It's one among the 7 brands under us at Evenflow - focussed on the lawn & garden category. 🏡
We acquired the brand in early 2022, and it went through a disastrous 18 months. We hired multiple people to run the brand, and none of them could get a strong hold on it - 6 people came in & left within 2-3 months, and the brand continued to suffer (grossly negative & pathetic over inventory situation). It reached a point in November, 2023 that no one from our team wanted to touch the brand - in their minds, running Cinagro = being fired in 2-3 months.
And looking at the s, investors suggested we should shelve the brand. They were right from their vantage point.
So I took on the challenge - at the end, buck stops with me. Could I solve it and turn it around? 🤔
Within the 1st month, I slashed the # of SKUs from 248 to 82, did the pricing from scratch, overhauled the catalogue + content and fixed the majority of the hygiene. I was a menace to Abhishek, Soumya and many others that I worked closely with. 😈
20 months forward, today, it's the largest brand in our portfolio, with double digit bestsellers with over 150 SKUs on Amazon, Flipkart, Instamart, Zepto and soon Blinkit. More importantly, everyone internally loves working on the brand and that fear from November, 2023 has dissipated. 💯
My partner-in-crime on this have been Shoba, Bhawna, Nitin, GeetaKrishna & Mahesh. Catalogue, content, ops, sourcing & perf in that order. 🍀
And Abhishek, Durga, Atul, & SIDDHARTH at Etrade - our retail partners. They have been supportive from Day 1 - we have our disagreements often, but at the end, we know we are working towards the same goal. 🤝
And Amol Tambe at Amazon - this is a new relationship, that's beginning to grow rapidly. 😄
And Soumya - he's a Nadal fan, I'm Federer. At times there's friction, but there's always respect for each other. 🏅
PS - If you made it this far, Cinagro spelled backwards is Organic! Now go buy yourself a nice Cinagro planter from your platform of choice. 🪴 🪴 🪴
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