Well, hello and welcome to the eCommerce Podcast with
me, your host, Matt Edmundson.
This is a show all about helping you deliver eCommerce wow.
And to help us do just that.
I am chatting.
With Gareth Everard from Rockwell Razors.
Uh, well it's a founder story today, which is great, and I'm really looking forward
to digging into the whole razor thing.
And it's not just about razors, is it?
It's about his journey.
About his story.
I know a little bit 'cause I've got the notes and it's gonna be fascinating.
So you're gonna wanna stay, uh, connected to, I'm definitely gonna want to grab
your notebooks if you're running your own e-commerce business, because I'm
hoping, and I'm expecting there's gonna be a lot of tips coming outta this one.
No pressure Gareth.
This is what we're expecting.
Now before we get into it, if you haven't done so already, make
sure you sign up to the newsletter at eCommerce Podcast dot net.
We will send out to you every week just to show notes and stuff straight
to your inbox so you don't even have to go onto the web to get them.
I dunno if I'm promoting laziness by doing this, but hey, hey, hope.
It builds the email list.
Come join us.
Uh, it'd just be great to connect with you.
Great to get to know you.
Uh, and why not come say, how's it?
Now let's talk about this chap on the other end of the phone.
Gareth Everett, the brains behind Rockwell Razors and the marketing force behind
eco game changers like Lomi and Pella case with the BSC and environmental
science from Western University.
Uh, he's built a career turning big ideas into planet friendly products.
Whether it's reinventing razors or leading eco-friendly innovations,
Gareth's mission is simple.
Make the world a greener, better place one product at a time.
Gareth, listen, welcome to the show, man.
I, I have been looking forward to this conversation 'cause I, for me, I, when
I read that you were involved in, in Lo Me, am I pronouncing that right?
Um, I instantly recognize what that was.
Uh, you might wanna explain to the, the audience what that was.
So let's get into that whole.
Side of things at some point.
But I'm very excited to have you here.
Welcome to the show.
Thank you for joining me.
Thank you.
London.
Yes, all the way from London, um,
in London.
Um.
But happy to talk to you about Lomi, about Rockwell.
Just happy to be helpful.
Where do you wanna start?
Well just, just explain what Lomi is.
Um, because I was intrigued by this, I never was intrigued enough
to buy it, mainly because my wife didn't want me to buy it.
Um, but I, I, I remember the products and I remember being super intrigued by it.
Just explain what it is.
So quick background for anyone listening.
Like I started a number of eCommerce, um, businesses over the years.
Um, but I largest one.
Co-founding partners, and there's a brand called loi, uh, om i.com.
And it's a, it's a home composter.
So basically it's a countertop, composter, it's a device, a little bit bigger than
a toaster, smaller than a microwave.
Um, you pop open the lid, put in your food scraps, push a button, and it turns,
uh, your food scraps overnight into, um, something very akin to compost.
And that, that's it.
So we launched it in 2021, um, and within two years had done over a hundred
million in revenue, uh, profitably.
So it was just this unbelievable kind of adventure.
I gotta be like the co-founding CMO of, um, yeah, it was, it was, it was great.
No doubt.
I mean, it, it, I, it, it sounds like, I mean, it's one of those products
which actually you kind of go, this is incredible 'cause from memory,
correct me if I'm wrong, Garris, but you could throw anything in there,
chicken bones and all kinds of stuff.
If I got that role was at a certain things.
Yeah, I mean, anything other than big, you're probably gonna start getting
into some trouble with, but like, uh,
reasonable smaller chicken and Okay.
It was, it was incredible.
Yeah.
get involved in that?
I mean, it's did, was it just a want ad in the paper or was
it just people that you knew?
No.
Okay, so to get back a, um, all.
I had started a kind of side hustle with a friend of mine and he was, he
had figured out how to sharpen wey, Todd style, like straight razors, you
know, those old timey straight razors.
And we were trying to buy them from a state sales in London, Ontario.
Um, that's the, the, the smaller London in Canada.
Um, and then we were selling them on our Shopify store and.
And those retailers said.
We put these razors in the, in the window at the, kind of like men's goods stores.
We put these razors in the window, but no one buys them 'cause
they're too hard to shave with.
Um, people buy, people always end up buying these double-edged safety razors.
Um, and so that's kind of how we were put onto double-edged safety razors.
And I started looking into the product more and realized there were these
razors that were very easy to shave with.
Um.
Mm.
Like very plastic, full cartridge razors, you know, like Gillette
Shake, all the ones that we're kind of familiar with Wilkinson in the uk.
Um, those have plastic on the cartridges and, um, double-edged safety razors
just use a recyclable, um, single blade.
And so we're like, okay, if we can.
cool, aren't they?
I
And they look kind of cool.
Um, so we figured out a way to make the double-edged safety razor, uh,
adjustable so that no matter if you have like sensitive skin or kind of
more thick, curly, coarse facial hair, like what I need to shave down here,
um, then, uh, then there's kind of like the Rockwell setting for you.
So we, um, had.
Had some initial prototypes made, took it to Kickstarter, and then it
kind of unexpectedly made $150,000 in a month, uh, which back in 2014
was quite a large Kickstarter.
Um, and so while all of my fellow environmental science graduates were
going to work in the, um, Canadian oil sands, which is, uh, what, what you
do with your, with your environmental degree in Canada, you go work in.
Then years later, by 2018, it was kind of like stable.
All the debt that we had taken on to start the business was paid off and were
able to get a management team into place.
Um, so I had a strong kind of stable company, um, with a management team
that gave me the freedom to go kind of explore other, other interests.
And so since.
Different eCommerce businesses.
Uh, one was called Keto, uh, K-E-Y-T-O.
It's a keto diet breathalyzer.
Um, and we had some really fantastic VCs involved with that.
It did really well until, um, COVID hit and then people just didn't care
about the keto diet quite as much.
Uh, and, and at that time I had already, I knew, um, map.
Um, I guess some, some product ideas, some different ideas around like
a startup studio for eco-friendly products that we talked about.
So when Covid hit, we said, you know, this is the right time
to start that startup studio.
So we, we used the community that they had built at Pela case and used that as a
platform to try launching other products.
And then LMI was the fourth out.
Four different attempts at launching a startup.
We, we did.
Um, and it was by far the most successful.
So I ended up spending a number of years after that kind as the
co-founder CMO of Lomi, while tending to some CMO duties at Pela case.
So that was like a crazy couple of years, basically from 2021 to
2023, um, just about two years.
And then I said, you know, this great, I've had a fantastic time kind of
learning startup studio, uh, building.
Within, within the infrastructure I built with Matt and Brad at Peel Case.
And it was time to go kind of do my own startup studio on my own.
So that's what I, that's what I've been doing since then.
Um, and then interestingly, a part of that, bringing this all full circle,
uh, Rockwell is still doing fantastic to today, so it's kind of part of that, part
of that startup studio, if you would.
Um, yeah.
so, so are you still, I, I, there's so much there, Gary.
Yeah.
I'm just trying to figure out where to start.
So the, you are still involved with Rockwell.
Are you still involved with, um, Lomi and the, the phone case, or are
Not, like, not in the day-to-day operations, but you know, still,
um, still like a, a proud supporter and shareholder, so to speak.
Um, yeah.
Fantastic fan.
Wait.
You sure know how to stay busy.
I mean, running three quite significant e-com businesses.
Uh, most people only ever dream of really running one.
You've done three.
So
Yeah.
well
it, it did definitely lead to a bit of burnout in, um, towards the end
of the two years with Lomi and PK.
So there are certainly points when there's the realization that it's,
it's an appropriate time to, to take a step back.
Um, but really proud of kind of all the, what's been accomplished.
And we've built some companies that I think are doing genuinely
really good things in the world, reducing plastic usage, um, and
diverting waste from landfill.
So that's, that's exciting to.
No, I, and I, I appreciate that.
And I think, um, Rockwell raises, uh, I mean, I don't, uh, I don't really shave,
as you can tell, but I, I remember, um, actually I used to live in a place a,
a town called Rockwell fully enough.
Uh,
Okay.
I, I lived in the States and I was, I was, I was visiting some friends a couple
years ago, um, and they showed me, uh.
These sort of double-edged razors that you
Yep.
you are talking about?
Because I'd not seen them.
I thought, you know, my granddad used them kind of years ago and
then they sort of disappeared and.
and I got very excited, uh, when I saw them, uh, back out.
And I, I really love the products and I thought, fantastic.
It's both the way you've done it, I think, um, is, is is a good mixture of sort of
modern and nostalgia and of, I I, maybe I'm of a certain age, I don't know, but
I, when I look at the products you've got on that website, I instantly think of, you
know, like my grandfather that sort of.
man's man generation.
I dunno if I'm allowed to say things like that, but Do you know what I mean?
That's the kind of imagery I have in my head.
I dunno if that's intentional, but it, it, it's, it sort of makes me
go down that in my, in my thinking.
Well, we're trying to kind of leave it, if that's, if you see those kind
of, uh, I guess these old timey sorts of razors, you know, they, they've
appeared in films like James Bond films.
They've been in a number of those.
They featured in Mad Men.
I think that actually, it's interesting, you, me, everything
you just did, 'cause I think that.
Those features in media were kind of a big part of what sparked a resurgence
of interest in, um, safety razor shaving kind around the early 2010s.
Um, and so that's probably, that interest is likely part of the reason that the
initial crowdfunding campaign for the, for our first product did like, well, um.
And yeah.
Beyond that, I think there are, there are lots of safety razors
and safety razor brands out there.
Um, but I think the, there is this perception that they're harder
to use than cartridge razors.
And we can get into why in a second.
It's actually really a marketing thing that the, the big companies
did over many, many decades.
Um.
Quant, easier to use, um, and appropriate for sensitive skin than that.
Um, then that just will make it a little bit more approachable.
And I think that's.
Yeah.
And I imagine, um, customers to your business are quite,
quite a big part in that sense.
A little bit.
Um, so interestingly, not like the idea is that you're buying a really high quality
tool once, and we sell razor blades.
Um, but they're not, they're not, um.
We're not the only people that you can buy those razor blades from.
They're not proprietary.
That's, I think that's a big part of it.
We make very good blades, so people often do gravitate towards ours,
but I'm not, um, I'm not losing my mind over, like dreaming of all the
profits I'm making out of every.
$10, $12 order of like a reorder of our hundred pack of blades.
We sell them for like just over 10 cents each.
So they're not, it's not a huge profit center for us.
Um, but where I guess we do see repeat orders are someone will often buy one
razor and then will not infrequently see that same customer come back
and buy like two or three, um, and.
Sending surveys to customers, we've, we've learned that those are
indicators of, of gifting purchases.
So someone will kind of discover Rockwell, so to speak, and then begin
gifting it to other people in their life.
So have you guys, um, have you guys then, I should, I've not
really, 'cause I don't, I've not really bought one of your products.
I should probably go buy one.
But the, do you guys, have you guys stayed away from the subscription model,
um, you know, like the Harry's and the Dollar Shave Club or, or have you
of done that with like the blades and found something interesting in there?
Or it is it just one time purchases really.
No, we've kept away from the subscription.
I mean, okay, so this is, maybe this is take believe in a way
subscriptions for eCommerce.
You see them pop up a lot.
You might agree with me.
You see them pop up on a lot of brands necessarily have and
Mm-hmm.
capital.
Um, of, of eCommerce and consumer goods over, I'd say kind of the last
10 years, up until about two years ago, people were really looking for
eCommerce, broadly speaking, um, to sort of fit the same economics that consumer
SaaS, consumer software as a service.
Fits.
And so they're looking for lifetime value calculations and um, and payback
period calculations and, and all like how, like how long do you keep your
cohorts around and lifetime value?
I think it's great.
Every brand you wanna end up having lifetime value, but I
don't think that subscription is.
Um, and I think it was asked of a lot brands to incorporate when in
paper, uh, cleanings.
A couple other things if you're a forgetful person, but, um,
there's not a lot things.
Physical product things, I think in a consumer's general life that were
like, I could not live without a subscription to this physical product.
Um, so anyways, long-winded answer on why we kept away from it.
I just don't think it's a value add for the consumer.
I think that you can be more successful as a brand, having respect to meet
customers where they're at, and meeting customers where they're at
often means make a great product.
And then serve them with opportunities to share that product with with
others when the opportunity arises, or if they love our blades.
I'd love enough blades to last a couple years, and then that's
a fantastic second order to.
Yeah, it's interesting you say this because, I mean, this,
the default model, isn't it?
Is you, you, you, you sell something and then you sell
something on subscription as well.
You know, it's that kind of, and, and the, the idea being I, I suppose
the Gillette model, you know, you buy the razor and then you buy the
cartridges, um, on an ongoing basis.
To give us that ongoing income.
And you do see it, you see it on so many e-commerce sites, you know, you
buy this widget over here and you can buy this thing for the widget on a
monthly standing order if you want to.
And some brands like you say, it makes sense.
Some brands I. You kind of do feel like, well, you've added this 'cause
it's, it's maybe a default model.
I find it really fascinating where a product like yours, which probably
historically would fit slot into that model somehow quite easily,
you've intentionally avoided it, which I, I think is, mean, hats
off to you, sir, for doing that.
I, yeah, I think there's just benefit to meeting customers where they're at.
If we.
Aggressive upsells to subscriptions.
There's some amount of customers who would've been considering purchasing
from Rockwell, um, who would've benefited from using Rockwell, either
on environmental level or at like, literally just helping with sensitive
skin or irritate skin irritation problems.
Um, 'cause that's what Rockwell's really good at solving is, is skin
irritation, um, from conventional, multi.
These guys are trying uneasy about that.
Know what percent customers
traffic.
Relevant and relevant information and making the brand and product feel
approachable to a consumer rather than exclusively focusing on like, what's the
12 month, 24 month, 36 month LTV, focus on making it a first order profitable brand.
And then explore other ways that we can serve the customer,
um, but not rely on, oh.
You know, subscription that they'll be hooked into, and
then we'll make our money back.
It just, that's never set right with me.
Oh, fantastic.
I I, it is, it is quite refreshing to hear, if I'm honest with you.
The, um, not that I have an issue with the subscription model at all,
No, I, it makes a lot of sense for a lot of businesses.
I know people who, who've done really well with it, um, and, and
have served customers really well.
It's just, it, it's a question of like, is that authentic to your brand or not?
Um, and for me it just wasn't.
So how did you, how did you go about finding what was authentic to your brand?
I mean, you did the Kickstarter thing and, and quickly rifling
through the memory banks of
Yeah,
head, 2014, Kickstarter was quite a new thing.
pretty new.
yeah, it was, it was.
I'm, I'm just intrigued.
How did you, how did you.
How did you find, or how have you found this, this voice of your customer?
Yeah, it took I, it took time.
I think we had to, over time learn more about who was drawn to the product itself.
I thought.
A very eco minded kind of customer.
And I think that's because I was projecting a little bit of my own
interests and values onto what I, I was idealizing the customer
that would be drawn to Rockwell.
Um, and I think there's always been an undercurrent of the
customer that understands, hey.
This razor doesn't have any plastic in it.
It doesn't use any plastic, um, in the blades.
So therefore we're, we're not sending a bunch of blades in plastic into landfill.
Um, that can all be recycled.
But the initial traction for Rockwell was more with what I'm gonna call
like a buy it for life type crack.
'cause we made this, our first product was this stainless steel
razor and it genuinely indestructible.
Um.
Don't come after me lawyers, I'm sure it's destruct if you really try.
Um, but like, no, no conventional, reasonable attempts to, uh, to
damage it really seem to leave much of a mark, um, just because it's
made out solid stainless steel.
Um, which is different than, than kind of the plastic stuff that
we're just used to throwing away.
A of, not necessarily an environmental perspective, but
there's different demographic people who are high quality stuff buy for
beautiful, high quality things.
In my um, and time, uh.
That customers continued to exist and be interested.
Um, and we begin to, we began to see a couple of those
like, oh, I wanna buy this.
It's cool And Manly Saw Bond, I saw it on something I kind of associate
with conventional manliness.
Um, and then we've seen like most.
I guess the, the fastest growing customer segment is the, uh, skincare segment.
So, uh, men and women are, are always, are looking more and more
ways to, to take care of their skin.
I think there's been, especially for men and kind of an uptick in, in taking care
of, of skin just a part as a part of like a general health and wellness routine.
Um, and a single blade to shave with, uh, that doesn't involve any of the kind goop.
Kind of coat the, uh, the cartridge blades with, that's just better for your skin.
Like, you don't have all those blades pulling at your, at your hairs.
Um, you just have a single blade, all metal, no plastics
or chemicals or anything like that, um, on the razor itself.
So I think that's really spoken to customers as they become kind of
more health and wellness conscious.
Um, so that's been the 10 year evolution of certainly the main
customer groups that I've noticed.
And is it a case of, uh, as I'm, I'm sitting here thinking about
it, when I sort of first got back
Okay.
form of shaving, I suppose all of a sudden shaving became less
about something that I had to do.
Quickly in front of a mirror between, you know, shower and a
cup of tea and rushing out the door to be in a bit more of a ceremony.
And I, I, I noticed this actually when I, I stopped throwing on the Gillette.
Stuff and just destroy I, I I, all of a sudden I invested in a wooden bowl with
soap and a brush, and I sort of, the whole thing became the old fashioned way.
Do you know what I mean?
It, it, uh, and I, I sort of got sucked into it a little bit and I, and I remember
standing there one morning in front of the mirror going, well, this isn't this
interesting that I've, I've actually created space in my day to do this now.
Like this is some kind of ceremony versus some kind of inconvenience.
It sounds like, um.
Experience and, uh, turned it into something that's
slightly meditative for you.
And I'm just extrapolating that based on your use of the word ritual.
Um, and I, I would say that that's extremely common.
Um, there's actually like a Reddit community called Wicked Edge that
is collectors of double-edged safety raises that, um, that'd
very, we've been very fortunate.
Brush soap, um, bowl stand and razor, uh, that they're using that morning.
They, they, they'll have a different kind of collection of different
soaps, much like some men and some women will have a collection of
different colognes or perfumes.
Um, everyone kind of finds their, their little rituals and their little what,
what is kind of their quiet moment to themselves during the day, and
myself included.
Shaving.
I don't do it.
I'll do it.
But like once a week kind of on, on Sundays, I had to shave my head as well.
Um, so I shave my, shave my neck, shave the beard, shave my head, all
with kind of a, a double-edged safety razor and very high quality soap.
We make, we make a soap as well.
Uh, and a brush and a bowl and all this stuff you just mentioned.
So that's, I think, um.
I mean, it's the whole thing, isn't it?
Exactly.
Mm-hmm.
So it it, and I mean, it's fascinating, Gareth and I, and I'm, I'm intrigued
when back on it now, sort of 10, 10 years later, I suppose just over
10 years, isn't it now, uh, when it got launched on Kickstarter, um.
What are, what are maybe the, the sort of the top one or two lessons you've
learned as, as an e-comm entrepreneur that you, maybe you'd wanna share with
others or maybe that you're just, if you could go back in time and tell
yourself this is what you would say.
Yeah, it's a great question.
So I think over the years I've learned that there's, there's a million different
things all the time in e-commerce that it feels like you can be doing.
There's so many different apps to be thinking about.
So many different, you've got, you've got email, you have your SMS, you
have conversion rate optimization.
You've got.
That you need to be thinking about, you need to be thinking
about delivery experiences.
There's just, there's so many different little bits and bobs, um, and I
definitely used to be the person who just like cycles through all the different
inboxes you've gotta be covering.
Oh my God, customer service, then jump into this.
And it's inherently unfocused just because you're trying to wrap your arms
around all the different things that you could be doing and not necessarily
thinking about what you should be doing.
Or even better.
So that you don't.
And I think over time, the biggest lesson has been that I can, I can
really understand what needs my focus and attention based on, uh,
assessing a business based on, on what I call the four levers of e-commerce.
So I'll always look at four main things, which is like your
average order value slash offer.
So are you present, are you giving, uh, customers a.
Elegant way to purchase the product.
It clearly makes sense, um, to the customer.
So that's why we have starter kits on Rock Lake.
The Rockwell website is almost entirely optimized to starter kit to give you
everything that you'd need to have that ritual shave right outta the gates.
Um, so that's me thinking about offer leading into a OV.
Um, so you want that average order value to be producing enough.
Room that you can drive traffic to the site.
We'll come back in a moment because conversion, so I've got this strong A
that's got strong gross margin coming out.
It.
It's different for every brand, but let's say on average more than 2.5%
of the traffic that comes into my site, I actually know how much I can
pay, not just per acquisition, which is what most people have to like live
and die on their e-commerce business.
Thinking about, uh, what ROAS can I afford?
But I can actually start looking at what can I pay for traffic?
Um, 'cause I know.
What percent of that traffic converts.
And every time that they convert, I know exactly how much gross margin
that's driving to the business.
So I can calculate what's called contribution margin.
Contribution margin.
As long as you're generating more, more, the more contribution margin than
it costs to actually run the business outside of all your variable costs and
your costs, um, then you're in good shape.
And so then fourth, you can just look at lifetime value, um, extension.
The initial, the initial acquisition, that is a, those are gross margin dollars
that you're gathering without needing to spend market additional marketing dollars.
Um, so I can kind of lay out the business at any point and say, Hey, which of
these things do we need to work on?
And then just focus on that instead of, um, needing to think about
every, everything under the sun all the time and saying, oh my
God, we've optimize everything at.
Mm. It's interesting listening to you talk.
I, as, as I do, I'm, I'm reminded of a, a, I dunno where I heard it.
I, whether it's on a podcast or something, talking about Elon Musk and how, um,
his whole thing in business, he's quite unique in how he does it, is like he goes
to the, I don't know, Tesla, whichever one he is particularly interested in.
He goes, right, what's the biggest problem, uh, that we face at the moment?
If we solve it, it's gonna have the biggest.
know, bang freaks book on our business, or it's kinda the biggest impact.
understands what that problem is and he just works solely on that problem.
Uh, which think is, is is quite an interesting to do it.
And he brings in people to help him understand what the problem
is, and then I guess, encourages people to think outside the box.
I don't know.
I've not worked for Mr. Musk.
Um.
But I listening to you talk, I'm kind of reminded of that, that you seem to have
gone from this trying to have an eye on everything to understanding actually
what's the most important thing for me to work on in my business at the moment, in
the context of your fall leave framework.
Let's go do that.
I dunno if I've oversimplified it, but in essence that's what I'm hearing.
Yeah, well, I would say I'm definitely a far cry from, um, dear Mr. Dear Mr.
Musk, um, on both an ideological and a just general commercial capacity level.
Um, but I'm, that's fine.
Um, uh, but I think my, my system as it were, comes more from a recognition that.
If I give myself the opportunity to run myself ragged,
I apparently will happily do that.
Um, so these are almost guard rails put in place, um, after
a couple hard won lessons.
Um, that, uh, yeah, that unless you're kind of focusing on.
The main thing, um, then you'll focus on a whole bunch of different things
and actually very little will get done, but you'll be completely exhausted.
Um, and that really doesn't help anybody.
Um, so it makes me less of a good husband, son, business partner, everything.
So energy management has actually become, um.
I feel like this four system is as much a business management
system as it is energy management,
umsomewhat of a.
No, it, it makes sense.
I'm curious, how does that work practically though?
Is that like, um, you get together with the management team on a Monday,
you have some conversations around the framework and you are kinda like, right,
this is what I'm gonna do this week.
Um, I mean, practically, how do you, how do you know
Uh, I think you have to be monitoring your numbers.
So if we go back into, um, I guess my, my four levers example, there would
be core metrics across everything that you're, that you're looking at.
Um, the main one, I honestly, I just wanna understand what conversion rate
and traffic levels are and, um, and CPM.
So like how much is that?
How much are we paying in total for
ratio?
New customer acquisition costs.
There's just a couple of core metrics that we're gonna be looking at, and that
almost guides the conversation, Hey, we're seeing new customer acquisition go up.
Why is that?
Let's dive in.
Okay, it's because CPMs went up.
Did CPMs go up across the market?
Do we think that this is just going to be temporary because it was the
week of the American election, so we don't actually need to change anything?
CPMs were just up because they were up.
Everybody.
Okay, no action needed.
Or is it a random week?
We have no idea why CPMs have gone.
Through the roof.
Okay, now we know that we need to dive into our individual ads.
Oh, it turns out that one of the ad settings is completely wrong and like
we're spending all this money on something that we thought was off, or there was
this ad that was performing really well and all of a sudden out of nowhere,
it's just not converting anymore.
Um, we, and we missed that.
Right.
I guess, uh, monitoring sort of system.
But often when I'm working with anyone who kind of works in my, my businesses
at this point, people are pretty good at being proactive, um, about, Hey,
we spotted this, um, it was affecting conversion rate, so even before the,
the Wednesday meeting, um, often we're able to kind of address stuff.
So if you were, um, if you were starting out again today.
Knowing.
I mean, you've, I remember the reason I'm asking, or sort of going down this
road, Gareth, I remember this conversation I had with a chap called Albert Goe.
Um, Albert Goe was a really fascinating fellow, very polarizing,
uh, fellow, died a few years ago, um, an extraordinarily wealthy man.
Um, and I got to know him, uh, and travel with him a little bit.
I, I remember saying to him one day, he's, he was quite.
He made his money in the 1960s, or he started to make his money in the
1960s when in the UK he set up a chain of supermarkets called Quick Save.
The whole idea behind quick save was if you leave the baked beans on the
pallet and people pick the, uh, the tin of baked beans off themselves,
you can charge two pence less.
Okay.
was this whole, this whole kind of way of thinking about things quite
differently to cut costs, um, therefore you could cut prices, therefore
you could attract customers in.
And he did really well.
I mean, he went from being a baro boy to, you know, exceptionally wealthy guy.
And I remember walking with him, I think we're in Germany at the time,
and I said to me, G listen, I, I, I, I've got a question for you and
I'm curious to know the answer.
you had to begin again today, would you do?
knowing what you know about the world, about markets, and so on and so forth.
And before I tell you age's answer, Gareth, I'm curious
to know what your answer is.
I think if you're starting again, anything that's going to build a degree of
community is the, the absolute key thing.
Um, so what I mean by that.
Is, it could be actually a lot of different things.
Some people build email lists, some people build, um, social media followings.
Some people build Facebook groups.
Some people build in-person meetups.
Um, but I think the.
Up to now or the, the, uh, generation of e-commerce that I grew up in.
Uh, so 2014 kind of onwards into, into now, um, has been the age
of, I would say, fairly cheap attention on social platforms, as in.
There's all these people on Facebook and Instagram and TikTok and Snapchat and
Pinterest and Reddit and all the other places where you have a ads product.
Um, YouTube as well, obviously a huge, huge platform.
Um, and in the grand scheme of things, renting that attention in the form
of putting an ad into their content has been relatively inexpensive.
Now, of course, in eCommerce, we hear all the.
It doesn't matter.
Like that's what the, that's what the market is charging.
So you have to figure out how to make the ads price work.
Like that's just the price of the auction.
There's no point in complaining.
Um, but when we get to a point where there is nothing that you can do to make things
work, it it, that means that you have to find alternative sources of, of traffic.
And I think that's why we're seeing more and more of these creator led brands.
Stuff like Mr. Starting brands.
Um.
Brands being spun out of startup studios from big multinationals
like L'Oreal and blah, blah, blah.
Like they have some degree of insight around product and visibility
on how they're going to be able to drive traffic and the way
that a mere mortal can kind of.
Do that is to start a, a, a niche community.
Any degree of aggregation of people's attention, um, of your own aggregation
of people's attention that you can ultimately divert to something that you
are selling, um, or some degree of buy button would be, would be the key thing.
So if I was starting again today, I'd likely be going out and either
buying or building communities.
So that's.
Places where people with a common interest or um, allegiance have, have gathered.
Uh, and I would be, yeah, I would be trying to, trying to get as much of
that available attention as possible so that I own that attention rather
than needing to rent it, because we don't know what the future renting that
attention looks like at this point.
that's a really interesting answer.
And is I, I mean, yeah, you started out with Rock Crawl, uh, rock roll raises.
Were you aware of, of the aspect of community then?
I mean, I can imagine that actually it's built, it its own sense of community.
You mentioned the Reddit forums earlier on and this sort of, this, this, you
know, we talked a lot about ceremony and stuff like that, but I imagine
it's, it's sort of built this sense of community, but was, was that intentional
or was that just because actually the, you, you, you lucked out a little bit.
You had a great product that kind of created that community and, and
actually at the moment, that's one of the things which is really important.
Um, I think I wasn't as aware of the importance just from
like purely a commerce context.
That wasn't something that in 2014 I was laser focused on because we.
You know, the Tim Ferris four Hour workweek book saying, Hey, you can go
start a landing page with a product that you've just cooked up, and why
don't you run Google and Facebook ads to drive traffic to this landing page?
And if people buy that product, then you should actually make
the product and ship it to like.
That doesn't, that doesn't happen because you can't get 50 purchases
on a landing for and under anymore.
Like unless you're, unless you're.
Mm
Hundreds of, or thousands of pre-orders on a product.
If you've built a community, if you're launching a new barbecue and you own, and
you've built a up, a huge YouTube channel of people who are obsessed with barbecues
and you've made the perfect barbecue, uh, for those people, then, then you're
gonna have a fantastic time if you've chosen to launch a barbecue company.
So what do you think?
I mean, I can just hear everybody's sort of listening to the show, you
know, running their own business.
They're going, well, this is great.
You know what channel.
What channels, I guess, have surprised you in building community?
I know people, there's the standard channels, there's a Facebook, there's
Metas, there's obviously YouTube, which makes sense for a whole bunch
of brands in so many different ways.
But, um, are they still the core ones?
Are you finding traction and interest somewhere else?
Mm-hmm.
I think the thing that's interesting to me most right now is, um, is
truly now we're social commerce.
The West, let's say.
So social commerce has been how a lot of e-commerce in, uh, Asia, especially
China, has been done for a very long time.
Um, and when I say social commerce right now, practically, that that
effectively means TikTok shops, but
there's no doubt that Instagram and YouTube are.
Mere months behind TikTok.
Um, and that's where creators who have a community are able to promote products.
So creators can now go out and without needing to produce their own product, come
up with a novel formulation for a skincare brand or render CAD designs for a new I.
Barbecues are good.
Let's stay with them.
Yeah.
Barbecue's good.
Uh, render cat designs, put up money to do all the quality control and manufacturing
for thousand barbecues or whatever.
That attention aggregation, uh, we can move over to, to creators who
have the ability to in-app monetize the aggregation of the attention,
which up to now has been really inel.
So in, in a way, it's like the perfection of the affiliate model, and lots of brands
have been built on an affiliate model.
That's where a creator promotes something says, use my code or use my link and
go to the site and then you purchase.
But there's so many.
Opportunities to lose the purchase.
So if I've done a great job, I've become a magical hat influencer, and I go out and
pro promote this hat, and I send someone to a Shopify site, say, use my code.
Don't forget to use my code.
When you click this link and go to this hat website, um, well, I have
to trust that they find a hat that they like, they add it to their cart.
They, they pick a size that actually ends up working out and they don't return the.
And they have to check out.
They have to remember to use my code probably and.
It's just, it's, there's a lot of clicks.
There's a lot of opportunities to lose the conversion.
So social shopping is conversions happening in app, whether it's right
now TikTok, but I think it'll be within Instagram, YouTube, and whatnot is
another example of an app that's, that's doing really well in social commerce.
Um, that's kind of nude, is not, it's not actually coming.
Social media platform, it's just its own social commerce platform.
And so, um, that's what's most interesting to me right now because it's, it's
letting brands get access to other communities that have been built up
and almost align or ally with many different communities in the form of.
Um, of working with a creator.
So, um, I just think there's it's communities all the way down.
Um, and even if you don't have the bandwidth to build a community right
now, technology is finally emerging.
That lets you ally with them really easily.
I.
Yeah.
And I know I, it's funny, your fellow can, I dunno if you know
Jordan West, your fellow Canadian, who's also a, a podcaster, um, he
is really hot on this at the moment.
I mean, just brands are doing some extraordinary things over
on TikTok with social commerce.
And so, um, yeah.
It's, it's a really big deal.
Gareth, thank you so much for joining us Men.
Uh, really.
No, it's been great.
It's been a fantastic conversation.
Uh, loved it, genuinely loved it.
Super excited by what you guys are doing as well.
And um, yeah, really, really cool.
So, uh, fantastic.
What a great conversation.
That was huge.
Thanks again to Gareth for joining me.
In fact, I should do this.
There we go.
Yes, yes, yes.
Bring out the, uh, the applause from the, the cheesy sound desk.
Uh, make sure you subscribe to the show, wherever you get your podcast
from, because we've got some more great conversations coming up.
And of course.
I don't want you to miss any of them.
And in case no one's told you yet today, let me be the first.
You are awesome.
Yes, you are created.
Awesome.
It's just a burden you have to bear.
Gareth's, gotta bear it.
I've gotta bear it.
You've gotta bear it as well.
Now the eCommerce Podcast is produced by the amazing Pod Junction.
Big shout out to the team, including Ada Fanon, uh, that makes this show possible.
Josh Edmundson wrote the theme music, uh, and of course, as I said, if you'd
like to know more about the show or.
All that sort of stuff, just go to eCommerce Podcast dot net.
Uh, but that's it from me.
That's it from Gareth.
Thank you so much for joining us.
Have a fantastic week wherever you are in the world.
I'll see you next time.
Bye for now.