Brightpearl’s Lightning 50 E-Commerce Growth Hacking podcast, hosted by Caroline Baldwin, gets under the hood of highly successful e-commerce brands to discover the key technologies they are using to power growth.
We spoke to Naturecan, an e-commerce retailer of CBD wellness products based in the North West of the UK. The direct-to-consumer brand is popular on a global scale, with its safe, effective and premium hemp-derived CBD products as well as supplements, vitamins and minerals.
We spoke to Andy Duckworth, CEO and Founder at Naturecan, to discuss how the brand achieved an impressive 220% growth rate, landing them 6th in the Lightning 50 list of fastest-growing UK companies and coming top in the Health & Beauty category. In the wake of such a tough few years for retail, he also shared his top tips for maintaining success in the face of so many challenges.
Here are some of the highlights from the transcript…
- “The globalised product is our goal – to branch into USA, Asia and Western Europe – that’s our ‘secret’, as it were. Hitting global markets gives you more opportunities for success. Different markets grow at different rates but putting it altogether really boosts revenue.”
- “My other tip is to harness your supply chain – getting your products to the customer quickly, and understanding the quality of your product in-depth, in regards to what is going into it at every stage of the production process.”
- “We prepare well in advance for Black Friday, Cyber Monday so that going into the golden quarter we’re well positioned to see growth. We plan for it literally all year round; when it’s over, we start planning for next year’s the following day. You’re missing a trick if you don’t prepare fully for this period.”
- ”CBD is a strange subset of wellness because Facebook and Google are only just getting used to letting you market it, so we have to improvise. Word of mouth is important, so I’d consider our customers to be the best form of marketing. Once you’ve attracted customers it’s then vital to continue talking to them via email, informing and educating them about products coming up, etc. to encourage repeat custom.”
- “We’re using a mix of strong WMS and 3PL software, and excellent integrations to pull stock in. That’s where Brightpearl comes in, as we know exactly where we’re at with stock. Working capital helps a lot as moving stock costs a lot more these days – so having capital helps mitigate that.”
Want to hear more of what Andy had to say? Catch up with the full episode, and subscribe to upcoming ones, here.