How Beard Club Will Dig for Consumer Insights Diamonds With Target
As Beard Club seeks to evolve from DTC darling to omnichannel stalwart, the company is bullish on the consumer insights diamonds it can mine in partnership with its newest customer: Target.
The personal grooming company, which counts NBA star James Harden as an investor, recently expanded from selling directly to consumers and via social commerce to having a half-dozen SKUs available on Target shelves and Target.com.
While this step is significant, it’s the earlier process and technology evolutions and upgrades they’ve undertaken — along with their iron grip on consumer understanding — that are expected by CEO Bryan Welfel to serve both parties well in the new relationship.
“Our approach for personalization and customization does not stop at our DTC website,” he noted to CGT. “When it comes to targeting and understanding the needs and the different personas and groups that we sweat day in and day out with our website, we're now translating those insights to help come up with a more robust offering for bearded guys at Target stores, as well as Target.com.”
As part of this, the CPG is doubling down on its ability to understand the various mid-funnel consumer personas, taking learnings from content performance and integrating them within the Target product packaging. In addition to issuing post-purchase surveys, Beard Club also leverages email and SMS to learn which content resonates with shoppers who’ve yet to pull the trigger.
While they previously invested a lot of resources on awareness to drive consumers to their DTC website, the visibility on Target shelves and e-comm site opens up new avenues for engagement and purchase, says Welfel. They already see opportunities when it comes to incorporating consumer insights into product development, as well as tracking media spend, from view to click-through, on all ads.
“Taking all that — and, as you can imagine, diamonds that you mine along the way — and translating that to the new platform [is] what we [have] really been focused on.”
Beard Growth
The Westwood, N.J.-based company, which was founded in 2015 and counts 17 full-time employees, has prioritized recruitment of insights talent. These employees, who translate findings between all teams, are focused less on reporting and disseminating insights and more on identifying what’s critical and unexpected — and then connecting the dots between departments, according to Welfel.
Welfel remains adamant that Beard Club will never drink the DTC Kool Aid to grow at all costs. Instead, they’ve brought on a director of retention who helped elevate their tech stack to gain a deeper understanding of consumers and their ability to forget relationships.
“What drives success for us is going as big as we can with the offerings that we know can impact customers and be compelling,” he says. “But that has to be the right equation in terms of how much we can spend on that awareness and what it translates to in terms of new customers.”
Certainly, expanding into Target widens the consumer pool given the large number of purchase considerations made in stores. Beyond that, however, Welfel expects the company will also benefit from new efficiencies on media dollars.
Rather than going full-throttle with a single provider, the company has chosen to integrate a range of platforms, with partners including CitrusAds, The Trade Desk, Instacart, and DoorDash. The company also partners with Syndigo for digital shelf optimization.
(It also doesn’t hurt to have a partner like James Harden raising awareness and credibility as an investor. Harden will also be featured in Q2 advertisements.)
“It's really about understanding the nuances of your business and incorporating the right pieces — and making sure you have the vendors that are able and willing to understand your process, your setup, and get things working for you,” says Welfel.
Looking ahead, Beard Club aims to capitalize on the shaving category’s transition from wet shave to serving bearded men.
“There's a big transition that's happening,” says Welfel, “and we're hoping to lead that with Target.”
