00:00:04 - 00:01:08

this is meant to be like open dialogue and to you know hopefully answer a lot of tactical relevant questions that you might have if you're marketing your company or if you're starting a business um so yeah really excited to kick off um like I said this is a collaboration between dark room and Shopify um I'm Lucas I'm going to be moderating the conversation I'm the co-founder and CEO of darkroom and I'm going to be basically trying to weave some sort of narrative between these three disparate

00:00:36 - 00:01:48

businesses so in terms of us we are a growth agency here in New York we work with a lot of fast-growing Shopify businesses we invest in cpg companies as well and commerce technology businesses and before we get into questions for the speakers I kind of want to Center the stage and just provide some context in terms of where we're at in the digital marketing ecosystem and then we'll go into to some questions that I've prepped for these guys and then open q a um and at any point you guys can kind of

00:01:11 - 00:02:30

jump in but um so just to kind of Center the stage in terms of uh just the crowd today how many of you guys are familiar with marketing efficiency Ratio or mer we can do just a show of hands does anyone know what that is one two three okay yeah the Dark Rumors know what more is um so mura's marketing efficiency ratio it's calculated as total revenue divided by total ad spend it is a measure for the efficiency of your ad dollars or how effective your advertising is at driving sales and what I have here are two

00:01:51 - 00:03:04

graphs one graph is showing basically actually they're both showing the past two years and how Mur is on a steady decline and so what does that mean that means that our advertising dollars are becoming less effective at driving Revenue so you have to spend more money on Advertising to drive the same amount in revenue or if you keep ad spend constant um you might actually have declining Revenue so said differently this is a bad bad thing for people who advertise it means that advertising is becoming a

00:02:28 - 00:03:32

lot more difficult um and so I think there are a couple of different factors that are happening in the macro environment that are precipitating the situation we kind of find ourselves in one is the implications of consumer tracking another show of hands how many people have heard of iOS 14 okay okay wow it's pretty good pretty good um cool so that was Apple tracking transparency there are a number of other privacy regulations that have been kind of ushered in um and will be ushered in over the past

00:02:59 - 00:04:00

over the next five years iOS 17 ITT privacy manifest loss of fingerprinting you know and then there's a lot of legislature that's still a little bit hazy but generally what we can kind of all anticipate is a world where tracking becomes more and more difficult and that's what the legislation will prescribe but it's also what apple is doing leading the charge they're saying we don't we want privacy is very important to the consumer we don't want advertisers to be able to track them

00:03:30 - 00:04:39

so that's tough for us as brand owners uh and that means that some of our traditional channels that work are are no longer as effective at targeting the other main Trend that I'm seeing is the rise of like endless browsing mode um and I think this is a combination and a Confluence of different factors but one is just increasing competition so there's so many people launching Brands today that's part and parcel because of Shopify thank you guys made it very easy for us to launch Brands but if you look

00:04:04 - 00:05:11

at basically every consumer vertical cpg apparel accessories you know the list goes on and on a lot more Brands today than there were 10 years ago um and so what this means is that switching costs for the consumer are relatively low if I'm shopping for a certain type of product I'm probably going to get retargeted or hit with an ad from five similar Brands right we've probably all experienced that and so what the consumer experiences is like a tyranny of choice they see all of these different brands right and

00:04:39 - 00:05:47

um you know I think that makes it very tough to build brand and to to grow revenue and the third Trend that we're seeing that I think is a result of these two negative or situational uh things that we're experiencing is uh the rise of the importance of community and how Community is actually creating moat for a lot of Brands to to grow and what I'm seeing is the brands that are most effective at growing are the ones that are very very diligent about creating community in an authentic way and that's

00:05:12 - 00:06:08

a very immersive amorphous topic uh but that's what we're going to be talking about today so you guys are lucky very lucky to be here so we're going to be talking about building Community Driven brands in a world of constant scrolling and I think this is necessary for any business today who's trying to scale definitely if you're digitally native um and so we've brought together uh three people I really admire they're at the helm of I think three of uh the brands that are doing this the best in

00:05:40 - 00:06:56

terms of cultivating Community um I'm going to introduce each of them uh so we have Jackie uh the co-founder and CEO of tiny Lux um yeah which I've known Jackie for for over a year and to watch her build this brand and be so um at the helm of it like really visually and in all the content has been incredible to watch and for those of you who don't know tiny Lux is a jewelry brand for sensitive skin it's digitally native it's a Shopify business and we also have Tim West uh the founder and creative director of

00:06:18 - 00:07:12

Bandit I'm sure if you guys have been in New York uh you're all in New York you've heard of bandit in some capacity I was introduced to Tim in November we were on another panel together and he has you know since then I followed Bandit and I think they've created and cultivated probably one of the most engaged communities in apparel for sure and definitely in running the engagement is is really something that we're going to delve into today last but not least we have Kevin who I just met

00:06:45 - 00:07:54

today um but who I've I've known about Emmy um for for a little while um it's a high protein better for you um instant Ramen business um so consumer cpg in the food space um Kevin had a background in venture capital and I've founded Emmy so great panel here and each of these businesses are building community in different respects so I'm going to kick it off with questions I'm going to help us you know kick off here and then you know you guys feel free to kind of interject

00:07:19 - 00:08:18

and you know answer ask anything that you want and I have a section reserved for that so let's start this is going to be for all three of you guys um with an understanding of the current market dynamics what we basically just talked about how do each of you approach creating Community for your Brands and Tim let's start with you just because you have the mic and we'll go from there cool all right hey everybody good to see you um how do each of you approach creating Community for your brand so

00:07:48 - 00:08:56

in the context of the graphs that Lucas just pulled up I think like full stop it's about getting the marketing mix right making sure you're really efficient balanced where you're spending spending in all the right areas making sure you've got healthiness in your channel strategy that's the fundamental I think um for Bandit communities in our DNA we are a community centered running apparel brand that's how we refer to ourselves we have a community-centered design process that is what informs everything

00:08:21 - 00:09:36

we do how we do it why we do it so what does a community center design process mean every single day we are talking to our community and gaining insights from uh anything about what they want in their products and that informs our collections how our collections are made what they look like the performance features that our community is asking for otherwise we're Flying Blind and making products that we don't know if people really want them which would be a very very risky strategy um but you know tactically there's a lot

00:08:59 - 00:10:13

of things that we do to engage community physically and digitally we put on braces we put on marathon training programs both virtually and in person we have our own run Club out of our store every Saturday 150 people show up get four miles in together um what else we've got an amazing newsletter that is all about the community and what's going on and it has a what's happening section which I slipped in tonight I see a couple of you who definitely read that and are here so thank you for coming Patrick especially

00:09:36 - 00:10:46

uh but yeah I think for us it's just about really understanding this is all about the community it's not about us it's not about our product it's about the community making sure that they feel heard seen special included it's just I like to really think of Bandit as like part of the hospitality industry in a in a weird way but we're really here to cater to them uh and yeah they're just at the center of everything we do so uh that's kind of a you know a broad answer

00:10:12 - 00:11:10

no no it's good I think it'll set the stage for some of the other questions that I'm going to ask this is definitely more more surface level um yeah Jackie how do you kind of approach the question and um have you thought about this with tiny Lux yeah so we sell earrings that's our primary product so you know taking someone buying a pair of earrings because it solves a pain point to then keeping them engaged and entertained over years and years of being a customer is pretty challenging but the way we

00:10:41 - 00:11:34

think about it is just trying to inject ourselves and our personality into every stage of the customer funnel so like a new customer they want to know our Brand Story they want to know why I started the company and that convinces them that they should join our funnel but then from there they don't need to hear our story a hundred more times they've already been convinced so at that point it's more about showing the behind the scenes of our team and injecting that into some things that are

00:11:08 - 00:12:12

scalable and some things that aren't you know sometimes we we have blog series that are not necessarily the most scalable thing but we're able to use those to build up our brand values and strengthen that within our community and then there's other things like using our ugc content in our ads that's scalable and that's more doable and that makes customers feel connected to us long term can you take us through that founding story really quickly just like yeah definitely um so I just had extremely sensitive

00:11:40 - 00:12:39

ears and I couldn't find any earrings that worked for me this was like a years-long problem and I knew like a lot of other women who had the same issue um so one day I was like scrolling Instagram there was this influencer that I was obsessed with she did this big collab with Bobble bar who sells jewelry and I wanted to buy like every pair of earrings that she posted but I was like I can't because they're gonna irritate my ears so then I just started digging and trying to find a solution I stumbled

00:12:09 - 00:13:05

on a medical implant manufacturer's website who was talking about the benefits of titanium titanium is always used in medical implants because it doesn't react with the body so that kind of clicked to me like oh maybe that would work for earrings then I couldn't find any Earrings made with titanium so at that point I thought like I have this problem I have a solution I could be the one to create the solution for everyone it started really small it was still working at the time and now here we are

00:12:37 - 00:13:33

five years later and it's growing every year so okay so with you know the authenticity of like Hey we're solving a problem I had this problem that's deeply personal do you find that people really resonate with that and they're like I have this issue too absolutely so my 10 and see as an engineer is to sell the um the product values and that can be a little boring and it's also not necessarily so this is a our product we have to get people over this hump of like I'm skeptical I've tried other

00:13:05 - 00:14:05

things how do I convince people that like your product is going to be different than everything else that I've tried um so me putting my face on the website and saying like I stand behind this product with my name and this and I have the same problem as you and now it works brings so much more authenticity and trustworthiness to the brand do you engage with customers and I know Tim I know you do this quite quite a bit how do you think about that Jackie I do I mean for service myself and sometimes I

00:13:35 - 00:14:39

still answer customer service emails but I also we use an app where it's you know my face telling the Brand Story people can click through they can see different like frequently asked questions with me answering the questions and I think that little piece of video content really helps a lot um and so yeah Tim let's actually go back to you really quickly let's double click on you know you mentioned a lot of different things the Run Club you know some of the events that you do regarding marathons like

00:14:07 - 00:15:11

you're pretty front and center in in the community you know and I think this is a theme and a through line um how do you manage that with like running the business and you know can you just talk more about it yeah sure I as far as most people know like I'm not a figurehead of the brand I never have been um public facing I've never been on the Instagram or I've never put my face on our story I'm scared to talk to the camera I'm always like wildly impressed by uh people who can do it

00:14:38 - 00:15:42

um and that's a personal issue but uh we're we're growing and we're getting on panels and it's great but I love love engaging with customers on a one-to-one basis or at a group run and I love like running our our club and I love being on set with our community members when we're putting together new campaigns and doing stuff like that like I love being Hands-On with the business and at the community but like at the scale of you know social uh I'm still hiding a little bit and I think I will

00:15:10 - 00:16:09

because ultimately like we're not when we were a sock company at first yes I solved a problem that was like unique to me I couldn't find a really good pair of running socks that went the distance but I didn't feel confident enough to really put my you know face behind it and uh it's not about me and that has nothing to do with with um tiny lux's strategy it's there's so many different ways to go about it um but for me I just like always felt best about putting the emphasis on other

00:15:41 - 00:16:53

people um so yeah that's just where we're at thank you um Kevin let's let's take it to you opine on some of the stuff we've been talking about yeah um so I think our approach to community we try to be very intentional in the beginning uh just because my girlfriend and I actually before working on Emmy we spent the past decade in the tech industry and my co-founder was actually at meta he was building features to help creators manage their communities and I had previously grown and run the world's

00:16:17 - 00:17:13

largest online community for product managers so we both knew we wanted to take that Community Driven approach into Emmy and I think what was funny is our community has that the how we approach creating community and really the purpose of our community has evolved over time in the early days it was just me and my co-founder we didn't come from the food industry we had to learn like food science and just like make stuff in our kitchens we made the first 200 versions ourselves so our community back then was just

00:16:45 - 00:17:35

us in a Facebook group with people who discovered you know our brand on like subreddits and they were just curious to see how we were going to create this brand new product it's brand new category from scratch I think a lot of them were just like I don't think these guys are going to do it but we would just post like photos and videos of us in the kitchen messing around and it was just kind of like a fun build-in public experiment and then I think over time we started to realize wow these people

00:17:10 - 00:17:56

are like super passionate we can even do like surveys we can send them early design mock-ups of the packaging and people would actually give us like really clever feedback because some people in the group were like packaging designers they'd be like you didn't even think about this and how it's going to work on retail so that kind of evolved over time and then when we launched uh it was it was just amazing because the community really went to bat they had been in that Community for I think at

00:17:33 - 00:18:18

that point a year and a half some of them just felt like they were this was like a private Facebook Community yeah it was a private Facebook Community um we picked Facebook because at the time we did a lot of demand testing before we built the product and we realized a large portion of our initial audience was actually a 35 Plus female and my co-founder and I are working in Tech we actually knew that that audience tended to live on Facebook so we didn't really want to overthink it not no fancy

00:17:56 - 00:18:54

Discord slack groups we just did Facebook groups you also don't have to worry about like having synchronous communication people can just like leave a comment in a thread at their own time and it will still feel like it's an Engaged community so yeah we we launched and then the community went to bat for us like they would fight trolls and they add comments for us um they really like blew out our initial sales and then when we launched in retail they also would like go into Whole Foods and like buy out the entire

00:18:24 - 00:19:16

shelf and so uh our community has really mobilized for us and we're super grateful but yeah it was intentional but not intentional like I think the power of it and what it is now um how do those you know how involved are those people now and do you have relationships with them I'm just curious yeah we have many uh direct relationships uh I just had a happy birthday to one today uh he's been with us since the very early days and he joins all of our we do Facebook lives when we announce new products and like

00:18:51 - 00:19:48

he's always in there um there are many members in there that just like we've grown honestly to like really appreciate and become friends with over time so some of a lot of them are families who always like share photos of their kids eating Emmy and we'll just like surprise them by just mailing extra Amy to them and it's always like a it's a huge customer Delight for them but yeah we're pretty engaged there's about 8 000 me like evangelist members in there now and it really just grew organically people are

00:19:18 - 00:20:17

posting recipes photos people bring like Amy to like Switzerland and their trips and like show us their like suitcases or they're packing it so it's pretty cute yeah so just to uh just to be clear too that that's that same Facebook group and you're still product testing and taking That Lean Startup like iterative mentality in your product development process too yeah definitely we are um we're we try to be pretty conservative with how we spend um we have a raise Venture but I think for us like when we

00:19:48 - 00:20:38

initially were going to do like taste testing we went to these like third party groups and they're like we'll charge you 25 000 to find a simple random sample of like you know 20 people across the nation we'll get their feedback and we're like why would we pay that we have a community so we run our own like pre-qualification surveys to kind of filter participants get like a decent representative representative representative sample of people across the U.S then we'll like ship them

00:20:13 - 00:21:06

product and then we'll have like post surveys where they taste a product on different dimensions and we can actually get a pretty good like representation of what the general population would think about each iteration of our product from a taste perspective and it cost us like less than a thousand dollars to do this at a huge scale okay so there obviously cost synergies what he's describing is like basically creating Community as like an asset almost for the business I'm curious what like the investment is

00:20:40 - 00:21:33

in in that so I'm sure you have like community managers now still just you guys uh it's yeah it was me and my co-founder for the first uh two years I was in there responding to every single comment um if you go in there today there's not a comment that's unresponding to in the early days now it's a little harder um and I think some of our team one of our team members has really stepped up to try to be like a new character in the cast thank God because it's like before we were like oh my God like we have to

00:21:06 - 00:21:57

post every you know every week and like respond to everyone and it was a lot of work but I think it was totally worth it people in the community just trust us versus like you know we're not a faceless Corporation and so they've really like been able to forgive us for a lot of the mistakes we've made the first version of our product we launched was not that great um and they stuck with us through that because they got to watch us build and they just like really believed we would do better

00:21:32 - 00:22:37

basically like giving them ownership almost in in product development and just being a part of the business um I'm very curious how do you measure like the impact or the effectiveness or it's just one of those intangibles that you're like this is an asset for us um yeah it's one of the question um we don't measure anything there's no analytics uh no we don't have a success metrics oh my God uh it's embarrassing Kevin I'm glad I know I know it's it's embarrassing um

00:22:04 - 00:22:58

I think you know my co-founder and I are pretty I mean we are very data oriented we both worked as product managers we were investing a long time but uh I was like redeem myself okay all right so take me through the take me through the pitch you mentioned he raised Venture then what do you I mean going through uh you know when you talk about the community and just like kpis you're just like this is a huge asset for us I guess that's what I'm trying to get at yeah we we talk about it because

00:22:31 - 00:23:21

um the proof isn't like we don't measure like oh there's so many posts are happening there's so many like how much engagement we get proposed what we show people is we'll be like look we launched in Whole Foods last year as a test trial in five of their regions the Whole Foods buyer wanted to test us we made a post in our Facebook community and literally like for the next week people would just send photos where they were like I bought out the entire shelf I even bought the box that the packets

00:22:56 - 00:23:54

are in like and I brought it the cashier like can I keep the box and then we map that like literally when that happened to our retail velocity data and there's a very clear correlation of like you can't fake retail velocity data and also our product is like 5.99 at Whole Foods so it's like if one person buys one you jump like by a dollar velocity like considerably so it's it's pretty clear-cut that there is a correlation um the other thing that we use it for is actually for like uh long term like say

00:23:25 - 00:24:11

so for example when we launched with a new retailer or we're about to or we're trying to pitch them we will go in our community we'll say hey everyone uh would you guys like to see us in The Fresh Market and we'll get like 300 comments of people being like yes I'm near a fresh market I love it and we'll take a screenshot of that and we'll send it to the buyer and the buyer will be like oh my God there's built-in demand like like why would I not want to launch you guys

00:23:47 - 00:24:55

and so there's clear benefits from like that sales perspective as well yeah that's awesome um Tim let's go back to you so running is inherently cultish I just learned this I'm not a runner myself but I've been talking to Tim and he's like yeah it's a total cult um and so I'm just curious how do you break into something like that uh especially from my understanding you started the business um as you were becoming a runner am I right uh no I've been yeah just cracked me sir

00:24:21 - 00:25:24

sure I I was a college soccer player I grew up playing soccer that was my main sport um but always trained for soccer through running and then after college decided I wanted to be competitive with myself and not in a team sport got really into Ultra marathoning I fell in love with the mental side of the sport started going those long distances where my socks didn't hold up and then one thing led to another and now we're here that's the sort of uh story there uh yes there there's running colts for

00:24:53 - 00:26:12

sure uh I'm gonna make this about something else so one of my favorite like anecdotes here is when when Nike entered skateboarding skateboarding extremely hard to break into sport there's a lot of authenticity a lot of history there there's people who shouldn't be on skateboards at skate parks getting made fun of it has like a bully culture it's like it's a tough Sport and you have to be really authentic and so how does a brand like Nike who makes running shoes go into a sport like

00:25:32 - 00:26:39

skateboarding where most skate skaters don't want them there they want the independent brands that are born out of the skate shops locally in Santa Monica and things like that what Nike did is they figured out and they just spent the first like two years figuring out what what do skaters care about they care about skate parks they care about spots like skate spots historical landmarks that are really rich with history and and are important to the skate culture they care about being able to have explicit music in

00:26:06 - 00:27:13

their videos they care about style and Swagger and like the subjectivity of skating and so Nike when they entered skateboarding they started off by building like skate parks all around the country and saving landmarks that were taken away from skateboarders and they brought them back and they worked with local governments and they hired or signed like guys like Niger Houston who's like the swaggiest skateboarder in the world um and they came out with videos that were like totally badass and they just

00:26:39 - 00:27:40

didn't come in as like a corporation they came in like another cool kid on the Block who's been there before and I think that's how you break in and establish your own subculture you figure out what people care about for us we figured out what Runners care about and then we just made it happen for them Runners want amazing resources when they're training for like the biggest moments of their careers they want the best products they want um to know where the water fountains are and what the best water fountains are

00:27:11 - 00:28:08

and where the bathrooms are along a route and they want you to have a water cooler outside your store and if you come in you can use the bathroom and there there's just like so many little things that you can do right to show up and to care and to like really do things that people are like that's that's awesome you're coming in I respect that you're working with amazing Runners we'll get into more about that later but I love that like story about how that's how you kind of got to show up

00:27:41 - 00:28:55

we've got some technical difficulties um if we can fix the the prompter um yeah so so in terms of like just you creating a a branded experience that resonates around that like a lot of the things that you're talking about are physical and they don't really relate to you know an apparel brand how did you make those how did you connect those those two um it happened very naturally uh so Bandit was born at McCarran Park Track in Williamsburg I was part of Brooklyn Track Club um and I created this sock that I needed

00:28:21 - 00:29:17

that was wet wicking and and very breathable and had perfect amount of spandex the story My founding story is um I was like a die-hard Nike guy if you can't tell by how much random knowledge I know about it but uh I was a Die Hard Nike started running Ultras their socks I was poking holes I was getting like really really sweaty feet by the end of the run it was I was like peeling my socks off it was a whole there's a whole thing Googled best running socks and couldn't find anything that resonated

00:28:49 - 00:29:53

with me it was all these brands with like silly patterns and colors and like just not my vibe coming from like 20 plus years of Nike minimalism and design so I decided to make my own and called it Bandit because there's there's no brand that's from no real real big flag waving New York City running apparel brand which is crazy because we're the Global Hub of running culture biggest Marathon biggest half marathon most clubs most Runners many city in the world and Bandit a bandit in running as

00:29:21 - 00:30:34

somebody who runs a race without registering the first person ever to do that was Bobby Gibb in the 1966 Boston Marathon before women were allowed to run so we named the it felt very New York we named the company after her and it felt very New York but like very empathetic and very understanding um and that's that's sort of how it came to be and then it really struck a chord with New Yorkers and people felt like this brand really resonated with them not having another brand a lot of the brands

00:29:57 - 00:31:15

that were getting super popular in New York at the time were from New England or from Portland OR from Germany and New Yorkers we like we like our black and white we like our neutrals we like our minimalism and so um you know building it on the track I just had a group of built-in friends just so happens Runners are very highly photographed they want pictures of of them hitting that float stride where both their legs are off the ground and made the socks look really good uh and when you have a really supportive group

00:30:36 - 00:31:42

all wearing the same sock tagging making it look really cool it can kind of take off pretty quickly in New York where people want like a trendy but trusty product um and there was this whole like fomo thing that was happening with me running it by myself and it always being sold out because I need to get my money back before I bought the next batch and uh lots of happy accidents along the way that kind of got it to where it is but it's a whole Confluence of factors and lots of luck lots of hard work but uh

00:31:09 - 00:32:23

yeah yeah so I think you spoke to like density being in New York like having that be a part of the strategy I'm just curious for uh Jackie and Kevin have you guys thought about that in starting the brand um for me personally uh that the product that we have spans every age every demographic so there's almost no way for us to establish that like in a certain location with density like like how you were able to do that with New York um so that's definitely been a challenge for us like how do we reach those

00:31:46 - 00:32:45

pockets of people all over the country that have the same problem um so yeah that wasn't location-wise wasn't necessarily something we thought about it was more just my strategy in the beginning was Google like I knew that people that were like for this product would be going to Google so we want to establish ourselves there first yeah it's like a it's a complete need for for the product because you have that white space which we will come back to um what about you Kevin uh same thing I

00:32:15 - 00:33:18

think most people like Ramen hopefully uh but uh we did not try to concentrate in a specific area I think for us it was actually interesting because Raman culture especially on like by coastal regions is much more developed like I think New York California has a lot and I would say if you're like hardcore into Ramen you probably would find Amy different because we're low carb high protein plant-based it was like you know we were trying to invent something new and I think for the purists like that

00:32:46 - 00:33:49

actually was the opposite of our our audience yeah so uh a lot of our customers actually in the early days did come from like Middle America and like where Ramen culture or just it wasn't as accessible to find a Ramen Shop and they just wanted some way to get Ramen in their home that also was healthier for them so um who is the main customer today I'm just curious um it's still so it's really hard to answer that question we've we've tried to figure this out ourselves um I would say it used to be that that 35

00:33:17 - 00:34:18

Plus like female now it's like 60 40 female male it is like probably 25 plus I think generally speaking like you've graduated you have some discretionary income um you're probably health-minded and that's like the very raw demographics information but in general like even our ads now and stuff it's all like Miss Ramen and like it's like anyone who probably ate Ramen at some point in their life but just stopped because we realized how bad it was for us yeah and it's a really big audience really big

00:33:48 - 00:34:47

tan which is good um Jackie let's go back to uh um you and this question is basically just how has you know obviously when you started the company is very intimate personal issue personal problem that you're resolving um how has that changed as the business has grown um and at your size today yeah um actually I was much like Tim in the beginning where I felt like it wasn't about me and I didn't want to make it about me even though it was my pain point I wanted to make it more about the

00:34:17 - 00:35:20

customer and more about the product so I really resisted putting myself front and center you know I was on like the about page but I was not putting myself out there on social Etc um and it kind of changed based off of tick tock I had a couple tick tocks where I started just answering customer questions and some that really really went viral very quickly and drove a ton of sales for us um so that's when I realized that like people actually do care about me and the story behind the brand or just putting a

00:34:48 - 00:36:00

face to the brand so since then I've tried to put myself forward as the face of the brand a lot more but then as we grow I want people to or you know we want Britney's here for my team we want to show everyone on the team more so people feel like they see like the community of us behind the scenes and I think each of us within the team have different um areas within our personality that can connect with a different type of customer so for example I might be talking about the behind the scenes of

00:35:25 - 00:36:24

the business where someone else on the team who's a mom might be talking about her work from home life with her child Etc so that's kind of how we're trying to inject and build that Community as we grow um and Kevin that's pretty similar to you as well right um yeah even I've seen some of the posts at least where you're you're you and your co-founder are pretty pretty front and center definitely we also tried to not be in the Limelight um in the early days uh we thought that for the longevity of

00:35:54 - 00:36:50

the brand we shouldn't be like the face of the brand and unfortunately or fortunately uh I think both of us kind of are more comfortable now with the idea that hey you know people do follow the brand and they've always followed the brand even the community because of us and what we were trying to do in the space I think our mission is pretty personal as well we really started ma because our families have chronic health conditions like my grandmother is pre-diabetic and both my parents have had high blood pressure for

00:36:22 - 00:37:16

over a decade and so I think when people hear that story they truly believe that we are building this for the right reasons and I think that really draws them to us so no matter how much we test different ad creatives the founder story always continues to outperform and it's the one like people on the street will be like hey you're the Kevin's because that's like one of the iconic ads that we have that's uh I think the first thing I said today I was like your co-founder James Kevin yeah um yeah

00:36:48 - 00:37:37

lucky there so how much Ramen do you eat um some important stuff yeah I no it's actually funny when um when people come into town to visit they're always like oh do you want to eat ramen I'm like God no I really don't want to um I eat Emmy probably like three times a week for lunch uh it's just really convenient I like it like I actually enjoy the product um outside of that I don't eat that much Ramen in this city uh people ask me like my favorite ramen shops I'm like I've

00:37:15 - 00:38:02

probably been to like three since moving here a year ago um now for any particular reason I just you know it's one of those things where you work on something day in day out it's it's heart it's like a chef going home and just making a peanut butter sandwich yeah not that I'm a chef but yeah um so you kind of you you spoke to this a little bit um but I think food is is pretty particular because it's it's High Velocity you're consuming it pretty frequently um are there any other tactical things

00:37:39 - 00:38:45

that you did launching the brand that you think is relevant for for these people here um I think for us we did do a lot of really weird like unscalable things in the early days just to get ready for launch like by the time we launched we had a an email wait list around like 38 000 people and at the time our community was I think around 3 000 so it was smaller then but the way we built that was uh we did also yeah so I one of the things we did for example is like we've we found this uh bot that would scrape all of

00:38:13 - 00:39:12

Reddit and uh anytime anyone wrote like low carb noodle or like healthy noodle or low carb Ramen uh it would ping Us in slack and I would click in go to the posts I would like leave a thoughtful response and Link back to our landing page and you know when you have like a really thoughtful response and if that thread goes viral you can get 500 to 1000 emails in like five minutes and so we used to do stuff like that we also record like we would when we were in r d we didn't really have a product we would

00:38:43 - 00:39:42

take our own noodles and we would film ourselves in the kitchen making recipes with them and then we would cut them into like these 10 second gifts and we'd post them in the like keto or food subreddits and we would consistently just be like in the top five for like weeks at a time and that also drove a lot of uh email signups but the point is like anyone who came to our email list we were drip sequencing them to get them into our Facebook Community because the an email list you can blast people great

00:39:13 - 00:40:02

but in a Facebook Community they're talking to each other they're sharing photos like they really feel connected to the brand so we really nurtured that that community and they they really showed up for our first month of launch and like blew it out um how do you so how do you mobilize them today you mentioned it was it's 8 000 though yeah we mobilize them uh it depends so we think of our community as like a mini strike for us I mean there's a reason again why we don't I think

00:39:38 - 00:40:30

measure like the analytics or anything is because that Community has really evolved to not be like a revenue generating like direct Revenue we're not trying to measure each post equals this much revenue we think of them as we have specific special projects we need help with the community is going to be the most engaged and most likely to act on those special projects so a special project might be we need to figure out what are our next three flavors to launch we will do extensive surveying in

00:40:03 - 00:40:56

the community try to remove as much of that bias you know the the confirmation I don't know what a bias it is a selection bias as possible or something like that and then um that's like one you know special project the other special project might be we need to build a relationship with our Whole Foods buyer so we will like when they're when Whole Foods decide to roll us out nationally a few months ago we ask Community to just like share their love and we sent a photo of all that engagement to our Whole Foods buyer who

00:40:30 - 00:41:24

then was like oh my God this is amazing I haven't seen anything like this before that's like a special project related to building that relationship and so I think we've kind of just thought about them this way or if we need to get like ugc we'll just straight up ask people in the community like can you send me a video of you eating the product and saying these things and it's just free ways to get like creative so I think that's how we have you done anything uh in real life with with those guys we

00:40:57 - 00:41:46

have not uh we we are horrible at real life stuff I could learn from these two uh is that that like I don't know why we haven't it's just um maybe we didn't have the resources before I think it's expensive to we can't just like go and like lay out our product or give out like you kind of have to set up a ramen bar and like do all sorts of stuff so uh instead we've really focused on digital community and it's funny because I think when we launched well we started this business

00:41:22 - 00:42:11

during coven a lot of people were just lonely Frankly Speaking and instant Ramen especially is known as a very lonely product it's like kind of like picture yourself like guiltily eating it at night like alone and I think like it was wonderful when people came to this community they've realized that they could just like share their bowl like a photo of their bowl and like talk to other people while they were like experiencing their Ramen and they would even like brag to each other how they

00:41:46 - 00:42:43

like styled it and like try to one-up each other and I think that in of itself has been a way to make instant Ramen feel social without getting people in person and to run this community today and when you started it's it's free it's free yeah if you are on an email list you can join it yeah yeah so we do oh we do ask for um we do user interview or like so when you join the community uh we do user research so every quarter we change the three um when you join any Facebook group you can ask three questions

00:42:14 - 00:43:08

um and so we ask like uh when is the first time you heard about Emmy or like what convinced you to buy Emmy today what almost stopped you from buying Amy what influencers do you follow and then that creates like the list the leads list for our like senior Partnerships manager to reach out to influencers so we do a lot of user research um but that's the only cost to join yeah super interesting Tim let's go back to you um so obviously we talked about density New York driven brand owning running

00:42:42 - 00:44:02

here um you know you guys are fundraising um and uh I think looking to really expand this this brand um how are you thinking about how Community evolves and how you maintain the Integrity of that as you move out to other cities yeah a great question uh running is such an amazing industry to be in because there's so much built in moments for you to take part of uh we show up to a lot of marathons around the world on a calendar basis so New York City huge it's like our Super Bowl Boston I want to go to Tokyo One Day

00:43:20 - 00:44:21

London Berlin Paris uh La Miami Marathon there's like you could fill up the calendar with all of these races that have Expos and big weekends and lots of events and that's like our bread and butter is like elevating those weekends and making them really special and adding to the programming of it um because it's just like such a it's the crescendo of 16 weeks of your hardest working not just in running but like balancing the rest of your life so that's like that's kind of built in

00:43:52 - 00:44:59

that's how we sort of travel around uh we also do a lot of digital stuff we just launched a 16-week marathon training program virtually in partnership with Asics um so we've got about 6 000 people in that all rowing in the same direction for the New York City and Chicago marathons I'm sure there's some Philadelphia people in there as well and every single week they're getting advice across running strength Mobility recovery nutrition and sports psychology which is like a very new Under kind of

00:44:25 - 00:45:31

spoken about topic which people are loving and I'm loving um and so we're serving people virtually we also just launched our first Strava challenge if you're active cycling running hiking you're probably on Strava we have a seven day challenge going right now we've got a little over 60 000 people in it and those people if you finish two hours of activity uh you get Bandit prizes you get entrance to to win some limited edition stuff um and those tools are really great and they're there and they make sense like

00:44:59 - 00:46:05

going back to the very first thing we talked about like that's one non iOS like that's a workaround right and that's a great platform for us um so we got the marathon training program we got Strava we got our marathons uh where we're traveling around um and yeah I mean that's that's the that's the bulk of it we're able to reach like a pretty large audience and right now like is there a customer base is it mostly in New York or are you guys internet uh across the United States

00:45:30 - 00:46:47

we're about 60 New York uh which is a really great place for us to be this early on if the first year we were like 99 New York maybe the second year 75 maybe higher and now we're kind of balancing out another great thing that just came to mind is like we work with clubs around the world so there's some very influential taste making clubs that aren't necessarily signed by big Brands yet so we just did Atlanta run Club one of the most culturally influential clubs in the in the world we

00:46:09 - 00:47:24

just made their 2023 Race Kit which is going to debut and we just to like preheat that moment we sponsored their Peach Tree 10K Cheer Zone and it was like an absolute party um we're about to unveil Enbrel out of Copenhagen is one of the most like outside of maybe a club in Paris like probably the most influential Club in Europe and we just made their 2023 Race Kit that's coming out at the Copenhagen half second fastest half in the world it's like a global destination people love it it's like net downhill it's such

00:46:47 - 00:47:55

a great time um so that's another way we're reaching customers and and showing up authentically and showing up with like fashion forwardness and uh yeah it's been really productive exciting um okay I have two more questions and then I want to make sure we got time for everyone else um how do you guys measure the success of your community Kevin you're kind of exempt from this one Mr I don't track any data um and so with Jackie and and Tim we'll we'll leave this one for you I'll take

00:47:20 - 00:48:31

it as a former engineer I talk I pay a lot of attention to metrics and kpis um but I think again it kind of goes back to like looking all the way through the funnel so um when you're talking about top of the funnel new customer acquisition some of the metrics that we look at are like social engagement so like I mentioned before if we have a post that goes viral on Tick Tock um it brings in a lot of new customers that's an indicator that we should probably keep going with that Avenue of um of uh content

00:47:56 - 00:48:59

um but then further down the funnel um one example is that we send out two marketing emails a week um so our Tuesday marketing email is kind of more of a Hard Sell and our Friday email is a newsletter that new newsletter has been there from the beginning it's never a hard sell it's kind of behind the scenes it's funny it um shares a little bit about ourselves we just have like team pictures that has been our that has had our highest open rate historically and also drives a lot of Revenue

00:48:28 - 00:49:18

um so that is an indicator that that's a successful initiative and that's building community and people are looking forward to it because it also has a very low unsubscribe rate so those are all metrics that indicate that that's a successful Avenue to go down and we should continue on that initiative um is there anything that you do for um you know the people because I imagine just with a product category it's like for some people this is endemic it's a really big problem in their life

00:48:54 - 00:49:58

um is there are there any moments like that you know that you engineer for for those people um we haven't been as good at that but we did have um a series for a while where we were giving away a gift card for a top review of the month and we were um picking that sort of randomly but we were sharing those reviews with the entire subscriber base so they would see a review and it was generally someone who had been like very effusive about how much we had helped them so I think that's an opportunity to like pull in your

00:49:25 - 00:50:21

customers and say like and like reward them for um for evangelating for your brand so and as as the business grows you have more you get more and more customers in theory more people who love the brand um how are you thinking about that strategically um you know how does that change your strategy and this is kind of filtering into question seven um that's a good question and I don't know that we've thought about it strategically but it's definitely something that we want to bring in more

00:49:53 - 00:50:54

I think these guys have built amazing communities and I would love to be able to do that too I think maybe putting them front and center in our ads and being more like testimonial based would be a really good way to kind of make them feel like they're part of our team and Tim just to kind of circle back to you are there any key metrics you do on the community side yeah anecdotally um I keep a really close eye on our Instagram engagement rate uh because Bandit is the most engaged with brand in

00:50:23 - 00:51:29

running on Instagram yes it's what's the metric exactly it's like well so we're we have a relatively small audience we've got about 26 000 followers so like inherently we're gonna have a great engagement rate so we just look at pure comments and shares uh so uh we on average have and like com your comment section is like kind of a really for me it's a great way to like understand if people feel as part of a community they're like comfortable there's a dialogue we're riffing back and forth

00:50:56 - 00:51:50

like go into some comment it's it can get kind of fun in there um and it's just it's a really great way to understand if people feel comfortable and feel like we have a real Community here if the if you're if you have a brand in your comment section is desolate or you're like prompting hey like comment below like what race you're gonna be at and it feels forest or like you're being marketed to I think and it's and it's kind of like a desert in there uh it's probably not not a great

00:51:23 - 00:52:39

sign and I really like making sure that we have a really vibrant comment section um so anecdotally I look at that email open rates and click rates are really important to us um and then our cohort analysis is the most important one when we meet customers at real life experiences at our marathon pop-ups those customers are a zillion times more productive uh than a customer that we meet through Facebook so that's why we've shifted a lot of our resources into being on the ground meeting customers elevating their Marathon

00:52:01 - 00:53:04

experience making them feel special partying with them like after the race doing all these things they're going online for a new pair of running shorts and they're thinking like I've I don't know that team I've never met those guys I hung out with the Bandit guys off the Chicago had a great time like we're winning customers over one by one one because it's a great business strategy but mostly because like we love it and our internal team is just a bunch of like Marathon freaks so including

00:52:32 - 00:53:32

myself so it's just come very naturally to us yeah that's awesome I think all three of you guys talk about doing things that that don't scale and those being the major drivers of of your growth respectively let's top us off here just quickly what is your strategy looking like going forward how is that changing [Music] fire our community ever uh is like probably how I've we'll see I don't know maybe I don't know um definitely we're going to keep investing in that Facebook group I think that

00:53:10 - 00:54:12

Community um has has really been like the heart and soul of I think this brand for a very very long time and um it's always a direct relationship that our community members can have with us so we're always going to be in there if anyone wants to like throw up a complaint about something or give us feedback like we're going to be in there to respond um outside of that we actually are possibly going to try other things so one tool we've spoken to is inveterate which um allows you to run a membership

00:53:40 - 00:54:35

program just like directly on your website um it's paid so there are a few Brands who are doing this where you can allow any you know traffic coming to your website or even like we can even put this in the Facebook Community people really want but you can offer membership benefits like obviously discounts site-wide you can give them free gifts you can give them early access to like new drops new flavors so that's something that I think we'd be curious to test out we've done like an

00:54:08 - 00:55:03

ROI analysis it looks pretty interesting but it's always going to be separate of our Facebook Community which is always going to be free that's really interesting yeah been been hearing Rumblings of membership model just I think it just changes the Dynamics of a consumer business too um very interesting Jackie what's your take um our strategy going forward is to pull almost any Hard Sell out of our funnel Beyond like very top of funnel where we're telling our Brand Story So once

00:54:36 - 00:55:47

someone has heard the Brand Story Once we're not going to beat them over the head with you know product values Etc and we're going to replace all of that with um marketing focused on our internal team and it's not to make it about us but it's to put a face and a personality behind the brand um and you know once someone has heard the story they don't need to hear it again and we think that that will um bring a lot more Community to our brand awesome and Tim uh yeah so we we have a membership we've

00:55:10 - 00:56:12

had it since uh we launched and so I I started the company with just socks we ran for a year and then I shut it down for a year to kind of uh recalibrate the mission the vision work on our full head to toe line um and as soon as we came out it was like all right how do we reward all my best friends who helped us get to this point and so we created the membership which gives everybody Early Access a standing discount free shipping on every order we have Instagram close friends where it's all behind the scenes Shenanigans

00:55:42 - 00:56:56

you get in there you get a free gift every year this year it's two pairs of member socks um and we're really doubling down on that um so we'll see we'll once people are acquainted with Bandit and really loving us and honestly we we designed it so that it makes a lot of like if you're gonna shop with us twice over the course of a year you should just be a member um because financially it makes sense you also get a 50 gift card that never expires so just driving more members more loyalty and making it very easy for

00:56:19 - 00:57:25

them to shop with us and just for for everyone because I think the memberships model is interesting has that been like the main driver of of growth for you guys so it is interesting we the way we do our drops we come out with a seasonal collection and members get 24 hours of Early Access and then people who are shopping with us for the first time who don't have a membership realize that by the time it opens to the public a lot of things are already sold out and so the only time we ever put the membership on sale is like

00:56:52 - 00:57:44

two days leading up to a drop and then one day after the drop those are our highest days where we get new members because you missed out and you're like I should have gotten Early Access so um I'm rambling and forgetting your question but is it unsuccessful it's been it's been yeah it's been successful people people love it we I mean we've had trouble it's like are membership grew too fast we didn't have enough products and then members got sold out on which is a terrible

00:57:21 - 00:58:34

experience because they're paying 100 bucks to like get Early Access so it's been a learning experience we're trying to get it right but overall our retention we just came up in the one year mark it's like very very positive signs that people are loving it and uh sticking around very cool so let's move guys thanks for bearing with us uh open QA can you guys all hear him or do you want me to repeat the question speak loudly yes um so go can you go to someone else I gotta read okay do we have another person

00:58:11 - 00:59:11

and um everyone always asked me this question um um yeah I can I think this sounds like obvious advice perhaps but like I think one thing we regretted was not also building in public on Tick Tock um I'm like a little too old for The Tick Tock generation and like um too young for something else but like I we just we did the Facebook groups because that was our audience lied and then like looking back we were sharing so much publicly and like building in public there we were like we could have

00:59:22 - 01:00:34

just duplicated that on Tick Tock as well and like I think we would have a pretty big Audience by now uh that's like a very simple thing yeah I would say I also regret not off out there sooner I wish that you know if I had started building up my personal brand five years ago that would build my brand even more than it was so I would say like put yourself out there as much as you can that's like my number one tip um and then I don't know are there other areas here curious of Beyond community

00:59:59 - 01:01:12

Justin okay um okay let me thank you I have a good answer uh not really no um I'll second what both of them said uh regarding building in public regret I wish I had started with one skew um you can put all your emphasis on one product and I would highly recommend like even if you think like one's not enough and people want to come and see a variety one is enough like literally I launched with 12 products 11 of them we never sold again one of them is still to this day our best seller and FBI had just started with

01:00:38 - 01:01:34

that I could have saved so much money and and grown let me ask you a question on that would would you have known that that was going to be the best seller though was there a chance that if you didn't make multiple products you wouldn't have found a hero I think no I didn't know what I didn't know but like it should have been obvious probably let's expand on this though because it sounds like you did product testing early on did you how many skus did you test we launched but sorry what what do you did you test

01:01:14 - 01:02:16

a variety you mentioned you went through like 200 iterations of product oh well yeah that was uh we we had 200 versions of our product but uh during r d but in terms of like the flavors when we were demand testing the flavors uh we yeah we basically did some research to figure out like okay what could be like the top 20 flavors to launch with and then we did a combination of quantitative qualitative testing so we definitely ran like Facebook ads just to use CTR as a proxy for whether um a certain flavor was more interesting

01:01:44 - 01:02:47

to folks um I think that was efficacious though it's interesting because it definitely gave us our number one flavor but our third flavor which is Tom Yum shrimp which I think most people unless you live in by coastal regions maybe you don't know what that is like that is our worst performing flavor and in our ad tests uh it was like one of our top three and maybe we should have like isolated from like a Geo standpoint and like removed some of the bias from bio coastal regions but um yeah that definitely was not like our

01:02:16 - 01:03:22

top performing so yeah data sometimes works sometimes it doesn't yeah I think it could be a good strategy I mean one might be like extreme like but start as small as possible I think is the advice I would give you um you'll learn a lot even just from one two three skus um but definitely centering around a hero product just makes your marketing it makes it makes it easier to build on and it gives customers less Choice people really don't want a ton of choice so I would say definitely that that's

01:03:04 - 01:04:02

one thing that I always tell people that I wish I had done oh I have one more thing for the regret um not just building a public on Tick Tock but uh LinkedIn um it's crazy to me that I now consider LinkedIn an actual social network and I'm like I'll actually browse a news feed um I think especially for your audience of nootropics where it's like probably pretty productivity and just like the work oriented in some ways like people that are going to love it and they drive so much free traffic for you

01:03:34 - 01:04:50

um go ahead so for much like in the beginning was your marketing product driven versus Community Driven uh in your marketing and your ads and how do you think if you were to look back what would you do differently if you were to actually Market your product because I know you were just selling socks initially but that's obviously a product kind of oriented strategy from what I'm assuming like why you pivoted in a year and then the brand the second time um so yeah that's basically like what

01:04:16 - 01:05:26

percentage sure yeah so I was pretty open about the fact that it's not super hard to make a great sock we could a hundred percent all of us figure it out um I figured it out it's just research you just have to figure out like the fabrics and test them put them to the test they need to be sweat waking they need to be breathable they need to stay up they need to be comfortable and have some cushioning um and and I think the the sock was great and the socks will occur itself and people loved it and honestly like

01:04:58 - 01:06:04

there was a great running hat brand out there and there's great running shoe brands but there wasn't like a namesake like Kleenex running sock brand at the time you could argue like but Legos or bombas are features but they're like in snowboarding and hiking and like people want like I want it for running and I want you to specialize in that and that's and I like products that way too um and so the product was a great product but the entire 100 of the emphasis was on community it was the

01:05:32 - 01:06:33

only Instagram post that we put up where about the community I don't think we ever like had a picture of like lay flat socks um we never really talked about the performance quality outside of like on the PDP it was like you see my friends and people in all these different run clubs across like boogie down Bronx to we run uptown to Brooklyn track club and Goldfinger and like all these clubs and you're like I'm down with this because these people are awesome they're having a great time

01:06:01 - 01:07:21

running they look stylish and I I want that and the way Bandit expanded was because it's very happy accident of I socks great starter product low minimums High margins repeat product identifiable on the body light to ship um and you know I could order I think the first batch was like 200 took me like 30 days to sell out and then uh two months went by and in the meantime I was just posting pictures of all these awesome people wearing the sock and it pent up so much demand that when I put 600 pairs up for the site and now

01:06:42 - 01:07:48

it's like new drop tomorrow more socks they sold out in five minutes and then two months go by I made my money back put in a new order same thing 1200 pairs gone in five minutes and it just like built on itself and that fomo is like really really important though everybody's getting really really smart and will know if you're faking it and like there's no way that's sold out or whatever it is like people are manufacturing that like supply and demand and you you'll get kind of if you get busted for it it's

01:07:15 - 01:08:08

not a good look and you just need to be really smart and like people see like oh you know back in stock like you know a week later you might have just taken your products down and a hundred percent like for products that weren't moving you you have to manufacture a little bit of that um but ultimately like I think that that's a really good strategy like if people can't get their hands on something it makes them want it more but make sure that it's coming from a genuine place and you're not just like

01:07:41 - 01:08:49

using it as a marketing strategy which is tough but you can you can definitely do it um do we have you wanna all right so when you're when you're saying how it's all right yeah okay if when you were saying how like in the beginning you were taking pictures of Joe cool normal people that probably was more accessible now you're a fashion forward brand right so like what a when was it in that process of just building the brand when you were like okay we want to actually create cream

01:08:16 - 01:09:35

clean aesthetic creative Direction that's more fashion forward and how is that played um an impact in break Revenue versus your authentic self that was like a camera dude and just like shooting stuff and are you gonna go back so I mean a lot of our content was user generated I wasn't out there with the camera I hired a photographer to shoot the the drop photos and what you would see on the website and that was about the only time I could like swing a photographer in New York City calling in

01:08:56 - 01:09:59

a lot of favors helping you know friends and whatnot but and you got to do that as well and we're still like Scrappy as hell um But ultimately as things evolved and we still use user generated content our bar has gotten a lot higher for what we repost and it has to like it has to be like a good looking photo and and like you have to have some personality and it's got to be like you know I'm not just gonna post like you know people will very this is such a weird thing in Runners people

01:09:27 - 01:10:31

will tag every brand that's part of their fit that's not making it up um but so just being a little bit more Choice as we've evolved and grown um you know reducing cross branding as much as possible and really make them feel owned like when we were just socks it was really hard and we would put make sure everyone's like in just Nike otherwise and not a million other brands today as I'm the creative director of our our campaign it's like creativity is King you like my favorite brands are

01:09:59 - 01:11:10

streetwear Brands like stucy and ald and kith and um there's some more Niche Brands like Greg laboratory and libero and like that are just like putting out content that gives you the chills on their collections this brand libero just did a new collection and their whole campaign was shot from the perspective of a surveillance camera that followed around these fake Mobsters in their clothes and it was like print out photos with like their shirts circled with like arrows and it was just so dope and it's like people eat that up

01:10:35 - 01:11:47

and the bar is getting raised and in running everything is like a stock photo same stride same smile same turn down the street um and you just have to stand out by just like being really creative and you can do that on a shoestring budget we've been able to do it and we'll uh hopefully continue to do it who else when did you know if you knew you can make that jump between a full-time job I'm doing but I can't get equip my [Music] with my salary like like what was your story what advice

01:11:27 - 01:12:49

would you have I'll give it my very quick answer don't do what I did um which is run through my entire savings um so I I was young enough when I started Bandit that I knew I could bounce back I had a great job as a product manager and I risked it all negative 500 in my bank account the day that I raised money um to go full time on Bandit so do not recommend that um and hopefully you can get there a lot sooner but I do really believe in like taking a big bet on yourself jumping just full confidence like you'll

01:12:12 - 01:13:20

have a backup plan and just be ready but like you gotta take the leap so that's that's my story and um yeah I can I can give my take I'm kind of the opposite end of the spectrum I waited until I maybe waited too long but I waited until I could basically replace my salary from my previous job um but that being said as soon as I left and pursued it full time our Revenue increased like pretty dramatically but I I'm very risk-averse and I wouldn't necessarily say like Take the Lead I

01:12:47 - 01:13:45

mean at some point you do have to and it's like do you believe in it enough that it can grow but I would say if you're not initially raising money if you want to do a bootstrap and profitably which is what I did too um and I and I strongly believe that that's the way to go in the beginning um I would say wait until there's actually a book called um there's a book called profit first and fix the snacks same author but he talks about this like a strategy for determining like what you actually need

01:13:16 - 01:14:26

your business to be making in order to leave and I would highly recommend those books do you want to take this good answers yeah uh go ahead um so I think as someone who used to run a community especially for product managers we ran that one on slack and this is the advice like I always tell anyone who's looking to start a community is like don't overthink your community platform like we live in an age of abundance where switching costs are so easy like everyone thinks you have to find the

01:14:18 - 01:15:15

best software out there and the truth is is you just have to meet your users where they are right like product managers were already on slack like with their engineering design teams like why make them switch to like a Facebook group or Discord when it makes them look like they're not working during the day for us like our audience was already on Facebook groups and so these days I actually am pretty skeptical of most Community platforms I've seen them all I've tried a lot of them I think like for a lot of

01:14:46 - 01:15:50

digital creators now like the only one I find like interesting is circle.so which lets you embed the community as almost as a forum directly on your website but outside of that I would just say like yeah meet the user where they are I know that wasn't the answer you're looking for but we use Circle as well good platform anyone else go ahead me I know at the beginning kind of mentioned how traditional advertis advertise that um for us our strongest channel has always been Google um we have a product where people are

01:15:48 - 01:16:55

looking for a solution um I invested a lot in SEO initially in terms of not money but my time um it takes a long time to build up your SEO presence still one of our biggest initiatives so I think people forget about Google but not a lot of people do SEO well so if you can do that effectively for a brand um and the way we did that was just writing blogs that answer questions that people might be asking um so it's pretty simple um and but the problem with Google is that it's not necessarily scalable so like

01:16:22 - 01:17:21

you can only um like people have to initiate the search whereas Facebook you can put yourself in front of them or Tick Tock or meta all those platforms um so at some point if you want to keep scaling you have to invest in those platforms um for us organically Tech talk has been the most successful um Tick Tock people are going to discover new things they're not going to see their friends and family whereas Facebook and Instagram people generally are they want to see people that they're familiar with and I think it's A Hard

01:16:52 - 01:17:51

Sell to get someone to follow a brand unless you're doing something really fun and exciting so I would say if you're looking for new channels or if you're starting a business Tick Tock is better than the other social platforms for that um I can speak on this too just just because this is what I do um I think that you know it's really interesting like when I speak with our clients um you know the the landscape's changing a lot that's what I that's what I discussed and there's just less margin

01:17:24 - 01:18:37

because of a lot of these privacy changes to you know basically create demand through paid platforms right and that's what I think you need to to think about from a a marketing strategy perspective what are the best places for us to generate demand um and unlock scale and that could be like organic Tick Tock it could also be organic uh organic search um but I think there are so many channels available now today Reddit Tick Tock um you know there's tons of different ads so it's just a question of

01:18:01 - 01:19:03

um where can you meet your audience where does that make sense for that business which I think everyone here really touched on so it's just getting harder but there are more channels available um other questions go ahead I can take that I started with Google pay per click because then you're only paying on someone like actually clicks through to your site and if you have um something like a hook that's really strong like a reason why people would be searching for that then it's likely that

01:18:47 - 01:19:49

they will shop from you or more likely than if you just throw your picture up in front of someone on Facebook they might click through it but they might not have no intent of shopping so that's why I liked Google initially um my next step was Facebook and Instagram at the time Tech talk didn't even exist I don't think so that was the natural Next Step um and again I would like if I were to go back I would start with just like a super small budget like just kind of think about the customer Journey like if

01:19:18 - 01:20:15

someone's new to you um what do they what do they need to know to be convinced to shop from your brand if someone's seen you before how do you like get them to re-engage with you and just kind of think about it that way and build out even just like a very basic ad funnel um then that's probably you'll probably have the best results you can also do just like a simple retargeting campaign on Facebook where like anyone who came to your site when they go out again on the internet they might see your thing

01:19:46 - 01:20:50

pop up your brand pop up and that's a pretty um generally has a pretty good return on investment in the beginning so I would recommend starting there and then building out um Lucas could probably answer what my ad budget is better than I could or what it's uh spread across but it's pretty evenly split and it gets um uh kind of reallocated based on what platform is performing the best at that time yeah I think um Jackie touching something really important which is to understand if your customers are

01:20:22 - 01:21:20

already like searching for products in your space I think for us when we went on like a refs to do our SEO research we realized that there wasn't really any search volume for like healthy Ramen or like low carb Ramen because it just never existed before no one knew that Ramen could be that way and so for us we knew that growing through sem in the early days was going to be pretty expensive just there isn't any search volume there the other thing we noticed was like we're obviously a

01:20:51 - 01:21:49

very visual product like you know you can make ramen look nice and so and we had a lot of like different value props we could call out with the low carb high protein plant-based so I actually meta worked really well for us and continues to work really well from a contribution margin standpoint it also just happens to have like great ad inventory and then Tick Tock will be next and then STM is lost for us but we we do influencers and everything as well I'm just curious just to Center the question too for both of

01:21:20 - 01:22:16

you guys at what point like Jackie right after you got product were you on were you on Google were you like I'm gonna I I like inherently knew that Google would be the best Avenue for us because like my whole journey I'd been searching Google and that's kind of the first place someone goes if they have a problem um I don't think I launched Facebook ads for maybe like two years but I started like very small and very slow in the beginning um if I had known more I probably would have started more in the beginning and

01:21:48 - 01:22:47

for you Kevin um when we launched our first month we ran no ads our community and our waitlist carried us and that worked really well for a while and then obviously it's going to slow down because you tap out of those audiences and like right after that we just turned on meta and tried to optimize meta and make it work and then once it became our quote-unquote like Cash Cow engine then it could fund Innovation into other experimental channels like The Tick Tock Google and influencer marketings of the

01:22:18 - 01:23:12

world yeah I think once you commercialize like a mass Market social Channel like meta which is usually where a lot of spend gets segmented at scale then you can think about layering on more experimental things like these guys are talking about I think the important thing to note though is like each of them had like a gut feeling about where Revenue was going to come from off the cuff you built up a big enough Community you were like this is going to drive substantial Revenue whatever that number

01:22:44 - 01:23:34

was Jackie was like there's probably a good amount of search Demand on Google where you know I could float the business and grow this thing off Google so I think that's the question you should ask yourself like where are my Shoppers going to be and what is that gut feeling I think always start there I would also just not diversify at all in the early days like I think I didn't know anything about marketing when I started this business and uh I have like a like originally I was like oh we got

01:23:10 - 01:24:14

to test everything and we got to see what works and everyone was like no you just pick one channel and you make it work and that will fund everything else and I don't know why I just like you know thought maybe I should keep experimenting and probably wasted a lot of money like in the early days doing that so now I just tell everyone just focus on one and get it to work other questions here go ahead this sounds like a software plug if anyone has a has a favorite software I I use judge.me it's an app on Shopify

01:24:09 - 01:25:01

um it's been good I think like any of them probably work but definitely like trying to capture as many as possible and get kind of an email flow set up like from the very beginning so that like anyone who comes to your site they have an Avenue to leave their email address I think that's what's important it's just and then once they're in your funnel then you can ask them for reviews and and just be like super transparent and just be like hey we're trying to grow our brand like any feedback would

01:24:36 - 01:25:32

be great and you can ask them a couple times they might not do it the first time but maybe the second time they will say we're a small business and we want to grow and your feedback's important just that kind of honesty and transparency people really really resonate with um so I think we have time for one more things um on the paid ads side we so our growth manager came from videography background and we hired him for a very specific reason because media buying is just totally different now in your ads

01:25:35 - 01:26:34

manager like you can rely on ASC campaigns and it'll you don't really have to touch your ads manager that much so our growth manager and our media buyer are basically investing all of their time in building a creative pipeline so we work with scriptwriters we have video editors they set up their own shoots in they don't do it in the US it's crazy expensive they rent studios in like Canada hire models there and then like right there on scripts and set up their own shoots and they're doing things like they study

01:26:04 - 01:27:01

psychology books on like the 16 like psychological like um just like things that most consumers are always thinking about and you're constantly just testing that in our creative and our copy and I think that's really the name the way to win in in meta um because you just you're not going to win from like a media buying or a budget standpoint versus the big Brands oh I'll touch on that if you're interested in like implementing a creative program at scale uh I'm gonna talk about just kind

01:26:33 - 01:27:26

of a newsletter in just a second we just gave a talk exactly about this point on Tuesday that you can definitely watch if anyone here is trying to launch meta and think about uh you know how to actually deliver creative that will perform the mediavine game today is a creative game so I think that's where a lot of effort's going what I see on the portfolio side is it's going into retention especially for more mature businesses Community the whole purpose of today's talk and then some more

01:26:59 - 01:28:22

experimental channels like uh close lead closed loop ad ecosystems where privacy hasn't affected them so much like Amazon for instance very curious about your Amazon business by the way um and so I think that's where people are focusing now go ahead I think yeah no for sure go ahead what percentage of your Marketing in the beginning through implementing a relationship s um we're not driving any Revenue now through this but you kind of um I actually think you might be better at answering this

01:28:18 - 01:29:46

can you simplify the question for me just a little bit thank you right it's the basically building Trust basically like at what point and like what levers did you really work it's in one year this is going to drive from yeah yeah okay I gotcha um for me it's just intuition and kind of understanding the moment that you're at and the size of your audience and and what they're reacting reacting to we have a bi-weekly newsletter called the B mail where the intro is nothing short of

01:29:27 - 01:30:46

ridiculous and it's very casual a lot of uh slaying and and mumbo jumbo and uh that has become like the only place where we kind of speak like that in our captions we're now on Instagram we're now a lot more simple and sophisticated and in line with what you see higher end Street Wear Brands I looked back at an email I sent uh like six months ago and it was like guess what guys we have customer service now and it was like very immature and ridiculous but it was like perfect for the moment and people like love that

01:30:07 - 01:31:21

transparency now like like we can't act like that um so I think it's just like really feeling it out uh and then staying true to like some channels like you can always be like that and other channels would be different um if you think that your customers and your community not like an example like that different kind of can you think that's just enough we are for I am the voice of the brand I was thinking about my first answer about like I don't ever put myself in front but it is my voice

01:31:22 - 01:32:22

um I write all of our copy and like you have to come I I kind of joke about this like as a customer like especially if you're a new customer and you don't know us like don't come complaining in the con in the comments about something like that isn't very real for example somebody was like where's my thing I ordered it 10 days ago I'm like looking up their order I'm like hey sorry so looks like you ordered that three days ago and like it's like Walker like we're gonna be people behind

01:31:52 - 01:32:58

it and we're not gonna like act like a corporation in the in the comments and like we're always going to talk to you as a human it's like so sorry about that like extended O's and like just like being real and not like having like chat gbt write your copy I think is really really important um so uh to an extent to an extent do you wanna I can I can answer um I would say your point of sale needs to be as professional as possible basically everywhere else you should kind of be casual but at least that's what has

01:32:27 - 01:33:23

worked we actually I started off thinking like everything has to be polished and professional and we need to look like the biggest brand and then people treat you like the biggest brand and they expect their product to be there the next day and they don't really give you any leeway if you make a mistake if you are honest with them and you're like we're a small team we're doing the best we can and then keep that kind of casual friendly attitude on like I would say everywhere except your point of sale your point of

01:32:55 - 01:34:00

sale should be perfect but everywhere else you can be as casual as you want probably for as long as you want in your content yeah across social on email that stuff that the more casual and behind the scenes we've been the better that content has performed all right guys I'm gonna cap this off here just because we're over but um thank you guys so much for coming it was incredible um yeah really engaging stuff we're gonna be we're gonna be doing this more often here at Shopify for office hours if you

01:33:30 - 01:34:06

guys are interested in like the more expert level topics where they're like serious deep Dives I would recommend sign up for the newsletter darkumagency.com newsletter or just follow us on Instagram and we have another uh event series called night school that's a lot more in depth