How D2C brands can separate themselves from the crowd

The huge mistake “old school retailers” are making that modern, direct-to-consumer (D2C) brands can avoid.

Stock availability issue at major retailer highlights once again how ecommerce fulfillment is a non-negotiable priority for any modern brand seeking to maintain and grow its customer following.

Over the Christmas period, high street ‘big name’ Joules announced their sales were below expectations, after trading was impacted by an internally generated stock availability issue.

Despite having as much as 8% increased traffic to their site, the fashion retailer suffered a drop in their conversion rate as products were either listed as “out of stock”, or ordered but then subsequently cancelled as the fulfillment team realised they could not deliver those orders as expected.

The CEO of Joules has acknowledged this as a failure to provide satisfaction to customers, and has “taken steps to prevent its recurrence”, in the form of outsourcing logistics to a 3rd Party Logistics provider (3PL).

Those steps reflect a common journey many traditional retailers follow when attempting to launch and grow an ecommerce arm. Do any of these journeys sound familiar to you?

Terrible Ecommerce Journey 1 – Making Do

• Decide to start selling online
• Attempt to use existing retail distribution warehouse software for ecommerce orders
• Realise bulk distribution and retail logistics are entirely different requirements from ecommerce specific order profiles
• Suffer inaccuracy, lack of speed, errors, and ultimately let down customers
• Have a major crisis and suffer genuine wider business impact
• Panic, buy an expensive 3PL service, and lose control altogether

Terrible Ecommerce Journey 2: All-In-One

• Decide to start selling online
• Implement a simplistic, all-in-one software for online order management
• Find out all too quickly this system can’t scale up or handle the demands and volume that come with growth
• Have a major crisis and suffer genuine wider business impact
• Panic, buy an expensive 3PL service, and lose control altogether

Terrible Ecommerce Journey 3: The ERP Dinosaur

• Decide to start selling online
• Attempt to roll ecommerce warehouse management into an existing legacy ERP
• Discover the clunky, traditional system is neither fast enough nor specifically crafted to deliver a reliable, satisfactory experience to the ecommerce customer
• Have a major crisis and suffer genuine wider business impact
• Panic, buy an expensive 3PL service, and lose control altogether

However, it’s not all doom and gloom. There is another way, particularly for online-first, forward thinking brands, as the likes of Gymshark, Showpo, Princess Polly and Meshki have found out.

• Start with ecommerce, with the potential for massive, loyal followings and unbeatable customer data insights
• Pre-position for scaling up and handling huge volume of orders by investing at an early stage in an ecommerce specific Warehouse Management System
• Allow for future growth through Strategic Retail Partners (SRPs), Pop-Ups, Brand Activations
• Enjoy the rapid pace at which orders can be dispatched, the simplicity of a mobile app with clean displays and seamless workflows that new staff or temps can be using in minutes, the specificity and configurability of a system that works for you and your order profiles
• Keep your stock live, accurate and in sync with your website with mobile lead, event driven updating
• Handle returns without fuss and widen daily selling windows
• Harness the power of delivering remarkable customer experiences and grow, better.