How a Latin-American company digitalised a 100% print business model

• ‍Challenge: Grupo Andrea's business model was 100% tied up to print. They needed to take some of that business online, but without alienating their customer base or their representatives.
• ‍Solution: Finding the right digital catalog solution with the necessary features, such as WhatsApp checkout, and with customer support before, during and after implementation.
• ‍Results: 80% of Grupo Andrea's website traffic visit their digital catalogs, while they grew 65% in terms of sales by representatives through the digital catalog. On top, the Grupo Andrea's culture has shifted, with representatives and shoppers embracing digital.

A few years ago, Grupo Andrea were like most Latin-American direct selling companies: Their business model was fully dependent on printed catalogs and representatives physically meeting with customers.

But then came COVID, along with social distancing, and changed shopping in Latin-America forever.

As Grupo Andrea's Marketing Director, Andrés Padilla says:

We faced the challenge of taking an analog business model, 100% paper printed, to a digital world.”

Grupo Andrea tackled this challenge using a familiar format, just online: Digital catalogs.

But how do you get started with the transition from print to digital?

Going digital with the right catalog solution for Latin-American

As Melisa Ruiz, Grupo Andreas' Digital Strategy Manager, knows, digital transformation from print to digital is a lengthy, complicated and necessary project for companies in Latin-America.

To succeed, you need at least two things...

1: The right tool with the right functionalities

At minimum, a tool to digitalize print in Latin-America should create digital catalogs that are shareable, have WhatsApp integration and enable engaging content.

For Grupo Andrea, iPaper had the right tool:

iPaper’s tool met all the requirements we had.”

- Melisa Ruiz, Digital Strategy Manager, Grupo Andrea

2. Support and guidance before, during and after implementation

The support from the provider should include frameworks for success, working hours matching Latin-American time and market knowledge of Latin-America.

iPaper has all of that.

The support from iPaper was crucial in this transition of making the digital catalog a reality. I don’t think the territorial barriers are so important, because the processes and the support are provided naturally.”

- Melisa Ruiz, Digital Strategy Manager, Grupo Andrea

Results of Grupo Andrea’s digital catalogs

Grupo Andrea found the right tool with the right support in iPaper. Now, they’ve transformed print into an interactive, shareable digital catalog with WhatsApp checkout:

Digital marketing metrics

This transformation has led to great results for many digital marketing metrics:

The results have been exponential. The number of sessions, times shared, the number of downloads started to grow at a vertiginous pace.”

- Andrés Padilla, Marketing Director, Grupo Andrea

On top, Grupo Andrea see that 80% of their website traffic visit their digital catalogs.

But what about overall sales, the most important metric?

“Last year, in 2023, we grew by 65% in terms of sales by representatives who sell through digital catalogs. It was a much higher growth than expected.” - Melisa Ruiz, Digital Strategy Manager, Grupo Andrea

Changing the direct selling culture

Given those results, the entire direct selling approach has now shifted towards digital for Grupo Andrea, their representatives and the end-customers:

There’s already quite significant growth of representatives who choose to use more digital catalogs than physical catalogs, and who have 100% of their sales through such a digital tool.”

- Melisa Ruiz, Digital Strategy Manager, Grupo Andrea

And, as one 13-year Grupo Andrea veteran representative says, that’s also the case for the customers:

Nowadays there’s fewer people asking for a physical catalog. They have adapted to digital catalogs. I love the digital catalog because it saves me a lot of time.“

- María de Luz Ruiz, Catalog Sales Representative, Grupo Andrea