THE marketplace entrepreneurs behind the mellow platform are diversifying with the launch of a new e-commerce service for partner brands.
James Storie-Pugh and Neil Tunbridge founded Mellow in 2019 – it currently has 70 brands and enjoyed a record month with orders up by 500% in March.
Having amassed substantial experience in cross-border eCommerce logistics and new market entry with their Pivot venture, the duo is curating this expertise and the CBD marketplace experience into the ‘Grow by mellow’ initiative.
They say the new service is designed to take the ‘headache and guesswork away for successful brands keen to enter the increasingly lucrative UK and EU markets’.
Each Market Is Unique
It offers operational and brand management solutions, adaptable to individual needs, with an initial focus on the UK and European markets and on to the emerging markets of Asia/APAC next.
Mr Tunbridge said: “When it comes to CBD, each market within the UK and Europe is unique. One of the beauties of ‘Grow by mellow’ is that brands can draw on our expertise in navigating and leveraging local complexities, cultural behaviours and opportunities.
“We can get a brand properly to market in around a two-month timeframe. This means they can have a fully-functioning site – front and backend – with analytics, warehousing, payment processing, CRM and access to our inhouse marketing services, all up and running, and operated by us.”
Mr Storie-Pugh added: “There’s been demand from the get-go. Our brand partners were increasingly asking us to provide a ‘build and operate’ service to help them enter the UK and wider European markets because they often weren’t set up for this themselves.”
Website Traffic Up By 50%
Five brands have already signed up to the service, with more to follow as the service officially launches this month. The mellow team has had a busy start to 2021 with website traffic up 50%, and revenues up by 450% in March.
The company is also launching a new platform – mellow Talks. With TED talks as its inspiration, the platform is looking to connect with the UK Gen Z consumer – in particular, the 18-25 student population – through a series of live online talks.
Mr Tunbridge continued: “It’s a demographic that has been overlooked in the CBD space, but they are health and canna-curious; more so than other generations and have been early adopters of CBD and alternative health and wellness.”
The first in the series – Alternative Healthcare in Sports – kicks off on April 28 and explores the daily test athletes put their bodies and minds through and how they prepare and recover.
The live talk and Q&A panel includes former England rugby stars, George Kruis, who launched his own CBD brand FourFive CBD, Lofa tatapu, ex-Seattle Seahawks NFL player and owner-founder of ZoneIn CBD, Lindsey Mintz, founder of Arcanum Edge, a US sports-focussed CBD brand. As well as Marcus Harris, ex-NFL player and a representative of Athletes with Care.
In-House CBD Chef
While a second mellow community launch, ‘mellow Eats’, has seen recipe developer and chef, Georgia Levy, join the mellow fold as their in-house chef. CBD-enhanced recipes are now regularly appearing on the brand’s social media channels – mellow Talks – for their growing community to experiment with dedicated emails and videos set to follow.
Mr Tunbridge added: “Our emphasis is to continue to support the growth of the mellow brand with complementary, value add-ons.”
Mellow recently signed a partnership with international trust mark detected which automatically monitors changes to each of its seller’s business credentials, enhancing customer transparency.
Every mellow listing will include the detected icon. Clicking this internationally recognised mark of trust immediately brings up a seller’s real-time business credentials.
Mr Tunbridge added: “Trust is critical for us, as is supplier credibility and traceability. Our seller verification processes are robust, however detected elevates these capabilities even higher by enabling our customers too quickly and conveniently assess a seller’s trustworthiness themselves.”
