For example, Crua Outdoors, a maker of high-end camping gear, wanted to see if it could extend its brand into hammocks, targeting the US market for outdoor living. It created the Koala, ‘the hammock you’ll want to stay in forever’. Rather that tie money up in R&D, Crua created an Indiegogo campaign with a humorous video showing the product in action. Almost $750,000 was pledged on the fundraising site: R&D paid for, future demand guaranteed and a viral video produced that could be shareable indefinitely on social media.

The second aspect of these brands is the understanding of the ‘long tail’ and the ‘fat tail’. Retailers are limited in what they can sell by the amount of shelf space they have, and so can only stock fat-tail products popular enough to justify keeping the inventory. Former Wired magazine editor Chris Anderson coined the phrase ‘long tail’ for all the products that don’t get placed in retail locations but which someone, somewhere, will buy. Long-tail thinking means that you don’t have to conserve shelf space or make such decisions about what to stock.

Understanding of the ‘long tail’ has meant that a small tent manufacturer can sell $1,000 tents to the US from Europe. Understanding of the ‘long tail’ basically explains the success of Amazon.

But the fastest-growing D2C brands are going after niches within the ‘fat tail’ and executing their positioning by relentlessly focusing on only a handful of products. Indeed, many started out with just one. For example, shaving brand Harry’s started with one type of razor with five blades, while Casper had just one model of bed.

Sourced through Scoop.it from: www.marketingweek.com