How Haus & Kinder's founder grew his lifestyle brand to over one million customers

The path to building a successful business with over one million customers is paved with a strategic vision, insight-driven decision-making, and a relentless focus on customer needs. In a recent fireside with Saket Dhankar, Founder, Haus & Kinder, a digital-first lifestyle brand shared his brand journey, strategies, and milestones and reflected on key learnings.

Here are five essential takeaways from the discussion:

1. Identify a meaningful gap: Saket's journey began with a deep dive into customer pain points in category of home and baby essentials. By studying reviews, talking to potential customers, and analyzing market trends, he zeroed in on the opportunity to create a design-led, quality-focused brand that could elevate customer experience.
2. Implement strategies to reach more customers: The brand continuously analyzes their product categories and identifies gaps to address unmet consumer demands. For instance, they introduced fitted bedsheets based on consumer needs. Moving into related categories like curtains, towels, and cushions also helped in reaching new customers.
3. Build a cohesive brand identity: Establishing a strong brand identity was important for Haus & Kinder. Saket defined the brand's positioning as "mom's beautiful world" and carefully crafted a brand world centered around international sophistication using pastel colors and lifestyle imagery. This clear brand vision allowed the company to forge a deep emotional connection with its audience.
4. Leverage Amazon Ads strategies for growth: Haus & Kinder used a variety of ad formats on Amazon, from contextual search ads to sponsored display and video ads. This approached help maximize reach and efficiency. High-quality content, particularly video, plays a crucial role in engaging new to brand customers. They focus on creating engaging, informative, and visually appealing content across ad formats that enhanced ad performance and engaged shoppers across multiple touchpoints.
5. Use data-driven insights: Saket shared his approach to measure overall growth and efficiency through metrics such as TACOS (Total Advertising Cost of Sales) and ACOS (Advertising Cost of Sales). He also touched upon the importance of Amazon Ads tools, such as Amazon Pi, to get an overall understanding of brand health, using insights such as ranking in keywords, views and share of voice. He also talked about measuring key performance metrics like click-through rate (CTR), conversion rate (CVR), and cost-per-click (CPC) to emphasize the importance of value proposition, cost, and creative effectiveness. By staying on top of these metrics and continuously optimizing their strategy, the Haus & Kinder team has been able to drive efficient customer acquisition and growth.

Haus & Kinder's journey from inception to becoming a million-customer brand offers key insights for digital-first brands. Key takeaways include the importance of thorough market research, clear brand positioning, strategic use of ads and content, and meticulous performance tracking. By staying true to its vision and continuously evolving based on customer feedback and industry trends, Haus & Kinder continues to grow in the digital retail space.