If you like reading up on success stories with shopping brands online, then you just might enjoy what I have to say in this post.
When it comes to delving further into my education with eCommerce marketing, sales & branding, I love to study successful brands. Brands that have a track record of being in the game for years and have a vision & mission that go WAY beyond the goal of making money.
One of the brands I came across some years back (And was actually an affiliate marketer for this company) is Jane.com. A marketplace for women’s fashion. Think boutique style that focuses on women’s fashion trends, home decor, kids clothing etc.
Now this brand has been around since 2011 and some of you reading this may have come across it before. When I last read about Jane.com, it was generating $100,000,000 plus in annual revenue.
Impressive numbers no doubt!
But here is what I found most interesting…
The entire company & business is based on a common sales tactic we hear about in sales.
That concept my friends… is Scarcity!
Well scarcity with a little urgency for good measure. Techniques that have been used in sales for time! What I find fascinating is how Mike McEwan (Founder of Jane), managed to use this one strategy and turn it into a $100,000,000 a year company.
So how did they achieve a result like this?
Let me summarize it for you. But before I do, I’m delivering this story because of how inspiring it is and how this whole business concept was manifested from tough times, just like we are all facing in the world right now. (Covid19)
With adversity can present opportunity and you need to have this mindset as an entrepreneur.
How It All Began
So first off…
Mike, a web developer was let go by the company he worked for. He partnered with a buddy to start a business doing web development contract work. Mike always wanted to build his own platform and saw an opportunity to fill a gap in the marketplace they serve today.
It took 2 weeks to create a minimum viable product. From branding, to front and backend development creation, shopping cart & product.
Once they completed that… they ran their first week of shopping deals.
Jane.com is essentially a daily deal boutique marketplace. A limited quantity product will appear on their site at a significant discount and will only be available for a short period of time. This causes a sense of scarcity and urgency. Within days the product will sell out.
So there is motivation for its visitors to view what is published on their site on a daily basis.
Here’s the cool thing I found interesting.
Most of their products ARE NOT household brand names.
They are from less well known boutique brands. These products hold great value, they just don’t come from the familiar brands we see on a regular basis. This is part of their unique value proposition. Offering unique stylish affordable clothing, jewelry, home decor etc.
The prices are low, but only for a specific amount of time.
Because of this scarcity & urgency element that Jane.com incorporates along with using boutique brands, products published at a discount would sell anywhere from 100 – 5k units during the sales promotion.
With a couple of thousand boutique brands on the platform, you can see how these revenue numbers on Jane.com manifest.
All because of a sales principle we’ve heard of before.
SCARCITY!
In the beginning, Jane only published one product a day as that was the only supplier they had to work with. But over time and as momentum built, more products were added to their deal promotions.
Starting off with Jewelry items and then moving into clothing, home decor etc. Clothing was the category that really accelerated the brand’s growth.
Here’s what else is pretty awesome with Jane.com’s success story…
Their growth was VERY organic in the beginning!
They teamed up with blogs (influencer’s operating within their target market), used their own organic social media etc to drive traffic to their store. This was all executed within the brand’s first 18 months of existence. This was at a time when organic reach would actually deliver significant results for your posts (They were the good old days). Most of it is “Pay to play” now.
So what are some lessons you can take away from this?
I’ll mention a few –
- Jane.com built a lot of relationships with suppliers of boutique brands to get them onboard for their marketplace.
- They also built a lot of relationships with bloggers & influencer’s to initially get the word out about the platform and their value proposition.
- They spent next to nothing in terms of marketing in the first 18 months. Just a ton of hustle and relationship building!
- They incorporated a lot of remarketing to build their brand. Things like email and social marketing.
As a software platform entrepreneur myself, what I admire a lot about this success story was that they didn’t take on ANY outside funding in order to grow the business. They bootstrapped this entire venture by themselves and put a lot of sweat equity into delivering Jane.coms success.
Now they have a larger team in place to take care of different departments within the organization. From paid acquisition, to customer retention, social media community management and application download.
So there you have it ladies and gents!
$100,000,000 annually… all in part due to a well executed scarcity strategy.
It would be silly of me to suggest that this is the only factor that contributed to the growth of Jane.com. They would have implemented systems within the business in order for this amazing growth to happen. Building a great team and reinvesting their income to pursue more efficient growth would have played a huge part to their success story.
But in essence… Scarcity and the urgency factor of taking action on lucrative deals before they are sold out is the appeal and driving force behind the growth of this digital shopping brand.
