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[Voiceover]: Welcome to the checkout. We catch up with previous add to cut guests and ask them five quick questions to get to know them better and leave you with a little extra inspiration to get through your Friday. Here's your host, Bushy.
[Ad]: Today's checkout features Karen and Aaron Langer, founder and CEO of Arms of Eve. Arms of Eve is a jewelry and accessories brand that channels self expression. Starting life at the Sydney markets, Arms of Eve now boasts celebrity customers such as Margot Robbie and Hailey Bieber and is soon to open its fourth and its fifth store.
Nathan Bush: Aaron and Kerry, thank you so much for joining us on the checkout. I can't wait to get to know more about both of you. We had a brilliant chat in our main episode around what established with Arms of Eve how you started in the Sydney markets and have expanded into the iconic into close to five retail stores now and being seen on some of the biggest celebrities around the world. Incredible story. But let's learn more about you both. I've got five quick questions. Okay, let's go Number one, what's the weirdest thing that you've ever bought online?
Aaron Langer: Oh, that's got to be me because.
Kerryn Langer: Oh yeah, for sure.
Aaron Langer: One of the recent things was if you should ever find yourself in your car trapped underwater.
Kerryn Langer: Oh my God. Oh my God.
Aaron Langer: It's a device that breaks the window so you can escape.
Nathan Bush: Okay, is this like driven by a phobia? A nightmare?
Aaron Langer: It's driven by being the black hole of the Internet.
Kerryn Langer: And what about that breath thing you wanted to get the other night and
Aaron Langer: tell yourself you could breathe into it and test your metabolism on what you need that day? If it's protein or carb, I'm like,
Kerryn Langer: why don't you just eat less? How about testing that?
Aaron Langer: Okay, too much information.
Nathan Bush: The magic bullet. Just give us, tell us what we've got to do. I love it. They're Great. And you surprised me because we were talking about how to record this with two people at once. I'm like, oh, look, you can do it different laptops. And you're like, don't worry, I got it sorted. And you've gone out and you've found the awesome mics where you can both record into one. Like, oh, thank you. Done. Done your shopping for me. So now I'm going to be recommending what you've bought.
Aaron Langer: I'll send you the link for that as well.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, thanks for doing my work. All number two. Which retailer has most inspired you recently?
Kerryn Langer: I think Mecca. I mean, they like, they blow me away, I think. Yeah. Maybe because my daughter's so obsessed and I spend so much money there and so do I actually. Let's be real. Yeah, I think they're brilliant. Then they're kind of never on sale. They've got a brilliant curation of products. Their staff is so that, you know, the experience is excellent, their website's excellent. There's so many things that I think they're doing a brilliant job.
Nathan Bush: Are you an in store shopper at Mecca?
Kerryn Langer: Yeah, both. I'm both.
Nathan Bush: Both?
Kerryn Langer: Yeah, both. I gift a lot of omnichannel. Yeah, Yeah. I do see a guy who's now
Nathan Bush: like, I'm all omnichannel. I'm all there.
Kerryn Langer: Yeah, we are all omni. Omni cousin. Okay, let's go. I think Mecca is amazing.
Nathan Bush: It's like we're creating an omni religion. I love it. Name a piece of tech that you or your e commerce business couldn't live without.
Aaron Langer: All right, I wouldn't say it's a piece of tech. I'd say it's a person full of tech. It's a developer. You can have your Shopify theme, but at the end of the day it only can do so much. And when you continue to evolve as a business and you really want things to be more customized, the only way you can do that is with code. And if you don't have a good developer who really understands what you're trying to achieve from conversion rate and experience and UI and ux, but that code is everything. So having a developer that you can pick up the phone or send an email to is gold.
Nathan Bush: So you're on Shopify. We are. And a lot of people, well, Shopify thing is that it's making E commerce accessible to a lot of people that may not have previously been able to code or understand the tech. And all of a sudden sudden E commerce store, obviously that reaches a Point where if you want to differentiate your brand you need to do the customizations. Where do you spend most of your time customizing that? You need a developer for the add
Kerryn Langer: to cart, the checkout phase, the clean in putting clean out, putting loyalty like
Aaron Langer: engraving, like navigation, almost every aspect like we have touched and custom. It's very heavily customized. I mean the theme that we used is not necessarily a Shopify theme, it's more, it's a. It's from a place called in the sandbox or out of the Sandbox, I'm not sure. And it's a theme that is really like customizable, like highly customizable. So we wanted ultimate flexibility. But in order to make any changes like you do need, you do need to have a developer who's able to do those changes. So and you know developers, there's developers and there's developers, you know, like there's people that are good at certain things and really not good at other things. So it's really about understanding like what your needs are and what you really need from that developer in order to choose that developer.
Kerryn Langer: And the communication between that is essential.
Aaron Langer: Well the project, the project management around developers. You know, because you don't hear from
Kerryn Langer: a developer for a few days or
Aaron Langer: like how I went down that black hole and found that device to break glass. If you're underwater like developers can go down a path and it could, it could take weeks. And you have to really understand that because it's at the end of the day it's cost and you really need to. You want to get things live. So it's really that balance and with
Nathan Bush: your focus on continual improvement and small changes and done is better than perfect. What's your preferred relationship with a developer? Is it in house? Agency offshore? Where do you see that relationship at all?
Aaron Langer: We have been everywhere. We've used the sort of upwork resources that are in some foreign country amazing. We you know it's which worked for us to get to a point, you know. But I think like when you, your business is reaching different levels of maturity, you need different things. Right now we're searching for like an agency that we're constantly can work with that's on the same time zone that you know we can project manage quite tightly, you know, eventually love to have in house. Like that's the biggest, that's the dream. Yeah, we'll geek out on that.
Kerryn Langer: Like I'll even geek out on that. I'll even like join.
Nathan Bush: You know.
Aaron Langer: To have a developer sitting in our office is like the biggest Dream ever.
Kerryn Langer: Best friends forever.
Nathan Bush: But moving. You know, I like your point there around. As you, as you evolve as a business, it moves almost from a resource to a partner to a team.
Aaron Langer: Absolutely.
Nathan Bush: Yeah. All right, number four, can you recommend a book or a podcast that our listeners should immediately get into?
Aaron Langer: Oh, there's, there's a lot out there.
Kerryn Langer: That book, we were just saying, Diary
Aaron Langer: of CEO is pretty awesome because it's to the point.
Kerryn Langer: I love it. Our friend gave it to us.
Aaron Langer: Really digestible, very easy. Yeah, but you're a podcast person.
Kerryn Langer: Yeah, mine are all very self helpy. I mean, I love them.
Aaron Langer: I, we listen to a lot of Jay Shetty interviews.
Kerryn Langer: Well then I go find the people that he's interviewing and then go down their podcast and then down their rabbit hole. I'm all about your self improvement and trying to be more Zen without the kai. Even with the small improvements of being more Zen.
Aaron Langer: You know, there's so much out there, but I think it's about finding things that are really like, you can really relate to. And when, when you find that thing, it's like it feeds you. It's like such good information because you're out there. You know, we're all running these, these D2C businesses and you feel like you're in this abyss. But there's a lot of information out there.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, there is, there is. And I think, I think you're right is that you can't listen to everything. You've got to find the ones that really resonate with you and they're your people. Almost like.
Aaron Langer: Absolutely, yeah. You're our people, Nath.
Nathan Bush: You're our people now too. Like you're part of the game. All right, number five, what is your biggest challenge today?
Aaron Langer: Balance is good, you know, especially for us. Husband and wife, partners, kids, parents, teenage
Kerryn Langer: kids, or like teening.
Aaron Langer: I think our, the, the biggest challenge goes to our therapist.
Nathan Bush: I.
Kerryn Langer: Employee. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Aaron Langer: I mean, I think, I think what Carrie said is right. It's balance, you know, like I'm now as addicted to the business as Carrie was when she started it. And you know, we're living this kind of this, this same life right now. So it's really about carving out space.
Kerryn Langer: Yeah, it's a bit enmeshed. So we trying to kind of, you
Aaron Langer: know, it's like this trip to visit our suppliers. Like we are really a meshing, you know, it's, it's, it's a family holiday.
Kerryn Langer: Slash, we are going to Mongolia. We are doing a three day family where there's no tech Yurt.
Aaron Langer: We're flying up north to Inner Mongolia and sleeping in yurts and horseback riding.
Kerryn Langer: And long as you take our tech out, we're good.
Aaron Langer: Off the grid. Off the grid completely.
Nathan Bush: I love it. I love it. I could imagine, like, I've got no idea, you know, how you create those boundaries between everything, because whether it is kids, whether it's the business, there's always so much more you feel you can be doing. And when do you go, enough's enough? Like, where do you draw the line?
Aaron Langer: To be honest, we draw the line when enough is enough at the end of a day. But, like, it never ends. The inbox is never emptied. Like it's. And you know what? I think that that's how life needs to be. Like, there's always things to do.
Kerryn Langer: Yeah.
Aaron Langer: And there's never a dull moment.
Nathan Bush: Yeah. I love it. And that's the theme we got out of our main conversation, which I loved, is around that continuous improvement. Things never stop evolving, never stop changing. There's always going to be more to improve on and I think you guys are doing that so well. So thank you so much, Kerry and Aaron for joining us on the checkout. It's been a pleasure to get to know you.
Aaron Langer: Thanks, Nathan.
Kerryn Langer: Thank you so much.
Aaron Langer: Thank you.
[Ad]: To hear more from Keren and Aaron, jump back into episode 431 where Kerry and Aaron share why they love the Japanese concept of Kaizen and how they apply it in their business to make continual little changes, even when it isn't perfect. We discuss their multi generational customers and what they do to cater with customers who range from Gen Z all the way through to Baby Boomers. And we get nerdy talking about some of the most recent changes they've made online to simplify their user journey and increase conversion. Thanks for listening. And until next time, keep adding to cart.
