Hello and welcome to another episode, the winning Shopify
podcast. I've got a very exciting episode
for you today. My guest, his name is John, He
is the CEO of Battle Box. They were founded in 2015.
John's been on the show before. These guys sell survival and
outdoor gear that gets delivered monthly to your door, and
they've even got their own Netflix show.
John, welcome back. How are we doing?
Good, Nick. Thanks for having me back man.
Pleasure, Satya. I should be the one saying thank
you. I'm going to jump straight in,
John, with a really tough question.
We're going to talk about this a bit more.
How do you build a $4 million sales channel in one year?
Well. We did it with, with live live
shopping. So we launched live shopping on
we, we chose the Whatnot platform on April of last year.
And here we are. We're getting close to a year,
year next month. And we did it.
It's, it's just wild. Live shopping is, is here.
We've heard about it for 10 years, about how big it was in
China and that it was going to go everywhere else.
And honestly, I was numb towards it because I heard about it for
so long. Like it just wasn't going to
happen, and it happened. It's mad though isn't it?
You make such a good point that like everyone was saying, it's
coming. And how many different like apps
you could plug into YouTube, plug into your own Shopify store
and stuff, And then along comes whatnot.
If if someone's not heard of whatnot, what is Whatnot?
It's it's a it's a live shopping platform.
Think about how you know Tiktok and YouTube reels and or YouTube
shorts and Instagram reels, how they function with the, you
know, full screen vertical video content that you can swipe
through. It's it's very, very similar in
behavior, except it's it's a shopping platform.
It's not a social media platform.
So in theory, if someone's in the app swiping their their
intent to purchase is much higher than someone just brain
rotting on TikTok and then seeing a TikTok shop item.
It's just a much different. Year and I love that it's
combined like we I call it retail therapy.
Retail has to be as entertaining as it is like factual and
function functional like this is the product and how it works,
but actually it needs to be entertainment.
I I guess somebody described to me the day as it's like it's
almost like TikTok shop without the rest of TikTok, isn't it?
It's like people only come in the app to shop so you're not
wasting your marketing dollars like trying to appear in front
of people that are just, you know, I was trying to see what
my friend and their family were doing at the weekend, going to
the pond and feeding the ducks and oh look, another phone case
on the. Ground you don't.
You weren't looking for a phone case, right?
Exactly, exactly. Whereas what you know, it knows
what you're looking for or what you're interested in, and it's
just that that video advertising is straight there and people
like it. Yeah.
And, and I think the difference of what you just described,
where, you know, you're looking for just brain rot content and
you see a shopping item on Tiktok, comparing that to
Whatnot where everything is, is live, live selling it, it
creates another behavior too. So, you know, we, we had a lot
and we have a lot of success on Tiktok shop, but the economics
are wildly different on Whatnot. Economics on Tiktok shop, AOV is
around $20. AOV is closer to 80 on Whatnot.
Wow, LTV repeat buying. It's all a thing on what not on
TikTok shop. It's not right.
TikTok shop we, we take pride in in really the marketing side of,
of managing and and creating this brand of battle box.
And the buyer on TikTok shop just doesn't really care.
They don't care about the brand. There's no, there's no affinity
towards that. There's, there's no LTV, there's
no respectable LTV. It's, there's no repeat buying.
It's, I mean, it exists, but it's just a fraction of what are
those. Every other sales channel and
whatnot behaves like other sales channels where there's, there's
repeat purchases and there's strong LTV and it's, it's crazy,
just a slight tweak and you know, purchasing intent changes
the behavior so. Much it's very, it's very
interesting what you say about the brand awareness.
I mentioned the intro like you guys have your own Netflix
series. Tell us more about the Netflix
series to add a bit more emphasis to what you've just
said as well about the brand equity you've built with
customers versus the on what not.
People don't care. Yeah.
So, you know, part of our, our main focus of this, this, these
two, the, these two principles of content and community, they
go hand in hand, You know, brands trying to accomplish that
is it's not easy, it's difficult, it takes a lot of
work. Content as, as you and I both
know is it's a kind and it's, it's even Wilder than, you know,
old school SEO where you know, you're making these changes,
you're waiting six months, nine months to really see the fruits
of your reward as content's worse, right?
You're having to put in sometimes a a year before you
really see it start to really click and and.
It's so expensive, isn't it? Like especially grade content is
so expensive. So we've always focused on
content as as our true top of funnel.
Don't get me wrong, we spend an astronomical amount on ads on
meta, right? It's it's a necessary evil, but
it's while there's some type of funnel there, for the most part,
it's mostly mid funnel. We're we're making the campaigns
as as prospecting, don't get me wrong, but people have seen our
content before. The majority of of the
demographic that we're targeting have and it's, you know, the
Netflix show as an example, right?
We're the entire season and every episode is we're testing
gear to determine if it's going to go in a battle box.
So it's a, it's everything is, is focused around that and and
our content doesn't sell, right? We're not selling.
We're educating, we're having fun.
We're we're showing the human element of the brand and the
business. And that's what people, people
connect with and what not just seems to be a natural way for us
to accomplish both. We can continue doing what we've
done. If you've ever watched one of
our shows on there, it's entertaining, right?
It's not just item A for sale go.
You know, as we've ramped up the past year, now most of our hosts
have OBS, so there's going to be graphics on the screen and
flames and we're really entertaining and it's we're
treating it much like content on the other social channels.
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And I think that that entertainment is the thing that
starts to are they what not you sort of say they don't.
They haven't seen that brand equity before, but that
entertainment factor that must create some stickiness within
whatnot, surely? It's like the amount of times, I
mean, even twice today in the office, someone said like
confused, did somebody else reply with.com, which was a car
insurance advert here in the UK, like, you know, but hasn't run
since I think I was back in school.
So 1000 years ago we had these adverts on TV and we're still
quoting them now. Or, you know, there's all these
little things like the Domino's advert at the moment, which is
like Domino, which is the only impression we're doing that
today. But just in all these random
settings suddenly like that's become banter amongst people.
So you might you must find that although people don't know or
even resonate or understand the brand equity, they've not come
across you guys before. What not must be building
something in that then, even if that's their starting point.
Yeah, no, absolutely. So what we're seeing is it's,
it's just another top of funnel for us.
We're running it as a profitable, very profitable
channel. But it, it, it really serves as
top of funnel brand awareness. We're then, you know, looking at
the data and these people are coming in, they're making a
purchase, but then they're then going to our website later on.
They're then joining the, the, the membership, which is our
core business. They're coming in just as as
prospecting with traditional content or, or prospecting on
traditional ads. They're they're coming into the
funnel and the exact same way and they're behaving the the
exact same way. Nice, nice.
Let's rewind the clock then if someones like like I imagine
half the people listening right now are like quick stop the car.
I need to Google something or like us chatting what is what
not like I need to see this thing.
You guys obviously weren't running it a year ago.
You've built this channel in 11 months.
I think when we first looked, it was like 10X in eight months or
something. You you're done with in your
revenue. How do you go from not running
it to running your first set of videos?
I actually think the the revenue you got, I know it may not have
been super profitable, but the revenue you got in month one was
all right, like and how did you achieve that from the get go?
Yeah. So, so month one, which was
which was April last year, we know we said, hey, we think that
this might actually be the, the, the beginning of live shopping
in in North America. Like it's going to, it's going
to catch on. North America and Europe are are
going to finally embrace live shopping.
So we're going to we're going to give it a test.
We were actually fairly close to launching it first on TikTok
shop because we already had a million followers on there.
We thought, hey, this is we already had the audience.
This is just going to be. Now that just to interrupt
quickly that I mean, that sounds like I I went with data all day.
If you tell me we've got a million followers on TikTok,
where are we going to put our shoppable video content?
What I know you're about to explain like why on earth did
you go? So what not why not stick with
TikTok where it's like we've already got all the eggs in that
basket. What?
What was the draw? We thought that they were doing
something different. They pure timing.
They prospected us right. Hey, we want you on the
platform. We we took a call and and it was
what what we were talking about earlier.
It it's not, you know, brain rotting, choosing, watching
content with an occasional hey, buy this $20 item.
It's literally a platform where purchasing is occurring right
same as Amazon, same as eBay. It's it's a the, the intent.
You don't when you open up Amazon, you're, you're looking
either you're somewhere in the process of buying something,
whether it's discovery or or end of funnel, like time to
purchase. And it's the same, same with
whatnot. So we're like, we, we, we
appreciated that. And there is also this extreme
vibe of community on whatnot with all these like little tiny
intricacies. And, and we're big community
guys. We, we see the value in that.
And I'll give, I'll just give one random example of a dozen.
When you're running a whatnot show and you're done instead of,
and let's say you have 100 people watching you when you,
you could end it and those 100 people just get kicked out of
the channel, you're done. But that's not what you do.
You do something called a raid and I'm running a live show.
I'm done. I have 100 people.
I'm like, hey guys, we're going to raid Nick's show.
And Nick, you're on there selling whatever it is you sell.
I mean, it's somewhat brand for you anyway.
Like we're going to do a raid. I mean, it sounds like a
survival game, like Outback or something like that.
It's brilliant, absolutely. Brilliant.
So we literally we literally hit raid.
I picked Nick's show, I hit raid and I've taken myself and 100
people watching me and I've dumped them real time all into
your show. Nice.
And you're like, I now have 100 more people and everybody from
my show is saying raid. And you know, you might do a
giveaway, but it's, it's, that's pure community, right?
Like I'm literally taking my buyers.
I'm just, I've just taken him and, and dropped him in someone
else's show. And then, and then Nick, you're
going to feel, feel and appreciate that.
So your next raid, if battle box is on, you're probably going to
raid us back. And it's this community vibe.
Everybody can win. No one has to lose.
That was really, really attractive.
So we said, OK, well, we're going to do a test.
And in, in April of last year, we ran, I think we ran 4 shows,
5 shows a total of 10 hours, 10 hours of selling.
And yeah, we did, we did right under 25 Ki think 24, nine.
And we were like, OK, we're on to something here.
This was, this was, was interesting.
It you know, there's, there's some revenue here like at scale,
what does this look like? And you know, in, in May we did
26 hours, right. In June, we did 60 hours in July
99, August 107, September 135, October 171, November 195.
And we're just ramping up hours and scaling, scaling the channel
right now. We run, you know, almost a year
in, we run between 65 and 70 shows a month.
Average. Average shows, Yeah, average
show is 3 hours. Nice.
And you mentioned it before to me as well, like you've actually
built A-Team around this, haven't you?
I like, and one thing I love about you and last time we spoke
in a couple of conversation we had in between, like when you
guys see something working, it's like it's, it's my two favorite
worlds. 1 is the data. And the other side is like you
guys double down on that and start putting, you know, the
data says this thing's working or it's got potential because I
think you said you've hired a few people now that like they
just run it. It's like you are the Whatnot
team just own this, operate it well, which is where I think so
many brands go wrong is they dip their toes in a bit of that and
a bit of that and a bit of that and it's suddenly you're spread
really thin. And then if any customer or
potential customer engages with any of that content, it's a bit
rubbish. So how, how do you manage that
internally where you've got Meta doing a huge amount, you've got
Amazon, you've got lots of organic stuff that comes in
through brand equity. How do you kind of split those
things out internally, but also keep them connected?
So it's still one big business driving one big bottom line.
Yeah. So it's it's not, not easy and I
don't think we do it perfect. I don't think we do it
perfectly, if if I'm being honest.
So, so you know, what we found is off the jump.
So we had Cameron who was one of he was our marketing coordinator
and you know, doing generalized marketing stuff across all, all
platforms, all parts of the business.
And he he had launched TikTok shop for us and then non live
shopping, just traditional TikTok shop.
And we're seeing success with that.
We decided to, you know, launch what not after we, we saw what
it was and made the decision, this can scale.
We, we said, OK, Cameron, you're in charge of social commerce.
This is this, this is a thing now.
This wasn't, this wasn't a position prior.
This wasn't a role we, we thought we needed prior.
Now we know with certainty this is a this is a full time focus.
So he became the the director of social commerce and we
backfilled his marketing coordinator role so that, you
know, the marketing general is touching e-mail and SMS and all
the social and all the other parts of the business and told
Cameron, go, go, go. This is this is this, this is
something so you know, from we had one host who is one of our
we have two full time creators with the company and one of the
initially one of them was just one of the hosts for those 10
hours and the 26 hours they were the host.
We need more hosts, right? Brandon, who was hosting, who
still hosts. He's full time creator for us.
He also has to focus on content. He can't just to your point,
spread himself too thin and, and, and, and not do anything.
Well, So we started grabbing hosts and we're up to six hosts
now there's a, there's a role that that only exists for this
called a showrunner. And we have two full time
showrunners, 2 part time showrunners.
They're sitting on a computer and they're the back end, right?
So they're loading the products for the show.
They're, they're doing everything.
They're communicating in the chat with the audience in
addition to the host. They're communicating with the
host. They're running the show,
they're the showrunner. It's a role that didn't it only
exists for this. So it's, it's, it's kind of
cool, you know, have those two dedicated showrunners that they
only exist to support, support this channel.
Yeah, and it's such a catch 22, isn't it?
Like things like this are going to go better.
Whatever channel it is, it's going to go better if you've got
someone who you're like, right, this is your desk, this is your
chair. Make this channel work like
that. That's your remit.
You know, like you cost this, here's your budget for
advertising. This is the target, make it
work. And you tell us what you need.
And again, I just think so many businesses I meet, like there's
agencies that can help, there's freelancers, you can hire people
to do things. It's scary for a, for a business
though, isn't it? I think you guys kind of reach
the size where it's like the investment you put in it has
kind of been like a bit more and a bit more and a bit more and a
bit more. And you've got the backing of
the big company. But it must have been a time
earlier on where it was like, look, if we're going to do metal
Netflix, we're going to do this thing really well.
It's going to cost money and we have to invest in that.
So what advice would you give to a smaller business that's like
there's 10 channels or four channels I could be running.
I want to double down on one of these.
I can only afford to do 1. How do we, how do they decide
which one or what advice would you give to them of like a sort
of just do it, but here's how to do it.
Yeah. So it's, it's, you have a good
point, right. You know your spread thing,
you've got to put where is the time, where does the resources,
where does the effort go? And the unfortunate part when
there's multiple people touching an avenue of a, of a, of a
business, an aspect of a channel, when there's multiple
people and there's multiple people accountable, nobody's
accountable. And it's a sad reality.
If multiple people are accountable for something,
nobody's accountable. I think you nailed it, yeah.
And we've, we, we, we know that because obvious people talk
about it, but we've made that mistake a dozen, a dozen times
through the years where there's multiple people accountable for
some kind of new sales channel or new brand we've launched or
some new initiative. And when every, when everyone's
accountable, nobody is. So as soon as we identified what
it was, we, we took the risk right as soon as we identified
that this was scalable. So we launched in April, We
didn't officially put Cameron in the role of director of social
commerce until until August, September.
So we continued to test and scale it for a few months before
we said, OK, dedicated resource. We're, we're very confident that
this is a double down moment. But in order to truly double
down, we've we've got to make the risk, we've got to have
someone solely focused on it so that the other people, everybody
else can focus on, on on the other.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I, I think one of the really
interesting things you mentioned now I said, you know, you
absolutely nailed it is and it comes back to like company hire,
like hierarchy or structure and things like this.
I feel like because of the age of things like TikTok and
whatnot and Shopify, like everything's sort of sold to a
lot of business owners as it's all plug and play.
It's all cheap and cheerful. And actually then one of the
challenges becomes around that's like actually some of the caller
old school. I'm becoming more old school the
older I get and the more like, we just need a simple plan for
this. Like there is no plan.
We're just kind of doing stuff like what's the end game?
What we're going to do in a year's time, five years time, 10
years time, like what are we actually trying to achieve?
And the more I start asking these questions, which you
probably kind of study at like Business School, the more you
start to take a step back and go, right, well, we need someone
that owns it. And then the people underneath,
they need simple and important like KPIs and metrics to go, if
you're doing your bit, well, this is happening.
And that will help your team leader who's in charge of the
whole channel, that will help them achieve their goal.
This is how your team fits into all the teams of the business
and this is the North Star. And I guess your job as CEO is
to try, and you know, you poor thing, try and hold all of that
together and keep everyone motivated on the same page.
But I think you, you nailed, you nailed something when, when
building the team that Cameron's building, KPIs are KPIs are
king. And it's not micromanaging.
It's just these are the KPIs, these, these are the, the
metrics that matter. And and for, for this channel,
it's, it's average hourly revenue, average hourly profit,
average margin and average new buyers.
The new buyers is key because that is is validating that this
is top of funnel. We're not doing any
cannibalization of our existing somewhere else.
Robin and you know how expensive that is on Meta and Google and
Amazon and all the other kind of big channels.
So yeah, it makes a lot of sense.
You said something to me as well when we were planning today that
really, really struck me and I think I glossed over it when we
spoke and I really want to talk about it is you said like this
is our this is now our like #2 channel above Amazon.
So this is your #2 channel. What's your number one Amazon's
three? Like how do you guys as a
subscription business in the sort of survival outdoor space,
what does your channel make up actually look like on, you know,
when you actually look at the kind of revenue attribution
reports? 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 product
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 every 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.
Yeah. So, yeah.
So Amazon had been our, our, our number 2 for for a couple of
years. It's it's a 7 figure channel.
It's it's a great channel for us.
The number one is, is our website.
Our our website is quick math. I mean, it's it's.
Probably about day-to-day, doesn't it there?
Yeah. But I would say on average
websites probably 8080%, maybe a couple points higher.
So it's a it's, it's, it's not thinking caught by anybody.
What do you use Amazon or like do you use Amazon or that was #2
it's now #3 channel? Do you do you consider Amazon
like a it's still a feeder channel.
People find us, they try the product and see it for the first
time. But then the websites, what it's
really driving or do you find they're a totally separate
audience? There's, there's some overlap,
but not as much as as I would hope for.
I mean, the, the Amazon shopper is the Amazon shopper.
I, I put myself into that category.
I, I buy on, I buy on Amazon because I know I'm going to get
it quickly and I know if, if there's any sort of.
Issue. You've got all that protection.
Yeah, yeah. Amazon's always going to side
with me. Prime example, and this is an
Amazon product. I bought my dad one of those
Ring doorbells. And.
And I got it I think for Christmas or his birthday and
he's he's got it connected on the doorbell and I'm seeing via
the app his face of like setting it up.
And I watch it just go, his face go like this because he's
dropped it and he dropped it and it broke.
And you know what Amazon, classic Amazon say, hey, it's
not working. They sent us a new one
immediately, no questions asked. Amazon always does the right
thing, and they do it unfortunately on the backs of
the vendors selling on. There right, I was going to say
yeah, that it's really great for consumer and it builds Amazon
well, but it brands sells yeah you're paralysed in terms of
like you might not even get the product back.
So it's like, right, like Amazon, I don't know if you guys
have it as well, but Amazon the UK, as soon as I drop it at like
the post office or in delivery collection point, as soon as I
drop it, I've got a refund especially.
And and they're also like, do you want to have your refund as
an Amazon voucher? And it's like another word is
like, are you going to spend some money on Amazon?
We'll just put it straight in there for you.
Saves your bank transaction, saves Amazon some money.
Yeah, and you're like. Straight, I don't, I guess from
any other platform, No, give me, give me my money.
But on Amazon, I'm like, yeah, just give me credit.
But that that's the beauty of having all the retailers in one
place on Amazon. So how see, see, I mean that it
sounds like Amazon's obviously one cost for you, but it sounds
like Whatnot for you then is counter to that because Whatnot
is, you said a lot of these guys will buy from you, but then they
they do come into site. You see them on the website, you
see them engaging. I'm going to ask you a horrible
question. So I did an episode on this a
few weeks ago myself about attribution.
How do you know they've come from Whatnot?
How do you like, is it spikes at the same time?
Is there an attribution? Do they click from Whatnot or an
e-mail into your site? Yeah, everyone's, everyone's
favorite thing that's way more difficult than it should be in
2026 and that's attribution. Attribution the the only way
we're able to see is digging into our data.
So because it's a marketplace just like eBay or Amazon, you
know, you don't own that customer technically, right?
You're not getting their e-mail address any marketplace.
The e-mail address belongs to the marketplace, but names,
addresses, marrying data. So it's a separate profile.
We have a Shopify integration pushes it as a separate profile.
But we can then do deep, deep analysis on our data and we can
cross identify same name, same address, probably the same
person. So we're able then to marry.
Yeah. No, it's not.
It's it's a lot of work to to marry the data.
Yeah, yeah. But.
It's thank goodness for AI. Yeah, exactly.
I've been building all sorts on there.
I keep saying to my team like I've had an idea for a new
system and they're like, have you built a web app?
I'm like, yeah, I've done some vibe coding and built a web app
and everyone rolls their eyes until they see what I've built
and they're like, oh, can I get a login?
This looks great. Like this tool saved me hours.
And it's like just I think the way the world's gone now, like I
flag it all the time now. Is Sidekick in Shopify flipping
genius? You've got a question and it's
like, rather than digging through the reports and
analytics, just ask it and say how many customers in Kansas,
which is it's a good segue. We're going to be in Kansas.
John and I come say hi at sub Summit in May and we're going to
be hanging out and having a beer or two.
And John doesn't know it yet. He's going to be my backup if I
need somebody on my panel on the podcast stage that we're
hosting. And John doesn't know it, but
I'll, I'll buy him a beer and he'll be there, I'm sure.
And but I think that you know, say like you want to find out
how many people in Kansas have bought a certain product because
you've got a theory or someone internal.
This is what I love in the office.
Someone's just said something and you and you kind of as ACEO
owner, you're like, really like that.
If, if yes, flipping, heck, we need to do loads of stuff with
that. Like that's a whole game changer
for the business. If not, I just don't want people
saying things or thinking things that aren't true.
Let's just ask Sidekick quickly on Shopify and sidekick goes yes
or no, or like more like that. It's grey, you know, it's not
black or white here. There's a kind of a middle
ground, but just getting that answer quickly and and then
saying like, now overlay this data and if it can't do it, I
think it's one of the best AIS I've used because it will say, I
can't do that, but you could download, export and then do
that data yourself using this formula in a Google Sheet.
And it's like, wow, like it really is trying to help you.
And but I love the fact you, you connect to that data because a
lot of platforms like TikTok shop is great and it integrates
into Shopify, but the orders still happened on TikTok.
It's not happened on Shopify. And the same with Amazon.
It's like you, you're like we said earlier, you're
disconnected from that customer. So I think seeing those
customers from Whatnot come into the site is like an enormous
tick for a brand like yours, especially when you're looking
longer than just, you know, the actual live, the three hour live
shows that you're doing. When you're looking long term,
you want people to be engaging with a brand and buying more
than once, don't you? Yeah, and with Tiktok,
unfortunately we we don't get it right.
They don't Amazon, you know, customers will buy multiple
things on Amazon and they'll, they'll save your store and
they'll if, if it, if it fits what they're looking for.
But yeah, unfortunately Tiktok does not have that.
Yeah, and. I'm.
Going to come in to land on two more questions.
The first one is if you were at a bootstrapped Shopify store.
So they're quite small budgets, like we said earlier, budgets
are tight. They can't allocate a whole
person to to whatnot and to shoppable video.
What advice would you give to them about starting out?
Like what's a good way to get going with it or test it?
And it's always that chicken and egg testing it with enough, but
not too much. What advice would you give to
somebody? In that situation, you know, the
way we tested was not anything, anything special, right?
So there's there's a there's a Shopify what not integration.
So it's going to it's going to put your products in your what
not tool. All you need is your phone.
You literally download the app start show and and it's go, go,
go and it's it's it's not going to be a lot of resources.
You, you literally jumping off, you could pull up your phone,
hit live show and go. It's you know, I think it's,
it's natural, especially a smaller shop to have paralysis
by analysis where they want to make sure that they're doing it
perfectly and it's going to be right.
And you don't, you don't need that.
Just go literally connect your store, schedule a show, sell
and, and, and, and garner some, some learnings.
You know, I look at it now and yeah, we have a, a, we have
Cameron who runs the channel and we have 6 different hosts and we
have, you know, multiple showrunners.
So there's three different things right there.
But like jumping off, we didn't have that.
We we had a host and then we had someone that was trying to
figure out the back end. But there's a lot, if you open
up Whatnot right now, I'd say 90% of the sellers, it's the
same guy that is running the back end, running the show as
the host and shipping, shipping the items out while Whatnot's
making this awesome. Yeah.
Well, so, so you know, Whatnot started and it's, it's mainly
with solar preneurs, single, single people that are, are
doing everything and it's a great platform for that.
Now they've, you know, they've raised, they raised money twice
last year in the beginning of the year at a, at a $5 billion
evaluation and then at the end of the year at an $11 billion
evaluation. So you can see.
Where it's going? Yeah.
So a part of this money is investing and they want to get
the the larger brands. And also that, that growth is
revenue based growth. It's not like AI and stuff which
people are investing in and the hope that it grows, the hope it
becomes a certain size. It's like, and again, I always
give, I always feel the need to say like, disclaimer, we're not
giving financial advice. We're not saying you should go
and invest and whatnot. But we're we're just saying that
actually it's like in terms of hedging your bets and giving it
a go, I mean that's amazing. And I think that leads me on
really nicely into my second and final question on this.
And second final question, if that makes any sense.
And but the the question is how do you pay Whatnot?
How do Whatnot benefit from the stuff you guys are doing?
Yeah. So Whatnot functions just like
any other, any other marketplace.
They they have their, their fees.
So Whatnot takes 8% for themselves and then there's also
a 3% and 30 cent credit card transaction overlay.
So, so 11 points of of the order are coming.
Never, never going to you. They're going straight to the
the platform, which you know, eBay is.
Roughly pretty lean. Yeah, eBay, eBay is called
probably 1314 points. Amazon is 15 if you're, if
you're fulfilling yourself, but we all know you, you've got to
do fulfilled by Amazon to really show up, which is another 15.
Amazon's taking 30 and we haven't even talked about
storage. Returns.
I'm not having such a bitch about Amazon today, but it's all
true. Yeah, but I mean, but Amazon's
great, right? Like I love Amazon.
It serves its purpose. We love selling on there.
It's just a different economic. It's instant customer reach and
I think that's the real power of it, isn't?
It that's what you're and that's what.
You're saying, yeah, you've got next day delivery, you're
reaching people really, really quick.
And actually if you run an offer or something, you can so quickly
build customer reviews, which is so much more valuable than just
100% conversion. It also gives you the insights
you need. So I've seen a lot of people
that have done a Kickstarter and then gone straight onto Amazon
and even called it like, you know, 2025 top Kickstarter
products or something, which again is like a really smart way
of just connecting up those two, you know, the the two hacks,
they're like. We're.
Here and we were Kickstarter. Yeah, yeah, it's amazing.
Well, look, I do have one final question.
It's a very easy question, John, that you shouldn't have to think
about at all. If people are listening to this
and going, John, this sounds amazing.
How can they come and meet us? How can they check out where,
you know, where's your website? What are your social channels?
What's your whatnot? Is it a handle?
Like I've not really used one I like myself.
It's a. It's a handle just like just
like any other channels. So so yeah, so on on whatnot.
It's it's at battle box. Battle Boxes is our handle on
all other social. Channels and it's missing the E
isn't it on battle box? I always spell it wrong.
Yeah. Spell checks on Google for me,
yeah. Which I love that it Google will
correct you now. It's like, do you mean
BattleBots with no E? And it will show you the results
of what do you mean anyway? Like we know what you're looking
for, they've given you the result and you can just click
the button. It's a Vlanity button.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. BATTLBOX also will be will be at
Sub Summit live selling on stage.
Nice. Yeah.
So we're looking forward to that.
We'll have the Whatnot team there and we'll be, yeah, we'll
be the Battle box. Whatnot team will be there
selling on stage probably every day.
Nice. We're working on the details.
Yeah, and we had your good friend Chris on.
I mentioned you to Chris. I've mentioned you to three
people now in the last couple of weeks and they were like, yeah,
of course we know John. It's like this guy is like he's
a good guy to know. But yeah, Chris here.
We had on a couple of weeks ago from sub summer.
It might have been last week. I don't know what the scheduling
plan is. Sorry.
Yes, yeah. And it's and it's beyond my pay
grades to know when we're when we're posting stuff on my own
podcast. But yeah, we had Chris on and he
mentioned you, John, and said you're going to be there.
And he also said, guys, if you're a brand and you want to
come along, people like me are paying to have meetings and
suppliers and tech apps are paying to have meetings with
people. So if you do those meetings, not
only do you get a free ticket and they cost thousands of
dollars, they will also give you up to $750 towards your travel
and accommodation and everything else.
And if you're not crossing the Atlantic like me, it's probably
going to be a lot cheaper than what I'm doing.
And you won't be as jet lagged as I'm going to be the whole
time there. So yeah, if you are in the US,
come say hi. We'd love to meet you all.
And yeah, I want to say a massive thank you to to John for
coming back. John, 2 incredible episodes
under your belt now. We hope to get you back in a
year or two, see if what not still exists, see how it's going
for you guys. So thank you so much.
Nick, thank you for having me. I'll see you.
I'll see you in a couple of months at our sub summit.
I'll see you in a couple of months.
And for everybody else listening back in on Tuesday, we choose
the tea break talks. I am missing one week, but I
think it would have already happened by the time this one
goes out again. I don't know that scheduling,
scheduling list of episodes that's coming up at the moment,
but hit subscribe button if you haven't already.
I hope you've enjoyed today's show and if you've got any
questions, send us an e-mail. Hello at Winning with
shopify.com. Thanks for tuning in.
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