Caraway CEO Jordan Nathan reveals how the cookware brand leveraged strategic retail partnerships as key customer acquisition channels to accelerate growth beyond DTC. Despite pandemic-induced supply chain challenges and stockouts, Caraway successfully carved out a niche by catering to everyday home cooks. This episode offers a compelling look at evolving from a pure DTC model to an integrated omnichannel strategy for scalable expansion.
It’s been a good year to be a homewares brand. Indeed, cookware startup Caraway was a hot commodity during the pandemic. According to its founder and CEO Jordan Nathan, the company’s popularity created some headaches. Many items were out of stock more often than not in 2020, and supply chain issues continue to persist. But, “we were very fortunate to be on the right side of the equation,” Nathan said on the Modern Retail Podcast. According to Nathan, part of what made Caraway especially successful was its specific niche in the cookware space. Right now, there seem to be endless online brands hawking aesthetically pleasing pans. But, as Nathan described it, most cater to home chefs looking for professional-grade tools. Caraway instead focuses on people looking for good, sturdy equipment -- but not necessarily the restaurant stuff. “We really felt like there was this just massive gap,” he said. As a result, sales have been booming. Now, Caraway is trying to grow even faster. One way it’s been going about that is through retail partnerships. The brand has forged partnerships with a number of retailers and marketplaces, including Crate and Barrel, West Elm and Food52. In Nathan’s eyes, DTC is a great channel to start out -- but it’s imperative to find more eyeballs. When it comes to being available on other retailer’s shelves and websites, he said, “we very much see them as acquisition channels.” What’s more, he said, is that retail collaborations “give us the ability to offer different assortments than what’s on our website.” In a sense, it’s about catching customers’ eyes and then reeling them into the other sales channels.