Breaking Into The US Market, With CEO Of Colombian Apparel Brand Maaji - Sergio Zuluaga - Episode 276

INTERVIEW WITH SERGIO ZULUAGA

DESCRIPTION

In today’s episode, Kiri speaks with Sergio Zuluaga, CEO of Maaji, a Colombian summer lifestyle brand. They speak about how their brand broke into the US market, Amazon, what worked and what didn’t, and more.

Make sure you tune in to find out more!

Sergio Zuluaga is married to Marcela and father of Emiliana, a 16-month-old girl, and Luciano, a boy who hopefully will arrive in March. He is currently the CEO of Maaji. Sergio has 7 years of experience in the fashion industry, more specifically working in Maaji.

Before that, he worked in finance for 7 years, in departments like risk management and investment banking. He’s very passionate about analytics, technology, sustainability, and how the mix of these elements could transform the industry in the near future.

“Gaining trust with the consumer when you are a foreign brand, is key. Marketplaces help you in that process. The marketplaces usually are the first place where consumers go to discover new brands, or to validate if a brand really exists or is it capable to ship your goods to their location.”

— Sergio Zuluaga

KEY TAKEAWAYS

In today’s episode, Kiri and Sergio discuss:

The Background on Maaji, for those who aren’t familiar with the brand - Maaji is a Colombian summer lifestyle brand that aims to create a positive impact by sharing Maajic. We define Maajic as the fun of the endless summer state of mind, full of surprises and simple details. We love to share the Maajic of our beautiful country and people with the world in each garment we produce and ship and each piece of content we make to be consumed by our growing international audience.
Maaji was co-founded by sisters, Manuela y Amalia Sierra in their early 20’s almost 20 years ago. Since the very beginning of the brand, they targeted the international market as the main opportunity to grow the brand. The core has always been swimwear but in recent years they expanded into other categories aiming to really become a summer lifestyle brand by offering their customers a full range of products to be used from the moment they wake up early in the morning and go out to workout, or just after the beach or the pool, or when they visit a shopping mall or a bar wearing one of our dresses or long pants while enjoy the warm breeze of the summer, until the go to bed wearing our cool and relaxing pajamas.
Maaji started its internationalization process by developing a strong Wholesale business, especially in the US. Since inception, we also developed a local retail business in Colombia where they currently own 9 stores in 5 cities. In 2018 they launched local e-commerce. In 2019 we decided to take it abroad. Since it launched, the online business has multiplied by 7x and today represents 20% of Maaji's total turnover.
Kiri and Sergio discuss the experience of breaking into the US market. What worked well, 3 attitudes about it:
- Be bold. Allocating a lot of budgets, like hiring the US team. As a self-funded company, this was a big bet. Hiring the best team for the job
- Full commitment, The US market was their number one priority, very committed to this path. Focus on learning about this customer
- Consistency. Don’t give up if you don’t see immediate results.
What advice do you have for peers looking to expand into international markets?
- Have a lot to thank for the wholesale model. If he could do it differently, he would have done DTC at the same time. So he could have direct feedback from the end customer at the same time.
  - But, this also had the benefit of allowing them to focus on product development and less on marketing.
  - They will replicate the same approach
What about marketplaces like Amazon?
- Helpful because of the trust in marketplaces. Customers trust that they will get the item they ordered.
- Retail media, looking for more diversification in terms of digital marketing investment, see marketplaces as a good option for new customer acquisition.
2 rapid-fire questions, related to e-commerce:
- What have you changed your mind about? - Multi-channel expansion at the same time when expanding to a new market.
- What are you excited about? - Increasing competition in retail media networks with traditional retailers entering the scene and social media facing challenges in terms of data protection and its impact on performance marketing. The challenge for brands like Maaji is to be able to allocate the marketing budget in such a proper way that we optimize every layer of the funnel. This tie to content development customizes to each media channel and customer target.