If you talk about branding today, most entrepreneurs will say, "I'm going to make a DTC brand." "So, what exactly is the DTC brand?
DTC is a business model, that is, Direct-to-Consumer (directly facing consumers), which means that brands do not need to use intermediary channels such as third-party platforms or wholesale retailers to reach the market, but instead use self-built channels to communicate directly with consumers in an independent identity, marketing operations and promote direct purchases (direct purchases).
An obvious performance is that in the first three quarters of 2021, there were 19 OVERSEAS DTC brands listed, including many veteran star brands such as Warby Parker, Oatly, and Torrid.
Overseas, also due to the high tax revenue of overseas e-commerce platforms, such as Amazon, Ebay and other platforms in the proportion of more than 10%. Therefore, skipping the intermediate channels, through the development of private domain traffic to obtain customers, expand multiple brand marketing channels, effectively reduce the cost of promotion, has become the first choice of brand merchants. In recent years, brands such as SheIn and PatPat, which are widely circulated by the industry, have not decreased in popularity and can achieve rapid growth, mostly thanks to this. It can be seen that the business growth and imagination space of the DTC model is huge.
Although cross-border e-commerce has always been a hot topic, there is no doubt that this year is the most ups and downs. Platform supervision, soaring maritime transport, unstable air transport, mismatch between supply and demand, and a series of black swan events have added obstacles to the brand's going to sea. Therefore, the brand has also reached a key node of change and change. With the general trend of global consumption upgrading, more and more young consumers are beginning to pursue their own personalized consumption habits, and hope that their personalized needs can be truly seen and valued by brands. Through the DTC model, brands can directly understand the needs of each consumer, use big data to draw user portraits, and make personalized differences and product experiences that truly meet the "thousands of faces" and exceed expectations.
The core competitiveness of dtc brands is a brand efficiency mechanism that takes consumers as the core, cultivates brand loyalty, and can use data feedback to rapidly iterate. Therefore, compared with relying on third-party platforms for drainage sales, DTC brands are more suitable for independent stations - that is, brands self-service to establish official websites for direct sales, DTC has become one of the most concerned models of independent stations. Through digital online sales, independent stations can directly face consumers, and form a mutually reinforcing closed-loop advantage within the DTC brand's own operation and sales chain.
The current status and opportunities of the DTC model
Although at present, the DTC model is the preferred way for brands to go global, for Chinese merchants, operating DTC brands through independent stations still faces multiple constraints, such as traffic acquisition, talent introduction and training, and cognitive gaps.
But there is demand and supply, with the birth of various independent station SaaS platforms, most of the problems faced by DTC brands can be solved. Generally speaking, the function of the independent station SaaS platform can not only solve the problem of website building, but also include services such as advertising and brand building, and can also access logistics, payment, ERP and other service providers on its platform, providing merchants with many choices. At the same time, the entire cross-border industry is accelerating into mobility, content and branding. Taking SHOPLAZZA as an example, if you carefully comb through its business, it is not difficult to see the layout on the DTC model.
In view of the problem of brand traffic acquisition, Shopsmith Technology has created a DTC brand incubation center, which provides targeted empowerment in technology, and gathers high-quality service providers in the industry, from market research, user insight, brand positioning, product design, marketing planning, multimedia traffic efficiency improvement, social media operation to celebrity marketing management, for the different stages of operation of merchants manpower and cognitive difficulties, to provide merchants with a comprehensive and whole life cycle solution.
Especially in the level of multimedia traffic efficiency, Shopsmith Technology is the only Business Partner on the e-commerce platform side of Facebook in China, which was awarded the "2021 Overseas Technology Innovation Award" by Google, and also completed efficient cooperation with other mainstream overseas traffic channels such as TikTok, Pinterest, Twittter, etc. It is committed to reducing the operating threshold of the merchant system while effectively improving the efficiency of traffic management.
In terms of private domain traffic, many tools such as ShareAsale, Refersion, Loyalty program, blog, email marketing (Mailchimp, Klaviyo) and many other tools empower merchants to continuously expand and convert private domain traffic from acquisition and operation, so that merchants can continuously precipitate private domain traffic and do a good job in user operations for different customer groups at different stages.
Open a new era of DTC brand going to sea
For this year's cross-border e-commerce, a key change is that sellers are beginning to seek multi-channel development, no longer putting eggs in a basket. Therefore, sellers who have always had brand dreams have begun to open up independent station channels.
Alloyworks, which ranks first in the car radiator category on Amazon, is a typical example, Alloyworks is mainly engaged in "car radiator" accessories, and has successfully achieved the first place in the category on eBay and Amazon platforms. After becoming the first platform category, Alloyworks also recognized the constraints and limitations brought by the platform, but obviously, the platform traffic and customer stickiness are not enough to support its branding. To this end, Alloyworks opens the channel through a standalone station and chooses Shopmaker Technology to incubate and operate the business from the DTC brand of 0-1.
In the auto parts market, different from domestic consumers usually solve all car problems in 4S stores, overseas consumers, especially in the United States, are keen to solve or modify cars by themselves, such as changing radiators, installing novice handbrakes, etc. To that end, Alloyworks positioned the brand as an "enthusiast-grade high-performance auto part."
At the same time, the SHOP MAKER DTC brand team customized the facebook + Google + KOL channel delivery combination method for customers. Due to the lack of brand and product materials on the platform previously operated by customers, and through the analysis of the Facebook channel of the same category, it is seen that the better effect is the user/celebrity real person installation evaluation material, in the case of customer approval, the shop craftsman DTC brand team began to expand and cooperate with high-quality celebrities, on the one hand, hoping to quickly accumulate materials, on the other hand, hoping to expand the exposure of brands and products with the influence of celebrities. Through the refinement of the official account operation of social media, we have cultivated accounts and maintained loyal fans from 0, and achieved a Facebook increase of nearly 30,000 fans.
In the third month, AlloyWorks' standalone growth exceeded 100% and broke even in the second quarter. By the tenth month, the annual performance target had been completed two months ahead of schedule.
If you look back at Alloyworks' journey from 0 to 1, you'll find that catering to overseas consumer demand and making clever use of local influencer marketing is key. In the story of going to sea, there are many cases of laughter and generosity because they have typed the keyword "foreign". Therefore, brands need to fit the minds of overseas consumers.
In the view of Chen Zhihao, co-founder of Shopsmith Technology, the core of DTC is to open up "people, goods, and fields", better create value for consumers, and seize the opportunity to promote digital transformation. Obviously, Shopsmith Technology is also working towards this, in addition to providing website building technology and branding, marketing, operation solutions, but also for Chinese enterprises and consumer goods brands to expand international business solutions and services. It is worth mentioning that Shopwright Technology has reached strategic cooperation with the industry's top brand marketing service providers on the DTC brand, and has laid out strategic consulting, brand IP co-branding, image content production and other directions.
About Shopkeeper Technology
This independent website construction SaaS enterprise, which was established less than five years ago, was born in the context of the in-depth application development of China's Internet, naturally has the innovation and research and development genes, and has grown rapidly in the market with its strong latecomer advantage, and has now become one of the leading enterprises of the domestic independent website construction SaaS platform. In the fourth quarter of this year, Shopsmith Technology won various authoritative honorary awards such as "Forbes Enterprise Technology Top 50" and "Google Partner Overseas Technology Innovation Award", and was also the first SaaS platform in China to dock the synchronization function of TikTok Catalog products.
From the perspective of cloud services, Shopsmith Technology builds a set of secure, stable, fast and open infrastructure for merchants, provides standardized website building tools, and partners and developer ecosystem solutions in international business development. Most importantly, to provide merchants with a set of cross-border e-commerce independent station standardized official website setting system, through the SaaS system, merchants do not need technical personnel or no development experience at all, you can also quickly use templates and card modules to create overseas official websites with sales functions, to achieve sales globalization, through its background plug-ins, merchants can also migrate their goods on other e-commerce platforms such as AliExpress or synchronize the goods on the shop maker platform to TikTok.
In addition to technology empowerment, Shopsmith Technology also provides merchants with DTC brand overseas business, and provides a complete set of branding, marketing and operation solutions in the field of cross-border e-commerce. Help its platform merchants overcome language barriers, differences in consumption habits and warehousing and logistics payment systems. At the same time, the shop maker DTC brand overseas business team will also formulate different content strategies according to the brand's overseas marketing demands, find differentiated points for the brand, and use a set of combination punches to maximize the marketing effect of the brand's celebrities. Through multiple successful experiences, from a professional point of view to help merchants plan to execute each key link, and deliver with high quality. Through the professional team to help customers quickly establish their own international brands and overseas e-commerce direct sales business.
In order to better help Chinese merchants achieve the goal of going global, Shopsmith Technology continues to open its ecological access to more ecological partners, and has established cooperative relations with major global traffic platforms such as Facebook and Google on the traffic side to help merchants achieve self-service account opening and automated marketing, and more efficiently introduce local online consumer traffic; in terms of logistics warehousing, it completes system docking with a number of ERP companies, and merchants can realize order automation and logistics information tracking through the system. Consumers can also understand the status of order logistics in a more timely manner on the website; in terms of interaction design, more styles of website building templates and functional combinations are constantly being introduced, which allows merchants to achieve customized experience design according to the category of sales, target country, consumption habits, etc., and truly localize.
Just as Shopsmith Technology adheres to the mission of "leading customers to global business success through excellent technology", it is helping Chinese brands realize the vision of brand globalization by virtue of its leading technology, experience and ecological advantages.