Collaboration for Success: Working with Start-ups
Di Di Chan, Founder of Future Proof Retail, shares her tips and tricks for networking with start-ups.
The sales cycle for new retail technology adoption is notoriously long. It is not uncommon to experience a year or even multi-year timeline in closing and rolling out new retail technology solutions. Without a significant financial buffer, many Business-2-Business (B2B) retail technology companies will end up shutting down before they have enough time to prove the value and capabilities of their technology service fully.
My motto for success has always been, “if we can survive, we will thrive.” Given the limited access to both money and time, a business strategy based on good collaboration can be a crucial resource in overcoming many early-stage hurdles that retail technology start-ups face. This helped me grow my company, FutureProof Retail, into the number one scan and go platform in the market.
Collaboration with other start-ups: Besides building our products and services, most start-ups spend a lot of money and time researching, fundraising, marketing, and working on early-stage business development. That means many of us are spending a lot of money and time doing the same redundant foundational work and not getting the benefit of economies of scale that larger companies enjoy.
Since most start-ups in my industry, fashion technology, are not directly competing with each other we can overcome this disadvantage by collaborating and sharing resources. Specifically, we can benefit by:
- Collaborating on marketing and PR: B2B start-ups do not need to spend an arm and a leg on marketing and PR when just starting. Most of the time, only earned media credit (news coverage we don’t have to pay for) makes a big enough difference to our bottom line. Therefore, it is often not worth spending a big chunk of start-up money on brand building or marketing efforts. We can accomplish a similar impact by working together. For example, New York Fashion Tech Lab Cohort 2020 (FutureProof Retail, Hafta Have, Heuritech, Becoco, ZOOMLOOK, Change of Paradigm, Sozie and Reflaunt) teamed up to launch the Fashion Technology Collective as a free platform that shares the most innovative news in fashion technology. These eight global women-led retail tech companies amplify the voices of all of the best technology leaders in the fashion tech industry and make it accessible for all.
- Collaborating on business development: Getting an excellent early case study is critical for most B2B retail technology start-ups to pass the proof of concept. Ideally, to ensure the best results, we want more than one pilot. Finding early adopter retailers that are willing to test a new solution is time and money-consuming. Retailers are often too busy with their primary business to explore the latest technologies, however promising it may sound. When they are finally ready to try something new, most are open to trying more than one solution at a time to figure out which direction they want to grow. Synergistic start-ups can save a lot of redundant business development effort and cost by collaborating. For example, in the grocery space, we are close partners with Halla (food recommendation) and SIRL (indoor navigation). We have shared resources, pitched each other, conferenced together, and introduced investors to each other too. We are able to form a deep collaboration because in addition to having synergistic solutions we also share similar business philosophies. It makes it easier to work together to find win-win opportunities.
Retail technology needs start-ups to bring efficient and practical innovations to an established industry — and to do that successfully, start-ups need to partner their way into the market.
Di Di Chan is a global entrepreneur that’s passionate about education, technology, and sustainability. Chan is Founder and President of FutureProof Retail, a company seeking to bring the convenience of online shopping into your stores with mobile checkout and more. Chan’s mission is to maximize human potential by removing friction in time, aligning profit with value, and paying it forward. Chan has a Bachelor of Arts in Global Studies from UCLA and a Masters in Economics from New York University.
