Artists need to understand and appreciate the fact that they draw all the income. They are the ones who got the juice, swag, art, creativeness, and everything needed to bring in the money. Getting into a deal with someone who takes 25% or 40% of what you bring to your business is not sensical. You need to build a team of experts capable of handling every core aspect of your business.

In this Interview we met with Kenneth Anand the COO of Roth House, a luxury production and distribution company that offers sample-making, sales and public relations resources spent 2 years as the head of business development for Yeezy, Kanye West’s fashion label. Initially, he started off as a general counsel for apparel on legal capacity, before becoming the head of business development. Before joining Yeezy, Anand had practiced law for 15 years, serving clients in business, fashion, and entertainment industries. During this period, he earned the skills and experience that allowed him to excel at Yeezy.

We discuss how Direct to consumer (DTC) brands like Yeezy are reinventing the way people buy consumer brands. The unique nature of these brands is the ability to cut out the middlemen inherent to the conventional wholesale and retail models. With brands like Yeezy excelling in this space, I sat down with former Yeezy General Counsel, Kenneth Anand to find out what it takes to build a DTC brand.

Going direct to consumer (DTC) is the easiest way for retailers to get to the trillion-dollar status. Looking at the sneakers’ culture and business, the market opportunity lies in the shift of how people consume goods. The last 10-20 years have seen consumers change the way they buy and consume products in a massive way. More than 81% of consumers plan to shop for products on direct to consumer brands over the next five years. This is a clear indication of the disruption that DTC brands are making in the retail sector, while creating loyal customers.

Artists need to understand and appreciate the fact that they draw all the income. They are the ones who got the juice, swag, art, creativeness, and everything needed to bring in the money. Getting into a deal with someone who takes 25% or 40% of what you bring to your business is not sensical. You need to build a team of experts capable of handling every core aspect of your business.

In this Interview we met with Kenneth Anand the COO of Roth House, a luxury production and distribution company that offers sample-making, sales and public relations resources spent 2 years as the head of business development for Yeezy, Kanye West’s fashion label. Initially, he started off as a general counsel for apparel on legal capacity, before becoming the head of business development. Before joining Yeezy, Anand had practiced law for 15 years, serving clients in business, fashion, and entertainment industries. During this period, he earned the skills and experience that allowed him to excel at Yeezy.

We discuss how Direct to consumer (DTC) brands like Yeezy are reinventing the way people buy consumer brands. The unique nature of these brands is the ability to cut out the middlemen inherent to the conventional wholesale and retail models. With brands like Yeezy excelling in this space, I sat down with former Yeezy General Counsel, Kenneth Anand to find out what it takes to build a DTC brand.

Going direct to consumer (DTC) is the easiest way for retailers to get to the trillion-dollar status. Looking at the sneakers’ culture and business, the market opportunity lies in the shift of how people consume goods. The last 10-20 years have seen consumers change the way they buy and consume products in a massive way. More than 81% of consumers plan to shop for products on direct to consumer brands over the next five years. This is a clear indication of the disruption that DTC brands are making in the retail sector, while creating loyal customers.

The millennials have shown significant changes in their choice of products and willing to pay more for sustainable products. In my interview with Shawn Office, the co-founder and COO of Brew City Aqua, I learned about Caviar farming and how their business model is working with Millennials. The company provides a wide range of products from caviar, which it sells to its customers directly.

Caviar is considered the most expensive food in the world, costing you up to $4,500 per pound. In fact, this product has been a luxury item for years that graced the plates of the royalty and dignitaries. However, this seems to be changing as the new breed of companies offering this product are now focusing on the millennial. Like in the case of Brew Aqua City, company’s competitive edge is based on selling caviar fish products to the millennials. It is interesting to see how focus on the sustainable business model is the magic behind the company’s success in selling a luxury product to the millennials community.

In today's interview we learn how brands are selling luxury to the millennial audience more than to the older generations. This group of consumers is gravitating gradually towards sustainable and luxury products. Although competition in sustainable business industry is still low, the demand for their products is becoming more popular among the generations. Since people in this generation have a different set of values compared to older generations, they represent a unique customer base. They are both interested in buying sustainable products and willing to pay more for such products.

The elevated use of internet, social media and technology has removed the hurdles for small brands to make their entry in the retail and consumer market that was predominated by the giant names holding massive market shares and earlier had the ability to suppress the new entrepreneurs to create a mark through various ‘techniques’.

But with customers needs changing the affinity is the strong bond created by the alignment of the customer preference with the product/service/value offered by a brand. And in order to plot these affinities, four bases of customer segmentations are used; namely demographic, behavioral, psychotic and geographic.

To have a thorough understanding of this concept, we spoke with Super Coffee’s Director of E commerce's “Christopher Tiffin” and discussed the process of using a DTC (Direct to Consumer) business model through social networks and independent of retailers and distributors.

Customer subscribes into relationship:

The airline business is likely to go through a transformation to better meet the needs of the customers. For SkyHi, they aim at becoming an amazon prime for customers in the airline industry. Although SkyHi is not an airline company, customers are already seeing it as a lifestyle travel brand. Moving into the future, SkyHi will capitalize by offering more products including lodging and public events to round off the customers’ experience. Currently, moving to places is the major friction. Airbnb and WeWork are already doing a great job in making easy for people to find a place to stay and work. With SkyHi the contributions that SkyHi is making in this space, this entire process will be frictionless.

In my interview with Rama Poola, CEO and Co-founder of SkyHi, I learned how subscription models are used by businesses to provide a consistent customer centric service. During my interview (Download Now), Rama highlighted how SkyHi uses the subscription model to study the needs of their customers. SkyHi is the first company to bring the subscription model into the commercial airline industry. For a subscription fee of $199 per month, SkyHi customers can fly up to 5 one-way flights a month.

The cost of the plane ticket is the biggest inhibitor of customer travel. Understanding this, SkyHi came up with a fixed price model based on the $199 per month subscription fee. Customers choose one of the price points based on their needs: $35 for 1,000 miles, $75 for up to 2,000 miles, and $120 for up to 3,000 miles. Since these prices remain constant, customers can always budget for their monthly travel. It gives them consistency in terms of the prices and services offered.

With the world digitizing so fast, there is also a revolution in sales and marketing strategies, "Digital Influencers" are the new Sales Team. In an interview with “Brian Freeman," the CEO and founder of Heartbeat, I came to understand how the digital influencers are becoming the new sales team. While there are some who think the expression “influencer” is an expired term, the role of influence on B2B buying decisions is irrefutable.

To learn more about how influencer marketing and influencer sales strategies have transformed the digital marketing, Brian’s idea of utilizing digital influencers to get more audience engagement and increased sales is the crucial concept. Before Bumble, Brian started "Wildfire" in 2013, which was the first-ever female-focused dating app. He allowed the influencers to post about his brand on their IG accounts, which resulted in a spike of traffic towards the app! Before getting into influencer-marketing and consumer-brand relationships, Brian categorized influencers into Nano-influencers( having an audience that is mostly organic), Micro-influencers(with 5K to 100K followers) and Macro-influencers( celebrities e.tc) based upon their role on Instagram and the volume of their followers.

In 2014, Facebook ad campaigns were very restricted as they didn’t want to make it a messy ad place. Brain took another way of getting traffic by letting people post on their Instagram about the specific brand. He shared his strategy of “ Marketplace model," which surpassed google ads strategy.