This article is spurred from a larger in-person interview with Liz Eichholz, Creative Director and Co-founder of Weezie Towels.

Do you have a solid launch strategy for your retail / e-commerce brand?

Photo courtesy of Weezie Towels — *Photo courtesy of* *Weezie Towels*

7 Keys to Successfully Launching a Retail Brand

Two years ago, bride-to-be Liz Eichholz was simply trying to register for luxury bath towels. What she found instead was a seemingly saturated market that didn’t offer what she wanted at all. Enter Weezie Towels, a luxury monogrammed bath towel and robe company with a mission to make you love your towels.

We sat with Liz on behalf of Weezie to chat their painstakingly-planned launch, their steps to success, and how any business with the right plan can launch with piece of mind.

Key #1: Research & Development

Spend the proper amount of time researching the current landscape, any trend projections you can tap into, and how you plan to actually operate as a business.

Liz: We worked on the company for a year and a half before our launch and we were just focused on quality. We knew the problem we were really trying to solve was one towel that was the best quality on the market that we could really stand behind in terms of quality, and having these fun design elements was just the icing on top. We knew if we couldn’t stand behind the quality and produce the towel that we had in our minds then the company wasn’t going to come into fruition.

Research & Development Checklist
1. Market Analysis (Competitive Landscape)
2. Business Legalities & Compliances (Federal Documents, Insurance)
3. Business Operations
4. Product Development & Production
5. P&L Projections
6. Business Plan
7. Partnership Agreement
8. Marketing Plan
9. Brand Management (Trademarks, etc.)
10. Launch Strategy

Key #2: A Strong Partnership or Mentorship

Bringing on a partner can be vital to a successful business. You want to look for someone with very distinct skills that fill in your own weaknesses. If a partner isn’t feasible, find a business mentor with experience in your exact market or industry.

Liz: Lindsay (my business partner) and I have very different backgrounds. Her background is in finance and venture capital and mine is in creative, which was really nice because we really could divide and conquer in very different areas of the business. Once we stumbled through the manufacturing portion - which both of us didn’t know a lot about - it was a lot of learning there. Then she really went on to focus on budgets and financing - “the spreadsheet stuff” - and I went on to really focus on the brand. I miss those early days because it’s so much about strategy and what you want the brand to be and now it’s more about checking things off on my to-do list (posting to Instagram, answering email, etc.)

Key #3: Clearly Solve a Problem & Know Your Target

The key to any successful product or service is to clearly solve a problem. Recognize who it is that has that problem, what their biggest pain points are, and then craft a product or service that provides the solution.

Liz: We’re unique in the sense that our company was inspired by a personal problem. My experience of buying towels off my wedding registry and not finding an option for:

- a brand I was excited about.
- an easy, seamless order process.
- high quality towels that felt like a good way to spend my money.

So I was looking for a company like Weezie and not finding one. I was the customer. That’s helped us; a lot of it has been gut development.

In the beginning, we thought we were targeting women our age but we now have a vast range of age groups within our customer base. But what they all have in common is someone looking for luxury.

If we had to divide our target into three demographic buckets:

- A customer who’s buying for themselves, ready to fill their home with luxury items.
- A customer who’s gifting our product (they love it for themselves and are now sharing with friends and family).
- Brides and wedding registries.
- Interior designers in need of luxury accessories to match their luxury bath design.

There’s the person that discovers Weezie, falls in love, and is filling multiple bathrooms in multiple houses and it’s their brand.

Then, there’s the person who has seen the brand, engaged with it, is convinced on the quality because of reviews, and they’re saving up to be ready to invest in towels.

Key #4: Keep Your Offerings Focused

When developing product, it’s easy to quickly expand into other categories in hopes of driving more sales. But, Liz advises that the exact opposite can happen when you expand too quickly or in the wrong direction.

“Every time you launch a new category you’re cannibalizing the original category.”

— Liz Eichholz, Creative Director and Co-founder of Weezie Towels

Liz: When we launched we were trying to do too much. We always had a new product launch, whether it be piping color or an entire new category every month and that was a big learning process for us because every time you launch a new category you’re cannibalizing the original category.

For example, someone might have been going to order a towel but now they’re going to order a robe. There’s just so many considerations that we didn’t realize needed to be part of the conversation until we were in the thick of it. In the beginning it was, “How much can we do how quickly?” and now we’ve cut our launch list for 2020 in half because we do ourselves and the category a disservice when we don’t give it room to breathe. We had so many ideas and we were so eager to get them out there but we are maturing in our decision making and want to see campaigns through to their full vision; give our customers room to take them in, etc.

Now we spend more time:
- coming up with a more cohesive campaign.
- zooming out and looking at things in a year or two-year standpoint.
- creating a fully planned calendar.

But also, we respond a lot to what our customers are asking for. At the beginning, not only did we have so many ideas but people were making requests. We would quickly pivot our product launches to accommodate. Now, we’re taking a breath - still responding to what customers want - but with a more strategic plan in place.

A lot of direct-to-consumer companies launched as sheet companies and offered towels as a second thought. We’re staying super focused on the towel and the bathroom. We’ll never do sheets or pajamas. Our hero item will always be towels.

Key #5: Know When to Invest and When to Get Scrappy

A lot goes into the launch and proper promotion of a product: photo shoots, email campaigns, social media ads, and more. Liz shares when she chooses to invest and when she finds ways to leverage relationships to save money on product launches.

Liz: Every time we have a big campaign, we’ll do a big shoot. I’ll have both a studio shoot and a lifestyle shoot. Then, we’ll try to not only send things to influencers whose imagery we love, but also interior designers. Interior designers are huge for us. We send them things a month before the launch to solicit more images. It’s been really fun to see our audience engage with that sort of content especially because when budgets are tight, that is a good way to get content in exchange for product.

Our campaign shoots are costly. It’s fun to do a mix. For our robe’s launch, one was a professionally shot video and the other one was on the opposite end of the spectrum: I sent robes to five favorite influencers and asked them to take silly videos and we got a video editor to edit them together with the same copy. Both have done really well, but it was a good lesson for us: when budgets are tight, it doesn’t always have to be an all-or-nothing thing. There’s quick scrappy ways to do things, too.

Things You Should Invest In
- Product photos.
- Lifestyle photo shoots.
- Website design and development.
- Brand strategy and identity design.
- Your product! (This includes packaging).

Things You Can Get Scrappy With
- UGC (User Generated Content).
- Trading Product for Reviews or Content.

Key #6: Hire Smart

When the time comes to expand your team, be in touch with the things you dislike doing the most; or the things you have the least experience in.

Liz: Two of our first hires were Product Development and Customer Service. At the beginning it was just me and Lindsay, and we’ve since hired someone to help manage influencers, collaborations, and press. We now have our Chief of Staff in house, which is just a fancy title for “Wonder Woman who does a little bit of everything” and she now handles the brand marketing side of things - manages our influencer campaigns, our press campaigns, and our interior design program.

It can be so scary to hire people - it’s costly. But it really has given us so much leverage to be able to zoom out and look at bigger campaigns (keeping an eagle eye on the brand and “what’s next”, working a year or two years in advance). For Lindsay, she has a whole other world with ordering and demand planning and finance.

If you’re not able to zoom out on your own business, that’s where a consulting agency has to come in because you need someone on the outside who’s going to have that kind of perspective.

Even if you’re just able to work with someone for a little while to get your head above water - like Flourish did for us with our drip email campaigns - it truly is so helpful.

Key #7: Engage with Your Audience

Take advantage of being a direct-to-consumer company and directly engage with your consumers!

Liz: Really engage with your audience and understand if something goes wrong or they’re disappointed in the product. Always ask yourself:

What true practices can be put into place to make changes?
What would make them buy again?
What would make them tell a friend about it?

We take all of that information and run with it and it becomes action items. Customer service is huge for us. A lot of the time, a disappointment turns into a sale because of how serious we take it. It’s just really digging into your existing customer and getting as much out of them as you can.

That’s the beauty of direct-to-consumer; we get to engage directly with our customer. We’re not wholesaling to a department store who then gets to engage with our customer. So we take full advantage of having that direct line of communication.

The feedback we receive every day shapes what we’re doing.

Ways to Engage with Your Online Audience
- Instagram comments and stories.
- Direct email marketing.
- Customer service tickets.
- Focused customer surveys (via Google Forms or TypeForm)

You can check out Weezie Towels on their Instagram or website. Or, check out their blog, The Soapbox.

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7 Keys to a Successful Retail Company Launch with Liz Eichholz of Weezie Towels