How Snitch is Embedding Technology to Build a Successful Brand?
How Snitch is Embedding Technology to Build a Successful Brand?

COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent closure of physical stores have fundamentally changed the way businesses operate. With consumers across the globe turning to online shopping, an increasing number of brands are taking the direct-to-consumer (D2C) route to create a distinctive customer experience. 

One such brand that started its just journey just 14 months back is Snitch. India's fastest growing fast-fashion brand for men, Snitch was founded by Siddharth R Dungerwal. This, ‘Made in India, For the World’ brand, is widely known for its fast-fashion approach that captures world-class trends.
 
Siddharth R Dungerwal, Founder & CEO, Snitch while speaking at a webinar #EmpoweringD2C in collaboration with Shipway states, “Snitch was introduced to bridge the gap in the industry as there was no brand focusing on men’s fast fashion on a daily basis.”

“We started off with a litmus test – more into an offline channel – we distributed our stocks initially to a lot of retailers across India, which got tremendous response from the consumers. For Snitch, the first 100 customers were these retailers who then got 1,000 reviews from their customers. And then pandemic hit us – we were really stuck at the time and the best thing to do at that time was to go online. The first thing that came to my mind is maybe we should introduce the brand on Flipkart and Myntra and try and liquidate the stock. But then I realized a) we wouldn’t be making any money and b) the brand wouldn’t get any good recognition and that’s how with a team of four people I started on the Shopify platform and barely within 48 hours, Snitch started getting a good response,” he adds.

The focus of the brand is to produce a larger number of styles than quantities of a few styles. On average, the brand has been producing roughly 3,000 styles per year.

While building the brand, the toughest task for the brand was to win the trust of its consumers. The brand tried to win the trust of the consumers by resolving their queries even at odd hours.

“We used to upsell through chatbots. Those were the initial days and then we started getting a lot of automation done. I would say this is a mix of a lot of things and the other tough thing was that we were barely new in the space and we had no knowledge about D2C especially coming from a very different background but I built a very strong team – a mixture of experienced and freshers and this helped me scale the brand further,” he asserts.

Elaborating on how a strong team has been the backbone of the brand, he says, “It’s been about two-and-half months since we launched our app, and we have over 200k downloads currently. Our returning customer ratio is 44-48 percent which is phenomenal for a new brand like ours.”  

Social Media Strategy

To start off, social media was the only platform where Snitch could market its products. Social media is the most easily accessible platform and most people spend most of their free time on social media these days. So that was the best place for Snitch to place itself.

“We have been successfully growing the Instagram family, as we started with 2,000 followers and now we have 100k + followers. We prefer to resolve all the queries on social media at the earliest possible,” he shares.

Betting Big on Sustainability

There is a common belief that fast fashion brands cannot be sustainable and environment-friendly. However, despite being a fast-fashion brand, Snitch is betting big on sustainability.

“We use organic cotton to produce our products. We will soon be introducing recycled polyester fabric. Almost 20 percent of our packaging is plastic-free and over the next 3-6 months we tend to make it 100 percent plastic-free.,” he asserts.

“We want to make a huge difference in the fast fashion segment through Snitch. Fast fashion and sustainability have always been poles apart, however, we are trying to get these two aligned in one single system,” he adds.

Marrying Technology With The Brand

No business can scale without technology and there is no doubt that technology is a core part of any D2C brand. 

“We have done automation probably everywhere we could such as returns, exchange and the whole experience of the customers. Soon, we will be testing technologies like Artificial Intelligence and we are also planning to live-stream the videos,” he states.

“Livestreaming is the future. We are engaging with a lot of influencers and trying to build a mini-Instagram kind of feel into our website where a lot of consumers talk about our products. Where they can browse through the whole product journey or it could be towards the product quality or fashion tip or grooming ideas,” he further adds. 

Future Plans

The brand that has already become a consumer’s favorite in the men’s fast-fashion category is soon planning to foray into the women’s fast-fashion category too.

“We have set certain targets for ourselves. Once we hit those targets, we will start with women’s apparel. It would be on the same lines as what we do presently and that’s what we do the best. We will stick to fast fashion and bring new fashion every single day,” he shares.

Apart from this, to expand the men’s category further, the brand will soon be launching the plus-size collection, accessories, and innerwear collection.

“Plus size is something that we are looking into seriously. Plus size is an untapped market. There are a few brands in the plus-size category but they are not into fast fashion,” he elaborates.

The brand is catering to its consumers through its own website/ app currently, and paving the way to launch it at marketplaces as well.

“Apart from this. we are also planning to open 15-20 digital stores across India and these stores would be more tech-driven. The stores will drive us towards branding, building trust, and they will provide the look-and-feel factor to the consumers,” says Dungerwal.

This fiscal, the brand, which is currently bootstrapped, is eyeing to clock Rs 50 crore in terms of net sales.  

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