From the beginning, the company aimed to target new and underserved markets in an industry that has lacked innovation over the years. Recognizing the need for a retrofit solution for motorized window shades, AXIS developed Gear in 2015, a smart device that motorizes and automates existing window coverings in minutes.
“Today’s motorization solutions can be incredibly expensive and are not really designed for retrofit applications,” says Trung Pham, CEO and founder of AXIS. This is why Gear is a solar-powered and wireless device that can motorize any window shade by controlling its beaded chain or cord loop. Gear is a customer-focused solution that enables users to control their shades and to set intelligent schedules and scenes.
From crowdfunding to DTC success
Canada-based AXIS was backed early on by angel investors and crowdfunding, moving quickly from concept to development to production. They began working with local advertising teams but they found their local advertising team’s methods ineffectual. In 2019, AXIS and DRVE crossed paths, as Pham was looking to bring on a growth partner in order to scale online revenue.
“The biggest problem that DRVE solved for us was being able to provide us with this fixed CPA per customer acquisition. So regardless of the revenue generated we knew how much we were going to pay month over month for every dollar generated in revenue.”, shares Pham.
At the time AXIS joined DRVE’s Velocity Program, selling its first product directly from its own website was a recent development. The growth experts at DRVE worked closely with Pham and the marketing team at AXIS to guarantee that the shift to Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) sales was a success.
About the experience of working with an investment and growth partner, Matthew Vultaggio, Digital Marketing Manager at AXIS, says: “It’s nice to see results backed up by actual data and research as opposed to intuition. I like that all our marketing needs are consolidated into one team: from capital to analytics, from Facebook to Google. There’s less to worry about, it makes setting up attributions a lot easier whilst everything remains consistent, as everyone is working toward the same goal”.
“The biggest problem that DRVE solved for us was being able to provide us with this fixed CPA per customer acquisition. So regardless of the revenue generated we knew how much we were going to pay month over month for every dollar generated in revenue".
Growing with a guaranteed CPA
During 2020, DRVE’s main focus for AXIS was the US market with paid growth strategies that generated steady traffic and lifted online revenue growth by 3x in 3 months. For the innovative brand, DRVE’s experts also activated affiliate marketing and email marketing, which remains an effective but sometimes overlooked marketing strategy. Customers are active across many touchpoints and for AXIS’s growth it was key to design a diverse marketing mix to reach customers.
Marketers and startup founders alike have long struggled to measure ROAS as their business grows and the customer journey gets more complex across new platforms and markets. AXIS’s team also faced the risks of paid marketing and that is why Pham recognized the importance of having a predictable ROAS every month. “The thing I love about DRVE is that they handle all our customer acquisition. They handle all our media buy and they ensure that we hit a minimum ROAS.”, he says.
What is next for AXIS? As home automation technology gains in popularity the company is working to introduce new products as well as to expand their sales efforts to commercial properties.