Why Some Fashion Brands are Embracing DIY E-Commerce.
With rising competition to acquire and retain customers online, digitally native start-ups are determining how to strike a balance between developing their own e-commerce features...
With rising competition to acquire and retain customers online, digitally native start-ups are determining how to strike a balance between developing their own e-commerce features in-house and partnering with external software providers.
E-commerce software providers like Shopify have made opening an online store as easy as just a few clicks. But simplicity has its downside.
Platforms like Shopify play a major role in e-commerce today, powering everything from website design to order fulfilment, and likely always will. But some digitally native start-ups that leaned heavily on software providers to jumpstart their businesses are reducing their reliance on these services. Differentiation is the ultimate goal.
The reason driving this still-burgeoning change is simple: With more competition, offering a unique online shopping experience helps to win customer loyalty. That’s easier to accomplish when a company has more control over how parts of its site are built, allowing them to collect their own data and make changes quickly. For DTC brands, the need to make their e-commerce feel more distinct reaches a greater pressure once they have reached a milestone of $100 million in annual sales.
What brands need to do is figure out what features are worth prioritising to build on their own, which are better outsourced, and how their budgets can accommodate each.
Taking Control:
When brands reach $100 million in sales, the uptick in order volumes and customers’ expectation for a personalised experience force them to outgrow Shopify’s standard user interface tools, such as those that power the main shopping feed or product display pages. The natural progression is to then develop features to manage the increase in activity and stand out from competitors.
A good rule is to develop easier-to-manage tools like order fulfillment in-house and partner with firms that offer software that may be time consuming and expensive to perfect. Luckily, many software providers, including Shopify, allow brands to pick and choose which features they want to use and tailor it to their specific needs.
Building an Ecosystem:
Taking ownership of e-commerce operations can lead to cost savings and increased profits — if a brand is able to build the right team to run things efficiently.
Fashion start-ups creating a tech team for the first time should start by hiring for a specific project since engineers often specialise in certain areas of software development. Ideally that first hire can attract and train talent over time, though tech teams at fashion brands don’t need to be large to be effective.
E-commerce software providers like Shopify have made opening an online store as easy as just a few clicks. But simplicity has its downside.
Platforms like Shopify play a major role in e-commerce today, powering everything from website design to order fulfilment, and likely always will. But some digitally native start-ups that leaned heavily on software providers to jumpstart their businesses are reducing their reliance on these services. Differentiation is the ultimate goal.
The reason driving this still-burgeoning change is simple: With more competition, offering a unique online shopping experience helps to win customer loyalty. That’s easier to accomplish when a company has more control over how parts of its site are built, allowing them to collect their own data and make changes quickly. For DTC brands, the need to make their e-commerce feel more distinct reaches a greater pressure once they have reached a milestone of $100 million in annual sales.
What brands need to do is figure out what features are worth prioritising to build on their own, which are better outsourced, and how their budgets can accommodate each.
Taking Control:
When brands reach $100 million in sales, the uptick in order volumes and customers’ expectation for a personalised experience force them to outgrow Shopify’s standard user interface tools, such as those that power the main shopping feed or product display pages. The natural progression is to then develop features to manage the increase in activity and stand out from competitors.
A good rule is to develop easier-to-manage tools like order fulfillment in-house and partner with firms that offer software that may be time consuming and expensive to perfect. Luckily, many software providers, including Shopify, allow brands to pick and choose which features they want to use and tailor it to their specific needs.
Building an Ecosystem:
Taking ownership of e-commerce operations can lead to cost savings and increased profits — if a brand is able to build the right team to run things efficiently.
Fashion start-ups creating a tech team for the first time should start by hiring for a specific project since engineers often specialise in certain areas of software development. Ideally that first hire can attract and train talent over time, though tech teams at fashion brands don’t need to be large to be effective.