Tom Hinser: He walked through the shop one day and he was like, mate, can we put this leaf rake online? Put it online, sell it. I was like, shit, Dad, I don't know how to sell anything online. Like, what do you mean?
Natalie Hinser: I mean, it's not sexy, is it? It's not the sexiest industry.
Tom Hinser: Everyone has their fuck ups. We've had some monumental ones ourselves.
Natalie Hinser: You can't cut corners. Yes. To delegating. Absolutely. And scaling and growing the business, but get your hands dirty first.
Tom Hinser: You either get with the times or get out.
[Voiceover]: Welcome to Add to Cart, the podcast that Express delivers Need to Know in the fast moving world of e commerce. Every month, Nathan Bush from 12 High and an E commerce industry expert will share the news, research and insights that you need to know to keep you at the top of your game and of course, keep your customers adding to Cart.
Nathan Bush: Hello and welcome to Add to Cart. My name is Nathan Bush, host of
Nathan Bush: Add to Cart and e Commerce Strategist at 12.
Nathan Bush: Hi. My guest today is Tom and Nat Hinser from Mr. Poolman. That's Mr. Poolman. Two words, pool and man. Don't screw it up like I did on our run sheets. These siblings.
Nathan Bush: Yes, siblings. Working with your siblings, establishing a business with your siblings.
Nathan Bush: These siblings have taken their dad's pool store and transformed it into an e commerce powerhouse. They've disrupted a very, very slow moving world of pull parts and accessories. Who knew this world was out there? They did. And they smashed it decked out in their Shopify plus hoodies. Both Tom and Nat were incredibly open during this chat. We covered everything from how to split test your free shipping offers to how to manufacture your own product and the difficulties in qualifying for B Corp status. Make sure you stay right to the end where I ask them both about their biggest business fuck ups. It's equally funny as it is enlightening. Oh, and in case you haven't guessed it, there's a big, big language warning on this one. So if you've got kiddies in the car, kick them out and listen on your own.
Nathan Bush: So let's get into it.
Nathan Bush: Thanks to our partners at Shopify. Plus here is our conversation with Nat and Tom Hintzer from Mr. Poolman. Natalie and Tom Hintzer from Mr. Poolman.
Nathan Bush: Welcome to Add to Cart.
Natalie Hinser: Yo, what's up? Good to be here. Thanks.
Tom Hinser: Bushy, how you going?
Nathan Bush: Good, good. Thanks for joining us guys. I'm really pumped about this conversation. We've been throwing these ideas around for a while now.
Natalie Hinser: We're excited.
Tom Hinser: Yeah, we have, man, we have. Let's let's make a splash, eh?
Nathan Bush: The first pun. I love it.
Natalie Hinser: Now
Nathan Bush: you guys are founders of Mr. Poolman. And for anyone playing along at home, that's two words. Pool, pool and man. Unlike me, who made a monumental stuff up in calling it one word all the way through. Common mistake, but any professional podcaster would get it right. Give us the elevator pitch on Mr. Pool Man. Guys, how did it come about? And what do you guys do? What makes you different?
Tom Hinser: Yeah, Cool. So our father, he started a pool business about 25 years ago. That's when he started with. It was called Waterwise Pool Services at the time. So he was just a single. A single man in a van, literally cruising around doing pools. He was quite successful in his own right. So that was our father, Hardy.
Nathan Bush: You know. You know. You know, that sounds a little bit dodgy. A single man in a van doing pools.
Tom Hinser: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Natalie Hinser: It was white too.
Tom Hinser: So he. He started it, built the business up to, you know, a couple hundred regular clients, customers. I finished school and I became a carpenter and a chippy as an apprentice. And the first year sucked the commute and I was on minimum wage and I had a chat to dad, did the whole he's like, yeah, come work for me kind of thing. So did that. From there, we grew into, obviously, both of us in a single van, got a second van and then a shop. We opened the shop and then it was at that point where we kind of like broke into the retail side of things rather than just the backyard servicing. Natalie came on board with us when she finished school, and that was at the point where we said, let's see if we can do something digital here. It was actually thanks to our father, Hardy, that he walked through the shop one day, and obviously we're very seasonal. And he was like, mate, can we put this leaf rake online? Put it online, sell it. I was like, shit, Dad, I don't know how to sell anything online. What do you mean? And sure enough, we took a photo of it, put it on ebay. The next day, it sold. We looked at each other and thought, oh, shit, what do we do now? So, walked down to the post office, put it in a satchel, sent it off, and we've actually still got the receipt of our first customer back in 2014. I think it was now.
Nathan Bush: Brilliant.
Natalie Hinser: Yeah.
Tom Hinser: So from the shop, we grew quite quickly. We got a custom ebay store designed up in the uk, so the full HTML design. I think we're one of, like three pool shops online at that point in Australia. Natalie Then took control a lot more of the marketing aspect and then we closed the shop. We found that the foot traffic and the retail, obviously that's when it really started to shift quite quickly in about 2014 was when we started to see a lot of growth on that, on the digital side of things rather than the foot traffic. So we closed the shop, opened the warehouse.
Nathan Bush: When you closed the shop, was the online bigger than the shop revenue?
Tom Hinser: Yeah, the shop was just full of just boxes, like we just had stock on hand and we didn't even have any room for customers to walk in the shop anymore. It was just full of boxes. And Natalie and I said to dad, we're like, shit, dad, we got to
Nathan Bush: get out of here.
Tom Hinser: Like, this is. It's growing too quickly. And so, yeah, we rolled it all up and then moved it all into a. I think we got a 500 square warehouse at the moment, which is what we've been in for the last three years. But we're filling it up pretty, pretty quick now.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, fantastic. And you're still on ebay?
Tom Hinser: Still on ebay, still on all the marketplaces. But I reckon we could probably dive into that a little bit more down the track. But yeah, no, definitely still on ebay now.
Nathan Bush: Awesome. And is your dad still involved in the business?
Tom Hinser: Yeah, he is. He's taken. We've pretty much blown his mind apart with, with online and digital. He was always like, what do you mean you're selling this and shipping it to wa. Like you're crazy. But anyway, it's working. And so now he's very much taking a step back of the business as we speak, year by year. He enjoys coming to work and just pottering around. We keep him busy. He likes to think of himself as the customer success person. He loves to have a chat with people on the phone about their pools and we do get very enthusiastic customers about their pools, about, you know, they take a lot of pride in it and that kind of stuff. And so we just pass it off to dad and here you go, mate. Have a, have a, have a conversation.
Natalie Hinser: Have that like wise old owl input sometimes as well. Like sometimes, you know, you're faced with like decisions and you obviously try and make the best one, but it's nice to have that soundboard that just has intuition based off their experience of just being around longer than us in business.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, awesome. That sounding board. And how do you guys get along? Brother, sister in a business, spending all that time together?
Tom Hinser: Yeah, no, we're actually sweet like, we. Yeah, like typical thing like you Know, we're best friends as what you commonly hear, which is pretty much the case with us. Like, we. We get along well. I'm 30. You're 26. 26. So we're pretty. Pretty closely aged. So a lot of our friends hang out as well. So in and out of work, like, it's just. It just works.
Natalie Hinser: And like, we've always had friends say, God, I could never work with my sibling. Love them, but could never work with them. And Thomas and I, like, we've had our hurdles. We've really had to, you know, work on our communication with each other, like, not only as brother and sister and best friends, but then also separate business and what's best for Mr. Pullman as well, and then growing those leadership skills with each other, too, because, as you know, it comes down from the top. So if Thomas and I aren't communicating, everything else is just going to fall to shit. So there's been a lot of challenges, but we've overcome them all.
Tom Hinser: So I think, too, that what's also cool is, like, because we're brother and sister, it's a very much like a no bullshit kind of approach. And we've got full 100% trust in each other where. And this isn't against anyone in a, you know, partnership, you know, in a working environment. But, like, we know 100 that we're not going to each other over, like, it's family kind of thing. So Natalie could go off and do her own thing with work, and I've got 100 trust in, like, she's doing the best thing for Mr. Pool man and vice versa for myself. You know, like, if I'm going on a work trip to China or what, Natalie's like, yep, sweet. Go procure, make that procurement. Get those products. That's sweet. It's not like, oh, what are you doing over there? I wanted to go do that. It's very much an even split, so it works well.
Natalie Hinser: And we don't just assume either. We communicate. We always communicate.
Tom Hinser: So actually, and something funny that always comes up whenever we go to, say, a conference or a seminar or a dinner, we always get like, oh, you know, oh, you guys are. You guys are married. Or, you know, we're like, fuck, it
Natalie Hinser: gets to the stage now. And they're like, hints are. They're like, oh, is this your wife? And I'm like, no, brother, I'm single.
Tom Hinser: We always have to hit it on the head first up. Or we introduce each other, or, this is Natalie, my sister. And they're like, oh, right. Okay, got it.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, that's funny.
Nathan Bush: All right, and, and tell us about
Nathan Bush: how big Mr. Poolman is now. Tell us what, whatever you can, obviously, but growing from that single physical store and what you guys have grown it into now because it's incredible.
Tom Hinser: Yeah, yeah, we've, what we've done like at the moment. So We've got over 150,000 customers across Australia and quite a few actually international. This year was meant to be our international expansion, but, you know, whole world got a cold, so. So that kind of hit that one on the head. But no, we, we've got a team where we are. Nathalie also manages a digital team externally. All of our agencies and different marketing channels are digital and external. In the warehouse. I've got four guys in there myself at the moment. And that scales with seasonality as we're quite seasonal with summer and winter. So in, in winter we kind of cut it back. In summer we put on a couple of casuals and we, you know, obviously pick the best of the best to stay on full time and work them up into, you know, some sort of a leadership role. So that's kind of the, the main size of it.
Natalie Hinser: Yeah. And not that we don't respect our competitors and the territory, but we'd like to say that with our innovation and forward thinking, we are a, you know, not the number one but very aggressive competitor in the space.
Tom Hinser: Yeah, top, top three or four in Australia, I'd call it, like respectfully to our competitors as well. Some of them have been around a little bit longer than what we have, so we're very much the underdog, but we're, we're hungry for it. Yeah, yeah.
Nathan Bush: So tell us about some of that innovation. What are the things that you've done to take a pool supplies business and make it innovative and make it stand out against your competitors?
Natalie Hinser: Oh, I mean, it's not sexy, is it? It's not. It's not the sexiest industry. And the more we got into it, the more that we notice that a lot of the people in the industry are dad's age and that's no disrespect to them and where they've come from, but just the space that Thomas and I are in daily, what we listen to, what we see, the brands that we surround ourselves with, we do come to the space with fresh eyes and a fresh way of thinking. So we like to see a problem with the industry or the market and reverse engineer it and put it into action to make our consumers life easier. And I just think that differentiates us from the way that our competitors do things, which is a little bit more old school, not as agile, not as scalable to grow.
Nathan Bush: It kind of feels like that if you go onto your website and the thing that I first noticed was that you have free shipping Australia wide for all purchases, not over a threshold. And you've also got a 60 day return policy. I could imagine that that has to be baked into the business model rather than added on, if that makes sense.
Tom Hinser: Oh yeah, yeah.
Natalie Hinser: That's only changed recently with the shipping.
Tom Hinser: We definitely a b tested the shit out of that. Like it was something that we, that we toyed with. So originally for the first couple of years that we're online, we just shipped everything free. And that was probably a little bit of my mistake from the operational side of things. I didn't know our costings. So we're trying to be price competitive on some high ticket items like pool pumps, pool cleaners, that kind of stuff which are heavy and bulky. And we're trying to be competitive on price and offer free shipping is just dangerous. Like it's, it's a, it's a bad business model which we learned the hard way. So we, we revamped all that. We definitely now tested different shipping brackets. So orders over 50 bucks there was four, nine orders under 50 was 495 orders over 50 bucks was free unless it was bulky. So then on our product page we had the bulky products tagged with a bulky. You know, hey, this might incur a shipping charge but it just kind of even from a costings put all the price in the revenue aspect away from it. Like the user experience and also our internal experience with staff, trying to explain to staff what's bulky, what's not bulky. When someone calls up, they're like, is that free shipping? Where do you live? Oh, regional Victoria. Yeah, look, I'll have to check. It's just all too much. It's just like.
Natalie Hinser: And you get them over the line, they're at checkout and then they abandon it, you know, and you're like fucking, you weigh it up.
Tom Hinser: So yeah, so yeah, so we baked it in and recently like we've only just gone back live with free shipping and we've also reflected that through our terms and conditions and stuff like that and giving, giving people like explaining to them why we're doing free shipping. And it's just been so much better for us. Like we have, our AOVs gone up, our conversion rate's gone up, our abandons
Natalie Hinser: are next to nothing. Because when you think about it where a needs, not a want business, they are coming to us because something is broken on their pool and they need a replacement. So there's really no reason for them to abandon. The only reason they'll abandon is if they haven't, you know, if there's friction or they haven't been given the information or the price that they need. And that's where 60 Day Returns comes in as well. Just that added value proposition. If people return products to us, it's really our fault because they haven't been supplied with the information that they needed to make the correct purchase. So the 1% of returns that we do receive, that's why we offer 60 day just for that trust with our consumers. We almost use it as a feedback loop. What went wrong for them having to return this?
Nathan Bush: That's a really interesting way of looking at it. Hey. Because a lot of retailers only look at faulty returns as their own fault, faulty products as their own fault. Whereas you're going actually any return that comes back, it just didn't meet the customer's expectations. So that was a great way of looking at it. Yeah, yeah.
Tom Hinser: And even if it's like I say, a technical product, if they've purchased a technical product that hasn't suited their application, then we, then we break it down even further and look at it more from how can we build a system or a process out of that so our customer service staff know how to correctly size that product or we build out a size chart for that application, whether it be a pool pump with flow rates or a cartridge filter with filtration area and build out a system so it doesn't happen again. And we all, we build out more content. We'll do a YouTube video on how to use that product where this product is best suited to or even do just a product review video where we talk about that product and maybe pull out some key features of it it to highlight those kind of friction points and so people don't make that same mistake again.
Natalie Hinser: Yeah.
Nathan Bush: What does that customer feedback loop look like? Because I could imagine you're getting customer feedback because you across a whole bunch of social channels, you've got the reviews, you've got a lot of inputs there. Right. How do you prioritize what's important and what you can change at the moment?
Natalie Hinser: It tends to just come from mine and Thomas's idea of what is what is regularly being asked all the time. Because we are still so much over our customer service and our returns and we work so closely with those Teams still. Thomas is in the process of creating a help docs though, which actually houses our most frequently asked issues or questions that we get. So it's almost as while Thomas is creating that, he's thinking, oh shit, this actually is an issue. This maybe should be solved on the website rather than just answered as a question.
Tom Hinser: Yeah, yeah, exactly. So we've got a small team of customer service guys that help out but I very much am across the majority of it. Like watching their responses, looking at their tickets, the response times and then, yeah, building out like Nat said, any sort of FAQs or a information knowledge base about that particular product or that question that gets asked frequently. And we're now only probably in the next couple of months going to be start baking that into like a, we've got a chat, but baking it into the chat widget as an FAQ that pops up rather than them going straight away into chat.
Nathan Bush: Awesome.
Tom Hinser: They can then go through the faq. So that's, that's you know, benefit but
Natalie Hinser: just really, it's like it pays to because you know, as unsexy as customer service is and as much as you just want to develop the business and the brand and have the creative stuff or even like, you know, the operation side of it, like that's fun as well. It's just being down in with the customers and you really just get that gut instinct on. Oh, this is a popular question. Like even the more you grow, it's important to go back into customer service every year now and then, isn't it?
Nathan Bush: Yeah.
Nathan Bush: And I can imagine that as founders of such a fast growing business, there's so much stuff that you can look out on and go, we can do, we can do this, we can do this, we can do this. But actually having the discipline to stop and put processes around what you've already done to help the rest of the team behind you is a really smart move. Like it's often gets lost in businesses of the size of yours. Right?
Natalie Hinser: Yeah, that's exactly right.
Tom Hinser: Yeah. And that's, we've now weighed up whether like rather than continually putting on new stuff or more staff to handle inquiries, it's like, okay, how can we build a system? How can we build a procedure to make this work and work better? So like we've also got an internal, like a staff wiki that I call it. So from an internal point of view, how to do a refund, how to, how to create an order, all the questions that we've got from an operational point of view. So the guys Downstairs in the warehouse. If I'm not there, if I'm not available or they can just help themselves, they can go to the wiki and literally type in how to create a product, how to return a faulty product to the supplier. And then we've got a front facing help doc for our customers which is more like website based questions.
Nathan Bush: Yeah. Awesome. Now your social plays a really important role from what I can say and I love looking through your socials because they're all so different. Right. So for me, and tell me if I'm wrong, Nat, your Facebook is very much your how to, you know, your articles and pieces like that. Insta is just inspiration, just amazing. Pools all around the world. YouTube More of your education is that in a time when a lot of people say you really need consistency over your social media, is that a strategy of yours to kind of go, actually no, this channel's for this, this channel's for this. And they actually don't need to align perfectly.
Natalie Hinser: Look, not intentional. So not not intentional of the way that it's a strategy to specifically change it up per channel. The way that our socials look now, they're not aligned. This is literally a visual representation of head of Marketing wearing 10 different hats at any one time. As you grow the business, I'm sure a lot of our listeners can relate to that. I think our initial outlook on socials was we really want to help the customer. We really want to educate the customer on that was a massive gap in the pool market. They were always getting taken for a ride by the local pool shop. Let's get it out there with food free information. Then we kind of realize that the consumers, as much as you have your DIY moms and dads that love it, some of them just want to be a part of a community and then when it comes down to it, they just want the job done for them. So that's why we're kind of moving our content model not away from education but around creating a fun community, user generated content as well. And that's what you're more seeing on our Instagram. Right. Your inspirational pool. So we're kind of just throwing heaps of pickles at the wall at the moment and seeing what sticks. To be fair with socials. Yeah.
Nathan Bush: And tell us about those customers because I could imagine that you have such a wide range. Right. We used to at somewhere I used to work is used to have the DIY segment and then a D I F M which was a do it for me segment and then it kind of Kept evolving. So you're always talking to different people, right? No. And you, you just alluded to it. You're kind of in a similar boat there.
Natalie Hinser: Yeah, 100%. And that's where, you know, at first we just started off with, you know, because you build up your Personas, don't you, with the data that you know and the information that's provided to you. And we started off with, okay, we're talking to 35 to 55 year old mums and dads. Okay. There's a lot of younger homeowners these days. We're also Talking to your 20 to your 30 homeowners that own a pool sort of thing. Okay. You're talking to your people that want to do it themselves, take pride in their pool, talk about it with their neighbors. You know, they really like to be given the information. There's the people, there's a hole of water in my backyard. Do it for me. I just want to swim in it. And that's all. So then you kind of have four real specific groups. And that's what we're actually starting to work on at the moment is the segmentation, is the speaking to the different groups in the way that you should. So that's still, I wouldn't say gray, but learning in process.
Nathan Bush: Yeah. And when you start bringing those groups apart and looking at them as four individual groups, what kind of data are you really leaning upon there as a starting point?
Natalie Hinser: Yeah, so I mean, with the data, we're kind of, we're reversing back to the customers that we already have that are engaged with us. So rather than prospecting, we're focusing on farming, we're focusing on, okay, they're warm, they're familiar with the brand, what did they buy from us, what did, what was their first transaction, how long before they came back for their second transaction? And then what did they buy? Like how were they testing the waters with Mr. Poolman? So we can be proactive rather than reactive in helping them when they land on our socials, on our website, in our email flows. So it's kind of, I'd say buyer purchase data at the moment, anywhere from, you know, the likes of glue, ga, just quite simple platforms. Because analysis paralysis, the big thing with data, isn't it when you just put with a sea of data and you
Nathan Bush: don't know where to start, Absolutely massive. And I think you, that's the right approach, is to use the customers that you've already got and understand what the patterns are and the lifestyles that you can get out of your existing customers and try and expand on those. Right?
Natalie Hinser: Yeah.
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Nathan Bush: In terms of your marketing channels, what's working really well for you at the moment from a conversion perspective?
Natalie Hinser: Look, it's paid Google because we kind of did it backwards, didn't we? Not that there's no correct way, but we noticed that there was a huge section to disrupt on Google purely because it was kind of the age old. All of our competitors were on it. But again we just bought that fresh edge with fresh business insights to be able to apply that quite quickly. So that is our biggest driver. Second is email making up, you know, anywhere from 20 to in our peak 40% of our overall revenue. That has a lot of effort, a lot of automated flows, a lot of, you know, really great segmented campaigns as well. I'd say our flows, our automations are you know, 70% of the driver.
Tom Hinser: There's and it's only just getting started. You've only been working that for 12 months.
Natalie Hinser: 100% like because we're the reasonably newer agency now and they think the same way we do again throwing pickles at the wall, seeing what sticks. And lastly SEO. Holy shit. Like just such a massive space for disruption there.
Nathan Bush: Yeah.
Natalie Hinser: And our blogs are ranking so high.
Tom Hinser: Well, I think what we do with SEO is a little bit different is we try and use obviously blogs, but more like again a very more detailed help doc like rather than FAQs that would get on like a chat that pops up. It's a very in depth how to, how to do this, how to do that around your pool. It's for those homeowner or pool owners that want to learn how to do their maintenance or fix their pump, clean their filter, that kind of stuff. So we've actually, we've got a full time copywriter that is just churning out blogs for our SEO guys and they love it, they just think it's unreal.
Nathan Bush: Tell me a little bit more and then we'll move on from marketing but a little bit more about email. Cause I can imagine that if you find someone who buys with you that also has a pool, there's a bit of a gold mine there. Over many Years, right?
Natalie Hinser: Yeah.
Nathan Bush: What are the, some of the, what are some of the top flows that you find have really converted for you?
Natalie Hinser: Look, I think when we realized that we were a needs rather than a wants, we really started to double down on replenishments because our historical data, it sways and it pivots with trends, but predominantly it stays pretty true.
Nathan Bush: So.
Natalie Hinser: So you can pretty much predict when they're going to be needing their next spare part, complete setup or chemicals. Our post purchase series has been massive for us. So of course you've got your browsing cart abandonments, they're always going to be your best drivers. You've got a great welcome series, really making them feel a part of the family, of course, creating that connection. But then you've got a post purchase and with some basic business insights, you can predict that if they come in with a small ticket purchase, within 30 days, they're testing the waters. Within 30 days they're going to come back and purchase what they really need from you. So you really should be there ready for when they're ready to come back and make another purchase from you now that they trust you. Okay, they've purchased that. Do they need this in 47 days? They might need it again in 150 days. You know what I mean? Like, don't be afraid to continually stay in touch with them without annoying them. That's the sweet spot. Because then they'll just unsubscribe and you lose them all together.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, and it's not like you guys have data scientists or machine learning algorithms telling you all of this. Right. It's literally you going in there and trying to pick the patterns.
Natalie Hinser: Look, I think some really exciting things that have come from it again, and it just comes with progression. Initially it just started with us trying to pick apart the data the best that we could. Then we brought in a fantastic agency which picks apart the data even better than us and we can collaborate with them then, you know, Mr. Poolman, we are working with a data scientist at the moment to pilot a beta platform similar to glue, but a different type of business insight. And it's just been in this space and sparking those conversations. Great things can happen. So, yeah, we just. The more we progress, the more information we have available to us to make those quality decisions.
Nathan Bush: We can't leave the conversation without talking about the, the cough that the world got. According to you, Tom.
Tom Hinser: The world cold.
Nathan Bush: The world cold. So I shouldn't laugh because I've got a cold at the moment. I had to get one of the tests yesterday, it was just horrible. I'm fine. We're doing it remotely.
Natalie Hinser: Sneezing and you're farting.
Nathan Bush: Exactly. I had to cancel all my lunches and everything. I don't want to be that guy in the restaurant.
Tom Hinser: Yeah.
Nathan Bush: Covid hit around February, and I could imagine you guys as a summer business. Was that kind of perfect timing for you? If it had to happen end of summer, was that good timing? Yeah.
Tom Hinser: Yes and no. Like, we. And this is a question that everyone asks us purely because we're in the pool industry, was like, you know, have you guys been affected? Rah, rah. But it's kind of. We're trying to measure whether it was just a seasonal decline, which we do have every year. Like, we never. We never plateau. We never stay flat through winter. It always declines. So we're trying to figure out whether it was actually a seasonal decline. But then we did have actually a raise in sales when people started going to lockdown. Like, they still needed stuff for their pool. This is the glory of pools. Like, they don't get sick, so they still need chemicals. They still need the consumables, which we were getting out to them as quickly as possible. We had a little bit of a supply issue at first when obviously when actually China shut down, a lot of our. Obviously a lot of our products, a lot of our manufacturers and suppliers come from China. So there was initial. A little bit of a worry period there just about supply and demand, but that all came good. But, yeah, to answer the question, I don't think it was. It's obviously never ideal, but it didn't. It didn't impact us to a point where we thought, we're going to go under. No, we. We did. We did have to, you know, negotiate with our staff about work hours, that kind of stuff, and just try and fit in. We moved some of them working from home, the guys in the warehouse came in as required just to get the orders done and then we're out. So it was a whole different business strategy that as same as the world has never been faced with. We kind of just thought on our feet and tried to make things work as effectively and efficiently as possible. And relaying that to our customers the whole way through that, hey, look, you've placed an order. It might be an extra couple of days. The borders are closed. There might be an extra couple of days delivery. And obviously working with all our carriers, Australia Post and, you know, the couriers, to also negotiate and mitigate those risks,
Natalie Hinser: then could I say that was our strength as well like, you know, we kind of in a way felt bad with how well we were able to pivot that meme that was going around with Ross from friends moving the couch around the corner. Pivot, pivot like every business was feeling like. But we'd worked hard to create that flexible structure to be able to pivot and be flexible quite quickly to changes. So like Thomas said, with operations, we managed to get it under wraps quite quickly. And in terms of marketing, our first time consumers were up 60%, you know, and, but then there's an, there's the added pressure of well, what are you going to do with that increased traffic? So obviously online is our strength. Great. You're getting traffic in their first time. What are you going to do with all these new consumers? Like you'd want to hope that you've got things in place to be able to capture that new audience. So I think we're all in the same boat with how quickly can you
Nathan Bush: adapt in terms of your channel, sales channels? You've got obviously the websites are directed direct to consumer and you're still in your marketplaces. Did you notice any difference in direct to consumer versus marketplace behavior over that time?
Tom Hinser: Yeah, I think we, we definitely saw or we saw marketplaces increase because I think also marketplaces were doing a lot of marketing themselves, advertising that they are the place to go for shopping during COVID that kind of stuff. So look, our, our product assortment actually varies between marketplaces and our website. So we've got obviously all of our products on our website, but we have a refined product assortment on our marketplaces purely for the fact like that they're happy to take a clip on the sales. So we don't have a lot of high ticket products on there or high value products especially like some more of the technical items. We like to ensure the customer comes through our funnel purely from a, not even a revenue point of view, from a customer service point or customer experience point of view, but also knowing or making sure they buy the right product for their application. Obviously marketplaces are great if you know what you want and you're price driven because you'll find it on there. But if you don't know what you want or you need some advice, you don't go through ebay or Kogan to find out that technical specs of suiting to your application. It's just, it's a long winded way to go.
Natalie Hinser: So say, to answer your question then we did notice an increase in data, say through our website, didn't we?
Tom Hinser: Yeah, yeah, well, yeah, across all channels. But it was a different kind of inquiry. Like through our website it was more technical because that's the way we're trying to bring them through is more technical. Where marketplaces was more just this is what I need, get it to me kind of thing. Just replacement parts.
Nathan Bush: So guys, as relatively young founders, this is probably the most important, exciting question for me and, and one we throw around. What's been your biggest up that you've made with Mr. Pool man and that you've learned from and that you'd like to share with everyone?
Natalie Hinser: Cutting corners.
Tom Hinser: That's, that's still a sore point, isn't it? Obviously everyone, everyone has their ups. We've had some monumental ones ourselves from, from me buying too much stock and having to return it to suppliers.
Nathan Bush: So literally, literally send it back.
Tom Hinser: Yeah, like literally it was a couple of hundred thousand dollars and lucky they were Australian. Yeah.
Natalie Hinser: China.
Tom Hinser: Yeah. It wasn't, it wasn't Chinese. And that was my first one that I made probably a couple of years ago and dad actually made me do that all on my own bat. So he. I had to make the call, call the national sales manager and be like, mate, I up. This is what I've done, this is what I need to do. And they're actually quite receiving of it because I did it in a timely manner before the bill was due and they could see that it was genuine and they were actually quite surprised at the order I placed at the time as well. So I hired a truck and I drove all the stock back, dropped it
Natalie Hinser: off and you know, in marketing we've all run a campaign which you thought you were doing, you know, overall 500% budget, but it was actually per day, 500 budget. We've all done that before accidentally. And then all of a sudden you got a five thousand dollar bill for this social campaign. You're like, what? I thought it was a 500 budget on that. And Thomas looks at it and goes ah, that was daily.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, yeah, I think everyone's kind of made that one. Hey.
Tom Hinser: Yeah.
Nathan Bush: Yeah.
Tom Hinser: So that was probably our first two bit ones. Yeah, first two. And then like I think the biggest one of, of recent was more. We didn't know our numbers as a business. As Nathan, I wear all the hats from accounting and you know, stock management, marketing, hr, all of that, we were all growing at like trying to grow at the same level and we didn't know our numbers based on marketing, based on inventory, based on margin. So we've spent literally the last 16 months getting those numbers down pat previously to that we weren't, we weren't. Well, we were, we were going backwards for some time and we couldn't figure out why. And it was because we didn't know our numbers, we didn't know the true cost of goods sold, that kind of stuff. So it was literally to the point where we had to just stop everything, stop the bleeding, stop the marketing spend, stop buying stock, stop selling. Like we just, there was a period there for about six weeks where we literally put the business on pause. This is before we got to the size that we were thankfully and we didn't know our numbers. And we got to learn them, got to learn them really quick. And we've been improving them now literally month on month. We sit down, we have a monthly audit as such. I go over profit margins, stock on hand, stock turns, days to supply, like trying to get all these metrics down pat. And we've also looked at various platforms like Google Glue, data analytics and studios and that kind of thing. But at the end of the day no one's going to help you except yourself. Like unless you sit down and just get your head around it, nobody's going to come in and show you the right way. So that was our biggest fuck up was growing broke. But we'll thankfully able to grab it in time.
Natalie Hinser: Yeah and like, you know, we learned from that. We'll never do that again, will we? You know, and it's all, it's the unsexy part. Everyone always talks about revenue, like how much money you turning over. And in essence that is the last figure that you look at. There's so many building blocks that come up to build that revenue house. And if your structure is shaky, your revenue is just not going to be there for long, is it? Because you know sooner or later you'll find yourself breaking even. Hopefully. But even going backwards in worst case scenarios, I mean just getting down to that unsexy stuff to actually good understanding.
Tom Hinser: But the interesting thing is once you start getting to know it, it gets interesting.
Natalie Hinser: It's not as daunting.
Tom Hinser: I'm really enjoying it now. Like I enjoy the thought of every month putting together a report, you know, for all of us at work going, hey look guys, this is what our margins at. And we have now like increased our margin exponentially to meet these needs, the growing business and, and doing all that. So it's, it's great. And you know, I've also been able to establish a good rapport with our suppliers because when we did up, I did have to say to them hey guys, I've got to pay this account down over time. I don't have the money for this right now. And I've been able to prove ourselves to them as well, that, yeah, these young kids, hey, they're up, but they've stuck to their word. We've made a payment plan, we've paid our bills, we've done everything on time in schedule and like, you know, it's, it's all fixed itself back up.
Natalie Hinser: And I'd say I just add on to that one more thing too. So like UPS is, yeah. Not knowing your accounts, like, like really your accounts as well. Like not only your operations but with your marketing teams as well. What are you getting as a return on your spend? Like it's not all just fluffy creative stuff, but also expecting people to give a fuck as much as you do. And I say that with love and respect. I say that because especially if you are working with external agencies, you are naive to think that, you know, they don't have anyone else on in their day. And if you don't come to them with that structure, corners will be cut and that is your responsibility as a manager of those teams. And I'd say our biggest fuck up is thinking that we can cut corners. So thinking we can get other people to grow facets of the business the way that we'd like to see them grow. Without us first understanding the language to be able to communicate with that team effectively, you just, you can't cut corners. It just, it comes back. And yes to delegating. Absolutely. And scaling and growing the business, but get your hands dirty first.
Nathan Bush: Yep. That's such great advice. That's great advice. I love everything there. So there was time. I didn't want to interrupt because you guys were on such a roll there. If I knew I should have just opened the podcast and said, tell us your fuck ups. We could have had a whole episode of you guys just talking and giving like this golden advice.
Tom Hinser: We'll do an episode too,
Nathan Bush: but on the metrics 1. I was just going to say, if anyone's really interested in diving a little bit further into that, the episode early on in Add to Cart with Jason Andrew is really great. He talks a lot around how to go through profitability rather than revenue as a vanity metric.
Tom Hinser: So, Jason, my man, shout out to you.
Nathan Bush: Yeah.
Natalie Hinser: Absolute legend. Legend in the ecom accounting space.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, absolutely. All right, guys, what is next for Mr. Pullman? I know you've got a lot going on. You mentioned before international, but I know that's only part of it. What else is on your radar?
Tom Hinser: I think I'll cover off the operations kind of side of things. We. I'm trying to now have a bit of a shift with our procurement, with our products obviously to Australian made where we can. We're finding that there's a big call for people that want to buy Australian, understandably. So. So I'm trying to work with a number of manufacturers here in Australia to get products and equipment here procured locally. So that's obviously Water Technics. That's our own brand, Water Technics, which we started. So that's further developing that. We're covering just the basic products now with that brand, but eventually would like to be able to sink more money into like R D and bring out products for the pool industry.
Nathan Bush: Manufacturing from China.
Tom Hinser: Yeah, yeah, Manufacturing from China, yeah. Product, cleaning products, parts, equipment. Basically we started Water Technics as a bit of a middle finger to our industry because our industry is at the time was so behind the eight ball and they still are. They're against E commerce and again, due respect to them, if they're listening to this, but they're trying to support the bricks and mortar pool shops which I think in traditional retail ways is unhealthy, understandable. But these bricks and mortar pool shops around Australia, they've got no interest to be coming or to get online themselves. They don't want to know about the Internet. So I don't understand why they're getting supported. Like you either get with the times or get out kind of thing. Like it's the revolution of the world. It's not just us having a, having a crack, trying to change history. It's the way the world's going and you either adapt and evolve or yeah, you get out. So that was us. They, they put a lot of limitations on what we can or can't sell online with their products, with their brand, which, you know, that's their brand, that's their product. Fine. Natalie and I were then like, well, we need to become, we need to fill this gap. Let's do our own product, let's do our own brand. So we came up with water techniques, went through the whole trademark, the ip, got all that sorted and now we're, we're slowly growing the assortment. So, you know, cleaning equipment, leaf scoops, that kind of stuff up to pool,
Natalie Hinser: pool pumps, pretty much every category, basic coverage in every main pool category.
Tom Hinser: Yeah. And then as I said, like we'd like to then do a little bit more R D. So, you know, we're Always going to have manufacturing or part of manufacturing in China. I don't think we're ever going to be able to get away from that. A lot of chemical manufacturing happens in China just because of the costs associated over there are much cheaper than Australia and the safety. And then the other aspect of the business that I'd like to see develop a little bit more in the future is more sustainability within. Mr. Poolman. It's, it's a big project and I know there's a couple of other econ businesses that we look up to that are part of B Corp. But we're going to look at a little bit more B Corp. It's a bit of a process. It's not something you want to, you need to rush. I've looked at the, you know, qualifications so after summer when we get a little bit quieter, next year in winter I'll probably try and further, further push the sustainability. Mr. Poolman. Also around our packaging, eco packaging, reusable stuff, all that kind of thing. Like at the moment we're fully paperless in the workplace so our pick packing is all done by scanners. There's no sort of pick slips or invoices printed. Everything's done electronically. So that side of things is already covered. But we want to get more sustainable with the business. Choose a charity or a fund to support and do and drive that side of the business.
Nathan Bush: What do you think will be the hardest piece to change to hit B Corp status for your business?
Tom Hinser: Their list is pretty extensive.
Nathan Bush: I looked at it the other day,
Tom Hinser: I thought oh yeah, I'll try and wrap this up before, before summer's here. I looked at it and I was like, no, that, that's going on, that's going on the back burner. No, I think, I think it's a great, I think it's a great organization. I really want to be part of it because I want the business to be sustainable. I want the business to be also reputable. And I think it's also a great point for customers to see that in a business as well that we, we actually care, we care about not only environment, about our staff, our culture, the products that we're sourcing, the products that we're selling, how we're getting them to your door. So it's definitely something. But yeah, and I actually appreciate that it is a hard process to go through because otherwise everyone would be on it and it lose its value. So yeah, it's a double edged sword, 100%.
Natalie Hinser: And I'd say, you know, with marketing we've got your data driven innovation and what we mean by that is like we said at the start of the pod, listening to the consumers and walking and working backwards and also having those business insights resources and using them correctly to make the end consumer's life easier, which is what we're here for, of course. And then of course it comes full circle to us running a business. But then also personalization as well. Everyone's special these days, aren't they? And everyone knows they're being marketed to. And a cookie cutter, one size fits all just doesn't cut it anymore. Whether that's an ad, whether that's a homepage, you really want to be proactive rather than reactive to the consumer. So just looking into the personalization side of things with Consumer's journey with Mr. Poolman makes a difference.
Nathan Bush: And when you talk personalization, are you coming at it from a technology or a content or offer or product perspective?
Natalie Hinser: Yeah, coming all I guess, I mean at the moment, of course we've been focusing on personalization through emails, definitely through not only our campaigns but our post purchase flows. You want that to be personal and speak to the consumer. Wow, they really know me. But also the website is what we're working on at the moment too. So they just like your Amazons or your Netflix. It updates to you the more that it knows about you. YouTube, you know, it's, it's already out there.
Tom Hinser: That's going to go live shortly, isn't it?
Natalie Hinser: Yeah.
Tom Hinser: You've got your homepage going live, correct?
Natalie Hinser: Yeah, over the next two or three months we've got that, we've got that heading and it was just meant to be a homepage redesign and now working personalization into it. So yeah, exciting times.
Nathan Bush: And that website, is that a Shopify website?
Natalie Hinser: Yes, Shopify plus represent anyone who can't
Nathan Bush: say them, they're both rocking the Shopify plus hoodies. We might take a photo and put it up on, on the gram later.
Tom Hinser: Yeah, no, we love the, we love the plus community. I think, I think I've got everyone on, on the Shopify Plus Connected on LinkedIn. So no, I love the guys there. And shout out to our, our MSM Paul. So he does a good job keeping us aligned because sometimes we just kind of go off on a tangent. He's like, God, hold on. Like you're not gym shark. Let's just, let's just run it in.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, but if you have to, if you have to listen to his bad, bad dad jokes, then you know you're allowed to go off on Tangents you're familiar with, Paul?
Natalie Hinser: Yeah, no, we, like, we. We froth, like not only the platform and working on it, but just what
Tom Hinser: they're about and the people. Yeah, especially even like the. All the five plus guys here in Australia. Just unreal. Like, if you're. If you're a merchant thinking of signing up, if you're a merchant that is signed up, just the community in there as well. Like, everyone's open to talking. Everyone's. It's like they've got a no dickhead policy when they sign people up. I swear, like, it's. It's that you're either a good fit or you're not. And if you're not, you won't know about any of the events that they do.
Nathan Bush: So.
Tom Hinser: No, it's good now. We love it.
Nathan Bush: Awesome. And I can't let you go, Nat, without giving a plug for your podcast that you've. That you've had up and running. Tell us about that and the idea behind it.
Natalie Hinser: Yeah, I mean, so no fkn idea. No idea. Originally, it started as mine and Thomas's podcast. We wanted to make it into a business podcast. We named it no Idea as a space to share our fuckups. Essentially, business got really busy. We kind of got. Kind of got put on the back burner and I said to Thomas, hey, look, I personally am just craving these really deep connections lately. I kind of want to open the space up, but more as a personal podcast rather than so much business. Of course. Thomas was like, yeah, 100%, like, go for it. You know, we can mold it to any way, any way we want in the future. So anyway, I jumped on and we deal with so many cool people in the space. I thought it was really nice to be able to give them a place to talk as a person rather than just business and really get to know them.
Nathan Bush: No F K N idea is the podcast. If anyone wants to go online and check it out, it's very clear to me that you guys both have a. A relentless focus on customer and it's Dr. A lot of the success that you have had already and are going to have in the future. And I think he's just such an inspiration for Australian entrepreneurs who are looking to start something of their own and growing into something massive. The way you've disrupted a whole industry is fantastic. So congratulations, guys and thank you so much for sharing everything that you have today.
Tom Hinser: Thanks, Bushy. Thanks for having us, mate. It's unreal.
Natalie Hinser: Yeah, thanks, Bushy. Pleasure being here. Thanks for having us on. Really appreciate it.
Nathan Bush: Let me give you a little insight on Nat and Tom. So our phone call finishes and they immediately hang up. Usually guests stick around for a little
Nathan Bush: bit longer to have a chat around
Nathan Bush: how the conversation went and what they felt, but they immediately left and I
Nathan Bush: was like, wow, they're pretty busy.
Nathan Bush: They're onto it. But two seconds later they call back and Tom calls and he says that he and Nathan that haven't moved. They want to discuss how the podcast went and what I'd recommend for them in how they best tell their story. That's never happened before. They weren't looking for praise. They were genuinely looking for how they can improve their storytelling and how they share what they tell the world about their business and their mistakes and their learning. And for me, this was a great insight on how Mr. Poolman has shifted the pool category. Tom and Nat are endlessly curious. You can even see on Nat's Instagram profile, it actually says endlessly curious. You can see the energy of them shift when we started talking about those fuck ups. They don't see these as mistakes, but opportunities which has made them better. They share these fuck ups with others and in return, others open up about them. I love this mindset. Endlessly curious.
Nathan Bush: Thanks for listening.
Nathan Bush: And until next time, keep adding to cartoon.
