How D2C Brand Deconstruct Planning to Grow 4x This Fiscal

The birth of the skincare brand Deconstruct is led by a mix of both business and personal insight of its CEO and Founder, Malini Adapureddy. Her motivation to create skincare products was fuelled by how most of the skincare products are sold to female customers. She never believed in the ideology that if someone uses these products; gets a job or cracks the interview instantly.

While using the available products in the Indian market, she was not satisfied as there was no significant change in her skin, due to the lack of innovation in the products and the overall industry. She always felt the way the skincare products were being sold in the Indian market was very archaic and demeaning.

“As per my understanding, skincare products in the Indian market were being sold with an assumption that Indian women cannot be provided logic about the products and the ingredients and chemical compositions. They have been made to believe that everything natural is good. This could be because of the non-availability of the right products that work on one’s skin. That is what triggered me to come up with Deconstruct,” she explained.

“From the business perspective, I found the sector very interesting and conducive online. The per capita spending on the beauty and skincare industry in India has been less even when compared to a similar per capita market like Indonesia. India spends around $2 per capita on skincare/personal care products whereas Indonesia spends about four times the amount that is spent by an Indian consumer on the same,” she further added.

She undertook primary research and spoke to over 500-600 women on products they would like to have in the market in the personal care and beauty space, what should the skincare product branding look like, and the preferred product category. About 3-4 months were invested in the ideation stage itself to come up with an evidence-based skin care product brand.

“We decided to provide evidence for every claim that our brand makes including the ingredients being used, how are they being used, the technology behind it, etc. We launched our products in February 2021, only after comprehensive R&D that began way back in May 2020,” she asserted.

Deconstruct is working to target the new-age consumers who it calls knowledge economy consumers. The brand believes that they make decisions basis knowledge and information before purchasing any products, unlike aspirational consumers of yesteryears who are used to making decisions basis the aspirational quality of the product. To suit this evolved consumer, it provides evidence in terms of details on ingredients being used in products, and the technology behind them, which helps customers to make a decision.

“We have observed that most available skincare brands in the Indian market do not focus on the R&D of their products and often replicate existing products through contract manufacturers. However, at Deconstruct we do 8-12 months of R&D on every product before launching it in the market,” she said.

From the range perspective, its current focus is on facial skin care products, and in the coming months, it will be launching body skincare products.

“We would focus on products that are under skincare, body care, and hair/scalp care since these product categories remain nascent in India,” she asserted.

Betting Big on D2C

The brand started with limited channels knowing that putting products on the shelf means blocking a lot of inventory. And unless it has a strong brand pull, it would not be effective.

“We aim to become a digital-first brand, and then slowly move towards the omnichannel approach. Considering we are small and have just started, the economics of this strategy would make more sense,” she stated.

“We will eventually move towards offline, which is inevitable. In India, the e-commerce space is pretty limited. Also, in the category we are, not more than 3-5 percent of your business is being sold online. So, from that perspective, if any brand wants to penetrate the market, going offline is inevitable, and the omnichannel approach is inevitable,” she further added.

Marketing Strategy

Currently, Deconstruct has been doing low-key efforts on branding majorly focused on influencer marketing. The business has been built in a capital-efficient manner and hasn't invested much in marketing to achieve a certain scale in a short duration.

“We are now looking to scale spends on brand building - brand marketing, and brand differentiation, rather than trying to spend more dollars on Facebook and Google Marketing,” she said.

Technology and Innovation

Deconstruct is tech and science-backed not only in its product formulations but also in how it approaches and solves its business problems.

“We ensure that our products follow a complete R&D cycle, which can go up to 18 months. We study data extensively to identify how we can serve our customers in a better manner, and employ the help of various tech tools to help us in this. We are pretty tech-driven and data-oriented in all business aspects,” she stated.

“Our sole motto is ‘information over impulse’ in your skincare/ personal care regime. So we are extremely driven by giving all the information to the consumer through multiple channels – our social media, our website blogs, and two-way communication through Whatsapp chats with our in-house expert teams. We believe in educating the consumer about skincare to empower them to make a more informed decision – it does not matter to us if they end up buying the product, for us it’s a win if we can help them make an informed choice,” she further added.

Future Plans

The brand currently has been growing at 30-40 percent month-on-month.

“We plan to grow 4x in this fiscal year. We have been able to tap into the knowledge-seeking consumer pool, and with growing awareness around personal care and skin care as a category, we’re confident that this base of consumers will only grow. All our business activities are geared to cater to this growing base and achieve our revenue targets,” she asserted.

The brand is also planning to launch its products in UAE along with exploring the South East Asian markets.

“Going ahead, for the next 12-18 months, we also plan to increase our product range from 15 products to 50 products, within skincare and adjacent categories. This will give our consumers a greater choice to try out our products,” she concluded.