Uptownie is a homegrown D2C womenswear brand with its roots in Kolkata, India. We design and manufacture clothes for Indian women, keeping in mind their preferences and sensibilities.
Shivani Agarwal, CMO and Co-founder at Uptownie has beautifully penned down her thoughts of building a D2C brand which according to her is just like perfecting one’s skincare routine!
✅ Consistency is everything: You can’t skip sunscreen – Not. Even. For. A. Single day. While building your brand, your content game must be strong every day, your branding must be on point, down to the smallest of details like the size of your logo on every piece of communication, and product development needs to happen consistently – a week of delay is a week too much.
✅ Experimenting is key – but in moderation! You have to find the skincare products that work for you, but too much experimentation and your skin will protest. So, experiment with your creatives in your ads till you find a winning formula BUT, exercise MODERATION! Resist the urge to tinker with something because it doesn’t immediately show results, and give it time. Once you find something that works, stick to it, just like you stick to your favourite night cream.
✅ Engage in your community! My best skin care finds are through word of mouth recommendations from my friends, and some of my best brand building ideas have come from random conversations with people in the D2C Community – which CRM tools to use, what influencer agencies to work with, or how to easily repurpose content.
✅ Patience pays off! Just like your skincare routine won’t show results overnight, but after 3 months of applying your sunscreen, never failing to remove makeup before falling asleep, and religiously following your nighttime routine, your skin will be better, consistently making website changes to improve conversions, perfecting your CX to plug the leaks in the funnel, reacting immediately to customer feedback to improve the product, and refining your ads will reliably and sustainably increase sales to levels you could never have imagined! This is probably what I struggle with most, but after months of keeping at it at Uptownie my sales when I wake up in the morning are what they used to be at the end of the day just a few months ago. You never know how far you can go, so just keep going!
