You’re leading e-commerce for your digitally-native direct-to-consumer (DTC) brand. Customer reviews are strong and your core products are selling strongly. You had a solid Q4, even with the challenging environment. But Q1 was a little softer than you were expecting, and revenue targets are getting hard to meet.
One of the biggest issues is that you’re limited with your product offerings. There’s just so much you can offer your customers between variations and options across your existing product line. You envision all sorts of complementary product categories that fit well with yours but they’re not something you can deliver given your current operations. And how do you even know which specific products are appropriate to the exacting standards of your own customers?
All those sales opportunities – and incremental revenue – will have to wait. Or will they…?
How to Drive E-Commerce Results with Complementary Products
Not anymore! What if there were an easy way to not only access a curated set of products that match well with yours but you could include within your online selling process? Your customers would benefit from getting more of what they’re looking for and further value your offerings. And your own offerings would be better positioned as you’re now delivering a more holistic end user experience. That will drive increases in online conversions, average order value (AOV), customer retention and customer lifetime value (LTV).
What are you promoting to your customers today – and what could you?
Selling swimwear and sunglasses? How about beach towels?
Selling specialty coffee pots? How about some exotic beans to go with that?
Selling nutritional pet food? Can I interest you in some playthings for your puppy?
Selling sustainable clothing? Want to add some eco-friendly beverage containers?
Selling customized birthday cakes? Can’t have a party without hats and balloons, right?
No matter what you're offering online, there are any number of complementary products that would fit well with and be of high interest to your customers. The trick is finding the right ones, ensuring they’re brand appropriate, and easily making them a part of your e-commerce store without any additional hassle.
Uncovering New DTC Sales Opportunities
At Stord, we’re always looking for ways to bring new opportunities to our own customers (e.g. B2C/DTC brands) to further drive their businesses. Executing superior e-commerce DTC fulfillment for all these brands is mission critical, but what if we could help them deliver more customer value – and see more revenue – without their expending any effort?
That’s why we’re partnering with Canal, an innovative e-commerce network that lets brands connect with other, like-minded brands to sell their products in their online stores. It’s a great way for our brand customers to create novel distribution channels and more deeply connect with their own customers, without impacting working capital or requiring additional inventory.
With Canal, Stord customers can easily add from a network of curated brands and find just the ones that would be most appropriate to their customers, at the point of purchase. Canal lets brands expand their product catalog and offer a wide range within their Shopify store, with complete control of what they sell and how they sell. Fulfillment can even be handled by Stord to streamline delivery and end user customer experience.
Drive revenue by offering vetted, complementary products
Gain Fast Access to Curate Brand Collaboration Network
However, by partnering with Canal’s curated brand network, Stord customers have another way to boost sales. In addition to adding vetted, complementary products to their own online marketplace, brands can make their products available to other brands in Canal’s network. Expanding distribution like this can be a great way to introduce one’s products to new customers and new markets while relying on Stord’s DTC/e-commerce fulfillment capability.
Canal’s already working with lots of brands that are seeing significant gains like 15% lift in AOV and 50% increase in LTV. Nik Sharma, founder of Sharma Brands (and investor, advisor, and operator to some of the fastest growing brands in CPG) sees Canal “revolutionizing the e-commerce space…and co-selling [as] the future of retail.”
And according to Maile Lesica, CCO, Fellow (provider of specialty coffee products):
"Thanks to Canal, our customers don’t need to leave our website to buy everything they need for their coffee bars. It’s a seamless way for us to offer quality products from other brands we trust.”
We're excited to offer Stord customers access to Canal in order to ensure a seamless experience for their e-commerce operations. This way, they can rapidly start collaborating with other appropriate brands and start seeing revenue gains from these new, untapped channels.
Canal’s CEO emphasized the importance of this new partnership for DTC companies:
“We're excited to be working with Stord's customer base of exciting brands to help power their e-commerce sales. Combining Canal’s collaborative co-selling platform with Stord’s nationwide fulfillment capabilities and supply chain technology is a great way to boost any brand’s customer experience and see real results"
If you’re already envisioning complementary products that would make sense in your online store (or others’ stores where you could make sense), let’s talk. Whether you’re a current Stord customer – or as we like to say, not just yet, reach out to us. We’d be happy to explore how Canal and Stord can accelerate your e-commerce biz!
