Starting an e-commerce company requires more than just jumping into business; it requires a combination of innovation, insight and the right opportunity. For Razvan Romanescu, going from studying geophysics to starting his own business was more than just a career shift. Shopify MasterRazvan shares more about his journey and his strategy for launching and growing a new product business in the beauty sector.
Razvan began cultivating a community online using platforms like Twitter and Facebook. After earning enough money selling ads, he dropped out of college to focus on digital marketing. He started experimenting with drop shipping and launched his direct-to-consumer business in 2018. Underline—A holding company launching niche beauty brands based on luxury trends.
Brands established through Underlining include: Tatbrow, Hide the makeupand Nail Boo— fusing the latest beauty styles with DIY tools to allow customers to pamper themselves from the comfort of their own home. Below, Razvan shares the essential steps he takes when setting up a new business.
1. Conduct market research
To launch a business with growth potential, you need to understand your competitors. Razvan recommends searching Google for other brands in your category, seeing what news articles come up, and checking out their social media pages. Read carefully what users are commenting on and how they are reacting to different posts. By understanding the market you’re entering, you’ll be better able to craft a unique marketing strategy that will make you stand out from the competition.
2. Choose a flagship product with content creation capabilities
“We socially engineer a marketing story, pick a core product, and build a brand around it,” Razvan explains. Your product should have multiple content creation options built in. For example, Razvan’s nail company, Nailboo, could demonstrate before-and-after effects of the brand’s dip manicures, as well as different nail designs to try based on the season or trend.
If your product has built-in content creation capabilities, here are some questions to consider: Will it capture people’s attention? Is there an easy way to demonstrate the value of your product with photos and videos? Can you quickly share the before and after effects of your product?
3. Test demand with drop delivery
Dropshipping is a retail method in which a store forwards customer orders to a supplier, who then ships the products directly to the customer. Rathbun used this method to try out different product categories, but moved away from a full dropshipping strategy after concentrating on the beauty category. Being new to the industry, he didn’t want to order the entire inventory, so he took a partial dropshipping approach, calling it “premium dropshipping.” “Because we’re dropshipping our own brand, we found very supportive manufacturers who were willing to produce for us, in terms of scaling up and financing the inventory. We don’t have to pay the full amount up front. It’s like pay-as-you-go, as long as everything is in the same warehouse that they manage,” says Rathbun.
If you can’t find a manufacturer willing to work with you in this way, you could start by using a full dropshipping approach to test different markets and product categories with unbranded products. Once you see the popularity of a particular product or category, you’ll know it’s worth investing in branding and purchasing inventory.
4. Invest in customer support
No matter how great your product is, if you don’t take care of your customers, your business won’t grow. “When I started, I hired a virtual assistant to monitor my direct mail, emails, and help me with chargebacks on PayPal,” Razvan explains. Meeting the needs of your customers should be a top priority no matter the size of your company, because it’s much less costly to keep a repeat customer than it is to acquire a new one.
Hiring as many people as possible to handle customer support increases customer loyalty, word-of-mouth recommendations, and the lifetime value of your business. “We now employ more senior staff, and can effectively manage that team and thoroughly analyze all customer feedback,” says Rathbun.
5. Follow the data
“Pay close attention to customer feedback, customer support reviews, and once you start posting on social media, you need to track the data on your social platforms — look at reach, engagement rates, what the comments are saying,” says Rathbun.
Rathbun emphasizes how important it is to understand the data in case you need to completely pivot away from a particular marketing strategy or product. When it comes to social media content, “you can pretty much only guess at what will and won’t work,” Rathbun says.
Razvan’s success began after he understood the importance of building a strong brand presence, evangelizing the product’s value proposition and engaging in market research.
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