eCommerce success: the story of laagam (2)

In the first part about this Spanish fashion brand we got an overview of how it had been growing, in this one we are going to focus on the details that have made it a reference of entrepreneurship and innovation in eCommerce.

Video streaming, influencer marketing, on-demand sales, podcasting... a mix that works wonders and that, with the corresponding adjustments, you may be able to use on your online store. Let's continue with the analysis.

One of the most striking things about laagam is the transparency of its strategic decisions, and this is particularly important in its recent journey. Diego Arroyo himself tells on his Twitter profile how he arrived at this business model.

As you know, fashion has been one of the hardest hit by the coronavirus pandemic. In the first months, laagam continued to work relatively normally, but summer came and sales did not answer as expected.

Added to this, the company's investors saw that it was strategically appropriate to stop investing in marketing, anticipating that the next few months were going to be tough.

This is how they found themselves limited, but eager to continue growing. The solution was to reinvent the business model using a different logic: to sell only those products that were "placed" in pre-sales, without stock problems or wrong forecasts that could condition the company. A sales model that seemed to guarantee success more than any other strategy.

What does this sales model bring to the table? We have already said that it provides a breathing space for investment because it gives the peace of mind of "playing it safe"; but there is much more at a strategic level.

Among other things, what stands out the most is that they join the ephemeral trend that has been so important in digital strategy in recent years. Their products are launched for a limited time. They can only be purchased for one week.

Conceptually, this company is in a segment that is a step or two above the fast-fashion brands, those that have a satisfactory design but very poor quality.

Laagam's products use textiles of a much higher quality than those of these chains, and their manufacture, carried out in local workshops in Catalonia and Portugal, has nothing to do with the level offered by the large factories in Asia with which these competitors work.

This quality, together with the fact of having truly exclusive designs with limited production and distribution, raises the perception of the brand.

Let's review its digital assets:

We have just discussed it, but it deserves its own chapter. It has been a long time since people stopped seeing this network as a "YouTube for gamers". The relevance that some of these streamers have been gaining has led to open content far beyond what were initially gameplay of the various fashionable games.

Little by little, it has been transformed into a platform that works more as an alternative media, and that is also perfect for transmitting a lifestyle.

Maybe the logical evolution for laagam would have been to transfer the podcast experience to their Twitch channel in a straightforward way: swap audio for audio + video. But no, they wanted to go further.

In addition to content that could be considered "inherited" from the podcast, their weekly Drops stand out. These are videos of varying length -although they usually exceed one hour- in which news of that period are shown live.