00:00.627 –> 00:03.288
[SPEAKER_01]: AI provides significant benefit within our development team.

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[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?

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[SPEAKER_01]: So we tend to drive out of ourselves.

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

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

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

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[SPEAKER_00]: Hello and welcome.

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

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

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[SPEAKER_00]: Huge thanks to the awesome Jamilla Jamani for introducing us to this brilliant guest.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you Jamilla.

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[SPEAKER_00]: So glad we got to meet at the women in e.com live event.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Not just for this great guest recommendation.

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[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.

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[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.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Kiron Creen is the co-founder and CEO at Mix Garage.

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[SPEAKER_00]: A car part and accessories store founded in 2004.

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[SPEAKER_00]: They now sell regularly via their custom website into over 34 countries.

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[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.

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[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.

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[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

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[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.

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[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.

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[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.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Why would they?

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[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

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[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.

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[SPEAKER_01]: based by phase.

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[SPEAKER_01]: We have done a couple of significant rebuilds.

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[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.

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[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.

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[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.

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[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.

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[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.

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[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.

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[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.

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[SPEAKER_00]: So have you finding that the one playbook works for all of them?

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[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

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[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.