Sometimes going offline makes sense: the Yislamoo story
Update: As of September 29th, Yislamoo has reached
its crowd investment goal on Eureeca.
They have not only reached their target of $71,300 but they are now
open for ‘over funding’, so there is still opportunity to
invest.
These days, someone asking for stamps or stationery is about
as common as someone asking for change to use the pay phone. But
the rarity of writing and sending a hand-written note, and the even
rarer pleasure of receiving one, makes it all the more
special.
To serve these letter-writing romantics in the region,
Amman-based graphic designer Rasha Hamdan has brought to market
cleverly designed cards and paper in a contemporary Arabic style.
During her market research prior to launch, she didn’t find
anything close to the product she envisioned: “If there was
something in the shops it was old school,” she tells Wamda, “old
fashioned and restricted to religious holidays.” For Hamdan there
was a real gap in the market when it came to finding cool and witty
cards in Arabic that could be used to commemorate birthdays, new
babies, Christmas, Valentine’s Day, etc.
So in 2011 she set to work. With her background in corporate
design, coming up with some initial designs wasn’t a problem. Other
designers were skeptical about whether her idea could work, but
when she started shopping her 10 prototypes around Amman boutiques,
the owners were enthusiastic. Yislamoo was born.
Hamdan is very clear about the image she wants to present with
Yislamoo. “The idea is to be contemporary,” says the entrepreneur,
“to be reflective of the spoken language, to show the wit of the
people of the Middle East.” Defying the stereotype of the social
media generation, Hamdan has found young people to be her biggest
audience, but still, she says, “the social butterflies of the older
generation are also slowly coming on board.”
But despite the enthusiasm of Yislamoo fans, it’s at times
been a rough ride. It was the business, rather than the creative,
side of the venture that presented Hamdan with her first hurdles.
“I have the backbone for design but not for anything else,” she
says. Despite this, Hamdan has managed some difficult pivots over
the course of the company, including refocusing on B2B sales, as
well as realizing – and leveraging – the importance of
brick-and-mortar business for a model like Yislamoo.
Pivoting from B2C to
B2B
Yislamoo, which now employs five artists and several
outsourced copywriters to draw up cards, first attempted to sell
online in 2012 but faced setbacks with the available platforms and
developers. The online store has been in its current form since
late 2013.
Shipping presented an early challenge that Yislamoo has
addressed, at least on behalf of the buyers. “The cost of shipping
a card costs more than the actual card,” says Hamdan. As of six
months ago, the site decided to institute a policy of free 14-day
shipping for all online orders. Since then, according to Hamdan,
sales have increased by 50 percent. Still, currently sales of cards
to individuals through the site makes up just 10 percent of
business. “From customer feedback we gathered, it isn’t a good ROI
route selling only to individuals.”
And how do they cover the shipping cost? “Because we're
offering the full retail price on the product, we maintain the cut
we were giving away for wholesales or consignees […] this of course
grants us a lower margin for now, but as volume grows we'll reach a
better deal with postal service.” The loyalty of their customers,
according to Hamdan, also helps offset shipping costs; people who
have ordered one card often return and order more at
once.
Another struggle for Yislamoo has been breaking out of Jordan,
where the cards are now available in 30 stores, into offline
boutiques in other MENA markets. “Breaking into the GCC market has
been a challenge but we are now available in one store in KSA and
Dubai, and this has all happened just in 2014.”
Refocusing on
brick-and-mortar
Justifying her decision to focus on getting Yislamoo cards
into regional boutiques, Hamdan is realistic about ecommerce versus
brick-and-mortar: “I think that unless online shopping can recreate
the experience of going into a shop and touching the product, it’s
always going to be the more popular way to shop.”
Hamdan has found that a lot of customers, instead of buying
online, will simply ask a friend who is in Jordan to pick up cards
for them. Reflecting this, the Yislamoo team is beginning to focus
its efforts more on offline retail rather than
ecommerce.
The traffic data on Yislamoo’s website backs up this decision.
After the home page, the most visited page on the site is the ‘find
us’ tab, proving that customers are still more interested in
in-store shopping despite the free shipping option.
Keeping close track of the trends has allowed Hamdan to spend
Yislamoo’s limited marketing budget strategically: “We’re using
[the budget] to target stores to stock the cards; when it comes to
online marketing, we don’t deem it necessary to make the
expenditure.”
Next steps
Keeping things afloat while dealing with these hurdles has
been a learning curve for Hamdan, who also has a separate design
practice. While her family as a whole put together the capital to
launch Yislamoo, Hamdan says: “You need to have a black belt in
bootstrapping…. The infrastructure in MENA to support a successful
online business is still evolving.”
But looking beyond bootstrapping, Yislamoo has just embarked
on a crowdinvesting campaign with Eureeca, launched
July 15th. The campaign is still in its early days, but Hamdan is
confident that Yislamoo fans will be excited at the opportunity to
invest in Yislamoo in exchange for shares.
But the team isn’t just relying on confidence to drum up a
successful Eureeca campaign. In weeks leading up to the launch,
Yislamoo began sending out announcements for the crowdinvesting
campaign in an attempt to secure early commitments, which we’ve
seen to be key to success on Eureeca in the past.
Funding from a successful Eureeca campaign will give Yislamoo
the chance to take the company in new directions. “We want people
to come to Yislamoo for anything to do with birthdays, for example,
the decorations, the balloons,” say Hamdan, “all with a regional
flavor, in Arabic and with a quirky sense of humor.”
A huge fan of putting pen to paper herself, Hamdan is
determined to find the right balance between technology and “old
school romanticism…. the whole point of Yislamoo is to make the
recipient feel special.”