The Hidden Channel Strategy Behind Gr4vy’s Growth: Why They Started Selling to Shopping Carts Instead of Just Retailers
Market assumptions can be dangerous, especially in enterprise software. Sometimes your most valuable customers aren’t who you initially thought they were.
In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, John Lunn, CEO and Founder of Gr4vy, revealed how discovering an unexpected channel strategy transformed their growth trajectory.
The Initial Target Market
Gr4vy began with a clear hypothesis about their ideal customer profile (ICP). “For us, an ICP is a mid to enterprise sized retailer looking to either expand geographically or increase their payment options,” John explains. The logic was straightforward: retailers struggle with payment complexity, so sell directly to them.
The Market Reality
But market feedback revealed a more nuanced opportunity. “What has changed is we’ve realized that another large part of our client base is the people serving those peoples,” John notes. “Rather than selling directly to the retailer, selling to the shopping cart that services the retailer is a different route to get to the same place.”
This insight fundamentally shifted their go-to-market strategy.
Why the Channel Strategy Worked
The success of this approach stems from understanding enterprise buying behavior. “Don’t sell to people who aren’t shopping,” John emphasizes. “When you’ve been in the consumer payment space, people will drive past the poster of the flashy new car every day and lust for it. That doesn’t really happen in enterprise software sales… unless you’ve got a problem you actually need a solution for right now, there’s really no point trying to sell to you.”
Shopping cart providers, already actively solving payment challenges for their customers, proved to be more receptive buyers than retailers who weren’t actively seeking a solution.
Building for Enterprise Scale
This channel strategy aligned perfectly with Gr4vy’s enterprise-grade infrastructure approach. “Unlike anyone else in this space, the way that we do orchestration is infrastructure as a software service rather than a SaaS service,” John explains. “You don’t connect to Gr4vy for Gr4vy to do your orchestration. Gr4vy rolls out instances of Gr4vy for you within your same region, your same area that allows you to manage orchestration.”
The Growth Impact
The results speak for themselves. The company is “doubling month on month” in transactions and has “tripled in the last quarter” in revenue. But perhaps more importantly, they’re achieving this growth through deep customer relationships rather than rapid customer acquisition.
“The rise in volume is not because we’re adding hundreds and hundreds of new clients,” John shares. “It’s because we’re growing with the customers we’ve got today.” This approach has fostered strong partnerships: “You talk to a Gr4vy customer, they’ll say, Gr4vy feels like it’s part of our team, and that’s by design.”
Lessons for Enterprise Founders
Gr4vy’s channel discovery journey offers several key insights for enterprise founders:
- Challenge your initial ICP assumptions
- Look for partners already solving your customers’ problems
- Focus on buyers actively seeking solutions
- Build relationships that enable mutual growth
Their experience shows that sometimes the fastest path to enterprise adoption isn’t going direct – it’s finding the right channel partners who are already serving your target market.
As John envisions, this strategy positions Gr4vy to become “the central point of integrations for retailers around the world with their payment types.” Their journey demonstrates that in enterprise software, how you reach your market can be just as important as what you’re selling.