Meeting Graze.com to find out why data is DTC oxygen
For my very first interview for the DTC book, I was invited to sit down with Anthony Fletcher at Graze.com’s HQ in their leafy riverside offices in Richmond-upon-Thames.
Graze is exactly the sort of businesses I wanted to include in the book. They are interesting, successful, intellegent, and have been doing their thing for a comparatively long time. All this means they are stuffed full of knowledge, lessons and examples about what it takes to be a success at DTC.
Sitting with Anthony was a bit terrifying partly as it was my first experience of interviewing someone, for the book, but mainly because Anthony positively radiates expertise and is so full of ideas, energy and insights he reminds me of how little I know in comparison.
Thankfully, Anthony could not have been more friendly and willing to talk about himself, Graze and some of the successes and challenges the business has had along the way.
We covered lots of ground as he took me through the humble beginnings of Graze, and how, to quote Anthony, starting with a business model that was described as ‘bonkers’ and company that was viewed as a ‘basket case’ they managed to build one of the most successful DTC organisations in the world.
The topics we chatted about included Performance Marketing, DTC businesses vs traditional B2B retail brands, continuous iterations on the product, the importance of using data throughout the business, what good customer service looks like, smart logistics and the future of DTC.
The conversation generated enough fantastic insight, to easily take up three of four chapters of the book. Condensing it down is going to be a no picnic.
For all their geekiness and tech-savvy, it was nice to hear from Anthony that he considers the most important thing about his business is not the technology but it’s their products and brand. It was a good reminder that you must first come up with something worth selling, only then you can go about using tech to build a customer base using a direct to consumer model. As Anthony said, “If you don’t have a good brand and product, no amount of technology is going to help you succeed”.
Graze is a fantastic example of a company which developed a strong brand and product and then used technology and novel ways of working to find customers and then used the data from those customers to help them make their products, brand and offer even better.
It was this virtuous circle which helped Graze grow from its “basket case” origins to being one of the best known brands around which ultimately lead them to be snapped up by Unilever at the start of the year.
Let me know what you would like to learn from Graze, and I will try and include it in the book.
Mike with Anthony. Hanging out, outside Graze HQ