Jess Munday: We've essentially tried to make a custom product, as I guess, Add to Cart possible.
Jake Munday: I've learned to just do one thing and do it really well.
Jess Munday: Our approach to the tool is that we're never done. We're always working on the next version.
[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. I'm just going to jump straight into it this week and tell you that today's guests are a couple from Geelong who lit up Paris Hilton's wedding.
Nathan Bush: There you go.
Nathan Bush: I thought that might get your attention. Jake and Jess Monday are the co founders of Custom Neon. They're making and selling LED neon lights in any size, shape and color you like.
Nathan Bush: There you go.
Nathan Bush: Let your imagination run wild. Starting out as a side hustle on Instagram, the couple now sell around 400 signs a week, have offices in the UK, Australia and the USA and and their client list includes Elon Musk and Kylie and Kendall Jenner. What a humble brag.
Nathan Bush: Hey.
Nathan Bush: In this chat, Jake and Jess give us the lowdown on all things neon, including the naked variety, how a pricey piece of marketing they call the big video has paid off for them and how they managed to slide right into Paris Hilton's DMs.
Nathan Bush: And trust me, Jess is happy about it.
Nathan Bush: And if you like me and you're a child of the 80s and Neon is your jam, you're going to want
Nathan Bush: to stay right to the end of
Nathan Bush: the episode where we hear the glowing offer that Custom Neon are giving to ADD to Cart listeners. So thanks to our partners, Shopify plus and Signet, here's our conversation with Jake and Jess Monday, co founders of Custom Neon. Jake, Jess, welcome to Add to cart.
Jake Munday: Thanks for having us.
Jess Munday: Thank you so much.
Nathan Bush: Thank you for joining us.
Nathan Bush: Now, I can see in the background
Nathan Bush: there, obviously our listeners can't see it, that I can see the reflection of a neon sign in your own office. What's that neon sign saying?
Jake Munday: This is where the magic happens.
Nathan Bush: That's literally what the sign says.
Jake Munday: That's it. And then next door we've got another one that we have a saying as a business, I love that, so that's next door in pink. And then we've obviously been a neon business. We've got neons all over the place.
Nathan Bush: Is it hard at putting a stop to how many signs you can have around the place?
Jess Munday: We've been through different phases. We definitely over decorated a wall in the office once and there was a bit too much reflection going on. So we've tamed it down a little bit since then.
Nathan Bush: Yeah. When your team's like walking around with sunglasses on, you're like, oh, we've overdone it a bit here.
Jess Munday: Yeah, absolutely.
Nathan Bush: So for those who haven't come across Custom Neon, can you share what Custom Neon is?
Jake Munday: The Custom Neon is a global business. We sell LED Neon signs not only here in Australia but at US and uk. So signs for, you know, home offices, businesses, kids rooms, events, weddings, pretty much anything, we can do it.
Jess Munday: Yeah. And our customers can go on our website, they can either choose from a pre designed shop item or they can actually design their own sign using our custom design tool. So they can choose their font, color, size, add to cart and then it will get delivered to their door three to five weeks later. Or they can get in contact with one of our neon designers and they can get a sign made from scratch. So turn their logo into a neon or anything that they desire. So that's what we do.
Nathan Bush: So cool. I had so much fun playing around with that custom designer. It's so well built and we're going to come back to that.
Jess Munday: Yeah.
Nathan Bush: It's funny in researching and having a look at what you guys do, once you have a look at the Custom Neon search site and social presence, you start seeing it absolutely everywhere. It's like, yo, there's another one, there's another one. Tell us about some of the well renowned, especially retailers perhaps that you work with in Australia.
Jess Munday: Well, we worked with a lot of
Jake Munday: different country road typo. I mean for us, like we obviously started the business and we've had a huge growth curve over the last four years which we'll touch on shortly. So a lot of the signs and customers we deal with now, we're probably a little bit back from that, working on the business, but we've got a commercial guy in our business, Jane, so he's really focused on building out the commercial side of that business, working with the franchises, the Vodafones, the sunglass hearts, the playful stores and really trying to grow those relationships and spread our wins that way.
Nathan Bush: And you're finding most are using it for a retail presence, warehouse offices. How are they using these signs.
Jess Munday: Yeah. So like Jake said, like we're wanting to probably more step into the commercial side where we can sell multiple signs to the same retailer. At the moment we're probably more in, yeah. Sort of individual spaces and it might be like a visual merchandising setup or for a shop front. A lot of hospitality venues as well. We do. So that's kind of our jam.
Nathan Bush: That's awesome. And I understand you've had some pretty high profile celebrity clients along the way.
Jess Munday: Yes. So probably the biggest ones, the Elon Musk, Paris Hilton, Kylie Jenner and Kendall Jenner. So yeah, they were probably the biggest ones and ironically they all came to us organically, so we didn't reach out for influencer deals or anything like that. So that was pretty cool.
Nathan Bush: That's amazing. Like just some little names being thrown out there. Obviously you're dealing with their teams, I'm assuming. Are you dealing with them individually?
Jess Munday: Yeah, it's always their team.
Jake Munday: Apart from Paris Hilton. Paris Hilton was all on the DMs and the voice. I mean, if I was a little bit more prepared, I could probably play a little snippet of the Voice. Hey, Amelia, it's Paris. And yeah, that's how we dealt with Paris, you know, directly with voice DMs, back and forth, got the deal done and then she's, you know, I'll put my team onto you and we'll finalize the details. So we actually did a sign, it was probably three years ago with an event that Paris was DJing at. We tagged her in on it and then she hit us up, went in some neons. Obviously the pandemic hit and whatnot. But then she decided to get married and hit us back up.
Jess Munday: So yeah, she reached out to us again and I think that's just the power of social media that keeping on top of it and tagging and doing it properly. What it can bring in future, you don't know.
Nathan Bush: So you're saying that you lit up Paris Hilton's wedding?
Jake Munday: Yes, a three day wedding. One was obviously the ceremony, the next day was, I mean, I don't even know. I think it was like the family gathering and then the third day was like a carnival at the Santa Monica pier that she booked out. So our Neil's were at the carnival that she had with all her, I guess family friends now.
Nathan Bush: So that obviously sounds like you've hit a really brilliant niche not only here in Australia, but in the us at what point did you realize that you're onto a great idea Here because I understand you guys have had a few different ventures along the way, and this seems to be the one that's just got fuel under it. When did you know that this had
Jess Munday: so much legs on a small scale? We knew there was a huge demand for the product when we first started because we were reaching out to local businesses saying, hey, we're doing this new thing. Are you interested in? So many of them were came. And so we knew that we had a product that people wanted. But it probably wasn't until we started discussions with our business partners. They are SEO specialists. They know everything there is to know about SEO. And it wasn't until they kind of got to know a little bit more about the business that I said, guys, there's a huge opportunity here and in the US as well. So that's when the whole global expansion thing came to light and we partnered with them and the rest is history.
Jake Munday: Going back a step when, you know, it was just Jess and I, it's meant to be a maternity project for Jess to do on the side. We got married. We used the content from our wedding to set up an Instagram account to hire out the Neons that we had just to get our money back. And Jess set up an Instagram account that was Neon Collective at that stage. And we just started dm, you know, local businesses like Jess said. We had some traction and then we started getting even inquiries internationally. Just when it was Jess and I, we grew it, just Jess and I, to 100k a month was one of our biggest months. And that's when we then we realized, hey, look, we're actually onto something pretty serious now, you know, having a sizable month, just the two of us. You know, I was working till 2am on a Bali holiday that we're sitting over there and Jess wasn't too impressed. But, you know, she understood that, you know, we're doing what we can. And being an entrepreneur myself, that's just, you do what you can. And yeah, that's when we partner with the Matt and Teresa, our business partners in December. So our biggest month was in October. Did about 120k, just Jess and I. And then they looked into an international expansion and that's when we changed to being Custom Neon. They purchased the domain customeon.com and we did a bit of an earning deal so that, you know, it was fair. Like their expansion was going to help our overall international growth. And once we got to a certain threshold, then it was, you know, 50 50. And we did that quite quickly.
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Nathan Bush: what was it in the SEO or the search engine optimization results straight away that you saw that got you really excited?
Jake Munday: I think with previously doing businesses, Jess and I personally it's all about social media, Google Ads, Facebook ads. The whole SEO side of things was pretty foreign to myself and probably Jess as well. And it wasn't until we started seeing the results of their work we were wondering why the website's got so much information on it and like but it is all for a purpose. And so it was really eye opening when we started seeing the results from the USA market starting to land on our page and purchase organically. Part of that deal I mentioned beforehand was getting to the 10k a month organic threshold from their work with no input from us is where we joined in the middle of 50 50. So that's, you know, they did that within six months. So the proof was in the pudding when that happened.
Jess Munday: And the opportunity they saw was essentially the amount of searches there were per month for this product and the keywords that are associated versus the competition that was in the market at the time. And that's where the opportunity was.
Jake Munday: Yeah. So custom me on signs searched 35,000 times a month organically in the US and now we rank number one for that.
Nathan Bush: Wow. And Jess, you mentioned about doing social media. Right. So I can imagine both strategies are working hand in hand. How do you know what's coming from organic search? Obviously it's still the last click, but social would help bolster that as would search bolster social. How do you know how they work together?
Jess Munday: So we just collaborate on our reports and it can be difficult to kind of get down to the accurate detail sometimes when it comes to that. But I guess each department comes in and pulls their reports each month and we look at the results from there. And yeah, it is definitely I guess a multifaceted approach across the board.
Jake Munday: Great.
Nathan Bush: And tell us about the expansion. Are you guys based in Geelong?
Nathan Bush: Am I right there?
Jake Munday: Yep.
Nathan Bush: And then how long did it take for you to start shipping internationally?
Jake Munday: Pretty much straight away. When we started we used the one factory out of Shanghai and that was basically servicing our orders here in Australia, orders in the US as well. So from the word go that was, that's what we did. Now we obviously as we grow as a business want to make sure that we're protecting ourselves. We've got multiple factories now around the place to service our customers but also deliver orders within a week if we need to, which our customers pay extra at a premium. But you know, we make sure we deliver that.
Nathan Bush: Yeah. So tell me about the custom side of the business because can imagine factories are hard enough, especially international factories are hard enough to maintain standards of quality when you're doing the same product over and over and over again. But when you've got custom designed products and from what I've seen there's some really out there designs happening. How do you maintain that quality from afar?
Jess Munday: It's a lot of learning. The product is so variable and there's a lot of different specifications in terms of sizing and what's possible and what's not in the product. So I mean there's a lot of internal every time we bring on a new team member, a lot of training across all of the learnings that we've learned over the past four years. I mean our manufacturing partners are great, they know what they're doing, they know how to manipulate use the product. And I guess the difficult part has been for us just making sure that we can train our new team members in how to design the product and get it ready for manufacturing because it is such a custom made product. So yeah, but we've managed to do that across multiple locations, multiple time zones as well.
Nathan Bush: This is a really weeds question but I'm so fascinated. How do you actually create custom neon? Like how is neon created?
Jake Munday: Is actually LED neon. Obviously the traditional glass neon with the gas pumped into it is the traditional. It's obviously can be quite fragile and toxic. So this is a new technology that is essentially got LED lights around a kind of a plastic tubing and as it's turned on it beams as though it's actually, you know, neon. From the naked eye you wouldn't know. It actually looks a lot neater as well. You have the kind of connecting cords and whatever they're called in the glass now in space. But it's so much cleaner, more energy efficient, more durable. So even shipping around the world, you know, imagine shipping glass neons around the world. It would be, it would be a terrible story. So it's safe for kids as well. Kids can play with it.
Jess Munday: And the LED is an LED strip or tubing and essentially it's flexible. So you can manipulate the product into essentially any shape you like. And then it needs to be glued or fixed to the backboard. Yeah. And so that's where it comes to sizing and things like that that we have to get right because there are limitations on how much you can bend the tube into a shape or a letter and things like that. But that's also why most things are kind of possible.
Nathan Bush: I'm picturing those people who make like animals and stuff out of those long balloons.
Jake Munday: Essentially.
Jess Munday: Essentially, yeah, a little bit more complex,
Nathan Bush: but yeah, yeah, a little bit more complex than that. That's really cool.
Nathan Bush: And so when it came to offering
Nathan Bush: off the shelf neon, where did you start with that offering?
Jake Munday: That came from myself in terms of just seeing other being part of e commerce business and having a shop item there rather than a custom. And we do get that SEO report of who is searching for what online. So we wanted to make sure first and foremost we were servicing those designs as a standalone off the shelf product. Off the shelf products for us, it definitely could be expanded, but it's not a huge focus for us. It's probably less than 5% of our, our sales.
Nathan Bush: Oh, wow.
Jake Munday: Yeah, so 63, 64% of our sales all go through our online design tool. So you know, we'll probably touch on it. But a lot of time and resources and you know, research and development is put into that design tool to make it simple for our customers. But also over the time of us growing, going from doing, you know, five signs a week to doing now, you know, 400, we, we want to make sure that the process is our team's end and the manufacturing end has also been defined, you know, simplified to make it easy for us here. So part of that design tool with all those fonts are actually copyrighted by us and we've manipulated those fonts in a way that can be directly put into manufacturing where previously when it was just started, we get a font and have to change it and make it a certain size and it was very tedious.
Jess Munday: So yeah, we've essentially tried to make a custom product as I guess add to cart possible.
Nathan Bush: It's fun.
Jess Munday: Yeah. And when we started it, we were like, we don't want to be waiting four days for quotes or responses, email response. We want to buy something now we just want to click add to cart and get it delivered to the door. Like we don't have time to be going back and forth. And that was really the driver as well behind like the huge focus of the tool.
Nathan Bush: Yeah. So I'd love to dive into the tool if it's okay. But before we do, can you talk us through the experience for the customer and some of the options that they've got around that custom design?
Jake Munday: Absolutely. So on the design tool, I encourage you guys all to jump on the website, have a play around so you can basically type in your name or a quote that means something to you. You compete between. I think it's 36 different fonts. So we've got try to get a range of different fonts that you may like. You can then go through and pick a, you can align it, you can do all, you know, do all sorts of things.
Jess Munday: Different lines.
Jake Munday: Yeah. Your color. So we've got 18 different colors. We've also just introduced RGB. So now you've got multiple changing color as an option. So you can, one day you might want it pink, the next day you might want it blue or you might want it just to change as you go. So that's one option. Then you go through and select your size. So there's six different sizes with small being into smaller. So that is pretty much possible for that design. So super size, which might then come as multiple signs. But when you align them or put them up, it will look however you want. As you go bigger, you've got more flexibility. Then we've got accessory add ons. So it all comes, they all come with a remote and dimmer. We've got wall mounting so it can sit off the wall, got wall hanging, different colored backboards.
Jess Munday: You can have gold, you can have clear. Yeah, you can just create whatever you want.
Nathan Bush: You haven't made life easy for yourselves, have you?
Jake Munday: No,
Jess Munday: it's always a process.
Jake Munday: But you know, I guess trying to give the customer options, you know, they can, you know, really customize something that's going to suit them. You know, we found when we first launched we've got cut around backboard which essentially the neon has to LED Neon needs to go on an acrylic backboard and cut around is to stand, you know, around. But that can cause a lot of reflection for photos and things like that. So we've introduced a new product called Naked Neon. We've also gone ahead and trademarked that term. So essentially it's the acrylic is directly behind the neon and you can't really see it at all. And it's super flexible and durable. So, yeah, we're always trying to improve what we do and come up with new ways of doing it ahead of everyone else.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, I can imagine you got some competitors on your toes now.
Jake Munday: Yeah, absolutely. I think this would be one of the most competitive markets that I've seen even touch on.
Jess Munday: Yeah, I mean, I guess our approach to the tool is that we're never done, we're always working on the next version. So I guess having that attitude does help us kind of constantly improve it and stay ahead of the game. I suppose. So, yeah, we're going to continue with that attitude, I suppose. And in terms of competition, there's other things that we try and do as well to set ourselves apart, like in terms of customer service and turnaround times and things like that as well. So it's a whole.
Nathan Bush: So from a technology point of view, what platform are you using?
Jake Munday: We use Magento. So we've been on Magento pretty much since we launched in the US and that's strategically for the reason of SEO and the team that is doing our SEO in Perth, basically there's more flexibility with, with Magento compared to other platforms out there.
Nathan Bush: Okay, and you've been able to then custom design within the Magento platform rather than external app and then feed in?
Jake Munday: Correct.
Nathan Bush: Okay, cool. And when putting together the custom development for the tool, what was the trickiest part to get right? I could imagine things like being able to surface an immediate price would be very tricky, but that would just be the kind of the tip of the iceberg in the trickiness. Where did you really struggle?
Jake Munday: Probably that we've gone to exact sizing as well. So previously we would give you a range of what size your neon may be, but now we've gone to exact sizing. I think the biggest thing was making the fonts specific to be able to manufacture it. So when we've done our own fonts, we've also traced the amount of neon that would be used so that we know how to price it, you know, how many characters. So there's a lot of in the back end, a lot of coding and algorithms and, and all that that goes into it.
Jess Munday: Yeah. And I think just when you say what was the biggest challenge, I mean, because we've kind of tackled it with bite sized pieces as we go, we didn't go from nothing to this. So we've made developments along the way, which essentially has made the next step up a little bit easier, I suppose. So that's helped, you know, I guess, not trying to do it all at once, I suppose. And that's been a lesson for us to learn as well throughout this process.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, it's a really great lesson. And it just reminds me of the conversation we had from the team from the memo who did a great custom development piece around their gift registry as a new customer acquisition piece. But they felt like that was their competitive advantage in market if they could get that piece of technology. Right. So when you've got this idea for a custom app and you obviously know from a business sense how it works, and I'm not sure what your technical knowledge is, but I'm assuming you can't go out and code the thing yourself. How do you translate your visual vision into something that works for the team that are developing it?
Jake Munday: Let's go with the first one.
Jess Munday: The reason why we're laughing is because the amount of conversations that we've had about this is the idea, how do we get there? I mean, we spend hours with our business partners trying to decipher each other's ideas. And that's why, I mean, like, this is a ongoing project and it. It's actually hilarious. It's time consuming. But it is so interesting how one thing you can say, how is that interpreted for. It's a creative process. At the end of the day, how is that interpreted from the other person? And just getting to the point where you're on the same page, It's. Yeah, it's something we've gotten very used to doing now. But, yeah, we've had some hilarious conversations.
Nathan Bush: Any disasters where you look back and go, how did it turn out like this?
Jess Munday: Not really, because usually crazy ideas get kind of railroaded pretty quickly, I suppose.
Jake Munday: But that's what I have.
Jess Munday: Yeah. Jake's got the crazy idea.
Jake Munday: Some of them are great.
Jess Munday: Yeah.
Nathan Bush: What's your craziest?
Jess Munday: I don't know if we're at liberty to disclose some of his crazy ideas, because we could maybe do them one day.
Nathan Bush: Okay.
Jake Munday: All right.
Nathan Bush: All right, That's.
Jess Munday: We have a future stuff list, and there's a lot of Jake's ideas on the future stuff. Listen, let's just say that maybe you
Nathan Bush: need more trips to Bali.
Jess Munday: Yeah, yeah, that's right.
Jake Munday: Flush them out there. I think with the custom. With us, it's hard to kind of answer that question because we've done everything custom build, and we've got our business partner that has managed that and kind of done that, where if you look at like some Shopify apps that you can use to really just start off and you can cycle through the different apps and to plug that into your Shopify site to be able to, you know, offer a custom. But I basically. Custom to your product, but I essentially just start off on the basics and
Nathan Bush: I wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't ask you what's the craziest custom design request even if you didn't make it that you've had?
Jake Munday: We've had so many and things that we probably can't talk about because it was. They're rude or whatever. But one that comes to mind that I can talk about was we've had an inquiry probably a few months ago of a girl that wanted to get her body outline traced for her boyfriend for his room so that he's reminded of her.
Nathan Bush: Wow, there you go. I don't even know where to take that.
Jake Munday: I mean, it's funny when you see it come back into her trace and go, oh, it doesn't quite look like the photo you sent us.
Nathan Bush: And where do you put the line
Nathan Bush: in the sand at swearing offensive? Yeah, just clear line.
Jess Munday: Yeah. I guess, you know, we've got terms and conditions on our website that obviously we wouldn't do. We have the right to refuse designs that I guess are not morally correct but also within our company values. So we just train our team on that when they start with us and you know where we sit with that and how do we handle that situation if something does come across our desk that we're not comfortable with? But for the most part they're pretty harmless.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, I could imagine you get some fun ones. So I love the ad that you recently, as in I think it's the last 12 months put out. Can you describe that? And we'll put a link into the show notes so everyone can see it because it's really well produced. How did that come about?
Jess Munday: Well, that was one of Jake's ideas, one of his big ideas. And we call it the Big video.
Jake Munday: Yeah, because it was a big video because it cost a lot of money.
Nathan Bush: Can you describe it for us?
Jake Munday: The vision came from like looking at Dollar Shave Club or $B Club, they kind of ads and what the reason why it came out is because there's a lot of competition in this business and everyone has ripped off photos, our videos and just reposted it and it's hurtful. It's hard to actually get Down. So we wanted to create something that was unique to us that no one can copy. But it's one video that shows exactly what we do across different genres, from kids rooms to a cafe to a business to a wedding. So we wanted a bold video that, yeah, that showed all that and it was kind of like ongoing. So like they film as they walk through the different scenes and essentially that's what the video turned out. It was almost 12 months, 11 months in planning to critique this through Pandemic as well, to get the script right to, you know, we also went through a rebrand. We still custom them, but we changed our branding once again, you know, being market leaders, wanting to make sure we had a brand that reflected that, a brand that's fun but professional. And at the time of launching that video is when we just launched our brand. And so, you know, it all tied in together and, you know, it's a piece that's still going to be relevant in 12 months time or 2 years time to our brand and what we do. And that's why it was worth the investment. And we can use it across multiple different platforms. And also, as you will see, it's based around our US market. US for US is 75% of our overall business revenue monthly, yearly comes from the us. So it was a huge focus to make sure we tailored and were relevant for that.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, beautifully shot and directed. It doesn't look like anything we see out of Australia. So fantastic job there. Was it all done in one shot in one studio? Are we going to lose the magic behind it?
Jake Munday: Shout out to True south as well. True South Film, if anyone wants to get some filming done. I don't know if you do that. Sorry.
Nathan Bush: Hey, I'm all for shout outs.
Jake Munday: That did a great job. Very blew us away with their professionalism and how they put it together. So it was across three days, three, four days. There was about 32 crew members in total. We hired a warehouse or two different warehouses, a customer's house and yeah, some of the sets were built in. So as they walked across, so one warehouse, we had probably 40 different sets. Luckily enough, the cafe was around the corner and then the final day was, you know, 10, 15 minute drive around the corner. It's all in Geelong. So, you know, and Geelong business as well, that filmed it. So it was, yeah, it was a great, great outcome.
Nathan Bush: Amazing. And you mentioned that it was a bit of an investment for you. Has it paid off yet?
Jake Munday: We're actually lucky enough to get a grant to go towards that investment as well. So I think it has, you know, definitely paid off. When you look at the overall, you know, revenue and growth that we've experienced, we've had on the video, I think it's, you know, over 2 million views, you know, multiple different comments, hundreds of different comments. But going back to that actual video, as, you know, it's not a, you know, conversion type of video. It's a brand awareness that then flows, filters through. So it's hard to put it, you know, directly on it. But like I said, it can be used over multiple years and we're, we're, we're still using it today, so. Very much so, I would say yes.
Jess Munday: Yeah. And we also were able to make shorter versions for Facebook and Instagram ads as well. So yeah, that was really handy in the brand awareness piece as well.
Jake Munday: So the cut downs will be, you know, used as a wedding piece that we can target, you know, people getting married and a cafe for the businesses. So, you know, it really was overall good.
Jess Munday: Yeah.
Nathan Bush: What's the return on investment overall?
Nathan Bush: Can you hear that? Customers are tying their shoelaces. They are limbering up. They're ready to bolt into your store this Black Friday. That's very exciting, isn't it? I mean, you've done the hard work this year and you deserve that traffic. You're stocked up, you've got sizzling promotions. You are waiting to welcome them with open arms.
Nathan Bush: What's that?
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Nathan Bush: Jess, you mentioned before around doing social media, right? And I referred to it earlier. Are you in charge of the social media presence with your team?
Jess Munday: Not anymore. Because we actually have a marketing team that knows exactly what they're doing. They're amazing. But yes, from the start, yes, I did the social media and yeah, I guess I didn't even have any experience in social media before but it was how we started the business and from just keeping relevant and connecting with other local businesses was kind of the starting point for us and collaborating with others and also from like a Customer service perspective. Replying to DMs straight away on social media was something that was important as well, which we've actually kept as the business has grown. But yeah, in terms of managing it well, you know, now we have content pillars that we, we follow throughout the year and we have our marketing campaigns that we follow throughout the year. We also have scheduled content days to make sure that we have our content in advance from organic content that we're going to post, but also content for campaigns. So I'm still involved in a bit of that, which is always fun. But yeah, it's just super important to obviously always keep up to date with our social media and always kind of push outside the boundaries as well. So, you know, TikTok is the next kind of challenge for us, which I'm sure it is for a lot of people.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, that's great, that's fantastic insight. I want to probably come back to the customer service piece about being responsive and you mentioned before around customer service being one of your differentiators and things that you're really proud of. Can you describe where you put your efforts in customer service and how you make it a differentiator?
Jess Munday: Yeah. So as I mentioned, when we started we didn't have a website. We were locking in orders through DMs and we found that was a competitive advantage because our competitors were taking three to four days to lock in a sale and we were able to do it immediately over dm. And as the business has grown and we've improved our communication across multiple platforms, we have felt it was important to keep the DM switched on and we always have a 24 hour response time because we have people in different time zones. So it's actually worked out quite well in sense that we do have people to reply to dms on Instagram and Facebook. We have a team in Australia, the US and the uk. So with all the time zones we can be quite responsive to our customers. But yeah, it doesn't just stick with DMs. We use air Call so our team members can call our customers. We can record customer details in there, they can text our customers. We make sure that we are responsive at all times.
Jake Munday: Contact.
Nathan Bush: How does Aircorl work?
Jake Munday: Aircore basically is like a voiceover ip kind of uses the Internet. You can select a US number, UK number, Australian number. You then can put what times you're available. If the US is not available, our UK team is or Australian team is. It will flow through to our team here. So we answer those calls to make sure that we're contactable. We can transfer to team members leave notice. So that's basically how it works.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, brilliant. There's a theme coming through. A lot of what you're saying here around you are an international business and you were set up to be international from the start, but your roots are in Geelong and it sounds like you have developed a really strong community there with you in Geelong. How do you establish that local community around you in terms of a business community? And what kind of benefits does that give you?
Jake Munday: It all started, as you mentioned, in a strong community. It all started. This business started from the support that we had in the Geelong community. As we mentioned, we reached out to our network of people that we knew, businesses that we knew. Basically, we offered them a cost price sign to get them on board, but we always give back where we can to our local community. Generally, when someone walks in, our staff have authority to give that customer a discount because they've come in to store to visit us. Also, you know, just generally looking after businesses giving them discounts because we're Geelong, we want to see our signs in Geelong, but also, and we also do a lot of contra deals, so, you know, if it's going to benefit our tenant. So whether it be, you know, hospitality venue, beer company or whatever, we'll look at, you know, supplying money on sign and getting some product back in return so that everyone can benefit from it.
Jess Munday: But I think also in terms of creating a good network for Jake and I as business leaders, it's been really beneficial to make connections within the business community here in Geelong because even though they might be based in Geelong, they can really help our business internationally. So, yeah, one thing we've learned is absolutely outsourced in the areas that are not our strengths. And we have now got essentially like an informal network of trusted advisors that we call upon for any different reason and for support, you know, in our offshore locations as well. So I guess you can really kind of do it all from here.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, Great tip on surrounding yourself with people who are going through similar situations as you in your local community? In our research, I saw one of your comments was around the need for more communities and connections for women founders in Australia. Do you feel like that's still the case, that there's a missing piece around helping connect women founders in E commerce?
Jess Munday: I mean, I'm sure there's always opportunity to make connections. I think it can be difficult to do that when you're in the hustle and bustle of trying to run a business and trying to balance it all. I just know that from the connections that I've made with other female entrepreneurs and founders that it's really reassuring to know that other people understand kind of the balance that you kind of have to do when you're trying to do it, do this and do the family thing and the business thing. And I just think it's so refreshing whenever I catch up with anyone in my network that's experiencing those things because, yeah, it kind of just makes you not feel so isolated, I suppose, in. In the way that you have to kind of balance everything. So, yeah, I think there's always an opportunity to create more opportunities for people to make networks easily when you're also trying to run a business and keep a family afloat.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, it's a lot.
Jess Munday: Right.
Nathan Bush: I'll give a shout out here to actually yopo. Australian Women in E Commerce Network seem to be doing some good things recently. Kick back up post. Covid. Have you been to any of their events?
Jess Munday: No, I haven't. And that's what I should find the time to do.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, just add that onto the list. And just as another thing to do. Jake, I'm interested in a little bit of your background too. You quit high school in year 11 and this is not the first business you've been through. Teeth whitening, golf equipment, juice press, social consultancies, dog businesses and more. How do you know where to put your energy and how do you keep finding these new opportunities?
Jake Munday: I like seeing momentum when it comes to projects and opportunities. So there's been many things that I've done that haven't gone so well. And there's been some that have been really good and set me up, you know, for a great, you know, great future. Great. And to support the family. One thing I've learned over my time, obviously leaving school, getting a job and getting. Having a few businesses like I try to juggle, obviously four or five businesses at once. One stage teeth whitening, as you mentioned, juice company, a swim boss and a magic hand car wash, a franchise. Two stores there. So that's four or five businesses at once. And you know, one thing I've learned now, being with Jess, just their first venture together, we got married and actually started this business. We got two kids. But yeah, it's focused on one thing and that's one thing that's worked well for me. Yes, you can have successful different businesses and have them managed well, but you spread yourself very thin and they end up falling apart because you can't be everywhere at once. And yeah, so I've learned to just do one thing and do it really well.
Nathan Bush: It's great advice. So what's next for yourselves and Custom Neon?
Jess Munday: So for us, we want to continue our expansion in the US and the uk particularly the US is our main market. We want to establish our team there more on the ground and really focus on that. But I guess continue to grow, but continue to grow sustainably.
Nathan Bush: So, so exciting. So much more growth to come. So if we've got retailers listening to this who are very excited about the prospect of creating their own custom Neons, or people in the Geelong community, or people just in retail wanting to reach out, what's the best way to get in touch?
Jake Munday: Reach out to myself, Jackuster, neon.com or give us a call and we'll be more than happy to help you. We've got a 15% discount for your listeners as well, so add that in.
Nathan Bush: We are super excited about that. So we're going to put all the links on the show notes and on the blog post. So people, if I could recommend anything, go in and just play with all the different custom Neon designs that you can make. You'll get pretty excited pretty quickly.
Nathan Bush: Jake and Jess, thank you so much for joining us on Add to Cart.
Jess Munday: Thank you so much. We really appreciate it. Thanks Nate.
Jake Munday: Thank you.
Nathan Bush: What an amazing story. Twists and turns galore. Loved hearing about it and love even more that Jake and Jess are offering a very generous 15 off their custom Neon signs for Add to Cart listeners. So like we said, if you've got excited about going in there and seeing what you can create in that custom Neon builder, now's the time to do it. To get 15% off 15, simply visit custom neon.com au and use the code add to cart15 or one word add to cart15 and get 15% off your order. Now let's dive into the three lessons from our chat with Jake and Jess Monday from Custom Neon. Number one for me is Tippy toe Custom. Now custom development can be a tricky and a scary area to dive into, but for Jake and Jess we heard how it's paying off big time with their custom Neon light generator. Now their tip for custom development was brewing. Find a development partner you can trust and build a relationship long term. Don't treat it like a one off project. Start small and develop new features and functionality over time. Remember you don't have one shot at the customer development title. It should be something that you add
Nathan Bush: to and grow over time.
Nathan Bush: Number two Hot leads. No, not hot lights. That is never a good sign. Hot leads I loved when I asked Jess about her tips for developing a strong social media presence. Now, instead of diving into influencers, the algorithm or roi, it was pretty simple. Get back to potential customers quickly. Get people when they are in the mood to buy because you've done the hard work to get them to that point. Don't let their messages get stale in your inbox or your DMs and let that moment pass you by. Really great advice. Number three Local Community Global Scale despite the majority of custom neon sales being in the us, Jake and Jess have put a huge amount of effort into building relationships in their Geelong Backyard Coffees events contra deals. Even with businesses that aren't directly related, they've opened up some brilliant opportunities and conversations for them. A really good reminder that help might
Nathan Bush: be in our own backyards if we make the effort
Nathan Bush: to get the highlights of today's episode. Head on over to addtocart.com and sign up for our free newsletter each Tuesday. We will send Monday's episode summary link and discount codes for you to go next level on. And if you're looking to explore your next e commerce opportunity, come and Visit us at eSweet. We're a dedicated e commerce talent agency connecting the best e commerce talent with the fastest growing brands in Australia. Head on over to esweettalent.com where you can download the free e Commerce Salary Guide and sign up to our weekly e Commerce job emails. Thanks for listening and until next time, keep those customers adding the car.
