Plum Goodness was launched in India in 2014, before the concept of vegan beauty brands and the D2C model were buzz words. Shankar Prasad, the Founder and CEO, launched the brand with 15 products. Over the years the brand has steadily built its consumer base on both online and offline platforms. Plum reaches over 350 towns and cities in the country through 27 EBOs, 1,200 assisted sales stores and over 12,000 other retail stores.
Recalling the early days of the brand in a telephonic conversation with Medianews4u.com, Prasad said, “The challenges the brand faced has remained, only the nature has changed. Initially it was all about functional issues like setting up the company, getting the products right, finding the right logistics partner… it was difficult back then because online wasn’t as common as it is now. Then it moved to the marketplaces as they scaled in a big manner in the 2015-2016 period. Another challenge was building a strong team. Also me being a solo founder, my involvement was quite high – it is even today.”
In the conversation, he explained the challenges on the retail front that was established in 2017. While Plum is in expansion mode, it is also cautious about the categories it gets into. “Whether it is meaningful for the brand and consumer – that calibration is ongoing,” he notes.
Edited excerpts from the conversation.
Plum Goodness was one of the early players in the vegan personal care space. What were the advantages of the tag?
The brand philosophy of Plum started with ‘Be Good’ as the proposition. Vegan became a subset of it. Us living that philosophy is far more meaningful, relevant, and relatable for the consumers than us saying anything. Because of social media consumers are very close to the brand. The brand communication is very straight so that consumers know the brand as they know a person.
Whatever communication we are putting out should reflect the reality of what they see. Vegan is something Plum has pioneered in India as a brand. It was a simple thought. Being vegan in food is quite difficult, especially given our habits. But when it comes to cosmetics, it is not that difficult technically. Cosmetics and personal care is a good and easy choice to make without compromising on any of the aspects around efficacy, equality, availability etc. That, combined with the brand’s intent to be authentic and promise the right thing and not over-promise, and accepting mistakes – the authenticity of the brand is the larger story that people are liking.
We are a brand that delivers. There were phases where we launched products and that didn’t work. We have accepted it and promised to come back with a better version or said we will not sell it. These factors differentiate Plum from the sea of personal care brands.
In 2022, Plum onboarded Rashmika Mandanna as an investor and brand ambassador. How has it worked?
When it comes to brand ambassadors, we have Mithila Palkar on skin care and Ananya Pandey on fragrances, apart from Rashmika Mandanna. When it comes to celebrity associations, our framework for measuring the success criteria is that the celebrity is real and relatable to the brand. In all three cases in their own way, they embody what we believe consumers are looking for as a brand personality. In our case, the brand ethos is about being real, approachable, and honest and being successful. All these three celebrities embody those criteria and that works very well for the brand because it is not jarring with what the brand wants to say. We are not a hyper-glamorous brand. Even when we are doing make-ups, we do it in a real way. That’s the important fact.
In terms of how the associations have helped, it is very difficult to measure ROI on a month-on-month or quarter-on-quarter basis. What we can do is take a longer time period and see if our clickthrough rates (CTR) or conversion rates have improved. If the brand recognition and retail improved overall. Whatever we have done as a portfolio of activities for brand awareness or recall consideration, we have definitely seen improvement over the last few years. It is important that the brand and celebrities are aligned on what they are talking about.
You have said that Plum is a bridge-to-luxury brand. Who is the TG in both the women’s and men’s categories?
I will break it up into three categories – body, makeup and skin care (clubbed with hair care). We have largely targeted women with most of our offerings. Our user base is 85 pc women and 15 pc men. The journey for skin care typically began a little later in the life of women when they are 25 to 26 years old. With products like serums, cleansers, sunscreens, it is starting at an early age of 14 to 15 years. Geographically, I don’t see any difference between big cities and small towns. We used to appeal to a slightly older audience which is our core audience for skin care which is 30 to 40 years. But many of our newer launch enquires come from younger audiences – people who are seeking functional benefits from skin care and hair care.
When it comes to body care products, it appeals to a slightly younger audience. Our approach with make up is to appeal to our core skin and hair audience, rather than to create a completely new category out there.
By age, it would be 18 to 50 years in women and for men it is 18 to 35 years.
You have a men’s brand called Phy. How has been the performance of the brand since its launch? What are the trends you have observed in men’s personal care?
Phy is comparatively small for us and contributes around 5 pc to the overall revenue. Having said that, in a couple of months, we will see a new approach to brand Phy. At the moment it is work in progress.
In terms of men’s consumer behaviour, the adoption of body care is quite consistent whether it is shower gel, deodorants and fragrances, and body lotions during winter. With skin care it is slightly flirtatious behaviour as it is not big part of expression; hair care and beard care are. There is a small section who are cohorts for skin care, but it is a very negligible number.
How much does Plum, Body Lovin, and Phy categories contribute to the brand’s overall revenue?
Plum is about 70 pc, Body Lovin is between 20 to 25, and as I said Phy is 5 pc.
Sixty percent of the brand’s sales comes from online and 40 pc from offline. Between the market places and our D2C platform, it is 75:25.
Reportedly, non- metros account for a 60-pc upwards of sales for Plum. How do you reach out to the customers in these cities?
Regional language is a very interesting concept. At times, marketers tend to associate economic strata with regional language markets. It is just a language one is comfortable with. For example, if you go to Europe, you are not economically different when you talk in German, or French or Italian. Marketers need to realise that just because it is a non-metro it doesn’t mean that you have to sell LUPs (Low Unit Packs) or lower premium products etc. For us, regional markets have been an area of focus. The best way to reach these markets are through content creation in that language – both long and short form content work very well for regional languages. Mediums used include influencer marketing. The advertisement we put out with Rashmika went out in all the Southern states. Hinglish is a very interesting take; most of our ads are in Hinglish and it has wide popularity. It appeals to most of the population other than the core regional language markets.]
How much of your marketing budgets go towards influencer marketing? What is the other form of advertising you resort to?
The ad budgets vary between 25 to 35 pc of the overall revenue. Sometimes during certain seasons it might go a little higher. When it comes to influencer marketing, when we have a new product launch or any specific message to be sent out, then it amps up. I would say 10 to 20 pc of our overall budget goes to influencer marketing. Performance marketing and sampling are the other forms of advertising for Plum.
Plum’s campaigns like #TalkCleanToMe are focused on educating consumers rather than merely passing the brand message. What were the thought processes behind the same?
In terms of evolution of the market and categories we spoke about, there is a lot more work to be done on that front for marketers. Whether it’s talking about the ingredients of the products or selection of the right products, application of the products, there is education required at multiple levels and it’s never a one-time thing. When it comes to skin care, you aren’t equipped with complete information after seeing one video or a blog post.
Consumers are also evolving as they age, hence there are learning necessities throughout. Therefore, the education and conversation have to be ongoing. Thanks to digital, the ‘how to reach the customer’ part is solved. Digital has democratised content flow which is a great opportunity for brands which genuinely care about the story they want to tell.
What is the percentage of repeat customers for Plum?
It is quite high depending on where you measure it. If you are measuring it on our website, typically more than 45 to 50 pc of our revenue every month comes from repeat customers. If you are running big sales then it will go up to 60 to 65 pc. The measurements are weaker on other channels because we don’t get the data.
Reportedly, in FY22, Plum Goodness had generated revenue of about Rs 250 crore, you have said that you are expecting a revenue of Rs 500 crore in FY23. What are the current numbers?
We are at an upward run rate of Rs.400 cr. I hope we do a run rate of Rs.500 crore once this (festive) season sets in. We need to maintain that run rate. For the full year, I hope we end up close to that number.
Plum has launched exclusive brand outlet stores. It is also present in 1,200 assisted sales stores and over 12,000 unassisted sales stores. Are these the current number of outlets and what are the expansion plans?
The current EBO count is 27. By December 2023, we are hoping to touch 50 EBOs. All these will be company-owned. The assisted sales stores and unassisted store numbers are right.
There is a spurt in D2C skin care brands, most of which claim to be organic. Where do you think the brand and D2C skin care space are headed towards?
It’s a little bit of crystal ball gazing and anybody can get famously wrong on this. The one thing I have noticed about markets in Western countries is, typically the market is a long tail and has multiple brands. If you look at the US market, it is not dominated by any brands. You can definitely find a lot of local brands. Customers love to interact with and adopt newer brands; that curiosity is natural.
That is at a market level. If you see the consumer-level behaviour, I am yet to come across a dressing shelf which does not have 5 or 6 brands. It always has a mix of brands. The consumer behaviour typically is that you like to cohabit all these brands together. There are a lot of opportunities for newer brands. In the long term, it will be a healthy mix of large brands which are currently and historically big and meaningful, younger, smaller brands. That’s what I envisage.
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