COLLAB: Supporting ventures in the digital age
As business operations have no doubt changed globally owing to the pandemic, one major change has been the acceleration of digitalization for most ventures. Since Himali De Silva founded Apé, the online resale platform that strives to create awareness of Circular Consumption, she, together with Shivane Wickramasekara and Alison Wijemanne, used their knowledge of using collaboration and social media to navigate through the crisis and the difficulties it has presented to businesses.
Earlier this week, the trio launched COLLAB — a startup that offers a wide array of branding, social media management services, brand audits, brand refreshes, social media content strategies, creation and management etc – across several platforms. It comprises a group of creators who bring together their ideas and content strategies to help brands grow their digital presence.
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- Shivane
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- Himali
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- Alison
Himali explains that consumers are more connected in this day and age through the use of technology. In turn, marketing strategies need to be tailored around the digital landscape, where social media plays a huge role.
Thus a business or start up learning to effectively navigate the digital landscape via their use of social media could reach a wider audience of potential customers. With the trend of working from home, people are now getting used to the fact that a service provider doesn’t physically need to be in the same location to provide a service for them.
So in a unique manner, Covid-19 highlighted the importance of business and startups going online.
It was during the first lockdown, last year that Himali created Apé to raise awareness around the benefits of circular consumption and enable the reselling of pre- loved items. Since commencing operations, she feels the adoption of pre-loved items has gradually become normalized, with Apé consistently having several people on its waitlist to place their items for resale. She has also observed people becoming more comfortable with the idea of buying pre-loved items.
“It is always that first step in the conscious consumption journey that needs to be taken,” she explains, adding that once a person buys their first pre loved item, one would realize it’s quite similar to a brand new product, only more sustainable and wallet friendly.
Today, Apé has grown beyond expectations, in terms of brand recognition, support and adoption of circularity, Himali tells us. The platform which is run solely on Instagram,currently has a follower base of 4200+
“Due to the small size of the Sri Lankan market and Apé being a new concept versus solely a product/service, this is an achievement the Apé team is thrilled about,” she adds.
Since Apé is run on a social media platform, Himali is always conscious of the fact that people can be constantly inundated with information. With this in mind, the content on Apé is always strategically and consciously planned, created and presented in different formats and via different platforms. This helps simplify the message, whilst still having a bigger reach.
The success behind Apé is probably owing to the many humanized campaigns it runs. Himali believes this helps spread awareness of the brand and circular consumption in easily relatable ways.
These campaigns feature people sharing their thoughts in support of the brand and circular consumption. “We recently ran a ‘12 days of Conscious Christmas reminders’ where different known personalities shared a conscious reminder each day,” she explains.
Aside from this, Apé also visually showcases sustainable circularity in a fun way, via their TikTok content. This may include for example different people wearing the same outfit, to demonstrate how an item can be used many times, by different people.
Since the launch of Apé, several people who run businesses and startups began to approach Himali, Shivane and Alison asking for their help with branding and social media presences. Because the trio already had a great collaborative working dynamic, the required skill set, and a true appreciation for each other’s inputs, they decided to use their experience to help other businesses/startups. This led to the launch of COLLAB.
Together the three have a wealth of experience between them. Himali has 15+ years of experience in the management consulting and business landscapes, while Shivane has 15 years of experience in the advertising industry. On the other hand, Alison has experience in Tea and charity work.
Alison has also for the past five years, organically grown her own social media presences across multiple platforms. Aside from this, Apé has given the three of them a wealth of knowledge, especially after being thrown into the deep end and having to swim in the startup world, all during a global pandemic.
Personally, Himali also volunteers as a Mentor on Hatch’s Open House Mentor Panel. She has also spoken for the Humanity Rising Conference organized by Ubiquity University, for HatchWorks and for Colombo Cooperative. The general theme of these public talks have focused on collaborating through a crisis and what the business landscape will look like in 2021.
Combined, COLLAB offers a range of expertise and insights, which they hope other business owners leverage to help grow their businesses.
Just like Apé, COLLAB will also operate initially solely via Instagram, and can be found at @apelk1010 and @collab.lk
Pix courtesy Manju De Silva & Shonel Perera