Latest / Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast) / GEMS: The DTC Toolkit with Kosterina founder Katina Mountanos

Transcript

GEMS: The DTC Toolkit with Kosterina founder Katina Mountanos · Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast)

• 0:08
  When you were working through these D2C brands and kind of getting the toolkit under your belt, as you could say, what are the things that you saw that you knew were critical in building this business? And what are the things that you saw that were like, what leads to failure and like what goes wrong that you need to be mindful of?
• 0:27
  Yeah, I think something very top of mind was the importance of being omni-channel, meaning going direct to consumer alone can be very tough and quite expensive. It's just very hard to get a customer to arrive at your website and make a purchase.
• 0:42
  Whereas if you are in brick and mortar stores, and of course, I learned this at Walmart, which has a huge presence in the US, that it really serves as a billboard for your brand and helps to raise awareness. And of course, there are other costs to selling in retail, but you know, that marketing is invaluable. And just being where the customer is when he or she is shopping is super important.
• 1:03
  Mm hmm. Yeah, I love that. And I think that's something that a lot of brands seem to be changing their strategy on in today's landscape, like brands like Away, which were completely DTC in the beginning and now have that retail presence. And that's the only one I can think of at the top of my head. But I've seen a lot of that happening. Yeah. And of course, the other way around, just with the pandemic, people who were brick and mortar focus going online as well to serve their customers during that time where most people were shopping online.
• 1:28
  Hmm. And what about the flip side of the coin when it comes to what are the things to avoid or the pitfalls that you saw and things that were failing, like in terms of strategy or in terms of product development or whatever it was? What were the things that you were like, mental note, I'm going to avoid that?
• 1:45
  Hmm. That's a tough one. I think that growing too fast can often be a detriment in whatever form that takes, either in product proliferation or skew proliferation, launching too many products too early before you're ready or before the customer has established what you are as a brand in their own mind, or expanding into too many retail outlets too quickly.
• 2:05
  And or, you know, if your service expanding into too many markets too quickly and making sure that you've nailed that playbook and exactly how you're going to reach that customer in a cost efficient way before, you know, doubling down on that expansion. Mm hmm. Mm hmm.
• 2:23
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• 2:48
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• 3:10
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