Rebranding would have meant that Sorabel had to rebuild its entire Product Value Chain, from its upstream value chain (sourcing for higher grade raw materials, perhaps from a different supplier, and increasing the product quality from its manufacturing partner) to its downstream value chain (changing the type of products and services it offered and its target audience).

Companies need to consider the impact on their Product Value Chain when they undergo rebranding. We will discuss the failure points using Sorabel’s Product Value Chain below.

Sorabel rebranded in 2019 from Sale Stock to position its brand away from clothing sold at heavily discounted prices. It wanted to cater to a wider target audience with multiple brands under them having different price points.

With this rebrand, Sorabel have launched 11 private brands to reach different target audience. However, this strategy would cause Sorabel to lose its original customer base as it shifted its business from an eCommerce (Sale Stock) to a marketplace (Sorabel) which has 11 brands under it. With Sorabel reaching out to a broader target audience, they are using the same resources to reach out to the target audience that was not captured by Sale Stock.

By rebranding and targeting a wider audience, Sorabel would have had to split its resources and marketing strategy towards its new target audience, which would result in inefficiencies in its processes, which caused the loss of its original customer base and the inability to attract new customers.

An alternative approach would be to retain the Sale Stock brand and launch Sorabel as a marketplace which carries items from Sale Stock and its new premium brands. This would allow Sorabel to retain its existing customer base while launching premium products through the private brands targeting its new audience.

Try-first-pay-later (CDBB)
One of Sorabel’s key product offerings was its Try-first-pay-later service, where customers could try on and return items within 15 minutes of an item’s delivery. This was intended to provide more assurance to customers uncertain about purchasing products from Sorabel by allowing them to return purchases after trying them on with little effort.

While CDBB may have been a way to encourage customers to purchase and try Sorabel’s products, it only provided them 15 minutes to try them on and decide if they wanted to keep their purchase. Customers may have needed more time to think about and consider their purchase, especially if the items were priced at a higher price. Hence, customers who were undecided about products may have preferred to return the items instead.

Despite the convenience that CDBB provided, customers who were paying a premium for products may have enjoyed the experience of going to the store because it allowed them to browse and take their time making decisions rather than being restricted to a 15-minute time limit.

Increased Capital expenditure
With little effort involved in returning items and without limited-time discounts to create a sense that repurchasing the item in future would be more expensive, customers had little incentive to reduce over-purchasing and returning items they disliked. As a result, this strategy may have increased Sorabel’s sales, but it would also have increased capital expenditure such as delivery and packaging costs and impacted Sorabel’s profits.

With its rebranding to Sorabel, the company would have shifted to a new product value chain and would have had to manage its upstream or the supply side of its Product Value Chain carefully.

When a business undergoes a rebranding process, it must align its product, marketing, operations, and finance. However, from the timeline, we can observe that several key personnel within the management team left the company before or during its rebranding process in 2019.

This included its Chief Operating Officer in 2018, its Chief Marketing Officer and its Chief Technology Officer in 2019. From our research, the Chief Operating Officer position was not filled after Stanislaus Tandelilin left.

The project would have been difficult without a competent and dedicated management team to align and support Sorabel's rebranding strategy. Sorabel's personnel would have had to adjust the way operations were managed if it decided to rebrand itself to a more premium audience.

Service standards, for example, would have needed to meet the criteria for its premium audience, as customers would have expected a more personalised service when paying for a higher-priced product. So, could Sorabel and its staff provide such personalised services to its new premium target audience?

What could Sorabel have done differently?

When businesses rebrand, there is a possibility that they would lose their original customer base. As such, companies should consider the following questions when rebranding:

• What proportion of customers you would be able to retain, and the customers you would lose due to rebranding?
• How would this change your upstream product value chain, the unit costs, and the appeal of your product if you increase the price?
• How would this affect your profits?
• Can the loss in profit be offset by an increase in the profit margin of its products or by the ability of the business to attract new customers?

Business owners should consider the operating costs when launching a product or service and how to limit or reduce such costs. To reduce such costs, you can consider the following:

If you’re planning to rebrand your company, consider the following: Can you use this rebranding as an opportunity to change your internal processes, logistics and operations?

In February 2022, the Business Times reported that Sorabel’s assets had been acquired by GROW Commerce, a brand aggregator that owns Berrybenka. Berrybenka is an Indonesian fashion eCommerce firm.