Influencers, camping, and Rosey the Robot
Route
What’s your favorite season? Is it winter? Do you like the snow, cozy blankets, and skiing? Or spring? The vibrant colors, cherry blossoms, and the reprieve from dark winter days? How about summer? Long days, beach vacations, and cold drinks. Ours might be Fall. Not only is it incredibly beautiful (seriously, check out some of the pictures from this fall in Utah), but it’s also the time when life gets going and ecommerce merchants start to think about the holiday season. They want to find the best tools to help acquire new customers, increase conversions, and build customer loyalty. Luckily, Route helps on all three fronts.
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Think back to just 10 years ago. Influencer marketing practically didn’t exist. Only with the rise of social media have we seen ordinary people gain extraordinary reach. Whereas before Instagram the only travel celebrity you might have known was Rick Steves, now there are people whose entire job is to travel and give attention to hotels, restaurants, and vendors. Ecommerce merchants have recognized that harnessing influencers, who oftentimes have a large, highly engaged audience who trust them more than they would trust a company or publication, can bring in huge results. But it’s not as easy as it might seem.
Influencers are not like companies in that they’ll take and promote almost any product. Influencers have their niches and they’re more selective in what companies they want to work with. Getting connected to the right influencers is the first step. ProductWind is a platform that helps connect influencers and brands. They just announced $1.67M in seed funding, too.
Working with influencers isn’t always what it’s cracked up to be. Many ecommerce merchants think it’s a quick way to boost audience count and see plenty of sales. But unless a contract is based on conversions (and many aren’t as brands oftentimes just send influencers free products to promote), it can be a quick way to get rid of some cash or product. There’s about as many cautionary tales as there are success stories.
After all, influencers are people AND companies. They need to cultivate their personal brand, maintain engagement, and do sponsorship deals. Sometimes those three activities don’t exactly line up. For example, Amazon recently settled with a few influencers who teamed up to sell counterfeit luxury products on Amazon by promoting them on TikTok and Instagram. Buyers would purchase a generic item on Amazon and receive a counterfeit luxury one. Because the promotion was done off of Amazon, it was much harder to detect and stop the operation. The influencers have been banned from promoting any products sold on Amazon.
The point is that influencer marketing should be part of your marketing mix, but don’t put all of your eggs into one basket. Direct response, content, and email marketing all definitely still have their place. When you do use influencers, make sure they’re the right ones for you, that you work together on relevant metrics that make sense for both of you, and that you understand who else they’re working with.
🥕 Carrot raises $5.5M to categorize your shopping cart
🥔 Spudsy raises $3.3M to take ugly sweet potatoes and make chips
👻 All Day Kitchens helps existing restaurants expand with ghost kitchens
📷 Google is turning pictures everywhere into shoppable photos
Astro is Amazon’s new home robot and it’s fully powered by Alexa…so we take it back, maybe don’t forget about Alexa. Astro is a small robot that started out as a security device but is essentially a mobile Alexa. It can patrol your house autonomously with a range of sensors to keep it from bumping into things, answer commands, and give reminders. And it will cost $1,500…
To no one’s surprise, Amazon isn’t the only tech company working on household robots. Facebook and Tesla both have similar products (though Tesla’s is much creepier). Household robots used to be confined to episodes of The Jetsons, but we might be much closer than we think to a robotic future. Admittedly, the current iterations are extremely limited—and Tesla founder Elon Musk thinks they should be limited in size and capability so that they can be easily overpowered—but the future moves quickly. Maybe someday we’ll all have our own Rosey the Robot.
With the pandemic placing limits on indoor gatherings last year, people turned to the outdoors to get out and enjoy themselves. There were more than 98M camper households last year, including more than 10M that camped for the first time. Plus, influencers on Instagram pushed an idealized image of camping in big beautiful tents and a full setup for cooking and enjoying the outdoors in designer fashion. Everybody was looking for the perfect Instagram-worthy camping setup and Snow Peak delivered.
Snow Peak started years ago in Japan building lightweight mountaineering and backpacking equipment. When the company came to the US, it operated out of a garage in Oregon. Now, Snow Peak makes camping equipment for every type of camper, from the first-time novice car-camper to the veteran ultra-lightweight backpacker. And if you’re looking for a camping setup that’ll have your followers green with jealousy, look no further.
Some great news for ecommerce IPOs: Warby Parker stock jumps in debut. Shares soared as much as 36% in the first day of trading. The $6B valuation means Warby Parker’s multiple is almost 13x its trailing revenue, which is significantly more than many ecommerce brands that are publicly traded. Analysts said they expect market volatility and a drop in Warby Parker’s price as more investors fairly price the company. Still, for now the warm public reception is good news for other ecommerce brands looking to IPO in the future.
Bed Bath & Beyond stock slides as supply chain issues cause it to slash holiday forecasts. The company reported significant in-store traffic slowdown in August and a 26% drop in revenue year over year. While the company’s online sales continue to grow and remain strong, that’s about the end of the good news for Bed Bath & Beyond. Continued pandemic-related issues will likely keep in-store traffic low and supply chain issues could make consumers getting the products they want harder than ever. The company cut its forecast from $8.4B to $8.1-$8.3B.
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