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“Yes, we’re building brands, but we're building brands at a scale and a speed that didn't exist before.” — Arturo Aranda, Director of Brands, Brand Central at Thrasio
Building a brand is difficult, building hundreds at scale feels all but impossible.
Thrasio, however, one of the fastest-growing acquirers of Amazon FBA businesses, may have found a blueprint for brand development.
Arturo Aranda, director of brands, Brand Central at Thrasio, joined a recent episode of The Unpacking the Digital Shelf podcast, “Building the Most Impactful Consumer Products Company of the Next Century,” to share how Thrasio intends to achieve this mission and exactly what it takes to do brand-building at this scale and speed.
Thrasio, which has acquired more than 150 Amazon challenger brands to date, has benefited from a business environment where the barrier to entry is as low as it’s ever been for entrepreneurs.
With a few software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions, some expertise, and the guts to start a business, anyone can begin to sell their products online.
“What's starting to happen now is that it's kind of like this exponential growth of the great American Dream. This entrepreneurial mindset, where if you have this idea, you can make it happen. If you have an idea for a product, all you have to do is find an amazing connection with some sort of manufacturer, whether they are in Brazil, India, China, and you can pretty much bring an idea to life almost overnight.” — Arturo Aranda, Director of Brands, Brand Central at Thrasio
Thrasio’s business model has thrived in this environment. The company typically acquires brands in 35 days, according to its CEO Carlos Cashman, who appeared on a previous episode of the Unpacking the Digital Shelf podcast.
After Thrasio acquires FBA businesses, it then optimizes each brand’s marketing and finds supply chain efficiencies and branding innovations that boost the value of these businesses. It’s a far different model than traditional CPG giants like Procter & Gamble and Unilever, but it’s one that could lay the groundwork for what future consumer products companies look and act like.
Recent Salsify research indicates 86% of consumers are willing to pay more for a brand they trust, and for them, trust is highly correlated with product quality.
Aranda says effective brand development has become critical in an environment where reviews, ratings, and rankings shape the definition of a brand. Thrasio is well-positioned to do this with the brands it acquires because the company has established an infrastructure and operating model that allows its brands to be as nimble and responsive as possible in an ecommerce world where a handful of consistently bad reviews can sully a brand’s reputation.
“If there's a problem with your product, it's really important to make sure your audience knows that you're listening,” Aranda says. “One thing that I think is amazing is because of the system that we have — and because we're involved with the entire supply chain and we can get involved with not just the creation of the brand, but the entire manufacturing process — we can actually start to pivot to address any issues we hear about.”
When brands are responsive to customer needs in this way, Aranda says it can result in a halo effect for the brand itself, paying dividends for the company in the form of greater customer advocacy, positive word of mouth, and increased marketing ROI and customer loyalty.
Thrasio’s overall mission is to be the most impactful consumer products company of the next century, and it is steadily moving toward this by building an agile organization.
Aranda leads the company’s Brand Central team, which focuses on developing impactful branding for acquired businesses — all in an effort to empower Thrasio to achieve its overarching mission. The team works with Thrasio’s brand operations group, product launch teams, and innovation groups to improve brand development strategy and marketing.
To complement its creative lab, Thrasio also is building an insights lab to conduct market research, audience segmentation, and to develop other category insights that will drive its operations.
“We have the ability to look across the entire supply chain and not just develop these products and brands, but also learn from them,” Aranda says. “We can gather the data and gather any analytics we need to develop these insights to not just evolve the brand and the products, but to use that to fuel the greater whole. That's the vision.”
Aranda says one of the keys to Thrasio’s operating model is momentum.
The company employs traditional disciplines like high-integrity marketing and branding but embraces an agile, nimble mindset to apply them in a scalable way across its portfolio of companies.
“We're trying to figure out, how do we make sure that we take the things that work from some of the legacy experiences and apply those, but make sure that it's actually a more progressive model,” Aranda says. “The more progressive model is one that doesn't make assumptions about what works and what doesn't. There is no real best way to get something done. You can actually work quickly — maybe not get it perfect — but actually get it done in record time so that you can start learning from it and then build from the insights you're gathering to just keep moving.”
Aranda adds that the company does sprints to remain agile. These sprints, or working sessions, often focus on a particular area, like naming and visual identity design for a brand.
For example, in one 27-minute meeting, Aranda and his colleagues came up with overall naming and positioning for one of Thrasio’s brands. This wouldn’t have been possible had Thrasio not already established scalable, repeatable processes it can easily adapt for every FBA business it acquires.
The three-year-old company may be at the beginning chapters of its story, but it is creating a blueprint that might just transform ecommerce in the future.
“We're building brands at a scale and a speed that didn't exist before,” Aranda says. “And that scale, it's not just about growing. It's also about some of the change [we need to implement]. We're trying to figure out, what does it mean to be able to have this constantly evolving and shifting relationship between the brands, the consumers, and us.”
The full podcast episode with Arturo Aranda provides more details on how brand development will continue to evolve — and how your team can remain agile while doing it. Be sure to check it out below.
