THE LOBBYiST : More Than Just Views: The perfect case study

The perfect case study
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Resti Reyes on 01 September, 2009 05:18:00
 
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.