Live selling finally works. Here are the numbers.
"Not knowing what we were doing, just bobbling through it, we did a couple thousand dollars an hour and we were like, whoa, this might be something."
John Roman bought BattlBox back in 2023 and went looking for the next channel. With over a million TikTok followers, TikTok Shop looked obvious. Then a Whatnot sales rep sent an email. Seventeen months later, live selling on Whatnot does $447K a month, with no ad spend.
John breaks down why Whatnot buyers spend three times what TikTok Shop buyers spend, what a three-hour show looks like when each product gets 30 seconds, and the host-hiring mistake that seemed like a sure thing.
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What you'll learn:
Guest: John Roman, CEO of BattlBox. Last on the show in January 2023.
BattlBox: https://battlbox.com
BattlBox on Whatnot: https://www.whatnot.com/user/battlbox
John Roman on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-roman
Online Queso (John's blog): https://onlinequeso.com
John's previous episode, "How a Subscription Box Biz Got a Netflix Show": https://unofficialshopifypodcast.com/episodes/john-roman-battlbox/
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The Unofficial Shopify Podcast is hosted by Kurt Elster and explores the stories behind successful Shopify stores. Get actionable insights, practical strategies, and proven tactics from entrepreneurs who've built thriving ecommerce businesses.
Kurt • 00:00.000
This episode is brought to you in part by Swym. Here's the thing about wish list apps. Most of them just sit there. A customer saves a product, and then nothing happens. Swym actually activates that data. When someone wishlists a product, you can trigger price drop or back-in-stock alerts and feed that intent directly into Klaviyo or your CRM. You're not guessing what people want because they've told you. Plus, customers can share wishlists for gifts, and your team can view them to offer personalized service online or in-store. And unlike card abandonment, wish list data is permission-based. These are people raising their hands saying, hey, I want this, just not right now. Swym's been around for over a decade. It powers 45,000 stores and installs in about five minutes. You can try it for free today at getswym.com slash kurt. That's G-E-T-S-W-Y-M dot com slash kurt. Today on the Unofficial Shopify Podcast, we have a returning guest who's going to teach me about whatnot, right? We keep hearing about live selling. Whatnot is one of those channels, and I've seen it be successful. I don't have direct experience with it, but we've got someone who does, a returning guest, John Roman from BattlBox. Last on the show, January 2023, when they just bought the business back. They'd had a successful Netflix show run they had pitched Netflix on. you know and well i want an update on how things are going uh it sounds like it's pretty good but i also want to hear about live shopping right we're all looking for this this new channel we're looking for alternatives to our traditional channels like meta and google right to help bolster those things and so hopefully john's got some answer for us john roman BattlBox welcome how you doing man yeah
John • 01:57.792
Good, Kurt. I can't believe it's been three years. Yeah,
Kurt • 02:01.242
it doesn't
John • 02:01.392
that went
Kurt • 02:01.642
feel
John • 02:01.692
by so quickly.
Kurt • 02:03.764
If I if you had asked me I'd be like, yeah, that was like 18 months ago. So
John • 02:07.314
yeah
Kurt • 02:07.464
like all
John • 02:07.764
same
Kurt • 02:07.864
right, that's close
John • 02:08.314
yeah a lot's gone on well thanks for having me again yeah um so as you said we had just bought the business back um in i think a couple months prior before the the show had aired so it was you know we had sold the business we thought we were done opportunity to buy it back and as we as we got a hold of it you know how do we how do we take it to the next level how do we grow further and you know we we thought we were mastering direct and we were like okay well let's look at marketplaces amazon is a is a our number two as far as source of revenue we knew we wanted to scale that further but we're looking at these other options and tiktok seems to be the thing that we're like okay it's tiktok everyone's talking about tiktok shop that's clearly the move we have the most followers on there with over a million like that's gonna be it and we were starting to go down the path and now I think he runs like a department but at the time just a sales guy sent us an email talking about whatnot I was a little familiar so whatnot um started in the collectibles
Kurt • 03:21.692
Well,
John • 03:21.892
like sports cards pokemon sure
Kurt • 03:24.142
let's remind people before we continue, what does BattlBox sell?
John • 03:28.292
oh yeah um that would be helpful outdoor gear adventure gear so everything from camping hiking to just general preparedness um like i have my box of gear that when the power goes out i have kind of what i need to not um go back into the caveman style So the full gamut of outdoor and preparedness gear.
Kurt • 03:50.084
And it's a monthly subscription that's an outdoor gearbox. I subscribe, I pick my box, and then every month I get a box of cool stuff from you.
John • 03:59.084
Yeah, so still our core business is the membership. So the membership will be, you know, in the infancy for the first few years was 99% of our revenue. Now it's... Probably this year it'll be in the 70, low 70s percent of the business, so still meaningful. It's great. It's recurring revenue. It's extremely forecastable. We know exactly where we're going to end up each month with the active membership. And the key benefit or the main thing of the membership is that monthly box. Lots of other additional added value that we spent time on where it's more than just the physical products. It's a community. the community it's access um it's battle games but but ultimately it is a physical box of curated gear we have a team of experts we test it um it doesn't it's not like white label private label crap like
Kurt • 04:53.584
Yeah.
John • 04:53.684
it's name
Kurt • 04:54.234
No,
John • 04:54.484
brand
Kurt • 04:54.684
I'm on BattlBox. it looks good it looks like you also sell this stuff and you've got like a separate catalog i could go through best sellers i
John • 05:01.676
Yeah,
Kurt • 05:02.176
could
John • 05:02.226
1500
Kurt • 05:02.476
pick and there's
John • 05:03.376
skews around that we sell direct on the website too. That's obviously another part of the business.
Kurt • 05:10.026
so many cool toys in here every every dude in their head at some point was wants to be a secret agent you know like age eight i mean dream drop secret agent this just feeds into that dream and it's also practical
John • 05:22.420
yeah and it's both right like you don't have to you can have the stuff to be be the agent right like at the end of the day like pay for car insurance in case something happens like
Kurt • 05:31.870
Right.
John • 05:32.020
you
Kurt • 05:33.320
This is, yeah,
John • 05:33.820
have to have
Kurt • 05:34.120
this is insurance.
John • 05:34.370
stuff it's insurance but if you're actually physically receiving something as opposed to just a debit or charge every month and We don't get anything out of it.
Kurt • 05:44.004
Okay, I'm on board with that. Like, proof is in the numbers. It's selling. People like it, and it's been going for years now, so great.
John • 05:50.554
Yeah.
Kurt • 05:50.854
I think it's cool. So now you've got to scale it. So we're back to, all right, you're thinking about TikTok shop. You've discovered whatnot. You're aware of it, but it's like it's early, so it's a lot of people doing opening trading cards on
John • 06:06.354
Yeah,
Kurt • 06:06.654
John • 06:06.754
that's
Kurt • 06:06.854
the stream.
John • 06:07.204
all it is at the time. it's um there there's a little bit of outdoor gear there's a little bit of women's fashion there's a little bit of all that but at the time it's just baseball cards and pokemon um and bobbleheads and funko pops so
Kurt • 06:21.622
Yeah.
John • 06:22.072
but they tell us and they paint this picture of you know we're we're building this to be this platform um that's going to have all categories and We believed them and they were right. And we jumped in. We didn't know what we were doing. It's super, super easy. We took the phone, turn it on, go live. And Brandon, who's one of the faces of the brand, always one of the guys you'll see in the videos, big beard, tall guy. He just started, we had agreed on these 30 items we were going to sell through. They were all normal items in our catalog. We Shopify integration, so we have quantity and not knowing what we're doing and just bobbling through it, we did a couple thousand dollars an hour and we were like, whoa, this might be something.
Kurt • 07:13.960
So hold up. we did all right so when you start you really don't have experience here you're just like let's just try it and see what
John • 07:18.256
I
Kurt • 07:18.356
happens
John • 07:18.556
have no idea what we're doing, correct.
Kurt • 07:19.706
okay that's what other i've heard from other people they're like we just we didn't know we're like we're just gonna get on a stream and screw around and figure it out from there because you just have to start all right i like that that it's like just go um and then you sold a few thousand dollars if i said hey i got the sales channel sells a few thousand dollars okay fine you know drop in the bucket for a business at your scale until you go we did it in an hour now suddenly it's like i can run a sale that cranks out thousands of dollars an hour oh i'm interested and this is all right this sits in line with what i've heard from other people all right keep keep going
John • 07:53.580
Yeah. So it was as simple as that. I was like, okay, well. Okay. I don't know if this hourly rate's scalable, but let's do some math. And all of a sudden, okay, this is a number. So we said, okay, we're going to put more resources in it. So this was April of last year. We did right under 25K our first month. We ran 10 hours. In May, we said, okay, we're going to run more. We ran 26 hours. We did 95K. In June, we ran 60 hours. We did 156K. And we just kept going, 1666K, 177K, 213K, 269, 273, December 277, keep going, August
Kurt • 08:34.078
So
John • 08:34.328
last
Kurt • 08:34.428
it's month. scaling like you're built.
John • 08:35.928
Every,
Kurt • 08:36.028
What do you think state you're building an audience you're getting better?
John • 08:38.428
all
Kurt • 08:38.578
What's all of the above?
John • 08:39.528
of the above. We're getting better, we're building an audience, we're also doing more hours. So I look at August, for example, our last full month, we did four. 447k but we ran 317 hours so the hourly we got down to 1400 there was definitely some diminishing returns as we scaled with the hourly but um it still scales right so it's uh it's right now it's we have this strategy down it's how many hours can we do
Kurt • 09:11.398
Interesting. Okay, so follow-up question. This is just – it's a – the shop – It's a separate platform, but
John • 09:18.812
Yeah,
Kurt • 09:19.012
I have a there's a whatnot sales channel I install in Shopify
John • 09:22.562
correct.
Kurt • 09:23.262
and that is that it unifies the catalog. It's like the product sync, the inventory sync, so I don't oversell if I don't want to. And how does buying work? in whatnot.
John • 09:36.594
So you have a couple options. The most popular and what we do for 95% is auctions. So you can start it at a certain point. That can be retail, can be a little bit below retail. If you're feeling risky, you can do a dollar start. The crazy part of starting a $120 knife at a dollar is the psychology of starting at a dollar. It's just like eBay or any auction site. It ends up performing the best, but
Kurt • 10:04.508
yeah
John • 10:04.758
you're
Kurt • 10:04.958
oh
John • 10:05.158
also i giving
Kurt • 10:05.458
ran
John • 10:05.558
yourself
Kurt • 10:05.658
ebay
John • 10:05.858
up
Kurt • 10:05.908
for years
John • 10:06.108
to risk.
Kurt • 10:06.358
that
John • 10:06.658
Yeah,
Kurt • 10:07.058
that it used to be like and this was 20 years ago like all right you have to start on a sunday night because that's got the most impressions and
John • 10:13.258
yeah,
Kurt • 10:13.808
you started a dollar because they're going to sort by you
John • 10:16.558
yep.
Kurt • 10:16.708
know what's cheapest and then it builds then they don't bid a hundred 100 bucks they bid two dollars and
John • 10:22.028
Right.
Kurt • 10:22.578
then so it looks it becomes social proof because
John • 10:24.678
Yeah,
Kurt • 10:24.728
it's got like all
John • 10:25.178
you see
Kurt • 10:25.378
these
John • 10:25.428
the amount
Kurt • 10:25.578
bids
John • 10:25.778
of and bids.
Kurt • 10:25.978
activity yeah
John • 10:26.428
It's yeah.
Kurt • 10:26.828
and it's fun
John • 10:28.678
So it's key two ways that I look at this lens. You think about QVC and HSN and, you know, But I know they're going through some bankruptcy issues. They're technically still around. But you think about the older generation and how they used it. I think of people I know that in that age bracket that they'll sit down and they'll watch it and they have their phone right there. i might end up with a touch-on lamp because they thought that i needed it um
Kurt • 11:00.828
Yeah, I have one on my nightstand and the number of times I've accidentally just turned the lights on in the middle of the night, not my favorite.
John • 11:07.078
um but so yeah so but then it skipped our generation right like and that's why they're in the the trouble they are because the the consumer changed on how they buy and now you go to where we're at today and whatnot is done is it create it's created the this new ingestible video content that you're swiping um that's what it is right like i can i can open it up i click a show swipe and i get a new show and it could be a different category it could be the algorithm's the algorithm is going to start showing you what it thinks you want um
Kurt • 11:40.830
But are they all live streams?
John • 11:42.630
they're all live streams and they're all selling so so you think about go ahead sorry sorry
Kurt • 11:48.948
conceptually this is like you know the format is the medium is TikTok and the format is HSN
John • 11:57.148
Yes. And the big difference is, in my opinion, why we made the decision to go whatnot instead of TikTok and why we've continued to put all of our resources and whatnot is if you look at TikTok. Their algorithm, I think, I would argue, it is the best algorithm for social media anybody's ever created. It knows how to show you what you want and send you down rabbit holes. And it knows what TikTok shop when to show you a $20 item to buy. Like their algorithm is dialed in. Credit where credit's due. The difference is when you're on TikTok, you go there to ingest. content brain rot whatever you want to call it right um and Brain the algo's rot, good yeah. it knows when to say hey buy this $20 um you know cup but with whatnot whatnot's just like the ebay app or amazon app like you open it up to buy you don't open up the amazon app to to look at content right you don't open up the ebay you app to look at you you're buying intent is so much further along and i think that's the difference is they're opening up the whatnot app to purchase and then they're getting the bonus of being entertained at the same time so it's like this weird special unique approach And I think those two things combined is the new generation's QVC, but it also it's that digestible content and you're buying intent is just so much further along.
Kurt • 13:35.672
yeah well i and it's one of those things where it's like well i never do that you know but then i'm very interested in it and i have enough clients now who are like have experimented with it we want pins and aces who's been consistently trying to figure out live selling selling and now all in on it loves it because
John • 13:53.344
Yeah.
Kurt • 13:53.794
they're seeing results you know not dissimilar from yours what
John • 13:57.244
Right.
Kurt • 13:57.494
does the thing that you know i have not wrapped my head around what does the format for that look like there i was like yeah we just go around okay what does that mean
John • 14:08.294
Yeah. So, I mean, we follow a pretty, we definitely follow a strategy. So we'll have. uh we'll decide and at this point you know we're running uh you know i guess we run 86 shows with average show length being um um doing the quick math over three hours the uh
Kurt • 14:29.608
That's not easy.
John • 14:30.608
no it's a lot so we have six different hosts to do it um we have show runners who run the back end we have seven show runners um what what they do is they build the show they have the products they want to talk through and think of it in the qvc hsn style but the difference is on qvc they're talking about this product for eight minutes or 13 minutes right this we're talking about it for 30 seconds we're selling it we might sell another one we might sell three or four more and then we move on to the next item so it's that Current younger generation, ADHD, like,
Kurt • 15:07.136
Oh,
John • 15:07.236
need new,
Kurt • 15:07.636
yeah.
John • 15:07.786
it feeds that perfectly.
Kurt • 15:12.736
Support for this episode comes from Zipify, makers of ShopRank. Consider this. AI may be hiding your Shopify store and you wouldn't even know it. Today more than 800 people use large language models like ChatGPT and Gemini to shop for their products, and those AI engines are deciding who to recommend. The question is whether they're picking you or your competitor. The trouble that most Shopify stores have errors they may not be aware of. Missing alt text, weak descriptions, JSON schema that is simply wrong. AI sees those errors and moves on without a second thought. And there goes the sale. Now you can do something about it. ShopRank checks your product catalog against 17 critical factors that can keep you from appearing in AI search. But unlike other audit tools, which only tell you what's broken, ShopRank fixes it for you, automatically. No tech skills required. ShopRank gives you your store's AI visibility score in under 60 seconds, and then helps you improve it, for free. You can see your AI score right now by visiting zipified.com slash ai. That's zipify.com slash ai. Do take a moment to do this today before AI gives away any more of your sales. so you're just like you're just whipping through it i have seen you know we've all seen clips of um of chinese shopping live streams Yeah. where it is much bigger much more popular and been around longer and like theirs move at a rapid clip it'll be you know like a woman they toss her a dress within seconds it's on her she demos it it is sold whips it off next one like she's wearing clothes underneath it um but just like the speed at which that thing goes is pretty fascinating
John • 16:56.736
And that's what we're when we're when we're going through strategy and trying to optimize, we're talking to it. How do we go faster? How do we optimize revenue and get it up even even higher? But
Kurt • 17:07.436
yeah that's part of the speed it's like just it ups the revenue per hour
John • 17:12.884
it's interesting because yeah we've seen we've all seen these chinese videos where they're i mean they are just well i don't think we'll ever get to that um but it's it is super fascinating i don't think we'll ever we're definitely a lagger everybody's a lagger compared to China and how far along they are with live shopping I don't think we'll ever get to the same point I think there's just some some cultural differences and consumer behaviors is different enough but I do know that it's it is growing rapidly and it'll never be the same ratio as it is in China but It is showing all inclinations to be a very large sales channel.
Kurt • 17:53.902
What is, all right, it sounds like, you know, other than the sheer amount of hours, you know, person hours that have to go into this thing to make it work, but the ROI is there. You know, it sounds good. Tell me something bad about it. Like where do the wheels fall off? What makes you nervous?
John • 18:10.010
Sure. So when we started off, we were like, okay, well, let's use inventory we have a large amount of. Let's use excess inventory. This is a place we can do dollar starts and we can move stuff and create cash. Within a couple of months, we have sold out of all of our. access inventory so now we need to order specific inventory for it um i will say that the host the person presenting has to do a good job creating value because if not you have people on there that are on there only looking for for a deal right
Kurt • 18:49.702
Okay.
John • 18:49.752
they're same as like an ebay buyer where some ebay buyers are willing to pay full retail price all day long that's where the item they want lives and they're going to buy it but then you have the also the the other cohort the other segment that is purely deal shopping they're trying to get something for 50 off of retail um and when you start doing that you know margins might not be um what they need to be for you so i think it's That's the downfall is at least my team is not at the point where we can just say, okay, item one, item two, item three, item four, we are spending that 15, 20, 30, 45 seconds explaining the product, creating value, explaining what it is to try to hold a more acceptable margin.
Kurt • 19:37.268
now from a all right i love my gear i love i love buying cameras are
John • 19:42.168
Yeah.
Kurt • 19:42.468
we is it just like iphone on a tripod with a lav mic you know and lights lighting is important like what's our what's our setup here
John • 19:50.618
Yeah. So it can be a simple as a phone in some sort of device tripod. etc you have people on there that have like the the phones that they can just sit on it like the little tiny like desktop where it uh just sits and they're not they're using the back camera and they're just hand they're a hands model they're selling stuff
Kurt • 20:17.380
Oh.
John • 20:17.880
and they're just even a knife like they're just showing it and
Kurt • 20:21.558
Okay,
John • 20:22.058
um
Kurt • 20:22.108
I guess that makes sense. Yeah, trying to demo something
John • 20:23.808
right
Kurt • 20:24.008
small,
John • 20:24.508
Kurt • 20:24.708
it
John • 20:25.208
now so
Kurt • 20:25.758
would be tough.
John • 20:26.108
we've tried that um we we had one host that that he exclusively sold that way you never saw his face only his hands but what we found works is lighting a studio um and it can be a it's actually for every single one of our hosts they all have a home studio somewhere something nothing wild nothing crazy right but they have some good lighting um they have a higher tripod device to hold the phone um the most successful hosts are using um uh obs so
Kurt • 20:57.762
OBS?
John • 20:58.462
so they're able to do cool visual effects and um and
Kurt • 21:03.212
Okay.
John • 21:03.462
sounds and and entertain um
Kurt • 21:06.862
And so, all right, so talk to me about hosts. Like, how do I find a host? Is this, like, is there someone who will do this as a cottage industry job? They're just streaming out of their house for, like, five different brands?
John • 21:19.924
it's an opportunity for someone to stand something up that sources them because it's probably the biggest choke point but it's also become on that channel on that platform a normalized thing there's we have multiple hosts that came to us they were just on the channel they were buyers and they said hey like you ever need another host um and so so that exists but there's not like um Three of our hosts are full-time team members that have other focuses too. So our two, Brandon and Joey, who are full-time creators for us and manage content, they're also part of their... their their their day their week is doing whatnot and then our head of sales and partnerships has stepped in and he does some too because he enjoys it um so it's it's a mix right it's
Kurt • 22:25.470
Yeah, the ones I've seen tend to be like, hey, we rotate through people in the organization, and then when it really takes off, then maybe they'll have someone whose job is just managing that or just being the host. But even then, like they. like they can't be doing it all of the time
John • 22:42.690
It's not sustainable, right? You can't go live for 40 hours a week. Like, you can, but, like,
Kurt • 22:47.840
you
John • 22:47.990
right,
Kurt • 22:48.190
can but like the yeah the person who could do that would be a rare breed
John • 22:52.440
100%. Yeah.
Kurt • 22:53.790
all right have you so we when we started out you were like well we're looking at tiktok and then we went with whatnot did you live streaming works on TikTok as well have we tried it there well
John • 23:04.592
It does. And we did. We also did eBay live too. We got put in their beta.
Kurt • 23:11.192
I didn't even know that was a thing and I'm a big eBay guy
John • 23:12.992
Yeah. So they're, they're, they haven't figured it out yet, but I think they are getting close. They're the biggest problem on the eBay side is that their infrastructure, the tech is a little bit. um not as not as uh no
Kurt • 23:29.970
A little clunky.
John • 23:30.820
clunky it's the that's the best way to say it um but it's something that they can absolutely fix right you've seen big platforms fix their clunkiness walmart did it um i
Kurt • 23:43.608
They
John • 23:43.758
remember walmart
Kurt • 23:44.008
had to get a new CTO,
John • 23:45.658
when we
Kurt • 23:45.758
but yeah.
John • 23:46.508
were when we were first selling on walmart we had to upload a csv of our inventory like it was just wild um but yeah so we tried tiktok and it's we kind of validated the the thing i said earlier that yes people were in there and we might have 100 people watching us but how many of them are buyers right and i think a lot of them were just swiping and the algorithm's like oh show them this and while the algorithm's often right like a lot of people are buyers so there's the audience
Kurt • 24:20.236
Yeah,
John • 24:20.436
is there
Kurt • 24:20.736
it's built for engagement. It's not built to find a buyer, which like I didn't put that together. But yeah, it's whatnot. It's like, okay, their algorithm is built to find a buyer. The whole thing's built around buying. So there's not a surprise, you know, in TikTok, if I swipe to a live stream trying to sell me something,
John • 24:35.886
yeah
Kurt • 24:35.936
that's
John • 24:36.136
yeah right
Kurt • 24:37.186
like interruption marketing a little bit. It's not quite an ad, but it's close versus, you know, whatnot. I am there for that. That is my intent. And it's
John • 24:44.956
Yeah,
Kurt • 24:45.056
like, oh, why is Amazon's conversion rate so much higher than, you know, my meta ads?
John • 24:48.806
exactly.
Kurt • 24:49.006
Well,
John • 24:49.356
Kurt • 24:49.456
they were there
John • 24:50.356
Crazy.
Kurt • 24:50.406
for a reason.
John • 24:51.106
Right.
Kurt • 24:52.206
Okay, I'm with you.
John • 24:53.106
So we jumped on there. We did about a dozen tasks and we tried all days, hours, different approaches. And there was revenue. It just was not at the same level.
Kurt • 25:08.948
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John • 26:13.804
Yeah.
Kurt • 26:13.854
lower AOV products tend to do better on TikTok, that I've noticed. But was there like a striking difference in basket size and what they'd spend?
John • 26:24.372
Yes. So yeah, so there's, there's, I hear it a lot. And I actually do agree with it. I think there are exceptions to the rules. You've seen some, some massive brands that have 100 $200 items sell, sell like hotcakes on TikTok. And I think for some brands, it does work. For us, it didn't. We are
Kurt • 26:44.072
I
John • 26:44.172
our
Kurt • 26:44.422
think you're the majority.
John • 26:45.072
AOV. Yeah, our AOV was under $20. Our AOV on whatnot is 68. um so i take that back 64 um 70 in july but around that around that point so almost three acts um the other big thing you know as you know i'm BattlBox is like a big on the community piece and the content piece and um what they've built what whatnot has built on there from the community point aspect is like really interesting where um take a bunch of little things but they add up together to something special so like one random thing on there is so you're running Kurt, you and I get off this podcast, running our first why not together, we're selling whatever, and we're at the end of the road and we're telling everybody goodbye. You have two options. You can hit end and it's over, which is the same everywhere else. Or you can hit the raid button and the raid button then pulls up another screen and you can choose some other show going on at the moment. hit the button hit raid if i have if we had 120 people in the show you myself and the other 120 have just shown up on someone else's show and there's no there's no monetary benefit to me doing that what's
Kurt • 28:06.082
This is a social thing. Twitch does this, right?
John • 28:09.482
that do
Kurt • 28:09.832
Doesn't Twitch do this?
John • 28:10.932
they
Kurt • 28:12.404
I think they do or just wait another channel in that fashion. I don't know if it's like a feature, but it's a concept that occurs
John • 28:20.804
So
Kurt • 28:21.004
on Twitter.
John • 28:21.304
it's genius. So like i'm not getting anything monetarily from it that person's happy possibly made their evening they're excited they'll do a giveaway for those people those people are screaming raid and excited like it's like this moment of community and there's
Kurt • 28:37.100
That's
John • 28:37.250
lots of
Kurt • 28:37.450
fun.
John • 28:37.500
little things like that there's community boosts so you can i'm watching your show on there i get a community boost and give five dollars it runs five dollars worth of ads ads for that person's channel which i'll get the full metrics on on the new viewers i got because of it the sales i got because of it and it's it's called a community boost and it's saying hey i like your show i want to help so i got all these little pieces of it and it just makes this community where like these whatnot buyers are very sticky um but they also like they're connecting so if you have a community yourself like the the natural flow from a tiktok shop buyer to our site you know i think the marketplace person is not our customer right we don't have their email address that's the the thing about marketplaces um but you know the addresses are the same so you can look at data with quad you can you can marry profiles and understand our data a little bit better than we used to be Um,
Kurt • 29:40.124
Smart.
John • 29:40.474
but you can see a lot of on TikTok, the $20 buyer doesn't doesn't come and check us out. They might not even they might buy our item, but I'd venture
Kurt • 29:50.374
It's a to drive-by.
John • 29:50.924
approach. They don't even know who we are. Um, but the the Whatnot buyer seems to be a little bit more bought in and understand and respect and want to be a part of something bigger. So we see a lot of flow that ends up just being top of funnel for the the rest of the business, which is super super unique because it stands on its own. That's just kind of icing on the cake.
Kurt • 30:11.878
So the core business, though, is still sell a subscription box, right?
John • 30:15.028
Oh,
Kurt • 30:15.128
Like looking
John • 30:15.628
yeah,
Kurt • 30:15.728
at the homepage.
John • 30:16.228
all all roads lead to the membership.
Kurt • 30:19.284
So how does that fit into the live selling strategy? Like it seems like the live selling strategy is selling one-off items purchased intentionally for that purpose. Are we able to convert them? Are we able to sell subscription up front? Tell me about that.
John • 30:33.534
Yeah, so we can't sell the subscriptions on there, but we talk about the membership. We talk about what it is. a couple things one you know you get with the membership the box is obviously a big piece of it and the value for what you pay is is substantial um you know if you the the pro plus box was shipping and sales tax somewhere popular box 55 of our base is in there it's 200 a month around 202 203 depending on your state um but you're getting like 350 400 worth of gear so you're getting a lot of value um those items in the box in our we call our box mission we're not selling those on whatnot those are exclusive to our members after
Kurt • 31:20.318
Okay.
John • 31:20.668
six months we make a decision on a product do we move it over to whatnot so there's almost a little bit of a of of a little door there like if if you want to join and get the stuff six months ahead of everybody else join
Kurt • 31:34.364
Early yeah and
John • 31:35.164
the
Kurt • 31:35.264
members
John • 31:35.314
app correct
Kurt • 31:35.814
get early access you're that's like
John • 31:37.664
right
Kurt • 31:37.864
a you're a VIP type perk
John • 31:40.164
um so so because of that because of the way we we handle the membership there is the natural flow flow into it
Kurt • 31:48.564
Okay, I like that. Is there, at this point, do you have a sense of, you know, like, is there a rule of thumb you have for this is a product that will not work well and whatnot? This is a product that will probably work well.
John • 32:02.514
Um, I think you have to have a deeper cat. You have to have a deep catalog. You can't have just three SKUs or four SKUs or probably even 10 SKUs.
Kurt • 32:13.800
yeah you're right you have to be able it's a lot of it's novelty and speed so similar to you know the brain rot i'm just swiping trying to find something new and different you got to bring that because if you're like all right it's three items that are really similar in a row they've left the channel haven't they
John • 32:30.150
Right. So we right now like we have. Um, we try to maintain about 200 of our products being offered on whatnot at one time. Like right now we're a little low, we're at 160. On a standard three hour show, we'll probably get through about 50 to 60 items. So quick math, I mean, after,
Kurt • 32:52.532
120 minutes,
John • 32:53.282
yeah.
Kurt • 32:53.632
180 minutes.
John • 32:55.316
yeah like you can in a whole day of three shows and nine hours like we're going we're going through items um yeah
Kurt • 33:01.666
Yeah, it's like every three to four minutes you are changing item.
John • 33:05.566
so you got to have a deep enough catalog yeah to to withstand that now you could have a lesser catalog you just probably aren't going to be able to rock 300 hours in a month like like we're doing it's just not going to scale as high because you're going to have some product fatigue
Kurt • 33:20.724
It's a lot of clearly a lot of work. Is it fun?
John • 33:24.374
It's a lot of fun and it's a lot of fun to host enjoy it just being in front of this audience that because they're interacting with the chat, you know, a first time buyer should buy something with OBS they're like doing like fireworks and flames and so a lot of interaction and a lot of people that then just show up to the show to see um to see the house where they're gonna they're gonna show up and support them um even if they're not necessarily gonna buy anything which is which is interesting it starts behaving sometimes like how content does um it's a lot of fun and it's new and it's different and it's it's not like um anything else really going on right now
Kurt • 34:08.436
now are there other what's fun about that you know a recurring theme for years at this point has been like meta is our number one channel how do we make meta not our number one channel right because it is expensive and increasingly expensive and so obviously like Whatnot live selling this is a good for you this has become a good alternative i've heard a few other people have success with it um obviously like tiktok and tiktok shop depending on the brand may be better Are there other than those two, are there other channels that we're excited about or exploring?
John • 34:39.706
Um, I wish I wish there were because I want them to be but there's there's not and I struggle every year current is the same thing I would love for meta not to be. what it is but it still works it just works a little bit less every year because
Kurt • 34:55.496
Yeah, they got
John • 34:56.196
yeah
Kurt • 34:56.446
the biggest inventory on ads.
John • 34:58.496
you
Kurt • 34:58.796
Like, how are you going to compete with that?
John • 35:00.046
can't you can't compete with it um what what this is it's just another sales channel there's you know technically not a customer acquisition cost um it's it's your time it's uh you're not you don't have you can run ads on there but you don't have to run ads we don't run ads um we ran ads we did a holdout We decided we weren't going to run ads on there. So it's it's it's, you know, zero dollar or negative acquisition costs. And if even a small amount of them end up coming into into the fold of the membership, then it's a huge win. And what we see also is. um you know we we've seen it affect our our meta rates right cat comes down a little bit when we're cranking as much as we are because we're
Kurt • 35:49.370
Okay.
John • 35:49.520
making noise and then a person's on facebook later and they're like oh i saw these guys here um now it's not like exponential drop but we've seen like small incremental reductions
Kurt • 36:03.020
It's a beast. Yeah.
John • 36:05.070
unfortunately it does you
Kurt • 36:07.124
Okay.
John • 36:07.974
Yeah.
Kurt • 36:08.774
You know, I don't hate it. I'm not mad about it.
John • 36:11.074
I'm not either. I wish this was the year we figured out the other source, but for now, meta is king.
Kurt • 36:18.644
still years of this it's like since 2015 at least and a decade of of just poor digital absolute dominance for zuckerberg meanwhile he just spends that money on doing crazy stuff like build the metaverse then give up on that
John • 36:33.244
I know there was a lot of buzz on Apple and some people had a lot of success with it. We didn't. I wanted to. I wanted to have success. They were giving free money to everybody to have success. have success um i think it works for some brands i think it it works uh apparently well for some it just we couldn't crack it at all
Kurt • 36:52.696
it the what i've heard is like hey it depends on who your audience is um especially if it's like if your audience is women ages 40 up then they are like they're they're more represented on app loving and so that you know like obviously they're probably not the audience for BattlBox
John • 37:11.302
I
Kurt • 37:11.452
would be
John • 37:11.702
was going to
Kurt • 37:11.802
my
John • 37:11.852
say that's
Kurt • 37:12.002
guess
John • 37:12.152
the opposite audience of us. Okay, checks it out.
Kurt • 37:16.552
you know like outdoors people uh you know dads who are into everyday carry gear like myself and i would imagine that's your audience All right. So on this, given your experience, you've got three years of experience live selling on Whatnot and at this point hundreds of thousands of dollars. So you you're you're like in the one percent of Whatnot of live stream Whatnot sellers. What's your advice then for someone who likes starting out on live shopping tomorrow?
John • 37:44.884
stop overthinking it and just do it like
Kurt • 37:47.134
Just pull
John • 37:47.584
it's
Kurt • 37:47.734
the trigger and start.
John • 37:48.434
the same same advice for so many things like you're not going to perfect it you're going to learn as you go um it's the the barrier to entry is so low like you don't have to overthink just go pivot and and
Kurt • 38:01.084
You
John • 38:01.284
figure
Kurt • 38:01.484
own a stuff phone.
John • 38:02.034
out as you go you're
Kurt • 38:02.834
If you can
John • 38:03.384
on a
Kurt • 38:03.484
prop
John • 38:03.534
phone it yeah
Kurt • 38:03.834
upright,
John • 38:04.134
Kurt • 38:04.234
do it. And then that's it.
John • 38:05.584
yeah if you if you can figure out how to get your phone vertical like this go and it has a Shopify integration um and yeah it's just there's no reason not to try it and at least like suss it out right away smoke it out and see if it's a viable channel for you um
Kurt • 38:22.692
Are there any mistakes you made early on that you wouldn't do again?
John • 38:28.592
yeah so we uh one of the mistakes we made is to your question earlier about how do we find hosts right We said, OK, well, we have all of these TikTok shop influencers that are doing videos for them. They get paid the affiliate fee drives the GMV. we will just grab these guys and and see if anyone want to make extra money doing whatnot and
Kurt • 38:55.846
All
John • 38:56.096
um
Kurt • 38:56.246
right, this doesn't – I already know this is being presented as a mistake, but from the get-go, this is how I would have approached it as well if
John • 39:03.246
it
Kurt • 39:03.346
I were
John • 39:03.546
seemed
Kurt • 39:03.596
in your
John • 39:03.746
like
Kurt • 39:03.796
position.
John • 39:03.896
a great idea yeah
Kurt • 39:04.746
I was like, this should translate. it's Okay,
John • 39:08.096
Kurt • 39:08.146
where does this go wrong?
John • 39:09.096
it's just a different different animal right so
Kurt • 39:11.296
Weird.
John • 39:11.346
like um well the tiktok influence shop influencer they're making a video they're on the couch like they film something and they're editing and making variations and um being live in front of someone and
Kurt • 39:26.936
You're right.
John • 39:27.586
it's it's just it's a different animal um the the scale of having to be in live and trying to sell someone for for three hours when I can shoot something for two minutes and sit on my couch and do all the editing and the variations of it and and not have to deal with people um it's
Kurt • 39:46.958
Yeah,
John • 39:47.358
a it's
Kurt • 39:47.458
you're right.
John • 39:47.708
a different You world
Kurt • 39:48.008
better be. you need to be prepared like going face to camera is one thing like
John • 39:52.486
Right.
Kurt • 39:52.586
you have to get over that hurdle first you know conquer cringe mountain on that one okay great you and i have both done it and it wasn't easy but here we are now it doesn't seem hard for me the idea of like oh doing a three hour live stream sounds exhausting and
John • 40:09.036
It
Kurt • 40:09.086
difficult
John • 40:09.386
is.
Kurt • 40:09.586
you
John • 40:10.486
And
Kurt • 40:10.536
know like
John • 40:10.886
it is.
Kurt • 40:11.136
i with effort i'm sure i could do it with some effort But, like, that's a new skill.
John • 40:19.364
absolutely and we just we thought that that was our honey hole we have all of these influencers we're just gonna have an army and we had several and then they all we are certain the same issues whether they they didn't enjoy it Their ability to make an amazing 12 second video didn't correlate to being able to sell to people live for three hours just wasn't wasn't a fit is a different different skill set.
Kurt • 40:47.956
yeah you're and like now that you've said it and you're like well a 12 second edited clip is way different than a live stream you're right i
John • 40:54.856
When
Kurt • 40:55.006
mean it's
John • 40:55.206
I say it like
Kurt • 40:55.806
totally
John • 40:55.856
that,
Kurt • 40:56.106
different
John • 40:56.206
but Kurt,
Kurt • 40:56.606
yeah no
John • 40:58.006
during the process, like we figured it
Kurt • 41:00.256
i
John • 41:00.306
out.
Kurt • 41:00.406
was yeah i was like let's let's
John • 41:02.206
Yeah, we
Kurt • 41:02.606
go get this
John • 41:02.806
got the
Kurt • 41:03.006
guy's
John • 41:03.056
final.
Kurt • 41:03.306
guys
John • 41:04.006
Yeah.
Kurt • 41:05.306
okay well coming to the end of our time together i want to know what's next for BattlBox what are you excited about
John • 41:11.220
um so we just concluded season three of battle games which was um every year for the last three years you throw a golden ticket um into a bunch of boxes we select the winners bring 10 of them out we brought them out outside of athens georgia this year three days of competition survival-esque skills and the winner got 25k um that's gonna drop um on youtube exclusively it's a six-part series uh weekly it's going to start dropping in november um that's probably what i'm most excited about it was uh 11.8 terabytes worth of data from 39 cameras um that the
Kurt • 41:52.216
That's
John • 41:52.316
team is currently
Kurt • 41:52.716
cool.
John • 41:52.866
ingesting and i uh gives me anxiety thinking about that much that much video um but we kind of uh We just upped it. If anybody's seen Season 2, Season 2 was an upgraded season, but Season 3 is just a major upgrade to Season 2. So yeah, most excited about that.
Kurt • 42:12.500
Sounds, I mean, just I could I could do another hour with you just on the production workflow there, but
John • 42:17.700
Yeah.
Kurt • 42:18.200
we'll we'll save that for another episode. If someone wanted to learn more about you or BattlBox, where should we go?
John • 42:24.950
Google BattlBox, B-A-T-T-L-B-O-X or spell it any which way you want and it'll come up or BattlBox.com with no
Kurt • 42:31.800
I
John • 42:31.850
E.
Kurt • 42:32.000
did. I misspelled it B-A-T-L-B-O-X and got it immediately. So
John • 42:35.450
Everybody,
Kurt • 42:35.750
good
John • 42:36.050
everybody
Kurt • 42:36.150
SEO.
John • 42:36.300
does. The only funkiness with that is if you. If you go to B-A-T-T-L-E-B-O-X.com, Disney owns that.
Kurt • 42:44.870
Interesting. For whatever reason, the E is not there, of course, but two T's.
John • 42:50.070
Yeah. So, yeah, LinkedIn is probably the best place to find me. I'm the most active there. I'm on X, but I'm just not any good at that channel. And then online case, though, is the. is my monthly blog where I just kind of outline everything.
Kurt • 43:07.266
which you know i did i pulled some of my notes for this recording from online queso and i enjoy the name it's fun uh but
John • 43:14.316
Yeah.
Kurt • 43:14.366
cheese man thanks so much for doing this i gotta i'm gonna crack i'm gonna download whatnot but whatnot and check out your stream uh John Roman BattlBox thank you so much
John • 43:23.516
Thank you so much.