eCommerce Essentials with Norm Douglas - COO of Conni

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Join us as Ryan Martin, Host and founder of Remarkable Digital, speaks with Norm Douglas, COO of Conni, a product that requires a unique marketing mix, as it can be a product people don't want others to know they use. 

Beyond his entrepreneurial achievements, Norm is also a senior football umpire in the Geelong Football League and an avid guitarist — a passion he picked up during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

We explore his multifaceted life and gain insight into the unique marketing strategies that have driven his business to nearly 5,000 reviews.

Norm shares his transformation from a communications and IT all-rounder to a digital marketing expert who orchestrated Connie's impressive growth. 

Discover the innovative approaches he employed, from leveraging Facebook and Google Ads to addressing high customer acquisition costs with a focus on quality and brand loyalty. 

Listen as Norm recounts the pivotal moment when customer demand led to a strategic expansion into disposable adult diapers, highlighting the company's agility and dedication to customer needs.

Effective customer engagement is at the heart of Connie's success. 

Norm emphasises the power of real, personalised interactions and the importance of adapting products based on customer feedback. 

This episode is packed with practical advice on inventory management, leveraging social media, and optimising shipping strategies. 

Norm's personal anecdotes and professional insights provide a comprehensive guide for anyone looking to build a resilient, trusted e-commerce brand in a competitive market. 

Don’t miss out on these valuable lessons and inspiring stories!

Download our Ultimate eCommerce Checklist to improve your eCommerce results.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:19

Welcome to the Ecommerce Australia podcast. For those of you seeking direct assistance, remarkable Digital is just a call away. Our mission is to be remarkable, doing great things for great people and great businesses. I understand how much choice you have and how many podcasts are out there, so I'm truly grateful you've tuned in. Please let me know if you have any questions, comments or topics you'd like covered. Let's get started. Welcome to another exciting edition of eCommerce Australia. Our next guest is what they call a long-term listener. First-time caller.

Speaker 1: 0:52

Norm has been very kind many times on many of the episodes of the eCommerce Australia podcast to message me and let me know his thoughts on the podcast. I think most of it's been positive, if not all of it, which is good. Norm Douglas is his name. He runs a great e-com business called Connie and has done so in various positions over the last eight years. Connie is very well known, but also in a category that has unique challenges when it comes to marketing, being in Contner's product, something quite personal to many people. So it makes it hard to get reviews, although he tells me what 5,000 reviews now.

Speaker 2: 1:27

Close to 5,000, yeah, Fantastic.

Speaker 1: 1:29

And he's also recently updated his LinkedIn banner profile and profile pic Mate looking extremely dapper there, I must say.

Speaker 2: 1:37

No, I thought I'd better. Once upon a time I was a photographer and I see others investing in good photography and I thought I should probably do the same I thought that might have been a takeaway from Retail Fest is just updating the profile.

Speaker 1: 1:50

It probably was that as well. Good stuff Outside of business Norm keeps very fit as an umpire in the Geelong Seniors. What's that?

Speaker 2: 1:59

Yep Geelong Football League. There's three leagues down there.

Speaker 1: 2:01

Yep, I'm a senior footy in the middle so he's used to getting abused, so hopefully there won't be too much of that on the podcast today. But yeah, someone who keeps fit and not only that plays a guitar. So he'd go to some open mic nights and play some guitar, mate. What's the sort of go-to tune?

Speaker 2: 2:18

I like male singer-songwriter kind of country. That's been my thing lately. I wasn't always a country type person, but that modern sort of contemporary Zac Bryan type of thing, you know, I really like it. So yeah, just anything that suits this gravelly nasally voice.

Speaker 1: 2:37

I can relate to that. Who's the best guitarist of all time?

Speaker 2: 2:40

Oh boy, probably Eric Clapton, I think, is the go-to answer. But look, I I really like acoustic guitar. I haven't yet dabbled in electric and so I think I like rhythm guitar better. So you know, I think any. If you watch, you know really good guitarists. I mean, prince was a tremendous guitarist and, yeah, the great video, uh youtube, of him playing it I think it was um george harrison's anniversary or something. It's a great clip. Go of him playing it. I think it was George Harrison's anniversary or something. It's a great clip.

Speaker 1: 3:08

Go and watch that I know the one, While my Guitar Gently Weeps.

Speaker 2: 3:12

Correct. Yeah, yeah, and he does a solo during it, which makes you I mean that'll never be me and, to be honest, I don't have much like attraction to that. Yeah, so I just like a rhythm guitar with good lyrics and and hopefully, moderately okay vocals sometimes nice.

Speaker 1: 3:28

Well, uh yeah, if you're in the geelong region, uh, send us a video if you see, uh see norm up there and uh, and now that's good mate. So, uh, yeah, is that something you picked up through covid or you've been playing it for a long time?

Speaker 2: 3:39

no, I got to um covid. I turned 50 during covid and I my wife, looked at me one day and said, you know, because we just realized we had more time on our hands because we weren't socializing whatever. And she said has there ever been something in your life you wish you'd spent more time on? And I said, yep, I know exactly what it is. I'm going to go and fix it tomorrow. And that was that I'd always wanted to learn an instrument. I always kind of considered myself a bit musical, yeah, and I'd see other people doing it and I'd think I reckon I could do that, you know, and I'd just never given it the time. I tried to play drums for about five minutes when I was, a young, fella tried to play keyboard when I was, and guitar, but only for, like you know, very short periods of time. So COVID gave me that opportunity. I gave me that opportunity. I went and bought an ukulele.

Speaker 1: 4:22

Oh yeah.

Speaker 2: 4:22

And then I went and bought another one, and another one, and another one and then eventually, after 12 months, graduated to a guitar and Ed Sheeran's size guitar oh yeah, because he plays little guitars. Yeah, yeah. And then, yeah, you look, you play until your fingers bleed and you get better than what you were. Yeah, I'll never be a great guitarist, but I can now at least, you know, do it to the point where I'm no longer embarrassing myself and I can generally do what needs to be done. So it's great, it's changed my life. It's the type of thing where I'm never bored, ever. Yeah, you know, I still watch TV, consume podcasts and YouTube, whatever, but whenever those things, then I don't want to do it. I just go and grab, pick up a guitar and start.

Speaker 1: 5:04

Is those things, then I don't want to do it.

Speaker 2: 5:06

I just go and pick up a guitar and start. Is it a nightly thing or weekly thing? Just lately it hasn't been a nightly thing, but over the past I would say it's at least a three-night-a-week thing over the past since I started, on average. Yeah, good on you.

Speaker 1: 5:17

All right, so welcome to the podcast Firstly Made. So you've been at Connie for eight years. What was that initial conversation? You know, you mentioned to me off podcast that your role is kind of an entrepreneur since starting at Connie. Yeah, how did that come about? And yeah, how's the eight years been since you started there?

Speaker 2: 5:36

You know, that term I'd never heard until yesterday. I was at a little mini conference yesterday and entrepreneur, and I love it because, starting I mean just a quick bit of background. I was born in 1970 and I was part of that generation. I always say that I'm just old enough to have missed computers. Being in schools all the time we had mechanical keyboard sorry, typewriters as a subject Okay, not as a bit tacked on, but as a whole subject. Typing, yeah, and I did that to meet girls, because there was only two boys in that class.

Speaker 1: 6:08

Strategy. I like it.

Speaker 2: 6:10

And I always had plans to leave school at year 10. I never had ambitions. No one in my family I'm the last of eight kids and no one in our family really went to uni. It just wasn't even spoke about either. So I started in year 10 and I was, I was really lucky. I got a job in photo retailing as a young man and and you know that's that's retailing, that's commerce, and it was fantastic. You know. It taught me, taught me everything you need to know. It taught me profit margins, taught me you know buying products for 10, putting a margin on it and selling it for 20. You know, yeah. And then, anyway, I wanted to be a photographer as well and I was never quite good enough. And then I joined the Navy as a thing to do. I probably needed a bit of smartening up and I did that. It was terrific, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 6:54

And then went back into the photo industry and I remember the day was about middle of 1996 and I was working for Michael's Camera and Video and I just had received a promotion to a purchasing manager off the sales floor and it was really cutthroat sales floor there. So I was happy to be offered and they sat me down and they showed me two different things in the same day. They showed me a thing called email and they showed me a spreadsheet. And I'd never seen either. And it was at that point that I realized, oh my goodness, I love data. Seen either.

Speaker 2: 7:25

And it was at that point that I realized, oh my goodness, I love data. And it was also at that point that I thought, oh, I've missed the boat. I know nothing about computers, but of course it was the infancy of it and then about I lose track of the exact timeline. I'd like to think it was only a couple of months later that I saw someone using Photoshop for the first time. It wasn't me. I saw a professional using Photoshop. I'm watching them use the clone tool.

Speaker 2: 7:48

If you know what the clone tool is, I don't know to be honest, I'm assuming it's one of the most basic tools in Photoshop where you can sample one section of the photo and put it to another section of the photo to sort of get rid of blemishes and stuff. And I just thought that was literal magic, actual magic. And I thought, oh, my goodness, this is it. So I was around that time as well. Html. So I bought a book.

Speaker 2: 8:10

You know, there was no no how to video courses and I bought a book and I've still got that book. Anyway, I started just trying to learn how to make a website. I just was interested in me and the first website I actually made properly was the Geelong Football Umpires League in 2000. My first year of umpiring Made that on my own, with just Dreamweaver and an editor.

Speaker 1: 8:34

Have they still got that website now? No, but if you go to the Wayback Machine it's still there.

Speaker 2: 8:39

That's what's great about the Wayback Machine. If you don't know, webarchiveorg has been keeping track of the internet for forever. Yeah well, Since the dawn of time 1996. Anyway, blah, blah, blah, corporate jobs, IT, yada, yada started a business of my own called Nerds On Site. It was a Canadian brand that had come. It's kind of a franchise model. I was kind of the master franchise holder here in Australia and I had a customer who needed help with laptops and that was the founder, Glenna Strayton Okay, who had just started three years old this business, and I was fascinated and they were a really dynamic person and got to know them. Anyway, long story short, fast forward.

Speaker 2: 9:19

About 10 years I'd been in agencies and I'd been building websites commercially and also my own brands. My wife was a professional mountain biker for many years and when you're trying to support an athlete in a fringe sport, you have to sort of generate a lot of your own income, and so we had a lot of businesses that required my talents and my skills and my energy to do marketing and SEO and all the stuff all on our own. So I went into my agency and then we pitched. I reached out to Glenis in Connie. At that stage it was about 10 years since I'd first met her, Yep, and I said, oh, you know, if you want a new website, let us know. And we did. We built the website, got paid.

Speaker 2: 10:03

And then I said to Glen. I said, oh, you know, you don't have staff in your premises. We'll have to arrange some type of a management, you know, payment, some type of management fee, so that we can help you maintain this thing. And she said, yeah, you're right. And then she said come and have a coffee, We'll talk about it. And then she pitched me and made me an offer that it was hard to refuse, Not from any type of monetary thing, but more so the fact that you know I'd always really respected her and that industry. I like to say that the bulk of our customers probably wish they'd never had to buy our products. Yeah, interesting, which makes it a challenge, right? Yeah, Makes it a challenge. But at the same time and I was saying to you off air before that we get to do commerce-like things, we get to be capitalists, but we're selling products that genuinely impact lives, and that's what attracted me to Connie, and at that stage we were predominantly wholesale.

Speaker 1: 11:01

Okay, yeah, did see, even in those early days was when building the website. Was it floated that they wanted to become more B2C, or has it just sort of evolved over that way as consumer behavior has?

Speaker 2: 11:14

shifted a little bit. Yeah, it was only ever designed to be another thing we did. It was designed to sort of help, you know, sell the brand and be there for people that wanted to buy online. But predominantly we were a wholesale company. So we're a brand, we're a manufacturer, we're the manufacturer, the importer, the wholesaler and the retailer, and it's our product that we're manufacturing. We have some secret sauce involved in our products, so the online component when I started was less than 10% of what we did and, to be honest, that was kind of okay as well. I was brought on to not only do that, but also a bit of communications and a bit of systems and a bit of IT and yada yada. I was sort of an all-rounder. But it was about two years into that that Glenis and I you know realised that things. Maybe there was an opportunity if we just were willing to spend some money, and so we started spending some money on Google.

Speaker 1: 12:07

Yep, so Google the first place you started, google Ads or SEO.

Speaker 2: 12:11

It's probably not entirely true. Probably Facebook was the first. Yeah, but we probably didn't do it that well. Yeah, but I was about to. I got pitched by an agency, yeah, so we decided that we were going to spend the money. I got pitched by an agency. I was about to sign the dotted line and right before I did, I thought stop, you've got the opportunity to learn this stuff yourself. I had the background, you know. I had enough understanding of how it's supposed to work. Yeah, but I had enough understanding of how it's supposed to work. But I never had the budget to play with. Yeah, and here I was about to throw away an opportunity, so I didn't. Yeah, we were small enough that I could do that on my own. Okay and yeah, so I did it myself for three years and we couldn't find the spend limit early, really Okay.

Speaker 2: 12:52

Yeah, we couldn't.

Speaker 1: 12:54

The more we spent, the more sales. Yeah, we couldn't. The more we spent, the more sales. It was as simple as that. I would imagine there'd be a big surge for your products because, as you sort of alluded to off the top, you know it's not something that people want to, you know, interact with from a social point of view. Or you know, at least some people aren't keen to sort of want to publicize the fact that they do use your products. I mean, sure, young, old, mothers, you know carers, all that sort of stuff is no problems. But you know a mid-40s guy, you know I'm probably not somebody who wants to sort of engage with your products.

Speaker 2: 13:23

Yeah, yeah, you're so right.

Speaker 2: 13:26

Our industry has got some really big old, established players, like some really big companies that are home healthcare providers, and I think what happened is all of a sudden, and it might sound arrogant, forgive me, but I'd like to hope that we were one of the brands trying to lead the conversation to try and normalize our industry, normalize the conversations we had about incontinence products. As I was saying to you, most of us are born incontinent, most of us will die incontinent and somewhere in between will often leak when we don't expect to. And it doesn't matter whether you're male, female, healthy, fit, otherwise not sick. And so it was those other people who wouldn't have ever found themselves in the traditional retailers that existed and still exist in our industry. They probably would never have walked into those stores or onto those websites that predominantly used funding models to get the product into people's hands Yep. So we hoped that they were the ones that we were attracting.

Speaker 2: 14:26

And we're talking about toilet training products, we're talking about bed pads, we're talking about mattress protection, body-worn products, which is underwear, where we thought we could try and attract those Yep. And what happened over the next, whatever six, seven years is, we kind of awoke the industry, and now we're kind of all doing it, yeah, yeah. So the cost per acquisition has gone through the roof.

Speaker 2: 14:50

What?

Speaker 1: 14:50

would be your. You know you obviously got a building a strong brand there, so I'd imagine you'd have a really good returning user rate, Like. Do you see that? Like the lifetime value we talk about, that returning user rate for your products would be strong, I would imagine.

Speaker 2: 15:05

I hate lifetime customer value because our products just last too long. Okay, yeah. So people invest in our products and generally they'll probably pass them on to their kids. Okay, particularly our bedpads. Yeah, yeah, our bedpads. Yeah, yeah, our bedpads are really high quality. They're not. You know, you can buy a $12 bedpad tomorrow and you can buy one of our bedpads, which go on our website, you'll find out they're more like $60. So there's a big, big difference and there is a big difference. Yeah, our bedpads are really high quality. They work. We invest a lot of time in how they work, so that is a problem for us.

Speaker 2: 15:38

But we're predominantly a reusable company. About three years ago, based on customer feedback, we started making a disposable for use of a better word adult diaper, which is a huge it's probably the biggest part of our industry. So the incontinence market in Australia is worth about $5 billion and more than half of that is in, essentially, diapers Well, nappies, what we say, but in an adult sense they often call them diapers. So we entered that market a little while ago, which was really hard because we were known as the brand of the reusable brand in Australia. So it was hard for us to make that decision, but we did it because we knew our customers wanted that.

Speaker 1: 16:20

Yeah, yeah. And how did you good segue there? How do you know that your customers wanted that Like? I think one of the biggest pillars to e-commerce success is actually knowing your customers and talking to your customers. If you can have that conversation better than your competitors, you're going to win more often than not. What prompted that? Was it market research? Was it talking to customers? Was it getting feedback? What was the mechanism for it?

Speaker 2: 16:42

I'd like to hope that I've followed the lead of Glenys, who's the founder, in that Glenys has always invested in things before she needed them.

Speaker 1: 16:51

Sounds like it. Yeah, with the website. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 16:53

And that's what I hope I do as well. I've always tried to invest in things way before we need them, so customer service was one of those things when we started investing in customer service and I mean real people in Australia really answering the phone or chatting with you on the website or answering your email whichever way you wanted to communicate with us. There was times early on, and maybe even still, where we might even have a bit of overkill. Staff will be listening to this and hearing that but it's possibly the case.

Speaker 2: 17:24

but that's okay, Because I want, when you know we have people call us and say, can you place an order for me over the phone, Because I don't want to do it on the website.

Speaker 1: 17:33

That's fine.

Speaker 2: 17:34

No problem, and it's those people that told us these things. And also it shows, you know, the industry of events for our industry is pretty big, particularly for aged and also for disability. Ndis has changed a lot in that space. So people would come up to us at our booth. I love your products but, geez, I wish it did this, I wish it did that, I wish you made a product. You know one of them. Quick, real quick story. So a typical bed pad is very common. They'll have like what we call wings and they tuck under the you know. So you put the bed pad on the bed and you tuck it into the mattress and you lie on top of it. So a customer came to us at a booth once and said, oh, my son likes to crawl underneath the bed pad which. And said, oh, my son likes to crawl underneath the bed pad which defeats the purpose of the bed pad, because you know they had some neurodiversity challenges in their life. And they said, you know, they just felt comfortable.

Speaker 1: 18:26

Yeah, yeah, right. And they said I wish it didn't do that and we went.

Speaker 2: 18:28

What if we incorporated the bed pad into a fitted sheet?

Speaker 1: 18:32

Yeah, yeah, and there it was. Wow, okay.

Speaker 2: 18:35

Because the thing is, with any type of incontinence product, it's not true to say that they're used in anger all the time. We've got customers that use our products just in case. Yep, because it's happened to them once before and they can't bear to think of it happening again. Okay, that goes for our containment swim shorts. So we make a swim short product, and you're probably thinking what?

Speaker 1: 19:01

does that? Do yeah.

Speaker 2: 19:02

You know, I'm sure many listeners have heard of so-called waterproof nappies. Yeah Well, I'm not saying you shouldn't consider those, but I'm here to say it's very difficult to separate urine and water, right, very difficult, yeah, yeah. So I don't quite understand how the urine only gets absorbed, or whatever. Yeah, so I think what ours do, ours do not absorb urine or water, they just contain poo. Okay, so in the event of an accident, the idea is that they're designed in such a manner that they create a seal around the legs and the waist that if there is an accident, it'll be contained.

Speaker 1: 19:37

You're okay, you're okay, you're okay, you can get out of the pool, so again at a show.

Speaker 2: 19:41

Once a customer came up had an autistic son, said you know I love your product. I said oh, can you tell me, when an accident happens, how do you wash them? And the mother leaned in and she said no, it's never happened, but I never want to be in that position. Okay, that's why we use your product.

Speaker 1: 19:56

Yeah yeah, because it happened just once.

Speaker 2: 19:58

Yeah, when they were younger. Yeah, and I don't want to, you know okay, interesting, very interesting.

Speaker 1: 20:04

Oh, it's good. It's a good lesson to for anyone in there in that e-com space to listen to your customers and, yeah, innovate from that as well. So, more on the e-com side of things you obviously you know we caught up Retail Fest. You were up there for the year. Some of your takeaways there, or what I'm trying to ask is you know you've been in e-com for quite a while now. What do you think are the pillars for e-commerce brands? Are there some non-negotiables that you know the listening audience can reflect on and apply to their business and help them succeed?

Speaker 2: 20:34

I think and I've said this to you before that the more I speak with larger brands, the more I realize that our challenges are the same. It's just the number of zeros at the end of the revenue sheet that changes Some of the things that I think many brands struggle with. And I say we've been lucky, but we also work pretty hard at being lucky. One of the simple things is having stock.

Speaker 1: 20:56

Yeah, that's pretty important yeah.

Speaker 2: 21:00

It's such a simple thing. Before COVID, we'd already realized the fact that we're lucky in that our product doesn't go off and we don't have a lot of seasonality. In fact, our whole industry doesn't have much seasonality. The only seasonality is we created ourselves. We don't change designs all that often, which is probably to our detriment. We probably should have a long time we start to now. So let's just keep more stock. Yeah, let's not be out of stock. So we started doing that in a clever way with data. Data's my thing.

Speaker 2: 21:30

When I first took over the role of ordering, I realized that, you know, we were doing it on a very well, not a very sophisticated method, just kind of guessing. Yeah. So when I first came on board eight years ago, we implemented a really good inventory management system. It's called Unleashed. Okay, it's good. Is it the best? Maybe not, but is it good for us? Yeah, and it's a good mid-tier one, and it links with Xero and Xero's accounting.

Speaker 2: 22:01

And Unleashed is stock management and what that allowed us to do is to finally get good data, good data on our sales and that type of thing, and it's what we've always done.

Speaker 2: 22:10

And you know, we have a tech stack and I was saying to you before that you wouldn't. You know most people would look at it and think that's too disjointed, but it's perfect for us because we can get the data that we want. So, anyway, get good data and then be able to create a good forecasting tool, which we created in-house, which effectively is, loosely speaking, a really good spreadsheet. But it's more than that to be able to predict and know what type of stockholding you'll need, yep. It's more than that to be able to predict and know what type of stockholding you'll need, yep, and that way you can increase your stockholding with comfort and knowledge that you're probably not buying the wrong stuff. Now, we get it wrong still sometimes, and sometimes we have to discount stock, but generally so that's probably one of the things I took from Retail Fest is that in other industries that appears really difficult for them because of seasonality, and you know we're also our average order value is pretty good. Yes, it's up around probably $170. Okay, and we know how to ship it.

Speaker 1: 23:12

You play with the shipping threshold, or?

Speaker 2: 23:14

Yeah, we used to give shipping away all the time. As shipping costs have increased, we've had to wind that back, which you know we didn't want to do, but we kind of had to. Yeah, and we still have a flat rate shipping and we still have a free shipping. And I was at one of those executive lunches that you know I managed to get invited to and I'm grateful for, but I'm often sitting there in a room full of very big hitters and I feel very intimidated at times. And one of the big hitters is can I say no, I can't say who it was, but a very big brand in Australia.

Speaker 2: 23:49

Okay, and they were in charge of this type of thing. And I said you know, what's your shipping percentage that you allow as a percentage of revenue in shipping? And they said to me Norm, we make money from shipping, yeah, yeah. So I said tell me how. And they told me the equation and I don't want to make money from shipping. I don't want. And they did clarify. They said we don't make much, but it doesn't cost us, that's right. And he said you know, just do this. Set the level here and it was $150. So we went from $50 free shipping to $150 overnight, yep. And he said look away from your numbers for seven days because you'll get nervous and come back. And you know they were right.

Speaker 2: 24:31

And I suppose you know consumers listening to this probably think, oh, you know, but shipping's expensive, yeah, it's expensive in this country and what we don't want to do is be put in a position where we have to cut corners. And I'm probably, you know, disclosing a bit here where we did do that once, yeah, and it bit us, yeah, so we wound back from that. That was probably my two biggest takeaways, I think. Is I'm glad we're not in a seasonal business? Is I'm glad we're not in a seasonal business?

Speaker 1: 24:56

Yeah, yeah for sure, but I think the shipping one in particular is people expect to pay shipping if they're ordering e-com. They just want choice and that was one of the things I got from ShipIt founder Rob Hango Zada I better just edit that out, I didn't quite know how to say his last name. Yeah, he mentioned look, consumers are conditioned to expect shipping. It just depends on options. So you can take the free slow method or you can take the express fast method, but at least you've got choice there, yeah, and that's going to hold your e-com brand in good stead.

Speaker 2: 25:28

And you know some of our negative reviews I would say 40% of our negative reviews are things out of our control. Yeah, yeah, slow shipping.

Speaker 1: 25:37

So how do you respond to that?

Speaker 2: 25:38

Be honest with them. Yeah, we respond back to every review. So we started just to go into reviews, if that's okay, because I was saying to you off air that that was a thing. If I started over again, I would have done much earlier. I feel so embarrassed that I didn't focus on reviews early on. Yeah, we now have really good reviews. Our customers tell us they love us. We've got a great brand. Generally speaking. If we can get the product in people's hands generally, they'll have a good experience. Yeah, because we make a great brand, a great product.

Speaker 1: 26:07

So how do you generate those reviews and do you have some automation in there that goes to them?

Speaker 2: 26:12

So I'll mention some brands. So we started with Trustpilot and had a great experience with Trustpilot, and then I got, you know, just basically just sending them the two reviews. Oh, and at the same time and this is a habit of mine, it's an old IT habit, you know throw five solutions to one problem and then stand back, yeah right, and then come back and think which solution worked.

Speaker 1: 26:36

Yeah. Yeah, it doesn't sound like efficient, but anyway it's not but it's what I do.

Speaker 2: 26:42

So I also turned on almost at the same time, a bit earlier Google reviews, Okay. So I remember the day that I was doing a search for our products and finally one of our results came up with the stars Okay, yeah, and I was like, oh, my goodness, it's happened. I now know that there's a minimum number of count, that you have to get a minimum reviews on Google. So you know, I remember setting it all up and thinking, oh, no one loves us.

Speaker 1: 27:09

It's not working.

Speaker 2: 27:11

But when it finally started working, so then that's when I went to Trustpilot, started doing that. Then I got pitched really hard by reviewsio at a big show and it was very compelling, and so we jumped ship and they've done a great job they're doing well.

Speaker 2: 27:30

I think they offer a really good product and we're pretty happy with them. Yeah, and so, yeah, it's an automated email that goes at different times, different journeys, different pathways one for how did we do and then another one for how was the product? Okay, and that feeds back to, obviously, to the Google algorithms and within their ecosystem, and it works well. And so the negative reviews we get and we do get them look our products particularly from a reusable point of view. Sometimes people's expectations of what a reusable product will do exceeds our product's capacities. Yeah, that's a nice way of saying. Sometimes it doesn't work.

Speaker 1: 28:07

Yeah, I think negative reviews are in some way good because, you know, if you see 5,000 five-star reviews, you're like what's going on?

Speaker 2: 28:15

here Exactly.

Speaker 1: 28:16

No one's perfect, no product's perfect. You can't have had that great experience. You're obviously doing something dodgy, whereas if you got 4.8, 4.7, you're like you know what. It's a legit business. Yeah, some people. They're not hiding from it, and that's one thing that I've got from a lot of these podcast episodes. I know Daniela Cohen from Welco. You know they just publish every review and I think it's a good way to be. It's just transparent and you know you do your best and sometimes things out of your control happen and I think it's a way that you respond actually makes you more human and build your brand and I think that's a good thing about these bigger platforms that do reviews.

Speaker 2: 28:53

Is that that's what you're signing up for? Yeah, you're signing up for transparency and I like that. It keeps you honest. Yeah, it forces you to respond to all reviews, and we do. We've got customer service staff that are dedicated for that. Shout out to Melanie With the reviews coming back. So, in the flow, when we ask them about their product, sometimes people's expectations of what it can do for them it can't do. You know, when younger kids are transitioning out of nappies, every parent wants that to happen really quick. Sometimes it's a slower process. Some kids take longer than other kids. It's just the way it is. There are things that you can do as a parent to try and assist that, but the reality is what we call our kids' training pants they're not going to hold what we call ready for a bit of industry terminology.

Speaker 1: 29:38

Yeah, yeah, I don't know if I'm ready, but we'll see how we go.

Speaker 2: 29:41

They're not going to hold a full void. Okay, so a full void is when the bladder empties. I get it. Yeah, disposable nappies are magic. Yeah, nappies are magic, they are magic and they'll hold all the way and nothing gets out. Well, a reusable product is kind of like a sponge If you squeeze a sponge, stuff comes out. So it's never going to replace. So therefore, it's designed to assist for accidents. It's the same with our women's products and our men's products. It's the same thing. So, some of those negative reviews, it's okay, we get it. Yeah, and you know, sometimes we try and help that person because a bed pad is a, you know, doing a sales pitch. Now, bed pads a great solution in conjunction with a pair of undies and probably a mattress protector as well. So three things. There's your $250 beautiful. So I think.

Speaker 1: 30:32

to wrap that up, I think those reviews, though, that people are saying, oh, this product didn't do this, probably helps the next person purchase something because they're like, okay, that product actually doesn't do what I need it to do, I'm going to buy one that does.

Speaker 2: 30:44

Because in our response yeah, we always say that in our response yeah.

Speaker 1: 30:48

Yeah, nice mate. A couple more things before we go. How much does connie spend on on branding, like what's the how do you build that brand versus, you know, google ads and performance marketing. What does your marketing kind of strategy look like?

Speaker 2: 31:03

we've got a really strong wholesale presence and, for the longest time, we've invested a lot into branding and our packaging. Okay, our industry has been notorious for not packaging products. Even the biggest brands that, if I mention them, you know exactly who I mean often won't package their product at all. We made the decision some time back. Even though a lot of our products get delivered online, many of our products end up on shelves in retail stores that you probably have never visited, but they're called home healthcare stores.

Speaker 2: 31:35

They exist all around the country. It's a huge industry. So what we try and do there is, you know, we like to say to people that we're the brand you can trust and we try and back that up in the whole thing, you know, including our packaging. We don't sing it from the rooftops. We try and be a little bit humble, probably to our detriment sometimes, but that's okay, that's okay. We don't need to be a massive company. We do. Well, we have our own two warehouses in North Geelong, we pay our bills and we're profitable and you know we do those things. So, in terms of branding, we kind of let our customers do the branding for us, not always.

Speaker 2: 32:16

We do a lot of social media. We've tried a lot of different things. We invested heavily in TikTok. It's a different audience, a different conversation. Sometimes it can be, you know, quite irreverent at times. Our consumers, our user-generated content, can be the most irreverent. You can get people who have discovered our products, particularly people who might have like a real chronic need. Yes, you know they've got ongoing issues, not something that's acute, and we had one once where you know this person is. You know they have long-term, forever challenges. So they used our bed pad on TikTok and said that they used it for not just urine, but maybe for sexual encounters. Okay, Jeez.

Speaker 2: 33:03

Right, because for them, their whole life around that needed protection. Lots of it Okay. So you know that was a great one Tapping into a new market.

Speaker 1: 33:17

there mate as well.

Speaker 2: 33:18

That's right, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1: 33:20

And last question what sort of keeps you up at night? What's the biggest challenge facing you in 2022 from an econ point of view?

Speaker 2: 33:27

We're a big industry that has some really big players that you know could stomp on heads if they you know, if I have those thoughts at night always think, you know, niche brands are niche brands and that's what we are.

Speaker 2: 33:42

We're a niche brand in a niche industry, which is fantastic, right. So making sure we stay relevant to our customers I know that sounds so cliche, but making sure that we, we do what we say we're going to do and making sure that when we you know, when we say we're going to deliver, we do, we've got the stock If we do all those things, I think we'll be okay. Yeah, I think we'll be okay. We haven't stopped growing during this time, when I'm now starting to see a little bit of a cooling in our growth. So, again, we're a very you know, we're an industry that that can happen that's not to say that I'm certainly arrogant about it. We're working hard to make sure that is. And some of the ways we're working hard to make sure I can sleep at night is to, you know, just deliver a great product and that's. I remember that from, remember that from when I was 16 trying to sell cameras, it's much easier to sell a good camera than a cheap camera.

Speaker 2: 34:40

What do they say? You can't polish a turd.

Speaker 1: 34:42

Yeah, that's right. Yeah, yeah, 100%. I think you're spot on and I was saying to you as well. I had Kelly Jamison on the podcast, which will probably be published already by the time this one goes to air, but she identified two things and it resonated with me. It's product and people. You've got a good product, you get it to the right people. You're going to do all right. I mean, there's obviously a lot more than that, but two pillars are probably good too.

Speaker 2: 35:08

Look, and if I can just finish on this as well, can I just say that I think part of the thing that helps me sleep well at night is being part of our success has been investing in our own people and our own systems, and I know you know my thoughts on this and I'm never going to bag hosted solution providers because they provide a great solution. But just recently, over the past 12 months, we went through a situation where we really decided, okay, just recently, over the past 12 months, we went through a situation where we really decided, okay, we probably need to get off our own tech stack and we use OpenCart and you know that's part of my background and I have some other staff that are really knowledgeable in that area and we went down the path and we tried to find one that would give us the flexibility that we or near the flexibility, and we just couldn't find anything that was going to give us the flexibility that we currently have, and it just terrifies me to not have that. So I invested in a really, really high end developer when they probably weren't as high end They've become high end during that employee Do you know what I mean? And him and I have kind of driven a lot of things together.

Speaker 2: 36:07

I invested in, you know, really good warehousing solutions, people and solutions. We made our own pick-pack system, so we coded it ourselves to make sure it worked in for ourselves. We invested in data gathering. We invested really well and we invested in customer service and we continue to invest in product and I think that's what helps me sleep at night is knowing that we invested before we need it. And there was one time last thing I'll say there was one time where I think that's what helps me sleep at night is knowing that we invested before we need it. And there was one time last thing I'll say there was one time where I let that slip and I remember it, yeah, yeah, and I remember the ramifications of that where our load had got ahead of our capacities. Yeah, it was terrible, and I burnt two staff and I lost one of them.

Speaker 1: 36:48

Okay.

Speaker 2: 36:49

You know I don't want to do that again.

Speaker 1: 36:51

Yeah, yeah, I want to try and keep ahead of that.

Speaker 1: 36:52

Yeah, when you say burnt to starve, not physically, just mentally, yeah, that's right. Yeah, yeah, no, that makes sense, mate, and you know, I get that feeling that you definitely are someone that invests in people and gives them time and sets them up to succeed. So, you know, we all learn from a few mistakes, obviously. But no, mate, I really appreciate you jumping on the podcast, sharing some great insights into a unique product and a unique environment that perhaps doesn't really get spoken about. So, yeah, it's good to hear the e-com journey.

Speaker 2: 37:24

It's terrific. Thanks so much for inviting me. I love what you do and you know there's two podcasts that I listen to all the time. You know who the other one is and I love it because it's what we need in Australia. We need more conversation about this. It's so often the fact that you know. Again, I love it when I can talk up.

Speaker 1: 37:42

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 37:42

You know when I can express the concerns, not just having people express concerns to me. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I don't always want to be the question answerer. Yeah, yeah, concerns to me.

Speaker 1: 37:53

yeah, I don't always want to be the the question answerer yeah, yeah, you know what I mean.

Speaker 2: 37:55

Yeah, yeah, 100 love what you're doing. Perfect, mate. Thank you. Can't wait to run with you again yeah, yeah, 100, that's it.

Speaker 1: 37:59

We'll have to, uh, we'll have to, organize a. Do you need to do the great ocean road? Uh, oh, you mean umpiring it's always during season. Yeah, yeah, okay, yeah, yeah nice one thank you, mate.