Cooking Up DTC Success with Cuisinart
Cuisinart’s shift to DTC and how it maintained good relationships with retail partners in the process
Most people probably know Cuisinart because of the company’s kitchen appliances like the food processor, air fryer, or coffee maker. Cuisinart’s products are everywhere — in kitchens around the world, in retail stores, and yes, online. In the last year or so, Cuisinart has put a much greater emphasis on the DTC part of the business — walking the tightrope of being there for retail partners, while still making sure that there is enough inventory to meet the demand coming from online.
Helping lead the charge is Mary Rodgers, the Director of Marketing Communications for Cuisinart, who saw the tides turning toward ecommerce and set sail in that direction.
“We keep our eye very closely on trends,” Rodgers said. “And when I get up in the morning, I’m reading all kinds of articles and information and just everything changes on a dime now. So you have to be on top of it all the time.”
In 2020 especially, consumers were relying on companies to have products available online, and retailers had to figure out a way to keep up with the demand. For Cuisinart, that meant having a dual strategy of keeping the internal DTC channel running and stocked up while also ensuring that retail partners had enough inventory to deliver what they needed to consumers.
“We started to hear things from our retailers, like they were looking for goods that they maybe weren’t looking for before, like bread makers, waffle makers, more coffee makers, coffee grinders because people during the time when lots of places were closed, they still wanted a great cup of coffee, and they had to make it for themselves,” Rodgers explained. “So what happened for us was, and I’m really very proud of our team on this because it took a lot more effort because in the past we didn’t have to worry about like, ‘We’re out of inventory of this, we’re out of inventory that. We sold out every last ice cream maker we had.’ In the past, we always knew we had stock and buffer stock and we never had to drill down. If we knew something was out of stock, it wasn’t like 10 or 12 items, might be one-offs or something. So we ended up going from an annual planning phase to quarterly, to monthly, to weekly, to daily. And we spent a lot more time and effort on operational issues, just moving inventory to our D2C business… then also just making sure that we had inventory. We at least had certain amount of retailers that had inventory of an item. And with every marketing program we did, we did that. So it took a lot of juggling. We had to push things out. We had to keep our eye on incoming inventory when it was going to be available, when retailers were going to have it. And so it became very tactical.”
Rodgers isn’t always focused solely on being tactical, though. In fact, when it comes to her marketing and influencer strategies, she has a very clear distinction between being strategic and being tactical, and she thinks the former is the way to go.
“I know for a fact that people probably go on our channel and see who we’re working with and use us as a free game for not having to find their own influencers for all I know, and we don’t do that,” Rodgers said, “We don’t do that at all. I would not encourage that. That’s kind of the lazy man’s way out… to me, that’s tactical because you’re assuming whatever I’m doing is going to work for you. And your brand’s, different brand. Your consumers have different needs and wants. That’s what you need to focus on.”
By staying focused on consumer and retailer needs, Cuisinart has been able to ride the waves of the shifting industry. To learn more about how Rodgers is guiding the ship, tune into Up Next in Commerce.
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