Born at the start of the pandemic, The Root Brands’ social sharing business model flourished and keeps on growing.
Today’s shoppers are relying on social networks to get information and recommendations on products and services they consider purchasing. Retail sales generated through social commerce are projected to grow to nearly $80 billion in the US and more than $2 trillion globally by 2025.
“Social commerce is more than just a new shopping experience. It represents a paradigm shift in consumer interaction with brands: where, when, and how they shop,” according to the McKinsey report “Social Commerce: The Future of How Consumers Interact With Brands.”
With more than 65% of the world’s population online and 61% of all people on earth using social media, that future is now. Shoppers increasingly rely on what their friends, family, and strangers are saying online when deciding to make a purchase.
Social commerce is the most immediate, accessible, and transparent way for companies to showcase who they are and what they have to offer. Just prior to the pandemic, our company, The Root Brands, embarked on a bold strategy to leverage this wave — not by hiring high-profile influencers, but by rewarding our customers for being ambassadors of our brand. It quickly proved to be a winning strategy.
Since launching on Feb. 2, 2020, we’ve experienced explosive growth of 300% and 400%, year over year. Within a month of launching, we were shipping our wellness products to 27 countries. Within 36 months, we’ve grown to 70 countries and aim to hit $100m in annual revenue this year. We’ve achieved a customer base of 200,000 people in three years and have an 88% return customer purchase rate.
Returning customers, not products
Our stickiness rate is off the charts. People don’t return our products, not only because they’re amazing but also because they’re buying them via referrals. Their neighbor uses our product and gets results, which encourages them to learn about it and try it themselves. The community-first approach is the key way we’ve achieved our growth results.
The social selling strategy we developed tracks and rewards the value of sharing for members based on influence and audience. It set us up to achieve amazing growth, even as we launched at the very start of the pandemic.
It took two decades to come up with a concept of a business model, thinking about what would work and then applying it in one of the most evolving business periods we’ve ever seen — and then seeing it absolutely explode.
Rewarding Connections
It’s a simple concept based on a simple idea: people shop online, more importantly, through social media, and through this, we are connected. If you produce amazing products and get amazing outcomes, your customers are going to do something that we humans do naturally: They’re going to talk about it and share it with their friends.
We decided as a business that our greatest asset was our community — our customers. So we decided to invest in them. Instead of spending money on advertising, we let our ambassadors do what they do and reward them for it.
Think about this: If you watch a show on Netflix and you love it and tell your friends about it, you are creating value for Netflix — but they pay you zero for that service. But our social sharing model rewards people for the value their normal behavior creates.
Our ambassadors are just people who like our products and share them with their friends. We don’t charge anybody to do that. We just reward them for it. But we’ve had people making such life-changing incomes that they’ve actually had to adjust their way of thinking because they started earning more money than they believed they were worth, which is really a cool adjustment to have to make in life.
The goal over time is to force companies to behave like us. We’re already socially connected. So, the value proposition for a company is just creating a great service and taking care of the people that you value.
Each of us has great value. When you create value for a company, the company should invest in you.
BIO: Clayton Thomas is co-founder of ROOT Wellness, a social sharing community focused on foundations of wellness; host of The Green Edition health and wellness show; and founder of The ROOT Brands®. His 25 years of health and wellness experience includes developing business models of analytical testing in medical practices to improve the quality of care by identifying risks of the big three diseases: diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and obesity. The ROOT Brands produces products that are non-GMO, organic, vegan, gluten-free, and safe for everyone, including children and professional athletes, to help people detoxify, strengthen the gut, and focus the mind. Learn more at therootbrands.com/product.
By Clayton Thomas
