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Over the past decade, a new breed of “direct-to-consumer” (DTC) startups, including Warby Parker and Casper, helped forge a new business model. But...
- April 2021
- Teaching Note
Thingtesting: Launching a Brand Discovery and Testing Digital Community
By: Ayelet Israeli and Jill Avery
Teaching Note for the "Thingtesting: Launching a Brand Discovery and Testing Digital Community" HBS Case No. 520-086.
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Keywords:
Influencer Marketing;
Influencers;
Influencer;
Monetization;
Monetization Strategy;
Female;
Female Entrepreneur;
Female Protagonist;
Direct-to-consumer;
Marketing;
Brands and Branding;
Marketing Strategy;
Venture Capital;
Entrepreneurship;
Marketing Communications;
Consumer Products Industry;
Financial Services Industry;
Advertising Industry;
London;
United Kingdom;
Europe;
North America
- March 2021 (Revised July 2021)
- Case
Resident
By: Jeffrey F. Rayport and Thomas O. Jones
Launched in 2016, Resident was a leading player in the direct-to-consumer bed-in-a-box mattress market, where it was one of at least 175 venture-backed companies competing in the space. By late 2020, it had realized over $500 million in revenue, profitability in the...
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- January 2021 (Revised March 2021)
- Exercise
E-Commerce Analytics for CPG Firms (A): Estimating Sales
By: Ayelet Israeli and Fedor (Ted) Lisitsyn
The E-Commerce Analytics group at the traditional CPG firm was in charge of compiling various online sales reports, as well as making data-driven recommendations for sales and marketing tactics. In a series of exercises, students address different data challenges for...
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Keywords:
Data Analysis;
Data Analytics;
CPG;
Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG);
Estimation;
Online Channel;
Retail Analytics;
Retail;
Retailing Industry;
Data;
Data Sharing;
Bricks And Mortar;
Ecommerce;
Direct-to-consumer;
DTC;
Data and Data Sets;
Sales;
Marketing;
Retail Industry;
Consumer Products Industry;
United States
- August 2020 (Revised September 2020)
- Case
Facelift at Olay (A)
By: Sunil Gupta, Rajiv Lal and Olivia Hull
By October 2017, Procter & Gamble’s skincare brand Olay has been struggling with declining sales for several years. The team has tried many remedies, but none has returned the brand to growth. As pressure grows from Olay’s competitors, including hundreds of new...
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- July 2020 (Revised January 2021)
- Case
Pattern Brands
By: Sunil Gupta, Elie Ofek and Julia Kelley
In March 2020, direct-to-consumer (DTC) company Pattern Brands needed to decide how to allocate resources across its different brands. Pattern Co-Founders Nick Ling and Emmett Shine hoped to avoid the pitfalls faced by some DTC companies—such as inability to scale and...
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Keywords:
Direct-to-consumer;
Brands and Branding;
Marketing Channels;
Marketing Strategy;
Product Marketing;
Product Launch;
Product Positioning;
Business Model;
Business Startups;
Growth and Development Strategy;
Demand and Consumers;
Business Strategy;
Diversification;
Competitive Advantage;
Consumer Products Industry;
Retail Industry;
North and Central America;
United States;
New York (city, NY);
New York (state, US)
- July 2020
- Case
Kathy Fish at Procter & Gamble: Navigating Industry Disruption by Disrupting from Within
By: Emily Truelove, Linda A. Hill and Emily Tedards
When Kathy Fish, Procter & Gamble’s Chief Research, Development & Innovation Officer, and a 40-year company veteran, stepped into her role in 2014, she was concerned that the world’s leading consumer packaged goods company had lost its capability to produce a steady...
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Keywords:
Female Protagonist;
Organizational Change;
Organizational Behavior;
Culture Change;
Digital;
Digital Transformation;
Innovation;
Lean Startup;
Experimentation;
Metrics;
Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG);
Leadership;
Leading Change;
Change Management;
Organizational Culture;
Organizational Change and Adaptation;
Disruption;
Innovation and Invention
- May 2020
- Teaching Note
Direct to Consumer Brands
By: Sunil Gupta
In recent years, we have seen a dramatic rise of direct-to-consumer (DTC) brands. Many of these brands, such as Dollar Shave Club, Harry’s, Glossier, and Allbirds, entered mature markets dominated by established companies, and yet they grew rapidly to attain valuations...
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- April 2020
- Teaching Note
Glossier: Co-Creating a Cult Brand with a Digital Community
By: Jill Avery
Teaching Note for HBS No. 519-022. Flush with cash from its Series C fundraise, cult beauty brand Glossier considers its next phase of growth, facing critical decisions on how to allocate its capital to support various marketing communications and distribution...
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Keywords:
Digital Marketing;
Crowdsourcing;
Social Media;
CRM;
Startup;
Direct-to-consumer;
DTC;
Marketing;
Marketing Strategy;
Brands and Branding;
Consumer Behavior;
Customer Relationship Management;
Venture Capital;
Business Startups;
Entrepreneurship;
Beauty and Cosmetics Industry;
United States
- March 31, 2020
- Article
Reinventing the Direct-to-Consumer Business Model
By: Len Schlesinger, Matt Higgins and Shaye Roseman
Over the past decade, a new breed of “direct-to-consumer” (DTC) startups, including Warby Parker and Casper, helped forge a new business model. But lately that business model is faltering as the advantages that early entrants enjoyed have evaporated. To retool, DTC...
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- March 2020 (Revised February 2021)
- Case
Levi Strauss (A): A Pioneer Lost in the Wilderness
By: Joshua Margolis, Ashish Nanda, Margaret Cross, Imran Manji and Bismah Rahmat
In 2011, newly appointed CEO Chip Bergh needed to urgently turn around the iconic but floundering denim apparel firm, Levi Strauss & Co. (LS&Co.) Famous for its blue jeans, LS&Co. had suffered a decline in revenue of 29% from $6.8 billion in 1997 to $4.8 billion in...
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- March 2020
- Case
Thingtesting: Launching a Brand Discovery and Testing Digital Community
By: Ayelet Israeli and Jill Avery
Thingtesting, a brand discovery and testing digital community devoted to uncovering and exploring direct-to-consumer brands, had just received seed funding and was contemplating a second year of growth. The new year brought many challenges, as founder Jenny Gyllander...
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Keywords:
Influencer Marketing;
Monetization;
Female Ceo;
Female Entrepreneur;
Female Protagonist;
Influencers;
Influencer;
Direct-to-consumer;
Marketing;
Brands and Branding;
Marketing Strategy;
Venture Capital;
Entrepreneurship;
Marketing Communications;
Consumer Products Industry;
Financial Services Industry;
Advertising Industry;
London;
United Kingdom;
United States;
Europe;
North America
- February 2020 (Revised January 2021)
- Case
Anomalie
By: Jeffrey F. Rayport and Thomas O. Jones
In early 2019, the founders of Anomalie, an online direct-to-consumer provider of bridal gowns, have just agreed to an $13.6 million Series A investment from a Silicon Valley VC. They are considering three major initiatives as they move forward. (1) To scale their...
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- January 2020 (Revised April 2020)
- Teaching Note
Brandless: Disrupting Consumer Packaged Goods
By: Jill Avery
Brandless, an online direct-to-consumer seller of upscale private-label consumer packaged goods (CPG), offered consumers a limited assortment of values-conscious products delivered directly to their homes with the simplicity of one fixed $3.00 price point that promised...
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- January 2020 (Revised March 2020)
- Case
SmileDirectClub: Better Is Better
By: Leonard A. Schlesinger and Aldo Sesia
- January 2020 (Revised May 2020)
- Case
Direct to Consumer Brands
By: Sunil Gupta
Recent years have seen the dramatic rise of direct-to-consumer (DTC) brands by several startups. Many of these brands, such as Dollar Shave Club, Harry’s, Glossier, and Allbirds, entered mature markets dominated by established companies, and yet they grew rapidly to...
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- January 2020 (Revised March 2020)
- Case
LOLA: Do You Know What's in Your Tampon?
By: Leonard A. Schlesinger and Aldo Sesia
LOLA is a direct-to-consumer (DTC) business launched in 2015. What started as a company to provide women with organic and transparent material-labeled tampons via a subscription model, had, by 2019 evolved to include additional menstrual and sexual wellness products....
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- January 2020
- Case
The June Oven
By: Leonard A. Schlesinger and Christian Godwin
The June Oven was a smart oven which was capable of identifying food and cooking it accordingly. This type of smart oven represented the next step in the long history of oven and stove development. Due to the widespread use of traditional ovens, the market for the June...
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Keywords:
Business Ventures;
Trends;
Customers;
Design;
Entrepreneurship;
Food;
Goods and Commodities;
Innovation and Invention;
Marketing;
Brands and Branding;
Demand and Consumers;
Distribution;
Product Development;
Sales;
Technology;
Internet;
Software;
Consumer Products Industry;
Retail Industry;
Technology Industry;
Electronics Industry;
Manufacturing Industry;
United States
- December 2019 (Revised January 2020)
- Case
Boll & Branch
By: Leonard A. Schlesinger and Mel Martin
Boll & Branch is a direct-to-consumer (DTC) business launched in 2015. It was the first Fair-Trade Certified manufacturer of linens. The case provides background on the company, its start, business model, and evolution through 2019.
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- August 2019
- Case
Twiggle: E-commerce with Semantic Search
By: Shane Greenstein and Danielle Golan
Four years after being founded, in 2014, by former Google executives Amir Konigsberg (CEO) and Adi Avidor (CTO), Twiggle had developed a search enhancement that plugged into an online merchant’s existing framework. The company utilized advanced structuring and...
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- January 2019
- Teaching Note
Hubble Contact Lenses: Data Driven Direct-to-Consumer Marketing
By: Ayelet Israeli
Teaching Note for HBS No. 519-011. As its Series A extension round approaches, the founders of Hubble, a subscription-based, social-media fueled, direct-to-consumer (DTC) brand of contact lenses, are reflecting on the marketing strategies that have taken them to a...
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Keywords:
DTC;
Direct To Consumer Marketing;
Health Care;
E-commerce;
Mobile;
Digital Marketing;
Attribution;
Experimentation;
Experiments;
Churn/retention;
Customer Lifetime Value;
Internet Marketing;
Big Data;
Analytics;
Social Media;
A/B Testing;
CRM;
Advertising;
Marketing;
Marketing Channels;
Marketing Strategy;
Media;
Brands and Branding;
Marketing Communications;
Online Advertising;
Acquisition;
Growth and Development Strategy;
Customer Focus and Relationships;
Consumer Behavior