The Verticale
How The Verticale Curates Conscious Brands with Convictional
“Some of our vendors are receiving their first orders in as little as 3 days.”
Overview
About
The Verticale
5
Categories Launched
100+
Brands Onboarded
2
Days to List a New Brand
The Verticale is a conscious commerce platform addressing a cultural shift in social norms - and curating around the values that consumers care about today. Their unique vetting process evaluates brands based on their stories and values. They present this information at the center of their shopping experience. The Verticale is looking to change the way that people shop and allow customers to vote with their dollars and 'Shop What They Stand For'.
The Goal
Launch a B2C Marketplace in 2.5 Months
CEO Jaclyn Grauman had a vision of turning The Verticale into an online store. Jaclyn originally started The Verticale as an editorial and review site for direct-to-consumer (DTC) and digitally native vertical brands (DNVB) brands.
In 2020, co-founder and COO Michelle Silverstein came onboard and the pair sought to transform The Verticale into a curated, values-based marketplace.
The Challenge
Onboard Brands Fast Without Increasing Headcount
With Michelle’s background in operations and product management, she knew that the heaviest lift would be in getting all the products and brands onboarded to their Shopify site. It was also the step that had the most moving parts, and thus, the most room for error.
Michelle emphasizes, “Every headcount weighs in on our P&L. If we can minimize the amount of hourly workers or time that we have, it allows us to put more effort into the technology, into onboarding new brands and growing the business.” To overcome the six month retail average time for onboarding new vendors, they needed to automate as much as possible.
“Every headcount weighs in on our P&L. If we can minimize the amount of hourly workers or time that we have, it allows us to put more effort into the technology, into onboarding new brands, and growing the business.”
The Solution
A B2C Marketplace, Built on Convictional
The co-founders knew how crucial it was to create a supplier experience that was as seamless as their customer experience. They chose Convictional to create a supplier enablement experience that automated product onboarding, order management, billing and so much more.
Instead of having to do the bulk of the onboarding work themselves, Convictional automated the onboarding process for new suppliers even when they were built on different ecommerce platforms. All their team had to do was take care of any outlier issues. Michelle recalls, “We actually had a brand onboard in 20 minutes once.”
“All their team had to do was take care of any outlier issues.”
The Results
Conscious Curation at Scale
When Michelle started reaching out and talking to brands for a beta of the marketplace, she found that it was about a 3-week sales process to get their buy-in about being on the site. Once the brand signed the contract, she would send them the Convictional onboarding link and they would be in the system within a few days.
These days, a brand can list on The Verticale as quickly as 2 days after they sign their contract. As a result of their partnership with Convictional, The Verticale can now trade seamlessly with as many brands and SKUs as they can curate, use limited resources to acquire customers and scale their dropship and marketplace models efficiently.
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