Every retailer counts on strong sales during the holiday shopping season. But small businesses can’t always count on a major advertising budget to compete with the retail giants like Amazon.
However, whether you have one store or 100, you can delight shoppers by giving them a memorable shopping experience and personalized service.
Imagine a customer named Mary walks by your retail store on her way to work. She doesn’t have time to stop and shop, but a jacket in your storefront window catches her eye.
Direct-to-consumer (DTC) selling isn’t easy. It requires a lot of hard work in the marketing and messaging department and an uncompromising customer focus. Without the convenience of traditional distribution channels, DTC brands have to start from scratch. However, DTC continues to be a popular business model for new retail startups because it offers a number of unique advantages:
You can learn a lot by studying the businesses that break the mold of traditional retail. Although your own brand might not be one of the “retail unicorns” that have grown into billion-dollar businesses, you can still borrow a thing or two from the businesses that faced an uphill battle—and won.
Despite dramatic transformations in retail strategy over the past few years, most retailers are still playing catch-up to meet customer expectations.
Trader Joe’s isn’t your typical grocery store. Instead of offering a broad selection of items in a huge space, TJ’s curates its products carefully and makes them easy to find by keeping the store’s footprint small. And although many of the products are fairly standard, they’re presented in unique, branded packaging, and many products achieve cult status among customers.
Your customers want quick, responsive customer service. But the expectation of prompt customer engagement can be a burden on your limited resources.
Direct-to-consumer (DTC) brands like Glossier and Warby Parker have become huge success stories by going outside of traditional retail channels and focusing on online sales.
Your customers witness the power of technology on a daily basis. They use their smartphones to deposit checks, monitor their heart rate and REM sleep, and summon vehicles to pick them up wherever they’re standing.
You’ve built up a steady flow of customers (congrats!), but you need to keep them coming back so you can keep growing. Inspiring and retaining those customers has big implications for your brand’s future success. But how do you do that, exactly?