w/ Mike Freeman, 4th Moon Toys
Could you turn your geeky hobby into a thriving business?
In this week’s episode of The Unofficial Shopify Podcast, we follow Mike Freeman, the mastermind behind Fourth Moon Toys, as he shares his transformative journey from a casual Star Wars collector to the owner of a booming online and retail business. Drawing on his experiences from the early days of internet trading to launching a niche market venture on Shopify, Mike reveals the challenges and triumphs of turning a passionate hobby into a successful enterprise. Tune in to discover how community engagement and a steadfast commitment to authenticity have shaped his business ethos and hear Mike’s insights on the evolving landscape of collectibles. Whether you're a collector, a Star Wars enthusiast, or an entrepreneur at heart, this episode offers a compelling look at the intersections of nostalgia, commerce, and innovation.
Niche Knowledge is Power: Mike's deep understanding of Star Wars collectibles, down to the most minute details, has set Fourth Moon Toys apart in a competitive market.
Community Engagement is Crucial: Actively participating in the collector community not only enhances credibility but also fosters a loyal customer base.
Authenticity Builds Trust: Rigorous authentication processes ensure that customers receive genuine collectibles, solidifying trust and encouraging repeat business.
Flexibility in Business Models: Transitioning from an online-only model to embracing physical retail can open new avenues for growth and customer interaction.
Long-term Vision: Like Shopify's approach to business, focusing on long-term relationships and reputation over quick profits is vital for sustainable success.
Kurt Elster (00:00):
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(01:32):
What's that? R two? You're looking for vintage collectible, star Wars toys? No. Well any kind Will do. Alright. Yeah, that was quite the shtick of doing, but because today we, well, we're going to talk about Star Wars toys, but in the context of selling them on Shopify, see I ran into during I do Office hours on occasion, and I got lucky to meet a man who was an early employee at Shopify, but has since is walking the walk and has moved into full-time running a Shopify business, has done so successfully for several years now, selling vintage Star Wars toys and a few other collectibles. And it is just the most fascinating fun and in many ways good natured business. The positive vibes in this episode, we'll see. We will start with simple. Who are you and what do you do?
Mike Freeman (02:26):
Hi, I am Mike Freeman. I am owner of Fourth Moon Toys and I sell Star Wars stuff.
Kurt Elster (02:31):
How long have you done that?
Mike Freeman (02:34):
So officially fourth Moon Toys has been around for just over four years, but as a collector I've kind of always been selling Star Wars stuff. I started back in the Usenet days selling Star Wars figures. I'm using
Kurt Elster (02:48):
It. What year was that?
Mike Freeman (02:52):
That would've been probably like 95 ish.
Kurt Elster (02:54):
Okay. Usenet in 95. Alright. Was but a baby.
Mike Freeman (03:01):
Yeah. So I had my whole route where I'd hit up the Toys R uss and all those places and buy figures and then resell them to American collectors. And so I've always kind of bought and sold Star Wars stuff and so maybe about six years ago or so I was selling a lot to fund my own collecting and was kind of at an inflection point in our careers and I decided to give it a chance at full time and was kind of like, I'll give this a year, see if it works out at all.
Kurt Elster (03:30):
And what were you doing before this?
Mike Freeman (03:32):
I worked in marketing my whole career, kind of worked my way up, worked digital strategy, regular strategy, and I ended up working at Shopify in Ottawa way back in the day.
Kurt Elster (03:46):
Ottawa. That's hq, right? The mothership,
Mike Freeman (03:49):
Yeah. So that was employee number 51. Oh, no way. Yeah, back in the day when it was pretty small and so I worked on the Build a business contest there. I managed that and ran that for a couple of years.
Kurt Elster (04:02):
Wasn't the prize, go to Nicker Island and hang out with Richard Branson?
Mike Freeman (04:05):
Yes, that unfortunately was the year I left was the last year they did that one. I did some consulting on that one, but wasn't able to get on the trip or anything. But I did get to meet and work with Tim Ferris, Seth Godin, that was amazing. Mark Cuban, Gary Vaynerchuk, all those guys that we had as consultants and they were all, what really surprised me is those guys were all so genuine and so wanted to help other entrepreneurs and so it was amazing to work with them because we had a contract of, oh, you're going to give us this many hours to do blah, blah, blah, but all of them went above and beyond and I know a lot of those entrepreneurs are still in contact with those guys after they had consultations and stuff with them. That's amazing.
(04:54):
So I did Shopify for a while, then moved back to Toronto and went back to the agency life and worked for a few years there. And then my wife and I both took some time off due to some medical surgeries that my wife had coming up. So we took about two years off, went through the whole medical thing, traveled with our daughter, and then that was kind of when it was like, okay, I need to get a real job or at least do something every day. And that's when I decided to give this world full time.
Kurt Elster (05:26):
Your background in, you've got a slat wall with Star Wars toys. This looks like a retail location. Yes. So you have a retail presence as well?
Mike Freeman (05:34):
We do now. So as of November we started retail. As I said, we've been online only for four years and for really most of that time only vintage Star Wars from 1977 to 86. So super niche within a niche itself. And then this year, the next step in growth to me seemed to go for retail and to do that I needed to expand the audience to kind of regular people that like Star Wars. So that meant moving into all the modern stuff because the vintage guys are like the nerdiest of the nerdiest hardcore fans into that stuff. Whereas the modern stuff, there's hardcore fans, but a mom can walk in here with a 10-year-old kid and find something cool that doesn't cost a thousand dollars. So I knew I needed to expand into basically everything Star Wars.
Kurt Elster (06:31):
So I greatly enjoy flea markets and I understand that the prices of the stuff is all over the place. I have paid $20 for X-Men figures from the nineties and I have a Ninja turtle from the early nineties that I paid $200 for.
Mike Freeman (06:50):
Yeah.
Kurt Elster (06:52):
And so the price is all over the place. Help me understand some of the price range on these vintage toys.
Mike Freeman (06:58):
So on the vintage stuff, it's going anywhere from $5 for a loose kind of beater figure up to, I mean, I think the most expensive one we have in the display case right now is about $3,000 and that's a graded Luke Skywalker Farm Boy 12 pack. So kind of like the first release of Luke Skywalker on the card. And then we even have display store display items or things like that that are probably even more so. It's quite a range, but most things would fall within the kind of a hundred to $500 category.
Kurt Elster (07:33):
Have you ever seen or acquired a life size R 2D two replica?
Mike Freeman (07:39):
I haven't. I haven't. I've come close. I've been in negotiations actually for Coke. Did a branded cobot back in the eighties that they would bring to stores and I was really close to buying one from a guy, but it would've cost more in freight to get it up here than it was worth even. But I do have some big stuff. We hung up some big tie fighters and stuff on the ceiling and I love big stuff myself. So I've got a few store displays in my own collection that have kind of found their way into the store.
Kurt Elster (08:11):
When Galaxy's Edge Star Wars land opened it to the Disney parks, there is a $25,000 life-size R 2D two. I was really hoping that you had that guy.
Mike Freeman (08:23):
No, no, that's a lot of money to put into inventory that's not going to move too fast.
Kurt Elster (08:29):
Yeah, I imagine you'd be sitting on that a while, but most of your inventory is no longer manufactured, is it?
Mike Freeman (08:37):
Yeah, so on the vintage side of things, really the work is finding inventory. So it's not other Shopify stores or my modern stuff where I can just go to my supplier and order more. I need to be constantly hunting for the vintage stuff. And what's nice is over the four years that I've had the site up, I have a page obviously that says, Hey, you want to sell your Star Wars stuff? Send us a message in a contact form. And at the beginning I'd get one email a week through there. Now that we're more established that Google is ranking that page higher, we get multiple a day people coming in that way to sell us their things. And that's way easier than going out and trying to hunt for stuff and trying to do flea markets or things like that. It's a lot easier to sit back, let's stuff come to us and then pick and choose what we want to purchase.
Kurt Elster (09:36):
I Googled sell Star Wars toys and sure enough, your first page.
Mike Freeman (09:40):
Nice. Yeah,
Kurt Elster (09:41):
And I love that it leads with like, hey, whether you found, I think the meta description, whether you found a box in the basement or you're a seasoned collector looking to offload, is authenticating items ever an issue? I like vintage toys. My wife collects vintage Barbies, but she did get a reproduction in a replica box once and in retro gaming replica cartridges and boxes are now starting to pop up and they're getting good.
Mike Freeman (10:08):
So with Star Wars, there's reproduction, carded figures and packaging and stuff to the seasoned eye. Those are pretty easy to catch. But in Star Wars vintage, the biggest problem is the accessories for the vintage figures. So the guns and the lightsabers and those tend to be worth more than the figures are themselves. So you'll have, let's say a $50 vintage figure, probably like $35 of that is usually the accessory it comes with and the rest is the figure itself. So they've been making knockoffs of those since the nineties and they've gotten a lot better today with them. So a lot of my time is spent authenticating stuff. When we buy collections online for people who approach us, we don't pay for them until we've received them and processed through the collection. So I have a good idea when I'm looking through pictures and you can kind of tell by a collection too what's like someone had as a kid and the range of figures they would have compared to someone who's a collector or bought stuff in the nineties and is trying to unload it. But yeah, when I get in a collection of loose figures, I got to spend half an hour to an hour looking through tiny pieces of plastic in a magnifying glass and luckily the community's created a lot of great content around that and how to spot stuff so I can compare and work on it. But yeah, it sucks and it sucks for customers. I know what it's like. A big part of who we are is that you can trust us that we never sell any reproduction items. So everything you buy is a hundred percent original.
Kurt Elster (11:40):
What's interesting about vintage toys, like any vintage collectible, the prices jump around. There's not a retail price here, there's not someone setting the price. It's like, alright, what's it going for in marketplaces? What's it going for on eBay? You see this with vintage cars, baseball cards, vintage toys, whatever it is. How do you deal with price fluctuations?
Mike Freeman (12:06):
So our goal first of all is to be at market price, just be right in the middle at a fair market price. I prefer to move inventory than sit on it for a long time, so I'd rather move it and get into inventory. I think that makes it a lot more interesting for our customers. Luckily there's a few good resources out there. So there's actually an app called Star Wars Tracker. The guy has built a great app that basically sucks in all the data from eBay and is then kind of filtered. And so with that app, I can go back six years worth of pricing data on eBay sales as well as the big auction houses. But then you do get rarer items that it is hard to find a carded figures like the ones behind me when it comes to vintage, there's a huge difference on what card back it's on, and those could look the exact same to a layman, but there's different variations of each of those card backs.
(13:02):
So to find an actual comp on the rare ones is tough. So it's a bit of an art. It's kind of, you look at what comps you think condition is so important. So even if you're looking at comps, you've got to look at the condition of those comps and you kind of guess and then you adjust from there. It's better to start out a little high. You can take it down later, but at the same time, I don't want to turn off customers who come in and see overpriced stuff and then just bounce and leave the site. So it's definitely an art more than a science and it's totally an experience thing. You see more stuff sell and you have a better idea of what things are going to sell for.
Kurt Elster (13:44):
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Mike Freeman (15:07):
For sure. And I mean I'm a member of that community. I'm a collector as well. I was collecting before I started selling and participating in the community. There's definitely a fine line to walk when I'm in the community. Am I like Fourth Moon Mike talking very commercially or am I like regular Mike being like, Hey, that's cool. So I think we definitely want to be part of the community where I think a lot of other stores just kind of do their thing and don't want to dip their toe in there because there can be negative consequences. But we want to be part of the community. We want to be a store that is helping to grow the community and grow collecting and educating newer collectors. So we participate and then I do stuff on my own within the community, but people in that community know I'm the owner of Fourth Moon toys, so even though I'm not speaking as fourth moon toys, it kind of all goes back to that trust that people would have with the store.
(16:09):
When they see me interacting in a positive way within the community and they see that I know what I'm talking about, I've got my own collection, I have the same passion, I actually care about this. I'm not in it to make a quick buck. This is the slowest way to make a quick buck. So I think community engagement is huge, but it's nice that I can do that from a personal point of view and still have it reflect on the business without having to go in and post. For instance on Facebook is where a lot of the community is. So I am leery of, for instance, going into a group and posting something as fourth moon toys that's very commercial and that's not what these groups are about, but my presence and my personal posts within those group does help go back to the business and support that.
Kurt Elster (17:01):
So self-conscious when you posted forums?
Mike Freeman (17:06):
I'm not too, I think as a collector I know what annoys me when other people do it, so I just know I'm not going to do that sort of thing. The business is important, the community aspect is just as important to me and my standing within the community. If I end up a pariah in the community, that's going to hurt the business and it's also just going to suck for me as a collector. But yeah, it's a big community, but it's small at the same point that everyone's kind of on Facebook or going to the same events so people have reputations. People talk about people behind their backs and stuff, so yeah, you just don't want to get labeled as a dude, you can't or someone that's in it for themselves.
Kurt Elster (17:53):
Alright. What's your favorite piece in your collection?
Mike Freeman (17:57):
I always find it hard to say a favorite piece. It changes over time. One really cool piece, and I can just move to it over there is that big huge Chewbacca over there. So that's a four foot tall, probably store display from the late seventies that was only in Canada made by Regal Toys. So it's a massive plus Chewbacca. It's got iron bars through it to keep 'em to be able to stand up and it's insanely rare and it's worth a hell of a lot of money. It's something I never thought I would own, but I had a customer come into the store, he saw I have a collection of Chewbacca items. He saw that he had picked it up at a garage sale for probably a dollar and he offered it to me at a great price, kind of on the condition that I wasn't reselling it, so I had to go for it and it's something I never would've had.
(18:53):
Another cool item is the store is actually in downtown Toronto in what was an old toy factory. It was reliable toys and they were biggest, this was one of the biggest toy factories in the world, had a post World War ii and then in the 1980s it was sold and it's been converted into kind of business lofts, but I have a R 2D two bootleg bank that was made by Reliable Toys. So it was made in this building and I acquired it before I rented the unit, but it's kind of just a really cool coincidence. That's super cool to have brought it back to this building.
Kurt Elster (19:33):
I got goosebumps. That's the flea market, the joy of discovery with the vintage stuff and seeking it out and finding something really special or finding something that has a local connection like that, especially when you're deep in collecting often, it's like the weird stuff that you can
Mike Freeman (19:51):
Get. Yeah, that's what I collect mostly is food related weird stuff. I just picked up Popsicle wrapper from the UK that I'm working on a run of all those and those are from 1978 and that someone kept a Popsicle wrapper from way back then. It is just insane.
Kurt Elster (20:11):
I have the Princess Leis shampoo complete with tag and the shampoo.
Mike Freeman (20:15):
Nice. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, even shampoos is something I collect. What's really cool about the business often a lot of times people ask me, does it hurt to sell stuff or to let stuff go? Do you ever regret selling it? I
Kurt Elster (20:29):
Was going to ask that. Yeah.
Mike Freeman (20:30):
Yeah, it was pretty common question. And the thing is, the beautiful part about this business for me as a collector, and I guess my enjoyment of collecting is it's always been the thrill of the hunt for me has been the funnest part of collecting is finding that stuff, buying, bringing it back home, emptying the box out when you get mailed something. So it's like I get to do that part of collecting nonstop. That's my job and what I've got to do and I don't have the negative financial consequences of it because I'm selling it. So I've never really regretted anything that I've sold through the store. Definitely the other advantage is when I pick up a lot, if there's something I really want for my collection, I obviously get first dibs on it. That definitely does happen, but the thrill of the hunt is really the great part and for me, the most enjoyable part of the job.
Kurt Elster (21:25):
Oh yeah, for sure. It is the fun of it. Are there trends or shifts in the collectibles market that you're seeing?
Mike Freeman (21:32):
So I think with Star Wars, it's interesting. With the vintage, everyone's always predicting the end and the end times for vintage it's going to go the same way that model trains went or whatever your parents' generation collected that's now worthless was once worth a whole bunch of money. And so every kind of collectible goes through that cycle. I think we've still got, the core vintage collector is probably in their early fifties right now, so we've still got a lot of time where these guys have a fair amount of disposable income before they're looking to get rid of stuff. So I think we've still got time there. And then Star Wars, the nice thing about Star Wars is it's so intergenerational and I've got kids, they're obviously immersed in Star Wars and have tons of Star Wars stuff and they gravitate towards different parts of Star Wars that aren't necessarily what I gravitate towards, which is the old school stuff.
(22:30):
They like Rebels the cartoon or even some of the sequel trilogy characters and stuff like that, and they just naturally gravitate towards that. So I think Star Wars overall, as long as Disney doesn't completely kill it with some really awful content, is probably still got legs for a long time. I think the toy industry is constantly evolving with the modern stuff. With Star Wars, we're really just tied to Hasbro. They own the license for most of the toy type things, even though they're all by adults. So Hasbro's had some bad financial times, they've cut production runs on certain items. So we're really tied to how well Hasbro does and hoping that they make good decisions that basically keeps the line profitable for them and keeps them putting stuff out. I think the biggest trend I'm seeing right now is that with the new releases that Hasbro's putting out, obviously their core customers are Target, Walmart, GameStop, Amazon, the really big retailers, and they're really not getting support from those retailers. So a lot of targets in Walmarts you go into now have no new Star Wars product and haven't had it for months. Even though there's new products coming out every month, there's better opportunity for the little guys like us where people can come into store or order them online and we actually have a way to compete with Target and Walmart.
Kurt Elster (24:01):
That was one of the fun things that, or I think one of the interesting great things that Ty did, sold Beanie Babies and started in Oakbrook, Illinois, not far from me. They exclusively sold to small independent retailers.
Mike Freeman (24:19):
So even with the modern stuff, I'm still buying collections of that stuff too, not just wholesale from Hasbro. So that's how I'm filling the back catalog for those products. But it's a lot easier to buy those collections still than it is to find vintage collections to buy.
Kurt Elster (24:34):
You ever watch that show American Pickers?
Mike Freeman (24:36):
Yes. Yeah, for sure.
Kurt Elster (24:37):
That's how that show the picking was real, but their business would only exist as part of the show. It was part of the production. Sorry it's a little fake, but that's kind of how I picture it. That guy got, I mean, he knew what he was looking for and he would get so excited when they found something just like oddball the thrill of that crazy find. But as your network grows and your reputation grows, you get access to better and better opportunities until it's like American picker style, you're just loading stuff boxes and boxes of figures into the back of a trailer.
Mike Freeman (25:14):
Exactly. And I think they're a great example too of it's all about relationships. So I've definitely had people, I just had a lot, for instance, that 50 carted figures from Return to the Jedi. So from 1983 all sealed carted figures and this guy had approached me three years ago to sell this lot and we had gone back and forth and we were off by about 500 bucks probably. And in the end he decided to keep it and he was just like, you know what? I don't think I'm ready to sell. I'm going to keep it for now. And a month ago he contacted me again and said, okay, now I'm ready to sell. Let's make a deal. And it was kind of like, well, market isn't quite the same as it was three years ago. Disposable income is down and prices are down, but we renegotiated and came to a price he was happy with.
(26:04):
But if you treat people well, they will send other people to you or they will come back when they find more stuff or when their brother find stuff. So that's a big part of it too. And then a lot of the stuff I buy too comes from customers. So you as a collector, you've got something that you're like, man, I'm not super into this anymore. Or I picked up two of them back in the day to have one to sell or whatever. So a lot of that, especially now that I have retail and people can just walk in with a box of stuff and trade it in and use it as trade value to new stuff, that's probably like 40% of the vintage stuff that comes in is coming in from existing customers.
Kurt Elster (26:46):
Have you ever found that sometimes people are just happy to find someone that can seize the value and the thing that they love?
Mike Freeman (26:53):
Yeah, I think so. The straightforward Star Wars stuff, it's fairly easy to figure out around a value if you look at eBay solds and stuff. But yeah, people appreciate when you value the weird stuff. We're up in Canada and Canadian vintage Star Wars stuff is actually worth more rarer, whereas 20 years ago it was worth less. Now it's worth more because American collectors have bought up all the American stuff in their collection, so now they need something new to buy, so they buy the Canadian version of it or international versions. So we have an appreciation here certainly for the Canadian stuff, so people appreciate that coming in. I mean, I think the other thing too is some stuff, a lot of stuff comes from childhood collection. So these aren't collectors, these are people who have had this box at their house or their parents' house for 40 years.
(27:44):
They have a whole bunch of childhood memories attached to it and value. They want to get a good chunk of money, all that. But it's like they have very pure important childhood memories tied up in these toys and it's not really a straight business transaction for them. So the idea that they're going to a new home, that we appreciate the fact that they're selling these things and that we're going to get them out to collectors, we're going to really appreciate them and display them. They're not going to sit in a box anymore. And just even taking the time with people to listen to their stories, they'll tell you about how they remembered picking up this piece at Woolworths with their mom and it was a big deal because it was their birthday or whatnot. Or even too, I deal a lot with people who are selling stuff from their parents' estates. So we're definitely getting into that time period where it's
Kurt Elster (28:44):
That generational transfer happens. But it's weird.
Mike Freeman (28:47):
Yeah, it's a collection their dad had and they know nothing about it. They don't want it, not in a bad way, but they're not going to dedicate a room to their dad's Star Wars collection in their house. And my father's passed on, so I've dealt with estate stuff before from that end and I get it and I get how the last thing you want to do is spend hours negotiating with someone to sell this stuff, but at the same time you want to get a good amount. So when I make offers, everyone gets the same offer from me, stuff goes into a spreadsheet, I output the percentage I want to pay for something and that's my offer. And I don't usually negotiate from that point because to me, A is just easier for me. It's like I don't have to do the work of like, hmm, is this guy smart, not smart, what can I do here? And then people just get that it's fair and even they'll come back and say, oh, well would you do this amount? And it's like a hundred bucks more. And I'll just say, I put the numbers in the spreadsheet, this is my top number. And people seem to respect that, and I think that's really good, especially when someone is new and doesn't necessarily know the value of it and they know they can trust you, that you're not going to pull a fast one on them. That's huge. And they definitely refer people to me after that.
Kurt Elster (30:09):
So I think being upfront and honest and fair pays dividends and that you could make a quick buck, low balling somebody who doesn't know any better, but long-term that's not helping you.
Mike Freeman (30:21):
Exactly. And you don't know who else they're talking to. So if you try and pull a fast one on 'em, so for instance, there's R five. D four is the little droid guy who looks like R 2D two, but he's red. There's a version of him that has a tiny bit of extra red on the label. It's called a red bar, R 2D two. You would never know the difference as a layman ever, but a regular one is worth 20 to 25 bucks. One with the little red bar on it is worth 500 to $900. So this tiny little line that you would never know. And so I've had those come in collections and I'll tell people, I'll say, okay, so this one here is super rare and it's worth a lot more than the other ones. I don't want them to then be talking to someone else and they mention that and I've low balled them without saying it.
(31:09):
It's like I've just lost all the trust right there and lost that deal completely. I'm still going to make money on it. I'm still paying the percent I want and getting the markup I want. So I am happy to tell people and educate them on what they have, and it all works out in the end. I'm playing a long game here. I want to be around in five years. I mean, I remember working at Shopify from day one. Toby was always like, this is a hundred year company. He's like, we don't even pick up the phone on purchase offers from day one. He was like, this company's not being sold ever.
Kurt Elster (31:49):
I imagine they've had many offers at this point. Oh
Mike Freeman (31:52):
Yeah, yeah. So many. Right? But that was not beaten into our heads, but whenever there was all hands meetings to talk about why we were making decisions and stuff at the back of all that was this is a hundred year company. We're building this forever. So we're not making short-term decisions. We're making long, long-term decisions.
Kurt Elster (32:16):
I think a hugely important lesson there. And it's easy to dismiss that when Toby's saying it. It's like, well, yeah, those guys are billionaires versus a small business. But same principles, right? It's thinking
Mike Freeman (32:33):
And it's just amazing how it changes what your decisions would be, right? When you're not, it is almost like you're not looking at numbers in a sense because you're not like, okay, well I can make 500 bucks more in the next two weeks if I do this. It's more of a gut feeling. You got to be like, well, if I do this, I think it's going to play out better and return the value to me. But I don't have an equation that says that.
Kurt Elster (32:59):
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(34:30):
Your are Shopify, early Shopify, you're running a Shopify store. What theme are you on?
Mike Freeman (34:37):
Oh God. And this is the sad part. I'm on a 1.0 dawn theme.
Kurt Elster (34:45):
I'm choking at my water. You, you're on dawn pre 2.0, we'll call it a classic theme.
Mike Freeman (34:51):
Yeah, it's retro, it's vintage. Yeah. And it's literally like I hacked it together four years ago before I launched and probably have touched two or three things on it since then. And I know every problem that it has and I'm working myself on a Dawn 2.0 reboot of it. But I mean, I specifically, and that's why I'm picking Dawn 2.0 for the next theme, is I don't want bells and whistles. I want straightforward Amazon. Before Amazon got crazy, look to the site, my competition is all bells and whistles. It's dark backgrounds with star fields and animated gif of figures moving around and crazy stuff going on everywhere. So I'm very purposely like white background square images of items on a white background, and I let the product speak without all the other mumbo jumbo. I run apps in the background to do things that help me run the business, but I'm not doing countdown timers and fancy weird stuff like that.
Kurt Elster (36:05):
And on the front end of the site, there's really very few, if any apps.
Mike Freeman (36:09):
Yeah, no, I mean the obvious Klaviyo judge me. I mean, I have a variant picker app that I don't even know if it's still necessary, but just to allow me to, so with the vintage stuff, I have to have pictures of every single item, even if it's the same item, even if I have five of the same item, I need to have pictures of all five of them because it's all about condition and people want to know what they're getting. So I have a variant picker app that helps separate the variants and link the right images to it. Yeah, I think that's about all the front end apps that are really going on there.
Kurt Elster (36:49):
Yeah, it's been kept intentionally simple and I think there's a lot of value in that and it makes it easy to navigate and get around and it's fast and things aren't breaking. You're not playing quite so much.
Mike Freeman (37:03):
Yeah, I think I've always gotten good comments from customers on the site because it is different from all the others, and I just want to get out of the way and let people buy. I mean, I have a very low conversion rate, but that's partly because people kick the tires a lot to figure out what shipping is on stuff and all that. I recently shifted to a free shipping threshold just to make my life easier and to make that conversion a bit easier.
Kurt Elster (37:35):
Do you do free shipping, shipping from Canada? I imagine you're getting a lot of US orders.
Mike Freeman (37:41):
So online stores, 90% of our sales right now, retail's only 10, but growing, we're only five months into it. 70% of online would be us, 20% Canadian, and then 10% is uk, EU and Australia. Luckily for us in Canada, a lot of infrastructure has been built for e-commerce like us. So I can ship to the states for cheaper than I could ship to most Canadian places, and I can ship faster than most American e-commerce stores because we have cross-border shippers here, which what that is is, so I have a company that I buy my postage through them, prints out USPS labels, FedEx labels, whatever, then I drop it off basically at a corner store that's a block away from here. They pick it up every day, they drive it over the border and drop it into the USPS sorting facility in Niagara Falls. So it goes directly into the sorting facility the same night I drop it off, which means that for East Coast people, they'll have it in a day or two days almost max.
(38:46):
So it's actually good. I pay about 50 cents to a dollar depending on the size of the package as the fee for that, which is totally reasonable. And then what's actually cool is so that company figured out we got a whole bunch of empty trucks coming back from Niagara Falls every day. Wouldn't it be cool to fill them up with stuff? So they offer a PO box service where I get all my US shipments sent to a PO box there, then they toss it in the truck, bring it up to Toronto, and I pick it up here in Toronto for five bucks a package.
Kurt Elster (39:18):
I've heard that that's not unusual for Canadians who live near the border to do this.
Mike Freeman (39:23):
But yeah, it is definitely an industry now. Yeah, there would be absolutely no way I could compete otherwise without that service is my killer app. Without that, I could not exist.
Kurt Elster (39:34):
Alright, I want your advice. If someone is looking to start a collectibles business, what's the one thing they need to know?
Mike Freeman (39:44):
So I would say number one, do what you're passionate about, not what everyone else is doing. I was told a million times when I started up this selling nothing but vintage Star Wars, that there's no way that that's going to work. You need to sell every kind of toy there is to have the biggest broadest customer base, and that's the only way it's going to work. Where I was like, well, would it be cooler to have, and this is a Seth Godin thing, right? It's better to have a hundred loyal followers than 10,000 people who don't really give a crap. So I would say do what you're actually passionate about because then you're going to actually enjoy it and you're going to enjoy coming in every day and then just create relationships. Our business is all about repeat customers. The long-term value, I mean, I haven't fully calculated it out, but if I can get someone to two purchases, chances are on their own, they're going to go for the five to 10 purchases over the next year. I've got lots of customers with 30, 40, 50 purchases in their history, people who have spent more than 10 grand with me over the past couple of years through multiple orders. So collectors want to buy stuff. You just need to find the stuff and then get out of their way and get it to them. So as long as you can do that and you make someone happy once or twice, they're going to keep coming back because buying stuff everywhere else is a pain in the ass.
Kurt Elster (41:15):
That is fabulous advice for you, what's the most rewarding part of running this business?
Mike Freeman (41:22):
So I mean, it's fun just to play with the stuff that you enjoy as a hobby, but I think since opening retail, opening the retail part of things is something like I now Wish had done a long time ago, and I love the freedom of the online store and coming in whenever I want and working from wherever, all that sort of fun stuff. And we're open Wednesday to Saturdays, we're not open every day, and that's on purpose. But actually interacting with humans and your customers and talking to 'em and seeing what they like. Even just watching how they browse stuff and what piques their interest and what doesn't. A whole other world to selling online where it's like boop, boop, order prints out and it's like, okay, this person wants this and I send it off to them and hopefully they leave a review on Judge Me, and that's the end of our interaction.
(42:12):
Whereas with the in-store, it's so much more interesting to watch people to talk to people and find out what they're into. And for me, the modern stuff is something I don't collect. So I don't know a ton about it. I know it because I know Star Wars and I know who the characters are and stuff like that. But to see the different ways, someone who collects the Black series, which is the more premium Hasbro line, six inch figures are more expensive as compared to these guys behind me, which is the vintage collection. They're a very different group of collectors. And I never would've sussed that out without talking to people and seeing them and seeing like, okay, if someone's between 20 and 35, they're going straight to the black series wall. If they're 40 and over and collect modern, then they're going over to this stuff. This stuff looks like the old stuff, right? It's in the same scale as the vintage stuff. So the guys who grew up,
Kurt Elster (43:10):
I'm 41, I go for the black stuff. The black lady? Yeah.
Mike Freeman (43:13):
Okay. Yeah. So there's a bit of variation there, but it's like I'm on the, it's interesting. It does fall along those lines, definitely. But yeah, it's almost like affirming and it just gives you energy. The retail side of things where I thought it would've been more of an energy suck. It gives you energy. And I have amazing customers. I try and give people freebies. Our business is all about discounts and freebies and the price is never the price. And I don't love discounting, so I'd rather give people free stuff. But I have customers refuse free things or say, or they will pay for them even when I'm offering it to them for free because they're like, I want you to be in business. I want to be able to keep coming here. And I know it isn't easy, so don't discount. I'm willing to pay a full price. I just want to support you doing this.
Kurt Elster (44:06):
That's beautiful.
Mike Freeman (44:07):
Yeah. I don't think probably a lot of other Shopify stores get that.
Kurt Elster (44:11):
Yeah, well you can't beat that in-person interaction, but having someone tell you, no, this is so great. I refuse your discount. It's like the most fabulous thing in the world. Where could people go to learn more about you?
Mike Freeman (44:23):
Alright, so first of all, they could go to the website, fourth moon toys.com, and then we're on Facebook and Instagram of course, and just search Fourth Moon toys. And if you're in Toronto or you're visiting Toronto, we're at 2 76. We're up on the second floor unit 2 0 2 A, so we're not a street front. We're actually in a big industrial former toy factory up on the second floor. And we're open Wednesdays to Saturdays 12 to six. So they can come there. And if you're looking to sell something, you can definitely hit me up. We've got a form on our website, and if you're into collecting Star Wars and you want to support a Shopify store rather than Walmart, come on over.
Kurt Elster (45:02):
That was perfect. Crowdfunding campaigns are great. You can add social proof and urgency to your product. Pre-orders while reducing risk of failure. But with traditional crowdfunding platforms, you're paying high fees and giving away control all while your campaign is lost in a sea of similar offers. It could be frustrating. That's why we built Crowdfunder, the Shopify app that turns your Shopify product pages into your own independent crowdfunding campaigns. We originally created Crowdfunder for our private clients, and it was so successful we turned it into an app that anyone can use today. Merchants using Crowdfunder have raised millions collectively with Crowdfunder. You'll enjoy real time tracking, full campaign control and direct customer engagement. And it's part of the Built for Shopify program so it's easy to use. So say goodbye to high fees and hello to Successful store-based crowdfunding. Start your free trial and transform your Shopify store into a pre-order Powerhouse today. Search Crowdfunder in the Shopify app store to get started.