Hello, welcome to another episode, the Winning with
Shopify podcast. I'm delighted to be joined today
by an amazing guest called Chuck.
He's founder and CEO of Mission Mercantile, Shopify brand
founded in 2015, but in the game since 2007.
Beautiful leather products can be found on their website.
Chuck, welcome to the show. How are you?
Mick, thank you, man. This is going to be fun.
I mean, I'm looking forward to it.
You've had over 50,000 customers and you got a 4.9 star review
rating as well for the business. How on earth do you build a
company that people love that much and want to say so many
amazing things about people like yourselves?
Oh. My gosh.
Well, thank you first of all for that.
That's very kind. It's it's one of our three
tenants of the business, mythical customer care,
remarkable products and remarkable promise.
So the mythical customer care is intentional.
We basically do things that are the companies can't or don't
want to do these days, especially now with AI.
So personal touch, we reach out to people, you know, they may
e-mail us a question, we may call them back and just chat
with them for a few minutes about it.
So we call it mythical customer care because it it's the thing
that we all want from support with the company, but it's
almost impossible to find it. So that's why we do our best.
And I warned you before we hit record, I'm going to ask loads
of sub questions about this. I think it's incredible the way
people talk about your, your, your products and about the
business. How, as a business, how do you
afford to phone people, given that phone calls are the most
expensive part of customer service short of turning up at
somebody's front door? How do you afford not to?
It's a great answer. I mean that's, that's the
biggest thing in the world. There's so much noise out there
with business, especially direct to consumer e-commerce.
How do you separate yourself? How can you afford not to give
the kind of customer care that people want to make them keep
coming back nowadays? I mean, there's, there's,
there's a lot of leather goods on the, on the Internet that
are, that are great products. You know, there's companies that
do a wonderful job marketing, you know, they may even have a
warranty of some sort. But how do you really separate
yourself? You got to do the things that
other people won't or or can't do, which is take great care of
your customers. So I love that I I don't see how
you can not do that I. Mean it's a great answer I I
don't think anyone's ever I've been running the podcast in six
years episode every single week and in fact 2 now and I don't
think anyone's ever said like how can you afford not to as a
response to a question we're asking how can.
You kind of sad actually, you know?
Yeah. But good for us.
Maybe it helps us stand out. So.
Yeah, yeah. And I and I absolutely love
that. And a lot of businesses I talked
to are lacking that USP. They, they don't, they refuse to
go the extra mile and they don't actually take the time to go.
Do you know what? Our customers are really, really
important. What does that do to your
lifetime value by investing that much in your customers?
Oh my gosh, where do you start? The big question I.
Mean you, you, you start going down the list when people trust
you to come back, whether there was a problem with the product
or not, whether it was a mistake or not, if you know you're going
to take great care of them. The way I think about it is the
way Marriott used to run their run their business.
And Marriott would say that not that they want to have any
problems in any of their properties, but it was almost
better because the customer got to see how they responded to it.
They didn't ghost you. You know, we always tell people
thank you for choosing in our leather goods, you know, our
handcrafted leather goods, if it's on the front end, we'll say
thank you for considering our handcrafted leather goods.
So what it does for us is it, it builds what I think is
relationships. And we see that typified in the
high percentage of return customers we have.
And we have customers in the 10 years that we've been in
business who literally have bought thousands and thousands
and thousands of dollars from us.
And we, we treat the customer that just had their first
purchase, bought their first leather product just the same
way as we did the people who had been buying from us for years.
And I'll tell you a quick example of that back during
COVID when every company was getting hammered initially, I
mean initially as soon as COVID hit.
Yeah, yeah. You saw you saw the damage both
in physical stores and online as well.
So what we decided to do was we decided to do something counter.
What we did was we took our list of the of about the 1st 200
customers, 200 best customers that we had at the time.
And it wasn't a big list. And we took them and we sent
every one of them a free gift. We just sent them a free leather
good and it ranged in valued somebody, some got a $2025
leather good and some we sent a $300 leather good just to say
thank you for your business. We really appreciate you
sticking with us. And you know, you might need a
little, you might need a little positive in your life at this
time. So we sent it to them and the
responses we got were amazing. We got some funny responses.
We had some great responses, which is, I can't believe you
sent this to me. We got some funny responses,
which we had a couple of kind of, I'm going to say angry, but
a little missed customers initially, but they said I
didn't give you permission to charge my credit card and where
did this come from? And then we called them back as
we would, Oh my gosh, it was the most amazing thing.
So we like to do those things from time.
Amazing, amazing. I, I love the fact that I think
you've mentioned it at least twice, possibly three times
since we've been and we've only been recording what, 5 minutes
so far, just over 5 minutes. You've mentioned it several
times that almost like whatever anyone, everyone else is doing,
your first thought appears to be like, let's just do the
opposite. And it's, and that is how
marketing works. It's disruption.
It's thinking laterally about what's going on.
I, I guess you guys always kind of shy away from trying to like
run as fast as everyone else and catch up.
You're like, we'll just do our own thing.
Absolutely well, it's a race to the bottom anyway so trying to
keep up I mean today with AI I mean AI is a disruptor right now
in some good ways, but then also in some bad ways because every
CRM platform wants you to automate the response and all of
those things and you're. Doing the complete opposite,
which is awesome. Which is the complete opposite
and it works. And you know what we find?
Well, the more you you, you reach out, you become available
to your customer and you call them back from time to time as
you feel like it's appropriate to do that.
One is they're shocked to cut to hear from you.
But the second thing is that you find that over time, if you
start graphing it, actually you're you're disgruntled
customers, let's call them lessons because they know when
they do business with you and come back that you're going to
take great care of them. Rather than kind of the
assumption that a lot of customers take online today,
which is you're going to screw me, You're going to take
advantage of me. I know you are, I just know you
are. And they're shocked when you go.
Hello, this is Chuck from Mission Mercantile.
Just giving you a ring real quick to talk to you about your
question. And they're like, Oh my gosh, I
can't believe you called me. And they love it.
And OK, so you just said something.
I think again, really interesting is that you phone
them as the founder, the CEO, the owner, you know, whatever,
whatever sort of title, you phone them directly and say,
look, it's my business and you're not happy.
And I really want to get to the bottom as to why.
I mean, there's nothing more powerful.
Than the business could. Possibly do than have you on the
phones in there. Well, thank you by the way, all
our team is awesome at what they do.
But it starts, you know, it starts with me and I actually
have a reminder on my calendar every Friday to reach out and
call 3 customers just to thank them for their business.
And, and I'm not talking about our top customers, they're just
kind of random just to call them and say, hey, I really
appreciate that, you know, and I, I think most of them go,
who's this Chuck guy? What is he calling?
Me, same question I asked about an hour ago was like, I'm doing
a podcast who's Chuck and then started looking at the business
a bit and check the show notes and that sort of thing.
But I mean, I, I think it's amazing that, that, that
personal touch has survived to 2026 that we're in now and
moving forwards. And I, I, I guess, I guess for
some businesses that you say it's a race to the bottom.
Some businesses are racing to the bottom on price and they're
doing it so aggressively and so rapidly.
They hence my one of my first questions.
They can't actually afford to spend any money like contacting
customers. If a customer reaches out, it's
like there's basically the profit from their order like
we've basically lost it. How do you guys therefore go
about pricing your again, I mentioned that products are
beautiful. Like I mean they look incredible
in terms of the design on them and then you can see the
craftsmanship. Just some of them are in the
background as well. If you're not watching some
video, guys, I highly suggest going on our YouTube channel or
check out one of our socials to see see the backdrop.
But the products are beautiful. How do you go about working out
the price of the product once you get into the region of like,
we're not the cheapest, we don't want to be the mega, mega
premium, but how do you find that balancing point per
product? Well, first of all, to me it's
about value. It's, it's all about there's,
there's several factors. One is you have to keep an eye
on what your real competition is charging for their products.
And typically for us that goes from 30 to 40% more up to two to
more X times what we charge. And so because we make all of
our products in our own shops, they're all uniquely ours.
We designed them and we source the leather, we source of all
the materials, the hardware, the brass, everything on it.
We have as much control as you can possibly on not only you
know your cost but also your quality so you know what's in
it. So our goal from day one, I
wanted to create and and deliver the greatest value that I could
see in the leather goods business.
So you buy a $500 leather goods products from us, I really want
you to be buying an 8 or $900 product honestly for what you
get. What's incredible is that we, we
really never tout that, you know, but we have reviews all
the time that says, Oh my gosh, you're way under pricing this
product. This is a $1500 bag and that
makes us happy. That makes us happy.
But we know that quality begins with the materials and then it
continues all the way through your craftsmanship.
And then my background in manufacturing was I spent almost
10 years with Procter and Gamble, which is I think one of
the best manufacturers in the world.
So what we learned was to do it right the first time.
There was never enough time to do it right the second time.
So you make it right. And then later when you deliver
this to your product to your customer, you know your, you
know your cost. Of course, you know, the markup
that you need to have in order to be able to deliver the
services and everything that you get, you know, including, you
know, a lifetime promise. If the product ever fails
because of materials or craftsmanship and that sort of
thing, we're going to stand behind it and and either repair
or replace it. What's amazing to me, Nick, is
that when you look at huge, huge brands like Louis Vuitton and
East St. Laurent or even Coach or any of
these big brands, none of them have lifetime promises.
Yeah, yeah. And the question is, you're
spending 3 to $5000 on a bag, why would you not stand behind
it with some kind of promise? I guess they, they probably want
you to buy another one. Having looked at the accounts of
one or two of these big companies over the years, they
probably do want you to buy another one.
So actually a lifetime guarantee is terrible news to them, but
they they're totally different incentivized to what you guys
are doing so. Yeah, they want you to buy
another one, or exactly that's what they want to do.
And, you know, I'm, I'm, I love the brands.
I mean, they're beautiful, gorgeous brands, but there's
nearly nothing that sets them aside even from materials or
craftsmanship. Then it does, you know, the
logo. But but with that said, I'm
thinking at least give some sort of promise.
Just, you know, to me, you're only as good as your remarkable
product, your remarkable promise, and your what we call
our mythical customer care. That's the only three things
that matter, right? I just want to interrupt today's
episodes tell you about some big news for Shopify merchants.
Yopo, which you might be using, is Sun setting as e-mail and SMS
products. You may have got an e-mail from
them and if you haven't, this might be the first time you're
hearing about this. So if you have been using them,
then you might be wondering what's next?
Well, our sponsor Saguno has you covered.
Saguno is the most deeply integrated e-mail marketing
platform for Shopify and makes switching really, really simple
with hands on onboarding, migration help and
deliverability expertise. Right now with code WWS 20, you
get 20% of your first three months with Saguno.
So don't let your marketing skip a beat.
Switch to Saguno today at saguno.com/winning with Shopify.
Yeah, yeah. I love that you call it mythical
customer care. That's awesome with, with the
products, with the products, the fact that you guys offer a
lifetime guarantee. I've, I've suggested this to
brands we worked with before and it scares them.
And so my question really is because you manufacture your own
products, it, it must make some of the things in like
economically and financially within the business so much more
viable for you guys. Because you don't have to pay
someone to repair it. You don't have to send a new
product out, whatever they send you.
We're we're manufacturing another however many today,
tomorrow, next week. Well, we could just repair this
one as part of that process, we could replace a bit of leather
or a bit of the product. You know, the actual completely
lost the word now, but the material, that's it.
The material of the product. You can just replace the section
that you need to or the the part of that, the panel, almost like
a car, like, you know, replacing the bonnet with another bonnet
that fits there. So you just make one, which must
make your economics so much better to be able to go.
Would you know if everybody's saying that this new product in
the market is amazing, It's got an extra pocket or a different
way of carrying it or it's a slightly different shape?
Well, guys, we just make one and put it on the Shopify store and
see what happens. Right.
It's you must have so much more control both economically and
and also creatively. You know the creativity goes
into products. You do, Absolutely.
And, and that's why I do it. I really wouldn't have anyone
else make our products for us. Yeah.
Because when you're doing repairs, you made it.
You know how it works. Yeah.
You've got to take the bag apart often and then replace it back
to first quality, you know, for them.
But it is so much more possible, so much more viable to do that.
Imagine if you didn't do that yourself and you have your own,
you know, your third party fulfillment, third party
warehouse or whatever. If they get a product back, they
obviously don't have the ability, the capacity, yeah,
they don't want. To do that, it's at the wrong
place. They don't want the customer,
but it's in the wrong place now isn't.
It exactly, exactly. And, you know, most of the
repairs that we do that people come back to aren't covered by
warranty because maybe they sent it to the airport and the
baggage system dismantled it and we're going, oh.
My gosh. This is horrible.
We say send it back to us and for a very reasonable price,
we'll fix it for you back. That's really the advantage of
high quality well made products is that they are repairable.
They are fixable as opposed to your nylon bag that just you go,
well that's just sad. I'll just go buy another one.
So even when customers make a mistake and they do something,
they get a pin mark on something or there's other kind of damage
or whatever, we don't tell them just go # sand.
We say, well, let's see what we could do to take great care of
you. And then of course, if we have a
problem with the product itself and it's our responsibility, we
take ownership for it. We say send it back and where
they're going to repair, to replace it.
Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
I mean, it's, I, I think if you can afford to do that as a
business and I think you guys are just in the right position
where you're charging enough per product that the economics mean
it's worth us putting that time in.
As I said, some brands it's not. But also you're in a sense
you're undercutting your competitors, but you're not
racing to the bottom. It's it's such a smart part of
the market you guys sit in so. It's it's smart and I can tell
you Nick, when it's not smart is that manufacturing, designing,
hand crafting your own product is not easy.
It is not easy. I can imagine you've made some
terrible mistakes. Some of my God use cases you
couldn't. Predict and yeah, yeah.
So it's not easy. So I wouldn't recommend everyone
do it because it's another, you know, I recommend do it if
you've got some experience or if you've got a passion for it or
if you're willing to do whatever it takes to do it right.
But when you can do that, you really separate yourself because
there's hard hardly any brands in the world right now that do
that it it's really difficult to name almost any brand that truly
manufacturers and markets and sells their own product,
distributes their own product. It's really amazing to find
them. Yeah.
And so you've, I mean you've already hinted at and I
mentioned with the amount of customers you've had, the review
ratings you've got, you have a lot of repeat customers.
Some of them as you say, have spent thousands with you.
They're very loyal. They love the products, but how
do you find new customers because obviously some will
churn, some have now bought their last product.
Unfortunately, it's just the nature of running a business.
How do you guys acquire new customers?
What channels do you use to do that?
Well, to keep it simple, I think you show up in the right places.
You mentioned about earlier, how can you afford to call your
customers? Well, one of the advantages of
that is it makes a distinct impression on a person.
And do you think they're going to tell their friends or other
people that run into about this great company?
I can't believe I got a call from them because they had a
question or problem or, or something like that.
So word of mouth is big returning customers who refer
other returning customers. Others happen because somebody
bought a product and they happen to run a company and they want a
hundred, a hundred duffel bags for their customers and for the
employees for Christmas. And that happened.
Those are the best kind of phone calls, aren't they?
It's like which products you want.
I want 100 of them. It's like, great, I want a
hundred of them. We also try to be very generous,
which means there are some really wonderful nonprofits out
there doing great work that are close to our heart.
And we support them. We, you know, we help them out
with product and things like that.
And that gets us in front of the right people.
We, we, we know our avatars, so to speak, who it is.
And then also we do paid ads as well, OK.
And we do that in on Pinterest and Facebook and places like
that and Visual. Platforms.
I. Guess work well for your sort
of. Product.
Yeah, exactly. Visual platforms, experiential.
And the thing about Pinterest, that's really kind of cool.
Not that Pinterest is a huge channel for us, but again,
Pinterest is just a big referral board.
You know, people see you're bored and they go, Oh my gosh,
that's incredible. Where'd you?
Find that it goes. Through and I'm going to pin it
and it lives forever it lives forever it's it's not like a
Facebook ad that stops serving as soon as you stop paying it
continuously and and it's a referral somebody else speaking
wonderfully about your brand. So that's a big thing.
And then of course the other SEO stuff and all of that we also
are. In.
Yeah, exactly. We also in are in about 400
different small, smaller typically boutique.
We're not in any big box stores, but we're in, you know, several
100 boutiques across the country.
Some of them have been have been working with us for years and
years, since almost the very beginning.
But that fits your brand, doesn't it?
It's if you were in Target or Walmart, it'd be like, what are
these guys doing here? Like, and you'd suddenly be
selling tons of them. And then I guess the thing with
your product as well is there's always sort of two types of
products and I find that do well.
One is the like. Like, I mean, this water bottle
I bought on Amazon, I and I, I saw two of them at meetings
yesterday in London alone, that same brand.
One of Amazon's. One of Amazon's best sellers,
right? So either it's a product that
everybody wants and everyone wants to get hold of, or it's a
luxury item nobody's ever heard of, no one's ever come into
contact with, and suddenly they see their best friend or
somebody at the train station or on a plane with that product.
And that's where it becomes an exclusive luck.
It's where Rolex have done so well is you can't just buy a
Rolex and actually if you've been found to sell a Rolex on
eBay or something, you're banned from buying Rolexes from now on.
Like that's the way Rolex works. And it's, I mean, I'm not really
into watches, but a friend of mine is and that that's how it
works. So I think, I think you guys
being in those boutique stores, being on Pinterest and more
visual platforms, it makes a lot of sense rather than just.
Trying to sell as many as possible.
On Amazon or eBay? Like it's just not the market
for you, is it? No, no, no.
We were actually on Amazon in the very, very early, early
stages of the business like 9 or 10 years ago and and we left for
that very same reason. It's a brave decision.
It just a lot of people see the numbers and go we can't leave
this. That's a brave decision, but
clearly a good one. And again, I think how could you
not? You know, it's like you have to
decide what your brand's all about and where they can find
you. And Amazon typically is a is
again a race to the bottom for the type of things that we do.
Yeah, absolutely. So those are the channels you
use to acquire customers. The bigger, and this is probably
a much tougher question I've got is you've got so many things you
could say in an advert or you could put on a posting or so
many images of different products or different people
with products, products in different situations that all
look incredible. How do you choose what to put
where? Oh my gosh, I think the answer
to me is authenticity. OK.
You know, you're not really trying to follow trends so much
as you are. You have to help your target
customer and use that word. But that's true.
People who really are a great fit for your brand, you're a
great fit for them see themselves with your product in
the way that they use it. So if it's a cooler, you know,
out in the field sitting next to a river, We have a great photos,
authentic photo of a guy who's sitting on a overturned tree
with a dog next to him and a cooler sitting next to him and
he's got his hand right there pulling his his drink out of the
cooler because that's how you're going to use the product.
I love that other pictures of. Like just even the situation,
having looked at your site and and your products, you feel like
you're in that situation. Oh yeah, Absolutely.
Exactly, completely. Agree.
And they're authentic. They're not AI.
Yeah. Generated, yeah, yeah.
You know, they have to within it.
People can see through that. They have to see themselves, as
you know, coming alongside you in this relationship.
Yost have just launched something that is absolutely
game changing. Their new AI Brand Insights tool
is now in beta, and it's built to help you track your brand's
visibility, sentiment and credibility across AI platforms
like ChatGPT. As search expands from Google to
AI Answers, this tool gives you a clearview of how your brand
shows up, combining sentiment, visibility and mentions.
It's designed for marketers who want enterprise level insight
without the enterprise price less than 4, $400.00 per year.
And here's the best bit. Yost Black Friday sale is now
on. So starting November 27th,
you'll get a 30% discount off all annual plans, including the
new Yost SEO AI Plus. Head to yost.com to learn more
and grab your discount. Yeah, I think it's such an
important point. And I, I made a joke on somebody
else's podcast a while ago where they they sort of said like,
look, you work in advertising, Nick, what images do you put on?
You know, what images do you tell your customers to send you
to put on Meta or put on Google Display or Google Shopping or
whatever? And I sort of said the one that
sells the product to the right audience.
And I've used this example a few times in the show, but we had a
client that was constantly trying to sell their really nice
super soft T-shirts. But they were constantly selling
them with pictures of people on surfboards or coming off
surfboards and putting a soft T-shirt on till we did a
customer feedback survey. How many of you go surfing?
Like none of them. How many of you are interested
in surfing? Like none of them.
It was like, where do you wear this T-shirt normally?
Around a city, right? It's an urban product and we're
trying to sell it on a beach. We changed the imagery
conversion rate nearly tripled. It was insanely uplift.
And the same thing as well is like like go back to the water
bottle examples. If you tried to sell me a water
bottle because it looked fantastic in a white background
image or the lid opened really, really nicely when it was brand
new. I'm about to put this water
bottle in my backpack and take it all over the world with me to
meetings on holidays. That water water has been on
safari in Africa and Kenya with me.
Like actually I want to picture of that being dropped out of a
building on a concrete floor. I want to see a video of it
being set on fire because I've I've had it near.
I want to see a video of it when it's.
When you pick it up, you kind of dust it off, screw the cap back
on and you're back in business. Exactly, and and and will it
survive the dishwasher? Forget the the Outback, the
dishwasher is the place it really needs to survive.
But again, it's it's that thing of like and actually this one
has and the reason it has is I I looked on, I deliberately bought
on an Amazon that had thousands of reviews so I could find one
that had enough reviews of where it was used.
So I completely echo, know what you say about putting the
product to the right location. You're selling what some you
need to sell, what somebody's life is going to be like with
the product, not the functions of the product itself because
every T-shirt's the same. But every time I put it on, even
if I'm sitting in an office, I want to feel like I'm
travelling. If it's a travel related
T-shirt, I want to feel like I'm at the gaming convention.
I can't wait to get to on Saturday because it's got
Minecraft or something on the T-shirt and I'm allowed to wear
it at work. It's people want to wear things
and engage with products that make them feel like they're in
the happiest place. And I think you've nailed them
with the the cooler by the by, you know, by the.
River Spot on Nick, spot on, Nick.
And, and the longer you have it, we, we have a saying is that the
first day, the first day you receive our product is the worst
it will ever look. Love that that's.
Cool. The longer you have it, the
better it will look, the more it will become part of you.
And we say better update your will because somebody's going to
want this after you go. Yeah, yeah.
Which it's kind of interesting. We got a little a couple of
pieces of feedback about that during COVID, during the
pandemic, about the that's very uncaring that you will.
You say the longer we're in business, the more we learn 1st
we said. That's right.
And very kindly we said, well, we're talking about your product
and we'll you know, not about you.
So and, and people get that. You know, that's the thing
you'll learn over time is that you'll go into your company
thinking you know exactly what your company is about and how
people are going to think about it.
You know, over time it becomes what your people think about
your business and how they know you.
And if those reviews that you're getting or not getting are not
reflective of what your mission is and how you're trying to
promote yourself, then you need to really question that and go,
wow, are we not, are we getting any customer reviews on our
customer service, right? Or are we getting any customer
reviews on how great the product looks or how long it lasts?
Or, you know, if you're not getting that, that tells you
that something's wrong. I find most brands don't even
look at their customer reviews, so the fact you're now talking
about types of reviews and what they the content of them is
fantastic. How could you not, Nick?
I know, I know, I know. I mean we so we've been using.
I spoke about this on the show a few weeks ago.
I do a little Tuesday episode if anyones come across come across
Chuck and myself today and go on.
What is this bright pink podcast I found?
I do a Tuesday show called next Tuesday tea break talks, partly
because all of you guys in the US, you love the fact I'm
British and drink tea. It's like I'm.
Going to play. On that, I listen to the reviews
from from all of you guys across the pond and then we call it the
Atlantic, we call it the pond. But I think the one of the
things I talk about with these agentic agentic audiences where
actually you say to an AI go and use the site and tell me what
you learned what what customer groups, you know, put them in
34510 camps. What are the different customers
you think this business is targeted at or who would come on
here? But use all the power of a is
knowledge. Don't just tell me who you think
we're targeting. Tell me who you think actually
comes here to buy. And then go back to the site as
each group and find emotional problems and friction points and
find technical problems and friction points and start to
tell me what's going on. What I love that you're doing is
we do that because brand, some of the brands we work with don't
talk enough to their customers. Or actually we just need a quick
answer. Something's been redesigned.
It has to go live tomorrow because of a technical issue.
It's got to go live quickly. But we've got an hour to put our
hat in the ring and it's like, that's a fast way we can get
some feedback using the power of everyone who's ever spoken about
this business. And AI has already got that
information. Now it applies it into a
specific question about, you know, what's the issue with this
new form we've designed or what's the issue?
You know, what, what, what might be the issue with us changing
the colour of the adds a cart button.
It says, actually, I think most of your audience are visually
impaired and you're putting a yellow button and a white
background. It should be red or dark blue or
black. You need to have a strong
contrast because most of your audience are of this age, this
demographic or you know, you're you're a glasses company.
Everybody comes on here to buy a pair of glasses.
They have sight problems. Make it big.
Make. It easy.
Make it easy, yeah. Exactly.
And say we've been using agentic audiences a bit for that.
The fact that you, I was going to ask a question of what are
some of the most important things you've actually got from
your review content and you've just explained that which I
think is incredible. Have there been any moments as
the business has grown either because of customer feedback or
and something has happened internally or a product you
design? Have there been any big moments
where you, you kind of look back and you go, that day was a
massive change for us. Like we really changed direction
and course and quite quickly because of something that
happens, like obviously COVID, I think it's a good example, but
were there any things you guys learned and you suddenly were
like, we need to change a lot, We need to change a lot here
because of this learning? Well, COVID, you mentioned the
pandemic. That was a defining moment, I
think for a lot of companies, either defining from a great
perspective or not a great perspective.
And what we saw it was affirmation of the fact that
during the pandemic here in the US, part of the thing that
happened was besides retailers not being able to open, that was
huge. We actually reached out to a
number of retailers we had. We, we did a full assessment of
the top retailers that we had and went and looked at their
websites and said, do they have a website?
Do they have a website that it's just not a billboard they can
actually sell on? And how good a good is it?
And we actually reached out to them and tried to start working
with them to help them with that.
We, we kind of fashioned ourselves a bit of a Shopify
would say expert. We're, we're, we're pretty good
at what we do. And so we said, let's help you
because we know you're closed, we know you're struggling.
You need to be able to sell online and we can work with you.
You know we can, we can even implement drop shipping with you
so. You don't even have to go to
your. Store.
Yeah. That's a nice thing just to
help. Some retailers took us up on it,
other retailers didn't and it told us something about them as
well, where we're going to stay the course no matter what.
And quite honestly, some of them are not in business anymore.
So we so we learned some things. So people had to stay home.
They had to go somewhere to shop.
And everybody's, I would say everybody's, most every
websites, traffic skyrockets during this time because people
are still shopping. Plus the fact that the US
government helped out its citizens by sending them some
checks and some money and things like that and they had some
money to spend. So we saw a big increase of, of
recognition on the Internet because of that.
So that was, I wouldn't say it was a defining moment, but it
was a, it was a big moment for us.
It helped us level up to the next level.
In general though, what I would say Nick is that I've I have
found over being in this business for quite a while now
that it's not the macro big pivots that you make that make a
difference in your business. It's the continual micro pivots
that you make, the adjustments that you make to improve your
website experience, improve your conversion, get in front of the
customers who really want your product and will be repeat
buyers. This continual improvement then
for us, the continual improvement of website images.
When we first started the the company, we had mostly white
background images, you know and by the way we take our own
product photography as well. Yeah, which again is a really
powerful. Place to be, Yeah, yeah.
It, it, it is because it can get quite expensive not to do it
unless you're using AI And then there's a, there's a can be an
element of foamness about that, I guess you'd say, and.
There's a risk of that AI doing it wrong and just not
understanding what it's trying to achieve.
Not understanding, no amount of. Messaging it back.
Saying do this, do this, do this.
We'll actually. Do it exactly, exactly.
No, no, no, no. So the exact, So we did a lot of
white background to begin with. But then what we did was believe
it or not, we actually found some customers who reached out
to us and say, I'm a photographer, what would you
like for me to make some photography for you?
And we said great. And we, we found some guys and
one guy I'm thinking of in particular, Eric is incredible.
So what we started doing was adding a lot more lifestyle
images with people in those images on the website and we
started leading with them. So now we have a combination of
the lifestyle imagery and the white background products.
So people can actually, when they kind of are attracted to
your product, they can actually dive in and go, well, let me
take a look at the stitching on this or the leather that they
use or how well this is made or the functionality.
So I think you have to have both, right?
So we started learning and, and that's just an example of more
and more things we started doing on our website to, to, to grow
our business and then be able to connect with other stores
through tools like stuff like collective.
And before they had collected, we used another app to be able
to connect stores in the background so you can help them,
you know, meet their business goals as well.
Yeah, absolutely. No, I love that.
And I think that when you start to do the maths, if you go
actually, if we found like if we just had to make a 1% impact or
a 1% uplift with 50 things and you times, it's not because it's
not 50%, it's cumulative. So it's 1.01 * 1 point.
Well, yeah, 1.01 times by another nought point, nought 1
plus another nought .1. And you keep adding that
together. By the time you've done 50
things, you're well over double. And it's like it's, it's the
same with financial investments. It's that cumulative build.
I love that though, because I, I do think some businesses they
get, they get so caught up in like it gets to a point where
it's like our business is 30% in the loss.
Now we need something dramatic. And it's like actually, if we've
just been constantly, you know, we're not, we're not trying to
get the ROI on, on our advertising from 5:00 to 8:00.
We're trying to get it from 5 to 5.2 and then once.
And if that takes a month, great.
If it takes three months, once we're there, then we're going to
get to 5.3 and 5.4. And we just kind of keep nudging
it up. Nudging it up in a year.
And you play the long game, don't you?
In a year or two, where are? We going to be, yeah, absolutely
continual improvement. How can we do it a little bit
better, a little bit better, a little bit better, a little bit
better? So absolutely, it's a, it's a
continual almost seemingly endless journey of that when
you're online. Yeah, yeah.
And I think one of the hardest parts and I'd love to get your
thoughts on this. And again, you mentioned
something very briefly earlier and I thought we're going to
come back to this. I, I think one of the biggest
lessons I've learned in business is that the more I humble myself
and I don't know what I don't know, the faster my company is
growing. And that's from giving people
AKPI instead of an instruction and just saying, here's what we
need to achieve. What do you need?
You must, I'd love to hear your thoughts.
You must have had some similar situations.
So I have over the last sort of 15, nearly 20 years I've been
doing this where you've just kind of gone, like you say, you
come in in the morning with like a, we're doing this.
This is how it's going to work. If you flip it on its head and
be open to the fact that if you're 100% wrong, you're
actually quite close to the solution.
Now you're exact opposite to the solution.
You know, in the murky bit, in the middle bit, it sounds like
the same for you of just like, right, our photography, we don't
know anything about this. Let's start doing it ourselves.
Let's see, see how we can tweak it, how we can improve it.
And let's watch what the data does.
Let's ask custom, do you prefer this one or this one?
And they're unanimous. It kind of doesn't matter what
we care. You must have had so much of
that over there, you know, over your journey as well so far.
Mixed spot on, spot on. I had a 18 year corporate career
before I left to start my own business coaching practice that
ultimately led me into this. OK, so Long story short, what I
learned is, is positively challenge your team to achieve
certain results. And as long as it's ethically,
morally, legally, all those things, right, don't tell them
how to do it. This is the results that we
knit. We need to go from here and here
to there. And then help me understand what
your thoughts on how we're going to get there.
And then, then my job as alongside that is to what I call
curate. In other words, filter out the
noise, so much noise going on there.
In fact with the marketing team, our marketing team and I, we
were talking last Thursday and we were looking at different
metrics and things like that. You know, everybody's looking
at, you know, revenue, net sales and everyone.
'S got a. Slightly different idea if I.
Improve that, everything will be better and you're like, no, it
won't. For these reasons, like we need
to agree, we need to agree with the.
Case we need to agree and we agreed.
I said, so all these metrics, I said it's all Stephen Covey, 7
Habits of Highly Affected People thing Stephen, I love Stephen.
Stephen said once he said some things matter, yeah, other
things matter more, but what matters most is to be able to
tell the difference. So as we we look through all
those metrics, I said out of all these metrics, which one matters
most? And we had a nice little lively
debate. Well, it's this, these all
matter. And I said, yeah, they all
matter, but which one matters most at the end of the day?
End of the day, it might be .5% difference, you know, but which
matters. And we agreed, yeah, this is the
metric at the end of the day really matters most.
And now let's talk about the relationships these other
metrics have to help drive that. And then we talked about if you
focus on them independently and how it works.
So we, so my job is not to tell them how to do their jobs is the
results you said that that you want to achieve.
And then I think is the is the key leader in the organization.
Remove as much noise as I can so we can all focus on what matters
the most. Yeah, I, I think as an agency as
well, we get the delight of looking at I, I have a thing
with an ECG, which my wife's medical ECG is a heart rate
monitor. So we have a thing with an ECG
internally and it's all my SEO clients, all my PVC clients on
it's a few pages, but it's one big dashboard.
And I just at least once, maybe twice a week go through the
whole thing And I'm like, hey, how did you like, and the stats
on our website, how did you get a 240% revenue uplift in six
months? So like it wasn't complicated,
actually, it was a lot of work, but it was a simple thing again
and again and again across the whole site.
I'm like, right, we need that in a case study.
And then suddenly other people in the room are going, I need
that for one of my clients. I'm what did you do?
And so you see how the shared learnings.
I love what you've just described.
I think it's it's really, really powerful.
I love that shared learning thing.
Absolutely, Absolutely. Definitely and well, look, we'll
come in to land here. I it'd been amazing talking with
each other. I'm just I suddenly glanced at
the time and I'm like, where has 40 minutes gone?
And but amazing everyone if people are listening going you
guys sound like the most. This incredible organization, I
really want to see these products, see this photography.
I want to read some of these reviews.
I want to see who these customers are.
How can people reach out? What's the website, what you
know, give us a quick overview of your actual product range.
What what's your what's your favorite product?
If someone's like, I want to try one of these products like,
which one should? People, it's like asking me
which is your favorite kid? It says I didn't ask that.
You can't tell them in front of it.
So I need to clear all the other leather goods out.
I need to have one here. And I said you're really my
baby. You're really my favorite.
No, I'll share some of that. He reaches first of all, mission
mercantile.com and Mercantile is MERCANTILE Mission
mercantile.com. I think if you Google too, just
Google mythical customer care and we'll pop up right there at
the top. Mythical customer care.
Nice. So Mission mercantile.com, if
you reach out to us, you know, you can reach out, of course,
e-mail, phone, text, carrier pigeon, whatever those things
are. And in fact, one of the things
we did that it's not really that expensive for us.
We have a live text, not an AI bot, but a live text option on
on mobile where it'll be a pop up and it says chat with us live
and there's a real person there, a actual real person.
They're like, I think there's 1617 hours a day coverage that
we have where you can chat with us.
And if it's more than they can answer, then they hand it over
to kind of the Next up person in our customer care to help out.
So that's how you reach out to us at all that range of
products. Oh, and by the way, it's
interesting. Sometimes we will, our e-mail
team will send out emails from me personally and actually it is
from me personally and my personal e-mail address will be
on there. And then often I'll reply with
my cell phone so people can call me if they have a question.
And sometimes we just talk range of products.
Our shop, our leather shop we make for, we made for dozens of
brands, you know, big brands like Pendleton and Lukasey and
Buffalo Jacks and a lot of different brands.
King Ranch we made for a lot of different brands.
Hut Berry is a great client of ours.
So we love making for them. So we we garner the expertise of
making their products of, you know, so many things We can make
our range of products on the website go from a key ring all
the way up to a large rolling duffel.
You know, it, it's the breath and it's backpacks and
briefcases and desk caddies and all of that belts, wallets.
But it's also we have categories like we call it hunting and
outdoor. So if you need a nice case for
your shotgun, we provide that or shell bag coolers.
We, we sell leakproof coolers. So it's a pretty wide range, So
cool. And yeah, yeah, it's a, it's a
pretty wide range of, of, of budget that'll fit your budget
as well. Amazing, will it, Chuck, thank
you so much for your time and thank you for running such an
amazing business. It's been honestly a pleasure
like hearing about what you're doing and the way you do it.
I've been taking loads of notes. I hope everyone else at home has
as well and I'm sure some people reach out.
So thank you so much, appreciate your time and and for joining us
on the show. You're welcome.
Thank you for the opportunity. And Nick, I want to stay in
touch with you as well. Yeah, definitely, definitely.
I love that when I click stop in a SEC, we'll have a quick chat.
And for everybody else at home, yeah, please, please do hit the
subscribe button if you haven't already, leave us a review.
The reviews are some of them are amazing.
One of them's one of them's not amazing, was quite hurtful, but
it's there and it's fine. I can take.
It but it was helpful, right? It was helpful and hurtful.
Yeah, the very similar one. But I thank you so much for
tuning in, everybody. And yeah, join us again on
Tuesday for my tea break talks. I'm having little rants about
different bits and pieces in the marketing world every week.
Like my wife told me, stop calling them rants.
So I'm sharing some knowledge on things that are frustrating me.
But yeah, we're back in next Friday with another another
guest as well. So thanks, tuning in.
Hope you can join us again soon. And again, if you haven't
already, hit subscribe, leave us a review and go and check out
our newsletter on the website. See you next time.
This episode of Winning Shopify is brought to you by Tax Cloud.
It's the busiest time of year for eco 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 shop.
I 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 tax cloud.com/winning.