Cogsy's Martina Vancena Talks DTC Operational Challenges

Dive deep into the problems (and their solutions) that we’ve seen surface in hundreds of conversations with DTC brands.

Having the right kind of conversations with your market can make or break your business. And in our case, these conversations with DTC brands are crucial to building a product that makes operators’ lives easier.

In this episode, you’ll find out what the industry’s common struggles, challenges, and trends are, including:

Top 3 inventory challenges for DTC brands these days
How brands can identify operational gaps
How to protect your operations in a subscription-based model

Tune in on: Apple | Google | Spotify

““What you did last year, is not what you intend to do this year. And it [historical data] does not give you the full picture to simply feed in data and expect that output to be completely and a hundred percent accurate. You can then log into our planning features and really get granular on what is occurring in your business, what's planned coming up, and what growth targets you're hoping to reach.”
Martina Vancena, head of growth at Cogsy

Meet Martina Vancena

Martina Vancena, Cogsy’s head of growth, spends a lot of time interacting with DTC brands and learning from them.

In her conversations, she has explored the most common patterns, DTC trends, and challenges DTC brands face. This allows her to provide invaluable insight into how Cogsy can better serve clients and build a better product.

Before joining Cogsy, Martina worked in ecommerce partnerships since 2018. During this year, she established several partnerships at Loop. In 2020, she was already leading the partnerships team at Octane AI, a marketing platform for Shopify stores.

Connect with Martina on: LinkedIn | Twitter

About Cogsy

Cogsy is the demand planning tool offering DTC retailers predictable inventory management in an unpredictable world.

With it, get a godlike view of your stock levels, restock needs, incoming purchase orders, and upcoming marketing events. All in one place. Plus, forecast demand with pinpoint accuracy (up to 12 months out) so you can stock up accordingly.

You can even run “what-if” scenarios to identify your best-case, worst-case, and most profitable inventory strategies. That way, you avoid expensive mistakes (like stockouts and excess) that keep you from reaching your revenue goals.

Learn more about Cogsy: Try it free l LinkedIn

The Checkout episode 37 unpacks:

In today’s episode, Martina shares some of the most common trends and challenges DTC brands face. Here are the highlights:

[2:38]

The most common challenges among DTC brands

The #1 inventory challenge that DTC brands are facing right now
What Cogsy is doing to help brands be more proactive

[7:50]

Biggest operational decisions for DTC brands

Operators ask themselves: “How do I ensure that we are growing, that we’re trending up into the right, but also ensuring that we aren’t overstocked?”

[11:48]

What brands love about Cogsy

Ability to influence the accuracy of Cogsy’s forecasts
“Our [Cogsy’s] growth plan and marketing events features really get people fired up.”
How Cogsy’s new functionality to merge SKUs will help you create more accurate forecasts and keep data cleaner

[15:20]

Coming soon from Cogsy

Multi-location support to give brands more visibility over inventory by location

[20:00]

What do brands think about moving to a “subscription-based” model

“I think that subscriptions make a lot of sense. However, when it comes to the operational side, products that are on subscription are always sort of a risk. There’s always a risk of them [customers] canceling if the brand can’t fulfill that order if they’re out of stock.”
Why reserving safety stock for subscription-based customers is crucial
How Cogsy helps subscription businesses protect their operations

[23:00]

The importance of identifying operational gaps in your brand

“Prioritizing the biggest operational gap, telling us why that is so important to you and why that affects your business so heavily. That is something that we can act on immediately.”
Cogsy’s growth team and product team are currently optimizing for learning from brands in order to optimize for impact