The Unofficial Shopify Podcast

He Quit Superyachts to Sell Kilns on Shopify

Episode Summary

£3,000 kilns, sold one phone call at a time.

Episode Notes

"This is the largest purchase they make after a car and a house."

Matt Davy spent his twenties fixing engines on 450-foot superyachts, earning six figures tax free. He ran a high-ticket dropshipping store from the engine room, picked pottery because his partner is a potter, then switched to selling his own pottery wheels. Kiln Crafts hit its first £1M in about 900 days. The second million took seven months.

Matt explains why his customers want a phone call, how draft orders became his best-converting Klaviyo flow, and what changed the month he moved his business into Claude Cowork.

LINKS

Kiln Crafts: https://kilncrafts.co.uk
Kiln Crafts on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kiln.crafts
Kiln Crafts on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@kilncrafts

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The Unofficial Shopify Podcast is hosted by Kurt Elster and explores the stories behind successful Shopify stores. Get actionable insights, practical strategies, and proven tactics from entrepreneurs who've built thriving ecommerce businesses.

Episode Transcription

Kurt • 00:00.000
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 wishlists a product, you can trigger price drop or back-in-stock alerts and feed that intent directly into Klaviyo or your CRM. You're not guessing what people want because they've told you. Plus, customers can share wishlists for gifts and your team can view them to offer personalized service online or in-store. And unlike card abandonment, wish list data is permission-based. These are people raising their hands saying, hey, I want this, just not right now. Swym's been around for over a decade. It powers 45,000 stores and installs in about five minutes. You could try it for free today at getswym.com slash kurt. That's getswym.com slash kurt. And today on the Unofficial ShopPi Podcast, I've got a merchant story for you that this one's interesting. We have a gentleman who's successful in the UK. He went from working for absurd salaries on super yachts to selling kilns on Shopify in the UK. All right, that's good enough hook for me. I need to know more. So I'm joined today by Matt Davy from Kiln Crafts. Matt, how you doing?

Matt • 01:38.996
I'm good. I'm good. Lovely to have a chat. Yeah, it's been an interesting journey over the last three years. And yeah, we're a wonderful place now that the store is a really comfortable now, really comfortable revenue point. And along with that, it's now, you know, I have control of my life. It's been a really fun journey.

Kurt • 02:04.564
Yeah, that agency and independence that is in entrepreneurship, when I wasn't making a lot of money, that's what kept me going. I was like, but I have my independence, you know, and life is what you make. Right. And, you know, now I'm successful and I can seek out more. I can maintain that independence, but then also like fulfill, you know, other interests and hobbies. It's enabled me to do a lot. I opened with like, man, you went from super yachts to kilns. Walk me through that journey. I want to know your background and experience and how you went from working on essentially a private cruise ship to selling an unusual product to sell on the internet.

Matt • 02:50.772
I, I've done everything. I was a chef. I did ski seasons in the Alps. I worked on boats. I started working on yachts as a chef, stayed for a while, got an engineering degree, then worked as a, worked into an engineering officer on large super yachts. So we're talking 120, 140 metres, so 450 feet. um and a whole different world i mean it was incredible i got to travel travel everywhere we did antarctica we did galapagos um fixing the engines on board fixing the toilets on board so it was it was a fun life it paid really really well um you're talking 100 plus thousand a year some of the boats i worked on you're also earning tips so you could be making 10 000 a month just from the tips um and tax-free which is a real big one um but you have no control over your life you know you

Kurt • 03:53.214
I was going to say, I'm like, all right, this sounds awesome. How do I sign up? Why did we quit? Like, where'd we go wrong here?

Matt • 03:59.860
I loved it and I really did love it it wasn't that I hated the job it was that I was getting to that point where you start to realize okay am I going to do this for the rest of my life and in which case I need to mentally prepare myself that I'm going to miss out 50% of the time with my partner I'm going to miss out 50% of the time with my kids or do I take that big leap leave this take a real kick in the old salary category but I get to choose when I wake up in the morning I get to choose you know when I work but the other thing that I've the biggest thing that I've loved about about stepping into this world is is that it's that direct feedback loop of when you have a really good month it's all you you know you can you work your ass off for a month and it's it's you know you get the feedback from it with the with work at sea and it's the same with a lot of jobs you can work as hard as you possibly can for that month and you'll get paid the same salaries if you do the bare minimum to not get fired um and that's what i found really hard it

Kurt • 05:06.786
Yeah.

Matt • 05:06.936
was that kind of you know what am i getting returned for this extra effort i put in whereas i know you probably know and a lot of the guys that probably listen to your podcast know that when you own your own business you can really see the feedback when you put in that real solid month if i if i knuckle down if i do all the reach outs if i do all the marketing if i really push myself you tend to have a better month and it's all on you that's what i love about it um it's

Kurt • 05:33.210
There are times where you're like, wow, it's all on me is the worst part about it. And then other times it's the best part about it. But, you know, it comes. what i've realized is just the the simple aphorism life is what you make you know 100 true of entrepreneurship but you also you know i don't want to encourage anybody to be like hey keep banging your head against the wall against this problem you can't fix you know it doesn't sometimes like

Matt • 05:57.620
the downside is that when it goes wrong it's also on you

Kurt • 06:01.170
Right. Yeah. So how do you go? Where's the transition here? How do we end up at Kilms from Super Yachts? Like I get why you left.

Matt • 06:12.470
so i was 29 um hitting that point about 13 was like right yeah is this what i'm going to do um started reading 4-Hour Workweek listening to a lot of podcasts

Kurt • 06:23.142
Or a gateway

Matt • 06:23.792
about

Kurt • 06:23.892
drug.

Matt • 06:24.142
yeah definitely

Kurt • 06:25.092
That's a gateway drug to entrepreneurship for a lot of people.

Matt • 06:29.242
definitely it's you suddenly realize oh maybe this isn't forever maybe there is another option um so I listened to a lot of podcasts and kind of fell into this okay I don't want to take too much risk um started hearing about drop shipping I started a kind of Ali Express drop shipping store um made one sale had to refund it it was awful um then started going down the route of of listening to this um podcast about high ticket drop shipping um it's uh drop

Kurt • 07:01.332
Well, I'm just based off the phrase podcast about high ticket drop shipping. I'm guessing it's Ben Knegendorf.

Matt • 07:07.532
yes 100 percent

Kurt • 07:08.782
Okay. Yeah, he's been on the show a couple times.

Matt • 07:11.252
Ben was brilliant. It was I mean, he's great to listen to. I reckon I probably for that year was the one of the highest listeners of that podcast out of everyone. I think I listened to thousands of hours. and then Jon, they they just they converted me i took the leap i paid for their course and their course was brilliant it set me up i built out a why did the first store i built out failed um but i think i picked the wrong niche and then my partner she's a hobby potter and i thought you know what i think actually that'd be a really good niche to go into um a lot of the websites she was buying off were rubbish you know they were very hard to navigate from For my generation, it was like, God, this makes no sense. Maybe we'll give it a go. um so yeah followed that full course um cannot recommend them enough they were brilliant and the support they did they had were brilliant Ben and Jon um and that led me into running this high-ticket dropshipping store for a year um i ran it uh it did all right i was running this whilst being at sea as well so i was i could be in the engine room i would then have to run up to my cabin take a phone call from a customer do a uh you know make an order there for them then go back to working and yeah

Kurt • 08:29.172
I

Matt • 08:29.222
it was it was

Kurt • 08:29.622
realize that that would have been like stressful and crazy, but also retelling it, how cool does that sound? Like the hustle of that is fantastic.

Matt • 08:39.124
I think when I talk to people starting businesses, I try and tell them like it is really hard work, right? It is, you know, you give up a lot. I gave up, I remember getting up at six in the morning. So I start work at eight. I get up at six in the morning. I go sit in the engine control room, uploading products. This is before AI. This is before I could afford a VA. I was uploading products. I was researching SEO. I was doing everything. And then then I would start work and then I would work for my eight nine hours and then I would do it again for another three hours after work I look back now yeah super cool story at the time I was like what am I doing here I'm making no money is this really working but that's all part of it

Kurt • 09:22.594
So we're still on the yacht and we don't want to do that forever. Entrepreneurship is the escape hatch. drop shipping got our toe in the water but realized like okay we got to move on from that all right we're going to do kilns and kiln accessories or like pottery as a craft store because you a you your your partner is an expert here and you know subject matter expert and through her experience you recognize like man this is ripe for disruption because these sites are bad

Matt • 09:55.700
yeah it

Kurt • 09:56.400
Okay.

Matt • 09:56.850
was it was just noticing that they're and i think this is the key to running any business like noticing there's a gap there there is there is something to be improved on and going right how do i improve it and that's where we jumped that we jumped

Kurt • 10:08.100
Yeah,

Matt • 10:08.300
on

Kurt • 10:08.450
why not me? Why? Like, okay, once I've identified the problem. And I have a theory on the solution that, okay, well, why shouldn't I just build it and see what happens? Well, you know, the sheer amount of hours that go into it is the answer. But if you're willing to put that in, absolutely. So, okay, once you recognize this, her pottery habit is the market signal, the gap is the lousy websites in the UK, you have the experience to build a better store from your dropshipping experience, where do you go from there?

Matt • 10:40.562
So we built, we got the store out, we got traction, it was, we probably, we ran for about 14 months as a high ticket drop shipping store and not making bad money here. You know, I was probably making two, two and a half thousand pounds profit a month. A lot of people would be really happy with that. But going back to the salary that I was on, I needed to be more. I needed this to be something that I could write. I can employ someone, I can leave, I can really take the leap and it maybe not will fully replace my salary, but it'll get pretty close.

Kurt • 11:15.700
Yeah.

Matt • 11:17.000
So then I started looking more into it and I think they'd mentioned it on the podcast and I looked at other routes about white labeling goods and about going. Do you know what the products are already on the market and from selling for 14 months, you then have also had the data of what sells well, you've had the feedback from the customers that you're talking to of what they want, what they don't want, what they like about the products that are already on the market. And so we reached out, I found three or four pottery wheel manufacturers in China. We got samples of their products. We chose pottery wheels because one, it was maybe wasn't what I sold the most of, but it was where the largest search volume is. It's a lower price point to enter the market than kilns because kilns are they start around three, four thousand up to twenty five thousand. Pottery wheels are close to the thousand pound mark.

Kurt • 12:13.078
How much does the pottery wheel weigh?

Matt • 12:16.756
Uh, probably will weigh, uh, ours weigh about 45 kilos. So that's 90, 100 pounds.

Kurt • 12:25.456
100 pounds. A 100 pound

Matt • 12:27.306
Yeah.

Kurt • 12:27.356
item. All right. In e-commerce, I'm always thinking about what is, how hard is this going to be to ship? Someone's like, I got to ship these glass bottles. Like, please don't, do not ship glass. All right, that's just a glass bottle. Like, oh man, I can't ship bottled drinks in cans. They're too heavy. All right, you're at a hundred pounds. Yeah.

Matt • 12:46.882
Yeah.

Kurt • 12:47.232
How

Matt • 12:47.832
And you wait till we get to kilns because then you're pushing like three, four, five hundred pounds.

Kurt • 12:54.182
do you even ship that?

Matt • 12:57.108
is well we so we you got to remember as well the uk is a lot smaller than the us so

Kurt • 13:02.358
Okay.

Matt • 13:02.458
this is what i think when i talk to a lot of us e-commerce owners they're like oh good this is this is just so stressful this isn't going to work financially the uk is one third the size of texas right with 80 million people in it so i

Kurt • 13:18.132
And most of them are concentrated around London, I would think.

Matt • 13:21.532
Yeah, exactly. Like half of that population is in the bottom half of the country.

Kurt • 13:28.032
Much easier.

Matt • 13:29.812
much much easier so we use a combination of a two-person delivery service so they literally will take it from our 3pl they'll take it to our customers and they'll put it inside their house or we use pallet service but all of these you know you're looking at maximum 50 to 60 pounds for that shipping and because you're at this larger high ticket product you can bake that all into the price

Kurt • 13:55.572
We in the US we would call that LTL less than truckload shipping, but yeah, the issue is like aside from the huge uh geography that you have to cover you also have to deal depending on like you know start in destination you have to worry about crossing a mountain range which depending on you know when you get into an item that heavy okay now we're introducing fuel cost surcharges like it's a real headache man give me i'm not used to things being easier outside of the u.s and ecom man tell me one thing that's harder

Matt • 14:27.092
outside of what outside of the u.s um

Kurt • 14:29.992
Yeah. Perhaps an unfair question.

Matt • 14:33.892
i think it's it's harder to sell here the um the american middle class they they love spending money they really do and you guys like you guys have a talent for it my my uh my auntie and uncle they live in texas i i used to work there i've traveled there and my goodness that credit card It's a real thing over there. Whereas over here, people find it harder to part with their money like that. So I'll go back into this later on, but we've leaned real hard on building relationships and customer service and building out proper scripts for our sales team so they help people get through that hurdle of spending this kind of money.

Kurt • 15:16.468
This episode is sponsored by Zipify. Black Friday is the best time of year to run a Shopify store, so make the most of it with Zipify One-Click Upsell. I think it is the best upsell app on Shopify because it upsells across the whole customer journey, before checkout, during checkout, and after. Most merchants set up one post-purchase offer and call it good. Zipify says users who show offers at all three points make three times more upsell revenue, and you don't need to be an expert. One click builds a complete Black Friday funnel for every product in your store, and it goes live right away. So try one click upsell free at zipify.com slash BFCM. And as a bonus through Black Friday, you also get Zipify's entire app stack free too. That zipify.com slash bfcM. Let's get into your phone sales, because I know phone sales are a big part of your success. And that's going to be a tough pill to swallow for a lot of entrepreneurs because especially like I assume you're a millennial of a millennial. It was just a phone phobic bunch. And I don't think it's getting better with successive generations.

Matt • 16:27.412
This is another thing that about. I do warn people when they're looking at what products to sell and what business to go into about working backwards from kind of what kind of lifestyle you want, because I didn't do that. And we've ended up that our core customer base is 55 to 75 year old women. It's just how it is. And

Kurt • 16:49.750
Okay.

Matt • 16:49.800
they love a phone call. They love talking. And so we've gone real hard on making sure we've got a real strong sales team. that are always available on the phone that can talk them through everything and we teach them that you know what if they if you hear a dog barking in the background ask them about the dog's name if they

Kurt • 17:06.216
Smart.

Matt • 17:06.266
talk about what they've been up to that day just go into that and spend five minutes asking them like what their day consisted of and you build this phone call is about building the trust because they're about to part for some of these people this is the largest purchase they make after a car and a house so

Kurt • 17:23.316
What does a kiln cost here?

Matt • 17:26.166
um so our cheapest pottery kiln probably comes in at about three thousand pounds um the probably pushing for some of the big ones i mean we've sold them up to twenty thirty thousand pounds so

Kurt • 17:38.766
So 3,000 pounds,

Matt • 17:40.016
yeah

Kurt • 17:40.166
4,000 U.S. All right. I mean, I.

Matt • 17:43.416
which it was in the uk is a lot of money a lot of money to spend

Kurt • 17:47.508
yeah well i mean four thousand dollars is a non-trivial purchase i think for

Matt • 17:51.358
Yeah,

Kurt • 17:51.458
for anybody

Matt • 17:51.808
definitely.

Kurt • 17:52.058
um but yeah it is it's a lot okay so yeah you really you need to build that trust you got to do it on the phone and you're in a culture that is not as prone to credit cards one of the nice things about credit cards in the u.s it de-risks it for the consumer because you could do a chargeback and they are very heavily loaded toward whatever toward toward the consumer so You know that I think that might be part of this here a little bit but

Matt • 18:17.770
I mean, I've never in

Kurt • 18:18.620
continue with this this brilliant

Matt • 18:20.070
three and a half years, I've never had a chargeback, right? Because most people purchase on a debit card or bank transfer here. So that's another big thing. That's why it's harder to sell. But on the other end, it means that I'm not having to deal with that side of things, which is very lucky.

Kurt • 18:36.916
You have a dedicated phone support person or peoples.

Matt • 18:40.266
Yes, yes. So we have, we currently have a full-time customer service on the phone. We have two sales team members on the phone. And then we're, the customer service is kind of triaging, right? Where is this going to, which person are we talking to? Are we trying to, is it something I can deal with? Is it someone that my sales team is then going to deal with? We also like to push towards setting up studios. So if I set up a studio, I'll sell three, four, ten wheels to a studio in one go. they're obviously higher priority because it also means that our customers are going to use that to learn how to do pottery they have a higher likelihood to to purchase our wheel so then they would go to our studio team member so who's going to nurture them it's going to be a long-term right this might take three four months but the payoff is is much larger And over the time, what we've done is we've learned, right, here are the scripts that we need to follow along with this chat about their day. But here's the things to touch on. And that's really and this has taken us probably a year and a half to really dial down what works. How do we get these people over the line and what doesn't work? How many sales have we lost because of this? Along with that, because, you know. Due to how much AI we now use in the business, we now have our own phone system and CRM built up purely our own, of

Kurt • 20:08.374
And this

Matt • 20:08.824
course,

Kurt • 20:08.874
is by

Matt • 20:09.124
all phone

Kurt • 20:09.474
coded?

Matt • 20:09.524
calls.

Kurt • 20:09.824
It's all custom?

Matt • 20:10.874
Yeah, I coded it. So I was using Freshdesk and I was using, you know, voice over IP phone services. I got all the integrations, put it into our own CRM. for him um but this now records the phone the the phone call transcribes it gets a feeling for it and then at the end of the month i can go right what's working who's doing really well what's what tact do we or what tact do we need to go down um but it analyzes pretty much every phone call we've had over the last 30 days and then tells me right this works really well this doesn't yeah

Kurt • 20:46.020
That's awesome. Give me a little bit more about like... AI usage because I've been I have been cutting edge on AI for you know two years now and it had limitations it had limitations and now You know, our models today, Fable 5, Opus 5.5, Astra and Sol, just phenomenal. I mean, you could just one shot previously difficult tasks and have it get it like 98% right on the first pass. It's just incredible stuff. So where is it? Obviously, you're using it extensively now. Talk me through some of that.

Matt • 21:22.438
I would say when I really. So March time really went hard on getting Cowork integrated into our business or our business integrated in Cowork. I've been using it a lot before that. I've been ChatGPT and Claude and bits here and there. Forex. My partner likes to tell me I've got undiagnosed ADHD, so I want to do this and I want to do this and I want to do this. But when you're a solopreneur.

Kurt • 22:04.342
Oh, no, I think you're on to something. All right, let me take this anecdote. I've been doing I was taking Adderall. I was prescribed amphetamines for five years straight to treat ADHD. I quit taking it. and now that i'm like i do everything with vibe coding with with orchestration layers with like just a very developer driven command line workflow that's like 10 sessions and i'm just jumping between things suddenly The ADHD version of myself without the Adderall

Matt • 22:35.790
It's

Kurt • 22:36.140
is

Matt • 22:36.290
actually the better

Kurt • 22:36.790
is

Matt • 22:37.040
version.

Kurt • 22:37.340
the better version is more successful because that that personality loves to think up ideas and solutions and spin them off and hand them off to the sessions, you know, delegate them like, hey, handle this research, this look this up, see if this is plausible, go fix this, check it like, yeah, just incredible. Whereas I was not as efficient and I certainly was not as happy on the Adderall because I'm like, I just need to lock in on one task and scroll and

Matt • 23:07.024
Yeah.

Kurt • 23:07.124
with vibe coding is not necessary anymore. So suddenly previously this disadvantage is an advantage. Maybe she's on to something.

Matt • 23:15.716
I think you've hit the nail on the head is that I, if you were to look at my Claude Cowork tasks for the last 24 hours, 50 or 60 of them, because I'll go, right, can you do this? And then that product page needs doing. And once that one's running, I'll go, oh, actually, no, I've thought of a new product that I want to start designing. So this needs to go here. And I can just go in and get them all done. And I didn't have to focus on it just one thing myself. And that's been an absolute game changer. Along with that, as now being able to integrate this into our own CRM and along with that, I make all of our team members do the anthropic courses on Claude. So they have to do that. They have to do the first two or three of them. They have to prove they've done it to me. But

Kurt • 23:59.596
That's

Matt • 23:59.696
it also means

Kurt • 24:00.146
smart.

Matt • 24:00.196
that they can then start taking over because I don't want mindless employees. I want

Kurt • 24:06.646
You

Matt • 24:06.796
them to

Kurt • 24:06.996
don't want learn quasi

Matt • 24:07.446
how puppets? to use it. No, I want them to start going, oh, I've built this artifact for you to monitor how this is doing. Our sales team, I want them to write, how do you think we can improve the sales of this product? And they go, well, actually, the people I'm talking to, I've got this data here and I put it in here for you to find. That's what I want, because that's how business grows. There are certain job roles where, yes, I just want them to do things. But as I start to employ more people and I start to have managers, those people I want to be autonomous. I want them to really drive themselves forward. And if they're not fully understanding of the way we use AI in the business, they're going to get left behind.

Kurt • 24:48.100
Yes. And I think at this point, there is no question AI tooling is ubiquitous and expected in the workplace. Like, oh, you can feel however you want about data centers and AI, but if you are doing knowledge work, which if it's white collar work in an office, it almost definitely is, you're going to be using AI.

Matt • 25:07.748
Yeah.

Kurt • 25:07.748
I think you need to master those tools and then when you do you know kind of divorce yourself from the existential questions around it which as a software developer it's like I have watched software development change in two years to the point where professional software engineers developers are like I don't touch code anymore how strange you know what an odd thing to adapt to but now that we have I'm like man I wouldn't go back this is incredible and so it's like i think you got to get on board with the workflow my current frustration is the folks who are not as sophisticated as me can't keep up you know

Matt • 25:42.402
Yeah,

Kurt • 25:42.502
because earlier you said hey i 4X'd my output 100 i think you know for me the i use 3x i think is approximately like for any of our developers 3x productivity just incredible

Matt • 25:53.502
yeah. And what I do think, though, is that it's and this is something we can't forget is keeping the humans wet doing the human the things humans do best.

Kurt • 26:02.314
Human in the loop.

Matt • 26:04.164
Well, human in the loop, yes, but I'm thinking more in terms of like our phone calls and relating to Julia on the phone. AI cannot do that. So I want my team to be using AI to do the boring stuff that takes their time so that they can spend more time connecting with a customer using that empathy. And that's where, do you know what, the humans need to, humans are so good at doing what humans do and AI will never be able to do that. But then just let the AI do the stuff that we, the AI is better at. You know, I just I'm trying to push with my team. I want you to spend more time on connecting with the humans at the end of the phone. And that is what ends up in sales. That is what it works. That's what gets people over the line is feeling like they're being you

Kurt • 26:55.226
They want to be seen.

Matt • 26:56.126
have a they want to be seen. They want to be they want to be understood. And when you can actually talk to them and actually connect with them. Yeah, that's that's when you bake the sale. That's when you at the end of the day when you're running a business, that's when the money comes in.

Kurt • 27:10.572
Okay, so when someone makes the sale and they're doing it via phone order, do you send a draft order and then it's through Shopify?

Matt • 27:21.372
So we

Kurt • 27:21.822
How do we take a phone order, I think is my question.

Matt • 27:24.644
Uh, when I first started, I literally would just go through my, uh, my, uh, website page as if I was ordering it on the website. Um, now we can do it all at the backend of Shopify. We just take all their website or their card details, put it through there. Um, I have a app set up with our draft orders so that whenever a draft order comes in. um it then sends them it's almost it's set up like an abandoned checkout Klaviyo flow um so that they get 10 emails here's your draft order here's something about us here's something about our Trustpilot score here's something about why you need this product um and that obviously depends on the product they're purchasing

Kurt • 28:07.778
That's clever.

Matt • 28:09.156
I tell my customer, our sales team, set as many draft orders as you can. Like if they talk about a product, tell them you'll send it to them because it's so much more personalized than an abandoned checkout.

Kurt • 28:23.356
yeah yeah it's like i call so i call i have a question and i talk to sarah on the phone and sarah's like okay this based on my experience and what other customers order i think this is what you want no pressure i'll send you the the draft invoice or i'll send you the order and you can see it and if you want to purchase it you could purchase it from there so they get it and it's like personalized ah

Matt • 28:43.610
Yeah.

Kurt • 28:44.110

Matt • 28:44.260
How much easier is it to get an email address or someone to get their credit card details?

Kurt • 28:49.110
yes

Matt • 28:49.560
They're much more likely to hand over an email over the phone and you just go, you know, there's no there's no obligation. It's just there. And then they get an email. once every three days for a month going hey do you remember us this is what you know this is what people think of us this is why this product is great for you blah blah blah blah blah um yeah and then the likelihood that that's our best converting flow on Klaviyo um and because they've come in they're essentially an extremely warm lead right that have come in and then you're just doing the automated follow-up and then after say a week week and a half then I'll tip it goes on our our team members tasks for that day again it's linked into the CRM that I built for them to call that person because they called you a week ago you've sent them the draft you just give them a check-in

Kurt • 29:39.574
That's really cool. Okay. don't worry so building a custom crm that hard training people and developing the scripts like that when you look at the whole business top down holistically okay there's you could see all the effort that went into it if i pick apart any individual piece all totally doable this is very much a case of like you just kept you saw the opportunity tried it felt something was there and just keep stacking the bricks at it All right, how many years did it take to get to where you are?

Matt • 30:11.126
So we started this just about three and a quarter, three and a half years ago. So, I mean, to give you some rough numbers, because I know everyone in these podcasts loves numbers.

Kurt • 30:23.676
Please do.

Matt • 30:24.900
We hit our first million pounds January of this year. So that took me about 900 days. We hit our second million last month. So that then took, what, seven months on top of that. It's just, it's exploded. So, yeah, three and a bit years, we're at two million pounds. and just growing and growing and growing. We've done 300 to 400% year on year for the last three years.

Kurt • 30:57.634
Oh, that scale. That's really nice. Okay. This episode's brought to you by Promo Party. Full disclosure, that's my app. We made it. So here's a Black Friday tip. Skip the 20% off. I know you're thinking about just doing 20% off again. Offer a free gift instead. Free gift when customers spend about double whatever your average order value is. So we checked 300,000 holiday orders. One store ran spend 50, get a free gift three years straight. Their usual order? About 50 bucks. Their gift orders? Around 100 every year. Promo Party does exactly this. You set the threshold, pick the gift, and then it drops into the cart automatically. A progress bar shows every shopper how close they are, so they keep adding to increase that cart size. Bigger orders without slashing prices or leaking discount codes. Search Promo Party in the Shopify app store. Install it free. free and have your Black Friday gift running this week. Well, what's the AOV there? Because that's like the magic of a high, the big baskets on a site like this are really powerful when the site starts to scale. What's our AOV looking like?

Matt • 32:09.858
So the issue with us is we're a bit bimodal in the sense of we sell a load of stuff so I sell a load of aprons. you know, pottery accessories for the wheels

Kurt • 32:20.918
Accessories.

Matt • 32:21.118
and yeah,

Kurt • 32:21.768
Yeah,

Matt • 32:22.218

Kurt • 32:22.318
that's

Matt • 32:22.868
I'd like sub 100, right? But if you were to discount that, because that's of actual revenue, that's maybe 10, 20% of revenue. Average order value is around 1500, 1600.

Kurt • 32:39.918
nice to have. So what is the... How do you get people into the top of the sales funnel? I imagine this is a lot of word of mouth.

Matt • 32:49.810
It's been hard. I think this is another thing with this high ticket sales is... it's a much longer purchasing journey right so I could actually put someone at top of the funnel now and they might purchase like we talked someone the other day they're talking about purchasing at Easter right but they're starting the process now so top of funnel has been two different routes that we've been going down one is about building trust and work through word of mouth so you produce a good product key thing here is people won't talk about you if you haven't got a good product then I built out things like I built out a pottery studio directory Again, Claude did all the scraping, did all the building, and then I just want my name to pop up. And then one of the biggest ones, and I cannot stress this enough for any, any business is going real hard on social media. It's just, it's where our customers hang out. They are creatives. They want to show off their goods. My partner, she runs. the social media side and she has just gone hard on it um and it's about again building that kind of trust building that community so that people just have your name you know

Kurt • 34:12.958
At

Matt • 34:13.008
and

Kurt • 34:13.308
the top of mind.

Matt • 34:13.708
then yeah and then slowly we then start building out our meta ads into right now you know about us let's tell you a bit more about us and then we start feeding them slowly down the funnel um and of course then then we start going real hard on the real targeted ads of products what they're looking for blah blah blah but at the top it's just it's it's a real slow process um unless you've you know unless you've got a big amount of money to throw at that top of funnel advertising it's it's a kind of you know it's a snowball effect but it is slow there's

Kurt • 34:50.698
So we really, we use, we're not using meta for cold traffic.

Matt • 34:54.948
uh we we are now and we're starting to spend more money on i know it's a bit rudimentary but like boosting really good reels that we had and just getting them out there and putting a lot of money into just people knowing who we are um We're doing a lot of reaching out to influencers, just giving them stuff, getting that again, getting that name out there. But when it comes to actual meta ads, very little top of funnel stuff because, again, it's such a long posting journey that it's really hard to attribute. I'm more OK with it now because we're in a much better financial situation where I don't mind throwing. a certain amount of money at it and going okay I think this will pay off in the long Yeah. run but I remember you know maybe this time last year when we were still growing and I was every penny that we'd make I'd put into buying more stock and then buying more stock then I wasn't willing to spend money on something that wasn't really attributable

Kurt • 35:51.940
In a business like this, in any econ business, cash conversion cycle, inventory versus what we sell, that's the lifeblood. That is the downside to the very expensive product is also huge inventory costs. Tell me about managing that a little bit.

Matt • 36:10.436
So this is, I would say this is probably the hardest thing. In fact, I'm still dealing with it now. We have recently redesigned our bestseller. So I've been selling wheels done around half a million in the last year, but it was kind of still a semi white labeled goods. And I was like, you know what, I want this to be fully custom. I want it to be, again, it's about building that brand. I want people to look at it and not go, oh, that looks similar to that. They're just a copy. I want it to really stand out. So that's taken a long time to really get the first container of that through. and now we're coming into Q4 and I should have bought more of them and unfortunately it's going to take another two three months to get the next batch I'm going to put my hands up and say I haven't nailed it I'm really struggling with that and it's it's I'm doing a lot of reaching out to ops managers and logistics managers to write to really learn from like because they know more than me i'm a guy that was a yacht you know was a yacht engineer that's now running a company and i'm so aware of my own ignorance in all of these separate categories um i've done very good at learning the ads i'm very good at learning the the management of people but understanding once you get to a certain level right how much do i need to order how much is it going to cost to to warehouse blah blah and especially when you're growing it's such a exponential rate it's really hard to go oh we sold this money this year maybe I'll buy this because I'm just pulling numbers out and going how much can you fit in a 40-foot container and they're going this and you go okay I hope that's that's enough yeah

Kurt • 37:47.508
okay it sounds good yeah

Matt • 37:49.758
that's pretty much what it is

Kurt • 37:52.408
forecasting is so hard especially like you're new so the you know normally in forecasting you're like okay what'd we do last year only here it doesn't inform in the same way when you're early and scaling like this you know like it in

Matt • 38:06.488
Well,

Kurt • 38:06.838
this case

Matt • 38:06.988
great.

Kurt • 38:07.138
you've grown

Matt • 38:07.288
First

Kurt • 38:07.388
short

Matt • 38:07.438
example is, is we're about to come into Black Friday. We're planning for it now. We did something like 70 odd wheels in a week in Black Friday, which was amazing for us, you know, and. I'm like, God, if we do double, I'd be really happy with that. But it's so hard because if you sell out your, you feel like you're missing out on money and you're not appreciating the money that you are making from the double or triple that you've done for the last year.

Kurt • 38:38.224
Yeah, it's such a strange position to be in, but it's good, you know, better than just having the stock sit. So tell me, we're coming to the end of our time together. What's next? Are we going to expand? We're going to scale what we're doing now. Where are we going?

Matt • 38:54.838
I think for me, it's a kind of. two-pronged attack here. We recently brought out a product that was around the £300-£400 mark. That was amazing. So one thing with selling these high-ticket products is your LTV of a customer tends to be the cost of that product. You're not going to sell them four of those over time. You're not going to sell them much other stuff. Once you have a pottery wheel, you don't need another pottery wheel for another 10 years, right? Maybe you'll buy a kiln, but... but you might have one of those already or you know whatever so bringing some of these products at the three four hundred pound mark that i can then sell to existing customers that they have the trust in us that's been a big one for us we're bringing out a range of those um but again it's a long i'm running the business and designing the products and liaising with manufacturers it's it's a lot um

Kurt • 39:45.016
That's a lot.

Matt • 39:45.566
post you won't have this in america post brexit shipping to the eu is just it's hard it's a lot of paperwork so we're currently going through that to be able to ship to the eu we use a 3pl in in the netherlands we'll ship direct there from our manufacturers um but that's the next one um and then the other issue is you use a different so after that i'm currently getting the certification for america America, South America. Again,

Kurt • 40:14.248
cool

Matt • 40:14.398
you

Kurt • 40:14.748
i

Matt • 40:15.048
guys love a credit card. Can't wait to get into that market.

Kurt • 40:18.398
have several that

Matt • 40:19.698
I have zero, genuinely.

Kurt • 40:23.048
see that to an american that's like mind-blowing like you would have to have at least one otherwise how would you function

Matt • 40:28.932
but we're um because america operates on 110 volts and we operate on 240 or 230 volts you then need a whole different product whole different set of certification so yeah my goals over the next year are go to two more markets europe and the u.s and then bring out a kind of range of probably five or six SKUs that range from about £100 up to about £5,000 and that way you can catch all of my customers at different points in their journey and then yeah those are the markets we know our product works we'll just start with one product we'll just copy and paste what we do here we'll copy and paste the ads just translate them we'll try that then for America Same thing, just 3PL, one product that we know works over there and then slowly expand over there.

Kurt • 41:18.080
Are you going to run this all on, are you going to do one online store using markets or multiple online stores using geolocation?

Matt • 41:26.180
We will do multiple online stores doing geolocation. I think

Kurt • 41:32.080
It

Matt • 41:32.280
a big

Kurt • 41:32.530
gives you the most flexibility.

Matt • 41:34.148
yeah and a big thing for brits and americans is like you like to buy from a store that says dot com the british like to buy from a store that's dot co.uk that obviously will come into my shopify but and the eu i can buy them at dot eu i can buy dot dh it's again i'm a strong believer in that consistency and trust and if an american looks at a store and goes oh it's a british store maybe they won't even look to see whether they can sell to america they'll just go i can't buy from there um so that's what we'll do um and i will just have essentially copy and paste the team that i've got here and just get an american team and have a european team um And that's the way we'll work it probably with a profit share. But yeah, I think that's the plan at the moment. A lot of trial and error.

Kurt • 42:25.104
I gotta set a reminder I want to follow up with you in 18 months and see we'll do a check-in we'll see like all right best laid plans of mice and men where did we end up

Matt • 42:34.404
I might be on Adderall at that point. There might be too much going on.

Kurt • 42:38.404
and I'll be like I changed my mind give me those amphetamines But, you know, until then, I'm just going to go. ADHD is currently my superpower for clod sessions. Man, this is,

Matt • 42:51.630
I

Kurt • 42:51.730
give

Matt • 42:51.980
agree.

Kurt • 42:52.130
me one piece of advice, one tip for our listeners before we go.

Matt • 42:59.030
Persistence. I think I ran this store for two years before I quit my job and God, But you just have to keep slogging away and you learn so much. And one of the best tips, piece of advice I've ever heard was from a good friend of mine, Jaden. He said to me, you've got to fall in love with growing. You've got to fall in love with building. And that I think is really key is fall in love with the other. um statistics not revenue um fall in love with more visitors to the store uh more products online more you know more reach um and that that makes you that keeps you going

Kurt • 43:55.444
yeah you have to yeah if you're i see these posts online where it's like i started my store i got one order should i quit and it's like they're on day seven like man you got one order in week

Matt • 44:05.444
Yeah,

Kurt • 44:05.494
one that's

Matt • 44:05.894
yeah.

Kurt • 44:05.944
amazing but they don't have the reference they don't know or you know you got to build the system before it will generate orders so they're not focusing on the other kpis i've never heard anyone phrase it like that that's smart I

Matt • 44:18.356
Yeah,

Kurt • 44:18.656
got to

Matt • 44:18.806
fall

Kurt • 44:18.856
remember that.

Matt • 44:19.056
in love with building. I think it's the big one is you have to, if you focus too much on that revenue metric or that order number or, you know, the amount of orders you get, you'll just kick yourself every night.

Kurt • 44:32.806
Journey,

Matt • 44:33.006
But now.

Kurt • 44:33.256
not the destination.

Matt • 44:34.708
Yeah. Now, the revenue is wonderful, but I am still in love with building the capacity of my business. I still love growing my business. I still love building it. And it's

Kurt • 44:45.908
It's good advice.

Matt • 44:46.608
I'm

Kurt • 44:46.708
It's a good

Matt • 44:47.008
yeah.

Kurt • 44:47.058
place to be.

Matt • 44:47.908
And now just the revenue is a bonus.

Kurt • 44:50.708
So where can we go to learn more about you, my friend?

Matt • 44:55.808
You can come and check out our Instagram page. Me, I just love running a store, so I don't really have much about myself. And you can go on our website, kilncrafts.co.uk. But yeah, I'm quite happy for people to reach out and ask me some questions if they want to. It's matt@kilncrafts.co.uk. But yeah, come give me a shout, come ask about it and I'd love to help other people grow.

Kurt • 45:21.840
Amazing. Matt Davy, Kiln Crafts. Thank you so much.

Matt • 45:26.100
Thank you, Kath.