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[SPEAKER_01]: If your cash flow is breaking, you really need to get to exactly why if your cack is skyrocketing, you need to understand exactly why and the only way you can find that is by spending the time to go on the data.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Just having a hint of truth across all the platforms is absolutely critical.

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[SPEAKER_02]: It’s the e-commerce master plan podcast.

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[SPEAKER_02]: Here to help you solve your marketing problems and grow your e-commerce business.

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[SPEAKER_02]: Cutting through the hinder to bring you inspiration and advice from the e-commerce sector and beyond, here’s your host, Chloe Thomas.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Hello and welcome.

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[SPEAKER_00]: It’s great to have you here.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for hitting play and choosing to listen to one of our inspiring guests.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I guess for this episode is here because they applied to be on the show.

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[SPEAKER_00]: So if you’ve got something you love to chat with me about and share with the audience, just go to ECMP, that’s short for e-commerce master plan.

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[SPEAKER_00]: ECMP.info for slash guest to apply.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And maybe we’ll be chatting very, very soon.

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[SPEAKER_00]: In this episode, I am chatting with Joe from Jacks of London.

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[SPEAKER_00]: We’re talking about how he’s kind of pivoted.

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[SPEAKER_00]: He’s very old family business into the world of children’s toys.

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[SPEAKER_00]: We’ll also be talking about the interesting time they had post COVID and how they survived that.

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[SPEAKER_00]: We will be talking about how he keeps everything in house right from the team in China

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[SPEAKER_00]: And a whole host of other topics, there’s some great marketing stuff around Facebook ads and influences if you listen right to the end of those top tips and four, four tips in the book top tip as well.

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[SPEAKER_00]: So I know you’re going to really enjoy this when I thoroughly enjoyed recording it with Joe.

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[SPEAKER_00]: So huge thanks to Joe for applying and to listening as well.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And hello, Joe, if you are able to listen to your voice and you’re listening back to that one, to this one, it’s a pleasure to have you tuning in.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, everyone.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Here we go.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Make sure to listen to the end because you do not want to miss out on Joe’s top tips.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And now to introduce our special guest.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Joe Jakes is the CEO at Jakes of London, inventors of croquet ping pong and chess, as we know them.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And championing play as the foundation of learning, founded in 1795, yes, over 200 years ago.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Joe is the eighth generation toy maker to lead this family business, winning multiple awards in recent years.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Now selling via their Shopify site and Amazon, they are on track for 12 million pounds this year.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Hello, Chloe, thank you very much for having me on the show as you know I’m a massive fan of this show, so I’m truly humbled to be here.

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[SPEAKER_00]: always a treat to get to interview one of our own listeners.

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[SPEAKER_00]: So thank you Joe so much for applying to be on here and very cool to have Jake’s on the show as well.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Having been a croquet player at uni in a very amateur sense.

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[SPEAKER_00]: This is very cool.

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[SPEAKER_00]: But rather than us go off and talk about the history of croquet ping pong and chess, which I must admit I did have to go and look up.

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[SPEAKER_00]: to serve to writing the intro.

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[SPEAKER_01]: It sounds a bit unbelievable, doesn’t it?

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[SPEAKER_01]: That one family is invented ping pong, readers on the store and chess are invented, happy family, snap, ludo, snakes, ladders, tiddly winks, you know, Lewis Carol is my great, great uncle.

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[SPEAKER_01]: It’s a quite unusual family to now sit here talking about selling things online, but we find us sounds here today.

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[SPEAKER_00]: But we are here.

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[SPEAKER_00]: So how did you end up in the world of e-commerce?

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[SPEAKER_01]: So I joined the family business in about 2001.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Was a salesman on the road selling here there and everywhere.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And gradually, over from that period up to about 2010, gradually, all of the customers that we were selling well too and we’re selling well, we’re selling online.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So I sat there and said, look, this is completely pointless.

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[SPEAKER_01]: We might as well learn to do this ourselves.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Starts is selling ourselves on Amazon, initially in about 2014.

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[SPEAKER_01]: and just in the days of Amazon hacking and ranking and now you have to do all sorts of started doing that.

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[SPEAKER_01]: It was really, really happy that we suddenly became the first second and third best selling backgammon’s set, but really cut our teeth when I got into data.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And effectively discovered how much bigger other toy market was had a daughter in 2012 and pivoted the whole business really to start reselling toys, you know, we used to sell toys years ago and started selling them a game about 2018.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And really now we’re a toy company, but we’re very recently become a toy company again.

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[SPEAKER_01]: and that was all kind of my vision and creation.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Why, so you went from literally out on the road?

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[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Driving rounds, stop this.

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[SPEAKER_01]: With an A to Z map.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and learning the internet.

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[SPEAKER_00]: and clearly becoming somewhat obsessed with it.

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[SPEAKER_01]: I’m completely, as I’m a complete data geek.

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[SPEAKER_01]: I love numbers and I love the money and I love the fun and the winning of it all.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And I love, obviously, we’re a family of creatives and have been vandres of years.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So understanding how we can dream up products and then sell products and understand the size and the scale of the market for those products is highly, highly addictive as we all know.

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[SPEAKER_00]: isn’t it, just?

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[SPEAKER_00]: Well, let’s cover off the basics of the business for those who aren’t in the know.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Where in the world are you and where are you selling to?

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[SPEAKER_01]: We’re based in Eden Bridge and Kent, and we sell just to the UK.

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[SPEAKER_01]: We have sold all across the world in the past, but my belief is sort of master a market first, and if you’re trying to build a brand where people know and can buy a game, you know, particularly with acquisition cost being what they are, you need to sell to the same person multiple times and you’ve got a much better chance of doing that in better concentration, in my opinion.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I’m pretty sure I don’t know the numbers of the top of my head, but the size of the markets you play in in the UK,

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[SPEAKER_01]: There’s huge, it’s absolutely huge, just like three and a half billion.

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[SPEAKER_00]: There’s plenty of scope there, isn’t there?

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[SPEAKER_01]: There’s loads, there’s absolutely loads.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And I kind of think people go obsessed with being a global business when you don’t need to be.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Life’s a lot simpler.

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[SPEAKER_01]: It really is, you ever tickling nowadays.

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[SPEAKER_00]: So tell us a bit about that product.

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[SPEAKER_00]: We mentioned a couple of things, but what’s the core focus and what else are you doing these days on the product front?

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[SPEAKER_01]: So the core folks with the products is people talk a lot about purpose in business and why you’re doing what you’re doing, what’s the problem that you’re trying to fix.

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[SPEAKER_01]: We’ve always been a educational play company.

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[SPEAKER_01]: We were making sort of lotto games 200 years ago about how you learn about the history and the different parts of history.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So now everything we do is about educational play and read the focuses on sub-five year olds and how much the brain develops by the age of three.

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[SPEAKER_01]: and how incredibly important it is to do the right activities with children at that age.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And really then, you know, we include learning cards with all our wooden toys, just to help sleep deprived parents have prompts to help get the most out of all of our toys.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And with the only people that are doing that really well, you know, loads of people may wooden toys, but no one does it with a clear clarity of purpose that we do.

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[SPEAKER_00]: as I mentioned, I used to play Croquet Unie, so I think of Jack’s as big old Croquet sets and you know, kind of posh sporting paraphernalia.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And obviously, you’ve got this huge history in backgammon, chess, et cetera.

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[SPEAKER_00]: It seems slightly odd, but then completely obvious when you talk about it, that you’ve now branched into the underfives as a court as the court market.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Absolutely.

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[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, used to do children’s things and it’s not like we’ve havened untoys, but and we are still the biggest dominoes center in the UK.

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[SPEAKER_01]: We’re still the biggest chess sets center in the UK.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So, you know, we do own those markets and we still very much against, but really play is at the heart of everything we do rather than games, so the importance of playing interaction, how you play with the toys, the same as, you know, everything is for our entertainment, but if you can make your entertainment part of learning, then I think that’s a really important thing.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And that’s when it makes so much sense.

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[SPEAKER_00]: So actually, this is just all different ways of different age people are getting to play.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Absolutely.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And what does the team look like?

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[SPEAKER_00]: What are you doing in-house?

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[SPEAKER_00]: What are you outsourcing?

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[SPEAKER_01]: We do everything in-house.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So we do have a visor on our account on our Meta account only, but everything we do, our self-talk Google ads, and then we’ve learned it across the team, Meta, all our Amazon account, all our Amazon listings.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And in fact, we’ve

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[SPEAKER_01]: what they now call in the world vertically integrates.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So we’ve got our own warehouse in China, which I set up 15 years ago.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So we do all of the products, all of the product designing ourselves.

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[SPEAKER_01]: We quality control, wrap packing QC, everything ourselves.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So the reason our quality is so high is because all the deliveries come into our warehouse in China, we wrap pack and actually make sure everything’s totally perfect before it leaves there.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So we’re really, really,

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[SPEAKER_01]: about that peak hundred people, but including China, but normally sort of 40 to 60.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And are they mostly, you’ve got the team in China doing the initial pick and pack, and then you’ve got it coming into your own warehouse in the UK for the film?

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[SPEAKER_01]: in Toro and where house in the UK and actually obviously all around is in order to fill by them.

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[SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, everything here and all our containers come here and, you know, we shift a bow at a container a week, they’re on theirabouts.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And how do you break down the head office team between the different functions?

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[SPEAKER_01]: Head of finance, a small-ish team looking after Amazon, and then a bigger team looking after social, product design, customer service, E-mail, it’s about 10 people in the office here, but fundamentally, all bar one or bar two dedicated to marketing and sales.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And so, oh, so many things, I could ask you about your business.

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[SPEAKER_00]: It’s really, you know, the background is fascinating.

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[SPEAKER_00]: What you’re selling today is fascinating.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I suppose one of them is the, one of the obvious places to go is the price point range you have in the business.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I was just looking at the chest sets.

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[SPEAKER_00]: You’ve got a 15 pound travel’s chest set, roughly speaking, to beautiful chest sets that are over 5,000 pounds.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

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[SPEAKER_00]: That, for most e-commerce business, that would be something we advise against that diversity

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[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and I’m not sure I’d advise to do it either to be totally honest with you.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And we obviously are very high and very collectible, very limited production.

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[SPEAKER_01]: We are the original designer of the store and chess sets.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So we do sell these collector sets, but make no mistake the bulk of the business is in consumer goods effectively.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And sub-hundred pound price points.

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[SPEAKER_01]: That is really 95% of our turnover.

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[SPEAKER_00]: So a very different mindset or prioritization of marketing activity, et cetera, across those different ranges.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, exactly and everything you do, you know, my objective is to get into people’s houses and have as many repeat users as possible.

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[SPEAKER_01]: My on a daily basis are repeat customers rate is 30 to 40% every single day.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So for a non-consumable non-deteriorating good and in fact something that we pride ourselves on lasting for a long time, we’re trying to sell people other things.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So for me, it’s what about portfolio expansion.

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[SPEAKER_00]: got you.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And then that that sub-hundred pound price point and then the larger ones of the specialist collect as market.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah and it’s a very small part of that business to be honest.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Something that would be loud and we’d take great care of, but in terms of getting, you know, driving about 12 million, it’s very much, it’s not, it’s not driven by that.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And then you, you know, we occasionally get people running, we know working at family businesses on the show and

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[SPEAKER_00]: to have 200 odd years of history to deal with.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, it’s seen, you know, from our conversation thus far, clearly it doesn’t leave you scared to innovate, scared to change the business and to adapt it.

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[SPEAKER_00]: But do you feel, do you feel the weight of it?

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[SPEAKER_01]: You do, but I think, I mean, I inherited the business that had debts of £1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,

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[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think you become confident in your own test, don’t you know, a lot of what we do is 1% better every day.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And you evolve, and I think the business has had to evolve over that period, you know, we used to make force teeth out of his behibopotamist teeth.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So that was a hell of a very odd thing to do.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So we have had to evolve.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And I think, um,

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[SPEAKER_01]: I think a lot of it, it’s really good because it keeps you really true to, you know, you won’t make a bad products, you know, you really put the effort and everything that comes to market, you’re really want to put yourself behind.

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[SPEAKER_01]: But I don’t think that makes me particularly exclusive because I make a generation.

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[SPEAKER_01]: I think a lot of people that run their businesses put their whole life behind it anyway.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So, so I think it’s just part of the honesty that we buy which you sort of operate.

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[SPEAKER_00]: From how you talk about it, it feels a little like, you know, when people are talking about the values and the focus in their business, as we’ve talked about fair bit already in this chat, you know, you get the feeling that sometimes that stake is really firmly rooted in the ground.

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[SPEAKER_00]: You know, it’s not gonna wobble very much because it’s really firmly there, which can be down to like force of conviction or in your case it can be down to, we’ve got 200 years of history under the soil and that will keep us on track.

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[SPEAKER_00]: You know, we can see that the clever stuff

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[SPEAKER_00]: But that gives you that really solid DNA to grow on.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it does.

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[SPEAKER_01]: I think, but also you’ve become more familiar.

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[SPEAKER_01]: I’ve been here 25 years now.

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[SPEAKER_01]: I think you get so much more familiar with the entity within which you exist, that it becomes an extension of you and you’re so proud of everything you’re doing, that it just becomes your absolute dying passion.

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[SPEAKER_01]: I’m not so fussed about the turn over in bits and pieces.

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[SPEAKER_01]: I want to make amazing products.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And I think, you know, as my father once said to me,

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[SPEAKER_01]: always one success and if you have success the money comes for free.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And I think chase success.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, why is man your father?

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[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, he was.

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[SPEAKER_00]: So, so changing tax lightly before we hit the record button, you mentioned you’ve had an interesting journey since 2020.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, I think I’ll try and a really potty history.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So we introduced toys in 2018.

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[SPEAKER_01]: We were doing three million year.

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[SPEAKER_01]: We went to five million in 2019.

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[SPEAKER_01]: We then hit 17 million in 2020, but for my own optimism is as much as she pitted.

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[SPEAKER_01]: What had actually happened is January, 2020, I’m in China.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Launch 93 new toys got really excited.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Launch them at the same time as COVID.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Obviously sold out of everything and it was completely amazing.

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[SPEAKER_01]: I thought, there we go.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Finally, after all these years, I cracked it.

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[SPEAKER_01]: went and borrowed money, often various in places to continue fueling that growth, and obviously came unstuck.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Actually continue to hold some okay turnover numbers after that, but really will weigh down by.

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[SPEAKER_01]: all your cash is going on debt.

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[SPEAKER_01]: We were advised to go for a raise, went and worked with one of the big financial institutions as an advisor.

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[SPEAKER_01]: They were actually, you know, quite helpful.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And we have people like BGF desperate to invest in us, but literally that was in about 2021, 2022.

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[SPEAKER_01]: But as we were going through that process, obviously the world started collapsing and every door that was begging us to come in just suddenly started slamming our face.

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[SPEAKER_01]: I thought, oh dear, here we go.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Got too much debt.

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[SPEAKER_01]: The only way through it was to put the business for a CVA company voluntary administration wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy being totally honest with you.

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[SPEAKER_01]: It was the most miserable thing I’ve ever done.

15:56.641 –> 15:59.345
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, does have you questioning your life a lot?

15:59.585 –> 16:04.873
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, but yeah, you also get through these things at that point.

16:04.893 –> 16:08.559
[SPEAKER_01]: My business partner left the business as well, just as it was all a bit tough.

16:09.781 –> 16:14.428
[SPEAKER_01]: And yeah, and now we’re here and I’m running the business on my own for the last two and a half, three years.

16:14.788 –> 16:18.514
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, which I’ve never enjoyed any more than I am now, which is totally epic.

16:20.502 –> 16:23.847
[SPEAKER_01]: And I’m finally doing all the new exciting products that I wanted to do in 2021, 2022.

16:24.007 –> 16:30.677
[SPEAKER_01]: I kind of got all the inheritance from my father and that journey piled it all into the business to rescue it, stuck it all on red.

16:31.237 –> 16:35.223
[SPEAKER_01]: And now I’ve got it through the other side and the business is now trading nicely, growing and profitable.

16:35.604 –> 16:37.707
[SPEAKER_01]: But it’s been a bit of interesting journey.

16:38.448 –> 16:41.532
[SPEAKER_00]: Looking back, would you have done the same things you did?

16:42.220 –> 16:50.572
[SPEAKER_01]: we made some mistakes of trusting people within the business of not really getting as close to the finances as I could.

16:50.712 –> 16:57.221
[SPEAKER_01]: I followed the commercial finance much more so than the daily sort of cash flow bits and pieces.

16:57.321 –> 17:00.065
[SPEAKER_01]: I was all about margin of bits and pieces of following detail.

17:00.706 –> 17:06.133
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I’d like to have done it differently, but I think it was not the 64 million dollar question.

17:06.153 –> 17:08.376
[SPEAKER_01]: What would you change in the past with all the things I got wrong?

17:08.396 –> 17:10.219
[SPEAKER_01]: I keep doing all the things I got right.

17:11.532 –> 17:13.334
[SPEAKER_01]: So I definitely can have done loads of things.

17:13.394 –> 17:17.580
[SPEAKER_01]: I’d love to have had a proper education and no now.

17:17.980 –> 17:20.424
[SPEAKER_01]: No what I do now, even 10 years ago would be amazing.

17:21.385 –> 17:23.127
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, business is like that, isn’t it?

17:23.267 –> 17:30.717
[SPEAKER_00]: I’m sure an MBA is a good thing, but I doubt it teaches you how to run a small dynamic business, particularly, well, if that makes sense.

17:30.797 –> 17:32.599
[SPEAKER_00]: A lot of that side of things.

17:33.080 –> 17:33.901
[SPEAKER_01]: Resilience.

17:33.921 –> 17:38.367
[SPEAKER_01]: Resilience is the number one thing, and I think it comes up time and again, and I think that’s the number one thing.

17:38.870 –> 17:47.764
[SPEAKER_00]: But I suspect given how the economy is at the moment, and the continuing post-COVID full and rise challenges that businesses are still dealing with a little bit.

17:48.185 –> 17:53.794
[SPEAKER_00]: For anyone who’s thinking about doing the voluntary… What is it there?

17:53.814 –> 17:55.577
[SPEAKER_01]: CVA, comedy, voluntary administration.

17:55.817 –> 17:56.298
[SPEAKER_00]: That’s the one.

17:56.358 –> 17:58.000
[SPEAKER_00]: I always get the letters wrong when I try.

17:58.020 –> 18:00.044
[SPEAKER_00]: As everyone just heard, I always get the letters.

18:00.064 –> 18:03.409
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, I had to practice saying it before I came on the podcast because I wanted to get into.

18:03.676 –> 18:11.045
[SPEAKER_00]: if anyone planning on doing one of those or thinking about doing one of those, what advice would you give them before during or after?

18:11.866 –> 18:14.569
[SPEAKER_01]: It’s very hard, very, very, very emotional.

18:14.789 –> 18:23.540
[SPEAKER_01]: But I think a bit like a lot of these things, whether it’s a CVA, whether whatever it may be, they are huge hurdles that you have to work through.

18:23.560 –> 18:24.961
[SPEAKER_01]: I think I was very lucky.

18:25.102 –> 18:27.945
[SPEAKER_01]: I bought on board an advisor.

18:27.925 –> 18:33.215
[SPEAKER_01]: Chairman, as we went into the race and he stuck with me through the CBA, it’s just still six with me now.

18:33.857 –> 18:42.914
[SPEAKER_01]: And just having someone as a bit of a rock to, you know, when you’ve got a sack, you’ll see a foe having someone there to say, right, you’ve got to go and do it now, Joe.

18:43.556 –> 18:45.259
[SPEAKER_01]: I was like, right, okay.

18:45.239 –> 18:47.905
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, he was the XCO of self-register.

18:47.926 –> 18:49.610
[SPEAKER_01]: He’s been through some big things in his cell.

18:49.810 –> 18:55.063
[SPEAKER_01]: So, having that, that CO of self-register and advice just really helped be a stable robot.

18:55.083 –> 18:59.453
[SPEAKER_01]: So, talk to people, you know, most of these things have been done by for, by somebody else.

18:59.534 –> 19:01.358
[SPEAKER_01]: So, you know, talk to people.

19:02.131 –> 19:09.001
[SPEAKER_00]: having taken a business through something similar, and various redundancies and stuff I’ve had to run in the past.

19:09.021 –> 19:22.080
[SPEAKER_00]: And it’s like, when you’re the person in charge of the business, it becomes really difficult because you, there’s so much you can’t tell the team legally at certain points, which is I found the hardest thing of all was not to be able to tell people.

19:22.100 –> 19:30.552
[SPEAKER_00]: So to have someone who’s a key advisor, who knows everything, who you can talk to and understands it, family and friends are great, but someone who actually is aware,

19:30.683 –> 19:34.187
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and good people always want to help good people.

19:34.407 –> 19:43.859
[SPEAKER_01]: So, you know, if you’re able to deal with it and be honest with yourself and honest with somebody else, then you will get honest to help for reply.

19:44.019 –> 19:52.489
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think that part of the hardest part is actually facing these scenarios and being truthful to yourself, but there we go.

19:53.414 –> 19:59.200
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to ask you about something slightly more positive if you’ve been more challenging before we head towards the top tip.

19:59.240 –> 20:19.860
[SPEAKER_00]: So it is Jay, you mentioned that you’re doing everything in house and that the Google ads and the Facebook ads are super important to the business and we’ve gone through a very challenging time with running Google ads and Facebook ads in particularly where I know a lot of people are now deliberating whether

20:19.840 –> 20:25.913
[SPEAKER_00]: creative in-house, somebody else running the accounts or outsourcing everything or keeping everything in-house.

20:26.695 –> 20:34.491
[SPEAKER_00]: How have you navigated that massive shift in how the Facebook ads, how we have to use Facebook ads to deliver the result?

20:35.787 –> 20:39.353
[SPEAKER_01]: I think measuring of session in detail and measuring.

20:39.373 –> 20:41.756
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, lots of people are talking about it being a huge shift.

20:41.776 –> 20:44.120
[SPEAKER_01]: I just always view these things as part of the evolution.

20:44.160 –> 20:48.647
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think, you know, when you’ve been doing it for a while, it is just always hard work.

20:48.687 –> 20:50.109
[SPEAKER_01]: It’s about finding on this data.

20:50.129 –> 20:51.291
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think that’s the hardest part.

20:51.311 –> 20:53.695
[SPEAKER_01]: We know you use AAA, which will come on to in a minute.

20:53.675 –> 20:58.640
[SPEAKER_01]: but just having a point of truth across all the platforms is absolutely critical.

20:59.001 –> 21:03.966
[SPEAKER_01]: A bit like everything, you know, if your cash flow is breaking, you really need to get to exactly why.

21:03.986 –> 21:08.230
[SPEAKER_01]: If your cack is skyrocketing, you need to understand exactly why.

21:08.250 –> 21:11.113
[SPEAKER_01]: And the only way you can find that is by spending the time to go on the data.

21:11.414 –> 21:12.575
[SPEAKER_01]: And we’re lucky enough nowadays.

21:12.595 –> 21:22.365
[SPEAKER_01]: You’ve got so many different ways of extrapolating data and dropping data into AI that you can start to ask challenging data.

21:22.345 –> 21:34.656
[SPEAKER_01]: I ask, you know, either Claude or Jackie BT, this is what I want to know, and I’ll ramble into it, tell me what the best prompt is and what data do you need from Mobie to kind of understand this.

21:34.816 –> 21:43.484
[SPEAKER_01]: And I will get prompts from one AI to feed into Mobie for triple well and then pull all that data back in so I can really understand the data as to what’s what.

21:43.844 –> 21:52.352
[SPEAKER_01]: So that sort of data analyst that a world class day journalist we’ve always wanted

21:52.332 –> 21:56.233
[SPEAKER_01]: asking more proactive questions and getting more and more data.

21:56.585 –> 21:57.506
[SPEAKER_00]: It’s interesting, isn’t it?

21:57.526 –> 22:04.617
[SPEAKER_00]: I think I used to say, like, about 10 years ago, that one of my roles as an advisor to people was to tell them what to Google.

22:05.539 –> 22:07.221
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, it’s like, I’ve got this problem glow.

22:07.241 –> 22:08.944
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, this is the key word you need to Google.

22:08.984 –> 22:11.768
[SPEAKER_00]: Then you’ll find the potential supplies and the potential solutions.

22:11.788 –> 22:17.117
[SPEAKER_00]: Because if you don’t know that area of e-commerce, you don’t know what the words people use for it are.

22:17.798 –> 22:22.525
[SPEAKER_00]: But listening to you talk about that, it’s like, actually now, AI gives us the right key words, C.E.s.

22:22.927 –> 22:27.817
[SPEAKER_01]: It does dictate and ramble into it, and it will work out what you’re trying to do.

22:27.857 –> 22:36.293
[SPEAKER_01]: It deciphers mass amounts of information, be that your own ramblings, what your own problem is, what it may be, or all the dates from all the answers.

22:36.354 –> 22:38.117
[SPEAKER_01]: I did a huge piece.

22:38.333 –> 22:42.077
[SPEAKER_01]: all about Tam and the totally drippable market that I could do for Domino’s and chess.

22:42.097 –> 23:01.499
[SPEAKER_01]: And I wanted to exactly, by month, how much of the UK market I had for Domino’s and chess, by, and I went through, went through all the keywords search volume, just for numbers of this is, went through all the keywords search volume, went through all the different conversion rates, went through everybody’s rankings, dumped it all in and got to a pretty good point of exactly how much of the market we are for each of those things.

23:01.959 –> 23:02.620
[SPEAKER_01]: That’s,

23:02.600 –> 23:06.947
[SPEAKER_01]: all data that exists, but it isn’t pulled together in a place yet.

23:07.428 –> 23:15.040
[SPEAKER_01]: But by having multi-stage questions into an AI, I can get all that data, ask the right questions of the data, and then let it process it.

23:15.160 –> 23:18.285
[SPEAKER_01]: Literally overnight I had to do it, but it got to it.

23:19.026 –> 23:23.393
[SPEAKER_00]: And then of course you can decide how much more should we push those products on Amazon?

23:23.754 –> 23:24.635
[SPEAKER_01]: Absolutely correct.

23:24.715 –> 23:25.617
[SPEAKER_01]: Where’s the opportunity?

23:25.757 –> 23:27.780
[SPEAKER_00]: Are we at 90% or are we at 10%.

23:27.862 –> 23:28.303
[SPEAKER_01]: That’s it.

23:28.483 –> 23:34.211
[SPEAKER_01]: So for example, I run two Mexican trained ominous sets on Amazon, one in a Tim box, one in a wooden box.

23:34.231 –> 23:39.938
[SPEAKER_01]: Our theory is if one’s out of stock, the other one sells, it was very apparent running the data that that’s not what happens at all.

23:39.998 –> 23:42.201
[SPEAKER_01]: So it’s absolutely a critical that you run them both.

23:42.662 –> 23:47.989
[SPEAKER_01]: And that’s why because it couldn’t see a shift in sales volume of that particular item when the other one was out of stock.

23:48.370 –> 23:53.717
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, I couldn’t really get to that in a way quickly the way that it did.

23:54.170 –> 23:58.798
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, very complicated spreadsheet and some manual looking at things and two days later.

23:58.818 –> 24:02.284
[SPEAKER_00]: You’re not entirely sure, but that’s exactly that.

24:02.304 –> 24:11.439
[SPEAKER_00]: Whereas you can you can get some pretty good understanding now where they are in dates from analysis and on the creative side of Facebook ads, how are you you tackling that?

24:11.479 –> 24:17.629
[SPEAKER_00]: If you’ve got you know video studio set up a using AI for it, how are you in the team creating the creative you need to feed it?

24:18.166 –> 24:18.587
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.

24:19.048 –> 24:20.711
[SPEAKER_01]: So all the creative is done in house.

24:21.132 –> 24:30.109
[SPEAKER_01]: We do, you know, or we do, we’ve got some lights and a bit some pieces and we do some of the ASMR kind of stuff, piece to camera and bits and pieces.

24:30.169 –> 24:35.179
[SPEAKER_01]: I do a like a fake podcast adverts for founder videos and stuff like that.

24:35.159 –> 24:37.061
[SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, we do it all in house.

24:38.003 –> 24:43.890
[SPEAKER_01]: The hardest part of the moment now is that all this persona shifting that we’re working, which I’m sure you’re going to cover in due course.

24:44.151 –> 24:49.858
[SPEAKER_01]: But looking changing one variable whilst not having due to the content.

24:50.519 –> 24:57.207
[SPEAKER_01]: So having a different angle of a very similar video, but making sure that it comes across in a different way.

24:57.808 –> 24:59.310
[SPEAKER_01]: But I think a lot of that,

24:59.290 –> 25:03.454
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, people got all the persona and the face and they’re there and what the advertiser isn’t working.

25:03.954 –> 25:07.938
[SPEAKER_01]: Hang on, isn’t this just what we used to call the type of customer in the olden days?

25:10.321 –> 25:20.070
[SPEAKER_01]: So really, I look at who’s going to buy a backgammon set and why, who’s going to buy a wooden toy tractor and why, and you kind of answer all these questions anyway.

25:20.190 –> 25:26.496
[SPEAKER_01]: So I think there’s a lot of

25:29.227 –> 25:34.077
[SPEAKER_02]: E-commerce Masterplan is supported by some of the greatest companies in the E-commerce sector.

25:34.218 –> 25:44.620
[SPEAKER_02]: Here’s a reminder of who they are.

25:46.878 –> 25:52.152
[SPEAKER_00]: I love this section because it gives me and I’ll list us some really quick ideas for taking our businesses to the next level, Joe.

25:52.192 –> 25:53.496
[SPEAKER_00]: Are you ready for the top tips?

25:53.957 –> 25:54.278
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.

25:55.000 –> 25:56.303
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, the book top tip.

25:56.424 –> 26:03.182
[SPEAKER_00]: If everyone listening to this podcast agreed to take Friday off and read a book to make their business better, which book would you recommend?

26:03.533 –> 26:06.158
[SPEAKER_01]: So I’ve got three books, which I’ll whisk through super quick.

26:07.260 –> 26:11.628
[SPEAKER_01]: Poor Charlie’s Albiniac, which is the book.

26:11.648 –> 26:20.405
[SPEAKER_01]: It’s all the pieces of work and advice that Charlie Munga did, which Charlie Munga was Warren Buffett’s right handman, and it’s the whole logic about how we approach as everything.

26:20.525 –> 26:23.871
[SPEAKER_01]: They simplified every piece of investing they ever did.

26:23.851 –> 26:28.718
[SPEAKER_01]: He said that the danger with intelligence is that everybody gets something know something that goes really deep.

26:28.979 –> 26:34.127
[SPEAKER_01]: So before you run into it, the logic is you need to keep on that.

26:34.147 –> 26:38.754
[SPEAKER_01]: Before you start any opinion, you need to keep understanding everything from the broadest possible perspective.

26:38.794 –> 26:41.638
[SPEAKER_01]: So they when took every view in every bit of knowledge.

26:41.698 –> 26:42.940
[SPEAKER_01]: So I think,

26:42.920 –> 26:46.485
[SPEAKER_01]: teaching you to think broadly and not nail down too much.

26:46.826 –> 26:50.872
[SPEAKER_01]: I love black box thinking by Matthew side, who’s a fantastic bloke.

26:51.272 –> 27:02.228
[SPEAKER_01]: It’s all about the power of diverse thinking and having a diverse team as possible so that you will challenge each other and you know, Mr. Average doesn’t exist.

27:02.208 –> 27:05.900
[SPEAKER_01]: So break that up a bit and I love Malcolm Gladwell tipping point.

27:06.021 –> 27:09.351
[SPEAKER_01]: I’m pretty sure people have spoken about before on this podcast.

27:10.014 –> 27:14.428
[SPEAKER_01]: I think I just like it for the emotional reason that they might be a tipping point out there where it all becomes a bit easier.

27:17.800 –> 27:28.553
[SPEAKER_01]: But I think it’s the logic that it does build and momentum builds and I think that’s the key thing when you’re doing lots of social leader influencing or whatever it may be that it does take a tipping point to get to.

27:29.053 –> 27:32.898
[SPEAKER_01]: And I’m going to be crazy if I may and add a watch top tip.

27:33.218 –> 27:38.745
[SPEAKER_01]: Please do my favorite thing that I’ve watched in many many years is a program called the Thinking Game.

27:39.434 –> 27:51.932
[SPEAKER_01]: which is a documentary about Demisa Sarbes, who’s the now the CEO of Google DeepMind, about how he went about solving the protein-folding problem, and how they did alpha-fold, to solve that.

27:51.952 –> 28:08.395
[SPEAKER_01]: They did alpha-go to beat the world champion at go, and just the way that somebody with a great mind thinks and progresses, and he’s now arguably one of the most influential people in the world, but just the humbornist and the way he thinks about things,

28:08.375 –> 28:09.456
[SPEAKER_01]: absolutely beautiful.

28:10.017 –> 28:12.060
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, I love that cheeky extra tip.

28:12.220 –> 28:13.261
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, really sorry.

28:13.882 –> 28:15.965
[SPEAKER_00]: Lots of lots of great advice there, Joe.

28:15.985 –> 28:20.971
[SPEAKER_00]: So, so definitely expecting good things from you from the rest of the top tips, pressures on.

28:21.913 –> 28:27.340
[SPEAKER_00]: Traffic top tip, which marketing method do you either prize above all others, or think doesn’t get the press it deserves?

28:28.401 –> 28:35.290
[SPEAKER_01]: For us, I always think it’s a pop-up, because we spend a lot of time worrying about how much traffic we get and where it comes in.

28:35.590 –> 28:36.812
[SPEAKER_01]: And

28:37.012 –> 28:40.036
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, our pop-up now converts to about 7%.

28:40.116 –> 28:48.485
[SPEAKER_01]: So 7% of the people that rock up at our site, 10,000 people, the difference between 3% of the 7% is quite a huge amount of people.

28:48.545 –> 29:04.504
[SPEAKER_01]: And if you’re pulling those people in and bringing them into a conversation with you and just making that conversation last a little bit longer than the time they’re on the site, I think that’s a hugely valuable thing that we’ve got our pop-up spots on our flows, we’re still working on to get as good as I want them to be.

29:04.872 –> 29:11.262
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think the email pop-up is a, or email capture pop-up is an under-appreciated tool.

29:11.382 –> 29:13.165
[SPEAKER_00]: So I love that you’ve, you’ve flagged that one.

29:13.725 –> 29:18.793
[SPEAKER_00]: The tool top tip, maybe a collaboration tool, a social media plug-in, a phone app, or just a way of working.

29:18.813 –> 29:23.320
[SPEAKER_00]: Is there a cool little tool you use that makes you and your team more efficient from day to day?

29:23.722 –> 29:26.985
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, my three, again, are life timely.

29:27.005 –> 29:29.767
[SPEAKER_01]: I love because it’s just an easy way of catching margin.

29:30.068 –> 29:33.691
[SPEAKER_01]: Not perfect margin, but you can follow your daily performance.

29:33.771 –> 29:35.152
[SPEAKER_01]: Nice and easily across the business.

29:35.252 –> 29:38.074
[SPEAKER_01]: Life timely, uh, Trifleware, I’ve already mentioned.

29:38.134 –> 29:43.039
[SPEAKER_01]: I think has been an absolute godsend and, and understanding and using that as it should be.

29:43.199 –> 29:48.483
[SPEAKER_01]: I hated it for the first three months, nearly cancel my subscription when I went to go and cancel bits and pieces.

29:48.524 –> 29:50.265
[SPEAKER_01]: They said maybe you’re not using it right, Joe.

29:50.906 –> 29:52.067
[SPEAKER_01]: So I dug, dug deep.

29:52.127 –> 29:53.728
[SPEAKER_01]: And I couldn’t do without it now.

29:53.708 –> 29:59.860
[SPEAKER_01]: And we also use upfloments, which is a really handy tool for putting all of your product seeding influences all together.

30:00.041 –> 30:03.066
[SPEAKER_01]: And we now do hundreds of products seeds a month.

30:03.948 –> 30:04.910
[SPEAKER_01]: And that’s a really good thing.

30:04.950 –> 30:08.838
[SPEAKER_01]: And it’s not about paying huge influences, tens of thousands of pounds.

30:08.918 –> 30:12.966
[SPEAKER_01]: It’s about getting people that really love your products to really talk about them honestly.

30:12.946 –> 30:28.181
[SPEAKER_01]: If you’ve got a really good product, people will want to talk about it, we’re not in beauty, where we’re forcing people to talk about a miracle face cream, we’re making really beautiful lovely toys and we want people to film their children playing with really beautiful lovely toys is not a big ask.

30:28.702 –> 30:29.925
[SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, up until this is awesome.

30:30.057 –> 30:36.531
[SPEAKER_00]: Has lots of people, I think, fail to make as much impact as they should with the influencer strategy.

30:36.571 –> 30:40.900
[SPEAKER_00]: You said you used your sending out to what is it 500 odd people at time with this?

30:40.920 –> 30:41.341
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

30:41.361 –> 30:46.412
[SPEAKER_00]: Is it a case of kind of go big with the micro influences is where you found the sweet spot?

30:46.595 –> 30:48.581
[SPEAKER_01]: But that’s where I’ve got it.

30:48.881 –> 31:02.038
[SPEAKER_01]: And we’ve done product influence of stuff seeding for absolutely ages, but I’ve always done it and then back to how and then done it and back to how and then you see it in the cost line you hate it and what we did now was actually dive in and actually do it properly.

31:02.018 –> 31:29.680
[SPEAKER_01]: And then I tracked a graph of impressions and a graph of product seeds and then I tracked branded search tone volume both across mainly across Amazon because you can kind of see where people then start searching your brand and then got the two graphs and then look for a graph correlation with AI and generally saw that within a week of the product seed dump going out

31:29.660 –> 31:33.470
[SPEAKER_01]: So then I can start to have some comfort actually that is working over here.

31:34.572 –> 31:41.610
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah and that’s it’s so hard to track but if you can see those correlation do you can see the impact going in the product sales then it’s you know.

31:42.080 –> 31:47.126
[SPEAKER_01]: If you’re struggling to track something, it’s always like, hey, I, this is what I’m trying to do.

31:47.146 –> 31:51.551
[SPEAKER_01]: Is there any way at all, any creative ideas or has anybody else had this problem before?

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[SPEAKER_01]: And Penny to a pound someone has and you can come up with it.

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[SPEAKER_01]: That was actually one of my ideas of graph correlation, but you know, I always can help too.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And then the carbon top tip, what’s your favorite way to reduce the carbon footprint of an e-commerce store?

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[SPEAKER_01]: There’s an old saying, which is by cheap, by twice.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And I think a lot of carbon can get wasted in resending out things that are broken.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So buy nice things and make sure it’s considered.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And when you do, when you’re lucky enough to get a sale for heaven, say, make sure that that product arrives and somebody wants to keep it, because it’s not junk.

32:26.039 –> 32:42.602
[SPEAKER_01]: And also if there is any problems, you know, damaged in transit, whatever it may be, work out some sort of resolution, have a human conversation with the customer, try and work a way of not having to go back and forth and back and forth and back and forth, you know, automation can very much be the enemy in carbon footprints.

32:43.182 –> 32:44.765
[SPEAKER_00]: Especially when it comes to returns.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, very much so.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Joe, before we say goodbye, could you please let the listeners know where they can find you and your business on the web and social media?

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[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, we are Jake’s of London, J.Q.U.U.S., so you can find Google that and you’ll find us.

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[SPEAKER_01]: And on LinkedIn, if anybody wants, you know, in all seriousness, Joe Jake’s, J.O.E., J.A.Q.U.E.S., yeah, dropped me a message on LinkedIn, I’m super happy to help anyone in anything positive, like all the stuff I’m spoken about, or if anybody’s going through a bit of a tough time and balancing and working their way through a dip.

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[SPEAKER_01]: I’m happy to be here for that person to talk to about something because I know how blooming hard it is and I’ve done it now and got through the other side.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So do reach out.

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[SPEAKER_01]: I’m always happy to help anybody at whichever side of that sea so you may be currently sitting on after the storms come the sun shines and keep peddling everybody.

33:35.443 –> 33:37.126
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, so such wise words.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Jay, thank you so much for coming on the Ecommerce Master Plan podcast.

33:40.390 –> 33:42.073
[SPEAKER_00]: It’s been a real treat getting to chat with you.

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[SPEAKER_00]: So thank you for being here.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Wow, Victoria, thank you so much for having me.

33:51.241 –> 33:52.784
[SPEAKER_00]: fascinating to chat to Jay there.

33:52.804 –> 33:56.591
[SPEAKER_00]: I can’t believe how many topics we got through in the course of that chat.

33:57.854 –> 34:13.384
[SPEAKER_00]: I think the bit which resonated the most with me was the clarity of who they are and what they’re doing, you know, that they’re doubling down on the play part of the story, which reminds me of

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[SPEAKER_00]: I don’t know if it’s an urban myth or reality, but where Nintendo were originally a playing card manufacturer, and then decided that their USP was not being a playing card manufacturer, it was being a creator of games, and therefore they evolved into what they are today, and the way

34:37.040 –> 34:43.172
[SPEAKER_00]: back to an element of its roots really feels very similar to that story to me and is you know clearly working well for them.

34:43.473 –> 34:50.366
[SPEAKER_00]: Fascinating stuff on the marketing front with the influencers and the ads approach there and lots of other bits and pieces in there.

34:50.466 –> 34:53.412
[SPEAKER_00]: I suspect several of you will be listening to this one again.

34:53.392 –> 35:01.503
[SPEAKER_00]: Are you going to get your hands on our notes from this episode including those top tips and links to what we mentioned by heading over to ecommercemasterplanned.com?

35:01.523 –> 35:10.615
[SPEAKER_00]: You could also use the direct episode short link just put ECMP.info4sash, the number of this episode into the URL bar and you’ll go straight to the right page.

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[SPEAKER_00]: When you get to the website you can also add yourself to our email list so you don’t miss out on any of the other things we share to help you improve your business.

35:18.265 –> 35:41.860
[SPEAKER_00]: And if you like this episode, then why not check out recent episode number 588, where we’re covering vaguely similar topic, but with some of the very, very similar mindset to business to Joe, so I think you’ll really like that episode as well if you haven’t caught it yet, that’s 588 just a couple before this one.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And if you want more on Shopify sellers, then head to ECMP.info for such Shopify for all our interviews with people on the Shopify platform.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for tuning in to this and every episode of the e-commerce master plan podcast.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I bring you a new interview every week because I want to inspire and help e-commerce business owners to succeed and thrive with their businesses, including progressing along the path to net zero.

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[SPEAKER_00]: So if you know someone this show can help please tell them to listen to

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[SPEAKER_02]: out if we’re great week and don’t forget to keep optimizing.