How to scale up DTC brands? Trust, audience and supply chain are key

Expanding the scale of an enterprise can reduce production costs and gain economies of scale , and this is also true for small businesses. So, for small DTC businesses that are still in the growth stage , how should they expand their business scale?

Forbes recently listed several key points to help sellers. Andrew, co-founder and CEO of CALA, said that trust, audience and supply chain are the three principles that DTC brands must grasp when expanding their business.

Gaining customer trust

Winning the trust of consumers often means attracting their money. For start-ups, a good store design is the first step to winning the hearts of consumers. Sellers can achieve this with the help of templates from website building platforms such as Shopify.

Next comes perfect and fast order fulfillment and customer support. If a first-time customer doesn’t receive their order on time, their newly built trust in your store can be shattered in an instant.

On the contrary, if the seller successfully delivers on its promise of order fulfillment, it can further strengthen customers' trust in the store and convert early customers into repeat customers and loyal fans of the brand.

Expand your brand’s audience

Influencers are modern storytellers who transform words into carefully crafted images and videos to build their own communities of engaged people, at a time when people are often not just looking for products, they are also looking for and supporting brand stories they are willing to believe in.

For DTC brands, it is necessary to invest enough budget for social media advertising before officially producing products. For example, create a website landing page with a design that is consistent with brand values, and then launch a simple advertising campaign on Facebook and Instagram to attract potential customers to your website. For companies that have created their own featured products, sellers can use social media advertising to amplify the story you are telling, but remember not to buy fake fans.

In addition, DTC brands can launch a "seeding program", such as giving product samples to social media influencers before the product is officially launched, hoping that they will share it on social platforms after receiving it. Although super influencers with a large number of fans may lack interest in the seller's products, sellers can also cultivate micro-influencers with smaller audiences but high fan engagement. There are already some influencer marketing platforms that can provide sellers with more convenient and time-saving marketing tools.

Building the right supply chain

For smaller DTC brands, a glamorous factory often means a high minimum order quantity, which exceeds the consumption capacity of small businesses and causes inventory backlogs. On the contrary, a small sample room and manufacturer with a team size of about 25 people will be a suitable choice.

After production is completed, in terms of product logistics and transportation, sellers can assemble them together with other companies to obtain lower discount prices and save a certain percentage of fulfillment costs.

trust

Audience

Supply Chain