Jackie Kruger: Because if we care about the product, then it's going to hopefully resonate on an emotional level with us. It was about being really raw and honest. And did I shed some tears in some of these meetings? Absolutely, because it was real. We have so many stories of people who've met their best friends, they've gone to a new city and they've never known anyone before and they've just connected with people and they've helped found their place in a new world. Welcome to ADD to cart, Australia's leading e commerce podcast that express delivers all you need to know in the fast moving world of online retail. Here's your host, Bushi.
[Voiceover]: Welcome to ADD to Cart, Australia's leading e commerce podcast. For e commerce professionals who never stop learning, we bring you insights from the top e commerce operators, founders and experts and across Australia to help you drive results and grow your e commerce career. My name is Bushi, joining you from the land of the terrible people here in Brisbane, Australia. Now, what happens when you suddenly find yourself leading one of Australia's most iconic fashion brands as it faces its biggest challenge and biggest transformation yet? In our latest ADD to Cart Live, we were joined by Jackie Kruger, CEO of Black Milk Clothing. Now, if you don't know Black Milk, what started as a cult beginning selling handmade leggings from a kitchen in Brisbane, has become a global brand with over 1.1 million followers, a thriving international customer base and community of sharkies and licensing deals with some of the biggest brands in the world, including Star Wars, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings and more. This live podcast was recorded at our Brisbane networking event at the Prince Consort Hotel in fortitude valley with 80 of our closest E commerce friends. Plus, as is a novelty with live podcasts, our audience got to ask some brilliant questions at the back end of the chat. Make sure you stick around for them. Jackie opens up on what has easily been the most defining year of her career. Guiding Black Milk through heartbreak, hard calls and high stakes. From the sudden loss of founder James Lillis to completely rethinking the brand's go to market rhythm, to replatforming onto Shopify and holding together a passionate global team and fiercely loyal community. It's the kind of story that every e commerce leader can learn from. Now, before we get into it, a big thank you to Jackie and the Black Milk team for allowing us to share their story live. It takes a lot of bravery to get up there and tell this kind of story live. And of course, a special thanks to our friends at Retail Fest for helping bring Together. Such a passionate community for this special recording. If you haven't got your tickets to Retail Fest yet, make sure you go and do it. Amazing days of e commerce, learning and networking on the Gold Coast. On the Gold coast, yeah. Networking, learning and a little bit of fun from the 28th to the 30th of May. Tickets are available at retailglobal.com and as always, a big thank you to our sponsors Klaviyo and Shopify for making this episode and this podcast possible. Now here we go. Let's get into it. Here's our live conversation with Jacky Krueger, CEO of Black Milk. Thank you everyone for coming along.
Nathan Bush: What an awesome venue, what an awesome night and I'm so excited for this conversation. So we're going to get straight into it. Everyone give it up for Jackie from Black Mill. All right, so we are recording live tonight, so I can't it up and we will still have editing, so we'll be all right. But we're going to chat for about half an hour. But then the beauty of live podcast is that you guys get to ask the questions that you want to ask. So I'm going to take a pause at around the half hour mark and throw it out to you guys. And I really do hope you have questions because that's when this becomes really fun. So we'll kick off, but keep those questions in mind. Jackie, Hi. Hello. Last 12 months. Ash alluded to it in his brilliant intro there. How do you Describe the last 12 months roller coaster?
Jackie Kruger: Look, it's been a really wild ride, really. Some significant change across the business and I don't think there's been one area of the business that hasn't had significant change. So excited to unpack some of that with you.
Nathan Bush: And in the few conversations that we've had in the last 12 months, I've just been so in awe of your determination and how you've looked after the team and what's happened, both good and bad, hasn't all been bad. There's been some really great transformation in there as well, which we'll hear about. And so as a leader, I'm really keen to dig into those insights from you as well. Who here has heard of Black Milk?
Jackie Kruger: Oh, I feel like we're winning. Job marketing team.
Nathan Bush: For those listening at home, that's about 80% of the room. My math serves me right. Who here owns a pair of Black Milk? One, two. Yeah, great. Great to see some guys with hands up as well. I like this. So it was about 25% of the room. All right, great. So, Jackie, I know Black Milk has changed a lot, especially because I've been following the journey as a Brisbane person all the way through from when it was founded as a tights business. How do you describe Black Milk now? Can you give us an idea on some of the numbers that you're doing worldwide?
Jackie Kruger: So we've gone through some significant change like I alluded to before, and we actually made some purposeful steps to set backwards in order to go forwards. So I'll unpack that in a little bit. So our numbers have actually reduced this year, specifically because we've changed our go to market strategy and we're now going to market. We used to go to market twice a month, full campaign, full collection. It was chaotic at best, but it's just on this hamster wheel and it wasn't sustainable. And anyone who's talked to me in the business or external, I'm like, we've got to go deeper, not so broad. So that was a part of that change to, I guess to. So that we could go deeper and we could spend more time and invest in the product and invest in the marketing and the communication. But I guess from a brand perspective, yes, we started with leggings and very much predominantly women's wear brand. And then over the years we've really evolved. And a fun fact, we sell more dresses than we do leggings these days, but we sell globally and it sort of fluctuates collection to collection. But we're sort of 50 to 60% US sales now, rather than Australia. Australia. And I think everyone's felt the pinch in Australia in the last 12 months, and we're definitely seeing our customer being impacted by that, but a number of other things as well. So our Australian customers have declined sadly, but we've definitely picked up in the US and that sort of kept things going, which has been really great for us.
Nathan Bush: That's an interesting point because I think there's a lot of people who were thinking about moving into the US and maybe on the verge of it, who might be scared of what's going on there with tariffs, et cetera. Yeah. Do you still think it's a stronger market than Australia from an E commerce perspective?
Jackie Kruger: So I went to Shop Talk last year, really lucky to go to the one in Vegas, and I was just blown away by. Everyone was talking about their businesses and what they're doing, insights and all that sort of stuff. And then they started talking numbers and I'm like, you're talking in billions, aren't You, I don't even touch the sides on that one. Like I'm just a little tiny fry. So yeah, if you consider the size of market, you consider the size of the online e commerce market in the U.S. absolutely.
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Jackie Kruger: Is it scary because of how volatile that market is, the tariffs and all of that sort of stuff? Absolutely. But definitely the opportunity is there.
Nathan Bush: Okay. I want to talk about brand and creativity because James, your founder sadly passed away 12 months ago, which was obviously it shocked everyone in the industry and I can't imagine what it was like for you and the team, how you got through that, how did that trigger a reaction within the team and your strategy from a branding and creative perspective? Because I know that he was at the heart of a lot of that.
Jackie Kruger: Yeah, look, honestly that was the hardest time for me personally and professionally that I've had in, I mean my 20 year career. It was really tough to lead a business through something so emotional and heartbreaking because it was just so unexpected. It was just a random accident. And so yeah, it was a really tough thing to both communicate to the team that they'd be at an accident and then communicate to the team that he passed away and I guess everything that subsequently followed from that. So there was, I guess the emotional component to supporting the team and how we pulled together to get through that, but also successful broadening our community and I don't know for better or worse whether it was the right decision or not, but when I thought about how we were going to talk to the community about him passing away, I looked at it as how would I want to know if my friend had passed away? I don't Want to get a text message, I don't want to get an email, I don't want to see some random post on social. So we actually decided to do a video and tell the team to tell our community what happened, which didn't expect it to go as public as it did. But I, in hindsight, not surprised, I suppose that it did. But then from that point, like, James was always doing the creative inspo sessions around product and used to really think about, I guess, our collections from a narrative sense, like, how are we going to dress the characters for this story? And so after his passing, we lost that. You know, we didn't have that person coming in with big energy, big creative ideas and talking about product and story and developing things around that. And we really did have to find our way with that. And I think we're still finding our way from a creative standpoint. But we've had some team change in that time as well. And the team are really passionate about the product. So the product team, we're developing the product, they are living and breathing these things. Particularly, I guess, when we do licensing collections as well. They're living and breathing these licenses and they just love it. And I think that sense of care is always been something that's been so important to producing great product, because if we care about the product, then it's going to hopefully resonate on an emotional level with our customers.
Nathan Bush: Obviously, you stepped up into the CEO role during this time. You would have had to have made some pretty difficult decisions in the last 12 months. Can you share maybe your most difficult decision that you had to make?
Jackie Kruger: So, like I alluded to before, we had to change the way that we went to market. The business had always been run as a family business, and to be honest, being profitable was never really a consideration. We just wanted to do what we did and be really passionate about the products and the things that we were creating. And that's great. It really is. It creates a really lovely environment for that. When you have a few collections that just don't land in market, you don't have that backing to go well. There's a, you know, all of this cash reserves sitting there to kind of trade through. So we obviously have tried through, but it was really tough. It was really difficult in that time. And I guess how we went through is, like I said before, I've always said to myself and the team or anyone who'd listen, we need to go deeper and not wider into product. We put so much care and so much effort and honestly, the amount of Creativity that goes into creating each of these products. The graphic designers are really thoughtful when they're placing their artwork and what they're doing. And same with the marketing team with how they're taking that to life and the story that they're telling behind these products. But it's there for two weeks. We're hyping it one week, we're selling it the next, and then, oh, what do you know, we're on to the next collection. And it really wasn't getting the airtime in market. And I really strongly felt that, I guess we needed to change that hamster wheel that we're on and look at shifting our go to market strategy. And go to market once a month, Give it a bit more air time, give it some more love, give it some more time to breathe. But to do that, we're essentially ripping out one major injection of cash each month from that collection drop. So in doing that, we had to downsize the team. And if you ask me the question of what was the hardest, it was definitely that. I know you asked me to give you some info about me and I put down my obsession with Korean dramas that really came from me not being out of sleep. So there was months there that I was just not sleeping because I. It really hit me hard because I've worked with these team members, you know, some for 10, 11 years, and it wasn't a journey that we wanted to go on. It wasn't like just on a whim. We turned on a dime and had to do this. It was actually, this is about survival and this is about the sustainability and longevity of the brand. And we had to take that step backwards to go forwards.
Nathan Bush: How do you share that with your team? Because I know you're a very close knit team. Both those who you've had to let go and those that are staying behind. How do you do that in a way that they accept it to the best possible way?
Jackie Kruger: I think everyone could see it. I don't think it came as a surprise to anyone. That doesn't make it any easier. Didn't make it easier for me or for any of the team who were staying or any of the team who were going. But it was about being really more and honest. And did I shed some tears in some of these meetings? Absolutely, because it was real.
Nathan Bush: All right, moving on. One of the big projects that you've done this year is your free platform. So moving from Magento to Shopify plus, and I know this was a huge project for you. Are you happy with the result?
Jackie Kruger: I'M so happy with it. And look, honestly, there was touch and go for a little bit then like it was a mammoth project. So we'd been on Magento 2 for a long period of time and we actually started on Shopify, went to Magento too. I know some people think they were crazy, but we had to. And then we came back to Shopify plus and it's been a game changer. Like the amount of visibility that I now have is night and day from what we had before. Our ability to, you know, plug in new apps or do different bits and pieces is so much easier because we're also on. We had a PWA with Magento as well. So it's just that added level of complexity and all of our dev hours went into feeding and watering this thing
Nathan Bush: to keep up from a customer experience. Did you take the opportunity to change anything there?
Jackie Kruger: Yes. So we had the same design since I think maybe about 2017. So it was a really long time to have that one design and it wasn't. I guess our customers are really used to it and had grown to love it. So that change was really hard for them. But we took that as an opportunity to, I guess, modernize the look and the feel. And it was very boxy before. It wasn't full bleed before we wanted to have some animations, we wanted to have a bit more magic because Brack Millers is a little bit like Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory. So we wanted that feel to come across in the website and tackle movement and have more animation and a bit of fun, add a little magic, sprinkle across when you buy something and that sort of thing. So, yeah, we completely redesigned it and earlier in the year before we'd done some customer surveying, we did a tone of voice survey with MI Academy shout out to Alita and it was really useful for us to have a look at some of the things that they wanted us to change. So we looked at different data points from customers around what they wanted to see, but also, you know, working with the working party on your current UI and what we should be doing from a UX perspective.
Nathan Bush: I know you've got your community of sharkies who are very passionate. What was their initial feedback when you push the button?
Jackie Kruger: Oh, I feel like, you know the answer to this one. They did not love it. I will be honest. The feedback was swift and fast and was really disheartening for the team because honestly, the amount of blood, sweat and tears and working around the clock, it was intense. It was a really intense period. Of time. And for it to land like that was really, really hard on everybody because we were really proud of it. Taking something to market with that much effort in the time frame that we had, coming across the challenges that we had, it was really hard. But I guess deep down we knew, we knew why we did it. We knew that we were leaning on best practice principles and we work with a really reputable agency to be able to bring it to life. So yeah, sometimes you just have to step back and go, okay, well we're going to have to work on this.
Nathan Bush: For the community, it's a beautiful looking site. It does feel like it's not templated and it feels like it is specially made for your customer. I think even if you replace the images and the text for another brand, it just wouldn't work. Like it does feel very unique. For Black Milk, you mentioned there some of the challenges in replatforming. You don't have to go into specifics. You can if you want. But for anyone considering a re platform project, what are some of the lessons that came out of it for you that you would take into your next one?
Jackie Kruger: Due diligence. So we'd made some decisions early on in some of the vendors that we wanted to work with as part of the project and you know, at all different levels of or what have you. And we had to make some course corrections during the process. All very well intentioned. Everyone was obviously doing the best that they could with the information they had. But the way that we go to market is really unique and it creates some really unique challenges. And through doing that, I guess third parties and other people that you work with don't know your brand as well as you do and they don't know the intricacies and the special components to the brand and how you go to market that might make their product or the way that they wanted to do something not work until the rubber hits the road and we go, oh, it's not working. So yeah, I think that's being really clear and spending that time up front and really working through some of those things because we had to make some pivots right at the end, which actually led to us having to delay our go live. We were supposed to go live in August and we got really close and I was like, I'm really sorry guys, I know how much you worked on this, but I'm going to have to pull the pin because we had our. So for us go time, biggest time of the year is Halloween and so we were getting really too close to Halloween for our biggest collection for us to go. There's enough time for us to test it once it goes live. And I was also concerned around the hip that we're going to have to meta in SEO. So. So we ended up pausing it and then waiting until after we had those corrections and then having a second go at it.
Nathan Bush: I remember talking to you around this point where you were trying to make the decision and I'm like, that's all right. You still got a while till Black Friday. Like, you've got a few weeks. And you're like, halloween is the one. Which blew my mind, like, with the Shopify ecosystem. And this is not a paid podcast by any means. I'm genuinely interested. Are there any apps or integrations, any partners that you were able to onboard because of being on the platform that's either created efficiencies for you or allowed you to offer customers things that you couldn't do previously?
Jackie Kruger: Yeah, for sure, I think. And that was part of the reason that we wanted to move on to Shopify as well. So that we just did. I mean, there's so many apps and the funny story is I go to a lot of these events and talk to a lot of people around the tech stack and what they're doing and what they use just always blows my mind how many apps people are running at any one time. I'm like, doesn't that slow your site down? We haven't got there yet. We've been very purposeful and careful around what we're trying to add into the ecosystem, but there's so many shiny things. We want all the things. But yeah, we just have to be mindful and cautious on that. But yeah, I mean, Tolstoy's been really great for us. Again, we know that movement is definitely. And social commerce around videos is definitely something that we see strong conversion. People are engaging their videos and that sort of thing. So that's been a really great addition.
Nathan Bush: Anyone using Tolstoy? Couple of hands. So if anyone doesn't know, it's essentially, I'm going to screw this up. But embeds social video onto your site. Great.
Jackie Kruger: So, fun fact. We were one of the first brands to have UGC on our product pages. We did it back before it was cool. And so UGC for us on our pages, is that social proof. It's a really important part of our brand. We did it triggered by hashtags back in the day when people still use those or some people still do. So yeah. So but be able to, I guess up the earning and having videos, just that next level, which is really cool for us. We still have UGC on site and we have some apps that power that. And, yeah, there's a lot of things that we're tinkering with.
Nathan Bush: Tell me about community, because you have one of the strongest communities out there. And I'm good friends with Cam, who you worked with, and we're talking 10 years ago now, so it's a lot, ages ago, but the ability to. Cam would go out and he would say, hey, guys, I'm just going down to West End park, whatever it was. Any sharkies who want to come in a hangout? And he would then post. Back then it was Facebook, this huge group with him. And it would have been close to 300, 400 people in tights back then who just turned up on a Saturday because they wanted to meet other Black Milk wearers. It was incredible. Obviously, the world's changed a little bit then. What community looks like now. How do you approach community for the Black Milk audience of today?
Jackie Kruger: Yeah, look, it's a really good question because I do think it's changed a lot over time. And I think I was actually having this conversation with the team today around community and what it means to us. And it is a very important part of the brand. And there's. When we talk about community and loyal customers, the depth of product that some of these customers own would blow your mind. We're talking hundreds of product or Even thousand products, 2,000 products. It's a lot. A lot of product. And so there's really a level of emotion that goes with someone that you've invested so much money with over time. And I think that for us, we have evolved a lot over time. I know that the community particularly was very, very connected with James, which is, again, as I spoke to before, something that we really wanted to make sure that they found out in an appropriate way when he passed away. But it has definitely evolved for us over time. And I guess one of the things that we're talking about at the moment is how do we engage that community. Community in a new way? Because it is not centered around a person anymore. It's centered around a brand. And one of the things that I really love about the brand is that ability for it to connect people. Like you mentioned before, we have so many stories of people who've met their best friends, they've gone to a new city, and they've never known anyone before, and they've just connected with people and they've helped found their place in A new world. And I love it when I walk down the street and I see someone wearing black milk and they see me wearing black milk. And it's this kind of moment like, oh, hey, you know too. So it's just, it's a lot of those moments and memorable experiences. Again, looking at how we lean into that, but doing it in a way that I guess is sustainable and scalable.
Nathan Bush: Yeah. How have you been able to replicate that globally or has that growth internationally come from a different source?
Jackie Kruger: I think it's come from a different source. Certainly in the early days, community is what was driving that growth. And there'd be a lot of meetups like a SoCal group and a NorCal group. So South California, North California. Then there's a Sharky group in France and there's one in the UK. Like there was 60 different run groups that was run by admins. So slightly arm's distance from us, we would feed them product and we would do bits and pieces like that for them to have moments and experiences. But I think now it's more people are coming together over certain moments of time. So we launched a Final Fantasy collection in February, our strongest month for a long time. I know February, it's not normally retail a strong month, but it was for us. So I was, you know, high fiving to everyone who walked past.
Nathan Bush: Everyone in this room has just been through February, March, going cool. When are the sales coming?
Jackie Kruger: So I think people are coming in for those fandom moments, those things that they really connect with because we do licenses and we do product in a really unique and different way. That's why licenses like to work with us too, because we don't just wrap it on a T shirt. No offense to anyone in the room who does put it on a T shirt. That's cool too. But we do it in our own really unique way and we want to have a bit of fun with it. And so there is an element of you can wear your fandom to work, you can wear your fandom out and people if you know, you know, that's great. But yet people are kind of coming in for certain things, things now. And that's fueled international growth.
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Nathan Bush: as you were doing the transformation work this year, did you reassess investment in community? Because I'm really interested to know how you can measure effectiveness of all the effort that you put into fostering and nurturing those communities.
Jackie Kruger: No, I think it's like brand, right? It's one of those things that you can try and put some measures on it, but they're a little bit fuzzy at best, so it doesn't stack up to the cfo.
Nathan Bush: And so from a marketing perspective, investment, where are you finding you're getting the best returns at the moment?
Jackie Kruger: So true story, we work with agencies to run our paid media and early last year we're like, Google doesn't work for us. It really doesn't get strong returns. We just, you know, we sort of pull our money back and really should sort of go to meta. We switched agencies back end of last year, similar sort of investment. But I guess the optimization that we've been able to do and obviously we're on Shopify or a different situation to where we were, but the returns we're getting out of Google is phenomenal. We're like, oh, throw money at it. It's going well.
Nathan Bush: Any particular type of Google activation putting you on the spot here?
Jackie Kruger: Helping shopping.
Nathan Bush: Okay, all right. I'm hearing that a lot at the moment around Google shopping. I've got one more question and then I'm going to throw it over to the audience. Okay, so get your questions lined up. We've got plenty of time. What's your focus? So we've talked a lot about what you've done in the last 12 months. If I was to ask you for one focus for the next 12 months, what would you say?
Jackie Kruger: It's really around clarifying our so there's a lot of work that I still want to do internally. So it's really having a really clarified vision internally on what makes us like, you know, what makes us unique, what is our brand? What is so what's so it's around brand playbook, product playbook, community and our team culture so that we've really got that sense of clarity. I think there's a couple of brands that come to mind, pretty based brands who are really good from that perspective of they know who they are and they're referently themselves. And we did that really well in the early days. It is easier to do that when you're smaller as well because you obviously don't mind if you piss a few people off. But when you're at scale and you've got women 1.1 million followers on Instagram like we do, you kind of skirt the edges and you could push the boundary a little too far and you get swift backlash. So I think for us just being able to have that real clarity of vision on brand product, who we are and who we aren't, really own that
Nathan Bush: and go after that really hard putting on the spot. Who do you look up to from a brand perspective? Who do you think does it really well?
Jackie Kruger: I think there's a lot of brands that do it really well. It's a really wishy washy ants if you're there. Bushy. But I guess from the point that I was just talking to then and I think LSKD do it really well from the point of view that you speak to any one of their team, it's like they're reading from the same hymn sheet. Like honestly, there's an indoctrination process in the best possible way. No offense to lskd, but they do that really well because they're using the same language, they're talking the same talk and they've got that. And when you are all that well aligned, you can run fast and redshift. Right.
Nathan Bush: I think it's. They've got an ice bath they call an ice bath, but I think it's really an indoctrination bath. Who's got a question for Jackie?
Jackie Kruger: I'm curious about the change in the go to market strategy. So I'm curious about when that actually went live and what the results of that have been in terms of have you seen success or is it more that success would be a longer term thing and what are maybe some of the challenges or unexpected challenges that have occurred as part of that process. So we went live with our change in January, so it's still very fresh, very new. We obviously had Final Fantasy in February, so that really inflated things. So it's really easy to have a great month when you've got the backing of a really big license like that and they help to drive traffic to the site and conversion, which was amazing. So we've had a couple of our own collections which is going to take a bit of time to build. So I guess to put this in context, it wasn't Just about changing our go to market strategy and now we're going to market once a month. We also went through that whole, whole change within the team and had to sadly let go a number of team members in that time. And because of the critical path that we work into, the collections in January and March and April were affected by that because of I guess the critical path lines that we're working to. So those are definitely being impacted because it's not I guess the number of products that we'd ideally like to do. We also don't have our all of our essential stock in stock at the moment. So product availability is something that we're definitely working through because I guess the focus is shifting on everyday sales coming from our essentials product and then having these drops to inject some newness. And so without having the stock available it limits our sales as well. But those changes were really because we had to I guess pull back on spending back in last year. So that's been a challenging.
Nathan Bush: Thank you. Sorry jacket, I meant to leave you up there by yourself but I'm just
[Voiceover]: too scared to move anyone. Any other questions?
Nathan Bush: How do you nurture the obsessive people? Do you mean business or just in person generally?
Jackie Kruger: Oh, that's a good question. So how do we deal with the obsessive people? Look, my personal view on that is I tend to try and kill it with kindness.
Nathan Bush: So sales in WSA3PL, shipping from here. Tell us about that journey of transitioning to your sales.
Jackie Kruger: So also a journey. So back in 201415 we actually opened manufacturing and a warehouse in downtown LA. Super cool office. You know we had a store and and all of those things but the exchange rate flipped the other way and we actually ended up having to wind it all up and bring it back. So currently at the moment we ship everything from Australia. We've seen everything that's going on with tariffs etc, etc we are looking at opening A3PL in the US. There's a few things that we need to do internally first for us to be able to get ready for that because we do a lot of Q. So for those that don't know the brand, we do onshore manufacturing but we also do manufacturing in China as well and we do a lot of the quality control checks of the China product in Australia. So we would have to change that model and get that ready and also from a tech stack perspective, change that so that we can allocate product to another warehouse. So there's a couple of hurdles that we need to overcome and hopefully you know, quickly because we will have to start sending DDP soon because we have already seen rejected parcels because of the tariffs that our customers got hit, even in that three day window where it went live.
[Voiceover]: Beautiful.
Nathan Bush: Thank you, Jackie.
[Voiceover]: We're going to wrap up here, but
Nathan Bush: I want everyone to give it up for Jackie. She was incredibly open, incredibly truthful about the journey so far. So thank you so much, Jackie.
[Voiceover]: Thank you so much.
Nathan Bush: You're the best.
[Voiceover]: There we go. Now look, I get it's not our usual sound quality, but that's the trade off with live events. It was an electric atmosphere on the night. I just love our live events. We are planning to do more in the coming months. We've got Sydney and Melbourne on the radar. More details coming soon. But how amazing is Jackie for her to stand up there on the night and share so openly and honestly. And yes, there were a few bits in there that we cut out that we weren't putting in the recorded podcast that was just there for those on the night. Jackie was incredibly honest and incredibly transparent and incredibly vulnerable. I think through all that conversation. Black Milk has always been one of those brands that you watch from afar and you think, how are they pulling this off? But after hearing behind the scenes, it's clear that it's equal parts courage, creativity and community. I think that's a good summary of how Black Milk grow. Now, three lessons from that episode. Number one, slow down so you can speed up. One of the boldest moves that Jackie made was pulling back from Black Milk's famous fortnightly drop cycle. It was chaotic, but it was cash generating. She wanted to make a more deliberate monthly release schedule. It was risky, but it's already allowing them to create deeper stories, stronger products and better marketing. Now, for any brand stuck on that high frequency treadmill, it might be worth asking, is speed costing you quality? Number two, don't just replatform, Rethink. Moving from Magento to Shopify wasn't just about the tech. It wasn't just about that transition. It gave Jackie's team faster workflows, clearer data and the freedom to experiment. And they didn't stop there. Black Milk used this tech transformation as an opportunity to modernize their design, refresh their customer experience and bring their Willy Wonka style magic to life online. Yes, the community did push back in the beginning, but it's paid off. Keep in mind, a re platforming isn't just a tech job. It's an opportunity to fix customer data, sharpen storytelling, improve internal processes and level up ux. Don't just think of it as a lift and shift. And number three, community is a double edged sword. You've got to lean into it anyway. Black Milk's community of sharkies aren't just customers, they're collectors. Some own hundreds, even thousands of pieces. That kind of passion, it creates pressure. But Jackie doesn't shy away from it. From breaking devastating news of founder James passing through a heartfelt video to holding space for tough feedback during the web transition, Jackie leaned into the community and the community stuck by them. If your brand has a passionate community, expect them to challenge you. Because if they don't, that's a bigger concern. Passionate feedback is the price you pay for long term loyalty. Now if you got value from this episode, I'd love if you could share it with a friend. Especially one that might be going through their own leadership. Challenges like Jackie has could be just the thing that they need to get them through. Also, if you have time, leave us a review on Spotify or Apple podcasts. It really makes a difference. If you want to see everything that we discussed today, head on over to Black Milk's new website and check it out. Jackie and the team have added some real magic in there. New animations, fresh storytelling and plenty, plenty of sharky spirit. Go check it out. And of course, please support our awesome sponsors Shopify and Klaviyo who make add to cart possible. Thanks again for listening. And until next time, keep those customers adding Descartes.
