We live in a world where branding is imprinted into our psyche at every possible opportunity. From McDonald’s “I’m lovin’ it”, to Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again”, branding has always been a key element to marketing success.
But recently, serial entrepreneurs, Tina Sharkey and Ido Leffler, are looking to challenge this tradition.
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- Tina Sharkey
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- Ido Leffler
Brandless is a San Francisco-based startup which aims to provide all your daily products for $3, and as the name suggests, with no brand association. The unique startup wants to eradicate your standard trip to the shops and replace it with a simple ecommerce site that offers all your usual grocery store products at the set price of $3.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hu71-HS-F8
The company’s founders have spent the last three years working to build a collection of products covering multiple categories such as health and beauty, cleaning and office supplies, and personal care items, and making them available for online purchase and quick delivery.
Brandless certainly has some tough competition from the large players that already exist in the industry of delivery household items. Nevertheless, the company’s efficient methods and brandless angle are making it a worthy adversary.
The company has been able to offer products at dramatically reduced costs by carefully selecting the number of products it offers. Their Minneapolis based product team focuses on narrowing their line down to a couple of hundred essential items. The team’s leader, Rachael Vegas, previously worked at Target for 15 years, where she was responsible for the company’s centre-of-store grocery business.
Another strong selling point for the company is their focus on packaging. The significance here being that all of Brandless’ products highlight the important details of each products. Therefore, details such as whether a product is organic, fair trade, non- GMO or kosher are clearly displayed on each item. Including other qualities such as whether a product is gluten- free or contains no added sugar.
An additional offering from the young startup is its willingness to to deal with the consumer directly. Many Consumer packaged goods (CPG) brands rarely have a direct relationship with their customers due to the traditional supply chain process. “Most CPG companies don’t have any relationship with consumers,” Sharkey explained to Techcrunch. “If you think about how products are distributed today, their customers are the stores, not the end consumer.” Because of Brandless’ decision to sell goods online, it cuts out the conventional method of selling through retailers and instead deals directly with the customer, so their products reflect what the customers want, not the desires of store middlemen.
Recently we have seen many new and revolutionary companies like Dollar Shave Club challenging traditional methods used by retail giants. In light of this, Brandless might stand a chance of making a big impact within this industry. Since it was founded last year, Brandless has now raised more than $50 Million over three rounds of funding prior to it’s launch. With a unique offering, strong financial support and two experienced entrepreneurs behind the wheel, Brandless is definitely a startup to keep an eye on.
