Today on the Winning with Shopify podcast.
I just sent them a photo of these scrunchies on my bed, and
I just said, do you want to sell these?
And they're like, yeah, we'll take 60.
And another one was like, yeah, we'll take 30.
And that's kind of how it started.
The more people get signed up, the more money you're going to
make sending emails, and the more you improve your emails,
the more money you're going to make sending those emails.
Do I miss that passion that I never really got to fully go
for, or do I just keep growing? Seeing customers is very
aspirational. And then on Canada Day, which is
July 1st, they posted me as like the headline news article for
all these small bits to support in the pandemic.
I know. That is amazing.
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Winning with
Shopify podcast. If it's your first time tuning
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I've got a couple of quick shout outs #1 is if you are in London
in the UK or you're around London or can get to London
easily. We are running a meet up on the
28th of May. It's completely free.
Sponsored by dot Digital at number 1 London Bridge,
overlooking the whole city. They're providing food and
drinks. It's a great opportunity to meet
some other Shopify stores and we've got a couple of Shopify
stores sharing their story and speaking on the night as well,
which can be amazing. If you haven't joined the Growth
Hub community, go join the Growth Hub community.
It's completely free and it's just for you guys, merchants
only. So go and get involved in those
two things if you haven't already.
Anyway, today I've got a very special guest, Tina from XXL
Scrunchy. Welcome to the show, how are
you? I'm good.
How are you? Thanks for having me on the show
today. Thank you, I'm good.
People don't normally ask that, so thank you very much.
It's a very polite thing to. Do thing to do.
Yeah, it's a very decent thing to do indeed.
But anyway, great to have you on the show, Tina.
And as we ask all of our guests, before we get cracking, I've got
one note and I've been eager to hear more about this as this is
the second time we had actually planned to record because I
cancelled the first time. You guys started with a
Christmas gift. Tell us about your brand.
How does that Christmas gift get involved in that story of yours
as well? Like give us an overview as to
how you guys got going. So this is basically the story
of why I started a small business over five years ago.
It was Christmas of 2019. I was still in college, or
actually, I just freshly dropped out of college to pursue my
mural career painting murals on walls for businesses.
And that Christmas, I cut up one of my mom's old shirts.
I made it into an oversized scrunchie for my cousin as a
gift, and that night she told me to start it as a business.
I did say no, because when someone just tells you to start
a business, you're not just going to be like, OK, I'll drop
everything and do it. She really convinced me.
Two weeks later, I launched it. It kind of like did really well.
I was all on my own and then two weeks later moved back home to
get my parents help. And now we're here, five years
later in our warehouse. Amazing, amazing story and I
just I love that you got you dropped out of college, not that
you dropped out itself, but I love that that was like what
started it. I know so many entrepreneurs and
myself included that never kind of finished or even started sort
of like higher kind of final level education.
And I love it that I don't know if you found the same thing that
I did, but I just, I found schools not for me like doing
worksheets and stuff and like following like a curriculum.
I was like, the world is not a curriculum.
The world is a complete universe of things and I need to create
something. So then if you had the same sort
of thing as you dropped out and started the business?
Yeah, I actually finished university, but it took me like
5 years to graduate. I failed a couple courses, I had
to do summer courses and it was in psychology.
And once I graduated, I was like, Oh no, like I don't want
to go further into this. So that I went back to college
for graphic design. But I kind of got caught up with
client work that in my last year homework was almost taking over
getting real clients, so then that's why I ended up dropping
out. Wow.
Well, it's amazing. I actually dropped out of, I was
at music college and I dropped out towards the inks.
I got offered a promotion where I was working part time running
Google Ads and then someone offered me a promotion to say I
need you full time, you'll be technical director.
And I was, I was like 17. I hadn't even turned 18 at the
time. And I was like, I can't not do
this. So I like scraped through the
end. I dropped out early but just
managed to get like kind of minimum grade.
So I still got the qualification.
But yeah, it was straight into the industry.
I think you sometimes that is the hard choice, isn't it, is
making that that switch. But psychology, I mean, that
must help you so much when it comes to marketing and even
emailing customers and how brains like actually tick.
You must have learnt quite a lot from that.
You can apply now. Looking back, it definitely
helped me to empathize better. Even in my personal life.
I feel like I just understand better and I think that's why we
get compliments on customer service and when we e-mail back
customers and the way we market in our emails too.
Absolutely. And we're going to come back to
that. Of course, you are a Saguno
customer as well, I'd say. So we are going to talk about
how you're using Saguno and we'll talk about e-mail as we,
as we go through a little bit later.
But it's, it's amazing to hear that that's worked.
My, my wife will tell anyone that I have no empathy at all.
I'm working on it. I did Google what empathy was
and I was ChatGPT a few years ago when ChatGPT first came out.
How do I be more empathetic? And it had some some fairly
really okay recommendations, but we'll see.
Anyway, let's talk about your business Sense XL Scrunchy.
Obviously five years ago you got cracking.
I've got several notes that use e-mail a lot.
You use YouTube. So you started the business
either of those channels like Pivotal to the early days or was
it, was it a different way you actually started getting the
first few clients and first few orders in?
The first few clients was actually my cousin, the one who
told me to start it. She owns a beauty salon in
Thunder Bay. And right off the bat, she's
like, I'll buy 30. And she sold them in her salon.
And that just like blew up in the town of Thunder Bay.
And then I had previous mural clients that also own salons and
I reached out to them. I just sent them a photo of
these scrunchies on my bed. And I just said, do you want to
sell these? And they're like, yeah, we'll
take 60. And another one was like, yeah,
we'll take 30. And at that point it was just
still me and I didn't have any pre made.
And that's kind of how it started because just organically
their clients were buying my scrunchies without me really
marketing. Amazing, amazing.
Took off solely from there. Yeah, and I love the fact that
people just started buying it. Our partners at Saguna have
released a brand new app for Shopify and it's called Shopify
Connect 4 Canva. You can essentially look at all
of your product images from Shopify directly in Canva and
export them straight back. This can save you a lot of time.
If you want to find out a bit more about this or go and find
the app yourself, you can go to saguna.com/canva.
Enjoy, I think and it apologies if this hits hard for anyone
listening at home, but so many stores reach out to us for help
and we look at the product and it's like there's nothing unique
about it. You've not really sort of sense
checked if people actually want to buy this, whereas you do that
completely organically through your cousin and then as you say,
sort of escalated from there, which I think is amazing.
And for anyone that's sitting here going, what is a mural?
Like explain to us the product just in case anyone's a bit old
school and it's like, I've never heard of this kind of thing or
it's just doesn't resonate. Yes.
So let's say you walk into a restaurant and then on one big
wall there's this huge art piece that looks like it's hand
painted. That's what I was doing before I
took off Crunchies because it just kind of it just kind of
took over and in my mind I was like, this is like my one shot
to like give this my all. So I had to put murals on hold
for a little bit, but I actually have one coming up next month.
Nice, nice. So you've technically got 2
businesses then? Or two, two things then.
So one is you paint the murals. Sorry if paint's not the right
word, I don't mean to be. It's just not my world.
Oh, it is. It is painting or drawing on a
wall. Nice, nice.
At least I got it right there. Just I tried to be respectful.
Yeah, when you talk people with professional things.
But so you got that on one side. Then also Excel scrunchy, which
we'll talk about in a second. But so you say you got another
job coming up. I guess those things though, do
you find it stressful when you've got like this scrunchy
Shopify store going on on one side and it comes with all its
own challenges? Do you find it to like hard to
concentrate creativity, you know, with your creativity
sometimes to actually deliver something like that when you're
thinking, I'm doing one thing right now when I've got like
1000 things going on on the other side or how do you kind of
split the 2 when it's I guess it could be the same for someone
going this is your, some legal stuff you used to deal with in
the business and financial stuff, some warehousing stuff.
How do you kind of park compartmentalize those things?
That I think that's my biggest struggle Work life balance and
just even work and more work balance because I only got hired
for this mural maybe January and I wanted to say no, but just
they showed me this blank wall and they're like, we love your
style. It's a local video studio
marketing that I've worked with as well.
So I was like, I know I can like I know the image I want to draw
for them and I know I can do it. And it's been, I have the sketch
outlined and I, it's been on my To Do List to like finish
drawing to show them the mock up, but I just keep putting it
off because they didn't set a hard deadline.
And there's just so many things coming at me right now to deal
with that. I have to like prioritize.
So it's, it's hard to do that fully.
I've said no to a lot of mural offers the last couple years
because I know I can't like give it my all.
So it's so it's kind of a hard balance.
I just try to find a couple minutes every day every other
couple days to squeeze in some drawing.
Nice, nice. And yeah, I think any one of us
can relate to that because even if you've only got 1 business,
as soon as you get it running, your mind starts wondering
going, oh, I could start this and start this and start this.
Sometimes you've got to take a step back and sometimes even
look at the financials or look at your diary or whatever it is
and just go, what's my best use of time right now?
And I think I think the hardest thing, and I'd love to hear your
thoughts on this. The hardest thing, I think when
you're juggling more than one big thing at one time like you
are, is almost going like, which one makes me happy and which one
makes me money And how do I ballot?
Because I wonder if for you is it that balancing act of like 1
is a really good business and one is something I really enjoy.
So I don't want to get overstretched doing the stuff I
enjoy. And then the business struggle
was no stone, just focusing the business and be, you know, die
kind of rich and unhappy. You know, it's getting that
balance between the two, isn't it?
Yeah, well, when I was giving up murals, I kind of got lucky
because maybe not lucky is the right word.
But the pandemic happened, so for sure no one would have
wanted to pay for a mural during that time.
So I just like, gave it all in on scrunchies and murals were
kind of put on the backside for a bit.
And now that there's more businesses opening and people
are out and about again, the offers are kind of coming back.
So it's hard to decide like, do I miss that passion that I never
really got to fully go for or do I just keep growing XXL?
It is, it is tough and I can actually relate to that.
And that's all I say on the matter for today.
We think we do a whole episode on that.
If, if we had time and let's talk about XXL scrunchies then.
So you obviously started it five years ago.
How did, how did the scrunchies really take off?
Because you've been being totally, you know, sort of
missing a really polite way, but being really blunt.
So many stores around Canada, the US, the UK globally sell
scrunchies. Like how did you get started and
get the first few orders in and get customers actually wanting
to go? I'm going to buy it from you and
your good place, good resource to, you know, spend my money.
There's actually a couple funny stories.
The first one, a customer it was like 5 months into the business,
a customer emailed me or DM Ed me.
They're like, hey, Global News, which is this huge news network
in Canada is taking on small businesses to promote on their
page. And I, I was like, OK, and I
just submitted like a little paragraph my information.
And then on Canada Day, which is July 1st, they posted me as like
the headline news article for all these small visitors to
support in the pandemic. I know that.
Is amazing. Because that customer told me to
apply and then I sent that customer a bunch of stuff and I
was like, thank you. We almost sold out that day and
just suddenly all these orders were coming in from that news
article. There was a second time that
where we started to sell worldwide, like I'm talking to
the UK and Australia, US everywhere.
We suddenly were going to so many countries because this girl
made a TikTok about my scrunchies and she didn't even
tag me. She just put me.
My photo was like the backdrop as her green screen and she
tried to make her own XXL size scrunchie and she just said she
can't afford it but she loves the brand.
She tried to make one but accidentally made it huge like
almost like a big poncho went viral.
And I remember looking at my phone that day, not even being
home, but I was just outside and I saw 100 visitors on my site
just constantly for 24 hours. I was so confused.
And then so many orders were coming in and my friend who
lives way out of town saw the video and showed me.
And then that girl happened to live 10 minutes away from me.
Oh. Wow.
So that one video that someone else made of my business sold
out our store, but at the time my store was just like my
parents front coat closet filled with my handmaid's crunchies.
Yeah, yeah. And I guess advice to anyone
listening, if they're going, hey, Tina, I need some
opportunities like this, like how how do you make something
like that happen? I appreciate, you know, both of
them sort of fell into your lap in some way.
But if someone's listening going, I've got a cool product
as well. It's similar to yours.
Like what advice would you give about turning up, being present,
being available for things out to happen?
I mean, how much do you do on TikTok for that that person on
TikTok to then try and copy, you know, what you were doing?
Yeah, I think like after I saw that happen, I was like, oh, I
need to get because I kind of quit TikTok.
I I honestly couldn't get the hang of it at first because my
mindset was this needs to look perfect.
It needs to be like a 4K video, everything sharp, great
lighting, perfect background, no mess, like no garbage in the
back, like don't even show us working.
And that was one of my biggest regrets.
I didn't document when I was I'm only working from my tiny, tiny
apartment where I just started because I thought people
wouldn't want to buy from me seeing that why would they want
to buy me making a scrunchie in my own apartment where my bed is
like beside the oven. But I was wrong because once I
started showing me and my parents, making them in our
living room, our story, why we started it just kind of like our
why, like our passion for it and that we love doing it.
That is what grew our social media and helped us gain more
customers and like grow a like loyal community around the
world. Yeah, and I think I think it's a
really good point. So I really appreciate you
sharing that. And for anyone that's only
listening to this, not watching it, Tina, you're sitting in your
warehouse right now as well. So you are practising what you
preach of like actually I'm going to sit where the magic
happens as opposed to just tell you about it and sit in a nice
office or whatever. We did have one guy who made
stuff out of old used fire hoses was sitting in his truck when
we've recorded. And that was the first recording
with somebody who's actually, he wasn't driving at the time, but
he was sitting in his truck outside the office.
But I, I love that. And the thing I love about it as
a marketing person is it's cheap and easy to do that.
As you say, it's not. You don't have to hire a whole
camera crew and, you know, go on a world tour with 50 actors and
do a major thing. Sustainable, like mentally
sustainable for you to keep doing like those other videos
that take so much production, which are beautiful still, but
for me, like I'm still a small business owner that has to do
all these other tasks. I can't just by documenting
instead of fully creating a whole new thing, it keeps it
sustainable for me to like, survive and not go.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, absolutely.
And the thing I love though is, I mean, you're sitting in your
warehouse. So like in terms of like
creating that content, you do not even need a a film set to be
set up. It's like just get the phone and
let's go. And I think customers as well,
like I can't remember what year it was now.
I think it was the year it wasn't last year.
I think it was the year before. Authenticity was like word of
the year in the US and quite a few other countries.
And I think it screams volumes that people certainly on social,
they want to see the real thing. And I mean, with everything
going on in the world and I won't mention any kind of words
that get us get us read listed on YouTube at the moment.
But everyone knows exactly what I'm talking about.
There are things going on that do mean that suddenly
international trade and things are, are, are a challenge.
And actually, I think showing on the ground like this is what's
going on and saying actually we do make all our products here on
site in Canada where we're based.
I think it's a really, really powerful message.
And how successful you guys been on YouTube then?
Because that's in my notes that you guys have like you've been a
YouTube phenomenon, it says in my notes.
So tell us about YouTube strategy.
Like what's what's happened on that side of things?
I'm actually surprised with YouTube because looking back,
like I wouldn't think a small business could post on YouTube
and it could help them. Like we've for sure gained so
many customers through YouTube and I only posted on there in
the first year in business. It was like October, we
renovated my parents basement so we could work down there because
I took over the whole living room and then we suddenly were
like sleeping beside boxes and stuff like that.
Which is. Part of the story, isn't it?
That authentic story is amazing. Once we renovated the basement,
I wanted to show everyone a tour because I was posting already on
TikTok and Instagram and Facebook.
And at the time, I think videos were limited to like 30 seconds,
maybe a minute Max. And I wanted to actually talk
and share like this is the sewing room.
This is where my dad helps. This is where my mom cuts
fabric. There's no way I could put that
in a minute video. So I sat down, made a vlog.
The audio was awful. I filmed it on my phone.
The lighting wasn't great looking back.
But that video, I posted it and I think a couple weeks later, it
just like blew up because people really loved hearing our story
and they loved hearing how my parents were helping me, dropped
everything to help me and they just like learning where the
scrunchies came from. That's when the first YouTube
video took off and grew. And it made me realize, oh,
people like they care and they don't mind watching.
So I'm going to keep posting vlogs once a week for a year and
see what happens. It's amazing and I I used to
vlog like in my spare time and I did it.
It's like as an agency owner for a while and it was just
incredible as well. I'm sure you found this, but
some of the people, even when you sometimes post something and
you get like 100 views, someone said to me, imagine 100 or even
1000 people sitting there all in one room watching your video.
And then some of the comments, yeah, even 5I mean 5's a trip to
the pub, right? That's enough people to go.
Just we're going to sit here for 44 minutes and just listen to
your day go and you do a 45 minute vlog.
But it's amazing how many people then are on the journey.
I mean, most of the emails we get from the podcast are people
going, oh, I've been listening to you for like 6 months.
And whenever we like talk to a brand or whatever, I always go
in initially and have that initial conversation and it's
always amazing. And some of you guys listening
will relate to this. It's always amazing.
Someone's watching people's reactions when I turn up and my
wife will tell you like, I'm not, I'm not a big deal at all.
But I think it's when someone's been sitting in the car
listening to my voice for so long suddenly go, Oh my gosh,
you're sitting in front of me. Like I can actually hear you,
you know, have a conversation. It's that against that
authenticity of like we're real people doing real things.
And I think the, the, the vlog world as well, I mean, watching
somebody create stuff, we, we've had quite a few brands like
yourself on who've been big on Instagram, TikTok, not so much
YouTube actually, but but certainly brands that make their
own products and those how it's made videos are absolutely
incredible. But let's, let's talk about
e-mail as well. So eventually using Saguna as an
e-mail platform, your customers clearly are engaged.
I mean, you've got the TikTok as one example, YouTube's another.
Tell us about how you engage with customers on e-mail and how
you use use Saguna to make that happen.
Well, before I was just relying on social media and I was just
it was hard to get out a message to everyone at once without
posting so many different posts. When in an e-mail you can just
have them scroll and it's like loyal customers will subscribe
because they want to be kept in the know.
I really underestimated e-mail marketing in the beginning, but
now I use it for success of a launch.
So when we're launching a new collection, for example, two
weeks out or maybe 3 weeks, I'll send like a sneak peek e-mail.
I'll do a countdown. Sometimes I'll post a giveaway
in the e-mail, but I always make sure e-mail customers find out
everything 1st and then even launch day, I'll send out an
e-mail to remind people because like not everyone's going to set
an alarm for launch, they're going to rely on the e-mail.
So we rely heavily on those. And I've even seen, I know for
sure if I didn't do emails for our launches, they would do like
75% less than what they do. OK, amazing.
And what I love, I'm just, I'm just writing down some notes as
anyone watching a video can probably see.
What I love is that so many brands we work with are like, Oh
yeah, nobody engages us an e-mail.
Not enough people sign up to our e-mail list.
And these are obviously the two big things.
And the more people you get sign up, the more money you're going
to make sending emails. And the more you improve your
emails, the more money you're going to make sending those
emails and to a bigger audience. What I love is 2/2 of the USPS
that scream out immediately. One is you'll be the first to
know. So we do launches all the time.
You'll be the first to know if you subscribe to emails.
There's a reason to actually subscribe there rather than just
it drives me mad sometimes. So my clients do it as well and
we don't talk about it enough with them, I don't think.
Join our newsletter. And it's like, why?
And yeah. And having spoken to some of our
clients, they're like, oh, because we send this, this and
this, I'm like, well, it doesn't say that.
And I can never assume, you know, always, always prescribe.
And the second thing as well is those launches, I mean, the
launches must be massive for you guys like saying like, hey,
there's been a big drop and it was in a new product drop, not a
drop in anything, but a new product drop.
Do you find that things like can sell out really, really quickly?
Do you, when you're creating products, making products, do
you, do you have to, I guess the first question really is do you
have to make them in advance so that you've got put them on the
shelf or do you make them on demand?
And that probably leads them to my second question of when
you're doing a big drop or a big launch or a big announcement,
how do you plan ahead for your inventory and stock levels?
How do you go, we're going to need 1000 of these, but actually
this other one we're doing up here, we're only going to need
50. Like how do you how do you plan
that and not end up with loads of excess stock?
Well to answer the first question, we usually sell out
and when we were in my parents basement we were just limited to
the fabrics we could pick up at the fabric store because I
didn't order yet from our current bigger fabric stockist
and we would just buy 1 bolt and that was all.
Almost like maybe 50 scrunchies per size and we would just make
the most that we can in my parents basement.
Sometimes we would be making them the day we launch, but I
would pre count the numbers and they would almost always sell
out because they were limited edition and there was just such
lower quantities that we could make back then.
But they would sell out almost the day of and we would be
getting emails back to the launch e-mail being like we just
tried to buy. They're sold.
Out. Yeah, Yeah.
I guess you could almost say to customers like, OK, we estimate
you've got 14 minutes or something, you know, to go and
get your product. So how different is it now that
you've got in essence like an unlimited supply of sorry, it's
not product, is it, but unlimited supply of Silk and
other stuff that you need to make the scrunchies?
We still actually do limited drops and the Valentine's drop
we did, which I was surprised at because it was right after the
holidays. We sent emails.
We had to e-mail basically right after New Year's Eve, which I
felt for me, I was like, this is too soon.
Like people just bought, they're not going to buy again.
I just emails that following week and then the sneak peek
e-mail and then the launch day e-mail and all those crunchies
sold out that same day. Wow.
Well, and so you're still getting that same effect, even
though within reason, you can make a much higher demand of
products, which is incredible. I'm sure anybody listening is
like, I wish my products would sell out and I put those on
e-mail. So I think I mean, certainly
guys go and have a look at XSL scrunchy and see what see what
Tina's doing and see if there's any good inspiration on that as
well. How much do you and, and forgive
me, Saguno, for saying this because I know you guys are
listening. Your Canva Connect is something
that everyone raves about and I've not used myself, but Tina,
you, it's in my notes that you use the Canva Connected Saguno
quite a lot. Talk me through that process.
How do you use it? What benefit is it?
How much time does it save? Well, before I was just using
the templates, which I found weren't as customizable and it
wasn't as quick as using Canva Connect because I can just drag
and drop what I create in Canva into the e-mail.
And it's just a little faster to e-mail or to edit emails in like
an editor instead of in like locked templates.
Cuz I like to really customize and just drag and drop.
I'm really used to using Adobe Photoshop.
So canvas kind of like the next closest thing and it connects.
So it just saves me time and gets me looking to our aesthetic
a little better. Yeah, absolutely.
And I think it's it's so hard sometimes when you get a
template. The mindset I find when I'm
using templates and e-mail is I need to now change the template
to fit my brand and get my message across.
Whereas using Canva, you can sort of design like, or you can
even use the templates on cambering, which is obviously a
huge archive of things, but being able to customise graphics
and stuff and just drop them straight in obviously brings
things massively to life. I, I guess if you don't mind me
sharing, asking and if you don't mind sharing, like what, what
percentage do you really focus on in terms of your sales and
order volumes through like these are people that subscribe to
e-mail and buy from us. You know, with those sell outs,
there's limited drops versus these are people that just kind
of drop in through social, through advertising, marketing,
bits of SEO, like what, what's that kind of split really
between that e-mail database and everything else?
I feel like because I can see the emails coming, like the
opening percentages coming through and they're quite strong
for e-mail. So I'd say e-mail is like
probably like 80% of where the launch day orders come through
because social media, not everyone on it all at once and
and they can't click right away. They can click through the
e-mail. So it's just even easier for an
e-mail for a customer. Yeah, yeah.
Which is exactly what I as somebody works in PPCNSEOI would
love more of my clients to take more of an approach like that.
We, we, it's always this constant battle.
I think of like we're working hard to try and acquire a new
customer in. So the ability to get more value
and lifetime value out of that customer.
And e-mail really is the channel to still be doing that in, even
in this day and age, which it's been that way for a very long
time. But still, so many brands, I, I
find they're just not tapping into e-mail properly.
And you, I start hearing stories from brand managers and
marketing managers who tell me, oh, we've just tried.
Like we just, we have so and so he's an outsourced agency or
someone sits in the corner and they do it.
They, they send an e-mail every week to let people know we're
still here. And it probably helps and I'm
sort of sitting there going, do you know, what if the majority
of your orders actually came from e-mail and you're just
adding a few new customers every week?
How much more profitable would your business be rather than
having to pay as much as I work in PBC, having to pay Google
every time you want to acquire a new customer.
It's obviously hugely, hugely expensive.
So I think having that customizable, you know, and
modifiable approach to e-mail through through Canva Connect
things amazing. Last thing on my list to ask you
about is product reviews to obviously help help convert
customers. Now, I, we work quite a lot with
a lot of review platforms, so I'm totally at home with how
reviews work and stuff. So my question to you really,
Tina, rather than telling us like what are reviews and how do
they work? I want to, what I'd love to find
out from you is how do you leverage the review content
itself? How do you get customers leave a
review? But how do you leverage that
content once customers have reviewed something to get more
customers or encourage people to buy another product?
So my first trick is I'll show you for people that are
watching, we have thank you cards and they're usually blank.
And then we write their name and on the back it says you can save
$5 off if you leave a Google review or Facebook review, or
this is how you leave one on our site.
And if they leave one on our site, they'll automatically get
an e-mail to leave another review for another discount
code. We also send an automation
e-mail that thanks every customer for their order.
And then we also send an e-mail to give a referral to a friend
and then they both get codes off.
So the customer's always getting something because like, what's
the point? Like I want to thank them for
their review because it's work for them.
Because I know what it's like on the other side to leave a
review. It means a lot for the business.
So the least I could do is thank them.
And then there's also reviews on our site.
If you leave 1, you get an e-mail discount code right away.
Amazing. And I think the the right of way
is so important. Is it you don't want a customer
going, I've done something and I've got nothing that's worth
than not offering it in the first place.
I think having it automated is amazing.
If I if I, if a client asks me, can you explain how we should
get more reviews? Everything you've just said, I
think is what I should probably say to them in such a concise
way of saying I, I guess it almost sounds like your mission
is as soon as someone's bought a product from us, we need to get
a review from them, whatever it takes.
And if they leave one, we should thank them, which I I imagine
must, it must create such a good long term, like communication
relationship between you and customer as a business because
you've already given them a reward, they've given you a
review. It's like that's quite a strong
relationship compared to just I bought something and never spoke
to them again. Definitely.
Nice. So there we go guys.
That is a review strategy in a nutshell.
So once you've got those reviews though, how do you present them
on site? Like what do you use that
content? Because obviously it's so
important, What do you use that content for?
Like where do you actually present it?
Where do you put it? And what you're trying to
achieve with the review content, obviously, I guess more sales,
but how do you actually use the content itself?
I actually got inspired by another site I was scrolling and
I saw beside their product that this product on the homepage, I
think it was nail Polish. It had like 100 reviews and it
showed like the star rating and I was like, oh, that looks
really good. And then you'll know that
customers actually bought that and like it.
So on our site, under the product, it'll have like the
star rating and number of reviews.
I think one of our scrunchies has like over 200 reviews.
And if you click into the product and you Scroll down, it
has the reviews underneath the product and it includes pictures
and now it includes video. So if a customer leaves a video
review, it's a higher incentive discount that they get because
video is a lot more work than just leaving a picture or a word
review. And we also have a review widget
on our site that they can view too.
But I think most important is underneath the product that
they're trying to buy. I think, I think that's so
important. And we, we've actually done it
with one client where if somebody tags you on social as
well, they'd always ask for the review in the 1st order.
And then if we get a second order from people, they would
say, tag us, tag us in a picture of this product and we'll give
you, say it was $5 last time. We'll give you $10 off this
time, which I think it's a really, really strong incentive.
And I love that you've got the video as well because what what
this brand did specifically with the Instagram post is quite a
lot of them were reels or little stories and stuff.
They featured them on the product pages.
So as you say, with the nail Polish, when you're looking at
shall I buy this, loads of people have bought it and
actually seeing customers is very aspirational, especially as
a brand, if you can go, some of these are a bit weird.
So let's not show those. Let's moderate the ones and just
go, we're just going to show this stuff.
And I think doing that from like Instagram, Tiktok, stories,
Reels, etcetera, or even just posts from customers.
It's like actually people are buying this thing and this.
And I read something really, really interesting recently
about product photography and it said it's one thing to show a
product photo and get it super glossy and someone's edited it
to get the lighting perfect and everything else.
It's another thing then to show like here's 5 Instagram posts, 5
Tiktok videos, and a load of reviews with pictures and
videos. It looks exactly the same as
people are wearing these glasses or using this scrunchie,
whatever it is, you know, whatever the product is as it is
on our website. Like again, it comes back to
that authenticity, like it's a good real product.
And what I love is you've not, you've not invented anything
that no one's invented. You've not come up with
something completely unique. Some of this is in a good way.
It's just basics done incredibly well.
And it's just you want to buy a product.
What are the barriers to entry to buying that product?
And let's slowly break those barriers down with our content,
which I absolutely love. I said final question.
I've got one more that I've just written down that I think would
be amazing to ask you. And, and also guys, if you, if
you're not watching on YouTube as well, if you want to see the
little cards that Tina held up a minute ago, they give the
discounts that get sent out the items like going to get on our
YouTube video YouTube channel. And it definitely, definitely go
on YouTube if you can appreciate it's quite hard to run on a
treadmill or drive watching YouTube.
Please don't do those things. But last question is, where are
you guys heading at the moment? Like what are some of the things
that you're challenged with some things that working really,
really well? Like what is the rest of 2025?
And it's 2026, which sounds so futuristic, say 2026.
And what are some of things you guys are focused on heading,
heading forwards? Well, The funny thing is I
always plan years in advance, so this is a weird question for me.
But at the current moment in time, we're actually planning
our advent calendars because last year it was the last week
of November, I think. And then I got some of these
boxes in that I thought could make cute advent calendars.
So it's those boxes at Christmas, you open up, there's
12 different days and you open up each day there's a new gift.
We wanted to do a scrunchy one. It was so last minute.
I did the photos, content, everything in three days,
launched like 100. Did the emails as well because
definitely needed that. And I just kind of had to drop
everything I was doing to do this because I wanted to get
them out. They sold out the first day and
we couldn't make more because it was just too late to ship them
in time. So now I've been planning our
advent calendar since like January to have enough for to
launch earlier this year, like October.
So right now we're up for holidays early.
Yeah. And I certainly there's very few
Shopify stores I've interviewed or spoken to a man who said,
yeah, we planned years in advance.
Obviously things do change, but I love the fact you're thinking
forwards. We, we do a whole thing in
January with all of our clients where we look at Black Friday,
Christmas. So a lot of the stuff we're
doing this year, unless of course, they're a new client,
but any clients we had last year, we've already planned out
Black Friday, Christmas, what we're doing over summer,
especially with like some of the SEO backlinks we want to
generate and stuff like that. It's like, let's get those
things teed up in June, July time or even earlier if we can,
or start saying to journalists, like we're going to be launching
an amazing product 1st of October.
And do you want to be the journalist that pumps this thing
out? We're a well known brand and
it's, it's kind of teeing those things up in advance, which,
yeah, which is really, really difficult.
And if anyone thought you had a virtual background, you just
waved at someone who walked past.
So absolutely amazing. Again, that authenticity,
absolutely love that. And and final, final point,
Tina, if anyone wants to go and have a look at XXL Scrunchy,
what's your website address? What are your social handles?
How can people come and follow you?
If they just look up XXL scrunchy we should pop up and
our website is xxlandco.com and yeah they should easily find us
at the top of Google. Hopefully when they type XXL
scrunchy. Amazing, amazing.
Well, thank you so much for having having the time to speak
to us on the show and say, yeah, I appreciate you coming on as
well, Tina. So it's been lovely to meet you
and I really appreciate everything you've done for us.
Nice to meet you too and thanks for chatting with me today.
Cool, amazing. And for everybody listening at
home, thanks again for tuning in.
Pleasure to have you listening. And if you've enjoyed today's
show, please leave us a review. It really helps us and also hit
the subscribe button as well. Back again next Friday and we
hope to see you all there.