About the speaker: Itai Gross
We spoke with Itai Gross, CEO & Founder of Naduvi about the challenges of selling home & living products through marketplaces. Itai has been working within the home & living industry for over 10 years, including co-founding Westwing home & living and spending a number of years helping several brands set up their internationalisation strategy. During a trip to Israel in 2019, Itai gained a lot of new ideas and returned to the Netherlands. Once he got home, however, a few things caught his eye.
The customer journey for home & living products
"Upon returning, I noticed that the marketplace models were gaining popularity, not only within the Netherlands but worldwide. I have always had an interest in vertical business models, especially within the home & living industry. The atmosphere and the people within this industry really appeal to me and it is a relatively flat and transparent model."
"What makes the home & living industry so interesting is that it is so not extremely brand driven. When you ask someone about the brand of their shoe or TV, you immediately get an answer. But try finding someone who knows the brand of the sofa he or she sits on every night.''
"This means that the customer journey within the home & living industry consists of other drivers than brand awareness. This means that there are a huge number of suppliers, all of which are spread out. They all excel at producing goods and building their brand, while being relatively small companies. However, many of them are not so active in selling online. This gave me an idea, why not create a model where I can unleash the potential of all these suppliers. And so Naduvi was born."
The role of Naduvi for suppliers
"Naduvi is a model that is a combination of a marketplace and a retailer. We offer suppliers the possibility to link their webshop to our marketplace through integrators such as EffectConnect, and we also offer content creation, for example taking product photos in our studio in Amsterdam. We have numerous AI-tools available to optimise existing content, such as product descriptions or mood photos. And last, but not least, we offer a full-suite supply chain solution - namely Nasuso, an umbrella name for all logistics solutions including pick-up, cross-dock and returns."
Return policy for Home & Living
"What is the reason that a customer returns a product? It often comes down to two simple reasons: they don't like the product or it is broken. Although there is no accounting for taste, there are many solutions to this problem. It starts with properly informing your customer online, so make sure your product descriptions and photos portray a good and honest image of your product."
"Another reason people return home & living products faster is because they cannot try the product before buying it. At Naduvi, we have the fabrics of products ready at the office and if a customer wants to view the fabric at home, we will send it.''