Edwina Cameron: Gosh, we live in a beautiful country, let's hang it up on our walls. There was that sort of pressure maybe that we were just putting on ourselves of needing to kind of keep up with the Joneses. Whereas now we're like, well, we have all we need here so we can afford to take those risks. We can afford to jump into our e commerce startup and give it everything we've got. It looks like a zombie. It looks like a zombie. Pelican. You can't make the pelicans beat blue.
[Voiceover]: Welcome to ADD to cart, Australia's leading e commerce PODC that express delivers all you need to know in the fast moving world of online retail. Every week, Nathan Bush from E Suite 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 Add to Cart and director at e commerce talent agency eSweet. It's a busy time of year and if you're anything like me, you would gladly swap the chaos of last minute Christmas shopping in a busy mall. I mean, are we really doing that? We're an e commerce podcast. Well, you would gladly swap that for the fresh air of a bushwalk and the sounds of nature. My guest today, Edwina Cameron, committed to much more of a long term tree change. Having got tired of keeping up with the Joneses in the suburbs, she and her family up sticks and moved to the rainforest. They built a shed in the garden and set up an online wall art business. As you do with a particular focus on Australian nature. I Heart wall art offers a range of digital prints, canvases and framed artworks, some of which Edwina creates herself, even though she doesn't call herself an artist. They now employ two staff and are just about to open a showroom office space in the town of Mulaney on the Sunshine Coast. In this chat we discuss the unique challenges of running a business from your own home, the best way to nail SEO for up and coming brands, and why a pelican's beak should always be yellow. Trust me, it makes sense when you listen. So thanks to our partners, Shopify plus and Signet, here's our conversation with Edwina Cameron from iHeart Wall Art.
Nathan Bush: Edwina, welcome to Add to Cart.
Edwina Cameron: Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here.
Nathan Bush: Oh, excited to have you here.
Nathan Bush: You're joining us from what looks like
Nathan Bush: a massive backyard shed.
Edwina Cameron: It is. It is a very big Backyard shed. Although I think we realized as soon as the walls went up that maybe it wasn't quite big enough for what we needed. It's one of those cases where, you know, by the time you've built it, it's almost already outgrown it. But it's been fantastic. And it's that 10 meters, if that from the back door of my house. So it's a pretty good place to come to work every day.
Nathan Bush: It seems to be the story of 2020 and 2021 for so many people. Having probably not in your situation, but warehouse moves upon warehouse moves, just outgrowing places.
Nathan Bush: But you've come at it a little
Nathan Bush: bit differently and created your own e commerce setup in your own house.
Nathan Bush: Can we start there?
Edwina Cameron: Yes, yes. I mean, madness. Actually, looking back on it now, when I think about it all. Yeah, look how our business started to grow, I think really quickly as a kind of online homewares retailer with COVID and over last year grew quite quickly. And at the time we were outsourcing the manufacturing of all of our pieces. But in one of our more kind of questionable decisions. No, not questionable, but perhaps mad decisions. My husband and I made the call to start manufacturing the stuff ourselves at the end of last year. How hard can it be? My husband, who's a nurse and could barely operate a power tool at the time. So, yeah, so this year we built this large shed on our property, got a large format printer, hired a team, and now manufacture quite a lot of our pieces. We do still use some outsourced manufacturing as well. But yeah, we've got a nice sort of balance of things that we produce here and things that we still do outsource.
Nathan Bush: And when you're talking about manufacturing, what are you actually manufacturing?
Edwina Cameron: So we are a canvas and art print retailer and manufacturer. So when I'm talking about that, I'm talking about, well, we also do wallpapers and decals. But talking about print manufacturing, predominantly, we print our canvases here. And we've got this workshop that I'm sitting in now is our sort of canvas stretching and framing workshop. So, yeah, it's basically just kind of producing art pieces that we then ship all around the country.
Nathan Bush: Beautiful. And when you say it was a questionable or mad decision to go into manufacturing, what do you mean?
Edwina Cameron: Look, I think it's one of those decisions that you make. And this is what I'm good at. I'm very good at making big. I want to say impulsive. I don't know if I'm quite impulsive because I do think them through, but I never quite think through the full. I think I'm just not scared of making big decisions. And usually my husband is the one who kind of rein me back in again. He's the voice of reason and quite pragmatic. But for whatever reasons, this time, when I decided that learning the print and canvas manufacturing industry couldn't possibly be that hard and I'm sure we could do it, he didn't talk me back down off the ledge, but just kind of went with it and we committed ourselves to sort of, yeah, acquiring all the kind of materials and equipment which we've done sort of over this year. Look, it's been. The reason I say it was a questionable decision is it's been quite stressful at times. I think, you know, if you're going to start learning manufacturing of the print, Print and framing industries, basically maybe doing it in the middle of a pandemic while living in a regional area, is it the best time and place to do it?
Nathan Bush: Like, especially in a timber shortage?
Edwina Cameron: Exactly. That also has not helped. Look, it's been a really steep learning curve and there's been moments where, quite literally, we've thrown our hands up in the air and sworn that we're never doing this again. Let's sell the business. We both left our jobs. Luckily, my husband, who was a nurse, was able to get a new role as a sort of casual nurse, which has meant. Has given us the ability, I guess, to kind of scale up and down with him, his work. Kind of over the years we've needed to. But I left a job that I loved and was sort of steady. And so there's definitely been moments, I think fleeting moments. Overall, we're really happy with what we're building here, but there's definitely been moments this year where we have sat down and gone, what have we done? This was crazy. But I think, you know, sometimes in life, those big decisions that you make, you don't really understand how good they were or bad until you're right at the end of them. So, look, we're happy that we've done what we've done, but there's certainly been moments, particularly this year, I think, where it's been quite stressful and quite a steep learning curve for both of us.
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Nathan Bush: How long has the business Iheart wall art been in operation now?
Edwina Cameron: Yeah, so I started it a couple of years ago. At the time I was working in communications within the conservation sector. So my background is in public relations, as we used to call it now, you know, corporate communications.
Nathan Bush: Sounds like Ospin.
Edwina Cameron: Yeah, it does, right, exactly. We rebranded ourselves. But more so I think within the. I've worked a lot within the sort of not for profit and environmental movement and sort of social justice. So I think that actually has set up quite well as it turned out. Because when you're working in sort of a lot of small organisations that may or may not have a lot of funding, you tend to have to learn to be a jack of all trades. When you work in comms, you have to know how to knock up a WordPress website and you have to know how to write an edm, you have to know how to write a. A Facebook post that's engaging and how to be able to read the analytics at the end of it. And you're obviously not going to be really strong on all of those things, but I think you just need to have a sort of overarching understanding of how those pieces fit together. And I had started dabbling in building WordPress sites many years ago, started building a couple of dropshipping sites. I think back before everyone was building dropshipping sites and selling those and then had this idea that I could build one with art because I thought a something that I was sort of interested in or you know, more so the creativity in creating the pieces, but also from a purely sort of commercial perspective. If you've got something that's unique that no one else is offering, you know, you don't have to race to the bottom with price cutting or you. If you have something that is unique that people can't get anywhere else, you can charge, you know, the price that you want to charge and people will pay it. So it made sense from that point of view. I set up the website. I started kind of creating the first series of works for the site just through sort of digital painting and then editing Photos and yeah, I just remember this is when we were still living in Brisbane, saying to my husband, I actually really enjoyed it. So I think, I think I'll keep this site. And it's sort of plugged away for six months or so. Yeah, after that, I think it was sort of actually after we moved out of town that I really made the decision to kind of run with it, which turned out to be about three months before COVID So yeah, I think all the timing just kind of lined up, I think to really kind of kick off the business and run with it.
Nathan Bush: It's interesting that point you make around starting with dropshipping, which is basically taking commodities and buying them cheap and then selling them a little bit higher and then having that realization that actually if I'm going to win at this, I need a unique product. Was that the lesson from drop shipping that made you abandon those sites?
Edwina Cameron: Yeah, look, I think the lesson from dropshipping was that I didn't really like it and I didn't feel. And I still to this day, I think it's not no criticism of dropshipping. I think for a lot of people particularly it's a good way, myself included, to get started. But I think for me as an ongoing model, I felt like if I was really going to do this and make a living from this, I needed to be value adding in a way that was more than just kind of forwarding almost, which is what sort of dropshipping felt like. And I felt a bit. Some of the ethics around it I think felt questionable. I don't know. I think, yeah, I think dropshipping is actually a really useful way to get started and kind of learn the industry and the trade without spending a fortune in kind of wholesale materials and things. But I think moving forward and you know, particularly the margins, if you are selling something that a whole bunch of other people are also selling and margins aren't necessarily always going to be there.
Nathan Bush: It's a really nice point though, is that it's a great way to learn the marketing, the user experience, the customer service, all those pieces, not having to worry too much about product if you're not exactly, exactly.
Edwina Cameron: And I think to see what works and what doesn't, you know, if I'd have jumped into what I was doing a few years ago and gone and spent thousands of dollars on stock, I would have wasted really a lot of money. Because it's not until you really start doing it that you see what works and what doesn't. Yeah, you kind of hone your craft so, yeah, look, in terms of starting out, I think it was an. An excellent way to kind of get started. But for me, because I had never, until this one, I'd never kind of built the site with the intention of keeping them myself. I was kind of building them and kitting them out and then selling them. The ethical question, I think, came in more for myself personally, because I thought, am I actually passing these on to people who are going to have the skills to be able to make a living from them? So I think doing it yourself and kind of getting in there at the ground and running it. Yeah. Is a great way to learn E commerce.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, that makes sense. And so then taking us forward to I heart wall art. Have you always sold your own artwork yourself?
Edwina Cameron: No, I haven't. And even to this day, I feel really uncomfortable when people describe me as an artist, which I know is some weird. So to give a bit of context, my mother is an art valuer and art curator. So I grew up in a house full of very fine art. And there's a real, I guess, a real sort of pretension, I think, around art. And I studied art through school. I was always a bit put off by some of the pompousness. I don't know if that's a word, but that kind of came with it industry. And I. I guess that kind of put me away from it. So when I started doing this, there was almost a. I just wanted to be making pieces that, you know, were nice but didn't necessarily have to have this sort of big kind of backstory to them. But I. I'm not a painter because I think that. Well, I do paint now, actually, but I didn't when I started this. I was more doing digital artwork. And I think because I've always felt my creativity is better online than, like, I just. I'm more comfortable being creative online and whether that's, you know, kind of building WordPress sites and creating brands for those and creating, you know, social media collateral, that's where I always felt happiest, expressing creativity. So discovering kind of creating digital artwork as I did at the start, was kind of a next step in that evolution. And now I've reached a point now where I actually have started painting and I'm enjoying it more and more. But, yeah, I've kind of come at it all back to front and upside down seems to be how I live my life, so no surprises there. And it is weird. And my, you know, I have had people sort of describe me or introduce me as an artist and I'm like, oh, no, no, no. I own an E commerce business. It's just a weird. The place our business sits is this weird kind of nexus between. We're like E commerce, but we're manufacturer as well. But it's art, so I'm an artist and it's this weird sort of, you know, to kind of pigeonhole yourself in any of those things seems to be to the detriment of the other ones. That makes sense.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, that does make sense. And obviously you've had a career before this as well, so.
Edwina Cameron: Yeah, exactly, yeah. You know, in conservation and I loved that work and was always very happy to describe myself as my work in conservation. And the people like, oh, but you build websites and you paint and you do. Yeah, I know, I just can't sit still, I guess. But I feel like what I heart wall art has done is really bring together those quite disparate, you know, bits of me and the things that I am good at and enjoy and kind of tie them all together quite neatly, which is lucky. And it was kind of a lucky find, I think, to start it in that way, you know, because, yeah, I sort of fluked it, I think. And then once I started, I was like, oh, yeah, this actually works. And it ties it all up together really nicely.
Nathan Bush: And where it is today, you're retailing other artworks and other prints. Would you call it a marketplace or is it still you being very selective and curating the pieces on site?
Edwina Cameron: Yeah, I'm very selective and curate all the pieces on site. We do work with a number of artists now and it's purely, you know, it's a sort of profit split model. After the cost of kind of manufacturing and shipping, the piece is factored out, then we split what's left. But I am very careful and I think that that is to do with. I have a very clear understanding of what the I Heart Wall art brand is and what I want it to be and where I want it to keep going and. Yeah, and unless something kind of fits in with that, I mean, we have, you know, we have more than 600 pieces on the site now, so there's certainly things in there that maybe wouldn't even know. If I had to kind of condense the brand into one sentence, there would be pieces that don't fit with that. But I think our brand is clear in my head and the way I want our art to look and experience that I want people to have when they buy it. So, yeah, I am quite careful with artists that we sort of start to work with and pieces that we include on the site. Because it'd be the easiest thing in the world to, you know, go and plug into a stock library and offer, you know, tens of thousands of sort of pictures of the Eiffel Tower. But that's not what this is about. So I am quite careful from that perspective.
Nathan Bush: My impression from the site is that there's artwork in here that could fit into almost any Australian house, but still be expressive of an individual's personality.
Edwina Cameron: Thank you. I think that's a really nice way of putting it. I think we try to cover off the main kind of Australian styles to an extent. I mean, I think that if I had to kind of like, it's that Hampton style that's really popular at the moment, sort of that kind of boho, that kind of earthy kind of natural look. And we'll have stuff across those ranges. But certainly, I think the point at which our range is very different, I think, is that a lot of the focus is on sort of nature, I think, and Australian natural kind of surroundings that we are so lucky to have in this country. So I wanted to celebrate that. And I think that if you look at a lot of other sites that, you know, you can see places overseas, and it's not that we don't have those, because we do as well. Because I do want to be able to, you know, for people to find what they're looking for, if that's what they want. But that's not our, you know, idolizing places in Europe isn't really what we're about. I want people to look at our range and go, like, gosh, we live in a beautiful country. Like, wow. Like, let's hang it up on our walls. Let's. Instead of having a picture of the Grand Canyon, like, let's put up this gorgeous picture of the Outback, you know. Cause it's just as beautiful and it's ours. So that's really, I guess, the crux of it. But in saying that, we do try to cater, within reason, for differing tastes and for the most popular styles that you find in houses in Australia at the moment.
Nathan Bush: What's the hardest part of transitioning a piece of art in the physical form to an online version where people feel confident that that's the piece for them.
Edwina Cameron: Yeah. So look, if it's an actual painting, and there's a mixture on our side of photography and digital art, which has, for anyone who's not aware, created on an iPad or computer, so was never done as an original painting, but we do also have plenty of pieces that started life as paintings and we're now reproducing as prints. Either just a standard print or what we call a hand finished print, which is where I kind of come in over the top and add in sort of brushstrokes and texture to the piece. So I think one of the challenges, the biggest challenges is in terms of a really slight, maybe difference in someone's computer monitor adjustments can actually mean a big difference in colors. And if you've bought a piece for the little pops of turquoise in it that you love, but you know, then you get it and there is a different shade of turquoise and suddenly it doesn't match your cushions or, you know, that can be quite a hard one. And we work really hard. And I actually often say to people like, actually look at, try and look at it on a phone or an iPad because do tend to find that they have more accurate screens in terms of colour matching. But yeah, look, certainly. And I think too with the pieces that have started as an actual painting, sometimes people when they order a print version of it, sort of forget that it is a print version. And if you've got the brushstrokes in there, it's a print of a brushstroke, it's not an actual brushstroke. So sometimes people can, you know, say, oh well, there's no brushstroke there. Yeah, but it's a print of a
Nathan Bush: brushstroke, you know, so maybe need 3D printing.
Edwina Cameron: Yeah, well, yeah, I've been thinking that. I'm like, God, imagine if we could get a 3D printer. That could give away all my grand ideas here. But yeah, so that can be hard, I think. Look, my philosophy with what we're doing here has always been to under promise and over deliver. And I deliberately started doing that because I really wanted all of the reviews that we got within the first year or two of business to be really glowing as possible. So we started off pricing quite low. We've had to put our prices up because we need to pay a mortgage. But we did deliberately start quite low when we were a new business and we did deliberately produce a product that was really premium quality, quite a low price. And yeah, that really did kind of blow people away because, you know, they were getting these really nice solid timber frames, which we still do for, you know, a fraction of what they're paying down sites now. It came to a point where we were like, okay, we're going to have to price this more realistically. Particularly this year. The price of timber has just gone through the roof because there's been big shortages. So yeah, look, we have had to look at that and address that. But we do price still very reasonably compared to some of the other online art retailers. So yeah, look, I think it's just really been about trying to exceed people's expectations and for them then really harness that kind of burst of like positivity they get, you know, and like leave a good review and tell your friends about it. And that's. That seems to have worked really well for us so far.
Nathan Bush: If you were to do it again, would you do it the same way in price really competitively and get all those positive reviews up and running so you can get that trust and then raise the price or would you go in straight away with price?
Edwina Cameron: No, I would do it exactly the same way again. I think the other thing that we factored in was that actually when we started manufacturing ourselves, this wasn't our profession and we wanted, we're not super experienced print background and when we started doing it ourselves, we bought really good equipment and we learned how to use it. But I wanted there to be wiggle room to that. We weren't charging like this really high end price while we learned the ropes of our trade. Which isn't to say that anything that has gone out of here has been shonky because actually it's been completely the opposite. My husband, who is a massive perfectionist, you know, has just taken so much time and care with each piece that it's like, okay, come on, we've really got to step up the pace a little bit here. No, I think it's, I think it's proven to be a really good strategy to just really price low, build up that trust in the marketplace, build up those reviews have that kind of be able to show that you're a legitimate brand with a history and then you can start to price yourself at a point where because you have this body of happy customers who are more than willing to go on the record and vouch for you. So I wouldn't change that.
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Nathan Bush: I want to go back to the story. We kind of got to the point where you decided to move out of Brisbane and you've been featured in a lot of news articles that I read before this and you almost. We were discussing before the podcast that you've almost become the poster person for the sea change lifestyle. Can you tell us how that came about and what you've created?
Edwina Cameron: Yeah, well, look, we. I have done tree changes in my life. I did1about10 years ago with my first husband which was a complete disaster. Our marriage broke down fairly soon after. We had a massive unrenovated house that we then had to work out what to do with. I moved back to Brisbane as a single mom with my tail between my legs. So I feel like telling my sea change little tree change story can kind of come from both perspectives because, you know, one was a fail and the second one so far is a complete, you know, we just love it and would never change a thing. I think the advantage that we had was that we did it before COVID only four months before. But it's a lot harder to do now because houses have, you know, the prices, I mean the prices are going crazy on houses anyway. But you know, rentals are scarce and suddenly the whole relaxed pace of life where you can kind of go and live more affordably and not have the stress. I feel like some of that big city stress has kind of come, you know, as well with just with that rush of people to the regions. But for us, I think I'll happily shout from the rooftops about what an amazing thing it's been for us and for our family and our children. You know, we've got an acre of sort of mostly rainforest here and they get home from school and hop on backpacks and kind of go, go off and have like picnics and climb trees and just all of those things that when we were living on a 400 square meter block in the middle of Brisbane, we were like, oh, you know, this isn't quite what we wanted for the lifestyle for our children to be. And I think the other thing with tree change has kind of given us is I don't want to kind of generalise and expand our experience out to everybody because different people will have different experiences. But it really for us broke us out of the mindset that I think we were in living in reasonably centrally Brisbane where we kind of fall into this pattern where it's like, you know, all you think about is what your next renovation is going to be or what your next car, what car are we going to drive or what school are our kids going to go to? Or you kind of get without meaning too caught up into this keeping up with the Joneses. And we moved out here and yeah, it's. We're part of a small community and there's just none of that sort of. And it's for both my husband and I really changed us really quickly. You know, we get around town now and this sort of bombed out old ute that's falling apart and you know, I couldn't care less. And I think for us it's given us the freedom to step, to walk away from well paid, secure jobs which neither of us would have done back in town because our mortgage was higher city prices. But also, yeah, there was that sort of pressure maybe that we were just putting on ourselves of needing to kind of keep up with the Joneses. Whereas now like, well, we have all we need here so we can afford to take those risks. We can afford to jump into our e commerce startup and give it everything we've got, which I don't know that we would have done had we stayed in town.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, and it sounds idyllic but you must still be really busy like obviously raising a young family. You've got this e commerce business. What does a typical day look like for you?
Edwina Cameron: Yeah, look, if I'm making it sound idyllic then I'm probably failing horribly because yes, our surroundings are idyllic. Life this year has been not going to swear on your podcast but really swear away complete. No, it's been really full on. It has been really full on. We've had, I think just the challenges of so with COVID when we started manufacturing ourselves also, you know, the thing about living in a small town is that we just haven't been able to find premises to move into. There just wasn't, just literally wasn't anything to move into. So we were like, okay, well we'll build a shed. And then we turned our rumpus room into a print room. And so for most of this year we've had a couple of casual employees who come in a few days a week and help us out. We've had myself, my husband, we've had our kids when they're not at school or daycare. We've had my father in law, he got kind of stranded here due to Covid. We've had my mother who's been on a few extended trips here for sort of similar reasons. So Most days it's like the house is kind of like, you know, Grand Central Station and there's just people kind of coming, couriers coming and going all the time with deliveries and picking up, you know, shipments and dropping off stock. And it certainly has not been the idyllic kind of year that we envisaged when we first thought about the tree change. But I think we're grateful that in a time when so many people were really struggling, you know, at least in Queensland we've been spared most of the lockdowns and we haven't had to keep our kids home, which is definitely been an advantage for us. We've been able to send them to school and kindly through the year. But yeah, look, it's been a typical day. Is anything like this morning for example, I Woke up at 6:30 and came and started painting because I had to hand finish a bunch of canvases that had to go out today. I was meant to do it last night but I've had a bit of a cold thing and so I just went to bed at 7:30. I was like, I just can't actually face the thought of doing them since. Out of bed this morning painting. Maria, who does our shipping and framing, got here at 8 and I was there with the hair dryer trying to dry the paint off them so she could pack them and ship them. And then it's like trying to get the kids out the door to school and kindy and yeah, careers kind of coming and going. I still do all of the customer service for the business so then I kind of go get on the computer and do customer service emails. We process outsourced orders, we make sure try and order stock. It's all sounding really controlled when I talk about it like this. Like it's actually generally anything.
Nathan Bush: It just sounds like a different type of chaos.
Edwina Cameron: It's a big type of chaos most days. And yeah, so that's kind of what it looks like. I mean my husband has just started doing some shifts again at the hospital. I think we just reached a point where we trained up enough of the, our casual workers here that we were like, okay, he can get a bit of a break because you know, certainly doing this is not his dream. He was just kind of thrust into it and handed a mitre saw last year. So yeah, he's kind of back at the hospital which is good for him to kind of get some time out. He's very much an extrovert. So kind of being at home 247 with his wife was starting to eat away at him a little. But yeah, look, it's always chaos and there's always, there's always something goes wrong. And you know, just when you think you've organize everything, then suddenly like today we had, you know, have everything printed and all the frames were made and Maria was going to frame this afternoon and realized that we'd run out of D rings, which like the little kind of, you know, things that you put the framing wire into. And we'd ordered them, but they hadn't arrived with the shipment. And there's just always a problem that needs to be solved and, and I think that's any startup, right? You know, you're always going to have to wear a lot of hats and you're always going to be the person that everyone kind of comes to when they need a problem fixed. And it's up to you to fix it, you know, because it's your business, it's your baby. And that can actually particularly I think with the family, and it can be really exhausting. And one of the lessons for me that I have to learn, I haven't learned it yet, is to actually just try and this is going to be my resolution for next year, but to actually just try and take, take time out because they've worked seven days a week all year, as is my husband, and it is exhausting. It's not sustainable. I think for really long, long term you have to at some point have built the systems or built the team to be able to step back a bit and take a breath.
Nathan Bush: I think it's the hardest part for most founders is actually knowing when to take that break.
Edwina Cameron: Yeah, I think that's it. And it's hard because you have to learn to loosen, give up, relinquish a bit of control. And that's really the hardest part because I'll see, you know, someone doing something and I'm like, oh, I could do it differently. And I'm really happy that we've got, you know, this team of casuals. And we hired people who like us, had really limited experience, but we hired based on personality. We hired because we are home based and we have two young kids kind of running around. We really wanted people in our space who we liked and who, you know, we just felt we could trust kind of coming and going from our house. They had keys to our house, you know, both of them, now we're not here. They come into the house, you know, turn the coffee machine on, fire up the printer and go. So finding that, you know, that was more important to us than Hiring really skilled people. But, you know, the flip side of that is we've got to bring them up to speed as well in an industry that, you know, we're still learning. So, yeah, look, it's been chaos. I think organized chaos would be overstating it, to be honest. I think it's just been chaos most of the year. But I'm hopeful that we've ironed out. In fact, I know that we've ironed out a lot of the kinks in the operation to kind of hopefully have a smoother year next year.
Nathan Bush: Brilliant. I love the line on your website when you talk about having people in your house. You've got that line on the website that you don't allow in person pickups for your customers because we don't feel like whipper sniffering the driveway every time some uncle comes to collect their artwork.
Edwina Cameron: I really should take that off the website, actually. It sounds really unfriendly.
Nathan Bush: Oh, I really like it. I think it sounds personal. It's great.
Edwina Cameron: Well, I think we live in rainforest and as we discovered after we moved to a little patch of rainforest is you have to work really hard against the rainforest, which is constantly trying to reclaim your house from under you. Like, you turn your back for a week and there's a vine kind of growing in through a window. And we live in an area of like really high rainfall. It's up in the mountains, constantly kind of foggy, and it just turns into a jungle within minutes. You know, the second that it's which and it's frequently neglected because we haven't had a lot of time. So, you know, when we first built the studio and kind of had it here, people were sort of were turning up on kind of weekends and just kind of peering into our windows and things. I was like, so we have solved that problem now. We just signed a lease on a space in town and we'll be able to have a bit more of a separation between the workspace here in the backyard and that studio space that we have in town.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, nice, Nice. Now, we're running out of time, but I really wanted to touch on your SEO because it feels like you do SEO phenomenally well. Like you are up there for some really competitive terms like Wall Art Australia alongside the big players like Temple and Webster and Zanui. What are your tips for getting that SEO really early for those key terms?
Edwina Cameron: Yeah, so I come from a background, as we said, of communications, and writing has always been my particular lean. So that is an obvious advantage. I was doing freelance content Writing over the years. So that obviously has helped. And that's a skill that not everyone may have themselves. But I don't think that that actually has been the core part. I think what we've always done differently is, for a start, I put the main keywords that we wanted to rank for in the title of the business. We called it I heart wall art. And wall art is, you know, really our number one key term. So that was one strategy. But I think, look, I could give a few really practical tips, which are, you know, with every product, take the time to write a unique description, Write something from scratch, make it descriptive, and make it. Structure it in a way that you would want the information presented to you if you were the customer. Take the time to put your alt text on your images. And I think something that's made a huge difference for us is naming each image as we upload them based on the keywords that someone might use if they were looking for that image. So instead of say, products, name image 4, name each image. Abstract artwork of ocean. And just trying to really be mindful of using keywords in your image titles, in your product titles and descriptions without sort of stuffing them in there. That's the thing that I think we've done differently. And I think I have an agency who run my ads for me, and they're constantly trying to. Well, they do give very good SEO advice. But they're, you know, we're saying to me like, you don't have enough backlinks. You need to get more backlinks. And I say, well, I know don't have many backlinks, but we still seem to be doing really well. And the only thing that I can think that sort of sets us apart is that time. There's no shortcut to it. You know, there's no kind of magic button or app that you can kind of plug in that's going to suddenly kind of get you to page one. It literally has just been a whole lot of legwork and writing. Good descriptions, clear descriptions, making sure that your website is linked. So, you know, under each print, I'll have you know, you can buy this as a stretched canvas. Click here to read what a stretched canvas is. Or so, making sure that it's just laid out in a way that is really accessible. And something that we always used to say in comms and the media industry is you need to write like you're writing for someone in about year nine. Like, that's actually the level that you should be presenting your information because it's Clear, it's accessible. If someone's in a hurry, they can read it easily. And so I think, yeah, using that kind of approach of really kind of starting from scratch, writing clear descriptions with useful, relevant information and just going that extra mile and naming all your images. Like, think of what people would be punching into Google when you would want your image or product to come up and use that in your titles. And also just using, I use Shopify, I think WordPress is very similar with some of the apps you can plug in, but just using that kind of SEO bit down the bottom, using your keywords in your URLs without stuffing them, but just being kind of descriptive, giving Google as much information to work with as possible. And that's the only thing I can think of that's actually allowed us to get to where we are. That's the thing that we've done differently and. Well, I think. So I can only assume that it matters to Google quite, quite significantly to kind of have that information clearly presented.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, I noticed on your email, Your email is iheartart.com but your website's iheartwallart.com and iheartart redirects to iheart wall art. Was that deliberately just to go after that wall art turn?
Edwina Cameron: Yeah. So when I started the business, I called it I Heart Art. And then I had a chat with a friend who works, you know, who has a good SEO brain, and, you know, he said, well, like, what's the keywords that you want to be up there for? I said, well, I guess wall art. You know, I think art itself implies more fine art. So actually sort of original paintings from independent artists, whereas wall art is a sort of more widely used term for printing. So I changed the name of the business. I really need to change the email. I know that's right. I'm like, oh, God, I haven't done that yet.
Nathan Bush: I reckon most people wouldn't notice it, would they?
Edwina Cameron: No, they don't. But the only problem is when someone writes hello at iheart Wall Art and it doesn't actually reach us. So it is on my list of things to do. It's just kind of fallen by the wayside this year. But, yeah, look, absolutely, you know, just kind of thinking from the word go from the time you name the business, like, what are the words that we want to be up there for? And, you know, you're not going to be able to name, get all of the keywords, all the right ones. But, you know, we just went with a kind of pun on Ryan's I Heart wall art. It's kind of memorable. It's cute. It's got the keywords in there. So that's what we sort of ended up using.
Nathan Bush: Yeah. Great.
Nathan Bush: Now, I can't let you go without
Nathan Bush: asking about personal selections for art. We've just renovated our house and we feel really grown up because we've actually bought our first piece of artwork. Like, we're like, oh, we've reached that adult stage where we're not buying IKEA prints anymore. What's your tip for helping people find their style and selecting art that suits them?
Edwina Cameron: Yeah, look, I think I get a lot of people emailing and kind of asking that or similar questions to that. And I think that the thing that I always say is, just find something you love. Like, I feel like it's so easy to shop on trend, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. And certainly, you know, I've talked about how our collections are structured around, you know, trends at the moment. Like, you know, this kind of. The bow had that kind of earthy sort of look, and that's. That's great. But if you're going to make a significant investment, you don't want to be having to sort of change it in five years time because that, you know, that sort of trend has passed. So I think find something that speaks to you. I think find something that has a meaning for you. And I think that's why a lot of the sort of nature that we have is really popular, because it has personal meaning for people. You know, they can connect with, you know, a picture of a cockatoo or, you know, a sort of print of a eucalypt forest that has personal meaning for people, and it reminds them of a place or a time or a childhood or. And that's going to outlast, you know, trends. And I think the other thing I would say, too, and I often do say this to customers, is you don't have to decorate your house to a style. Like, I think it's so easy to fall into this trap of, you know, and I get it. Customers a lot who are like, well, we're doing Hamptons and everything has to be blue and white. And I had one customer once who actually made me change the color of a pelican's beak to blue because she said, well, I'm doing Hamptons, so the beak can't be yellow. And I said, but, like, it looks. It looks like it's like a zombie. It looks like a zombie pelican. You can't make the pelicans be blue. She was like completely rigid in her belief that nothing that wasn't blue and white could be in her house. So the pelican had to be completely blue and white. So it did end up looking like this sort of like necrotic kind of zombie pelican. And, you know, at the end of the day, like, it's her house and that's her decision and if she loves it, then, you know, more power to her. But I think particularly if isn't your background or. And it's not my background, but it's easy to think like, okay, well, I really love this trend that's around now, so I know it's safe if I buy everything that's kind of that trend and it's going to look good. But I think you don't be afraid to just buy a piece because you love it or you love the color or you love a cockatoo, you love kookaburras. You know, like, I think just make your space a reflection of who you are as a person and who you are as a family and your lives and your life stories.
Nathan Bush: That's beautiful. Great advice. Now, what is next for yourself? Edwina and I heart wall art.
Edwina Cameron: Oh, that is a big question. Look, I think what's next for myself is a break over Christmas because it has been a long time coming. But I think next year, yeah, we've got some plans, big plans in place, I think to really start ramping up for our business. We want to start working with a lot more commercial clients. We started recently working with more resorts and holiday trains and things who are looking for, you know, that Australian kind of nature theme in their spaces. We have that and we can provide it at a good price and it's good quality. So I think for us that that'll be a big driver next year. But, you know, I'd also like to start, start offering more personalised options to our range. So I'm not going to give too much away, but we've got a few ideas kind of around sort of changing up some of the ranges for next year. But yeah, look, I think getting into that commercial space more and partnering with more commercial art providers would be a great next move for us. So, yeah, after hopefully a couple of nice weeks off, that'll be where I'll be pushing it next year.
Nathan Bush: Perfect. And now if anyone's listening to this and, and love to get in touch, what's the best way to do so
Edwina Cameron: just jump onto the website, which is iheartwallart.com and there's contact links all over it so you can contact us through there. You can find us on Instagram, Facebook, many ways, or in Maleny. If you're in Maleny, you can pop in and see us in the shop very soon.
Nathan Bush: Beautiful. No need to whippersnip either.
Edwina Cameron: No need to whippersnip. It's amazing.
Nathan Bush: Edwina, thank you so much for joining us on the Add to Cart.
Edwina Cameron: Thank you so much for having me. It's been really fun.
Nathan Bush: Did it make you want to pack everything up and go and live out in the country? No, me neither. But it did make me want to put up some good art on my walls. Finally. Love the chat. There were three really great takeaways from Edwina that I want want to highlight the first. I loved when Edwina said that running a dropshipping site is a good way to get a feel for online business without having to commit to the lot and all the risk of product and inventory. I've never thought of it that way, but it's a great way to learn. E Commerce like dropshipping gets a really bad name but if used right, potentially could be your way in. By keeping pricing low when starting out out, you can build trust and collect amazing reviews. It keeps expectations where they need to be and you can gradually bring your prices up down the track. Number three to get the best SEO, get descriptive. Give Google as much information as possible. Edwina put key terms into her company name. She also takes the time to write unique descriptions and alt text on her product images. Naming each image and uploading them based on keywords a customer might search for is paying dividends. It's a lot of work, but pays off in the long term as you saw by Edwina and Iheart Wall Art. To finish up, I have three resources for you. Firstly, if you're a first time listener of Add to Cart and you want to stay up to date with new episodes, head over to addtocart.com and you can sign up for our weekly newsletter. We'll let you know every time a new episode drops, as well as giving you my three takeaways from each episode and a link to the transcripts so you can know that this is an episode that you want to dive straight into. Secondly, if you want a weekly roundup of the best e commerce case studies, tools and research, sign up to the Hi5 Friday newsletter which which is delivered to inboxes at 8am every Friday morning. I read all the e commerce news and send you the bits that I think you can take action from sign up at 12 high 12h I g h.com au high 5 and the last thing if you are looking to explore your next e commerce opportunity, head over to esweettalent.com we are a D dedicated e commerce talent agency connecting the best e commerce talent with the fastest growing brands. Check it out. Sign up to the email and get in touch with me if you want to discuss your next move. Until next time, thanks for listening and keep those customers adding to cartoon.
