40% of our customers come back for another purchase; company has been growing 3x YoY: DaMENSCH's Deepti Karthik

When it comes to women's wear, there are a plethora of players that operate in the segment in multiple categories. On the other hand, there are lesser options for men, both in the number of categories as well as brands. A newly established brand - DaMENSCH, has emerged to cater to the needs of the modern man in the innerwear category.

Deepti Karthik, Senior Vice-President - Marketing, DaMENSCH, told BestMediaInfo.com that 40% of its customers keep coming back to them for another purchase. She also said that the company has been growing 3x YoY and plans to grow at the same rate in 2022.

Karthik added, “According to Google analytics, the brand search has grown by 219% over the year.”

Marketing and promotion of an innerwear brand are handled very delicately, yet very creatively, for instance, the ‘Fit Hai Boss’ campaign, ‘Ye toh bada toing hai’ campaign, had spread the idea of machoism and masculinity.

Karthik, however, said that today’s men do not subscribe to the idea of machoism or the tales of being a knight in shining armour. Today’s men pay more attention to owning their comfort space, as per her. 

Talking about using this idea to market their product, she said, “The DNA of the brand is comfort. All our campaigns have been talking about comfortability and not giving air to the toxic masculinity, it's not about the perfect guy, the models that we are choosing are not conventional and they are all types of men. We would like to talk about any kind of men and not to talk about any perfection in our communication. We majorly want to talk about men being comfortable in all aspects; whether it is their financial stability or their sexuality, the career they choose, so on and so forth.”

The company recently raised $16.4 million in series B funding. The brand is not planning on exploring other mediums, apart from digital as of yet for marketing and advertising, as they have all their customer base coming from digital channels. For mass marketing, Google Ads has been a major marketing tool to acquire more customer base for them.

Karthik further spoke about the key factors to attract investors for a newly established brand in a niche market. She said, “There are three metrics that everybody looks at:

• The number of new customers coming on to your platform tells about the kind of brand awareness working in your favour.
• The stickiness of consumers, how frequently they are coming back to you. 
• The overall sentiment of the brand as to how positive/negative your brand is.”

With brands like Jockey, Dollar, Amul Macho, Nike, etc and many other unorganised, unlisted brands being available in this Instagram-first world, the stickiness of customers is a major problem for any brand.

Influencer marketing is a must-do thing in today’s Instagram-dominated world. DaMENSCH has an influencer induction programme to make the influencer understand the philosophy behind the brand and it believes in a long-term association that goes for around 6-8 months. The brand also communicates with its customers on various digital platforms to create a sense of community, leading to increased customer retention.

D2C is a growing trend in the country, it is forecasted that it will cross $100 billion by 2025. This will mostly create clutter and confuse the consumer. However, Karthik said that every brand has different strategies, some are product-first, some value-first, while some give more discounts. She said, “Apparel as a category has a lot of players. One has to find a niche and stick to it, that will help D2C brands to create benchmarks and go beyond the clutter.”

DaMENSCH is currently focusing on brand awareness and better customer experience. The company wants to bring AR into the catalogue so that customers can have the option to try apparel easily. The company wants to target Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities and have a strong customer base in those cities.

Info@BestMediaInfo.com