Today on the Winning with Shopify podcast.
It's been a really about bringing the brand back to the
front of of minds of of consumers.
If someone's sitting there going right, I've got quite a nice
sized business. Now we want to do what you're
just describing like 10X revenue increase sounds incredible.
We've done tote bags with Waitrose and John Lewis GLP
group. It does concern me when I look
at UK businesses and think they're up against this.
Been in the industry for coming up to 20 years, quite a long
time. Still like a young dinosaur, I
suppose. Hello and welcome to another
episode of the Winning with Shopify podcast.
If it's the first time tuning in, my name is Nick and it's a
delight to have you clicking on the brightest pinkest podcast
icon you've ever seen. If you want to know more about
how fantastic and effective our branding is and please do reach
out, happy to choose our designer.
A few of you guys have asked about that if you're listening
to this today and going, this is a bit longer than the last one I
listened to or you're thinking this is the only one I've
listened to. We also do a Tuesday show as
well called Nick's Tuesday Tea Break Talks.
I'm British, I love drinking tea.
So we have a quick chat about all the Shopify news going on
that week and things changing. Tuesday coming up.
So this is going to be the 14th of November.
This episode's going out on the following Tuesday in a few days
time. I'm going to be talking about
SEO and AI at the end of that show.
I've had so many questions and emails about it over the last
couple of weeks. So we're going to unbox what
ChatGPT and Gemini and the Google AI overview and lots of
other things are asking for at the moment and ways you can get
featured on that. So make sure you tune in on
Tuesday if you haven't already, hit subscribe button.
And you can go to our website as well to sign up to our
newsletter. If you want news sent straight
into your inbox, that's wwspodcast.com.
So without further ado, I've got a very special guest who's
jumped in last minute. So I'm so appreciative of his
time. But John, welcome to the show.
How are you? Yeah, good.
Hi, Nick. Thanks for having me on the
show. I mean you gave me at least 24
hours notice, so it's not that thought notice.
I think it was like I was having dinner last night while we were
whatsapping going like I'm Nick if we met.
No, no, OK, fine. Do you want to come on the show
tomorrow? Chris has recommended you
obviously chairman of of your organization for some.
Yeah. Thank you so much, John.
John, give us a bit of an overview to your background and
how you ended up in this amazing business.
Lulu Guinness. Yeah, yeah.
We call it, we joke, we call it Britain's oldest start up,
founded in 1989 by obviously an amazing creative Lula Guinness
OBE. Yeah, I've been with the
business as CMO for almost a year now.
It's been in business is on an incredible journey, huge brand
transformation, incredible reach, lots of branding and
partnerships, which is then LED on to see more awareness and
more traffic. And then obviously a lot of the
digital marketing channels have been really scaled.
We've introduced new channels across social, which is the
biggest growth engine of the business, which is net, new
TikTok and even Snapchat recently sort of targeting a
younger demographic than we've ever targeted before.
And then of course, in order to maximize all of that traffic,
record traffic, we've been employing multivariate testing
and CRO with the great Shopify app we'll come onto it called
Key. And then obviously the team
working really hard from a brand and creative perspective and
utilizing the CDP, which is dot digital, which is not just dot
digital, it's also fresh relevance.
So there's cohesive single customer view across CRM and a
site with fresh relevance because they've obviously become
one platform. But yeah, I mean, just to give
you a quick intro some John, I've obviously I've been, as I
said at Lulu for a year, but been in the industry for coming
up to 20 years, quite a long time, feel like, you know, still
like a young dinosaur. I suppose.
You know, I first started in E com and marketing in 2003
because I was studying computer science and at the time WAP and
E com was coming to retail with the likes of OS commerce and it
was really like really code and dev heavy.
And then you had the likes of WordPress and eventually
Shopify, which obviously it's been a game changer.
But yeah, I was a young sprout O3 studying computer science,
learning about E com, the professor of E com at Kingston
Uni, Jonathan Briggs. He had founded Hyper Island,
which just sounded super cool and futuristic and was working
with actually ironically, British brands like Paul Smith
and Hornby and Scale Electrics and setting up their E com
businesses with his own agency. It was called the other media.
But anyway, you know, this is many, many years ago and I was
working in a designer clothes shop as my dissertation.
I made a website calleddesignerfashions.co.uk,
sold lots of designer labels and I got introduced to the founder
of as seen on screen.com, Nick Robertson, which is now
obviously ASOS. And yeah, I finished my degree,
joined an agency, was agency side Big Light in Camden,
Kentish Town for seven years. Did lots of everything from E
com trading to PPC paid search, paid social affiliates.
I really gravitated towards affiliates and the people side
of the business. And it was all bloggers and
content anyway. I was at the agency, I say for
seven years. It was more less, it was less
Shopify there. It was more, you know, demand
where which since it becomes Salesforce marketing cloud and
commerce cloud and then hybris, you know, and and some of those
other big, big E com giants. But the Shopify businesses were,
you know, looking really exciting and, and you could see
that it made it and it made getting direct to consumer for
retailers and smaller business is much, much easier.
But obviously now you know Shopify is the the leader.
Especially, I mean even just, I mean, just to trust in that the,
even the payment gateway. I mean, you're, I've been an
industry in 18 years. So when you set up an issue, I
was thinking like, come on, is it is, it's slightly longer than
me. So you can take the take the
credit today. But the, I think with Shopify
even just making the checkout, you mentioned OS commerce.
I I was lucky enough to be friends with the son of the
founder of Actinic, which then became seller deck, which is one
of the really like it was just before eBay launched episode of
winning with Shopify is brought to you by tax cloud.
It's the busiest time of year for e-commerce.
Your stores buzzing, orders flying in and growth is at an
all time high. But with all that momentum can
come new sales tax exposure that you might not even see coming.
That's why now is the perfect time to take a closer look at
how you're handling sales tax and make sure your business is
set up for the growth that you've earned.
Tax cloud is our trusted partner for sales tax compliance built
for growing Shopify brands. They handle regulations, filings
and ongoing compliance working directly with the states on your
behalf across the US so you can stay focused on running your
store. They've got a five star rating
in the Shopify App Store and listeners winning Shopify get
free migration and boarding when you make the switch.
To apply for that and learn more, you can go to
taxcloud.com/winning. That's taxcloud.com/winning.
One of the really early, like I remember sitting in McDonald's
with him and him and his dad one night.
He said this ketchup, if you produce this ketchup sachet, you
could just sell this on your own website.
That's what I'm building and it's across the Internet and I
remember sitting there going like, no one's going to do that
because you can't touch the product and how wrong I was
where I'm sitting today. Yeah, that check out journey
Shopify has is just incredible that it's just it's done and
money comes into your bank. It's so easy when there is there
are still, you know, opportunities to optimise and
check out. When I was listening to the
Netflix document, I was watching the Netflix documentary about
Amazon and how they do so much in terms of MBT and CRO and then
check out with regards to colours and UX and, and buttons
and layout and different variants and stuff.
So obviously there is opportunity that, you know,
out-of-the-box, Shopify makes it really, really frictionless and,
and simple for, for people to sell.
I mean, it's my it's one of my wife will tell you it's one of
my dreams to actually, you know, have my own stratify that
T-shirt or or street wear business or.
Yeah, I've been there and tried it.
It's grass is always greener. I came screaming back to the
agency. Whenever the agency, Well, yeah,
yeah, yeah. I mean, it was hard.
Even my I was talking to my my daughter's friend's father, he's
got a Shopify store and he's doing, you know, he's doing 300
probably about, you know, half a million a year.
But that's great. Like it's a really good business
just selling a grand's worth of T-shirts today.
I won't mention them here, but yeah, it's just like it's
exactly like you said. Shopify has changed the game in
terms of people having fully fledged E com friction nurse
check out, you know, inventory, you know, even I mean, I've
really enjoyed some of the AI tools like copy or product
descriptions, you know, tone of voice, like the variance that
you could get there straight out-of-the-box.
Or it might be Shopify pro. I'm not sure, but we obviously
have been testing that. But yeah, I mean, coming back to
to the quick intro, it's turning into a long intro.
It's really interesting. Agency seven years, which was,
you know, E coms dash marketing agency called Big Light who
founders Stephen Jane, you know, fabulous inspiration.
They focus now more whatever on B to B, but also UX.
But at the time it was, you know, retail and marketing and
obviously it's a very busy space, a very competitive space.
So they found their niche and yeah, I was there seven years.
I've worked with some amazing brands like Tommy Hilfiger,
Calvin Klein, British brands like Firetrap jeans, Ben
Sherman, Fat Face, River Island, French Connection, Nike, Uniqlo,
some some big ones, also some smaller ones.
And yeah, given Chris, he was at 5:53, which was like an empty
St. wear brand. We had Firetrap Jeans and Full
Circle, which were I think like the original All Saints
essentially, but that that's that seven years agency said.
Segwayed really nicely into Arcadian Topshop and I had a
short contract there getting US set up and helping drive the
marketing there, which is fantastic. 5th Ave. store launch
bloggers back in the day. And then I went to Fitflop,
which is an amazing footwear brand rooted in science and
innovation and ergonomics and pressure diffusion.
And that that was founded by a female founders of Marcia
Kilgore. She's she's absolutely amazing,
really inspirational as well and has since gone on to produce
amazing brands like Soap and Glory, which was sold to Boots
and also Beauty Pie, which is one of the big challenges for
the beauty subscription, if not leaders now for beauty
subscription anyway, Yeah, I was head of digital marketing there
and grew the team did some incredible stuff launching into
Europe, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and USI think it was 5 1/2
years and then pandemic, very surreal time, but ended up
getting a remote job in New York, leading the digital team
there, which was amazing. And after three months, moved to
the Netherlands office where I got promoted to the global
director of, of ecom and marketing.
So. So that was, yeah, that was a
surreal time because obviously we had immense growth through
ecom and digital because everyone's at home and had
nothing, nothing better to do than buy jeans and T-shirts and
baseball caps and of course. They're not spending any money
on petrol anymore, so. Yeah, go shopping.
Yeah, Yeah. And also we'd we'd come up with
a fantastic plan to sign Snoop Dogg and and launch in the US
and we had the half time show of Doctor Dre and Eminem wearing G
star raw jeans. And that whole campaign was was
a real global campaign. I did worked with the teams in
Japan to do the the the famous crossing there with with out of
home with sound. And it's the first time I've
ever done audio on a crossing, you know, without of home in
Japan, which is again, in the pandemic, very surreal.
And then also, yeah, growing the European base.
But yeah, after G Star, I did some consultancy and then joined
Urban Outfitters as the Director of Marketing.
I mean, their stores feel more like a somebody's house, which I
love. It's like you're walking around
somebody's like wooden staircase and now you're like in one of
the like, I don't know, you almost like the shed at times
because so much wood across all of their different stores and
everything but. Yeah, the, the retail
experiences, you know, Urban Outfitters is a, you know, I
think it's 4 1/2 billion dollar business.
It's it's poked me on that, but it's it's massive and and and
you know, there they have tested different E com platforms for
smaller startup brands. I don't know misquote, but you
know, they've had beauty brands and a fantastic fashion rental
business called newly. I was in charge of the free
people Europe team. We saw incredible growth there
not on Shopify or any of the other well known E com
platforms, but more more of a, a bespoke variant of one of the
big guys. I I I won't say who, but but.
But we're not affiliated with anyone here.
We're fine. Yeah.
But it was a very big, very big organization, but also quite
small in terms of areas of, for example, you know, customer
insights and analytics had its own team, which which grew very
quickly. And obviously we had, you know,
different team members for brand and and digital.
But it, you know, there was regular insights from the
digital and real world space which would help inform and make
business decisions, which would be communicated.
And obviously, you know, digital really fast growing and has done
across all of the the brands within the group.
But yeah, fantastic time there, just over 2 years.
And then, yeah, joined the Lily Guinness team and we've, we've
been really pushing the boundaries in all of the digital
space. You know, as I mentioned, it's
been a really about bringing the brand back to the front of minds
of consumers. We've, we've, there's been a lot
of time crafting culturally relevant partnerships.
You know, we've, we've done, they're everywhere.
We've done tote bags with Waitrose and John Lewis, JLP
Group and oh wow, that's cool. Those those, those tote bags
have been phenomenal in terms of new customer acquisition, you
know, ads on Meta and as I mentioned, you know, we have
TikTok, not to mention half a million followers on Pinterest
and then a recent. Pinterest is a dark horse, isn't
it? We maybe, maybe we'll talk about
it a bit if we've got time, but. Yeah, it's a bit of a.
Dark horse I find it's. Yeah.
But I mean there there, you know, Pinterest is obviously CPC
channel, so more akin to Google. But yeah, we we can come back on
that. But yeah, I mean, the, the
business has seen fantastic growth, 10X revenue growth, you
know, last month versus the year and you know, 30% increase in
new customers. You know, a lot of the success
has been from the tape, but also new categories like jewellery
and luggage has performed extremely well.
And you know, there's a new collection, the Cosmic
Collection, which is just launched, which has performed
really well. And it's, you know, it's been
utilising the creative shoots and the assets and the videos
and servicing those in a really obviously efficient way so that
they don't make the, the the user spend a lot of time waiting
to load. But obviously, you know,
highlighting the products and improving the performance and.
How do you, I mean, sorry to interrupt, yes, I, I, I'm just
trying to think like what's the like?
It sounds fantastic having these partnerships and you've just
mentioned some incredible statistics.
How do you go about creating one of those?
If someone's sitting there going right, I've got quite a nice
sized business now we want to do what you're just describing like
10X revenue increase sounds incredible.
Like that's, you know, over the course of a year, how do you
strike up some of those partnerships?
Like how do you get in touch with that big super?
And for anyone who's in the US or has never heard of Waitrose,
a supermarket, it's one of the more premium supermarkets in the
UK or grocery stores or hypermarkets, whatever you call
them in your country. But how do you strike up a
partnership? How do you just get get in touch
with them and do a pitch to say let's let's do something
together here? Well, that's the human element.
Obviously waitress as you mentioned is a more premium
British. They call it a partnership.
Everyone's a partner. So they were, I think they were
already doing designer bags. They've got several other
designers that they work with, but obviously, you know, the
conversation, this is the human element of, of what we do behind
digital and e-commerce marketing is those conversations which
were open minded and, and, you know, encouraging, which have
enabled us to, you know, push into huge, obviously huge
footfalls in, in, in retail and food.
And it's almost like sometimes it's a little bit unexpected to
see a beautiful designer bag at the checkout at an extreme.
And this is obviously the glaringly obvious one, which is
extremely good price point, which means I think this is
before my time, but there were in the first second batch, there
was customers. I see this now obviously in
Shopify, but customers buying 10 or 15 of of the totes because
they make fantastic gifts or they thought, you know, people
that they want to, they want to give them to.
And you know, in some instances there's a whole resale market
where you'll see some of the previous collaborations which
are obviously sold out and they're now going for.
I mean, there's, there's some ridiculous 1000 people chanting
it on, you know, Vestia Collective or eBay, but you'll
see that as well with, with Anya Hindmarch.
And they've just launched a supermarket tote collab,
different colour for each country in the world.
So, so it's a, it's a, it's a really like obvious scalable
partnership, which you know, any retailer would be foolish to say
that. Humans are fascinating, aren't
they? As soon as we we've worked with
quite a few clients before where like there's a collection or a
set and the first one might be discounted or free or like in in
that case, one's available in your country, but you've got to
go and travel or buy online to get the rest of them to complete
the set. Hey guys, I just want to take a
moment aside from today's episode to introduce one of our
amazing sponsors, Covella. They are the all in one platform
that helps you design, sample and launch your product lines.
Covella, a helping shop by brand, save up to 40% on stock
costs thanks to their smart, streamlined supply chain.
That means more profit for you, less costs, and loads of time
saved in trying to get stock on your shelves right now.
You can fast track their waiting list and get 50% of your first
sample order just by using the code winning at checkout.
This exclusive offer for winning with Shopify podcast listeners.
Just go to the link in our description or in our bio to
unlock the savings and skip the queue.
We build your brand, save on stock and step in into the
future of e-commerce with Cabela that code again, winning back to
the episode. As soon as there's some level of
challenge of like, you know, get all of them, so many people
suddenly jump out. It's like stamp collectors, coin
collectors, like there is a monetary value to some of these
items long term, but it's but it's also fascinating.
People just want to collect and complete some sort of challenge
getting all of them. I think it's less about monetary
value and more about emotional connection.
We're as humans, we're hardwired into loving things.
And I see the customer comments on Facebook, Instagram, even
TikTok. Customers love the brand, they
love the products. And if they don't, you know,
they'll tell you that as well. So there's a lot of emotion when
it comes to obviously fashion and accessories and bags and
particularly with more personality LED brands like Lulu
Guinness, which obviously, you know, lips are the motif and the
logo and there are Lulu is an incredible designer.
You know, she'll have secret messages on the inside panels of
purses or bags. And in some of the vintage
cases, you know, there's some really provocative, you know,
tongue in cheek things, but also just lovely things.
Like for example, with the Cosmic collection, you know, it
says, you know, wait until the clouds roll by that are quite,
you know, quite nice and lovely. So anyway, in short, the
retailers are really keen to work with Billy Guinness as a,
as a British heritage brand. There aren't many of them left
left. You can count them on your hands
sadly. And you know, I've just been so
fortunate to, to, to kind of drive it faster and, and further
than ever before, not just obviously through brand, but
also through E com and, and digital and.
What? What would your advice be to
just like say, say again, let's let's focus I think on some of
the some of the scaling brands. And the reason I say that is a
lot of you guys listening at home are either a small brand
that wants to scale or you're already scaling, you're already
in that space. So this does apply to everybody,
but focus on that growth. How, how would you advise people
start to build that emotional connection and start to create
that kind of relationship or that one to one with customers,
but on a corporate level across all all, all people that buy?
Well, obviously the storytelling is, is key.
I mean, we have a great story. We have a female founder, we
have a creative founder. You know, she's nearly Guinness
OBE and her designs. I've been fortunate enough to be
with Lulu at her home and, you know, see her draw and design,
you know, so you have to respect the and honour the art, the
artist. So that helps.
I mean, even when it comes down to for example, my daughter's
friend's father, he's with his Shopify T-shirt, you know,
T-shirt shop. He's got artists that obviously
his friends or through his network, they have designed Tees
and they're using the Shopify app connections where when
you're buying the T-shirt, it's, and we've talked about this at
Lulu is the design which obviously been drawn by an
artist or in some instances, you know, I'm hearing using AI is
it's then printed immediately after you've purchased and then
picked and packed, you know, same day, next day delivery is
with you. Or in some instances, you know,
it's like, you know, yeah, it's, it's, it's amazing how efficient
that kind of art, creative and tech world has become.
And it's just, you know, how quickly can, can, can the, the
aeroplanes or the boats bring it to?
Because even for example, at the lower end where, you know, I did
a test all of the other day on Aliexpress and you know, I just
actually can't believe that stuff is coming so quickly.
I'm quite, I'm quite concerned actually about the, the
challenge retailers have being faced by Timo.
And, you know, I've seen the number of skews are in the
millions on, on those Chinese fashion retailers and they're
obviously challenging the, yeah, you know, top shops coming back.
But they're faced with a huge challenge, obviously, not just
with Amazon Next and, and M&S as, as leaders, but the, the
Chinese retailers who have got obviously access to all the
tech, all the logistics and probably unlimited resources and
money. Even within P Max, we see Amazon
Next, M&S and the Chinese retailers in the, in the ad
auctions. So even us, you know, a niche
fast growing heritage brand is, is, is coming up against that
potential threat. Yeah, it's certainly a lot.
I was chatting to Timo at AS the e-commerce Expo in London
recently. We had a stand at it and they
sort of popped over and said hello and they were saying, oh,
why don't you get all your clients to advertise on Timu?
And I was like, there's an advertising channel as well.
And I didn't know that. I like to think I'm quite well
connected. Like I meet someone like
yourself every week on here and loads of publications going on.
We've got lots of clients. Clients tend to tell us a lot of
things as well. So just need one client to say,
oh, I saw today that this is being launched and we tell all
clients and it's kind of the word spreads very quickly.
Yeah, Team has got their own advertising channel and they
wanted us to pretty much like Google Shopping or like a
marketplace, list our products and stuff on there for our
clients. And when I looked at all of our
clients and you'd be the same for you guys.
You guys would come in as like the most expensive luxury item
that's ever been added to Team. Everything's really cheap.
All the adverts for Team who were like create an account now
and you get a tablet, you know, complete like iPad style tablet,
obviously with a kind of like a blank brand on it or something.
But it does, it does concern me when I look at UK businesses and
think they're up against this and there are so many of these
little Aliexpress, this Teamu, I think because Teamu replaced
wish didn't it? Someone was telling me that the
other day. I, I tried to avoid this end of
the market. I prefer to go down the route of
like quality and found the leads businesses with, as you say, a
story. You know, there's not much of a
story at Teamu apart from, you know, this, this device will
Hoover your car and it costs $3. That's.
Kind of the end of the. Story on the product.
I would I would challenge that just purely often what I'm
seeing when it comes to, you know, scrolling through the
fashion proposition because they are utilizing influence.
So they are utilizing, you know, UGC like, you know, ratings and
reviews with pictures and videos from real customers.
It's almost like, you know, they're ticking all the boxes
they've got time limited like countdown till the price.
Yeah, I've seen the countdowns. Yeah, you know, they're
utilizing live shopping on obviously the Chinese owned
TikTok. They're utilizing brands that
they probably own on, on their, you know, and it's, it's, it's
almost like, you know, our, one of our biggest challenges this
year has been the US when obviously as the consequence of
the huge spend and growth on the media platforms from the Chinese
retailers has, you know, introduced, one would say it's
fair to say that that's as a net result of the taxes and duties
which have been imposed on the world.
Obviously, China in particular have got really heavy taxes and
duties, as has India. And that's obviously something
that they've, they've, the government, the US government
have introduced to try and counter the relatively low costs
barrier to entry. Because I say, you know, I've
just ordered a set of test orders, ordered something like
Christmas lights and some fun stuff for the kids with
Christmas site projector, you know, the same projector which
projects, you know, snow icicles, we call them snowflakes
on a projector. It's waterproof.
And it's, you know, in some, you know, it's £15 on Amazon and it
was £1.50 on Aliexpress. Now it'll probably break after a
week. But the point is, I mean, and
it's an experiment for me because I've never ordered
anything from it. And it's, you know, and it's
come within seven days, which in some instances that could be
some of the smaller UK retailers that, you know, sometimes
deliver their products. So obviously it's a long time,
but not if you consider it coming from China.
Yeah, yeah, it's certainly an interesting move.
And I guess coming back to to Lulu as well.
Just yeah, a question on Lily Guinness quick.
And this is like, so when people when people are starting to shop
on Aliexpress and Timu, how does and I know you mentioned the
storytelling and stuff, but when people are almost doing like
that product comparison between yours and Timus, how do you in
terms of like actual collateral on the product page, the
website, the advert, they said, how do you actually get that
message across that like you're buying something really, really
amazing? Like, is it, I know it's a
slightly dirty word to use at the moment or not dirty, but
controversial word to talk about the British flag and the, the
Union Jack. Just if anyone's not seen the
news, like people have been putting them up on lampposts all
over the United Kingdom right now.
And some people love them. Some people think they're really
divisive. It's there's a whole kind of
thing going on, but without kind of just stapling like we're a
British brand and therefore we're better.
Like how do you actually kind of get that story across And
suddenly that value proposition on a product that is going to be
235-2030 times the price than the team or Aliexpress?
Alternative well, I think we, I mean, I don't want to go off
topic too much, but I think obviously it's subjective.
I think we're some of us are slightly shy of our nationalism.
I mean, I'm, I'm half Persian, half English.
So, you know, I, I historically have always liked and gravitated
towards, you know, the Union Jack.
And I mean, there's an amazing vintage Lula Guinness lips
clutch, which is a Union Jack bag made out of totally non PC,
made out of Python snakeskin covered in Swarovski crystals,
which was worn by I think Jerry Halliwell or Emma Bunton in the
Spice Girls. You know, when the, you know,
and so there's like this, I don't think we should be, I
don't think we should allow like with any kind of political or
extremist view, I don't think we should allow that to stop us
from being proud to be British or English.
And yes, it can be off putting when you see 20.
I think it's more the Saint George's flag that when I see
that one everywhere. But then equally, you know, when
it's the World Cup coming, then it's like, yeah, why not?
Yeah, I think, you know, we can all be proud to to be who we
are. And, you know, we're a very
multicultural nation. You know, we've, we've welcomed
lots of nationals in our in our arms.
I even say, you know, and these are my thoughts and my thoughts
alone. So I say to my mum like, don't
read what you read. Don't believe everything you
read in the press. You know, there's a lot of
negativity about, you know, nationalism and, you know, I
mean, because. The negativity sells.
The newspaper doesn't. It as well, I think that's
important. But anyway, you know kind of to
your point, it's come back to the E com.
So on the E com side of things, we've, we've, we've obviously I
mentioned a lot of experimentation, but we've also
just some things you have are a hypothesis and some things you
just do. So we didn't have ratings and
reviews before I joined. We did an RFP, we got Yacht PO
on board. We've got immediately, I think
we have 4005 star reviews within 24 hours of launch, which is I
think a record. And that is as a consequence of
the love for the products and the brand.
We didn't at the time, we didn't even have an incentive for
people to, you know, upload a picture or send a review.
They just did it because they wanted to and they wanted to
share their advocacy for the product and the brands and then
obviously for the products and the brand.
And then, you know, we then obviously have utilized those on
paid search with the star ratings, which has been great
for click through rates and conversion rates.
And then obviously it's like how do we layer that into the
loyalty program, which was loyalty line.
We then upgraded, I say upgraded because we felt as though it was
an upgrade to integrate ratings and reviews with loyalty.
And so we launched Yacht PO Abilities, which is Club Lulu,
which took inspiration from when I pitched it internally, a
combination of the British Airways Avios, which I think
they've actually turned it into British Airways Club or Club
British Airways now. But you had at the time the
Executive Club. So it was earning points, but we
wanted to make customers feel really special.
And we wanted to also extend for members access to selected brand
partners. And so that obviously helped
segue great conversations with retailers.
And also we all know fashion and food has gone hand in hand the
last for three or Four Seasons at least.
So we did a fantastic pop up cafe with the bags, iconic bags
and biscuits at the Biscuit Ears in Notting Hill, which was
immediate synergy and beautiful tin designed by Lulu herself,
hand drawn and taken to market really quickly.
All the biscuits are handmade and obviously the bags were
shown off proudly to to press and implement.
That was for the launch of London Fashion Week.
So then obviously you've got lots of people seeing it and
lots of press picking up on it. And of course the press have
evolved into a digital affiliate context.
So they're all getting permissions on any products that
they sell through the links. So then incentivize and then
obviously that segues and snowballs into more organic PR,
which then could potentially be improving our SEO, which leads
me onto our focus on helping our SEO because of course, like most
businesses, our hyper growth has been driven by paid media as
well as obviously all the tech and the product and the
platforms. But we can't forget SEO.
And even now, as we look to the future, it's like just SEO
become more important than ever before given the future.
And I'm not talking about just the immediate future, but the
next 5 to 10 years when personal assistants like Siri or Alexa
are driving your consumer decisions or even your purchases
for you. There's a Shopify integration
Chat, ChatGPT of course if you're in P1 for say designer
tote bags. And we're doing loads of that.
Obviously, I run an SEO agency, we're doing loads of Geo hence,
hence the signpost I mentioned earlier for everyone as well.
Like if you missed the big intro bit Tuesday, definitely my
Tuesday episodes. I'm going to unpack some of the
things that like ChatGPT and Google AI overview and stuff are
looking for. But thank you so much for that,
John. I think that it's almost like a,
almost like a second amazing answer to my earlier question of
like, how do you build those brand partnerships?
And as you say, actually calling the loyalty program something
very intentional then goes, we've got got a similar loyalty
program to you and you can knock on the door of a load of other
big brands and start to yeah, start to have some good, good
interaction with with those as well.
Bringing things down into land. What, what would you say to
retailers at the moment, both small, medium, large people that
are growing. What would you say are some of
the big things that you're you you are focused on at the moment
that Lulu Guinness are focused on that all retailers need to be
thinking about? Given that we're 2 two weeks, I
think it is from Black Friday at the moment and Christmas is then
straight away afterwards. And then we're into kind of the,
a lot of people have a through in January, you know, things
really start to to fall apart. What, what are you guys focusing
at the moment? What are some of the things
you're like you've got to double down on these things right now?
Obviously AI is definitely one of them, but what other things
are you saying to or would you say to retailers to really focus
on? Well, I think, you know, the
extent of discounting in the past has been far too deep.
I think that you know, you don't if you don't need to discount,
then don't. And you know, utilise your CRM
or or loyalty platforms to make that, you know, that's that's
the value exchange. You know, for me, the the future
vision for Club Lulu should be that all incentives or.
You know, early access to product drops, collections,
sales, Black Friday should all be only if you're part of the
club, in the club, and that's. All value without this.
Capital love, yeah, club members should get that ahead of anyone
else and anyone else maybe shouldn't get access to it.
I mean, we're, we're we're avoiding, you know, placing too
much importance on Black Friday. So Monday, of course, you know,
there are some big numbers to hit and the team, we've got
fantastic product plan and trading plan, but really we're
looking to normalize the sales curve over the, you know, the
next it's we want to learn more into gifting into party.
And you know, that kind of point of difference that you can't get
out bags anywhere else unless they're a dupe or a replica from
one of the Chinese retailers. But then, you know, it's also
like having an all year round proposition.
Obviously for smaller businesses, I would say, you
know, even 20 or 30% off everything is enough.
I see far too many big retailers from fast fashion doing 7075, I
think crazy 80 or 90% off boohoo or or misguided last year.
So, you know, I mean, and that's basically they're they're
effectively competing with the the T moves and the yeah, the
kind of but. I always, I always say to
brands, whatever you discount down to, that's the value that
your customers will always remember now because they'll
come back and say, well hang on a minute.
I bought, you know, I bought this shirt for 20 lbs.
Why are you now trying to charge me 80 for it?
I bought it for 20 on Black Friday.
So I'll just wait till November and if there isn't a sale I just
won't buy one. Well, I think you you.
I. Think you're wearing a super dry
shirt? It is.
It's very hard to see the Yeah, I mean, I was talking to.
I mean, our social agency social hit run super dry social
business and there's a lot of shared insights there.
Obviously they've seen super growth.
They were massive at one point and then seemed to tail off and
then now they're really pushing on social and TikTok in
particular. So younger demographic.
But yeah, I think that the, if the way I look at it is the
money that the margin that you're giving off through Black
Friday side Monday could be the marketing investment that, you
know, you could be investing in the brand and growing brand
equity. And obviously I hate the term
accessible luxury, but really Guinness aren't selling 3000 LB
bags. It could because we've got some
incredible vintage pieces in the archive.
But if you're buying a £300 bag shaped his lips covered in
crystals, it's slightly less. It's still a good consideration
because we see that with the data, but it's slightly less of
a consideration than perhaps a three to 4000 LB Chanel quilted
bag. So, but we get in, you know, we
get inspiration obviously from Lulu's archive and vintage
pieces because she's been designing since 1989.
And you know, it was fantastic when the Cosmic collection
dropped this season because Chanel also dropped a cosmic
themed selection. So we were kind of on trend, on
Vogue, as they would say. So it's important for fashion
retailers and lifestyle brands to be on trend and also to set
the trends if they can, leaning into social.
And then obviously when somebody's coming through to the
site that that experience is is beautiful and dynamic.
And you know, we've challenged our in house creative team to to
make it as, you know, experiential as possible with,
you know, if we can do parallax and, you know, introduce video
and dynamic elements as much as possible.
So yeah. Amazing.
Well, no, thank you so much for that and final question.
And again, massive thank you to John.
If you missed the beginning bit, John's had less than 24 hours
notice for this. So thank you so much, John.
Appreciate your time. If people want to check out Lulu
Guinness or reach out to you, what's the best way for people
to get in touch or follow? What's?
What's going on? Yeah, I mean, anyone can connect
with me on LinkedIn. You get a lot of in band
connection requests, which I'd love to look at.
But yeah, I'm pretty, I'm pretty good on LinkedIn, you know,
posting and responding to people's comments etcetera.
So yeah, that's the best way. Good, cool.
Well, what we'll do is we'll put a, we'll put a link to John's
LinkedIn in the description and John can spend the next three
weeks sorting through all the invites he gets.
But John added me as well just before this episode, so he does
use LinkedIn. I can I can verify and back that
out. So it's the only way.
And you know he talked about those retailer brand
partnerships. You know, some of the
connections that I can't talk about, which are coming in the
next year or two have been through cold reaching out on
LinkedIn which warm meetings in the office in London with a.
Coffee. I had a quick look at our mutual
friends and some of them are like even Chris, who's the
chairman at Lily. Some of Chris's mutual
connections also mutual connections with you say that
network as you say is is so important.
It's a small industry and I've been fortunate to be in it for
longer than it feels. Good, good.
That is the way it should be. But yeah, thank you so much,
John. And yeah, we're going to wrap up
there today, guys. But as they make sure you tune
in on Tuesday, thanks for tuning in.
If it's the first time you tuned in today, make sure you hit the
subscribe button. Check out our
newsletterwwspodcast.com. And we hope you too, hope you
join in. Lots of other episodes.
Leave us some comments on Spotify as well.
We've been there replying to lots of people on there over the
last few months. So thanks a lot.
Thanks again, John, and thanks for everybody for tuning in.
See you next time. Do you ever find that in your
warehouse you have dead stock, you can't sell it, no one wants
to buy it and you can't get a refund on it.
Or alternatively, you're missing inventory in your warehouse that
you need, you've got sales coming in and you're low on
stock and you haven't ordered more stock in time, All these
things hit profit. And I've been there.
I've run my own Shopify store and had exactly that problem.
But we've partnered up with Inventory Planner who have the
most incredible app to help you manage that and forecast exactly
what products, what skews even down to what colour of products
you need to order in advance to make sure stock levels remain
consistent throughout. They're also running a seven day
boot camp. And if you want to go and sign
up to that, it's 7 emails in seven days and it takes the same
amount of time as your morning coffee.
And in seven days, like me, you can become an inventory
management pro. Both links are in the
description. Enjoy.