How Diaspora Co. spiced up an annual drop

Building on an authentic and engaged community

When it comes to Diaspora, one thing is for certain: its customers are connected with the heart of the brand. With a large customer base and thriving channel on Discord, The Disapora Collective, fans of the brand chat all things spices, plant care, and recipes between product purchases. Last year, Diaspora partnered with a nursery to do something novel—sell a Kadipatta, or curry leaf tree, through its site from a local nursery named Kula.  

When the plant sold out, they left the product page up, collecting a waitlist of thousands of customers interested in the next drop. And when it came to planning their 2023 release, they knew they wanted to make it bigger than ever.

Streamlining logistics to invest in marketing

Despite successful sales, their 2022 release involved a manual process that was difficult to manage—taking their attention from marketing, a crucial ingredient for the success of this release.

To drum up excitement and sales, the Diaspora team invested heavily in a coordinated promotion strategy through their social channels and email. By teasing the arrival of the product, they re-engaged their waitlist audience from last year in anticipation of this year’s drop.

They also activated their community in an authentic and helpful way: Kadipatta plants, despite being a South Asian household essential, are known to be very difficult to care for in North America. Leveraging their Discord group, Diaspora offered free care guidance from their head horticulturist and focused on creating a complete maintenance guide for the plant.

When they were ready to launch, their team announced on social, through email blast to their waitlist, and on their Discord community.

Scaling sales and conversion with Canal

As sales began to trickle in, these orders went directly to Dispora’s Shopify backend and to its nursery partner, Kula. Having already onboarded Kula to Canal, the two partners agreed on commission terms and set up the PDP on Diaspora’s site to sell the plant. Customers checked out as normal on Diaspora’s site, with a single checkout despite ordering from another brand.

The result? A record-setting 2.5x increase in site conversion during the week of release, and an impressive 9% conversion rate amongst returning customers.

"Working with Canal really streamlined this process for us, and allowed us to scale a product launch in a way we wouldn't have been able to if we were still cross-checking every order on a spreadsheet," shares Dena Holper, Diaspora's ecommerce manager.

When the plant quickly sold out again, Diaspora kept the landing page live, collecting emails for future product drops.