The perfect case study

At the 3rd IMMAP (Internet and Mobile Marketing Association of the Philippines) Summit in the SMX complex beside the Mall of Asia last week, we were introduced to some very interesting new learnings, particularly in the field of marketing on the internet. One particular case study stood out – the case of funkyfeet.multiply.com.

The first thing you will notice is that their website is a social networking site hosted by multiply – which means they didn’t spend anything on its construction, development, or maintenance. But we are getting ahead of the story.

They started in late 2007. A pair of young mothers, Rianna Roces-Trinidad and Sheryll Ang-Tiong were preoccupied with their babies. Being fashionista parents, they were of course dressing up their little tots every chance they got. But there was one problem: babies cannot wear shoes and should not wear shoes because their little feet will not develop properly if the tiny toes are confined by stiff footwear. Their feet need to feel the ground if they are to learn to walk. Still, nice dresses need to be complemented by the right footwear. Somehow, going barefoot didn’t quite go well when the kid is dressed up to the nines from the hemline up. Solution: socks! But better if the socks could be designed to look like shoes, right? And so a product was born. But more than just a product, it was a concept – an innovative idea. The most important point was, early on, they clearly decided it should be a brand. Funky Feet – not quite shoes. Ingenious.

So like typical young entrepreneurs, they went about selling their product to the usual channels: department stores. Christmas was fast approaching and they obviously wanted to take advantage of the season to be splurging. To make a long story short, on December 15, 2007, they decided to put up an online storefront on multiply. The rest, as they say, is history.

Today, the young mom-preneurs are managing a bustling business (I am not sure how many millions the business is now worth), but they still spend most of their time fussing over their fashionista babies. But in the truest sense of the word, theirs is a business built online. Rustan’s, Landmark, Crossings, are just a few among the many department stores who now are asking them to supply them with the cute baby stockings with faux shoes.

The young mothers have introduced some new products, still geared towards the market they most identify with: young mothers, who else? For instance, one of their newest items is a little piece of cloth about two inches across. It is worth very little. But its value is almost priceless. One of the most common problems of young moms who are still newlyweds is undergarments. Typically, these ladies have just spent a fortune on fancy underwear. Then they get pregnant, and give birth, and start breastfeeding their babies. In a span of a year or so, their bra and cup sizes will change dramatically. And to be sure, they are loathe to give away their recently purchased expensive honeymoon bras from Victoria’s Secret. Solution? Bra extenders. Hook-and-eye sets are placed on strips of nice soft cloth that allows them to stretch the size of their current lingerie by as much as two inches.

Multiply enables them to communicate directly with their market with the minimum of fuss and inconvenience. Every time they upload something new on the site, the system automatically sends out a notice via email to everybody on their mailing list. Their consumers are kept up to date with new product introductions and the latest promos. The consumers themselves have also evolved into a community as they share their experiences with one another and effectively encourage each other to buy more Funky Feet products.

And even as they are now expanding and diversifying into other related product lines, they maintain the core structure on which the business was built. Until today, they have no office and no employees. Everything is done online. Orders are received, stocks are sourced from suppliers, customers pay online or via bank deposits (which they verify online), and deliveries are outsourced to courier companies.

Truly, this case study affirms what we had always thought would someday happen: the media has become the marketplace.

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