Applying design thinking to digital marketing to grow your customer base
Jacob Rosenberg, a Stanford in Management Science & Engineering, wasn’t a Launchpad student, but still benefited from the office hours of instructors Perry Klebahn and Jeremy Utley. Through this engagement, Jacob learned how to launch a business venture, develop robust prototypes, and reach key customers and investors. Jacob reflects on his learnings which came in handy when the pandemic started.
The result is Tajima Direct, a direct to consumer lens replacement company. Below is Jacob’s first-hand account about how we went from a Stanford engineering student to digital market to:
- Grow the customer base over 300% in the last three months.
- Reduced Customer Acquisition Cost by 250% in the last three months.
- Increase revenue 600% up in June / July from March / April
- Doubled orders month over month since March
Authored by Jacob Rosenberg:
I had the idea for Tajima Direct the summer of 2018 in between my Sophomore and Junior year — using my dad’s polarized lens technology for a direct-to-consumer polarized lens replacement company. I spent the summer creating a business outline and came back to school looking to get guidance / mentorship from professors and resources at Stanford to figure out how to start and build the company.
Learning from Launchpad
Being busy with school and being part of the Stanford Sailing team, the progress was slow until I went to the d.school for Perry Klebahn and Jeremy Utley’s (d.school professors) Launchpad office hours in early February of 2019. We discussed the idea, which they liked, and they told me to throw out the business plan and start taking action using the d.school design principles of quick experiments and iteration.
That was a pivotal moment for me in creating Tajima Direct. They told me to come back the following week with a simple SquareSpace website that detailed the Pain Point I was solving and our Key Feature. So, I did and that is when our website/online store (the same SquareSpace site we still are using to date) was created. I continued to come back week over week to meet with them, discuss the week’s progress, and make a plan for the following week.
Early on was a lot of testing product/market fit and understanding who the target user was and what their pain point was that we solved. Not only did they help me to roadmap and strategize to find product / market fit, but they also put me in touch with resources I would have never had access to such as a Facebook Ads expert to run experiments that way.
Ventures into Paid Ads
By the end of the academic year (May 2019), our initial SquareSpace website was becoming more robust (able to take payments as an e-commerce store) and Jeremy wanted to try our service. Right there, he became the first real order we took in from our website. I left for the summer of 2019 ready to set everything up to launch that summer. I kept in communication with them over the summer whenever I needed help or had any questions. They were always there, happy to help me.
I came back for my senior year in the fall of 2019 with a soft-launched business that was up and running and making sales. Like I had been in the Spring of 2019, I kept going to Perry and Jeremy’s weekly office hours in the d.school. They were happy with the progress I was making and getting more invested into the business and seeing the potential.
The conversations shifted from product / market fit to focusing on Customer Acquisition Cost of different channels (ranging from selling in person to finding influencers in my target market to FB / Google Advertising) and Customer Lifetime Value (focusing on how to bolster word of mouth referral strategies and repeat customers). It was perfect to have the combination of Perry and Jeremy because Perry brought experience and wisdom through his background building Atlas Snowshoe Co. and Patagonia while Jeremy brought more creativity in designing different specific ideas for referrals.
The Power of the Social Network
It was their insights, experience, and resources that continued to be invaluable to me. For example, I needed help understanding how to better use and optimize the Google Ad interface and they immediately put me in contact with an old friend they knew who worked at Google for several years and was then working for Facebook. They made the introduction, and I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to meet over lunch with him at the Facebook headquarters not too far from Stanford, which proved to be incredibly helpful. I continued to meet with them weekly until the pandemic hit and we were all sent home from school.
Luckily for me, I had finished my degree in the winter and was able to go 100% full focus on Tajima Direct during the Spring. At that point, I was worried that my relationship might fade with Perry and Jeremy as I was no longer technically an enrolled Stanford student and everything had turned virtual.
However, my relationship with them not only continued, but became stronger, as I continued to see them in their weekly office hours, but this time over Zoom. We have started to shift conversation towards scaling, cash flows, and PR recently now that we are seeing more and more sales as our Customer Acquisition Costs are getting low enough to scale.
Most recently, they have put me in contact with an awesome PR resource and we have continued to meet over Zoom even as the school year has officially ended. I truly don’t know where this business would be without all of their help and I see them continuing to be a resource and mentor for the future even as I leave Stanford.
Have questions about Tajima Direct? Contact Jacob at Jacob@Tajima-Direct.com.
Are you a Stanford student interested in launching your own business? Learn more about Launchpad.
Are you a professional that wants to learn the same customer focused skillsets as Jacob? Check out the d.school Executive Education offerings.
