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LoveNspire: A Journey of Pandemic Generosity to Global Success – Nidhi’s Story

Raksna Anand — Fri, 22 Mar 2024 15:13:08 +0000

Nidhi is the face of LoveNspire. LoveNspire is a thriving D2C store specializing in culturally rich, ethnic products that include over 2500 products. They sell handcrafted gift items, jewelry, home and festive decor. Born during the pandemic, they’ve grown from a one person operation to a global store, catering to customers all over US, Europe and Canada.

That’s a huge leap in four years. And not only that, the brand has over 3000+ 5-star reviews. We eagerly listened as Nidhi Spilled the Tea on How LoveNspire racked up these awesome reviews.

Would you like to throw some light on what happened in those early days and how the brand started out?

It all started during the pandemic, which was 2020. There was a scarcity of masks in the United States, during COVID. Hospitals and first responders were urging people around to make masks and help people out. I had a sewing machine at home. I have never sewn masks, but I thought that I could try it out. I watched some tutorials and I started making masks. I gave them out for free. Some people refused to take them for free and they wanted to pay me. Slowly through word of mouth and social media, many of my friends and neighbors started approaching me, asking for masks and within two, three months, I made more than 50 designs of masks, helped more than 500 people, made more than 2000 masks. It never stopped there. I think LoveNspire started out like that.

After that, some of my customers approached me and wanted me to make Rakhis (Rakhi is a bracelet gifted to siblings – an Indian tradition). Logistics was a problem from India to the United States. People wanted Rakhi to celebrate the Raksha Bandhan festival. (it is a celebration of sister and brother bond).

Many Indians from India started asking me if they can send a rakhi to their siblings in the US. That’s when we again started making DIY rakhis. Within like a span of one month, we helped out more than 1000 customers and made more than 25 designs of Rakhis. We got a very good response and it was rewarding. That’s when we realized that there’s a gap which we can try to fill in. There was this next festival which was Diwali (Diwali is the Indian festival of lights). I made DIY stuff at home.

Slowly, we started collaborating with some of the women artisans back in India. At that time, logistics started opening up, internationally. That was a good time to pitch in and start collaborating. For Diwali, we got a huge response, we launched more than 50 products. We got amazing five star reviews. And from there, we never looked back. Today, we have more than 2500 products, and we have more than 2500 positive reviews from our customers.

Wow, that’s truly inspirational. There are four and a half million Indians in the United States and there are many ethnic brands out there. How do you really make your brand stand out and appeal to this crowd?

There are many things to add on, but I will just highlight four important things.

First and foremost, is that we have a very wide portfolio of our products. We have all kinds of products for Indian festivals. They are handmade Indian ethnic products made by Indian artisans. Not only that, but we are very accommodating for everybody. Pricing is very good. We can cater to all kinds of customers internationally.

Second is, Quality of our products. We take quality very seriously. We make sure that we provide the best quality.

Thirdly, Customer service is very important for us. We are available to our customers by email, chat or by call. If there is anything, any queries or questions, we answer them immediately.

Last but not the least, is shipping. We ship out items from our warehouse in Michigan within, one business day, we try to ship our products out ASAP.

These are the four most important things for us.

That’s indeed true. Businesses cannot compromise on the above stated factors. You have more than 3000+ positive reviews. How did you achieve that?

We are reachable to customers by email or by text or by call or Zoom calls. This is how we are trying to make ourselves available and put them at ease. Even in our listings, our products have good product descriptions and images. This helps the customers make the buying decision. We provide them with a lot of information before they buy. We try to make ourselves available through any and every means to the customer before and after they make the purchase.

Products are categorized under festivals and the events, which makes it easy for customers to navigate through our online store. The whole experience for them is really easy and convenient. Everything is done keeping customers in mind and their convenience.

Customer feedback is taken seriously. If we get to know that there’s anything we can do to make our customer experience better, we do it right away. If there’s any problem, we make sure that at the end of the day, it’s resolved and the customer is happy. It’s all about retaining your customer and becoming a family. We don’t want to work with a customer for one time, We want to give them an experience. We want them to become lifelong customers. That’s what we believe in, strongly.

That’s very impressive. In terms of shipping, do you face any challenges?

The biggest challenge in shipping would be the timing. We try to resolve this by providing multiple shipping options.

We have standard shipping. Above $35, we have free shipping. Depending on the geographic location; it reaches them within one business day to five business days.

The second is premium shipping, where the products reach customers in two to three business days.

If people have emergencies and they need the product ASAP, we have Next day shipping too.

It depends upon the customer’s requirement, they can choose the shipping options.

We’re sure that this helps you build trust and credibility for many first time shoppers as well as repeat customers that you get. We know that you put a lot of focus on your post-purchase customer experience. Why so?

Everybody wants to keep themselves updated on what’s going on with their shipments. Because the timeline is everything. Timely delivery is very important for the customer. Once the customer is placing an order, we make sure they immediately get a notification, by email or by chat, that they’re order has been received and that it will be shipped within the next few hours or one business day.

That’s the first thing we do and after that, we’ve been working with LateShipment.com for quite some time and they have really helped us out to keep our customers updated. Once we ship out the order to the customer, LateShipment.com comes into the picture where they keep the customer updated about the whole journey of their package, and this just keeps the customer at ease. They are informed on where the package is and if there are any discrepancies, the customer gets to know, if there are any timeline issues, even as a business owner, we get to know and this is such an amazing thing.

Sometimes, we have to take action immediately, call the customer or immediately get in touch with them and tell them this is what is going on. We ask how we can make it better and then come up with a solution and make things right. Thank you LateShipment.com for that. It’s really amazing. This enables us to proactively communicate as a business, where we are reaching out to our customers, informing them that this is what is happening before they come out to us. Customer Experience is everything to us, this has tremendously helped us out as a business.

Thank you, These are words that really fuel us and keep us going. As a woman leader, we’re all truly inspired from what you’ve created at LoveNspire. What advice would you give all the women entrepreneurs out there who are probably just starting out?

As a woman entrepreneur, you have to wear different hats; as an entrepreneur, as a mother, as a wife, as a daughter. It’s really challenging, and I must say that work-life balance is very important. One needs to have a strong support mechanism in your family, where, if you need something, somebody is there to help you out, and time management is very important. You need to have priorities, what are you going to do in a day, because you cannot do everything, you need to have great time management, and you need to prioritize what you have to do. If my glass is full, I can help out others. I think that all of us need to do that as business entrepreneurs.

Second is that when we started this business, we never knew how this journey was going to be. One needs to be very consistent in one’s efforts, and one needs to have a lot of persistence because failures are a part of business.

Trust me, you are falling every other moment. If you think that you’re gonna be good after one year, two years, NO, every moment, you’re having failures, but you have to get up because that’s where you learn, and you can learn from your mistakes, and you get up and you get better and better every day,

You need to have the right partners and collaborate with the right vendors because you’re not gonna do it alone. You need to have people around you, your success depends upon how good they are. You need to be very creative and innovative in your business, you need to bring in new technologies and test new products, you need to understand what customers are looking for and it keeps on changing too. Your business needs to keep changing to the customer’s tastes and customers’ expectations and keep bringing something new and creative.

Be hungry for more and more, and keep working towards it. Never get settled for less, just be hungry.

That’s very inspiring. The main takeaway is to stay humble and stay grounded. Thank you, Nidhi.

The post LoveNspire: A Journey of Pandemic Generosity to Global Success – Nidhi’s Story appeared first on Lateshipment.com.

8 Branding Storytelling ideas during the holiday season

Raksna Anand — Thu, 09 Nov 2023 06:54:19 +0000

Brand storytelling is a relatively less used term. E-commerce sales have been explosively growing. There’s a reason why people prefer to shop online. Correction, there’s not one reason, there are so many reasons. Starting with convenience, people can shop whenever they want, wherever they want, however they want, in any device they want. You know what I mean, right?

And second, there are so many coupon codes, discount codes, special offers online, and exclusive online products. Other reasons include reviews, people can meticulously read what others think about a particular product and make an informed decision. This way customers know what they can expect. There is a free returns option also. In a world full of amazing brands, how can your brand stand out? That’s through Brand storytelling.

Branding VS Storytelling

Brand storytelling is very different from branding. For starters, branding focuses on very materialistic things like color, theme, logo, aesthetics, and creates an image of how a particular brand should be perceived by a customer.

But brand storytelling is different. Brand storytelling is how you emotionally connect to a customer by being your authentic self and what purpose you serve for the customer. The main goal of brand storytelling is an excellent relationship marketing tool.

Why is Storytelling important during the holiday season?

This is one question which always arises from a customer. Why should I buy from you? As an e-commerce brand, what values do you stand by? What do you provide for me other than the product, is what the customer in 2023 wants to know? Brand storytelling plays an important role here. Brand storytelling makes you:

Establish emotional connection
Stand out from the crowd
Build trust and authority
Make them feel included in your community

8 Branding storytelling ideas during the holiday season

1. Website design

Your website or your social media may be the first thing that a customer sees which sets a definitive image in the customer’s mind. Make sure that you say something that truly defines what you are and what you stand for. Your website homepage or your website design doesn’t just have to be about what you represent. Even very minimalistic touches can be very influential on your customer. For example, take a look at the micro animation below which sets the holiday mood even with a very micro interaction. This contributes to one of the elements of storytelling – Attention-grabbing.

2. Streamline the checkout process

Streamlining the checkout process is one small gesture from an e-commerce brand that you show on your site that you really want to make your customers feel convenient. Especially during the holiday season when the customers are in a rush? This not only increases conversion rates but also establishes a good customer experience.

3. Be your authentic self

Brand Storytelling is establishing that your brand stands for something. Don’t force your brand to be something that it’s not. Stand for what it really means, even if it means something really small. Take Patagonia, even on Black Friday, they stood by their values and boycotted the huge sale of the year opportunity. They opposed mass consumption during the holidays and their brand advocates even grew fond of what this brand did.

4. Unified messaging in all channels

All the channels through which you communicate, be it social media, be it your website, be it your brand tracking page, be it your holiday packaging, be it your emails or SMS, be it your customer support representatives, set the tone right. All these touchpoints revert back to your emotional connection.This unified messaging not only creates consistency but also builds trust and credibility.

Your brand, when it has a unified strategy, represents one thing and one thing only – your brand’s value, which is conveyed more and more to the customer once they get to experience all your touchpoints.

5. Customer testimonial

Customer testimonials are the social proof of what your brand stands for. This assures customers that you deliver what you say, leads to more conversions, and increases trust.

6. Showcase your CSR value

If you’re doing something that’s good for the environment and the people around you and your customers, then you should definitely take the liberty of showing that off to your customers. Not to sound very salesy, but good deeds are not meant to be kept a secret.

7. Holiday Packaging

Holiday packaging is one exciting touch point that you can use to further establish an emotional connection. You can customize your packaging, opt for eco-friendly gift options, add gifting options, do personalization, allow customers to add personalized notes, make interactive QR codes. This can lead to a very exciting unboxing experience.

8. Branded tracking page

Brands often think that nothing much could be established on branded tracking pages. But we are here to say that it’s not the case. You can add a number of content to your branded tracking page. You can add videos saying what your brand does and how the product that is being shipped to the customer can be used. This promotes customer education also, which reduces the number of returns. Branded tracking page is a great way to interact with your customers post-purchase.

Bonus Tip: Build a memorable customer experience

Building a memorable customer experience ties several knots to the relationship that you already have with your customer.

40% of shoppers do not come back to you after a poor delivery experience.

So, in any part of the customer journey, be it pre-purchase or post-purchase, there cannot be any compromise in what you offer. If the customer is not satisfied with the experience, this creates a negative brand image which cuts all the ties that you’ve tried so hard to establish.

Final Word

We live in an economy where relationships hold the primary power. Establishing an emotional connection with your customers is very important as we state again and again and again. E-commerce is not just about convenience and variety of products anymore, it’s more than that. It’s a good strategy to include brand storytelling in your marketing in order to convert customers. This increases customer retention when a customer feels connected to the brand.

Good luck!

The post 8 Branding Storytelling ideas during the holiday season appeared first on Lateshipment.com.

7 Quirky Social Media handles to get inspired from

Raksna Anand — Mon, 16 Oct 2023 11:20:03 +0000

As a brand, do you have social media handles? Of course, you do. Every brand has a social media handle which establishes its presence online and communicates with its customers from a social standpoint. Posting regularly on social media also informs the customer about what the brand has been doing. Many customers often search for a brand on social media platforms first, before they go to their official website. For many brands, social media provides a first impression of the brand for the customers.

Have you been posting constantly and catching up with the current trends? Don’t get us started about the difficulties of staying on top of the ever-changing trends, the words that you shouldn’t use to get canceled, following bizzare rules levied by the social media platform, having a social voice without offending anyone while also promoting your brand. It can be overwhelming. Even if you do all this, you can go unnoticed. Because every other brand does it!

Ever thought of taking the quirky unconventional path? No, no, we know what you’re thinking. Quirkiness also gets you noticed on social media. Here is a list of a few brands (well-known brands, actually), that use savageness, quirkiness, dark humour and crude humour in their social media. You won’t believe us, but their strategy has got them a devoted follower base.

Quirky Social Media handles to get inspired from

1. Zomato

Zomato is a food delivery app in India. Zomato uses a combination of fun, sarcasm, comparison, current affairs, and trendy topics to engage with their customers.

Play Video

Recently they used their own brand’s name pronunciation as a social media trend whether to pronounce their name as ‘Zomaito or Zomato’. Zomato featured a series of celebrities in their ads to endorse Zomato. None of these videos actually declared the right pronunciation of Zomato but ended up in a quirky way promoting Zomato itself.

This Instagram pos below is another example of how Zomato uses humor in their social media handles.

2. Croma

Croma uses moment marketing and meme marketing to drive engagement on its social media handles.

3. Ryan air

Ryanair uses dark humor and savageness in their social media handles. So, below is an example, a classic example of how Ryanair promotes its brand.

Play Video

Ryanair is a budget-friendly airline operated in the European Union. It offers cheap flight rates but amenities aren’t so sophisticated compared to the normal typical flights. Even though people know that Ryanair is very basic, they still choose this airline owing to its cheaper rates. Ryanair uses this consumer behaviour and strategizes its online presence on social media.

Ryanair also engages with the audience in the comments section. Ryanair responds to any negative comments with a very savage approach and it still has a very huge customer base and social media following.

4. Swiggy

Swiggy is also a food technology company in India, which uses relatable posts and witty one-liners in meme marketing to advertise on social media. The below post, which translates to, “Who googled this”, is one example of how Swiggy poses itself on social media. Swiggy also uses its employees to make memes.

5. Aviation gin

Have you seen Deadpool? Well, Ryan Reynolds is the owner of Aviation Gin and he mimics the same swag that he had in the scenes of Deadpool to promote his brand Aviation Gin. He also does eyeball hijacking.

Eyeball hijacking is leveraging current trends and adapting them quickly to catch the eyeballs of the audience and engage with the brand. Ryan isn’t afraid to break the walls of social media with his witty banter and self-deprecating humour.

Play Video

6. Duolingo

Many followers call Duolingo’s mascot cute. Duolingo uses its mascot to promote its social media strategy. It even collaborates with celebrities with the social media mascot present. This mascot isn’t not popular. This Owl even got invited to Barbie’s premiere. Duolingo uses entrainment to teach stuff.

7. Dunzo

Dunzo is a hyperlocal delivery service which uses meme marketing and moment marketing to approach its audience in social media along with consumable comics. Dunzo’s mascot is even a comic.

Social Media Trends in 2023

Do you still think collaborating with influencers is the trend? Nah! It’s the norm. Find out some of the social media trends of 2023

ASMR: Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response, that’s ASMR. ASMR is a social media trend that’s been going viral for the past few months. It’s nothing but someone whispering into the mic very closely, giving a chill down the spine for the viewers watching. It doesn’t involve a lot of music or any audio-visual effects. It’s just someone really amplifying the sound of the task that is being carried out by the person in front of the camera.
Subscription-only content basis: Using Instagram’s new feature of subscription-only channels, brands can grant exclusive access to those audiences who have subscribed. They can offer exclusive access, early product releases, member-only discounts, and post educational content, which builds the community.
Broadcast channels: Broadcast channels are one way to keep in constant touch with your audience. You don’t have to post salesy stuff through your broadcast channels. You can give quick tips and tricks on what’s happening in your business’s realm, to update your customers. This is one way to engage with your customers by adding them to your broadcast channel.

Wrapping Up

If one had told us that ASMR would be so trending right now, I wouldn’t be able to believe you in the past. Social media trends can change rapidly overnight, and one strategy that you’re doing can go out of the trend just like that. It’s important to keep up with what your customers want to see. There are millions of other brands which catch up with these trends, and if you don’t do so, you might be considered irrelevant.

But sometimes that irrelevancy is also what customers expect. In a world where everyone follows the same sheep, your brand could be one black sheep which stands out of the crowd with your unconventional ways. The only way to know what strategy works for you is by testing, testing, and testing.

The post 7 Quirky Social Media handles to get inspired from appeared first on Lateshipment.com.

Blondery – a Cloud Kitchen That Went from Home Baking to a DTC Empire in a Week

Hemalatha Sekar — Thu, 17 Nov 2022 11:34:44 +0000

Auzerais went from baking for friends to building a DTC bakery empire in a week. Yes, you read that right. This exponential growth has been documented by multiple publications. Currently, Blondery ships over 75,000 shipments per week nationwide.

So how did this huge success happen, and how does Auzerais handle it all? We sat with her in a conversation to learn about her brand – Blondery.

Can you tell us about yourself and how Blondery came into formation? Also, what’s your typical workday at Blondery?

I was a pastry chef, for about 10 years, I worked in some fine dining restaurants such as the French Laundry, and Busan bakery. And I started making the blondies and sending them back home to my friends and family. And I ended up opening up a website and selling over 500 orders within a two-week timeframe. I knew from that point on that I had something special.

Can you tell us how the transition happened? How did you make the decision that you have to start a website?

It didn’t start as a full-time business. It just started as something I did, just during the holidays. And no one I would say I guess no one but also everyone kind of pushed me to do this. But I could say the most pivotal moment was when I was a personal assistant. And I had made some blondies for my client; he took them to his office and he came back I think the next day and was like, everyone loves the blondies. Do you mean? Like, let me see your Instagram, and I was showing him what I had done on Instagram. He’s like, I think if you focus more on your photography and your marketing, I think you’ll have a valid business soon. So that’s exactly what I did, like my first photo shoot, I paid like $300 for it.

Since you have mentioned building your brand on Instagram, do you have any tips for brands looking to grow a following on Instagram, especially cloud kitchens, and people who are in D2C and food business together?

I don’t necessarily have a strategy. I post whenever I feel like coasting and it’s probably not a great thing but my audience that’s continuing to grow. Maybe I’m doing something right. And I guess, in the beginning, my goal was to stand out and be as authentic to myself as possible. A lot of bakeries are typically marketed to very pink or blue or very, like, feminine colors. And I went the opposite route and took the darker, mysterious approach to my marketing, which I think helped us stand out a lot when Instagram got started because I started my page in 2018.

You just mentioned your business grew exponentially within a week, and you had a lot of orders once you opened your website. So how did you handle the exponential scaling up?

It was definitely overwhelming at the time, I had roommates, and I was baking from home. So they were not happy with how much I was baking in our kitchen. But eventually, you bribe them with some treats to make them okay with the arrangement. And I would say, there’s never really a right way to do it. I maxed out a few credit cards and got some really nice packaging made. And you know, it’s a constant evolution scaling up, it’s, I would say, I’m still technically scaling up now.

And that leads us to the next question, how is it working as a single person out of your home from the comfort of your house, to scale up to be a team? How do operations work right now since you’re shipping nationwide a perishable good?

I did, I went from working in my home to renting kitchen space by the hour to renting kitchen space by the month. And now I just signed a 10-year lease for a space of my own. So I’ve done all the shared kitchens up until today.

That's a really nice way to scale up. Can you share some of the biggest challenges you face in your business? And how do you make sure you give great customer experience for your customers, people who buy from you?

The biggest challenge has been kitchen space for us. And finding something that was affordable, yet flexible. That we could actually grow in, unfortunately, late last year, we noticed that we needed to move out within eight days.

Because of the Hurricane Ida flooded a facility. For the past year or so we’ve been in like a whirlwind of kitchen stuff. Like, we’ve moved way too many times — that has been like one of the biggest struggles, but also, I think, on the other side of all of that is managing our customers’ expectations around what like how this process works, it is a perishable good. And I think like because people are used to Amazon or just like E-commerce in general.

They’re either expecting it to take like be a very short window of time before they receive their product or they may be expecting a longer period, but they’re concerned about if the product will be stale, stale by the time they get it. They start thinking like, if I order on Monday, and it doesn’t ship until Friday, that means that the product has been sitting in our facility since Monday and that’s not true. Like when we get your order on Monday, we’re probably baking it On Wednesday, and then we’re shipping it on Friday. So yeah, it’s just like managing our client’s expectations.

And that’s actually why we got involved with LateShipment.com because since ours is a perishable product, people are very anxious about it and they think something horrible will happen to it if they know stays in transit for a little longer than it has to, but constantly reassuring them like, at the end of the day, we’re just making brownies, right. So there are very few things that can go wrong with a brownie. It’s not ice cream, it’s not a cake like It’s not pie, it’s a brownie. Even though we package it differently, and call it something else.

I think people are still very anxious about getting food in the mail and they’re scared, they’re nervous, they’re excited. So just managing the fulfillment and shipping process so that the customer knows what’s going on has been the biggest thing. It’s like one of our biggest customer service inquiries. It is like when will my order ship? How long does it take? Well, how long will it be fresh by the time it gets there? What if it gets delayed in traffic? Like it’s just so many things that people are concerned about? When it comes to like perishable products

Did you take any measures to personalize your relationship with your customers to suit your business model?

When a customer places an order, they receive an order confirmation email, which does detail all the things we kind of try to reinforce throughout their entire customer journey and that we’re making your product fresh, we’re going to ship it Monday through Thursday, it takes two to one day to ship we’re constantly saying that in all of our communications.

So then we also have when the order is shipped, they get an email and it says all those similar things differently. And then we have when it’s out for delivery when it’s been delivered, we have your orders delayed in transit. With LateShipment.com now, no order was canceled or voided because of something that happened with FedEx. We try to keep in constant communication with our clients. I think the next step is we want to add an email that, if we’re taking more than maybe two days to ship their product, we want to have an email that goes out that says, hey, we haven’t forgotten about you.

We’re still baking your order, you’ll get a confirmation or shipping confirmation when it does ship just letting you know that we’re we haven’t forgotten. Because they’re just so anxious. It’s so funny. So we’re just trying to make sure that we stay on top of it and let them know what’s going on.

You said that there is resistance for new people who are ordering online first, edibles. Do you employ any strategies or marketing tactics that inhibit this resistance? Like the order status notifications are for people who have already done business with you? How do you cover new customers? Like, take away the resistance from them?

We have verified reviews on our website. So they can click through each product and see other people’s experiences. I don’t delete anything or add anything. Those are all real reviews. And then we also have on every product page, we tell them like we ship orders Monday through Friday. So it’s literally the same message they get from the time they’re prospecting to the time that they have gotten their delivery. They’re getting the same kind of information all around and we’re hoping that it just kind of sticks and implants into their brain. And then we also have a live chat function on our website. so that if they are having any issues or any questions about a product, they can just chat with us right away.

And we’ve also been featured in support. We’ve been featured in publications, and you have a lot of influencers post our content. So we also do a lot of unboxing on our social media. So they can see how the product arrives. see how big or small it is? etc.

You've done an amazing job when it comes to PR for Blondery. So how did you get featured in such big organizations in such a short span?

Unfortunately, I can’t take any credit for that. That was all organic. They would usually find and would email me and say, “hey, we want to feature you”. And I’m giving them information. And then they would write about us. Right now, though, this year. I’m starting this July. That’s, yeah, it’s great. It was all organic PR. Until, like, just recently, we won a scholarship with a PR agency called Nike communications. And they’re gonna be working with us this fall. PR wise. So that’s it.

What about the influencers Who post on behalf of your brand? Are they organic, too?

Yeah, some of them are organic. We did do a few influencer campaigns with YouTubers, Instagram personalities, and TikTok personalities. But it’s never been like we’re dedicating X amount of dollars to this influencer campaign. It was just like, I liked their content. I feel like it resonates. I like what they’re talking about, I think we have similar audiences, and I think they would enjoy our products. Let’s see if they’ll take some bodies. You know, that’s how most of our campaigns go. And it hasn’t, I would say maybe at the most, it’s been like 80 people, maybe maybe not even that though.

We try to focus more on the product and provide a really yummy experience. Rather than blowing up money on marketing since I am bootstrapping my business. It’s just very scrappy still.

And most of the heavy lifting of your business happens in the post-purchase phase, that is post checkout, how do you ensure it is a good experience for your customers?

Communicating throughout the process is going to be the biggest thing, I believe, when I think about me purchasing something from Bloomingdales or Macy’s, it’s about setting that expectation upfront for when they will receive their order. When will it ship so we try to again over-communicate in that sense of when the order will ship and how soon will they get it? We are literally everywhere on our website, and in our email marketing, it’s everywhere. It’s everywhere.

Since you've been a sous chef before this, and now you're a baker, how do both fields differ for you and where do you feel comfortable being a full-time Baker?

Initially, I wasn’t comfortable being a full-time Baker when I was working for someone else. Right now, I enjoy being an entrepreneur. I think that it’s my life’s calling. And I enjoy being able to build things from scratch and kind of curate the team that I want to work with If and yeah, I, from being it’s two very different worlds. But at the end of the day, I think even in kitchens, there was a lot of teamwork that had to happen when I was at Wu Shan or French Laundry, there’s a lot of teamwork. So those are some of the values that I’ve taken into being a boss, you know, to someone else or a team leader to you know, my two employees.

Since you're shipping edible goods nationwide, do you use any industrial freezer service at your avails such as subscriptions or such services for your goods?

Now, we are doing everything in-house, so we make a store and ship the product? Yes, we have like three different freezers. And two, we have three freezers, and two fridges, but they’re not huge. As I said, we just signed a 10-year lease for our new production space. So we will be building a walk-in freezer and fridge into that space, I believe, within the next few years. But yeah, we’re super scrappy. So we make do with what we have. And I really love going to the auctions here in New York City and finding any equipment because you can find some really good stuff for relatively well.

What's the single most important advice or thing you wish you knew before starting a DTC cloud kitchen?

I would say, definitely get your product in front of your potential customers as soon as possible, whether that be at a farmers market, flea market, or somewhere where they can touch it and feel it first, before trying to ship it. selling food online comes at a disadvantage. Because all they can do is, they can’t see it, they can’t touch it. Um, it comes at a disadvantage. So you have to do a lot on the back end to understand what your customer is looking for and what they’re attracted to.

So at farmer’s markets, I used to write down any questions that I got about my products. Whether that is people asking me how much it cost? Is it gluten-free? Is it vegan? Is it dairy free? Is this vegetarian? Does this have any nuts questions like that? I would write down and then put tally marks next to how many times people would ask me the question. And based on that, that’s how I did like to improve on my marketing or improve on my signage, things of that sort. And you can’t do that online.

What do your operations look like during the holiday season?

I mean, anywhere in the holiday season, we can be doing around 75,000. Especially during these last two months of the year, and then we only have two people working for us right now. But we’re looking to expand our team. We bring in seasonal people to help us with packaging and things of that sort. So at any time, there can be maybe six or seven people working in the kitchen.

Okay, and since you're into doing treats for people, and the holiday season is approaching, do you have any special strategies you have in place to handle the orders that are going to come?

We’re trying to put in as much automation in places as possible email or alert-wise. So onboarding with LateShipment.com before the holiday season is probably going to be very essential, as keeping our customers updated because UPS and FedEx are bound to lose, you know when you’re shipping hundreds of 1000s of packages, one is bound to go missing. So, again, just making sure our customer knows that we care and that we’re on it and we’re on top of it.

We’re tracking the orders because I used to track the orders manually by myself, where I would go into ShipStation, and check and see if every order was delivered. And if it wasn’t, I would call the customer or email the customer and say, Hey, I see that your orders are late. So basically just kind of automating that process, because I can’t do that down, there’s no way I will be able to call all my customers and ask them about their order.

So I think LateShipment.com makes a great companion for us this holiday season. And then obviously, we bought a lot of packaging. So a lot of packaging, a lot of social media campaigns, and getting email setup for Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and things of that sort. That’s what we’re working on.

So again, on behalf of all our readers, and me personally, it was an absolute pleasure to talk to an owner and a business that is very tuned in to the community of customers, and also offering a product that not only meets quality requirements but actually stands for something right. It was a pleasure to talk to you in that regard.

The post Blondery – a Cloud Kitchen That Went from Home Baking to a DTC Empire in a Week appeared first on Lateshipment.com.

Baraka Sheabutter – an Ecommerce Brand That Aligns Social Impact & Profitability Together

Hemalatha Sekar — Fri, 11 Mar 2022 14:39:41 +0000

The world is increasingly looking to adopt eco-friendly options in our day-to-day lives. The shift towards eco-consciousness and sustainability is now the expected benchmark for businesses world wide. And we can see brands across the globe prime themselves to this shift. Multiple corporations are taking up sustainability projects as a passion project to get in the goodbooks of their customers. But most often, these passion projects are isolated initiatives and are not built into their business model.

This is where Baraka Sheabutter has cracked the code. This ecommerce brand can be considered the pioneer of a holistic sustainable business model. Prof. Wayne Dunn has successfully created a global ecommerce network that ventures in wholesaling, D2C, leveraging sustainable private labels & small scale DIY labels on the sales side; while on the other hand have created a system for community building, reforestation, and zero waste systems on the environmental stewardship side.

Yeah, that was a lot to process even for us. And if you’re like us, you must be wondering how an ecommerce business could even dream such complex and ambitious structures of workflows, and on top of it, tie it all together in a single flowing system. And if other businesses can also find their own profitable way to make a social impact on their own terms.

To gain insights on how they managed to pull off such a feat, and how businesses can become a sustainable and profitable model like the one they’ve created, we sat with Mr. Dunn on a call.

Here’s what Mr.Dunn had to say about it.

Let me start off with a question you might be very often asked. How did you establish a business with such a strong vision? And also, could you tell us a bit about the history of Baraka shea butter?

Two things drove the start of Baraka. One of my founders is from Northern Ghana, and we were married. And we were often bringing things back and helping the women in villages around where she grew up in Northern Ghana. The women basically said, you know, we want income, not charity. We love that you bring us stuff, but we want to earn an income, not be dependent on you, and we have more control on our finances.

My wife was making some products out of shea butter, and I was bringing it back at the time. And because I was doing consulting, I had a consulting and training agency, the Corporate Social Responsibility Training Institute, we were on the cutting edge of theory and practice in the space where business meets community. This was 20 years ago, when we focused on Millennium Development Goals before the sustainable development goals. We eventually started realizing that there was a role to play on social and environmental issues and the leading businesses were finding that it didn’t have to come at a cost, it could be a strategic opportunity. So I was consulting and training on that, all over the world. And Baraka sort of started up as a hobby. As my wife was already making products out of shea butter, I thought, well, if people want to buy it, maybe we can find a way to sell it, it’ll give more income for the women and in the community. And that’s how it started.

It wasn’t until 2013-2014 did we finally ship a full container of products. Our main focus was on consulting and training, I was doing lectures and programs all over the world and, and what I started to find was that, the way I built Baraka the way we had aligned social impact, environmental stewardship, and business strategy and brand was making a great story was making a great case study for my lectures, as the model of sustainability resonated world wide. And not to mention, it was a very slow business.

Paralelly, there was a rise in the need of natural organic skincare and cosmetics products, where people were interested in knowing what goes into making these products and what’s the story of the makers. And, Baraka was providing that story, which was rooted and was both authentic and amateurish.

I started working with Lateshipment.com, as you guys had a clear value proposition – there was no cost to having you monitor my shipments. And catch the ones that were late and delayed and I knew there was a lot more you could do.That really drove the start of Baraka, and as we started to reach out more into D2C as we could meet the needs of the markets.

As the pandemic approached, we had to rethink our entire operations, as until then, we were mostly doing bricks and mortar and craft fairs while the whole world was shutting down. I never dreamed of such a change until then and I could see that people were being sent home. I also knew there was this growing interest in DIY in the natural and organic skincare market, people wanted to make their own products and know what goes into their products. So literally, on the flight home, I came up with this strategy of sizing down our products, we didn’t have a thing under five kilograms. At that point, I took them down to 500 grams and started to work out a marketing strategy, an order fulfillment strategy that would let us adjust to the pandemic and become a D2C brand.

Once we started to go down, we had different marks, we had to get faster and sharper on our marketing, but we also had to get more efficient on our fulfillment. And I think it was around that time, maybe sooner that I started working with late shipment, because you know, you guys were you, you had such a clear value proposition, there was no cost to having you monitor my shipments. And, you know, and catch the ones that were late and delayed and, and I knew there was a lot more you could do, and I just never got around until recently to really take advantage of what you could do. That really drove the start of Baraka, and as we started to reach out more into, you know, some D2C, but I’ll call it a quasi-D2C because we’re selling to people who make their own product, or maybe they make it and, and sell a little bit online or to share it with family. So it’s not quite a consumer but they were really resonating with the brand’s story and that authenticity, and the fact that we could demonstrate the impact their purchases were having.

We’re very clear in the fact that Baraka on its own will not have any impact on women and communities in Ghana, period. We only have that impact, because our customers buy into that process. And we try to give our customers content that support them in their conscious purchasing decisions and allow them for our business customers.

We try to give them content that can help support them in their own marketing so that their customers can know the impact that they’re having. So we’ve even created an entire framework for it called “Your impact”. I mean, some people give our business credit for it and that’s just the way it goes but our business works, when we connect social and environmental impact in our far upstream reaches in the impoverished rural villages where we work with impact for our customers are getting high quality product that they can know and see where it comes from product that their customers love. And they get there feeling good from buying and using those products? Because they know they’re making an impact. That was a long answer. I think I answered more than one question. Sorry.

That really was a very informational load. It covered quite a few of the other questions I had to thank you so much for that. Your model is not only inspiring, but also was so clearly articulated, which lets us know that it's not always a straight path from A to B, or a combination of a variety of decisions sometimes taken on the fly, the collective impact that the customers as suppliers have on the ecosystem as a whole. Related to that, an interesting part that as well about your business, I think one of the other undulations that your business has, was that you started out primarily doing retail, direct to consumers, but then kind of branched out from there and also doing white label raw material sale to larger businesses, which don't have their own retail labels, right. So what was the transformation like?

That’s really a really good question there. And I think so, we look at the natural and organic skincare market. As you know, there are some major major players in there, it’s a rapidly growing market, it’s many 10s of billions of dollars and growing rapidly and there’s major players and then there you know, smaller businesses, some even micro businesses that are buying ingredients, buying butters and oils making products and selling them either wholesale either through the website, again, in fairs, craft fairs and exhibits; and then there’s the the DIY market, people who are buying essentially to make for themselves and their families and maybe selling a little bit and then underneath and supporting everyone except the DIY market as the consumers the who are buying finished products to use and you often see consumers moving from consumers to DIY and, and back or you see those micro businesses are making some products, they buy some others. So our initial foray into that market was with the small and micro businesses, people were buying 25 kilos of shea butter, or five kilos of shea butter. And, you know, we started out with just shea butter. And then we added on cocoa butter and coconut oils and palm oils and but all of them with a very strong, easily easy to understand origin story, supply chain story.

We can tell you where it comes from, and the impact that it has. So we were, in essence, giving your white label branding and marketing content and tools to our customers to allow them to, to market our product. Some of our customers were using our brand. I mean, it’s ironic in a way that probably our biggest competitor in the US online market right now is a company called Brambleberry. And they’re also one of our biggest, biggest customers. So they’re actually marketing our branded products on their site. And, you know, I think they recognize the, you know, the impact branding, the halo effect that the baraka brand can have on other brands, because it’s not easy for a lot of companies and consumers. I used to teach this when I was a professor of corporate social responsibility. Everyone is expecting more from businesses. Globally there’s an expectation that businesses should it have a positive social impact and it should be an effective steward of the environment at the same time as it’s producing profits and shareholder value and that’s not always an easy thread to follow, it’s a nice needle to thread because, often the social and the environmental are seen as costs rather than contributors to value and Baraka has really focused on aligning those.

We now have a lot of people that love to see Baraka branded consumer products, and we slowly or very cautiously dipped our toe in that market, we started with the black soaps, which there’s, you know, there are a lot of sort of ad hoc black soap brands and suppliers in North America and we keep expanding our market with these base products, for example, we’ve recently launched recipe kits for our black soaps for the DIY market.

Again, that was so enlightening. The fact that brands typically think about being just one or the other, the fact that you can be successful both on the b2c as well as b2b front without being afraid about one part cannibalizing the other other parts of the business that I think will help a lot of times. How do you achieve a balance with the things you’ve mentioned? And what advice do you have for brands, especially the ones that hope to create a social impact?

Find an alignment, where social impact drives value rather than cost where environmental stewardship creates value rather than rakes a cost. I did a keynote lecture on how the path to profit has shifted. Before it used to be that the path to profit was simply by optimizing what the market wanted to buy. The more efficient you could be at creating and getting something to market that the market wanted to buy, the more profitable you’d be. And as expectations around social and environmental impact and management started to work their way in, the first response for business was to treat them as a cost. So, strategically work to minimize them and you strategically treat them as a cost. And the path to profit went from where your business is, to your profit, and social issues. And environmental issues are like little detours that you sent somebody else on, but you tried not to let them get in the way of getting your business down the path to profit.

The reality today is that those expectations on social and environmental performance are higher but at the same time there are higher financial performance expectations of investors and bankers. It’s harder for businesses to thread that needle to what to do with all of them. Traditionally businesses thinking around social impact and social responsibility was – let’s find something good to do something that’s good for society and we’ll do that and then we’ll do our business and often they were totally divorced

Traditional communities thrive on subsistence economies. When big businesses get into the market, they shift the natives to a cash based economy who wouldn’t fully grasp the potential they could create and oftentimes feel overwhelmed and run back to their original ways. The school idea of personal and economic life skills are running in families through generations. Now that there’s one or more people in a household earning cash incomes, they’ve got regular cash coming in; it doesn’t all have to be barter or subsistence anymore. So how do you manage that? How do you take advantage of the savings and loans and insurance and all of these other areas?

Teaching that to them is more of a service than creating a feeding program. That is an incredibly valuable service you’re going to do a lot of social good when you do that you can credit you know you don’t have to do it yourself you can probably find you own in your organization to do it with and when you do that your your social good is going to equal or maybe surpassed what you’re achieving before but on the business side you are getting your brand in front of your potential customers and putting yourself and your brand ahead of your competition and you’re giving yourself more educated and getting customers are better able to use your services so they’re going to get more benefit in you’ll have less churn. That’s the sort of thinking that needs to be picked up.

I don't think anybody else could’ve put it better. Moving on from the social aspect of your business, you’re also running a very complicated supply chain network, from sourcing and directly selling in different parts of the world. What’s your take on emphasis on customer experience? How do you keep up your customer satisfaction?

I didn’t start off thinking all this through strategically or make some master plan. When we started it evolved with us but it is challenging. I mean we worked our way through finding little reaches, working with the women gathering Shae nuts, running nearly 1000 person days of our economic livelihood training right in villages and in northern Ghana.And navigating shipping through all of this is so complicated. We’ve had to add 3 months on our inventory pipeline and in finance 3 months from our inventory pipeline just because of shipping challenges. Especially during the pandemic shipping delays, I’ve had a container sit idle for 6 weeks midway. Half the products got spoiled by the time they got shipped which was not just a loss, but also looked bad for us in the face of our customers. I’m still figuring out and bringing people in, from back end operational support in Ghana to investment banks, and software like yours.

E-commerce is about what the brand stands for, and we’re lucky our story was memorable for our customers and that’s worked in our favor. None of us get it right all the time. We all make mistakes all the time. If you wait until you’re going to have a perfect you’re going to get run over by the bus coming behind you.

Some words on LateShipment.com

My exposure to Lateshipment.com was just that you had a very simple value proposition you really focused on the value your you were bringing to my business it was easy; simple to understand it was clear and and it was a medium what was that focus on on value and that as I got to know you I realized that value proposition was backed up by incredible service as well.

Interview with LateShipment.com CEO, Sriram Sridhar. Transcripted by Hemalatha Sekar.

The post Baraka Sheabutter – an Ecommerce Brand That Aligns Social Impact & Profitability Together appeared first on Lateshipment.com.

Nola Skinsentials – A skincare brand that went from a humble beginning to 200k+ community

Hemalatha Sekar — Fri, 26 Nov 2021 13:22:07 +0000

If two things could define the last two years other than the pandemic, it is the rise of TikTok marketing and conscious consumption of skincare products.

Jane Ormon, a young entrepreneur has taken advantage of both and has built a rapidly growing skincare brand that has grown beyond double its production value in the past year alone. She and her fiance have put in their educational background, personal experiences, and love to create a community to create Nola Skinsentials.

We sat down with Jane herself to know the secret behind the exponential growth of Nola Skinsentials, and their secret to building a loyal customer base turned community. Here’s what Jane had to say about it.

Could tell us a little bit about yourself and your role in the company.

Yeah, so my name is Jane. I am the CEO of Nola Skinsentials. I pretty much handle the entire team. Anything that’s associated with admin, marketing, and customer service, I have my hands on all of that.

We love talking to leaders who are very hands-on with their business as that's where we get the most lessons from. Tell us a little more about Nola Skinsentials, where the idea came from, and how the business has developed from there?

Nola is where my fiance and I, who’s also my business partner, met at a seafood cafe when we were vacationing. We eventually became friends and later started dating. He’s a cosmetic chemist, I was going to school for pre-med. That’s how we got to the idea to start a skincare business with both of us as partners.

That's a really cool story! One thing we noticed about your brand is that you have created a skincare plan that is focused on melanin-rich skin tones. Could you tell us about that and how you pick that particular category? I'm assuming there's a personal connection with that.

Yeah, definitely. Back when I was a college student who was dealing with hormonal acne, there weren’t a lot of skincare products on the market that were compatible, products that were created specifically for women of color, and their skin tones.

Everything was marketed for all skin types and skin tones. And you know that that’s not true. Darker skin tones have different skin ailments and skin concerns than lighter skin tones. We deal with a lot more hyperpigmentation cases, we scar differently. We would need products that cater to our skin tones. We saw the need there and a big gap. So we went ahead and kind of created a solution for that and that’s kind of how Nola Skinsentials originated.

Skinsentials is just a play on the skin, obviously, and essentials. The things that your skin needs. So Nola has what your skin needs and just all that good stuff.

Awesome. Again, we love the effort that you're taking to make beauty and beauty products more inclusive. We see your business doing really well through Instagram marketing. Any tips for brands looking to grow a following on Instagram?

When we first started our brand, we by default created pages on all social media platforms. But the initial engagement we received was from Twitter. It was organic and conversational.

We could be our authentic selves there and create a community. I’d credit our brand’s initial success to Twitter. This made it easy for us to create an Instagram presence.

Even before we started running ads on Instagram, we had good word-of-mouth community building going on. We also started working with influencers and did paid promotions, which were also fruitful.

For newer businesses that are just starting out on social channels like Instagram, what would you offer as advice to them to be successful in these areas?

Starting a new business is no easy feat. It’s definitely super challenging and I feel like it’s even more challenging now because there’s so much competition, there are so many new platforms, and there are so many things that you have to do to be a successful brand.

For people that are just starting out, I would say, focus on your why you’re starting your brand. What is your reason for the mark? Like, why should somebody buy your product, and live by that? Don’t compare yourself to other brands, believe in your brand. Focus on the why. Once your customers understand your why and believe in your products, you’re going to be successful and grow.

Don’t focus too much on paid social, as you wouldn’t be able to create an organic community through plain paid promotions. Fixate on building an organic and engaging community and getting people to understand and what they can benefit from your product. And definitely put your customers first, they’re going to be the backbone of your products.

It’s so hard to get someone to shop at your brand for the first time. But it’s so much easier for repeat customers to keep coming back to you. And they refer their friends.

I'm sure anybody needing this or hearing this is going to appreciate that. How did the pandemic affect your operations as a business? What are the challenges you had to face and how did you overcome them?

One of the things we struggled with was supply chains.

A lot of our packaging and inventory materials come from overseas. So when the pandemic first hit, luckily, our packaging orders were in transit on the way to the US. It just was delayed. But anything after that was super delayed.

We really weren’t able to place large orders like we generally did with our suppliers to get anything done. Because at the same time, while we were struggling to send out our orders, we were growing exponentially. A lot of people migrated to online shopping, and black-owned businesses were getting a lot of support from the social movements.

Meanwhile, the work from home mandate made us lose a lot of employees and the job market was extremely hard to find like top talent. But the main outcome from the pandemic was definitely growth for us.

I'm sure you're expecting even more of a growth spurt as the holiday season rolls those boots. So what are your strategies to combat that spike in shipping volumes? How do you plan for a busy season like that?

First thing is to be super transparent with your customers. If there’s ever an issue, we always are super transparent with them. We’re starting our holiday sale a little bit earlier this year to alleviate the expected delays with shipping to help our customers out.

We were informed by USPS and UPS that there could be massive shipping delays, and with only four weeks between like Black Friday and Christmas. We realized we had to equip ourselves to make all ends meet. Thus we stocked up accordingly and hired additional staff in our warehouse to get things going smoothly.

Can you tell us about the efforts you take on the post-purchase side to ensure that your customers have a great experience? Even after the auto-ship?

Yeah, for sure. A lot of things that I’ve learned just about customer service and post-purchase CX are from the reviews and complaints on the website or social media of our competitors.

Many brands think that when a customer orders from your website and you ship the package to them, their relationship and the service stops which is not true. Because if they’re coming to you for something, it’s our duty as a brand to ensure that they get their items.

We, at Nola Skinsentials, tend to stay in contact with a customer for at least two or three weeks after their order has been delivered because we truly want to know what’s going on and how our customers are benefitting. Thus we focus a lot on our post-purchase phase and make sure that they’re getting the best service that they can possibly get.

As an extension of this, if there are one or two important takeaways from your experience that you would like to leave behind for any new young brands reading this?

Number one is to realize from the very beginning that you cannot do everything all on your own and build a solid team to grow your brand. Building and finding a core team is an investment, and also mentally healthy for an individual as an entrepreneur, and in turn, brings a better return on investment.

Number two, even though you may be an expert in your field and expert in some of the things you study, you never ever stop learning. There are always new things coming out on the market, new platforms, for instance, new-age platforms like tick tock you may not be as well versed in. Open yourself to learning, listening to people, and getting advice, to become the best version of yourself.

We see that your mom has played a very important role in you becoming an entrepreneur. We’d love to hear more about her role in your success.

Coming from a Caribbean background where people take the traditional routes of profession like teachers, doctors, or nurses; my mom never imposed such expectations on me. I never wanted anything traditional even back when I was a kid, and my mom never forced me into anything.

She got me thinking life is full of endless possibilities and gave me the confidence to explore less trodden routes. Thus, I went to pre-med school, started my own skincare brand, and today also own a spa. Had she limited my potential, I would’ve never gotten this far. And I think everyone needs a support system like that to succeed.

That’s inspirational. Do you have any closing comments on how Lateshipment.com has enhanced the customer experience at Nola Skinsentials?

Yes, definitely. Lateshipment.com is one main enabler for us to be transparent about shipping updates and delays, and be in touch with our customers in general as I mentioned before.

I found your app on an integration page of Klaviyo and had my mind blown by the fact that someone was making the post-purchase phase of the customer cycle to be customer-friendly. It also eventually led us to be ahead of the customer service curve, curbing our helpdesk ticket volume.

Before we partnered with LateShipment.com, we were using a different platform that required a lot of money and manpower to ensure our deliveries were made at a maximum of five-day windows.

Since we send an automated email through Gorgias integration on shipping updates, we’ve had so many customers thanking us for being proactive in communicating shipping delays and such. All this wouldn’t have been possible without LateShipment.com.

Interview with LateShipment.com CEO, Sriram Sridhar. Transcripted by Hemalatha Sekar.

The post Nola Skinsentials – A skincare brand that went from a humble beginning to 200k+ community appeared first on Lateshipment.com.