This Dragon's Den alum's acupuncture brand is sharp
Paul de Jersey wants you to lie on what looks like a bed of nails. If you think this is unusual, so did he when he first experienced a spikey acupuncture mat, but it works. It worked so well that he eventually began selling his own spike mats on Shopify, and even appeared on Dragon's Den to pitch the idea.
Born and raised in Vancouver, Paul de Jersey is a former Division 1 hockey player turned entrepreneur. This is the story of his journey founding Aku, a line of premium self-care products with over $1m in sales. It wasn't easy though– Paul shares his struggles and successes with us in this episode.
Kurt Elster: Today, on The Unofficial Shopify Podcast, we are talking to a former Division 1 hockey player turned entrepreneur, a gentleman who has appeared on Dragons’ Den and has a really cool brand, a really cool Shopify store. It’s called Aku, and what’s interesting about it is prior to being introduced to this merchant, I have seen the site before. It’s been shown to me more than once where people say, “Wow, I wish my site looked more like this!” And it’s because they have really phenomenal branding. And so, joining me today is Paul de Jersey of Aku, akuspike.com, and they sell… Well, you know what? I’ll let him tell me. Paul, how you doing? What the heck is an Akuspike, or Aku?
Paul de Jersey: Thanks a lot for having me on, Kurt. It’s a pleasure to be here. And yeah, I appreciate the kind words. Akuspike, Aku is our brand, and we specialize in acupressure products, so A-K-U is short for acupressure and our products are derived from Eastern Europe, so that’s where we get the KU from, and our products are essentially self-care tools that you can use in your home, anywhere, anytime, without the need of seeing a massage therapist or acupuncturist, and they provide relief kind of for blood flow, muscle relaxation, and general wellness optimization.
Kurt Elster: And you’ve got several products here and they all look pretty spiky. Explain to me these products. What do they look like? What do they do?
Paul de Jersey: Yeah, so they’re really spiky. They’re quite shocking when you first try them. Some people are quite intimidated when they first feel the spikes, but they’re essentially acupressure products, so it’s very similar to acupuncture in theory. However, our products don’t actually puncture the skin, so it kind of enables a self-care treatment that you can use without supervision, and our halo product is the Aku Mat, and it’s essentially a bed of nails. So, there’s a lot of these plastic derivatives online. Our products are the only acupressure products made with high grade metals as opposed to cheap plastic. So, the idea is you essentially lie down on the mat, or you can stand on the mat, and you let the spikes pressure against the skin, and that pressure stimulates blood flow and circulation, and also helps with lymph flow and lymph drainage.
So, when you originally lie on the mat, you’ll feel a really intense sensation, but as you kind of breathe through it, it actually becomes quite relaxing, so it’s really like a pain to pleasure type experience, like when people first try the mat, they’re in shock at how painful it is, but after about five minutes, they’re just like completely relaxed and a lot of times people fall asleep on it.
Kurt Elster: So, I’ve not tried this, and I’ve not tried acupuncture, but I don’t doubt it. We’ve got… So, this looks like a yoga mat that is also covered in nails. Would that be a fair description?
Paul de Jersey: That’s a really good description. And we use five different metals, so we have silver, zinc, iron, copper, and nickel. Those metals are all organic to our body and they’re antimicrobial, so you don’t have to worry about kind of bacteria growth, and these metals have certain ionic charges, so you’ll feel a lot of warmth when you lie on the mat. So, a lot of times when you get up, your back will be completely red from all the warmth and blood flow that comes to the area. So, the metals are really quite amazing. It’s a particular blend, so there’s trace amounts of silver, zinc, iron, copper, and nickel in all of our products, and it’s this ideal blend for the ionic flow.
Kurt Elster: When did you launch this store? When did this product first become available?
Paul de Jersey: I believe it was early 2018. We kind of put up our first theme, and then ever since then, it’s been a work in progress. And as you know, these sites take a while to build up and we’ve kind of just been iterating since day one and the site is kind of… It’s never done and we’re always trying to improve it. There’s always little tinkerings and optimizations we’re always looking into.
Kurt Elster: So, three years ago when you launched this thing, your first sale, it was on Shopify? You started with an online store?
Paul de Jersey: I kind of went door to door a little bit when I first launched it. I’m from Vancouver and as you mentioned in the intro, I used to play hockey, so when I was kind of originally had the idea, I wanted to validate the concept and prove the market kind of locally, so I was just selling it to people I knew, like in stores, and trainers, and gyms, and then we had our Shopify site up first. But I think our first couple sales were definitely offline and then we had a couple sales when we launched the site, and when you get your first sale online, it’s really cool. Especially when it’s a stranger, so that was kind of a… That kind of put us in motion and we’ve been going strong ever since.
Kurt Elster: All right, so going back even further, where did this idea come from? Did you first think like, “Man, I should go sell a bed of nails to people?”
Paul de Jersey: That’s not something I would have ever thought before we launched the business, but when I was playing hockey, I had a really amazing trainer who’s actually now my business partner. His name’s Sergey Nazarov, and he actually traveled the world for eight years with the Cirque du Soleil, so he just-
Kurt Elster: Oh, wow.
Paul de Jersey: Yeah. He’s a total freak with his body, like he’s what you would expect in terms of like flexibility and strength, just amazing. But I hurt my back one day while I was training with him. Nothing serious, but he had one of these mats lying around, because all the Cirque du Soleil guys swore by them, and he’s from Russia and Eastern Europe, and they’re quite popular over there, so he gave me this mat to try out and I absolutely loved it, and I thought this was just an incredible feeling and it really helped me back. But I was kind of playing hockey at the time, so I just really forgot about it. Then my career came to an end at college, and I remembered the mat, and I wanted to just buy it myself, and I couldn’t find it anywhere. I was looking up like bed of nails, spike mat, and I couldn’t find the product anywhere, so I asked Sergey about it, and he told me it comes from Ukraine and they’re very popular in Russia, but they’re really not well known over here.
And so, I thought to myself like, “I know at least like 50 of my friends who would want to buy this product and we can create a really cool brand here,” so I reached out to this Ukrainian manufacturing partner and we… The first call with them, I didn’t know a single thing they were saying. I was just nodding my head, saying, “Yeah, we want to sell this. Yeah.” And we eventually were able to negotiate the exclusive rights to distribute and sell it in North America and we built our brand around acupressure, and that’s kind of where the A-K-U comes from, because it pays homage to Ukraine and in Russia and Ukraine, everything’s called… Every C is spelled with a K, so it’s kind of like akupressure, so that’s kind of where we got the name from. That’s a little bit of the backstory.
Kurt Elster: And-
Paul de Jersey: I tell people I’m not a… It’s a medical grade device and the product was built by a famous sports scientist over in Russia, and so I try not to make too many claims from a medical standpoint, but it really is an effective tool that’s been used for many years, and it dates back to even when yogis would lie on literal bed of nails. I don’t know if you seen on like Ripley’s Believe It or Not, where they actually had nail beds that people would get driven over on a truck, which is obviously just silly, but it proves the concept of… It’s called the force per unit area, meaning the force is evenly distributed and it won’t puncture the skin if you use it properly, so it’s quite intense but you don’t have to worry about hurting yourself on it.
Kurt Elster: Right. It’s because you’re dividing the weight across the surface area of the head of each nail.
Paul de Jersey: Exactly. Yeah.
Kurt Elster: And then that keeps you… Keeps it from puncturing you.
Paul de Jersey: Yeah.
Kurt Elster: You experienced this firsthand, and you said like, “Wow, this thing’s really cool.” And then you were a believer. It worked. And then you tried to buy one on your own locally, couldn’t find it, didn’t exist, and it turned out this thing is very localized to Eastern Europe or Ukraine and Russia, and you believed in it so hard, you acquired the distribution rights.
Paul de Jersey: Yeah, pretty much. I mean, when you say it like that it sounds pretty crazy, but I kind of always envisioned myself as an entrepreneur. I know it’s kind of a cliché thing to say, but I really always wanted to start my own business, and this was kind of just a launch pad for me and I thought I didn’t really know where I could go, but I just knew that I had some people in my network that would want to buy this and I thought this kind of checks all the boxes for eCommerce. It’s health and wellness, it’s like eye catching, and it’s kind of like on trend with self-care and it was a good product to launch at the time in terms of the category it was in.
Kurt Elster: Oh, absolutely. And so, to validate the idea, to get the initial customers, you went to friends, to people you know, and sold it locally.
Paul de Jersey: Yeah.
Kurt Elster: Okay. And from there, then jumped into an online store. Once the thing was online, the advantage to it being entirely new here is you don’t have competition. The disadvantage is no one knows to look for it, so how do you go about acquiring those first customers? And initially, were people like, “You’re out of your mind?” What was the reaction?
Paul de Jersey: Yeah. I mean, it was a little slow online to get started. I think everyone kind of thinks they’re gonna put their store up and you’re gonna start seeing insane traffic, and you’re gonna start converting left, right. Obviously, it took a lot longer, and luckily for us there’s… These acupressure mats are actually quite popular in North America. There’s a couple huge companies, like called Pranamat, and one’s called Spoonk Wellness, and they do plastic, so the concept is actually relatively popular in terms of the acupressure mat space. So, originally, we kind of just tailored our marketing, our messaging, to suit the needs of these people that use the plastic mat, and we kind of piggybacked off these people that already believed in the concept and said, “Hey, you guys are using the plastic mat. Try this. It’s the same concept, ours is just higher quality and it’s more effective.”
And a lot of our early adopters were those who have used the plastic iteration. And then we obviously had… I was grateful to have some buddies who play in the NHL and some pro athletes who helped us kind of build the brand awareness off the bat and we got some good social shares, and it was never like we launched, and we started selling like crazy. It was just since day one we’ve kind of steadily grown, and we’re doing more sales day by day, but it’s always been a very kind of a steady grind or steady flow of sales as opposed to just one moment that really broke us through.
Kurt Elster: Yeah, we always call it stacking the bricks. You know, a house is not built immediately. You just keep stacking bricks and then suddenly you turn around and oh my gosh, there’s a house there. And it sounds like that was the case for you, where there was an initial small group of people who were looking for this product, and you also had your network of people who could benefit from it, and because you believed in it, and then they believed in it, they were willing to share it, and then those things combined snowball and when combined with really great branding and a great website, which you have… I love it.
Paul de Jersey: Thank you.
Kurt Elster: Things start to take off. It really… It enables word of mouth.
Paul de Jersey: Definitely.
Kurt Elster: Talking about the brand, did you always have this branding from the get-go?
Paul de Jersey: Yeah, so I really like the black and white. That was kind of my vision for it. And once I found the name, my brother is a… He has a design company based in Vancouver and he built this Aku logo, and right when he built the logo, I was just like, “That’s the one.” And I absolutely loved it. And I was obviously probably a little biased because he’s my brother, but we get so many compliments still just on the logo, and the brand, and we try to keep it really minimalistic and really clean, and so I love just the three letters and the black and white. I think it really suits what we do, and I don’t plan on changing the brand anytime soon, because it’s definitely worked for us.
It’s one of the biggest compliments we get, so I can’t take all the credit for that. It was a lot of people that put their minds into it, but I think it suits us well.
Kurt Elster: At the same time, it sounds like you had some vision there, like you knew what you didn’t want, and that’s as important as knowing what you do want, and then when you saw it, you said, “That’s it.” But you know, you said, “Well, it’s my brother, so I was biased.” But at the same time there’s a lot of value in trusting people, delegating to them, and then getting out of their way and letting them do the work.
Paul de Jersey: 100%.
Kurt Elster: It sounds like that’s what you did. So, early on… Well, so you started this in 2018 and it sounds like you didn’t have prior business experience, right?
Paul de Jersey: No. I mean, I got my business degree while I was playing hockey and I was kind of working in real estate, what everyone does in Vancouver when they’re kind of lost and have no direction, so I was working in Vancouver just doing some real estate, and I always knew I wanted to start something. I just didn’t know what. And then right when I saw this product, I actually quit my job and just went after it because… Gary Vee, I was heavy into Gary Vee, and he was telling me a lot of people say they’re an entrepreneur, but you’re not an entrepreneur if you have another job. If you have a salary, then you work somewhere else. You’re not an entrepreneur. He says if you want to start a business, you gotta go all in and just go for it.
So, I said to myself I have a little bit of savings and I’m just gonna go for this no matter what, and for like six months I made no cash whatsoever, but I was like 100% all in. That was a huge turning point, just because everyone I talked to, I’d have to be like, “I’m doing this.” And it would be like… I was quite self-conscious at the beginning, like trying to explain to people what I do. They’d be like, “What are you doing nowadays?” I’m like, “I’m selling this spike mat.” And I couldn’t even really describe it. I was like, “You gotta just check out the site.” But it was probably the first year I was pretty… I don’t want to say embarrassed, but I was just definitely self-conscious and nervous about…
Kurt Elster: It’s imposter syndrome.
Paul de Jersey: Yeah. Exactly.
Kurt Elster: You feel like, “You know, I’m faking it and they’re gonna sniff me out.”
Paul de Jersey: Yeah. And there’s a lot of obviously people just like looking at this, being like, “What is this product?” And I was just like, “It works. Trust me. I like it.”
Kurt Elster: And so, now versus then, it sounds like you’ve figured out the importance of positioning and being able to do that quick 10-second elevator pitch. And on your website, I love this, the headline, it says, “Acupressure therapy in the comfort of your home. Real spikes. Real results.” And then the call to action is, “Feel better.” You have to click feel better. And so, it doesn’t make any health claims, but there’s like the… Between the lines, it’s there. I love it.
Paul de Jersey: Yeah.
Kurt Elster: It’s well done.
Paul de Jersey: I appreciate that. It’s tough to figure out what to put on that initial value prop. You can kind of go a lot of ways with it. And we’ve tinkered around with it, but I really like the feel better. We’ve played around with the acupuncture at home, but I like the feel better a lot.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. No, I think this works. And you’re right, it sounds easy, like, “Oh, you just gotta come up with a tagline that describes what you do and the value.” And like, it is so difficult as to reduce people to tears if you really make yourself crazy with it. So, you were on Dragons’ Den. The Canadian Dragons’ Den, not the U.K. Dragons’ Den, right?
Paul de Jersey: Yes. Exactly.
Kurt Elster: Okay. And what was that experience like?
Paul de Jersey: That was amazing. I mean, that was one thing I knew, I guess it was one of the things that really made me want to be an entrepreneur growing up, because that show’s been around for many years, and I always told myself, told my parents, like, “I’m going on that show no matter what.” And that was literally the first thing I had in my mind when I started this company, was, “I want to go on the Dragons’ Den.” And that’s what I told early investors. They would ask about the Dragons’ Den, and I said, “We’re going on the Dragons’ Den. Don’t worry. We’re gonna be on the Dragons’ Den.”
So, I went on about… I think it was the beginning of 2019 was when we had an original audition, and you audition for the show, and basically the girl was not… The original producer was just saying, “How can we make this exciting for TV?” And I was like, “Well, we’re gonna make it exciting for TV. I’ll get my NHL buddies to come out with us.” And we ended up going on air, I think it was May 2019, and it was really nerve wracking. I mean, I was petrified before we went on the show, but it truly couldn’t have gone better for us. I mean, the Dragons loved our products. They loved the brand. And we ended up getting multiple offers on the show from four different Dragons, and we did a deal with Arlene Dickinson, who is a really prominent entrepreneur in Canada.
So, I mean the whole experience was truly great for us, and then obviously the brand exposure after was tremendous.
Kurt Elster: So, you did take investment from a Dragon. And what’s that like? That’s the part that has always fascinated me, is like what’s the… What does that look like? I have no idea, like what’s the level of involvement? What’s the expectation?
Paul de Jersey: To be honest, that was the worst part about the whole experience, like we had… So, we had multiple offers on the show, and we were asking for $150,000 for 10% of the company, so we valued it at $1.5 million. And a bunch of the Dragons were kind of like negotiating back and forth, and then Arlene just said, “I think the valuation’s fair. I’ll give you what you came for.” So, we just said, “Yeah. Done. That’s a no brainer for us.” And we were so excited because we had so much… We had amazing momentum going into the show, like we had all these incredible sales, we were hitting trade shows, we were just buzzing.
And then I was expecting to do some DD and get it done, but it took so long after the show, and we ended up not getting paid till like a year and a half later almost, and it was just… The due diligence was insane. And I was expecting a lot of due diligence, but it was honestly just like the timeframe was just unbelievable and it actually really hurt our business, because we were relying on this cash and I had other investors that were not happy about it because they said, “I’ll put up the money now. We don’t need to have Arlene come in. Let’s just keep rolling here.”
And so, I was actually in a big cash crunch for probably eight months because I was just assuming this money was coming, which it did, but it just made it hard to kind of make any other decision, so it was actually quite challenging and that was probably the hardest thing I’ve ever gone through as an entrepreneur, because it got to the point where it was like we needed the money, and I was like, “Are they even giving it at this point? I don’t even know.” And they just kept going back and forth, so then we just said like, “Look, you know everything about our company. We provided every financial statement, every piece of due diligence you could ever imagine for a small business, you have to tell us. Are you giving us the money or not?”
And eventually, they just like… They did. And so, it was great, and really grateful to have Arlene on board, but that was actually… That was something I would warn people before going on the show, is be ready for serious due diligence, and it’s not gonna be a quick process. At least for what I went through.
Kurt Elster: Cash is king and cash flow makes or breaks businesses. Having been through that tough experience, what advice do you have for people who may be facing a similar challenge? What practical things did you do to manage a cash flow crunch?
Paul de Jersey: Yeah. I mean, that’s something I had to learn the hard way. I was definitely not as careful and cognizant of it as I should have been, and I would tell people definitely just always be really cognizant of your cash balance and make sure you have a really strong bookkeeper or accountant who can kind of keep you in line. And you really overlook the bookkeeping and the accounting aspect when you first launch a business, and that was something I just didn’t really look at. I would just look at like our Shopify analytics, and see, “Oh, we got cash coming in here.” But there’s just so much more that goes into it and we were literally selling more than we ever had been and we almost went out of business, so I was like really… It really was eye opening for me, because I was like, “The business in my mind has actually never been better, but we’re almost out of business. If we don’t make this work in the next month, we’re done.”
And our sales had never been stronger, so I just didn’t really think about it as much as I should have, and if I was giving advice to someone who’s about to launch a store, I would say first things first, if you’re not a bookkeeper or if you’re not an accountant, hire someone right off the bat to do that for you and just make sure you understand when the cash is coming in, when your payment terms are due, and negotiate payment terms. I would always say like, “Oh, the sale’s done. We’re good to go.” But then we wouldn’t get paid for 45 days and I realized how important that was later, like cash is king, and you really need to negotiate payment terms.
And anyone you deal with will always try to prolong payment. We do the same thing. If we order anything, we always say, “Can we pay you in 60 days?” I’m negotiating on everything. So, I would just be really cognizant about the terms of everything and don’t be afraid to negotiate, either, because it’s really important and everyone’s negotiating against you, so you have to negotiate yourself. Otherwise, you’re probably gonna get eaten alive.
Kurt Elster: That is all true and all excellent advice. I would also… Building on that, I would suggest if someone… If this seems intimidating or you’re like, “I don’t feel like I have a strong understanding of my cash flow,” implementing an accounting system will help, and the book Profit First is probably one of the best in that category. Have you read that one? Were there any books that have helped you along the way?
Paul de Jersey: Yeah, there’s quite a few. I actually… Well, podcasts too. I don’t think I would have ever launched my business if it wasn’t for Tim Ferriss, like his podcast was incredible, just… Guys like Gary Vee, who I don’t really listen to as much anymore, but I kind of just read all the books, like I was really into… When I was done playing hockey, I was really in a dark spot. I kind of like lost my identity as an athlete and I didn’t really know what to do, and so I was just reading everything. I was never really a big reader before, but now it’s like it’s such a huge part of my life, and I kind of just read all the big books that you’ve probably heard of, you know? There’s a couple ones that stand out, like I’m reading that Sapiens book now, and the Homo Deus, and there’s a lot of business books, like 48 Laws of Power I love. There’s one called the Billion Dollar Whale which I just read. I like to read all sorts of things.
But the podcasts definitely are huge for me and Tim Ferriss’s podcast for business I think is really, really vital.
Kurt Elster: So, you mentioned the struggles with cash flow and how you’re such a… You’re a first-time entrepreneur with your business. Give me the good, the bad, the ugly about entrepreneurial life.
Paul de Jersey: Yeah. The good is it’s really fulfilling. I feel like when I was working that previous real estate job, I kind of just knew this wasn’t for me. But I know that whether it’s with Aku, or whether it’s with another company, I’m always gonna be doing this type of thing for the rest of my life. I’ll always be an entrepreneur at this point. And then once you do it, you can kind of prove to yourself that you can be an entrepreneur, and now I have the confidence to… If Aku failed tomorrow, it would still be the best decision I ever made professionally, and it would kind of launch something else from there.
The bad is just it’s everything takes longer than you think. You want to start your business and start selling right off the bat, and it’s kind of hard to think of it any other way, but the reality is things just take so long, and I would say be really patient with the process, because you can work on it hard every day, but sometimes things just take a long time to come to fruition. So, I try to stay patient and I’m typically not, so it’s something that I’m working on, but it’s definitely hard to stay patient in this space.
And the ugly, I would say it’s really emotional, and I’d say it’s 90% struggle and 10% gain. People really don’t see the day to day, like it’s not glamorous. People always kind of I run into, they’ll be like, “Oh, Aku’s just killing it.” And I’m like, “To be honest, I’m really stressed about paying my rent right now and I don’t feel like I’m killing it at all.” And there’s like it looks really good on the outside and I’m really proud of it, but we’re not killing it in terms of we’re not printing money, and we’re growing-
Kurt Elster: You’re not placing the order for your Ferrari right now?
Paul de Jersey: Exactly. Exactly. And I want to.
Kurt Elster: But you know, at the same time, as you are rewarded, as you have these successes, I think it’s very easy to get stuck in recency bias, where it’s like you really… Your brain is only looking at the last 72 hours, maybe a week, and if there were stressful things that happened, it’s very easy to distract yourself with it and be like, “Oh, man. Things are falling apart.” When you turn around and really take stock of what you’ve done since 2018, been on a globally syndicated television show, acquired six figures, at least, in investment. I mean, those are people who voted with their dollars that they believed in you and your idea. And so, I think it’s just it’s important to take stock of our achievements when we have those moments.
Paul de Jersey: That’s well said.
Kurt Elster: And to your point, you know, I was watching American Pickers. I don’t know if you ever watch American Pickers on History Channel. And the guy running it is a small business owner and he deals with a lot of small business owners. And he said, “Being an entrepreneur or a small business owner is both the hardest thing you’ll ever do and the most rewarding.” And I’ve heard that before. I know it’s a cliché. And until you’ve lived it, you don’t realize how absolutely 100% true that statement is. It’s a cliché for a reason.
Paul de Jersey: I couldn’t agree more. I wouldn’t add anything to that. It’s exactly the way I feel about it.
Kurt Elster: But at the same time, everyone runs their business or should run their business the way they feel is right, the way they are comfortable, and for some people that means, “I’m not gonna take investment. I’m bootstrapping only. I’m on my own.” And for other people that means it is a practical and reasonable decision to take investing, to take investment, and you have done that. You have outside investors. What is it like dealing with investors? If you had to do it over again, would you do it? And what’s some of your advice there?
Paul de Jersey: Yeah. There’s definitely been some learnings. When I launched Aku, I had no money to do it, so I knew right off the bat that I needed to raise some capital and I wanted to bootstrap it as far as I could, but I’m talking like I needed 10 grand to make the first order. I just… I couldn’t do. So, our first check we raised was like I think it was 15 grand, and when we got that check, it was a guy from Vancouver who I just kind of came to through a mutual connection of mine. It was really kind of spontaneous. But just getting that check in from someone else really validates your idea and it just shows that someone else believes in you, and even though it was $15,000, that was a huge tipping point for me just to say like, “This is actually a pretty good idea. Someone’s willing to give me 15 grand just to get a…” With literally nothing. We had like a prototype, and we didn’t even have our site up yet.
So, that was good validation for us, but then obviously there’s cons, as well, like we have nine investors now. If I could do it again, I would have preferred to have… Trim the cap table in terms of how many people are on it but have bigger allotments. So, we have 9 or 10 guys who have done like 50 grand type thing. If I could do it again, I’d try to find maybe one or two whales to eat up most of it, and then they can actually provide a lot more day-to-day insights and value, because a lot of our investors are unbelievable just women and men, but they’re not involved in any capacity. They’re silent investors. And a lot of these guys are high net worth individuals that are very supportive and encouraging, but I don’t have too many people on the cap table that are actually helping me on a day-to-day basis.
So, it’s really silent and if I could do it again, I would look for more of a strategic partnership, where I could really lean on them and maybe even bring them on as a co-founder who is working day to day. But I think if you need the money, I don’t think looking for investment’s a bad option. I think the bootstrapping thing, it’s ideal, but I just-
Kurt Elster: It’s hard.
Paul de Jersey: Exactly. I haven’t seen it done really. It’s like it’s… Cuban has a really good quote. He says, “I’d rather have 90% of a…” I forget what he said. I’d rather have 10% of a watermelon than 90% of a grape. I think that’s a great quote, because it’s just like what are you trying to do? Do you want to have this 100% to yourself? It’s almost selfish to just be like, “This is mine, 100%.” Don’t you want to have a team? Don’t you want to have supporters?
So, I mean, there’s obviously ways to bootstrap. I think if you’re doing a drop ship business or just want to have… I guess call it a side hustle. I don’t even know if that works anymore, but there’s ways to do it, obviously, but I think if you want to grow brand and grow a business, I think it makes sense to look for some strategic capital and getting investors is big, because it really gives you confidence and it gives you some runway and takes a little bit of the pressure off in the short term.
Kurt Elster: Well, and especially with manufacturing a good.
Paul de Jersey: Exactly.
Kurt Elster: You have to prepay for the inventory and that’s where cash flow in an eCommerce business is really… is difficult and different than a lot of other businesses. It’s very easy for me as a professional services business that doesn’t produce a physical good to be like, “Yeah, we bootstrapped.”
Paul de Jersey: Yeah. That was the dream, though.
Kurt Elster: Because I didn’t have to pay a manufacturer.
Paul de Jersey: That was the dream, though. I’m looking, I’m always kind of… Now that I’ve done this once, I would love to start just a Shopify store where I just own 100% of it and on a monthly basis, I can just take whatever cash out of the business I feel appropriate, so I have a lot of respect for what you’ve done, and I think bootstrapping is the dream. It’s just a lot harder. And it’s kind of a… I imagine your business is not too much overhead and at this point it’s just kind of like you run the show and it’s up to you to produce. So, like you said earlier, we have to order tons of products, and it’s pretty hard without a lot of cash on hand.
Kurt Elster: Oh, for sure. So, going back to the beginning, I wonder, when you were deciding to do an online store, how did you end up choosing Shopify?
Paul de Jersey: I kind of… Being from Canada, I just heard a lot about Shopify, and it was kind of before Shopify really went crazy. They were pretty popular in 2017-2018, and it was a no brainer. I looked at WordPress and Square… What’s the other one I’m thinking of? Anyway…
Kurt Elster: Wix and SquareSpace probably?
Paul de Jersey: Yeah. And I’m not tech savvy, so just being able to have everything under one roof with Shopify was just really, really good for us, and right off the bat they’ve just been so, so helpful, and I have nothing but good things to say about them. Especially if you compare them to Amazon. And they just… They’re always helping, like I have account managers now, and they’re just reaching out about capital, about fulfillment, about marketing, and they have their blogs, their resources, so I would never even consider anything else at this point. I love Shopify.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. It’s as much about the product itself, about Shopify as your online store and your backend, as it is the ecosystem around Shopify that they have been… That’s what attracted me to the platform early on, is we said, “Wow! This thing’s easy to work on. It’s well documented.” And they just keep investing in their partners and the ecosystem. And now, many years later, clearly that has paid off.
Paul de Jersey: Yeah. It’s unbelievable.
Kurt Elster: So, aside from selling direct on your website, do you sell on any other channels?
Paul de Jersey: Yeah. We used to sell on Amazon. We were on .ca and .com, on Prime, so they did our fulfillment, and then we had Touch of Modern, which is a big kind of wholesaler in the U.S., and then Grommet in the U.S., but this year actually I got rid of all that and we’re focusing purely on Shopify. I mean, it was hard to have all these distribution channels, and I decided this year that we’re only going through Shopify. We can collect the email data. We can kind of control the entire process and that was a huge decision for us, and I don’t see myself doing any wholesale or any Amazon or anything else for the foreseeable future.
Kurt Elster: So, speaking of Shopify, what’s your favorite app? I bet there’s some apps that run this store. What’s your favorite? What’s the one you couldn’t live without?
Paul de Jersey: We have Privy for email marketing, which I love, and our email marketing… I’m trying to take a page out of your book. You know what you’re doing there. But yeah, Privy’s been amazing, and we have the BOGO, the Buy One Upsell, which has been awesome. We just put that Wheel of Fortune in, and it’s actually been… It actually works pretty well. I thought it was pretty gimmicky at first, but-
Kurt Elster: Those darn spin to wins.
Paul de Jersey: I know. It’s been good, so yeah, I’d say Privy’s a really good one that we love, and just integrating all the payment platforms, like we have… You can check out on Google Pay, Apple Pay, we take PayPal, just Shopify Pay, so just having all the payment options I think is really important. And more than apps, I think just finding a theme that works well and then kind of just iterating, and then if you see a cool app that you want, you need, I would definitely look into it. The app store is incredible on Shopify. You just kind of… You can just look around in there and there’s so many cool ones you can add onto, so I’m always learning and seeing what else is available, and there’s all these new ones coming out. It’s hard to keep up with it.
Kurt Elster: It is. Oh, man. The app store, double-edged sword. There’s just so much there you can go app crazy.
Paul de Jersey: It’s true. And you don’t want to clutter it, to be honest, like we had the wheel, and we had the Buy One Upsell, and then we had our reviews, and I was like, “This is getting a little too much.” So, we kind of like are playing around with it, but you don’t want to have too many popups happening on your site.
Kurt Elster: So, what’s next for Aku?
Paul de Jersey: Yeah. I mean, we’re just growing. We’ve still got a lot of room to grow in North America and we’re focusing purely on our store this year. I mean, I was really kind of all over the place. Last year with COVID was obviously an exception, but we were just doing trade shows, we were doing wholesale, we were selling in stores in Vancouver, we were selling on Amazon, and it just got too hectic, and we weren’t ready for that, so I wanted to really simplify things and focus on our experience, focus on the customer experience. We’re really grateful for anyone who buys our products. We want to make sure we’re just offering great shipping times and offering gifts to people, and I think we got a lot of room to just grow revenues in North America.
And then we’re launching a lot of cool new SKUs, so we have a brand extension coming out, like the Aku Roll, which will be foam rollers, like lacrosse balls, just massage… It’s more of a roll, because my vision for Aku Spike is make it more of a hub for acupressure, so we have kind of our Spike Collection, and then we have kind of like a foam roller, like a foam roll is still considered acupressure therapy, so it’s like me massaging with my thumb, that’s considered acupressure, so I want to just be kind of a hub for acupressure and have a lot of information there. I think that’s a good kind of space for us to own, because it’s niche in the sense that there’s not too many companies trying to do what we’re doing, but it’s also… It’s pretty well known, and the market size is pretty significant, so I think it’s a good kind of area for us to try to dominate.
Kurt Elster: Oh, I like the plan. I like your vision. And I am excited to see where you take Aku. Oh, I have here that you have a coupon code for us. 20% off all products. Use code KURT, K-U-R-T.
Paul de Jersey: 100%.
Kurt Elster: Still valid? Does this coupon still work?
Paul de Jersey: Still valid, buddy. I really appreciate you having me on here, so that’s the least I can do.
Kurt Elster: And if people wanted to learn more about you, where can they go?
Paul de Jersey: I would say check out the site, for sure. We try to update our blog and we try to… We have a pretty good FAQ section there. And then if anyone’s listening to this and they want to reach out to me personally, I’m happy to field any questions they want, so my email is paul@akuspike.com, and I don’t mind. I love connecting with any customer. I’m always… We’re not at the point where we’re too busy to talk, so I would love to talk to anyone who’s interested.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. Oh my gosh, take advantage of that now when people offer that. There is a narrow window. Because everyone thinks like, “Oh yeah, I’m gonna help everybody who reaches out to me.” And it happens to everybody. Eventually, you get to a point where it’s like, “I just can’t help everybody anymore.” So, if you have a question for Mr. de Jersey, do it now!
Paul de Jersey: Yeah.
Kurt Elster: Paul, thank you for doing this. This has been phenomenal, and enlightening, and inspiring, and I am so glad that you hated real estate and started your own business.
Paul de Jersey: Yeah. I really appreciate you having me on, Kurt. I love what you do also. I think you’re adding a lot of value to the eCommerce community, and I’ve personally learned a lot just in the last couple months just reading your blog and listening to a couple of your podcast episodes, so I really appreciate it.
Kurt Elster: Oh my gosh. Thank you.
Paul de Jersey: Yeah.