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~ Ronan Bardet ~

COLUMN

THE NATURAL EVOLUTION OF DNVBS TO ONVBS

020 was definitely the year of the e-commerce revolution, its
rise has been incredible and badly needed in markets like the
2Spanish one where consumers were still, let’s say, getting used
to buying online.

Back in 2010, the DNVBs (Digital Natives Vertical But, what’s an
Brands) created a new trend of business model that Omnichannel
caught my eye from the very first moment, and Native Digital Brand?
year by year we have seen its amazing evolution. I
followed this phenomenon closely, looking at how Still native, still digital, still a brand focused on storytelling
D2C online brands like bonobos.com, casper.com, but with an omnichannel touch to escape advertising
or dollarshaveclub.com were disrupting the retail dependence.
industry.
In the end, it’s nothing new, but it’s a fresh new look to a
Also, since 2016, I have been particularly involved as successful business model, reducing it’s bigger pain point.
a mentor/investor of stunning online brands such as ONVBs still face advertising costs but have a wider range of
mamoriginals.com and flipandflip.com. opportunities to reach their customers.

This phenomenon has scaled to a level to which some people The key to their success is the balance between sectors. Every
aren’t even aware that a brand they know and trust is actually channel has the back of the other ones when hard times
a DNVB. It’s to the point that the Love Index report of come. The moment we are living in right now is a great
Accenture revealed that four of the top five most loved brands example of difficulties to overcome. This balance is not easy to
were actually DNVBs. achieve, though.

As always, the first brands that arrived in the market got When you want a real omnichannel business, you must be
the big slice of the cake faster than the ones that arrived able to not only collect and analyze data from your website,
later on. This model, based on strong storytelling, is quite but it is utterly necessary to get data from all your other
dependent on online acquisition, and its margins are affected channels. And to get it in real-time.
significantly by increasing costs in advertising, both on
Google and Facebook. There are great solutions out there to manage your data, and
if you really want to succeed with your ONVB, choosing the
Capturing the audience’s attention is pretty hard with the perfect platform for your business will make all the difference.
huge amount of advertising we see every day. Nowadays, the ••
cost of advertising can easily be 50% of the product price. For
a newborn DNVB, it’s an almost impossible cost to take on.

As the costs increased and consumers evolved, this issue RONAN BARDET
became a critical pain point for all digital native vertical Founder of EGI Group & Club eCommerce; I have been named one of the Top
brands. It became a weakness to be faced. 10 Spanish eCommerce Influencers with more than 17 years of experience in
the Digital Commerce industry.
Some DNVBs faced it by opening physical stores to reach
new customers without depending so much on social I am an expert in SaaS Retail Tech & eCommerce Tech Startup acceleration
networks. New channels, new challenges. (sales + marketing + capital). My passion for the industry has led me to
launch and grow many Digital Commerce tech startups in Spain and create a
In the last few years, we have seen a new variation in the specific acceleration program for them. As an eCommerce expert, I have also
DNVB model called ONVB. mentored many Spanish DNVBs / D2C Brands.

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