Vineeta Singh, Co-founder and CEO, Sugar Cosmetics, spoke about launching as a digital-first brand when less than 15 pc of online shoppers were women, to reaping the rewards today, when they account for 43pc.
“We launched Sugar in 2015, with the objective of building a brand for Bharat,” said Vineeta Singh, Co-founder and CEO, Sugar Cosmetics, speaking on day one of Goafest 2022 on ‘Resilience of building a consumer brand in Bharat’.
“We launched as a digital-first brand at a time where there weren’t many female online shoppers. In 2015, women made up less than 15 percent of all (online) shoppers. We have witnessed the transition and today around 43 pc of online shoppers are women,” she added.
She explained that in 2015, most brands did less than 1 to 2 percent of their business online and young women were almost neglected as consumers by most large brands.
Currently, 60 percent of Sugar Cosmetics’ revenue comes from 30,000 offline stores, while 90 percent of the brand’s customers still continue to discover it online.
On the advertising and marketing strategies of Sugar Cosmetics, she said, “Digital gave us a level playing field. Last year, Sugar had more than 4 billion views on our content. The entire production and distribution of the content happened in-house.”
She added that as a small company, the right content on digital helped effective reach, comparable to that of a typical ad campaign.
On the makeup industry and marketing on digital mediums, Singh said, “Makeup is one of those categories which is based on education. Brands had a humongous opportunity to move the entire education digitally, but most brands continued to educate in-stores and that’s where Sugar as a brand saw an opportunity in engaging and educating our consumers in a fun way and that’s how our entire marketing strategies were devised.”
“Every time we think about brand building, we don’t think about advertising. We think about products, trust, and consistency. Consistency in the product experience, which starts with delivering more value than the customer is paying. It starts with communication being consistent,” surmised the speaker, a familiar face from Shark Tank.
