How Character tested the appetite for its DIY kits with Walmart before launching into the retailer’s stores
Character, a three-year-old home improvement startup, wants to reinvent the do-it-yourself industry.
Specifically, the startup characterizes its approach as “do-it-with-me.” Character, which started out as a direct-to-consumer brand, sells tool sets as well as project-specific kits designed to help people with manual at-home tasks such as hanging a plant or installing a light fixture. Alongside these physical kits, Character also offers customers access to digital guides and videos demonstrating to customers how to install these objects and access to an SMS helpline seven days a week.
Now, Character has unveiled its biggest wholesale deal to date. As of October 1, its faucet installation kit is rolling out to 1,200 Walmart stores nationwide. The kit is also available for sale through Walmart’s website. Character’s bet is that its kits can help retailers sell more faucets or picture frames; customers who are intimidated by home improvement projects might be more inclined to purchase if they see a kit promising to help them right next to the product.
In total, Character’s products are now available in more than 1,450 stores, including in select Ace Hardware and Framebridge locations. Alex Onsager, CEO and co-founder of Character, said that one of the biggest challenges in convincing customers to buy products like light fixtures or faucets is “getting [them] over the hump of, well, how am I going to install this and how much is it going to cost?” Many retailers, including Walmart, now have partnerships with services like Angi or Task Rabbit, where customers can pay extra to have someone come and install something they bought through that retailer. But those services can still sometimes cost hundreds of dollars.
That’s where Character comes in. Its faucet installation kit, for example, costs $24.98 and includes a basin wrench, plumber’s putty, seal tape, wet wipes and a drip pan for excess water. The kits are meant to appeal to someone who isn’t a DIY expert but wants to take a shot at installing something themselves — or doesn’t want to pay someone else to do it.
Onsager said that the startup’s partnership with Walmart actually started out as an online pilot last fall. Character’s faucet install kit showed up as a recommended add-on when people were looking at buying a faucet on Walmart.com.
“This was an experiment to see how many people buying a faucet would add our faucet kit, and it worked,” Onsager said.
“Walmart helped us think about how to modify what had been just an online product.” For example, he said the buyer Character worked with gave him feedback on how the brand could improve its packaging for retail.
To promote its availability in Walmart, Character will be investing in some tried-and-true tactics like running ads on Walmart.com, and partnering with DIY creators to promote the launch.
Brad Jashinsky, director analyst at Gartner, said the home improvement and DIY space has now grown to accompany a variety of specialty and mass-market retailers. Home Depot and Lowe’s remain the most familiar faces in the space, but many people now buy home improvement tools from places like Walmart, Target, Amazon and Ikea or flock to specialty retailers like Sherwin-Williams.
Jashinsky said the digitization of the DIY space “started, like many things, in just culture and marketing in general.” Then, he said, “Brands started to kind of latch onto it.” Shows like “This Old House” and networks like HGTV drove more interest in home improvement content. On social media, “we see many consumers turning to YouTube when they’re looking for DIY help and kind of how-to guides,” Jashinsky said.
Brands, in turn, started to make this content a part of their marketing strategy. Back in 2019, Lowe’s was publishing at least two videos a week to its YouTube channel, much of it centered around DY content.
But what makes Character a little bit different is that it is baking this content into the actual products that people buy. Installing a faucet, for example, “is the kind of project that, if you’re doing it for the first time, you often get stuck.” Even if someone doesn’t use the SMS helpline that Character has set up, “knowing that it’s there, you know, gives you some confidence that you’re going to be able to finish the project,” Onsager said.
The how-to content has evolved as Character has grown; as part of the Walmart rollout, Character filmed a greater variety of videos showing customers how to install different types of faucets.
It all feeds back to the company’s overall goal. It believes that its kits can help retailers — and even faucet makers or frame stores — sell more products. And it hopes to prove thatwith more partnerships, starting with the Walmart deal.
“We expect to be helping hundreds of people a week install faucets, just from Walmart, and there’s so much we’re going to learn from that,” Onsager said.