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Do you follow the r/entrepreneur subreddit? We here at Shopify love that space, and regularly look through it for inspiration.

Last week we picked up a super helpful post by an entrepreneur who has built an amazing store. In less than a year Mr. Eric Bandholz built a business with $120,000 in monthly sales.

The company is Beardbrand. And Eric spells out exactly what he did to generate revenue of this scale.

His secret? Building a brand. It’s a “high priority” especially as a consumer business. And the results?

• In less than a year Beardbrand went from $0 in sales to $120k/month in sales
• Beardbrand has a higher repeat customer rate than industry average
• Beardbrand’s 7k email list gets 46.6% open rate and 13% click rate
• Beardbrand’s users gladly write reviews of their experiences and share it on social media
• Customers will tell Beardbrand that they purchase from it because of its videos and its vision

With Eric’s kind permission, we excerpt parts of his post (the original is found in gray) while adding bits and pieces to supplement his advice to help make sure that merchants see the value of building a great brand.

First, the advantages to building a brand

• Customers will be more loyal
• Your products can carry a higher price point
• Word of mouth marketing / viral marketing is more common
• Valuation of your company will be higher (One example: the US company Electrolux sold their brand and nothing else to the Sweedish Electrolux. Their new brand is now known as Aerus.)

Eric is right that creating a good brand makes people more loyal. When they know and trust your products, people start to care about your work. Once you build a following, you no longer have to compete on price. You probably want to be more than simply an internet reseller, or someone whose products can easily fit in on a shelf of Walmart.

For example, there are hundreds of iPad case makers. But DODOcase has marketed itself as the only company that sells iPad covers designed by bookbinders and made in San Francisco. They’ve positioned themselves brilliantly, and their cases certainly aren’t sold at Walmart prices.

And yes, it’s much easier for your marketing to go viral if you’re easily identified and people are able to associate something (anything!) about you. You can only hope for virality if people want to share out your content. And people will only share the stuff they care about. Building a brand enables you to tell a story about what makes your business remarkable – something people can connect with on an emotional level.

Finally, Eric is right to note that the valuation of your company is higher if you have a good brand. In fact, financial analysts have a precise way to measure the value of a brand. It’s listed as an “Intangible Asset.” Intangible assets are calculated as the difference between what your company would sell for and how much your company’s total tangible assets are worth. Brand is a significant part of that remainder.

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It pays to have a brand, and we can’t stress this enough. This is especially true if you’re running an independent store, online or offline. You can’t just sell clothing identical to what you’d find at Macy’s, or fudge that tastes the same as what you’d find at Whole Foods.

People are looking for something different when they buy from independent shops. You can’t compete with the big-box stores on price, so go for differentiation through products and customer experience. If you offer a product not much different than something that can be found on Walmart, it’s really hard to get them to buy from you when Walmart is down the street, easy to buy from, and probably offers a lower price.

Use your brand to tell a story, and to uniquely position your products in the minds of your customers.

Do the research to figure out what you want to be

First you will want to commit to building a brand, and all the challenges that presents. You will have to be prepared to say “no” and stick to your guns. Inconsistency is the death to brands. Spend a lot of time up front to truly understand what you want to be and how you want to present your company.

You certainly don’t want to oscillate on your message to customers about your product. Do spend the time and effort figuring out exactly what you want to say. Once you start marketing, stick to the message.

Here’s how and what Eric settled on to represent Beardbrand:

With Beardbrand we developed the term “urban beardsman” which describes a man with a beard who cares about their style, their grooming habits, and who has a plan and a vision with their personal life. Traditionally beardsmen were thought of as hippies, bikers, outdoorsmen, or homeless folks. We wanted to unite people who didn’t feel like they fit those labels.

Next, great design

To get this rolling we place an emphasis on design and branding. Our logo is simple and clean. Our primary colors are black and white and secondary color is cyan. We have had our tagline front and center on our store since we created it. Fortunately, I am a self taught designer and have implemented a lot of our designs. If you do not have those skills, you will need to invest in a quality designer. Most likely you won’t find those at Fiverr, 99 designs, or any of those spec work places. Try instead to search for them via Dribbble, /r/graphic_design, your local AIGA club, or other places designers like to hang out.

Plan on establishing a relationship with a designer you can trust and work with. You’ll want to send all (or at least a majority of) your designs to them so that you create brand consistency. All designers have different styles, and like I said before; inconsistency a roadblock to building a quality brand. A good designer can also help you with brand guidelines to keep you and others on track. It’s essentially a blueprint on how to keep things consistent.

A great brand needs distinctive design, not something hastily put together by someone using Photoshop for the first time ever. It’s not just the logo that needs design work. There’s quite a lot to figure out, including how your site will look and feel; the types of fonts throughout; the prominence of images on the site; and of course signage and banners if you’re running an online store. Start by getting yourself an attractive, mobile responsive theme and if you need further design assistance consider hiring a professional to help.

If you’d like some help with branding in physical stores, take a look at our recent posts on physical retail. It includes tips on creating amazing window displays, and how to set up compelling street signs.