WOW Skin Science – Dutch Uncles

Relevance Of Sustainability And Purpose In Helping Build Brand Value For New Age Entrepreneurs

Saurabh Bajaj — Sat, 07 Aug 2021 04:35:08 +0000

It’s often believed that Purpose-led brands are recession proof, grow three times faster than others and command a far higher share of the wallet then their competitors. But is that really true, even for the cost or value conscious Indian?

Purpose-driven brands connect with their audience on causes that both believe in. The brand’s messaging aligns to the customers’ beliefs and that in turn builds loyalty. The purpose could be driven through a need to help their customer or to make the world a better place. It can be personal or lofty, but eventually what matters is the authenticity of the same.

A set of start-ups in India have embraced a set of strong beliefs and appear to be seeing strong early success in the market. Let’s study the story of Mamaearth, Bombay Shaving Company and WOW Skin Science to study how they have wowed the Indian consumer.

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The magic of building a credible purpose-led brand is that its core value offers an opportunity for extension into a range of product categories which have a similar need.

Mama Earth

Mamaearth is perhaps one of the finest examples of purpose-led brand building in the Indian market today and it’s intriguing how they went about it.

Their story started in 2014, when Ghazal and Varun Alagh were blessed with a baby boy. Paranoid as most young parents are, they scanned the Indian market for toxin-free baby products and found that there were none! They actually started ordering products from the US and UK, which were expensive with heavy shipping charges and uncovered an interesting gap in the Indian market.

Next, they realized that this need strongly resonated with a new generation of affluent Indian millennial audience that today has a robust and growing consumer cohort. This led them to founding Honasa Consumer Pvt Ltd in 2016 to provide toxin-free baby care products. By the year’s end, the company launched its brand as Mamaearth.

Unleashing the Gold Mine of Consumer Value

They also built credibility for their brand by seeking a certification from MadeSafe – a US based non-profit organization that provides a comprehensive health-focused certification for making non-toxic products.

The magic of building a credible purpose-led brand is that its core value offers an opportunity for extension into a range of product categories which have a similar need. Hence, Ghazal and Varun Alagh soon realized that they were sitting on a proverbial gold mine of consumer value that they unleashed through an entry into the broader cosmetics category. In just 4 years, they went from 6 products in the baby care range to 80+ SKUs across skin and hair care for men and women and a turnover of 100 Cr across 500 cities across the country primarily served through D2C platforms.

However, with purpose at its core, the rapid growth of the brand has been fuelled through robust marketing thought & consumer facing investments.

Decoding Mamaearth’s communication journey

Mamaearth started their communication journey through a traditional purpose-led film ‘Goodness is in the little choices we make every day’. Here, they elevate their rather functional attributes of “No Toxins”, “Plastic Positive” and “Cruelty Free” to the emotional payoff of a better world as a reminder that it’s the little choices we make that make a big difference.

They, next, gave teeth to their claim of building a better world through the rather significant initiative of ‘An act of goodness in every order’. Here, Mamaearth promises to plant a tree for every order that has been placed from them. They lend credibility to their claim by helping you view the tree plan on their website and have claimed to have planted 1, 11,853 as on 31st July 21.

My favorite piece of their communication journey is of course Mama-Earth Day: Grading the Goodness Report Card. Here, they made an endearing edit with a child rating Mamaearth on – Goodness towards planet: Here they talked about 1 Lac+ trees planted and oxygen for 2 Lac people.

Goodness towards people: Products without 1193 toxins.
Goodness towards the environment: 1135 tons of plastic recycled equal to the weight of 200 elephants.
Goodness towards animals: Cruelty free as certified by PETA. No animal testing now & forever.
Goodness in other activities: 50k hand sanitizers, 20k cloth masks distributed to Covid heroes.

So these initiatives surely build the base for a purpose-led brand and what does it give them? The right to charge a significant premium on their products versus main line players and an expectation of a turnover of 500 Cr in 2021.

But do they have an Achilles heel? If one watches all the brutal reviews of their products on YouTube, it can only be the functionality of their products. They use the right ingredients and sell at a significant premium to other players in the market. But can their products really deliver to the functional delivery of synthetic based cosmetics, I guess only time will tell! For the moment, the going is very good!

Let’s now compare and contrast the Mamaearth journey with other similar brands in this space!

WOW Skin Science

WOW Skin Science is another incredible journey in the same space of premium better-for-you cosmetics. But what I find exciting, is that WOW starts where Mamaearth leaves off, that is the promise of functional delivery.

Ashwin Sokke, one of the founders of WOW Skin Science, had been working in the space of online marketing for some time and as a part of an affiliate programme in the USA, worked on an assignment to market some products in the health and beauty space.

He, then, realized as the e-commerce space started taking off in India in 2013 that there is potent space for a high end D2C brand in India and he kicked off his journey with his partners Arvine Sokkie, Manish Chowdhary and Karan Chowdhary. The founding company was Fit & Glow and the WOW brand was launched in 2014.

Rejecting the conventional brand building

The founders started with their passion for the best formulations rather than conventional brand building and hence honesty and transparency are critical differentiators for the company.

The magic of online listening

Further, given the rigorous digital acumen of the founders, they believe very heavily in data and online listening. Their hero product, the Apple Cider Range started as a drinkable product, but data analytics showed that customers were using it for their hair and on their skin. Thus in 2015 the apple cider range was born. Legend goes that Manish flew to the US nine times to meet formulators and scientists for creating WOW’s popular sulphate and parabens- free apple cider vinegar shampoo. They have since launched several offerings out of it including the drink, shampoo, face wash and moisturizer.

The Right Pricing

The next thing that the founders focused on was the right and transparent pricing for their high end, toxin free brands. At the time of their launch, competition was selling a 200 ml bottle of apple cider vinegar shampoo for Rs 1299, the start-up launched theirs at Rs 399.

Being ‘Customer First’

The third factor in their success is that the founders are extremely passionate about being ‘customer first’. They aggressively deploy social media not just to participate in consumer conversation, glean insights for new products but also to use YouTube and Instagram to promote the brand’s nature-based, science-backed range of products. They spread awareness through product videos and influencers to retarget existing buyers and those that viewed their products.

This strategy paid off and made WOW one of the bestselling brands on Amazon. The next step for the brand was to extend itself to brick and mortar stores and they started their journey only after 4-5 years through Health & Glow in Mumbai, Bangalore and Delhi.

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The brand's promise is to deliver innovative, luxurious products at affordable pricing.

Discovering the brand core

Now, while the brand achieved business success through a range of enviable products fairly early in their journey, they started talking about and embracing the power of purpose only post attaining some scale.

In a query in 2019, when one of the founders was quizzed on how they have used their success to bring goodness into the world, the response was quite honest but revealing. The founder mentioned that we believe in giving opportunities to employees from diverse educational backgrounds with passion and hunger rather than educational accreditations.

It took some time for the brand to discover its core as a brand that would be known for delivering advanced, research-backed, nature-infused products to wellness-conscious people. Moreover, their strengths as an organization with an emphasis on bringing to market nature-crafted products formulated with a high concentration of natural ingredients that help nourish skin, hair and body and deliver visible results. The brand’s promise is to deliver innovative, luxurious products at affordable pricing.

Once the founders released this brand core, they were then able to move away from simple product videos talking about their variants and product features to more meaningful communication. To take on this task, they tied up with two well-known Bollywood actresses Disha Patani and Bhumi Pednekar.

The communication with Disha Patani was again more functional and science driven in line with the core of the brand. In this communication, while ad recall would go up because of a popular celebrity face, yet the message is surprisingly cliché and forgettable.

Waking up to Millennial Audience

With Bhumi Pednekar, we see the brand starting to talk about its nature-infused credentials. Trust in WOW, trust in nature. Here, we see the subtle evolution of the brand language and tonality towards a firmer message of natural goodness.

Only in recent years, we see the brand waking up to its millennial audience which has catapulted the brand to a business of 340 Cr in 2020 and setting it a target of 800 Cr in 2021 with new messages of sustainability.

Now, while the communication with Bhumi does not talk about nature or sustainability the choice of the ambassador reflects this realization. A PR release in 2020 talks about the fact that Bhumi is a perfect choice as she is a persistent advocate for climate change. The PR release talks about the fact that consumers are demanding ‘Clean & Green’ beauty and WOW! is making it accessible to all.

As we enter 2021, the founders are increasingly becoming vocal about how environmental friendliness is at the core of their business values.

Some of the initiatives the founders have embraced in recent times are:

Curating their packages with 30% post-consumer recycled packaging.
Moving towards 100% PCR packaging made from ocean waste for reduced carbon footprint.
Also, extending their range of refill packs which are already available in Face washes to other products.
During Covid, the brand also started manufacturing hand washes and sanitizers, as a part of its CSR activity. They distributed over 15 lakh sanitizers and hand washes in hospitals, police stations, NGOs, municipalities etc.
In recent times, one initiative that WOW! promoted was #TrashYourSpam to fight digital pollution which encouraged millennials to empty their spam folders to fight climate change on the premise that every message in your spam folder contributes to 0.3 grams of Carbon dioxide per message.

While the brand is currently taking baby steps towards sustainability, yet it’s interesting to view their evolving strategy.

Brand building lessons for new age entrepreneurs

There are several lessons that new age entrepreneurs can learn from these two brands who found an un-serviced niche in Indian market and then used purpose-led brand building to drive a disruptive scale up of their business.

Indian millennial audience is rich, vibrant and rapidly seeking out premium, healthy new age offerings that would have been considered fit only for the western market.
The pandemic has made D2C mainstream and if you have an idea that offers great value, you will find consumers all across the population strata well beyond just the Tier 1 & 2 cities.
It’s critical to identify your brand core and build your portfolio around it. There are more than one way to catch the fancy of your consumers, be it the emotional ‘MadeSafe’ route that Mamaearth took or the more functional Nature and Science route of WOW!
As one starts finding traction, it is useful to garner a deep understanding of your consumers, be it through social listening, customer reviews or just spending time with them to understand their passion point. That’s often where the passion points of sustainability and purpose emerge.
As you arrive at the emotional core of the brand that you are building, finding the right brand partners, be it influencers or celebrities can yield a mega scale up of awareness and hence business.
Finally, there is no replacement for a well-researched and winning product. The entire temple of your brand starts with a strong need and a fulfilling product. Everything else helps your scale-up the same.

The post Relevance Of Sustainability And Purpose In Helping Build Brand Value For New Age Entrepreneurs appeared first on Dutch Uncles.

How WOW Skin Science created the ‘WOW’ factor in its brand?

Khushi Singh — Tue, 06 Jul 2021 12:35:05 +0000

Fortune is in the failure. When WOW Skin Science hit an estimated valuation of $3.7 Billion, the world changed for these friends-turned-co-founders – Aravind Sokke, Ashwin Sokke, Karan Chowdhary and Manish Chowdhary, who rose from the ashes in 2016 with their venture’s inception.

“Success is not final, failure is not fatal; it is the courage to continue that counts” – Winston Churchill

This famous saying fits aptly on the quartet, which took their second plunge into entrepreneurship with Bengaluru-based personal care brand WOW (Wealth of Wellness) Skin Science. The success of this start-up is even more inspiring since it grew out of the failure of the founder’s first venture in retail business in 2012. Finding motivation after a start-up’s failure is a challenge, which the co-founders managed to overcome.

Their offline retail business in laptops and electronics went for a toss after the emergence of deep discounts by e-commerce portals. With a swollen loss pool of over $1 million, the founders finally decided to shut down the business for good, collecting nothing but a few lessons. One of the most important one being – pivoting at the right time.

Bringing WOW to Life

Aiming to turn their misfortune into gains, the founders began with a plan to start a niche in a new segment. During that time, there were barely any affordable organic personal care brands for the general public. It was an open market with not many competitors providing economical products.

After putting a final stamp on ‘Beauty and Wellness’ as their area of focus, the four friends pooled in their combined savings to start Fit & Glow, the mother brand, in 2016.

Banking on their past lessons, the founders kept their focus intact on product quality and travelled around the globe to meet up with scientists and skincare experts to bring out a mix between traditional therapeutic formulations and scientific developments.

They wanted to perfect the product before bringing it out in the market and strengthen their product’s USP. After intensive research and experimentation, WOW, a Direct-to-Consumer brand, was launched.

WOW was started as an exclusive online brand with its own website besides marking its presence on digital shopping platforms.

Cashing on the ‘Vegan, Ayurvedic and Natural’ Wave

New-age consumers are constantly looking for newer formulations and healthy variants. There has been an increasing consciousness about using sustainable, nature-based products and WOW tapped on that opportunity.

Modern-day consumers are more aware and conscious about the products they associate themselves with in terms of their origin and socially attached stance. Hence, the WOW brand focused on creating a line that only relies on natural bio-active ingredients, free from any artificial additives.

At the time WOW was launched, there was little to no business footprint that delivered such products. The wave of curating nature-based products came a few years later with start-up brands like NatHabit and MamaEarth cashing in on the same while the already existing ones like Biotique and Lotus expanded their offerings under natural products. Besides, older brands like Khadi went aggressive on their digital presence and marketing.

Interestingly, this ‘all-natural, sustainable’ tag is not only used by beauty and skincare start-up brands, but also by international ones. The global natural skincare products market, valued at $10.84 Billion in 2019, is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 5% from 2020 to 2027, as per a report by Grand View Research. With the space getting crowded with both new-age and established brands, the differentiating factor will remain on how businesses sell the ‘natural’ narrative besides the quality. The exclusivity factor in terms of ingredients will also matter.

Speaking about WOW products, the term ‘nature-powered formulations’ is used by the brand, which puts them neither in the traditional Ayurvedic category nor in the modern scientific formulas based ventures. It’s a blend of both, which brings in the exclusivity factor.

The company paid attention to the look and feel of the brand to keep the aesthetics right. Selling a product is like storytelling. You need to convey the message better to make that sale.

WOW has kept its products very sober yet innovative. Special attention has been paid to retain the texture and feel of natural ingredients to boost the overall user experience.

With an understanding of woke consumerism and correct implementation of these inputs, WOW has established itself as the go-to brand for the modern-urban conscious consumers looking for a holistic solution to their beauty and wellness needs.

The look and feel are unorthodox unlike most of the other naturally infused brands such as Dabur or Emami, giving WOW the edge. This is the main USP of the brand and its biggest selling point. The company also introduced add-ons like attached brushes and applicators, which set the products apart and led to at least first-time conversions out of sheer curiosity.

WOW’s success as a brand can also be credited to the e-commerce revolution. They entered the D2C space at the most opportune time and availed themselves of the success of e-commerce in India right when it started. Without the launchpad that the internet is, it would have taken 15 years for a brand like it to create the same impact among consumers using the traditional offline format.

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The company paid attention to the look and feel of the brand to keep the aesthetics right.

Affordability is the Key!

The brand’s success is majorly credited to its affordability, which skyrocketed the sales. A majority of WOW products are priced under Rs 500, bringing in the urban middle class under its target audience net. This is coupled with online shopping discounts.

Take, for instance, the WOW Apple Cider Vinegar shampoo, which was sold at Rs 299 as compared to other products in the same category costing about Rs 1400. This has amassed a huge user base for a single product and spurted sales. Later on, the prices were strategically increased to Rs 399. Apple Cider Vinegar shampoo’s success inspired the creation of an entire product line with the same formulation including face cream, face wash, hair mask, snack and tonics. To date, it is the most sold product from WOW on Amazon, both in India and the US.

Competitive pricing is one of the biggest reasons WOW has been able to seep into the market besides product exclusivity and quality. The key to their success is often credited to millennials and generation-z looking for a change outside the big skincare brand names and increased access to naturally-made products.

Towards Global Domination

There is a great market for natural Indian products globally and WOW wanted to cash in on the same. It wouldn’t be completely wrong to say that the tags of Yoga, Ayurveda, all-natural, vegan, cruelty-free, etc. sell faster today than it did a few years back.

The company started in the global market under Amazon Global Selling in 2016. Although the brand was relatively new in the US, it enjoyed a good acceptance in the foreign market. This can be understood with the recent increase in consciousness around consuming organic and plant-based products as a lifestyle choice.

In order to strengthen its base, WOW launched an entire line of personal and healthcare products after acquiring the rights for ‘Justice League’ by Warner Bros Media in 2020. This licensing deal helped the brand to add a sensational value to their product ranges as it opened up an entirely new segment of target audiences, especially kids.

Another important thing to mention here is that WOW kept a finger on the pulse of what different regions expect. For instance, the ACV Shampoo & Conditioner launched in the US market was kept the same in terms of formula and bottle size as in India. However, while the quality was appreciated, the quantity was not. The size was simply not large enough for the State’s market. Thus the 500ml bottle was born for the company’s American customers.

The brand has registered an 18x growth rate in the last four years in this particular segment. In India, the business has grown over 170% per cent in the last year, while in the US the growth percentage is 370%. These figures are remarkable considering the value conscious markets.

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Competitive pricing is one of the biggest reasons WOW has been able to seep into the market besides product exclusivity and quality.

Marketing 101

Since its inception, the company kept a sharp focus on long-term marketing and brand-building initiatives. The idea was to target potential customers through social media and digital marketing and the start-up took an aggressive route for the same.

The narrative decided for the brand is natural, scientific and environment conscious. Although affordable, the overall look and feel are kept very minimal yet luxurious.

Video advertisements were majorly used to capture attention. These videos by WOW are educational about their product range and easy to understand, along with being visually pleasing. Once the users interact with these videos or visit the website, the re-marketing concept is used to attract them wherein they are shown WOW products repeatedly whenever possible on multiple platforms. Besides, it also engages in various brand engagement activities like giveaways, which keeps the momentum going.

The result of this extensive digital marketing has been such that Amit Agarwal, Amazon India Head, went on record to designate WOW as one of its most successful brands among all its sellers. Digital demand alone has boosted the sales of WOW products by over $1 Million a month.

Presently the brand has signed two Bollywood actresses — Disha Patani for their haircare range and Bhumi Pednekar for their skincare range — as their brand ambassadors. This is coupled with its social media influencers tie-ups. The company forged an alliance with PVR in Tamil Nadu, the biggest market for the brand, as a part of its PR activation campaign. This was done with hoardings across Mumbai, New Delhi, Punjab, Chennai, Surat, Goa and parts of Karnataka.

The brand’s communication is focused on the generic issues faced by the consumers, like hair fall, among others. According to Madhur Acharya, WOW’s head of marketing, the brand will do more of ‘Out of home advertising’ (OOH) and print media, along with aggressively advertising on digital. They also plan to do some offline activations with start-ups like Ola and Uber, along with focusing on advertising in offline spaces, like airports, public transports, etc. It is yet to explore television.

For WOW, product quality supremacy is essential. For any company, advertisements could attract potential customers but the re-sale or its retention depends on the effectiveness of their products. This is one of the reasons WOW kept a strong focus on the quality.
Presently the brand has over 200 product variants with formulations, created specifically for niche consumer groups.

Going Offline and Official!

The brand is laying focus on off-line presence moving forward. The founders believe that in order to become a truly established brand, it is mandatory to have a strong offline presence as well.

Data collected through artificial intelligence from online sales is expected to help in replicating the same growth offline. The company has already started selling their personal care products at over 5000 pharmacies and stores.

The ultimate goal is to set up dedicated official stores across the country. The company remained self-funded till 2021. Recently, ChrysCapital invested $50 Million in the company for a minority stake. The anticipated strategy is to help WOW grow multi-folds by further deepening online penetration, pan-India offline expansion and coming up with new brands in relative categories.

The beauty and wellness segment is expanding and the competition is intensifying. The Ayurvedic-Scientific market is relatively new and hence open for all. Mamaearth, which started out at the same time as WOW in 2015, is the biggest competitor. With similar product range, pricing and business model, the two brands are constantly curating better products and looking for an edge to pin down each other. Other new competitors are MCaffeine, Amway and Body and Bath.

WOW has been able to maintain an upper hand through its well-established reputation and niche product range so far. It is twice the size of any of their competitors owing to their vast product range. Both in terms of quantity and price point, WOW is surely ruling the roost.

With revenue of Rs 350 crore in FY20, it is one of the most successful D2C brands in India with ample lessons for entrepreneurs to learn – right from the perfect implementation of digital marketing strategies to intensive market research, to creating an unbeatable product range and impeccable consumer services.

The do’s and don’ts are here. We hope yours becomes a bigger success story and all of us say – WOW!

The post How WOW Skin Science created the ‘WOW’ factor in its brand? appeared first on Dutch Uncles.