From Dream to 7-Figure Chicken Supplement Success
So there's this moment in 2022 where Celia Hatch wakes up from a dream about chicken supplements called "Chicken Spice." She thinks it's ridiculous. Fast forward to today, and she's running a seven-figure business serving America's 13% of households with backyard chickens.
The twist is it started as her teenage son's eighth-grade homework assignment. He made $500 selling herbs in craft bags, then quit. Ms. Hatch, a serial entrepreneur with 16 businesses behind her, picked it up and scaled Buff Clucks to seven figures in 18 months using Meta advertising, landing pages, and subscription bundling.
This is a story about accidental entrepreneurship, the growing market of premium pet owners willing to double their feed costs, and why sometimes the best business ideas come to you in your sleep. Along the way, Celia reveals why their Shopify store is the "neglected child" of their operation, how a "sneeze warning" became genius marketing, and why she wishes she'd built a proper Shopify store from day one.
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 Elster
This episode is sponsored in part by Swim. Okay, here's a depressing stat. 70% of shoppers who want your products never actually buy them. They browse, they consider, then they forget. That's revenue walking out the door. Swim Wishless Plus turns browsers into buyers. Customers save products they want, get notified when prices drop, or items restock. You can also engage them in personalized fashion through your marketing or sales outreach. It's like having a personal shopper reminding them to come back and buy from you instead of your competitors. And 45,000 stores already use it, and it only takes five minutes to install. You could try it free today for 14 days. Go to get swim. com slash curt. That's swimwithay. com slash curt. Turn those maybe later into sales today. Get swim. com
Celia Hatch
Awesome. We'll just shoot the shit and see what happens.
Kurt Elster
Exactly. Today on the show, I am joined by uh someone who has turned a backyard hobby into a thriving business. Joining the show after we heard from her in Denver at Smart Marketer is Celia Hatch from Buff Clucks. Celia, welcome to the unofficial Shopify podcast.
Celia Hatch
Hi. Thanks. Kurt, thanks for having me.
Kurt Elster
My pleasure. And you're here because I am fascinated by a a pet supplement business. I think is is very interesting. You know, the things That make a successful business, right? We found our solves a painter problem. Probably started in your own life. and uh adding to it a consumable good that you could sell on subscription. Those are really nice businesses to have. And you're in the supplement space, but not for people. for chickens. You are trying to get uh really like roided up chickens, buff clucks. Like what do we when we say supplements for chickens, what is it you sell?
Celia Hatch
So our supplement is purely herbs and botanicals. Um there are supplements on the market that are a little bit more pharmaceutical um medicated type supplements. Ours is just loose leaf herbs and botanicals that have really great kind of homeopathic uh medicinal properties. And these are kind of like time-tested traditional medicine that our grandmothers and their grandmothers um trusted to help with keeping chickens healthy.
Kurt Elster
How how old is Buff Klux? When did this start?
Celia Hatch
Okay, so there's different timelines here because it started I actually had a dream about it. in 2022. And like we have our own chickens. We put these different herbs and things into our chickens feed and um I was kind of like, oh, I I dreamed that I put them all together and made a business out of it and it was called chicken spice.
Kurt Elster
Chicken spice. I will. Which chicken spice sounds like, you know, seasoning for chickens after the fact.
Celia Hatch
It was like Real self was super critical of dream self. Like I woke up and I was like, what kind of SEO has this girl ever done? What is what does she think is gonna happen if somebody searches chicken spice? But so you know. But dream self.
Kurt Elster
It sounds like they're looking for the kernel secret recipe.
Celia Hatch
Yeah, yeah, for sure. And um anyway, so I kind of like had that in my back pocket of like, ah, that's a great, that's a great business idea. Um, and then my son, when he was thirteen, this was in mm, probably twenty twenty three, he had to put a project together for school and at their school, it's kind of like an internship. They have to come up with something that they just feel passionate about learning. It can be literally anything. Like for his project, he wanted to learn how to start a business. So we made him like a sheet that was like a checkbox of like, does it do this? Can you know is it seasonal? How much money do you have to have to start it? Do you have to have a car to go do this thing? Because he was 13. And uh every business idea he had, we'd have him run through this checklist. And his his deadline was like looming where he had to turn in his project idea and he was panicking and I was like, How about chicken spice?
Kurt Elster
The last minute idea. Okay. Chicken splendids.
Celia Hatch
And he was like, Oh, everybody's gonna think I'm like a farmer and obsessed with chickens
Kurt Elster
A thirteen year old, the worst thing that can happen to them is someone finds out they're interested in something.
Celia Hatch
I know, heaven forbid. Well and like we've had his friends like while he was doing this, like we have them come over and help him do some some parts of it and They were always so excited about the chickens. So it's not really an embarrassing thing, but to the person that's thirteen, I guess it is highly embarrassing.
Kurt Elster
When you're in middle school, it's different.
Celia Hatch
Everything is embarrassing. So anyway, he he ended up like him and I working on that as his school project and working with with different like poultry vets and helping teach him kind of these different parts of the R D aspect of like starting a business that's a product. And um yeah, by the end of the school year he had made $500 by peddling herbs in little craft bags. that he just kind of wrote buff clucks on and just kinda like gave 'em to teachers that had chickens that were willing to give him some cash. And uh that was his first foray into peddling herbs at school and hopefully his last if you catch my drift. But um anyway, so when he was done with this project, he was kind of like, I don't really wanna keep doing this. And I was like, Well I will continue the project for you. So he is currently our social media guy. He does all the social media and uh gets to get paid for doing a job that he started the helped start the business for. And so that's that was the origin story of it. The actual real start, like once we kind of cleaned it up and made it like an adult professional business, not in craft bags and Yeah, not delivered on bike. It yes, stopped delivering on bike. And uh we started running meta ads January of twenty-four.
Kurt Elster
Okay. And so at what point did you build a Shopify store for this?
Celia Hatch
We build our sho honestly, it was it took a minute, Kurt. You're not gonna like to hear that. It took us a minute. Um we let him keep so our first website was a Wix. website that my son built as part of his project. And we let that live for a while. And then we have We still actually do our customer acquisition through kind of the old school Russell Brunson style like click funnel. s style page. So we use funnel-ish for that on the front end. Um and then that syncs up with Shopify. So we built our Shopify store um it's probably been a year ago.
Kurt Elster
The idea came in a dream, which is amusing. validated by a middle school project, school project, and then as a serial entrepreneur, you could not resist this catnip. You had to do it, didn't you?
Celia Hatch
It was putting all of America's chickens at risk if I didn't.
Kurt Elster
Did it yes, we have to help the chickens. Tell me okay, backyard chickens. You my HOA forbids it. I have not personally seen a backyard chicken before, but I've I've heard about this. What is the I bet you have stats. What is like market market reach of backyard chickens?
Celia Hatch
Yeah, so okay, pre-COVID, eight percent of American households had chickens. During COVID, it jumped up to about 10%. Currently, COVID and the avian flu and food prices and everything else, we are sitting at about 13% of American households currently have backyard chickens. or chickens.
Kurt Elster
There's quite a few.
Celia Hatch
It's a lot. It's it's actually a pretty big market. Um, but our market shrinks down a little bit when you take into account people that really treat their chickens as pets and are willing to basically double the cost of chicken feed by buying our product. So um yeah, these are definitely the people that like build those really bougie coupes. These are the people that put swing sets and uh jungle gyms in the chicken coop. Yes, this is a thing. There's a huge market for chicken toys. And um if you've never seen a chicken on a swing You gotta go Google that.
Kurt Elster
Find it on the I haven't, but immediately I was pretty thrilled at the idea of chicken playground.
Celia Hatch
Yeah. Oh, it's super cute. It's like you can just watch chickens playing all day. They're very, very therapeutic. Um, so you like can go, especially this time of year with like leaves, like my backyard right now, like I could just sit back there with like a coffee and a comfy chair and my chickens are scratching the leaves and it makes the best noise.
Kurt Elster
Maybe I'll I'll flaunt the HOE's rules and get get some chickens. The you really sell me on it. So The you know, general the like there's a painter problem we're trying to solve here. Normally, you know, if I'm if I'm doing it the wrong way, how am I feeding my chickens? What uh what do they get?
Celia Hatch
Okay, so most chicken owners, you'll go to a farm supply store and you'll buy a big bag of chicken feed. There's different types that are like Hey, my chickens lay eggs. I need layer feed. Hey, I'm raising my chickens for meat. I get broiler feed. Hey, like there's different ages of chickens, different stages, whether they're laying eggs, they're young, they're roosters. So most chicken owners will buy like a all-flock kind of combo feed. But to be considered a feed, you have to hit all of these certain uh nutrient levels, right? And just like with dog food or any other food for animals. Um, but the problem is it's kind of like a minimum, like, we'll keep you alive. And that's good enough kind of thing. Um so I'm familiar with this.
Kurt Elster
We have we've had rabbits for uh many years now. I love my rabbits, but In the it used to be believed that a rabbit's lifespan was like five years max. Well it turned out that's just cause people were feeding them pellets. If you give them actual like fresh greens, they live ten, twelve years. You know, like their lifespan doubles. And so the same thing is happening here. It's like, yeah, they're getting calories, but they're just like eating exclusively mc the equivalent of McDonald's versus you're like I looked at the ingredients in what in in what you sell and It sounds delicious. I'm like, I should put this on pizza, right? It was like rosemary, garlic, oregano. You know, it it sounded like Italian herbs, which, by the way, rabbits love Italian herbs.
Celia Hatch
Okay.
Kurt Elster
One of their favorites.
Celia Hatch
We do have a very common customers have said this to us so many times, and it's so specific that it kills me. They say that it smells like you're at a spa next to a pizza parlor.
Kurt Elster
Okay, and I was close with the pizza then.
Celia Hatch
Yes. 'Cause you've got all this like lavender and and uh like rosemary is used a lot in like kind of spa and and um creams and things like that. Like and so yeah, you've you've got this like spa smell and then it's like throw in some garlic. Smells amazing. Um but the smell is, I mean, it's very sticky for people. They love usually chicken coopes smell like chicken poo and so to have your chicken coop actually smell like you're at a spa next to a pizza parlor like people love that Um so you were asking though about like if you're feeding just regular pellets, like what are you doing wrong? And you know, we talked about your rabbits and this finding of like, oh wait, if you feed them actual food. Hello. They can like span doubles. Um, so chickens are really interesting because they're so cheap. I mean you can go to, you know, tractor supply and get a little baby chick for a dollar or whatever. I mean they're so cheap But they become pets. And so you've got this really weird balance of like, like I have a royal standard poodle. He's enormous. He's like, my baby, if he gets sick, like, am I gonna pay and take him to the vet and have surgery and all that stuff? Like, yes, of course I am. If my $1 chicken And I have 15 of them. If one of them gets sick, you get You're like, oh sorry, buddy. It's like really weird. Like, do I just kill this thing? Do I like what do I do with it? It's like a pet that you don't spend $500 to take a chicken to a vet. Like people don't do that. Um so the preventative side becomes really powerful. Because a lot of the things that are causing um chickens to be ill and, you know, early mortality and all this stuff um is very preventable. It's like parasites. Parasites is a super, super common issue with chickens. Which makes sense.
Kurt Elster
They're out there scratching around and reading who knows what. Going through your site, reading reviews, looking at what I could find, that seemed to be the top painer problem that was getting solved here was parasites and people saying that this this really helps.
Celia Hatch
I mean, as soon as you see one picture online in like a chicken forum of an egg with a worm in it You're ready for anything to prevent that.
Kurt Elster
Okay. Yeah, no, I could see that. That sounds like some nightmare fuel.
Celia Hatch
Yeah, there's a lot of like chicken nightmare fuel. Like They get um mites, which are kind of it's kind of like ticks. Like they come little tiny tiny speckly things that come out at night and suck the chicken's blood. And they get lice. And that looks very similar to human lice with like these big like um egg sac things around the like base of their feathers. They get um yeah, worms.
Kurt Elster
It sounds like a lot of these backyard chickens are having a tough go of it.
Celia Hatch
Most chickens, like if they're being well cared for This isn't going to be this like constant like issue that people are having. Uh people get kind of scared of like starting having chickens because they see these like pictures where people post like What is this noodle in my egg? And then everybody's like, and it stops people from like wanting to take up the hobby. But it's it's I don't think, you know, it's not as common as it feels like when you're seeing this in forums.
Kurt Elster
Right. Yeah, forums always surface the worst. How do you approach education? Like are is this, yeah, I I have the problem and then I Google it and I find you. You know, like we create SEO articles, blog articles about these various issues.
Celia Hatch
We do that, yes. Yeah, that's a good strategy. Strangely, one of our best ranking articles, which it's not strangely. I love keyword research. So I, you know, do assign out tasks to my copywriter based on like what people are asking. But do chickens have sex is our most popular blog post.
Kurt Elster
How did the the eggs happen? What's going on here? You're right, I don't it sounds like a dumb question, but I don't actually know the answer when I think about it.
Celia Hatch
There's a a rooster kind of part that kisses the chicken part.
Kurt Elster
There's not you know I'm getting the birds of the bees talk. Here's a word from our sponsor, Zippify. You know why they call it Black Friday? It's when businesses finally dig out of the red and turn real profit. Wanna squeeze every penny from your Black Friday sale? One click-up sale is the easiest money you'll make all season. OCU automatically increases average order value by up to 30% with AI-powered upsells at every step of your customer journey. Plus, there's a new tool built right in. Zippify PostProfit. Post Profit monetizes your thank you page with brand safe ads from partners like Hulu, GoDaddy, and Disney Doesn't cost you anything. Just switch it on and get paid pure profit for every view automatically. Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Christmas. Earn up to thirty percent more from every order all year long. Don't leave money on the table this holiday season. Go to zipify dot com slash curt for your thirty day free trial. That's zipify dot com slash K U R T. You were talking about the blog articles and you know assigning stuff to a copywriter, which is excellent. I love this. Do you have favorite uh keyword research tools? Are there SEO tools we like? Or is it just like look this is this is the trend. This is what people are asking me about right now, so clearly let's run with this.
Celia Hatch
So I used to be really deep into SAMRush. Um
Kurt Elster
SEM Russia, yeah. I like a lot.
Celia Hatch
I I've kind of shifted a little bit over the last six months as ChatGPT's deep research has gotten better. Um and now I I'll usually Deep Research is where it like really makes stuff up. Well, I take it, I have it go not creating the content. I have it research in forums what people are talking about during each month of the year.
Kurt Elster
I yeah, that's smart. I think that yeah, that's like the right way to use it.
Celia Hatch
Yes. And then I piggyback Um actually at this point I'm using Uber Suggest, Neil Patel's tool. Since I'm not I'm not doing really deep analytical like research, I feel like it's a the kind of easy gentle tool. So after I pull all that data with deep research, then I will kind of put together what kind of keywords I feel like match the questions that people are asking and then assign that to my copywriter. But um you ask though the education part. And this is actually when it comes to customer acquisition, it this is huge for us because it is an unknown thing. It's a thing people like, yes, maybe they've heard that if you put red pepper flakes in your chicken's feet it helps with deworming Um, but like this is not a product that peop it's not like vitamin C or peop everybody knows what it is, everybody knows you should take it, whatever. So education has been huge for us. And that's the way that we have ran our marketing since day one because we knew it was gonna be this way. So back to the like we do the Russell Brunson kind of click funnels thing. We have a very long sales letter. That is basically positioning all of these problems. Usually we do it seasonally. So like right now, chickens are losing all their feathers. It's called molting. So we do this great big long sales letter that's talking about molting and why it's natural but also puts your chickens at risk because of the stress on the body and then they're gonna attract parasites because they're you know, stressed out and their digestive system gets out of whack and they stop laying eggs, it's a whole thing. Um and so we use this education not just about our product, but about the problem that the chickens are facing and then present, hey Here is something to support your chicken while this natural thing is occurring. Here's how we it helps. Um and so we've used that is That is our acquisition mechanism. That's where we send our all of our meta ad traffic goes to sales letters like that.
Kurt Elster
Um and it And then those you host, you use like a probably I'm guessing like a landing page builder.
Celia Hatch
Uh it's ClickFunnels. Or I mean excuse me.
Kurt Elster
Oh, funnels. It is ClickFunnels.
Celia Hatch
Used to be ClickFunnels. ClickFunnels does not integrate with Shopify like at all. Um funnel-ish I mean, I know this is a Shopify podcast, so really important for people to know that there is a really great landing page builder that's like ClickFunnels, but is much more e-commerce focused and integrates. really, really well with Shopify.
Kurt Elster
Yeah. Uh I have not tried it, but good to know.
Celia Hatch
Yeah. I mean it's a little put there's it's a little clunky in parts, but we've done millions of dollars of sales in it. So it's been wonderful.
Kurt Elster
You know, I'm looking through your I am I am in fact looking through your blog, and I could tell you you have 66 articles and the blog instead of being named news. Bless you for this. The default is blog slash news. Yours is Bia Backyard Chicken How-Tos. There is no question as to what this is about. It is tutorials for backyard chickens. Not for the chickens themselves, mind you. They can't read.
Celia Hatch
We found that making sure we put backyard chickens basically everywhere helps a lot with not accidentally ranking for recipes.
Kurt Elster
Uh well and you have like dedicated landing pages for the ingredients. It's like you know pages slash oregano, pages slash basil. I went through your site map is how I did this.
Celia Hatch
This is really um and those those are kind of like not f fully like lived, like you could not go to our website and then navigate to those like if you were just a customer. Um they're kind of in construction mode right now, but it became an issue. We've had so many people kind of calling out um there's kind of like a battle between like like natural things or like uh to woo-woo or like Like you have to either choose pharmaceuticals or like herbs and natural stuff. And so we get a lot of that like pushback and push and pull in our comments on our like on our ads where people are getting like Yeah, this is all like a bunch of baloney just, you know, buy medicine or whatever. Um and so we actually put together all the research that like around the world for all of these ingredients which we utilized you know, in the creation of this product to begin with, but we're making it in a kind of a more like digestible format. We're putting it in.
Kurt Elster
In the content where like you have you you know you You show your research, like you're like, hey, here's here's the receipts as to why we believe this and why we think it works. Do you cite sources?
Celia Hatch
Um I'm not actually building these myself. They are supposed to be at the bottom end clickable and all of that stuff, but Well the only reason I bring it up is like supposedly if you're you're trying to get more AI citations.
Kurt Elster
Yes. Which I think, you know
Celia Hatch
That was part of this plan as well, is to Yeah.
Kurt Elster
Having, you know, in your long form articles is like a particular format that the AI tends to prefer. And it always ends with like, hey, here are our footnotes. Like we've got links back showing that this is not just an editorial.
Celia Hatch
Yeah. Well, and that's Um, I really like to control our destiny as much as possible. Um, I don't I don't like organic social for the one reason that it's like Ooh, I really hope this one takes off and people get to know our brand. Like I would spend ungodly amounts of money on meta-ads if it's, you know, obviously converting. And same thing with like prepping our site in an SEO type way to be prepared. for these LLMs to find us and once they are fully, you know, integrating shopping and everything that we're solid, um, I will control that narrative as much as possible with like like We will present ourselves as the authority all day long. That's the goal.
Kurt Elster
So with all right, that brings me to my next topic. You've got you have to present yourself in a as an authority. A and you're already seeing pushback just on the fact where you're like, hey, there are all you could start with alternatives to pharmaceuticals, right? By by just using normal, healthy things that chickens enjoy. I don't think it's a crazy claim, but for some people, I guess it is. For some people, leaving crappy comments on Instagram posts is a sport. It's a sport. It's just like for fun. People weren't gonna buy. They're just being jackasses. Yeah. But you ha you still have to establish yourself as a trustworthy authority. And if you show up and go, hey, this is a thing we figured out because we're backyard chicken owners like you That either is or isn't compelling because it you're holding up the mirror to the person. But then I see you've also partnered with uh you've partnered with vets or like animal nutritionists. Is that correct?
Celia Hatch
Um They are not like collaborative partners. They were part of the the creation phase. Um there are actually it's a certification to be an herbal veterinarian So that's kind of a cool um place for us that we connect with if we need like kind of some advice that way. But my favorite way of building the authority in the clout is actually letting the customers just speak.
Kurt Elster
How so?
Celia Hatch
Because the customers are the they're experiencing the results and I don't have to be a I mean how do we
Kurt Elster
How do we share that? I 100% agree with you that like that customer social proof is the best. What is the what format does that take on the site?
Celia Hatch
Oh it this is this is a current thing I'm working on. Because right now it's just, you know, written reviews and reviews on our ads. The re we notice a huge difference in like our conversion rate when one of our ads has like a lot of customer reviews in the comments. Um so we we love seeing that. And then we have I have my customer service person. having those people then come say the same thing on our website, leave the same review. And then we're actually now starting to personally reach out to each of the people that leave a positive review to do a video testimonial review as well. So that we can create a big library that way. It's um it's hard to always be implementing new things because There's so many hats and there's so many things that break.
Kurt Elster
Oh yeah. There are a million and one things that you could do.
Celia Hatch
Yeah. Right. I was trying to figure out how to like set up this like hierarchy of like staff and and who's overseeing what as we're like building like our team a little bit bigger and like I be I put like everything that I'm I own all the tasks that I own, even things that I'm like just doing approvals for. I put it all into like Tat GBT and I was like, can you like organize this and help me like create like a hierarchy of what's happening It's like, this is 12 full-time employees. I was like, oh, okay, like little old me. There's 12 of us in here, I guess.
Kurt Elster
Earlier you talk about like, hey, use meta ads to acquire the customers. And then we send them to funnel-ish. So we have like dedicated long form landing pages. And or they come through organic SEO and then they go to a Shopify store and make a purchase. We've got what is interesting is a lot of your reviews specifically mention finding you through meta ads.
Celia Hatch
Mm-hmm.
Kurt Elster
Yep. Like that's unusual. Um and they're positive reviews, but they actually you know they state like, Oh yeah, this is how I found it. Yeah.
Celia Hatch
Well they'll usually say something like I was skeptical at first when I saw it on Meta.
Kurt Elster
Those are the best, best reviews of the testimonials.
Celia Hatch
You're my favorite. I feel like I miss telling you something though about why we use Funnelish because this is also kind of a like why of course we could build a long-form sales letter in in Shopify, obviously. But what we can't do in Shopify is have a whole bunch of one-click upsells after they purchase.
Kurt Elster
Uh you can do like two. You could use zippify one click upsell will do it. There's a there's apps that'll do it in Shopify.
Celia Hatch
We do about six. Upsells after they've purchased.
Kurt Elster
Like one click. Like like upsell, downsell, like okay, like hey you add this, you know, you want to Really like you bought this product, add this, and then if they say yes, hey, well you should also get this, or if they say no, well, try this, it's cheaper. Yeah. Like that kind of thing.
Celia Hatch
Yeah. And with Zippify and with one click upsell, you can do One post-purchase upsell and then a downsell or upsell after. It it would cut our AOV down quite a bit if we implemented over that way. Right now our AOV is we average over $100 for a $30 initial purchase.
Kurt Elster
That's really good. Are you saying like, hey, just buy two of them? Or these are like separate discrete products that you're adding on?
Celia Hatch
They're separate products. So um we actually emulated a really interesting thing that tr do you know truly free? They do like home it's like laundry detergents and I love their products. It they're so great. Like natural laundry detergents usually suck so bad, but theirs is really good. Um anyway, I get I spend so much money with them because they they have a wonderful post-purchase upsell system. And one of the things that they implemented that I was like, this is so smart, is they have a screen that just says, hey, you know, thanks for your purchase. You've unlocked, you know. Four special deals that you're going to see one page at a time. If you want it, you know, click yes. If you don't, just go to the next one. There's four. Don't miss any of them. And so you ensure that people go through your entire upsell, down sell funnel on the back end. And um we've As soon as we implemented that, we noticed a like a pretty good boost in our AOV because nobody was dropping off until they got all the way through to the very, very last offer.
Kurt Elster
Well, you more than it sounds like you tripled the AOV, which is extraordinary, right? It's like I don't need any more traffic. I don't have to mess with my conversion rate, but revenue gut double triples.
Celia Hatch
Yeah, and so that's it's we've had a hard time like cutting off of this, you know, old school click funnels kind of vibe of doing that because of how it makes it so we can just keep increasing our meta-ads. so high. Like we spend about ten thousand dollars a day right now on our on our meta ads. And it's all it's profitable on the in on the first um acquisition like it is profitable from the immediate purchase. So we're not hoping that in three months this person will come back and then will be profitable from this acquisition cost. Um we are like we we've also just added Fermat. Have you heard of Fermat? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes. And so that's gonna be, you know, the checkout is through Shopify on that one.
Kurt Elster
I'm I'm used to pronouncing it with a Midwestern accent. Fermat.
Celia Hatch
Maybe that's how it's supposed to be. I don't know.
Kurt Elster
Just nail that A. I doubt it. So what what does it do for you?
Celia Hatch
The downfall with our funnel-ish acquisition is um subscriptions go directly into Stripe rather than into Shopify. And so everything is like broken. And so we just don't do it. We just focus on that high AOV on the initial purchase and then worry about bringing people into a subscription subscription through, you know, email flows through Clavio. But we want to start having ads running that are focused on that high AOV and then some that are also focused on getting people into that subscription. And so we're using Fermat or Fermat, however we want to say it, to um build those subscription. We're gonna mimic the exact same long form sales pages. But the offer will be for subscriptions instead of high AOV. So that's the plan.
Kurt Elster
Here's some customer service emails you don't want to wake up to. I was drunk. This was a gift. But we broke up. Wrong color, wrong size, wrong me. Sound familiar? With Cleverific, you don't have to deal with these anymore. Cleverific gives your customers a self-service portal to edit their own orders. No emails, no back and forth, just simple fixes. Fewer support tickets, faster fulfillment, and happier customers. Peter Manning, New York, slash their order support request by 99%. You can too. Get 50% off. the Cleverific Pro Plan, just forty-nine dollars a month exclusively for the unofficial Shopify podcast listeners. Go to cleverific. com slash unofficial and use promo code Kurt50 Fix the problem before it's a problem. That's cleverific. But yeah, no, you're smart to not to stick to letting the subscriptions be Shopify payment plans. Um Just it'll you know, trying to migrate that stuff later is a pain. And it's you know difficult for the customer because now it's like, well, which of the two places where my subscription lives do I go edit it in? Uh yeah.
Celia Hatch
For everybody. Customer service is like, what the hell is going on?
Kurt Elster
Yeah, no, life gets easier when it's like just have everything live in one place. Yes. Um Well you you talked a lot about like some of the apps integration and services use. Uh any other favorites?
Celia Hatch
Um we really love loop subscriptions. Um it's really great. Their customer service is so great. They've um yeah. It's it's been really beneficial. And all the analytics, I was just joking yesterday. I was like, so much data, so little understanding of what most of it means.
Kurt Elster
Yeah, you and me both. Sometimes I'm like, wow, I'm so glad I have all this. Now if only I knew what to do with it.
Celia Hatch
Yeah, it's like, ooh, look at these charts. They look positive. Yeah, as long as the numbers look like they're green, there's green and arrows that are up. I'm happy.
Kurt Elster
Yeah, up and to the right. Uh but it's fine, like your reviews, in addition to being like, hey, I was skeptical and I saw a meta ad, another thing they mention a lot are subscriptions. So The which is unusual. Um, that people are just like in a review feel compelled to mention the fact that they subscribe. I know it's very surprising, but is it the convenience of auto ship? Is it a discount? I mean what Like subscriptions are great, but what's your magic?
Celia Hatch
Here's here's what is happening. Our product is a one-to-one with a bag of chicken feed. For the most part with like human supplements, it's like you don't really know when you're gonna need them again. It's kind of just like when you run out, you just get some more. Maybe if it's like a you know, thirty day thing, you'll hopefully need it again if you've been actually a good boy and taken your supplements every day. Need them on the thirtieth day. But our chicken people, since they are mixing it directly into a bag of feed, They they want that subscription so that they know that every time they open their bag of feed, they're gonna have an entire pouch to dump in at once because it all goes together at one time.
Kurt Elster
That also, you know, that adds a lot of convenience. If the product is difficult to use, people are less likely to adopt it. Whereas here it's like, just dump it in.
Celia Hatch
We yeah, we just dump it all in at once. And so it's really easy to like kind of set it and forget it. Um it has like really pushed us to need more retail distribution. We get a lot of customer um engagement asking for it to be in like their local farm stores because Grab your bag of feed, grab your bag of buff clock, pick up balls, boom you go. Um, it just makes so much sense. So we're in about 70 retail locations right now. And yeah, it's about it's about where we could handle right now. Um I think if tractor supply called me tomorrow and was ready to You know, put us in two thousand stores all at once, it would cripple us for a second. So we're slowly building into that But um yeah.
Kurt Elster
And in addition to the retail stuff and your online at your Shopify store, you're also selling through Amazon and Chewy, I believe.
Celia Hatch
Yeah, and Chewy's a really cool one. Chewy's technically that's like retail distribution. They're a wholesaler. They're not like Amazon. It's not a marketplace.
Kurt Elster
They do have So they buy they buy like a palette from you and then they're selling it on their website.
Celia Hatch
Yes. Yes. Okay. Um, and that's kind of a cool story because they reached out to us and invited us to be part of their catalog expansion into chickens as pets. Um there they were putting a massive investment into the messaging of horses and chickens as pets and making sure that They beat Pet Smart and Pet Co. and other big pet retailers to realize that like actually people treat chickens as pets, not just livestock. And so we're gonna start, you know. treating them the same as we do cats and dogs. Because it's the third most popular pet in America beside behind cats and dogs.
Kurt Elster
The interesting Yeah, well, you know, I think the right person you get attached to any animal. I met a man who was like deeply knew all the names, personalities, and deeply loved his cattle, his cows. And they were just like they were pets. Like I had like five cows as pets. But all right. Or being a having Amazon as a sales channel, a lot of online store owners have a mixed relationship with Amazon. How do you feel about it?
Celia Hatch
We have had five different businesses in the past that were destroyed by Amazon.
Kurt Elster
Oh, jeez.
Celia Hatch
So when we decided to actually like All right. Chicken spice is a go. It was kind of like, let's make sure that we can fully acquire our own customers and sustain a business without including anybody else. Amazon, Walmart, eBay, no other channels except for what we drum up for ourselves. And if we can do that, Amazon will be a cherry on top. And then they don't have any control, you know, if They don't like a word we used in our listing instead of shutting us down for six months, you know, we don't care. We have control over our own destiny. So that was the goal and that we did that. Um we did not launch on Amazon for probably a Not a year, maybe six months. It was probably like six months. We were already doing all of our own acquisition profitably, and then it was like We had a a friend who runs very successful he has has a agency for Amazon and he does a very good job. And so we were like, I guess we'll let you put this on Amazon.
Kurt Elster
And it I assume it worked out.
Celia Hatch
Oh yes. Yes. We do very well on Amazon. Our subscriptions on Amazon are Uh probably they're it's probably doing about two hundred thousand a month in subscriptions on Amazon.
Kurt Elster
And I think that's a enviable.
Celia Hatch
Yeah, for only being up there for maybe a year.
Kurt Elster
Yeah, it's really good.
Celia Hatch
Yeah. Um, so obviously our Amazon takes a whole bunch of our traffic from our like meta ads, but I don't care. That's fine.
Kurt Elster
Go on over there. It seems like it's all it's all profitable, uh, which is what we want.
Celia Hatch
So my point fear with Amazon though, and this I've been really grateful for this, is Our reviews on our website, it's kind of like we see people commenting on our social media and we'll say like, hey, you should go say this over on our, you know, go leave a review, say the same thing. So it's they're not fake reviews, but when we see people talking positively, we request that they go and and share that. So my worry was like not having the control on Amazon of like I can't just send my happy customers to Amazon because if they haven't purchased there, the review won't really show up anyway. It's gonna have to just be like Let the gods handle it. And so I've been really happy that the reviews and the response on Amazon's been equally positive as on our own channels.
Kurt Elster
Yeah, I mean based on the reviews, it's a the product works and people love it. So and sounds like the chickens do too. We're talking, you know, various marketing channels, meta, Amazon, SEO, and word of mouth. Oh, which which is the best? Which is your favorite?
Celia Hatch
Um, I mean my personal favorite, these are different, there's layers here. These aren't quick rapid fire questions because what I actually love I love SEO. I love copywriting. I I love the blog side of that. I like content marketing. Um But if I'm saying what's my favorite for like a successful business to be successful, I like the control of meta and like, hey, once I figure out what's working, I can just keep putting more money in there and make more money come out.
Kurt Elster
So I think we're gonna say favorite is SEO and content marketing, but best currently is Meta.
Celia Hatch
Yeah. That's how I heard that. Yes. And then Amazon, since I don't actually do anything with it, since Since I chose to kind of wash my hands of it and I just have our agency handling it. I love Amazon 'cause it feels like magic. Since I don't have to do anything with it.
Kurt Elster
It well, it is a business owner. That is a it's a gratifying feeling. So uh biggest operational headache for you is it, you know, fulfillment, inventory, customer service.
Celia Hatch
Um inventory always. Mostly because loose leaf herbs and botanicals are actually quite difficult to keep coming in a consistent manner. There's growing seasons that like there will be periods where literally the entire world doesn't seem to have a certain product. And since we're kind of in the scheme of things, we're like babies with this. Like this is n like a new thing for me, sourcing we're we're literally sourcing ten tons of a certain ingredient at a time. And I I'm not familiar enough with all those growing seasons. So we we kind of keep finding ourselves in these like tight spots of like Nobody told me that no one in the world was gonna be growing marigold for two months. Somebody needs to grow some more marigold. So I have a supply chain manager and he's amazing and he's definitely working out all the kinks with this, but that's been our biggest issue is inventory. Uh we we basically sell out of everything and then like we'll have multiple days where we don't have any stuff to sell. And it's like, oh my gosh, I hope our sh our manufacturer finishes this really quickly because we're in trouble. So that's it's been hard to scale up because we always are like pinched for inventory. Um but yeah, so operationally always the issue. A great problem to have. I am not complaining about inventory issues.
Kurt Elster
It is, yeah. It's like you know should be grateful you were able to sell out of it, but yeah, it could it could really be frustrating. Um There's a sneeze warning on your packaging, isn't there?
Celia Hatch
Oh yeah. We um we yeah, we popped that right on the top there because our first iteration of our packaging did not have it And we are told all the time, like, oh that made me sneeze, that made me sneeze. I was coughing like crazy. How can somebody open this and and even breathe? Because it's super powerful. It's It's like freshly dried herbs and and there's red pepper in there and there's garlic, so it's very strong. Um and we're like, you know We're not gonna change the recipe to make it like more mild because we want all of that power in there.
Kurt Elster
And So the sneeze wording is is honest labeling, it's genuine, but in some ways it is genius marketing.
Celia Hatch
It is us controlling the narrative that this is We are making a promise to you when you open this bag, you are going to sneeze because these herbs are so because it says we have it say um sneeze alert powerful herbs inside. So it's making this promise that like you're gonna open this bag and these herbs are so powerful and their health benefits are so strong for your chickens that you're not gonna be able to breathe.
Kurt Elster
If you had to start Buff Clucks over and no one has ever heard of it, but you retain your current knowledge, what's the one thing you do differently?
Celia Hatch
You are gonna love this answer. I would have built our Shopify store really, really, really well immediately. Because it is our Shopify store, since we don't send traffic directly to it, we're sending through funnel-ish. The the Shopify store is like it's like the neglected child.
Kurt Elster
It lagged behind the rest of the design.
Celia Hatch
We're like rolling this free theme where we like it's like not even our own it's like stock photography is in places. Like it's not great. It needs a lot of love. So you probably love this answer that if I would have done it differently from day one, that would have been immediately.
Kurt Elster
You know, at the same time, clearly I you have in no way done it wrong. So that's good. I'm a big oh okay, go ahead. You've got you've got a chicken supplement business. What's next? You know, keep going as is, expand to other, you know, animals, double down on chicken, like what's What's our thoughts?
Celia Hatch
Um we of course there's always like this imaginary roadmap that I'm constantly thinking through. Um and For what we are really wanting to do a product for ducks, ducks, because we get a lot of people asking for specifically a product for ducks. So then we can have buff ducks and buff clucks.
Kurt Elster
Well, if it rhymes, clearly it's gonna work out.
Celia Hatch
Yeah, so we just have to whatever rhymes with ducks, clucks, we'll just keep going with that.
Kurt Elster
All right, final question. If I need I have backyard chickens or I need more chicken content in my life, where do I go? What do I do?
Celia Hatch
Well, you come to buffclucks. com and you don't judge the Shopify store too harshly and you just get some herbs on there and maybe get a mask so then when you open them you don't sneeze.
Kurt Elster
The I want I'm buying a bag for myself and I'm just huffing it. I just want just straight people.
Celia Hatch
People eat it. We have people.
Kurt Elster
I was gonna ask, but I'm like, no, it's too obvious.
Celia Hatch
I've had people tell me they've made kombucha with it. Don't ask, I didn't drink it. I have no idea how that turned out, but they made kombucha with it. People put it on their steaks. I've had people say they put it in their pasta. Um, because and it it's totally safe to do so because all of our ingredients are like culinary grade. We have a our main supplier is a tea supplier. And so It's like very high grade herbs and botanicals. Um and then we all of our production happens in a food facility that does production for like some pretty big players. Um, Trader Joe's.
Kurt Elster
So food safe. I could. I shouldn't, but realistically I could use this as seasoning.
Celia Hatch
You could. You could. I do not vouch for how it tastes It'll be weird.
Kurt Elster
Right. I'm not a chicken.
Celia Hatch
But if you won't have any more worms. So if you're concerned about that
Kurt Elster
I wasn't worried about it till right now. And on you know, that note, I'm I have to go get dewormed. Uh Celia Hatch, Buff Clucks, thank you so much. Thank you. Crowdfunding campaigns are great. You can add social proof and urgency to your product pre-orders while reducing risk of failure But with traditional crowdfunding platforms, you're paying high fees and giving away control all while your campaign is lost in a sea of similar offers. It can be frustrating. That's why we built Crowdfunder. The Shopify app that turns your Shopify product pages into your own independent crowdfunding campaigns. We originally created Crowdfunder for our private clients. and it was so successful we turned it into an app that anyone can use. Today, merchants using Crowdfunder have raised millions collectively. With Crowdfunder You'll enjoy real-time tracking, full campaign control, and direct customer engagement. And it's part of the Built for Shopify program, so you know it's easy to use. So say goodbye to High Fees and hello to successful store-based crowdfunding. Start your free trial and transform your Shopify store into a pre-order powerhouse today. Search Crowdfunder in the Shopify App Store to get started.