Seven founders, one tent, zero paid-ads-first answers.
Kurt spent a day at Beanstalk, an invite-only ecommerce conference at Industry City in Brooklyn, recording 15-minute conversations under a tent. Seven made it to tape. Every guest is on Shopify. Not one led with paid ads.
The lineup: Matt Butcher of Adam's Polishes on why he comes. Jay Wright, who spends about a billion dollars a year on Meta, on why your media buying is "completely cooked." Maria Lopez-May, VP Marketing at Nugget, on life after the pandemic lottery. Vivek Kumar, CEO of Articore (Redbubble and TeePublic), on their new Shopify integration and a $20 million turnaround. NJ Falk of APL on $400 sneakers and the thing she noticed about Sidekick. Robbie Bent of Othership on building $15 million bathhouses and marketing through the local dentist. Ali Weiss, former CMO of Glossier, on launching NoBiggie and choosing not to turn on paid.
Paul was not there. He asks what you would ask.
What you'll learn:
Hosts: Kurt Elster and Paul Reda, co-owners of Ethercycle, a Shopify-exclusive agency.
Swym - Wishlists, Back in Stock alerts, & more
getswym.com/kurt
Cleverific - Smart order editing for Shopify
cleverific.com
Zipify - Build high-converting sales funnels
zipify.com/KURT
Apply for Shopify Help
ethercycle.com/apply
See Our Results
ethercycle.com/work
Free Newsletter
kurtelster.com
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 • 00:00.001
This episode is brought to you in part by Swym. Here's the thing about wishlist apps. Most of them just sit there. A customer saves a product, and then nothing happens. Swym actually activates that data. When someone wish lists a product, you could 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 getswim. com slash Kurt. That's G-E-T -S-W-Y -M. com slash Kurt. Oh man, what are we doing today?
Paul • 01:14.080
Uh I got a new uh computer and it's transferring all my files.
Kurt • 01:18.220
So you you can't work?
Paul • 01:19.260
I'm mostly sitting here. I can't work.
Kurt • 01:20.940
Okay, well let's let's record the bumpers for a podcast.
Paul • 01:23.980
Okay, all right. So where'd you go?
Kurt • 01:25.980
Uh last week I went to Brooklyn.
Paul • 01:28.060
Oh, I thought you went to Broadway and you like got off a bus and walked on the street and was like, is this where I go to be a star?
Kurt • 01:34.860
Sounds like too much work for me. I did take a train to Times Square successfully, but then leaving I got on going the wrong way and I didn't figure it out 'til I was in Queens.
Paul • 01:45.000
Okay.
Kurt • 01:45.320
I sorted it out though. Yeah, now I'm much more comfortable with the New York subway.
Paul • 01:48.680
Oh, okay, good.
Kurt • 01:49.320
You gotta get lost on it a few times first.
Paul • 01:51.840
I have not gotten lost on it.
Kurt • 01:55.360
Well, you're not as prone to uh
Paul • 01:57.600
You're you're famous for getting lost all the time, though.
Kurt • 01:59.920
No sense of direction.
Paul • 02:00.799
You're like, okay, right now. You got a camera on you right now. Which way's the lake?
Kurt • 02:04.360
Which way's the lake?
Paul • 02:05.399
The lake.
Kurt • 02:05.799
That way.
Paul • 02:06.200
Okay, you got it right.
Kurt • 02:06.920
Yeah, that I got right.
Paul • 02:08.280
Which way's your house?
Kurt • 02:11.300
Mmm, that way.
Paul • 02:13.300
Wrong no. That is also the lake That is not your house. So what were you doing in New York? Spending all my money?
Kurt • 02:24.540
Uh no, no. And and I did not do that much. I mean, how much could a pizza cost?
Paul • 02:29.019
Yeah. Yeah, well would something in New York be like ten dollars? I mean, come on.
Kurt • 02:33.799
No, I was there for a conference. Beanstalk. It's the fourth year I had never been. I'd gone went for the first time. Um and the first time it was like Somebody was telling me it was like 40 people or so, you know, something extraordinarily small. And they're trying to keep that vibe going. Only, you know, now I'm at the fourth one and it's over a thousand people. So how do you keep keep that vibe? And it turns out they did what I have always wanted to see in a conference, a medium-sized conference like that. There were really no talks.
Paul • 03:08.080
Okay.
Kurt • 03:08.960
Showed up for a keynote, somebody interesting. That's how you set your tone. It was the the Reddit co-founder who's the one who is not married to Serena Williams.
Paul • 03:17.760
Okay.
Kurt • 03:18.240
Yeah. And that you know that's very interesting. He's telling stories. Um Sam Sam Altman from ChatGPT was in there because he was at Y Combinator at the time and like led a round of funding for them.
Paul • 03:30.040
He wasn't at The conference.
Kurt • 03:32.380
No, and the st I'm sorry. This was in the guy's keynote story.
Paul • 03:35.660
Well I can tell you a story involving Sam Alpin if you want to.
Kurt • 03:39.140
Yeah. No, it's yeah, that didn't really go anywhere for me. But no, it sounded like um you know, I met someone there from Peacock or the NBC Universal Streaming Service. It sounded like NBC helped start the thing initially, and then later were sponsors, and they were like, hey, you know you could buy Peacock ads as like connected TV ads. And I was like, wow, you know, that is that's quite the thing. It sounded like we got this whole fancy conference to sell some connected TV ads was the original pitch here, but and then it evolved into something very cool.
Paul • 04:12.920
All right.
Kurt • 04:13.880
That's just my I'm extrapolating from what I knew.
Paul • 04:16.760
So do you like talk to people? Do you get to some business? What are you doing?
Kurt • 04:20.200
See, you know, I I talk to some people. Getting you business, man, I'm a rainmaker. I don't need to go to a conference for that. Like after that initial talk then you have pre-arranged meetings and it's all like in a courtyard or it's like a lunch meeting, but they tell you where table to meet at and they give you a topic. I got they asked if I wanted to moderate one, which is kind of fun. Um, but instead of it being, you know, passive like I you go to this talk and learn this and then this talk, which those have their place. This was just purely focused on networking. So outdoor courtyard covered with a tent. It was in this really cool industrial area or like industrial mall, like a box factory from a hundred years ago turned into an outdoor mall in Brooklyn. As soon as I've said it, like you could start to picture this thing. But it was neat. And you get 15 minutes to talk to like 10 people.
Paul • 05:12.760
So you're speed dating.
Kurt • 05:15.000
Speed dating, but it's you're just talking to other entrepreneurs. And some of them were very kind and I said, can we record this conversation? They said, you know what? So a few said no. Uh, and I did not take offense. We had great conversations anyway. But a majority said yes. And that's what we're about to listen to.
Paul • 05:33.720
All right.
Kurt • 05:34.920
We're going to open with uh Matt Butcher from Adams Polishes.
Paul • 05:38.479
Oh, we know him.
Kurt • 05:39.280
Yeah, we know him. We built the Adams Polishes website when they migrated to Magento. Still maintain it. Um yeah, I was just like I was sitting there for the opening keynote. Some guys from NBC Universal at the table. And then I hear, hey Kurt. And Matt Butchers is sitting down right next to me. So also nice. We had a lot of clients there. Um so nice to reconnect with those folks. But yeah, let's give it kick it over to Mr. Butcher. Get this thing going and we'll run through some interviews uh and then come back.
Paul • 06:04.740
All right.
Kurt • 06:08.639
All right, who are you? What do you do?
Speaker 3 • 06:10.400
My name is Matt. You know what I do. I know what you do. We've been in business two on together. I run a business called Adams Polishes Which is uh like premium car care products primarily online but also in stores across the nation.
Kurt • 06:23.139
And we're at where are we at right now?
Speaker 3 • 06:24.900
We're at Beanstock. We're in Brooklyn at Oh, what's the name of this building?
Kurt • 06:28.940
Industry City.
Speaker 3 • 06:29.740
Industry City.
Kurt • 06:30.380
How badass is that?
Speaker 3 • 06:31.500
It's actually a really cool old building that they've reutilized. Yeah, it is
Kurt • 06:35.180
cool. Sorry, a conference like this, you know, pretty good like the high-end nice business conference. What do you why do you come here? A lot of effort. What do you get out of this
Speaker 3 • 06:44.660
Yeah, I mean I think compared to other conferences, this one's pretty curated. Like everyone I bump into here is worth chatting with. I think the key benefit here is that you can meet people that are going through similar issues to you. Talk about how consumers are right now, you know, what's going on with tariffs, what's going on with the war in Iran, how is it affecting the business. And then for us, you know, we're going into so many new channels, emerging channels like TikTok and into retail partners. So pretty much everyone here has seen similar problems to what I'm about to go through So I'm looking for people to uh teach us before we go learn on our own.
Kurt • 07:20.560
Yeah, and w it just started, but like you were talking to people last night at dinner. Any have you already gotten some you know tips, unlocks, interesting tidbits?
Speaker 3 • 07:29.320
I think so, yeah. Like it's funny people here can be so opinionated, but I mean they're just smart. It's not opinionated, they're just so smart. So I was talking to this one guy last night. I was like Hey, like talk to me about TikTok and the halo effect. He's like, I don't call it the halo effect. And I'm like, okay, well let me fall on that thread. What what do you call it? What do you mean? How are you measuring if it's working for other channels? So I think that that part's really cool. You know, there's just a lot of one-liners and people who are very charismatic that bring a totally different lens or view to how I think about things in my business. So I think that's awesome.
Kurt • 08:02.620
Did you uh any AI discussion?
Speaker 3 • 08:05.259
A little bit. I I want to have more of the AI discussion now. I think we're seeing how powerful and stupid it can be at the same time still So trying to figure out how to integrate it, where to integrate it, who to integrate it with. I think consumers crave some level of AI, but trying to figure out like where to interface it, product matching For us, you know, if you've got a black car that's outside and you live in Brooklyn and it's the winter and you're not sure which paint sealant to use or which coating to use, well we have like twelve options and live agents have to go in and work with you on it There's gotta be a way to get that friction taken away.
Kurt • 08:44.000
Anyone that you know is here you're excited to meet and talk to.
Speaker 3 • 08:47.040
So I know the guy from Portland Leather is here
Kurt • 08:50.339
Curtis Matsko.
Speaker 3 • 08:51.699
Yep. The guy from uh Pop Sockets is here. He's in my lunch today. I'm excited for that. He's a Boulder guy, I think There's a lot of cool CEOs of like awesome brands that are like past the emerging stage, like established brands that I I want to meet with. So yeah, I think those are those are two of the bigger ones.
Kurt • 09:09.440
Alright, I think we gotta go.
Speaker 3 • 09:10.640
We gotta go. Good to see you.
Kurt • 09:14.720
No, I'm recording.
Speaker 4 • 09:15.840
I'm no squirrel. I is an old puck
Kurt • 09:18.740
So tell me about Nugget.
Speaker 4 • 09:21.139
Yeah. Nugget
Kurt • 09:22.660
's a couch?
Speaker 4 • 09:23.540
Yes, it is a couch. It's also a toy, so we call it play furniture Um which is exactly what it sounds like. It's furniture that kids can play with. So if that
Kurt • 09:33.040
gets together, they can build forts, right?
Speaker 4 • 09:34.399
Yeah, you can build forts, you can do crash pads, obstacle courses. Whatever a kid's imagination comes up with, because let's be honest, they're way more creative than we.
Kurt • 09:43.580
I'm familiar with Nugget from I think it was over the pandemic. The number of people being like This is the biggest thing ever you gotta look at that.
Speaker 4 • 09:50.340
That's exactly right. That's exactly right.
Kurt • 09:52.100
What do you think was the success there?
Speaker 4 • 09:54.500
Um Tell me your secret something. Yes, tell me, yeah, right, exactly. Let me just tell you all the trait secrets. Um no, but I think it was the right product and I hate to say it but at the right time.
Kurt • 10:04.720
Yeah.
Speaker 4 • 10:05.200
Right. So if you think about from a product perspective there was nothing else like it on the market Um, you know, it's four pieces, so it's really simple and yet kids can do a ton with it. And I say at right time because parents had their kids at home. They needed to keep them entertained. The pandemic started in March, so it was, you know, for a lot of places cold weather. You couldn't quite get outside kids don't understand that you know if it's not outside maybe we just chill out a little. They have energy all the time. And so it had already been growing but the pandemic for sure accelerated that growth because again it was very much a need from the parent side and we were supplying something that you know fit that fit that need absolutely beautifully.
Kurt • 10:51.120
And then post-pandemic, you know, are you able to continue that growth or did Yeah, like what what was it like?
Speaker 4 • 10:57.700
Yeah, no post pandemic we definitely saw you know saw a a decline as things kind of came back to our new normal. And that's where innovation has been really important. So our play couch unfortunately has been copied Seven Waysel Sunday. There's a lot of dupes out there. So we introduced to play Ottoman. So it's a regular Ottoman that you take off the top piece and there's two more pieces inside. Kids are, it's an amazing product. It has 99% recommendation on our site. It has six one-star reviews counted So it's an incredible product. And so we're building this idea of play withable furniture and activating the home. Right, because kids will want to play with whatever is around them and we say why can't we do both? Why can't we have something that's functional that also invites play So innovation has been really key and then just, you know, more traditional forms of acquisition. You know, we're we're now very heavily using paid media, which we weren't before. We went onto Amazon this past fall and that's been a really uh really strong channel for us as well because the search was already happening. You just weren't finding our product And so yeah, just more traditional more traditional business, I would say.
Kurt • 12:20.519
On Shopify?
Speaker 4 • 12:21.720
We are on Shopify, yeah.
Kurt • 12:24.140
And any any reason exciting Shopify features using lately or ones you wish you had?
Speaker 4 • 12:31.260
Ooh, let's see. Exciting features. I mean right now we just we've just brought on um a new like dev agency to to work with us to really amplify the site So I think just kind of maximizing what what we have. Big fans of the AI feature and just the ability to just very easily synthesize a lot of data for us. So we we use that quite a bit. Yeah, but it's a I mean it's a great platform. There's like it's like endless uses. It's just really kind of figuring out how to maximize it.
Kurt • 13:09.420
Did I hear correctly that you later, like post-pandemic, started getting into paid advertising?
Speaker 4 • 13:15.580
Correct.
Kurt • 13:16.460
How are you doing it before?
Speaker 4 • 13:18.780
That's exactly right. That is a a viral sensation. I mean that is that's a we had a lottery that you entered the lottery for the chance to buy the product Because there is so much demand and we're like, well, we don't want to just do a drop when we do have inventory and have it be like the first people, so the most Like um I guess fair way that we can think to do this is by doing a lottery. You enter it every week and if you get selected then you can buy the couch. Um so yeah, we just did it, you know, a lot of um organic at the time Instagram the algorithm was really rewarding brands like ours. I would say that's not the case anymore. But um yeah, just like word of mouth Facebook groups, mom Facebook groups and again I I say right product right time because amongst those groups and like in circles it's like what are you doing to say? Say it at home I like the nugget, get the nugget, I'm telling you the nugget is game changing, it's life changing. I mean we really like heard those words 'cause it was like places kids could set up a little fort and like hide in it or read in it or you know again like play like an obstacle course and It kept parents, it kept kids entertained, it kept the home semi semi-organized in the way like you weren't taking off the couch cushions and you know Uh I
Kurt • 14:45.399
I got three kids. Like I saw the use case immediately.
Speaker 4 • 14:48.279
You get it.
Kurt • 14:49.240
What an event like Beanstalk, is this your first one or your like what what do you hope to get out of this
Speaker 4 • 14:55.839
I just really want to get inspired. I want to see what what's like the new and different out there. I think it's really easy, especially as you're in a maturing business to focus on the brass tacks, you know, and like how do you create processes? When I started at Nugget, it was very much still a startup. And since then we now have an internal creative team. We do all of our creative in-house. Um we 're the amount that we're able to do for the size that we are, I think, is incredible. It also means that we maybe are not as focused on disruption and I I think that's really important and just staying kind of fresh and so I'm hoping to get new ideas and kind of yeah just kind of step out of the day to day.
Kurt • 15:43.520
I think that's just the act of leaving that day-to-day suddenly, you know, you look at things differently.
Speaker 4 • 15:50.480
Yes, a hundred percent. And you can do that, you know, in just talking to another parent Right, like anytime I talk to anybody who has kids, I'm I'm constantly like half putting my friend on, but half putting my like marketing, like research brain on. Um, but I had a an incredible mentor that on I worked for a kid business and on Fridays afternoon she was like, I want everybody to do things that kids are doing And I remember one Friday afternoon I'm like working on a forecasting sheet and she's like Haria is your consumer forecasting today? I'm like probably not. He's like, what's your consumer doing? I'm like playing kickball, she's like grab a team, go play kickball. And like she just was so passionate about like immersing outside. And so I'm like, oh it's so true. Like the minute you just step out of like your laptop. You just start to get new ideas. So that's why I'm so
Kurt • 16:48.340
we we have to advertise on on meta, probably I assume Google, you know, like the the traditional ones. Are there But we're all trying to escape it too.
Speaker 4 • 16:56.580
Right.
Kurt • 16:56.980
Sorry, what are the what are the channels we want to explore that aren't those?
Speaker 4 • 17:02.540
I mean, I think Reddit is really interesting. I think it's a hard one to crack because it because it's so native and organic and there's so much skepticism towards anything that isn't Which I appreciate.
Kurt • 17:15.000
Hate advertising.
Speaker 4 • 17:16.280
Exactly. Which I appreciate. It's like the beauty of the platform is you can actually get unfiltered real opinions. Um but I do think that there's something interesting about that again. I don't know how that comes to life. Um so that's one for us and then I would say for us, you know, there's so many parents listening to podcasts Now um from like more of like an awareness play but it is really hard to it's such a virtual product And so trying to figure out how to get something that is visual that I can say like, oh, look at this video or look at, you know, this Carousel, how do you entice somebody on a podcast? But it is like a medium again where the consumer is at, so it's just cracking neckle.
Kurt • 18:00.260
Have you tried connected TV?
Speaker 4 • 18:02.180
We are just about to launch um on Mountain
Kurt • 18:05.540
Okay.
Speaker 4 • 18:06.020
Um and we did a a while ago we couldn't get the you know our frequency was really low and I'm a I'm a traditional marketer so I do believe in reach and frequency not just reach Um, but we're gonna try it again. They have a a great agency partner, so yeah, we're gonna give it a whirl.
Kurt • 18:23.040
Cool.
Speaker 4 • 18:23.520
Yeah, so wonderful.
Kurt • 18:25.800
Who are you and what do you do?
Speaker 5 • 18:27.640
My name is Jay Wright, I run the e-commerce equation, so we're a coaching program for small to mid-size e-commerce businesses I mean help them take marketing in-house, get clarity over their numbers, control over their marketing, and scale without dependencies on third parties like typical agencies.
Kurt • 18:45.500
How long have you been doing this?
Speaker 5 • 18:47.100
I started LindaCommerce in 2012, had an agency for seven years, did four of my own brands And I've been doing e-commerce equations since 2019, so seven years.
Kurt • 18:56.940
Okay. And so it's all right, you mentioned help people get their numbers right. I was just talking to a guy who's like we're scaling. We just did our first seven figure month. Also, I don't actually know my numbers. He's like, I'm just looking at whether the bank account goes up or down And I've talked to enough merchants now where I know I'm like, man, the moment you figure that out, decision making gets so much easier
Speaker 5 • 19:19.480
Yeah, I mean one of my experiences having an agency was I'd see people with crazy results and they wouldn't spend more and they were they were being very defensive They would have spended amount of money they could afford to lose because they didn't understand the cause and effect between the action and the outcome. And so when I ran my own brands I went through a process of actually looking at how much profit I was making every day, understanding the key cost centers and benchmarks that I needed to hit, and that gave me so much clarity that I had the confidence to spend more. And so if you make it really obvious that there's an outcome from your action, people will naturally do more of that action. Like founders are very smart if they can see cause and effect. And so that's you know, that's what I mean by understanding your numbers really and getting clarity.
Kurt • 20:04.280
Okay, what do you think what what's the thing that you're consistently hearing is the struggle for people right now
Speaker 5 • 20:10.360
So I'm always thinking about the frontier, the performance frontier, where the actual gap is that'll help the brands I work with over others And it has shifted, I think, from the skill of media buying into creative. And so creating a data-driven creative factory that is looking at bottom up from your account and top down from the market like what is working specifically for you and identifying new personas and angles that will sell your product to new and different people. I think is the biggest differentiator right now. And I do think it is getting more and more competitive, so just being very dialed. on all of your metrics like your cash conversion cycle, your relationship with your manufacturers, like all those things are starting to become very important because You need to be very efficient and very good at the persuasion through creative. And so the best brands in the market right now I think are doing those two things very well.
Kurt • 21:03.380
Okay. So we've got. Alright, here's what I'm seeing Cost of acquisition cost keeps going up. And like really we're talking about meta.
Speaker 5 • 21:12.760
Yeah.
Kurt • 21:13.080
And so everyone's like, alright, I gotta find alternatives to meta But then they don't they don't have the eyeballs, you know? Only Meta has Meta's inventory. So like what do you do?
Speaker 5 • 21:24.919
Yeah, so I mean I spend a billion dollars a year on Meta, whether the well, you know, the biggest meta partner and APAC, we're top ten worldwide. And so You're right, like there's nothing quite like it, right? So if meta has started to deteriorate in performance, it's not that meta doesn't work, it's an auction, right? So we're all bidding So someone is making it work at that CPM. And so I think what you're describing is a symptom probably of like not keeping up with the times And then also there is an efficiency game. So yes, you might be getting a little bit squeezed on your cost per visit, but there's a hundred ways that you could increase your revenue per visit. So You know, often we're seeing big breakthroughs in how the offers position, bundling, unit economics, so the actual profit per visit can expand to match the slight increase in cost per visit.
Kurt • 22:16.240
Okay.
Speaker 5 • 22:16.640
But I do think like it's, you know, you've got to be conscious of that dynamic between how much does it cost to get a click and how much profit do I get from that click and not just constantly trying to get your cost per click. lower to to you know to zero that'll never happen it does tend to trend up so you need to kind of make sure that everything else in your business is also performative.
Kurt • 22:35.840
And I would assume what you're seeing is you know most Most stores are on Shopify.
Speaker 5 • 22:42.080
Yeah, 95%. Maybe 99% of those of the store you have. There's the odd the odd WuCom and the odd big commas here and there, but they're they're fading very quickly. Yeah.
Kurt • 22:53.100
Yeah, no, Shopify, I mean it just it took over. It's incredible.
Speaker 5 • 22:56.940
Yeah.
Kurt • 22:57.660
Are there are there recent features, developments in Shopify as a platform that you're like, this is what people are missing out on?
Speaker 5 • 23:05.500
Well, I mean what we've seen over the last year in particular is with you know Claude and Claude Code the ability to kind of roll out more output than typical so you might be able to get like a framework done by a professional but it might be cost prohibitive for a lot of the brands I work with the SP market to actually roll that out across 10 or 20 different personas, but now I think like you can get more and more personalized within Shopify. And I think Shopify have done a tremendous job within their ecosystem of constantly innovating tools and features like Sidekick is okay, it's getting better, but like there are a lot of these tools that are now available to smaller merchants. Like I think these things are accessible to a lot of the larger merchants, a lot of the people in this room But uh you know I work with like a more early stage brand. And so I think just the empowerment of like AI through Shopify and third-party tools has meant they could do more for You know the same or less money. Um so yeah, more personalization.
Kurt • 24:05.480
Okay. More
Speaker 5 • 24:06.200
landing pages. I think it's been incredible.
Kurt • 24:08.600
What's the What's the biggest mistake you see people just keep making?
Speaker 5 • 24:12.899
I would say abdicating responsibility of the growth of their brand to someone else. Most of the brands I work with are creatives, they love their market. They had the problem And they're passionate about bringing something to the world that fixes that problem for them and their friends. And they love that side of it. Product creation, design, new product development. And they they think that they can't do the marketing. They think they can't find new customers. And they think someone else is smarter than them. And the reality is no one will ever care about their brand like they will. No one knows their customer as well as they do. And it's not that hard. Like thousands of people have learned that skill. And at the end of the day, they're in the business of getting units to market and selling those units. And you can't just think someone on a thousand dollar retainer is gonna fix half your business for you, you know what I mean? And so I think people probably just have a fear or a lack of confidence that they can do it, they can figure out the marketing side of their business.
Kurt • 25:08.919
Tell me about I mean early on you you really hammered on creative tell what creative is working right now
Speaker 5 • 25:16.039
I I think that If I was to say the number one format right now by the time this goes to being published, it's probably old, right? So we look across so fast. So every month we look across all of our accounts and we look at all the best performing top funnel content. And we give people like a swipe file of like the trends and the themes that we're seeing emerging, right? So there's a lot of like raw yapping style content, like a yapping pack or you know, and they're working well right now. But that's a top-down approach and I think like the majority of creatives shouldn't be net new. It should be iterations from elements of winning ads that you're seeing in your account And so probably the number one thing people should be doing is data labeling correctly. And so actually identifying what was the persona, what was the creator, what was the angle in that ad, what was the style or format, and actually understanding and labeling all of those elements. mean that you can very quickly do like a meta-analysis across all of your ads and see the winniest elements for you and have a bottom-up approach that informs your next batch of creative. And so the process is probably more important than me just saying here's the winning format today as we sit here in September, if that makes sense. And so if everyone just had better data hygiene with their ads, they could answer that question themselves every day and know what was working and what they should be producing next.
Kurt • 26:41.060
Should we be doing should a majority of these ads be creator-led ads? Should they like trying to do UGC? Should I be bothering trying to make AI creators? Or should it be like founder face to camera
Speaker 5 • 26:52.919
Yes, all of it. Test all of it. You need to test all of it, right? So for some brands, Founder Creative is not good. Like one of the biggest brands in Australia that I work with sells collagen, a beauty supplement And it's three dudes that used to be tradies. They should not personify their brand, right? They're not the ICP. And it wouldn't resonate. So they hit heavily into UGC creators and team members But founders do have something special. There's a different gravitas, right? So if you are your ICP and you're not personifying your brands, I think you're doing your business a disservice Like we are in a world where you will get a performance boost if you are your ideal customer profile and you can actually step in front of the camera. And so most people that go through that journey do have improved performance. But there's no like single format, right? There's no silver bullet. As good of a social clip as that makes. The reality is you need to figure that out for yourself through an iterative process. and clean data.
Kurt • 27:50.180
Alright, last question. What do you wish everybody would do differently?
Speaker 5 • 27:53.540
I I wish everyone would understand the cause and effects of their actions in business, right? So If every day you woke up and you knew the number one thing holding your business back with confidence through benchmarking or calibrating to others and you relentlessly focused on that your business would move forward. Right? So I wish everyone I I wish the number one thing I I wish everyone would do is just actually get to the core of the bottleneck in their business and focus on that and not all the other noise that is around them.
Kurt • 28:21.980
Alright, I'm guessing you've got newsletter, resources, something to plug here. What is it
Speaker 5 • 28:26.260
Well, I mean I share a lot on Instagram, JRite Official, and we do a lot of workshops and a lot of those sorts of things. So you can find us at e-commerce equation. com and uh jump on the list and you'll hear about what we've got coming up.
Kurt • 28:36.340
Thank you so much.
Speaker 5 • 28:37.140
Thanks, Kurt. Dude, lovely to meet you
Kurt • 28:39.840
Wrong address, wrong size, add one more. The same three emails every single day, and every one is a ticket your team handles by hand. Read it, verify it, fix it in Shopify. email the customer back, do that a few hundred times a month, and you're paying salaries to be a manual order editing tool. Our sponsor, Cleverific, has been thinking about this for years. They've run order editing on Shopify since before it was a category. Now your shoppers can fix their own orders right on the order status page. Address, size, quantity, add-ons. No ticket, no back and forth, and everything writes straight back through Shopify. And here's what's new. Order upsells that build themselves. Cleverific reads your store's order history, generates post-purchase offers based on what your customers actually buy, and it works with the flows you already run. This summer, they'll even do the whole thing for you. Mention the unofficial Shopify podcast and Clever Effic will handle the complete setup, order editing, post-purchase upsells, all of it done for you. plus a $500 upsell credit to get you started. So stop editing orders for your customers. Let them do it themselves and let it pay for itself. Clever Effect Order Editing on the Shopify App Store. I just well
Speaker 6 • 29:52.940
I do what's your name? I'm Vivek Kumar.
Kurt • 29:55.740
Vivek CEO of uh Articor Group. What is Articor Group? What are those the public brands?
Speaker 6 • 30:01.500
Yeah, so Articor Group owns and operates uh uh independent creator marketplaces, Red Bubble and T-Public. These are two highly established marketplaces where
Kurt • 30:11.220
unavoidable.
Speaker 6 • 30:12.019
Yeah. Yeah, like
Kurt • 30:13.139
you will have encountered them at some point.
Speaker 6 • 30:15.380
100%. Either you're buying a t-shirt or a sticker or hoodie through these marketplaces. We also launched Dash Tree last year. So Dash Tree is our creator platform for creators who have their own audiences and they want to sell merch and want their own storefronts. They don't want to sell our marketplaces. So Dashri allows them to do that. So quite an exciting development for the group. It's scaling nicely. It's been a year.
Kurt • 30:38.920
At its core for fulfillment, this is print on demand. That's right. And I could print all kinds of stuff. Similar to a printful. Like that kind of if I'm on Shopify, I'm you know I'm familiar with that. Do you have a Shopify integration?
Speaker 6 • 30:50.480
We do. We just launched a Shopify integration. 10 days back. So now any Shopify merchant or Shopify creator can use the same supply chain that actually powers Redbubble and T-Public for their merch store.
Kurt • 31:05.179
So if I've got like I'm doing print on demand now, I could plug this in and then like just have you do my fulfillment for me.
Speaker 6 • 31:12.460
Absolutely. What's it called? It's Dash Tree. So Dash Tree is a plugin as well on Shopify, which again if you're a creator, you can either create your own store using our platform, Dashtree. Or if you already have a Shopify store, you can just use us for fulfillment. So again, it is up to the creator What we do is we make it super easy for creators. What we know is how we work with creators for twenty years, right? That Bubble was founded twenty years back, T-Public ten years back. We understand what creators want. And what they want is they want to do what they love. It's create. Right? They don't want to deal with print on demand and merchandise and pricing and all the stuff that makes their life more complex. And I think that's the insight uh that we have and we have made our platform super easy so that creators just don't have to do anything. We even can offer design services for creators, uh create the designs and they just have to Use their platforms tell their fans that they have a merch store and that's pretty much it.
Kurt • 32:16.480
So having yeah having b been involved with this for so many years As far as like what print on demand trends, are there any trends there? Like certain categories do better than others
Speaker 6 • 32:28.280
Definitely t-shirts are the biggest uh category player in Pilt on Demand because a lot of these designs people want to wear. Uh stickers is another big category, of course, Red Bubble uh is pretty big in stickers. uh hats and mugs uh but again it depends on the creators like certain creators are into hoodies right and they would be like hey I want to keep keep pushing hoodies again, it's a higher price point item as well. But yeah, those are the the big uh categories that we see that are are very much aligned to print on demand But print on demand as an industry is growing twenty -five percent. So it's a growth industry. It is growing. And what we are also seeing is There are a lot of new like all the creators, even creators who have 100,000 to 500,000 followers can now have their own merge store through platforms like Dash Room. So what we are seeing is an increasing trend of creators creating their own stores, which is leading to this disaggregations of designs, right? Where it's no longer just A big creator like Mr. Beast can can have uh like five or ten people running the store. That's no longer the case. The barriers to entry has come down so much that even creators of any size uh can create a merge store in no in no time at all. So that's a big big trend we are seeing.
Kurt • 33:53.480
So it's typically like I I'm the creator I I'm doing what I love, I build an audience doing that, but at some point you go, all right, I gotta monetize my time here. And you know the quickest path to that is you know what can I sell? And You know, depending on what they're what they're creating, like what the brand is, it seems like print on demand is just a really easy place to start or a really place to an easy place to add on.
Speaker 6 • 34:21.319
Absolutely
Kurt • 34:22.440
And it's like there's, you know, the additional branding. I got people wearing my t-shirt out. Incredible.
Speaker 6 • 34:27.560
Yeah, it is great. Like the eyeballs you get And it's uh usually an add-on, like, because the creators can still continue to do everything that they are doing in their day jobs, right? They can create, engage with their fans, do brand deals. Print on demand is a such an easy side uh business for them, right? Most of the creators we work with, they're like, oh my God, I did not know it is so easy for me to just get a check at the end of the month, right? Because Everybody thinks it's an e-commerce store, I don't want to get into the logistics and supply chain, we take care of everything. Customer service, delivery, printing, any issues that the customer is seeing. So I think when you take that pressure off on the theater It is just a no-brainer because you're like getting a check at the end of the month for just doing the things that you are already doing, which is talking to your fans and just telling them about your merch store maybe once or twice a month
Kurt • 35:20.299
What do you think is the big the big mistake that people make when they first start? Uh
Speaker 6 • 35:26.460
they try to do a lot of things themselves. Shopify is a great platform and it's probably really great for big creators like Mr. Beast, but uh a lot of the creators that we work with find it too complex and they give up too too early, right? They're hey this is This is not for me it's taking too much time. How do I set up my store? So choose a choosing a platform that actually allows them to make this super easy is would be my my big advice
Kurt • 35:56.440
I find the mistake I see people make with print on demand is because it is so easy, they're like, I'm gonna make one of everything And I I and I get why that happens and it's an easy problem to fix, but I really I think people should curate more Like even because I can sell it doesn't mean I should. But then how do you figure out, you know, like what are the products that will sell
Speaker 6 • 36:20.100
Yeah, and that's kind of where our expertise comes in again, right? Because we know what is selling on these marketplaces, right? Which is um at scale. We are we ship we are shipping millions of uh orders every single month. So we understand what the customers are actually buying and we can guide the creators to your point not to have the kitchen sink on their store, right? Yeah, do the 8020 do the things that really matter on your store and that goes a long way because otherwise the customer is also getting a paradox of choice. There's so much choice uh that some creators or merchants can have on their platform which creates friction in that buying process. So at the end of the day, and again this is where e-covers parts we can do right that's kind of uh what what we do the best and we can guide the creators in terms of hey this is how you can set up your store we set up the stores for the creators as well so Yeah, it's quite quite exciting.
Kurt • 37:16.780
Well thank you for sharing it with me. They're kicking us out of here. Yeah, thank you. Vivic, Articor. Thank you.
Speaker 6 • 37:20.700
Awesome. Thank you so much.
Kurt • 37:21.500
Let me get that lamp slide for a minute.
Speaker 6 • 37:22.780
Yeah, I don't want to steal that.
Kurt • 37:25.400
We're good.
Speaker 7 • 37:27.000
So
Kurt • 37:27.320
who are you and what do you do?
Speaker 7 • 37:29.800
Hi, I'm NJ Falk. I'm the managing partner of APL, also known as Athletic Propulsion Labs.
Kurt • 37:36.720
Athletic Propulsion Lab. So Rocket Netflix.
Speaker 7 • 37:40.559
No, no, no. We're the luxury performance sneaker company. We're the innovators and pioneers of the category luxury performance.
Kurt • 37:49.640
Luxury performance.
Speaker 7 • 37:51.079
And athletic footwear, yes.
Kurt • 37:53.000
Alright, what does a luxury sneaker cost?
Speaker 7 • 37:56.119
Um it can It can range anywheres from $180 to $400 or more depending on the style the category, the materials and all the designs, the technology and everything we put into it.
Kurt • 38:13.140
Are you wearing a pair right now? I didn't check it.
Speaker 7 • 38:15.960
I w we're not looking at my feet right now.
Kurt • 38:18.600
Alright then.
Speaker 7 • 38:19.320
On camera.
Kurt • 38:20.120
We'll move on.
Speaker 7 • 38:21.160
Okay.
Kurt • 38:21.960
What um all right so you is your store on Shopify?
Speaker 7 • 38:25.620
Yes, our stores on Shopify. We're on Shopify Plus. We actually migrated from Magento in 2019 to Shopify Plus and honestly um it was a very easy migration with we had a lot of health But I'd say we were during the migration process we were really up and running. I'd say within a week very, very smoothly, which was uh incredible And it was interesting because we wanted to do it before we went into Black Friday, Cyber Monday that year. We had a cutoff of October 15th, like everybody you know has a like a deadline and it it went off basically without a hitch.
Kurt • 39:09.580
I always want to know like there's always a something that happened Like what happened where you went, all right, we're leaving Magento, we're going to Shop Fi?
Speaker 7 • 39:16.520
That's a great question. And you know what? We gave it a lot, a lot of thought. And I mean on Magento there was a lot of customization and things that we could do, but we realized on Shopify the platform was going to be long-term more robust for us, easier, faster checkout, so many things on there everything from shop pay and all of these advantages on this platform and support and even the customer care aspect of it has just been incredible. So we really took a hard look at that and we found that in it in the long run we were going to have better growth, more flexibility. But we also looked at it from the consumer side, which is really even more important, is how was the consumer using this platform? Were they growing with it? Were they expecting it And that just became part of the whole decision and w we'd never look back. Well
Kurt • 40:15.500
I'm happy to hear it. Okay. In So you you went Shopify and then almost immediately the pandemic happens.
Speaker 7 • 40:24.780
That's right. Oh my gosh. Yes.
Kurt • 40:27.900
How and Looking back on it, did you benefit?
Speaker 7 • 40:32.780
Absolutely. And here's something really interesting too. We opened our first flagship store at the Grove in Los Angeles Four months before the pandemic, we're on Shopify POS also, and we actually um bruised so significantly during the pandemic because we could run our D to C business. And we also took our store associates at that time, trained them on Shopify. customer service and we use this to maximize the opportunity and also as the product knowledge people talk to our consumers and chat and and magnify the whole experience. So we took something that could have been possibly a negative and made it into such a positive by looking at it and pivoting.
Kurt • 41:22.220
Yeah, I know it's it's survivorship bias, but I have talked to so many people who are here and they're like looking back on it, wow, they're like we really you know there was a lot of tailwind from the pandemic.
Speaker 7 • 41:34.140
Absolutely So I I think what what it also showed us is we it we had this incredible growth. We also learned that we had to have uh and and leaned into newness We also learned that different styles might sell better during the pandemic and other styles took off post-pandemic. So we're good at leaning and being very nimble according to the data that we're seeing. And I think one of the other things is I love Sidekick on Shopify now and all the data and the analysis we get. And that was another major reason. I mean, we were just getting so much more information on this platform that we can use to make decisions and make them really, really quickly. And it's just getting better and better that way.
Kurt • 42:22.660
I yeah, I like sidekick. I use it especially for report generation or like just like hey can you make this automation for me? And I don't think it gets enough credit People are quit they turn their nose up at it. I'm like, you know it it's really just as good and it's already plugged in.
Speaker 7 • 42:38.700
That's so interesting to me. I mean I'm I'm always saying I like to be part of the The beta, we like to be part of the beta. We want to use the newest things. We want to innovate. Our brand is about innovation, performance. Why should our partnerships not be about that as well? Why should we not be giving that to our consumers? We want to partner with people that give the same amount of innovation and performance that we do on our own products. I mean we're meticulous about that. And I feel Shopify is always also pushing the envelope, looking for the newness. Even our customer care team is asking us about that. And it's a great experience. And I love sidekick how he looks up, down into the side.
Kurt • 43:24.340
What is it?
Speaker 7 • 43:25.220
I love how sidekick the icon just looks up, down into the side when you're you're asking it questions
Kurt • 43:32.860
Yo I didn't notice. I gotta look.
Speaker 7 • 43:34.860
You didn't notice though? Oh my god, it's the cutest thing. I like
Kurt • 43:39.420
in software we call that whimsy. You have to add whimsy.
Speaker 7 • 43:42.860
I love that. I didn't know that. Okay, I love whimsy.
Kurt • 43:47.099
Uh and are you doing anything else with AI?
Speaker 7 • 43:50.220
Um we're absolutely using it in a very controlled way. I mean we have it on our customer care desk, but um our Our associates or concierges have the last word before releasing something. We use it uh in times to create um information that helps us. I mean we're using it in other parts of our business and obviously Sidekick is is AI in a very sophisticated way. and you need to ask the right questions and information. But it's wonderful how it's um helping us with the speed of commerce and change.
Kurt • 44:28.100
Oh a hundred percent. Hey uh NJ if I wanted to get new sneakers where would I go?
Speaker 7 • 44:33.480
Well, you would go to athletic propulsion labs dot com and shop a buy plus and you would um come to our store and we'd be happy to help you.
Kurt • 44:44.500
Thank you. NJ Folk, APL, appreciate it.
Speaker 7 • 44:47.780
Thank you. So
Kurt • 44:53.339
you run a business, uh well what's your name? What do you do?
Speaker 5 • 44:56.940
Robbie Bennett and I run a business called Othership.
Kurt • 44:59.579
Othership, all right Other ship UFO products, what do we sell?
Speaker 5 • 45:03.700
Sort of, you can see it here. The idea was that we're all on a journey together, whether it's like relationship, apprenticeship, mentorship, allyship, partnership, all these things we're working on We call it other ship because we're all working on them together. And so it started but it's also a ship and it also looks like a uh spinning top, which is the first toy. So this idea that like well this can be fun. Yeah, so it's kind of like a mix of uh therapy Wim Hof, Sonic Hole Plunge, all combined. So we started in Toronto with an ice bath in a backyard, just a horse drop free for the neighborhood. Every day 30 people would come in, there'd be coffee, a fire going, people would plunge together, listen to music, hang out. That grew into a thousand-person community and a just a garage. So garage converted into sauna ice bath tea room pre-COVID. Post-COVID we had so many, over a thousand members And like people were making friends, starting the date, really changing their life. A lot of people coming in who used to have problems with substance abuse that were sober. And so we self-funded a space in Toronto. Launched it just after COVID, February 2022. And so in the space you have giant performance saunas, like hundred-person saunas In that sauna we have stand-up comedy, live music, guided classes. We'll have socials that kind of replace the bar. And then in the daytime, it's like a super high-end premium spa. So there'll be candlelit, quiet hours, sound baths, anything that's happening in like a wellness or social environment wrapped into a bathhouse environment Um the brand like really went viral because it's a quite emotional experience. So we have classes where the lights go out, everyone's in this pitch dark sauna, 90 people screaming at the top of their lungs. And that class is called Inner Power. So it's like a pretty weird thing and as a result a lot of word of mouth uh and a lot of like love for the brand so we have like you know hundreds of customers with the tattoo which is pretty crazy for a new brand Once that first one was open, it was so successful that we decided we wanted to be in New York and there was nothing like it in the U. S. So we raised funding.
Speaker 8 • 47:09.160
We opened a second flagship in Toronto. Two flagships in New York, one in Flatiron, one in Williamsburg. So in the last four years I've opened four like mega locations, the fifth one coming in the Upper East. I'm from Guelph, which is like a small city outside of Toronto. So to open something like, you know, a brick and mortar space in New York is pretty It was uh kind of a dream come true.
Kurt • 47:30.160
How do you advertise this?
Speaker 8 • 47:32.000
Mostly just word of mouth. Yeah, crazy, you know, experience. Everything's hyper local, so things that work for e-comm don't work for us A lot of e-com channels that have wide reach are pretty expensive. And so that wide reach for us, it only works if you live within a five, seven, ten block. radius so we we rely on like cheaper out of home you know uh wild postings stuff like that ways to get um you know billboards up in a cheap way We rely on influencers, but like not mega influencers, local influencers, so personal trainer, the hairstylist, the physio, the local dentist. People who see a lot of people and talk to them, the local bartender , local restaurants. So we'll go to these local places and do partnerships with people who talk to people in the neighborhood. It's a very community-driven business And then the product is designed for word of mouth. So when you have 90 people screaming a sauna, it's something that you share. Like you're like the next day like, wow, I went to this place. So there's a lot of viral sharing. Paid ads work okay, but a lot of stuff that's worked for traditional e-comm doesn't work for brick and mortar in the same way.
Kurt • 48:37.880
So you've got brick and mortar locations in major cities. Yeah and then a website where we're using somewhat like more D2C e-com advertising strategies like microinfluencers. But it's all this it's to sell bookings?
Speaker 8 • 48:51.780
Yeah, exactly. Sell bookings to memberships. We also have a digital app, so we have a breathwork app we built that's similar to Calm or Headspace for Breathwork. That's iOS and Google. And so that we try to use our in-person customers to drive distribution there. uh and then our co-piloted ambassadors, our influencers. And then we just we actually do have a Shopify store and so a lot of the products that we use in the space, so we custom make our own smells. Incense, body wash They're based on the essential oils that go over the stove and the sauna. So the experience is very sensorial.
Kurt • 49:25.200
Okay.
Speaker 8 • 49:25.520
So we take our smells and we put them into products like uh deodorant, shampoo, conditioner, body wash, uh essential oils for your sauna, essential oil rollers, uh incense sticks And so we have candles. So we have these influencers that, you know, sell our products. We have Shopify Store that we launched last year. Small, but you know, to probably do a couple hundred grand in sales in year one is a side quest. And hopefully we can grow that over time as well.
Kurt • 49:53.400
Which are you of those three we've got you know the in-person space We've got uh uh the app and we've got the online store. I'm guessing the in-person space is still your passion.
Speaker 8 • 50:03.400
Yeah, the in-person space does, you know, ninety percent of the revenues and there's a clearest path for growth. So You know, this experience doesn't really exist outside of Toronto and New York. So I think there's 50 major cities in the U. S. we can build in with like very clear payback on construction, so it's very good business model. Hard to scale and a lot of capital. The app works quite well and we don't have a really good channel to scale. So we don't we haven't cracked paid where we can be profitable on first purchase. So we're mostly growing through like content, word of mouth, and grow slowly, but there's no way that we can like step on the gas there. The merch I think can work Uh but it's very new for us and then you know for a D2C merch business you need to find inventory, you need like uh operations and inventory management.
Kurt • 50:50.420
Print on demand is out, we can't do print on demand.
Speaker 8 • 50:53.040
We print on demand works for clothing, but it doesn't necessarily work for it might. I don't know what the lead times are for these things. So we haven't like So basically how it works now is we have inventory in our spaces and we know what we sell. We do probably like a million bucks total merch sales across our spaces right now.
Kurt • 51:10.220
That's great.
Speaker 8 • 51:10.700
Yeah, it's decent. And and then probably like a hundred, two hundred online It's our goal is to grow the online, but it's not like core. We have these products we don't people buy to use in our experience. We think of them more as like If we get you to use something that has our smell at home, you're more likely to come back. Yeah, you get symph memory. Exactly. Literal. And if we get something that you use um You know you're gonna wear it's like a walking billboard. So the merch for us is more like it makes the experience it makes you come back or it makes the experience better. So we sell sauna hats and different things you'll use in your sauna So it's always been like a ancillary cool thing versus like a hey this is part of the business. As we get bigger though and the brand gets bigger, I think there could be a really good products business. So over the next three to four years, I would like to see that Grow.
Speaker 6 • 51:56.740
What what's the thing that keeps you up at night about this business?
Speaker 8 • 52:00.260
Uh brick and mortar is just hard, you know, like it's it's like D to C you can figure out a loop and a a supplement and like your supplement 's working and it's like okay let's push the gas on it like my service is different every time you come in. You know sixty people come in and one person didn't get the right onboarding they can ruin the experience for the other fifty nine if a person calls out sick, if uh pipe breaks, the space is flooded twice, or just every single experience is variable. It's very similar to running a high-end restaurant. It's just it's very hard, you know. Finding the spaces is tough, doing construction is tough, different cities have different regulations, training is difficult, the lead times are tough. So brick and mortar is just like pretty relentless in terms of the complexity of like things you have to get right, just why you don't see so many and then building bathhouses the mechanical and electrical, you know, we're talking some of these builds are fifteen million dollars. So yeah, it's uh uh it's uh just a very intense intense uh fields but I think that's why there's like so much opportunity because it's really hard and not that many people want to do it. So there's value there
Kurt • 53:08.260
That's fascinating.
Speaker 8 • 53:09.140
Yeah.
Kurt • 53:09.460
I am so glad I asked us. For me it's like grass is always greener. I'm in doing everything's online store and I'm like, wow The those brick and mortar people sure have it easy. You know, from the outside looking in. But then hearing it from someone experiencing it the other way, they're like, you don't know.
Speaker 8 • 53:24.040
Well the problem is if you build it you can only scale to what can fit in that unit. And even like if you sell a a donut, let's say, you know, you can have so much throughput for that because it's a five minute checkout experience. For us, a gym, a services business, a hair salon, you can only see so many people an hour and so even if your space is very successful it's capped and then people want to come five to eight they want to come on the weekends. So even if you get it super right, you like if you make the best supplement in the world, if you get it right The market size is is somewhat endless, you know? Like that's just it's all of the US in your target market. So it's just the brick and mortar is so bound by You know, you get one right, you have to build more, and then when you get that one right, someone sees you've done it right in New York, and it's like, oh, I want to try and do that in LA, and I want to try and do it in San Francisco. You can't open a hundred units at once, it's just too expensive.
Speaker 6 • 54:14.039
Yeah.
Speaker 8 • 54:14.279
So I just think the upside for brick and mortar, it takes a lot longer, you know, to build successful businesses. You see like 20 years, 30 years
Speaker 3 • 54:22.900
is sort of the life cycle of like the Amman, Whole Foods, Equinox, like the juggernauts in the space are all I don't think there's been one I've seen do it in less than two decades Um so just just long time horizon.
Kurt • 54:36.500
Man, that's fascinating. Thank you for sharing your experience with us.
Speaker 3 • 54:38.900
Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 8 • 54:43.660
Support for this episode comes from Zipify OneClick Upsell. And they want to know, what if your upsell app paid for itself? Every Shopify merchant knows they need upsells. But upsells aren't free. There's the monthly cost, a cut of every sale. Some apps charge you per offer view, whether it converts or not. OneClick Upsell is the gold standard, the only upsell app that works across your entire funnel, the product page, the cart, checkout, and post-purchase. And recently, they introduced a feature that can make all of those upsells free. It's called Post Profit. It places brand safe offers from names like Disney Plus and Hilton on your thank you page. and then deposits cash directly into your bank account. Some merchants are clearing $100,000 a month simply by turning it on. Postprofit can cover your entire one click upsell subscription. so you get the best full funnel upsell coverage available for a fraction of the cost. So free upsells sound good to you, visit zippify dot com slash curt and start your free trial today. That zip ify dot com slash K U R T. 30 days free.
Kurt • 55:49.020
Who are you and what do you do?
Speaker 4 • 55:50.700
I'm Allie Weiss and I'm the co-founder and CEO of No Biggies.
Kurt • 55:54.060
No Biggies? I like the name, but what does it sell?
Speaker 4 • 55:56.880
No Biggie is a juicy sparkling drink made just for kiss. So it's a seven and a half ounce mini can of sparkling juice.
Kurt • 56:03.440
Alright, and I I did look you up before this. You worked somewhere very interesting previously. What is it?
Speaker 4 • 56:08.880
Yes, I spent seven years as the CMO of Boissier.
Kurt • 56:11.740
Glossiate. Okay, so going from that to this, what did you have to unlearn?
Speaker 8 • 56:17.580
I had to unlearn that uh
Speaker 4 • 56:19.260
beauty margins are amazing.
Speaker 8 • 56:20.940
So I had to unlearn the fact that 90% margins were the reality and now In Beverage it's a very different story. Um
Speaker 4 • 56:27.560
and the other thing
Speaker 8 • 56:28.440
more practically is that um it's a totally different distribution game.
Speaker 4 • 56:31.720
We got to guru
Speaker 8 • 56:32.520
Glossier direct to consumer for m several years at a very rapid pace and beverage is just not a direct to consumer game.
Kurt • 56:39.859
Huh. Okay, so what is the man what's what's hard about shipping and selling cans? Um well no added sugar fruit juice Or sparkling drink.
Speaker 8 • 56:49.520
Yeah, so the um the sparkling drink is it's actually not as much about shipping the drinks. We can do it and you can make money from a unit economic perspective, but it's more about the customer behavior. So if you think about when you're buying beverages, the last place you think about is going to nobiggyplease. com.
Speaker 7 • 57:05.440
And the first place you think about it is in a cafe or a grocery store or next to your favorite snack or um in the bodega on the corner. And so it's much more important for us to be in the places where people are actually wanting a beverage because the first place they think of is not, oh I'm going to go to a website and buy this. Of course we have loyalists who go there, but the most important thing is actually getting in new places.
Kurt • 57:25.180
So what is it like what to you what purpose does the website serve then?
Speaker 7 • 57:29.579
It it brings in customers organically, which is amazing, but the most important thing is telling the brand story. You can tell so much more on a website with multiple pages, multiple screens, even just the PDP itself, then you can throw a box on a shelf or a can on a shelf. So when you think about how limited the information is on this can, right? I can show you kids drinking it of all different ages. I can tell you so much I can show you videos of how they enjoy it. I can show you our clever can opener. It's made for small kids' hands to be able to open cans. You can't see any of that when this is just stuck in a refrigerator shelf.
Kurt • 58:02.820
Okay, so what fascinates me, this is for kids.
Speaker 7 • 58:06.100
Yes.
Kurt • 58:06.740
But kids don't have credit cards.
Speaker 7 • 58:08.580
That is true.
Kurt • 58:12.540
But the parent has to buy it. What that feels like playing on hard mode. So
Speaker 7 • 58:18.380
what was really important to me is thinking about those two stakeholders and the decision and making sure it was really easy for both of them to get excited about it
Speaker 8 • 58:25.559
And so the kids of course get excited. It's bubbly. It's a treat. It's sweet.
Speaker 7 • 58:28.920
There's games inside of the boxes. And for the adults, it's very easy to say yes to because it has 75% less sugar than the average juice box a lot less sugar, even more than that, than your average soda. Yeah. And so as kids are growing out of sort of the toddler ages where they're getting a little bit more agency and saying, Mom, Dad, can I have this treat You want to make it really easy for the parent to say yes. And the easiest things to say yes to are things that are healthy and things that are simple. And this already had the built-in behavior of parents were letting kids drink juice, they were letting them drink sparkling water, so let them drink a juicy sparkling water.
Kurt • 59:04.680
What's hard about selling this? Like what's the thing that keeps you up at night?
Speaker 7 • 59:08.839
The thing that keeps me up at night is honestly the distribution for Beveridge. It's just getting in all of the places. I want this to be the next Capri Sun, right? Like we want to replace and be the modern juice box, the modern juice couch and it's making sure that we can actually show up at all of those places. That's the really long hard game of starting this thing. It doesn't happen overnight and you have to convince not only the end user but all the people in the middle, the distributor, the retailer, right, the buyer at the retailer, someone else, all those people to make sure that you can get it in those hands. So that's truly the thing that keeps me up
Kurt • 59:42.300
I heard uh an attendee earlier this morning say, well, it's it's so easy to get into Target, you just pay the slotting fee. Is this true?
Speaker 7 • 59:51.440
That might I that might be somewhat true, especially because Target right now is really focused on being a food and beverage destination. and bringing in a lot of new brands. However, my view is it's not about getting on the shelf, right? I just said that's the thing that keeps me up at night. The thing that doesn't keep me up at night because it's more of what I know and what I've built before is how to generate the consumer demand that's actually going to drive velocities on the shelf. And so while it might be easy to pay the slotting fee or have that conversation, which I'm not sure everyone would say that, but if if you assume that's easy, you can't assume the part that actually moving the product is easy, which is building the demand in the consumer, having all the right marketing angles in place to actually make them love it, and truly having a good product. If you put a bad product on the shelf, someone might buy it once, but they're not going to buy it again.
Kurt • 01:00:35.460
So what attra why no Biggie? What attracted you to this?
Speaker 7 • 01:00:39.700
Um I I was just I really love simple, obvious problems. And so I saw I really had a vehement hatred of juice boxes at kids' birthday parties. It's like this passive consumption of an inordinate amount of sugar. And then I saw all these kids drinking things like Waterloo and LaFroix and other sparkling drinks that were really rising in popularity and even the healthy sodas of the world But parents were sitting there being like, I don't want to give a juice box, I don't want to give a soda, I want to give something that's better for them. And I also was just really inspired by the way real families live. They want something simple and easy and I love the old cereal box age of like when everything got better for you it all got boring and so I wanted it all to be be fun again. So it's sort of this intersection of the product opportunity with the ability to I love creating brand and product, the ability to create a really fun, engaging brand around it.
Kurt • 01:01:28.220
How do you how do you advertise something like this? You know, because it's you have you have two audiences.
Speaker 7 • 01:01:34.220
Yes.
Speaker 8 • 01:01:34.779
My primary route of advertising right now is really showing up in real life at events
Speaker 7 • 01:01:39.859
So our number one strategy, we have a program called No Biggie Neighbors where you can apply to get free or discounted no biggie for your event. So you can say, hey, I'm having a seventh birthday party. I'm having 20 kids there. Can I have some no biggie? We'll ship you no biggie. We'll ship you some postcards that explain it with a discount code for all your friends who try no biggie at the party. And so that's our way of really doing what I call a grassroots seeding. And I think it's the best way to show up because
Kurt • 01:02:03.300
That's brilliant.
Speaker 7 • 01:02:04.180
Yeah, you're like
Kurt • 01:02:05.940
all the individual concepts, you know, product seeding, right Yeah, the reaching the grassroots effort, great. But just giving it to the end consumer, be like, hey, this is just free, hand it out as long as we got a party.
Speaker 7 • 01:02:17.520
Right.
Kurt • 01:02:18.080
Wow. Brilliant Well that never would have occurred. Where did you where did the idea come from?
Speaker 7 • 01:02:22.940
I'm very passionate about community like building community and thinking about how people can be the microphones and the amplifiers of the story we're telling and because our s
Speaker 8 • 01:02:32.240
Story
Speaker 7 • 01:02:32.640
so easy to translate. It doesn't require a lot of explanation. It's just juice and sparkling water. You can hand this to someone and also just the way it write it's easy to say it's no biggie. The whole thing really resonates. And so when you can hand that over to someone to amplify and talk about it in their own way. That's the kind of stuff I get really excited about. And we were joking, we're like, we want to build this in our own backyard, but actually no we should be building it in everybody else's backyard.
Kurt • 01:02:54.540
Clever. I do love the name.
Speaker 7 • 01:02:56.300
Thank you.
Kurt • 01:02:56.780
Yeah, no biggie. So how long have you been doing this?
Speaker 8 • 01:02:59.340
We launched in May.
Kurt • 01:03:00.300
Oh May, wow.
Speaker 7 • 01:03:01.100
Yeah. Four months.
Kurt • 01:03:02.540
Okay, so really su we're right at the beginning.
Speaker 7 • 01:03:05.260
Yes.
Kurt • 01:03:05.740
Any early wins?
Speaker 7 • 01:03:07.260
Uh honestly the big early win is our repeat rate. We're seeing a lot of families and even the small retail shops come back for this and to us that proves that there's something there that people really like and want to get. And that's the most important thing in this category
Kurt • 01:03:20.460
For someone who's just starting out, like how do you get those those first orders, that first placement?
Speaker 7 • 01:03:25.820
Honestly, it's a lot of word of mouth and a lot of sort of grassroots showing up. Like our first weekend that we launched I personally was at a food festival down in downtown Manhattan. We were handing out, I think we handed out maybe like 2,500 cans. And it was a family specific event where the people were there and it was a food festival. And so you needed tickets for all the food, but everyone was attracted to that um amazing like free drink sort of that they saw in the corner of the event. So a lot of it was really just driving that trial and creating that um grassroots awareness within the community
Kurt • 01:03:55.440
How many, what, how do you identify a good event? Because it, you know, it they're not free to attend.
Speaker 8 • 01:04:02.080
Yes.
Speaker 7 • 01:04:02.480
We have really clear filters. For us, parents and kids need to be together. So to your point about how do you convince them both, we want them both to experience no biggie together. We want to make sure the context is right, that it really is about family friendly, right? Even if it's focused on something else, we want to make sure it's family friendly.
Speaker 8 • 01:04:18.980
And then we just want to make sure that we have the right setup for to have the right context to talk to the people that are consuming the drink.
Speaker 7 • 01:04:24.420
And if we're not there that it's set up in the right way for people to interact with it and understand the context. It can't be hidden. They should be able to taste it easily and served cold.
Kurt • 01:04:33.260
Smart So do do we do do we is it too early? Do we even bother with with pay-per-click advertising?
Speaker 7 • 01:04:39.980
Um we are not doing it yet. It's too early. Um my philosophy is that I'm really
Speaker 4 • 01:04:45.440
want to build all organic acquisition digitally because I think this category, which is very different from what I did before, but this category is all built on being able to get it cafes, shelves, different places like that. And then we'll be able to start to build the direct business. Most people want to stock their stock their pantries or buy for large events and things like that. But I don't really want to start that flywheel until we have a lot more trial.
Kurt • 01:05:06.360
That makes sense. So we're looking at in-person events, grassroots marketing, word of mouth, what's the threshold where you'll say, all right, you know, time to move into these other channels?
Speaker 7 • 01:05:17.240
It's a great question. Probably
Speaker 4 • 01:05:18.760
around, I think it's when we start seeing that repeat behavior across all of the Omnichannels. For me, it's less of like a revenue threshold and a lot more about just being able to see
Speaker 7 • 01:05:27.640
that the velocity is actually being driven across all of those places and that we're seeing repeat buying across channels because then we'll know okay we can pay to bring someone in because they're gonna buy again
Kurt • 01:05:37.420
Smart. Yeah, because then I mean the big with PPC the big fear is always, well what is my acquisition cost? But you already know what your repeat customer rate is going into it.
Speaker 7 • 01:05:47.660
Yes.
Kurt • 01:05:48.140
Very clever. You might be good at this.
Speaker 7 • 01:05:51.540
We're trying. It's always different and it's a whole new thing for me. Like
Kurt • 01:05:54.900
oh my gosh. So where do you go from here? What's next? What are you excited about?
Speaker 7 • 01:05:58.660
I'm really Excited, I can't share it right now, but we're partnering with a really fun chain of cafes where we're gonna be in their beverage selection and then also doing all of their kids' venues. And so I love always like an axe extra element that adds to the experience beyond just the drink in the can.
Speaker 8 • 01:06:12.840
And so the kids' menus will reflect a lot of the game and interaction we have in our boxes that have fun um game boards and different things like that.
Speaker 7 • 01:06:20.040
So that's what's next.
Kurt • 01:06:21.000
What's your favorite flavor?
Speaker 8 • 01:06:22.559
It's like picking a favorite child. I think my favorite thing to have with food is Clementine lemon, which is our yellow can. And my favorite curveball flavor overall that is so tasty is our green can, which is kiwi
Kurt • 01:06:34.319
apple. Ti Wee Apple, that one does sound burnt.
Speaker 8 • 01:06:36.840
Yeah, I'll get you some.
Kurt • 01:06:38.280
And you have uh I assume this is on Dropify.
Speaker 8 • 01:06:41.080
Yes, it is
Kurt • 01:06:42.460
Of course. Of course. Of course. I know, something I don't even bother asking anymore. I'm like, it's on Shopify, right? Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah.
Speaker 8 • 01:06:48.940
I mean we built glossy in the age before like that existed and then had to do a whole
Kurt • 01:06:52.460
whole transition. Yeah. And like the Glossier Shopify store that was you know such a great example like oh we all poured over that site.
Speaker 8 • 01:06:59.799
Yeah, totally.
Kurt • 01:07:00.839
Glossier made any change and we were like all right why'd they do that? You know You like try and armchair quarterback it as a you know being in this space.
Speaker 7 • 01:07:08.539
I'm sure.
Kurt • 01:07:09.500
But what um well what lesson from that are you bringing to this?
Speaker 7 • 01:07:13.620
For me it was a lot about like who's the collective that can really support our brand early. Like in the early glossy days, that was obviously a different time, but there was this whole involved, you know, very vocal, beauty, junky community that loved into the gloss and moved over to Glossier and so I'm very focused on building people who are not just transactional in their interactions with us but really truly our early adopters love this proponents of it and ambassadors for the brand. So bringing that over and then also to your point, like bringing over some of the lessons on the analytical side of saying, okay, how do we make the union economics work? What actually m makes sense for customer acquisition And one of my earliest hard decisions was I was about to go turn on the paid marketing engine and I said, wait, why are we doing this? Like let's go get distribution as a beverage brand first and then start to turn that on so it can complement what we're already doing on shelf
Kurt • 01:08:00.660
So you were gonna do paid marketing and then went, wait a second. Maybe we shouldn't yet.
Speaker 8 • 01:08:04.980
Yeah, it was actually one of the harder decisions that I made because it's you just sort of wanna see the revenue come in and start to build that but it's like why do that if that's not gonna be your core channel and you should know how everything else around it's working before you invest in it
Kurt • 01:08:17.340
Yeah, well and especially like if you didn't know the repeat customer rate yet the thing that bleeds every e-com business drive is wow we're making sales and losing a dollar on every one.
Speaker 8 • 01:08:26.940
Exactly.
Kurt • 01:08:27.420
You know and then it just keeps scaling. Yeah You're like, why are you doing this?
Speaker 8 • 01:08:30.600
Right.
Kurt • 01:08:31.000
So you have avoided that common trail.
Speaker 8 • 01:08:33.159
Yes.
Kurt • 01:08:33.560
Clever. If I wanted to get this today, where do I go?
Speaker 8 • 01:08:36.679
You can go to our website, to Amazon and get it very quickly. And you can also go in New York to Happier Grocery. And Westside Market and Lincoln Market and a couple other local destinations all in New York right now.
Kurt • 01:08:48.839
Are you a New Yorker?
Speaker 8 • 01:08:49.799
I am.
Kurt • 01:08:50.440
Very good. So this is very local for you.
Speaker 8 • 01:08:52.900
It is. It is a local experience.
Speaker 4 • 01:08:54.420
Where are you from?
Kurt • 01:08:55.540
Chicago. Yeah. Quick 90 minute flight to get here.
Speaker 4 • 01:08:58.339
Very easy.
Kurt • 01:08:59.540
Thank you so much.
Speaker 4 • 01:09:00.179
Yeah, thank you.
Paul • 01:09:03.859
I feel like there was a lot of uh Facebook meta talk there.
Kurt • 01:09:08.420
Alright, so I fully expect it, you know, because I come from the Twitterverse. Come from X where I expected everything to be AI. And the developers would talk AI with me, the merchants and marketers less interested, the
Speaker 8 • 01:09:21.880
butt Then you know if you asked the uh you asked the merchants about meta, oh my gosh. Then suddenly they're like, let me tell you Yeah, every one is struggling with the same thing is, you know, rising costs, you know, ineffective ads, is this worth it? Trying to figure that out together. But, you know, at the same for as much as everybody complains, they could only complain because a hundred percent of everybody was advertising on meta as their number one channel.
Paul • 01:09:47.319
Yeah, if e if everyone's complaining about you, you're doing something right because everyone is involved with you.
Kurt • 01:09:52.119
Yes. So like for sure, if you're like, man, meta, okay, you and everybody else. Um a TikTok shop, if I have to pick a number two. for sales channels, that's like this is the the alternative. Like obviously people are on Google Shopping, you know, they're doing other platforms, but not necessarily talking about it. TikTok Shop was the other the other big channel that people talked about. And you know, less frustration like they'd had with Meta and more, you know, it's it's new and they're figuring it out. Now, I will say the one the AI breakthrough I had, I was sitting with some dudes uh that I know from Twitter and like Zane, um, and they they're all texting Only they're not texting a person. They're texting an AI assistant called Instinct. And I had not used it. I heard of it. But I was like, why do I want this? It's invite only, it's beta, you know, who knows what they're doing with my info. So naturally I was like, give me the invite, and then immediately gave it my credit card, connected it to Gmail and Calendar. It was like, let's go. I do that on my personal account, not my work account. And by that weekend, I texted this thing. I said, hey, I need new front brake pads for my car. Here's the VIN number. It was like, hey, I think I found the pads. This is what they cost. Do you want me to order for you? Sure. Boom. Just pulled the trigger off Shopify store that I recognized. That is the first agentic purchase I've made where we the AI didn't just do the research, it went end to end and like clicked the complete purchase button for me. me.
Paul • 01:11:21.820
Alright, you need to call that vendor you bought it from and see if that purchase was attributed.
Kurt • 01:11:28.940
Yeah, there was somebody else at on Twitter who was like Yeah, joking around. There's like, hey, uh, I'm buying some sneakers and yes, I hit AI, chat GPT, research it for me. And I reply, I was like, just manually add the UTM tag so it gets the attribution. I don't care what you have to do. to get that in there. Because I just ran our report again where we did state of e-commerce, how much chat GPT referrals are happening. And it is tr was trending up but has still barely moved. on orders. It's like, come on, guys, let the the darn thing can't make purchases. But then like, you know, this AI that no one's ever heard of, Instinct, you know, I hadn't heard of it until recently.
Speaker 8 • 01:12:06.140
That one could just click purchase for me. And now MetaMuse can use Shop Pay. It is they have a partnership with Shopify. It can make purchases for you, assuming it's ShopPay. Um, which great. But so I'm like, all right, this is happening, but is grandma gonna do it? Right. I got my wife to use it, but she's like, I'm not giving it my credit card.
Paul • 01:12:25.540
Yeah, it crossed my mind over the weekend that We're still struggling to get people to buy things on phones. Like the phone conversion rate is consistently markedly lower than the desktop conversion rate. So it's like now we're adding another layer in between. Like people still haven't caught up on phones yet.
Speaker 8 • 01:12:48.960
But once you the thing, like once you set it up, it is so easy. I mean it was as easy as Text it, hey, I need this, research for me. And then it just came back with, all right, this is gonna be the total. Do you want me to make the purchase? Yes. And then it was like, oh, do you want me to track it for you once the shipping confirmation comes in? Sure. Like once I was over the hump of let this thing do this, then I immediately saw the utility and convenience of it. Because most purchases don't need me to think about. I was like, hey, you know, I've I've got this TV and I've got this game console and I like this brand of cables. What is the best cable that will work? And it came back. It was like, here, get these. Yeah, I like I could figure that out on my own, but I don't need to.
Paul • 01:13:32.680
Yeah, like why do anything?
Speaker 8 • 01:13:34.840
Exactly. I no, I want the time.
Paul • 01:13:37.280
Alright, let me get back in my wally chair now.
Speaker 8 • 01:13:40.160
Oh, yes, I'm See that's right now, the problem with that is I'm still meat. I don't want to be meat anymore. Just upload me and then I'm the AI assistant.
Paul • 01:13:50.199
Oh. That's the end game. You could be my AI assistant.
Speaker 8 • 01:13:53.159
That's right. That's where we're headed. And on that note Let's wrap it up there. Uh geez. And I'm not sure what's on next week's schedule.
Paul • 01:14:03.739
Yeah, you don't have anything for next week, so hope you get something.
Speaker 8 • 01:14:06.380
We'll figure it out then. All right. Uh, and hey, if you want to be on the show, you want to hear your story on the show, head to unofficialshopfipodcast. com and click the be a guest link you can apply, and I would be happy to hear from you. Hey, before you go, I was hoping you would check out our new app, Promo Party Pro. It is what I want to be the single best, easiest way to run a free gift with purchase promo on Shopify. We just put it live in the App Store. We've got less than 50 users. We want your feedback. So if you need to run a free gift with Purchase Promo in the near future, install it, try it. There's a live chat. I check that all the time.
Kurt • 01:14:45.640
And so if you have any issues at all, you know, or any suggestions on how we can make it even easier to use, let us know. We're happy to help. If you want to try it, search promo party in the app store. Promo PartyPro's the app. Give it a shot. It's got a free trial. Thanks