Fabnest is one of India’s fastest-growing homegrown labels, providing a variety of ethnic, western and lounge apparel for women. The brand’s founders, Divam and Aditi, started out with a vision to create supreme quality clothing at affordable prices. Fabnest is also big on CSR, with a range of measures in place to benefit the social and environmental spheres.
The brand has been successfully selling through e-commerce marketplaces for the past seven years, but decided it was time to expand to a direct-to-consumer (D2C) model, which provides Fabnest with greater control over customer experience and profitability, and enables them to highlight their unique value proposition to stand out from competitors.
Challenges in scaling up a D2C business
To enter the next stage as a brand, Fabnest faced various challenges: Customer acquisition, customer service, pricing and margins, and technology & infrastructure.
With the D2C space, and in fact, the wider digital commerce space, becoming increasingly crowded, it would be increasingly challenging for Fabnest to attract and retain customers, and as such Fabnest would be required to develop targeted marketing strategies that resonate emotionally with their target audience, and highlight their unique value proposition to stand out from competitors.
In addition, customer service and the ways D2C brands engage with their customers online are paramount to building strong customer loyalty and ensuring repeat business. Building a strong customer service strategy and infrastructure would also help them stand out amongst competitors.
At the same time, Fabnest would also have to look at setting competitive pricing while maintaining sustainable margins – striking a balance between offering value to customers and protecting their bottom line.
When scaling a D2C business, there would have to be increased investment in technology & infrastructure to support increased order volume, website traffic and customer support requests. Key areas here include upgrading the D2C site, payment processing systems, and other platforms that enhance customer experience and streamline operations.
Focusing on the key aspects for an immediate headstart
As such, Fabnest decided to focus on three key areas that were readily achievable with the right technology and strategy, and would give the brand an immediate headstart.
- Mapping of D2C roadmap: The first step that Fabnest took together with AnyMind was to develop a roadmap and outline key milestones and objectives for the transition. The roadmap should include a launch timeline, target audience definition, and a customer acquisition and retention strategy.
- Differentiation from competitors: Fabnest tapped on AnyMind’s solution consultants to develop marketing campaign strategies that emphasize their unique product offerings, enhance their branding and messaging to resonate emotionally with their target audience, and design customer service flows. These strategies and customer service flows were designed around maximizing AnyMind’s technology offerings including AnyTag for influencer marketing, AnyChat for customer engagement, and POKKT for mobile marketing.
- Streamlining of operations: In addition, AnyMind’s solution consultants worked with Fabnest to develop and implement strategies to improve their operational efficiency and reduce costs, including optimizing their supply chain through AnyLogi, implementing an e-commerce management system (AnyX), and automating customer service processes through AnyChat.
- Improve customer acquisition: Improvement of customer acquisition efforts through data-driven strategies that attract and convert new customers. This includes optimizing the website for search engines, developing targeted ad campaigns using AnyDigital, and optimizing their sales funnel.
Evaluating the early-stage impact of Fabnest’s expansion to D2C
By implementing the above measures to kickstart their journey into D2C whilst continuing operations on their e-commerce marketplace stores, Fabnest was able to early results including an increase in sales by 112% on Amazon. In December 2022, the brand started onboarding AnyMind Group’s offerings, which led to a 200% uplift in ROAS and organic growth in search volume and traffic on their own brand.com site (fabnest.co.in), and saw a 500% increase in revenue to INR 2 million, with a 30% month-on-month growth rate.
Looking further ahead, Fabnest is also planning to offer its apparel in overseas e-commerce marketplaces, and will be able to tap on AnyMind’s cross-border technological and service capabilities.
At AnyMind, we will continue to help enterprises better manage the growing complexity of online commerce, accelerating a world where business is done through a single platform, is borderless and open, and data can be utilized and maximized freely across business functions, enabling higher levels of growth – ultimately advancing a new era of commerce for Asia and the world.
