Ido Leffler and Lance Kalish are two of the founders of Beach House Group, a brand incubator that’s dedicated to adding a touch of flair to categories that traditionally have none. The team are familiar with Amazon Launchpad having used on Amazon in the U.S., where they’ve successfully sold their men’s skincare brand, Marlowe.
Of using Amazon Launchpad in the U.S., Lance said, “Launchpad in the U.S. has offered us an opportunity to understand the inner workings of Amazon as a company. Instead of just launching a brand and letting the end result be trial and error, Launchpad has helped our team understand what best practice is when it comes to selling on Amazon.”
“Essentially, it’s given us a huge head start and since launching, we’ve seen an overall 500% year-on-year growth, and 230% this year alone. We are excited to ‘return home’ and bring our products to Australians from skincare to stationery via the Amazon.com.au Launchpad store. “Everything Beach House Group does is based on three key pillars: incredible people, brilliant product, and an awesome and an impactful cause. However, even with those pillars in place, there is no guarantee of success.
As Lance explains, “The biggest challenge with growing an online business today is obviously the traffic. Just like opening up a retail store, you can't make sure that millions of people are going to walk past from day one.”
Fortunately, that’s where our new Amazon Australia Launchpad program can help, as it’s designed to give innovative and unique brands like Beach House Group access to our retail expertise and infrastructure, so they can grow their businesses.
“With Amazon Launchpad, the team actually helped us walk through exactly what the best and worst things we could do on Amazon were. It gave us a huge head start,” says Lance.
Through Amazon Launchpad, Beach House Group will also have access to our local fulfilment network and fast, unlimited shipping with Amazon Prime, along with exceptional customer service.
Ido and Lance confess that when launching a new brand, fulfilment is one of the biggest challenges from day one. As a result, this element of Amazon Launchpad has made a huge difference. According to Ido, “You want to make sure that your fulfilment is seamless.”
Most important of all, Amazon Launchpad has extended Beach House Group’s reach dramatically.
For a unique brand there’s always the risk of remaining niche and undiscovered, but as Lance explains, “When we launched on Amazon, all of a sudden we had hundreds of millions of people looking at our products for the very first time.”
With the support provided from Amazon Launchpad, the Beach House Group team feel that they have more time for innovation.
“We know that innovation is key and a way to drive innovation is in the consumer reviews. Using reviews as feedback and constructive criticism has been hugely beneficial, so that’s something that has been interesting to understand along the way. An online review from a customer reviewing Marlowe's soap scrub said, "This soap bar saved my marriage", which is obviously a great insight that helps us understand which products are the most popular,” Leffler said.
We then used these reviews to develop other products directly in line with customer feedback. Everything we put into Marlowe is said by our customers, not by us.”
To learn more about the Amazon Launchpad program and how it could be right for your business or to shop the store, visit www.amazon.com.au/launchpad
