Quidsi’s Vine.com Brings the Farmer’s Market to the Upscale Millenial

I don’t know about you, but I don’t particularly enjoy walking home from the store with a 12-pack of toilet paper and have everyone know that my commode is missing a critical accessory. Which may be why like-minded folks are simply buying TP online and having it delivered to their door. A relatively simple stroke of genius: big bulky items or ones too intimate to say in polite company are the perfect candidate for an online convenience brand.

Which is why the behemoth known as drugstore.com is making a killing in all things domestic and beauty, with a family of branded sites that each addresses those FMCG’s – “fast moving consumer goods.” Founded in 1998, Drugstore (was purchased by Walgreens) now features five sites including Beauty.com, Visiondirect.com, Skinstore.com, and of course, Walgreens.com. It is undeniably powerful in the world of ecommerce, and the added retail marketing power of Walgreens doesn’t hurt.

Hot on their heels though is Quidsi.com, which began in 2005 as Diapers.com and now includes Soap.com, Wag.com (pets), Yoyo.com (toys), Casa.com (you guessed it), Afterschool.com (sports gear), and Bookworm.com.  Quidsi was purchased by Amazon in 2011. Do you see a pattern here?

Quidsi’s strategy however, is more deeply invested in the lifestyle of the customer, with sites that speak to a more upscale and sophisticated audience than Drugstore.com and with the added incentives of free shipping (for orders of $49 or more) and “no-hassle” refunds.

Last fall Quidsi stepped up their strategy and added Vine.com to its roster, a site which promotes itself as “an online shopping destination offering the finest selection of natural, organic, and sustainable goods, delivered fast and free.”

“We had been seeing green purchasing behavior on our other sister sites,” says Christine Desvaux, Vine’s associate director of marketing. “We felt we were at the point where we could offer our customers a site where all of these products were all in one place.”

At top, a recent mailer from Vine.com that drew inspiration from the Farmer’s Market experience — one which is increasingly influential to Vine’s target customer. 

A recent marketing campaign underscores this point, with a mailer that proclaims, “There’s the Farmer’s Market, for everything else there’s Vine.com.”

“We sort of lifted that concept after doing a sponsorship with Joanna Goddard’s Cup of Jo blog [www.joannagoddard.blogspot.com],” says Desvaux. “She described Vine as, ‘you know that really good feeling you have when you go to a farmers market, where you can trust everything?  That’s how I feel with vine.com.’ Well we thought that was a really good description of what we want people to feel. It allows us to connect via this really beautiful, tactile experience. As an online retailer, that’s hard to duplicate on a site.”

Unlike Drugstore.com, which has nothing similar to Vine.com under its umbrella, Vine encourages browsing and discovery, with categories not unlike the experience of shopping at Whole Foods. That similarity is not coincidental – it’s part of that “tactile experience.”

“With Whole Foods brick and mortar concept, it’s all about taking consumable goods and offering them in a convenient, beautiful place to shop. With Vine, we’re essentially emulating that experience online,” says Desvaux.

Quidsi’s target customer is sharply defined, and for good reason. “I think the idea is that for the busy, urban, millennial kind of household, who is looking to shop in this vein, on her terms, we offer that option,” says Desvaux.

Whole Foods was an inspiration for the design of Vine.com’s interface. “We’re essentially emulating that experience online, “says Desvaux.

Indeed, millenials have come to define modern shopping behavior, a demographic that grazes on multiple platforms and gets their information from a broad range of sources – not least of which is their friends.

Vine’s platform feels as authentic as a Whole Foods, or Elephant Pharm, which in its earlier bricks-and-mortar incarnation, attracted a loyal following. “We really strove to create a site that kept people moving, and took time to design something that resonated with this particular consumer,” says senior designer, James Reeves. “The challenge is always to create a dynamic experience where the customer feels it’s a fun place to shop.”

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