• What ‘omnichannel’ means at Olipop and why it’s a core tenet of their strategy as a business

• The benefits of committing to an omnichannel distribution approach

• Why retail data is a bit of a “mastered science” and what types of data absolutely aren’t mastered just yet

• What Ed and his team has discovered about how retail sales impact DTC sales, and vice versa?

• How Olipop structures their business insights function to drive alignment and lots of learning

• The new flavor Olipop is about to launch 🙂

Meagan: What is so unique about your brand’s distribution strategy?

Ed: I think it’s a couple of things. You know, first off, I think a lot of brands either start in retail and then try to build out their DTC platform or vice versa. You see a lot of brands to start in DTC just because it’s such a low barrier to entry. You know, if you think about it, Allbirds, Casper Mattress, Warby Parker glasses and sunglasses, they were all DTC who have now started to build out retail stores, at least across the United States.

So they kind of went full steam ahead and one strategy and then were like, “Hey, you know what? Let’s actually try to pivot and also build out retail. Or some brands who were just so heavily in retail, and then in the past couple of years have seen the large growth in the dot com and we’re like, “Hey, you know, we’re going to throw resources and just try to grow some of this as well.”

I think what’s unique about um, about Olipop was that our early growth stage was really happening at the beginning of 2020. You know, we weren’t in a ton of retail, we were still trying to identify ourself. We had a dot com business, but it was doing very minimal dollars. And kudos to Steven on our team. Basically, at the beginning of the pandemic, he saw, you know, “Hey, we got to shift some things around”, and saw the opportunity very early on and basically helped create our dot com business out of nothing.

And so I think that’s why it’s different for all hip hop, because really since our early stages, it’s been a huge priority for both DTC and retail. And so we’ve kind of seen both of those channels grow pretty significantly over time. And so, they’re both major priorities and have been since the beginning.

Find the rest of the episode here.

If you want to connect with Ed, feel free to reach out to him on LinkedIn.

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