Having a diversified business strategy is an absolute must to ensure long term success. This is no new wisdom anybody actually should know about. But especially in the recent years and in the e-commerce sector many don´t seem to care about that rule. Especially on Amazon one can find sellers, whose only presence in the web is the Amazon page where they offer cheap-sourced goods to the customers. Even the smallest ripples in the market can throw these vendors into total havoc.

And things actually can be done differently. The Austrian martial arts and performance sports brand Phantom Athletics around CEO Dominique Wenger is proof for this. Back in the days of founding structured as an online-focused company they took the step to sell on Amazon only recently in 2019 as further add-on to their distribution pipelines.

Dominique Wenger, himself an e-commerce pioneer, explains: “It was an absolute essential for me that we always have a diversified distribution channel. This is the guiding principle on which we built our whole business strategy. Besides our online shop we also served different brick and mortar-stores, small and bigger ones, that offer our products as part of their range. Or we had collaborations with different sports teams in the amateur and pro sector. When we entered Amazon in 2019 we brought an extensive customer base with us, people that use solely our products for years while we were able to gain the attention of new customers, as well. By being so diversified we are also pretty stable in times of changing circumstances. We don´t take bruises by Google updates that change the ranking structure and can cause serious problems for other stores. They adjust the Amazon algorithm? No big deal for us.
This is something I´d really like to tell the e-commerce newcomers: Diversify. And then diversify more. Not just in regards to your stores but also the customer groups. Don´t just go into two countries, if possible internationalize. We are a global brand. If one local market is having a low-time we can counter-balance this with other markets until they are back on track again.”

Besides their diversified distribution channels another success factor for the company and Dominique Wenger is the strong connection to its customer base, via different communities like Facebook, Instagram or Youtube.
Phantom Athletics and Dominique Wenger´s strategy prove one thing: the extra effort needed to diversify one´s portfolio is never in vain. On the contrary it can be the factor that decides over loss or success.

Find more information at www.phantom-athletics.com