...and she did it in just six months.
In this episode, we talk to an experienced Facebook marketer Mojca Zove who started her first real online store in 2020, and then bootstrapped it to 100k in 6 months. The number of things she learned along the way is priceless.
Her store, Your Soul Time, sells crystals and natural incense. Almost a year later their house is packed with inventory and they’re opening their first brick & mortar store and looking to scale beyond the local market.
We learn:
The Unofficial Shopify Podcast
10/12/2021
Kurt Elster: Today on The Unofficial Shopify Podcast we’ve got a recurring guest who has now been on both sides of the equation. We are joined by Mojca Zove, who has both been a Facebook ads expert for some time and is now a new online merchant, having scaled her store from zero to $100K in six months, and now looking at opening her first brick-and-mortar store. So, I am thrilled to hear about her journey as a merchant through the eyes of someone who is experienced as a marketer for many years, as a Facebook ads expert.
I’m your host, Kurt Elster, AKA:
Ezra Firestone Sound Board Clip: Tech Nasty!
Kurt Elster: And this is The Unofficial Shopify Podcast. Mojca, thank you for joining us.
Mojca Zove: Thank you so much for having me.
Kurt Elster: So, tell me, when did you start this online store?
Mojca Zove: It was end of 2020. I’m not sure if I’m remembering that correctly, but I think we made the first sale on eighth of December 2020.
Kurt Elster: Well, actually, I forgot to tell the name of the store, what you sell. What is this store?
Mojca Zove: Yeah, so it’s called Your Soul Time and currently we sell crystals and natural incense, and we’re soon expanding to candles, as well, and some other products for like… I don’t know. Relaxation and taking time for yourself. Yeah.
Kurt Elster: Why did you pick that? Because you, viewing it as a Facebook ads person, most people have… When they start their store, they are new to branding, marketing, and eCommerce. They’re like they have a pain or problem in their own life. That tends to be the entrepreneurial journey here. At least in the context of like the hundred-something interviews I’ve done. What was your impetus? What made you start this?
Mojca Zove: Great question. So, I am actually… Before even starting this store, I was a regular user of natural incense and crystals. I meditate a lot, so I use that as some sort of a tool to… I don’t know, just kind of relax myself. The problem was that I couldn’t find really good sellers of natural incense here in Slovenia, which is where I started my online store, so I decided, “You know what? Since I’m already buying this stuff from abroad, what if I just buy in bulk and I save on shipping costs and I then sell this to my friends?” Because all of my friends were using this, as well.
So, I started, I just kind of pitched the idea to a friend. I was like, “Hey, I’m thinking of starting this store and we would sell this natural incense which we already use.” And they were like, “This is a great idea because I won’t pay for shipping anymore.” Not like $15 or $20 for shipping, so we were all excited. And that’s essentially what prompted me to swiftly open the online store.
Kurt Elster: Okay. So, you did have this experience and you did have a problem in your own life in that you were in Slovenia, and so anything… any of these products you were trying to purchase had to come cross border.
Mojca Zove: Yep. That’s true. Yep.
Kurt Elster: Okay. And then you had friends who you thought had similar interests, where you’re like, “All right, I’ve got a fallback if I just buy a bulk quantity of product. I know I can probably get rid of it.”
Mojca Zove: Correct. And I just… The seller or the merchant that we were all buying from, me and my friends, we bought from the same merchant, and I just… Honestly, I didn’t know how to run an online business or like an online store, so I essentially just went to him and said, “Hey, if I buy instead of like one or two, if I buy like 50, can you give me a discount?” I didn’t know about like wholesalers or anything.
Kurt Elster: Oh, really?
Mojca Zove: Yeah. Like no idea. So, I just told him like, “If I buy in bulk, can you give me a discount?” He was like, “Yeah, sure.” So, I did exactly that, and I think my first order with him was for like 200 euros, so a very small order.
Kurt Elster: So, not a lot when we’re investing in like, “Okay, this is our first product order.”
Mojca Zove: Correct.
Kurt Elster: But you’re not drop shipping, because you’re acquiring the product and then you’re essentially selling it private label. It seems strange to think about that in regard to crystals, but that would be the model, right?
Mojca Zove: Correct. Yeah. Yeah. That’s true.
Kurt Elster: Okay. And when you launched the store, did you set it up yourself? Did you build the theme yourself?
Mojca Zove: No. I used a free Shopify theme because I essentially said, “You know what? This is an experiment and if I can start selling with a free theme, then I can eventually buy a theme for myself that kind of fits or have someone make it.” But I wanted to start with a free theme in order to just, yeah, test this idea and see how it goes without investing too much into it.
Kurt Elster: And so, what was the initial goal? Was it like, okay, can I just move this product?
Mojca Zove: Yeah. Yeah. That was, and I wanted to do this organically, or with a bit of help from Facebook ads, but I didn’t want to rely on Facebook ads as my kind of main marketing channel. And I wanted to see how far I can push it organically, if this is something that people would buy regularly, so yeah, that’s how I essentially started.
Kurt Elster: And how did you get those first customers? That’s always the hardest part.
Mojca Zove: It is.
Kurt Elster: Is going from zero to 10 orders.
Mojca Zove: Yeah, so I have let’s say a decent Instagram following, so I think I have, or at point I had, like 1,500 people following me. But to be fair, most of them are not my target audience. However, I still use that channel to… First of all, I created a new Instagram profile, and then I used my personal one to just publish one Instagram story saying, “Hey, I’m launching this new thing. Come and check it out.” So, I got a couple of people following me from there, and then I started just… Before even launching the store, I started publishing some content, like inspirational quotes, which goes really well with what we’re selling. I started posting sneak peeks of what we’re selling or of what we’re going to sell, and just trying to create some sort of a relationship with the end customer.
And that’s how I slowly built my following I think to a couple of hundred before we launched the store. And then when we launched it, when it was essentially opened, I just posted an Instagram story and it all got started from there. I have a very good friend, which… She was also ordering a lot of incense from the same seller that I previously did, so when we went live, she has 10,000 followers, so she just posted like one short… or I think that was even like days after we launched. Yeah, so that did help us, but it was I think after a couple of days after we launched. But those first few sales actually came from our Instagram page or Instagram profile, where we built our following way before we actually opened up the store.
So, we were trying to build momentum and… Yeah. Just get people hyped up.
Kurt Elster: And so, really the initial sales came from working with a micro influencer.
Mojca Zove: Yeah. That’s true.
Kurt Elster: So, somebody with a following of 10,000, but they… It was your… Their following was your target market?
Mojca Zove: Yes, it was. It definitely was.
Kurt Elster: Because you had a following but it’s people interested largely-
Mojca Zove: In cars.
Kurt Elster: My guess is in Facebook ads or-
Mojca Zove: Not even Facebook ads.
Kurt Elster: … your phenomenal car collection.
Mojca Zove: Not even Facebook ads. It’s just guys following for cars. So, not really the target audience. I mean, they are interested in crystals and incense. Some of them are. But not like… They’re primarily women. It’s a primarily women-based target audience.
Kurt Elster: Okay, so you had an audience, but really it didn’t help you at all.
Mojca Zove: No.
Kurt Elster: Okay.
Mojca Zove: I had a pretty… I think it was a pretty good… I mean, by the size of it, 1,500 people, it’s good. But yeah, that wasn’t… Yeah.
Kurt Elster: Okay, so the answer really was like number one, friends, my network, who do I know, and then you have a micro influencer, which micro influencers are great when they have an engaged audience, because they come across as more authentic. That’s been my experience, is like often you would be better off with… I would say nine times out of 10, you’re gonna be better off with five people with 10,000 followings than a single 100,000 following.
Mojca Zove: Yeah. For sure. And I think the audience, the big difference between this really working and not working is reaching out to influencers or micro influencers that have an engaged following base. So, if people are not engaged with their content, nothing’s going to happen, because we do organically now attract a lot of micro influencers with 10 to 60,000 followers, however, they organically post. We don’t pay them anything. But they organically share our… like our Instagram handle and our product.
I can see the pattern if they don’t have a really engaged audience. We don’t barely get even a sale from the sharing a story about our products. Versus if there is like a… I don’t know. A person that has 5,000 or even less people following them, but they do have an engaged audience, we tend to get a lot of sales from that.
Kurt Elster: Okay. Interesting. And so, do you… This is not English-first. It’s Slovenian. Your website.
Mojca Zove: It’s Slovenian.
Kurt Elster: I don’t mean to alarm you. Your website is not in English.
Mojca Zove: Oh, I know. Thank you. I did know that. Yeah.
Kurt Elster: Oh, all right.
Mojca Zove: Yeah. It’s all in Slovenian right now. That is going to change, but yeah, right now we’re only catering to our essentially local market. With some exceptions, because we do get a sale here and there from Croatia, or Poland even, because people use Google translate, but yeah, it’s mainly like 99% is Slovenian market.
Kurt Elster: So, you will ship internationally.
Mojca Zove: True. Yes.
Kurt Elster: Okay, so the website is in one language, one currency, but if I want to go through the effort of running Google translate, I could get this to ship to my country.
Mojca Zove: Yep. Because Shopify makes it very easy to set up. So-
Kurt Elster: Oh, yeah. Certainly.
Mojca Zove: Yeah. We already have a contract, and we are able to sell internationally. We have special prices. But I’m just not really advertising that at this very moment.
Kurt Elster: Okay, so it is a avenue to scale that you have, it’s like you’ve got it in your back pocket, you could set it up, and you’re holding out on it for the time being.
Mojca Zove: Yeah.
Kurt Elster: Do you think that was easier or harder starting in Slovenia versus if you were doing this in the U.S. or Canada? Like a very Facebook-first country.
Mojca Zove: Typically, I would say going in the other direction, so going, starting in English language, catering to international markets is easier. But I’m not sure that’s the case at this point. I’m really confused because I… If you were to ask me this question three months ago, I would say that it was easier to start in Slovenian, because I could build my audience. We now have passed 4,000 followers on Instagram that we mostly got organically, so we have a really good customer base, and I think three months ago I would ask, definitely easier starting in Slovenia.
But now, I was observing some sellers from the Netherlands, actually, and I’m not that sure anymore, because someone from the Netherlands, it’s actually a friend of mine. I befriended her now that I’ve launched my online store because some of the sellers are really connected. So, after observing her, she launched her online store in February and has a much larger following base on Instagram. I think she just passed 10K because she’s doing everything in English.
However, I don’t know her internal data. I don’t know how much she’s selling. But I’m really confused. I’m not yet sure. I think maybe it was easier starting in Slovenia. But yeah. Because it was like there was… You could feel that there was something missing. There was a fit in the market. People were searching for this, they just couldn’t find a seller that they would trust, so yeah. Let’s say that it was easier. That’s a long answer to this question.
Kurt Elster: Well, because it’s speculation. We really don’t know.
Mojca Zove: Yeah.
Kurt Elster: So, when you started, how many products were there? Two?
Mojca Zove: Five.
Kurt Elster: Five. And when I look at the site now, it seems like there’s quite a few more.
Mojca Zove: I think it’s at least 200. I’d have to check. Yeah.
Kurt Elster: Are there just pallets in your garage, just like crystals in boxes around Porsches?
Mojca Zove: Honestly, my whole house has become a warehouse, because I have crystals, and we have quite a large house, and I have crystals in the… There are boxes in the hallways. So, it’s a lot.
Kurt Elster: You know, we’re doing this on video, so I could see the background, and it looks like a big, open, clean room with a lot of Post It notes.
Mojca Zove: I cleaned it. There were boxes right behind me a couple of days ago and when I was recording an interview, I was like, “Oh, I have to clean this.” So, I have boxes right there.
Kurt Elster: I was gonna say. Yeah, if we like panned out, moved the camera, I’m guessing it’s just like a hoarder’s level series of boxes occurring here.
Mojca Zove: Yeah. It looks really clean here but not so clean on the other side.
Kurt Elster: That’s why you always… You crop the photo, the frame tight, and then people don’t know that you’re a trash hoarder.
Mojca Zove: Yeah. Exactly. Or I blur the background when I have a Zoom meeting.
Kurt Elster: There you go. Okay, so we launched the store. We get our initial traction. We add more products. We’re scaling. We’ve got our house now filling up with inventory. At what point do you know, “All right, I gotta move this to a warehouse or a 3PL.”
Mojca Zove: I thought that that click is going to happen sooner, but it didn’t until we were making, I think 20K a month in revenue. That’s when I was like, “Okay, so this is really something that sticks, and this business is like… I have kind of verified that it’s going to run quite smoothly, and this is something that people are looking for, something that people are buying, let’s look for a warehouse.” But it wasn’t until I was just… It wasn’t until my house was flooding with crystals and I actually stopped and said, “Okay, things are getting out of control. We need to find something to store everything in and possibly do something else.”
Kurt Elster: I have met your husband before, Jure. What does he think about this?
Mojca Zove: That’s a very interesting story. So, he was super doubtful at first, and I… He was actually I think changing tires on our Porsche when I was… It took me like one or two days to launch a Shopify store. And he was working on the car outside and he came inside, and he was like, “What are you doing?” And I didn’t really… I just told him, “We’re launching an online store selling-“
Kurt Elster: Oh, you were already building it and he didn’t know?
Mojca Zove: Yeah. And he was like, “Cool. Okay.” And he was super doubtful and then we said, “Okay, if we make 1K revenue in one month, then this is something that we’re going to start working on.” And he was doubtful that we’re going to do that, and I think we made 5K in the first month, and then he told me, “Yeah, maybe this was luck, so let’s see.” Because it was the holidays. It was the holidays, and he was like, “Okay, maybe it was like people buying presents and then they’re not going to buy anymore.”
So, then we have our next month, which I think we ended with 10K in revenue, and he still had some doubts, but then I think by month three he was like, “Okay, this is a real thing.” And he’s now really helping with everything because I couldn’t do it all alone. He’s really good at like managing things and I’m more of the creative type of person, so we fit together very nice and… Yeah, like now he’s super into it. He loves it. And our followers, I frequently show him on our Instagram stories, and they love him. They constantly ask like, “How is he doing? Can he answer one of my questions?”
So, yeah, it’s super fun.
Kurt Elster: I love that. And I love entrepreneurial businesses that are run by couples just because I think it… When you can agree, when it works out and you’ve got the honest and open communication that’ll make it work, then really it becomes like a really… a fun, powerful, great bonding experience. I’m not saying like this always works out fantastically, but when it does, it is beautiful and fun to watch.
Mojca Zove: Yeah. We’ve been together for 10 years now, so I think we work together very well considering that we’ve lasted for so long, and he loves to tell the story about Your Soul Time that I must mention, but he is very… Like I said, he’s good at administrative work. He’s good at managing things. And when I actually opened and launched an online store, I didn’t even have boxes, or envelopes to send our items in, so he was actually the one to ask me, “Look, you did all that work, but what are you going to send these products in? You need something.” I was like, “Oh, you’re right, actually.”
Kurt Elster: Oh, it hadn’t even crossed your mind?
Mojca Zove: No, no.
Kurt Elster: Mojca!
Mojca Zove: I know. I’m coming from a completely different industry. And like I later started thinking about, “Oh, actually you’re right.” So, he was the one to take care of everything, and order the boxes, and the envelopes, and he’s really good at that stuff, so I just leave it to him.
Kurt Elster: Okay, but think about this. You were a Facebook ads expert, so in theory, your job was to help people sell more stuff, more often, to more people, right?
Mojca Zove: Yeah.
Kurt Elster: And so, the end result of your work when you succeeded was people picking and packing boxes. And now you are in that position. It didn’t even occur to you.
Mojca Zove: I know. I know. I feel so bad about this.
Kurt Elster: All right, so being… having all this Facebook ads experience, two things strike me. A, when this business started, you really didn’t… It sounds like the success was not Facebook ads related. It does not seem like you relied on that. At least certainly not primarily.
Mojca Zove: Yeah.
Kurt Elster: That, I think, is fascinating, that you’re like, “I’m a Facebook ads person. By the way, we’re gonna bootstrap this.”
Mojca Zove: Yeah.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. All right, well, let’s start there. Speak to that.
Mojca Zove: Yeah, so I knew Facebook ads were always there, but I wanted to test this idea. Not without it, because we did invest a little bit in Facebook ads, but we didn’t invest a lot. I think it was like… I don’t know. 5 euros a day or something. Or maybe even less. But I wanted to see how well it does organically, because that, to me, was the proof that this business is going to work. And I knew, okay, so if we can’t achieve that organically, we can always test it with Facebook ads and see if we can push it further, but honestly, the organic part worked really well, so we added then… We added Facebook ads. So, we’re now, I don’t know how much we’re even investing because I stopped looking at it, but we are now using Facebook ads more regularly. Our campaigns run… They’re not evergreen campaigns, because we do change the creative and change the campaigns, but they are constantly running.
But it wasn’t… I wanted to just validate the idea without Facebook ads. That was my internal goal, so to say.
Kurt Elster: Okay. Yeah, because from day one, you really said, “I don’t know if this’ll work, and I don’t know if anyone will buy it. And I have not even gotten to the part where I think about how I’m gonna send stuff.”
Mojca Zove: That’s true. I couldn’t even send the packages out. If I were to start with Facebook ads and get hundreds of orders on day one, I couldn’t even send the parcels out. So, thank God.
Kurt Elster: I refer to this as intentional growth, like you purposefully go, take it slow, so that it’s more manageable, it’s less scary, you can react faster, and things don’t blow up in your face. Where it’s like, “Oh, now I have 10,000 orders and no boxes and no inventory.”
Mojca Zove: Yeah. Yeah. And that’s-
Kurt Elster: That’s just such a bad place to be in.
Mojca Zove: Exactly.
Kurt Elster: You could say it’s a good problem to have, but when you’re in it, it doesn’t feel so good.
Mojca Zove: And that’s essentially why we haven’t yet scaled to other markets. Like Germany, for example, it’s a really strong market. I did a little bit of analysis with the help of my friend and it’s looking very promising, but that’s also one reason why we haven’t yet scaled there, because I don’t want to be in that position to sell out of everything and then just be on the standstill for the next couple of weeks.
Kurt Elster: Well, you know, we can’t bring up Facebook ads without talking about the terrifying specter of iOS 14.5.
Mojca Zove: I know, I know. Yeah.
Kurt Elster: Tell me about it. Because you probably know more than most people. What’s the issue? Is it as terrifying as we all think? And are there workarounds?
Mojca Zove: So, it is terrifying for advertisers. I think the Facebook users who don’t do advertising don’t feel that aspect. However, advertisers definitely do. So, with iOS 14, what Apple actually started is this whole privacy thing, which I kind of support, but you now have to… When you open your Facebook app with iOS 14, you have to opt-in if you want to be tracked, because you’re automatically opted out. And a lot of people actually decide, “Hey, I don’t want to be tracked by Facebook,” which means that we cannot, or the data that we get from our Facebook advertising efforts is scarce to what we typically got. So, all of our optimizations that we now do, they’re just flawed because the amount of information is incomparable to what we used to get. And it did actually impact Your Soul Time, as well. However, I do… With our growth, I’m not that… I’m not thinking about that a lot because we do mostly… We do Facebook ads for brand awareness and at the end of the month, we essentially dry a line and see, “Okay, this is how much we’ve made in revenue. This is how much we’ve spent for Facebook ads. We don’t really know how much purchases we got from Facebook because that data is not available. However, this looks good. We’re still making a profit and let’s continue doing that the next month maybe with a little bit more investing more in Facebook ads.”
But yeah, this is how Facebook advertising world looks like right now.
Kurt Elster: So, it sounds like the big fundamental change really was changing which KPI you use to measure success. And so, you’re saying like, “All right, ROAS, return on ad spend, Facebook can’t get the attribution data, so it’s no longer… It’s a less useful metric.”
Mojca Zove: It definitely is.
Kurt Elster: And you described, all right, at the end of the month we look at, we compare marketing spend versus revenue.
Mojca Zove: Yeah.
Kurt Elster: I’ve heard that called MER, media efficiency ratio, right?
Mojca Zove: Yeah.
Kurt Elster: Yeah, so total revenue divided by total paid media spend, and yes, I Googled it to make sure I didn’t screw it up.
So, it sounds like that was what you did. You switched to MER?
Mojca Zove: Yep, that’s essentially what we did, because we just can’t measure anything anymore, and if it looks… and I still ask people, so from time to time I ask because I engage a lot with our customers. I get around 100 messages on Instagram a day.
Kurt Elster: Whoa.
Mojca Zove: Yeah. I do. I engage a lot with them, and I frequently ask them like, “Where did you hear about us?” And they still say Facebook ads. So, I saw you were on Facebook ads and that’s how I found you. So, when people are still saying that and we’re still making a profit, that works for me at this point.
Kurt Elster: Well, you said wow, getting 100 messages a day.
Mojca Zove: Yeah.
Kurt Elster: What’s the next thing? Well, have you outsourced anything yet?
Mojca Zove: No.
Kurt Elster: What’s the next? Are you thinking about it? What’s the next thing you would outsource?
Mojca Zove: Oh, yeah. So, while I love packing parcels, because it’s a whole process, I love doing that.
Kurt Elster: Do you?
Mojca Zove: I really do. I do enjoy it. Because you’re… What I’m actually thinking of when I’m packing the parcels is the reactions that we get when people unpack them. So, I get 100 messages a day from people saying, “Hey, you just made my whole week with this package. I unpacked it. I feel so relaxed. I’m super grateful. Thank you. I am so grateful that I discovered you.” And that’s what I’m constantly thinking when I’m packing these parcels.
However, we could scale so much more if I, instead of those few hours per day me packing parcels, if I would do something else scaling would be much easier. I would be much more relaxed. So, I think the number one thing that I want to outsource right now is definitely packing. And we haven’t been able to do this because we’re running everything from our home, so I don’t want to have a stranger in our home packing parcels, and that’s why we wanted to first rent a space where we could actually run this business from.
Kurt Elster: Okay. And is that where the brick-and-mortar store comes in?
Mojca Zove: Yes.
Kurt Elster: I’ve never opened a brick-and-mortar store. I have rented a few event spaces. I found it very stressful.
Mojca Zove: I’ve never done that, as well. And I already find it stressful. So, actually, what we did in July was what made me think about doing this and opening a brick-and-mortar store. So, crystals and incense, it’s a very interesting market because a lot of people… So, especially crystals, these are all unique items, so there aren’t two crystals, there aren’t two same crystals. So, they’re all in different shapes, they’re all… You have to see it if you want to actually buy it and some sort of attracted to it.
And a lot of people, our target market says, our audience, they say, “I need to be able to connect with the crystal in order to actually buy it.” And I understand that. I understood it from the very beginning, but I didn’t know how to actually approach this. We tried several things with our online store, but it was like back then, it was just too early to actually launch a brick-and-mortar store. And then in July we decided, I think it was July, we decided to do an experiment and to actually have a popup event or a popup store and to see how well it would actually do. So, we rented a space for half a day and essentially said, “Hey, we have this popup event. Feel free to come. We’re going to have some drinks and food and you’re also going to be able to see all the crystals in person, and incense, and just connect with them or whatever.”
So, that was really a success, so I didn’t expect it to go so well. Half an hour before we actually opened, there was a line in front of the door and people were knocking on the door saying, “Hey, can I come in?” I was like, “You’re 30 minutes early.” And we were still sticking prices on the products, so it was all very chaotic, but also very rewarding because I did… It’s just so different, I think, that this type of industry or these types of items… You really need to see them in person. People need to see them in person and it’s a community that likes to actually hang out and meet other people.
And the popup shop was actually really… It was a success. People were messaging me for days saying, “Oh my God, can you do this again? Can you come to the other part of the country and do this?” So, that’s when we decided, okay, let’s try and find a space. It took us a couple of months because the real estate market right now isn’t really… Yeah, it’s just expensive. And there aren’t a lot of warehouses or spaces that would look good that would fit what I’m trying to achieve or the general feel that I would like to create in the store. So, after a couple of months, I actually got in touch with a guy that owns actually two spaces, and we rented both of them. One is going to be our warehouse and the other one is going to be not an online store, a brick-and-mortar store and an event space.
So, that’s kind of in a nutshell.
Kurt Elster: So, now you really have to do some outsourcing in that you are about to hire staff.
Mojca Zove: Yeah. Yeah.
Kurt Elster: Does that scare you?
Mojca Zove: Yes. Very much. And I, when I was talking to my lawyer the other day, and she was just running me through different scenarios, and I was like, “Oh. I feel like I’m so not ready for this.” But I need to do it, so yes, I’m freaking out, but I think also in a good way, because I do feel that we’re making a lot of progress and… Yeah.
Kurt Elster: Yeah, at the same… It’s scary because you’re doing it for the first time.
Mojca Zove: That’s true.
Kurt Elster: But I find in those moments, like if you just… I’m sitting in a mall. If I just look around, I am surrounded by a thousand people who are employed by someone else. And like the world keeps moving, nothing bad happens on a regular occurrence.
Mojca Zove: Exactly. People have been doing this for years, so I’m going to push through, as well.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. Yes. And so, in those moments, that’s what you have to remind yourself of is like, “Look, I’m by far not the first person to ever have to do this, so really how bad could it be?”
Mojca Zove: Yeah.
Kurt Elster: All right. Hindsight being 20-20, looking back on it, what surprised you going into direct-to-consumer retail?
Mojca Zove: So, what I was super scared about when I started this was COVID, essentially. I didn’t know what… like the purchasing habits that people have right now. Is that going to affect me? Am I different in any way? And what surprised me in a positive way was… Because I wasn’t thinking about it from that perspective, but a lot of people have actually approached me and told me, “What you do and what you sell fits perfectly into the current situation where everyone is super stressed out and with COVID…” We were in a very extreme lockdown in Slovenia for a couple of months. We couldn’t go anywhere, so people were stressed out, and they found really this unique and feel-good experience when they ordered from our store, because they got incense and they could light it up, and everything was smelling good, and they could relax.
So, what surprised me in a positive way was how well, and unintentionally, we actually fit into the general atmosphere of COVID. And how that was actually very needed.
Kurt Elster: But yeah, early on, like yeah, we had no idea. No idea what… What are these changes gonna be? And then of them, what are going to be lasting changes? And so, you had a lot more people from ordering at home, different categories, and it’s like, “Well, what’s gonna carry forward? What’s gonna continue?” And in your case, ultimately what people are buying from you, the direct end benefit is peace of mind. Like you said, “Hey, I sell incense and I sell these crystals,” but it’s part of a larger process.
Mojca Zove: It is.
Kurt Elster: It’s part of meditating. It’s part of self-care. It’s part of a mental well-being. Like I go home, and I do… If I’m really stressed out, I do Yoga with Adriene on YouTube. I love her.
Mojca Zove: Oh, I love her.
Kurt Elster: Very similar thing. Yeah, who doesn’t love Adriene? She’s the best. Adriene talked me through a migraine over the weekend. Thank you, Adriene.
Mojca Zove: There you go, and that’s like… This self-care aspect is what I started thinking of after I launched the online store, and it brought people together in a way that we decided, “Hey, we need a space where we could bring all of these people together.” A space that won’t be just a brick-and-mortar store but would also be an event space where we would have guided meditations, guided yoga events, pretty much everything that you could think of self-care related, or like just a space where people could come and hang out and meet other like-minded people who like to take care of themselves and their mental well-being, et cetera.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. Being able to… I think part of the magic of this brand is that it sounds really like there is a community behind this and a community growing with the brand.
Mojca Zove: Yeah.
Kurt Elster: And I think that’s the magic of what you’ve tapped into. And then when you combine that with, “All right, we can have an event space and we can have experiences,” okay, now we’re really adding value to this thing. And then the other part, as just like pure business wise, incense is a consumable good. Ah, so I have to keep buying.
Mojca Zove: I know. Yeah. So, I never actually thought of that, and then someone… I think I was recording a podcast with someone, and they told me, “That is so genius selling incense,” and I didn’t know what he was talking about. He was like, “You literally burn it and then you have to buy again.” And I was like, “Oh, that’s actually true.”
Kurt Elster: You do. Well, yeah, in my head I went, “Consumable good.” But you’re right, you are straight up buying it to burn it.
Mojca Zove: No, you actually burn it. You burn the product. Yeah.
Kurt Elster: Are you mad at it? Geez.
Mojca Zove: No, I just like it.
Kurt Elster: One thing I want to go back to. You said people are thrilled when they receive their package, and they open it, and you enjoy packing them. Surely, this packaging is not just like we dropped a crystal in a padded mailer and sent it.
Mojca Zove: Yep. That’s true. We did that at the beginning, though. We did it at the beginning.
Kurt Elster: Oh, really?
Mojca Zove: Because like I had no idea how to run things, so the easiest thing to buy was a padded envelope. And then we moved into boxes, so yeah.
Kurt Elster: So, what’s… Is there like a presentation to it? What’s fancy about it?
Mojca Zove: Oh, for sure. So, the first thing we do is because we sell natural incense, we sell crystals, which are all natural, we tend to be very ecological with our packaging, so we use recycled boxes, recycled materials, and actually these cotton bags that we put our crystals in, so it’s very sustainable. It’s very eco-friendly. And we wrap it up real nice, so we have this paper which we wrap all of our products in, and along with our product, we have these notes that we also put into every package, which is first of all is a thank you note for supporting us, and it’s kind of a reminder. That thank you note is also a reminder to them to take care of themselves for their mental well-being, so it actually puts them in a really good mood when they open the package.
And then we have a couple of different ones that we send with every product. So, for example, if you buy this type of crystal, you get an explanation what it is, what it does, what are the metaphysical properties. For example, when you buy an incense, we tell you what this is, what you can use it for, either it’s to increase your energy levels or to actually relax you at the end of the day. So, I think that really puts people in a good mood. It explains to them what this… There’s a story behind it and that’s something that they really appreciate.
And it’s packaged up real nice, so I think that’s something, because we want to create an experience, a relaxing experience that starts when you get the package.
Kurt Elster: I love it, because you’re adding so much value. If you picture it as, “All right, you got a rock in a padded mailer,” versus I get a box, I open it, it’s in the cotton bag. I picture like the drawstring bag, right?
Mojca Zove: The drawstring bag. Yeah.
Kurt Elster: Yeah, those little drawstring bags are always… They’re inexpensive. They’re cute. People save them and reuse them for stuff. And then in there, you’ve got an explanation, and you have a story, and you really set the stage for this is how to use it, this is the value in doing this, and here’s why we’re doing it. Obviously, no secret, I’m really into Disney Parks, having been like 10 times in the several years. And the one thing that is universal to everything they do is it really doesn’t matter how small or insignificant you think something may be, someone figured out a way to write a story about it. Not all of them work, but every single thing has a story to it, and that story speaks to a theme.
And it sets the tone for everything, and I think it really… It’s just such an easy and overlooked way to increase perceived value and improve the experience.
Mojca Zove: Yeah. It’s all about the experience and those stories really make a difference. And it’s also what sets us apart from other people selling essentially the same stuff in Slovenia, because there are a lot of them right now, so yeah, I think it just makes a difference.
Kurt Elster: And in your store, as a recent merchant, are there any apps you can’t live without? Do you have like a favorite app? Or an app you wish existed?
Mojca Zove: I have an app that I… Oh, okay. An app that I can’t live without is Stamped.io, which is the-
Kurt Elster: Reviews.
Mojca Zove: Yeah, the reviews. We have I don’t know how many, actually. The last time I checked, we had like 500-plus reviews on our store, which is a lot for a very new store. And I can’t live without this app anymore because I think it’s just… It proves our authenticity, our authority, people love reading other people’s reviews. Every review or most of them, they’re like a story. People tell what they’re doing with the product, this has been a gift for my sister, she was super excited and now she’s using it every day, so it’s like a whole thing. That’s one app that I can’t live without.
The other one that I can’t live without and that I absolutely hate is… I think it’s called like a bundles app, because we do have several bundles, bundles of products, and the bundle app takes our stock into account when making those bundles, but I just hate it. I hate that bundle app because it’s so buggy, and slow, but I didn’t find a good one.
Kurt Elster: It’s clunky?
Mojca Zove: I’m sorry?
Kurt Elster: I said it’s clunky.
Mojca Zove: Yeah. Clunky and full of bugs and just… But I can’t live without it. Yeah.
Kurt Elster: Oh, no. You know, if you try a few, you’ll land on one that meets your needs.
Mojca Zove: Yeah. I need to. That was the… I did a little bit of research. That was the first one that we really started using, but I think now, after a couple of months, maybe we could revisit that again. It gets the job done. It’s just annoying to use.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. No, it gets frustrating, especially when it’s like you have three apps like that, where it becomes like, “This is a necessary evil.”
Mojca Zove: I know. Yeah.
Kurt Elster: They can’t all be delightful, but it helps.
Mojca Zove: Yeah.
Kurt Elster: We’ve been taking a while and I’m thrilled to have you here. I greatly enjoy your company. But it’s October. I have to… and you’re a Facebook ads expert. I gotta ask you about Black Friday. What are your feelings? What are your predictions?
Mojca Zove: So, personally, as a merchant, we’re not going to do Black Friday, because we are… We don’t do discounts. We only have one discount. It’s a 10% discount if you leave a review. Other than that, we don’t have giveaways, we don’t have other discounts, and we’re not going to do Black Friday because it doesn’t fit the brand.
However, I think that Black Friday this year, with… I think COVID becoming slightly lighter of a problem is going to be really big. However, being a Facebook ads expert, I know that it’s going to annoy the heck out of Facebook advertisers or anyone who advertises on Facebook, because it’s so hard to track everything that happens on Facebook now. You won’t be able to see your ROAS. You won’t be able to directly see the correlation between your ad spend and your revenue. So, I think that it’s going to be a sweet problem to have, because I think that the sales are going to be good and it’s going to be another record-breaking Black Friday. However, a very annoying one for Facebook advertisers.
Because even now, you can’t do retargeting anymore. It’s not effective anymore. So, I know that a lot of merchants relied on retargeting when it came to Black Friday, because it’s most… It’s the best target audience to work with on Black Friday when everyone’s advertising, so it’s the cheapest one to advertise in. It’s really hard to advertise to cold audiences on Black Friday. However, retargeting being practically out of the window, I think a lot of advertisers will have just a lot of headaches coming to Black Friday and on Black Friday.
Kurt Elster: Well, is there anything we could do instead, or anything you recommend people do instead?
Mojca Zove: Instead of… Well, a lot of people have been going to email marketing. That’s one thing. So, instead of relying on Facebook ads to bring in sales, there’s always email marketing that you can start growing your email list right now and then use it on Black Friday. The other thing that I really like, what a lot of merchants started doing is using lead ads coming to Black Friday. So, essentially growing the list of people that are interested in their Black Friday sales through lead ads, because lead ads are trackable because everything happens within Facebook ad, or within Facebook ads ecosystem. So, using the ads as, “Hey, if you want to be the first notified about our Black Friday deals, sign up for our newsletter or whatever for updates here.”
And then reusing that with either retargeting those people on Facebook ads and reusing that via your email marketing tool.
Kurt Elster: I like all of this advice. Lastly, where can we go to find out more about you? What’s your crystal store? And what else you got?
Mojca Zove: So, my crystal store is called Your Soul Time. You can find it on YourSoulTime.com and have fun learning Slovenian.
Kurt Elster: Yeah, just get ready to fire up Google translate.
Mojca Zove: Yeah, but it’s going to be soon available in English, as well. We’re aiming at Q1, but we’ll see. So, YourSoulTime.com. YourSoulTime.si is our Instagram handle. I’m open to any questions. I love interacting with people, so I’m available there, or SuperSpicyMedia.com is my Facebook ads consultancy and I’m also available on Twitter @mojcamars. So, if anyone has any questions that they would like to ask, feel free to shoot me a message and I’ll be so happy to respond.
Kurt Elster: Wonderful. Mojca, this has been a delight. Thank you so much.
Mojca Zove: Thank you so much.