Summer Series Teaser
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Streaming here
In the upcoming summer series of Commerce Chefs, Tom and Kyle will be highlighting some of their favourite founders and commerce leaders from Season 1. Every two weeks beginning in July, a new long-form and previously unreleased interview with a commerce chef will be released to keep you inspired all summer long. Each episode will feature new ideas and insights that will help you be a better leader, and make the brand you lead better, too. This appe-teasing episode features hand-selected clips from previous guests Marina Parejo, formerly from O2 Canada and Shopify featured on Episode 4, Courtney Buhler, Founder and CEO of Sugarlash Pro from Episode 5 and Aaron Powell, Founder and CEO Bunch Bikes from Episode 10. In the episode, the guests discuss everything from building a community around your brand, the technology stack you need to power your ecomm efforts, and top tips to scale globally —completely raw and unfiltered.
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Transcript
Kyle Oh, hi there, it's me, Kyle, the less funny, but arguably more punny co-host of Commerce Chefs. I know. I know. You're hoping today will be that special episode where I share three easy listening hours of endless wisdom from my forthcoming HBR article, My Life in 1000 Anecdotes or Less. But alas, you are stuck with a teaser for our forthcoming summer series, which highlights, you know, a few of our favorite founders and commerce leaders from season one. Like, OK, well, like I mean, I think they're all our favorites, obviously. But just like we had to pick a handful because of network execs and awards season and stuff like that. And just please come back to the show, all our guests, we love you. So today we've got a few clips from Marina Parejo, formerly of O2 Canada and Shopify, as featured on episode four of Commerce Chefs. Courtney Buhler, the founder and CEO of Sugarlash Pro from episode five, and Aaron Powell, the founder and CEO of Bunch Bikes from episode 10. And they've been hand selected to appetease your ears and your brain for the upcoming summer series that starts about a month from now. Every two weeks over the summer, we'll be releasing a 30 to 40 minute long form interview with a brave commerce chef that has all kinds of previously unreleased gold nuggets. It's not quite the three hour masterpiece that you'll get in my HBR article, but, you know, each hand-picked interview is bound to at least brew and use some ideas and insights that will help you be a better leader and help make the brand you lead better, too. Here we go.
Marina I'm Marina Parejo, head of e-commerce and customer experience at a brand called O2 Industries,
Tom If the hard work of building trust happens after the conversion, after the sale, then how can ecomm leaders mindfully and cost effectively build their brands in a way that focuses on this stage, the the long term, the hard work, rather than just counting conversions?
Marina So I think that there are some pretty low resistance ways of doing it as a brand, so something as simple as planning and being strategic about all of your touch points post purchase. Right. So building a strategy with not only regular touch points, but something that sort of reinforces the principles that you have as a brand and reinforces why that individual should want to be part of this community or give them the opportunity to feel like they're a part of it by engaging with them. And not only regular email or SMS touch points post purchase, that reinforce those things, but also just like general information that you can share about where a package is, letting them know ahead of time whether there's going to be a delay in a package. I mean, there are technologies out there that are able to predict the path of a particular package and tell you that there's a great chance that this package, because the last 10 packages that had a similar path as yours were delayed due to customs or whatever it might be. And so giving, having those touch points to build trust with the customer before they've received the product. Also, like from an e commerce perspective, having frictionless returns and exchanges is a massive, a massive thing that is sometimes overlooked. So you have brands that will kind of not really talk about returns or exchanges or whether it's possible as though hiding it is the way it is going to make it so that customers don't don't recognize or realize it. But so having a return policy that's front and center and even building up on that that return or exchange experience. So A) making it super easy so you can use different tools that build automation or that that introduce automation to your reverse logistics flow. Right. And so you work with a tool like that and it allows you to A) because no customer is going to blame you for a shirt not fitting them or the colour not being right. We have this expectation that we we can try things on. And if we can send it back then and if we can create a frictionless experience for returning and exchanging products, then that again builds trust and credibility between the customer and the brand, but also recognizing as a brand that a return is not necessarily a refund. Right. So it's actually a new opportunity for you to build trust and relationship. And it's almost like a second chance at a first impression because you get that opportunity to resell to the customer again and say, hey, we get it. You know, this size didn't work for you. We'd love to collect that feedback and understand, like, was it too big? Was it so we can go and adapt and build more robust sizing charts or whatever that might be. But also coming back to the concept of building on your principles, you have brands like, say, for example, Allbirds? Allbirds, they work with this non for profit, but that non for profit, essentially, you can return your shoes at any point in time, even after trying them on and wearing them. And the reverse logistics is actually just sending it to this organization that will then donate the shoes. So you can feel actually good about the fact that if I do need to process a return or exchange, I can do it easily. But also I'm doing it a good thing by returning or exchanging, you know, and it also makes me feel like we can challenge the concepts of things being final sale. Like we'll go back to the TenTree example. I'm like totally fine with buying something that's final sale TenTree, because I know if that shirt doesn't fit me, I can give it to my sister or to a friend. But I did a good thing by making the purchase in the first place. Would I have spent 40 dollars on planting 40 trees? Obviously. So we can use technology to build and create these experiences, build and create more trust and credibility through the process and also from an operation side, using these technologies makes it more efficient, less expensive, which allows us to invest more dollars in sustainable practices and things like that.
Courtney My name is Courtney Buhler and I am the founder and CEO of Sugarlash Pro,
Tom Looking at that kind of organic growth, that CEO mindset. What are some of the things that you feel give you or founder CEOs a unique edge in their respective spaces?
Courtney I think for me, like lots of the success that came from the early days of Sugarlash Pro was the fact that I was so inherently tied to being a lash artist myself. So being on the other side of it and, you know, starting small, like the cool thing about me, I guess, is that I've been on every single side that you can be in on in the lash industry. I had the solo based home based like just just me lashing out of a spare bedroom. And then I had a larger scale home based business and then I had a commercial space. And then I was going to open up another space. And then we decided not to do that just because it was a lot of work. But knowing all those pain points, like inherently as a lash artist and all the holes in the industry and all the frustrations that I would come up against. So like for me, I was like, oh, my gosh, like, lash companies just need to keep stock. There were so many times that I was like, they're out of stock. And not that we've been perfect with Sugarlash Pro, but I know for sure the pillars and the things that would steer me away from doing business with the company. And so I make sure that those are the pillars that we're always keeping in mind. There was other things like in the lash industry, lots of companies at that time when we kind of got started, it was like if you took that training, you had to sign a contract to say that you'd exclusively use their products like forever or you'd lose your certification, which I was like, that's crazy. Like that just gives such companies such a like a loophole just to not stay innovative and not stay on it. And I was like, you guys can use whatever you want. I'll have the best product. But if you want to use other brands, then that's fine. But I was like so confident in what we are bringing to the table that I knew that they'd use our product anyway. So I never wanted to like, lock people in or make them feel like they had to go with us so that they're making this big decision of like who to get in bed with, so to speak. It was just going to be this organic thing. And people do still like they use Sugarlash and then they'll kind of go around and try other people, the lash artistry industry is like very volatile, people, because it's so new still. Right. So people haven't, like, made up their minds. Everyone wants the newest, greatest thing. So people will bounce around. But I think just making sure that you have what they need and then giving amazing customer service and an amazing experience and they're always going to come back no matter if they try other people or not.
Tom You know, a lot of D2C brands that we've been talking to, whether they saw hardship or maybe some of the best times of their lives, 2020-
Courtney Yeah.
Tom Has been a really friggin weird year. What were some of the big things that you had to come face to face with as a CEO in pivoting with SLP with like expectations or plans or product lines or like you tell us, but what did that what did that year bring and what did you and are you still kind of working with in terms of meeting what was required of you and the brand?
Courtney Yeah, it was definitely a year for the books, like for everybody we in the history of, like, Sugarlash, we've never laid anyone off or had to make any of those calls. And it was definitely new territory. Like we went in the personal services industry. You know, we are, I guess, B2C, but our our consumer is still a business. So it's kind of B2B. It's kind of B2C. It's kind of a weird flow there. But with that said, at the beginning, when stuff, when COVID was hitting and it was like we knew it was getting worse and worse and worse at that point, like my team was like, what are we going to do? We should do a big sale on lashes. We should do this. And I was like, I remember. Like, I can I can, like, very clearly remember it. I was at my house and whenever, I live on an acreage like on a lake and I was just I was just so stressed and I always just go down by the water, like when I am stressed. And I was like looking at the water. And I, I was just like, I can do a sale or I can do whatever. But the fact of the matter is, like, I know that it's going to get worse and I know that they shouldn't be doing lashes. But no one had said that yet. Like there was no mandates. It was just like obviously we shouldn't be doing personal services at this point with what information we have. Right. And so I had to convince my team, but I did. I wrote out a big I want to say like presidential address, but I was kind of like that to be like, we don't know what we're dealing with here. Like, this doesn't look great. Consider like consider stepping away from lashing now. And what I did was we have these online courses with our academy. We were the first company in the world to do like a full blown online academy. And so we have these courses. And so what I did was I said: maybe consider stepping away from lashing and pouring some effort into education so that when we get back to normal, then you can be stronger than ever? So what I did was give away our lash lift course, which was like a three hundred dollar course. I gave it away to anyone who wanted it. And we had in one day eighty four hundred people sign up.
Aaron My name is Aaron Powell, I'm the founder and CEO of Bunch Bikes.
Kyle Do you see the brand like that, whatever that means to you, do you see brand playing a part in helping protect what you've built, or is there a lot that's just in the product design like how do you see brand interplaying with with that in the future?
Aaron Yeah, it's almost 50/50. So like number one is like, you got to have a product. Right. So like and I worked for years, iterated, finally got the product market fit that I'm really happy with right and the reviews are incredible on it. But that's only half the the picture, you know, a bike? There's really nothing proprietary about a bicycle like it can be easily, well, I mean, not easily, but it can be knocked off and somebody can have something similar that does the same thing. Right. Like it's not like it's a new technology or anything like that. So to that degree, it's like there's only a limited defense on the product side. So but the other thing, the other half of that, those the whole experience around a bicycle, it's not just that moment of purchase and you're using the product and you never have an issue with it. There's things like, you know, warranty, something stops working. You need to get it worked on. OK, what does that experience look like? How are you handling that as a brand? As you know, how is the customer being taken care of? There's it's it's just it's everything down to freight and delivery and communication and all the things that like, you know, I'm buying this five thousand dollar product, like I shouldn't have to lift a finger to have, like, this perfect experience and have all my needs taken care of. And if you're not doing that, then it's just the customer's just let down. And so, so, so much about what I think goes into our brand is it's one is that we're values driven, right. Like everything we, that comes up, any situation, any new problem or challenge, it's all run through these filters of what are our values and what do we believe in? How do we think that this should be handled? What's going to do right by the customer right? Almost like just the golden rule, right? Like if it was me, how would I want that brand to treat me? It goes so much more like if it was just a product on the shelf, it's like you're kind of relying on the retailer to provide a lot of that. And that's, you know, every retailer is going to do it differently. Right. But, you know, when it's direct to customers like everything is on you. It's like if something is lost in shipping, it's your fault. How are you going to handle it? Right. Or if you're maybe a brand that's not as kind to their customers, you're going to say as long as it leaves our warehouse, you're responsible. But in the end, like I look at actually what Zappos has done, you know, it's all about exceeding those customer expectations. So it's down to the little things like, you know, we typically get the bikes shipped out within 24 hours and then delivered within four or five days. You know, it's a big product shipped via freight. But we kind of had this revelation that if anything, any little thing along the pipeline doesn't go perfectly. That bike might take six days, might take seven days to get delivered. It might take two weeks. You know, all these little things can happen, at which point now the customer is disappointed. So we actually just changed on the website. Look, you can expect your bike within two weeks, right? And then if you get it within four or five days, you're like, oh, my God, that's awesome. It's like, well, you know, nothing changed about anything on the logistical side. It's just we're now exceeding your expectations. And and so that's actually, you know, value number one is like we're going to exceed customer expectations, whatever that means. And so I give a lot of leeway to my customer service people like look like, don't come ask me, what do I do here? Can I do this kind of do that, just make the customer happy. Whatever would make them happy, just do that. I don't even care what the dollar value is because I'm concerned with the long term, not the short term, the long term value of the brand versus short term financial things. OK, yeah, we lost five hundred dollars because we did X, Y and Z for the customer. But now they're are an advocate for life and they're going to tell everybody that they know about it. And hey, maybe they even sell a bike to a neighbor or two and it's like that five hundred dollars is nothing compared to selling another five thousand dollar bike or something like that.
Tom One of the themes you were touching on there, Aaron, which is you're right, you are a high consideration product. Somebody typically is not just going to jump on on a whim, see this, buy it, you know, and there you go. This isn't deodorant or macaroni. So how does that brand experience of a specialty, high consideration product like yours, how does it need to differ from more of a mass retail or mass product consumable approach?
Aaron It almost just piggybacks off what I was saying, where the customer experience is a big part of it. And, you know, I like to think of it almost like as a concierge experience or there's a great example that the Airbnb guys put out in an interview, which is they called it like the seven star experience or something like that where, you know, a five star experience, you know, somebody's going to give you a five star review. They're going to do that if you delivered everything as expected. Hey, it's a great product. I got it in time. You know, it was easy experience buying it. No, no issues, no frustrations. Five stars. And that's it. It's such a transaction, you gave me everything that I asked for, you get to review, we go our separate ways. But you think beyond that, it's like, OK, what what would a six star experience look like?
Kyle And there you have it. Thanks so much for listening to this special appeteaser episode, but kind of like when you go for half price appies and basically order enough for a whole meal but still order a meal. You've been there. Don't pretend you've not been there. Anyhow. Today featured just a few of the brave and brilliant commerce chefs will be showcasing in long form over the summer series starting in July. We do have two episodes still left in season one. So tune back in on June 24th as we unpack the case or not the case for capital. With D2C brands. Until then, you know the drill. Subscribe and drop that five star review wherever you get your podcasts and be sure to hold your spot for the much anticipated commerce chefs community that is launching this fall by visiting commercechefs.com/community. This has been a pinch of Kyle and a dash of Tom, and we'll be cooking with you in two weeks.