In 50 years people will talk about 2020 as the year of divergence; it has been a year of extremes with so many companies either skyrocketing or completely going out of business. While no one can ever predict why or when success comes, we wanted to take a look at a few companies who had major growth in 2020.
Some were expected because of the vertical they’re in, but none of these success stories comes without hard work and creating a winning strategy. At DCL Logistics, we love working with brands who are leading their field, creating new pathways, and defining their markets. We work with brands of all shapes and sizes, but what they all have in common is high-growth and innovation.
Here are three brands who saw big order volume increases in 2020, each with very different strategies, reasons, and products.
Growth Strategy #1: Align With The Right Partners
Kinsa’s order volume tripled at the beginning of the COVID pandemic. It might seem obvious that a company selling smart thermometers would see a rush of sales during a global health crisis. But that doesn’t mean that they had the infrastructure to follow through on those orders.
Not only did their DTC order volume increase, they started getting orders from medical institutions for thousands of orders. Kinsa CEO, Inder Singh trusted that no matter how high the volumes got, he could trust DCL Logistics to get the job done. He originally chose DCL out of a sense of shared values. When launching Kinsa, he picked his supply chain partners strategically to ensure there was a deep partnership every step of the way.
During the initial rush of orders, Inder realized he needed maximum fulfillment support for the huge demand for the product, he texted DCL President, Dave Tu directly. Inder recounts, “I texted him on a Saturday and he called me right back. I explained that we were getting a massive surge and as far as we can tell our product is really helping to identify hot spots in this pandemic and we need to roll it out more right now. Dave’s response was incredibly supportive. His said, ‘Yes that’s what we do, tell us what you need and we’ll get it done.’”
It’s this close relationship and shared partnership that is what facilitated quality fulfillment at scale. Since this summer their order volume has continued to grow, and there’s no stopping in sight because Kinsa didn’t just ride the wave of initial market demand—they’ve always had bigger goals in mind. The way they executed their commitment to solving global health issues is what led to their continued success throughout 2020.
The Kinsa app helps patients take the care they need in the moment, but it also aggregates population health insights to understand where and when illness is spreading to help society react. In March, just as the pandemic was hitting the US hard, Kinsa launched Healthweather.us as a way for anyone anywhere to see the risk factor in their neighborhood.
Growth Strategy #2: Have the Right Model for Scalability
At first glance, it appears that Eargo simply makes nearly invisible hearing aids. But there is so much more to the company than just their physical product. Eargo’s commitment to scalability and innovation helped them grow tremendously this year, when so many companies struggled.
What Eargo does differently than other hearing aid companies is offer remote support for their customers through telecare and digital support assets. The wellness of their clients is their highest priority. When so many clinics had to shut down, and hearing aid companies lost business as a result, the Eargo model was primed to succeed in a world of quarantining and remote-only business.
Because the company has been growth-minded all along, their systems and their supply chain partners were primed to handle the spike in orders they started to receive. CEO Christian Gormsen says, “We have run record levels of orders and calls of people interested in our products. I’m happy to say that despite this added pressure on the system, we have been able to keep all of our service levels and actually give customers a solution within days of when they order it. So we are doing quite well in the current situation.”
The Eargo team found that because they outsource logistics support they can focus their efforts to directly support their customers. He explains, “What we’ve seen with the higher order volumes is that we’ve been able to optimize how much time we spent on support materials—creating new digital assets that allow our customers to self help themselves—that’s part of our telecare offering.” It’s the direct relationship they have with their clients that has given them continued high sales volume throughout 2020.
Right now they are offering anyone in America a free hearing check or remote consultation even if they aren’t a customer.
Growth Strategy #3: Know When to Pivot
iOgrapher sells accessories that turn your phone or tablet into a full blown filmmaking camera. They’ve sold innumerable products to schools and sports teams for years. But their products were being used primarily for broadcasting and events, so when any gatherings were quickly shut down in March this year, the team at iOgrapher knew they needed to pivot and change their target audience quickly.
Innovator and Founder, David Basulto saw that people were going to need better video set-ups to work from home, and businesses were going to need better tools to help market their products and services remotely.
He says, “It dawned on me that I needed to come up with a bundle of products to help people do live streaming, Zoom calls, Google Meet, and Facebook Live. So I did a big turn to provide a low-cost entry-level kit, to get people just up and running when all they had to bring was their phone or their iPad or tablet or whatever, their computer even. And it took off like gangbusters.”
With Amazon basically shutting down any non-essential products, the iOgrapher team needed to rely on their DTC channels to get these new bundles sold. Because they had such a close working relationship with their account managers at DCL, it was a seamless process to ensure these bundles could be built quickly and delivered to the end-customers on time and accurately.
If you’re to partner with an experienced 3PL for shipping and fulfillment support, reach out to our team. DCL Logistics works with high-growth companies looking for a partner who can scale with them. Read what our customers say about us.