Rosa Claire Willis: That's what we're all about. We're about breaking down the barriers to having conversations with your friends, your family, your lovers and your Tinder dates.
Andrew Ford: That's why we're like, shit, let's rip the band aid off. We have to be early adopters of this.
Rosa Claire Willis: Randomly setting arbitrary dates that have no meaning and just executing like, even if you're half baked by that.
Andrew Ford: Yeah, we acted like we had investors pretty much from day one.
[Voiceover]: 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. 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 E Suite. By now many of you are back in the office and if you are feeling the post holiday slump bump, I have the episode to kick you back into high spirits. I don't think I've ever had as much fun on an episode than I have with this one. And despite what I say, I wasn't actually drunk while recording, I promise you. Today I got to chat with Rosa Claire Willis and Andrew Ford, co founders of DIY Pottery Kits Crocked, Croc'd are on a mission to help friends and family have real connections through the power of creativity. Both are from a startup and a UX background. They only launched Croc two years ago and are now selling across Australia, Europe and the U.S. even more impressive, what started as a physical setup with a warehouse and an office on the Gold coast is now a fully remote team scattered across the world set up for scale. In this episode of Rosa and Andrew share their UX tips for how to create a website that converts and doesn't cost the world. They also share their insights from their recent New York citizenship where they spent months getting crocked, ready to take on the US and best of all, well, at least for me, they shared their unpopular opinions about the world at large, including Buy now, pay later and discounting. You might be surprised at what they say. So, thanks to our partners Shopify plus and Signet, here's our conversation with Rosa Claire Willis and Andrew Ford, co founders of croct. Rosa and Andrew, welcome to Add to cart.
Andrew Ford: Thanks. Pumped to be here?
Speaker E: Yeah, that's all right.
Nathan Bush: Hey Rosa, I think you've still got
Speaker E: something in your teeth.
Andrew Ford: You Bastard.
Speaker E: We were doing the video check before we went on and I think we sorted that out, so I just had to call it out.
Nathan Bush: You guys are in Thailand. What are you doing joining me while
Rosa Claire Willis: you're in th A good question.
Andrew Ford: We should just kind of leave right now.
Speaker E: All right. Shortest episode of ADD to cart ever.
Andrew Ford: We are here. We have literally just based ourselves in the most convenient time zone possible. Definitely is also convenient that the weather is pretty good this time of year. But yeah, I don't know. What are we doing in Thailand?
Rosa Claire Willis: Yeah, we. I guess we've been on a bit of a journey the last 12 months. So we, we set up the business in Australia, obviously we went over to the US and we spent about seven months there. So we grew a team and we grew the business over there. Then we came back to Australia for Rose's best friend's wedding. And now we're kind of just making our way back around the world and just trying to find the best places to be to connect with our team who's in some of the weirdest little corners of the globe. So, yeah, essentially a pretty decent time zone. Plus less distractions. Right. Like on the Gold coast, like you got something every. Every second night. So when we're here, nothing distracts us. We can just get stuff done.
Speaker E: Because you guys are Gold coast locals, right?
Rosa Claire Willis: Yeah, we're imports.
Nathan Bush: Was it always the intention to set
Speaker E: up a business that's like totally remote and could be anywhere in the world?
Andrew Ford: It was always a dream for us to work together. Andrew and I were both working in pretty remote businesses before this, which is why we both kind of found ourselves living on the Gold Coast. Anyway, that was like a bit of a lifestyle style choice. And then we met there. But we never anticipated like this is not by design. Except for now in the last kind of 12 months. It's all pretty intentional.
Rosa Claire Willis: It's a bit half half. Right. So we started as a physical business. We started with our own warehouse in Burleigh Heads. We started with a. With a whole team. We used to have a big warehouse full of people kidding and packing and doing everything from start to finish. And we just realized like, if we wanted to go big and we wanted to hit our mission, then we had to go global. And what that meant is that we just like, we couldn't. We couldn't manage people in a warehouse in Burley. So we've actually found that going remote has that byproduct of making you put in place systems, processes, SOPs and actually just systematizes your entire Business just naturally. So we're not like that normally. So it's forced us to get our act into. Act into shape.
Speaker E: How good? So take us back to the original idea for Croc. How did you guys come up with the concept and launch the business?
Andrew Ford: Yeah. Whoa. So it's so funny. It feels like ages ago, but it's not even been two years yet. But so pretty much for like a little bit of context. So Andrew and I kind of both come from a startup background, but in tech. So we had never done anything in product before, never touched E Comm. And we pretty much found ourselves like, we both love to work. Andrew probably a little bit more than me, but I love to work if I'm loving what I'm doing. Andrew just froffs on working. Doesn't matter. He could be honestly working in like, oh, we are in mud. But anyway, he's a happy guy working. Anyway, we basically found ourselves, we're getting to the end of the week, we feeling super burnt out. We kept turning to alcohol as our way to kind of unwind and realize that we're having a moment to ourselves. I think alcohol symbolizes in like, you know, a lot of kind of millennials lifestyle that when you have a drink, you're offline. So that's kind of what where we kept finding ourselves. And then we joined this like, amazing gym. We were trying to get into shape and we were like, you know what? We're not going to drink anymore. And we just kind of were like, what the hell? What do you do when you, you're not drinking but you're trying to unwind and you know, you're from Queensland.
Speaker E: What are you saying?
Rosa Claire Willis: You know,
Andrew Ford: you know, you're rum.
Nathan Bush: I'm drunk right now.
Andrew Ford: I thought so anyway, and then we kind of just basically were like, okay, well, let's do something creative. And I come from a kind of background of like, hobby painting and I love to do all that sort of crafty stuff. And Andrew had no disposition to like, to doing anything kind of hands on, creative. So long story short, the one thing that Andrew was like keen on doing was pottery.
Rosa Claire Willis: It was pottery, but it wasn't pottery in a traditional sense. So when you think about pottery, you think about, you know, you know, what a generic potter looks like, right? So, you know, you go down to your local pottery studio. The average age is 50 to 60. It's like going to church and you sit around for a couple of hours and you talk about whatever. And that just didn't really interest me. And I think, like, Speaking from a guy's perspective like that, like, it's just not an environment. It's just not an environment that is inviting to being creative. Like, I don't find that creative at all. I find it intimidating. So we kind of just sat down and we said, you know, well, it can't be that hard. Like, it can't be that hard just to do this from home.
Andrew Ford: Yeah.
Rosa Claire Willis: So what we did was we went out, we rose. I said, yeah, we can get some clay anyway. Cannot get clay, or you couldn't get clay anywhere. Like, these people don't. They didn't traditionally have websites. They don't have Facebook pages. They don't do anything. They're just, like, local people in their studio. They've been there for 30, 40 years, and they do not care about having SEO presence or anything like that. Right. So we went on Facebook, Marketplace. We went to buy clay. It took us a day or two. We ended up turning up to some person's house, and they weren't there. They had to leave. So we transferred them. 100 bucks for the clay.
Andrew Ford: Which is steep.
Rosa Claire Willis: Which is steep. And we went and picked up the clay. We brought it back to the car, and quickly after, we realized it was, like, women's face mask client. So it had, like, nothing to do with, like, what we wanted to do at all. And then, like, and we were just two normal people wanting to do, like, pottery from home. Right. With zero avenues to do it. And then literally, in the car ride on the way home, we looked at each other and we were like, if this is so difficult, like, why don't we do it ourselves? And why don't we put it in a kit and make it easy for people to access? And that was basically it.
Andrew Ford: And then we literally ended up having to set up a wholesale account anyway just to get play into our hands to do it for ourselves. And so we had 12 kilos of clay. It was Christmas time. We were like, oh, fire out. We'll just invite all our friends over. And then that was pretty much the magic that we witnessed. We had probably 10 of us in our kitchen, and everyone had beers and drinks and whatever. And what we noticed was, like, people hardly reach for their drink. Like, their hands are so dirty. You know, they're just. So get into this activity, which we now know activates the state of, like, flow. And we realized, like, Farah, this is, like, a phenomenal catalyst for the type of conversations that you would otherwise never had. And then the idea was, yeah, the
Rosa Claire Willis: idea was then to build conversations into the product. So if you're not touching your phone, if you're not touching alcohol or a beer or a wine, then, like, why not start decent conversations and maybe we can help with that. And if we can just start a couple of decent conversations from a couple of cards, which we include in the kit called Claybreakers, then that's what we're all about. We're about breaking down the barriers to having conversations with your friends, your family, your lovers, and your Tinder dates. So that's awesome.
Nathan Bush: How do you like your cocktail gift boxes? Shaken, maybe stirred, perhaps? Broken?
Speaker E: Definitely not.
Nathan Bush: Cocktail gifting company Cheers Sweetie were finding that they were regularly coming up against broken items when mailing their gift boxes all over Australia. Not only was it costing them money, but it was a horrible customer experience. Working with our packaging supplier partners, Signet Cheer, Sweetie added an outer protective layer and internal cushioning, all while remaining environmentally friendly. They're now saving over $6,000 a year in broken items.
Speaker E: Cheers to that.
Nathan Bush: Visit signet.net aublog to find out more.
Speaker E: What kind of questions are in the Clay Breakers?
Andrew Ford: They're quite focused around mental health, so we basically come through a few iterations, but now they kind of slowly build people into a position where they might start sharing, you know, what the state of their own mental health is. So we start. It's really funny. It's quite symbolic of how we are as both a couple and then our friendship circles as well. So we love to have our group of friends, love to have, like, debate night, and I love to, you know, throw something out there and see what happens. And, you know, we're all about the deep conversation. We don't really keep anything superficial. And so the first kind of card is turn to the person next to you. Why do you admire them? Which seems like a really simple card, but it automatically gets people in this state of, like, relaxed seeing. You realize, like, you heard someone say something about you that you never would have thought that they thought about you. And then that gets you in a really comfortable place to then start sharing other parts of your personality. So the questions from there start to gradually get deeper and deeper. One of our favorite questions is, like, what's your most unpopular opinion? Which is hilarious. Like, some of it's really controversial, of course, and then some of it is just, like, so random.
Rosa Claire Willis: People always say, you know, sometimes they come back and they say, these cards are really deep. And we're like, yeah, we know, like, that's what they're for. Like, you can. You can talk normally and you can have Light conversations every other hour of the day. So why not spend two hours, like, getting deep and. Yeah, getting deep and getting dirty.
Speaker E: So I'd be worried that it'd turn into, like, a clay fight if I did that with me and my wife.
Rosa Claire Willis: That's between you guys.
Andrew Ford: It'll get more into. It'll be the ghost scene. You'll get more Internet. I reckon we've made heaps of clay babies.
Rosa Claire Willis: Yeah, I reckon there's probably not.
Speaker E: If I shared my unpopular opinions, I wouldn't.
Rosa Claire Willis: You wait till she shares hers.
Speaker E: That's right. Then I'm in real trouble, so. I know, and this might be the most obvious question in the world, but you would have seen a change in the way people used croc'd during COVID especially using video conferencing to connect and things like that.
Andrew Ford: Hundred percent.
Rosa Claire Willis: Yeah. Two big changes for us. One we kind of saw earlier and slightly before COVID which was the move to people actually wanting to do things themselves. Right. Like, and doing things from the comfort of their own home, which is the position I kind of came from. Like, people would rather watch Netflix on the couch and go to the movies. People would rather get hellofresh, you know, and cook it at home than going out to a restaurant. So why should creativity be any different? Like, why should you have to go out somewhere and go to an art studio and there's nothing wrong with that, but, you know, why not have that come to the comfort of your own home and then stem those conversations? So we saw that early, and we definitely have been on that trajectory and been on that trend. But, yeah, we saw the move, especially in the new virtual world, towards teams just really wanting something to allow them to connect with each other. My brother just started a new job, and, you know, it was a couple of months before he even met his coworkers. Like, that's a crazy world, and that's not a normal world and not what we're used to. So we have a huge amount of teams like the Canvas Atlassians, and just these amazing teams that are investing in their people that we will, you know, supply our kids to. We have facilitators that hold conversations between these teams and really kind of break down those barriers and get those teams working stronger, more collaboratively together. And the feedback we get on that is outrageous.
Speaker E: That's cool. I did one session with our team where we tried to do, like, a Friday drinks thing on Zoom, and it was a disaster. And I was like, we're not doing this ever again. So I love having Something to kind of creatively be around and share in that experience.
Andrew Ford: It's funny to get lit on zoom and then, like, close the. By yourself drunk. You're like, oh, fuck. Okay.
Speaker E: Just a normal Friday night again.
Andrew Ford: In Queensland.
Speaker E: In Queensland. So tell us. So let's go back from the time you picked up the dodgy clay to the time that you get your first order that isn't friends or family. Can you tell us about that order and how did that feel?
Andrew Ford: So, okay, so we basically pretty much had this entire idea done. Like, as soon as we came up with, like, we had the idea, this is November 2019. Then as soon as we had the name, it basically everything just kind of fully was born from there. And we set ourselves a date of, okay, we want for people to have kits in their hands by Valentine's Day. Also worth mentioning, is that your unpopular opinion? You don't believe in it.
Speaker E: I'm gonna edit this bit out, you
Rosa Claire Willis: know,
Andrew Ford: but, yeah, also worth mentioning that my sister runs a business, Little Suckers. Who you interviewed, Tara.
Speaker E: I didn't know the connection.
Andrew Ford: Yeah, yeah, she has a different surname, so that's probably why. But. But anyway, she. When she launched Little Suckers, she launched it by Valentine's Day. And so that was just like, what was in our head. Like, okay, well, that's a smart day to launch. So we knew we were going to launch on Valentine's Day, and then we literally just had to pull rabbit out of the hat from there. We kind of whipped everything together and on from the moment we launched. So we launched the 4th of Feb, 2020. We had about. We had 10 kits that we could sell. That's all we kind of had. And then we ended up selling about 18 in that day. And that was all family and friends. And then it was the most snowball effect from there. So I think we basically just kept doubling, doubling, doubling every single day. Then we were like, okay, we. We had this whole little goal mission to get to our first 100 orders. And Andrew was like, yep, I'll leave my job if we get to 100 orders in the next 12 months. And then it was like, I don't know, like two weeks. And we're like, oh, my God. And then we set a new milestone and we kept popping champagne, and I'm like, oh, my God, this thing's a beast.
Rosa Claire Willis: So even if you take a step back, like, we launched. We launched Croft in, like, two and a half months. Like, not even. It was probably two months, like, start to finish from ideation all the way. Through to like shipping product. It was probably, you know, two months on the dot. We launched. It's like classic scrappy stuff. We launched with Apple product photography. We didn't spend a dollar. In fact, we paid like 50 bucks for a couple of renders. And we rendered like, we rendered out like material. Like that was it. We rendered like PDFs onto boxes and we sold based on that. And then, you know, it just got crazy. Like I, like Rosa said, I ordered a dozen boxes and they'll go on that night. And we've never turned the tap off. Like that is one thing we've never done. We just keep selling, keep selling and keep growing and this thing continues to amaze us.
Speaker E: So. Good. And obviously with both of you coming from a startup background, was there anything that you took from your previous careers into croc that you think really helped you that others may not have had the privilege of?
Andrew Ford: I think user experience and UI is definitely something that Andrew and I, we're both like really passionate just about kind of user experience in general. So we like froth on a good website. We love good service in a cafe, we love detail. Like, we're so, so into that.
Rosa Claire Willis: Unboxing, Unboxing is everything in E commerce, it's everything.
Andrew Ford: And we basically definitely took that. Like, we're both very much into UI UX experience in our previous kind of tech startups that we're involved in. So we definitely took that with us for sure.
Rosa Claire Willis: And just like randomly sending arbitrary dates that have no meaning and just executing, like, even if you're half backed by that.
Andrew Ford: We acted like we had investors pretty much from day one.
Rosa Claire Willis: Yeah, true. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker E: And that's a great tip.
Rosa Claire Willis: There you go.
Andrew Ford: There we go. Value.
Speaker E: I should use that. I should pretend I've got investors and I get more done.
Andrew Ford: Yeah, you should.
Rosa Claire Willis: Like we've been part of startups that have spent years building products, like building products with no revenue. And I think like, you'll hear it probably a hundred times on this podcast and every other podcast you listen to. Like, who cares? Who cares if you build a product but nobody wants it? And from day one we just like, we just kept building something and then validating it with sales and then iterating. Like we. Nothing is ever perfect and we execute like a 90%. 80. 90% and keep moving.
Andrew Ford: There's probably a lot of soft stuff that we took that we didn't that we're not really realizing yet. But I think the most obvious thing is also just like, generally how you manage people in a Startup, you know, I think that has definitely been helpful to us. You know, we've grown a team really, really quickly. We manage this remote team, I think pretty seamlessly. But they might say, might not agree, but I think that kind of stuff is super useful. But to be honest, we were right back at the beginning of our startup journey in E Comm. Like we had a lot to learn and we still do, that's for sure.
Speaker E: Yeah.
Nathan Bush: And going back to the UI ux,
Speaker E: was there anything around the standard E commerce model that you came into and you looked at it from a UI or UX angle and went, that just doesn't make sense, we're going to do it a bit differently.
Andrew Ford: That's a really good question. It's like, I don't know, I really don't know how to answer that. I think the most useful thing for us is that our business has become split in terms of we have like, it's the same customer but we basically have the B2B side of our business and then we have the E Comm side and so we really naturally quite good at the B2B stuff. So that's been the most easiest part of our business to grow and we've now kind of intertwined the learnings between both, which is I think what makes us really unique and easy to deal with for other B2B. But don't know, I mean the thing
Rosa Claire Willis: I've learned and we probably have, has taken us a little while to learn and we're even speaking about this this morning is like we set a scrappy website live and conversion rates were great, right? Like there was intention there, people people were executing and people were purchasing. Then we went out like a traditional business would and said, let's make a beautiful website. Like let's make this just fantastic website. Let's make it look beautiful and flow. And we would have spent months and months and thousands of dollars with developers, blah, blah, blah. And it wasn't until probably six months ago that Rosa and I just said like, let's start again, let's start again from the base up, let's get this right. And we locked ourselves in a room in New York. We've just come back from the States, we locked ourselves in a room in New York for 48 hours. We smashed out a brand new website, just scrappy ads, we had all the product photography, so it was pretty easy, but we smashed it out. And it doesn't matter how beautiful your website is, it matters the flow of users and just like their intention to purchase and the One thing we've learned as well is that even though we think it might be beautiful, it may not convert, it may not serve the purpose that we want it to.
Andrew Ford: And I think just like one other thing that we very much didn't want to take from the E commerce space, particularly in Australia, is discounting. We just see so many people come in with discounts and to be honest actually think what a lot of them are doing is quite illegal. Like having permanent, you know, compare prices and permanent discounting, like that was something we saw and we're like, we actually, we've come a long way but we constantly question ourselves. Like it took us nearly two years to put afterpay on our website because we were like, do we want people going into debt over a pottery kit? But like, we don't know. We don't know. We had this back and forth, back and forth and we honestly nodded it out with our community and we were like, why do you use it? Why do you want it? Why would you have it on our website? And people just basically said back to us like, this is how I manage my money now, this is what I want to use. So yeah, I think we're quite different. We're not money grabbing. We very much all about kind of the customer experience, even at a cost of the business. So yeah, we definitely that kind of direct to marketing, salesy discount approach. We are just so like so far from.
Speaker E: Yeah. Do you have any tips? I'm really curious about that 48 hours where you redesigned the website from scratch. When you're looking at it from a user flow perspective and working out what triggers and how people go through the website, do you have any advice for other people on how to do that process?
Rosa Claire Willis: Well, for sure.
Andrew Ford: I think the first thing you have to think about is like we're on Shopify plus and Shopify makes money when you make money. So don't try and bend too much of what they have. We totally will custom code in the first few iterations and we're like, we'll do this, we'll do that, we'll make this. And you're like, you know what, there's a reason why you're having to go into the back end and custom code this stuff because it's not innate for that user. So I think what we did, I mean that Shopify 2.0 rollout has been such an incredible change for E commerce. And it's like you feel jealous of people who are starting now because they get to start just straight on that and that's why we're like, shit, let's rip the band aid off. We have to be early adopters of this, otherwise we're going to have this legacy system that we keep trying to build upon.
Rosa Claire Willis: So we have no custom code. We just straight up on the. On on the templates, like. And that's a kind of rule for us. It's like, we don't want to bog it down. Speed's important. Don't bog it down. And also, if you think you can convert better than Shopify, then you're dreaming. All the best here.
Speaker E: Exactly. You know, I speak to a lot of people and I go, you're not a special snowflake. It's like, this thing is built. This thing is built to maximize conversions. Good luck beating it.
Andrew Ford: Exactly. Exactly. We couldn't agree more. And I think for us too, it's like we've dabbled with so, like we a B test stuff all the time. We could even do even more AB testing. But we kind of have realized that we're in this really interesting space where, okay, if you want to be a DTC brand that is all about kind of using direct marketing techniques, then go for it and go hard in that. But we've had to really find this balance of, okay, how do we. I think copywriting is the biggest challenge when you're creating any kind of Shopify store, because everything else now is pretty much templated and built out there for you. You'll be fine. But trying to, if you're a brand first business, trying to tell that story, but then also still use language that is clear and is optimized for conversions. That's that weird fine balance because we're like, how do we make it super clear to move people through? But then how do we also make sure that they know that they're buying from something that has a social mission, purpose, impact, all that sort of thing. So I would probably recommend to people who are like, starting on that journey, build, Shopify yourself. As long as you have your design elements intact, then you're fine. But I'd probably invest in a copywriter, which is something we're only just now starting to do, which we should have done way earlier.
Speaker E: Great advice. And we'll move on from the design aspect soon. But I can't let you go without asking about the brand because it is a beautiful brand. It feels like you've put a lot of effort into creating that as a differentiator and a moat. Especially, you know, when you go from, yeah, sure, it's the website, but it's also the unboxing experience, it's the packaging, it goes through everything. How did you formulate such a strong brand identity?
Andrew Ford: It's so nice. It's so nice when we hear people say that because it is something we put a lot of effort into, but it's actually just such a weird representation of our sense of humor and our personalities as well. But we knew we wanted to have a cheeky brand. Like that's the first thing we wanted to start with. We came from tech businesses that were quite corporate facing and we were like, we never intended on this being a full time business, so we just wanted to have fun with it. So when we came up with the name cropped, it was a really like, you can interchange crops in so many things, right? So at the time we're trying not to drink, so we just kept saying get cropped up, not fucked up. So there's so much stuff that you can do there.
Nathan Bush: And then from there, family history there
Speaker E: with little suckers as well, isn't there?
Andrew Ford: I know, I know. We have a dirty sense of humor in our family. You should see Andrews and they're worse.
Speaker E: Not gonna tell you that one.
Andrew Ford: I love it. So, yeah. So anyway, then we were from, like, from the name then, just like Andrew was kind of alluding to before with art. We wanted it to very much like democratize the space, right? So we were like, we want anyone to see themselves in this brand. We don't want someone to just like, you know, be in Byron Bay and say this like, Byron Bay, babe. Like making all this stuff, making it look so simple. We're like, right, so let's use characters, let's use illustrations. Let's make it a real androgynous character that anyone could really see themselves in. So we kind of had these key brand elements. And now like our unboxing in particular takes you on a journey from like every single product we do. It's all about like our pottery kit, for example. It's almost representative of him being in like anxiety, a state of anxiety. He's inside a box, you open it up. This is Patrick Clay Z. You set him free, you know, and now it's like your turn to set him free. And you're basically really taken into that kind of moment from, from day one. So the brand to us has kind of like three key things that we stick to. What are they? The first is, this is more about product development, to be honest. But the first is like, would we do it ourselves? The second is, is it grammable? Because when you talk about differentiation, like if you can get people to post on social media what you're doing and virality, right.
Rosa Claire Willis: Like, you need to build something that people will put online and share with their audience.
Speaker E: So if you're not social activity too, 100%.
Rosa Claire Willis: And we would have had thousands of people like, just like tag. It's like we probably have 10 a day, you know, like, yeah, it's like free, free marketing just by spending that extra, you know, bit of effort on making your unboxing just a special experience and it pays dividends and it all
Speaker E: make things out of clay and tag you and you go, oh, I wish you didn't tag me in that.
Andrew Ford: I've actually a funny story. I've. We were so busy once. I just kept. It was when I was managing our socials and I kept like, I was just sharing stuff that was coming through and I didn't listen to the audio of one of them. And my sister messaged me being like, do you know what you've just shared on props? Instagram. I'm like, oh my God, no. What? And it was like, we never get any negative feedback on anything, but this one particular person was like, it looked like a beautiful unboxing video, but the audio was just like, what the hell have I been gifted? It's just like two lumps of mud. What the hell is it? What am I supposed to do with it? I just shared it. Oh my gosh, the story is just so funny. That's the other thing. If you create something super grammable, you're getting live feedback. Like people are recording their user experience. And we learned so much from that.
Rosa Claire Willis: Yeah, we made so many changes just based on people tagging us in videos. That's the biggest point of feedback that we have. Have. So if you're not doing that and you're not creating a product that, that, that has some form of virality or something behind it, then, yeah, it's a bit of a missed opportunity.
Speaker E: Makes sense. And sorry, I cut you off from your third item.
Rosa Claire Willis: Oh yeah, that's good because we forgot it.
Andrew Ford: No. So the first is, would we do it ourselves? The second is, is it grammable? And the third is, is it simple? So it has to be something that is you can properly unwind doing. So we, like we said we want to take away any like, intimidation and so we do that through the branch, but then we also need to make sure we do that in the experience itself. So that's a really important part to us. And Andrew and I have like late Nights of, like, arguing. Because I come from a little bit more of a artsy background. He's like, no, people don't know what that word means. People don't know what that means. I'm like, yes, they do. Everyone knows who Van Gogh is. No one knows who Van Gogh is. And we have these, like, it's really good that we come from two very different worlds.
Rosa Claire Willis: And it's perfect because, like, I come from it and I almost play it down a bit as to, like, consider me. Consider the consumer knows nothing. Like, just consider you've got to educate them and you've got to take them through that journey. And don't assume that they know that you have to mix a third of this color with two thirds of this color to get this color. Like, I don't know that. Like, how am I supposed to know that? So you have to break it down to them. And it's all about breaking down the barriers to entry. Like, no matter what you do. Like, I would never have done pottery if I didn't have it just delivered to my house in a box. Like, I'm not going to go down the road and do pottery. I'm not going to go down the road and do a painting class. Like, but if you deliver it in my box and it rocks up there in an Auspost bag on a Friday afternoon, then I'm doing it that weekend. So we're all about breaking down the barriers to conversations and to creativity.
Speaker E: It's very cool.
Nathan Bush: So you've been in the US and
Speaker E: I came across the videos that you've started creating, taking us behind the scenes of the reality of being E commerce founders. And they are so good. They are brilliant. And we're going to put a link in the show notes to them because I think any founder in E commerce will love the honesty and the rawness of them, but they're well produced. There's like, some great stuff in there. What made you want to create those videos?
Andrew Ford: It's so funny because, yeah, we've just kind of started doing them, but they are, they are for sure cringe. Like, we watch them and we're like, oh, this is so cringe. But we're almost like forcing ourselves to do it because, like, so much happens. Like, we just had our, like, big celebration with our team today virtually. And you're like, you go back and you're like, this happened, this happened, this happened, this happened. Like, and like, you're moving so fast and that we're like, you know what, let's start documenting this let's actually start like for nothing else rather than for us to look back and go, if this all fell to shit, like what a friggin fun time. What an MBA we got to do. So we do definitely record them for ourselves. It is helpful for our team as well to know what we're doing.
Rosa Claire Willis: And you know, you see, you see there's other YouTube channels, how to grow your business 10 times in a year. And how about recording all the shit time, recording like all the bits in the middle that like every other person has to through because like that's pretty much it for 95% of the time. It's like the grind we say like nothing is ever as bad as it seems or as good as it seems. So you just better love the in between. So yeah, we're just documenting it. I'm not a. Rosa loves journaling. I hate. I can't do it. I just cannot. Like, she's like, why don't you just write a few pages? I'm like, are you joking? I can't even, I can't put pen to paper. So I guess this is a way for us just to record a few things and, and almost like a little journal for us, right? So yeah, if there is anyone out there that wants to see just the realities of doing some weird stuff. And I mean it was pretty cool filming over in New York. Like that is the, if you're trying to make it, then that is the bear pit. Yeah, it is hardcore and it is a 24 hour city.
Andrew Ford: So that's why we're in rehab in Thailand.
Speaker E: What did you learn in New York? Or is there a story that stands out for you in New York where you just, your eyes just popped open and went, holy shit.
Andrew Ford: I think in generally America is like, they're a tough audience. Like you. Everyone said this, right? We spoke to, we know the founders or one of the founders at this, like one of the biggest startup e comm businesses, sorry, text business, not econ. And he basically told us that he tried launching in America. They tried three times. And this was right before we left and we were already selling in America this time. And we really felt like, okay, it'll be so simple. Like we've got it. Ecom's totally different. And it has like took us like, you know, why isn't this working? Why isn't this working? Like, and it took us so long to just basically sit down. Like customers here are totally different. They are completely different to Australia. Like people underestimate the Australian market. This is a lucrative Market here. Like, we are willing to pay good money for good quality things. We're willing to support small business and pay a premium, you know, to get something great in return. In America, they're like, they want it now. Like what? They want it yesterday. They want it cheap. They don't care. They're much more of a disposable place anyway. So they don't care about longevity of a product or anything like that.
Rosa Claire Willis: They don't care about plastic. They don't care about having, you know, renewable products in your, in your product suite. So, yeah, we're talking generally, just, generally like these are just general findings. And, you know, we would turn up to our apartment every day and that day there'd be like 60 or 70Amazon packages there. Like, it is crazy. They just own the market.
Andrew Ford: Yeah.
Rosa Claire Willis: There is nobody else out there. You see like 10 FedEx packages and maybe a few DHL, but it is Amazon, Amazon everywhere. Like, they want to order it in the morning and it be there at lunchtime. So, yeah, it's just a totally different market.
Andrew Ford: And we kept trying to force a square into a circle or whatever the saying is, because, you know, we kept being like, no, no, it's worked so well in Australia. It'll definitely work here. And we kept ignoring where it was working in America and it was a different audience. And then we just kind of kept ignoring it. Kept ignore it, kept ignoring it. And then we're like. It took us actually being there and talking to people and hearing kind of, you know, what matters to Team America is totally different to what matters to Team Australia. So I think you've got to go and you've got to face the music and you've got to spend the money to learn. Like, we spent a lot of money trying to make that market work, but now it's humming.
Speaker E: Did you. Without going into ultra detail because you probably don't want to give all your secrets away, did you change the product to fit America or did you just find the American audience for the product that you've got?
Andrew Ford: We changed our way of getting to the audience, put it that way. Yeah, so we. Yeah, yeah. So we basically our audience, the way we deal with that audience is totally different to the way that we like, deal and converse without with our Australian audience. So we've obviously got a different website there now too. And you can see the subtleties of how we talk to America versus Australia.
Rosa Claire Willis: But it is a different market, big time. Like, it's a totally different market over here. You know, the basics of it is In Australia, the individual pays for everything. You pay for all your own goods. But in America, if you work for a corporation, you kind of expect them to pay for you, to pay for your medical benefits, to pay for anything to do with your health and well being. And that's really the biggest takeaway over in the States is that there were people there who loved the product, who wanted it, who wanted to buy it, but couldn't justify buying it themselves when they thought it was something that the employer should purchase on behalf of that. So it's a totally different market and it stems from the way that their health care, their health care runs over there. Right. Like it is ingrained in their, in their jobs and their job titles and everything over there. So it's completely different.
Andrew Ford: I think if you don't have a product that's going to make someone prettier or skinnier, then America is going to be a really tough market and you probably have to go through the corporate rather than through the actual consumer themselves.
Speaker E: That sounds like fun.
Rosa Claire Willis: It's good though.
Andrew Ford: It's a crazy fun sweating just thinking about America.
Rosa Claire Willis: We would start the day there at 10am but you wouldn't finish at 2am like, or 3am Right. Like they are, they just like, they work, they backlog. Yeah, they backload hard. Especially in New York. You can walk down the street at 3am there's thousands of people and it just feels like another, you know, first afternoon. Yeah, yeah, it's fun.
Nathan Bush: Now they may do 1000 burpees before breakfast and bench press pallet racks for fun, but when it came to Black Friday, LSKD needed some spotting. Introducing the well built Shopify plus look out. LSKD re platformed onto Shopify plus between the 2019 and 2020 Black Friday sales period in order to keep up with the huge growth and automated processes that
Speaker E: were running through the business.
Nathan Bush: And the results were a PB in Black Friday 2020, LSKD handled 50,000 orders. That's a 1100% increase from the year prior. Even serving 19,000 shoppers at the same time. Talk about some serious gains. To read more of LSKD's story and see other case studies, visit the customer section on shopify.com/plus. You can also hear the full LSKD story. It's incredible growth story back on episode 76. In terms of you guys being really
Speaker E: well connected to other founders and the startup community and being advocates, being really aware of mental health, what have you noticed as generalizations around the state of mental health for founders as we get to the end of 2021, I think
Andrew Ford: people are really singing for a community. Like, I really do believe that, you know, we see a lot of our friends who are willing to pay the money just to join different kind circles, to be part, you know, with other founders. So we've definitely seen more of these sort of, you know, communities pop up. And we also see people joining a lot of different programs as well to basically get learning. So I think online courses have become a lot bigger. Not because that amount of information isn't free on YouTube, it is. It's actually just the fact that, you know, they feel guaranteed that they're going to meet other people on this journey. And I think something that Andrew and I often reflect on is like, how the heck would we have done this without each other? I have no idea. Like, it is such a roller coaster, you know, and it's different when you're thinking, when you're thinking about reaching your potential and you're feeling like, you know, you're working in a job and you're dreaming of your startup idea, it's almost like it's easy to be motivated then, right? And then as soon as you've got something, and not only you've got something, but it started to then take off, you don't feel like, oh, it's taking off. This is amazing. We can relax. You feel like it's going to get taken away from me at any moment. You see all these other competitors pop up as well. And a lot of that has to do with these courses as well. A lot of people wake up and want to be found out, but they don't actually know what they want to do, so they just take ideas that already exist. For me, it would be community. I've seen so many more people join these online forums more than ever.
Rosa Claire Willis: Yeah, we've been lucky to be part of a heap of them. I mean, the Gold coast is, is from what I've seen, the best mix of hardcore startups and low to the ground kind of community, grassroots. And they've been able to mesh that really well. And I think there are a lot of people moving up from the southern cities and the southern states up to, up to Queensland. And you would have seen that in Brizzy, you would have seen a lot of that. And people are desperate for that community and to accelerate their learnings too. Like, we've, like, don't. There's no mistakes that we've been on the back of other founders in the past and we've learned incredibly quickly what to do what works and what doesn't work. So, yeah, we're super thankful to them as well. But that community aspect, it just drives those learnings even faster.
Andrew Ford: Yeah, we've definitely from the start put in, put things in place to make sure that we don't get ourselves into a rut and that we always have someone. Like, we don't have investors. Yeah. But we do have, we do have somebody who almost acts as a bit of a, like investor, board advisor sort of thing. And he's always like, every time things seem really dark and gloomy and hard, you know, he's definitely there to help pull us out of it.
Rosa Claire Willis: Which is an interesting point. Like, we, we recognized less than a year in that we needed like a quasi kind of board member. So they're not an official board member, but they hold us accountable. And I guess we sat back and thought, like, why should we be managing stuff and us be accountable to nobody? We need some form of accountability. Otherwise we just lose. Like, we just do some crazy stuff.
Andrew Ford: Yeah.
Rosa Claire Willis: So it's a good mix of structure, but then we still have that, like, ability to flexibility and the freedom to just execute on what we think, you know, where we think the market is and what we think is cool.
Andrew Ford: What do you do for your mental health now?
Speaker E: What do I do for my mental health? I actually had a week off in October. I just got to the point where, because I'm, you know, we've started E suite in the last 12 months and so last 12 month birthday and got. We didn't take holidays MRI. We didn't take holidays all year because we were so focused. Exactly what you said. It's like, we've got this opportunity. Let's go. Business is good. Like, we had all good things. We were all crazy busy the whole year and got to October. We're like, I feel like I'm scraping the bottom of the barrel here.
Rosa Claire Willis: And there was nothing like.
Speaker E: So we both just took a week off at different times and just turned the phones off and was like just a week of nothing.
Andrew Ford: Yeah.
Speaker E: And it was a good lesson for us. So now we've scheduled for 2022 where our holidays are going to be and when we're going to take that.
Andrew Ford: So good. Yeah, we need to do that.
Speaker E: Easier said than done, but yeah. Yeah. Like, I noticed It Definitely in 2021, the importance of as a founder, having to almost like be the person over your own shoulder saying, yeah, you're not doing as well as what you think you are.
Andrew Ford: Yeah.
Rosa Claire Willis: There is one point I would add Which I think is really important for us, and probably me as well, is like, your environment plays a massive role in your mental health. We spent a lot of time in Denver and New York. And with New York, you can only spend so much time there burning at 100%. Like, you will burn out. And there's no like, solace to go back to your, like your 25 meter, you know, apartment and just chill out. Like, you don't chill out in a place like that. So if you can build a remote business and, and have that balance between that kind of grind and kind of where we are now, right, Like Thailand, this is our, this is our, like, okay, now relax, settle back into creativity mode and let's build cool product. Like, you can't build cool product if you're in New York City. It just doesn't happen. Like, you don't get that. You don't get that mental breathing room. So, yeah, you just got to schedule that in.
Andrew Ford: We talk about flow a lot too. So, like, I think we've learned not to grind against, you know, your flow. So, like, if you're, if you're in the zone, like, you know, some people are like, you know, you've got to set rules, you know, be off your computer by eight, do this, do that. Like, we totally disagree where, like, if you are in a flow and you're feeling IT, work till 2am if the next day you wake up and you absolutely couldn't think of anything worse, or you're not motivated at all, listen to your body and take it off. Like, you have to listen to that motivation and that flow because if you go against it, you won't be as productive and you'll start to feel really crap about yourself. And you really need to make sure that you don't try and grind against when your flow is telling you to relax. So we're kind of as woo as that sounds. We're big on that. And vitamins.
Speaker E: Let's not get into the vitamins.
Nathan Bush: But I don't think it sounds woo
Speaker E: at all because I'm a big believer in planning and managing your energy at the right time. So I do a good mix of creative work. I call this creative work, social work, naturally an introvert. But I run a podcast. Doesn't make any sense. But. So you've got to be really careful around managing what you're doing and when. And when you're running a business, like you said, that's turned from an idea and a really creative pursuit into something that's really serious. Very managing people and systems and budgets and finance and the whole lots of big operational element to it. It becomes this big blur and all of a sudden can get very overwhelming when you're trying to do creativity and operational stuff at the same time.
Andrew Ford: Totally. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And that's why co founders are important too, right?
Speaker E: Yeah, makes sense. All right guys, we go for ages but I've got to ask you one last question. I think you might have already shared a couple, but what's your most unpopular opinion?
Andrew Ford: Oh my God, that's so good. We should have been prepared for this. What's podcast worthy?
Rosa Claire Willis: I don't know if we can share.
Andrew Ford: Okay, I've got an unpopular opinion. Here we go. Roll your sleeves up. That's related to, you know, add to car e commerce. My unpopular opinion is that you should 100% be careful of who you outsource your advertising to. Particularly, particularly in Australia. I think there is a big group of people who are essentially taking on clients and feeding that up to people who can throw much more cash at it and grow it way faster. So if you've got a growing business, do a lot of due diligence on who you're basically going to give it to. So my, I've always been pretty anti advertising agency to be honest. So that's my unpopular opinion to a point.
Rosa Claire Willis: Is that unpopular enough for both of us?
Andrew Ford: No, you got to get one. What's yours?
Speaker E: You don't get off scot free. Come on.
Rosa Claire Willis: I don't know if what is one.
Andrew Ford: You have so many unpublished.
Rosa Claire Willis: Yeah, they're not.
Nathan Bush: You're in a safe place, Andrew.
Speaker E: You're in a safe place.
Rosa Claire Willis: It's just us talking. That little red button down there.
Andrew Ford: No, it's not recording.
Speaker E: It's not recording. Don't worry.
Andrew Ford: I think Andrew's like, I think I know you talking to, speaking to you. Okay. Andrew thinks that. Sorry, I'm not saying this for you. No.
Rosa Claire Willis: What?
Andrew Ford: No, I don't want to get you in trouble.
Rosa Claire Willis: No, no, I don't have any unpopular opinions. Mine are all.
Speaker E: He's a man of the people.
Andrew Ford: Andrew's unpopular opinion is that you're not an open minded person. He disagrees that you're open minded if you're not willing to actually listen and take on the perspective of the other person you're talking to. So obviously in America we love following the kind of different kind of politics. I think those like the contention between the two parties is something that gets Andrew like super passionate about. And your unpopular opinion is that like just because you support you Know one side over the other or whatever. It doesn't make you any less kind of open minded.
Rosa Claire Willis: So I think that's a whole part of the reason behind Croft. Right? Is that like, I'm big on, like, I have opinions about everything. I'm a super opinionated person. But like, I'm interested in people who have alternative opinions. That's not unpopular. But like, I get really frustrated with people that have really strong opinions and then shut down. And then shut down conversation. Like I just think that.
Speaker E: Well, it doesn't even turn into a conversation.
Rosa Claire Willis: Yeah. It's just, hey, this is my opinion. If you don't agree, you're wrong. Well, what use is that to anybody? Like what, what are you learning? What am I learning then? Whatever. You're a waste of time.
Andrew Ford: Really?
Nathan Bush: Well, I have to tell you that
Speaker E: both your unpopular opinions aren't that unpopular. They're just great insights. Thank you for sharing. They were awesome.
Nathan Bush: All right, guys, what's next?
Rosa Claire Willis: Yourself and Croc, what's your unpopular opinion?
Speaker E: Oh, geez, I wasn't ready for this.
Nathan Bush: I'm the interviewer.
Andrew Ford: Come on.
Speaker E: Look,
Nathan Bush: I get unpopular in our office
Speaker E: because we're in Brisbane and the fancy street that everyone likes going to is James street and there's similar ones in Brisbane and Sydney. And I hate it with a passion. I will not go to James street because I'm just like, everyone's there to go on Instagram. I remember going into the Carlisle Hotel, which is like the new hotel, blah, blah, blah, fancy, Instagram, all that sort of stuff. I don't even know how to say the thing properly, but I walked in,
Nathan Bush: my wife, we had a, you know,
Speaker E: weekend away without the kids. Walked into the foyer. It's the most amazing hotel. It's gorgeous. Walked in and I just saw everyone there. I was like, I hate this place. So I'm like the unpopular one in the office because I hate that whole thing.
Andrew Ford: Yeah, okay. Mine's anti Botox. That's my true one. No.
Rosa Claire Willis: All right, all right.
Nathan Bush: So that was good. Imagine doing that with a bit of pottery in there. And away we go.
Andrew Ford: Yeah, they'd be much more comfortable.
Speaker E: Love it.
Nathan Bush: All right, guys, what's next for yourself? And cropped.
Andrew Ford: We have got big, big, big, big ambitions for 2022. I think something massive. Like we're in full product mode at the moment. Next year we're definitely going to be releasing more products. We actually are going to go into cropped categories. Our mission is to get the world out of their head and into their hands. So it's never been just related to pottery. And so now what we want to do is we want to launch, like cropped beauty. We want to launch, you know, cropped home, cropped cooking, cropped anything you can imagine. That's pretty much where we're heading in 2022.
Rosa Claire Willis: Yeah. And it's all about reducing those barriers to entry. Right. So all those things that you've wanted to do, even old school craft projects or whatever you've ever wanted to do like that are just that little speed bump too hard for you to get to, then we want to break down those barriers we're going to put. But yeah, we've got a massive year, so we want to grow the team. We've got a. We've got a huge team now in Australia, in the us a couple in Europe and Sri Lanka, and we just want to grow that team out. So we're looking to hire a couple of new roles at the moment in marketing and product, but also looking for other opportunities out there. So we're always interested to talk to people who have scaled massive E commerce businesses. That's right up our alley. And we've kind of hit. We've definitely proved out the concept. We've grown, we've doubled year on year. It's getting massive and we want to make it even bigger. We have a massive mission. We want to go global and yeah, we're not going to stop until we do.
Speaker E: I just got goosebumps. All right, guys, so if we have people who want to reach out to you and start that conversation, what's the best way to get in touch?
Andrew Ford: Hi. At Crochet, it is a shared inbox, so just address it to Rosa or Andrew. No explicit content or messages on the
Rosa Claire Willis: gram or on LinkedIn or whatever. You know the drill.
Andrew Ford: Yeah.
Rosa Claire Willis: You want to get in touch, you'll get in touch.
Speaker E: Yeah, yeah. We connected over Instagram and my, you know, my bad use of Instagram where I actually recorded the music I was listening to as a voice message rather than actually typing a message. So I'm the idiot.
Andrew Ford: I was like, that was lovely.
Speaker E: Wasn't even my music. It was the kids music.
Nathan Bush: Rosa and Andrew, thank you for joining
Speaker E: us on Add to Cart. Love your Stu story.
Andrew Ford: Thanks so much for having us. We loved it.
Rosa Claire Willis: Thanks Ay.
Nathan Bush: How much fun was that? And to have so much energy and great conversation. I reckon we could have gone another hour of conversation if we had time. Maybe we'll have to have the guys back if they'll join us. Here are the three takeaways. I took from it. Number one no custom code. On their previous website, the Croc team stuffed the site with custom code. It was hard to make changes to and it was slow. Obviously all done for the right reasons at the right time. However, since replatforming to Shopify plus they now have one rule, use only the templates and the plugins. In Andrew's words, if you think you can convert better than Shopify, good luck to you. Number two Treat new markets like new audience Andrew and Rosa learnt this when expanding into the us. The customers were totally different to customers they've been selling to in the past and as a generalization the US audience was more price sensitive, less sustainability focused. They expected faster delivery, more B2B reliant and worked until stupid o' clock in the morning. It doesn't mean you need to research to the extreme before launching into a new market. Just be prepared to adapt once you get there there. Number three Keep yourself accountable. Rosa and Andrew acted like they had investors from day one even though they didn't. They also onboarded a board type advisor to keep them accountable. This pushed them to launch when they were uncomfortable and to keep making changes. There was no comfort level at all. The results after two years obviously speak for themselves. To finish up, I have 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. Second, 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 is delivered to inboxes at 8am every Friday morning. I read all the ecommerce news and send you the bits that I think you can take action from. Sign up at 12 high 12 h I g h.com au h5 and the last thing if you are looking to explore your next e commerce opportunity, head over to esweettalent.com au we are a 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 car.
