Speaker A: Welcome to the checkout. We catch up with previous add to cart guests and ask them five quick questions to get to know them better and leave you with a little extra inspiration to get you through your Friday.
[Voiceover]: Today's checkout features Rosa Claire Willis and Andrew Ford, co founders of DIY Pottery kits Crocked. Rosa and Andrew are on a mission to help friends and family have real connections through the power of creativity. They're both from a startup and UX background, but they only launched croc'd two years ago and are now selling across Australia, Europe and the U.S. even more impressive, what started as a physical setup within the warehouse and an office on the Gold coast is now a fully remote team scattered across the world, ready for scale. Rosa and Andrew Louis learned a lot
Nathan Bush: about CROCT in our main episode and now we're here to learn a little bit more about you guys. So five quick questions for you. Number one, what's the weirdest thing that
Andrew Ford: you've ever bought online? I work a lot on the couch and the laptop gives me like, I don't know why, but I just keep pushing through when my neck is rooted. And one time I bought one of those random devices that like straps around your legs and then to the back of your neck.
Rosa-Clare Willis: It was weird.
Andrew Ford: And it looks like you're in a circus.
Rosa-Clare Willis: Like it looked like a weird, like text outfit. It was weird.
Nathan Bush: He says it's for the laptop.
Rosa-Clare Willis: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Andrew Ford: I put one of those rubber balls in my mouth.
Nathan Bush: So you work from home? Work from home has benefits. Yeah.
Andrew Ford: Oh yeah, that's probably my one. Rosa laughed at it. I got scared and put it in the cupboard. Never seen it again.
Rosa-Clare Willis: Yeah, he also bought like a 50 foot cat towel once too. It really freaked me out.
Andrew Ford: Yeah, yeah, I did do that.
Nathan Bush: Did you have a cat? Yeah.
Rosa-Clare Willis: I thought when he was in the outfit.
Andrew Ford: Off you go, Roiza.
Rosa-Clare Willis: I honestly, I don't know what my weirdest thing I brought online is. I don't really shop online.
Andrew Ford: No. Which is weird.
Rosa-Clare Willis: Yeah, I know. Weird. We have an income.
Nathan Bush: It's just a fad. Anyway, don't worry about it. Number two, who is your favorite retailer?
Rosa-Clare Willis: We love Allbirds. We always look up to Allbirds as a leader in the industry and of course go to skinwear. Here's yours.
Andrew Ford: I think Lulu is doing a pretty good job at the moment, especially over in the States. Like their retail experience is pretty bang on. Also like Peloton in the States, crazy. Like their marketing and then they're in store experience. We see other ones like I think, who cares? They're over in the States. But Casper, like, we saw they had a really cool online presence and they have. Then they opened up these storefronts and it's just such an underwhelming experience, such a disconnect. You just felt like you're walking into like an old school, like David Jones or something like that. It was just such a disconnect. So, yeah, there's a couple of really cool US brands we saw over in
Nathan Bush: the States, Lulu and Peloton, obviously doing a really good job at combining that apparel and tech world all together to be one experience. All right, number three, which E commerce practice do you wish was history?
Rosa-Clare Willis: Discounting. I am sick of it. Stop doing it. You're driving everyone, all of us down.
Andrew Ford: Something else that just looks rubbish is like the permanent like strikethroughs. Like, if you think that, like your price hasn't changed on your website in two years, like, why have you got a strike through price? Like, I feel sorry for these consumers. It's like, oh, this used to be $180 and now it's 80. Oh, really? Wow. Just for today. That's cool. It's just rubbish and it looks shit. Yeah. Just tell them the price and be honest about it and sell your product properly based on its benefit.
Rosa-Clare Willis: Yeah.
Nathan Bush: So how do you guys, if you come to a point where it's either Black Friday or it's like you've got to shift a whole bunch of product quickly. Do you do anything else promotional wise to get around that? That's not discounting. Or you just go harder with.
Rosa-Clare Willis: We've doubled, like we've done a whole bunch of different stuff. So this Black Friday was the first time we've ever run a discount because, you know, we were super keen to just kind of learn and we decided that kind of last min we tried different things like adding value before. Like we'll throw in a free messmat with every order and all that kind of stuff. But really what we learned this year was when you do on Black Friday offer a discount, that average car order does go way, way up. So you're actually not really losing out too much. But we don't really have a problem when like people are trying to move, like move like maybe seasonal stock or stuff like that. It's more about the permanent discounting. It's like that permanent like bait that people have their website for an evergreen product. It just doesn't make sense. So, yeah, that's kind of what we are more specifically anti.
Nathan Bush: Yep. Makes total Sense. All right, number four, can you recommend a book or a podcast that our listeners should immediately get into ADD to? Cut.
Rosa-Clare Willis: We actually do love you. And we also really love listening to How I Built this. So we often pretend like we're on that podcast.
Andrew Ford: We like, dream about the day we're speaking at Nathan Bush.
Nathan Bush: See, Guy called me up and he said, can you start add to cart? Because it's like the warm up, warm up experience for How I Built this.
Andrew Ford: Yeah, I think how I built this is what. Well, you must have listened to almost every episode of that. We've dedicated so many hours to listen to that. And often when we can't be bothered talking to each other anymore because we've done a 14 hour day, like, we'll stick the podcast on Go for a walk, and we'll just smash an episode out of that. So.
Rosa-Clare Willis: And sometimes when, like, we've made a massive step up, like, I sent like a bit of a raunchy email accidentally to corporates once, and it's like, even though it seems so horrible, all we hear is like, Guy Raz's voice. And I had go like, so you sent a sex email to 5,000 employees? And we're like, yeah, Guy. And then we wrote like it.
Andrew Ford: Yeah, we did. And we came back. We came back strong.
Rosa-Clare Willis: We rehearsed it all the time.
Nathan Bush: Next up on npr.
Rosa-Clare Willis: That was good.
Andrew Ford: So we just. We kind of like replay that all the time. The other one, I mean, everyone's read this, but like the four hour work week, I, although corny and kind of a little bit cringe these days, so it's worthwhile just revisiting that, seeing how ahead of the time that was, especially in this day and age. And every time I read it, I just start skimming more and more, but I pick up one or two little points and I think, like, growing a remote business and some of the things that we've done in CROC have been a direct impact of reading that book over and over.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, I agree. I agree. It is corny when you read it, but then if you keep it on your bookshelf and you just flick open now and again, there's some really good practical tips in there. Last one I've got for you. Finish this sentence. The future of retail is fucked.
Rosa-Clare Willis: The future of retail is a hundred percent AI. Like, it already blows my mind.
Andrew Ford: Like, if you're not, we've just been like, drilling over this. But like, this metaverse shit that people are talking about, that is the future. Like, yeah, sticking on a VR headset and walking down a virtual retail walkway. It may not be for five years or whatever, maybe sooner, but that is a future. Like, if you're not already starting to under. If there's kids in uni right now who aren't interested in that, then you may as well quit, because I think that's. That's a place to be.
Rosa-Clare Willis: There's so much, too, that we, like, think that the metaverse is probably going to be so good for the world because a lot of what we see people buying now is just a status symbol. Right. It's not actually functional to make themselves feel better. So how much better? When you're in this virtual world and you can put glasses on and you can actually see that people are wearing their status symbols, but they're not impacting the environment. Like, as lame as it is. Like, fucking buy that. Is it an nfc? NFC hat. Buy that. At least it's not going to end up in landfill. But, like, it's just. I think it's going to be a super interesting space to go into.
Andrew Ford: I think, for us just quickly, like, if you. This digital ecom world and this digital marketing world is changing so quickly. If you're. If you're kind of not an early adopter, you'll very quickly get left behind. Like, there are. There are kids coming out of uni now who know digital marketing and the new age of digital marketing better than we do. But we're not. We. We don't try and shy away from that fact. We'd love to work with them. But if you're not an early adopter in this space and you're not kind of thinking ahead and getting on these trains early, then I think the lifespan is kind of limited. Right? Yeah.
Nathan Bush: And just think about the benefits. You can do pottery without getting your hands dirty.
Andrew Ford: That's the whole idea. I actually think it'll go the other way.
Rosa-Clare Willis: That's why we need pottery.
Andrew Ford: I actually think it'll push people more towards, like, tangible arts and crafts as well. So I think the harder you go in the virtual world, the harder people have to slingshot back and come back into, like, real immersive, deep, like, dirty activities. So we want to be in both places.
[Voiceover]: Spoken like true.
Nathan Bush: Founders Andrew and Rosa, thank you so much for joining us on the checkout.
Rosa-Clare Willis: Thank you so much.
[Voiceover]: To hear more from Rosa and Andrew, jump back into episode 150, where they share their UX tips for how to create a website that converts without breaking the budget. They also share their insights from their recent New York adventure where they had to make some changes to the croc'd offering to adapt to the market. And best of all, well, best from my opinion, they share their unpopular opinions about the world at large, including buy now, pay later and discounting. Might surprise you some of their opinions that are unpopular because they're unpopular opinions. Thanks for listening and until next time, keep adding to cartoon.
