Drop culture is an alternative supply chain method where an entrepreneur creates a direct experiential relationship with their customer base or a targeted culture.  Instead of the linear model of trying to find a distributor to pick up the product and find stores to stock the product, drop culture empowers an entrepreneur to promote an “event” for the “culture” to show up at a “location” at a certain time to experience what is known as the drop. 

There are several benefits to using drop culture, particularly in urban areas for startup entrepreneurs who are selling products. First is the high-density urban population made up of “subcultures” where people are connecting based on interest or preference. Big cities from New York to London to Tokyo self-organizing subcultures, not artificial corporate marketing personas like millennials, a made-up term. This means in real large cities, your ready-made customer already defined who they are and their identity and behaviors that are unique to them. 

The second benefit to drop culture is the ability to focus on “the drop” instead of focus on “the pipeline” when bringing your product or service to market. In traditional product release “pipeline”, you first have to market at trade shows, secure a distributor who want a huge upfront inventory to distribute, then market to retailers to order from the distributor or you directly. After that, you just have to hope the retail store will place your product where the customer can find it. Then you also have to spend marketing money on trying to convince the customer your product exists and tell your customer where your product exists to purchase. This entire pipeline process is very cost-prohibitive and should be considered the wrong way to get your product and service out to the market in the 21st century. 

A better approach is to focus on “the drop” by targeting an existing subculture. Then plan for an event called “the drop” and market the drop via street marketing and social media marketing. Allow the subculture to talk among themselves and spread your drop word of mouth. As a result, the marketing is organic and self-organizing throughout the subculture and everybody from that culture will show up to your drop as part of their cultural experience. This is the proper way to enter a market with your product or service as a new entrepreneur. 

In this article, we are going to show you what we learned specifically about drop culture in two markets – London and Tokyo and exactly how they do it as a science and method. The goal of this article is to help you understand how to implement “drop culture” as a new venture or someone that want to facilitate economic growth models in your urban community. So let’s get started. 

Create a Culture-First Product

Avoid Supply Chain. New ventures will always have a tough time and odds stacked against them going through a traditional supply chain, such as a big box store or trade shows. First, either you have to take out a serious loan or secure “angel investing” to finance the supply chain. Even if you successfully secured supply chain financing, the supply chain itself may not respect your hustle over a big established player. This means your boxes and crates may be just sitting in the back of a warehouse as a last priority to ship out. Then when your product finally arrives at the stores, the retailer may not place your product in a visible location for the customers to notice at first glance. On top of the supply chain, you have to pay for advertisements to the customer to learn who you are and what products you selling and where to buy. 

Focus on Culture-First. Your product should be designed as a culture-first product to target a ready-made group of people in a high-density area. Ask yourself who is this culture, what does this culture want, where can I provide this product and how can I connect my product with the culture? By having a culture-first mindset, your product and service have already positioned itself to be self-marketed by the culture without spending a lot on advertisements or going through a traditional supply chain. 

It is important to know there are two types of cultures for your products. 

Collector Culture. This is a collector culture where these people buy items to collect and possibly sell later for a higher price. Think of the Ford GT model where car collectors who originally purchased them with the intention to sell after the limited release inventory is depleted by Ford. Those new car collectors late to the game will pay a higher appreciated price to add a Ford GT to their collection later down the road. With this example, you may want to create a limited line of a product that can be collected by a culture who want to sell at a higher price later. 

Lifestyle Culture. These are people projecting a lifestyle. This culture wants the latest shoes, the latest mobile phone accessory, the latest productivity app or the latest yogurt craze to project their lifestyle to the world or their own preference. In this instance, you will want to create products and services positioned to make a cultural lifestyle statement that the customer wants to express. For example, during any sport team season is a prime time to create products and services to support a fan-based culture supporting their favorite team. This is an example of a lifestyle culture. 

As an entrepreneur, think about the type of culture you are targeting first before deciding on the product you want to offer. In some cases, you can combine a mix of collectible products as well as lifestyle products in a drop culture event. 

Tap into the Culture

After you research the culture you wish to target and after you create a product portfolio for the drop, the next step is to immerse yourself into the culture. The purpose of immersion is knowing how to introduce your product and service to the culture.

Who-What-Where-Why? Create a list to describe the where, what, who and how the targeted culture operates. Where do the culture hang out? Do they hang out on the internet? Do they hang out at the club? Do they hang out Saturday morning at an exhibition gathering? Do they get together at big events like a sporting event? Be mindful the Internet have plenty of strong culture groups that can organized together in the real world as a meetup so do consider online spaces such as social media as a place to discover the culture. 

Observe Activities. Next is to find out what do your culture do as activities? Do they talk online all the time? Do they meet regularly just to talk shop? Do they hang out at a space such as a tailgating event? Do they have conferences or trade shows? Where do they spend their time socializing? These are the data you want to collect during your pre-intelligence gathering.

Identify Influencers. The next part of the list is who are the people your culture sees as influencers? Who are the names of people the culture got all up in their mouth when they are talking? These are considered influencers. Keep in mind that you may want to rethink who are the true influencers of the culture. It is not the person who is being name-dropped, it is the person with the big mouth talking too much that is the actual influencer of the culture.  You may want work with the big mouth people or work to take down the big mouth person from the culture to create the ability to introduce your voice to the culture. 

Learn how they Interact. Then add to your list how the culture engages in communication.  What most people may not realize is the comment section is how most subcultures are engaged or developed. Twitter feeds where discussions can carry on are the people that add conversation enriching the depth of a cultural experience. Look around for message bulletin boards, comment sections and even major news comment sections on trending topics and hashtags to see the conversations of a culture. Again, it is not the poster or publisher but the actual comment section where the culture really exists and the real conversation is taking place.   

Create Drop Culture Product Line 

Now that you know the culture you wish to create a product for, the next step is to define your products. The main rule of thumb is to sell stuff a queue of people will come in, pick up and take to the cash station in the shortest time possible. Selling stuff people have to try on first, ask questions about the specification waste a lot of time for the additional people waiting in line outside. So let’s go over some popular categories to consider. 

Apparel. Most drop culture events sell t-shirts because most people know their t-shirt size. Socks are another popular category in this aspect. The issue with custom size clothing is you don’t know the size of the customers coming in the door and want to focus on the basic size products. 

Mobile Lifestyle. These are mobility for people on the go. Electronics such as phone cases, smart watch replacement bands, portal hard drives and portable battery chargers. The key is to have things a customer can hold in their hands to show off your brand to others as part of culture display.   

Tools of the Trade. If you targeting a skateboard culture, then a customized board or wheels are things customers will be interested to upgrade their existing equipment. Think about the tools your culture use most often - create a flagship product that would upgrade it in some way with your brand. For travel culture, maybe custom luggage tags. 

Carry Bags. Every subculture carries accessories whether they are bags to carry their laptop, their skateboard, their money from the hustle or socialite bags. Look at everything from branded bags such as duffel bags, hand bags, pocketbooks, RFID wallets and more. 

Jewelry and Accessories. These are small visible items from earrings, belt buckles, shoelace tags, wristbands. Don’t just think fashion accessories, think of everyday things you see at the gift counter such as nail manicure sets and hair grooming sets or writing instruments and notebooks. 

Cosmetics. These cover perfume and cologne, skin cream, handmade soap with branded logo and more. These are the items your customers can just pick up and take to the cash wrap without further inspection. 

The overall goal is to create a grab and go environment where your drop culture customers see something they got to have or like, pick it up and head to the cash wrap so you can bring in the next batch of customers.  

Locate a Space for the Event

There are several options to choose from when it comes to choosing a space. Before choosing a place, understand what you will require of a space to hold a drop culture event. 

Be Sidewalk Smart. First, you will need a space with a sidewalk to accommodate a line of customers that may extend out a city block. You don’t want to have a line disturbing another business storefront, a common problem with poorly planned drop culture events. Make sure you choose a place where you can manage customer line queues. 

Work with Existing Spaces. It is a win-win to work with an existing boutique that cater to the culture you are targeting. First, it brings the culture to their store creating exposure and follow-up opportunity from the culture at large. You win by not needing to create a space from scratch. Make sure you respect the existing boutique lease terms and allow them to host the drop culture event for you if necessary – this is the idea and recommended approach.  

Create a Space if Necessary. In some instances, you may need to locate and create your own space. You have several options from renting out an event space to using a warehouse space in an industrial part of town over the weekend. The advantage of this is you may have better queue management of your drop culture event and more parking spaces but you may have a lot of people having to drive instead of walk or take public transportation to the event. In this case, leverage and tip-off ridesharing events and provide help bring people to your space. 

Space design consideration

 A drop culture layout is different from a traditional store layout because the goal is to get the customers who are lined up moving in and out of the store quickly. With that said, here are observations we noticed in both Tokyo and London design considerations of a drop culture event. 

Outside Stanchions. A stanchion is setup only in front of the store if necessary – it is important to get local council permission to use stanchions on public right-of-way spaces. If you are on a private lot, stanchions can be very helpful in a snake-like design to have a queue more together. We recommend retractable stanchions over metal fence barriers as stanchions are more portable and easier to handle.  

Cash Station Up Front. The cash station should be located in the front of the store as this is the final destination for customers wanting to make a purchase and exit.  This is the first thing a customer walking in should see to know exactly where to go to make a purchase. 

Selling Floor Behind Divider Wall. This is an important and most critical design point of any drop culture. Hide the selling floor behind a huge divider wall so it remains a surprise to the customers outside. The divider wall should have a huge branded logo or photo and can be used as a selfie station. When a customer enters the drop culture event, they walk on the other side of the wall and is surprised with the selection and assortment. 

Consider Display Units Only. Have only a display unit of a product with a number on it so users can just view the display unit and ask for a “number 43” for the staff to pull from the back. Give to the customer to take to the front. 

You should notice the main design of your drop culture event is flow. Have a flow to get your customer in, be taken in for the first time as the assortment, look for items to grab and go to checkout and you bring in the next batch of customers. 

Promote the Event

If you done proper research on the culture you are targeting, you should be in shape to have an ideal how to promote your drop culture event. We recommend 3-4 weeks lead time to get the culture to spread word of mouth and viral about your event. Here are things to consider in your promotion strategy. 

Street Marketing Team. Their job is to pass out fliers, put out easel signs on sidewalks and yards, put up posters on walls and bus/train stops around the culture. Street teams are very effective and if you cannot hire one, create your own strategy to spread in a local radius where the culture is located to get them to see what is about to go down.   

Social Media Marketing Team. Their job is to be part of social media hashtags and social media groups of the culture and promote the drop culture event. They should use good pre-made media templates for each social media network posting and never post text-only. The only thing that should be in the text is the information for time, location and products and how to ask for more information. 

Gamification. Have some fun before the event and allow someone get a chance to locate a product hidden they have to find through a QR code egg hunt. Or give someone the opportunity to be the guaranteed first in line if they promote the event to other people on social media. Think of other ways to engage the culture before the actual drop event to spark interest. 

You should have metrics on how effective your marketing campaign is. This mean having a social media page where you can view the page, view the amount of QR scans from the street signs or advertisements and overall level of conversation and reactions from your social media postings and activities. 

The desired outcome of your marketing to have the culture see your drop culture event as a gathering point for the culture where they meet and greet while they are in line or inside the store. They talk about their experience and they are peer-pressured to buy something to support the culture by supporting your product line. 

Facilitate the Event 

On the day of the event, there are several dynamics you have to manage. We are going to share a few of things you have to be mindful of and manage appropriately. 

Security and Queue Staff. You will need people in place to make sure the crowd is standing in line in an orderly fashion. This staff is going to need communication radios with earpieces to talk to each other to know when to advance people waiting in queue to the next waiting station and to bring in 15 more customers. 

1-Hour Color Wrist Bands. When the customer is ready to enter the drop event, they are provided with a color wristband for that hour of time. After the hour, a new color is issued so those with the older color are going to have to purchase immediately or leave because they been there for a while. This is how you make sure you don’t have laggards sitting around the drop culture for too long and give everybody in line a chance to get in.  

Swag Bags of Local Businesses. Offer a bag for the customers that contain advertisements and offers from other businesses and others in the culture. This is a great way to generate revenue to offset the expense of your own drop culture. These should be just a plastic bag with cardstock of other businesses, including the ones next to the business so the people at the event can spend money while they in the neighborhood. This is a good way to show you are a great business partner to the business community who will be more tolerate of your event and the lines outside. 

Street Hawkers. Whenever there is a drop culture event, it is usually someone there selling their own wares such as their own CD, their own t-shirts and so on. In these instances, don’t bother them because they are part of the culture as well – just be observant of their actions and keep in mind the culture may know them more than you do and to let be – the customers are in line for your event and they are not waiting there to spend money on hawkers so keep this in mind. 

Having an alert and active team in place to facilitate the movement of customers in and out of your drop event is critical. It is important to have training drills in advance, testing communication events and scenarios on how to respond to incidents with protocols established so everybody is ready to roll on the actual drop date. 

More Opportunities

Overall, this article shows the overall opportunity of new entrepreneurs bypassing the traditional supply chain to get their product directly to the customer through “the culture” in an organic manner. Drop culture is here to stay and will continue to be more and more innovative as time go by and more cultures are engaged with the drop events. 

There are several opportunities not really explored for urban communities to accommodate drop culture events that facilitating entrepreneurs can pursue to support this method of event-based retailing. 

Drop Event Controller. This can be an “agency” that manage when and where drop cultures can take place in a community and have a plan to coordinate licenses and permissions for the event and hire a reusable team to provide coverage for the drop event.  If you think local economics, this controller should have the capability to turn a blighted area into a vibrant area every weekend hosting drop cultures and a team in place to make it happen. 

Drop Event Space. This is a real estate owner who can redesign a traditional storefront into a reusable and modular space designed for a drop culture event. The space contains all of the design considerations and can be booked in advance. A great idea would be to create a themed and branded establishment. For example, the interior can be modeled after a castle or modeled after a Japanese garden and when drop events are held, people will remember the name of the place holding the event. 

There are plenty of more opportunities such as consulting, drop culture product sourcing and security and fixture rentals that can all come from the local community. The ideal solution would be an urban community taking advantage of the Opportunity Zone and create drop culture storefronts that people in the local community can get ready for an event. Where local entrepreneurs can get their start and debut and the culture can meetup and not only attend the drop culture event but hang out in the area and spend more money at local establishments and events.