Roman is back on the show to share how Carwow is using AI across the business, from speeding up experimentation to building smarter, more reliable workflows. We explore what happens when AI moves from a useful tool to a core part of how an eCommerce team works – including the surprising impact on workload, productivity and growth. 

Hit PLAY to hear: 

• How Carwow got its teams experimenting with AI at scale 
• Why AI has taken Roman’s team from 10 projects to 50 
• The secret to making AI tools actually useful: the “harness” 
• Why you should NOT let AI directly control your Google Ads 
• How AI can make eCommerce testing 10x cheaper 
• The surprising downside of AI: why doing more can leave teams more exhausted 

Key timestamps to dive straight in: 

[05:31] One-on-one adoption strategy 

[09:00] Consolidating AI Tools at Work 

[11:25] Choosing the right tools for teams 

[14:47] Discussing sustainability and resource use 

[17:08] Using AI for different tasks 

[22:42] Evaluating the idea process 

[23:17] Mental exhaustion from constant AI work 

[25:04] Listen to Roman’s Top Tips! 

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00:00.031 –> 00:08.159 [SPEAKER_00]: We have a huge benefit of being small enough so we can roll out changes, experiment, fail, try again, fail, try again, win.

00:08.459 –> 00:24.475 [SPEAKER_00]: And this is what the formula of the companies, I make sure that people have time to dedicate to try stupid things because you only learn by trying things with the eye so that they can actually use it when the hard time comes in and the hard question comes in.

00:27.350 –> 00:29.731 [SPEAKER_02]: It’s the e-commerce master plan podcast.

00:30.271 –> 00:34.352 [SPEAKER_02]: Here to help you solve your marketing problems and grow your e-commerce business.

00:34.872 –> 00:40.414 [SPEAKER_02]: Cutting through the hide-off to bring you inspiration and advice from the e-commerce sector and beyond.

00:40.654 –> 00:42.655 [SPEAKER_02]: Here’s your host, Chloe Thomas.

00:46.025 –> 00:47.106 [SPEAKER_01]: Hello, and welcome.

00:47.146 –> 00:48.187 [SPEAKER_01]: It’s great to have you here.

00:48.247 –> 00:52.210 [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you for hitting play and choosing to listen to one of our inspiring guests.

00:52.671 –> 00:57.094 [SPEAKER_01]: In this episode, we’re catching up with Roman for the second time this year.

00:57.114 –> 01:03.499 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, we don’t do that often, but when I chatted to Roman for the last episode when he was on, he had so many projects going on.

01:03.519 –> 01:10.705 [SPEAKER_01]: I’m just saying such fascinating work that I thought it was worth getting him back on the show for an update and just find out what he’s working on, really.

01:11.626 –> 01:23.815 [SPEAKER_01]: What that transcribed, that turned into is one massive chat about how they are day-to-day using AI tools within the business car.

01:24.316 –> 01:33.863 [SPEAKER_01]: Across the teams, how they are embedding it across the teams, and we get a little bit philosophical about some of the future of the AI tools, but he also shares some really interesting

01:34.603 –> 01:38.368 [SPEAKER_01]: impacts of what it’s doing to people’s workload and enjoyment of work as well.

01:38.929 –> 01:47.641 [SPEAKER_01]: So lots of cool stuff in this episode, a few tablets and two, and his top tips answers are awesome as well, so make sure you stick around for those.

01:53.859 –> 01:55.621 [SPEAKER_01]: And now to introduce our special guest.

01:56.061 –> 02:00.725 [SPEAKER_01]: Roman Petrochenkov is the head of marketing, a media analytics at CarWow.

02:01.145 –> 02:08.992 [SPEAKER_01]: CarWow is a one-stop shop for changing your car, offering customers the ability to buy a new or used car or sell their existing vehicle.

02:09.472 –> 02:24.979 [SPEAKER_01]: Founded in 2013, they now operate in the UK, Germany and Spain, and in 2024, they grew 50% with nearly £3 billion worth of cars bought on the site, and £1.8 billion of cars listed for sale through the self-micar service.

02:25.339 –> 02:26.100 [SPEAKER_01]: Hello Roman.

02:26.600 –> 02:28.501 [SPEAKER_00]: Hello Chloe, very happy to be back.

02:29.101 –> 02:30.662 [SPEAKER_01]: Awesome to have you back on the show.

02:30.762 –> 02:31.522 [SPEAKER_01]: How have you been?

02:31.582 –> 02:33.203 [SPEAKER_01]: What’s been going on for the last year?

02:34.258 –> 02:38.201 [SPEAKER_00]: Well, AI is changing a lot of things, so we have to have to a lot to that.

02:38.781 –> 02:51.910 [SPEAKER_00]: And I think what is the craziest and the most complex thing is that if we used to have 10 things we’re working now, we have 50 things that we’re working on and all of them have to be worked on because you have multiple AI chats in behind that helping it do that.

02:52.874 –> 03:02.136 [SPEAKER_01]: I feel like, I mean, last time you were on, we got into AI, but I feel like we did the mirror scraping of the surface of AI.

03:02.156 –> 03:03.417 [SPEAKER_01]: You know, it was like, AI exists.

03:03.577 –> 03:07.978 [SPEAKER_01]: It’s quite useful for putting together proposals to massively summarize what we talked about last time.

03:08.418 –> 03:12.559 [SPEAKER_01]: So it doesn’t surprise me at all, the AI is right up there.

03:12.579 –> 03:21.921 [SPEAKER_01]: Have you, would you say car wow is ahead of the game on AI adoption or middle of the pack or behind?

03:23.172 –> 03:24.833 [SPEAKER_00]: I’m not going to say we’ll be behind.

03:24.873 –> 03:28.776 [SPEAKER_00]: We definitely, in the top, maybe 10, 20% of a car or it.

03:29.377 –> 03:37.502 [SPEAKER_00]: We have a huge benefit of being small enough so we can roll out changes, experiment, fail, try again, fail, try again, win.

03:37.783 –> 03:39.984 [SPEAKER_00]: And this is what the formula of the companies.

03:40.685 –> 03:46.169 [SPEAKER_00]: And especially in my team, like, I make sure that people have time to dedicate

03:50.992 –> 03:59.014 [SPEAKER_00]: because when you learn, you only learn by trying things with the I so that they can actually use it when the hard time comes in and the hard question comes in.

03:59.774 –> 04:05.935 [SPEAKER_01]: Got you, and so active, a bit like Google’s old 10% of your time to be spent on other projects.

04:05.975 –> 04:12.397 [SPEAKER_01]: You’ve got like choose the afternoon or something, go and do something silly with AI just to see if you can get something from end to end.

04:12.437 –> 04:13.057 [SPEAKER_01]: That’s sort of thing.

04:13.590 –> 04:21.674 [SPEAKER_00]: I think company white will have different practices, but in generally the whole company approaches we want to get people to try and experiment as much as possible.

04:22.294 –> 04:42.485 [SPEAKER_00]: But then when we realize if you just ask people to do something, like out of the outside of context anything, people find a choice paralysis, like, okay, what I’m supposed to do with this, you’re looking at this black box, you turn it left, it’s black, it turn it right, it’s still black, but you need to give a few examples, and then it comes down to the teams,

04:43.205 –> 04:56.030 [SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes it takes more than 10% of the time, but I find the most is you need like a couple of weeks of a lot of heavy usage and then you can down be down to like 5-10% of your time and experimenting.

04:56.450 –> 04:57.091 [SPEAKER_01]: Got you?

04:57.291 –> 05:03.033 [SPEAKER_01]: It’s finding those reasons to use it heavily for a couple of weeks to then get yourself up to speed.

05:03.493 –> 05:04.594 [SPEAKER_01]: And you say it’s

05:05.984 –> 05:07.885 [SPEAKER_01]: different parts of the company have got different approaches.

05:07.925 –> 05:14.368 [SPEAKER_01]: So can I ask which department is leading the push into AI?

05:14.628 –> 05:22.472 [SPEAKER_01]: You know, because I imagine in many companies, it’s like a marketing got really into it or the website team got really into it and then everyone else is following on behind.

05:22.533 –> 05:23.893 [SPEAKER_01]: I doubt it’s ever financed.

05:24.233 –> 05:31.117 [SPEAKER_01]: But is there one team kind of leading for you or are there several of you pushing the boundaries a bit more than others?

05:31.792 –> 05:33.073 [SPEAKER_00]: It’s such a good question.

05:33.253 –> 05:38.996 [SPEAKER_00]: Obviously, not affiliated, but there’s a head of marketing and it is going to say analytics is actually very much ahead.

05:39.716 –> 05:55.284 [SPEAKER_00]: What we have done is, with some point, we realize that the only way to push adoption is to sit down with people, like person by person, see what specific person would problems they have and then show them how they can solve those problems.

05:56.004 –> 05:58.686 [SPEAKER_00]: And though you can try to write like a huge instruction

06:01.307 –> 06:16.862 [SPEAKER_00]: When you have a small enough team, the most efficient way to get people in is to just sit with them, spend a couple of hours, and then two hours down the line, you see people’s eyes, just dig to, they’re like, I want a more of this, and then you immediately start getting like a person that’s human, it’s spreads and spreads.

06:17.483 –> 06:21.910 [SPEAKER_00]: To be fair, in caros specifically finances, definitely number two team in adoption.

06:22.210 –> 06:25.516 [SPEAKER_00]: And they’re driving adoption across the company a lot.

06:26.096 –> 06:28.781 [SPEAKER_00]: And they’re very much sharing examples on how they use it.

06:29.322 –> 06:31.946 [SPEAKER_00]: I’m actually very, very proud for the team we have here.

06:32.631 –> 06:51.344 [SPEAKER_01]: I suppose there’s some element of AI works best where you’ve got hard and fast facts to feed into it and in finance there should be hard and fast facts to, you know, definite black and white territory of, you know, this is a yes, this is a no and so on and so forth.

06:51.444 –> 06:52.005 [SPEAKER_01]: And actually,

06:53.191 –> 07:04.637 [SPEAKER_01]: for all, you know, let’s not get into the attribution debate again, but apart from how do you attribute the actual nuts and bolts and the data coming into the world of analytics is also pretty steadfast isn’t it?

07:04.657 –> 07:13.021 [SPEAKER_01]: So it would make sense that those two teams are able to take it a bit further because you’re dealing with more facts than maybe the copyrights are dealing with.

07:13.883 –> 07:18.567 [SPEAKER_00]: I’m sent, I would say, there are two parts for me that work a lot.

07:18.987 –> 07:20.168 [SPEAKER_00]: One is the harness.

07:20.769 –> 07:34.380 [SPEAKER_00]: So if all the AI tooling that you have in front of you is just chat, so you can do a lot of chatting, but then you try to ask it to go and change your Google Ads campaigns and it’s like, well, it just cannot, it’s a chat.

07:34.400 –> 07:35.881 [SPEAKER_00]: So I need to do some MCP in it.

07:35.961 –> 07:37.883 [SPEAKER_00]: It becomes really technically really complex.

07:38.463 –> 07:44.428 [SPEAKER_00]: But let’s imagine you have a chapter that is specifically designed for Google like boom, it has a harness, understanding how it works.

07:45.129 –> 07:50.054 [SPEAKER_00]: And that is, for example, for finance, cloud provides Microsoft Excel connection.

07:50.354 –> 07:52.576 [SPEAKER_00]: So you can just ask it to do your pivot table.

07:53.277 –> 08:02.165 [SPEAKER_00]: And though most people in finance know how to do the pivot table, everybody in e-commerce know how annoying it is sometimes to make specific filters with specific semifz.

08:02.685 –> 08:08.910 [SPEAKER_00]: And this is where Claude is amazing, but it just takes all of that complexity out of the question.

08:09.771 –> 08:13.374 [SPEAKER_00]: And the second thing is your logical thinking.

08:13.434 –> 08:21.901 [SPEAKER_00]: So if the person is kind of wired to do, you know, like, logical, almost coding, like, experience.

08:22.581 –> 08:32.726 [SPEAKER_00]: They get it a little bit quicker, because they frame their questions in the way that the eye is just going to get their quicker, but it doesn’t mean that they’re smarter in any way.

08:32.786 –> 08:41.150 [SPEAKER_00]: It’s just copyright or immediately spots the eye slope text, and like, well, it doesn’t actually, it does mean the other thing that I need to do, it doesn’t replace me in any way.

08:41.410 –> 08:46.453 [SPEAKER_00]: There’s nobody’s going to argue that the club text is anywhere close to actual human being writing that.

08:47.053 –> 08:51.419 [SPEAKER_00]: But then you can use AI to research a topic, provide ideas, or summarize what other people do.

08:51.960 –> 08:56.206 [SPEAKER_00]: But that requires you to have a little bit of like how to automate my work.

08:56.226 –> 08:59.291 [SPEAKER_00]: And this is the technical capability, rather than incorporating capability.

09:00.134 –> 09:12.437 [SPEAKER_01]: You mentioned the AI tools there and I feel like this is a not a plateau point but a sudden load of work that many companies are going through with their AI tools.

09:12.597 –> 09:24.160 [SPEAKER_01]: Is it starts off, you know, Jenny and Accounts has got a log into Claude and Kevin in marketing has gone, has got an open AI account on the go and someone’s racking up some

09:30.341 –> 09:44.579 [SPEAKER_01]: And then there comes a point where you suddenly realize you’re duplicating all this work because everyone is working in different tools without one kind of hub and then someone is using a tool where all the information gets fed back into the central LLM and then oh god nightmare.

09:45.159 –> 09:47.542 [SPEAKER_01]: So I feel like everyone’s heading towards a point of

09:48.443 –> 09:52.970 [SPEAKER_01]: AI tool, consolidation, and corporatization, dare one say?

09:54.132 –> 09:57.577 [SPEAKER_01]: How are you handling that within CarWow?

09:57.677 –> 10:03.586 [SPEAKER_01]: Is it as everyone logging into the same Claude portal or are there different ones set up for different teams?

10:04.449 –> 10:07.150 [SPEAKER_00]: We have several of them set up for different teams.

10:08.071 –> 10:10.952 [SPEAKER_00]: We have shared skills and shared context with people to use.

10:11.492 –> 10:18.736 [SPEAKER_00]: But I think the problem with AI tooling from where I said is that people think of AI as a tool that does a thing.

10:19.036 –> 10:20.897 [SPEAKER_00]: For example, everybody knows Photoshop.

10:21.117 –> 10:27.867 [SPEAKER_00]: it’s a tool to change images and there’s like a tool like final card that changes in the video and stuff like this.

10:28.347 –> 10:36.719 [SPEAKER_00]: Whereas AI is a tool you want it to be and what my concern is like when you try to say well everybody in the company should use it the same way.

10:37.520 –> 10:43.041 [SPEAKER_00]: It comes just all because you can’t because people in different departments use it in absolutely different way.

10:43.461 –> 10:50.423 [SPEAKER_00]: It’s almost like a piece of metal that you can forge in any form and then the fighters will make swords.

10:50.863 –> 10:53.664 [SPEAKER_00]: And then engineers are going to make small CPU units.

10:54.064 –> 10:59.145 [SPEAKER_00]: And then I don’t know, people who are doing arts are going to make a really beautiful statues.

10:59.185 –> 11:00.925 [SPEAKER_00]: And like this is what AI is.

11:01.206 –> 11:04.646 [SPEAKER_00]: Depending on your purposes it will be absolutely unrelated to each other tools.

11:08.007 –> 11:10.648 [SPEAKER_00]: But this is where the real complexity comes in.

11:10.988 –> 11:14.749 [SPEAKER_00]: Do you try to solve this of everybody using it the same?

11:14.909 –> 11:17.450 [SPEAKER_00]: Or do you give everybody freedom but then how you control it?

11:17.870 –> 11:24.812 [SPEAKER_00]: And I feel this is like a constant debate internally which we don’t know which one is better because each one of them comes with the trade-offs.

11:25.685 –> 11:33.308 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I feel like, um, with, like, so I can thinking too much there, sorry for the pauses, this is.

11:33.529 –> 11:43.313 [SPEAKER_01]: So, um, I completely get me coming from about different things being, different for, for, for, for the best tool for different teams, you know, your example of finance with their Excel spreadsheets.

11:43.353 –> 11:46.734 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, Claude is obviously going to be the best one to go for.

11:46.774 –> 11:52.297 [SPEAKER_01]: If marketing a deep in Google sheets, they’re probably going to want to go into Gemini and Nano and all of that stuff.

11:52.897 –> 12:01.419 [SPEAKER_01]: And I think there’s, I think Claude became a bit of a game changer with its folders and, you know, the different structure it put around things.

12:02.199 –> 12:08.921 [SPEAKER_01]: But I feel like it’s another stepping stone and in a couple of years time we’ll all be logging into something else.

12:09.441 –> 12:17.343 [SPEAKER_01]: Because there’s a lot of tools out there now that do that same document capture and folder thing that Claude does.

12:18.003 –> 12:20.024 [SPEAKER_01]: But enable you to access everything.

12:20.744 –> 12:23.086 [SPEAKER_01]: you know, all the models available in the marketplace.

12:23.126 –> 12:30.611 [SPEAKER_01]: And I can see that becoming more of a corporate apart from the fact that, you know, the Claude time to Microsoft.

12:30.631 –> 12:42.779 [SPEAKER_01]: But, yeah, I can see that more of a corporate play, we’ve got this hub where we can feed in Gemini and OpenAI and Claude and anything else that comes along in the next two years.

12:43.140 –> 12:44.000 [SPEAKER_01]: And we’ve immediately got

12:49.404 –> 13:03.291 [SPEAKER_01]: in some government somewhere that suddenly decides we can’t have access to it anymore to LLMX, then we’ve still got all the rest of our stuff in this third party piece that then we’ll we can then use it across other AI stuff.

13:03.791 –> 13:06.092 [SPEAKER_01]: Do you see that coming down the line as well?

13:06.192 –> 13:08.313 [SPEAKER_01]: Or am I am I in a little island of my own here?

13:08.373 –> 13:09.214 [SPEAKER_01]: And that thinking?

13:10.145 –> 13:12.548 [SPEAKER_00]: I think it’s very much depends on the company size.

13:12.808 –> 13:30.626 [SPEAKER_00]: Like big companies will try to take a control over it because it exponentially grows and it creates so much noise when it’s uncontrolled that it becomes more expensive to take care of the noise rather than to actually, like you don’t have enough incremental benefit to cover for a month of noise that people with AI.

13:31.587 –> 13:35.049 [SPEAKER_00]: For the smaller companies, I think it will come down to a different thing.

13:35.569 –> 13:43.453 [SPEAKER_00]: I don’t know how about everybody else, but as of today, I don’t really feel much of a difference between models, like they’re all roughly do the same thing.

13:43.954 –> 13:50.297 [SPEAKER_00]: Obviously there’s not a banana, which is amazing for images and Claude’s image generation is really really far away from this.

13:50.697 –> 13:55.220 [SPEAKER_00]: But if I’m writing some kind of like research proposal, I can do different things.

13:55.260 –> 13:55.800 [SPEAKER_00]: It doesn’t really

13:57.901 –> 14:00.042 [SPEAKER_00]: What really changes it is the harness.

14:00.602 –> 14:04.264 [SPEAKER_00]: Like sharing skills and cloth is just superior to Gemini.

14:04.444 –> 14:05.745 [SPEAKER_00]: And that’s why it’s so big.

14:05.765 –> 14:07.366 [SPEAKER_00]: And that’s why everybody talks about it.

14:08.046 –> 14:12.128 [SPEAKER_00]: And the real question is, is harnessing going to all equalize?

14:12.168 –> 14:14.669 [SPEAKER_00]: And you can do all of these things across all of the models?

14:15.149 –> 14:20.512 [SPEAKER_00]: And if that’s true, the question will come down to cost, who can actually run the model at the cheapest level?

14:20.852 –> 14:22.493 [SPEAKER_00]: Because right now they all subsidize.

14:22.533 –> 14:26.575 [SPEAKER_00]: And if you all will pray, we’ll pay the amount of money that actually costs.

14:26.875 –> 14:31.140 [SPEAKER_00]: And then it also would be using, yeah, all of us will just say, well, it’s a thing from 20 years from now.

14:31.160 –> 14:34.984 [SPEAKER_00]: Like, you know, it’s going to take so much time for it to actually be normal, like flying cars.

14:35.284 –> 14:39.929 [SPEAKER_00]: They exist, but about five of them, you know, but we don’t know what’s going to happen with a cost factor.

14:39.949 –> 14:44.234 [SPEAKER_00]: But I think harness around it, I predict is going to be all equalized.

14:44.494 –> 14:47.117 [SPEAKER_00]: You can take a lot of skill put it in Gemini and be fine with it.

14:47.831 –> 15:05.493 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think you’re probably right there because, and the point you make about the cost of it is from an ecological and sustainability standpoint, I would like those costs to come in sooner or later because we are burning through an awful lot of the earth resources for no good reason at all, you know, creating.

15:06.254 –> 15:14.599 [SPEAKER_01]: And sorry, no one who likes doing this, but creating endless pictures of your friends looking like dogs is not a good use of the world’s energy and resources.

15:15.260 –> 15:18.782 [SPEAKER_01]: But if we had to pay for that, then we would use it more sparingly.

15:19.342 –> 15:20.403 [SPEAKER_01]: Get off that soapbox, okay?

15:21.144 –> 15:31.871 [SPEAKER_01]: But I think, you know, as business is we are, we don’t want to become too dependent on it because you could suddenly find yourself in a scenario when the prices do start going up to where they should be.

15:32.811 –> 15:49.607 [SPEAKER_01]: economically if nothing else, where suddenly our costs get a lot higher, and it’s I can’t help but think that for the ease of life of all of us and less of the yo-yo effects, then it would be good if if that happens sooner rather than later, but maybe I’m just being no commudging with that.

15:49.947 –> 15:50.908 [SPEAKER_00]: I honestly don’t know.

15:51.228 –> 16:03.177 [SPEAKER_00]: I think what can happen is that the AI cost will actually not going to get that much lower and it’s actually going to climb up and that is also the removal of this image generation and it will basically focus on a specific thing.

16:03.637 –> 16:06.680 [SPEAKER_00]: It’s more natural to assume that it actually will go come down.

16:07.100 –> 16:15.106 [SPEAKER_00]: But I always need to remind myself that back in the days everybody invested in Uber because the driverless taxes were just one two years away.

16:15.626 –> 16:25.469 [SPEAKER_00]: And now we’re like 15 years into this conversation is still not quite at the point that Uber had to switch completely to this strategy and being like one, I have to provide a lot of different things.

16:26.010 –> 16:32.912 [SPEAKER_00]: So how many years are there until AI will be at the point where it is cheap, affordable and efficient to run?

16:33.492 –> 16:41.695 [SPEAKER_00]: I honestly not experienced enough to know that, but I definitely know that at the current price if you’re small and medium sized business,

16:42.335 –> 16:46.459 [SPEAKER_00]: you can build so many things for basically their cheap.

16:46.719 –> 16:50.242 [SPEAKER_00]: You couldn’t even imagine to afford like five years ago.

16:50.943 –> 17:05.015 [SPEAKER_01]: So do you find that you and your team are mainly using AI to analyze data to write reports or to build technology that you couldn’t afford or couldn’t build before?

17:05.616 –> 17:07.837 [SPEAKER_01]: Coding words or number crunching, basically.

17:08.693 –> 17:20.360 [SPEAKER_00]: I think what I’m really kind of concerned, honestly, is that when I say, yes, I use it a lot for coding because for coding it’s amazing, and then I use it a lot for analysis because it’s also amazing.

17:20.680 –> 17:27.944 [SPEAKER_00]: That also comes with an extent that I have more than 10 years experience in both of them and I can verify every single input and output.

17:28.424 –> 17:34.168 [SPEAKER_00]: So maybe it’s just as good in everything, but I can’t verify output of everything else or prompt it right away.

17:35.028 –> 17:39.331 [SPEAKER_00]: but also it comes down from where the quality really matters and where the quality doesn’t matter.

17:39.811 –> 17:50.497 [SPEAKER_00]: If you need to get a number to have an estimation of how many app users you have, but you just want to have a distribution of which different marketplaces drive the conversions or like leads to your business.

17:51.137 –> 17:53.398 [SPEAKER_00]: The risk factor on that number is very low.

17:53.819 –> 17:55.780 [SPEAKER_00]: So even if you get it a bit wrong,

17:56.628 –> 17:58.070 [SPEAKER_00]: It’s not really that big of a deal.

17:58.110 –> 18:02.436 [SPEAKER_00]: As long as it’s not drastically wrong, but the chance for it to be drastically wrong is not really big.

18:03.217 –> 18:11.648 [SPEAKER_00]: Whereas if you’re creating an investor deck or the board level meeting and you’re using AI for that, you probably should reconsider that approach you taking, because

18:12.249 –> 18:14.690 [SPEAKER_00]: It’s very inconsistent that what it gives to you.

18:15.011 –> 18:20.894 [SPEAKER_00]: And this is what I have in my team and say, look, I want you to use AI to build solutions that are deterministic.

18:20.934 –> 18:25.656 [SPEAKER_00]: So you can use AI to write code because you can verify code and then code produces exactly the same result.

18:26.176 –> 18:30.759 [SPEAKER_00]: You can use AI for marketing, for example, to scrape information about your competitors.

18:31.439 –> 18:32.600 [SPEAKER_00]: And that is a low risk.

18:32.900 –> 18:40.004 [SPEAKER_00]: It’s always nice to know what they’re doing, but you should not use AI to drive your Google Ads campaigns because one day it’s going to be really expensive.

18:40.904 –> 18:42.129 [SPEAKER_00]: because it’s going to just something wrong.

18:43.159 –> 18:45.680 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, there is that context element, isn’t it?

18:45.720 –> 18:53.744 [SPEAKER_01]: He’s like, if you’re in a board meeting, or a marketing strategy a wayday, and some of you guys, oh, what’s our customer lifetime value?

18:53.764 –> 18:54.945 [SPEAKER_01]: Or what’s our attention number?

18:54.985 –> 18:57.286 [SPEAKER_01]: A quick and dirty answer is completely fine.

18:57.906 –> 19:07.931 [SPEAKER_01]: But if you’re then building out the budget model for five years based on a customer lifetime value from per channel, you need that to be, to the letter precise, don’t you?

19:08.091 –> 19:10.532 [SPEAKER_01]: Absolutely, absolutely spot on.

19:12.873 –> 19:18.436 [SPEAKER_01]: There’s no rule you can set for that, is there for which solution to use?

19:18.476 –> 19:21.177 [SPEAKER_01]: That’s just something you have to get through experience.

19:21.838 –> 19:26.100 [SPEAKER_00]: 100% and this is where the harness, which I’m talking about, comes into play.

19:26.880 –> 19:29.682 [SPEAKER_00]: Because what AI is really good is when you give it

19:31.283 –> 19:33.885 [SPEAKER_00]: It tasks to build you something that is not AI.

19:34.225 –> 19:42.652 [SPEAKER_00]: So for example, you want to build a dashboard or automation or some sequencing that then can work without your subscription or any tokens, whatever.

19:43.372 –> 19:44.013 [SPEAKER_00]: It’s amazing.

19:44.373 –> 19:53.320 [SPEAKER_00]: But currently, if you take for example marketing, there is not so many platforms that allow you to build, for example, a harness to generate consistent creatives because again,

19:53.900 –> 20:00.222 [SPEAKER_00]: It’s just not there, it’s not economics, it’s not proven to build it efficiently or like a good automation.

20:00.642 –> 20:01.943 [SPEAKER_00]: But there are some examples.

20:02.123 –> 20:08.865 [SPEAKER_00]: So for example, Google Ads Script is a simple cheap dirt automation that any business can run.

20:09.825 –> 20:11.746 [SPEAKER_00]: And it’s so small and it’s so annoying.

20:11.766 –> 20:13.767 [SPEAKER_00]: You need to know JavaScript, which is annoying.

20:14.168 –> 20:18.290 [SPEAKER_00]: You need to know how it works, which is not like the addition of the whole tool is just horrible.

20:18.870 –> 20:24.434 [SPEAKER_00]: And then if you go to Cloud Chat and ask it to generate your code, it will confuse everything around.

20:24.934 –> 20:29.597 [SPEAKER_00]: But you can give it enough, it’s good skill, that will basically give it all the elements.

20:29.677 –> 20:32.498 [SPEAKER_00]: And boom, you have a very cheap automation for your Google has campaigns.

20:32.558 –> 20:33.799 [SPEAKER_00]: If you need to know zero coding.

20:33.819 –> 20:35.580 [SPEAKER_00]: And this is exactly what I’m talking about, harness.

20:35.900 –> 20:38.402 [SPEAKER_00]: If you give it enough instruction, it can put it in there.

20:39.062 –> 20:53.114 [SPEAKER_00]: It’s amazing, but what you shouldn’t do, you shouldn’t actually run campaigns directly from MCP and say, I’ll just up my budget for a couple of campaigns and come to more, I was like, oh yes, I did it all campaign, sorry about that, I will revert it now, but you will have a million pound bill from Google Ads.

20:53.735 –> 21:06.485 [SPEAKER_01]: So it’s, it’s used the AI to create the code to run the non-AI programs like Google scripts that are just the non-thinking programs that just do the same thing, the same thing, the same thing.

21:07.106 –> 21:10.669 [SPEAKER_01]: Ro ask goes above x, they do y in the area.

21:10.709 –> 21:14.672 [SPEAKER_01]: So the kind of the reliable non-thinking, I’m saying yes.

21:16.053 –> 21:21.914 [SPEAKER_00]: Like another example is link it in, like I’m posting link it in Lately and trying to get some impressions and trying to get stuff.

21:22.415 –> 21:26.375 [SPEAKER_00]: My first interaction was obviously I’m just asked for to write a link it in post.

21:26.615 –> 21:35.458 [SPEAKER_00]: And then I realized that every post is exactly the same because the boarding it uses the average out caught like order of words is exactly the same.

21:35.878 –> 21:36.978 [SPEAKER_00]: So now I don’t do that.

21:37.098 –> 21:43.119 [SPEAKER_00]: I ask it to criticise me, maybe create a better hook, maybe give me some advices,

21:46.140 –> 21:46.400 [SPEAKER_00]: work.

21:46.460 –> 21:53.146 [SPEAKER_00]: When was such a two-manual human input with all of my human mistakes and all imperfections of my English?

21:53.967 –> 21:59.332 [SPEAKER_00]: I actually got significantly better outcome because people like reading human human-generated content.

21:59.986 –> 22:07.513 [SPEAKER_01]: I do just a tangent slightly away from me commerce, but the new report this post is AI Slop button on LinkedIn.

22:08.114 –> 22:16.341 [SPEAKER_01]: I would love to know whether they’re actually feeding that into the algorithm or whether it’s just to stop people messaging them and going, stop putting AI Slop following them.

22:16.742 –> 22:19.744 [SPEAKER_01]: Is it a PR campaign or is it actual data they’re capturing?

22:19.804 –> 22:21.206 [SPEAKER_01]: I suspect it’s both.

22:22.407 –> 22:22.547 [SPEAKER_01]: Right.

22:22.567 –> 22:23.847 [SPEAKER_01]: Let’s not go down that tangent.

22:24.168 –> 22:39.217 [SPEAKER_01]: One thing you said right at the beginning when I ask you how things are these days was that embracing AI heavily in your department means that rather than working on 10 projects at a time, you’re now working on 50 projects at a time.

22:40.998 –> 22:41.938 [SPEAKER_01]: Is that a good thing?

22:42.899 –> 22:44.120 [SPEAKER_00]: It’s a very good question.

22:45.306 –> 22:48.667 [SPEAKER_00]: But whether it’s a right question, it’s my question.

22:48.707 –> 22:49.708 [SPEAKER_00]: So let’s look at this one.

22:49.728 –> 22:51.149 [SPEAKER_00]: There’s a human perspective to that.

22:52.169 –> 22:53.730 [SPEAKER_00]: And we had a conversation internally.

22:53.890 –> 22:57.311 [SPEAKER_00]: And I really keep thinking about it more or more as every week passes by.

22:58.192 –> 22:59.652 [SPEAKER_00]: You used to come up with idea.

23:00.192 –> 23:01.153 [SPEAKER_00]: You come to the meeting.

23:01.293 –> 23:02.013 [SPEAKER_00]: You have a meeting.

23:02.073 –> 23:02.714 [SPEAKER_00]: You come down.

23:02.734 –> 23:03.434 [SPEAKER_00]: You have your coffee.

23:03.454 –> 23:04.434 [SPEAKER_00]: You sit down for two hours.

23:04.454 –> 23:05.495 [SPEAKER_00]: You execute that idea.

23:05.955 –> 23:07.316 [SPEAKER_00]: Then you go and try that idea.

23:07.396 –> 23:10.377 [SPEAKER_00]: So you have different activities during the day that you do.

23:11.097 –> 23:16.620 [SPEAKER_00]: Now, you have an idea, you go to the meeting, Cloud executes the idea, you come from the meeting, you start thinking about that output.

23:17.141 –> 23:30.348 [SPEAKER_00]: You have a new idea, you put it in, you go to the meeting, and there is no break, you just have seven, eight hours of exhaustive mental work that you do, because you constantly thinking, because execution is not part of your workflow anymore.

23:30.868 –> 23:33.790 [SPEAKER_00]: It’s like if you would be able to teleport to office,

23:35.251 –> 23:37.815 [SPEAKER_00]: And not going to the gym, there would be zero physical activity.

23:37.855 –> 23:47.829 [SPEAKER_00]: The same thing here, you brain just never switch off the thinking, because there’s always a new chat in your cloud that just stopped thinking, you came with the outcome that you now need to process.

23:48.550 –> 23:50.393 [SPEAKER_00]: So humans really start getting

23:51.134 –> 23:55.536 [SPEAKER_00]: tired more and more with AI because there’s just more things that you need to think about.

23:55.956 –> 24:04.079 [SPEAKER_00]: And from that perspective and perspective, it’s a sustainability because after all, we want humans to be happy, we want to Earth to be healthy.

24:04.099 –> 24:09.580 [SPEAKER_00]: Like we want, when we’re all doing it to live our life happily, that’s probably a negative outcome.

24:09.941 –> 24:15.963 [SPEAKER_00]: And this is something we would need to live with, the same way that social media is not necessarily the healthiest thing for us.

24:17.375 –> 24:30.979 [SPEAKER_00]: The company perspective, that actually can be, like, not this particular aspect of it, but being able to try things faster is good because then the amount of investments you need to put into trying something is now 10 times smaller.

24:31.659 –> 24:34.680 [SPEAKER_00]: You’ll need to hire an agency to make a lending page.

24:34.700 –> 24:37.800 [SPEAKER_00]: You can do lending page, sloppy, not very good.

24:38.261 –> 24:43.662 [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, it gives some traction, some traffic, then you give it to agency and then it becomes so much cheaper to try and test.

24:46.812 –> 24:51.576 [SPEAKER_02]: E-commerce master plan is supported by some of the greatest companies in the E-commerce sector.

24:51.716 –> 24:53.157 [SPEAKER_02]: Here’s a reminder of who they are.

25:04.497 –> 25:12.404 [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, I love this section because it gives me an honest answer so I’m really quick ideas for taking our businesses to the next level and a chance for all our brains to relax after.

25:12.424 –> 25:17.209 [SPEAKER_01]: I’ve quite an impressive chat about AI that certainly sent my head to go off in their multiple directions.

25:17.249 –> 25:19.331 [SPEAKER_01]: So Roman, are you ready for the top tips?

25:19.911 –> 25:20.371 [SPEAKER_00]: I’m certain.

25:20.572 –> 25:21.092 [SPEAKER_00]: Always ready.

25:21.472 –> 25:23.034 [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, booktop tip.

25:23.114 –> 25:29.600 [SPEAKER_01]: 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?

25:30.427 –> 25:31.989 [SPEAKER_00]: I would recommend don’t make me sing.

25:32.330 –> 25:39.659 [SPEAKER_00]: It’s a 20 year old book, hasn’t changed anything, but then in the era where I became, I think a hundred times more relevant.

25:40.280 –> 25:47.209 [SPEAKER_00]: Make it simple to order and to work with your business and it’s just the only thing that literally the customers need.

25:47.869 –> 25:49.290 [SPEAKER_01]: an utter classic.

25:49.750 –> 26:00.458 [SPEAKER_01]: I have no problem with that being recommended many many times on this show, so I love that thank you Roman, traffic top tip, which marketing method do you either price above all others or think doesn’t get the press it deserves.

26:01.163 –> 26:08.707 [SPEAKER_00]: Last time I said influencers, this time I’m going to say, I’m going to again, very, very predictable and say, my latest laugh is better advertising.

26:09.027 –> 26:11.689 [SPEAKER_00]: I love going into all the details and information.

26:11.709 –> 26:15.611 [SPEAKER_00]: You can send that back to meta and get a really good outcome of meta.

26:16.391 –> 26:20.933 [SPEAKER_00]: But I’m going to have the honest amount of effort it takes to get the maximum out of it.

26:21.454 –> 26:23.755 [SPEAKER_00]: It’s just becoming more and more over the years.

26:24.095 –> 26:25.636 [SPEAKER_00]: The thoughts from become more complex.

26:27.100 –> 26:43.549 [SPEAKER_01]: It’s a brilliant thing that you can feed all this information back to Meta, but yeah, Roman, if you with all the sales volume you’ve got and the whole team dedicated to analytics and attribution to say it gets a bit much, it’s definitely one which smaller businesses don’t get lost down that rabbit hole, isn’t it?

26:43.569 –> 26:44.509 [SPEAKER_00]: I’m sorry.

26:44.749 –> 26:54.694 [SPEAKER_00]: I’m not even talking about how much time it takes to open ads page in Meta, it takes five seconds to load, and then you have all of this EI stuff going on and then every button is five seconds.

26:57.225 –> 26:58.506 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, say that one for next time.

26:59.146 –> 27:09.352 [SPEAKER_01]: The tool to maybe a collaboration tool, a social media plug in, a phone up or just a way of working, is the recall little tool you use that makes you and your team at more efficient from day to day.

27:10.138 –> 27:34.093 [SPEAKER_00]: I started using Claude design a lot, because I, it’s the thing that I like as an analyst, as a technical person, is to be able to organize my thought visually, and I don’t use it just to generate like banners or HTML files, which is absolutely amazing, but also it can generate anything, any mind map or thought or thinking process, just visualize my thoughts really quickly, and it’s my favorite tool over the last few weeks.

27:35.036 –> 27:36.780 [SPEAKER_01]: was not expecting that.

27:36.880 –> 27:38.002 [SPEAKER_01]: Love it, thank you.

27:38.824 –> 27:43.534 [SPEAKER_01]: Carbon top tip, what’s your favorite way to reduce the carbon footprint of an e-commerce store?

27:44.402 –> 27:50.383 [SPEAKER_00]: I always struggle with this one because my carbon thinking always like big things, let’s go to renewable energy.

27:51.243 –> 27:59.065 [SPEAKER_00]: I would probably say having less meetings, meaning that you will be more organized, means that you need to have less commutes, be doing things less.

27:59.705 –> 28:03.106 [SPEAKER_00]: Type things in notion or in docs share the period before meeting.

28:03.186 –> 28:06.066 [SPEAKER_00]: Let’s try to do it like 10 years ago when you were all prepared.

28:06.586 –> 28:08.747 [SPEAKER_00]: To the meeting, that would be amazing experience.

28:09.087 –> 28:11.727 [SPEAKER_00]: But as an outcome, people would spend a little way less time

28:15.129 –> 28:17.111 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, people unprepared to meetings.

28:17.331 –> 28:18.652 [SPEAKER_01]: Hey, what are we talking about today?

28:18.933 –> 28:21.595 [SPEAKER_01]: Not heart sinks when that starts.

28:21.615 –> 28:24.198 [SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, get just use your time better.

28:24.478 –> 28:24.939 [SPEAKER_01]: Love that.

28:25.199 –> 28:25.820 [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you, Roman.

28:25.840 –> 28:30.965 [SPEAKER_01]: But before we say goodbye, could you please let the listeners know where they can find you on the web and social media?

28:31.497 –> 28:33.378 [SPEAKER_00]: The best way to find me is on my LinkedIn.

28:33.438 –> 28:34.739 [SPEAKER_00]: It’s a Roman battery chunk of.

28:35.540 –> 28:38.622 [SPEAKER_00]: You can reach out to me always if you have any questions or suggestions.

28:39.042 –> 28:44.145 [SPEAKER_00]: I post multiple times a week, sometimes three times a week when I’m very consistent with my diary.

28:44.986 –> 28:48.468 [SPEAKER_00]: And besides that, if you have any project, you want to work with partner on.

28:48.548 –> 28:50.549 [SPEAKER_00]: I’m always open for any consultancy ideas.

28:51.030 –> 28:54.452 [SPEAKER_01]: OK, because you’ve been doing some consultancy recently with smaller businesses, haven’t you?

28:55.040 –> 28:55.820 [SPEAKER_00]: Yes, 100%.

28:56.000 –> 29:03.262 [SPEAKER_00]: It’s something that keeps me really excited because when you work with something that car wow, it’s very, very interesting, but some ideas takes a lot of time to execute.

29:03.682 –> 29:06.063 [SPEAKER_00]: And when you work with small businesses it’s the other way around.

29:06.083 –> 29:09.644 [SPEAKER_00]: You might not have resources, but you can try and experiment way faster.

29:10.444 –> 29:10.844 [SPEAKER_01]: Awesome.

29:10.884 –> 29:13.745 [SPEAKER_01]: Anyone who wants to reach out to Ramin’ on that, just find him on LinkedIn.

29:14.365 –> 29:17.346 [SPEAKER_01]: Ramin’, thank you so much for coming on the Commerce Masterland podcast.

29:17.366 –> 29:18.986 [SPEAKER_01]: It’s been great catching up with you again.

29:19.046 –> 29:22.287 [SPEAKER_01]: And thanks for giving us the ins and outs of the AI journey.

29:22.327 –> 29:23.187 [SPEAKER_01]: So thanks for being here.

29:23.877 –> 29:24.838 [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you very much, Clay.

29:30.901 –> 29:33.602 [SPEAKER_01]: So much to think about there from Raymond.

29:33.622 –> 29:41.066 [SPEAKER_01]: And I thought that obviously lots of super practical clever advice on the big picture of getting AI to work within the business.

29:41.466 –> 29:50.892 [SPEAKER_01]: But I thought that final thing he was saying about how shifting from 10 to 50 things, because you’ve got those chats running all the time, is not giving you any downtime,

29:53.893 –> 30:00.500 [SPEAKER_01]: leading to the team getting more exhausted more quickly, which of course exhaustion is the enemy of creativity.

30:01.060 –> 30:02.101 [SPEAKER_01]: It’s quite fascinating.

30:02.141 –> 30:03.142 [SPEAKER_01]: So, one to watch out for.

30:03.162 –> 30:04.343 [SPEAKER_01]: I’m not quite sure how we fix that.

30:04.363 –> 30:06.085 [SPEAKER_01]: Do we force everyone to take a lunch break?

30:07.186 –> 30:08.167 [SPEAKER_01]: Maybe that would help.

30:08.667 –> 30:16.134 [SPEAKER_01]: You can get your hands on all our notes from this episode, including those top tips and links to what we mentioned by heading over to ecommercemasplan.com.

30:16.795 –> 30:22.784 [SPEAKER_01]: You can also use ECMP.info forward slash this episode number to get straight to the right page on the site.

30:22.964 –> 30:31.196 [SPEAKER_01]: When you get to the website, scroll down to the bottom to the big banner across the footer and add yourself to our email list so we can help you with other things too.

30:31.997 –> 30:47.605 [SPEAKER_01]: If you like this episode, then make sure you check out Episode 579, which is our first chat with Roman, where we got, we did a little bit of AI, but we mainly talked about consent, attribution, tracking, and all those kind of more analytics things.

30:48.786 –> 30:53.489 [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you very much for tuning into this and every episode that you do of the e-commerce master plan podcast.

30:53.569 –> 31:03.975 [SPEAKER_01]: I bring you a new interview every week to help you inspire and build your business, including encouraging businesses and consumers to make more sustainable buying decisions.

31:04.095 –> 31:09.018 [SPEAKER_01]: So if you know someone this show can help please tell them to listen to the e-commerce master plan podcast.

31:09.538 –> 31:12.300 [SPEAKER_01]: I hope you have a great week and don’t forget to keep optimizing.

31:15.413 –> 31:18.736 [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you for listening to the e-commerce Master Plan podcast.

31:19.177 –> 31:24.062 [SPEAKER_02]: Find out more at e-commercemasterplanned.com slash podcast.

In this episode, Phil and Chloe explore how agentic AI can help eCommerce teams implement more of their marketing strategy, analyse data faster, and uncover new opportunities for growth. They also discuss what separates the businesses getting real value from AI from those still using it for basic tasks. 

Hit PLAY to hear these 5 big wins: 

• Why agentic AI is more than just generating better copy 
• How AI could help you implement 75–80% of your marketing strategy 
• The overlooked power of AI for faster, deeper data analysis 
• Why connecting multiple data sources can unlock new growth insights 
• The mindset that separates AI experimenters from AI leaders 
• How to turn AI’s speed into a real eCommerce growth advantage 

Key timestamps to dive straight in: 

[04:48] Adapting eCommerce Tactics 

[06:42] Trusting autonomous marketing systems 

[11:32] Using AI in marketing strategies 

[13:27] Evolution of abandoned cart campaigns 

[18:48] Using AI for data tasks 

[21:48] Integrating diverse data for insights 

[23:14] Listen to Phil’s Top Tips! 

[31:55] Episode sponsored by Manago AI. Get a demo or free trial today at https://manago.ai/      

Full episode notes here: https://ecmp.info/617 

Episode sponsored by Manago AI. Get a demo or free trial today at https://manago.ai/  

— Download our ebook… https://ecmp.info/ebook 500 Tips to Increase Your Profits

Get all the links and resources we mention and join our email list at https://ecmp.info

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00:00.492 –> 00:13.672 [SPEAKER_02]: The thing which is generally the differentiator is really if people like your brand, you can spend an awful amount of money on search engines and LinkedIn, but then you go to your website, look at your product and it doesn’t look good enough, they can bounce off.

00:15.504 –> 00:17.888 [SPEAKER_01]: It’s the e-commerce master plan podcast.

00:18.429 –> 00:22.515 [SPEAKER_01]: Here to help you solve your marketing problems and grow your e-commerce business.

00:23.036 –> 00:30.828 [SPEAKER_01]: Cutting through the hide-off to bring you inspiration and advice from the e-commerce sector and beyond, here’s your host, Chloe Thomas.

00:34.195 –> 00:35.475 [SPEAKER_00]: Hello and welcome.

00:35.495 –> 00:36.756 [SPEAKER_00]: It’s great to have you here.

00:36.816 –> 00:40.856 [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for hitting play and choosing to listen to one of our inspiring guests.

00:41.417 –> 00:52.899 [SPEAKER_00]: I’m super excited to bring you this episode partly because I’ve known and worked with today’s guest for about a decade, always around what’s next for email marketing, SMS and customer engagement and he’s ace.

00:53.319 –> 00:56.820 [SPEAKER_00]: He’s also now leading Manago AI who are on

00:57.000 –> 01:03.584 [SPEAKER_00]: arguably pushing the e-commerce ESPCRM thing further and more successfully into AI than anyone else.

01:04.304 –> 01:13.030 [SPEAKER_00]: And probably most importantly my excitement is because I know from some recent surveys we’ve run that a lot of you, like about half of you.

01:13.830 –> 01:18.415 [SPEAKER_00]: have not yet progressed past the basics of using AI within your business.

01:18.495 –> 01:27.104 [SPEAKER_00]: And this episode is all about how to make the most of AI and agente marketing within your e-commerce store.

01:27.204 –> 01:28.165 [SPEAKER_00]: We’ll be talking about

01:28.846 –> 01:39.370 [SPEAKER_00]: what Phil’s seeing the winners doing, the white those who are pushing it for this, how they’re building success using this technology and lots of angles to help you make the most of it.

01:39.770 –> 01:45.873 [SPEAKER_00]: Potentially right now as we go into Q4, but also Q4 and peak rather, but also as we go through 2027.

01:45.893 –> 01:51.695 [SPEAKER_00]: So some good thoughts, lots of get you thinking here, but lots to also help you get things moving practically in your business.

01:52.176 –> 01:55.697 [SPEAKER_00]: So make sure you’re soon right to the end of the episode, because he’s got some ace top tips as well.

02:01.810 –> 02:03.631 [SPEAKER_00]: And now to introduce our special guest.

02:04.051 –> 02:18.840 [SPEAKER_00]: Phil Draper is the CEO at Manago AI, an AI-powered customer engagement platform for the modern marketer, which means he’s deeply involved in working out how AI can best support e-commerce brands to do more powerful marketing.

02:19.141 –> 02:19.801 [SPEAKER_00]: Hello Phil.

02:20.241 –> 02:21.322 [SPEAKER_02]: Hey, Chloe, how are you?

02:21.746 –> 02:22.286 [SPEAKER_00]: I’m good.

02:22.346 –> 02:23.467 [SPEAKER_00]: It’s lovely to see you.

02:23.487 –> 02:31.391 [SPEAKER_00]: I’m going to be very careful answering the how am I question because we could talk about that kind of stuff, which the listeners don’t need to know about for quite some time.

02:33.332 –> 02:36.854 [SPEAKER_00]: So let’s go podcasty rather than rather than any tangent thing us.

02:37.294 –> 02:41.596 [SPEAKER_00]: How did you get into a recovery, which weirdly is a question I have never asked you before?

02:41.876 –> 02:43.297 [SPEAKER_02]: How did you get into a commas, right?

02:43.557 –> 02:44.998 [SPEAKER_02]: I’m going to go half an hour and I’ll

02:46.969 –> 03:04.606 [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, the little one thing that some people, it’s a surprise when I say this, it’s my background’s design and then it was back in the day of 1997 or something when web design was a thing and that gradually took me into the internet, which then took me into marketing.

03:05.006 –> 03:18.790 [SPEAKER_02]: which then took me into sales and marketing and e-commerce, which took me into the bowls I do now, which I actually think is my pretty good angle actually, because I kind of a lot of the, all my customers are marketing some form this CMO, CMO and people as well.

03:19.551 –> 03:26.173 [SPEAKER_02]: I’ve walked in the shoes of most of the people that buy the software that at some point in my career, I’ve helped sell.

03:26.593 –> 03:31.594 [SPEAKER_02]: So I do kind of understand it from their perspective, which hopefully

03:34.360 –> 03:52.568 [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I think as well, there’s the whole angle of learning the principles of marketing properly, which I did the CIM exams back in the day and got my diploma and I use that so much without realising it still today, of actually

03:53.428 –> 04:03.298 [SPEAKER_00]: doing the work to build the marketing plan of the marketing strategy and understanding the customer and all the rest of it, which hasn’t changed at all as the, you know, the roles, as the technology evolves.

04:03.658 –> 04:12.847 [SPEAKER_00]: And I guess, you know, with your background in design and then on three different types of e-commerce and digital, that must help as well, having that really solid grounding in the fundamentals.

04:13.047 –> 04:13.567 [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah.

04:13.708 –> 04:14.208 [SPEAKER_02]: Absolutely.

04:14.228 –> 04:14.328 [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

04:14.628 –> 04:16.910 [SPEAKER_02]: It also comes back down to customer need at some point, doesn’t it?

04:17.491 –> 04:22.635 [SPEAKER_02]: And the technology changes, you know, obviously the flavor now is AI, which is delivering some great, great gains.

04:23.256 –> 04:27.359 [SPEAKER_02]: But I remember 20 years ago, when database marketing was at work.

04:29.841 –> 04:35.267 [SPEAKER_02]: So it’s just the same thing, you know, as long as you can commit to your customer and be relevant.

04:36.028 –> 04:44.977 [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, there’s obviously a rising expectation for customers now, which is balanced out by the fact that they’ve got a little time, the pressure’s on their time.

04:45.538 –> 04:48.062 [SPEAKER_02]: obviously increased, so that means you’ve got to be smart all the way.

04:48.683 –> 04:59.899 [SPEAKER_02]: I think the the adaptability people have always got to think about changing, you know, that’s what work five years ago doesn’t work necessarily now, and in any commerce, for example.

05:00.440 –> 05:03.181 [SPEAKER_02]: You know, I think we can all go see those these peaks and troughs.

05:03.701 –> 05:12.763 [SPEAKER_02]: The abandoned cart, being an eye-opener and a new to-fandle technique, for example, is a kind of thing now, which is just the standard across all the campaigns.

05:13.063 –> 05:29.767 [SPEAKER_02]: It doesn’t mean that you still can’t, you can’t deliver your energy, it can, but it just means you’ve got to test it, optimize it better, take real feedback, more, use more data, and probably also you’ve got to implement it faster, because if any technology takes you two days to add that to that, that’s now too long and

05:30.747 –> 05:39.919 [SPEAKER_02]: We, as a service provider, need to make sure that our customers can implement e-commerce technologies fully and faster, because if not, we and they can be getting behind the curve.

05:40.500 –> 05:41.821 [SPEAKER_00]: are completely agree with you.

05:41.841 –> 05:48.585 [SPEAKER_00]: So we’re going to be talking about a Gentic marketing and the key ways of making work for you because you’re seeing a lot of brands.

05:48.745 –> 05:51.187 [SPEAKER_00]: A lot of businesses at the moment working with it.

05:51.707 –> 05:54.930 [SPEAKER_00]: I guess first of all, what do we mean by a Gentic marketing?

05:54.950 –> 05:59.112 [SPEAKER_00]: Because I think it’s a buzzword that gets thrown around a lot or a phrase that gets thrown around a lot.

05:59.232 –> 06:01.114 [SPEAKER_00]: I think it’s a disservice to call it a buzzword.

06:01.574 –> 06:05.457 [SPEAKER_00]: But one which I’m not sure all of us fully understand.

06:05.917 –> 06:09.079 [SPEAKER_00]: So when you say a Gentic marketing,

06:09.420 –> 06:11.587 [SPEAKER_00]: So what do you think that it’s mean?

06:12.303 –> 06:12.963 [SPEAKER_02]: a good question.

06:12.983 –> 06:15.665 [SPEAKER_02]: And I think the definition does vary for people.

06:16.225 –> 06:20.307 [SPEAKER_02]: I think it’s where the AI does more of the lifting to get marketers to the goal faster.

06:20.887 –> 06:27.390 [SPEAKER_02]: I think it’s different to autonomous marketing where you allow the computer to make all the decisions for yourself.

06:27.430 –> 06:29.011 [SPEAKER_02]: That will be coming down the line.

06:29.111 –> 06:33.874 [SPEAKER_02]: But when, and to what extent, I’m not quite sure, I’m in the board, probably he’s clawed on the call.

06:33.894 –> 06:37.115 [SPEAKER_02]: You know, you get a little prompt about allow it this time or allow it forever.

06:37.755 –> 06:39.676 [SPEAKER_02]: You know, and when you get there and allow it forever,

06:41.057 –> 06:42.098 [SPEAKER_02]: Shall I do I do that?

06:42.158 –> 06:42.538 [SPEAKER_02]: Don’t know.

06:43.239 –> 06:45.301 [SPEAKER_02]: And I think that’s the same with autonomous marketing.

06:45.341 –> 06:51.366 [SPEAKER_02]: And then if we think that, you know, history never repeats, but there are patterns in the past, which can actually help us predict the future.

06:56.951 –> 07:03.273 [SPEAKER_02]: there’s a discipline about when people move from batch and blasts to automation or workflows or life cycles, whatever you call them.

07:03.793 –> 07:10.055 [SPEAKER_02]: Because it gave you all the controls and all the power, but there was still a problem, do I trust the machine to do it right for me?

07:10.556 –> 07:14.077 [SPEAKER_02]: So there is that a money took a long time to build up that trust.

07:14.777 –> 07:18.760 [SPEAKER_02]: and before they could disconnect from pressing the button and trust the system to do it.

07:19.200 –> 07:21.362 [SPEAKER_02]: And I think autonomous is exactly the same thing.

07:21.822 –> 07:32.189 [SPEAKER_02]: So I think what’s going to happen is we’re going to get a lot of people using the gented to change their the vibe coding in the one prompt, the level of the Figma makes, all those things which are very, very easy to do.

07:32.209 –> 07:37.833 [SPEAKER_02]: And they’re going to mean that people can get to age percent in 20% of the time without trans speaking cliches.

07:37.853 –> 07:42.277 [SPEAKER_02]: And then once that started working, I think at that point you’ll start to get

07:42.837 –> 07:49.778 [SPEAKER_02]: that autonomous parts coming in, which, of course, will follow all the same adoption rules of the yearly adopters, the peaks or leg arms.

07:50.338 –> 07:58.820 [SPEAKER_02]: But I think at this moment in time, a genetic is probably where it is, because it removes the bar, let’s skill, let’s time.

07:59.480 –> 08:06.102 [SPEAKER_02]: And then I think, I might be answering maybe, no big part of the question, can I ask you now, I think there are two parts to the agentic.

08:06.582 –> 08:07.362 [SPEAKER_02]: There’s a bit switch,

08:08.467 –> 08:09.528 [SPEAKER_02]: does all the nice stuff.

08:09.568 –> 08:13.871 [SPEAKER_02]: So, you know, the classic examples would be give me a subject line, you know, all that kind of stuff.

08:13.891 –> 08:15.192 [SPEAKER_02]: Boom your nice email campaign.

08:15.212 –> 08:17.274 [SPEAKER_02]: Boom your a workflow.

08:17.794 –> 08:21.097 [SPEAKER_02]: And that’s that’s helping the creative part of the process.

08:21.597 –> 08:28.663 [SPEAKER_02]: But then there’s another part which I think is is being more heavily used if I’m being honest, where it’s a faster way to the analysis.

08:29.223 –> 08:41.816 [SPEAKER_02]: You know, and that part is really interesting, and that’s really going quick because, you know, everybody, you know, how many times did we have to put stuff in Excel and you know, is I to do this thing look up any help, right?

08:51.146 –> 08:54.570 [SPEAKER_02]: and we can see the analytical part in Menagaway is very popular.

08:55.250 –> 08:59.575 [SPEAKER_02]: People can get to the, how can I be better next time more quickly?

09:00.035 –> 09:07.062 [SPEAKER_02]: So I think you’re going to have parts which allow the creative process, which is really good, but it also can sometimes be taken with the form parts.

09:07.803 –> 09:10.166 [SPEAKER_02]: But it’s faster, so it certainly should be taken on.

09:10.206 –> 09:15.491 [SPEAKER_02]: And then there’s other parts where it just makes things which weren’t possible, brings them completely into view.

09:16.112 –> 09:18.494 [SPEAKER_02]: So that’s how I would see the agentex.

09:18.574 –> 09:23.419 [SPEAKER_02]: I think it’s classically defined, I think, by a one-point process.

09:23.479 –> 09:26.823 [SPEAKER_02]: And then it iterate by a few reps to prompt to get to what you need to do.

09:27.407 –> 09:54.829 [SPEAKER_00]: I think that analysis part for me is kind of the game changer as you move into more of the agente stuff is because even if you take just the email marketing channel you suddenly go too many variables for the human brain to properly compute you know you’ve got you’ve got time of day location of customer device you know all that myriad information that could take your results here there are everywhere for like your black Friday campaign or your you know new product

09:56.330 –> 10:03.435 [SPEAKER_00]: that it quickly becomes something you can’t efficiently analyse as a human anyway, so it’s hugely impactful that side of it.

10:03.735 –> 10:07.397 [SPEAKER_02]: There is another danger, of course, that the analysis can become so easy and so quick.

10:07.897 –> 10:13.821 [SPEAKER_02]: You spend all your time analysing things rather than correcting what you need to do from the analysis.

10:14.722 –> 10:22.566 [SPEAKER_02]: It’s always that problem of, well, that they’re called analysis paralysis, and now the analysis is so fast, you’ve got a chance of more paralysis, so you’ve

10:25.188 –> 10:29.050 [SPEAKER_02]: But it is definitely a different problem because how many times can we also have a data problem.

10:29.110 –> 10:30.611 [SPEAKER_02]: I’ve got so much infrastructure data.

10:30.651 –> 10:31.551 [SPEAKER_02]: I don’t know what to do with it.

10:31.912 –> 10:36.454 [SPEAKER_02]: And now we have a tool at our fingertips that can actually give you a good idea of what that would be.

10:37.463 –> 10:42.505 [SPEAKER_00]: It’s almost like you have these levels of, I’m asking chat to you be T for some copy.

10:43.045 –> 10:47.887 [SPEAKER_00]: And then you go up to the, the agetic playground, I suppose, where you’re going, oh, this is interesting.

10:48.028 –> 10:48.728 [SPEAKER_00]: This is interesting.

10:48.788 –> 10:54.130 [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, I can do that, but nothing’s strategic and nothing’s not as much as being implemented.

10:54.170 –> 10:55.811 [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe you’re getting distracted by the analysis.

10:55.831 –> 10:59.172 [SPEAKER_00]: You distracted by creating things, but not actually going hold on a minute.

10:59.773 –> 11:02.694 [SPEAKER_00]: I could do these 20 things, but what should I actually do next?

11:03.634 –> 11:11.240 [SPEAKER_00]: So I guess the next question for you is, so we know we’ve probably got to embrace agentic marketing.

11:11.300 –> 11:12.981 [SPEAKER_00]: It’s where everything’s heading.

11:13.041 –> 11:13.901 [SPEAKER_00]: It makes sense for the business.

11:13.921 –> 11:15.943 [SPEAKER_00]: But what should our goals be with it?

11:16.483 –> 11:17.964 [SPEAKER_00]: Are we looking to do more?

11:18.024 –> 11:20.006 [SPEAKER_00]: Are we looking to connect with our customers better?

11:20.026 –> 11:21.507 [SPEAKER_00]: We’re looking to time save?

11:21.927 –> 11:23.068 [SPEAKER_00]: What’s the aim of it?

11:23.088 –> 11:31.333 [SPEAKER_00]: Because I always think like having that goal that aim helps you make sense of it and actually become strategic if you realise why you’re

11:32.529 –> 11:33.870 [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

11:34.650 –> 11:35.951 [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, it’s a good question.

11:35.971 –> 11:43.214 [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I probably answer that question almost for my positions to see what I want my employees calls to be.

11:44.254 –> 11:48.756 [SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, it comes down to, we’re in the business of making money on me.

11:49.156 –> 11:50.877 [SPEAKER_02]: Everybody’s trying to sell more stuff.

11:51.878 –> 11:56.660 [SPEAKER_02]: And as a result, I think that if it can take you further down that path as

11:57.661 –> 12:00.185 [SPEAKER_02]: then making more money it has to be used.

12:00.806 –> 12:07.779 [SPEAKER_02]: Now where I would publish CD opportunity for AI for a lot of them e-commerce businesses.

12:08.622 –> 12:24.246 [SPEAKER_02]: is again, for my experience speaking to marketers at events in sales processes in customer reviews, there’s always been an element of, if I’ve said, who’s thinks they’ve got their marketing strategy perfect, right?

12:24.726 –> 12:32.468 [SPEAKER_02]: It’s a very, very difficult question to answer that, and progress can be quite perfectionist, can be suffocating, but progress can be quite alarming.

12:33.288 –> 12:48.907 [SPEAKER_02]: And I think that with AI, making it faster and easier to deliver things, the revenue opportunity, I think the companies using AI, is instead of having a marketing strategy to another than a 20% implemented because you were not skills, it were not time, we were not technology.

12:49.828 –> 12:50.148 [SPEAKER_02]: Now,

12:50.989 –> 13:17.921 [SPEAKER_02]: realistically you should be able to get to 7580% of your marketing plan done because we’ve removed the barriers at time of data and of course this then takes you down to the aggregation of small games that you know there’s very not really in our big low-hanging fruit because the e-commerce industry is relatively mature and people are aware of the tactics so therefore the game comes from implementing more of your nudge factors I think to drive your revenue

13:18.541 –> 13:24.609 [SPEAKER_02]: And that now can be done the barrier to that is reduced because of the time and ease of the AI, and the gender care I’m particular.

13:24.889 –> 13:26.992 [SPEAKER_02]: So that’s where I think the opportunity exists.

13:27.303 –> 13:50.586 [SPEAKER_00]: It’s a bit like, and I know you live through this step change in email marketing same as I did when it was like to create an abandoned cart campaign went from being a three-page brief to your developers who would then do it and you chart test it and you do it and you test it and you do it and then you will breathe a sigh of relief when you put it live and it actually worked to a click and drop system.

13:51.467 –> 14:13.161 [SPEAKER_00]: And it was like once that happened it was like if you didn’t have a band in cart you were massively missing out but now it’s if you don’t have your band in cart and you’ve analyzed it and you’ve used the AI to build out the different flows and you’re keeping that update every month because there’s no excuse not to anymore because you’ve got the AI support to analyze and to build that’s where we’re shifting to in a microcosm.

14:13.733 –> 14:34.516 [SPEAKER_02]: absolutely yeah yeah and then of course you know if you’re abandoning car gets done in four hours rather than four days you’ve also got three and a half hours to look at something else so therefore that’s the completeness of your marketing strategy which I think will be we’ll be coming around and that ties into what you know the rising customer expectations you know so did the window I think actually if I’m being totally on its where

14:35.057 –> 14:39.259 [SPEAKER_02]: that the speed games from the AI can deliver an advantage to the marketer.

14:39.579 –> 14:46.901 [SPEAKER_02]: But more than five years, when everyone’s got a Gen2KI and everyone’s completed their marketing strategy, it would be like going back to your abandoned carts.

14:46.981 –> 14:52.403 [SPEAKER_02]: And now we have five years to go, 10 years ago, it did give an advantage to them, but now it doesn’t because the playing feels leveled out.

14:53.104 –> 14:56.565 [SPEAKER_02]: So that’s why it is a case of like, this is the time to make that move.

14:57.332 –> 15:03.075 [SPEAKER_00]: And so what are the key things we need to get right to make this work within our organization?

15:03.675 –> 15:08.837 [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, we’ve greatly touched on data earlier, but what are the things you’re seeing?

15:08.997 –> 15:13.679 [SPEAKER_00]: Because I’m sure, you know, you’re seeing some of your clients absolutely fly with this.

15:13.839 –> 15:17.241 [SPEAKER_00]: And others really struggle to get beyond, give me a subject line.

15:17.961 –> 15:21.843 [SPEAKER_00]: What is it that separates those who are really doing well with the deployment from those who aren’t.

15:22.762 –> 15:25.163 [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, we can see all the data how it’s being used.

15:25.183 –> 15:32.087 [SPEAKER_02]: This is the wonderful thing, you know, we can see all the prompts that have been done and we’ve feed that back into our product gets better.

15:32.847 –> 15:42.632 [SPEAKER_02]: It’s probably though, not really a technical answer there, so I think it’s really sips around the mindset of the users, you know, because if,

15:44.313 –> 15:48.815 [SPEAKER_02]: This is take AI because it can sound scary, especially with the dim on-grip which is going on.

15:48.935 –> 15:52.656 [SPEAKER_02]: If you just want that, is that as a latest bit of technology we need to use.

15:53.196 –> 15:56.757 [SPEAKER_02]: There are always people to get on that first of all, and there’s some people that take longer.

15:57.357 –> 16:00.799 [SPEAKER_02]: So I think the reality is, just try it, right?

16:00.919 –> 16:04.720 [SPEAKER_02]: And anybody that hooks up claw to Excel will never want to use Excel again.

16:05.260 –> 16:19.049 [SPEAKER_02]: And it will just use AI or maybe an MCP version that software vendor and cross reference to each other’s data will never want to not do that again, but how you make that first step is really a really difficult part.

16:19.589 –> 16:23.732 [SPEAKER_02]: So we can say how many I’ve been in the more marked in business software.

16:25.506 –> 16:35.432 [SPEAKER_02]: New 20 years, but there’s always been that same thing about we just got to try and get to try something new and there’s people that do and there’s people that don’t.

16:36.012 –> 16:44.617 [SPEAKER_02]: So I think the people that will stand up and people that approach the challenge with the right mindset to do the technology, you don’t even need to send anything out, but just try it.

16:45.017 –> 16:46.598 [SPEAKER_02]: you know, and then you’ll never go back.

16:47.039 –> 16:56.065 [SPEAKER_02]: And I don’t mean, you know, it is like the subject line of course, but it’s like it’s the extra parts when you start putting a few things together and link them together gets really, really powerful.

16:56.586 –> 17:04.132 [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, obviously you need some technology which has got some decent AI in there, but I think you need a mindset which is naturally inquisitive.

17:04.972 –> 17:08.094 [SPEAKER_02]: and it doesn’t demand to get a few things one.

17:09.115 –> 17:24.106 [SPEAKER_02]: You’ve probably got to build a business case maybe to your bosses or maybe to or the other way down to convince your people below that the AI is not going to take their job right because that’s the way you’re people on some people, my answer to that is quite simple.

17:24.246 –> 17:29.270 [SPEAKER_02]: AI is not going to take your job, but one of your competitors using the AI may take your job.

17:30.081 –> 17:33.743 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think it’s also, you know, it took about the top down bit.

17:33.823 –> 17:46.068 [SPEAKER_00]: I think it’s the, it’s important for the people at the top of the business to create an environment and a culture where it’s acceptable for the team to play with AI, take the time to learn how it actually works.

17:46.688 –> 17:50.210 [SPEAKER_00]: And it’s like we’ve had a few businesses on the show talking about how they’re implementing it.

17:50.250 –> 17:59.338 [SPEAKER_00]: and almost always the idea of an AI champion in each team comes up and cross business working groups to share how they’re learning and how they’re using.

17:59.619 –> 18:03.803 [SPEAKER_00]: It does seem to be a, it needs that push from a breath to go.

18:03.823 –> 18:05.965 [SPEAKER_00]: You’re allowed to try this out.

18:06.005 –> 18:07.606 [SPEAKER_00]: You’re allowed to fail with this.

18:07.646 –> 18:11.269 [SPEAKER_00]: You’re allowed to actually do it and create that scenario where it’s all right to be an

18:13.355 –> 18:14.596 [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah, I agree.

18:15.016 –> 18:22.842 [SPEAKER_02]: And certainly the peer sessions where somebody that’s known and trusted can demonstrate some of the games is the way.

18:22.882 –> 18:31.388 [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, right at the start of this, I remember this, or are there any, can we get some need to come in and teach as AI, if I don’t know, that’s not how this works, you know?

18:31.548 –> 18:34.550 [SPEAKER_02]: It’s not, you’ve just got to get your hands dirty.

18:34.810 –> 18:37.352 [SPEAKER_02]: And we have, we really lean into this.

18:37.372 –> 18:38.293 [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, we did re-brand,

18:38.853 –> 18:40.956 [SPEAKER_02]: a few months ago when we actually put AI in our name.

18:41.336 –> 18:48.205 [SPEAKER_02]: And that’s not just because of the capabilities and the platform, but also we’ve reworked a lot of our process internally for the new AI world.

18:48.586 –> 18:53.292 [SPEAKER_02]: So like the data reporting, for example, the way that we might build our prospect lists.

18:54.273 –> 19:02.242 [SPEAKER_02]: the way that we build our pitch decks and our demos, all of that now is it’s called from some data points and then it’s actually built and delivered by AI.

19:02.482 –> 19:14.414 [SPEAKER_02]: The delivers in the person but all the background supporting information, what would take hours and date by person is now taking that to a 9% level using AI and it looks incredible actually.

19:14.454 –> 19:16.957 [SPEAKER_02]: Not only does it look good in better need to do the speed of it.

19:17.617 –> 19:27.906 [SPEAKER_02]: It is off the hook and what we’ve ended up doing was on our monthly all hands, but to have a regular session, 15 minutes right, here we go, person stand up, talk is what you’ve done in the last month.

19:28.486 –> 19:30.548 [SPEAKER_02]: You know, when people were off, that sounds good.

19:30.788 –> 19:41.257 [SPEAKER_02]: And he kind of started them wanting to experiment and get some savings, not everybody was confident enough to want to stand up and speak from at the company, of course.

19:46.788 –> 19:57.495 [SPEAKER_00]: Well, I think it’s like, you know, you imagine someone gives you a spreadsheet for the first time because it’s a really powerful tool here use it for something and you’re like, it’s a load of squares and I’ve no idea what I was supposed to be doing with it.

19:58.076 –> 20:08.483 [SPEAKER_00]: It’s exactly the same with a prompt box and some Claude folders or you know, going on to, you know, you get the email from your supply again, we’ve added an AI agent to the back end go use it, you know, like.

20:09.117 –> 20:10.939 [SPEAKER_00]: what for though, you know?

20:11.819 –> 20:18.685 [SPEAKER_00]: And having those, those examples and someone on the team who you can go and grab a coffee with and go, so how did you actually do that?

20:18.705 –> 20:22.989 [SPEAKER_00]: Because I think I can do something similar over here can be, can be super bad for you.

20:23.069 –> 20:27.232 [SPEAKER_00]: I totally get me a comment from that’s not about getting someone in to teach everyone for half a day.

20:27.252 –> 20:28.573 [SPEAKER_02]: No, no, no.

20:28.653 –> 20:29.254 [SPEAKER_02]: Exactly, it’s not.

20:29.494 –> 20:32.517 [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, like all of these things, it comes with some risks, risks doesn’t it?

20:32.537 –> 20:34.138 [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I think I’m at a post

20:36.903 –> 21:06.550 [SPEAKER_02]: Now we haven’t got to be much more stringent we would be interviews because everybody now comes in with a bit of a bluff and then the bluff looks quite solid by AI and and the moment we get a snippet is actually been to AI you’ve kind of got a bit of off it’s a bit of a problem and so there’s there are some challenges with that because he makes everybody an expert so what you really looking for now is is not just the cream we’re looking for the very top of the cream you know because that’s AI and and they would everybody to be better.

21:07.470 –> 21:23.101 [SPEAKER_00]: Okay Phil, so we’ve talked a kind of about whole pile of things there, but I particularly liked, you know, you’re saying about how the opportunity now is you pushed the 75% point on your strategy, whereas previously that you’d only got to the 20% or you pushed.

21:24.902 –> 21:35.150 [SPEAKER_00]: to the next level with what you’re doing and that’s where we will win is not just by doing what was the tick box activity of a couple of years ago but by pushing beyond that optimizing beyond that and so on.

21:36.071 –> 21:47.520 [SPEAKER_00]: Is there anything for those who are, you know, approaching the 75% what are you seeing them doing that’s enabling them to kind of really be leading the field at the

21:53.708 –> 22:02.451 [SPEAKER_02]: different data sources, different platforms, and then getting the AI to putting it to work to find trends and analyze that.

22:02.511 –> 22:06.393 [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, it’s interesting actually as recently the headless has come back to the conversation, hasn’t it?

22:07.422 –> 22:24.949 [SPEAKER_02]: And I think that’s where that comes from, because if you can get your customer data, your loyalty data may be even your website behavior data, or call handling your call listening software, or even if it’s traditional, it comes business, you know, tool receipts and store data.

22:25.569 –> 22:30.971 [SPEAKER_02]: Suddenly, you can put those together and get some insight, which is really, really useful and powerful.

22:31.451 –> 22:35.092 [SPEAKER_02]: So I think, in terms of the question, what do we see that most powerful people are doing

22:36.993 –> 22:41.275 [SPEAKER_02]: Then everything can have done it now, take next, go and watch next all the time.

22:41.835 –> 22:46.997 [SPEAKER_02]: And that naturally takes one, two, and combining multiple different data sets to get better analysis.

22:49.858 –> 22:54.621 [SPEAKER_01]: E-commerce Masterplan is supported by some of the greatest companies in the E-commerce sector.

22:54.761 –> 23:02.884 [SPEAKER_01]: Here’s a reminder of who they are.

23:03.064 –> 23:04.885 [SPEAKER_01]: It’s time for the top six round.

23:07.472 –> 23:13.119 [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, I love this section because it gives me and I’ll list those some really quick ideas for taking our businesses to the next level.

23:13.179 –> 23:14.561 [SPEAKER_00]: Feel that you’re ready for the top tips.

23:14.741 –> 23:15.702 [SPEAKER_02]: Go on then, hit me.

23:16.003 –> 23:17.485 [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, the book top tip.

23:17.825 –> 23:22.791 [SPEAKER_00]: If everyone listening to this podcast agreed to take Friday off, read a book to make their business better.

23:23.232 –> 23:24.754 [SPEAKER_00]: Which book would you recommend?

23:25.751 –> 23:31.435 [SPEAKER_02]: Okay, it probably a marketer’s favorite, but Huawei’s southern’s ultimate is very strong.

23:31.956 –> 23:42.644 [SPEAKER_02]: It picks up on a few of the things I’ve talked about before, you know, there’s not really new techniques, there’s the opportunities exist within the gaps or the speed to deliver the technique.

23:43.364 –> 23:50.330 [SPEAKER_02]: and is psychoanalytical behavior that he always talks about where he tries to think of a bottom backwards.

23:50.691 –> 24:00.479 [SPEAKER_02]: It’s just, it’s a fascinating read, but I think it’s particularly relevant for this because it’s not the new, it’s the gaps in between, I think, where the opportunities are.

24:00.880 –> 24:03.022 [SPEAKER_02]: So that’s if that’s the one I would recommend.

24:03.662 –> 24:06.203 [SPEAKER_02]: and it’s also one of those books that you can read and laugh at.

24:06.243 –> 24:09.284 [SPEAKER_02]: You can read on your drinking a pinnacle out of on a sun lounger.

24:09.304 –> 24:11.004 [SPEAKER_02]: You don’t need to read it in the office, right?

24:11.064 –> 24:11.764 [SPEAKER_02]: It’s one of those ones.

24:12.225 –> 24:16.066 [SPEAKER_02]: And then the mindset bit, and this you have to excuse me, this is also of the time.

24:16.626 –> 24:21.147 [SPEAKER_02]: The book I’ve just recently finished is the Oasis One, which is a sound so very loud.

24:21.627 –> 24:23.328 [SPEAKER_02]: Now the reason I’m mentioning that is because

24:24.128 –> 24:26.529 [SPEAKER_02]: It’s the mindset thing that I spoke about.

24:26.589 –> 24:28.150 [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, you may well just have to cut this out.

24:28.390 –> 24:32.573 [SPEAKER_02]: Chloe, but like I said, I’ve just subscribed to my tickets.

24:32.613 –> 24:34.014 [SPEAKER_02]: I saw them when they came last year.

24:34.434 –> 24:36.395 [SPEAKER_02]: And I’m not trying to say that it’d be successful.

24:36.415 –> 24:40.637 [SPEAKER_02]: You need to be for Manchester or, you know, be a rock and roller.

24:41.098 –> 24:47.561 [SPEAKER_02]: But what I think’s interesting about that is when they didn’t have anything, they believed they could be the biggest rock band in the world.

24:47.681 –> 24:50.643 [SPEAKER_02]: And they nothing stopped and trying to become that.

24:51.283 –> 24:53.764 [SPEAKER_02]: So you ask the question about what do people need?

24:53.804 –> 24:57.946 [SPEAKER_02]: If like, leaving yourself, approach every problem with the positive mentality.

24:58.366 –> 25:01.508 [SPEAKER_02]: If you approach from the negative mentality, you will always fail.

25:02.068 –> 25:08.171 [SPEAKER_02]: So believing yourself, positive mindset, and I think, you know, that puts you on the right path.

25:08.231 –> 25:09.031 [SPEAKER_02]: So there are the two ones.

25:09.132 –> 25:12.093 [SPEAKER_02]: One is, I think, opportunity spotting ones mindset related.

25:12.445 –> 25:12.685 [SPEAKER_00]: Nice.

25:12.725 –> 25:13.546 [SPEAKER_00]: I like that pair.

25:14.246 –> 25:15.667 [SPEAKER_00]: I imagine everyone’s going to pick the OAS.

25:15.687 –> 25:16.588 [SPEAKER_00]: It’s one for Friday.

25:16.668 –> 25:17.088 [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, yeah.

25:17.108 –> 25:18.870 [SPEAKER_02]: Why not?

25:18.970 –> 25:19.590 [SPEAKER_02]: It’s a good spot.

25:19.790 –> 25:21.091 [SPEAKER_00]: Do Rory’s next Friday.

25:21.552 –> 25:23.293 [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, the traffic top tip.

25:23.393 –> 25:27.636 [SPEAKER_00]: Which marketing method do you either prize above all others or think doesn’t get the press.

25:27.776 –> 25:28.737 [SPEAKER_00]: It deserves.

25:29.978 –> 25:30.258 [SPEAKER_02]: Well.

25:31.582 –> 25:42.871 [SPEAKER_02]: I’m traffic top tape, I mean it’s not new, but certainly, I think we’re in a change in landscape traffic where AI drive traffic is obviously rising very high.

25:43.651 –> 25:48.074 [SPEAKER_02]: We can see on our own website, for example, the amount of traffic that is coming in from the,

25:49.355 –> 26:01.624 [SPEAKER_02]: the chat engines, the AI engines so it is increasing and of course it’s normally coming in more qualified because it’s not a lot of the lab you’re lifting so it’s not new but I think I think that’s just a direction of travel.

26:02.184 –> 26:04.146 [SPEAKER_02]: I’m going to give you two answers Chloe.

26:04.346 –> 26:09.710 [SPEAKER_02]: Okay and this one head, this one next one probably goes back really to my design background.

26:10.250 –> 26:23.201 [SPEAKER_02]: You know, there’s always been whether it’s a way to, you need to have your social media or Google on a pando, I’ll give it a update right, there’s always a way where you think you’re going to get ahead of it, it catches up ultimately.

26:23.721 –> 26:31.648 [SPEAKER_02]: And the thing which is generally the differentiator is really if people like your brand, if it looks good, people buy with their minds.

26:32.388 –> 26:36.391 [SPEAKER_02]: And I think that you can spend an awful amount of money on all these, uh,

26:37.272 –> 26:39.554 [SPEAKER_02]: in hope on search engines and LinkedIn.

26:40.034 –> 26:44.018 [SPEAKER_02]: But then if they go to your website, look at your product, and it doesn’t look good enough, they’re going to bounce off.

26:44.238 –> 26:46.680 [SPEAKER_02]: People buy otherwise, it’s got to look fantastic.

26:47.621 –> 26:50.123 [SPEAKER_02]: And it ties into that rising customer expectation.

26:50.163 –> 26:56.749 [SPEAKER_02]: So I, you know, that don’t forget how AI will be changing your traffic sources.

26:57.069 –> 27:01.733 [SPEAKER_02]: But then when they do get a given something which looks good, which looks credible, which is a brand-making believe in.

27:02.366 –> 27:07.713 [SPEAKER_00]: Yes, it’s going to be interesting to see how that changes web design.

27:07.833 –> 27:14.281 [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, everyone’s very focused on changing the web design in order to make sure they get found by the LLMs.

27:14.361 –> 27:18.767 [SPEAKER_00]: But it’s going to be interesting to see how it changes what we put on the website if the traffic is more qualified.

27:18.867 –> 27:25.472 [SPEAKER_02]: Well, I think you will affect that as well, because in going back to this thing, the AI raises a bar, gets opening towards you nine, seven more quickly.

27:26.052 –> 27:29.115 [SPEAKER_02]: Roll it on five or six years, everyone’s gonna have the most fantastic websites.

27:29.615 –> 27:31.697 [SPEAKER_02]: But then that means how do you stand out?

27:31.737 –> 27:37.281 [SPEAKER_02]: You’ve got to have a personality, you’ve got to have a brand voice, you’ve got to be bold enough to be different and look good and be credible.

27:38.021 –> 27:40.663 [SPEAKER_02]: So the brand is only just gonna come to the fore.

27:41.024 –> 27:46.007 [SPEAKER_02]: And it’s very difficult for marketers, I know to say we’re gonna spend X-Mount on brand because

27:46.948 –> 27:52.430 [SPEAKER_02]: You will have to push your boss or, you know, this campaign got as x-many leaps.

27:52.970 –> 27:59.793 [SPEAKER_02]: You know, we know that’s how the game works, but if your brand is working for you correctly, it acts as a halo on everything that does before.

28:00.433 –> 28:05.795 [SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, some businesses are very fortunate to have a single channel which works and then you can see the acquisition.

28:06.615 –> 28:18.020 [SPEAKER_02]: But a lot of businesses work in the much more complicated sales cycle, where it’s multi-touch, multi-eptribution, multi-bayer, multi-time frame, and those parts, it’s the brand which links them all together.

28:18.698 –> 28:19.338 [SPEAKER_00]: are so true.

28:20.159 –> 28:23.421 [SPEAKER_00]: I could ask you about 25 up questions on that, but this is the top tip round.

28:23.781 –> 28:26.903 [SPEAKER_00]: And the audience know it’s supposed to be relatively quick, so okay, on.

28:26.923 –> 28:29.145 [SPEAKER_01]: I’ll see you next.

28:29.365 –> 28:33.148 [SPEAKER_00]: No, no, no, don’t have to get one word next, but it does mean I’m not allowed to ask 20 follow-ups.

28:33.448 –> 28:42.454 [SPEAKER_00]: A tall top tip, maybe a collaboration tool, a social media plugin, a phone-up, or just a way of working, is there a call little tool you use that makes you and your team

28:44.463 –> 28:50.728 [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I mean, obviously lovable is great for people that want to try and do a prototype to something.

28:50.748 –> 29:00.596 [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, lovable say it’s production ready, but I would be mindful of that, I think it’s much better as a prototype until before you pass on to the experts, but they may well disagree.

29:01.376 –> 29:07.301 [SPEAKER_02]: I think the Figma make the vibe coding version of Figma is actually really quite good as well.

29:08.002 –> 29:09.102 [SPEAKER_02]: Again, it’s very good for

29:10.123 –> 29:13.805 [SPEAKER_02]: If you, if somebody is a designer, go to know the tools, it’s quite good for that.

29:13.845 –> 29:19.147 [SPEAKER_02]: You’ve still got to know the design and the example, if you, this might be a bit the longer one.

29:19.167 –> 29:21.367 [SPEAKER_02]: So is that you can do amazing things in PowerPoint.

29:21.928 –> 29:26.229 [SPEAKER_02]: If you’re a designer, but if you don’t, you still can’t do a good PowerPoint design.

29:26.249 –> 29:27.950 [SPEAKER_02]: If you, you know, I haven’t got a design mindset.

29:27.970 –> 29:28.510 [SPEAKER_02]: It’s still can’t.

29:28.530 –> 29:29.991 [SPEAKER_02]: You speak my makes at the mindset.

29:30.591 –> 29:32.072 [SPEAKER_02]: And the knowledge is still important.

29:32.632 –> 29:37.714 [SPEAKER_02]: The one which I think everybody, I use all the time, which is available to everybody, is, is whispered flow.

29:38.334 –> 29:43.757 [SPEAKER_02]: which is the one I use and that is absolutely transformed probably how I work in the last six months.

29:43.797 –> 29:56.123 [SPEAKER_02]: And now I hardly type at all, you know, I just speaking to it, it takes out all the pauses, hesitations, reframe things so that the structure of the sentences and more logical and it’s so much quicker.

29:56.663 –> 29:58.384 [SPEAKER_02]: It’s a no takeover meetings now.

29:58.504 –> 30:00.625 [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, that’s one I would absolutely use.

30:00.665 –> 30:05.007 [SPEAKER_02]: I think once once you do that, the keyboard’s almost gone.

30:05.426 –> 30:06.707 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

30:07.087 –> 30:07.968 [SPEAKER_02]: Okay.

30:08.348 –> 30:10.189 [SPEAKER_00]: Me, no, I can’t, I tried.

30:10.609 –> 30:11.189 [SPEAKER_00]: I failed.

30:11.870 –> 30:13.691 [SPEAKER_00]: I cannot bring myself to talk.

30:14.451 –> 30:16.313 [SPEAKER_00]: I’m just as ridiculous for a podcast there.

30:16.333 –> 30:17.033 [SPEAKER_00]: There’s a podcast there.

30:17.373 –> 30:20.555 [SPEAKER_00]: But I really struggle to talk my thoughts in that way.

30:20.635 –> 30:22.296 [SPEAKER_00]: I’m very addicted to my keyboard.

30:22.876 –> 30:25.238 [SPEAKER_00]: I know I’m an unusual person in that respect.

30:25.794 –> 30:25.994 [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

30:26.174 –> 30:28.775 [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, don’t remember one when I said it moves keep on it doesn’t.

30:29.555 –> 30:32.656 [SPEAKER_02]: I will put it into this before and then probably edit it and then send it.

30:32.776 –> 30:37.137 [SPEAKER_02]: But it’s a final edit rather than active creation is still published.

30:37.177 –> 30:39.398 [SPEAKER_02]: It makes me three times more efficient on those things.

30:39.638 –> 30:41.339 [SPEAKER_00]: I will probably try it again next year.

30:41.679 –> 30:42.339 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

30:42.719 –> 30:46.340 [SPEAKER_00]: Because because I everyone tells me it’s a so clearly I was doing something wrong.

30:47.320 –> 30:52.362 [SPEAKER_00]: The carbon top tip, what’s your favorite way to reduce the carbon footprint of an e-commerce store?

30:53.128 –> 30:57.550 [SPEAKER_02]: That’s a tricky one because it’s not really my realm of specialists and my afraid.

30:58.130 –> 31:04.052 [SPEAKER_02]: So I’d be very confident to say risk-provover change in life, but I don’t think I can necessarily say something which would say the planet.

31:04.752 –> 31:12.635 [SPEAKER_02]: The only thing which probably makes sense in our interview courses is choosing providers that are part of the warbling trust and carbon neutral.

31:13.015 –> 31:18.317 [SPEAKER_02]: So therefore marketers, e-commerce marketers can ensure they’re not

31:20.145 –> 31:28.408 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, especially in e-commerce, it’s very easy to ignore your digital footprint because your physical footprint is so large and so loud.

31:28.748 –> 31:37.211 [SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, the digital side of it is always worth doing at least an audit once a year on and seeing what you’re storing and what you’re using that could do better.

31:37.411 –> 31:39.392 [SPEAKER_00]: There’s a perfectly good carbon top tip.

31:39.612 –> 31:40.032 [SPEAKER_00]: Okay.

31:40.492 –> 31:41.833 [SPEAKER_00]: We’re very pleased to have that one.

31:42.253 –> 31:42.733 [SPEAKER_00]: I hope so.

31:43.293 –> 31:54.796 [SPEAKER_00]: Before we say goodbye, please let the audience know where they can find you, Manago AI, if they’re interested in fully embracing this opportunity that a Gentic marketing is going to give them.

31:55.296 –> 31:56.257 [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, absolutely.

31:56.277 –> 32:02.958 [SPEAKER_02]: Well, happy to have people returning me on LinkedIn, Phil Drake, born LinkedIn as the title on the bottom of this says.

32:03.959 –> 32:05.659 [SPEAKER_02]: And then, fortunately more about Manago AI,

32:12.501 –> 32:22.610 [SPEAKER_02]: And we can find out more about the product we do, customer engagement platform, very heavy e-commerce features, specialisms, these free trials on there as well, so people can see it and with their own eyes.

32:23.151 –> 32:30.397 [SPEAKER_02]: As anything, there’s a whole load of features, the best way to get the values followed by a demo, but the best place to start all of those in queries is the website.

32:30.827 –> 32:31.047 [SPEAKER_00]: awesome.

32:31.107 –> 32:39.097 [SPEAKER_00]: And wherever you’re listening to this, uh, everybody you will find a link to the Menaga AI website somewhere very close to where you are right now.

32:39.617 –> 32:42.340 [SPEAKER_00]: Phil, thank you so much for coming on the show.

32:42.360 –> 32:45.464 [SPEAKER_00]: It’s been lovely to catch up and to talk about such an interesting topic with you.

32:45.484 –> 32:46.405 [SPEAKER_00]: So thank you for being here.

32:47.026 –> 32:47.566 [SPEAKER_02]: My pleasure.

32:47.626 –> 32:49.308 [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you very much for having you on your podcast.

32:49.348 –> 32:49.869 [SPEAKER_02]: We’d enjoyed it.

32:55.590 –> 33:01.318 [SPEAKER_00]: So obviously, a real trait for me to get to catch up with Phil, but I suspect you all got quite a lot out of that session as well.

33:01.898 –> 33:07.766 [SPEAKER_00]: What I find really interesting is that yet again, in marketing, yet again in e-commerce.

33:08.867 –> 33:31.977 [SPEAKER_00]: the tools are becoming a level playing field for all of us and the ones who are actually going to get the results from all of this are those who have the mindset to get going with it because at the moment there is still some level of first mover advantage and then those who have the strategic and the marketing now to understand how to get the best out of those tools and to make the right decisions and to work on the right areas.

33:32.398 –> 33:35.119 [SPEAKER_00]: So super, super fascinating to hear all that from Phil because

33:38.220 –> 33:41.825 [SPEAKER_00]: It’s a huge percentage of their user base that are already using the agentex.

33:41.865 –> 33:45.030 [SPEAKER_00]: They have the data to see in the case that is to see how people are using this.

33:45.811 –> 33:53.742 [SPEAKER_00]: Which I guess in some ways makes it seem a bit more straightforward to get started because it is just about having a go and getting your mindset and thinking like a good marketer.

33:54.369 –> 34:02.451 [SPEAKER_00]: You can get your hands on our notes from this episode, including those top tips and links to what we chatted about by heading over to ecommercemasterplanned.com.

34:03.012 –> 34:09.153 [SPEAKER_00]: Use ECMP.info forward slash six one seven to head straight to the correct page on the website.

34:09.713 –> 34:12.374 [SPEAKER_00]: And when you get there, you can add yourself to our email list.

34:13.074 –> 34:16.996 [SPEAKER_00]: If you liked this episode, then make sure you tune in again next week.

34:17.056 –> 34:20.957 [SPEAKER_00]: I know, normally I give you a past episode to look at this time I’m giving you a new one.

34:21.897 –> 34:30.584 [SPEAKER_00]: Next week, we’ve got Raymond from Car Well back on the show again, to give us an update on all the big AI and tech projects they’re working on.

34:30.604 –> 34:41.153 [SPEAKER_00]: I know a lot of you enjoyed that episode earlier, I think earlier this year, where he talks about where he was, but he will be talking about how they are delivering that mindset piece across the business.

34:41.393 –> 34:44.156 [SPEAKER_00]: So definitely a good one to follow on from this.

34:44.196 –> 34:47.038 [SPEAKER_00]: But if you’re listening to this one the first week, guys, I have you can have to wait a little bit.

34:47.498 –> 34:48.679 [SPEAKER_00]: So, so listen to that.

34:49.620 –> 34:54.482 [SPEAKER_00]: I’m thank you for tuning in to this and every episode that you do of the e-commerce master plan podcast.

34:54.862 –> 35:05.425 [SPEAKER_00]: I bring you a new one every week because I want to inspire and help you to succeed and thrive with your business, including encouraging both you and your customers to make more sustainable buying decisions.

35:06.185 –> 35:12.087 [SPEAKER_00]: So if you know someone they show can help, please tell them to listen to the e-commerce master plan podcast.

35:12.467 –> 35:15.868 [SPEAKER_00]: I hope you have a great week and do not forget to keep optimizing.

35:19.017 –> 35:22.339 [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you for listening to the e-commerce Master Plan podcast.

35:22.800 –> 35:27.663 [SPEAKER_01]: Find out more at e-commercemasterplanned.com Slash Podcast.

In this episode, Gemma shares how JOMO Club has evolved from a subscription discovery box into a wider eCommerce business. She also reveals how they use events, digital marketing and customer insight to keep growing as the market changes. 

Hit PLAY to hear: 

• How JOMO Club grew beyond its subscription box 
• Why product discovery can become a powerful growth strategy 
• How to adapt your eCommerce strategy as your market matures 
• 5 ways to make your next eCommerce event more successful 
• How to track the real ROI of in-person events 
• Why combining digital and physical touchpoints can drive growth 

Key timestamps to dive straight in: 

[04:48] Starting JOMO Club and eCommerce 

[08:21] Running the business with family 

[13:30] Transitioning to Virtual Events 

[15:04] Engaging and effective trade show presence 

[19:22] Setting up versatile event spaces 

[22:14] Listen to Gemma’s Top Tips! 

Full episode notes here: https://ecmp.info/616

— Download our ebook… https://ecmp.info/ebook 500 Tips to Increase Your Profits

Get all the links and resources we mention and join our email list at https://ecmp.info

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00:00.552 –> 00:09.063 [SPEAKER_00]: For me, as a founder to connect to the consumer and understand who is actually enjoying Joe Mo and who do we need to be targeting, that’s very much part of our strategy today.

00:09.083 –> 00:16.052 [SPEAKER_00]: I think it’s important to have physical and digital touch points to make sure that you’re actually growing the business it in every way you can.

00:18.356 –> 00:20.739 [SPEAKER_02]: It’s the e-commerce master plan podcast.

00:21.300 –> 00:25.365 [SPEAKER_02]: Air to help you solve your marketing problems and grow your e-commerce business.

00:25.886 –> 00:33.737 [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.

00:37.030 –> 00:38.192 [SPEAKER_01]: Hello and welcome.

00:38.212 –> 00:39.354 [SPEAKER_01]: It’s great to have you here.

00:39.414 –> 00:43.461 [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you for hitting play and choosing to listen to one of our inspiring guests.

00:44.262 –> 00:49.251 [SPEAKER_01]: In this episode, we’re going into the world of subscription, haven’t done that in a while, and in honor of

00:50.360 –> 00:53.302 [SPEAKER_01]: stop October or give up drinking October.

00:53.842 –> 00:56.203 [SPEAKER_01]: We are talking non-alcoholic as well.

00:56.423 –> 01:14.912 [SPEAKER_01]: Real fascinating, focused business owner coming up who’s going to be sharing tips around subscription, tips around, pivoting your business as the market changes will also be talking about selling at real-world events and how to make the most of all of that and her top tips are pretty stocking as well.

01:14.972 –> 01:15.093 [SPEAKER_01]: So

01:21.277 –> 01:23.238 [SPEAKER_01]: And now to introduce our special guest.

01:23.619 –> 01:30.043 [SPEAKER_01]: Gemma Mills is the founder of Jomo Club, the UK’s leading alcohol-free drink discovery club.

01:30.403 –> 01:37.087 [SPEAKER_01]: Founded in 2022, they’ve already sold over £1 million worth of product via their Shopify store.

01:37.147 –> 01:37.828 [SPEAKER_01]: Hello, Gemma.

01:38.308 –> 01:40.149 [SPEAKER_01]: Hello, thank you so much for having me.

01:40.689 –> 01:42.511 [SPEAKER_01]: Awesome to have you on the show.

01:42.951 –> 01:45.112 [SPEAKER_01]: How did you get into the world of e-commerce?

01:45.132 –> 01:49.095 [SPEAKER_01]: You know, was Jomo Club the first thing you did in 2022 or have you been here before?

01:49.735 –> 01:51.876 [SPEAKER_00]: not at all here before actually.

01:52.356 –> 01:54.177 [SPEAKER_00]: I came from a very different background.

01:54.677 –> 02:01.821 [SPEAKER_00]: I went straight from school into the maritime industry and that was actually a smooth, obviously.

02:02.381 –> 02:15.827 [SPEAKER_00]: So much knowledge about that from school not, but it was in print publishing so something very different and then after a year or so I went to my first London job which was physical events based business.

02:16.327 –> 02:24.514 [SPEAKER_00]: and that was in the Neutrosutical side, which is kind of supplements and the world of nutrition and then moved into pharmaceuticals.

02:24.534 –> 02:29.979 [SPEAKER_00]: So I worked on sales and marketing, but other than that, absolutely not e-commerce.

02:30.019 –> 02:34.223 [SPEAKER_00]: So it was very, very new this, this world for me when I started Joe Myclab.

02:34.703 –> 02:36.765 [SPEAKER_01]: And what led you to start Joe Myclab?

02:37.392 –> 02:41.255 [SPEAKER_00]: It really was during the fun lockdown times.

02:41.355 –> 02:46.239 [SPEAKER_00]: I think a lot of us probably turned to anything we could to get us through that time.

02:46.560 –> 02:52.525 [SPEAKER_00]: And for me and my partner Richard, we definitely turned to gin and tonics for a little while.

02:53.285 –> 03:09.516 [SPEAKER_00]: it was a way to obviously as so many of us use our call to relax and try to find some kind of normality or ritual after meeting so long to London and then coming home in your evenings, obviously we were all working and living from the same space.

03:09.576 –> 03:15.140 [SPEAKER_00]: So found that gin and tonics really provided that break between the daytime and the nighttime.

03:15.520 –> 03:23.227 [SPEAKER_00]: So it was kind of finding that ritual and then as time went on and lockdowns never ended, it felt like we needed to find something a little bit healthier.

03:23.247 –> 03:40.761 [SPEAKER_00]: And that’s when we discovered sort of the alcohol-free world, which then expanded in terms of writing, the business plan, working out how we could bring our cold free options to other people that were experiencing the same thing, and then that’s kind of what led on to our launch and obviously it made sense to do that online.

03:41.582 –> 03:50.166 [SPEAKER_01]: And so a lot of people in that, on that similar journey would have invented their own non-alcoholic or crisis, just a normal store.

03:50.926 –> 03:53.447 [SPEAKER_01]: What was your decision to go subscription?

03:53.467 –> 03:56.969 [SPEAKER_01]: Were you subscription from day one or was that something that evolved in the business?

03:57.329 –> 04:01.611 [SPEAKER_00]: Yes, so we were number one, so there was a few reasons behind that really.

04:01.691 –> 04:07.833 [SPEAKER_00]: So when we first launched, there really was just one alcohol-free spirit that was widely known, which was seedlip.

04:07.933 –> 04:11.694 [SPEAKER_00]: They were the ones who obviously started the category, most people knew about them.

04:12.194 –> 04:20.717 [SPEAKER_00]: The thing with seedlip, they have done such an amazing job in the category in terms of opening it up and really sort of launching and starting the category.

04:20.777 –> 04:22.258 [SPEAKER_00]: But the thing with seedlip is,

04:22.718 –> 04:48.258 [SPEAKER_00]: In the alcohol world, not everyone likes to keel her, not everyone likes rum, not everyone likes gin, so if someone tried to see lip and it wasn’t to their tastes, they thought we don’t like anything in alcohol free, which is obviously changed so much in the past four years, but we kind of set out to see other brands in the market, other artisan independent brands that just aren’t discovered yet, and that’s when we found there was actually a lot of artisan brands out there.

04:48.618 –> 05:02.566 [SPEAKER_00]: So when we started trying them ourselves, I really wanted to help people understand and discover you can actually enjoy your drinking cocktail at home ritual without the booze and it doesn’t always have to be said lip if that isn’t your preference.

05:02.646 –> 05:09.930 [SPEAKER_00]: So I really was kind of passionate about building the ritual, building that cocktail experience in terms of

05:10.490 –> 05:11.852 [SPEAKER_00]: creating our ring drink.

05:11.932 –> 05:18.059 [SPEAKER_00]: We had so many amazing people that have experienced for years in that sector and they know exactly what they’re doing.

05:18.459 –> 05:23.305 [SPEAKER_00]: Although when I started Joe Merkel, I had no idea what I was doing in terms of subscription and e-commerce.

05:23.665 –> 05:26.789 [SPEAKER_00]: I certainly think it was a whole kettle of fish with the

05:27.850 –> 05:32.892 [SPEAKER_00]: creating your own drink and bottling and recipes and everything that came with that.

05:32.952 –> 05:43.817 [SPEAKER_00]: So for me, it felt like, firstly, I was more passionate about the subscription side and working with other brands and it made a lot more sense, I think, along with that being a huge gap in the market.

05:44.497 –> 05:47.999 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and it manufacturing as a whole other game isn’t it?

05:48.059 –> 05:50.860 [SPEAKER_01]: It’s some if you can avoid getting into it, I certainly would.

05:51.681 –> 05:54.562 [SPEAKER_01]: So tell us a bit about the business as it is right now.

05:54.822 –> 05:56.923 [SPEAKER_01]: Where in the world are you and where are you selling to?

05:57.479 –> 06:09.251 [SPEAKER_00]: So we are UK-only, I live in Hitchin’ and Hartfordshire, but we ship and both our Joemo subscription boxes and our call free spirits across the whole of the country.

06:09.611 –> 06:12.013 [SPEAKER_00]: We have a pretty dominant in London.

06:12.073 –> 06:18.580 [SPEAKER_00]: We also have quite a big customer base in Scotland, but we’re pretty spread out across the whole of the UK at the moment.

06:19.220 –> 06:19.560 [SPEAKER_01]: nice.

06:20.081 –> 06:25.764 [SPEAKER_01]: And you mentioned that I think that you’ve got both the subscription box and standalone products.

06:26.264 –> 06:28.626 [SPEAKER_01]: So how did that evolution come about?

06:29.255 –> 06:44.288 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so it’s not Joe Moves products, but basically when we launch the subscription boxes, our core focus is discovery to help people even to this day to help people find what they couldn’t find on supermarket shelves and couldn’t easily find elsewhere.

06:45.029 –> 06:50.974 [SPEAKER_00]: That is a great problem that we solved, but also then people couldn’t find them again when they like them.

06:50.994 –> 06:51.155 [SPEAKER_00]: So.

06:51.755 –> 07:01.860 [SPEAKER_00]: It made sense for us to launch our Jomeo bottle store to mean that once people did find a favorite, they could then top up through us or just proceed buying that alcohol free spirit.

07:02.201 –> 07:10.425 [SPEAKER_00]: We’ve then expanded into alcohol free wines and cocktails and other things like that, but it kind of just made sense as we’d solved a problem and then created another one.

07:11.011 –> 07:13.114 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, when you put it that way, it’s so obvious.

07:13.134 –> 07:15.977 [SPEAKER_01]: It’s like, oh, yeah, here’s this beautiful thing that you fall in love with.

07:15.997 –> 07:17.359 [SPEAKER_01]: You’re not allowed any more.

07:17.499 –> 07:18.380 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, exactly.

07:19.762 –> 07:20.963 [SPEAKER_01]: It doesn’t make sense at all.

07:22.064 –> 07:26.570 [SPEAKER_01]: And what does the team look like now you’re what four years in?

07:27.214 –> 07:32.459 [SPEAKER_00]: We are four years in and it has been a lot of learning curves.

07:32.819 –> 07:46.010 [SPEAKER_00]: Our business plan is kind of changing all the time where two years ago I was thinking we’ll have a team of this person, this person, then market changes happen, happen, not just in our call foray, but in the crazy world that we’re living it right now.

07:46.030 –> 07:51.295 [SPEAKER_00]: The past four years have been very turbulent and it’s very hard to predict what’s to come next.

07:51.875 –> 07:58.378 [SPEAKER_00]: So we have actually for now kind of gone down the freelancer route for the gaps that we have.

07:59.198 –> 08:08.242 [SPEAKER_00]: I think at this point we will soon get to the point where we will need a full time higher, but I’m maybe this is the control freaking me, I’m sure a lot of time.

08:08.482 –> 08:18.605 [SPEAKER_00]: is actually empathised, but I kind of wanted to learn every aspect of the business before then getting someone on board to be able to understand what they’re doing, how I can support them.

08:19.245 –> 08:21.585 [SPEAKER_00]: Ultimately, we want someone to fill the gaps in knowledge.

08:21.605 –> 08:27.367 [SPEAKER_00]: There’s someone out there that will do a much better job at certain things than I will, but I want it to have a kind of basic understanding.

08:28.007 –> 08:45.675 [SPEAKER_00]: For now, it is myself that runs the business day on the daily basis, and then my partner Richard, who still has a full-time job, but he runs all our paid socials and our CPC and all the kind of digital activation side, which is our kind of number one customer acquisition channel.

08:46.255 –> 08:56.940 [SPEAKER_00]: In terms of freelancers, we were packing for two years every box by hand in a family barn that we had, including my 85 at the time, your old grandma.

08:58.258 –> 09:03.302 [SPEAKER_00]: and pack for hours and every time I would say sit down, she would say, absolutely not, I’m fine.

09:04.382 –> 09:09.186 [SPEAKER_00]: So we did that really well, which was quite nice to connect you to your actual business.

09:09.206 –> 09:14.469 [SPEAKER_00]: When you’re behind a screen a lot, it can be quite hard to actually see what people can experience.

09:14.489 –> 09:17.952 [SPEAKER_00]: So that was quite nice, but we did get to the point where we obviously had to outsource that.

09:17.972 –> 09:21.714 [SPEAKER_00]: So we outsource all warehousing and shipping and fulfillment and things like that.

09:27.398 –> 09:38.424 [SPEAKER_00]: We’re getting there, we’re working out what a team would look like, and I think we’ve kind of crafted in the subscription world what that would look like for us in the future and where the gaps are that we kind of need to fill.

09:39.085 –> 09:48.330 [SPEAKER_01]: It makes so much sense in those first few years to be control-freaky over everything because it changes so much and it adapts so much.

09:48.610 –> 09:52.373 [SPEAKER_01]: And I guess in your space it must have adapted more than most because

09:53.273 –> 10:02.875 [SPEAKER_01]: I feel like the alcohol free industry, it’s like completely different beast to what it was four years ago from the outside of perspective.

10:02.955 –> 10:04.536 [SPEAKER_01]: Is that how it’s power has been for you?

10:05.036 –> 10:12.438 [SPEAKER_00]: Definitely, I think both looking at subscriptions and alcohol free, subscriptions absolutely boomed in lockdown.

10:12.818 –> 10:17.319 [SPEAKER_00]: So obviously everyone was at home and that’s when craft junk club went crazy

10:23.660 –> 10:36.127 [SPEAKER_00]: change slightly where subscriptions are very much part of our lifestyle now, but that was just such a boom that I think all these big brands then had to sort of adjust to the new normal, even though that obviously really supported growth in the early stages.

10:36.807 –> 10:47.053 [SPEAKER_00]: And then, so subscriptions as a whole, but then obviously our co-free, so when just like I was mentioning a minute ago as to why we actually launched the brand, people knew of one our co-free spirit.

10:47.193 –> 10:57.375 [SPEAKER_00]: Now you go to the supermarket, they’re still limited and they’re quite often the bigger brands, but we have a whole shelf dedicated to our cold free now, so you might get six, seven-hour cold free spirits.

10:57.395 –> 10:59.055 [SPEAKER_00]: You’ve got all the beers, the cocktails.

10:59.696 –> 11:03.376 [SPEAKER_00]: We very much had to focus on education in the early stages.

11:03.416 –> 11:05.157 [SPEAKER_00]: We were building up consumer trust.

11:05.237 –> 11:09.517 [SPEAKER_00]: People tried rubbish, our cold free drinks and thought, I’m not spending my money on that.

11:09.878 –> 11:11.618 [SPEAKER_00]: We used to get comments on our socials.

11:12.198 –> 11:15.660 [SPEAKER_00]: Why would I pay that when I can get it out the tap, meaning it all tastes of water?

11:15.740 –> 11:17.640 [SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, you’d get quite a lot of comments like that.

11:17.660 –> 11:20.702 [SPEAKER_00]: It was a lot of educational based marketing.

11:21.042 –> 11:23.063 [SPEAKER_00]: Now, we don’t really have to do as much education.

11:23.303 –> 11:28.025 [SPEAKER_00]: It’s just really helping people continue to discover those alcohol free drinks.

11:28.045 –> 11:34.748 [SPEAKER_00]: So, it puts us in quite an exciting position, really, where we can step back slightly from the education.

11:34.828 –> 11:35.548 [SPEAKER_00]: People get it.

11:35.588 –> 11:36.509 [SPEAKER_00]: They understand it.

11:36.869 –> 11:43.014 [SPEAKER_00]: is now just focusing on how to drive the business and the brand forward to make sure more people discover us.

11:43.034 –> 11:44.956 [SPEAKER_00]: So it’s kind of a different challenge to what we have before.

11:45.796 –> 11:50.380 [SPEAKER_01]: It’s interesting how it even if you think you’re in a space that’s not changing at all.

11:50.400 –> 11:57.586 [SPEAKER_01]: Those first few years of foot of twists and pivot and when you’re in a space where the industry changes so much, you both got

11:58.567 –> 12:03.470 [SPEAKER_01]: the downside of well, everybody knows there’s more than seed lip now because it’s everywhere.

12:03.830 –> 12:13.775 [SPEAKER_01]: So that whole discovery uniqueness is lesson but that also frees you up in your marketing to stop purely being education, education, education, education, education.

12:14.076 –> 12:16.257 [SPEAKER_01]: So it’s always, it’s pros and cons, isn’t it?

12:16.657 –> 12:17.017 [SPEAKER_00]: Definitely.

12:17.037 –> 12:32.403 [SPEAKER_00]: Well, I think it opens a consumer market and, I guess, business opportunity for me and other our call free brands hugely, because I think it’s over half now of UK consumers actively and openly during our call free drinks on a regular basis at home and out.

12:32.524 –> 12:37.005 [SPEAKER_00]: And the statistics and pubs and restaurants of people choosing our call free is huge.

12:37.025 –> 12:43.068 [SPEAKER_00]: You know, before people thought pubs and restaurants thought they were going to miss out and revenue by offering our call free drinks.

12:43.488 –> 12:51.474 [SPEAKER_00]: Now lots of pubs and restaurants charge very similar to alcohol as long as the alcohol free options are quality and people want to pay for them.

12:51.574 –> 12:56.858 [SPEAKER_00]: So I think it opens a massive opportunity that more people than ever are drinking alcohol free options.

12:57.339 –> 13:00.021 [SPEAKER_00]: It’s just exactly how do we tap into those?

13:00.841 –> 13:08.404 [SPEAKER_01]: And you mentioned whilst we were chatting before we hit record that you also do real world events to grow the business.

13:08.644 –> 13:20.210 [SPEAKER_01]: So you mentioned earlier that the digital activation, the digital ads is your number one client acquisition channel, but you’re also doing multiple real world events a year.

13:20.970 –> 13:25.392 [SPEAKER_01]: I guess first of was that a no brainer for you because you have event

13:30.988 –> 13:47.664 [SPEAKER_00]: I suppose so, it was really funny when we launched, because before I started Joe May, I was physical events based in terms of my role, and then it was kind of a crossover into COVID where all physical events cancelled, and I moved over into the virtual event world.

13:47.724 –> 13:50.827 [SPEAKER_00]: So I kind of had knowledge of both, and

13:51.528 –> 13:56.852 [SPEAKER_00]: physical events obviously just went to a standstill where people weren’t travelling or they’re worried to be face-to-face.

13:57.353 –> 14:03.358 [SPEAKER_00]: It took a little while to have a bounce back so initially I was a bit hesitant of, do people still want to do face-to-face?

14:03.398 –> 14:04.879 [SPEAKER_00]: Is everything just online now?

14:05.339 –> 14:11.104 [SPEAKER_00]: We took a few risks, those bigger events always cost a lot of money, we took a few risks and they really paid off.

14:11.704 –> 14:11.944 [SPEAKER_00]: So

14:12.845 –> 14:18.367 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I guess it was a natural fit that I did come in with skepticism and obviously working for a big brand before.

14:18.547 –> 14:22.488 [SPEAKER_00]: It’s then all my own money, which is scary.

14:22.908 –> 14:28.549 [SPEAKER_00]: And being in sales before and offering people the stands, it’s a bit scary when you’re on the other side and paying for the stands.

14:28.589 –> 14:32.750 [SPEAKER_00]: So, but yes, it’s definitely a core part of our business.

14:32.891 –> 14:40.533 [SPEAKER_00]: I think especially in those early days of education, allowing people to try and taste and walk them through the experience

14:42.093 –> 14:48.639 [SPEAKER_00]: for me as a founder to connect to the consumer and understand who’s actually enjoying Joe Moe and who do we need to be targeting.

14:49.059 –> 14:51.001 [SPEAKER_00]: But that’s very much part of our strategy today.

14:51.021 –> 14:58.068 [SPEAKER_00]: I think it’s important to have physical and digital touch points to make sure that you’re actually growing the business it in every way you can.

14:58.888 –> 15:03.633 [SPEAKER_01]: If you had to say five things were key to make you an event successful, what would they be?

15:04.650 –> 15:07.472 [SPEAKER_00]: I think having a great person on the stand.

15:07.572 –> 15:22.700 [SPEAKER_00]: So whether that’s yourself or whether that’s a really great team member, a lot of people hire sort of freelance people to come in, which can be great, because it means you can do more events, but just make sure that they’re passionate about no one’s going to be more passionate than your own brand.

15:23.081 –> 15:28.664 [SPEAKER_00]: But you know, you walk past people’s stands and they’re sat on their phone, or that’s just a waste of money in my opinion.

15:28.704 –> 15:30.765 [SPEAKER_00]: I think trying speak to as many people as you can.

15:31.385 –> 15:32.586 [SPEAKER_00]: making your stand good.

15:32.666 –> 15:46.913 [SPEAKER_00]: It doesn’t need to look expensive, but I think as long as we’ve tailored our stands so many times and if you understand things like where are people’s eyes going to before, because we’re subscription, we’re showcasing other people’s brands too.

15:47.214 –> 15:50.335 [SPEAKER_00]: So we don’t want people to walk away and remember that brand necessarily.

15:50.415 –> 15:52.656 [SPEAKER_00]: We want it to be Joe McCud that they walk away with.

15:52.997 –> 15:54.998 [SPEAKER_00]: That was being a huge challenge to make sure that you

15:55.698 –> 16:00.382 [SPEAKER_00]: make your standard contractive, but also that people are going away with the right impression.

16:00.863 –> 16:03.405 [SPEAKER_00]: The third is make sure you’re tracking things.

16:03.925 –> 16:15.336 [SPEAKER_00]: So again, before we kind of loosely guessed, we were like, yeah, it’s going all we’ve taken this much money on the the machine or whatever, but I think making sure as much as possible, you can understand the ROI.

16:16.977 –> 16:28.123 [SPEAKER_00]: who is subscribing after the event, whether that’s a discount code, how many people are scanning the QR code, just every touch point you can to understand the true success, not just from direct sales, but over time.

16:29.064 –> 16:36.308 [SPEAKER_00]: I think an event makes sure your position in the event is right, especially on these bigger events, a lot of people,

16:37.008 –> 16:42.652 [SPEAKER_00]: no hate to the big events, but I think often they’re just sort of you’re another brand in their big event.

16:42.692 –> 16:44.474 [SPEAKER_00]: So I think make sure your position right.

16:44.514 –> 16:54.701 [SPEAKER_00]: We’ve done events where have been huge, successful and then we’ve been putting dead zones other times and it’s just not only is it a waste of money, it’s a waste of your time, you stand there being frustrated.

16:54.841 –> 16:56.743 [SPEAKER_00]: So make sure the positions right.

16:57.303 –> 16:59.244 [SPEAKER_00]: And fifth one probably give a good

17:00.265 –> 17:03.168 [SPEAKER_00]: give a reason for people to come over to your stand.

17:03.348 –> 17:07.772 [SPEAKER_00]: So if you’re there and the traffic’s there, you really want to maximize that and drive people in.

17:07.812 –> 17:13.757 [SPEAKER_00]: So for us, it’s sampling as an our coffee drinks brand, but you know, sampling is the best way everyone loves a sample.

17:13.838 –> 17:17.341 [SPEAKER_00]: But if there’s whether there’s a spinning wheel or a prize or

17:17.741 –> 17:22.623 [SPEAKER_00]: a free offer, make sure that you’re bringing people into your stand and maximizing that traffic in your time.

17:23.583 –> 17:24.744 [SPEAKER_01]: Love those tips.

17:24.784 –> 17:25.424 [SPEAKER_01]: That’s awesome.

17:25.464 –> 17:26.004 [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you.

17:26.444 –> 17:34.587 [SPEAKER_01]: You mentioned about the right stand and the right position, how do you know in advance it’s going to be the right stand and the right position?

17:34.727 –> 17:38.849 [SPEAKER_01]: What are the key things to look out for and avoid or go into?

17:39.483 –> 17:44.465 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so it can be kind of difficult if you’ve never done the event before, obviously that can be difficult.

17:44.485 –> 17:55.249 [SPEAKER_00]: So if you can visit the event before you commit to it, I would recommend that because you can then actually walk as a visitor yourself and understand where you’re gravitating towards and put yourself in the shoes of them.

17:55.850 –> 18:04.653 [SPEAKER_00]: If you’re part of any communities or network, I’m part of by-women built community, you can all the network is so amazing at sharing their advice.

18:04.673 –> 18:08.115 [SPEAKER_00]: So if people have done the event before, just ask people, that’s a great way of doing it.

18:09.015 –> 18:10.996 [SPEAKER_00]: Ask the person that’s selling you the stand.

18:11.176 –> 18:13.776 [SPEAKER_00]: Yes, they’re going to probably want to put you in the most convenient spot.

18:13.796 –> 18:18.457 [SPEAKER_00]: But if you know what you’re asking for, so a walkway in an aisle, that’s really what you want.

18:18.837 –> 18:23.438 [SPEAKER_00]: A corner, which means you’re obviously getting both walkways leading up to your stand.

18:23.919 –> 18:25.879 [SPEAKER_00]: They’re probably the two main things.

18:25.919 –> 18:28.920 [SPEAKER_00]: As long as you’re on a walkway, you’re likely to get good traffic.

18:29.480 –> 18:33.861 [SPEAKER_00]: And the final thing I would say is make sure you ask for a floor plan to look who’s around you.

18:39.122 –> 18:45.584 [SPEAKER_00]: not because we’re an alcohol free brand necessarily in terms of messaging, but people will go and try a gin.

18:46.084 –> 18:50.645 [SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely burn their taste buds off by drinking neat gin and then come to an alcohol free stand.

18:50.665 –> 18:52.065 [SPEAKER_00]: And that’s not super helpful.

18:52.405 –> 18:55.486 [SPEAKER_00]: Or the same with chili sources and things like that.

18:55.506 –> 18:59.167 [SPEAKER_00]: Like it’s just not very good on the palate to then come to us to try something.

18:59.207 –> 19:02.988 [SPEAKER_00]: So check who your competitors are and who are around you and make sure that it makes sense for you.

19:03.508 –> 19:07.769 [SPEAKER_01]: I love that advice about going to the stand the year before if you can.

19:09.951 –> 19:21.446 [SPEAKER_01]: I went partly because a lot of them get booked out 12 months in advance anyway, so this isn’t something you can really do on a whim or do you have like a stand ready to go if you get last minute good space somewhere.

19:22.483 –> 19:23.904 [SPEAKER_00]: Yes, we do.

19:24.265 –> 19:34.233 [SPEAKER_00]: Now that we know sort of what we’re doing, we created a bar out of a pallet basically and that just makes a really easy bar for us for sampling.

19:34.493 –> 19:36.755 [SPEAKER_00]: And then we have our panels already sorted.

19:36.875 –> 19:39.817 [SPEAKER_00]: If it’s a smaller event, we just have one of those really simple pop-up

19:40.658 –> 19:45.059 [SPEAKER_00]: So we can be quite agile in terms of taking last-minute space if we need to, and if we can.

19:45.559 –> 19:52.741 [SPEAKER_00]: I think that’s probably another thing to note, like, just make sure that your event space that you create works for every event.

19:52.781 –> 19:54.781 [SPEAKER_00]: You can add touches if it’s a Christmas event.

19:54.801 –> 20:02.203 [SPEAKER_00]: You can add some presents at the front or something Christmasy, but just make sure that it fits everything because it will save you a lot of money in the long run.

20:02.323 –> 20:08.324 [SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, we could be pretty agile in terms of just using the stand that we have in the space that we have and bring it with us.

20:09.266 –> 20:16.009 [SPEAKER_01]: And then another thing in the world of events given this episode’s going out in October, also known as stoptober.

20:16.509 –> 20:23.913 [SPEAKER_01]: It would be mad not to assume, obviously we’ve recorded this before, but assuming October, you are busy, busy, busy.

20:24.305 –> 20:25.185 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, we are.

20:25.205 –> 20:30.408 [SPEAKER_00]: I think from October all the way through to February really because we’ve got dry January as well.

20:30.508 –> 20:32.289 [SPEAKER_00]: So all the way through to then.

20:33.069 –> 20:36.471 [SPEAKER_00]: So Brocktober was a huge part.

20:36.491 –> 20:45.535 [SPEAKER_00]: I think in changing consumer behaviours and the way that we all drink nowadays, both sober October and dry January and then there was also a sober spring.

20:45.555 –> 20:47.336 [SPEAKER_00]: So they were all sort of popping up everywhere.

20:47.757 –> 20:48.117 [SPEAKER_00]: I think

20:48.817 –> 20:55.683 [SPEAKER_00]: The problem with dry January is it became a challenge where you really try to not drink for the month.

20:55.923 –> 20:59.306 [SPEAKER_00]: Then you would complete it and I’m talking from experience there.

20:59.626 –> 21:03.249 [SPEAKER_00]: You would complete it and then you would go to the pub and go absolutely mental.

21:03.469 –> 21:05.891 [SPEAKER_00]: That kind of is defeating the object slightly.

21:06.251 –> 21:09.254 [SPEAKER_00]: You have achieved it but I think a lot of people are now

21:09.834 –> 21:12.116 [SPEAKER_00]: moderating their drinking the whole year round.

21:12.156 –> 21:21.785 [SPEAKER_00]: We’ve seen a lot less sobriety in abstinence and more, just moderation and they call it zebra striping, maybe drinking an alcoholic drink, then a non-alcoholic drink.

21:22.245 –> 21:27.490 [SPEAKER_00]: But that being said, people still do like sober October as kind of a reset.

21:27.870 –> 21:33.312 [SPEAKER_00]: So if the summer socializing, the sun comes out, everyone goes straight to the park and pubs and drinks beers.

21:33.393 –> 21:40.316 [SPEAKER_00]: And I think it’s a great reset, especially as you transition from summer into that autumn wintery cozy season.

21:40.936 –> 21:44.337 [SPEAKER_00]: People do like to have that as, okay, let’s have a month.

21:44.417 –> 21:45.658 [SPEAKER_00]: Let’s reset my body.

21:45.958 –> 21:47.399 [SPEAKER_00]: What do we want from drinking?

21:47.479 –> 21:49.840 [SPEAKER_00]: Do we drink on the sad, happy, celebrating?

21:49.920 –> 21:51.461 [SPEAKER_00]: When do we want to enjoy that drink?

21:51.501 –> 21:54.262 [SPEAKER_00]: So I think it’s a great reset, months of sobriety.

21:57.053 –> 22:01.854 [SPEAKER_02]: E-commerce master plan is supporting by some of the greatest companies in the E-commerce sector.

22:01.974 –> 22:10.095 [SPEAKER_02]: Here’s a reminder of who they are.

22:10.275 –> 22:12.136 [SPEAKER_02]: It’s time for the top six round.

22:14.756 –> 22:15.816 [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, I love this section.

22:15.836 –> 22:20.177 [SPEAKER_01]: Excuse me, and our listeners some really quick ideas for taking all businesses to the next level.

22:20.217 –> 22:21.818 [SPEAKER_01]: Gemma, are you ready for the top tips?

22:22.178 –> 22:22.578 [SPEAKER_00]: I’m ready.

22:22.658 –> 22:23.398 [SPEAKER_00]: Is it fire round?

22:23.438 –> 22:24.158 [SPEAKER_00]: I feel pressure.

22:25.345 –> 22:26.567 [SPEAKER_01]: Don’t worry, we won’t be too hard.

22:26.767 –> 22:29.870 [SPEAKER_01]: We’re not going to drive you to drink, let’s put it that way.

22:29.990 –> 22:38.119 [SPEAKER_01]: The book top tip, if everyone is listening to this podcast, agreed to take Friday off and read a book to make their business better, which book would you recommend?

22:39.040 –> 22:46.628 [SPEAKER_00]: I don’t know if anyone said this before, maybe I’m not being very original, but I would actually say if someone a founder is taking a Friday off,

22:47.308 –> 23:01.429 [SPEAKER_00]: I think you should actually pick a book that you really want to read and that would make you really happy and I think that’s important because you’re so involved in building, growing, everything to do with your business all the time that sometimes it takes.

23:02.210 –> 23:08.133 [SPEAKER_00]: a lot to step back, look at what you want to achieve, look at what you are achieving and what needs to be done.

23:08.513 –> 23:11.934 [SPEAKER_00]: I think that reset moment as a founder is really, really important.

23:12.034 –> 23:13.615 [SPEAKER_00]: I’m quite a creative person.

23:13.935 –> 23:22.338 [SPEAKER_00]: So if I can take time away from my screen and something like getting lost in a book, then I can come back to the business and actually come with a lot of ideas.

23:22.358 –> 23:25.500 [SPEAKER_00]: So I would actually just say doing reading something that you enjoy.

23:26.332 –> 23:28.753 [SPEAKER_01]: You’re not the first, but it is very good advice.

23:29.994 –> 23:38.079 [SPEAKER_01]: And there is something about a physical paperback novel of some description, which is really hard to get distracted from.

23:38.299 –> 23:42.742 [SPEAKER_01]: When it’s good, you know, literally both your hands are involved and your eyes are involved and there’s no screen.

23:43.282 –> 23:51.767 [SPEAKER_01]: It’s a tonic for the soul, the traffic top tip, which marketing method do you either prize above all others or think doesn’t get the press it deserves.

23:52.465 –> 23:58.169 [SPEAKER_00]: So for me, I am all about kind of always on circular marketing funnel.

23:58.489 –> 24:02.071 [SPEAKER_00]: So I think it’s really crucial for everything to be working together.

24:02.251 –> 24:20.783 [SPEAKER_00]: So from all your digital touch points from your organic and paid socials, to your email, we use Clavio, but whatever your email plugin is, to physical events, to virtual events, to partnerships, I think everything works well in Unison for us on number one traffic driver is organic.

24:21.223 –> 24:28.429 [SPEAKER_00]: but that’s definitely not just our SEO and people searching for us, that is to do with all those other channels and activations that we have going on.

24:28.870 –> 24:35.055 [SPEAKER_00]: So I think working everything in Newton has a core part to play in building driving traffic overall.

24:35.836 –> 24:39.779 [SPEAKER_01]: It’s the best answer, but the worst answer, because it’s like, do everything brilliantly people?

24:40.219 –> 24:42.922 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, but I have everyone become an expert in everything.

24:44.237 –> 24:45.218 [SPEAKER_01]: you’re completely right.

24:45.918 –> 24:56.505 [SPEAKER_01]: The tall top tip, maybe a collaboration tool, a social media plug-in, a phone app or just a way of working, is there a cool little tool you use makes you and your team more efficient from day to day.

24:57.319 –> 25:15.774 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah so we haven’t mentioned it yet and I don’t want to make everything all about it because it’s a bit of an overwhelmingly scary fast-moving situation but obviously I have to reference AI for me I am still working out the best way to use AI and how to implement it into our business.

25:16.274 –> 25:23.039 [SPEAKER_00]: The past three months it has been pretty invaluable to what we have coming up and I would say

25:24.000 –> 25:38.198 [SPEAKER_00]: I have now got to grips with how to work it to make sure that I am bringing personality and character and a human element to our business, which is so important I think for something like ours, but also to be able to use it to become more efficient.

25:38.999 –> 25:49.008 [SPEAKER_00]: For example, Shopify have Shopify’s AI assistant that is so helpful for me to pull statistics just within a second that would take me forever to pull.

25:49.068 –> 25:54.172 [SPEAKER_00]: So what is our number one driving traffic source or where are we getting ourselves from?

25:54.672 –> 25:55.914 [SPEAKER_00]: What’s our target audience?

25:55.994 –> 26:05.642 [SPEAKER_00]: Shopify assistant AI platform is amazing using those statistics to then put into Claude really then helps me to be able to understand and analyze the business and to a real

26:07.203 –> 26:14.565 [SPEAKER_00]: Also, Camver, which I’m sure a lot of people use already, they have a Camver AI, which actually designs documents.

26:14.625 –> 26:22.908 [SPEAKER_00]: Now, once I have all that data, I can create pretty social media campaigns, I can not create a pretty document, save my life and it just hurts my head.

26:22.988 –> 26:26.669 [SPEAKER_00]: So they can put it into readable, readable document.

26:27.069 –> 26:31.450 [SPEAKER_00]: For example, if you’re looking for investment, just sharing that one page or with them is really, really helpful.

26:31.530 –> 26:32.951 [SPEAKER_00]: So I vowed to not

26:33.771 –> 26:45.119 [SPEAKER_00]: AI, any of our content, or any of our magazine, or any of our hand-curated boxes, but I do use AI for the statistic and understanding our customer and helping us grow.

26:45.700 –> 26:50.123 [SPEAKER_01]: I like that clear line of where you are and where you aren’t using it, so great answer.

26:50.703 –> 26:55.387 [SPEAKER_01]: Carbon Top Tip, what’s your favourite way to reduce the carbon footprint of an e-commerce store?

26:56.227 –> 27:02.691 [SPEAKER_00]: So for us, we looked at this from the very beginning before we launched and make sure this was quite integral to what we do.

27:02.791 –> 27:09.675 [SPEAKER_00]: So from our, we have no plastic in our boxes, which is kind of difficult actually for a glass-based product.

27:09.735 –> 27:13.457 [SPEAKER_00]: We definitely struggled with that in the early stages and we had a lot of damages.

27:13.717 –> 27:16.519 [SPEAKER_00]: Um, you realise cardboard isn’t that protective.

27:16.579 –> 27:18.620 [SPEAKER_00]: So we’ve managed to overcome that hurdle now, but

27:19.100 –> 27:21.781 [SPEAKER_00]: No plastic, so cardboard only.

27:22.061 –> 27:30.864 [SPEAKER_00]: We also work with a printing brand that plants a certain number of trees, a person, a number of boxes to try and offset some of our carbon footprint.

27:31.284 –> 27:40.568 [SPEAKER_00]: We also work with sustainable brands, so a lot of our customers in the our cold free world are very conscious of what they’re consuming both in terms of ingredients and brands and products.

27:41.188 –> 27:48.731 [SPEAKER_00]: So a lot of the alcohol free brands in the market are also sustainable in terms of their practices and a lot of them are b-corp certified.

27:48.791 –> 27:55.914 [SPEAKER_00]: So actually the brands we work with are quite important for us as an e-commerce brand to make sure we’re putting out what we’re talking about.

27:56.894 –> 27:58.155 [SPEAKER_01]: Loftar, okay, Gemma.

27:58.175 –> 28:04.317 [SPEAKER_01]: Before we say goodbye, could you please at the list of snow where they can find you in your business on the web and social media?

28:04.891 –> 28:10.038 [SPEAKER_00]: Definitely so you can find us online at jomoclub.co.uk.

28:10.398 –> 28:19.270 [SPEAKER_00]: You can follow us on socials at jomoclub official and we also have a very special discount which I don’t know if you want me to say or if you don’t.

28:19.290 –> 28:21.553 [SPEAKER_01]: Oh no, please, please reveal reveal.

28:21.873 –> 28:27.578 [SPEAKER_00]: So, for any of our subscriptions, we have our coffee cocktail wine already to drink subscriptions.

28:27.958 –> 28:41.649 [SPEAKER_00]: You’ll get 25% off your first month and you’ll also get a free cocktail shaker to get you started as well just by using the code master plan and it’s fully flexible, cancel any time and hope you all enjoy it.

28:42.430 –> 28:43.411 [SPEAKER_01]: There you go everybody.

28:43.911 –> 28:53.919 [SPEAKER_01]: Use the code masterplan at jomocclub.co.uk to get your 25% off and your first month and a cocktail shaker as well.

28:54.720 –> 28:56.862 [SPEAKER_01]: Gemma, thank you so much for all of the listeners.

28:57.022 –> 29:00.244 [SPEAKER_01]: They will really appreciate it and thank you so much for coming on the podcast.

29:00.264 –> 29:02.286 [SPEAKER_01]: It’s been a real pleasure chatting with you.

29:02.326 –> 29:03.247 [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you so much for having me.

29:09.060 –> 29:12.141 [SPEAKER_01]: fascinating to hear how Gem has gone about building her business.

29:12.181 –> 29:20.503 [SPEAKER_01]: I think the clarity she’s gone about, what they do, why they do, and why they do all the things they do is something I think we’re probably all striving for.

29:21.003 –> 29:35.146 [SPEAKER_01]: Love to break down on the AI front, and those five things to get right, if you’re going to be doing the big gift fairs, the big events, really, really clever, and things which you might not have thought through, but which you really do need to think through if you’re going to make a success of those.

29:35.886 –> 29:42.631 [SPEAKER_01]: Get your hands on the notes from this episode, including those top tips and links to what we’ve mentioned by heading over to ecommercemasterplanned.com.

29:43.091 –> 29:48.755 [SPEAKER_01]: You can also use a direct episode short links that’s ECMP.info for such the number of the episode.

29:49.115 –> 29:52.217 [SPEAKER_01]: Just put that in the URL bar to go straight to the right page of the website.

29:52.578 –> 30:00.123 [SPEAKER_01]: When you get to the site, why not add yourself to our email list as well so you don’t miss out on any of the stuff we share to help you improve your business.

30:00.603 –> 30:09.370 [SPEAKER_01]: And if you liked this episode, then make sure you check out Episode 401, which is another subscription Drinks brand, Big Island Coffee Roaster.

30:10.091 –> 30:13.333 [SPEAKER_01]: And I get to chat with a brilliant Christina Smith all about that one.

30:13.694 –> 30:19.879 [SPEAKER_01]: And you can find all our subscription episodes at ECMP.info for such subscription.

30:20.379 –> 30:24.723 [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you for tuning into this and every episode that you do of the Ecommerce Master Plan podcast.

30:25.083 –> 30:35.632 [SPEAKER_01]: We bring you a new interview every week because we want to inspire and help you to succeed and thrive with your businesses, including encouraging both businesses and consumers to make more sustainable buying decisions.

30:36.133 –> 30:40.837 [SPEAKER_01]: So if you know someone this show can help, please tell them to listen to the Ecommerce Master Plan podcast.

30:41.197 –> 30:43.699 [SPEAKER_01]: Hope you have a great week and do not forget to keep

30:47.653 –> 30:50.957 [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you for listening to the e-commerce Master Plan podcast.

30:51.417 –> 30:56.303 [SPEAKER_02]: Find out more at e-commercemasterplanned.com slash podcast.

In this episode, Liat shares how DeviantArt is turning its huge community of artists and art lovers into a thriving creator economy, while keeping the community at the heart of the business. She also reveals how they approach monetisation, global expansion and AI without losing sight of their core values. 

Hit PLAY to hear: 

• How DeviantArt turned a huge community into a thriving marketplace 
• Why DeviantArt removed programmatic ads to put creators first 
• The “stairway to growth” helping creators unlock new revenue streams 
• Why 55%+ of first-time buyers return to the same creator 
• How DeviantArt is tackling global growth through localisation 
• DeviantArt’s practical approach to AI-generated art 

Key timestamps to dive straight in: 

[04:37] Balancing community and eCommerce 

[08:22] Supporting creators with new sales options 

[10:44] Supporting Artists on DeviantArt 

[15:27] Community growth and creator tools 

[18:47] Expanding localization efforts 

[23:44] AI art policies and user options 

[26:43] Listen to Liat’s Top Tips! 

[36:17] Episode sponsored by DeviantArt. Find out more here >>> https://www.deviantart.com/        

Full episode notes here: https://ecmp.info/615 

Episode sponsored by DeviantArt. Find out more here >>> https://www.deviantart.com/

— Download our ebook… https://ecmp.info/ebook 500 Tips to Increase Your Profits

Get all the links and resources we mention and join our email list at https://ecmp.info

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00:00.391 –> 00:16.627 [SPEAKER_00]: It’s an ongoing challenge for us to think about how we maintain the focus on what is the core of what the VNR is and that’s community and keep that community healthy and growing and connected while allowing the e-commerce to lay on.

00:17.407 –> 00:19.770 [SPEAKER_00]: Once you have that community in place,

00:20.370 –> 00:23.771 [SPEAKER_00]: Then the business piece is in many ways easier, right?

00:23.851 –> 00:30.434 [SPEAKER_00]: The really hard part is finding the right audience and connecting with them and having that ongoing relationship.

00:33.155 –> 00:35.515 [SPEAKER_01]: It’s the e-commerce master plan podcast.

00:36.096 –> 00:40.157 [SPEAKER_01]: Air to help you solve your marketing problems and grow your e-commerce business.

00:40.677 –> 00:48.480 [SPEAKER_01]: Cutting through the highly to bring you inspiration and advice from the e-commerce sector and beyond, here’s your host, Chloe Thomas.

00:51.813 –> 00:53.134 [SPEAKER_02]: Hello and welcome.

00:53.154 –> 00:54.275 [SPEAKER_02]: It’s great to have you here.

00:54.375 –> 00:58.038 [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you for hitting play and choosing to list one of our inspiring guests.

00:58.398 –> 01:02.562 [SPEAKER_02]: In this episode, we’re getting in touch with someone who was last on the show five years ago.

01:02.602 –> 01:06.185 [SPEAKER_02]: It is now doing a very different role to what they were doing then.

01:06.585 –> 01:08.707 [SPEAKER_02]: We’re getting into the world of digital products.

01:08.947 –> 01:11.290 [SPEAKER_02]: and deep into the world of community as well.

01:11.350 –> 01:12.512 [SPEAKER_02]: So we’re talking a lot about that.

01:13.313 –> 01:22.165 [SPEAKER_02]: There’s a lot about biobehavior, community behavior, elements of goals, values, lots of good stuff in this one and some lovely top tips that you’re not going to want to miss.

01:22.266 –> 01:23.848 [SPEAKER_02]: So make sure you listen to the end.

01:29.683 –> 01:31.744 [SPEAKER_02]: And now to introduce our special guest.

01:32.205 –> 01:36.567 [SPEAKER_02]: Leighett Carpool Goethe is the Chief Revenue Officer at Deviant Art.

01:37.028 –> 01:43.872 [SPEAKER_02]: A digital art marketplace and community founded in 2000, they pivoted completely to the marketplace model in 2023.

01:43.892 –> 01:47.034 [SPEAKER_02]: And in 2025, had over 265,000 buyers, spending £23 million via their platform.

01:47.134 –> 01:47.554 [SPEAKER_02]: Hello, Leighett.

01:54.338 –> 01:55.358 [SPEAKER_02]: Chloe, how are you?

01:55.958 –> 02:02.740 [SPEAKER_02]: I’m very good and it’s great to have you back on the show again for the first time in what I think is five years.

02:02.880 –> 02:05.501 [SPEAKER_00]: So how have the last five years been?

02:06.301 –> 02:09.742 [SPEAKER_00]: Well, now it sounds like a really long time but it’s been great.

02:09.802 –> 02:11.122 [SPEAKER_00]: I think we last met.

02:11.622 –> 02:13.583 [SPEAKER_00]: I was doing e-commerce at Wix.

02:14.263 –> 02:19.764 [SPEAKER_00]: So these days, managing the business at DeviantArt, it’s been an incredible

02:23.345 –> 02:24.566 [SPEAKER_00]: so excited to be here.

02:24.586 –> 02:33.430 [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it’s quite, I mean, obviously still in e-commerce, but a very different role to what you are doing, doing before, and I can tell from how you’re smiling, how much you’re enjoying it.

02:33.550 –> 02:37.212 [SPEAKER_02]: So let’s let everyone in on what is happening at deviant art.

02:37.392 –> 02:37.652 [SPEAKER_02]: What?

02:38.893 –> 02:40.094 [SPEAKER_02]: What is the product?

02:40.114 –> 02:45.657 [SPEAKER_02]: Because you’ve got, you know, normally I’m talking to people with physical products, they design, you know, they manufacture themselves.

02:45.677 –> 02:46.597 [SPEAKER_02]: You’re products quite different.

02:46.617 –> 02:48.378 [SPEAKER_02]: So what’s the product on deviant art?

02:49.071 –> 02:49.451 [SPEAKER_00]: Sure.

02:49.611 –> 02:53.353 [SPEAKER_00]: So David and Art at our core is actually a community.

02:54.334 –> 02:57.555 [SPEAKER_00]: We are the world’s largest online art community.

02:58.156 –> 03:01.097 [SPEAKER_00]: Just celebrated our 26th birthday.

03:01.197 –> 03:03.438 [SPEAKER_00]: So we were founded back in 2000.

03:04.539 –> 03:08.501 [SPEAKER_00]: Today we have over 110 million registered users.

03:13.744 –> 03:19.303 [SPEAKER_00]: So really a massive, massive network of creators and art lovers that come together.

03:20.511 –> 03:29.193 [SPEAKER_00]: And over the past quarter century, David and Art has established itself really as a home for artists and art lovers.

03:30.013 –> 03:47.956 [SPEAKER_00]: And it’s always been what set us apart, but I think the part that is new is that in recent years, we’ve really been building in more tools for artists to make a living on the platform and transitioning from not only being a community, to being a true, creator economy,

03:49.057 –> 03:58.727 [SPEAKER_00]: where we allow people not only to come and share their work and connect with their communities, but also to transact and support financially creators that they love.

03:59.692 –> 04:03.654 [SPEAKER_00]: So, yeah, it’s made this incredible flywheel of growth.

04:03.754 –> 04:15.298 [SPEAKER_00]: I think a network is always different than just, you know, kind of a straight funnel e-commerce and adding into that the element of art, which, you know, I just love.

04:15.338 –> 04:20.540 [SPEAKER_00]: So for me, it’s bringing all the passions together into a single world.

04:21.319 –> 04:28.302 [SPEAKER_02]: I suspect some people will still be thinking, oh, so you had like 20 years of community building up before you monetize.

04:28.322 –> 04:29.823 [SPEAKER_02]: That must have made it super easy.

04:30.163 –> 04:36.946 [SPEAKER_02]: Presumably, it was actually made it quite hard to change the game within the platform.

04:37.826 –> 04:55.443 [SPEAKER_00]: Right, I think it’s an ongoing challenge for us to think about how we maintain the focus on what is the core of what the event art is and that’s community and keep that community healthy and growing and connected while allowing the e-commerce to layer on.

04:56.043 –> 05:01.349 [SPEAKER_00]: I definitely think it’s probably the opposite way round that a lot of other companies end up doing it.

05:01.369 –> 05:02.750 [SPEAKER_00]: I think many people start with.

05:03.110 –> 05:09.416 [SPEAKER_00]: the business piece and then they kind of get to a point of growth where they’re like oh we really need to layer in community.

05:09.936 –> 05:24.749 [SPEAKER_00]: So you know the challenges that other way around for us but I think that what we found and this is true I think for many e-commerce businesses that do manage to establish their community is that once you have that community in place

05:25.369 –> 05:29.032 [SPEAKER_00]: then the business piece is in many ways easier, right?

05:29.112 –> 05:35.717 [SPEAKER_00]: The really hard part is finding the right audience and connecting with them and having that ongoing relationship.

05:36.318 –> 05:40.961 [SPEAKER_00]: So I’m not saying it was easy to build, but you know, we came at it the other way around.

05:41.807 –> 05:58.573 [SPEAKER_02]: I suppose the fact that your goals as deviant are and your community’s goals for the most part align, because the way you’ve built the monetization structure is you make money when they make money, and most artists do want to sell their goods.

05:58.593 –> 06:05.496 [SPEAKER_02]: So if you make the selling easier for them and help themselves, then you win and they win, which must, you know, it’s not like you’ve built a community and now you’re trying to sell them.

06:08.867 –> 06:10.068 [SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely, absolutely.

06:10.108 –> 06:14.110 [SPEAKER_00]: So I will say it’s not that Dave and I didn’t do other things in the past.

06:14.331 –> 06:18.974 [SPEAKER_00]: So for many years, Dave and I had programmatic ads running on the platform.

06:19.574 –> 06:28.420 [SPEAKER_00]: And it was in 2023 that we decided it was pretty bold decision for us as a platform and a business that we were going to completely remove that from the platform.

06:29.041 –> 06:32.844 [SPEAKER_00]: And focus instead, the business around artist success.

06:33.768 –> 06:49.119 [SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, instead of promoting advertisers, we decided to use all of our real estate just to promote the creators themselves, you know, and not have them, and there are compete with clicks on ads that were essentially driving traffic away from them.

06:49.640 –> 06:54.103 [SPEAKER_00]: So, yeah, today, Devon Art only makes money if our artists make money.

06:54.723 –> 07:00.588 [SPEAKER_00]: And I think for us, it is being incredible to see that it’s not only a far better business model for us,

07:01.168 –> 07:07.976 [SPEAKER_00]: It’s a far more rewarding mission and definitely one that I’m much happier to be helping to grow.

07:08.837 –> 07:15.525 [SPEAKER_02]: So what are the products that your creators and your artists are creating?

07:15.605 –> 07:16.847 [SPEAKER_02]: Is it all digital art?

07:16.867 –> 07:18.408 [SPEAKER_02]: Is there some physical art as well?

07:18.488 –> 07:21.212 [SPEAKER_02]: Or is this digital art exclusively?

07:22.135 –> 07:28.020 [SPEAKER_00]: So first of all, deviant art has been based on digital art from the get go.

07:28.061 –> 07:32.665 [SPEAKER_00]: So the majority of our creators and the art on the platform is digital art.

07:33.245 –> 07:42.073 [SPEAKER_00]: But we have such a board spectrum, and we’re very proud and always have been to be accepting of all creators and all types of art.

07:42.974 –> 07:50.039 [SPEAKER_00]: When we first introduced the monetization on the platform, we started with digital options for monetization.

07:50.540 –> 07:58.986 [SPEAKER_00]: So we have a suite today, everything from premium galleries, premium downloads, subscriptions to creators.

07:59.106 –> 08:06.312 [SPEAKER_00]: So a creator can offer ongoing access to either behind the scenes, special limited

08:11.195 –> 08:14.898 [SPEAKER_00]: We launched a new product called exclusives a couple of years ago.

08:15.358 –> 08:18.500 [SPEAKER_00]: It’s essentially digital collectibles on platform.

08:18.980 –> 08:22.823 [SPEAKER_00]: So that also allows a resale model for creators.

08:22.903 –> 08:28.086 [SPEAKER_00]: So when a buyer buys the collectible, they become the owner on deviant art.

08:28.126 –> 08:33.250 [SPEAKER_00]: But then if they put that up for sale in the secondary market, the original artist will earn

08:33.710 –> 08:36.472 [SPEAKER_00]: royalty on every additional sale after that.

08:36.632 –> 08:42.955 [SPEAKER_00]: So it gives creators a way to continue to earn from their art over time.

08:44.156 –> 08:50.659 [SPEAKER_00]: But more recently we have started to offer physical ways for creators to sell their work as well.

08:51.279 –> 08:54.101 [SPEAKER_00]: So we have a product called Arts and Crafts.

08:54.281 –> 08:56.242 [SPEAKER_00]: That is for creators who literally

09:02.645 –> 09:10.533 [SPEAKER_00]: paintings to create crocheted work or any other craft, the jewelry clothing that artists want to offer.

09:10.953 –> 09:25.167 [SPEAKER_00]: And then we are just as we’re speaking, so I’m not sure by the time this is out, we’ll probably be live about to launch our first print on demand solution for creators to be able to sell merch of their art.

09:25.908 –> 09:43.534 [SPEAKER_00]: And that one I think allows digital creators to take their first steps into physical commerce without having to take the heavy load of fulfillment and shipping onto themselves, but does allow them to put their art out in a physical way into the world.

09:43.674 –> 09:50.677 [SPEAKER_00]: And many of their fans do want to own physical pieces of their work and be able to display them.

09:51.813 –> 10:04.476 [SPEAKER_02]: I love how, you know, you’re slowly adding every possible option for your, your artists to make money and the way in which it just keeps everything within the community.

10:04.896 –> 10:13.658 [SPEAKER_02]: So when you’re saying about, you used to have the programmatic ads, but they were a fighting for airspace with our members, but they were also sending people somewhere else.

10:15.578 –> 10:18.440 [SPEAKER_02]: And it’s like, well, if we want to community, we want to keep it in the community.

10:18.460 –> 10:25.145 [SPEAKER_02]: So we can put the shops in there and we can put the marketplace in there and we can put the physical product all within there.

10:25.206 –> 10:27.127 [SPEAKER_02]: Then it’s going to make those artists lives.

10:27.727 –> 10:40.397 [SPEAKER_02]: So I’m going to thought artists are one of those business person categories where the least time they have to spend dealing with technology and admin, the better as well.

10:40.417 –> 10:42.859 [SPEAKER_02]: So they’re quite a happy audience to have

10:44.713 –> 10:45.654 [SPEAKER_00]: Right, absolutely.

10:45.874 –> 10:55.639 [SPEAKER_00]: I think, you know, full time artists and creators and especially independent creators, they want to spend their time on the art on creating.

10:56.160 –> 11:03.124 [SPEAKER_00]: I think learning how to run a business is often just an necessity in order for them to be able to make a living.

11:03.604 –> 11:06.986 [SPEAKER_00]: So we definitely aimed to provide them as many tools as possible.

11:07.286 –> 11:08.787 [SPEAKER_00]: possible on platform.

11:08.867 –> 11:11.469 [SPEAKER_00]: Take as much of the load that we can off of them.

11:11.549 –> 11:28.359 [SPEAKER_00]: You know, at the end of the day, it’s still going to be up to them to use those tools wisely, but definitely putting it in a much more accessible way for them in a single place and also allowing them, I think, over time to kind of lay or on to what they’re building.

11:28.439 –> 11:30.721 [SPEAKER_00]: So whether, you know, you come to deed and art first,

11:31.220 –> 11:39.663 [SPEAKER_00]: to build that your own community to get that audience up and running choose one of the products that works for the art that you create to start selling.

11:40.383 –> 11:49.746 [SPEAKER_00]: We do start seeing over time that artists tend to expand beyond just a single type of monetization line on DVNR.

11:49.847 –> 11:59.330 [SPEAKER_00]: So for example, many of our exclusive sellers will then, I think it’s something like 98% of the top exclusive sellers will actually expand into subscriptions.

11:59.990 –> 12:00.770 [SPEAKER_00]: for their art.

12:01.490 –> 12:17.915 [SPEAKER_00]: And I think that’s a really good indication of the success of the communities that they’re building because they start by offering you single purchases but then as they build app that audience who really wants to support them in an ongoing way then they’re able to also grow into a subscription model.

12:19.000 –> 12:32.087 [SPEAKER_02]: I like you’ve created the stairway to growth for them, so they’re going to stay on your platform because I mean that’s where their fellow is are, but it’s also, there’s no point in which which they run out of runway.

12:32.428 –> 12:35.909 [SPEAKER_02]: I mean using all the metaphors that are in runways and staircases,

12:38.911 –> 12:39.751 [SPEAKER_00]: It’s so true.

12:39.871 –> 12:46.714 [SPEAKER_00]: And for us, I think, you know, we feel bad because for many years creators did ask DeviantArt to do that.

12:46.894 –> 12:53.717 [SPEAKER_00]: That, you know, they were coming to DeviantArt even before we offered monetization to build their communities and their audience.

12:53.777 –> 12:54.757 [SPEAKER_00]: And then essentially,

12:55.173 –> 12:59.955 [SPEAKER_00]: They had to send their audience elsewhere if they wanted to monetize.

12:59.975 –> 13:07.099 [SPEAKER_00]: They would have to link off-site to some other website or some other platform and then try and get you to sign up there and support them.

13:07.719 –> 13:18.685 [SPEAKER_00]: So I think in that sense, it allows them to keep their business where their community is, which for everyone is a far more natural way to connect and support.

13:19.625 –> 13:20.226 [SPEAKER_02]: definitely.

13:20.246 –> 13:27.013 [SPEAKER_02]: So over the last few years, you’ve obviously been building up active buyers on the platform, not just the creators.

13:27.935 –> 13:31.338 [SPEAKER_02]: How have you found them to behave?

13:31.358 –> 13:31.699 [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, you’ve

13:35.623 –> 13:36.764 [SPEAKER_02]: physical product e-commerce.

13:36.784 –> 13:45.990 [SPEAKER_02]: If you found they behave in a similar way to a normal physical product store or the nuances with the community element within that.

13:46.150 –> 13:47.792 [SPEAKER_00]: I definitely think there are nuances.

13:48.412 –> 13:52.835 [SPEAKER_00]: Initial discovery happens very organically through the network itself.

13:53.075 –> 13:59.520 [SPEAKER_00]: So people who are coming to Dian art to browse art and discover creators and art that they enjoy.

14:00.100 –> 14:08.023 [SPEAKER_00]: are primarily focused on that first, and they’ll be, you know, diving in to whatever fandom or sub genre they’re interested in.

14:08.503 –> 14:13.605 [SPEAKER_00]: But then along the way, you start to see that you have the option to purchase some of these pieces.

14:14.105 –> 14:18.007 [SPEAKER_00]: So I think that’s kind of a first step as a consumer on DVNR.

14:18.047 –> 14:23.209 [SPEAKER_00]: These you discover the art first, you start to support some creators, you make your first purchase.

14:23.729 –> 14:38.060 [SPEAKER_00]: But in a really similar way, we see, and I’ll go with the exclusive example, like, over 55% of first-time buyers will come back and make another purchase from that same creator that they purchased from originally.

14:38.641 –> 14:45.206 [SPEAKER_00]: So I think that starts to speak to the relationships, because it’s more than just making these one-off purchases.

14:45.246 –> 14:46.687 [SPEAKER_00]: It’s really about discovering

14:49.709 –> 15:01.381 [SPEAKER_00]: And then once that relationships build, once you have opportunity within the community to interact, to see other things that the artist is up to, then you’re able to keep supporting them over time.

15:02.343 –> 15:14.070 [SPEAKER_02]: So it seems to me like the growth of deviant art as a whole is more dependent on how you enabled the creators to build those relationships, to monetize those relationships.

15:14.490 –> 15:18.072 [SPEAKER_02]: Then it is on your email marketing program.

15:18.512 –> 15:21.534 [SPEAKER_02]: Or your ads program to bring people to the site in the first place.

15:21.934 –> 15:26.937 [SPEAKER_02]: Would that be a fair assumption that the growth is all about the creators?

15:27.805 –> 15:31.067 [SPEAKER_00]: I think the growth at the end of the day is all about the community.

15:31.107 –> 15:35.991 [SPEAKER_00]: And the community exists only if we have both sides of that network, right?

15:36.011 –> 15:42.176 [SPEAKER_00]: You need the creators who want to share their work, who want to publish their work, ultimately want to monetize their work.

15:42.736 –> 15:50.562 [SPEAKER_00]: But then you also need the people who just want to come and enjoy that work, whether it’s just looking at it, participating groups, curating, collecting,

15:50.962 –> 15:54.525 [SPEAKER_00]: and eventually also purchasing an owning that aren’t.

15:55.265 –> 16:02.070 [SPEAKER_00]: So I think as a network and as a community, it’s about making sure that that wheel is continually turning.

16:02.730 –> 16:14.018 [SPEAKER_00]: It’s really not one without the other, but I think for creators to be able to maintain their business over time and really become reliant on this as a full time.

16:14.878 –> 16:25.521 [SPEAKER_00]: source of income, we definitely need to provide tools for them to be able to manage their sales, their business, and also their relationships with their sub audiences.

16:26.161 –> 16:34.983 [SPEAKER_00]: So I think their elements of it, and certainly when we look at it at the individual creator level, that are really similar to any classic e-commerce building.

16:35.383 –> 16:46.133 [SPEAKER_00]: business where you’re building relationships with your customers, you’re trying to know, you know, what you do out there, get the right people to notice you, get them to connect with you.

16:46.573 –> 16:50.697 [SPEAKER_00]: If they do make a purchase, make sure that you maintain the relationship,

16:51.357 –> 16:56.539 [SPEAKER_00]: keep them updated about what you’re doing, hopefully over time they’re going to come back and buy again.

16:56.559 –> 17:05.842 [SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, although the products might be different and I certainly think that the fact that it’s all digital is kind of unique to DVNR.

17:06.462 –> 17:13.044 [SPEAKER_00]: But other than that, at its core, I think it’s very, very similar in many ways to classic e-commerce.

17:14.265 –> 17:21.227 [SPEAKER_02]: At the end of the day, it’s trying to get people to buy things, which, whether you’re doing it offline online in a community and so forth.

17:21.247 –> 17:25.447 [SPEAKER_02]: There’s always those same trust building mechanisms, cause to actions and all the rest of it.

17:25.467 –> 17:28.728 [SPEAKER_02]: So it makes sense that it would be, be not as a parallel as that.

17:29.348 –> 17:32.789 [SPEAKER_02]: And we’ve talked about the community and the location of the community.

17:33.109 –> 17:36.570 [SPEAKER_02]: Where do you graphically as your community is, are you a US?

17:38.084 –> 17:40.526 [SPEAKER_02]: exclusively business community, you’ve got the digital capacity.

17:40.566 –> 17:42.387 [SPEAKER_02]: So you could be completely global.

17:43.048 –> 17:49.052 [SPEAKER_02]: And do you see the same geographic profile between creators and buyers?

17:50.413 –> 17:54.956 [SPEAKER_00]: So first of all, David, I was founded in LA back in 2000.

17:55.016 –> 18:03.742 [SPEAKER_00]: So we’re originally a US company, but being an online community means that we are truly got global.

18:05.767 –> 18:07.068 [SPEAKER_00]: from all around the world.

18:07.128 –> 18:13.215 [SPEAKER_00]: We have creators and art lovers from everywhere, but up until this year.

18:13.395 –> 18:17.880 [SPEAKER_00]: So for 25 years, Debian art was only in English.

18:18.740 –> 18:26.628 [SPEAKER_00]: And just this year, we have started making real steps towards globalization of the platform.

18:27.269 –> 18:33.614 [SPEAKER_00]: So I think that we can welcome way more members into the community once we do that.

18:33.695 –> 18:39.540 [SPEAKER_00]: We have actually localized the platform into quite a few languages already.

18:39.700 –> 18:46.746 [SPEAKER_00]: So we have German and French and Spanish Dutch and Portuguese already out.

18:47.286 –> 18:52.368 [SPEAKER_00]: we’re making our way towards Japanese and some more on the list after that.

18:53.008 –> 19:04.893 [SPEAKER_00]: So we’re definitely putting in effort to help localize the platform, introduce it to more members around the world, and also just make it feel more like a home for them.

19:05.033 –> 19:05.193 [SPEAKER_00]: So

19:05.653 –> 19:12.078 [SPEAKER_00]: I think at the end of the day, so many of our users come to DVNART and then stay on the platform for years.

19:12.759 –> 19:17.723 [SPEAKER_00]: And you want that to feel the most natural and the most comfortable that we can for you.

19:18.443 –> 19:24.228 [SPEAKER_00]: And also, it’s a way for us to help users connect with people from all around the world.

19:24.308 –> 19:34.937 [SPEAKER_00]: If they don’t have to be the ones worrying about how the content is going to be translated and how the person on the other side is going to be able to understand what they’re reading or looking at.

19:35.677 –> 19:39.619 [SPEAKER_00]: So that, for us, is really the next stage of growth there.

19:39.719 –> 19:50.104 [SPEAKER_00]: So it’s not that we weren’t global already or didn’t have a global user base, but I think that we can get way, way better at supporting them than we have until now.

19:50.844 –> 20:00.869 [SPEAKER_02]: And is that, I mean, my assumption would be that’s partly been enabled by the world of AI, which enables kind of on the fly translation and automatic translation,

20:02.077 –> 20:24.322 [SPEAKER_02]: But you’re also a very large company, so I imagine there’s possibly some human element going in there as well, hence the rollout wasn’t to 180 countries overnight, so it am I right there is this like an AI plus human play on the translations right we’re definitely using a lot of technology to help support that but we want to make sure that the quality is there that it feels.

20:25.142 –> 20:32.326 [SPEAKER_00]: right for DVNR, and then it also feels right for each market that we step into and organic to them.

20:32.346 –> 20:44.193 [SPEAKER_00]: I think to truly localize it’s going to be more than just translating the content at the end of the day, especially if people are building their businesses, it’s going to come down to having local payment solutions as well.

20:44.573 –> 20:46.376 [SPEAKER_00]: and local shipping solutions as well.

20:46.736 –> 20:56.771 [SPEAKER_00]: So for each market, we’re also trying to see how we support that full package to really make the platform feel like home for for those users.

20:57.713 –> 20:58.554 [SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, I think

20:59.495 –> 21:05.538 [SPEAKER_00]: all around whether it’s for us as the team that works on DeviantArt or for the community.

21:06.119 –> 21:13.183 [SPEAKER_00]: AI is introducing a lot of opportunity, a lot of questions, a lot of challenges.

21:14.023 –> 21:17.125 [SPEAKER_00]: It’s certainly interesting times around.

21:18.176 –> 21:30.940 [SPEAKER_02]: One of the most controversial areas of AI is, I’m not going to be the one of the areas of AI where there is the most controversy, I think is the in the world of arts, script writing, songs, arts, et cetera.

21:31.740 –> 21:39.003 [SPEAKER_02]: Do you allow AI generated art to be put onto the community what’s yours, the deviant art policy on that?

21:39.956 –> 21:46.764 [SPEAKER_00]: So, yeah, it’s definitely been a very sensitive and hot topic on the platform for a while now.

21:46.964 –> 21:51.830 [SPEAKER_00]: So, maybe I’ll start with a little bit of history here about who Dven art is.

21:51.910 –> 21:53.592 [SPEAKER_00]: So, as I mentioned, we were founded in 2000.

21:54.593 –> 21:58.814 [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, we predate Facebook and Reddit and most social networks.

21:59.494 –> 22:07.376 [SPEAKER_00]: And when we were founded, we were founded as a home for the deviance, if you like, of the traditional artwork.

22:07.857 –> 22:09.977 [SPEAKER_00]: And that was the digital creators.

22:10.177 –> 22:16.259 [SPEAKER_00]: Back in the early 2000s, there was a lot of controversy around using digital tools.

22:16.499 –> 22:20.100 [SPEAKER_00]: And digital art was not considered art.

22:20.940 –> 22:31.428 [SPEAKER_00]: And that was how we started, and since then, for deviant art, we’ve always pided ourselves on the full range that our creators put out in terms of their art.

22:31.929 –> 22:44.278 [SPEAKER_00]: And you’ll find everything on deviant art, from like classic pillars of digital creativity, photography, illustration, design, as well as more of the niche corners of the art world, things like

22:48.321 –> 22:54.504 [SPEAKER_00]: So while technology might change over time, our mission is deviant art does not.

22:55.124 –> 22:59.086 [SPEAKER_00]: And so with AI, we’re kind of applying that very same approach.

22:59.426 –> 23:11.351 [SPEAKER_00]: So in the past few years, for us, it is felt very reminiscent of the early days of deviant art and what those original, you know, digital pioneers face back then.

23:12.403 –> 23:20.330 [SPEAKER_00]: So for us, we’re not here to Gate Key Bart, but we do want to foster innovation and creators of all kinds.

23:21.131 –> 23:23.053 [SPEAKER_00]: So we see how AI is…

23:25.913 –> 23:30.216 [SPEAKER_00]: fundamentally shifting so many landscapes, including the creative landscape.

23:30.816 –> 23:34.739 [SPEAKER_00]: It is not that every creator is adopting AI by any means.

23:35.279 –> 23:51.970 [SPEAKER_00]: But for those who do, it’s a very powerful tool to help them bridge gaps between vision, and final execution, it allows them to prototype ideas to experiment with new styles, and to do that in a way that a new speed

23:55.440 –> 24:12.225 [SPEAKER_00]: So we have taken a practical approach, I’ll say, when it comes to AI and we definitely have policies and tagging systems where we do ask creators if they’re using AI to clearly tag their work as being such created using AI tools.

24:12.885 –> 24:17.967 [SPEAKER_00]: And so that gives us the data that we need to be clear about the provenance of the art.

24:18.607 –> 24:32.373 [SPEAKER_00]: And then we’ve also added on additional capabilities and tools on the platform so that users can also decide if they want to see AIR to or not and if you don’t want to see it, you can, you know, suppress it and then you don’t have to.

24:33.136 –> 24:57.473 [SPEAKER_00]: So, I think for us, it’s about giving people all the options, supporting creators of all walks of life, regardless of the tools that they use, trying to be as transparent as possible about, you know, how people create and what you’re looking at, and then kind of leaving it up to the community to decide for themselves where they want to end up within that spectrum.

24:58.753 –> 25:13.941 [SPEAKER_02]: So it strikes me, you know, given the DNA of the business, as you’ve described it, you know, and how the business was found, it will be really weird if you guys have gone and gone near, no AI content on the platform, it would have been a completely anti-values maneuver.

25:13.981 –> 25:24.046 [SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, I’d totally get why you’ve gone in on there, but then if you’ve got the tagging and everything and the options and the filtering, then the community can do what they want to do, but you can also then monitor it.

25:24.066 –> 25:25.186 [SPEAKER_02]: So it makes a lot of sense.

25:25.226 –> 25:27.127 [SPEAKER_02]: Now, from the history of the business

25:28.749 –> 25:34.787 [SPEAKER_02]: Obviously globalization is big on your list for the coming years, what else is next for Deviantart?

25:35.817 –> 25:41.120 [SPEAKER_00]: So I think for us, it’s kind of those three tracks that we’re focused on for the next one.

25:41.380 –> 25:50.666 [SPEAKER_00]: One, maintaining the health of the community, always ensuring that that core of deviant art remains strong and at the essence of everything that we do.

25:51.386 –> 26:00.432 [SPEAKER_00]: In terms of globalization, continuing to expand there and going deeper and deeper into different languages and different geos and what they need to support them.

26:01.242 –> 26:14.609 [SPEAKER_00]: And then in terms of our professional creators, I think that there’s still a lot of room for us to grow in terms of tools that they need to manage their content, manage their business, and themselves grow over time.

26:17.891 –> 26:22.654 [SPEAKER_01]: E-commerce most of the land is supported by some of the greatest companies in the E-commerce sector.

26:22.774 –> 26:24.135 [SPEAKER_01]: Here’s a reminder of who they are.

26:30.752 –> 26:32.933 [SPEAKER_01]: It’s time for the top tips round.

26:35.573 –> 26:41.255 [SPEAKER_02]: Okay, I love this section because me and our listeners some really quick ideas for taking our businesses to the next level.

26:41.315 –> 26:43.515 [SPEAKER_02]: They’re at, are you ready for the top tips?

26:44.736 –> 26:47.216 [SPEAKER_02]: I’ll try, excellent.

26:47.516 –> 26:51.317 [SPEAKER_02]: So we can ask, okay, the book top tip.

26:51.397 –> 26:57.979 [SPEAKER_02]: 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?

26:58.971 –> 27:06.755 [SPEAKER_00]: Well, I’m going to go with something that is in the spirit of deviant art, which is this combination of community and building a business.

27:07.395 –> 27:09.856 [SPEAKER_00]: So I say there’s a book called Tribes.

27:09.916 –> 27:12.037 [SPEAKER_00]: We need you to lead us by Seth Golden.

27:12.718 –> 27:22.082 [SPEAKER_00]: It’s a book that talks about how anyone can use the internet to connect people to share an idea that you’re passionate about, to lead a movement.

27:22.122 –> 27:27.425 [SPEAKER_00]: Really about how technology and the power of the internet removes these old barriers.

27:28.105 –> 27:34.890 [SPEAKER_00]: and small groups can turn into big movements and how you don’t need permission to lead.

27:34.950 –> 27:39.293 [SPEAKER_00]: You just, you know, you need some passion and some courage and then it can happen.

27:40.194 –> 27:41.174 [SPEAKER_02]: Oh, great recommend it.

27:41.194 –> 27:46.958 [SPEAKER_02]: I’m not sure we’ve had that one recommended before, but we should have more Seth Gode in books recommended on this podcast.

27:46.998 –> 27:49.100 [SPEAKER_02]: I must find a way to fix that.

27:49.600 –> 27:56.505 [SPEAKER_02]: Um, the traffic top tip, which marketing method do you either price above all others or think doesn’t get the press it deserves.

27:57.477 –> 28:04.102 [SPEAKER_00]: Well, I’ll say something, I don’t have to say straight forward or not, but I would say make great content.

28:04.362 –> 28:16.371 [SPEAKER_00]: And by great content, I mean, focus on things that you love and that represent you, whether it’s you as a creator, you as a brand or a business, or just you as an individual.

28:16.391 –> 28:23.836 [SPEAKER_00]: And it doesn’t matter if it’s a product, a piece of art, a photograph, a blog, you know, even

28:26.118 –> 28:44.835 [SPEAKER_00]: At the end of the day, if your content is good and you choose the right platform on the web to put it out on, it’s going to not only get you traffic, but it’s going to get you traffic from people who you want to retry with people who the same thing you’re passionate about, that same idea is resonating with them.

28:45.903 –> 28:46.904 [SPEAKER_02]: totally agree.

28:47.204 –> 28:50.286 [SPEAKER_02]: I’m very fitting for deviant art and your community.

28:50.346 –> 28:51.327 [SPEAKER_02]: I’m sure as well.

28:51.907 –> 29:02.595 [SPEAKER_02]: The tool, top tip, maybe a collaboration tool, a social media plug in a phone up or just a way of working, is there a cool little tool that you use that makes you and your team a more efficient from day to day?

29:03.562 –> 29:06.764 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so maybe I will focus on our team here for a second.

29:06.784 –> 29:10.906 [SPEAKER_00]: We’re also a very remote team all around the world.

29:11.167 –> 29:18.891 [SPEAKER_00]: So I would say for us, the two critical tools that we use are Zoom and Slack.

29:19.051 –> 29:23.314 [SPEAKER_00]: So at their core, really fundamentally, they’re both just communication tools.

29:24.034 –> 29:27.737 [SPEAKER_00]: And I think that that’s what you need to focus on as a team.

29:27.857 –> 29:35.743 [SPEAKER_00]: So I’m a big believer in sharing and communicating as much as possible trying to have us all moving in the same direction.

29:35.763 –> 29:40.887 [SPEAKER_00]: It doesn’t mean that we always have to agree, but we should have the conversation.

29:41.848 –> 29:42.788 [SPEAKER_02]: Totally agree.

29:43.469 –> 29:45.010 [SPEAKER_02]: Okay, the carbon top tip.

29:45.030 –> 29:48.733 [SPEAKER_02]: What’s your favorite way to reduce the carbon footprint of an e-commerce store?

29:49.881 –> 29:53.704 [SPEAKER_00]: Well, I’ll focus on maybe the art side of things.

29:53.804 –> 30:03.110 [SPEAKER_00]: And I would say, for us, when we think about art, we’re always encouraging people to explore digital alternatives for displaying their art.

30:03.290 –> 30:09.915 [SPEAKER_00]: So, whether it’s in your home or your workspace, if you think about a digital frame on which you can display,

30:10.395 –> 30:11.955 [SPEAKER_00]: digital art that you own.

30:11.975 –> 30:18.637 [SPEAKER_00]: Here I’ll do a shameless plug for even art if you don’t already own some beautiful digital art.

30:18.697 –> 30:23.698 [SPEAKER_00]: We have plenty for you to browse and shop in our beautiful marketplace.

30:24.298 –> 30:38.182 [SPEAKER_00]: But even for things like events and exhibitions, if you just use a screen, it’s so easy to show a lot of artwork and you can reuse that so easily without having to reprint and have all that

30:40.759 –> 30:42.001 [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that’s a really good point.

30:42.041 –> 30:42.662 [SPEAKER_02]: I love that one.

30:42.842 –> 30:43.343 [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you.

30:44.325 –> 30:47.410 [SPEAKER_02]: Okay, Leah, it’s very nearly time to say goodbye.

30:47.510 –> 30:55.082 [SPEAKER_02]: So if people want to get in contact with you and want to go and browse and join the community at deviant art, how do they do those things?

30:56.303 –> 31:04.133 [SPEAKER_00]: So it’s honestly just go to dvnart, wherever you can go to dvnart.com and find us there.

31:04.153 –> 31:11.182 [SPEAKER_00]: I’m very easy to find on dvnart or you can find us on any social platform dvnart.

31:11.883 –> 31:14.967 [SPEAKER_00]: We’re all there, eager to meet and talk.

31:16.382 –> 31:20.586 [SPEAKER_02]: I love it, normally we get like the LinkedIn shout-up, but no, don’t find Leia to link them.

31:20.606 –> 31:23.328 [SPEAKER_02]: Finally, on Deviant, are in the community.

31:23.348 –> 31:25.129 [SPEAKER_02]: I don’t know, that’s the best place.

31:25.750 –> 31:27.031 [SPEAKER_02]: I love that.

31:27.732 –> 31:29.653 [SPEAKER_02]: Leia, thank you so much for coming on the show.

31:29.673 –> 31:32.756 [SPEAKER_02]: It’s been great catching up with you again, and what a fascinating business.

31:32.776 –> 31:34.237 [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you for telling us all about it.

31:34.758 –> 31:36.139 [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you so much for having me.

31:41.833 –> 31:59.500 [SPEAKER_02]: what fascinating, fascinating business and how interesting to learn how a community has turned itself into an e-commerce store and slash marketplace, which I think that we can take a lot from in terms of how to build more community within

32:00.700 –> 32:15.854 [SPEAKER_02]: our own business is not our own e-commerce stores and that piece about the the aligned goals and everything being aligned back to the values of the original founding the business I think makes so much sense of really really lots to think about that and really lovely to catch up with Lea again as well.

32:16.735 –> 32:24.823 [SPEAKER_02]: and get your hands on our notes from this episode, including those top tips and links to what the things we mentioned by heading over to ecommercemasterplanned.com.

32:25.384 –> 32:37.396 [SPEAKER_02]: You can also use our direct episode short links, just put ECMP.info for the number of the episode into the URL bar and you’ll go straight to the right page on the site and why not sign up to our email list when you’re there.

32:38.177 –> 32:46.366 [SPEAKER_02]: If you like this episode, then I would recommend checking out episode 469, where we are again in the digital products space.

32:46.486 –> 32:53.373 [SPEAKER_02]: This time with Bartosk from G2A, which is the world’s largest digital entertainment marketplace.

32:53.673 –> 32:59.159 [SPEAKER_02]: So another fascinating one to get your e-commerce brain going around the corners, I suppose.

32:59.940 –> 33:01.802 [SPEAKER_02]: So four, six, nine is that one.

33:02.222 –> 33:09.128 [SPEAKER_02]: And if you want to hear from more big businesses then head to ECMP.info4s, I should big for all our big business episodes.

33:09.829 –> 33:14.092 [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you for tuning to this and every episode that you do of the e-commerce mass plan podcast.

33:14.473 –> 33:26.703 [SPEAKER_02]: I bring you new interview every week because I want to inspire and help e-commerce business owners to succeed and thrive with your businesses, including encouraging both businesses and consumers to make more sustainable buying decisions.

33:27.684 –> 33:33.468 [SPEAKER_02]: So, if you know someone they show can help, please tell them to listen to the e-commerce master plan podcast.

33:33.488 –> 33:34.709 [SPEAKER_02]: I hope you have a great week.

33:35.149 –> 33:36.951 [SPEAKER_02]: Don’t forget to keep optimizing.

Mick’s Garage has built its growth around keeping its technology and development in-house, allowing the team to experiment quickly with new verticals, improve the customer experience and test new ideas. In this episode, Ciaran shares how they approach AI, product data, international expansion and the operational challenges of running a 10-million-product eCommerce business. 

Hit PLAY to hear: 

• How Mick’s Garage scaled to 25,000 orders a month 
• Why custom tech became essential for 10M+ product listings 
• How dedicated websites helped unlock new growth opportunities 
• The playbook for taking new verticals from paid ads to SEO growth 
• Why Mick’s Garage moved away from direct supplier fulfilment 
• How they’re using AI to help customers find the right products 

Key timestamps to dive straight in: 

[04:30] Building custom eCommerce solutions 

[07:06] Launch of dedicated UK website 

[10:16] Launching and Growing New Verticals 

[14:11] Revenue sources and supply chain management 

[20:18] Efficient order processing system 

[22:35] Using AI for customer engagement 

[24:20] Listen to Ciaran’s Top Tips! 

Full episode notes here: https://ecmp.info/614

— Download our ebook… https://ecmp.info/ebook 500 Tips to Increase Your Profits

Get all the links and resources we mention and join our email list at https://ecmp.info

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00:00.627 –> 00:03.288 [SPEAKER_01]: AI provides significant benefit within our development team.

00:03.468 –> 00:13.671 [SPEAKER_01]: Of course, can you write a function to do X within our research team for myself if we’re looking to do some research or whatever thing, but AI provides to me to generate descriptions right?

00:13.691 –> 00:15.672 [SPEAKER_01]: So we tend to drive out of ourselves.

00:18.153 –> 00:20.534 [SPEAKER_02]: It’s the e-commerce master plan podcast.

00:21.094 –> 00:25.155 [SPEAKER_02]: Here to help you solve your marketing problems and grow your e-commerce business.

00:25.675 –> 00:33.518 [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.

00:36.791 –> 00:37.932 [SPEAKER_00]: Hello and welcome.

00:37.952 –> 00:38.932 [SPEAKER_00]: It’s great to have you here.

00:39.013 –> 00:43.095 [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for hitting play and choosing to listen to another of our inspiring guests.

00:43.536 –> 00:47.938 [SPEAKER_00]: Huge thanks to the awesome Jamilla Jamani for introducing us to this brilliant guest.

00:48.099 –> 00:49.199 [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you Jamilla.

00:49.279 –> 00:52.401 [SPEAKER_00]: So glad we got to meet at the women in e.com live event.

00:52.782 –> 00:54.863 [SPEAKER_00]: Not just for this great guest recommendation.

00:55.584 –> 01:03.269 [SPEAKER_00]: In this episode, we’re talking to a high skew count business, very high skew count business, who have some really interesting

01:03.969 –> 01:11.416 [SPEAKER_00]: approaches to how they handle product dispatch, how they handle the warehouse, where they are a product, where it’s car parts.

01:11.556 –> 01:22.867 [SPEAKER_00]: So it’s a need-based business primarily, but they’ve also spun out into verticals, which are more of a want or a enabling rather than a, oh, my break pads have run out, I need more break pads.

01:23.387 –> 01:43.693 [SPEAKER_00]: and they’ve done verticals, websites in that and spun those out and we’ll be talking about the playbook for growth in that area, lots of marketing bits, team bits, lots of good stuff in this one, I think you’ll feel quite inspired and what I also ask how they’re using AI2, in such a product data, heavy business with such technical expertise, it’s very interesting answer.

01:44.474 –> 01:50.716 [SPEAKER_00]: Please make sure you listen to the episode to you catch that answer as well as our guest top tips and my

01:58.030 –> 01:59.970 [SPEAKER_00]: And that introduced our special guest.

02:00.371 –> 02:04.292 [SPEAKER_00]: Kiron Creen is the co-founder and CEO at Mix Garage.

02:04.612 –> 02:08.653 [SPEAKER_00]: A car part and accessories store founded in 2004.

02:08.693 –> 02:12.974 [SPEAKER_00]: They now sell regularly via their custom website into over 34 countries.

02:13.394 –> 02:23.656 [SPEAKER_00]: With over 10 million listings, the range has expanded way beyond just car parks, now including far more categories, like outdoor sports equipment, camping gear, and refrax.

02:24.117 –> 02:25.877 [SPEAKER_00]: All meaning they ship a whopping.

02:26.519 –> 02:28.928 [SPEAKER_00]: 25,000 orders a month on average.

02:29.209 –> 02:29.972 [SPEAKER_00]: Hello, Kieran.

02:30.373 –> 02:31.216 [SPEAKER_01]: No, I love you to meet you.

02:31.572 –> 02:36.795 [SPEAKER_00]: great to have you on the show and I must admit, I often look at car parts.

02:36.855 –> 02:38.796 [SPEAKER_00]: I don’t often look at car parts websites.

02:38.816 –> 02:44.459 [SPEAKER_00]: When I come across car parts websites, I am confounded by the complexity.

02:44.499 –> 02:48.401 [SPEAKER_00]: So maybe we’ll get on to that but congrats on building one so big.

02:48.881 –> 02:51.823 [SPEAKER_00]: But first of how did you get into the world of e-commerce?

02:51.903 –> 02:54.784 [SPEAKER_00]: Was it your journey begin with mixed garage or

02:56.505 –> 03:10.900 [SPEAKER_01]: And not necessarily actually it was more of an accident than anything else and I mean it’s a long time ago now like we’re talking about 22 years ago just over 22 years and my background is a software engineer by training I worked in Holland Australia

03:11.601 –> 03:24.148 [SPEAKER_01]: London, back in Dublin, my brother’s background was an automotive car part and supply, and he got a little bit disillusion with actually being in the industry at the time, as a young guy, I want to become a web developer.

03:24.588 –> 03:28.591 [SPEAKER_01]: So in doing so, between jobs he decided to for the crack,

03:29.091 –> 03:47.561 [SPEAKER_01]: develop a website to sell a car price because they asked the industry that a new and between the two of us, we managed to convince a supplier to join up with us in January 2004 and yeah, we went live in 2004, we got a first order to come in and that’s it.

03:47.661 –> 03:51.103 [SPEAKER_01]: I’ve gone from being a software developer to selling car parts.

03:51.950 –> 04:02.797 [SPEAKER_00]: So I guess the product complexity or product range complexity and your background in software development and your brother’s desire to be website is one of the reasons you won’t custom with the website.

04:03.295 –> 04:09.659 [SPEAKER_01]: Well, it had to be at the time, Chloe, because if you think about car parts, car parts is quite a unique beast of a product set.

04:09.739 –> 04:17.544 [SPEAKER_01]: And indeed, of a supply chain, if you think about, you know, you go to Curries and you look at a set of headphones, for example, right?

04:17.564 –> 04:19.785 [SPEAKER_01]: You know, it is the headphones, you have to consider the headphones.

04:20.546 –> 04:29.671 [SPEAKER_01]: But for a set of car parts, you may have a set of brake pads, and that set of brake pads could fit up to 50 or 60 or need a hundred car models, right?

04:31.372 –> 04:35.353 [SPEAKER_01]: most people don’t actually know the part numbers of the products in their car.

04:35.453 –> 04:36.714 [SPEAKER_01]: Why would they?

04:36.814 –> 04:50.679 [SPEAKER_01]: So we had to come at a solution that actually took what we call application guys, which is a product and the recommended car and the technical information car that I’ve fitted and work from the car back to the product.

04:51.099 –> 04:54.620 [SPEAKER_01]: That complexity at that time in 2004, when I actually could

04:57.961 –> 05:01.223 [SPEAKER_01]: solutions available like the risks today, Shopify, magenta, etc.

05:01.483 –> 05:16.070 [SPEAKER_01]: So we had to go down the Beesburg route and put arguably actually even if we launched today, we could not adopt an offer shelf platform to deliver the life of experience against the many millions of listing records that we have today.

05:16.690 –> 05:21.713 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, you be in a world of work around rather than actually build it to work.

05:22.482 –> 05:30.606 [SPEAKER_01]: For sure, absolutely, and given our background, we were very confident and actually building it and tweaking it and evolving it and finesse it and drive it forward.

05:31.047 –> 05:43.734 [SPEAKER_01]: And I think that, you know, the fact that we could do that that was in our control, particularly as a start-up back then, and all that really required to do anything was just effort as opposed to cost.

05:44.094 –> 05:51.398 [SPEAKER_01]: And I mean, cost of dev agencies, et cetera, meant that we could probably put a bit of wind in our sales for a very little cost.

05:52.306 –> 06:00.310 [SPEAKER_00]: And in the last 20 odd years, if you ever done a rebuild or has it just been ongoing phase by phase development of the site.

06:00.670 –> 06:01.471 [SPEAKER_01]: based by phase.

06:01.511 –> 06:03.532 [SPEAKER_01]: We have done a couple of significant rebuilds.

06:04.053 –> 06:07.996 [SPEAKER_01]: That’s because our product cataly expanded significantly.

06:08.436 –> 06:17.443 [SPEAKER_01]: And we had to look to see, you know, we’ve remember start off as car parts, but, you know, we moved into accessories, what we call, kind of fitment accessories.

06:17.483 –> 06:19.325 [SPEAKER_01]: You don’t, you know, like, for example, like a roof rack.

06:19.645 –> 06:22.067 [SPEAKER_01]: You don’t need a roof rack on your character, bring your kids to school.

06:22.087 –> 06:22.227 [SPEAKER_01]: What?

06:22.748 –> 06:23.408 [SPEAKER_01]: I hope you don’t.

06:24.929 –> 06:36.834 [SPEAKER_01]: But it meant that the structure and the site structure that was required to set up pure car part, a clutch kit or a time bucket, that had to change to facilitate a moving product category and segment.

06:37.514 –> 06:39.935 [SPEAKER_01]: And so for sure, and look at it, it never stops.

06:40.015 –> 06:45.597 [SPEAKER_01]: It’s continuously ongoing because obviously, we don’t rebuild every year and nobody really does.

06:46.417 –> 06:52.099 [SPEAKER_01]: We are constantly evolving the website to ensure that it delivers the very best experience to

06:54.167 –> 07:01.697 [SPEAKER_00]: And you mentioned before we got on the, before we hit the record button that you’ve also spun off a number of vertical websites.

07:02.298 –> 07:06.083 [SPEAKER_00]: I’m guessing that’s a lot easier when you’re in total control of the text there.

07:06.617 –> 07:07.418 [SPEAKER_01]: Well, absolutely.

07:07.458 –> 07:16.464 [SPEAKER_01]: So if you think about it, you know, we have a website, we have web services and then we have a database engine under that that we’ve a single database engine that is fraud intensive purposes.

07:16.564 –> 07:20.667 [SPEAKER_01]: It’s a, you know, it’s source cosmos and orders, but it’s a product management system as well, right?

07:21.628 –> 07:23.570 [SPEAKER_01]: And so we took the decision.

07:24.510 –> 07:28.131 [SPEAKER_01]: probably up to probably four years ago actually to spin off dedicated verticals.

07:28.811 –> 07:33.993 [SPEAKER_01]: Because mixed cars are calm, it’s a terrific website and it’s a phenomenal wide catalog of product.

07:34.453 –> 07:49.317 [SPEAKER_01]: We were asking ourselves, did we really serve that stication or when they arrived at the website all they wanted to do was engage with roof racks and roof box and bike racks and kayak racks and have that look and feel and that experience of that.

07:49.597 –> 07:50.557 [SPEAKER_01]: At that point in time that

07:53.418 –> 07:54.238 [SPEAKER_01]: break paths, right?

07:54.939 –> 07:59.001 [SPEAKER_01]: So, so we met the decision to do a test launch on our first website.

07:59.041 –> 08:02.463 [SPEAKER_01]: We went when it was dedicated for the UK market, car racks.co.uk.

08:02.903 –> 08:09.187 [SPEAKER_01]: And it really true more as a test, we could do these tests because it’s very much within our own development wheelhouse.

08:09.427 –> 08:12.188 [SPEAKER_01]: So there’s no huge effort to to run the test out there.

08:12.208 –> 08:17.151 [SPEAKER_01]: So you have a dedicated website, web service, and it just feeds off a slice of a product.

08:22.294 –> 08:42.422 [SPEAKER_01]: the same set of car rack stuck pretty care was slightly different positioning and but for sure the user experience and the experience is all about staycation everything everything and all of that about that fun involves and we found very quickly that actually the the conversion ratio was significantly higher on the dedicated vertical than it was for for mixed garage.com

08:42.922 –> 08:57.200 [SPEAKER_01]: So we took that, we ran with it, and we have since that launched an additional three dedicated vertical websites for cascades that are very important to us, and they all have worked really well for us on that respect.

08:58.258 –> 09:16.051 [SPEAKER_00]: My assumption would be that with those dedicated sites and with mixed-guaraged itself, the business is heavily dependent on SEO and being found by people at the point when they’re hunting for something rather than a major Instagram campaign or something or Facebook ads.

09:16.691 –> 09:17.932 [SPEAKER_00]: Is that a fair assumption?

09:17.992 –> 09:19.793 [SPEAKER_00]: Is it a UNSEO focus business?

09:20.694 –> 09:24.577 [SPEAKER_01]: Well, yes, and I hear given this answer, Chloe, but it depends.

09:25.923 –> 09:28.684 [SPEAKER_01]: You know, we’ve been around since 2004, right?

09:28.704 –> 09:37.269 [SPEAKER_01]: So from MixGarers.com, we have built up a significant customer database profile and awareness within a customer base.

09:37.549 –> 09:43.212 [SPEAKER_01]: Indeed, just to tell you how all I am, we were one of the first companies to advertise on Facebook.

09:43.372 –> 09:45.173 [SPEAKER_01]: And we were getting a click for a cent.

09:46.214 –> 09:47.114 [SPEAKER_01]: sent to click, right?

09:47.154 –> 09:49.316 [SPEAKER_01]: They hadn’t even localized their billing at the time.

09:49.977 –> 09:50.978 [SPEAKER_01]: So a sent to click, right?

09:50.998 –> 09:56.243 [SPEAKER_01]: So we had the advantage of not necessarily first mover, but we were early to market and we continued to build on that.

09:56.703 –> 09:58.705 [SPEAKER_01]: So on mixed guys, I mixed guys are calm.

09:59.185 –> 10:05.992 [SPEAKER_01]: We had we we always have and we enjoyed and we don’t we don’t relax with it, but we have that headwind and that that level of gravity tasks.

10:06.032 –> 10:09.675 [SPEAKER_01]: And and of course, you know, we have I think to show 45 tasks of feedback on

10:12.677 –> 10:15.859 [SPEAKER_01]: We’ve a really good, well-oiled machine to live for the customer there.

10:16.199 –> 10:27.186 [SPEAKER_01]: For a vertical, it’s slightly different because when something is new out of the blocks, you have no choice but to put a bit of cost behind it in order to seed that road.

10:28.226 –> 10:38.615 [SPEAKER_01]: And we have, we have seen, because we have launched these verticals of the stage, just practically worn every, should we say, nine to ten months, it’s interesting to see the very stages they go through.

10:38.855 –> 10:47.202 [SPEAKER_01]: So what we see is we see getting Google ads in place, putting the merchant feed in place, and we see us falling in that quite heavily, almost kind of,

10:47.482 –> 11:04.767 [SPEAKER_01]: not worrying to some degree about the return is because that’s an investment and then but we as we see to maturity, I’m not saying a four-year-old vertical is mature, but to some degree as we see it mature, we see the costs of acquisition slide and we see SEO starting to pick up and drive and word them out and repeat business, etc on that.

11:05.147 –> 11:13.349 [SPEAKER_01]: So it really comes to pins where the business is at relative to its life cycle, where is the last vertical we launched, a cow wind effect

11:17.170 –> 11:20.193 [SPEAKER_01]: We’re looking to just penetrate some market share to open the door.

11:20.833 –> 11:29.680 [SPEAKER_01]: And of course, as orders start to come in, all the various scripts and guru will be getting awareness that, yes, we are selling, we’re just batching and et cetera.

11:29.720 –> 11:33.644 [SPEAKER_01]: And that starts to build a small little rolling ball that that gathers.

11:34.044 –> 11:38.748 [SPEAKER_01]: And as a year has come, so in some ways, we almost have a little bit of a playbook relative to that approach.

11:39.228 –> 11:43.612 [SPEAKER_01]: So, to answer your question, re-contopens where that business is at relative to its maturity and life site.

11:44.298 –> 12:04.195 [SPEAKER_00]: And do you find it’s more about having a solid playbook and just being patient as the month’s raw buyers you work through each of the stages than it is any difference from vertical to vertical, I know your verticals are fairly similar but they’re also quite different in some ways as well.

12:04.295 –> 12:08.739 [SPEAKER_00]: So have you finding that the one playbook works for all of them?

12:09.361 –> 12:17.489 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, absolutely, and sometimes it doesn’t work because no matter how good the playbook is, you may just not have a competitive positioning, right?

12:17.889 –> 12:26.037 [SPEAKER_01]: In order to kind of get into the market, or you might discover that would all the best will in the world and the research that we have done, relative to the cost of inching that market.

12:26.458 –> 12:29.260 [SPEAKER_01]: That actually, when the rubber hits the road, that’s not the fact.

12:29.280 –> 12:30.542 [SPEAKER_01]: So I’m telling you about

12:31.042 –> 12:35.925 [SPEAKER_01]: the the sites that we have away in the life cycle, but you know there’s one or two that have found a way of as well.

12:36.426 –> 12:44.911 [SPEAKER_01]: But I think again because we’ve never outsourced our development function it means that we can do this and you know we’re not spitting up a new product database.

12:44.951 –> 12:51.356 [SPEAKER_01]: It’s just taking a slice of existing product that we’re selling our mix scanners.com and it just haven’t a virtual website spinning up.

12:51.716 –> 12:58.440 [SPEAKER_01]: So the effort is not massive right relative to getting these sites out and every site is learning, every site’s learning curve.

12:58.460 –> 12:59.361 [SPEAKER_01]: There’s no doubt about that.

12:59.946 –> 13:02.247 [SPEAKER_00]: And so you’ve kept development in-house.

13:03.208 –> 13:05.289 [SPEAKER_00]: How about other aspects of the business?

13:05.309 –> 13:06.769 [SPEAKER_00]: What does the rest of the team look like?

13:06.829 –> 13:09.151 [SPEAKER_00]: Is it you fully in-house with everything?

13:09.271 –> 13:13.893 [SPEAKER_00]: Or if you’ve got outsourced Google ads or steamer marketing, how do you put that all together?

13:14.192 –> 13:20.857 [SPEAKER_01]: No, we do everything we’re very, not necessarily tight, but we’re a very efficient team, right?

13:20.917 –> 13:37.628 [SPEAKER_01]: You know, we do our marketing as in-house, so everything from adds to socials, which we actually do very little on to be quite frank, because we found that it didn’t necessarily pay within our industry, but for everything for add, adds is probably, Google adds is probably our heaviest spend requirement, it’s one that we spend the most time on.

13:38.068 –> 13:42.812 [SPEAKER_01]: And then, because we’ve been around for so long, particularly, it may scare us a common, we’ve got a significant

13:43.432 –> 13:52.435 [SPEAKER_01]: or heart and database of customers that will use CloudView, of course, to communicate to it and to make sure that we’re presenting that all the good offers are now.

13:52.455 –> 13:53.675 [SPEAKER_01]: So that’s the marketing side.

13:54.095 –> 13:58.317 [SPEAKER_01]: And then we are a very tight team of two other procurement sites.

13:58.697 –> 14:02.338 [SPEAKER_01]: And our procurement is quite challenging, actually, because we do saw a car part.

14:02.378 –> 14:09.220 [SPEAKER_01]: So just to give you an interesting fact, our warehouse has just over 46,000 unique skews.

14:11.823 –> 14:14.847 [SPEAKER_01]: which serves approximately 60% of our revenue.

14:15.428 –> 14:21.475 [SPEAKER_01]: So the other 40% of our revenue could be any one or up to 800,000,000 or 50, can be 900,000 products that is so to our customer.

14:26.882 –> 14:29.883 [SPEAKER_01]: cross dock into our warehouse and sent out the same day.

14:30.503 –> 14:36.664 [SPEAKER_01]: So we have a procurement team that actually delivers that supply chain for the better than the business.

14:36.744 –> 14:46.006 [SPEAKER_01]: So the procurement team does a tradition of buying your container from China, from European suppliers, but also does our and runs and manages our cross dock buying.

14:46.046 –> 14:53.828 [SPEAKER_01]: So if you, if you order mixed cars that come now, you order time bell kit, we don’t have that in stock, but that will automatically feed to a supplier.

14:53.848 –> 14:55.568 [SPEAKER_01]: They can deliver to us at the lowest cost,

14:56.201 –> 15:00.885 [SPEAKER_01]: the highest margin and the quickest possible time, and that will come down into where has me.

15:01.105 –> 15:10.633 [SPEAKER_01]: And as soon as the scanned or touch point of the scanner will tell you, send a straight dispatch or put that on the shelf and we’re waiting for the clutch kit to come in behind it if you order that as well, right?

15:10.653 –> 15:22.063 [SPEAKER_01]: So, but because we have built our own tech stack and particularly from a procurement standpoint, all of those movements can be managed by team of two and procurement and procurement site.

15:22.423 –> 15:25.366 [SPEAKER_01]: And then, of course, we have a tight small finance side.

15:25.526 –> 15:26.307 [SPEAKER_01]: I won’t talk about finance.

15:26.327 –> 15:27.408 [SPEAKER_01]: Nobody wants to hear about finance.

15:27.468 –> 15:44.365 [SPEAKER_01]: And then, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on,

15:44.945 –> 16:04.392 [SPEAKER_01]: and we have three within the product data team who are responsive to ensuring that the cash agrees are well, financed that we have the latest data and for the various cash agrees that they’re responsible for that we’re staying on top of the current listings and the current roof rack, for example, for the latest key that’s at the door, et cetera, right?

16:04.892 –> 16:11.535 [SPEAKER_01]: And so our team is quite tight, but, you know, we drive things really well.

16:12.206 –> 16:19.370 [SPEAKER_00]: Now, one thing in there really surprised me, which I would have assumed that you did direct dispatch.

16:19.891 –> 16:33.819 [SPEAKER_00]: So you took the order and then your supplier delivered that to the customer, but you’re actually having everything sent into your warehouse and then controlling the customer’s experience, how did that come about?

16:33.839 –> 16:38.382 [SPEAKER_00]: Because I think a lot of people will think that’s an unusual way of managing such a scenario.

16:38.798 –> 16:41.359 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yes and no, because we evolved to that.

16:41.499 –> 16:55.002 [SPEAKER_01]: So the scenario you mentioned as an early business, when we started off in a very, very small ten-foot office, all our product been sent out, all of us were very much of a cross-doc in nature, right?

16:55.282 –> 16:57.183 [SPEAKER_01]: Send it to supply, they sent it out.

16:57.963 –> 17:01.484 [SPEAKER_01]: We soon learned that as a model that wasn’t scalable,

17:02.284 –> 17:03.745 [SPEAKER_01]: for us for two reasons.

17:04.225 –> 17:06.446 [SPEAKER_01]: Number one, your only as good as your supplier.

17:07.006 –> 17:11.789 [SPEAKER_01]: You order time by KD-567 and you get KD-565.

17:12.389 –> 17:15.971 [SPEAKER_01]: Right, one is for a high-end Mercedes and the other one is for an open course.

17:16.731 –> 17:18.112 [SPEAKER_01]: And you know, there’s a problem.

17:18.672 –> 17:33.020 [SPEAKER_01]: And then secondly is, in the automotive industry, in the basket size, so if we have one of our customers in the order and the basket to service that car, so four plugs, blades, or four filters, potentially pads, discs, etc.

17:33.580 –> 17:36.642 [SPEAKER_01]: Right now, we do what about 50 suppliers.

17:37.182 –> 17:45.007 [SPEAKER_01]: So we could not have that order dispersed for crosstalk across that number of different suppliers to send individual orders

17:45.807 –> 17:47.569 [SPEAKER_01]: So let’s say that come in four orders to you.

17:48.049 –> 17:49.471 [SPEAKER_01]: You would be pretty annoyed about that.

17:49.911 –> 17:53.415 [SPEAKER_01]: And let’s say, for example, that we didn’t remind that you’re pretty annoyed about that.

17:53.675 –> 17:58.220 [SPEAKER_01]: Well, think about the margin that margin hit to our business on that, right?

17:58.240 –> 18:02.645 [SPEAKER_01]: A if all the if all the orders been sent up correctly and you’d have to assume it is.

18:03.125 –> 18:09.267 [SPEAKER_01]: Then you tell them a four different shipping charges, you tell them a packaging, you talk about a different experience.

18:09.707 –> 18:18.910 [SPEAKER_01]: Two of our suppliers might send that with DPD and one might send that with Roy Mail and the other guy’s car’s a force and three turn up in the Thursday and it could be the following Wednesday before one another one turns up, right?

18:18.930 –> 18:24.372 [SPEAKER_01]: So we met the decision many years ago that our business and our customers

18:25.032 –> 18:34.634 [SPEAKER_01]: you know, matter more, sorry, our customers matter more than potentially the difficulty and the margin and the business that we have to be loved to serve them the correct way.

18:35.214 –> 18:40.775 [SPEAKER_01]: And so very quickly, we weren’t from having nowhere else to explore rolling into warehouses very quickly, right?

18:41.215 –> 18:48.536 [SPEAKER_01]: And so in order to facilitate that, but we’ve built a business model around that and that’s the way we will continue to drive on.

18:49.116 –> 18:53.217 [SPEAKER_01]: And for us, we could not cross-duck, given the scale of business

18:54.452 –> 19:01.736 [SPEAKER_00]: It makes so much sense when you do the, you know, the example of someone who’s servicing their own car and they need eight different parts in order to manage that.

19:01.896 –> 19:11.561 [SPEAKER_00]: And to be the company that holds all that together until it’s all in one place, put it in the one box and send it out with whatever tracking, et cetera, just necessary.

19:11.581 –> 19:23.168 [SPEAKER_00]: It’s just such an improved customer experience than getting eight different updates from eight different companies you had no idea you were transacting with on when this delivery will arrive.

19:23.608 –> 19:29.842 [SPEAKER_01]: Well, that’s it, but you know, like as a business, you know, we have, you know, a significant volume of stock.

19:31.070 –> 19:34.631 [SPEAKER_01]: in stock, to much to my accountants and annoyance.

19:35.391 –> 19:43.713 [SPEAKER_01]: And so we try, we’re constantly ensured and we’re trying to make sure that for 80% of everything we send out, we try and bring it into stock, right?

19:44.013 –> 19:50.395 [SPEAKER_01]: We will never get there because we may get someone who’s ordered a washer for an open cavalier basis stock.

19:50.495 –> 19:52.135 [SPEAKER_01]: And we just, we just never, we’ll ever stock that.

19:52.395 –> 19:55.156 [SPEAKER_01]: And by the way, when we sell it, we won’t see it again for another 10 years.

19:56.016 –> 20:09.188 [SPEAKER_01]: right so so we but we try and and ensure that as much as possible 70% of all orders that we consent are gone same day because we have done our homework relative to what our stock and profile should be.

20:09.808 –> 20:13.712 [SPEAKER_01]: If an order has to be crossed octane we have supply agreements with our

20:14.372 –> 20:17.695 [SPEAKER_01]: Suppliers that, you know, they delivered to us same day.

20:18.095 –> 20:29.144 [SPEAKER_01]: So it’s as good as stocking the only overhead that we have is to process that purchase order when it comes else into us to get that back out the door and we have a pretty sophisticated tech that does that.

20:37.687 –> 20:40.849 [SPEAKER_01]: that 30% of orders that we can’t finish off because we don’t have in stock.

20:41.309 –> 21:01.041 [SPEAKER_01]: You know, as we’re scanning those to shelf, you know, if we’re scanning a headlamp and the order’s only for the headlamp, ours, we have an approach, as soon as you scan that it will basically be a system of automatic check, it does go to a huge amount of checks and then we’ll finally say, listen, put the headlamp into a trony strafe for packing bench because it’s on a tone has to go now, right?

21:01.661 –> 21:05.944 [SPEAKER_01]: So we’ve built up a level of tech that allows us

21:06.704 –> 21:15.129 [SPEAKER_01]: to run with this cross-dark and a volume in such a way that all I have to do is give a new hire a scanner and they can’t mess up, right?

21:15.249 –> 21:15.449 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

21:15.509 –> 21:30.537 [SPEAKER_01]: So there’s a huge amount in that, and the supply chain is very extensive relative to automotive, but we’ve been home in the first years and years and years, so we kind of know what’s good, and the approach we’ve taken is the one we’ve kind of arrived at, we feel it’s going for a bit.

21:30.557 –> 21:31.558 [SPEAKER_01]: So now it’s saying that though,

21:32.038 –> 21:37.823 [SPEAKER_01]: You know, from 20 our years ago, we’ve gone from a 2000 script for where it’s to 5,000 to 10,000, 15,000.

21:38.544 –> 21:39.425 [SPEAKER_01]: We left one.

21:39.905 –> 21:42.527 [SPEAKER_01]: The last one we left was 33,000 to the current warehouse.

21:42.547 –> 21:43.688 [SPEAKER_01]: We have a 70,000.

21:44.089 –> 21:46.050 [SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes we ask where we go with this, right?

21:46.411 –> 21:51.675 [SPEAKER_01]: Because, you know, operations attract costs, and you have to operate the operations.

21:52.136 –> 21:52.796 [SPEAKER_01]: But no work.

21:52.876 –> 21:55.679 [SPEAKER_01]: We’re certainly very, very comfortable to happen with the track that we’re on.

21:56.358 –> 22:13.962 [SPEAKER_00]: Now, given your company’s product data quality, because especially you wouldn’t be successful, if you didn’t have good product data, and your focus on efficiency and your in-house tech and dev team, I have to ask you the AI question.

22:14.342 –> 22:25.065 [SPEAKER_00]: Because you seem like, from what we hear, you seem like the sort of business who would be trialing and testing it and succeeding with it because you’ve got the data and you’ve got access to your systems, et cetera.

22:26.465 –> 22:28.527 [SPEAKER_00]: what’s your take on AI and the business?

22:28.727 –> 22:29.668 [SPEAKER_00]: Are you all over it?

22:29.888 –> 22:31.209 [SPEAKER_00]: Are you not using it at a tool?

22:31.750 –> 22:34.272 [SPEAKER_00]: How’s it fitting into your plans?

22:35.513 –> 22:37.115 [SPEAKER_01]: Not hugely heavily what you believe.

22:37.615 –> 22:43.640 [SPEAKER_01]: So on a product ranges, Africa is we feel that and just the way our product management

22:44.579 –> 22:45.420 [SPEAKER_01]: solution is set up.

22:45.860 –> 22:48.283 [SPEAKER_01]: We feel that we’re always better off coming out of ourselves.

22:48.703 –> 22:51.786 [SPEAKER_01]: The thing but AI provides you with me to generate descriptions, right?

22:51.806 –> 22:53.808 [SPEAKER_01]: So we tend to drive out of ourselves.

22:54.669 –> 22:59.554 [SPEAKER_01]: AI comes in significantly, provides significant benefit within our development team.

22:59.734 –> 23:02.317 [SPEAKER_01]: Of course, you know, can you write a function to do X, right?

23:02.597 –> 23:04.379 [SPEAKER_01]: Within our research team, you know,

23:08.823 –> 23:22.884 [SPEAKER_01]: The only client-facing AI proposition that we launch and we’re doing a trial with the company and we’ve launched like PowerRax.co.uk and you can absolutely go and test it out and basically we want customers to engage with that and if we want customers go, hey!

23:23.545 –> 23:26.326 [SPEAKER_01]: But roof rack fits my car and in the AI, we go, yeah, great.

23:26.346 –> 23:27.926 [SPEAKER_01]: Hi, what car do you drive?

23:28.306 –> 23:30.327 [SPEAKER_01]: Have you got a panoramic roof?

23:30.647 –> 23:31.908 [SPEAKER_01]: Do you have a raised rail?

23:32.028 –> 23:33.028 [SPEAKER_01]: Is it a flat rail?

23:33.388 –> 23:35.309 [SPEAKER_01]: And what do you intend to do on a roof box as well?

23:35.329 –> 23:36.189 [SPEAKER_01]: And what do you intend to do with it?

23:36.229 –> 23:37.569 [SPEAKER_01]: Is it for swimming gear?

23:37.609 –> 23:39.350 [SPEAKER_01]: Is it for golf clubs or are you going to travel, right?

23:39.370 –> 23:43.391 [SPEAKER_01]: So, and we’re seeing really, really good engagement with that, as in,

23:43.711 –> 23:45.332 [SPEAKER_01]: as a public face in AI2.

23:46.093 –> 23:59.904 [SPEAKER_01]: So certainly AI is prolific through the company, but very much as an internal aid on a one-on-one basis versus we are defined policy of using AI4x, if you know what I mean.

24:15.664 –> 24:17.865 [SPEAKER_02]: It’s time for the top tips round.

24:20.546 –> 24:26.327 [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, I love this section because me and our listeners are really quick ideas for taking our businesses to the next level.

24:26.347 –> 24:28.408 [SPEAKER_00]: So, Kieran, are you ready for the top tips?

24:28.828 –> 24:29.468 [SPEAKER_01]: Yes, let’s go.

24:30.208 –> 24:31.529 [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, the booktop tip.

24:31.629 –> 24:38.391 [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?

24:39.633 –> 24:48.758 [SPEAKER_01]: My favorite book, and one that I can only recommend to give in the industry that I’m in on Saddam product in Brownboxes, shoe dog by Finn Knight.

24:49.619 –> 25:03.987 [SPEAKER_01]: And Finn Knight is the founder of Nike, and his story and the way he capsidia and the struggles that he went through and supply chain challenges, the distribution challenges and the licensing challenges, really will strike a chord when any e-commerce business.

25:04.832 –> 25:11.134 [SPEAKER_00]: You know, it’s been mentioned a couple of times on the show and I still haven’t read it, so I must get round to it.

25:11.154 –> 25:17.236 [SPEAKER_01]: If you look, it’s out of no audio, so if you’re taking a weekend away, whack it on the car and you will enjoy it.

25:17.737 –> 25:18.697 [SPEAKER_00]: I will do that.

25:18.717 –> 25:24.539 [SPEAKER_00]: The traffic top tip, which marketing method do you either prize above all others or think doesn’t get the press it deserves?

25:25.333 –> 25:25.653 [SPEAKER_01]: email.

25:26.154 –> 25:30.476 [SPEAKER_01]: I think people look at email as yesterday’s, yesterday’s mark and in tactic.

25:30.917 –> 25:32.598 [SPEAKER_01]: It’s prices email.

25:32.618 –> 25:39.842 [SPEAKER_01]: You know, we go to great extents and mix guys to ensure that we capture email, we keep email as clean, we get strong engagement.

25:40.283 –> 25:47.107 [SPEAKER_01]: And as far as possible, we try to do the relevant offers to the relevant offers to the interest to consumers.

25:47.207 –> 25:51.009 [SPEAKER_01]: But a certainly is understated and very often forgotten, right?

25:51.670 –> 25:53.811 [SPEAKER_01]: And in second to that, I would say, and we’re all

25:55.268 –> 26:06.451 [SPEAKER_01]: but Google AdWit’s right, and it’s still strong, it’s the primary driver, and we do research, and we do change, and we do tests, and we do push on that.

26:06.891 –> 26:18.915 [SPEAKER_01]: You know, maybe it’s a function of the fact that I’m old, but email and Google AdWit’s, if you asked in a question, I probably would have given the same answer 16 years ago, but that’s the one that works for us as a business.

26:19.468 –> 26:20.708 [SPEAKER_00]: I don’t think it’s an age thing.

26:20.788 –> 26:31.691 [SPEAKER_00]: I think they are still the fundamentals of a lot of e-commerce, especially when you have a need-based products, not a want-based product like you have.

26:31.731 –> 26:33.631 [SPEAKER_00]: So I think you’re spot on with those.

26:34.131 –> 26:44.654 [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, the tooltop tip, maybe a collaboration tool, a social media plugin, a phone app, or just a way of working, is there a cool little tool you use that makes you and your team more efficient from day to day?

26:45.420 –> 26:55.903 [SPEAKER_01]: From the team side, we use, I should give you a few of our from teamsidewaysMonday.com, great collaboration to allow you to deliver your dashboard, your workflow, your tasks, et cetera.

26:56.964 –> 27:03.406 [SPEAKER_01]: For a reporting, we connect to Tableau, which is great for your business intelligence.

27:03.866 –> 27:06.767 [SPEAKER_01]: And the coolest little tool I only got two days ago,

27:07.427 –> 27:11.548 [SPEAKER_01]: I see you all very often asked to sign documents and scan them, and I hate printers.

27:11.668 –> 27:15.409 [SPEAKER_01]: I’ve got this horrible hate of printers and scanners that never worked for me.

27:15.810 –> 27:21.011 [SPEAKER_01]: But I actually found it’s actually some of the office gave me this tip, Adobe scan on your phone.

27:21.691 –> 27:23.332 [SPEAKER_01]: It does exactly the same thing.

27:23.352 –> 27:26.633 [SPEAKER_01]: And you can stitch documents together for scanning and it produces a scan.

27:27.173 –> 27:29.694 [SPEAKER_01]: And for some reason, that just makes me so happy.

27:31.014 –> 27:33.015 [SPEAKER_00]: That tool makes me very happy too.

27:33.315 –> 27:36.297 [SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, totally get what you’re coming from with that.

27:36.377 –> 27:39.058 [SPEAKER_00]: Love those tips at the carbon top tip.

27:39.098 –> 27:42.800 [SPEAKER_00]: What’s your favorite way to reduce the carbon footprint of an e-commerce store?

27:43.400 –> 27:49.283 [SPEAKER_01]: Well, we send out a lot of fragile product as you would expect in the mirror components and headlamps and rear lamps.

27:49.803 –> 27:56.246 [SPEAKER_01]: All of the boxes that receive in carbon that we receive, we shredded to use it as packaging to send out a fragile product.

27:56.266 –> 27:59.288 [SPEAKER_01]: So we really don’t have any wastage when it comes to packaging.

27:59.947 –> 28:00.367 [SPEAKER_00]: I love that.

28:00.387 –> 28:09.474 [SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes we get people saying about, you know, reusing the boxes that come in as boxes to send things out in, which can create a little bit of, you know, doesn’t look as good as you want it to.

28:09.494 –> 28:14.018 [SPEAKER_00]: But, of course, if you shred them all, doesn’t matter what they look like, because they’re the shredding parts.

28:14.038 –> 28:15.839 [SPEAKER_00]: So, so love that.

28:17.040 –> 28:23.805 [SPEAKER_00]: Karen, before you say goodbye, could you please let the listeners know where they can find mixed garage and you on the

28:28.490 –> 28:36.032 [SPEAKER_01]: or in the car rack, so could you care, or we might have passed a car, anyone referred to goes, and I’m not sure if I’ve find in me, but I’m unlinked in.

28:36.712 –> 28:47.636 [SPEAKER_00]: Excellent, and then, because of the success of your warehouse management system, you’ve actually spun that out into a business all of its own, haven’t you?

28:47.656 –> 28:49.056 [SPEAKER_00]: So can you tell us what that’s called?

28:49.616 –> 28:52.297 [SPEAKER_00]: What it offers to other e-commerce stores and a little bit about it, please.

28:52.928 –> 29:01.610 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so we have done so just at the tail end of COVID, we had an opportunity to commercialize our warehouse and our order management software called Waveless.

29:01.730 –> 29:02.850 [SPEAKER_01]: So Waveless.com.

29:03.651 –> 29:10.052 [SPEAKER_01]: And now we have a software company that actually sells that to clients to help them power their own their own warehouse.

29:10.212 –> 29:18.474 [SPEAKER_01]: And it was born out of volume, it was born out of being able to cross dock at scale, but also keeping it simple.

29:18.514 –> 29:20.694 [SPEAKER_01]: So it’s a software that keeps

29:23.015 –> 29:29.568 [SPEAKER_01]: Let’s walk in and you can usually give it to an 18-year-old and they can’t mess up your business.

29:30.049 –> 29:30.970 [SPEAKER_01]: So wave a mess.com.

29:31.676 –> 29:40.923 [SPEAKER_00]: another fact you mentioned less walking, which I think only someone who really knows what they’re talking about in that sense knows that less walking is a good goal.

29:41.523 –> 29:53.872 [SPEAKER_01]: It’s a good listen, we had Fitbits on our warehouse operators at one point, like ultimately the greatest percentage of costs on warehouse at pictures, because they’re basically going up and down the odds.

29:54.430 –> 30:01.372 [SPEAKER_01]: And we can cut the cost of warehouse and down by up to 50% just relative to the approach that wave on us takes to do that.

30:01.972 –> 30:06.934 [SPEAKER_01]: So it’s all about less walking, more working, and every order going at the doors buying acres.

30:07.354 –> 30:09.094 [SPEAKER_01]: And that’s what we deliver for our clients.

30:09.114 –> 30:18.457 [SPEAKER_01]: And that’s purely driven out of what we had to do, necessities the mother all invention, what we had to do for mixedguires.com, when COVID hit,

30:19.217 –> 30:26.744 [SPEAKER_01]: and sales double overnight, but we had to keep the team tight because obviously you couldn’t inject any new personnel into the team, etc.

30:26.784 –> 30:30.327 [SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, that’s gone really well and we’re delighted with it.

30:30.347 –> 30:31.348 [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, congratulations.

30:31.388 –> 30:33.050 [SPEAKER_00]: It sounds like a great tool.

30:33.510 –> 30:37.434 [SPEAKER_00]: Kiran, thank you so much for being on the Ecommerce Mass Plan podcast.

30:37.454 –> 30:39.716 [SPEAKER_00]: It’s been fascinating exploring your business with you.

30:39.736 –> 30:40.997 [SPEAKER_00]: So thank you so much for being here.

30:41.477 –> 30:42.278 [SPEAKER_01]: Well, thank you, Lloyd.

30:42.358 –> 30:42.979 [SPEAKER_01]: Love you to me.

30:42.999 –> 30:43.339 [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you.

30:49.183 –> 30:50.464 [SPEAKER_00]: what a fascinating business.

30:50.484 –> 31:08.022 [SPEAKER_00]: You can really tell that Kiron and his team have optimized that business hugely successfully over the last 20 years with how they’re handling the orders, how they’re spinning out those verticals and the process for doing that really, really fascinating and great to get to chat with him there.

31:08.402 –> 31:15.626 [SPEAKER_00]: You get your hands on our notes in this episode including those top tips and links to what we mentioned by heading over to ecommercemasterpland.com.

31:16.006 –> 31:25.251 [SPEAKER_00]: There you’ll also get the full transcript and you can use the code or the short link I suppose ECMP.info for such the number of this episode.

31:25.591 –> 31:28.753 [SPEAKER_00]: Put that in the URL bar and you’ll go straight to the right page of the website.

31:29.153 –> 31:36.097 [SPEAKER_00]: When you get there you can also also add yourself to our email list so you don’t miss out on any of the other things we share to help

31:37.778 –> 31:42.860 [SPEAKER_00]: And if you like this episode, then why not check out Episode 551?

31:43.360 –> 31:55.904 [SPEAKER_00]: Where I’m chatting with Paul Hancock from Parts Town, which is another business with an equally huge skew count, but this time in the HVAC and appliance part sector rather than the car part sector.

31:56.384 –> 32:01.606 [SPEAKER_00]: And I think there’s lots of similar stories in that one that will really help you if this one really hit home for you.

32:02.246 –> 32:08.971 [SPEAKER_00]: You can also get all our episodes of bigger e-commerce stores at ECMP.nfo4s-big.

32:09.772 –> 32:13.715 [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for tuning in to this and every episode of the e-commerce master plan podcast.

32:13.795 –> 32:26.465 [SPEAKER_00]: I bring you a new one every week because we want to inspire and help e-commerce business owners like you to succeed and thrive with your businesses, including encouraging both businesses and consumers to make more sustainable buying decisions.

32:26.925 –> 32:31.989 [SPEAKER_00]: So if you know someone this show can help, please tell them to listen to the e-commerce masterplan podcast.

32:32.430 –> 32:35.012 [SPEAKER_00]: Hope you have a great week and don’t forget to keep optimizing.

In this episode, returning guest Jay shares what he learned from leading Product Discovery at Next, from getting the foundations of product data right to using AI and search insights to uncover new growth opportunities. He also explains how eCommerce teams can make product discovery work harder across SEO, PPC, onsite search and the wider customer journey. 

Hit PLAY to hear: 

• Why product discovery is now much bigger than onsite search 
• The 20% of product attributes that deserve your attention 
• How AI can uncover valuable insights hidden in search data 
• Why better product data should come before better tech 
• How to turn emerging product trends into SEO and sales opportunities 
• The surprising reason you should regularly clean up your search rules 

Key timestamps to dive straight in: 

[03:09] AI in product discovery 

[06:16] Dealing with data silos 

[10:34] Using AI to analyze search data 

[14:42] Improving search and utilizing chatbots 

[16:27] Choosing the right chatbot provider 

[19:26] Leveraging domain authority for SEO 

[23:33] Listen to Jay’s Top Tips! 

Full episode notes here: https://ecmp.info/613 

— Download our ebook… https://ecmp.info/ebook 500 Tips to Increase Your Profits

Get all the links and resources we mention and join our email list at https://ecmp.info

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00:00.583 –> 00:04.008 [SPEAKER_01]: What surprises me is, people don’t shop aside so as much anymore.

00:04.209 –> 00:13.382 [SPEAKER_01]: Shop your customer, like when I first started to meet commerce, that was every Friday, like that was your after lunch, just the hour, where you all went and shop your sites, etc.

00:13.703 –> 00:15.465 [SPEAKER_01]: Everyone from different teams or one in today.

00:16.136 –> 00:20.658 [SPEAKER_01]: And I don’t know if that’s mainly just in the enterprise space, if you don’t do that as much anymore.

00:21.118 –> 00:22.699 [SPEAKER_01]: But, push up a size of custom.

00:22.719 –> 00:25.500 [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, Google understand of what’s going on, look at competitors, et cetera.

00:25.520 –> 00:31.123 [SPEAKER_01]: See what’s working, or see what they’re in a slightly different, and take some ideas and some learnings on that, rinsing tests, et cetera.

00:33.847 –> 00:36.250 [SPEAKER_02]: It’s the e-commerce master plan podcast.

00:36.791 –> 00:40.856 [SPEAKER_02]: It is a help you solve your marketing problems and grow your e-commerce business.

00:41.377 –> 00:49.188 [SPEAKER_02]: Cutting through the hive to bring you inspiration and advice from the e-commerce sector and beyond, here’s your host, Chloe Thomas.

00:52.508 –> 00:53.609 [SPEAKER_00]: Hello and welcome.

00:53.629 –> 00:54.769 [SPEAKER_00]: It’s great to have you here.

00:54.829 –> 00:58.791 [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for hitting play and choosing to listen to one of our inspiring guests.

00:59.332 –> 01:05.415 [SPEAKER_00]: In this episode, we are catching up with one of our most listened to guests of last year.

01:05.715 –> 01:10.297 [SPEAKER_00]: His episode was one of our five most popular episodes of 2025.

01:10.617 –> 01:12.178 [SPEAKER_00]: So you know this is going to be great.

01:12.678 –> 01:15.540 [SPEAKER_00]: Last time we talked about scaling from 7 to 8 million.

01:16.000 –> 01:20.943 [SPEAKER_00]: This time we are diving into his experience over about the last 18 months being

01:21.603 –> 01:30.886 [SPEAKER_00]: In charge of product discovery at next, the big UK fashion and home wears retailer, and we will be basically just talking about product discovery.

01:30.926 –> 01:41.410 [SPEAKER_00]: We’ll be talking about what to do with your product data, we’ll be talking about what tech to implement, how to make it, how to get the most out of it, all how AI feeds into all of this, just lots of stuff.

01:41.890 –> 01:42.391 [SPEAKER_00]: on a topic.

01:42.471 –> 01:47.018 [SPEAKER_00]: I know a lot of you are trying to wrap your heads around with round and make the right moves on at the moment.

01:47.499 –> 01:52.768 [SPEAKER_00]: So have a listen, enjoy, make sure listen to the end for his brilliant top tips.

01:58.840 –> 02:00.700 [SPEAKER_00]: And now to introduce our special guest.

02:00.920 –> 02:01.300 [SPEAKER_00]: J.O.

02:01.340 –> 02:09.582 [SPEAKER_00]: Neal was recently product manager of Product Discovery at next one of UK’s most successful high street retailers focused on fashion and homewares.

02:10.002 –> 02:10.262 [SPEAKER_00]: J.

02:10.322 –> 02:15.303 [SPEAKER_00]: Specializes in growth through digital marketing, conversion rate optimization and tech stack optimization.

02:15.803 –> 02:25.025 [SPEAKER_00]: He scaled sock.com from 2 to 80 million, drove digital growth at Holland and Barrett and took Bathroom Mountain from 0 to 40 million in just 18 months.

02:25.505 –> 02:26.265 [SPEAKER_00]: Hello, J.

02:27.015 –> 02:28.796 [SPEAKER_01]: Hi Chloe, thanks for having me back.

02:29.616 –> 02:32.017 [SPEAKER_00]: Very cool to have you back on the podcast again.

02:32.197 –> 02:38.019 [SPEAKER_00]: How have things been since the last time we caught up, which was tail end of 24 early 25?

02:38.039 –> 02:49.083 [SPEAKER_01]: Well, yeah, I think when we recorded our session, I was actually looking for my next role, and then I started it next to, as I say, to the lead product discovery.

02:50.160 –> 02:53.121 [SPEAKER_00]: And a mad time to be leading product discovery.

02:53.141 –> 02:57.584 [SPEAKER_00]: I think it’s always a challenging sphere in any decade.

02:58.344 –> 03:09.029 [SPEAKER_00]: But I feel like the last 18 months has been when AI kind of picked up product discovery, shook it around, and then left us all trying to work at what on earth was going on.

03:09.783 –> 03:23.767 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it kind of felt like there was this promise of AI within politicians recovery that’s been, it’s been there for a little while, but no one’s really capitalised on it, but then it just became, if it came good enough, really, to put to put in front of customers and for people to start utilising.

03:24.027 –> 03:31.009 [SPEAKER_01]: And yeah, I mean, the whole search market from vendor perspective is consolidated, lots of movements around different vendors.

03:31.895 –> 03:53.965 [SPEAKER_01]: merger at Morgan accessions, et cetera, but yeah, I think the tech has moved on quite considerably and a lot of the stuff that maybe we were doing back in the day, it’s so can bathroom out and that all that we wanted to do that wasn’t quite possible, but now it’s the point where it is possible and actually the tech is as good as you need it to be to start testing some of this stuff as well.

03:54.957 –> 04:05.661 [SPEAKER_00]: So when we talk product discovery, I think it’s another one of those terrible terms in e-commerce, like the word e-commerce itself, that means 20 different things to 20 different people.

04:06.121 –> 04:09.882 [SPEAKER_00]: So for you, what’s the remit of product discovery when you think about it?

04:10.505 –> 04:12.186 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think you’ve got a few elements.

04:12.206 –> 04:22.411 [SPEAKER_01]: So I think there’s the traditional side which is on-site search, which covers majority of product discovery, but I think that a lot of retailers now are thinking about it slightly differently.

04:23.732 –> 04:30.736 [SPEAKER_01]: They know that well, customers don’t just discover products via on-site search anymore, and they start to consider other channels.

04:30.756 –> 04:34.778 [SPEAKER_01]: So digital marketing, it starts to think about as it’s across the site.

04:34.798 –> 04:37.159 [SPEAKER_01]: So things like recommendations, et cetera,

04:37.759 –> 04:41.081 [SPEAKER_01]: quite a lot now as chat bots, etc as well.

04:41.161 –> 04:51.805 [SPEAKER_01]: So there’s various different routes and I think what one thing that I applied to to next was let’s think about this as product discovery now.

04:51.965 –> 04:57.808 [SPEAKER_01]: Now I wasn’t the product manager for digital marketing or for SEO, etc.

04:59.099 –> 05:02.281 [SPEAKER_01]: but I made sure we made connections there and we started to bring the teams together.

05:02.321 –> 05:05.502 [SPEAKER_01]: So we added that a more of a holistic view of follow-up discovery.

05:05.562 –> 05:17.649 [SPEAKER_01]: So whatever the merchandise and team were doing within dashboard, success trial, within our search platform, making sure that data was then available to our SEO team, available to our PPC teams, et cetera as well.

05:17.689 –> 05:24.132 [SPEAKER_01]: So it became a more broader role in terms of the channels that touched when I first started really, I guess.

05:24.757 –> 05:30.223 [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I think it’s one of those pieces, which especially, I know, I didn’t ignore that.

05:30.243 –> 05:33.486 [SPEAKER_00]: I was gonna say especially on-site, but that’s ridiculous, Chloe.

05:33.566 –> 05:34.107 [SPEAKER_00]: Well, ignore that.

05:34.427 –> 05:35.008 [SPEAKER_00]: Forget I said that.

05:35.308 –> 05:43.797 [SPEAKER_00]: But I think product discoveries, one of those areas where the more layers of the onion you peel back, the more it impacts on every single area of the business, it’s like you have

05:45.378 –> 05:49.080 [SPEAKER_00]: the product data that you’re using to power on site search.

05:49.320 –> 05:57.884 [SPEAKER_00]: That then is also the same, you know, any enhancements to that should be similar to what’s powering the chat box should be similar to what’s helping with the SEO and the Google ads and all these other areas.

05:57.904 –> 06:07.408 [SPEAKER_00]: And then you go, okay, we’ve now got we’ve optimized a great helpful chat for the website, but you haven’t given access to the customer service team who are dealing with queries on WhatsApp.

06:07.768 –> 06:11.730 [SPEAKER_00]: And it seems like the more the layers you peel back, the more this impacts on

06:12.650 –> 06:15.472 [SPEAKER_00]: Pretty much every area of the business part from possibly the warehouse?

06:16.473 –> 06:21.576 [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, it could even affect the warehouse at times when you think about attributes, etc.

06:21.977 –> 06:23.538 [SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, no, completely agree.

06:23.638 –> 06:23.798 [SPEAKER_01]: Right.

06:23.818 –> 06:25.259 [SPEAKER_01]: I think the biggest problem.

06:26.406 –> 06:30.267 [SPEAKER_01]: the retailers have, and now this isn’t just an enterprise retailer.

06:30.287 –> 06:37.469 [SPEAKER_01]: Next problem is actually the same problem for bathroom out and as we grew really quickly, same problem for so-so, same problem with all in the barracks, etc.

06:38.029 –> 06:44.910 [SPEAKER_01]: And for my time at Merchdark, where we had various different customers, across different domains, everyone had the same problem.

06:45.070 –> 06:48.311 [SPEAKER_01]: There was always a data issue, and that data was genuinely siloed.

06:48.871 –> 06:54.293 [SPEAKER_01]: So you had merchandise and teams working, their socks after improved product data and

06:56.954 –> 07:03.202 [SPEAKER_01]: But then the SEO team were over the far corner, not being able to utilize that data and probably doing the same work.

07:03.783 –> 07:09.771 [SPEAKER_01]: And I think it’s probably more important now that it was a few years ago because

07:10.750 –> 07:13.991 [SPEAKER_01]: good product data is now driving other channels.

07:14.192 –> 07:18.193 [SPEAKER_01]: So everyone’s talking about A, O, G, etc.

07:19.234 –> 07:21.795 [SPEAKER_01]: But essentially, it’s all the same for fundamentals.

07:21.855 –> 07:28.558 [SPEAKER_01]: As long as you’ve got a foundational database right and you’re doing your strong and your attribution of your products is strong.

07:29.222 –> 07:31.183 [SPEAKER_01]: then that data can get utilized everywhere.

07:31.403 –> 07:47.010 [SPEAKER_01]: It makes it applicable to everything and it’s being utilized by every channel and you’re not kind of double count in stuff or one team’s calling something that’s taken pants and trousers for instance.

07:47.370 –> 07:54.233 [SPEAKER_01]: If you’ve got different terminology there then it’s going to cause confusion and actually as you get it crawled more and more by various

07:58.190 –> 08:12.294 [SPEAKER_00]: It does seem like we’ve always had that need for the customer to get a consistent experience from what they see in Google search and elsewhere through to what they experience on the website.

08:12.714 –> 08:24.897 [SPEAKER_00]: But it feels like that consistency is even more important when we don’t know which elements of our identity, the AI is looking at to make decisions on how it recommends us.

08:26.277 –> 08:33.681 [SPEAKER_00]: that consistency through teams, yeah, there’s potentially a cost saving because like you said there might be people doing the same work more than once or different people doing the same work.

08:34.142 –> 08:43.527 [SPEAKER_00]: But there’s also that if we can be more consistent, there should be an impact a result bump simply from having that consistency throughout the business.

08:44.153 –> 08:45.413 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, you can clean right.

08:45.433 –> 08:47.514 [SPEAKER_01]: And I think there’s two levels to that.

08:47.534 –> 08:48.574 [SPEAKER_01]: The first level is what you say.

08:48.634 –> 08:57.695 [SPEAKER_01]: So having that consistency, making it available, the same data available to everyone, considering boxes, as more of a customer these days, as well.

08:58.035 –> 09:03.816 [SPEAKER_01]: So they’re crawling on, you’re making sure they’re crawling the right data, they’ve got access to the right data sets, et cetera.

09:04.477 –> 09:12.658 [SPEAKER_01]: But also the next level up front that is say in Rockable, we can have thousands, millions of attributes if you want to.

09:13.686 –> 09:19.309 [SPEAKER_01]: but what really counts is probably 20% of those attributes because they’re the ones that really matter.

09:19.329 –> 09:21.571 [SPEAKER_01]: They’re the ones that customers are searching for.

09:22.151 –> 09:35.619 [SPEAKER_01]: And actually, if you concentrate on that rough 20% and you do that really, really well, that’s then going to translate into working well for your customers, but also for a lot of these bots as well.

09:36.119 –> 09:41.022 [SPEAKER_01]: And it’s going to feed in the data, a bit much better data into chat bots, except you’ve got on site.

09:42.033 –> 09:49.642 [SPEAKER_01]: and then because your focus from a customer perspective is the same with SEO as right, right, like we’ve gone through all these.

09:50.537 –> 10:02.685 [SPEAKER_01]: different ways of doing SEO and improving SEO the years, but now it’s got to the point where as long as you’re doing it in the right way for real customers, it genuinely stands well for you overall for SEO.

10:02.705 –> 10:10.971 [SPEAKER_01]: Obviously there’s some technical points to that as well, but but generally, if you’ve got the customer at heart, then SEO usually works out better for you.

10:11.211 –> 10:14.593 [SPEAKER_01]: You get a lot more growth as long as you’ve done the technical parts right as well, I guess.

10:15.303 –> 10:19.226 [SPEAKER_00]: You say about focusing on the 20% most important attributes.

10:19.286 –> 10:21.528 [SPEAKER_00]: How do you work out which those 20 are?

10:21.568 –> 10:25.751 [SPEAKER_00]: Is that putting yourself in the shoes of the customer and going which ones are the customer care about?

10:25.811 –> 10:30.434 [SPEAKER_00]: Or is there like this 5% of the ones we know Google cares about?

10:30.454 –> 10:31.415 [SPEAKER_00]: So we’ll definitely do those.

10:31.455 –> 10:34.077 [SPEAKER_00]: How do you work out your key attributes to focus on?

10:34.677 –> 10:36.078 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think I think some big stuff.

10:36.098 –> 10:38.840 [SPEAKER_01]: You’ve got to kind of have that list of Europe cross-channels.

10:39.020 –> 10:48.167 [SPEAKER_01]: You’ve also then got to look at it from a customer’s perspective, let me say it going through through your site, looking at what customer, looking at filters that customers are using, look at the search terms.

10:48.727 –> 10:57.673 [SPEAKER_01]: I was quite shocked when I first joined next to see that we had this huge search report of search terms, but it wasn’t really being mind that much and don’t get wrong.

10:58.194 –> 11:02.336 [SPEAKER_01]: It’d be a big merchandise and team that would go through those reports quite

11:03.487 –> 11:22.781 [SPEAKER_01]: but they can never get past the first few pages because there’s just so many service terms and that’s where, again, like I said earlier, the fact that AI is come on so much now, you can start using AI now to to mine that data, start to pull out some of the insights like to, I mean, you can run a report through

11:28.019 –> 11:32.122 [SPEAKER_01]: millions of lines of data and you’ll get something back with you in a few minutes.

11:32.602 –> 11:38.366 [SPEAKER_01]: It’s good that’s a human to do and you’re probably, you might get something back this year, maybe, because there’s so many data points in there.

11:38.766 –> 11:41.488 [SPEAKER_01]: And it starts to add, and you can start to pull those insights out.

11:41.528 –> 11:52.195 [SPEAKER_01]: And I think it’s, I guess we, we’re very eye people trying to maybe be a bit too smart at times and there’s just there’s the simple little things I use it for efficiency to pull those insights together.

11:52.215 –> 11:55.877 [SPEAKER_01]: And that’s where you then you start to build out that 20% of stuff that you should really go and focus on.

11:56.734 –> 12:03.358 [SPEAKER_00]: It feels more conversation like the heart of getting product discovery right is the product data.

12:04.479 –> 12:06.160 [SPEAKER_00]: Would that be a fair statement?

12:06.701 –> 12:06.921 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

12:07.901 –> 12:08.602 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think so.

12:08.662 –> 12:11.844 [SPEAKER_01]: Like it’s the same as there’s only a piece of tech, right?

12:11.864 –> 12:13.825 [SPEAKER_01]: Like garbage in equals garbage out.

12:13.885 –> 12:19.989 [SPEAKER_01]: So if your product data isn’t strong enough, then you are going to see poor results.

12:20.630 –> 12:22.131 [SPEAKER_01]: I won’t name the exact customer.

12:22.151 –> 12:23.051 [SPEAKER_01]: When I was back at

12:24.788 –> 12:30.953 [SPEAKER_01]: Very big enterprise retailer had very, very poor product data and their search was horrendous.

12:31.554 –> 12:38.760 [SPEAKER_01]: Like you couldn’t find half of the products that should have been coming up and they knew they had a problem with their product data.

12:38.880 –> 12:42.523 [SPEAKER_01]: They just didn’t have the resources available to go and fix it.

12:43.063 –> 12:48.828 [SPEAKER_01]: And so they just moved along and they had thousands, 1000s of rules within their dashboards with their search they were using.

12:49.388 –> 12:50.669 [SPEAKER_01]: Same with next, historically,

12:54.012 –> 13:01.075 [SPEAKER_01]: This slowly started to bring those down as the improved product day, etc, and improved some of the other stuff they were doing within the search platform itself.

13:01.776 –> 13:05.237 [SPEAKER_00]: I think there’s that evolution of the search platforms as well as now.

13:05.257 –> 13:13.561 [SPEAKER_00]: I remember people getting very excited, like 10, 15 years ago, about the fact they could create a rule that went include plurals.

13:14.242 –> 13:18.124 [SPEAKER_00]: Obviously we don’t have to create a rule about that manually anymore.

13:18.164 –> 13:19.604 [SPEAKER_00]: That’s part and parcel of it.

13:19.624 –> 13:21.105 [SPEAKER_00]: So I suppose there is kind of like that.

13:23.748 –> 13:26.214 [SPEAKER_00]: you know a set an on-site search tool for a while.

13:26.595 –> 13:32.169 [SPEAKER_00]: It’s probably worth going and working at which rules you can get rid of now because they may actually be causing more harm than than good.

13:32.865 –> 13:46.576 [SPEAKER_01]: 100% low will be often, it was always on a Friday, late on a Friday where some people was going wrong with search, we’d have a couple of engineers running through stuff, we’re working with the third party, the owns at all as well.

13:47.156 –> 13:54.142 [SPEAKER_01]: And then nine times out of ten there was some historical rule that had been there for three years, it was caught in something not to work correctly.

13:54.162 –> 13:57.304 [SPEAKER_01]: So everyone talks about that spring cleaning, right?

13:57.405 –> 13:58.085 [SPEAKER_01]: It definitely

14:00.567 –> 14:09.232 [SPEAKER_01]: just knock a few off, let’s go through those historic ones, start oldist to newest, most of the time, especially in enterprise retail, the people that created those rules aren’t even working there anymore.

14:10.333 –> 14:11.614 [SPEAKER_01]: So, most people don’t even know about them.

14:12.194 –> 14:19.359 [SPEAKER_01]: So, yeah, I think it’s definitely definitely important to go through and do that keynote, but especially as the tech’s advanced quite a lot as well within that space of time.

14:19.906 –> 14:41.382 [SPEAKER_00]: So if someone’s listening, who’s got great product data, but they haven’t yet really explored onsite search, onsite merchandise, you know, auto merchandising, AI chat bots, all those things that are on the go at the moment, what would be the first tech solution you put in place if the data’s good?

14:42.616 –> 14:53.579 [SPEAKER_01]: If the date is good, I feel like if you can get a good search tool, I would focus on that first, get a right partner and really focus on that and improve your search.

14:54.220 –> 14:57.101 [SPEAKER_01]: The reason for that is because then it unlocks other stuff as well.

14:57.381 –> 15:04.683 [SPEAKER_01]: So, a really good search provider, most likely now, will have some sort of product discovery chatbot that you can utilize.

15:05.412 –> 15:20.262 [SPEAKER_01]: There’s no point in doing it the other way around getting a chatbot first and then going over search because that chatbot is probably likely going to use the search API or what you optimize for on your own site search, get other than utilize that data within the chatbot itself as well.

15:20.903 –> 15:26.967 [SPEAKER_00]: Would it be fair to say it’s a lot harder to build a good on-site search tool than it is to build a good search good chatbot?

15:27.811 –> 15:29.093 [SPEAKER_01]: Yes, definitely.

15:29.133 –> 15:33.240 [SPEAKER_01]: I think there is so much more to search that most people don’t realize.

15:33.360 –> 15:35.403 [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I’ll just definitely talk a few things for granted.

15:36.024 –> 15:36.886 [SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, I would.

15:37.666 –> 15:48.773 [SPEAKER_01]: I would say search, unless you have a very, very technical engineering team of people that have experienced a building search, I would never advocate for building your own search.

15:49.414 –> 15:59.080 [SPEAKER_01]: And that’s coming from someone next where we had a huge engineering resource, but even then I wouldn’t want to build my own search.

15:59.160 –> 16:03.483 [SPEAKER_01]: I’d rather bring in a third party solution and then build on top of it if we can.

16:04.335 –> 16:11.219 [SPEAKER_00]: And so, as you said about, we do the site search first and then if they’ve got the AI chat, but we go with that.

16:11.279 –> 16:22.886 [SPEAKER_00]: So, in this space, are you a by the best of breed tech person or a by the all-in-one tech person when it comes to product discovery?

16:24.347 –> 16:27.729 [SPEAKER_00]: Um, just just spinning you the big questions today.

16:27.809 –> 16:31.992 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I mean, I would say best of breed normally,

16:33.444 –> 16:45.814 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I wouldn’t, I still say better breed because you are going to get some chat box solutions that come out of the box that are very focused sound fashion or very focused on the homes, I’m current, etc.

16:46.555 –> 16:56.082 [SPEAKER_01]: And if you’re in that set domain and that works well for you, if you’re in a multi-domain retailer where you go across home fashion, etc.

16:56.103 –> 16:58.284 [SPEAKER_01]: next it, then that’s a little bit different.

16:59.065 –> 17:00.946 [SPEAKER_01]: Now there are some suppliers out there that

17:02.213 –> 17:06.497 [SPEAKER_01]: happen to be best of breed at a few of those areas as well, so that kind of helps.

17:06.577 –> 17:10.041 [SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, I would suggest best of breed, I think that’s probably the best route of going.

17:10.521 –> 17:18.769 [SPEAKER_01]: You then start to you to look, because you’re not just bought from a good supplier, you’re not just buying their tech, you’re buying their expertise, right?

17:18.909 –> 17:20.211 [SPEAKER_01]: Probably discovery, for instance.

17:20.921 –> 17:27.225 [SPEAKER_01]: if you want someone that knows the tech well, and that is a trip, but also knows the markets well, and they’re gonna give you those insights.

17:27.245 –> 17:37.190 [SPEAKER_01]: So if you’re not getting value out of, say your QBR or your customer success manager, every month, then you’ve probably not got the right partner, because that’s exactly what it should be.

17:37.210 –> 17:38.091 [SPEAKER_01]: It should be a partner.

17:38.271 –> 17:39.632 [SPEAKER_01]: You should be back and forth.

17:40.172 –> 17:42.595 [SPEAKER_01]: You go into them, saying, can you help me do this, can you help me do that?

17:43.015 –> 17:48.220 [SPEAKER_01]: But then I want them to come back to you with insight and saying, I’ll, you should be looking at this or we’ve noticed this, etc.

17:48.320 –> 17:51.463 [SPEAKER_01]: or here’s something new you should maybe go and try as well.

17:52.464 –> 17:52.864 [SPEAKER_00]: Got you.

17:53.084 –> 17:59.130 [SPEAKER_00]: And if tech wasn’t the next steps take after getting good product data, what’s the other things you do?

18:00.138 –> 18:07.703 [SPEAKER_01]: I think it’s about utilizing that product data, making sure you capitalize on it.

18:07.723 –> 18:21.093 [SPEAKER_01]: So simple things like, if you’ve got a decent amount of authority, starting to utilize that data to build out your taxonomy, for instance, capitalise on specialist, a sub-categories, et cetera.

18:21.393 –> 18:27.017 [SPEAKER_01]: Rather than having just a dress is paid and hoping that ranks, you should be looking at a black dresses,

18:29.038 –> 18:29.458 [SPEAKER_01]: etc.

18:29.478 –> 18:32.060 [SPEAKER_01]: And those are more long, there’s more long-tailed queries.

18:32.760 –> 18:41.645 [SPEAKER_01]: And it’s the same then for if you can bring in those trending attributes as well, maybe this year, well this year, it started this year.

18:41.665 –> 18:44.127 [SPEAKER_01]: I think it was buttermilk, yellow, was big.

18:44.327 –> 18:46.668 [SPEAKER_01]: So starting to build out pages around that as well.

18:46.688 –> 18:48.810 [SPEAKER_01]: And the long loss of building campaigns around it as well.

18:49.990 –> 18:59.557 [SPEAKER_01]: The way that data should be is if you have a peer, or you have somewhere where this activity is set in a good product data, but it makes sure it’s utilized and pushed out to all channels.

19:00.758 –> 19:04.380 [SPEAKER_01]: And you’re building things around that and campaigns around that as well.

19:04.400 –> 19:06.602 [SPEAKER_01]: And you’re really utilizing especially the trend in data.

19:07.378 –> 19:25.481 [SPEAKER_00]: presumably all of this is, you know, you say about bottom up yellow took off rather so therefore, you know, we have to spin out the pages and all the rest of it, presumably there’s there’s quite a big reporting feedback loop going on with what’s being seen on each of these product discovery channels to then impact different areas of the business as well.

19:26.184 –> 19:27.105 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, definitely.

19:27.125 –> 19:36.331 [SPEAKER_01]: I think it’s, it’s how, how do you get through them quick, quick enough to make it an opportunity or to, I really add the value next, how to use the main authority.

19:36.371 –> 19:44.236 [SPEAKER_01]: Like if we created a page, it was linked to, correctly, set up correctly today, then it’d be ranking within a couple of days because it’s a crawl, but it was so high.

19:44.856 –> 19:48.679 [SPEAKER_01]: the main authority and yeah you get to pay it on very, very quickly just by putting something live.

19:49.940 –> 19:59.086 [SPEAKER_01]: So it’s been able to capitalize on that and it’s quickly as possible if you let’s say buttermilk could only just start a trend in now and it’s a couple of days here and you can start seeing it jumping up.

19:59.387 –> 20:13.057 [SPEAKER_01]: Well if we jump on that now before anyone else else then perfect we’re going to pretty much own that space of NCO but then also the social media teams can jump on it as well on those trends and it’s built in that trend in kind of database.

20:13.717 –> 20:26.922 [SPEAKER_01]: easier said than done, obviously, as I said before, tools are now available that, again, some it’s simple like Claude or Tati Retriever and those reports, again, they’ll pull out trends much, much quicker than any, any human’s going to pull them out.

20:27.491 –> 20:27.731 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

20:27.931 –> 20:32.855 [SPEAKER_00]: And going back a step, because I took us into what you do once your product data is good.

20:33.495 –> 20:36.377 [SPEAKER_00]: Of course product data being good is quite an important thing too.

20:37.378 –> 20:45.564 [SPEAKER_00]: I’m reading lots of kind of cases people are getting, oh, we got Claude doing all of the site and Tesla was bad and we then we used AI to fill it all in.

20:46.184 –> 20:54.070 [SPEAKER_00]: Is that the approach you take for improving product content or would you go a different way to improve that product database?

20:54.855 –> 21:04.600 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think I think a multiple reviews kind of what surprises me is speaking to other retailers at events and stuff and I’m going into that.

21:04.640 –> 21:07.241 [SPEAKER_01]: It’s people don’t shop a site so it’s much anymore.

21:07.441 –> 21:13.164 [SPEAKER_01]: Shopping a site like a customer like when I first started me commerce, that was every Friday.

21:13.224 –> 21:17.566 [SPEAKER_01]: Like that was your after lunch, just the hour where you all went and shop your site.

21:17.666 –> 21:20.268 [SPEAKER_01]: It’s such an everyone from different teams all wanted to do it.

21:20.951 –> 21:25.821 [SPEAKER_01]: And I don’t know if that’s mainly just in the enterprise space, if we don’t do that as much anymore.

21:26.723 –> 21:29.107 [SPEAKER_01]: And maybe smaller retailers are growing quite quickly.

21:29.127 –> 21:30.711 [SPEAKER_01]: They still found their led etc.

21:30.771 –> 21:31.813 [SPEAKER_01]: so they’re kind of pushing that.

21:32.514 –> 21:32.695 [SPEAKER_01]: But

21:33.715 –> 21:38.519 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, go, go, go shop a size of customer, get a good understanding of what’s going on, look at competitors, et cetera.

21:38.539 –> 21:49.709 [SPEAKER_01]: See what’s working, or see what they’re in slightly different and see I’m not saying copy every single competitor because never that never works, but take some ideas and some learnings on that rinsing test, et cetera.

21:50.289 –> 21:51.130 [SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, I think it’s

21:52.537 –> 22:10.026 [SPEAKER_01]: If you can kind of get a view of what those attributes, or those key attributes are, there’s 20%, then yeah, you can start utilizing Claude or something, start using a bit of computer vision, et cetera, to look at images, look at the data you already have, see what the caps are, start to fill those gaps.

22:10.206 –> 22:17.350 [SPEAKER_01]: I definitely recommend automate as much that as possible, as long the view is set it up correctly, and you’ve got a taxonomy, you can feed into it, et cetera.

22:17.985 –> 22:23.270 [SPEAKER_00]: Because I think it’s always an important point to make is that this is not a once and done job.

22:23.650 –> 22:28.635 [SPEAKER_00]: You know, it’s like, this is at every time a new product comes on, every time a new piece of insight comes through.

22:29.315 –> 22:34.120 [SPEAKER_00]: This has to become business issues, it doesn’t it product data quality, and then all those feedback loops.

22:34.940 –> 22:36.020 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, definitely, I think.

22:36.601 –> 22:49.186 [SPEAKER_01]: And those feedback loop, and those, yeah, those work flows stuff you’ve got to set up now, I’d like you to change, because it raises me how much customer language changes in the short space of time when I talk about the same thing.

22:50.426 –> 22:51.167 [SPEAKER_01]: And we could

22:51.987 –> 23:17.343 [SPEAKER_01]: There’s great being at next because there’s so many customers coming on to the site using search that you could see the change is very quickly and yeah astounded me how how much same terminology around dresses would change so quickly when you start moving for the seasons but also just a trending word will start popping up all of a sudden then it just becomes the norm so yeah whatever you’ve got set up now definitely need to review it in the next quarter that’s for sure.

23:20.814 –> 23:25.617 [SPEAKER_02]: Ecommerce Masterplan is supported by some of the greatest companies in the Ecommerce sector.

23:25.737 –> 23:33.861 [SPEAKER_02]: Here’s a reminder of who they are.

23:34.041 –> 23:35.922 [SPEAKER_02]: It’s time for the top tips round.

23:38.484 –> 23:43.707 [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, I love this section because it gives me and our listeners some really quick ideas for taking our businesses to the next level.

23:44.287 –> 23:45.768 [SPEAKER_00]: Jay, are you ready for the top tips?

23:46.774 –> 23:47.034 [SPEAKER_01]: Yes.

23:47.074 –> 23:47.654 [SPEAKER_01]: Let’s go for it.

23:47.874 –> 23:48.195 [SPEAKER_00]: Okay.

23:48.235 –> 23:49.055 [SPEAKER_00]: The book top tip.

23:49.495 –> 23:56.298 [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?

23:57.778 –> 24:03.780 [SPEAKER_01]: Probably the e-miss revisited by Michael Goodberg.

24:03.800 –> 24:04.541 [SPEAKER_01]: Michael Goodberg.

24:04.581 –> 24:05.141 [SPEAKER_01]: That’s the one.

24:05.161 –> 24:05.481 [SPEAKER_01]: Yes.

24:05.721 –> 24:06.021 [SPEAKER_01]: Yes.

24:07.022 –> 24:07.682 [SPEAKER_00]: A classic.

24:08.563 –> 24:16.504 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I, for me, my time of bathroom out in, I kind of went in, set the business, we’re ruining it, we’ll grow them very, very quickly.

24:16.524 –> 24:25.406 [SPEAKER_01]: And obviously it talks about the three different people and their, or three different roles, the technician, the manager, and Donchpona.

24:25.706 –> 24:33.107 [SPEAKER_01]: And as the business grows, I feel like you spend too much time being the technician, trying to get you hands dirty against, okay, and I definitely did.

24:33.167 –> 24:33.587 [SPEAKER_01]: I was doing

24:38.567 –> 24:47.791 [SPEAKER_01]: If you need to focus a bit more on that manager, setting up processes of such a but then you should be setting your early founders should be setting ourselves up that they aren’t needed.

24:48.191 –> 24:53.714 [SPEAKER_01]: Like if all of a sudden you want to take a day off without telling anyone the business still runs smoothly.

24:54.034 –> 25:03.458 [SPEAKER_01]: But then it also means that you actually genuinely have time then to focus on the opportunity it’s how you can grow that business and really sort of really work out what the direction should be.

25:04.433 –> 25:13.880 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it’s such a classic book because it’s got such key core lessons in it and we did have Michael on the show as a guest a while back.

25:13.900 –> 25:23.768 [SPEAKER_00]: So every one this thing I if you’re a Michael Gerbert Emyth fan I will before I finish recording this I will find out the number and of which episode is not let you know before we end this episode.

25:24.568 –> 25:26.010 [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, back to the top tips.

25:26.290 –> 25:31.634 [SPEAKER_00]: Traffic top tip J, which marketing method do you either prize above all others or think doesn’t get the press

25:34.076 –> 25:50.635 [SPEAKER_01]: If you’re in a founder-led business, I actually think that his or her brand, that that personal LinkedIn that Instagram makes such a short, there’s so many founder businesses now that are really building their own brands and really pushing.

25:51.591 –> 26:14.359 [SPEAKER_01]: And I feel like it’s kind of a missed opportunity because it’s free a lot of the time I being back at a retailer like next just a couple of posts on LinkedIn because I was at a retailer all of a sudden the impressions which shoot up because it’s not I’m not trying to sell anything and I think that actually it kind of helped me build a little bit of a

26:15.108 –> 26:25.371 [SPEAKER_01]: a brand around us, a brand product discovery that I’m on LinkedIn and I’d caught a few really good conversations that led a few different, down a few different rabbit holes, but I feel like yeah, focus on that, that found that.

26:25.611 –> 26:39.196 [SPEAKER_01]: If I had my time again with battery mount in, 100% that’s what I do, I would have been, would have forced myself to put my face out there, which I don’t often do, so yeah, I think that would have been one I would have really focused on and draw down on.

26:39.775 –> 26:57.535 [SPEAKER_00]: It’s such a prouver of trust and builder of trust with the customers as well, which has always been, in the other way, our consumer psychology functions, we love, we’re motivated by things we trust, but in this world of increasing AI content.

26:58.335 –> 27:02.317 [SPEAKER_00]: to have that kind of unfaicable content.

27:02.737 –> 27:07.200 [SPEAKER_00]: Everyone, please do not now send me 20 founders who are producing AI Slopper Cross social media.

27:07.460 –> 27:08.340 [SPEAKER_00]: I know they’re out there too.

27:09.081 –> 27:12.282 [SPEAKER_00]: I don’t need them in my inbox, but it’s got,

27:13.603 –> 27:16.186 [SPEAKER_00]: I think that that trust signal becomes even more powerful.

27:16.246 –> 27:18.328 [SPEAKER_00]: So I love that as a traffic top tip.

27:18.868 –> 27:28.797 [SPEAKER_00]: A tall top tip, maybe a collaboration tool, a social media plug-in, a phone app, or just a way of working, is the record little tool you use that makes you and your team more efficient from day to day?

27:28.817 –> 27:33.802 [SPEAKER_01]: Or a bit of a cop-out of an answer, but clawed or checked you B2.

27:34.182 –> 27:38.687 [SPEAKER_01]: And now I know everyone’s using it, but are they using it to it’s

27:39.531 –> 27:40.971 [SPEAKER_01]: four capabilities, definitely not.

27:40.992 –> 27:41.972 [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I don’t think I am.

27:42.012 –> 27:49.214 [SPEAKER_01]: I’m not going to sit here setting, but having it actually connected in to pretty much everything, I think is important.

27:49.434 –> 27:51.335 [SPEAKER_01]: And the now, the integrations are much easier.

27:51.355 –> 27:54.936 [SPEAKER_01]: The SMTPs out there for pretty much anything these days.

27:54.996 –> 28:01.278 [SPEAKER_01]: So having it connected into, I think most people go into the e-miles properly in their calendars etc.

28:01.338 –> 28:06.820 [SPEAKER_01]: but literally everything that if you could pour stuff together, we used to have this huge

28:07.607 –> 28:13.322 [SPEAKER_01]: a bathroom mine is used sweeter tools that we created ourselves within the back end of magento.

28:14.080 –> 28:24.403 [SPEAKER_01]: If I could have had that all connected in and in the morning, I could have wrote a few lines of getting an update, such as, you know, where things are and run a few different workflows that would tell me at 12 o’clock.

28:24.943 –> 28:30.705 [SPEAKER_01]: If we were actually going to hit, getting all the products shipped that day, it would, yeah, it would have been my last so much easier.

28:30.845 –> 28:38.707 [SPEAKER_01]: So, I think just trying to be curious as well, like if you’re using it, what else could I, how else could I utilize?

28:38.727 –> 28:41.487 [SPEAKER_01]: How could I tap it into this, tap it into that, it’s such and the more information you give

28:43.688 –> 28:50.009 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, but probably a bit of a standard answer these days, but one I would definitely have to take more thought.

28:50.029 –> 28:51.110 [SPEAKER_00]: I like it.

28:51.510 –> 28:55.531 [SPEAKER_00]: It comes up not as often as you think as an answer to this question at the moment.

28:55.611 –> 29:01.312 [SPEAKER_00]: I think we’re about a 50-50 at the moment, so definitely still valuable on that basis.

29:01.332 –> 29:04.392 [SPEAKER_00]: If it gets to 100, I might have to start 100% I might have to start banning it.

29:05.953 –> 29:11.434 [SPEAKER_00]: The carbon-top tip, what’s your favourite way to reduce the carbon footprint of an e-commerce store?

29:12.500 –> 29:16.804 [SPEAKER_01]: It’s a bit of a boring tactic like that.

29:16.824 –> 29:25.791 [SPEAKER_01]: I don’t know if people have come here hoping to get some quick wins, except during, and some magic wand kind of formulas, but it’s the boring stuff.

29:25.831 –> 29:30.796 [SPEAKER_01]: Like every week, a battery mountain, we would have a meeting of,

29:31.356 –> 29:40.967 [SPEAKER_01]: these are all our damages, these are all our returns and start to review that data and the damages in the early days we would review every single report of damage.

29:41.568 –> 29:50.217 [SPEAKER_01]: But that meant that we improved that packaging, we improved our pallets that the bathrooms are going out on, not about bathrooms are very breakable, a lot of the

29:51.138 –> 29:54.421 [SPEAKER_01]: So it meant that it saved as money at the end of the day.

29:54.441 –> 29:59.545 [SPEAKER_01]: It saved us having to send out more goods, which meant that we were actually much more efficient on our common footprint.

29:59.565 –> 30:03.528 [SPEAKER_01]: We went down because a lot of the stuff that you get’s broken, it gets for our own skip.

30:03.728 –> 30:05.730 [SPEAKER_01]: So not a lot you can do with it unfortunately.

30:06.371 –> 30:11.635 [SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, reducing that, reduce our current footprint, but also it made the business much more efficient as well.

30:12.322 –> 30:33.874 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think it’s one of those fundamentals that’s easy to forget in e-commerce that if we can sell every product, we manufacture to someone who will love it and make use of it, that is a much lower carbon footprint than if 5% gets smashed, 5% gets returned and just sits in the warehouse for 20 years and 50% of the rest of it sits in someone’s shed.

30:34.274 –> 30:35.134 [SPEAKER_00]: It’s like, it’s,

30:36.455 –> 30:56.273 [SPEAKER_00]: it’s not actually that complicated and of course then if you get that right then your business grows because people love your product they tell other people there’s you’re not spending so much money on waste of stock because I think that’s a really good answer and Jay before we say goodbye could you please let this know where they can find you but also tell us a little bit about your new exciting role

30:57.030 –> 30:57.431 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, sure.

30:57.451 –> 31:06.702 [SPEAKER_01]: So I’ve all before me on LinkedIn, it’s J. O’Neill, and so yeah, my new role is at a product discovery SaaS business called constructor.

31:07.431 –> 31:11.173 [SPEAKER_01]: And actually, I’m now focused heavily on actually enrichment.

31:11.193 –> 31:31.761 [SPEAKER_01]: So build that actually enrichment tools, pretty much everyone talks about today, it’s actually lined up quite nicely as my new role, but it’s, I guess, the last few years I’ve been focused on that and it’s been an area of interest of mine, so it’s kind of worked out quite well that, yeah, this new role is around that script enrichment, and then, yeah, utilising that across all of the constructs of tools.

31:32.417 –> 31:32.918 [SPEAKER_00]: very cool.

31:32.938 –> 31:35.080 [SPEAKER_00]: Well, I wish you all the best in the new role.

31:35.241 –> 31:37.403 [SPEAKER_00]: And hopefully we’ll get the catch up again soon.

31:37.423 –> 31:37.904 [SPEAKER_00]: Well, it’s day.

31:38.204 –> 31:41.629 [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you so much being on the podcast and giving us a deep dive into product discovery.

31:41.669 –> 31:42.810 [SPEAKER_00]: We really appreciate it.

31:43.471 –> 31:44.332 [SPEAKER_01]: I’ll have me again, Chloe.

31:50.253 –> 31:57.523 [SPEAKER_00]: So is it wrong to say that my biggest takeaway from that is that there is no quick fix for good product discoverability?

31:58.224 –> 32:00.387 [SPEAKER_00]: It’s about doing all the things well.

32:00.867 –> 32:03.832 [SPEAKER_00]: It’s about getting your product information right.

32:03.932 –> 32:04.933 [SPEAKER_00]: It’s about getting

32:05.774 –> 32:07.816 [SPEAKER_00]: You’re product information right constantly.

32:07.896 –> 32:09.998 [SPEAKER_00]: It’s about watching those trends as they come in.

32:10.038 –> 32:24.732 [SPEAKER_00]: It’s then about setting up and optimizing those text acts and working with your partners at those text acts to make sure you are delivering the best possible experience for the customers as things change and how they refer to things and how they expect things and how they want to interact with you.

32:25.432 –> 32:27.453 [SPEAKER_00]: So lots for you all to get stuck into there.

32:27.473 –> 32:33.375 [SPEAKER_00]: Hopefully that’s given you all some clarity, because I’m sure many of you are working on product data and product discoverability at the moment.

32:33.835 –> 32:41.038 [SPEAKER_00]: You get your hands on our notes from this episode, including those top tips and the things we mentioned by heading over to ecommercemasterplanned.com.

32:41.578 –> 32:49.683 [SPEAKER_00]: You can also use redirected episode short links, that’s ECMP.info for such the number of the episode and that will take you straight to the right page of the site.

32:50.203 –> 32:57.327 [SPEAKER_00]: When you get there you can also add yourself to our email list so you don’t miss out on any of the other things I share to help you improve your business.

32:58.127 –> 33:12.366 [SPEAKER_00]: If you like this episode, then make sure you check out our previous chat with Jay, which is episode 527, which is all about his past experience scaling businesses from 7 to 8 figures, and it was one of our top five most listened to episodes in 2025.

33:13.748 –> 33:35.565 [SPEAKER_00]: So, you’re sure of good insight in that one, and if you are a Michael Gerber, Emyth Fan, then you can hear me and him chatting in episode number 89, so a long time ago, and we come quite close to disagreeing, so it’s quite an interesting lesson from that perspective, if none of us, that’s episode 89 where I’m chatting to Michael Gerber of the Emyth.

33:36.279 –> 33:40.683 [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for tuning into this and every episode that you do of the e-commerce master plan podcast.

33:41.103 –> 33:50.852 [SPEAKER_00]: I bring you a new interview every week to help it inspire you to succeed and thrive with your business, including encouraging businesses and consumers to make more sustainable buying decisions.

33:51.352 –> 33:56.657 [SPEAKER_00]: So if you know someone this show can help, please tell them to listen to the e-commerce master plan podcast.

33:57.197 –> 33:59.960 [SPEAKER_00]: I hope you have a great week and don’t forget to keep optimizing.

34:03.586 –> 34:06.910 [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you for listening to the e-commerce Master Plan podcast.

34:07.351 –> 34:12.237 [SPEAKER_02]: Find out more at e-commercemasterplanned.com slash podcast.

Janis shares how Clothes Doctor has built a multi-channel growth engine while staying focused on making clothing care easier and more sustainable. She also reveals the marketing lessons, challenges and opportunities that come with scaling a fast-growing eCommerce brand beyond its Shopify store. 

Hit PLAY to hear: 

• Why adding a subscription isn’t enough — and the question you should ask first 
• How to attract higher-quality customers who stick around 
• How Clothes Doctor uses AI to do more with a small team 
• Janis’s approach to getting better results from ChatGPT 
• Why sustainability alone may not be enough to win new customers 
• How two very different subscription products can drive growth in the same business 

Key timestamps to dive straight in: 

[03:55] Challenges in media subscriptions 

[07:04] Caring for clothes longevity 

[11:28] Using Sidekick with Shopify 

[14:35] Launching Seasonal Care Subscription Box 

[17:30] Discussing laundry product varieties 

[20:38] Joining a sustainable brand 

[24:29] Listen to Janis’s Top Tips! 

Full episode notes here: https://ecmp.info/612

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00:00.628 –> 00:17.665 [SPEAKER_00]: I’m hoping to see it, a resurgence in PR, I think, particularly as people are thinking about optimizing for AI agents and, you know, kind of AI search and all of those things, how you position yourself in the marketplace, how people talk about you is increasingly important.

00:20.263 –> 00:22.647 [SPEAKER_02]: It’s the e-commerce master plan podcast.

00:23.188 –> 00:27.274 [SPEAKER_02]: Here to help you solve your marketing problems and grow your e-commerce business.

00:27.795 –> 00:35.587 [SPEAKER_02]: Cutting through the highly to bring you inspiration and advice from the e-commerce sector and beyond, here’s your host, Chloe Thomas.

00:38.937 –> 00:40.138 [SPEAKER_01]: Hello and welcome.

00:40.158 –> 00:41.319 [SPEAKER_01]: It’s great to have you here.

00:41.399 –> 00:45.122 [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you for hitting play and choosing to listen to one of our inspiring guests.

00:45.642 –> 00:48.384 [SPEAKER_01]: In this episode we’ve got one of our regular guests back on.

00:48.444 –> 00:53.227 [SPEAKER_01]: Yes, Janice Thomas is here for our first chat about her new role at Clothes Doctor.

00:53.568 –> 00:56.970 [SPEAKER_01]: And before anyone says it’s nepotism, we’re not related.

00:57.210 –> 00:59.492 [SPEAKER_01]: The surname is just a coincidence.

00:59.592 –> 01:04.836 [SPEAKER_01]: Janice is back because she always brings great insights to the show this time we are talking about

01:05.496 –> 01:08.638 [SPEAKER_01]: sustainability and eco products are why that fits in the marketing mix.

01:08.678 –> 01:14.321 [SPEAKER_01]: We’re getting into the different types of subscription and how to build and grow subscription businesses.

01:15.122 –> 01:25.228 [SPEAKER_01]: Our subscription products are there and we will also be talking about how she is using AI within the marketing team at closed doctor.

01:25.768 –> 01:28.930 [SPEAKER_01]: Please isn’t the other of the episodes you don’t miss out on her top tips either.

01:34.740 –> 01:36.640 [SPEAKER_01]: And now to introduce our special guest.

01:37.141 –> 01:46.283 [SPEAKER_01]: Janice Thomas is the CMO at Clothe Stockter, a fast-growing UK clothing care brand selling premium laundry and fabric care products.

01:46.643 –> 01:52.584 [SPEAKER_01]: Founded in 2017, they are now a seven-figure business selling via wholesale, Amazon, and their Shopify store.

01:52.764 –> 01:53.604 [SPEAKER_01]: Hello, Janice.

01:54.005 –> 01:54.765 [SPEAKER_00]: Hello, Chloe.

01:54.825 –> 01:55.665 [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for having me.

01:56.325 –> 01:59.167 [SPEAKER_01]: as always an absolute pleasure to have you on the show.

01:59.727 –> 02:01.188 [SPEAKER_01]: And this is your fourth time.

02:01.208 –> 02:07.492 [SPEAKER_01]: So I was kind of racking my brains with your help to be fair, to work out what my first question should you be to you.

02:07.512 –> 02:09.133 [SPEAKER_01]: Because you know, how do you get into your comments?

02:09.153 –> 02:10.353 [SPEAKER_01]: We’ve definitely really covered that.

02:10.593 –> 02:18.338 [SPEAKER_01]: But as you suggested, and as it’s quite likely to be a theme of this episode’s description, how did you end up working in the world of subscription?

02:19.492 –> 02:25.697 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so funny enough, when I graduated, I went to work for a big Fz100 retailer.

02:26.297 –> 02:31.001 [SPEAKER_00]: So it was an incredibly commercial numbers driven environment.

02:31.701 –> 02:35.884 [SPEAKER_00]: And so really when I left there, I went to work for News International.

02:35.964 –> 02:46.592 [SPEAKER_00]: And because I’ve come from this very commercial numbers driven basis, it enabled me to kind of segue into subscriptions like really naturally, because everything is about the numbers

02:47.413 –> 02:48.453 [SPEAKER_00]: and all of those things.

02:48.493 –> 02:56.515 [SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, I spent six years at News International publishing, then I went to work for Playboy.

02:57.096 –> 03:08.339 [SPEAKER_00]: I then went on to build one of the streaming platforms in the UK, even before Netflix was doing streaming and basically spent more than a decade in Median Entertainment

03:10.119 –> 03:24.591 [SPEAKER_00]: And then I went to work for Birch Box, who recognized that while they could get people who understood beauty, who understood e-commerce, getting someone from a very, very strong subscription background could really, really help them grow their business.

03:25.392 –> 03:32.818 [SPEAKER_00]: And from that, I kind of transitioned into straight e-com, but then in November last year I came back to

03:36.014 –> 03:36.854 [SPEAKER_01]: excellent news.

03:37.275 –> 03:54.743 [SPEAKER_01]: So having spent so long in media subscription where there is a admittedly a lot of the time of physical product, not always a physical product, there’s also a physical product, how different is e-commerce subscription, if we can call it that, if one of the better phrase, to media subscription, is it different?

03:55.823 –> 03:59.585 [SPEAKER_00]: I think a lot of things are the same.

03:59.685 –> 04:13.810 [SPEAKER_00]: I think the things that make media subscription difficult, which is mostly around getting people to use the product because they paid for it, but it’s actually about consumption.

04:14.651 –> 04:20.533 [SPEAKER_00]: That’s the specific challenge for media subscriptions that you don’t tend to find with physical product.

04:20.773 –> 04:32.700 [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, you do a little bit because certainly a bird box like our primary reason for cancellation is what we called sampled out is that you had so much product and that you needed to take a break for a while.

04:32.720 –> 04:33.900 [SPEAKER_00]: So there are even there.

04:33.920 –> 04:36.942 [SPEAKER_00]: There are parallels with it.

04:37.182 –> 04:39.563 [SPEAKER_00]: But I think particularly when I went to

04:40.624 –> 04:45.388 [SPEAKER_00]: the metrics in a subscription business are absolutely crucial.

04:45.448 –> 04:46.870 [SPEAKER_00]: They call it the leaky bucket.

04:47.350 –> 04:57.659 [SPEAKER_00]: Like the whole idea is that you’ve got to have a certain amount of acquisition coming in, but you’re always going to be losing a certain amount of your customer base.

04:58.240 –> 05:07.388 [SPEAKER_00]: And it’s all about how do you maximize those kind of what goes in, what happens when they’re there and what happens when they leave.

05:08.128 –> 05:28.421 [SPEAKER_00]: that is universal to any subscription business and certainly for me actually really helped to applying those principles to a straight e-com business as well because there’s so much you can learn about particularly in subscription, there is no point acquiring a poor quality customer.

05:28.761 –> 05:36.067 [SPEAKER_00]: somebody who’s going to cancel, somebody who’s not going to stay, you’re going to very, very quickly have a business that is in trouble.

05:36.787 –> 05:45.273 [SPEAKER_00]: So applying that to a straight e-com business where you’re like, actually, I just, I don’t want to just acquire customers at volume.

05:45.433 –> 05:56.842 [SPEAKER_00]: I want to acquire quality customers who are going to come back, who are going to advocate for the brand and all of those things are really, really useful principles to then apply to straight e-com business.

05:57.460 –> 06:03.711 [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I think often in the world of straight e-com people go, how are we going to increase revenue?

06:03.831 –> 06:05.414 [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, we’ll slap a subscription on it.

06:05.935 –> 06:07.377 [SPEAKER_01]: And it’s, it’s,

06:08.627 –> 06:21.594 [SPEAKER_01]: When you want to start on picking it, actually, subscription is as different a business model as selling on marketplaces or opening a physical store to you buy, you go, you come as you know, straight forward, you come as isn’t it?

06:21.614 –> 06:30.118 [SPEAKER_01]: It is a completely different set of messaging, techniques, software, et cetera, et cetera, a completely different business model.

06:30.718 –> 06:38.945 [SPEAKER_00]: And I think as you’ve alluded to, where businesses get into trouble is I want to launch a subscription to my product.

06:39.325 –> 06:45.070 [SPEAKER_00]: Rather than why would customers subscribe to this, why is this a subscription business?

06:45.630 –> 06:47.412 [SPEAKER_00]: That’s where things tend to go.

06:47.432 –> 06:48.293 [SPEAKER_00]: All right.

06:48.833 –> 06:48.993 [SPEAKER_01]: Cool.

06:49.013 –> 06:52.739 [SPEAKER_01]: Well, I want to get into what you’ve been up to at close.

06:52.759 –> 06:55.843 [SPEAKER_01]: Do you’ve been there for about nine months at the time of recording?

06:56.163 –> 07:00.509 [SPEAKER_01]: So let’s just update the audience a bit on what close doctor actually is.

07:00.549 –> 07:03.073 [SPEAKER_01]: So where in the world are you and where are you selling to?

07:03.701 –> 07:12.384 [SPEAKER_00]: Yes, so we sell worldwide to be fair on Shopify, but we are predominantly UK because we are based in the UK.

07:13.064 –> 07:25.087 [SPEAKER_00]: And in terms of what we’re doing, I think this ties into that kind of subscription that we’ve always been about caring for your clothes and keeping them looking new for longer.

07:25.107 –> 07:31.629 [SPEAKER_00]: And ultimately that came from a founder, Lulu’s frustration with that kind of fast, fashion,

07:33.850 –> 07:44.334 [SPEAKER_00]: But it’s not just, oh, you should be buying quality clothes that last, but actually how you treat those clothes has a massive impact on how long they last.

07:44.614 –> 07:47.216 [SPEAKER_00]: But it’s not something we ever really think about.

07:47.256 –> 07:54.478 [SPEAKER_00]: We’re just like, oh, I wear something and I put it in the wash. We don’t think about, oh, should I wash that?

07:54.959 –> 08:02.582 [SPEAKER_00]: You know, and if I don’t wash it, how do I make sure it feels nice when I put it on next time?

08:04.046 –> 08:13.435 [SPEAKER_00]: But then if you are gonna wash stuff, then I mean, now I’ve worked in the business, you know, how you can’t unsee something once you’ve seen it.

08:13.775 –> 08:26.007 [SPEAKER_00]: And it’s just like even like eco detergent, it’s like a big plastic bottle that is 90% water and then the remaining ingredients is mostly filler.

08:26.547 –> 08:29.829 [SPEAKER_00]: and it’s like, how, why are we buying these products?

08:30.289 –> 08:51.201 [SPEAKER_00]: And so we specifically came up with a solution to that, which is called everyday laundry, with the when you are going to wash your clothes that you do that in a much more sustainable, effective way there’s better for your clothes, but also that whole kind of piece around that you don’t always need to wash your clothes and how should you

08:53.622 –> 08:53.982 [SPEAKER_01]: got you.

08:54.022 –> 09:02.628 [SPEAKER_01]: So all about extending the life of our clothes and helping us have less impact on the environment with how we manage our clothes as opposed.

09:03.709 –> 09:06.290 [SPEAKER_01]: So what does the team look like?

09:06.310 –> 09:07.931 [SPEAKER_01]: Are you doing everything in hell?

09:07.951 –> 09:10.273 [SPEAKER_01]: So there are many of you, if you’re out of your outsourced.

09:10.857 –> 09:13.478 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, we are very small.

09:13.518 –> 09:31.345 [SPEAKER_00]: In fact, we’ve been on quite a journey since I’ve joined around slimming down our agency profile, doing more stuff in-house and particularly using AI tools rather than agency, and we become a lot more self-sufficient.

09:31.385 –> 09:34.927 [SPEAKER_00]: And I think it’s taught me so much about

09:35.927 –> 09:51.871 [SPEAKER_00]: what you can do and what you can do yourself as well, that particularly for me personally, using AI tools for things where I would have generally had a fairly senior experience.

09:57.993 –> 10:21.300 [SPEAKER_00]: How would I brief that team member and how would I have evaluated their output and using AI tools in that place has been really really interesting because we are a small business a small team and if we want to grow then we need to grow the business without significantly increasing our head count and our fixed costs.

10:22.445 –> 10:25.726 [SPEAKER_01]: So I have to ask you some AI advice here.

10:26.046 –> 10:32.427 [SPEAKER_01]: What key tools, key problems to solve with it, or anything you’ve discovered just don’t even try?

10:33.688 –> 10:45.471 [SPEAKER_00]: Honestly, the biggest thing that I’ve found that is the most useful is genuinely thinking about the tools as you would a team member.

10:45.631 –> 10:48.491 [SPEAKER_00]: Like, what information would you provide them with?

10:48.571 –> 10:50.772 [SPEAKER_00]: What feedback would you give them?

10:51.752 –> 10:52.972 [SPEAKER_00]: how would you treat them?

10:52.992 –> 11:06.735 [SPEAKER_00]: And I think particularly, you know, I was having a conversation with a colleague the other day about I think she called it reverse prompt engineering where you’re asking the tool, what does it need to know in order to do this task?

11:06.855 –> 11:17.077 [SPEAKER_00]: Well, and I’d kind of already figured that out organically myself because that’s how I would work with a team member would be like,

11:22.419 –> 11:22.939 [SPEAKER_01]: I like that.

11:23.019 –> 11:26.642 [SPEAKER_01]: Are you using just using a Claude or a chat GPT or something?

11:26.682 –> 11:28.323 [SPEAKER_01]: Are you using other things?

11:28.423 –> 11:31.666 [SPEAKER_00]: We’re just using, I mean, there are specific things.

11:31.726 –> 11:38.091 [SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, sidekick in Shopify is so incredibly useful.

11:38.451 –> 11:42.875 [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, particularly for me because I’ve never ever worked on Shopify before.

11:43.435 –> 11:46.458 [SPEAKER_00]: So just being able to say, oh, what’s this?

11:47.018 –> 11:48.219 [SPEAKER_00]: particular data point.

11:48.359 –> 11:49.500 [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, how do I use this?

11:49.540 –> 11:50.581 [SPEAKER_00]: Where do I find this?

11:51.061 –> 12:04.151 [SPEAKER_00]: You know, and now getting to the point where I’m working with sidekick to do some quite ongoing projects, like really saying, okay, how are we going to forecast our revenue this month?

12:04.671 –> 12:07.453 [SPEAKER_00]: Like, what would you, like, what data points would you look at?

12:07.493 –> 12:08.934 [SPEAKER_00]: What do we need to be thinking about?

12:09.014 –> 12:09.875 [SPEAKER_00]: All of those things?

12:10.375 –> 12:14.278 [SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, I mean, sidekick is amazing and so helpful.

12:14.318 –> 12:15.059 [SPEAKER_00]: Somebody who’s never

12:16.958 –> 12:17.318 [SPEAKER_01]: nice.

12:17.438 –> 12:34.407 [SPEAKER_01]: And when it comes to the marketing stuff for you, mainly using AI to create graphics, videos, copy, that sort of thing, or you’re using it to analyze reports or to plan strategies, what sort of things are you having it doing for you?

12:35.447 –> 12:55.043 [SPEAKER_00]: all of those things, like sometimes it’s a sounding board, you know, and again, it comes back to that idea of like, how would I work with a team member on this, like particularly, you know, for email, I work with a freelancer who is a Clavio expert who builds and sends my emails for me.

12:55.503 –> 12:57.605 [SPEAKER_00]: But technically, I write them.

12:57.806 –> 12:59.568 [SPEAKER_00]: I don’t actually write them myself.

13:00.048 –> 13:01.389 [SPEAKER_00]: I’m working with chatGPT.

13:01.450 –> 13:05.454 [SPEAKER_00]: I’m working on a brief, you know, will evaluate, will go back and forth.

13:05.514 –> 13:16.686 [SPEAKER_00]: And my mother-in-law, who is an ex-English language and English literature teacher, said to me the other day about how much she loved her emails and how beautifully written they were.

13:16.706 –> 13:17.087 [SPEAKER_00]: And I was like,

13:17.647 –> 13:17.967 [SPEAKER_00]: Nice.

13:18.188 –> 13:20.990 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it’s that comfort to hold AI slot thing.

13:21.010 –> 13:40.767 [SPEAKER_00]: It’s like, yeah, if you just say right me an email, then you’re going to get absolute rubbish, but if you’re working continuously with like on improving the the prompt that you’re putting in that you’re giving feedback, it’s having the opportunity to learn then over time you are going to get much better quality outputs.

13:41.701 –> 13:56.428 [SPEAKER_01]: love that thank you site site side by there but I figure the audience will really have wanted to hear that so yeah so back to subscriptions then would I be right in assuming one of the reasons you were bought in was to help bring subscription to the business.

13:57.448 –> 14:06.932 [SPEAKER_00]: So subscription was already live when I joined that we have two core subscription products.

14:07.412 –> 14:10.933 [SPEAKER_00]: One is we call it a seasonal sentence and protect box.

14:11.394 –> 14:18.936 [SPEAKER_00]: So basically every three months we send you a box of different things that care for your clothes this season.

14:18.957 –> 14:19.477 [SPEAKER_00]: So right now.

14:20.357 –> 14:22.439 [SPEAKER_00]: we’re in peak moff season.

14:22.820 –> 14:28.266 [SPEAKER_00]: So we’ll send you very low moff traps to, you know, keep them off the way from your clothes.

14:28.326 –> 14:30.248 [SPEAKER_00]: We’ll send you sent bags.

14:30.288 –> 14:32.250 [SPEAKER_00]: We’ll send you draw liners.

14:32.330 –> 14:35.613 [SPEAKER_00]: We’ll send you a specialist and it weren’t a delicates detergent.

14:35.954 –> 14:42.261 [SPEAKER_00]: Like we’re sending you the things that you need right now to take care of your clothes for this season.

14:42.781 –> 14:51.070 [SPEAKER_00]: So that launched in April 2025, so that’s been going just over a year, and that’s a quarterly subscription box.

14:51.270 –> 14:57.557 [SPEAKER_00]: And then end of September 2025, we launched every day laundry.

14:57.917 –> 14:58.057 [SPEAKER_00]: So

14:59.018 –> 15:02.621 [SPEAKER_00]: I said how broken the laundry system is.

15:02.901 –> 15:09.706 [SPEAKER_00]: So every day laundry says, okay, I don’t want a big plastic bottle filled with water.

15:09.826 –> 15:10.987 [SPEAKER_00]: How does it work instead?

15:11.007 –> 15:11.768 [SPEAKER_00]: So it’s okay.

15:12.429 –> 15:16.752 [SPEAKER_00]: We’re going to send you two beautiful refillable glass bottles.

15:17.172 –> 15:20.715 [SPEAKER_00]: And then we’re going to send you little detergent and fabric softener.

15:21.155 –> 15:28.720 [SPEAKER_00]: concentrates in the post, in a little letter box size thing, you put them in your glass bottle and you dilute them at home.

15:29.160 –> 15:35.464 [SPEAKER_00]: So you don’t have any of that wastage, you have no artificial thickeners and fillers.

15:35.724 –> 15:37.545 [SPEAKER_00]: It’s all essential oil.

15:37.865 –> 15:42.728 [SPEAKER_00]: Since there’s no microplastics, I didn’t know that, you know, you see all these ads.

15:42.768 –> 15:46.911 [SPEAKER_00]: They’re like, oh, you know, the fabric softness smell lost for two weeks.

15:47.291 –> 15:48.132 [SPEAKER_00]: Do you know how they do that?

15:48.612 –> 15:53.593 [SPEAKER_00]: they put little microplastic beads of fragrance that burst over time.

15:53.613 –> 15:56.554 [SPEAKER_00]: So, exactly.

15:56.574 –> 15:59.975 [SPEAKER_00]: And I think this is what the kind of thing that’s most people don’t know.

16:00.555 –> 16:05.976 [SPEAKER_00]: So, everyday laundry, nice, refillable, completely different way of doing things.

16:06.516 –> 16:08.577 [SPEAKER_00]: And that launched September last year.

16:08.917 –> 16:13.858 [SPEAKER_00]: And those two products now account for most of our revenue.

16:14.318 –> 16:33.363 [SPEAKER_00]: and they are very much two products that there’s a reason why you subscribe to this that, you know, in the case of centre protect, we’re going to send you exactly what you need every quarter and in terms of everyday laundry, it’s like once you’ve bought into the refillable system, you know, the little box of refills just comes, let a box size through the most.

16:34.263 –> 16:36.923 [SPEAKER_01]: Got you, but there are two very different products, aren’t they?

16:36.943 –> 16:38.504 [SPEAKER_01]: Like one is your

16:39.519 –> 16:40.920 [SPEAKER_01]: Reef literally your refills.

16:41.020 –> 16:42.061 [SPEAKER_01]: Your refills are just come.

16:42.101 –> 16:42.922 [SPEAKER_01]: So you don’t have to worry about it.

16:42.942 –> 16:50.209 [SPEAKER_01]: You’ve always got them there, very straightforward boring in the nicest possible way subscription.

16:50.649 –> 16:55.013 [SPEAKER_01]: And then you’ve essentially got much more similar to the Birch book system you’re running.

16:55.073 –> 16:58.616 [SPEAKER_01]: It’s not a surprise what you get, but different things come each quarter.

16:59.157 –> 17:02.700 [SPEAKER_01]: And it’s a more elongated subscription piece as well, which

17:03.160 –> 17:11.687 [SPEAKER_01]: I would assume the warehouse have kind of a couple of manic weeks where they’re bringing all the boxes together and they all go out in one massive truck load.

17:12.127 –> 17:17.912 [SPEAKER_01]: Whereas the refills are every day there’s going to be some of those going out depending on how people are managing their subscriptions.

17:17.932 –> 17:28.821 [SPEAKER_01]: So they’re still two very different products to be managing in the business presumably with very different marketing to sell them, get the retention and the consumption going

17:30.850 –> 17:44.369 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, absolutely, because there is a customer, particularly you’re more likely to go for sentimentate if you’ve got a lot of high quality clothes, and particularly you’ve got a lot of cashmere and kind of all of that stuff that needs careful care.

17:44.690 –> 17:47.013 [SPEAKER_00]: Whereas anyone who washes their clothes,

17:47.634 –> 17:49.215 [SPEAKER_00]: could use everyday laundry.

17:49.855 –> 18:04.905 [SPEAKER_00]: And while they both have a kind of different sustainability angle, they are for slightly, you know, there isn’t overlap between them, but they are slightly different propositions and kind of how you’re talking about them and all of those things are very different.

18:04.945 –> 18:05.245 [SPEAKER_00]: And I think

18:05.605 –> 18:09.690 [SPEAKER_00]: that they both exist for a really specific reason.

18:10.471 –> 18:19.181 [SPEAKER_00]: And I think the reason why they kind of dominate our sales is this is there’s a reason why you would subscribe to this product.

18:19.581 –> 18:25.428 [SPEAKER_00]: The other things that we do like you know you might you know for example we’ve got a great spray

18:25.808 –> 18:27.389 [SPEAKER_00]: that means you don’t have to iron your clothes.

18:27.409 –> 18:28.370 [SPEAKER_00]: We call it crease release.

18:28.470 –> 18:30.371 [SPEAKER_00]: It’s like, you know, don’t need to iron your clothes.

18:30.391 –> 18:32.432 [SPEAKER_00]: Just give it a quick spritz and a stretch out.

18:32.472 –> 18:33.433 [SPEAKER_00]: And it looks great.

18:33.733 –> 18:35.554 [SPEAKER_00]: You might be the kind of person who uses that every day.

18:35.614 –> 18:38.857 [SPEAKER_00]: You might be the kind of person who uses it once in a blue moon.

18:39.577 –> 18:41.959 [SPEAKER_00]: It’s very different when we’re selling single product.

18:41.979 –> 18:46.321 [SPEAKER_00]: To when subscription is like, no, these two products is the reason why you were subscribed.

18:46.642 –> 18:49.784 [SPEAKER_00]: And there’s a reason why you’ll continue to subscribe to them.

18:49.924 –> 18:54.527 [SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, you know, kind of from a business and marketing perspective, they are very, very different.

18:55.372 –> 18:56.013 [SPEAKER_01]: keeps you busy.

18:58.654 –> 19:09.482 [SPEAKER_01]: So with those three different, we think we’ve kind of got the discovery box, we’ve got the quarterly box, we’ve got the refills and then we’ve got the one off products.

19:11.316 –> 19:13.677 [SPEAKER_01]: That makes your life as the CMO.

19:14.277 –> 19:23.121 [SPEAKER_01]: More interesting, so I might say more complicated, so I might say, with potentially slightly different customer sectors for each different marketing cadences for each.

19:23.261 –> 19:30.204 [SPEAKER_01]: How do you work out where, you know, how to keep your focus on all three, I suppose?

19:30.224 –> 19:31.945 [SPEAKER_01]: I’m guessing, you know, it’s not like this week.

19:32.005 –> 19:34.186 [SPEAKER_01]: We do boxes, this week, we do refills.

19:34.626 –> 19:38.968 [SPEAKER_01]: But how do you keep them all front of mind when they’re so, such different beasts?

19:41.821 –> 20:00.327 [SPEAKER_00]: that’s part of the reason why I enjoy this challenge because it is like these different strands that you’re kind of pulling in from time to time where there are jobs where I’ve worked where it feels like there’s an annual cycle, you’re like,

20:00.927 –> 20:09.411 [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, and we do this in January and we do this in February and we do this in March and and once you’ve been through that cycle a couple of times, it very quickly gets boring.

20:09.911 –> 20:17.334 [SPEAKER_00]: Whereas what I like about what I’m doing is like, there’s, and particularly because we are such a small team, there’s always more that we could be doing.

20:17.374 –> 20:21.676 [SPEAKER_00]: There’s always, you know, kind of, like, you think of something like email automations.

20:21.916 –> 20:26.138 [SPEAKER_00]: There’s always, always more layers to that that we could be doing.

20:26.178 –> 20:29.059 [SPEAKER_00]: We could always be fine tuning it and making more sophisticated

20:30.961 –> 20:37.396 [SPEAKER_00]: So for me, that’s actually part of the appeal is I get to do something new and different every day.

20:38.409 –> 20:38.709 [SPEAKER_01]: nice.

20:38.949 –> 20:45.852 [SPEAKER_01]: And the other, I’ve just actually subscription isn’t a new thing for you in this role, because it’s very much the thing you’ve returned to.

20:45.912 –> 20:52.414 [SPEAKER_01]: And guys, if you could listen to if you could see Janist now, she’s grinning from ear to ear about being back in subscription.

20:52.434 –> 20:54.735 [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, there’s nothing small about that smile.

20:55.056 –> 21:02.879 [SPEAKER_01]: But the new thing I suppose about this role is it’s the first time you’ve really worked to the brand who care about sustainability in a big way.

21:03.039 –> 21:06.240 [SPEAKER_01]: I’m sure many of the other businesses you worked for didn’t ignore it, but

21:06.640 –> 21:10.304 [SPEAKER_01]: but it’s the first time you’ve worked at one which has been eco as such.

21:10.664 –> 21:13.507 [SPEAKER_01]: How have you found that to be different?

21:15.041 –> 21:17.382 [SPEAKER_00]: I think it’s really interesting.

21:17.402 –> 21:23.864 [SPEAKER_00]: And I think I’ve heard from a lot of my colleagues in e-commerce, kind of similar stories.

21:23.964 –> 21:29.386 [SPEAKER_00]: It’s just like, you would think that e-co should be the primary message.

21:29.866 –> 21:38.409 [SPEAKER_00]: But it’s always, no, it’s got to be convenience, or it’s got to be, we keep your clothes looking you for longer, or whatever it might be.

21:38.849 –> 21:42.710 [SPEAKER_00]: And the e-co is the thing that underpins it.

21:43.090 –> 21:49.972 [SPEAKER_00]: like the thing about microplastics, it’s like, you know, I feel like just telling people, do you know your fabric softeners got microplastics in?

21:50.412 –> 21:55.634 [SPEAKER_00]: Should make everyone go like, ah, no, I need to switch straight away, but it doesn’t.

21:56.674 –> 21:57.594 [SPEAKER_01]: Indeed, indeed.

21:57.674 –> 21:58.635 [SPEAKER_01]: It’s kind of weird, isn’t it?

21:59.595 –> 22:04.516 [SPEAKER_01]: The there was a brief window when sustainability could be a USP.

22:05.397 –> 22:06.557 [SPEAKER_01]: And now it’s more of a

22:08.049 –> 22:24.720 [SPEAKER_01]: not a tickboxing exercise, but a lot of the brands we’ve had on, when I’ve asked this question, it’s been, we talk about how great the product is up front, and then once we’ve got the customer, then we educate them about the sustainability afterwards as kind of a retention metric.

22:24.780 –> 22:28.583 [SPEAKER_01]: Is that how you’re seeing it fit in at a closed doctor?

22:29.497 –> 22:34.460 [SPEAKER_00]: I think the problem with laundry is it’s total system one thinking.

22:34.761 –> 22:38.884 [SPEAKER_00]: It’s the thing that you just never would consider changing your habit.

22:39.184 –> 22:42.906 [SPEAKER_00]: So we have to give you a reason to change your habit.

22:43.006 –> 22:48.911 [SPEAKER_00]: And just your clothes are cleaner, they smell fresher, they stay looking new for longer.

22:49.351 –> 22:51.773 [SPEAKER_00]: Like all of those things are important.

22:52.473 –> 22:58.821 [SPEAKER_00]: but you’ve got to be bought into no I actually want to do things differently to how I’ve done them historically.

22:59.262 –> 23:10.276 [SPEAKER_00]: So for us, while it’s not the only thing or the primary thing, it’s a really important part of the acquisition journey.

23:11.297 –> 23:11.637 [SPEAKER_01]: got you.

23:11.877 –> 23:18.000 [SPEAKER_01]: And looking to the next nine months or longer or shorter, completely up to you.

23:18.340 –> 23:22.642 [SPEAKER_01]: But what are you looking forward to and you excited about coming up at closed doctor?

23:24.924 –> 23:29.586 [SPEAKER_00]: You mentioned earlier the idea of like the sentence and protect the quarterly box.

23:29.766 –> 23:33.348 [SPEAKER_00]: It being like, oh, it’s got that surprise and delight element.

23:33.528 –> 23:37.590 [SPEAKER_00]: And that’s something that we’ve always wanted to bring to everyday laundry.

23:37.610 –> 23:40.192 [SPEAKER_00]: And that’s always been part of the plan.

23:40.772 –> 23:47.755 [SPEAKER_00]: And we have just launched our first limited edition seasonal laundry scent.

23:48.656 –> 23:50.577 [SPEAKER_00]: And that is really exciting.

23:53.398 –> 24:09.828 [SPEAKER_00]: I think for a five more in the pipeline for the next kind of year or so, and I’m just so excited to bring some of that surprise and delight element to what seems like quite a dull category.

24:11.809 –> 24:16.612 [SPEAKER_02]: Ecommerce Masterplan is supported by some of the greatest companies in the Ecommerce sector.

24:16.732 –> 24:18.033 [SPEAKER_02]: Here’s a reminder of who they are.

24:24.692 –> 24:26.873 [SPEAKER_02]: It’s time for the top tips round.

24:29.455 –> 24:34.377 [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, I love this section because it gives me an list of some really quick ideas for taking our businesses to the next level.

24:34.417 –> 24:36.098 [SPEAKER_01]: Janice, are you ready for the top tips?

24:36.718 –> 24:37.018 [SPEAKER_00]: I am.

24:37.559 –> 24:38.799 [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, the book top tip.

24:38.959 –> 24:43.822 [SPEAKER_01]: If everyone listening to this podcast agreed to take Friday off and read a book to make their business better.

24:43.942 –> 24:45.463 [SPEAKER_01]: Which book would you recommend?

24:46.577 –> 25:02.825 [SPEAKER_00]: I would choose Adam Grant’s think again because it does literally make you think about those decisions that you make on autopilot and how to do things better, and I think everyone could use that thinking.

25:03.826 –> 25:13.470 [SPEAKER_01]: A bit like laundry, apart from everything else, but yeah, traffic top tip, which marketing method do you either prize above all others or think doesn’t get the press

25:15.307 –> 25:17.389 [SPEAKER_00]: I’m going to go for PR right now.

25:17.529 –> 25:31.739 [SPEAKER_00]: I think that’s just something that, particularly with the swing back, I think more businesses are thinking about how do we actually educate people about what we do and why they should be interested in us and all of those things.

25:31.799 –> 25:39.405 [SPEAKER_00]: And I think I’m hoping to see a resurgence in PR, I think, particularly as people are thinking about optimizing

25:40.085 –> 25:50.962 [SPEAKER_00]: for AI agents and, you know, kind of AI search and all of those things, how you position yourself in the marketplace, how people talk about you is increasingly important.

25:51.730 –> 25:55.772 [SPEAKER_01]: It’s kind of both an anti-AI tactic and a pro-AI tactic.

25:55.792 –> 25:58.453 [SPEAKER_01]: If you see what I mean, it’s like we want the citations.

25:58.493 –> 26:01.915 [SPEAKER_01]: We want AI to really understand who we are because we put the right message out there.

26:02.275 –> 26:05.897 [SPEAKER_01]: But there’s also the, well, how do we build trust in the world of AI?

26:05.917 –> 26:11.299 [SPEAKER_01]: Well, we go back to getting featured in the pillars of the fourth estate, essentially.

26:11.419 –> 26:15.501 [SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, I think it’s a good recommendation though.

26:15.521 –> 26:16.642 [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, tooltop tip.

26:16.722 –> 26:25.485 [SPEAKER_01]: Maybe a collaboration tool, a social media plug-in, a phone app, or just a way of working, is there a cool little tool you use that makes you and your team more efficient from day-to-day?

26:26.185 –> 26:30.106 [SPEAKER_00]: I’ve already mentioned it, but yeah, sidekick on Shopify.

26:30.226 –> 26:33.407 [SPEAKER_00]: I call him SID, and I’m like, you know, just…

26:33.687 –> 26:54.375 [SPEAKER_00]: earlier we were like okay what proportion of sales of this of one of our subscription products comes from people who bought from us before versus first time customers and yeah sure I could have set up a report and sliced it and diced it but I could just our sidekick what’s this and it gave me the answer straight away so yeah I genuinely think it’s a brilliant tool.

26:55.123 –> 26:56.485 [SPEAKER_01]: converted you to Shopify.

26:57.446 –> 27:00.389 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, you know how that’s a big deal for me.

27:00.909 –> 27:01.410 [SPEAKER_01]: Big deal.

27:01.870 –> 27:03.692 [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, the carbon top tip.

27:03.753 –> 27:07.577 [SPEAKER_01]: What’s your favorite way to reduce the carbon footprint of an e-commerce store?

27:08.613 –> 27:33.362 [SPEAKER_00]: I think what we’ve done with everyday laundry is quite an interesting proposition more widely for e-commerce is like, what are you sending and what do you actually need to send your customer is quite a big mindset shift for a lot of businesses being like actually what do they actually need and what do they have at home already?

27:34.125 –> 27:39.830 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, how much air and water do we actually need to put into boxes and ship around the world?

27:40.330 –> 27:45.515 [SPEAKER_01]: And what’s interesting is you get little bits of it in the cleaning and laundry space on the waterfront.

27:46.236 –> 27:48.958 [SPEAKER_01]: You get none of it in the drink space.

27:50.379 –> 27:56.063 [SPEAKER_01]: None at all in the drink space, bring on the round cans and the air and the water inside them with, you know?

27:56.083 –> 28:02.687 [SPEAKER_00]: Well, that’s why I think what Lalo does is so brilliant, it’s like, you know, that they’ve said boxed wine.

28:02.707 –> 28:18.117 [SPEAKER_00]: It’s like, well, you’ve got that weight of those glass bottles, you’ve got the waste of space, all of those things, and to just actually say boxed wine is a really fantastic proposition if it actually had decent wine in it, which is what they do so well.

28:18.802 –> 28:25.685 [SPEAKER_01]: And with less waste because you don’t have a horrible end of bottle to deal with because it came out glass by glass.

28:25.865 –> 28:27.985 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, love Lalo.

28:28.185 –> 28:35.048 [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, Janice, 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 please?

28:35.593 –> 28:39.034 [SPEAKER_00]: Sure, we are closed, hyphendoctor.com.

28:39.514 –> 28:43.955 [SPEAKER_00]: Please do come and try our 60 day trial of everyday laundry.

28:44.255 –> 28:49.437 [SPEAKER_00]: We’re so convinced that you will be delighted with it that we will give you your money back if you’re not.

28:50.337 –> 28:51.197 [SPEAKER_01]: There we go, everyone.

28:51.277 –> 28:53.718 [SPEAKER_01]: Good deployment for money back guarantee there as well.

28:54.478 –> 28:56.939 [SPEAKER_01]: Janice, thank you so much for being on the show again.

28:57.139 –> 28:59.239 [SPEAKER_01]: As always, super insightful.

28:59.379 –> 29:00.159 [SPEAKER_01]: You’re a brilliant guest.

29:00.179 –> 29:01.220 [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you so much for being here.

29:01.720 –> 29:02.740 [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for having me, Chloe.

29:08.634 –> 29:35.600 [SPEAKER_01]: so lots to think about in the world of subscriptions there and how to get involved with those those different types of subscriptions are making sure you are creating the consumption of the product in order to get the retention and the recommendations and all those kind of good things as well plus some really interesting insights on how Janice is successfully and practically using AI in the business too loads to get you all thinking in this episode and doing too I think.

29:36.120 –> 29:55.628 [SPEAKER_01]: To get your hands on the notes from this episode including those top tips and links to what we mentioned then head over to ecommercemasterplanned.com You can also use our direct episode short links just put ECMP dot info forward slash the number of this episode into your album and you’ll go straight to the right page on the site When you get there, please add yourself to our email list.

29:56.288 –> 30:07.833 [SPEAKER_01]: If you liked this episode, then make sure you check out Episode 585 where I’m chatting to cleaning products, seeps, head of growth about scaling to 10 million.

30:07.853 –> 30:14.196 [SPEAKER_01]: So seeps is another eco cleaning laundry products business and we’re chatting at how they scale to 8 million.

30:14.216 –> 30:15.397 [SPEAKER_01]: It’s really interesting episode.

30:15.977 –> 30:17.478 [SPEAKER_01]: He brings some really cool insights.

30:17.918 –> 30:27.713 [SPEAKER_01]: And if you want more on cleaning products and home care products and all that kind of good stuff, then ECMP.info-zashhome will take you to our page that lists all of those episodes on the website.

30:28.314 –> 30:32.379 [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you for tuning in to this and every episode of the e-commerce master plan podcast.

30:32.860 –> 30:45.204 [SPEAKER_01]: I bring you a new interview every week because I want to inspire and help e-commerce business owners like you to succeed and thrive with your businesses, including encouraging businesses and consumers to make more sustainable buying decisions.

30:45.784 –> 30:51.386 [SPEAKER_01]: So if you know someone this show can help, please tell them to listen to the e-commerce master plan podcast.

30:51.786 –> 30:54.587 [SPEAKER_01]: I hope you have a great week and don’t forget to keep optimizing.

30:57.880 –> 31:01.229 [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you for listening to the e-commerce Master Plan podcast.

31:01.650 –> 31:06.542 [SPEAKER_02]: Find out more at e-commercemasterplanned.com slash podcast.

In this episode, Chloe and Mark unpack the hidden engine behind modern eCommerce growth: product data. They explore how brands can get products to market faster, manage listings across multiple marketplaces, and prepare their data for the next wave of AI-powered shopping and search. 

Hit PLAY to hear these 5 big wins: 

• Why AI search is making product data more important than ever 
• The “time to online” metric that directly affects revenue 
• How to sell on multiple marketplaces without managing 20 separate stores 
• The product data mistakes that lead to costly returns 
• How leading brands structure data for both humans and AI shoppers 
• Why retailers are becoming stricter about claims like “sustainable” 

Key timestamps to dive straight in: 

[05:53] Describing products with evidence 

[08:06] Managing different retail platforms 

[12:19] Brands asserting eCommerce guidelines 

[15:21] Negotiating retail brand guidelines 

[17:20] Handling Marketplace Customer Expectations 

[22:33] AI implementation challenges and oversight 

[23:22] Legal challenges in agentic commerce 

[29:34] Storing and sharing business data 

[32:04] Listen to Mark’s Top Tips! 

[36:17] Episode sponsored by Rithum. Find out more about Rithum >>> https://ecmp.info/rithum

Full episode notes here: https://ecmp.info/611 

Episode sponsored by Rithum. Find out more about Rithum >>> https://ecmp.info/rithum

— Download our ebook… https://ecmp.info/ebook 500 Tips to Increase Your Profits

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00:00.551 –> 00:09.438 [SPEAKER_00]: Everyone knows that data is really important, but actually the biggest concerns that most of our retailers and brands have is in getting their data into the right place.

00:09.678 –> 00:13.722 [SPEAKER_00]: That’s still everyone’s number one concern that everyone’s striving to tackle.

00:13.882 –> 00:15.223 [SPEAKER_00]: The principle is still the same.

00:15.303 –> 00:21.888 [SPEAKER_00]: You need good data, but the world just keeps layering more important things on top and of top that the data’s still the foundation.

00:22.068 –> 00:24.550 [SPEAKER_00]: You just can’t get away from how important and critical it is.

00:27.165 –> 00:29.549 [SPEAKER_01]: It’s the e-commerce master plan podcast.

00:30.090 –> 00:34.176 [SPEAKER_01]: Here to help you solve your marketing problems and grow your e-commerce business.

00:34.697 –> 00:42.489 [SPEAKER_01]: Cutting through the highly to bring you inspiration and advice from the e-commerce sector and beyond, here’s your host, Chloe Thomas.

00:45.822 –> 00:47.063 [SPEAKER_02]: Hello and welcome.

00:47.103 –> 00:48.243 [SPEAKER_02]: It’s great to have you here.

00:48.323 –> 00:52.165 [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you for hitting play and choosing to listen to one of our inspiring guests.

00:52.765 –> 00:56.987 [SPEAKER_02]: In this episode, we’re getting into one of those foundational parts of Ecommerce success.

00:57.547 –> 01:02.569 [SPEAKER_02]: One that’s had its important skyrocket as a result of AI in all its forms.

01:03.009 –> 01:11.553 [SPEAKER_02]: We’re talking about product data, how you get it, what you need, where you put it, how you optimize it, how you expand it out across all your many sales channels.

01:12.193 –> 01:23.358 [SPEAKER_02]: And we’ve got a brilliant expert joining us who has over 20 years experience helping a myriad of brands and businesses get their data right to get themselves listed on marketplaces.

01:24.098 –> 01:26.239 [SPEAKER_02]: So you’re going to get a lot out of this one.

01:26.279 –> 01:31.121 [SPEAKER_02]: Lots of insights, lots of behind the scenes, angles, and lots of good practical advice too.

01:31.581 –> 01:35.503 [SPEAKER_02]: Make sure you listen to the end of the episode so you don’t miss my guest’s top tips.

01:41.493 –> 01:43.334 [SPEAKER_02]: and now to introduce our special guest.

01:43.755 –> 01:47.718 [SPEAKER_02]: Mark Howe is the Director Retailer’s EMEA at Rhythm.

01:48.018 –> 01:58.046 [SPEAKER_02]: Where they help the world’s leading brands and retailers list market for fill and optimize products across every major commerce channel from Catalog to consumer.

01:58.626 –> 02:07.689 [SPEAKER_02]: Rhythm’s single-connected network now has over 40,000 brand suppliers, retailers, including Walmart, Marks and Spencer Samsung, and many more.

02:08.129 –> 02:17.772 [SPEAKER_02]: Before his decade at Rhythm Mark spent 10 years at Tesco, supporting their dropship of marketplace sellers, getting listed and launched on Tesco.com.

02:17.892 –> 02:18.573 [SPEAKER_02]: Hello Mark.

02:19.313 –> 02:19.813 [SPEAKER_00]: I’m sorry.

02:20.451 –> 02:42.601 [SPEAKER_02]: very cool to have you as someone who’s like doing such cool stuff at rhythm with all that data and all those customers and all those platforms and it’s like got my mind boggling already, but also to have done so much kind of so long ago at the beginning of this marketplace and product listing journey that we’ve all been going on with all that you did at Tesco.

02:42.621 –> 02:45.742 [SPEAKER_02]: So was that your first journey into e-commerce?

02:45.762 –> 02:47.703 [SPEAKER_02]: Is that how you ended up in the world of e-commerce?

02:48.622 –> 03:04.475 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so it started off very much with Ashley Tesca one by the case with the start of my journey and the Tuskegee Entertainment well, so selling DVDs and games back when that was physical media, which is also now becoming a thing of the past, which is slightly surreal when I think back.

03:05.135 –> 03:15.822 [SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, then transitioning into filling that gap where being an operator, but at the same time, being actually quite technical, like my life outside of of work is a very technical one.

03:15.902 –> 03:21.466 [SPEAKER_00]: So building that bridge between operational teams and IT teams, that’s always been my sweet spot.

03:21.706 –> 03:24.828 [SPEAKER_00]: And so yeah, and that’s the the great opportunity I got at Tesco.

03:25.348 –> 03:27.330 [SPEAKER_00]: Learn a huge amount and amazing company.

03:27.510 –> 03:30.432 [SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, and that got me to where I got to at rhythm.

03:30.552 –> 03:30.752 [SPEAKER_00]: So,

03:31.498 –> 03:32.262 [SPEAKER_02]: very cool.

03:32.282 –> 03:35.357 [SPEAKER_02]: Well, let’s talk about, um, about all of this then.

03:36.846 –> 03:47.854 [SPEAKER_02]: It feels like product data has always been important, but now with the advent of AI search and AI within businesses, we’re all trying to make it do stuff.

03:48.034 –> 03:54.059 [SPEAKER_02]: Like the importance of product data has just become so you can’t avoid it.

03:54.139 –> 03:59.363 [SPEAKER_02]: You know, it’s like the pillar right in front of you going, if you don’t get me right, you’re in real trouble.

03:59.883 –> 04:03.005 [SPEAKER_02]: Is that how you’re seeing it with the people you’re working with that?

04:03.285 –> 04:05.267 [SPEAKER_02]: There’s this kind of renewed focus on it.

04:06.024 –> 04:06.564 [SPEAKER_00]: definitely.

04:06.685 –> 04:12.930 [SPEAKER_00]: And some of our own research we’ve done has written shows that everyone knows that data is really, really important.

04:13.570 –> 04:21.057 [SPEAKER_00]: But actually the biggest concerns that most of our retailers and brands have is in getting their data into the right place, into the right structure.

04:21.677 –> 04:25.738 [SPEAKER_00]: That’s still everyone’s number one concern that everyone’s striving to tackle.

04:26.318 –> 04:30.058 [SPEAKER_00]: On top of, yes, you’ve got your own pin, you’ve got your own website stack.

04:30.579 –> 04:37.680 [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, and now I now need to worry about these agentic things that I’ve got to then educate with my data or otherwise, I’m not going to show up as well.

04:37.780 –> 04:40.900 [SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, it feels like the principle is still the same.

04:40.980 –> 04:50.402 [SPEAKER_00]: You need good data, but the world just keeps layering more important things on top and of top that the data’s still this foundation that you just can’t get away from how important

04:52.116 –> 04:58.358 [SPEAKER_02]: It feels like, you know, we’ve gone from the world of product title, product description, product image, you know.

04:58.378 –> 05:00.339 [SPEAKER_02]: There’s simple days, 20 years ago.

05:00.919 –> 05:07.622 [SPEAKER_02]: To now there’s like visible stuff, hidden stuff with schema, metadata, all this sort of sort of thing, and that

05:08.542 –> 05:22.753 [SPEAKER_02]: those a lot of those fields and our less free flowing than they used to be, you know, you used to just be able to go product information, slap a couple of paragraphs in there and you’re good, but now there’s lots of fields with criteria, I suppose, I’m trying to say.

05:23.427 –> 05:24.268 [SPEAKER_00]: very much.

05:24.568 –> 05:31.495 [SPEAKER_00]: And I think this is the challenge retailers or channels face of, well, I need my data to show up.

05:32.136 –> 05:45.789 [SPEAKER_00]: So you need to have a level of discoverability, but at the same time you need to also have uniqueness in that why is your website reference for that skew different to someone else’s so you show up at the top.

05:46.593 –> 05:49.796 [SPEAKER_00]: Because again, it’s all about getting up in the list and showing up.

05:49.876 –> 05:50.957 [SPEAKER_00]: So yes, exactly that.

05:50.997 –> 05:58.224 [SPEAKER_00]: You’ve got so much a quite functional cat sat on mat requirements, or it’s a yes, it’s a no, it’s this value, there’s rules.

05:58.885 –> 06:05.931 [SPEAKER_00]: But then it’s then moving into the world of, I need you to be descriptive, but I need you to be descriptive with guardrails.

06:07.102 –> 06:21.580 [SPEAKER_00]: A really great example in the market right now that comes up is lots of people would like to say they’re sustainable, but actually quite recently trading standards caught a few people out and said actually you can’t prove that that’s not sustainable.

06:21.620 –> 06:26.145 [SPEAKER_00]: So one of the new guardrails that for instance, one of our customers is really passionate about is.

06:26.866 –> 06:31.088 [SPEAKER_00]: they have to be able to either back it up and we have to give them approval to use the words sustainable.

06:31.108 –> 06:34.109 [SPEAKER_00]: Because you can’t just say it without evidence anymore.

06:34.269 –> 06:36.750 [SPEAKER_00]: So it’s not even just the data itself.

06:36.850 –> 06:43.193 [SPEAKER_00]: You might have to have some other side process to justify that you can say something on a product as well.

06:43.293 –> 06:47.795 [SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, it gets, but I don’t think that’s a bad thing because I think it’s consumers.

06:47.855 –> 06:49.295 [SPEAKER_00]: We want the transparency.

06:49.335 –> 06:51.656 [SPEAKER_00]: We want to know that if someone’s telling us

06:56.543 –> 07:04.908 [SPEAKER_02]: Yes, it’s a bit more work, but it is better for the consumer, which therefore builds more trust and therefore becomes much better for us in the long run as well.

07:05.268 –> 07:11.072 [SPEAKER_02]: So let’s talk about product induction, getting the information together on a new product.

07:11.436 –> 07:21.202 [SPEAKER_02]: Why is that it’s so important to try and do this, I guess quickly as bizarre as that sounds because I think some, you know, I’ve been in businesses, I’ll take take you back in time a minute, right?

07:21.483 –> 07:28.087 [SPEAKER_02]: I used to work a long time ago at a mail order company where the buyers would source the products, beautiful products would come in.

07:28.347 –> 07:30.808 [SPEAKER_02]: The copyright will write beautiful copy.

07:31.709 –> 07:38.757 [SPEAKER_02]: Then it would go into the catalogue and the beautiful copy would get shrunk down to one line, or three words, depending on the space.

07:39.298 –> 07:47.768 [SPEAKER_02]: And then we take the copy out of the catalogue and put it on the website, not the beautiful, beautiful copy got lost somewhere back in the male stream of time.

07:49.043 –> 07:50.825 [SPEAKER_02]: that took forever.

07:51.466 –> 07:56.292 [SPEAKER_02]: You know, we’d be on like maybe a three-month process from product to actually getting it listed on the website.

07:56.372 –> 08:01.719 [SPEAKER_02]: That’s not really feasible anymore and that process is clearly an extreme one of a broken process.

08:01.739 –> 08:06.225 [SPEAKER_02]: So how do we do a good job of getting the product information together for product launch?

08:07.100 –> 08:25.792 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so the first step is that the challenge for brands is every channel they connect to has differences has different rules has different criteria, you know, what Tesco has on their website for for one product the exact same product on multiple expensive will be different the expectations of the data to collect is different.

08:26.512 –> 08:31.674 [SPEAKER_00]: So the first challenge is, well, how can you make that simple for the brand to understand that two difference?

08:31.714 –> 08:35.956 [SPEAKER_00]: And no, okay, for that channel, I have to do X for the other channel I have to do Y.

08:36.497 –> 08:39.578 [SPEAKER_00]: But actually, as a brand, I’ve still got one spreadsheet of data.

08:40.298 –> 08:46.221 [SPEAKER_00]: So how do I make my one sheet of data work for channel 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7?

08:46.261 –> 08:50.203 [SPEAKER_00]: And it kind of continues on, you know, if you were brand and you’re trading in multiple places.

08:50.903 –> 08:56.570 [SPEAKER_00]: And then there’s the mirror image problem, if you’re the retail world, I want the content, I want the brands to come in.

08:57.111 –> 09:04.701 [SPEAKER_00]: And a really important thing actually a lot of retailers are passionate about now is I want it to be a good experience for the brands to work with us as well with our platform.

09:05.342 –> 09:08.686 [SPEAKER_00]: But how do they then easily explain their rules and how do they

09:09.607 –> 09:12.908 [SPEAKER_00]: not have, I’m trying to build the Ferrari of product data.

09:13.488 –> 09:22.390 [SPEAKER_00]: Actually, I need a good level of product data for a customer’s to know and discover because I think sometimes in the past, we all would ask for everything.

09:22.770 –> 09:24.190 [SPEAKER_00]: You know, we did a test group, you know.

09:24.451 –> 09:24.811 [SPEAKER_00]: We would.

09:24.851 –> 09:29.432 [SPEAKER_00]: We’d have a really incredibly high bar, which to your point around eternal writing of copy.

09:29.832 –> 09:32.632 [SPEAKER_00]: We could sometimes have a bit more luxury of time and it was our product.

09:32.652 –> 09:33.213 [SPEAKER_00]: We do it.

09:33.753 –> 09:38.914 [SPEAKER_00]: But then taking those rules out and then dropping them on to your suppliers, that’s not always

09:40.114 –> 09:45.558 [SPEAKER_00]: But it’s then that juxtaposition of, yes, but I want to really great consistent experience for my customers.

09:46.058 –> 09:51.742 [SPEAKER_00]: So you have all these things competing with each other and at the same time I’m a desire for simplicity and efficiency.

09:52.602 –> 09:59.927 [SPEAKER_00]: And it actually doesn’t all happen wonderfully, but that’s, and again, that’s half the battle with product data of.

10:00.607 –> 10:08.749 [SPEAKER_00]: I as a brand need to get my data to the right place in the right format so that it gets the answer because your point around why is it important.

10:09.490 –> 10:16.732 [SPEAKER_00]: Time to online is one of the key metrics of product induction which is the soon you get at live it’s quite simple the soon you start making money.

10:17.712 –> 10:20.673 [SPEAKER_00]: That is the basic premise of why product induction needs to be fast.

10:21.547 –> 10:31.012 [SPEAKER_02]: So do you kind of have a granular set of product data that’s the ones and zero stuff, the basics, the, this isn’t actually going to change.

10:31.373 –> 10:34.955 [SPEAKER_02]: Wherever we’re listing it, the product is still 20 centimeters wide.

10:35.435 –> 10:35.615 [SPEAKER_02]: Yes.

10:36.015 –> 10:36.776 [SPEAKER_02]: And then a,

10:37.776 –> 10:53.822 [SPEAKER_02]: an enhanced layer of data which I suppose brings the brand feel and everything into it and then can be adapted from however many characters there are in the title or however many you know however many paragraphs you can have or how many how you need to cut and dice that up is that the way people are approaching it.

10:54.622 –> 11:21.831 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so if you think the terminology I use, which is as agnostic as I can make it is common attributes, so the things to your point of, it’s always the same, you know, it’s a laptop, it’s screen is this size, it’s got a one terabyte SSD, those are just facts about the item, they’re facts or it’s got a unique reference code, it’s got a bar code, it’s got a serial number again, those are just facts, then you get into the descriptive attributes.

11:22.751 –> 11:26.893 [SPEAKER_00]: about the product, which is where you start and make more moving more into maybe it’s more copy.

11:27.333 –> 11:28.473 [SPEAKER_00]: It’s descriptive copy.

11:28.953 –> 11:30.774 [SPEAKER_00]: It’s supposed to entice the customer.

11:31.194 –> 11:45.180 [SPEAKER_00]: It might still need to be informative and I think this is also now when we’re transitioning into the next level, an iteration of that descriptive copy, which is it needs to be conversational attribution, which is it’s not just a laptop

11:45.900 –> 12:06.707 [SPEAKER_00]: It’s a lightweight machine which is great for students and great for professionals on the move, really great battery life because that’s the type of thing someone might type in to an agent to research to say this is what I’m looking for because we don’t I don’t say I want like a box that’s 15 centimeters long.

12:07.207 –> 12:10.588 [SPEAKER_00]: You have a conversation and I think that’s also the new shift of

12:11.288 –> 12:19.971 [SPEAKER_00]: we need to layer the data and build it in this because that’s actually the use now as well that’s coming into playing on this.

12:19.991 –> 12:28.514 [SPEAKER_00]: So that, I mean, a lot, one of the things which has been very interesting over the years for brands and their product data is previously used to be the buyers would do it all themselves.

12:28.814 –> 12:37.717 [SPEAKER_00]: Frankly, regardless of whether it was in the warehouse, whether it might be the early versions of dropship and sometimes even marketplace, people were still writing

12:40.598 –> 12:45.980 [SPEAKER_00]: Whereas now, obviously, the e-commerce ability of the brand has been going up and up over time as well.

12:46.620 –> 12:54.043 [SPEAKER_00]: And actually, what’s now a slight shift is the brands and now saying, if you’re going to use my products, I want the copy to look like this.

12:54.783 –> 12:59.465 [SPEAKER_00]: Some brands are now impressing their guidelines on if you want my products.

12:59.805 –> 13:02.206 [SPEAKER_00]: I need to see things on your website do this.

13:02.906 –> 13:06.668 [SPEAKER_00]: So it isn’t just a one-way street, actually, with retailers and brands of retailers saying,

13:07.948 –> 13:08.148 [SPEAKER_00]: go.

13:08.788 –> 13:13.350 [SPEAKER_00]: Some brands go, well no, actually, if you want my rules, I need to see four images.

13:13.510 –> 13:15.311 [SPEAKER_00]: I need five descriptive bullet points.

13:15.491 –> 13:18.272 [SPEAKER_00]: I need to be able to have an attached PDF.

13:18.492 –> 13:21.072 [SPEAKER_00]: I need to have these things and even some video content.

13:21.573 –> 13:25.114 [SPEAKER_00]: So it’s not just a one-way street of the channel they’re dating.

13:25.534 –> 13:34.297 [SPEAKER_00]: Actually, the brand’s some brands have the power to say, no, actually, this is how I want to engage with my customer, because the brands also see, of course, it’s their customer too.

13:35.198 –> 13:54.104 [SPEAKER_02]: That was something I wanted to get into was the fight of the brand, of the brand voice, if that makes sense, you know, because you’ve got very well-known soft drink or whatever, wanting to soft drink laptop, et cetera, wanting to be listed in this marketplace for those sales.

13:54.685 –> 13:55.425 [SPEAKER_02]: And then you’ve got,

13:56.531 –> 14:02.114 [SPEAKER_02]: the retailer with their marketplace or their drop shopping or personal ever, it might be building out their range.

14:02.234 –> 14:10.239 [SPEAKER_02]: They have a set of customer voice guidelines and the brand selling into them has a set of customer voice guidelines.

14:11.119 –> 14:14.401 [SPEAKER_02]: And I imagine sometimes those could jar.

14:14.782 –> 14:18.264 [SPEAKER_02]: So is it always kind of an negotiation piece, or is it,

14:18.984 –> 14:24.766 [SPEAKER_02]: You know, set from on high, our marketplace can do can write whatever they like, as long as it’s not swear words, etc.

14:25.386 –> 14:29.027 [SPEAKER_02]: Or is it more an agreement by agreement basis?

14:30.028 –> 14:30.648 [SPEAKER_00]: It’s a bit of both.

14:31.648 –> 14:37.610 [SPEAKER_00]: Some retailers are very specific about their customers and their voice and how their website needs to be.

14:38.910 –> 14:48.862 [SPEAKER_00]: And typically those retailers will take what’s kind of like called a curated dropship or curated market place view where ultimately the retail will still make the final decision.

14:49.583 –> 14:55.010 [SPEAKER_00]: They might take the copy and they might take a lot of data in from the brands, but they deserve the right to change all of it.

14:56.348 –> 15:22.042 [SPEAKER_00]: you then have other marketplaces which kind of then stem more towards the public like the Amazon example of Amazon and because it has its rules you put the copy in and you win the biobox or you don’t that’s in essence Amazon’s interest and of course they do care about is it legal as it valid and those kind of points that’s still a thing but that’s very much as a brand you can put up what you want as long as you meet the rules type point of view so

15:22.962 –> 15:29.829 [SPEAKER_00]: But again, there’s, but then there’s the ones in between where like certain brands have the power to say, well, no, you do it this way.

15:29.849 –> 15:32.692 [SPEAKER_00]: You just don’t get the stock and it’s, and that’s how it is.

15:32.772 –> 15:36.115 [SPEAKER_00]: Now, and again, it’s there’s there’s the 5% of brands who can do that.

15:36.988 –> 15:41.769 [SPEAKER_00]: then there’s the group who negotiating the middle and then you have a long tail who, yes, you don’t get a choice.

15:41.829 –> 15:44.730 [SPEAKER_00]: You just, you have to hit the guidelines and the way you go.

15:45.430 –> 15:58.833 [SPEAKER_00]: So I think sometimes it’s one of those classic ones where there’s no one answer and it also depends on how that retailer perceives themselves, maybe what’s their legacy in the industry and how strongly they feel about it.

15:59.673 –> 16:14.241 [SPEAKER_00]: newer channels take sometimes a more relaxed view, then more traditional retailers who obviously started with bricks and mortar have a lot more exposure to customers, they’ve got bigger reputations, they’ll get in the press faster than anyone else if something goes wrong.

16:14.902 –> 16:25.008 [SPEAKER_00]: There’s always those pressures, I mean that that was a pressure we felt at Tesco, which is if something came through on any of our products and you know it was slightly controversial,

16:27.469 –> 16:31.611 [SPEAKER_00]: So there’s that other element, which not every retailer has to worry about that.

16:32.491 –> 16:39.475 [SPEAKER_02]: No, and I guess there’s that side of, um, I would assume that it kind of depends on how the products being positioned.

16:39.955 –> 16:54.302 [SPEAKER_02]: You know, like as a consumer, maybe, I’ve been in e-commerce a long time, maybe I have not or true consumer anymore, but as a consumer in the Tesco marketplace, I would expect it to feel less Tesco than I would expect it to feel on Tesco’s website.

16:55.182 –> 16:56.223 [SPEAKER_02]: if that makes sense.

16:56.243 –> 17:03.710 [SPEAKER_02]: You know, if you had the same soft drink that I could order in ones from Tesco.com and I could order a crate of 24 in the marketplace.

17:04.810 –> 17:16.140 [SPEAKER_02]: I’d expect there to be a difference in how those are put together because one is a marketplace and therefore the interaction is that you’re not getting it from the brand if that makes sense.

17:16.701 –> 17:20.224 [SPEAKER_02]: Am I guessing, am I guessing up wrongly there or is does that come into account?

17:20.444 –> 17:34.067 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, well, and I think you touched on it a little bit yourself there, which is because of your own level of knowledge around a commerce is you and you don’t stand this distinct differences that fall into those two models, actually as customers.

17:35.196 –> 17:38.458 [SPEAKER_00]: even if that’s explained clearly up front and I’m not I’m not to be clear.

17:38.478 –> 17:40.299 [SPEAKER_00]: I’m not talking about the current Tesco marketplace.

17:40.319 –> 17:43.060 [SPEAKER_00]: I’m very much talking about my own experiences from the first version.

17:43.820 –> 17:48.243 [SPEAKER_00]: Even though we signposted that things were marketplace and they were seller, it didn’t matter.

17:48.783 –> 17:54.226 [SPEAKER_00]: The customer still was like, well, no, but I bought it on the Tesco website, so I expect you to go to take care of everything.

17:55.006 –> 17:55.967 [SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, even if

17:56.807 –> 17:59.848 [SPEAKER_00]: customer service should have actually gone to the seller, never did.

18:00.068 –> 18:04.030 [SPEAKER_00]: Always came pretty much to our customer service team, we took the call, we had to deal with it.

18:04.730 –> 18:16.475 [SPEAKER_00]: And I think that’s another interesting part of why some retailers still feel very responsible for everything that goes happens on their website is because the customers don’t delineate actually.

18:17.455 –> 18:19.736 [SPEAKER_00]: You can give every T terms and conditions

18:22.492 –> 18:32.255 [SPEAKER_00]: But at the end of the day, if you’re a long-term telescope customer, long-term science, these waitress, whoever it is, you will still pick up the phone to the channel that you know the best and go, I had a problem with this.

18:33.475 –> 18:36.256 [SPEAKER_00]: And honestly, then a good retailer will go, I will help you.

18:36.917 –> 18:41.558 [SPEAKER_00]: It was one of the things we learned very quickly as we couldn’t divert that customer away.

18:42.098 –> 18:50.581 [SPEAKER_00]: And in the end, we changed our proposition, because it was important to ask that, let’s test go, we do need to go after our customers,

18:52.002 –> 18:56.006 [SPEAKER_02]: And I suppose that’s that’s part of the product data gathering, isn’t it?

18:56.046 –> 19:07.096 [SPEAKER_02]: So it’s the customer service team have got the information to be able to deal with with any problems that do occur from an information or stand boy or from a who to call to get it fixed standpoint.

19:07.568 –> 19:19.540 [SPEAKER_00]: Do you know on the product database, one of the big reasons to get it right is, you know, that this product is not as I expected is one of the most common return reasons.

19:20.121 –> 19:22.624 [SPEAKER_00]: So you can get really good product data up front.

19:23.064 –> 19:31.687 [SPEAKER_00]: you do yourself a really good service on the back end of your P&L frankly, because it means people aren’t calling up saying this is not how it was described.

19:31.707 –> 19:37.129 [SPEAKER_00]: You’ve got this wrong, that picture’s bad, so that really makes a difference to the channel.

19:37.149 –> 19:49.974 [SPEAKER_00]: And especially if you’re on a marketplace to you, the brand seller, because it’s ultimately going to bite you back because you return rates are going to start creeping towards thresholds and SLAs where you might get dropped off from a compliance standpoint.

19:50.811 –> 20:01.675 [SPEAKER_02]: We’re moving to a market where a market normality, I suppose, where many creative products brands are listing on tens of market places now.

20:01.715 –> 20:16.802 [SPEAKER_02]: As we’re seeing this kind of marketplace boom here in the UK and other places as well as well as selling overseas, how do you advise brands to make the most of that opportunity and without turning it into feeling like you’re running 20 different stores?

20:17.462 –> 20:20.063 [SPEAKER_02]: What are the best practices for doing this well?

20:20.940 –> 20:32.450 [SPEAKER_00]: Look, I think that’s one of our strengths as rhythm to help people do that because look, it’s not easy because we said slightly earlier, every channel has its own unique requirements that you have to adhere to.

20:32.570 –> 20:37.415 [SPEAKER_00]: So it’s very hard for an individual, a human to keep all of those things in mind for your day to day.

20:37.715 –> 20:44.221 [SPEAKER_00]: You need tooling, you need things in front of you that are making that simpler and easier to kind of maintain and persist.

20:44.781 –> 21:00.457 [SPEAKER_00]: You know, having something which you’re mapping is already saved for every one of those channels and you just understand the difference between them so you don’t have to do 100% at the same work every single time you launch a channel you’re just understanding the 7% there’s different between that channel and this one

21:01.454 –> 21:05.457 [SPEAKER_00]: because that makes it a lot easier for you to manage all of those things.

21:06.098 –> 21:11.582 [SPEAKER_00]: That I think the other thing is managing the stock across those channels, how are you a portioning the inventory?

21:12.203 –> 21:17.827 [SPEAKER_00]: You know, when we talk about product data, it depends on how far we extend it from a topic.

21:17.867 –> 21:24.333 [SPEAKER_00]: But when I think about product data, inventory is obviously quite a critical part of that is, yes, it’s great to say this is what the product is.

21:24.933 –> 21:27.235 [SPEAKER_00]: You really need to tell me how many units of stock you have.

21:27.255 –> 21:29.757 [SPEAKER_00]: And even better, where you have those units of stock.

21:30.277 –> 21:32.359 [SPEAKER_00]: You might have a warehouse in Germany that’s got a hundred.

21:32.779 –> 21:34.881 [SPEAKER_00]: You might have a warehouse in UK that’s got a hundred.

21:35.441 –> 21:40.065 [SPEAKER_00]: I would rather you ship declaring in the UK from the UK warehouse please, because I know that’s going to be faster.

21:41.166 –> 21:45.689 [SPEAKER_00]: So there are other pieces of information about a product, which are a great capture as well.

21:46.230 –> 21:49.532 [SPEAKER_00]: And again, brands are getting more sophisticated about providing that.

21:50.434 –> 21:54.450 [SPEAKER_00]: and putting demands on their channels to say, I want to be able to give you this.

21:55.093 –> 21:55.976 [SPEAKER_00]: How can I give it to you?

21:57.197 –> 21:57.537 [SPEAKER_02]: nice.

21:57.637 –> 22:05.082 [SPEAKER_02]: And so kind of one o one is have software that’s built to actually help you manage all those channels inbound and outbound.

22:05.542 –> 22:08.344 [SPEAKER_02]: So you can maintain your sanity, I suppose.

22:08.644 –> 22:20.471 [SPEAKER_02]: And then I’m guessing that AI and automation always quite hard to draw the line between those two sometimes, but AI and automation are becoming the brand’s best friend in managing

22:21.848 –> 22:28.520 [SPEAKER_02]: Listings in multiple locations and the adaptations and putting it all together all those kind of things as well.

22:28.540 –> 22:32.467 [SPEAKER_02]: Are you seeing that shifting a lot at the moment or is it as it’s always been?

22:33.402 –> 22:36.666 [SPEAKER_00]: No, we are seeing brand starting to adopt AI and use it.

22:37.347 –> 22:45.598 [SPEAKER_00]: Being very candid, we are seeing some bad results coming out where people are just using AI that think it’s quick and easy and then the output is not correct.

22:46.459 –> 22:51.745 [SPEAKER_00]: I do feel quite strongly about the use of AI in that for me, it’s augmentation for your experts.

22:52.366 –> 22:59.329 [SPEAKER_00]: Because especially in you need someone to be able to look at product data export and go, yes, that looks as I would expect it to be.

22:59.389 –> 23:02.950 [SPEAKER_00]: I can see the characteristics I know about our products are in there.

23:03.551 –> 23:03.791 [SPEAKER_00]: Great.

23:03.971 –> 23:06.512 [SPEAKER_00]: I will sign off that AI did that and that’s correct.

23:07.412 –> 23:12.754 [SPEAKER_00]: I think as it stands right now, human in the loop still is a very, very valid scenario.

23:12.974 –> 23:13.875 [SPEAKER_00]: I think the other thing which

23:14.695 –> 23:21.900 [SPEAKER_00]: Especially in the UK and Europe, which is slightly different maybe to other regions of the world is, we have very tight product legislation.

23:22.421 –> 23:33.729 [SPEAKER_00]: You know, legal requirements around what we can say, it has to be accurate, has to be valid, and obviously trading standards in the safety of product is obviously paramount for consumers.

23:34.490 –> 23:38.052 [SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, there’s an extra, I think risk that we

23:43.476 –> 23:46.697 [SPEAKER_00]: we’re not at a stage ever, frankly, where you can just set it loose.

23:46.757 –> 23:56.840 [SPEAKER_00]: And if you, it was quite interesting seeing when everyone got very excited about a gented commerce, and you’ll be able to check out through chat GPT and all of those things.

23:56.860 –> 23:58.581 [SPEAKER_00]: There was all this buzz, wasn’t there.

23:59.401 –> 24:05.343 [SPEAKER_00]: And it’s strange enough, suddenly everyone started pulling back from it and going, hmm, actually, maybe I’ll just help you find the stuff.

24:05.943 –> 24:24.273 [SPEAKER_00]: I don’t want to be involved in the transaction itself because suddenly, when the transaction happens, that’s when the contract is formed between the customer and the seller, and so always the liability of something’s incorrect or inaccurate and someone’s hallucinated along the way, whose fault is that?

24:25.073 –> 24:28.335 [SPEAKER_00]: If it came down to it in the extremist version where maybe someone got hurt,

24:33.245 –> 24:47.851 [SPEAKER_00]: Is it a surprise that suddenly everyone kind of drew back from that complex team was like, I don’t actually want to touch that right now because that’s really not easy to buy for case and say, well, actually it’s really clear that the delineation is here and that’s clear to the consumers they go all the way along.

24:48.471 –> 24:49.471 [SPEAKER_00]: You know, we’re not there yet.

24:50.352 –> 24:51.672 [SPEAKER_00]: It’s not to say we won’t get there.

24:52.212 –> 24:55.334 [SPEAKER_00]: But I thought it was very interesting when there was this sudden acceleration to it.

24:55.414 –> 24:58.555 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, we can transact and do this and then every moment, maybe not.

24:59.536 –> 25:07.363 [SPEAKER_02]: Yes, it’s looking, oh, yes, that’s interesting, but I’m not, you know, knowing how bad many people’s product data is.

25:07.944 –> 25:09.805 [SPEAKER_02]: This is going to be fairly challenging anyway.

25:10.186 –> 25:13.028 [SPEAKER_02]: And then you think if that was easy to do.

25:13.958 –> 25:23.061 [SPEAKER_02]: then Google with their vast amount of product data, given to them by merchants as the feed’s going into Google ads.

25:23.721 –> 25:37.025 [SPEAKER_02]: If they haven’t yet done it to put a buy button on the Google search or within Google shopping, if they haven’t yet done it, there’s reasons there aren’t there, there’s reasons and you outlined them brilliantly.

25:37.454 –> 25:51.132 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and look, and if you think about them, just marketplaces as a whole, and that word market place can mean many things, but especially like you co-trading standards, they’re starting to get more and more narrow of you that look if you buy on someone’s website.

25:52.206 –> 25:53.866 [SPEAKER_00]: It doesn’t matter if you say they’re a seller.

25:54.687 –> 25:58.067 [SPEAKER_00]: It’s the website’s responsibility to make sure it’s accurate.

25:58.187 –> 26:01.288 [SPEAKER_00]: It’s safe, you know, and it’s the right thing for the consumer.

26:02.048 –> 26:15.812 [SPEAKER_00]: And I think that some of the advantages that people have talked about of that kind of pure play marketplace model, it kind of keeps coming back and back as the consumer protections are kind of catching up with these topics.

26:16.552 –> 26:20.293 [SPEAKER_00]: So I think that’s part of the new tension around product data as well, which is

26:21.153 –> 26:33.080 [SPEAKER_00]: that’s partly also why the channels are well we still actually have to control this and we can just take your stuff down and there’s nothing you can do about it because the channels themselves might end up the one in the dock for something went wrong.

26:34.300 –> 26:42.525 [SPEAKER_02]: So given all of that presumably there’s quite a lot of accuracy checking that needs to go on you know in terms of

26:43.857 –> 27:02.611 [SPEAKER_02]: We might be using AI to spin up some content for us and then we’re checking it before we put it live, but also with all this dense data flowing around from place to place to place, making sure that any changes, any adaptations are getting through to the front end on all the different platforms.

27:02.971 –> 27:09.536 [SPEAKER_02]: But also, as soon as you start going cross border, then you’ve got different legislation that you need to make sure you’re going on.

27:09.556 –> 27:13.219 [SPEAKER_02]: So there’s quite a lot of work in maintenance and accuracy.

27:14.117 –> 27:20.840 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I mean, because it’s one thing to load a product once, it’s another to keep it up to date to your point of keep it accurate.

27:20.920 –> 27:25.942 [SPEAKER_00]: So that that’s a big part of our work with with all of our customers of it.

27:26.102 –> 27:28.082 [SPEAKER_00]: It’s not just enough to get it live.

27:28.663 –> 27:30.223 [SPEAKER_00]: It’s about how do you maintain it.

27:30.323 –> 27:31.744 [SPEAKER_00]: You might need to update an image.

27:31.864 –> 27:33.605 [SPEAKER_00]: How do you add a new variant?

27:34.065 –> 27:36.105 [SPEAKER_00]: Because it might be as a as a seller.

27:36.226 –> 27:36.886 [SPEAKER_00]: I’m listing.

27:37.566 –> 28:03.251 [SPEAKER_00]: actually the edge case sizes like 12 to 16 of a shoe on one particular channel, but then actually maybe I do want to give cool sizes to that channel and suddenly you’ve got to add 10, 9, 8 into a very in-grouping and whilst that sounds easy out loud, actually it’s not always easy with some channels that once that varying group is created in the first place sometimes it’s not easy to break that very in-grouping open again.

28:03.371 –> 28:04.931 [SPEAKER_00]: So it’s something

28:06.131 –> 28:10.874 [SPEAKER_00]: simple that sometimes isn’t actually that easy to do to keep things up to date and accurate.

28:11.535 –> 28:23.003 [SPEAKER_00]: And when you’re thinking about exactly that content and cross borders, not everyone is good at creating a product and then at the same time creating their internationalization fields at the same time.

28:23.523 –> 28:25.785 [SPEAKER_00]: And having one lovely continuous row of

28:26.485 –> 28:32.846 [SPEAKER_00]: You know, my I18N field for French and German and Italian and Dutch, etc.

28:33.366 –> 28:39.207 [SPEAKER_00]: So I think that’s that’s sometimes hard and there are some brands who rely on the channel to auto translate it on their behalf.

28:39.887 –> 28:52.750 [SPEAKER_00]: But then coming back to some brands who are very precious about the data that I know we are going to give you the internationalised content because we want to make sure the translation and the context is correct, not auto translated.

28:53.670 –> 28:59.520 [SPEAKER_00]: because I think my wife was actually done translation and she said half a time to context is the battle.

29:00.201 –> 29:05.731 [SPEAKER_00]: Everyone can use addiction, Ray, but it’s what is being said at the time in the situation that’s key.

29:06.923 –> 29:19.672 [SPEAKER_02]: And given all this, all this complexity, but all this opportunity mark for anyone listening, he’s going, okay, this is the time for us to start expanding beyond our own website and possibly a little bit of Amazon doubling, let’s say.

29:20.512 –> 29:30.559 [SPEAKER_02]: What you’re advice to them to make sure they are getting that product data in the best possible structure for making that move.

29:30.659 –> 29:34.102 [SPEAKER_02]: What do they need in place first before they start as opposed is what I’m trying to say?

29:34.697 –> 29:41.418 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so I mean, it’s the foundation of where are you where are you storing it in a way that you can access it simply?

29:41.718 –> 29:42.538 [SPEAKER_00]: That’s 0.1.

29:42.878 –> 29:48.680 [SPEAKER_00]: Then think about how do you get that data route into some form of fixed format?

29:49.260 –> 29:51.160 [SPEAKER_00]: Now, we doesn’t have to be an API call.

29:51.340 –> 29:54.421 [SPEAKER_00]: You don’t have to stress yourself out about that technical capability.

29:54.901 –> 30:02.202 [SPEAKER_00]: But just think that how could you share a sheet with someone that to someone who’s agnostic and doesn’t know your business will make sense to them?

30:02.662 –> 30:12.207 [SPEAKER_00]: You know, if you’re a brand who’s especially trying to break into the market and you’re trying to sell yourself out there to the world of think about how you can showcase it.

30:12.907 –> 30:24.293 [SPEAKER_00]: Now, one of the things that there’s more examples of and there’s actually something like within rhythm that we have is it’s kind of we call it supply explorer where it’s kind of like a shop window where people

30:27.235 –> 30:29.838 [SPEAKER_00]: to other people to come and say, all that looks interesting.

30:30.438 –> 30:42.110 [SPEAKER_00]: You know, if I’m a retailer for chance, I can come and insert, you know, these are categories, this is what I’m interested in, these kind of price points, and then they’ll get some some records come back of what these people might be interesting to you.

30:42.590 –> 30:44.993 [SPEAKER_00]: And then they can have like an interaction and between them.

30:45.073 –> 30:49.837 [SPEAKER_00]: So I think it’s, but part of that depends on where so you’ve got to get your catalog in the first place.

30:50.698 –> 30:54.020 [SPEAKER_00]: Now, of course, we have tooling that makes that simple for people to do.

30:54.520 –> 30:59.982 [SPEAKER_00]: But of course, it still depends on the data being in our format that can be passed by a machine.

31:00.563 –> 31:11.988 [SPEAKER_00]: So I think if your brand is that that’s the first simple challenge of get it into a structure that, again, someone from outside of your business can look at or it’s machine readable and go from there and start from there.

31:12.668 –> 31:15.289 [SPEAKER_00]: Don’t worry too much about getting 10,000 products on.

31:15.790 –> 31:16.310 [SPEAKER_00]: Start with 10.

31:17.550 –> 31:27.957 [SPEAKER_00]: And then once you’ve understood the nitty-gritty and you’ve understood the ways of working, you might not get huge amounts of conversions to start with that build your fundamentals first.

31:28.898 –> 31:34.602 [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, again, we’re talking on the masterclass podcast here, but as with most things, you don’t become a master.

31:34.822 –> 31:40.666 [SPEAKER_00]: Immediately, you start at the beginning, you start small and you add increments and you add complexity.

31:41.567 –> 31:42.868 [SPEAKER_00]: That’s my best advice.

31:46.095 –> 31:50.857 [SPEAKER_01]: E-commerce most Atlanta is supported by some of the greatest companies in the E-commerce sector.

31:50.997 –> 31:52.438 [SPEAKER_01]: Here’s a reminder of who they are.

32:03.757 –> 32:08.963 [SPEAKER_02]: Okay, I love this section because me and I’ll list us some really quick ideas for taking our businesses to the next level.

32:09.003 –> 32:10.925 [SPEAKER_02]: So Mark, you ready for the top tips?

32:11.346 –> 32:11.766 [SPEAKER_00]: I’m ready.

32:12.307 –> 32:12.747 [SPEAKER_02]: Excellent.

32:12.827 –> 32:14.049 [SPEAKER_02]: Okay, the book top tip.

32:14.129 –> 32:21.117 [SPEAKER_02]: 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?

32:22.413 –> 32:37.576 [SPEAKER_00]: So now I could have come up with a random business book so I looked really you know high brown and business centric but actually for me personally being honest is reading is an escape isn’t for me in the leisure time so it’s normally actually a sci-fi or fantasy physical book that I actually read.

32:38.357 –> 32:55.947 [SPEAKER_00]: But when I’m thinking about learning about business or a new topic, and of course a big focus for me is AI, I’m more my learning would sit more in like things like GitHub, Udemy courses, like practical learning, because for me practical learning is I have to be practical, I have to do something and I have to play.

32:56.407 –> 32:57.868 [SPEAKER_00]: So I’m a play learner.

32:57.988 –> 33:01.650 [SPEAKER_00]: So you know, in the context of this, my recommendation would be

33:02.350 –> 33:17.195 [SPEAKER_00]: especially when you think about talking like Lord and things like that is just carve some time out and just play and explore and try because honestly that’s how practically I learn and I think you learn so much more through doing than for me always text.

33:18.016 –> 33:19.036 [SPEAKER_02]: Love that.

33:19.476 –> 33:23.337 [SPEAKER_02]: A nice alternative answer to our booktop tip but a very good one too.

33:23.437 –> 33:24.138 [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you Mark.

33:24.558 –> 33:28.499 [SPEAKER_02]: A traffic top tip which marketing method do you either price above all others or think

33:31.533 –> 33:42.525 [SPEAKER_00]: Markting in the sense of where I kind of exist in the market is, you know, that the network and when I think about network, I think about people, you know, it’s all about the people.

33:43.140 –> 34:02.814 [SPEAKER_00]: it really is that there are some wonderful experts and SMEs out there and you will across pass with them or maybe find them and help them understand you and then again that’s that’s a really important kind of first fundamental step for me and I think that’s where especially with my time in the industries is quite

34:03.554 –> 34:18.245 [SPEAKER_00]: unusual to go to meet a new business and not see someone I know from the past because actually UK e-commerce and retail is actually quite a small population of people so yeah it’s always quite amusing to meet people who you’re like I’m sure I’ve been met before and you actually have

34:19.320 –> 34:28.348 [SPEAKER_02]: And I think the faster things are changing in the industry, the more important talking to your peers about how they’re handling those changes is.

34:28.368 –> 34:33.272 [SPEAKER_02]: And I think there’s so much changing at the moment, I could not agree with your advice more, more there.

34:33.673 –> 34:44.162 [SPEAKER_02]: Okay, the tool, top tip, maybe a collaboration tool, a social media plugin, a phone app or just a way of working, is there a cool little tool you use that makes you and your team more efficient from day to day?

34:45.473 –> 34:58.217 [SPEAKER_00]: I think my team are wonderful, and they’re fantastic at sharing knowledge with each other, and again, there’s this new phase where we’re kind of taking it to the next level of almost like practical working days on.

34:58.277 –> 35:05.400 [SPEAKER_00]: So what are you doing with this new cool AI tooling thing, sitting in a room next to each other and actually playing and designing again together?

35:06.060 –> 35:11.762 [SPEAKER_00]: Because you don’t know what you don’t know and I think we all need to be very humble with this new world We’re kind of entering into.

35:12.382 –> 35:20.305 [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I’ve rewritten half the things I’ve got in my AI Tolling about five times already because you just you learn something you go actually That’s not actually working now.

35:20.325 –> 35:26.047 [SPEAKER_00]: I need to then tweak this and do that and if you can help someone else avoid four of those missteps

35:26.847 –> 35:31.213 [SPEAKER_00]: But at the same time, not sacrifice the learning you’ve got from making those missteps.

35:31.754 –> 35:35.939 [SPEAKER_00]: It’s a funny balance of something, those working sessions from me are fantastic.

35:36.740 –> 35:39.424 [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, again, completely agree.

35:39.484 –> 35:43.890 [SPEAKER_02]: Carbon top tip, what’s your favourite way to reduce the carbon footprint of an e-commerce store?

35:44.856 –> 35:46.778 [SPEAKER_00]: excessive packaging is a pet hate.

35:47.158 –> 35:49.120 [SPEAKER_00]: A lot of thin industry actually is getting better.

35:49.621 –> 35:51.683 [SPEAKER_00]: I think four years ago it was shocking.

35:51.883 –> 35:56.187 [SPEAKER_00]: There’s some people and not gonna throw them under the bus who could definitely still get better.

35:56.647 –> 36:01.312 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I mean there’s a lot that can be done but I do think that’s actually getting better.

36:02.305 –> 36:16.572 [SPEAKER_02]: I think you’re right there and I’m going to resist sharing stories of excessive packaging because we’ll be here all day and Mark, 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?

36:17.247 –> 36:17.868 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, for sure.

36:17.908 –> 36:22.153 [SPEAKER_00]: So please do find us at www.rhythm.com.

36:22.213 –> 36:25.137 [SPEAKER_00]: That’s rhythm spelled RITHUM.

36:25.718 –> 36:27.400 [SPEAKER_00]: You can find all the information about us.

36:27.921 –> 36:33.969 [SPEAKER_00]: You can contact us through the website and yeah, it’d be fantastic to talk if you think there’s a way we can help you.

36:34.883 –> 36:39.767 [SPEAKER_02]: or some thank you Mark, and that’s for sharing so much of the nitty-gritty advice or product data.

36:39.787 –> 36:40.367 [SPEAKER_02]: I know it’s something.

36:40.968 –> 36:48.173 [SPEAKER_02]: Everyone’s got on there to do list better product data, but many don’t know how to actually go about doing it, so I’m love your advice.

36:48.193 –> 36:49.194 [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you so much for being here.

36:50.254 –> 36:50.935 [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for the time.

36:56.682 –> 37:09.054 [SPEAKER_02]: So fascinating how the not the complexity but the impressive ways of managing product data have altered in the the 20 plus years I’ve been in this industry from when we had like two fields.

37:09.474 –> 37:14.659 [SPEAKER_02]: To now there’s so many fields metafields, Geberfields, back in fields, fields for Google feeds for,

37:15.380 –> 37:39.211 [SPEAKER_02]: All our, sorry, fields for all our different fields as we go across various marketplaces and others and then the huge opportunity at the moment of the marketplaces that many of the big retailers are now opening up on their website as explicit marketplaces or otherwise really great to have Mark here on the show taking us through what really matters in the space of getting your product data right and really fascinating to hear about how.

37:40.051 –> 37:45.575 [SPEAKER_02]: the negotiation of who gets to write the copy to some extent is going on on different places too.

37:46.015 –> 37:53.260 [SPEAKER_02]: You get your hands on our notes from this episode, including those top tips and links to what we mentioned by heading over to ecommercemasterland.com.

37:53.680 –> 38:00.664 [SPEAKER_02]: You can also use our direct episode short links that’s ECMP.info forward slash 611 for this episode.

38:01.005 –> 38:04.367 [SPEAKER_02]: That works for all our episodes, that will take you straight to the right page on the site.

38:04.727 –> 38:08.351 [SPEAKER_02]: And when you get to the website, you can also add yourself to our email list.

38:08.391 –> 38:10.012 [SPEAKER_02]: So you don’t miss out on any of the other things.

38:10.353 –> 38:11.934 [SPEAKER_02]: We share to help you in your business.

38:12.875 –> 38:23.846 [SPEAKER_02]: If you liked this episode, then why not go and check out Episode 565 with Andrew Steel of Charles Bentley who is a business a brand in the parlance of this episode.

38:24.567 –> 38:30.290 [SPEAKER_02]: with lots of skews, thousands of skews, managing them across more than 10 different marketplaces.

38:30.310 –> 38:42.275 [SPEAKER_02]: So, fascinating chat with Andrew in episode 5, 6, 5 that I think kind of builds on some more we’ve been talking about today and thank you so much for tuning into this and every episode that you do of the e-commerce master plan podcast.

38:42.715 –> 38:55.408 [SPEAKER_02]: We bring you a new interview every single week to inspire and help e-commerce business owners like you to succeed and thrive with your businesses, including encouraging both you and your customers to make more sustainable buying decisions.

38:55.908 –> 39:00.973 [SPEAKER_02]: So if you know someone this show can help please tell them to listen to the e-commerce master plan podcast.

39:00.993 –> 39:04.457 [SPEAKER_02]: I hope you have a brilliant week and don’t forget to keep optimizing.

39:07.660 –> 39:11.005 [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you for listening to the e-commerce Master Plan podcast.

39:11.425 –> 39:16.291 [SPEAKER_01]: Find out more at e-commercemasterplanned.com slash podcast.

In this episode, Tariq shares how BLD BRO grew from a small Instagram community into a multi-million-pound eCommerce brand. He reveals the practical decisions behind that growth, including their Amazon launch, lean SKU strategy, in-house fulfilment, and why they outsource specialist marketing expertise instead of trying to do everything themselves. 

Hit PLAY to hear: 

• How BLD BRO grew from250 Instagram followers to £3.5M in sales 
• Why Amazon became a third of UK revenue within months of launch 
• The 5-SKU strategy that keeps growth simple and profitable 
• Why they rejected Kickstarter despite already having a community 
• The founder mindset shift: “We’re not eCommerce experts” 
• The surprising reason they insist on keeping fulfilment in-house in Birmingham 

Key timestamps to dive straight in: 

[05:41] Early funding and avoiding crowdfunding 

[09:45] Keeping product line focused 

[10:59] Managing product diversity and packaging 

[16:41] Building an eCommerce team 

[17:43] Optimizing website conversion strategies 

[23:00] Starting the hair loss journey 

[25:58] Listen to Tariq’s Top Tips! 

Full episode notes here: https://ecmp.info/610

— Download our ebook… https://ecmp.info/ebook 500 Tips to Increase Your Profits

Get all the links and resources we mention and join our email list at https://ecmp.info

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00:00.530 –> 00:01.852 [SPEAKER_00]: We are not e-commerce experts.

00:02.152 –> 00:04.856 [SPEAKER_00]: We are three guys who had an idea about board skincare.

00:05.137 –> 00:10.604 [SPEAKER_00]: So, as we build this business, yeah, we’re starting to onboard more and more in-house talent.

00:10.945 –> 00:14.670 [SPEAKER_00]: I think a lot of founders fall into the trap of trying to do everything themselves.

00:15.191 –> 00:17.074 [SPEAKER_00]: If you get good agencies, they can be invaluable.

00:19.790 –> 00:22.173 [SPEAKER_02]: It’s the e-commerce master plan podcast.

00:22.734 –> 00:26.800 [SPEAKER_02]: Here to help you solve your marketing problems and grow your e-commerce business.

00:27.321 –> 00:35.172 [SPEAKER_02]: Cutting through the highly to bring you inspiration and advice from the e-commerce sector and beyond, here’s your host, Chloe Thomas.

00:38.465 –> 00:39.566 [SPEAKER_01]: Hello and welcome.

00:39.586 –> 00:40.628 [SPEAKER_01]: It’s great to have you here.

00:40.688 –> 00:44.973 [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you for hitting play and choosing to listen to this inspiring guest.

00:45.534 –> 00:58.189 [SPEAKER_01]: We are going into the world of men’s grooming and we are going to be talking to a CEO and co-founder of a fascinating men’s skin care business all focused on the bald head.

00:58.909 –> 01:22.523 [SPEAKER_01]: With the real purpose behind the business, amazing community, we’ll be getting into why they didn’t do a kickstarter and self-funded instead, we’ll be talking about their recent launch on Amazon, skew strategy, warehousing strategy, should you insource or outsource your marketing expertise loads of cool stuff and he’s also sharing some really interesting bits and pieces in the top tips too.

01:28.988 –> 01:30.930 [SPEAKER_01]: And now to introduce our special guest.

01:31.370 –> 01:35.293 [SPEAKER_01]: Tarek Kazimi is the co-founder and CEO at Bald Bro.

01:35.754 –> 01:39.017 [SPEAKER_01]: A British skincare brand championing Bald Confidence.

01:39.477 –> 01:47.083 [SPEAKER_01]: Founded in 2021, they did £3.5 million last year and are growing fast via their Shopify store and Amazon.

01:47.183 –> 01:48.104 [SPEAKER_01]: Hello Tarek.

01:48.785 –> 01:49.245 [SPEAKER_00]: Hey, Glowy.

01:49.686 –> 01:52.128 [SPEAKER_01]: Very cool to have you here and what a story.

01:52.788 –> 01:53.209 [SPEAKER_01]: Love it.

01:53.729 –> 01:55.811 [SPEAKER_01]: How did you get started in e-commerce though?

01:56.528 –> 02:07.455 [SPEAKER_00]: Well, even before Bullbroke had a little bit of a background in e-commerce and operations, I had a startup in the golf that I started in 2012, and we slowly built that up.

02:08.075 –> 02:11.737 [SPEAKER_00]: And actually, Bullbroke came about more as a passion project.

02:12.017 –> 02:15.640 [SPEAKER_00]: I like many people shaved my head during over lockdown.

02:16.060 –> 02:19.102 [SPEAKER_00]: I finally got tired of that ball spot and decided to embrace it.

02:19.222 –> 02:20.843 [SPEAKER_00]: But it had been quite a journey.

02:21.823 –> 02:43.155 [SPEAKER_00]: Someone, a friend of mine, reached out, Richard was also a co-founder and said, friend of his Ben, the other co-founder, had had an idea to create a community that would just champion baldness push against the narrative that exists in society, that there’s something wrong with being bald or that you have to cure something when actually it’s a completely natural process.

02:43.575 –> 02:46.917 [SPEAKER_00]: And we just wanted to create a little corner of the internet that was positive and

02:47.657 –> 02:58.333 [SPEAKER_00]: We did have a, you know, I had an e-commerce background, we will have some sort of commercial background and we’d sort of seem that there wasn’t really any brands that dealt with Bulltaking care.

02:58.733 –> 03:03.260 [SPEAKER_00]: When you go bald, all the things they tell you are negative aren’t true, but there is one negative and that’s

03:04.261 –> 03:15.289 [SPEAKER_00]: You are more susceptible to sun damage, skin damage, bald guys, the seven times more likely to get skin cancer on their head, so there is a need for skin care and sun care, and there was no brand champion there.

03:15.349 –> 03:22.293 [SPEAKER_00]: So we had that sort of on the back burner, but initially it wasn’t even a commerce, it was an Instagram community that slowly grew into a commerce.

03:22.914 –> 03:24.435 [SPEAKER_01]: Wow, so it all started on Instagram.

03:25.200 –> 03:33.205 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, just buildy.browbe, we used to put pictures of like Kelly Slater, Jason State them, some positive quotes.

03:33.265 –> 03:34.106 [SPEAKER_00]: We were so happy.

03:34.386 –> 03:37.888 [SPEAKER_00]: We just passed 50,000 followers, which for us is big.

03:38.168 –> 03:41.590 [SPEAKER_00]: But I remember celebrating 250 followers.

03:41.610 –> 03:45.353 [SPEAKER_00]: We didn’t have a brand, we didn’t have a product, but we had bull-browns to grandma.

03:45.753 –> 03:52.257 [SPEAKER_00]: Through that, we saw this community grow, and that really helped us in our e-commerce journey as well.

03:52.840 –> 03:58.944 [SPEAKER_01]: No, so at what point did you decide it was the time to go to monetize that community, I suppose?

04:00.085 –> 04:03.808 [SPEAKER_00]: Well, it wasn’t really, we wanted to do a skincare brand, but we weren’t sure.

04:04.028 –> 04:11.073 [SPEAKER_00]: So we spent about, when we started the community, it took about two years to then launch a product.

04:11.673 –> 04:17.157 [SPEAKER_00]: One year of doing that thing and then another year of pure product testing, we didn’t want to just

04:17.677 –> 04:27.380 [SPEAKER_00]: A lot of skincare brands and a lot of niches, what they do is they take an idea of brand a kind of an ethos, but they just stick that on took a pre-existing cosmetic product.

04:27.980 –> 04:35.702 [SPEAKER_00]: Whereas for bald guys, we really wanted to not just bring the same old skincare with a kind of bald twist to it.

04:36.102 –> 04:44.965 [SPEAKER_00]: We wanted to create a product specifically in the somecare realm that wasn’t shiny or greasy because a lot of good bald guys care about kind of shine on their heads and

04:45.325 –> 04:48.266 [SPEAKER_00]: So we wanted to make an SPF gel, so we had to develop it.

04:48.306 –> 04:56.670 [SPEAKER_00]: So it took about two years for us to launch our hero product, which is then, but again, let’s not over a state kind of how big that was.

04:56.730 –> 05:00.772 [SPEAKER_00]: It was a thousand units, self-financed in little plastic tubes.

05:00.872 –> 05:09.416 [SPEAKER_00]: And the consensus around the ball bro table at the time was, obviously no one’s ever going to buy this, but at least we have a lifetime supply of

05:15.393 –> 05:19.614 [SPEAKER_01]: How come you didn’t take the route of crowdfunding?

05:20.034 –> 05:29.678 [SPEAKER_01]: Given, you know, we get a lot of people on the podcast who’ve done the Kickstarter route and they’re evangelizing about how great is you build this community at the same time as you launch in the product, you get the funding at front.

05:30.058 –> 05:36.080 [SPEAKER_01]: You had the community, I would have thought, and you know, a potentially viral product.

05:36.140 –> 05:39.961 [SPEAKER_01]: I would have thought you’d be like perfect for that Kickstarter crowdfunding model.

05:39.981 –> 05:41.321 [SPEAKER_01]: So how come you chose not to?

05:41.681 –> 05:42.602 [SPEAKER_00]: Probably poor management.

05:45.747 –> 05:57.181 [SPEAKER_00]: I think we actually had an early warning story from a friend of friend who runs at the time a much bigger company like he, you know, quite established.

05:57.602 –> 06:02.427 [SPEAKER_00]: They’re just got a listing and same sprees and they’re done crowdfunding and they’d said look

06:03.048 –> 06:16.858 [SPEAKER_00]: It’s a huge amount of due diligence, a huge amount of legal, your investors aren’t getting the kind of rights that an ordinary shareholder might get, you know, with obviously horror stories like what happened with the broodogpunks and so on.

06:17.779 –> 06:27.987 [SPEAKER_00]: And actually to get traction on crowdfunding, you really need quite a stack of money being invested privately that then you tag you top up with

06:32.570 –> 06:49.778 [SPEAKER_00]: But we were lucky enough when we did our first pre-seed round that we managed to just through the three F’s, or, you know, for those who don’t know as I think friends, family and fools, managed to manage to raise what we were looking to get in our pre-seed.

06:50.258 –> 07:00.923 [SPEAKER_00]: So we didn’t need to, but as that community is grown, maybe if we can make sure it’s a fair deal for us and a fair deal for them, we might do it at some point in the future fundraising round.

07:01.503 –> 07:06.508 [SPEAKER_00]: So it’s not something we’re totally against, but it’s also something that we decided against doing early stage.

07:06.868 –> 07:24.826 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, just, it does, I think it’s one of these things which you can, you can quite easily get sucked into the, oh, everyone who does this succeed mantra because it’s such a noisy process as people go, you know, go through it, but actually it’s not for everyone and it’s not always the right way to go down.

07:25.539 –> 07:31.063 [SPEAKER_00]: No, I just didn’t feel, it’s a few people have mentioned it, but it just never felt the right time for us to do it.

07:31.443 –> 07:44.452 [SPEAKER_00]: So, and again, if we can, again, there’s bad publicity around it now, but if there is a time where, you know, our community was 250 people then, how many of those were, you know, potentially investors, maybe none.

07:51.572 –> 07:51.912 [SPEAKER_01]: Got you.

07:52.152 –> 07:54.614 [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, let’s talk about the business as it is today, then.

07:55.094 –> 07:59.297 [SPEAKER_01]: Where in the world are you based and where are you selling to?

07:59.337 –> 08:01.799 [SPEAKER_00]: We’re based in South Birmingham in Sturchley.

08:02.019 –> 08:08.303 [SPEAKER_00]: So near Bourneville and near the Cadbury Mondalese factory, we sell internationally.

08:08.404 –> 08:11.746 [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, a predominant primary market is the UK.

08:12.246 –> 08:17.510 [SPEAKER_00]: So it’s the only place where we do any big brand activations like non-digital advertising.

08:18.110 –> 08:27.797 [SPEAKER_00]: But we have had sales internationally and continue to do so, predominantly in the English speaking markets, a little bit in Europe, and then the, you know, the odd order here and there.

08:27.837 –> 08:32.320 [SPEAKER_00]: We, the Shopify store is open globally and we can fulfill globally.

08:32.340 –> 08:34.301 [SPEAKER_00]: So we do if, if the orders are there.

08:34.702 –> 08:35.002 [SPEAKER_01]: Nice.

08:35.282 –> 08:38.944 [SPEAKER_01]: And, um, obviously you’ve got the hero product, the SPF.

08:38.984 –> 08:41.046 [SPEAKER_01]: What does the product range look like these days?

08:41.086 –> 08:42.287 [SPEAKER_01]: How many skews are you up to?

08:43.007 –> 08:53.773 [SPEAKER_00]: We have five skews, so I mean, not to get too salesy, but the here a product is cynical, Bull Bradale, which is a mattifying gel that’s a moisturizer with SPF.

08:53.793 –> 08:57.915 [SPEAKER_00]: So it was this real, like, does what it says on the tin moment.

08:58.536 –> 09:11.043 [SPEAKER_00]: It really did bring something new to the skincare market and from that we built a waterproof SPF 50 version, a anti-aging night moisturizer to do sort of Bull Bradale, sort of, protect in the day, repair at night,

09:12.363 –> 09:15.884 [SPEAKER_00]: the other thing that all guys do habitually relate to skincare is shave.

09:16.284 –> 09:39.730 [SPEAKER_00]: So there’s a lot of good shave creams on the market, but not very many pre-shave, expolating scrubs or off-shave bumps, so we did a scrub and a balm duo, so I mean I shaved at least twice three times a week with a full-head wet shave, so it’s a product that we felt we were happy that it brought something high quality to the market that would be appreciated by the current

09:41.145 –> 09:44.207 [SPEAKER_01]: Can I say kind of all elements of bald skincare covered?

09:45.028 –> 09:48.651 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, which I’m not to, obviously, it’s been the quietest successful brand.

09:48.971 –> 09:52.614 [SPEAKER_00]: But we are trying not to over-diversify the skewer engine.

09:52.634 –> 09:53.374 [SPEAKER_00]: There are pressures.

09:53.514 –> 09:56.437 [SPEAKER_00]: You need different size of different sense, different skews.

09:56.497 –> 10:01.821 [SPEAKER_00]: But I think we’re trying to keep that only what’s really necessary.

10:01.881 –> 10:04.683 [SPEAKER_00]: What’s really pertinent to bald people.

10:05.323 –> 10:09.787 [SPEAKER_00]: I really want to do a head and body wash, because I’m tired of seeing shampoo or shower gel.

10:11.007 –> 10:37.396 [SPEAKER_00]: I feel like shampoo is very baldist, so I wouldn’t mind a product that’s specifically for washing for bald guys their head and body, but I don’t know right now what the difference between that and shower gel would be apart from the name, so if we figure that out and actually bring something that’s useful to bald guys we will, but yeah the five skews are there, they’re the baseline, the core of the range now, but we will potentially add a couple here

10:38.922 –> 10:44.268 [SPEAKER_01]: I think often people fall into the trap of adding a skewer and adding a skewer and adding a skewer.

10:44.388 –> 10:49.054 [SPEAKER_01]: And every time you add one, it adds a lot more complexity to the business, doesn’t it?

10:49.094 –> 10:56.102 [SPEAKER_01]: So I think I often think the wisest of those who kind of actively constrain the addition of new skewers.

10:56.523 –> 10:58.345 [SPEAKER_01]: If that makes sense, it seems like that’s what you’re doing.

10:59.057 –> 11:10.064 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, 100% I mean, look, the packaging, for example, every new skew might be different size, then you’ve got to divide the best of eye packaging, you look at what do your customers actually want.

11:10.184 –> 11:17.209 [SPEAKER_00]: It’s very easy to say, oh, like they want this and that’s do this and we need to have a 12 skincare range of 12 products.

11:17.589 –> 11:18.410 [SPEAKER_00]: But the reality is,

11:19.670 –> 11:26.578 [SPEAKER_00]: But, you know, if you look at your sales data, it’s better to have five skews that sell broadly to your customers.

11:26.598 –> 11:35.349 [SPEAKER_00]: And if you’re not there yet, then maybe concentrate on bringing up that spread rather than trying to dilute your range.

11:35.389 –> 11:36.891 [SPEAKER_00]: Because then you’re going to the stock.

11:36.971 –> 11:37.271 [SPEAKER_00]: You have to

11:38.172 –> 11:42.018 [SPEAKER_00]: order the amount of capital that has to invest in stock and so on.

11:42.038 –> 11:43.380 [SPEAKER_00]: So I think you’re very right in that.

11:44.001 –> 11:50.490 [SPEAKER_00]: But conversely, you do want to build a OV, you want to build variance, you want to try different segments of your potential cost in the base.

11:50.791 –> 11:54.136 [SPEAKER_00]: So it’s more of an art rather than a science at him.

11:54.727 –> 11:58.693 [SPEAKER_01]: And how do you manage the split between Shopify and Amazon?

11:59.173 –> 12:04.501 [SPEAKER_01]: You know, I know some people will only put one or two products on Amazon and they’ll do the rest of their own website, they’ll put everything there.

12:05.082 –> 12:08.867 [SPEAKER_01]: What, how do you balance the needs of those two hungry sales channels?

12:09.789 –> 12:19.194 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I mean, we only launched Amazon last November, so it’s relatively new for us, although it’s really, I mean, it’s already representing a third of UK sales.

12:19.835 –> 12:24.958 [SPEAKER_00]: So it’s grown very, very quickly, and we’ve only put,

12:26.264 –> 12:34.769 [SPEAKER_00]: the so what we’ve got all our skews are on there but what there are are some of our bundles and upsellers and re-packs and so on.

12:34.789 –> 12:54.280 [SPEAKER_00]: So for the full boardbroke experience you would have to order from our website but if you’re just looking for you know we appreciate the people on prying people like that service even though we often make stay delivery at sometimes is you know if you order after 3pm you’re getting at the day after it’s such a so people like to shop and Amazon so we want to make sure with present there but we also

12:55.220 –> 13:00.305 [SPEAKER_00]: in order to cut down a bit of the complexity, some of the upsells and bundles we keep just website only.

13:00.745 –> 13:05.550 [SPEAKER_01]: Just keep it as that simple straightforward sales channel without the whizzes and bangs.

13:06.110 –> 13:06.971 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, we’re trying to.

13:07.692 –> 13:19.703 [SPEAKER_00]: We have been prevented in the subscription option on Amazon, probably, you know, maybe we’ll use Amazon warehousing to distribute in Europe if we go, you know, if we take that route recently, there’s a three-year-old charge for shipping from the UK to

13:21.205 –> 13:25.972 [SPEAKER_00]: It would be useful to leverage that if you say we’re stocked stocked in Amazon Germany.

13:26.392 –> 13:35.926 [SPEAKER_00]: So we’re open, we’re flexible, and maybe at some point Amazon will mirror completely what we do online, but still really new, so we’re just going slow and steady.

13:36.608 –> 13:38.430 [SPEAKER_01]: Slow and steady, but it’s already a third of sales.

13:39.231 –> 13:46.779 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, slow and steady, but in the tactics or strategy, but in sales, yeah, absolutely unbelievable.

13:46.939 –> 13:47.159 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

13:47.440 –> 13:51.664 [SPEAKER_00]: But you can say, I think some people exclusively shop on Amazon.

13:52.004 –> 13:53.726 [SPEAKER_00]: And it has a built-in trust.

13:53.746 –> 13:56.689 [SPEAKER_00]: There’s a brand like us that are defining a category.

13:57.350 –> 14:06.937 [SPEAKER_00]: And a lot of people, especially were selling to, you know, guys 40 plus a lot of the time, they might be from a generation who’s not that comfortable just seeing an Instagram ad and buying from a random website.

14:07.177 –> 14:08.278 [SPEAKER_00]: You know, is it a scam?

14:08.298 –> 14:08.898 [SPEAKER_00]: Is it fraud?

14:09.038 –> 14:10.199 [SPEAKER_00]: Because a lot of that exists.

14:10.239 –> 14:15.143 [SPEAKER_00]: Well, at least if it’s on Amazon, it’s reviewed on Amazon, you can trust that to a certain extent.

14:15.819 –> 14:18.782 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and there are people who would just be Amazon customers.

14:18.802 –> 14:22.266 [SPEAKER_01]: So if you want to sell to them, you’ve got to have product in the right place.

14:22.767 –> 14:27.112 [SPEAKER_01]: So you mentioned that you’ve got, I think, two co-founders Richard and Ben, so right here.

14:27.693 –> 14:28.233 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, correct.

14:28.373 –> 14:30.035 [SPEAKER_01]: Is it still just the three of you?

14:30.316 –> 14:32.098 [SPEAKER_01]: And if not, how many are you?

14:32.238 –> 14:33.960 [SPEAKER_01]: And how do you divvy up all the work?

14:34.854 –> 14:51.281 [SPEAKER_00]: Well, so no, it was still a small team, I mean, we’ve grown a lot in the last, since 2024, it’s really been of a crazy upward journey as far as revenue and traction, and still, obviously, a long way to go.

14:51.582 –> 15:00.886 [SPEAKER_00]: The three co-founders, so Richard runs the warehouse in Birmingham, Ben is the creative director, and is really responsible for everything to do with the visual image.

15:01.566 –> 15:10.953 [SPEAKER_00]: We have a CMO who, you know, plans and runs and manages agencies are related to performance and an out-of-home marketing.

15:11.434 –> 15:16.458 [SPEAKER_00]: We have Jake Nassie, formerly of Lad Bible, who is our bald head of social media.

15:16.978 –> 15:21.282 [SPEAKER_00]: So he’s, he’s absolutely doing an amazing job of

15:21.902 –> 15:23.383 [SPEAKER_00]: building our organic socials.

15:23.563 –> 15:38.830 [SPEAKER_00]: So we have millions of views on our organic socials, which for a you know, skin care brand is unusual, but it’s because we talk about the subject of baldness and Jake specifically talks to that subject and it’s not just there being like, I look, you know, this is a matter of fine moisturizer, that’s perfect.

15:38.850 –> 15:43.992 [SPEAKER_00]: It’s actually asking people, what do they think of hair loss, what do they think of being bald, asking for other people’s perspective?

15:44.512 –> 15:46.253 [SPEAKER_00]: So that’s the core team.

15:46.293 –> 15:51.355 [SPEAKER_00]: We have also have Head of Custom Service Nikki, a chair, a fractional CFO.

15:51.415 –> 16:05.202 [SPEAKER_00]: So we’re starting to broaden out the core team, as well as and agency support in things like CRM, creative, performance buying, ER, we have PR, and we have CROs.

16:05.242 –> 16:05.462 [SPEAKER_00]: Well,

16:06.062 –> 16:09.388 [SPEAKER_00]: So, and where we are affiliates, and now I’m boarding TikTok shop.

16:09.568 –> 16:15.658 [SPEAKER_00]: So, yeah, there’s a whole ecosystem around Bulbro, and that the core team is still a very solid unit.

16:16.239 –> 16:25.986 [SPEAKER_01]: So many brands and founders go through that to the liberation of what, especially on the marketing and all those bits you just outlined in the conventional optimization, all that side of things.

16:26.426 –> 16:27.547 [SPEAKER_01]: What do we do in-house?

16:27.607 –> 16:31.089 [SPEAKER_01]: What do we do outsourced to agencies or freelancers?

16:31.449 –> 16:36.573 [SPEAKER_01]: Seems like you’re very pro outsourcing to the expert in each area.

16:37.373 –> 16:38.554 [SPEAKER_01]: What is that, your rationality?

16:38.614 –> 16:39.495 [SPEAKER_01]: I have my accident.

16:39.515 –> 16:41.036 [SPEAKER_01]: Has that been a goal from the beginning?

16:41.796 –> 16:43.818 [SPEAKER_00]: I think we are not in common with experts.

16:44.538 –> 16:47.259 [SPEAKER_00]: We are three guys who had an idea about board skincare.

16:47.520 –> 16:51.922 [SPEAKER_00]: So why would I know how do I know how to hire a CRO guy?

16:52.642 –> 16:55.424 [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I don’t know what good CRO looks like.

16:55.464 –> 16:57.745 [SPEAKER_00]: I don’t know what good format’s buying looks like.

16:57.765 –> 16:58.886 [SPEAKER_00]: I don’t know what could PR looks like.

16:58.926 –> 17:07.210 [SPEAKER_00]: So as we build this business, yeah, we’re starting to onboard more and more in-house talent to complement the agency support.

17:07.310 –> 17:07.971 [SPEAKER_00]: But these guys

17:08.971 –> 17:14.175 [SPEAKER_00]: You know, I think a lot of founders fall into the trap of trying to do everything themselves.

17:14.755 –> 17:31.426 [SPEAKER_00]: Now, agencies are not, you know, we’ve had plenty of not-so-great agencies that we’ve had to get rid of, and that’s also important to make, you know, make the cut them quick, because you can get kind of stuck with mediocre agencies for a long time, and I think that can hold you back a lot.

17:32.086 –> 17:36.209 [SPEAKER_00]: But we also trying to get, if you get good agencies, they can be invaluable.

17:37.343 –> 17:38.364 [SPEAKER_01]: I like your take on that.

17:38.624 –> 17:42.648 [SPEAKER_01]: We’re not experts in the come as how we know how to hire the perfect CRO person.

17:43.426 –> 18:01.060 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, what do we, I mean, I don’t know, well, how would I, I wouldn’t, I haven’t, making us chat TV to write an interview question, but it’s sort of, we understood that we needed, I mean, CRO, for example, we fell into it, we wanted to do a website rebuild and actually we realized the website was convulting really well, but maybe we could just optimize a few things, but be testing at the same time.

18:01.161 –> 18:09.868 [SPEAKER_00]: So that made sense to us rationally, but we wouldn’t know, you know, if we hired someone in the house, we wouldn’t really know how to quality can check them.

18:10.028 –> 18:10.568 [SPEAKER_00]: And also,

18:11.724 –> 18:15.427 [SPEAKER_00]: You know, you’re scrappy, fast-growing startup.

18:16.228 –> 18:22.633 [SPEAKER_00]: You don’t want to be getting into big long-term contracts with potentially with people that are difficult to get rid of if they don’t work out either.

18:23.213 –> 18:37.325 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, there is that flexibility to it isn’t it’s like, let’s wait until something has shown itself to be so core that we need somebody owning it completely in-house, but in the meantime, let’s keep ourselves that flexibility to be able to dip in and out of channels and experts.

18:38.190 –> 18:39.711 [SPEAKER_00]: 100% and things like creative.

18:39.731 –> 18:42.631 [SPEAKER_00]: So we have a creative agency that I’ve created of strategists, creative.

18:42.952 –> 18:52.315 [SPEAKER_00]: So the perfect situation there is, we might even hire a creative strategist to work with their creative strategists because in commerce, creative, and decent, so important.

18:52.775 –> 18:55.976 [SPEAKER_00]: So it’s not like, okay, we hire a creative strategist to get rid of theirs.

18:56.436 –> 19:02.438 [SPEAKER_00]: It’s just more to then manage that relationship, slowly on board, maybe more talent in house, but still have that capacity.

19:03.018 –> 19:15.962 [SPEAKER_00]: You know, to turn out with metter and endrometer and the amount of creative required, it’s good to have that engine room that’s, you know, already been built by someone else, the agency found to support us, so we don’t have to build ourselves.

19:16.528 –> 19:26.690 [SPEAKER_01]: And then the other kind of obvious thing from your team structure is you’ve got the warehousing in-house, which is another big, should we shouldn’t wish, should we, shouldn’t we?

19:27.511 –> 19:29.051 [SPEAKER_00]: That was always definitely we should.

19:29.071 –> 19:36.853 [SPEAKER_00]: I think it’s like a lazy idea that you shouldn’t do things yourself of why wouldn’t you have your own warehouse, why wouldn’t you couldn’t quality control?

19:37.113 –> 19:43.154 [SPEAKER_00]: If you’re using a 3PL and you’re not manufacturing, where are you storing anything, how are you making sure that that process runs smoothly?

19:46.535 –> 20:02.191 [SPEAKER_00]: But at the end of the day, that’s still another company with loads of clients that are not going to, that if you know logistics, right, there’s a track that’s turning up, oh, it’s it came at seven a.m. Well, if it’s your warehouse, you’ll solve that problem with a 3 p.m., you might not.

20:02.311 –> 20:08.156 [SPEAKER_00]: So, and also on dispatch, we put things like handwritten notes, stickers in first orders.

20:08.797 –> 20:14.859 [SPEAKER_00]: There’s a whole load of picks that you’d be then charged for to create that quality in a 3PL, as well as the storage.

20:15.619 –> 20:17.679 [SPEAKER_00]: And we just prefer to do it ourselves.

20:18.019 –> 20:21.961 [SPEAKER_00]: And it gives us an opportunity to really be a Birmingham company.

20:22.261 –> 20:23.541 [SPEAKER_00]: We’re that’s where we were founded.

20:23.981 –> 20:26.282 [SPEAKER_00]: That’s where two of the co-founders are born and bred.

20:26.682 –> 20:31.583 [SPEAKER_00]: We hire local Birmingham guys in our warehouse, so we’re actually contributing to that economy.

20:32.143 –> 20:36.724 [SPEAKER_00]: And we do it all in all Chica, then the best 3PL quote that I’ve been given,

20:38.785 –> 20:46.452 [SPEAKER_00]: and we don’t, we just do it across, so for us, and I think that’s within the UK, that’s infinitely scalable.

20:47.133 –> 20:56.182 [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, we may use 3Piles in US or Germany or wherever we use Amazon for filming in other markets, but I don’t ever see a world where we don’t have our own warehouse.

20:57.177 –> 20:59.299 [SPEAKER_01]: Well, I didn’t think we could all hear the passion.

20:59.359 –> 21:16.677 [SPEAKER_01]: By that’s, I think we’d all be very surprised if we hear that you’ve outsourced your UK fulfilment in the near future, which got me thinking, I would assume you’re not a particularly seasonal business, not like a women’s skincare business, picks up an awful lot at peak, but do you have a peak,

21:17.538 –> 21:33.089 [SPEAKER_00]: We do, I mean, the two predominant skews are sun related, so from, let’s say, April to August, you do have what we consider peak sun, but then we’re also because we’re a premium skincare brand that makes the perfect gift for bald guys.

21:33.469 –> 21:36.311 [SPEAKER_00]: We then see a secondary peak in November, December.

21:36.331 –> 21:37.052 [SPEAKER_00]: So the only

21:37.852 –> 21:50.641 [SPEAKER_00]: Let’s say required to months would be Jan Feb, March, and maybe September, October, which I think in general commerce is normally the quiet amongst any way, but then with things like the shave range that’s a habitual evergreen.

21:50.801 –> 21:58.627 [SPEAKER_00]: So you might see a spike at Christmas if it’s being gifted, but we hope to see that be more of a steady move throughout the year.

21:58.967 –> 22:06.193 [SPEAKER_01]: Yes, so the in-house warehouse becomes a bit easier to manage once you’ve got if you’ve got a relatively even throughout the year sales profile.

22:07.212 –> 22:11.955 [SPEAKER_00]: And you know, there’s support, so you have the core team in the warehouse, but you go to get contractual support.

22:11.995 –> 22:17.137 [SPEAKER_00]: So you know, guys that come in do more hours and peak and do less outside of peak as well.

22:18.318 –> 22:31.045 [SPEAKER_00]: And I’m quite passionate about it because I do see it as the heart and soul of of of our company that it’s a tangible physical thing that’s there that has our office, has our stock, has our guys, it’s a but you know, it’s

22:31.900 –> 22:40.609 [SPEAKER_00]: regional, it’s a Birmingham company, it’s all there and real as opposed to, you know, because we have, we are scattered as far as management’s concerned agencies.

22:40.949 –> 22:45.995 [SPEAKER_00]: It’s really nice to have this sort of heart of the company, which I think is why we’re also fond of having it.

22:46.763 –> 22:47.763 [SPEAKER_01]: I make so much sense.

22:47.783 –> 22:58.806 [SPEAKER_01]: So what, to be because got you excited about the coming months and year at the business, what’s coming up that’s got you eager?

22:59.086 –> 23:02.167 [SPEAKER_00]: I’m excited or scared.

23:04.007 –> 23:04.447 [SPEAKER_00]: I don’t know.

23:05.047 –> 23:08.768 [SPEAKER_00]: I think the journey itself has been really, really exciting.

23:09.108 –> 23:16.070 [SPEAKER_00]: The fact that it’s gone from just three guys with an idea that we cared about, that we are

23:17.030 –> 23:23.572 [SPEAKER_00]: This was, you know, I think a lot of e-commerce or brands are joining of heads where someone says, how can we make money?

23:24.072 –> 23:29.513 [SPEAKER_00]: Whereas actually a lot of this was how can we’ve gone through this journey of hair loss that was horrible.

23:29.673 –> 23:32.554 [SPEAKER_00]: We hated losing out hair, but we liked being bald.

23:32.694 –> 23:34.394 [SPEAKER_00]: So why did we hate losing out hair?

23:35.055 –> 23:37.075 [SPEAKER_00]: And so this was all about, you know,

23:37.195 –> 23:40.197 [SPEAKER_00]: this all originated in shortening that journey for other guys.

23:40.417 –> 23:42.198 [SPEAKER_00]: So saying, okay, can we do that?

23:42.278 –> 23:43.458 [SPEAKER_00]: And we are doing that.

23:43.478 –> 23:46.940 [SPEAKER_00]: So not only by building the business, by building the socials.

23:47.040 –> 24:00.107 [SPEAKER_00]: And so a lot of the feedback and reviews we get is that finally a someone who’s all that the only ads they’ve seen around Helloss have been negative or they’ve been worried about losing their hair, seeing us and said, you know,

24:01.468 –> 24:03.810 [SPEAKER_00]: time to do it, time to brave the shave, I’m going to be a bullbroke.

24:04.210 –> 24:21.982 [SPEAKER_00]: So all the interactions with customers and so on that have been through that journey, really excite us, the fact that it’s growing so much so we’re getting more well-known, things like bald fest excite us, so I don’t know if it’s in your notes, but last year we did free beer for the bald at a warehouse in Birmingham.

24:22.362 –> 24:26.785 [SPEAKER_00]: So we just set an email to anyone in Birmingham that was on our list obviously and said,

24:27.265 –> 24:32.406 [SPEAKER_00]: We’re doing free beer, if you’re bald, are they brewery near our warehouse with a free curry?

24:32.826 –> 24:35.467 [SPEAKER_00]: And like 30 or 40 guys turned up and it was incredible.

24:35.827 –> 24:37.867 [SPEAKER_00]: We said, okay, that’s something to build on.

24:38.007 –> 24:40.408 [SPEAKER_00]: This year we did bald fest in Soho.

24:40.988 –> 24:45.989 [SPEAKER_00]: Again, we got sponsored, the beer sponsor was siren brewers, so they gave us the cows and pines.

24:46.489 –> 24:51.470 [SPEAKER_00]: And we had a thousand bald guys turn up over the day to a pub in Soho for a free beer.

24:51.870 –> 24:54.891 [SPEAKER_00]: We got coverage and good morning Britain and the times to telegraph.

24:56.051 –> 25:05.842 [SPEAKER_00]: When the video, the flyer was shared 23,000 times and the summary videos, it was seen over a million times on TikTok.

25:05.922 –> 25:11.968 [SPEAKER_00]: So being able to do really fun things like that exactly, seeing our community grow, seeing that bald.

25:12.809 –> 25:17.591 [SPEAKER_00]: And if you call anything, call it automatically isn’t cool, but China, there is this move.

25:17.891 –> 25:26.494 [SPEAKER_00]: What we’re trying to do is bring into an acceptance of baldness to so that the guys that go through it no longer dread it or feel that something bad is happening to them.

25:26.774 –> 25:33.396 [SPEAKER_00]: So the more and more bullbrokers as a commercial entity, the more and more that we have that effect on society, it’s really exciting.

25:33.577 –> 25:37.518 [SPEAKER_00]: So it’s broadly, I’m excited about what bullbrokers doing and where we’re going.

25:40.789 –> 25:45.631 [SPEAKER_02]: The Ecommerce Masterplan is supporting by some of the greatest companies in the Ecommerce sector.

25:45.751 –> 25:55.895 [SPEAKER_02]: Here’s a reminder of who they are.

25:58.556 –> 26:04.858 [SPEAKER_01]: I love this section because it gives me and I’ll list some really quick ideas for taking our business to the next level to wreak are you ready for the top tips?

26:05.459 –> 26:06.219 [SPEAKER_00]: Sure, okay.

26:06.671 –> 26:14.306 [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, the book top tip, if everyone is listening to this podcast, agreed to take Friday off and read a book to make their business better, which book would you recommend?

26:15.443 –> 26:21.485 [SPEAKER_00]: It’s interesting because I try and read business books or listen to business audio books and I never finish them.

26:21.985 –> 26:30.468 [SPEAKER_00]: So the one book recently that I did finish was something called the consolidation of philosophy by Alan DeBottom, and it’s just for a layman philosopher.

26:30.488 –> 26:39.351 [SPEAKER_00]: He just picks and chooses some historical philosophical figures and talks about their views on happiness or their views on love or their views on friendship.

26:40.884 –> 26:52.076 [SPEAKER_00]: at a really core level, those are the things that really matter in life and I think it’s important to make your business better that you are balanced in the other side of your life and I found that book really enlightening for that.

26:52.096 –> 27:00.705 [SPEAKER_00]: So it’s not really a business book recommendation, but it’s something that’s definitely, I think, made me more balanced and hopefully a better manager in business.

27:01.317 –> 27:06.882 [SPEAKER_01]: I’m going to have to look that one up because philosophy is something I always fail to get into.

27:07.702 –> 27:13.727 [SPEAKER_01]: You know, like, end up thinking I want to read it, fail to read it, that that sounds quite approachable.

27:13.807 –> 27:15.589 [SPEAKER_00]: This is not like one of Plato’s dialogues.

27:15.609 –> 27:21.213 [SPEAKER_00]: This is, I mean, even those are quite fun, but this is really just very approachable philosophy.

27:21.613 –> 27:22.134 [SPEAKER_01]: Marvelous.

27:22.594 –> 27:28.139 [SPEAKER_01]: The traffic top tip, which marketing method do you either prize above all others or think doesn’t get the press it deserves?

27:29.179 –> 27:47.971 [SPEAKER_00]: I think, and this, I have to give a guy, I’ll see I’m going to shout out here, traditional above the line brand marketing in out of home, TV, radio, you know, all these e-commerce founders, it’s all matter, it’s all there, it’s all YouTube, all with top of funnel.

27:48.731 –> 28:01.308 [SPEAKER_00]: Well, the problem with matter is you are just another binary piece of information in their core in their ecosystem basically feeding off the crumbs that they give you.

28:01.769 –> 28:04.372 [SPEAKER_00]: Whereas, you know, for immediate, you can negotiate.

28:04.392 –> 28:05.794 [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, you can get deals.

28:05.874 –> 28:06.114 [SPEAKER_00]: You can

28:06.755 –> 28:10.920 [SPEAKER_00]: have amazing deals that get amazing CPMs that you wouldn’t even dream of at matter.

28:11.120 –> 28:17.507 [SPEAKER_00]: And although traditional media might be in some levels declining, it’s still much more trusted.

28:17.627 –> 28:27.158 [SPEAKER_00]: So for us, what we’ve had a lot of fun experimenting with is those more traditional things that actually, if you’re spending 5-10 grand a day on matter,

28:28.019 –> 28:32.188 [SPEAKER_00]: If you zoom out, they’re still quite affordable to do some of those things.

28:32.829 –> 28:38.300 [SPEAKER_00]: If you have a little bit extra, not an or not looking for an immediate return, but actually looking to build your brand longer turn.

28:38.972 –> 28:41.113 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I have a big love for that type of advertising.

28:41.154 –> 28:46.917 [SPEAKER_01]: I’m gonna have to say, and it’s, it’s, and like, you say, you can actually negotiate with a human being.

28:47.138 –> 28:51.461 [SPEAKER_01]: There’s not, it’s not just a blue screen, but you get stuck.

28:51.581 –> 28:51.941 [SPEAKER_00]: Exactly.

28:51.961 –> 29:03.049 [SPEAKER_00]: And then, you know, there’s inventory that you might get inventory offers, they haven’t sold it, it’s a peer, and you can actually get really fast growing brands that have a little bit of budget.

29:03.289 –> 29:04.189 [SPEAKER_00]: You can get really good deals.

29:04.610 –> 29:04.810 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

29:05.775 –> 29:08.736 [SPEAKER_01]: excellent like excellent top tip and tool top tip.

29:08.816 –> 29:17.520 [SPEAKER_01]: Maybe a collaboration tool, a social media plug-in, a phone app or just a way of working, is there a cool little tool you use that makes you in your team at more efficient day to day.

29:18.358 –> 29:24.962 [SPEAKER_00]: This is really new one for me, but I’ve just got something called granola, which I plug in to Claude.

29:25.522 –> 29:32.126 [SPEAKER_00]: So it basically takes all my meeting notes and summarizes them and makes action points, so I don’t have to.

29:32.746 –> 29:38.229 [SPEAKER_00]: So I’m a little bit behind on this AI journey, which was certainly not fully AI integrated.

29:38.269 –> 29:39.430 [SPEAKER_00]: I’m trying to figure out if I

29:40.330 –> 29:55.543 [SPEAKER_00]: I don’t want to just do it for AI sake, but actually find useful ways it either real deficiency in the business or speeds up processes, but with that it is actually really useful because you don’t, you know that something smarter than you was listening and taking notes.

29:56.364 –> 29:57.425 [SPEAKER_01]: It is always nice.

29:58.806 –> 30:03.710 [SPEAKER_01]: The carbon top tip, what’s your favourite way to reduce the carbon footprint of an e-commerce store?

30:04.535 –> 30:05.055 [SPEAKER_00]: It’s stuff one.

30:05.376 –> 30:08.057 [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, for us, it’s the packaging we use.

30:08.077 –> 30:10.679 [SPEAKER_00]: We’re trying to use as few plastics as possible.

30:10.779 –> 30:13.961 [SPEAKER_00]: So our tubes are made of infinitely recyclable aluminium.

30:14.301 –> 30:16.483 [SPEAKER_00]: All our packaging is infinitely recyclable.

30:16.523 –> 30:20.265 [SPEAKER_00]: So that’s been something that’s been quite important to us.

30:20.285 –> 30:23.547 [SPEAKER_00]: We didn’t want to just create, you know, you have this really successful company.

30:23.567 –> 30:27.470 [SPEAKER_00]: And something you’ve created, 10 million plastic tubes that are in landfill.

30:27.590 –> 30:32.393 [SPEAKER_00]: So that’s not something we wanted to do, but it’s still, there is a footprint.

30:33.974 –> 30:53.442 [SPEAKER_00]: trying to localize production, of packaging, localize production, of manufacturing general, and it’s a difficult one, you know, an aluminium tube in China costs a third of what it does in the UK, and including shipping, but then you weigh up everything and try and make the choice that’s right for your business, but also that’s right for the environment.

30:54.242 –> 30:54.922 [SPEAKER_01]: Nicely put.

30:55.582 –> 31:00.104 [SPEAKER_01]: Tariq, before we say goodbye, could you please let the listeners know where they can find you,

31:03.162 –> 31:15.613 [SPEAKER_00]: Sure, so the best place to buy bull bros just for our website, that’s BLDBRO.com, we’re also available on Amazon and I think I mentioned it earlier where I’m TikTok and Instagram, BLD.BRO.

31:16.394 –> 31:17.815 [SPEAKER_01]: Simple as that, everybody.

31:17.895 –> 31:20.618 [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you so much being on the Compass Masterman podcast.

31:20.638 –> 31:22.820 [SPEAKER_01]: It’s been fascinating chatting to you about your business.

31:23.160 –> 31:24.361 [SPEAKER_01]: So thanks for sharing so much with us.

31:24.381 –> 31:25.302 [SPEAKER_01]: We really appreciate it.

31:25.922 –> 31:26.623 [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for having me.

31:32.338 –> 31:39.223 [SPEAKER_01]: interesting his book was a philosophical one where I feel like most of our interview was kind of about the philosophy of running an e-commerce business.

31:40.004 –> 31:58.238 [SPEAKER_01]: But fascinating insights in there, you know, the way they’re building that community and doing things that are kind of purely for the community, but in order to hit their purpose and grow the brand as well and then those Amazon stats is mad, launched November last year and already

32:00.380 –> 32:04.802 [SPEAKER_01]: So if anyone tells you there’s no space you left on Amazon, they’re wrong, clearly, clearly wrong.

32:05.502 –> 32:12.686 [SPEAKER_01]: And get your hands on our notes in this episode, including those top tips and the links to what we talked about by heading over to ecommercemasterplanned.com.

32:13.186 –> 32:23.531 [SPEAKER_01]: You can also use our direct episode short links, just put ECMP.info forward slash the number of this episode into the URL bar and you’ll be redirected straight to the right page of the site.

32:24.151 –> 32:27.053 [SPEAKER_01]: When you get there, you can also add yourself to our email list.

32:27.093 –> 32:31.075 [SPEAKER_01]: So you don’t miss out on any of the other things I share to help you improve your business.

32:31.596 –> 32:36.919 [SPEAKER_01]: And if you liked this episode, why not check out bit of a random one this, bear with me?

32:37.419 –> 32:45.604 [SPEAKER_01]: Episode 341 with Matt from Backblade, which is another niche men’s grooming success story.

32:45.644 –> 32:48.566 [SPEAKER_01]: They create shivers specifically for shaving ones back.

32:49.126 –> 32:50.407 [SPEAKER_01]: So that’s episode 341.

32:52.308 –> 33:03.615 [SPEAKER_01]: And if you want to hear more about Shopify success stories, then head to ECMP.info for us to Shopify to find all our episodes with Shopify pound founders and there’s plenty of them.

33:04.175 –> 33:08.698 [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you, Vittunian, to this and every episode that you do of the e-commerce master plan podcast.

33:09.078 –> 33:18.424 [SPEAKER_01]: 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 encouraging businesses and consumers

33:20.765 –> 33:26.770 [SPEAKER_01]: So if you just know someone this show can help, please tell them to listen to the e-commerce Master Plan podcast.

33:26.810 –> 33:29.912 [SPEAKER_01]: I hope you have a great week and don’t forget to keep optimizing.

In this WWYD episode, Dan walks through what he would do if he became the first serious CFO at a fast-growing DTC brand. He shares practical advice on fixing reporting, improving unit economics, finding hidden margin, and unlocking cash from inventory so brands can grow faster without losing control of profitability. 

Hit PLAY to hear: 

• The first thing a new CFO checks in a fast-growing DTC brand  
• Why your Shopify dashboard might be lying about profit 
• The 3 margin numbers every eCommerce founder must understand  
• How one brand found 8 extra margin points without selling more 
• When to reinvest profit into ads instead of taking it off the table  
• The hidden inventory mistake that could be trapping six figures of cash in your warehouse  

Key timestamps to dive straight in: 

[05:17] Understanding Sales and Margins Discrepancies 

[07:56] Managing finances in eCommerce 

[13:03] Understanding Contribution Margin Basics 

[16:57] Analyzing industry benchmarks and margins 

[18:28] Analyzing Profit and Loss Statements 

[22:46] Managing stock levels and cash flow 

[24:28] Listen to Dan’s Top Tips! 

Full episode notes here: https://ecmp.info/609

— Download our ebook… https://ecmp.info/ebook 500 Tips to Increase Your Profits

Get all the links and resources we mention and join our email list at https://ecmp.info

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00:00.531 –> 00:06.993 [SPEAKER_00]: Generally, all brands have a different range of constraints, but it all comes back to kind of the source of data.

00:07.193 –> 00:11.654 [SPEAKER_00]: When your Shopify dashboard says one thing, your triple wild is another thing, or store heres, it’s another thing.

00:11.874 –> 00:14.695 [SPEAKER_00]: The first source is to, can I get right this out?

00:14.755 –> 00:15.975 [SPEAKER_00]: Can we just start it this out?

00:16.055 –> 00:25.478 [SPEAKER_00]: Can I work my way down that piano and can we see through margins that actually match in say zero or quickbooks as much as they do on the dashboards that most founders look at?

00:28.143 –> 00:30.526 [SPEAKER_02]: It’s the e-commerce master plan podcast.

00:31.087 –> 00:35.173 [SPEAKER_02]: Here to help you solve your marketing problems and grow your e-commerce business.

00:35.694 –> 00:43.485 [SPEAKER_02]: Cutting through the hive to bring you inspiration and advice from the e-commerce sector and beyond, here’s your host, Chloe Thomas.

00:46.798 –> 00:48.299 [SPEAKER_01]: Hello and welcome!

00:48.339 –> 00:49.279 [SPEAKER_01]: It’s great to have you here.

00:49.379 –> 00:53.860 [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you for hitting play and choosing to listen to one of our inspiring guests.

00:54.361 –> 00:58.442 [SPEAKER_01]: In this episode we’re doing one of our WWYD episodes.

00:58.482 –> 01:00.163 [SPEAKER_01]: Yes, it’s what would you do time?

01:00.563 –> 01:09.466 [SPEAKER_01]: These are the episodes where we get an expert in the industry to come on and take us through a scenario on what they would do if they were faced with that scenario.

01:09.946 –> 01:13.987 [SPEAKER_01]: This time, we’re going finance, yes, for the first ever time.

01:14.347 –> 01:18.408 [SPEAKER_01]: We are donating an entire episode to the subject of Ecommerce Finance.

01:18.968 –> 01:19.769 [SPEAKER_01]: Not something.

01:19.989 –> 01:23.430 [SPEAKER_01]: When we’ve done selling your business, we’ve done buying a business.

01:23.550 –> 01:26.230 [SPEAKER_01]: We’ve never done the finance as of running your business.

01:26.710 –> 01:30.151 [SPEAKER_01]: So our guest today is going to be answering the what would you do?

01:30.611 –> 01:35.893 [SPEAKER_01]: That is, what would you do if you were bought in a CFO of a fast growth D to C brand?

01:36.493 –> 01:55.216 [SPEAKER_01]: and I’m really looking forward to this and I know you’re really going to like listening to it because we get into some really good nitty gritty stuff that even if you’re even if you’re trying to void finance like the plague you’re going to get a lot out of this you’re going to like it you’re going to find finance less scary and you’re going to get some great ideas for improving the performance of your business.

01:55.756 –> 02:03.178 [SPEAKER_01]: So make sure you listen to the end of the episodes you don’t miss out on my guest top tips because they’re particularly good as well and you’ll also get my

02:09.657 –> 02:11.697 [SPEAKER_01]: and now to introduce our special guest.

02:12.137 –> 02:24.340 [SPEAKER_01]: Dan Major is a fractional CFO for D to C fashion, footwear and beauty brands focused on scaling profitability by unlocking margin and freeing up cash for ads and stock.

02:24.400 –> 02:25.320 [SPEAKER_01]: Hello, Dan.

02:25.700 –> 02:27.781 [SPEAKER_01]: Hello, nice to see you.

02:27.921 –> 02:30.201 [SPEAKER_01]: Very cool to have you here on the show.

02:30.361 –> 02:34.782 [SPEAKER_01]: And how did you get into the world of e-commerce before we go completely fine, Antscrazy?

02:35.638 –> 02:36.699 [SPEAKER_00]: I’ve always worked in brands.

02:36.859 –> 02:44.522 [SPEAKER_00]: I had one quite painful year in insurance, which very, very quickly confirmed to me that that is not where my future lie.

02:44.942 –> 02:47.204 [SPEAKER_00]: The most of my career has been in various in brands.

02:47.724 –> 02:52.206 [SPEAKER_00]: It is bigger than Gucci and smaller than 7 bigger brands.

02:52.306 –> 02:53.887 [SPEAKER_00]: And always in finance.

02:54.487 –> 03:00.272 [SPEAKER_00]: And bit by bit, I focused more and more on e-commerce, eventually had an e-commerce function borting and under me.

03:00.432 –> 03:07.798 [SPEAKER_00]: And I kind of found that link between finance, marketing and operations, which is fairly unique in deed sea brands.

03:08.059 –> 03:17.407 [SPEAKER_00]: Thought quite a few brands make some pretty terrible decisions with the whip, but because they weren’t really taking note of their financials, their unique economics.

03:17.967 –> 03:18.487 [SPEAKER_00]: And I thought,

03:19.408 –> 03:21.011 [SPEAKER_00]: I could make an impact there.

03:21.151 –> 03:27.882 [SPEAKER_00]: I could provide that financially lens and specifically help do to see first brand families.

03:28.824 –> 03:30.567 [SPEAKER_01]: I have to say, having worked with

03:32.118 –> 03:41.187 [SPEAKER_01]: many different e-commerce and supplier side businesses over the years of having the agency doing the consulting, doing all the various bits and pieces of done working in house, etc, etc.

03:42.368 –> 03:49.214 [SPEAKER_01]: If your if a brand has a quality good finance director, finance team,

03:50.375 –> 04:00.510 [SPEAKER_01]: it makes such a difference, you know, the good ones are like the marketing heroes, you know, the marketing team love the good finance people because they actually, everybody’s speaking the same numbers.

04:00.891 –> 04:05.838 [SPEAKER_01]: And like, whenever I approach a brand and they’re like, oh, we try not to talk to finance, oh shit.

04:06.358 –> 04:16.365 [SPEAKER_01]: You know, it’s like, oh no, this one, we’ve got big problems here because if finance marketing and finance need commerce aren’t getting on, then someone’s been hired badly.

04:16.825 –> 04:25.931 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and it’s natural ground founders normally come from, or more often they’re not come from a product background, and they want to be involved in the product that’s more driven into it.

04:25.971 –> 04:31.315 [SPEAKER_00]: First place, sometimes a marketing background as well, very rarely do they come from a finance operations background.

04:31.395 –> 04:33.616 [SPEAKER_00]: So a lot of the time they come

04:35.592 –> 04:37.675 [SPEAKER_00]: when there’s a need, but they actually don’t love finance.

04:37.695 –> 04:38.236 [SPEAKER_00]: And that’s fine.

04:38.256 –> 04:39.397 [SPEAKER_00]: I’m well aware of that.

04:39.437 –> 04:47.167 [SPEAKER_00]: But if you can have a finance person that can can talk, in-cack, and a low effect across channels is easily as they can financial.

04:47.207 –> 04:52.815 [SPEAKER_00]: Then you’re probably in the right place, and you can actually, you know, you’re able to actually link those parts together.

04:54.121 –> 05:04.324 [SPEAKER_01]: So, let’s imagine you’re starting as the CFO, at a fast grinded C brand who is not doing all the right things.

05:04.404 –> 05:08.025 [SPEAKER_01]: You know, you’re kind of there for a serious finance person coming on board.

05:08.105 –> 05:09.065 [SPEAKER_01]: Cause that’s your what would you do?

05:09.145 –> 05:13.046 [SPEAKER_01]: What would you do if you were bought in as a CFO of a fast grinded C brand?

05:14.646 –> 05:16.167 [SPEAKER_01]: Where do you start?

05:17.787 –> 05:20.588 [SPEAKER_00]: So, generally, all brands,

05:21.610 –> 05:23.891 [SPEAKER_00]: have a different range of constraints.

05:24.252 –> 05:29.014 [SPEAKER_00]: So there’s different areas that can be impacting individual brands.

05:29.535 –> 05:32.136 [SPEAKER_00]: But it all comes back to the sort of data.

05:32.256 –> 05:35.919 [SPEAKER_00]: And I realize probably you hear that a lot of the time, very natural thing to refine it, it’s better to say.

05:35.939 –> 05:41.342 [SPEAKER_00]: But when your Shopify dashboard says one thing, your triple wireless is another thing, or store heres, it’s another thing.

05:41.382 –> 05:42.763 [SPEAKER_00]: And Amazon, how else?

05:43.887 –> 05:48.349 [SPEAKER_00]: are so vastly different from the Amazon British South of that you think you’re getting.

05:48.749 –> 05:53.790 [SPEAKER_00]: The so many obscured fees and payouts, the first source is to get right.

05:54.090 –> 05:55.031 [SPEAKER_00]: Can I get right this out?

05:55.071 –> 05:56.311 [SPEAKER_00]: Can we just staff at the South?

05:56.391 –> 05:58.472 [SPEAKER_00]: Can I work my way down that piano and get that?

05:58.932 –> 06:10.956 [SPEAKER_00]: Can we see through margins that actually match in say zero, quickbooks as much as they do on the dashboards that most founders look at, and pressing refresh 150 times a day on Shopify.

06:11.536 –> 06:20.225 [SPEAKER_00]: A lot of the time they don’t, they’re emitting core things, but it could be a simple as sales tax on the map or something, or it could be pouts or fees or missing.

06:20.645 –> 06:22.787 [SPEAKER_00]: So, you’re a written example.

06:24.453 –> 06:29.157 [SPEAKER_00]: Hi, Greg, some figure a month did C-branders work with, and their third part in ours is tall.

06:29.657 –> 06:43.307 [SPEAKER_00]: It was telling them they were making 15% contribution margin, but actually, when I immediately pulled up, there’s zero financials, and they were completely break-even at that level, and so there’s complete gap, and it turned out they just had not set up this tall.

06:44.092 –> 06:47.336 [SPEAKER_00]: But then that was mastering other things because it completely changed in it.

06:47.356 –> 06:57.087 [SPEAKER_00]: I’ve got a value, completely changed the margin they’re making and it’s a case of just making sure that are the tools you’re using coming up at the same figure to push the board.

06:57.367 –> 07:03.234 [SPEAKER_00]: That’s probably the initial starting point, but for you even start making decisions on the rest of it.

07:04.062 –> 07:12.488 [SPEAKER_01]: Is it feasible to have a third-party reporting tool and, I guess, the ad space, something like a triple whale?

07:12.508 –> 07:25.198 [SPEAKER_01]: It’s exactly matching your QuickBooks or zero accounting piece because in my experience, as the marketer, you’re better at the numbers than I am, because you’re fine, but as a marketer, it’s like,

07:26.018 –> 07:29.061 [SPEAKER_01]: So long as we know they’re all trying, I’ve always taken the approach.

07:29.121 –> 07:33.645 [SPEAKER_01]: So long as we know they’re all trying to report in the same way, we have included that.

07:34.425 –> 07:37.828 [SPEAKER_01]: We have included costs, the right costs where we need to include the right costs.

07:38.368 –> 07:43.433 [SPEAKER_01]: Then I’m okay with differences because of cookie lengths and reporting time when it’s all this kind of stuff.

07:44.296 –> 07:55.596 [SPEAKER_01]: But are you striving for a, May 2026 exactly the same on every single platform or are you striving for numbers you can trust in every platform that are telling the same story?

07:56.400 –> 07:58.321 [SPEAKER_00]: No, I’m not striving for perfection.

07:58.622 –> 08:08.328 [SPEAKER_00]: A lot of the time you could end up creating a cottage industry and finance well before you know, you’d end up by that point, you’ve hired six different roles just to try and keep track of all the tunnels.

08:08.468 –> 08:13.792 [SPEAKER_00]: And it’s, it you become, as I said, it’s a cottage industry and far too much cost and involved.

08:14.132 –> 08:16.854 [SPEAKER_00]: You’re looking for something reliable that you contrast.

08:17.374 –> 08:19.936 [SPEAKER_00]: And if it turns out that by the time you either didn’t

08:20.576 –> 08:24.659 [SPEAKER_00]: every single fee or but into a third party like a triple hour store hero.

08:25.199 –> 08:26.060 [SPEAKER_00]: And it’s slightly off.

08:26.640 –> 08:30.262 [SPEAKER_00]: It’s still as long as you can spot that difference and it’s regularly the same amount.

08:30.503 –> 08:34.305 [SPEAKER_00]: And you can still use that as a kind of a run rate for the month.

08:34.325 –> 08:39.589 [SPEAKER_00]: If you can still see right have a good feeling that you know it might come in and say total sales and I know that next sales.

08:40.289 –> 08:40.749 [SPEAKER_00]: lower than that.

08:40.789 –> 08:52.154 [SPEAKER_00]: But actually, as long as the, I can trust that what it’s showing us in the R or ROS or that I can trust that the net sales coming through, I’m going to have a reasonable idea of what their unit economics are going to look like.

08:52.534 –> 08:55.116 [SPEAKER_00]: So I can get good enough.

08:55.876 –> 08:57.457 [SPEAKER_00]: And that’s what you need for a bit of something.

08:57.497 –> 09:00.598 [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe maybe when you’re a figure, you’re funded, you’ve got a kind of maybe.

09:01.397 –> 09:07.659 [SPEAKER_00]: private equity owners that you need to have everything exact, then find you need to then have the then your payment for a team.

09:08.019 –> 09:11.941 [SPEAKER_00]: But at this point here it’s about having good enough and been on to move forward on it quickly.

09:12.881 –> 09:24.926 [SPEAKER_01]: So we’re trying to get to that point where the founder can refresh in their pretty tall as many times as they like during the month to be pretty confident that when they have their catch-up with down their CFO at the end of the month, there’s not going

09:29.007 –> 09:33.873 [SPEAKER_00]: and that moment happens in 100 million companies as much as it happens in five million companies.

09:34.233 –> 09:44.565 [SPEAKER_00]: There is countless times that you’re going to get called out because of something changed or there’s a one-off or a certain connection to an ad partner dropped or something happened where.

09:45.005 –> 09:46.227 [SPEAKER_00]: that was the case.

09:46.667 –> 09:55.317 [SPEAKER_00]: But the majority of the time, you can get it close enough that you can start to learn to have 11 crust and that gives both sides that almost gives that live dashboard approach.

09:55.678 –> 09:58.461 [SPEAKER_00]: But also, it also means you can cross correct, click on it.

09:58.481 –> 09:59.001 [SPEAKER_00]: There’s no point.

09:59.859 –> 10:07.483 [SPEAKER_00]: waiting to the dead first the month, then going and letting the book keep us work on the 15 days and then having a meeting booked in with me on Saturday 24th of a month.

10:08.204 –> 10:16.909 [SPEAKER_00]: And then finding out that actually something to have a last month, you need to build to react to something much quicker than that, especially indeed see it’s not a flow moving industry.

10:17.109 –> 10:20.691 [SPEAKER_00]: You need to light your six or eight weeks late by the time you’re actually reckoning changes then.

10:21.171 –> 10:22.212 [SPEAKER_00]: So you need to build to get live

10:28.340 –> 10:34.943 [SPEAKER_01]: So you once you’ve got those kind of, um, I guess the numbers, the brand are looking at working for you all.

10:35.244 –> 10:36.224 [SPEAKER_01]: Where do you go next?

10:37.125 –> 10:50.932 [SPEAKER_00]: So then I want to, um, I want to make sure from a unit economics perspective and by that, I mean, if you sell one product, this one scheme, maybe hero skews, so I mean, oftentimes I find that most brands will have

10:51.803 –> 10:55.525 [SPEAKER_00]: two, three, four skews that may come up after 50 different methods.

10:55.545 –> 11:16.054 [SPEAKER_00]: So start their first, but if you sell one of this, does it come, where do they come on a product margin, a gross margin, and a contribution margin, and I know you make money at that point, because a lot of the time, that is where these various tools we’re speaking out are hiding, and it, you know, as I said, there’s different constraints and different businesses, but ultimately speaking,

11:17.054 –> 11:22.178 [SPEAKER_00]: Before we fix anything else, are we actually making money on the sales we think we’re making money on?

11:22.498 –> 11:28.162 [SPEAKER_00]: So there’s industry benchmarks, you can find out pretty quickly where you sit on that.

11:29.077 –> 11:32.959 [SPEAKER_01]: I’m not going to ask you to share benchmarks because we’ll have to get out of every vertical that’ll take us hours.

11:33.299 –> 11:36.421 [SPEAKER_01]: But you mentioned three different types of margin there.

11:36.521 –> 11:38.922 [SPEAKER_01]: Gross margin contribution margin and another margin.

11:38.962 –> 11:42.064 [SPEAKER_01]: Can you give us a very quick explanation of what those three are?

11:42.084 –> 11:45.466 [SPEAKER_01]: Because I know at least some of the listeners are going, what there’s more than one margin?

11:46.106 –> 11:47.046 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, very, very quick.

11:47.247 –> 11:48.727 [SPEAKER_00]: And I’m looking at them for different purposes.

11:49.248 –> 11:49.448 [SPEAKER_00]: So,

11:50.599 –> 11:52.180 [SPEAKER_00]: off your revenue, have your product margin.

11:52.280 –> 11:55.921 [SPEAKER_00]: That’s the cost it takes to get your product into you to your warehouse.

11:56.141 –> 12:00.062 [SPEAKER_00]: So that’s the cost of the product that may be any inbound fees, inbound duties and so on.

12:00.462 –> 12:04.964 [SPEAKER_00]: That’s useful because that’s also the margin that might be used to wholesale logic in post going on that one.

12:05.684 –> 12:08.325 [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, that’s that’s one strong word to be what that’d be.

12:09.459 –> 12:15.088 [SPEAKER_00]: Your gross margin is the next one is what it costs to get it out to the customer.

12:15.288 –> 12:22.319 [SPEAKER_00]: So it includes any Shopify selling fees, any economies, maybe any shipping distribution costs.

12:22.640 –> 12:24.262 [SPEAKER_00]: And that you’ve got it out to the customer.

12:25.095 –> 12:28.458 [SPEAKER_00]: And then your contribution margin is your final variable margin.

12:28.958 –> 12:32.301 [SPEAKER_00]: Overall, probably your most important margin as we see first brands.

12:32.661 –> 12:34.983 [SPEAKER_00]: And that is after to include customer acquisition.

12:35.564 –> 12:38.686 [SPEAKER_00]: Now, in the financials, it’s a blended customer acquisition.

12:38.906 –> 12:44.851 [SPEAKER_00]: So it’s the blend between, you know, you might actually find that on a brand new customer, you might look bright even.

12:45.532 –> 12:50.836 [SPEAKER_00]: But then, obviously, with the retention of customers, as long as your blended is a good, you’re probably your student-making money that.

12:51.900 –> 12:58.763 [SPEAKER_01]: Got you, and it’s that it’s that customer acquisition part is once you get to the contribution margin, the last thing you had before.

12:59.003 –> 13:03.245 [SPEAKER_01]: I think we should probably explain contribution as well because that’s still not your profit, is it at this point?

13:03.585 –> 13:11.269 [SPEAKER_00]: No, that’s, that says your final variable margin is everything it costs to deliver and sell one unit to one customer.

13:11.869 –> 13:14.651 [SPEAKER_00]: that is the the contribution you’ve made of that one.

13:14.671 –> 13:25.619 [SPEAKER_00]: So it might be this 20% and you put, you know, sole tonic repound and you’ve collected 20% you’re still going to have all your fixed costs and operating costs off the bottom of that and a lot of companies are very bloated there.

13:25.639 –> 13:30.183 [SPEAKER_00]: So it’s not quite your net profit before tax number, but it’s the final number that

13:30.863 –> 13:37.769 [SPEAKER_00]: you can impact with scale, though, if I felt 10 of them, give a 10x, this, if I sell 20, then it’s going to 20x.

13:37.889 –> 13:44.776 [SPEAKER_00]: Whereas your bottom number is all fixed numbers, they shouldn’t increase the scale in the same way, and that’s actually quite a good tactic.

13:44.816 –> 13:53.263 [SPEAKER_00]: If you’re overweight on the bottom, as long as you’ve got profitable computer margin, you could often go out for that because your bottom numbers start getting smaller,

13:56.247 –> 13:58.989 [SPEAKER_01]: It’s kind of one of those things when people hit a difficult point.

13:59.049 –> 14:01.550 [SPEAKER_01]: It’s really easy to go, oh, we’ll cut overheads.

14:01.990 –> 14:15.058 [SPEAKER_01]: You know, we’ll see what money we can cut, but actually, for the amount of effort it takes to cut a thousand pounds of overhead, it probably takes less effort to increase sales by the amount that we’re bringing in a thousand pounds with a contribution.

14:15.198 –> 14:17.339 [SPEAKER_01]: And of course, then you’re on an upward trajectory.

14:17.359 –> 14:19.380 [SPEAKER_01]: And I think it’s often what people forget is that

14:20.902 –> 14:26.376 [SPEAKER_01]: Yes, we’ve got a cash paper for more profit problem, but actually if we can sell more

14:27.670 –> 14:29.671 [SPEAKER_01]: level of overhead isn’t a problem anymore.

14:29.731 –> 14:31.952 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and that’s totally true.

14:32.432 –> 14:45.657 [SPEAKER_00]: You still, like later on, no, still the elements of dealing with a cash line of things, cash doesn’t always follow the sale or the profit, but with an element of when you’re trying to scale, you can’t scale if your contribute for modernism is not decent.

14:46.098 –> 14:48.058 [SPEAKER_00]: So they just isn’t enough profit left over.

14:48.118 –> 14:52.040 [SPEAKER_00]: So you have to fix those first and then you could pull on the top.

14:52.780 –> 15:00.582 [SPEAKER_00]: And a big part of what I do is actually not trying to, if someone comes in and they break even 0% at the final profit margin, net profit.

15:01.362 –> 15:02.643 [SPEAKER_00]: I don’t want to try and get them’s 20%.

15:03.083 –> 15:10.685 [SPEAKER_00]: I might want to make enough changes to get them’s 10% but then grow their absmends because they might only have been spending 20% on absmends.

15:10.705 –> 15:11.665 [SPEAKER_00]: I might want to get them up to their 5%.

15:12.769 –> 15:23.534 [SPEAKER_00]: because they can then outspend the rest of the competition when the auctions and so essentially that scaling piece is a lot easier if you’re willing to outspend if we’re gonna have a higher count of minutes.

15:23.934 –> 15:26.936 [SPEAKER_00]: So for my perspective, I’m not looking to make someone the highest profit margin.

15:27.336 –> 15:32.579 [SPEAKER_00]: I’m looking to say, well, we’re coming to you to send a bigger than them up at this contribution margin.

15:33.419 –> 15:39.242 [SPEAKER_00]: And then keep the more into the outspend and see if we can then outspend the next layer and the next layer and the next one there.

15:40.053 –> 15:46.802 [SPEAKER_01]: Yes, you’re at that point where you’re going, we’ve got x percentage points, where are we going to deploy these?

15:47.002 –> 15:49.225 [SPEAKER_01]: Is it going to be more marketing or is it going to be my pocket?

15:49.425 –> 15:53.290 [SPEAKER_01]: Obviously, the growth answer is marketing’s been, but clever marketing’s been.

15:53.310 –> 15:55.513 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, this pages of life, I guess.

15:55.573 –> 15:58.476 [SPEAKER_00]: There are, there are points that if you’re in the year before you’re going to sell.

15:59.537 –> 16:11.460 [SPEAKER_00]: and you’ve already done three or four years of growth, it might then be useful to focus on ramping up that bottom margin a little bit, because obviously, any valuation will be based on that, that final number.

16:11.700 –> 16:13.180 [SPEAKER_00]: So, different stages of life.

16:13.500 –> 16:25.943 [SPEAKER_00]: If you’re already at a size where you’re happy with and you’re not in a growth phase, then take a bit more of margin off the table, take money off the table, people keep expecting a big exit, solve things, but actually taking money off the table

16:29.884 –> 16:34.625 [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, so you’ve got your accurate numbers feeding into all the different platforms.

16:34.685 –> 16:39.466 [SPEAKER_01]: You’ve got a handle on those unit economics and all those different levels of margin.

16:40.987 –> 16:44.827 [SPEAKER_01]: Now I figure you’re going to need to start finding some impact to make.

16:44.887 –> 16:48.628 [SPEAKER_01]: So how do you work out where to look?

16:48.708 –> 16:52.129 [SPEAKER_01]: Is it always the same place for every brand or the different things you dive into?

16:52.169 –> 16:56.790 [SPEAKER_01]: How do you find the place to make an impact after you’ve got all that accuracy in place?

16:57.638 –> 16:58.399 [SPEAKER_00]: you mentioned earlier.

16:58.699 –> 17:10.451 [SPEAKER_00]: So, every vertical is slightly different, but broadly speaking, if you find in your vertical, you know your metrics of what you should be aiming for as a benchmark, you should put a very quickly see way or over what it’s.

17:10.471 –> 17:21.762 [SPEAKER_00]: So, for example, if the whole industry in your vertical, if the whole industry is getting a 75 to 80 percent product margin, cost, and you’re only getting 60 percent, you’re probably spending too much in your products, so you need to really go shape with the factory.

17:22.262 –> 17:39.404 [SPEAKER_00]: you need to find the cheaper method of making it or equally raise the average order value raised there RRP quite often you’ll find that actually a company is spending far too much on distribution, far too much on in and down in the gross margin and actually it’s not an issue

17:40.245 –> 17:41.987 [SPEAKER_00]: specifically that they’re overspending.

17:42.007 –> 17:50.173 [SPEAKER_00]: They might, you know, it might be besides the weight of the product that they’re spending, that might be the right distribution cost, but if it’s making up 20% of your margin, you can’t go anywhere with that.

17:50.193 –> 17:53.016 [SPEAKER_00]: So then what it might be is, well, why are you sending it for free?

17:53.336 –> 17:57.079 [SPEAKER_00]: So maybe the point is you need a shipping income that can neutralise part of that.

17:57.119 –> 18:02.083 [SPEAKER_00]: So the the recent brand, I said, I worked with earlier that seven, seven figures a month, right?

18:02.263 –> 18:07.648 [SPEAKER_00]: They didn’t have any shipping income and actually just by adding a shipping income, we added four percentage points to their margin.

18:08.268 –> 18:16.352 [SPEAKER_00]: and we adjusted discounting down, because we’re given away bottom matching discounts and I’ve got that from 12% to 8% and there’s another 4% which is there.

18:16.472 –> 18:21.995 [SPEAKER_00]: And so we were able to find eight or nine pounds of average order value on every single sale with no additional costs in the business.

18:22.375 –> 18:23.175 [SPEAKER_00]: It won’t always be that.

18:23.375 –> 18:27.617 [SPEAKER_00]: You might already be covering those things, but there will be somewhere in your panel which is overweight.

18:28.138 –> 18:32.400 [SPEAKER_00]: And if you look down at it and your product margin is good, be your gross margin is terrible.

18:32.860 –> 18:34.241 [SPEAKER_00]: It’s in there, though it’s,

18:35.041 –> 18:36.622 [SPEAKER_00]: you’re selling fees or your distribution.

18:36.922 –> 18:56.473 [SPEAKER_00]: If you’re at gross margin, you’re still hitting 60% 55% maybe 50% in the streets, and you’re down there, you’re pretty solid, and you’re against your verticals benchmarks, you’re doing solid there, but actually you’re in a 10% confusion margin, then something’s gone, hey, why are you in your marketing and you need to kind of pull back them, maybe it’s because you’re in a growth phase, and therefore,

18:57.273 –> 19:08.391 [SPEAKER_00]: almost all of your markets and spend is on newcack, not retention and maybe there’s something there to fix, but you can normally quite quickly spot where in the pinout you’re overweight.

19:09.200 –> 19:13.143 [SPEAKER_00]: equally same thing you could be making 25% contribution margin.

19:13.184 –> 19:17.527 [SPEAKER_00]: But if you’re spending 30% on your operating costs and fixed costs, you’re still going to be underwater.

19:17.848 –> 19:25.014 [SPEAKER_00]: So then you may need to get some changes to your fixed costs or headcounts or subscriptions that the pieces below there.

19:25.274 –> 19:31.119 [SPEAKER_00]: So it’s about kind of spotting where you’re heavy and then targeting the easiest

19:33.120 –> 19:39.884 [SPEAKER_01]: And you’ve mentioned already about redeploying some of that saved margin into more marketing spend.

19:41.125 –> 19:58.015 [SPEAKER_01]: That’s very easy to do flippantly, I suppose, but to do it well, how do you make sure that that’s just not becoming a cost somewhere else in the P&L and is actually bringing in the right things without becoming the marketing person yourself?

19:58.624 –> 20:01.605 [SPEAKER_00]: So it’s about having a really close relationship with the marketing person.

20:01.945 –> 20:08.948 [SPEAKER_00]: So from that perspective, this is where brands don’t need to use finance as kind of a cost cutting-edge side, but can use it.

20:09.008 –> 20:10.048 [SPEAKER_00]: So it’s not defensive.

20:10.068 –> 20:12.949 [SPEAKER_00]: You can always use it as an offensive utility.

20:13.489 –> 20:22.413 [SPEAKER_00]: If we’re happy with the net margin and they’re not in a period of their life where their needs take particularly heavy dividends or they’re not in a period of life where they need to show heavy net profit margin.

20:23.113 –> 20:32.987 [SPEAKER_00]: then all of the savings we can make across the PNL and you’ll need them every year, metric, matters 60% higher in the last two years or at everyone has a different statistic, something like that.

20:33.027 –> 20:37.533 [SPEAKER_00]: But it’s if you’re going to get more expensive next year and the year after and your job is to keep finding.

20:38.469 –> 20:51.822 [SPEAKER_00]: enough spare margin and enough meat on the bottom that you can afford that next cost of cac, that next cac, that next every year because if your competitors can’t or if people in your space can’t then you’re going to win those bits, you’re going to win those stats.

20:52.182 –> 21:02.212 [SPEAKER_00]: So every year you’re going to have to find more and more and it might be part of the RLP, it might be that you find savings, you might find that there’s some easy wins going and then it comes, you know, it’s RLP focus.

21:02.612 –> 21:02.752 [SPEAKER_00]: But

21:03.413 –> 21:26.288 [SPEAKER_00]: the aim then is if the idea is scale is a growth and then it’s about someone will how much you spend if you’re already spending 40% on marketing spend then we have an efficiency problem because if you can’t find scale on 40% of net revenue on marketing then then you’ve got a deep dad that first but a lot of brands were able to you know scale quite quickly on say 15th then ad spend during covid years

21:26.948 –> 21:32.511 [SPEAKER_00]: And that world has gone now and they kind of, you’ve talked to them and they say, well, why do I used to get that growth then?

21:32.651 –> 21:39.654 [SPEAKER_00]: And it’s just a different, different scenario, maybe metering good, that ads got more widespread and charging more and it’s more separated platform.

21:40.114 –> 21:44.576 [SPEAKER_00]: If growth is the ambition, which is what is really important to work out what the goals are, first of all.

21:44.856 –> 21:47.597 [SPEAKER_00]: Because if the goals are to milk profit, then that’s the totally different game.

21:48.058 –> 21:48.538 [SPEAKER_00]: But if,

21:49.218 –> 21:53.964 [SPEAKER_00]: Scal is the goal, then it’s about feeding that into marketing and then tracking each other.

21:54.004 –> 22:07.300 [SPEAKER_00]: It’s never linear, so you can’t put, it’s never quite linear to say I’m going to put money into here and I’m going to get it out here because obviously NewCack is more expensive than it’s a few like returning customers, you almost have to break through new levels.

22:08.341 –> 22:09.182 [SPEAKER_00]: But you have to monitor it.

22:10.168 –> 22:11.008 [SPEAKER_01]: love that answer.

22:11.228 –> 22:35.417 [SPEAKER_01]: And the other thing which the other thing which which people get tripped up by as they grow is inventory and stock and cash flow and overstocks and all that stuff that goes on in the actual physical product which seems to be, I mean I don’t get into the P&L of many commerce stores these days but it does seem to be one of the big

22:36.277 –> 22:41.400 [SPEAKER_01]: problems and the big challenges that people come up against is is actually managed to have enough stock to sell.

22:42.080 –> 22:45.321 [SPEAKER_01]: How can a brand, how do you help brands solve that problem?

22:46.322 –> 22:52.105 [SPEAKER_00]: So quite often there is a problem of having enough stock to sell but also according to much stock.

22:52.705 –> 23:02.550 [SPEAKER_00]: A lot of the time brands are overweight on stock and they are, they often don’t have enough of their course cues but they also don’t have enough cash to buy enough of their course cues.

23:03.703 –> 23:08.289 [SPEAKER_00]: and the reason is they’ve across the last couple of years and it doesn’t hit you in the face straight away.

23:08.450 –> 23:09.831 [SPEAKER_00]: It’s left on that where I was shot.

23:10.452 –> 23:19.064 [SPEAKER_00]: And that by that you made a mistake on, that by that you may be overbought on across two or three years, still sitting in there and bit by bit.

23:19.845 –> 23:27.292 [SPEAKER_00]: you know, if you use up a million in stock a year and you’re sitting on a million stock technically your stock takes a year to pass through.

23:27.552 –> 23:43.508 [SPEAKER_00]: So you’re not going to have to go back for a whole year, though now in reality you probably have a handful of excuse that you’re sharing through every 60 to 90 days, however you also have other stock that probably take until three years worth of and actually that’s that that in most brands overweight.

23:44.048 –> 23:46.631 [SPEAKER_00]: and actually could do with, you know, play for the bet.

23:46.891 –> 23:47.952 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that’s all hasn’t worked.

23:48.452 –> 23:53.518 [SPEAKER_00]: Now, that’s the stop you use, say, sell times for Fridays, and you just clear it back.

23:53.598 –> 23:57.642 [SPEAKER_00]: And all you’re worried about doing, you’re not in a so worried about making a margin, I think you’re just worried about getting the cost of sale back.

23:58.142 –> 24:03.608 [SPEAKER_00]: So the product back to you, to place another bet to go again, and with another star or another skew.

24:04.148 –> 24:12.035 [SPEAKER_00]: So the inventory perspective, most people are sitting on too much, and often there is a unlock there, two, three multi-six figure, our amount of cash.

24:12.495 –> 24:15.577 [SPEAKER_00]: Look, and it’s not instant, from it’s not instant to change.

24:15.758 –> 24:24.925 [SPEAKER_00]: You need to work on it, and you might need a sale period or a Black Friday or a January sale, but most of the time there is six figures in multi-six figures in there that could be unlocked.

24:28.334 –> 24:33.118 [SPEAKER_02]: E-commerce master plan is supporting by some of the greatest companies in the E-commerce sector.

24:33.239 –> 24:41.366 [SPEAKER_02]: Here’s a reminder of who they are.

24:41.526 –> 24:43.408 [SPEAKER_02]: It’s time for the top tips round.

24:45.990 –> 24:47.231 [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, I love this section.

24:47.271 –> 24:51.475 [SPEAKER_01]: Gives me and our listeners some really quick ideas for taking our businesses to the next level.

24:51.535 –> 24:53.357 [SPEAKER_01]: Dan, are you ready for the top tips?

24:54.078 –> 24:54.278 [SPEAKER_02]: Yes.

24:55.839 –> 24:56.299 [SPEAKER_01]: Excellent.

24:56.380 –> 24:58.201 [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, the book top tip.

24:58.401 –> 25:05.487 [SPEAKER_01]: 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?

25:06.218 –> 25:11.221 [SPEAKER_00]: So, the book I’ve chosen is called 12 months to 1 million by Ryan Daniel Moran.

25:11.861 –> 25:14.083 [SPEAKER_00]: The title is a little bit clickbaity.

25:14.623 –> 25:23.489 [SPEAKER_00]: So there are some things in there which are along those lines, but the bit I really like is that they go very, very deep on your IPP, your ideal

25:29.252 –> 25:34.035 [SPEAKER_00]: tough fabric, though, I am going to make tough fabric for seven different verticals.

25:34.475 –> 25:39.819 [SPEAKER_00]: You go, my ICP is someone who’s just started jujitsu or something.

25:40.299 –> 25:50.866 [SPEAKER_00]: I’m going to say, right, product one is the kit, product two might be the belt, product three might be the athletic tape, they need product, but I’m creating that three to five product ecosystem that our person is going

25:56.769 –> 26:11.838 [SPEAKER_00]: create that 3 to 5 product ecosystem around a journey of an ITP, then Sam will actually my faculty can produce one thing so I’m going to do it for this buyer and this buyer and this buyer because buying those new customers having 2, 3, 4 email, it’s very expensive.

26:13.105 –> 26:21.909 [SPEAKER_01]: I’m so glad you qualified that decision because the title 12 months to $1 million is it sounds like the least CFO book ever.

26:22.309 –> 26:23.530 [SPEAKER_00]: No, absolutely.

26:23.790 –> 26:35.236 [SPEAKER_00]: And I’m done all over this one because there’s plenty of other options and the site options you kind of hear me come up over as a profit first or an e-mith revisited, but I’ve thought you’d probably heard that a hundred times and I’m thinking I’ve slightly different option.

26:35.256 –> 26:39.798 [SPEAKER_00]: I’m definitely qualifying it because there is a lot in there which is…

26:40.813 –> 26:46.158 [SPEAKER_00]: It’s probably slightly on the old fashioned Gallup product and Amazon dial journey.

26:46.478 –> 26:55.506 [SPEAKER_00]: But I just, if someone was the 3D one part, I was just focused on that building an ecosystem around the journey of your ICP and then they will keep coming back to you.

26:55.566 –> 26:56.327 [SPEAKER_00]: It’s not new, CAC.

26:56.487 –> 26:59.470 [SPEAKER_00]: They will recommend you to their friends and that’s what I really love about them.

27:00.290 –> 27:00.811 [SPEAKER_01]: Love that.

27:00.871 –> 27:01.191 [SPEAKER_01]: Okay.

27:01.672 –> 27:07.277 [SPEAKER_01]: Traffic top tip, which marketing method do you either prize above all others or think doesn’t get the press it deserves?

27:08.262 –> 27:12.183 [SPEAKER_00]: Again, as a CFO, my natural inclination is to stay simple first.

27:12.243 –> 27:19.805 [SPEAKER_00]: So if you’re a Shopify business, say, focused on one channel, however, inevitably, brand-fandered do-spicy channels, they want to be in multiple places.

27:20.305 –> 27:25.406 [SPEAKER_00]: So remember, from a market perspective, to judge the hell effect on the blended marketing.

27:25.746 –> 27:30.087 [SPEAKER_00]: So if you might find that you’re ticked up on your mixer are creating a low ROI.

27:30.548 –> 27:31.808 [SPEAKER_00]: But if that spend

27:32.628 –> 27:55.247 [SPEAKER_00]: on Metta and TikTok awareness suddenly generates a bumping sales on Amazon, you can’t shut the tap on this one because you have to, you have to, you have to, you have to access it as an overall, to see whether there is a halo impact across all of the channels, so marketing don’t just shut up the channel based on single channel ROI, you almost have to look at how it’s impact on your total blended result.

27:56.400 –> 27:59.401 [SPEAKER_01]: and everyone, that was a fine ant person saying that.

27:59.762 –> 28:03.083 [SPEAKER_01]: As I said earlier, you get the right finance people in your business.

28:03.383 –> 28:05.144 [SPEAKER_01]: It all makes sense.

28:05.164 –> 28:06.525 [SPEAKER_01]: Sorry, dad.

28:06.925 –> 28:08.646 [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, the tool-top tip.

28:08.746 –> 28:13.048 [SPEAKER_01]: Maybe a collaboration tool, a social media plug-in, a phone app, or just a way of working.

28:13.448 –> 28:17.430 [SPEAKER_01]: Is there a call at all to all you use that makes you and your team more efficient from day to day?

28:17.870 –> 28:24.753 [SPEAKER_00]: There is a tool that I like to bring into all of my DC brand clients and anyone else that managed to speak to.

28:26.276 –> 28:26.817 [SPEAKER_00]: There’s two of them.

28:26.837 –> 28:28.219 [SPEAKER_00]: There’s an American one and an English one.

28:28.239 –> 28:31.403 [SPEAKER_00]: The American one is called A2x and the English one is called Link My Books.

28:31.503 –> 28:33.045 [SPEAKER_00]: And they do broadly the same thing.

28:33.065 –> 28:33.485 [SPEAKER_00]: I’m full though.

28:33.766 –> 28:34.306 [SPEAKER_00]: Say they did.

28:34.326 –> 28:35.408 [SPEAKER_00]: But they do broadly the same thing.

28:35.748 –> 28:38.271 [SPEAKER_00]: And they’re definitely the Link My Books and A2x.

28:38.312 –> 28:42.176 [SPEAKER_00]: They essentially automate the Shopify Amazon TikTok.

28:43.263 –> 28:45.065 [SPEAKER_00]: supporting directly into your financials.

28:45.446 –> 28:59.604 [SPEAKER_00]: So quite often, if your bookkeeper is not a did-see-first bookkeeper, trying their posting net panels as your sales, and they weren’t post-any feeds, or you know, where is this completely told that?

28:59.624 –> 29:01.286 [SPEAKER_00]: You almost have live numbers in

29:02.347 –> 29:03.228 [SPEAKER_00]: Bookbook saw zero.

29:03.808 –> 29:04.489 [SPEAKER_00]: It just works.

29:04.889 –> 29:05.850 [SPEAKER_00]: It’s it’s simple.

29:06.010 –> 29:07.871 [SPEAKER_00]: It’s cheaper than bookkeeping hours.

29:08.652 –> 29:13.475 [SPEAKER_00]: And your bookkeeper will thank you if you bring it up to them because they have a lot of plants.

29:14.416 –> 29:22.122 [SPEAKER_00]: But it just works and it saves time and it accurate and you get all of the fees, all of the cogs, all of the revenue, all of the clarity counts.

29:22.222 –> 29:23.923 [SPEAKER_00]: Everything’s just done automated.

29:24.063 –> 29:24.824 [SPEAKER_00]: You have to set it up.

29:24.984 –> 29:26.485 [SPEAKER_00]: But once it’s plummeted, it’s pairing.

29:26.685 –> 29:27.906 [SPEAKER_00]: It’s working really well.

29:28.867 –> 29:29.287 [SPEAKER_00]: All branching.

29:30.311 –> 29:31.612 [SPEAKER_01]: love that recommendation.

29:31.652 –> 29:32.193 [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you.

29:32.733 –> 29:37.777 [SPEAKER_01]: The carbon top tip, what’s your favorite way to reduce the carbon footprint of an e-commerce store?

29:38.658 –> 29:53.230 [SPEAKER_00]: So, dear, I want to buy less and buy right over production dead stock is one of the biggest, you know, it’s a landfill issue, it’s a carbon way to this shoot, heighten your buy, you sell through data, you can go out stock occasionally.

29:53.890 –> 29:54.511 [SPEAKER_00]: You’re allowed to.

29:54.631 –> 29:57.813 [SPEAKER_00]: You’re allowed to, on especially on that’s not your core.

29:57.853 –> 30:03.698 [SPEAKER_00]: Don’t go to stock on your course skis, but on some of those bits, it’s fine to buy slightly less than you think you can sell and then reorder.

30:04.439 –> 30:06.201 [SPEAKER_00]: Don’t end up putting it into landfill later.

30:06.541 –> 30:08.863 [SPEAKER_00]: It’ll improve your margins and it’ll improve your carbon.

30:09.243 –> 30:09.824 [SPEAKER_00]: Come on, wait.

30:10.544 –> 30:19.472 [SPEAKER_01]: Probably the biggest and best advice you can ever give on reducing the carbon footprint of anything in the world of retail by the right stock and by less of it.

30:20.112 –> 30:20.533 [SPEAKER_00]: It’s like

30:21.299 –> 30:37.262 [SPEAKER_00]: If you can set it up so you can get hold of it quicker as well, not by plane, but you know, you can have a, if you are, maybe you can get to point me on the assuring then then that can again save, but but ultimately be the overall aim here is that you can get away with buying rest and being able to and selling all of it.

30:39.063 –> 30:40.283 [SPEAKER_01]: Yes, that is the goal.

30:49.702 –> 30:54.506 [SPEAKER_00]: So I took quite regularly on LinkedIn, Dan Major, on LinkedIn.

30:54.906 –> 30:57.188 [SPEAKER_00]: And I also, I write a weekly newsletter.

30:57.688 –> 31:02.432 [SPEAKER_00]: There is a free resource for deedseed margin calculated people are interested in that.

31:02.752 –> 31:10.197 [SPEAKER_00]: But I also, I write about the kind of things that deedseed brand founders wish they knew if they had a CFO in the room.

31:10.658 –> 31:12.079 [SPEAKER_00]: It doesn’t go deep on the finance.

31:12.239 –> 31:13.800 [SPEAKER_00]: It goes deep like I was spoken about today.

31:13.820 –> 31:18.324 [SPEAKER_00]: It goes deep on actionable insights and texts that they can use to help them.

31:19.084 –> 31:20.605 [SPEAKER_00]: improve their business straight away.

31:21.887 –> 31:23.048 [SPEAKER_01]: Nice, love that everyone.

31:23.068 –> 31:26.010 [SPEAKER_01]: We’ll make sure you put links to all of that in the show notes for you all.

31:26.130 –> 31:28.993 [SPEAKER_01]: And Dan, thanks again for coming on the Commerce Master Plan podcast.

31:29.393 –> 31:31.115 [SPEAKER_01]: It has been brilliant chatting with you.

31:31.135 –> 31:33.216 [SPEAKER_01]: So thank you for sharing so much of advice for everybody.

31:33.617 –> 31:34.818 [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you very much for having me.

31:40.648 –> 31:46.591 [SPEAKER_01]: Doesn’t that get you excited about the possibilities of taking a good look at your finances and what it could do for your business?

31:47.151 –> 31:49.532 [SPEAKER_01]: Love what Dan ran through there.

31:49.712 –> 31:59.496 [SPEAKER_01]: Getting that accuracy right at the start of it all, he then needs to get to grips the economics and then it’s all about finding the opportunities wherever the problem is, how can we solve them?

31:59.876 –> 32:03.018 [SPEAKER_01]: How can we fix that with different approaches and different strategies?

32:04.358 –> 32:05.700 [SPEAKER_01]: really love that chat with Dan.

32:05.780 –> 32:07.101 [SPEAKER_01]: I hope you found it useful too.

32:07.162 –> 32:10.906 [SPEAKER_01]: If you like our dive into finance, do think this is the first step of time we’ve done it.

32:10.946 –> 32:14.490 [SPEAKER_01]: Then do let me know and maybe we’ll bring some more of it to you.

32:14.510 –> 32:22.079 [SPEAKER_01]: You can get your hands on our notes from this episode including the top tips and links and all that good stuff by heading over to ecommercemasterplanned.com.

32:22.439 –> 32:33.153 [SPEAKER_01]: You can also use our direct episode short link just put ECMP.info forward slash the number of the episode into the URL bar and you’ll be redirected straight to the right episode page.

32:33.634 –> 32:40.482 [SPEAKER_01]: 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 stuff I share to help you improve your business.

32:41.183 –> 33:00.851 [SPEAKER_01]: If you liked this episode, then one that comes with a surprisingly large number of similar recommendations is Episode 586, with Richard Chappell who’s the ex-CMO of Jim Shark, and he was doing a what would you do all about if he was starting a new job as CEO at an eight figure fashion brand.

33:01.551 –> 33:13.304 [SPEAKER_01]: and it’s kind of more taking a marketing and sales perspective to what we’ve just gone through really fascinating stuff definitely worth a listen after this one because it really does build on what we’ve just been talking about.

33:13.905 –> 33:17.830 [SPEAKER_01]: You can find all of what would you do’s at ECMP.info

33:21.053 –> 33:25.676 [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you for tuning in to this and every episode that you do of the e-commerce master plan podcast.

33:26.077 –> 33:38.845 [SPEAKER_01]: We bring you a new interview every single week because we want to inspire and help you to succeed and thrive with your e-commerce business, including encouraging businesses and consumers to make more sustainable buying decisions.

33:38.945 –> 33:45.090 [SPEAKER_01]: So, if you know someone they show can help, please tell them to listen to the e-commerce master plan podcast.

33:45.110 –> 33:47.551 [SPEAKER_01]: I hope you have a great week and don’t forget to keep

33:51.658 –> 33:55.004 [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you for listening to the e-commerce Master Plan podcast.

33:55.425 –> 34:00.293 [SPEAKER_02]: Find out more at e-commercemasterplanned.com slash podcast.