Success Stories
We’ve turned scores of brands into stunning online successes. Here are their stories.
CASE STUDY
Unilever
Unilever and Witz: A Nimble and Innovative Partnership
Partner Since: 2017
Partner Since
Website
2017
145
200%
Portfolio Increase in 2023
6%
Introduction
Even with household-brand names such as TRESemmé, SheaMoisture, Dove, Vaseline, Degree, and Love Beauty Planet, Unilever, a global billion-dollar company, relies on having a trusted 3PL partner like Witz by its side to help conquer the Amazon marketplace.
The e-commerce relationship between Unilever and Witz began in 2017 after Unilever acquired SheaMoisture. With the Witz track record of success with the hair care and skin care giant on Amazon, it was a logical progression to continue collaboration with an aim toward expansion.
Over the past six years, the partnership has steadily grown and all the brands in Unilever’s large portfolio have thrived on Amazon – with the entire portfolio witnessing double-digit growth in sales. In 2023, alone, Witz helped the company update, optimize, and manage over 200 product listings from top to bottom.
At the core of the partnership’s success, according to Justine Fitch from Unilever, is the organizational capabilities of the Witz team combined with a willingness to share information transparently for their scorecards and help solve business problems creatively.
Jeff Rajanen, also from Unilever, says he especially appreciates the high level of organization that Witz brings to each task, which includes real-time project trackers and a custom website portal where all asset requests and reports are centralized. “They have a high attention to detail,” Rajanen says, “which is needed when handling so many SKUs.”
– Jeff Rajanen, Unilever
TRESemmé Challenges
One example of a pressing business challenge Unilever faced with Witz’s support on Amazon is price undercutting. According to Fitch, TRESemmé was experiencing significant price undercutting on Amazon from numerous third-party sellers.
To tackle the issue, the Witz team presented the Unilever e-commerce team with some outside-the-box solutions. Given the Witz team’s vast insider knowledge of how Amazon works, the Unilever team was receptive.
“We love the excitement Witz generates around trying different things or solving challenges that some other company might tell us ‘it is what it is’ and there’s nothing we can do.”
– Justine Fitch, Unilever
Innovative ideas from the Witz team, a company active on Amazon since 2010, can often lead to impressive results. Greater search engine visibility, higher buy box rates, and increased conversion rates are some of the likely outcomes, to name a few.
Ultimately, Fitch says, new ideas from Witz help Unilever test what works on Amazon and what doesn’t, which helps her team better understand how to navigate the way forward in the marketplace.
Overall Growth
Finch attributes the success of the Unilever brands on Amazon to many other key factors guided by Witz, including improved stock levels based on inventory and logistics planning, a more strategic approach to advertising media investment, and efficient management of the ad campaigns.
In fact, the Witz team fully supported the Unilever team with their advertising tactics, including researching the best-related keywords for attracting more shoppers, performing thorough competitor targeting analysis, and running both Headline Search Ads (HSA) and video ads. In fact, Witz was able to increase the RoAS 3x in 2023.
With these impressive returns on advertising spending, it did not take much for Witz to persuade Unilever to expand their advertising budget to include Amazon DSP. Display ads were uncharted territory for Unilever, but the e-commerce team placed their trust in Witz. According to Fitch, Witz delivered impressive results in a very short time, even with a smaller budget.
On the path to success, Witz has also leveraged new unpaid features to enhance customer engagement and create more brand trust on Amazon.
Looking Ahead
As Unilever evolves and continues to place its trust in Witz, Fitch says the 1P’s e-commerce team’s internal processes are now becoming more integrated and aligned with the Witz 3P processes. This is further enhancing efficiencies, starting at the supply chain level to foster an even more collaborative approach.
As for the bigger picture about what’s ahead for the partnership, Fitch believes that even stronger results are yet to come by staying with the tried and true formula of executing what’s already working while nimbly testing new and exciting ideas from Witz.