Bummer Witnessed 3x Growth in 6 Months & 25% Repeat Purchases with ParcelPanel

Business Profile

Bummer is a DTC innerwear brand in India that aims to break the monotony of the traditional underwear market by offering comfy and fun undies with trendy prints and eye-catching colors to over 200 million millennials across the country.

Brand: Bummer

Industry: Apparel

Platform: Shopify Plus

Country: USA

Year Founded: 2020

Employees: 51 – 100

Usage: Since December 2021

Carriers: 10+

Integration: N/A

Based on over 1 year’s development, the new Indian innerwear brand, Bummer was grappling with the high customer acquisition costs like other DTC businesses online. Before its appearance on Shark Tank India, the brand was lesser-known. Still, clear about the huge potential of the world’s biggest millennial market as well as the huge challenge, Sulay Lavsi, Bummer founder, strived to win young people’s hearts by offering comfy and trendy undies that could make their day and put customer retention high on the agenda. 

The challenge: Rising customer acquisition costs

Implementing a “Digital First” strategy, Bummer satisfies millennial internet users’ needs for doorstep delivery of comfortable & fashionable undies. Since the majority of India’s 900 million internet users will be millennials by 2025, at the end of 2021, the brand was in dire need of increasing brand awareness among millennials in the coming 3 years while sparing no efforts to develop a customer retention strategy to stay afloat.

“Our team held meetings several days in a row to brainstorm, in an attempt to identify the key touchpoints that customer retention strategy works the best. At first, we wanted to keep customers coming back as often as possible. After heated discussions, we found that a large number of our shoppers choose COD as the payment method, keeping them informed of the delivery progress is essential. With that in mind, we embarked on the search and testing of different order tracking solutions.”

Mahesh Tabiyad, Head of Operations

In search of the best order tracking solution

Mr. Lavsi was going to pitch his business ideas about Bummer to convince investors on Shark Tank India on December 23, 2021. He was extremely anxious as time was running out. To him, a well-rounded customer retention strategy was an indispensable part of utmost importance, and he couldn’t afford to wait. Therefore, he commanded the operations team to put forward the must-haves in the desired order tracking solution, start testing, and make the final decision in a week. 

Based on several rounds of discussions, Bummer’s operations team concluded that the perfect order tracking solution in their dream must meet the following criteria:

• Real-Time Tracking Across Indian Couriers: The order tracking app must work well with all popular Indian couriers such as Delhivery and Bluedart to provide real-time updates while supporting tracking lesser-known couriers accurately.
• Order Information Synchronization: Because many of Bummer’s orders come with tags, such as “COD” and “Exchange,” apart from order tracking automation, Bummer’s team also wanted to centralize order management.
• Product Recommendations: The ideal order tracking app must showcase products catering to the interests of different individuals as they come back for shipment updates to assist decision-making and boost repeat purchases. 
• Estimated delivery time: The solution should also automatically update customers in time so they can get ready for the doorstep delivery to avoid failed attempts and returns to the origin. 

Overseen by the boss, Bummer’s team worked against the clock – they installed all available Shopify order tracking apps, tried one by one, and made comparisons in different aspects.

The solution: Enhanced tracking & customer engagement with ParcelPanel

No sooner than ParcelPanel was installed on December 18, 2021, Bummer’s team reached out to ParcelPanel customer service and provided some tracking numbers that other solutions did not track accurately to see if ParcelPanel could help. Special courier matching rules were defined by our technical team in a few minutes. 

Two days later, having made up their minds after a series of solution comparisons, the team switched to the ParcelPanel’s Professional plan to automate tracking for new orders. With the Professional plan, Bummer enabled more features, providing customers with product recommendations relevant to their interests and specific estimated delivery time.

“We were all impressed by ParcelPanel’s ease of use, order tracking accuracy, and responsive customer support. Upon onboarding, we contacted customer service, and the technical team immediately finished the courier matching rules setup for more accuracy. With increased exposure and more sales, we upgraded to Shopify Plus one month later. To our surprise, ParcelPanel worked seamlessly with Shopify Plus, so it remains the second-to-none choice for our business.”

Mahesh Tabiyad, Head of Operations

The results: 3x growth in 6 months & 25% repeat purchases

The surefire way to success is by combining brilliant business ideas and an effective customer retention strategy, as is evidenced by Bummer’s successful fund-raising on Shark Tank India. After the TV show, with the implementation of their customer retention strategy, the visionary decision-makers at Bummer have witnessed 3x business growth in 6 months and nearly 25% revenue made up of repeat purchases (Apparel Resources). Overall, Bummer has grown nearly 12 times since its establishment, registering an astounding revenue of 11 crore in fiscal year 2023. Moreover, it has a large following on Instagram – 67.7K, and its products are available across a wide range of marketplaces, including Amazon.in, Myntra, and Flipkart.

Highlights of Bummer’s achievements:

• 62% Return Visits to Tracking Page: Any Bummer’s customers can track the real-time delivery progress of orders and the estimated delivery date without external help. The order tracking page satisfies most people’s needs for shipment visibility.
• 3x Growth in 6 Months: Bummer has developed a well-rounded customer retention strategy. ParcelPanel plays a pivotal role in post-purchase – bringing paying customers back and impressing them with a top-notch experience. Assisted with word-of-mouth marketing, Bummer’s sales increased tremendously in merely half a year.
• 25% Repeat Purchases: Influenced by AI-powered product recommendations on the branded tracking page, customers easily find Bummer undies to their liking. It turns out that repeat purchases take up nearly 1/4 of the total sales.

Up till now, Bummer has helped cover “1L+ bums” of Indian millennials with soft, comfy, and trendy undies made of the most sustainable fabric ever. These undies are designed to bring comfort to everyone and delight them in the terrible weather in India. 

The future: Further improve returns experience in post-purchase

Shreya Sharma, customer experience manager at Bummer, is working on improving the returns & exchanges experience. No longer after the ParcelPanel Returns app was launched, she communicated with the product manager of the ParcelPanel Returns app to suggest necessary features for returns processing, hoping to be an early adopter of ParcelPanel Returns in the future and transform returns from a cost center into a profit center.