How D2C brands can leverage GlowRoad’s platform to accelerate growth

The pandemic, along with rising internet and mobile penetration, encouraged businesses to devise alternative ways to quickly reach the end customer, and the omnichannel route did the magic. The new star in India’s retail boom — direct-to-consumer (D2C) brands — have been forced to rethink how they build, market and sell products, without relying on middlemen or third-party suppliers.

Now brands, from not just Tier I cities but also Tier II and beyond jumped on the online bandwagon to sell their products online.

That being said, most of the fashion products sold in Tier II and Tier III are unbranded or unstructured. In small towns like Coorg, Surat, Coimbatore, Tirupur and the likes, there are several homepreneurs and small business owners, or ‘Bharat ke D2Cs’, as GlowRoad calls them, which are popular in their locality. If they start performing well, they start selling in nearby states/cities and eventually start selling PAN India. But there's no platform to easily list their products and grow their business, except for B2C e-commerce platforms which is a time-taking process.

This has led to the rise of social commerce, which helps brands to create curated and personalised products and allows targeted selling via customised feeds on various social platforms.

Connect beyond your locality

Social commerce is quickly becoming a launchpad for D2C brands which were mostly only selling in Tier I cities, to expand to Tier II and beyond. In a typical scenario, brands have to deal with manufacturers, distributors and retailers and pay commission, for the product to finally reach end customers. With social commerce, brands can do away with this hierarchy.

"Social commerce has had a great reach in deeper Bharat due to the increased number of smartphone users who have the Internet at their fingertips. People in these cities have started discovering new ways to connect and do business using apps like Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram," says Shekhar Sahu, Co-founder, GlowRoad.

Reselling emerged as the primary way of doing commerce on these apps, which is not only helping lesser-known brands make their product known to customers but also helping established brands enter rural India.

But social commerce poses challenges for established brands, which have strict selling prices and guidelines. As a result, they are reluctant to provide products to resellers at a lower cost. The end-customer base in Tier II cities and beyond are comfortable transacting with products that are Rs 600 and below.

If the brands have to succeed in social selling and capture millions of social commerce buyers, they will have to make their product pricing attractive and provide this flexibility so that resellers can add their 15-20 percent markup and enable the sale.

How GlowRoad paves the way for expansion

Unlike e-commerce, you can go online and showcase your products to thousands of global users on social commerce platforms from Day 1. D2Cs can grow multi-fold when they partner with a social commerce leader such as GlowRoad. Here, the products are listed easily and resellers act as your spokesperson and share your products with customers.

The platform takes care of shipping and allows resellers to even share videos of the products to upload to their shop. These resellers also host live-commerce sessions on social media platforms to spread the word about brands and widen their customer base by sharing their online shop links.

GlowRoad's focus on automation is a key reason for the company's rapid growth post the pandemic. There is no added commission as resellers can create their own shops online for free and add products with a preferred profit margin. Customers can browse products with just a link and track shipment, without much assistance.

Today, social commerce has enabled 100 million+ customers for D2C brands in Tier II and beyond. Many leading brands have listed their products on GlowRoad and are growing their business in Bharat using the platform’s deep reach in Tier II and beyond.

"It's important for D2C brands to leverage this whole ecosystem of social commerce to penetrate deeper into markets much faster, compared to what they could do organically. Any brand that misses this wave will fall behind in the larger scheme of things," says Kunal Sinha, Co-founder, GlowRoad.

.