Then they have that consideration part. Perhaps there's an offer right Bringing them all the way down to your website, to where you can expand upon the story, all the way down to purchase. With retail, the first time they're seeing you is a box a lot of the time.

Alex Vailas 19:27

So what are you doing to connect with that? And so, if I could do it over again, I would have probably revisited some of our brand and gotten clarity and alignment, and also organizational alignment, because when you have a company who is everyone's focused on DTC and then you have to also win at retail, it's it's, even though profitability, of course, would probably be the thing that everyone says you're working towards. Sure you end up with a war of who is more important old guard, new guard, all this know and, and what it takes to sustain a retail team is is is you know, or retail experiences, a whole other skillset, and then you end up with different people trying to do yeah and, and then the story can change or the needs for each channel changes and you need that alignment with in in the company and that's that vision. You need that alignment within the company and that's that vision, that mission, the values that keeps things aligned, that brand manager.

Greg Shuey 20:27

Interesting Brand manager.

Alex Vailas 20:32

So you would say that's the role that keeps everything aligned. That is, yeah, the brand manager, brand director, however your hierarchy is set up, but that is what they do. They keep the alignment of the brand and the product and they're understanding. They're making sure to the alignment of the brand and the product and their understanding. They're making sure to check back with the consumer insight, research and informing the brand as it is today and the innovation pipeline.

Greg Shuey 20:51

Yeah, which is a whole another topic in and of itself.

Alex Vailas 20:57

Oh my gosh, yeah Not qualified to talk about that one. Oh my God, not qualified to talk about that one.

Preparing Your Brand for Retail Success

Greg Shuey 21:03

Oh, I love it. That's funny. So I know we've talked about kind of some of the issues that you came across, but would you be able to help our listeners understand, like, what it really took or so I know you said you ran into it really fast but like, what are, what are some of the steps that need to be taken in order to start to prep a brand to get into retail, and like, what does that look like?

Alex Vailas 21:29

Yeah, I think that I mean preparing a brand means for retail is spending a lot more time on your packaging and the presence of your brand on pack.

Alex Vailas 21:40

There are best practices that we didn't know. We were like probably many listening. You just you think it looks good, you like the design and and you go for it and you know you, you kind of look around and see what other people are doing and but wow, I mean I would have probably spent a lot more time on that and invested in research with that, also the configurations and everything that also go into getting things on shelf when you also have to sell something on Amazon, by the way, let's just, I mean, that's not my area of expertise, but the counts, the shape of the box. Dealing with an Amazon experience and then a Walmart experience are two different things. Um, I think that, uh, when I look at you know we didn't have a lot of brand awareness when we entered retail. If I'm honest, we had a really strong DTC business, but overall, in the category as a whole with with parents with kids two and under, when I look back at it it's like 3%, 4%.

Greg Shuey 22:54

Just a small sliver.

Alex Vailas 22:56

Tiny, tiny, tiny.

Greg Shuey 22:58

Yeah.

Alex Vailas 22:59

I. I think that it's very important to make sure that, as a brand, you've invested in brand awareness campaigns and eyeballs, and that isn't really something. If we're all honest here, that's not really the area where we put a lot of dollars. Sure, the area where we put a lot of dollars. Sure, because you're trying to drive sales. It has a very low return. Yeah, yeah, ROI always right.

Alex Vailas 23:28

So I would, in hindsight, probably, as you know, if you know that you're going that way, start those top funnel awareness campaigns to bring that awareness up so that when they see you you're not completely foreign. Oh yeah, I heard of that, got it. Okay, I would also make sure that you are thinking about. You know you have your shelf experience, but what are other ways, that other touch points that you could be doing? Like like.

Alex Vailas 24:04

For us it was like baby registry boxes, coupon programming and making sure you have enough money to fund the brand awareness and and marketing that you need in order for people to consider your product. And I think end caps are another thing, which we hired someone to help us understand that. These are all touch points and areas of branding that are probably not in the realm of experience of a lot of the listeners that are D2TC focused. And so I would also say hiring the right people to help inform and make the right decisions and inform your budget and create healthy expectations of what is going to, what needs to happen in retail in order to stay in retail, cause that's the other thing. It's like everyone wants to stay, wants to go into retail, but you got to stay there because if you don't stay there, the chances of coming back are very slim.

Greg Shuey 25:07

Interesting. So you know you've talked a few times. I like to call them knowledge gaps. Right, we have a gap in knowledge to be able to, you know, execute X, y and Z. How. How did you fill those gaps? Like, were those contractors, were those other agencies who have been there done that? Like, how did you go out and find these people?

Alex Vailas 25:29

We hired agencies to help us. Um, that was a fantastic investment. And as far as the packaging goes, we do all of that in house and so we we did just reach out to other people who had done packaging in our category before as consultants and advise us. We're so thankful that our chief product officer, katya Lerner she comes from Kimberly Clark, who makes Huggies and really knew comes from Kimberly Clark, who makes Huggies and really knew we felt very confident with our product, our product strategy, our product innovation pipeline.

Alex Vailas 26:13

So I'm thankful for key hires within our organization that have CPG experience in retail and you know the retailer wants to see you win. They're betting on you, right that they're putting their own reputation and they're giving you shelf space, which is dollars that they you know, so they don't want to see you fail. They're going to help you along the way. But anyone that's listening, that really wants this and you just need to know this, isn't it? There are so many moving parts. You're going to need more help. You're going to need a proper budget to uh, get the right help to also have enough of brand awareness and marketing and hit the velocities and hit the metrics that you really need to see in retail and stay in retail.

Greg Shuey 26:59

In other words, it's not going to be cheap. How about that?

Alex Vailas 27:04

Nope, nope. This isn't like a easy growth hacking experience of a bunch of meta campaigns. That's funny.

Greg Shuey 27:14

Yep, cool. Well, that was very helpful. You know we've also touched just briefly on measurement. It's hard to measure the impact across all the different channels, but when you look at retail specifically, what impact are a good set of metrics that brands should be looking at and considering and familiarizing themselves with before getting into it.

Alex Vailas 27:44

So we primarily look at, of course, our sales but then our velocity, how fast that they are selling. Obviously that's important for people to know for forecasting and product fulfillment and other departments. That's what we're primarily focused on as far as KPIs, of winning it at retail. But I'd also say reviews for me from the brand marketing side. I care a lot about customer reviews. We can't it's not as easy to measure NPS. You know I don't have access to that data.

Alex Vailas 28:24

But how are the reviews going? What are the experiences customers are having? I mean, gosh, that's a big fear. Like you hope that everybody loves your product and starts raving about it and you get a positive experiences online about it and you get a positive experiences online Um.

Alex Vailas 28:41

For me, as a brand uh manager and and someone that is just wanting to make sure that we're growing an awareness I think I mentioned this my main KPIs are brand awareness, uh, brand consideration and recent purchase data. So I do a quarterly survey every and I do it quarterly because it's harder to see really the change month over month but just making sure that I I'm sure there are people who are listening. You're surveying your subscriber base. You have subscribers or you're you're asking questions there. So I already had NPS data. I already had things for the DTC channel and then overall, like I can set that call where did you recently purchase at Walmart, make that a qualifier and then I can ask these questions and then I can see, okay, how has the experience been?

Alex Vailas 29:43

What is uh? Are they? Do they know who we are? What um, what are their reasons for the giving the NPS score that they gave? Um. So I'm happy to say that each quarter we're growing and growing and growing in brand awareness and in brand consideration and product consideration, and so I would say it's primarily retail, just because the footprint is substantially larger than what our D2C and our.

Alex Vailas 30:15

Amazon footprint has been, which is wonderful. Got it, that's awesome, cool.

Greg Shuey 30:20

So, based on all of your experience and all the trials and hurdles and everything that you've had to to overcome, like, what two or three pieces of advice would you give to other brands who are just starting to think about retail?

Creating Cohesive DTC and Retail Experiences

Alex Vailas 30:36

I would ask what do you have? You know we didn't talk about this, but there's a potential that retail could cannibalize your D2C sales Yep, like loyalty programs or other products that are exclusive to DTC. What do you have to protect your DTC business as you expand? What is the value or the experience that you're creating for your customers that makes it so that they have to subscribe and come back to you? What you don't want to have happen is have your D2C customers go to the retailer and just buy there. You want to just grow your customer base. You want to reach the people that buy in retail and then keep those that buy online. But the reality is is if you go into a retailer a lot of times, the pricing will probably be different than your pricing, and so you know there's also the reality of it could be lower. Your agreements could make it so that the price is lower for that retailer than what you have on D2C. And then why? Why should they come? What values strategy do you have? So a big.

Alex Vailas 31:57

My biggest piece of advice is thinking about what is the DTC experience that you really want to create and how does that differentiate in retail. How can you create two different experiences that are still cohesive. Perhaps it's a different product line. Perhaps it's it's a product line that's specific for that retailer. Just spend time truly thinking about your strategy. Just don't jump at the opportunity.

Alex Vailas 32:24

I know a lot of people need to just jump and figure it out as you go. I mean, that's what we had to do and many people do, and that's the scrappy startup mentality and I love it. And, at the same time, if you could just give yourself a little more time, if you could just carve out if there's one theme that's come out of this podcast carve out some time to really think back through your strategy and making sure that you're you're protecting your, your business in every area and and creating a truly wonderful experience for for your different customer channel or your different retail channels. But that would be it. And then it would be also to really figure out what is the true vision of your brand. Okay, let's fast forward here. Let's fast forward and you're in retail, you're doing well in retail. Let's fast forward and you're in retail, you're doing well in retail, then what, what, what, what's.

Alex Vailas 33:26

What's the end game? Yeah, what is it? Is it an acquisition? I mean, there are a lot of people that just want to grow into retail and then get acquired and peace out, I don't know. But think of, instead of thinking about everything from a business standpoint what is your customer experience? Get back to the customer. Get back to your why you created a problem or you created a product to solve a problem. How are you continuing to support your customer? Don't lose your customer. Don't lose your focus on why you exist and who you serve. Um, I think a lot of companies just keep focusing on the business and they focus on what other people in the category are doing, and then they make decisions about the business based on those things instead of basing every decision on the customer experience. You have to be consumer centric at the core in order to win. These days, especially with personalization and all these other trends that are happening, and customers aren't loyal. They're not loyal to anyone anymore.

Speaker 1 34:21

Yep.

Alex Vailas 34:22

So, getting back to that and really making sure you have a strong team, I mean, I think that you know it's it's it's not easy, it's it's climbing a mountain, and you probably already climbed one, because you're here at this point right, you probably already climbed like 10 and then you're about to climb 10 and then climb Everest.

Speaker 1 34:46

And so.

Alex Vailas 34:47

I think that it's just making sure that your team is on board, that your team understands what's ahead and that you incentivize and support your team appropriately with proper budgets. And look, if it's not this year, maybe pause, maybe it's okay, maybe it's not the worst thing to pause and then try the a year later, or maybe it's fundraising or maybe there's other solutions to making sure that you are going to be successful, but it's important to pause.

Greg Shuey 35:18

Yep, pause, but also have a good time. Block built out for you to be able to build, rush it. How about that?

Alex Vailas 35:27

Yes Time blogging Huge fan.

Greg Shuey 35:29

Yeah, I love it. Cool, cool, um, kind of. One of the last questions that I want to close out with is predictions. I like to ask all of our guests that I want to close out with is predictions. I like to ask all of our guests where do you see retail going over the rest of 2024 and into 2025? Do you see it continuing to get bigger and bigger? Do you see D2C continuing to get bigger and take away from retail, or what do you think?

Alex Vailas 35:57

I think retail is going to get bigger. Mainly because retail is going to get bigger, mainly because retail is demanding a certain um. Usually the pricing ends up higher on d to c for for reasons of shipping and a lot of reasons that go into those higher prices. And so when you can have retailers issue a big po and they can handle a lot of that you're going to keep the prices down.

Alex Vailas 36:24

And consumers are very price sensitive right now. I don't think that people love going into stores. Still, I think that we all like the comfort of our home, and yet I think that people are going into retail to discover new products every day and I think the retailers are excited about offering new things, and so that's kind of cool for a lot of these D2C brands. But I think that the thing that D2C will always have the upper hand on is there's a high demand for a personal special experience, and that's where DTC can win, but it's taking time to invest in that funnel experience. Every touch point. Seeing how we can truly make it special for the customer journey, for the customer journey and retention is going to be a huge issue. It is an issue for many of us right now and that's going to be.

Alex Vailas 37:31

It all comes back to value and I don't think that it always has to be price that we offer value on. What premium experience that can you offer your customer online? For us, we developed an app this year. We launched an app and the app can be tailored to the journey of how old your child is. So now we have the ability to celebrate wonderful moments in a child's life and surprise and delight our customer and tell them they're doing a great job. And you know what? I retailers can't do it the same way that we can. So I would say a huge trend would be personalization and doubling down on that for D to C, whereas with retail you're going to see a lot of traffic there and growth there because of price.

Greg Shuey 38:16

I love it. I love it and I love to hear that you guys launched an app. Yes, I think a lot of brands over the next couple of years are going to have to get on that mobile app bandwagon. I think it does provide a lot of opportunity to personalize and retain customers in a new, unique way, so it's fantastic.

Alex Vailas 38:39

Absolutely.

Greg Shuey 38:41

Awesome, awesome. Well, that was a great discussion. Thank you so much for everything you shared. It was amazing.

Alex Vailas 38:49

I hope it helps.

New Tech Company

Greg Shuey 38:50

It does. It does so. On our next episode, I will be chatting with Alte Malasgert from Go Audience. They are a relatively new tech company. They help brands find new customers based on their credit card spending history. It's a really cool. It's a really cool thing that all brands should be looking at, and we are gonna be specifically discussing meta ads and how it's becoming more and more difficult to manage your customer acquisition costs due to the so many different variables that can't be controlled from the brand side. We're going to be tying that back into their technology and some cool things that you can do with it to be able to go out and prospect and find new customers. So it's going to be a really, really awesome discussion. And that's it for today. So take what you've learned here and we have learned a ton about retail. I have learned so much. I'm going to have to go back and listen to this again. Take it, make a plan and take massive action this year. Thank you everyone for joining.