“Modern Dropship was able to facilitate the connections between us and our biggest accounts”
Overview
About
Steep & Mellow
Steep and Mellow creates groovy beverages that help promote health, wellness, and environmental responsibility. They are a female-founded, mission driven brand whose vision is to create a more mindful, creative, and sustainable world; one sip at a time. Their purpose is to create opportunities for their community of customers to make small changes towards becoming the brightest versions of themselves all while helping to heal the earth. All of their ingredients are sustainably sourced from around the globe and housed in completely compostable packaging.
The Goal
Connect with the Right Retailers, Fast
Steep and Mellow launched as a direct to consumer (DTC) company in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic.
From the outset, founder Meg Pedersen knew standing out from thousands of other online DTC brands would be difficult. So she built a unique brand rooted in her own values of conscious consumerism and sought to connect with customers who shared these values online. The brand undoubtedly stood out from the crowd, but Meg soon realized she had an awareness problem. Steep and Mellow needed more eyes on its products, and fast.
The Challenge
Breaking Into Retail While the Doors Were Shut
While DTC sales showed promising growth, the credibility to be gained with strong retail partnerships was undeniable.
The only problem? All of the people, including customers and retail merchandising contacts were at home - not in stores.
To overcome these obstacles, Meg did everything from cold outreach over phone and email to hand delivering product samples to merchandisers’ homes. These efforts landed Steep and Mellow’s first retail partnerships, where Meg saw first hand how time consuming working with certain retailers could be. While she was thrilled about the new partnerships, the effort involved with sending product imagery and keeping product catalogs and pricing in sync was overwhelming.
“I only have so many hours in the day to allocate to things like logistics, so to have a system that makes it super quick is awesome.”
The Solution
New Retail Partners and Game Changing Automation
In search of stronger, more scalable retail partnerships, Meg learned about Modern Dropship from a close business advisor. The focus on reducing the effort required to work with new retail partners resonated. “I only have so many hours in the day to allocate to things like logistics,” says Meg. “So to have a system that makes it super quick is awesome.”
Working outside of Modern Dropship, it had taken months to get set up with retailers, going back and forth over phone, fax and email. The team spent inordinate amounts of time ensuring product content, pricing and inventory were always up to date. On top of these commitments, when issues arose with certain orders the process to resolve them was far from automated.
After Modern Dropship's team connected Steep and Mellow with retailers like The Detox Market and Indigo Books, that all changed. “I just love how simple and easy it is to get onboarded, sync product catalogs and pricing. It’s really easy to use,” says Meg.
The Results
Growth in Retail and Direct to Consumer Sales
There are only a few ways for a new brand to quickly establish credibility, and partnering with established retailers is among them. Steep and Mellow quickly realized the benefits of its retail partnerships on Modern Dropship with increased social engagement, an expanding set of newsletter subscribers, and higher conversion rates, all leading to direct and retail sales growth.
Additional opportunities to dropship with new retail partners are in Steep and Mellow’s future, and with Modern Dropship's supplier enablement platform they have no concerns with the additional operational workload as for the most part, it will be automated.
And as customers return to brick and mortar, further opportunities for growth have come up with Steep and Mellow’s new retail partners. After getting set up with Detox Market, they were invited for their first in-store pop up, which drove even more awareness and credibility for their brand. “We were able to do live sampling with our teas which was great as it allowed us to get real time feedback on everything from flavor to the packaging design,” said Meg. Beyond in-store activations, Steep and Mellow is looking forward to joint press releases and other co-marketing opportunities to grow the brand.
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