Why eComID Doesn’t Have a Marketing Strategy (And Why That’s Working)

The marketing playbook is clear: build your funnel, optimize your CAC, scale your channels. Every growth advisor says the same thing. Launch ads. Build content. Get visible. Fast.

Oscar Rundqvist isn’t following any of it, and it’s working.

In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, Oscar Rundqvist, CEO and Co-Founder of eComID, made an admission that would terrify most investors. “Right now we haven’t really applied that many active marketing strategy,” he explains. For a company a year into building a pre-purchase returns reduction platform, this sounds like founder naivety. Until you look at the results.

“We have a waitlist on our side with brands signing up on a weekly basis right now,” Oscar notes. Zero active marketing. Growing demand. How does that math work?

The Discovery Phase Doesn’t Need Marketing

The conventional wisdom says early-stage startups need marketing to generate awareness and drive demand. But that assumes you already know what you’re selling and how to talk about it. eComID doesn’t have that luxury. They’re inventing a category.

“The category that we’re inventing, kind of returns reduction or pre purchase returns reduction is quite new,” Oscar explains. “It’s not that they actively know it’s something to look for.”

Here’s the trap: if you start marketing before you’ve figured out your category positioning, you’re cementing the wrong message. You’re teaching the market to think about your solution in ways that might not actually resonate. Every dollar spent on ads, every piece of content published, becomes technical debt you’ll need to unwind later.

When Oscar says “I think right now we haven’t really applied that many active marketing strategy,” he’s not describing inaction. He’s describing patience. The company is using this period to figure out what pre-purchase returns reduction actually means to customers before they scale the message.

What’s Actually Driving Growth

If eComID isn’t running marketing campaigns, where are those weekly waitlist signups coming from? “Currently I think it’s more word of mouth brands find us through LinkedIn, I guess, Instagram,” Oscar explains. “They’ve started to sign up to our waitlist in a very nice way.”

The phrase “in a very nice way” is revealing. This isn’t manufactured virality. It’s organic discovery driven by the severity of the problem. When fashion brands face 30-50% return rates, when “54% of all dresses that was bought online in Europe last year were returned,” they’re actively looking for solutions.

“We’re trying to engage wherever this is discussed, trying to encourage this to be discussed even more,” Oscar explains. This is category evangelism, not marketing. The goal isn’t driving traffic to a landing page. It’s shaping how people think about the returns problem.

The Cost of Marketing Too Early

There’s an underappreciated risk to scaling marketing before you’re ready: it attracts the wrong customers. When you haven’t nailed your ideal customer profile, aggressive marketing fills your pipeline with noise.

For eComID, this matters enormously. “We intentionally right now are not onboarding all brands at the same time,” Oscar says. “We rather want to have fewer but better and I guess in a way deeper relationships with a few brands we select to onboard.”

Imagine running paid acquisition campaigns right now. They’d be generating leads they couldn’t properly serve, burning capital on CAC for customers who wouldn’t become good references. The lack of active marketing isn’t slowing growth. It’s protecting quality.

The Product Focus Window

Oscar’s priorities reveal what matters in this stage: “Product focus, brand focus and team focus, I guess.” Marketing isn’t on that list because the product isn’t ready to be marketed at scale.

This doesn’t mean the product doesn’t work. It means they’re still discovering what the product needs to be. Early customers are teaching eComID how to position pre-purchase returns reduction, which features matter most, and how to measure success.

When you’re building something genuinely new, the discovery phase requires concentration. Marketing campaigns create distraction. They generate leads that need nurturing and shift focus from learning to scaling.

When Marketing Makes Sense

Oscar hints at when the equation changes. “Yeah, later on I guess it will be more marketing that we will apply when we’re there.”

“When we’re there” is the critical phrase. Where is “there”? It’s when you can confidently articulate what you’re selling, who it’s for, and what success looks like. It’s when you’ve validated the category positioning through real customer implementations.

For eComID, “there” will involve making responsible shopping culturally aspirational. “We want to make it cool to shop in a responsible way and we want to make it rewarding,” Oscar explains. They’re exploring “gamification aspects where responsible shopping, low return rates is rewarded by, let’s say, early access to new collections or invitations to cool fashion events.”

That vision requires product features and brand partnerships that don’t exist yet. Marketing that future before you can deliver it creates credibility problems you can’t easily fix.

The Organic Growth Advantage

Word-of-mouth growth validates that you’re solving a real problem. When brands find eComID without prompting, when they sign up to a waitlist without being sold, that’s market pull, not push.

This matters for fundraising and strategic decisions. “When you are a Founder, you can also do your due diligence on your investors,” Oscar notes from eComID’s funding experience. Having organic demand strengthens your position. You’re showing real market demand, not hoping investors believe in your marketing prowess.

It also creates a different quality of customer. People who discover you organically and join a waitlist are more committed than people who clicked an ad. They’ve done their own research and are more likely to become engaged partners.

The Principle for Category Creation

Strip away the specifics, and you find a principle that applies broadly: in category creation, organic growth in the discovery phase beats scaled marketing.

The pressure to “do marketing” comes from advisors who’ve scaled existing categories. They’re applying a playbook that works when customers know what they’re looking for. But when you’re creating something new, when the search terms don’t exist yet, traditional marketing mechanics break down.

Your job isn’t generating awareness of your product. It’s generating awareness of the problem and the category of solution. That requires education and conversation, not ad spend.

Oscar’s approach with eComID won’t work forever. Eventually they’ll need marketing at scale. But by waiting until they’ve figured out the message and validated the positioning, they’re ensuring that when they do invest in marketing, they’re scaling the right thing.