eCommerce Master Plan

Trying to work out how to acquire more customers? Need to improve customer retention? Or just looking for some reassurance you’re on the right track? That’s what the eCommerce MasterPlan is here for.

eCommerce Master Plan is a business podcast hosted by Chloe Thomas, with 10 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80.

Chloe Thomas hosts eCommerce Master Plan, a business show with 10 episodes published.

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  eCommerce Master Plan

  eCommerce MasterPlan | 614: Mick’s Garage: Scaling to 25,000 Orders a Month with Custom eCommerce Technology

  Sep 27, 202633 min

  Ciaran Crean is the co-founder & CEO at Mick’s Garage a car parts & accessories store. Founded in 2004 they now sell regularly via their custom website into over 34 countries. With over 10 million listings the range has expanded way beyond just car parts now including far more categories like outdoor sports equipment, camping gear, and roof racks – all meaning they ship a whopping 25,000 orders a month on average. 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 Love the show? Chloe would love your feedback – leave a review here: https://ecmp.info/review or reply to the episode QandA on Spotify. Interested in being a Sponsor? go here: https://ecmp.info/sponsor Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy WEBVTT 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

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  eCommerce Master Plan

  eCommerce MasterPlan | 613: Using Product Discovery to Create a Better Shopping Experience and Drive Growth with Next’s Jay O’Neill

  Sep 20, 202634 min

  Jay O’Neill was Product Manager of Product Discovery at Next, one of the UK’s most successful high street retailers focused on fashion and homewares. Jay specialises in growth through digital marketing, CRO, and tech stack optimisation. He scaled soak.com from £2 to £80million, drove digital growth at Holland & Barrett, and took Bathroom Mountain from £0 to £40million in 18 months. 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 Love the show? Chloe would love your feedback – leave a review here: https://ecmp.info/review or reply to the episode QandA on Spotify. Interested in being a Sponsor? go here: https://ecmp.info/sponsor Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy WEBVTT 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 prod

  ListenShow Notes
• 

  eCommerce Master Plan

  eCommerce MasterPlan | 612: How Clothes Doctor Is Growing with Smarter Subscriptions, AI, and Sustainability

  Sep 13, 202631 min

  Janis Thomas is the CMO at Clothes Doctor, a fast-growing UK clothing-care brand selling premium laundry and fabric-care products. Founded in 2017, they are now a 7 figure business selling via wholesale, Amazon and their Shopify store. 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 — 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 Love the show? Chloe would love your feedback – leave a review here: https://ecmp.info/review or reply to the episode QandA on Spotify. Interested in being a Sponsor? go here: https://ecmp.info/sponsor Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy WEBVTT 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 differ

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  eCommerce Master Plan

  eCommerce MasterPlan | 611: How Products Get to Market Faster – and How AI helps Shoppers Find Them

  Sep 6, 202639 min

  Mark Howell is the Director Retailers EMEA at Rithum, where they help the world’s leading brands and retailers list, market, fulfill, and optimise products across every major commerce channel – from catalog to consumer. Rithum’s single connected network now has over 40,000 brands, suppliers and retailers including Walmart, Marks & Spencer, Samsung, and many more. Before his decade at Rithum Mark spent 10 years at Tesco supporting all drop ship and marketplace sellers to list and launch on Tesco.com. 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 Get all the links and resources we mention and join our email list at https://ecmp.info Love the show? Chloe would love your feedback – leave a review here: https://ecmp.info/review or reply to the episode QandA on Spotify. Interested in being a Sponsor? go here: https://ecmp.info/sponsor Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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  eCommerce Master Plan

  eCommerce MasterPlan | 610: How BLD BRO Built a Fast-Growing DTC Brand with Shopify, Amazon and Community

  Aug 30, 202634 min

  Tariq Kazemi is the co-founder and CEO at BLD BRO, a British skincare brand championing “bald confidence”. Founded in 2021, they did £3.5million last year and are growing fast via their Shopify store & Amazon. 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 Love the show? Chloe would love your feedback – leave a review here: https://ecmp.info/review or reply to the episode QandA on Spotify. Interested in being a Sponsor? go here: https://ecmp.info/sponsor Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy WEBVTT 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, probab

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