Joel Azzopardi: We make sure that they're wearing our products so they can really give that true experience and convey that to our customers. The key part to the formula is really having a very personalised but streamlined process from start to finish, making sure that we 100% protect the brand and that there is that consistent kind of tone of voice and brand image globally.
[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 catches up with Australian e commerce leaders to get all the insights, tips and lessons to keep you at the top of the e commerce game and of course, keep your customers adding to cart. Here's your host, Pushy. I remember when I last went to Italy, all I came away with was a caffeine addiction and a few extra kilos from all of the pizza. My guest today actually came away with a business acquiring the distribution rights to an Italian clothing brand and developing a cult following in Australia and New Zealand. Joel Azzapadi is the co founder and CEO of Freddy the. They make jeans that prioritize comfort and fit and look amazing on everybody. Thanks to the patented fabric technology, the Freddy brand is over 50 years old and in Australia now has a cult following with over 150,000 Australian Instagram followers. Who knew good fitting jeans would be so popular? In this chat, Joel shares the secrets to Freddie's customer happiness, the best way to organize a distribution model and a winning formula for influencer marketing. Now, before we get into today's chat, I want to share a little resource that we've just released. As you might know that in our checkout episodes I ask our e commerce experts, do you have a book or a podcast that you recommend? Well, I've taken all of those recommendations and the stories behind them and put them into our own book called the Book Recommendations of E Commerce Experts. Just makes sense. The idea is that you never ever run out of reading ideas ever again. You can download that one now for free over on add to cart.com au go check it out. All right, thanks to our partners Shopify plus and Paclio. Here's our conversation with Joel Azzapadi, co founder and CEO of Freddy. Joel, welcome to ADD to cart.
Joel Azzopardi: Thanks for having me.
[Voiceover]: Pleasure. We've been lining this one up for a while. You very, very busy expanding internationally, so I appreciate your time here today. Before we get into it, tell us who is Freddie and what makes it special.
Joel Azzopardi: Sure. Yeah. So Freddy empowers its customers in moving forward throughout their day through the apparel we design and sell. So we're really famous for reinventing jeans. So we've taken comfort and fit to a whole new level through our patented designs and technical fabrics that we use. So Freddie basically solves the problem of uncomfortable, unflattering, poorly fitting. Jeans that stretch out of shape are uncomfortable to move in, they slip down at the waist and does nothing to flatter your curves in particular for women. I guess what a lot of people in Australia don't know is that the Italians have been enjoying Freddie for almost 50 years. So Freddie is an activewear brand that originated in Milan in 1976.
[Voiceover]: Oh, before activewear was cool.
Joel Azzopardi: That's basically right. And yeah, with a real belief that being active shouldn't be limited to slogging it away on the treadmill or in the Pilates studio or in the gym. Freddie takes up more holistic approach to what it means to be active. And we've created clothing, and more specifically pants and jeans that enables you to be active and move comfortably and confidently from the minute you wake up in the morning to the minute you go to bed.
[Voiceover]: I mean, that's a pretty big problem, right? No one likes shopping for jeans and especially hard online, knowing what jeans will look good. How do you do design jeans or redesign jeans to make the perfect fit?
Joel Azzopardi: So we have a worldwide patent on the design specifically of our ruck shaping effect pants. So we, we kind of completely redesigned it. So experimenting with different fabric. So we have a four way. A traditional denim has a two way stretch only kind of stretches in one direction. We've got a four way stretch on our products. Our original product was a real cotton jersey pair rather than kind of a woven jean. And with that comes unbelievable stretch. We're really big on ensuring comfort and style and a flattering fit are things that are at the forefront of every product we create. Because you can have comfortable clothing like or comfortable pants like TRAP pants, but you're not going to get that really flattering fit. So we've completely redesigned the back. We've ensured on our, on our initial designs not having pockets, so but more, more strategic stitching in the pants because by having pockets people are encouraged to put things in them and that defeats the purpose of what we're trying to do is ensuring that you are comfortable in your clothing and you look great in them as well. So a combination of that strategic stitching, the fabrics we use and the overall design that we've created means that we've created something that's been really unique on the market for the past 10 years.
[Voiceover]: That's cool. And is all the design still done out of Italy?
Joel Azzopardi: Yeah, we have a design house in Milan and in Verona in Italy. So, yeah, a team of designers. Carlo Freddy, who started the business in 1976, still heads up the design team and he's. He really is the genius behind the brand and he has an incredible mind and comes up with these concepts and designs. And what's been really great with Freddie, they're really big on patent, seeing their designs, which is really unusual for a fashion brand as well. And it's something that, that we're really big on and it enables us to make sure that we are unique in the market and we're able to stop any copycats out there as well.
[Voiceover]: Yeah, great. You've got a massive following, 158,000 followers just for the Australian and New Zealand side of Freddie. Do customers, when they first come across Freddie, how do you move them from discovery into then purchasing and having the confidence that, yes, this is going to be the jeans that fit perfectly?
Joel Azzopardi: I think for us, it's really taking them on that customer journey. It's really telling the story. So we work a lot with influencers. We're really big on marketing as well, and it's really ensuring that at every touch point of that customer journey, we're giving them the right information for where they're at. So that might sound very basic, but you can't go to the hard sell straight away and particularly for a unique product. And it has been challenging at times to get people's head around a product which has been around for over 100 years in terms of a denim jean, people are really unsure about difference and something that is unique and different to the market. What we see time and time again, and I personally experienced it hundreds of times in our, in our stores, the minute our customers try on our products, we see the same reactions every single time. The first one is, oh, my God, I cannot believe how comfortable these are. And it's immediately followed by a squat or moving their legs and they captured themselves in the mirror and they say, oh, my God, these look amazing. And they do. And we've really, we've designed our products so that it isn't just one fit fits all. We've actually designed each size of our products and to fit different body shapes as well. So we range, we have low rise, mid rise, high rise, we've got an ankle length or a full length. And we also have our curvy products as well, which we've completely redesigned. We haven't Just increased the sizing of our original pan. But we've actually designed them to mold to people's individ body shapes as well. So yeah, which has been challenging to try and communicate that through E commerce and through our online channels. But yeah, we've managed to do it and we really have a strong and loyal customer base because. Yeah, but once they try on our products, we've had customers that buy five, $600 designer jeans and they write to us and say, a problem. I need to throw my designer jeans out because I cannot wear anything other than Freddie again because I just find uncomfortable.
[Voiceover]: So good. Do you have to do anything special on your fitment page or fitment information to give people that confidence?
Joel Azzopardi: Yeah, definitely. We really invest in kind of our size guide. We've got kind of our fit quiz on our website as well. And for us, it really all comes down to the customer service side of things. Ensuring we constantly have live chat with a real person on our site is really important for us and we have a team that we train really well and they live and breathe our products so we're able to to really give that tailored response to people who are unsure. And I think that's really vital for any fashion brand, really. On E commerce, I think particularly in Australia and New Zealand, we're finding that confidence has increased, but people are still hesitant to buy clothing online and particularly something particularly a new brand as well. And yeah, it's our jobs to really give their confidence that yes, what you can buy. It is possible to get your right fit and your right size first time around. But if, if you don't and you don't find that perfect fit straight away, we make sure we just make it really seamless for that customer to swap things out and try again and give us another sh.
[Voiceover]: Phew. I bet you're breathing a sigh of relief now that Black Friday is over for another year, right? Well, according to our friends at Shopify customers, they haven't stopped looking for bargains and they are going to keep chasing them all the way through 2023 as the cost of living takes its toll. Yes, that old chestnut. But Shopify have surveyed 2000 Australian customers and they found that 3 in 4 Australians are already reducing their discretion discretionary spending and 84% of customers are comparing prices with price and value. Such a hot point for customers. It is worth considering how you are going to continually send price messages throughout 2023 to keep your customers interested. The battle for the wallet is going to be fierce to view more resources to help with your 2023 planning and see how Shopify can take your e commerce plan business to the next level. Visit shopify.com au today. I mean, I can imagine it's hard enough for customer service teams on the, on the floors of retail stores when people are shopping for pants and jeans. Like it's probably one of the hardest things to buy. You mentioned that you give your customer service team training so they can help people over live chat. What are the kind of things that your team look out for or ask when trying to help customers find that perfect fit?
Joel Azzopardi: So the very first thing we always ask our customers is whether or not they've heard of the brand before or they're familiar with our products. The answers to that really, really tailors the direction that our customer service team go down. And if they haven't, it's simply asking questions about what those customers are generally used to and what they're looking for. We tend to find, for example, if you're used to wearing a high waisted product and our customers wouldn't consider anything lower, then we immediately kind of eliminate a whole lot about products. So then it's then asking questions around how tall they are, what their usual pant size is, and showing and sharing examples and pictures of our, of our real customers through that live chat function we find really helps show the customer what our products would look like on a similar body shape to them. And what we also give is that real tailored and personalised customer experience. So our customer service team, as I mentioned, like live and breathe our products, they're wearing it daily, they've tried all of our styles and they're able to really give that little personalized recommendation as you would if you were a salesperson in a bricks and mortar store. So yes, we have a really strong customer service team, or we call them a customer happiness team. But they're also trained as sales staff to a large degree because that's basically their role is to be there for our customers, ensuring that they're giving the right advice. And part of that is ensuring that we do monthly training with our team. We tell them all of the features of our products and we send them and we make sure that they're wearing our products so they can really give that true experience and convey that to our customers.
[Voiceover]: Do you track and measure the customer happiness team, the conversations that lead to conversions?
Joel Azzopardi: Definitely. We have so one person in the team that's constantly monitoring responses and using examples to try and improve if a discussion or a conversation could have been handled better. We get around we discuss it as well, and we find that that is the best way to really train the team, make sure that we're all on the same page. So regardless of who you speak to within our team, it feel like we're all conveying the exact same message. You're not getting any mixed messages. And that goes with our physical stores as well.
[Voiceover]: When you're talking metrics and targets for measuring customer happiness, what are the most important measures or signals that you've got? Happy customers.
Joel Azzopardi: For us, there's a few things. So I guess customer happiness to me is when things are seamless and they just work. And we've invested a lot in optimizing our customer experience at each touch point within our business. We believe that our customers are real people with unique needs and expectations, rather than just another number. And by taking the time to really understand their perspectives and actively listening to their feedback and emphasising with their experiences, we're able to provide a real personalised level of experience that sets us apart. We have a really strong feedback loop within our business, so we're constantly asking and listening to customers and understanding what their potentially frustrations are or how we can improve our products or any recommendations they have for designs. And we immediately feed that back into our design team in Italy to ensure that we are making products for our customers or where we're tweaking products to make sure that they're ultimately really happy with and really proud about wearing our brand.
[Voiceover]: Awesome. What tools or technology are you using that you think is really working for you to help collect that customer feedback and also pass it in through the team?
Joel Azzopardi: We've got Zendesk, we've got Gorgeous in terms of our emails, we've got telephone systems as well. But I think what really, truly makes customers happy is is having that genuine level of service. But we also have like a few practices within our customer service team because we ultimately, we want to become famous for our customer service and we genuinely do go be up and above and beyond and treat every customer like a VIP, regardless of whether it's their first or their 10th purchase. And one practice we have is that we like to unexpectedly surprise and delight our customers and make an impact through their interactions with us, regardless at what touch point. And that may be small things like being flexible with our returns policy or our customer service team trying on products for our customers and sharing images with them to help them decide on styles or colors, or some bigger initiatives like refunding our customers and sending them out their order for free, or sending them a little care Package with some cheeky Freddy chocolates and famous underwear. We've enabled our customer service team to know that it's their job to unexpectedly put a smile on our customers faces. And I think that's the practice that also makes our team feel great too because I mean, at times customer service can be a very challenging role. But through this practice we've been able to give fulfillment to our team's jobs and also provide a memorable experience to our customers. And yes, technology really helps facilitate that. But I think it's just, it's really being genuine and really valuing the people that are coming to your website or that are walking in your store. These are people that are willing to part with their hard earned cash and they really genuinely love our brand. And the minute they have a negative experience, we could lose them. As the saying goes. They'll go on and tell 10 other people about their terrible experience experience and we definitely don't want that. So I think it's really empowering and having this initiative of surprising and delighting our customers when they least expect it, I think that's what really sets our customer service apart.
[Voiceover]: Yeah, I love that. It sounds very much like the Zappos philosophy to customer service. Does having treating all customers like a VIP, whether it's first customer or the 10th order, plus the ability to do surprise and delight and empower your team to do surprise and delight. Does that rule out a structured loyalty program for you?
Joel Azzopardi: No, definitely not. So we've got our loyalty program at the moment based on kind of points that our customers can earn over their kind of lifetime value and doing different points throughout their customer journey. To be honest, we're actually in the process of revamping our loyalty program and we've partnered with Yoppo to really take that to the next level. So I think our loyalty program is only a couple of years old and there were some limitations and we used it as a real test case to really understand are our customers engaging with it and B, getting that feedback to really understand what they truly value out of a loyalty program. What's going to convince them to sign up and how would they feel really valued as a customer to continue being our customer. So we kind of ripped that current loyalty program apart. And I think we're in the process of launching by the end of May our new revamped loyalty program with Yoko, which we're really excited about because it's going to enable us to really, really deliver on a lot more perks and really help hopefully increase that lifetime customer value.
[Voiceover]: What were the biggest lessons you got out of that first iteration of the loyalty program that you'll take into this second version with YoTPO. And you don't have to give away any state secrets before you've launched.
Joel Azzopardi: No, it's the biggest one is ease of use. If you're making it difficult for customers, they forget about it or too hard basket. The feedback we were getting is it was too difficult to really understand, well, how many points do I have? What can I do with these points? Why do I need to kind of log in to my account and get a discount code to be able to use my points? Why isn't it just seamless on the checkout, especially if I am. If I do enter my email address? And I think what we really love with the yoco setup is that it is fully integrated into the Shopify cart. As long as the customer has put in their email address and they've signed up, they're immediately their next purchase. They're immediately able to see how much credit do I have, how many points do I have and be able to use it there and then on that purchase. And for us, that ease is going to be a game changer because, yeah, customers don't want to things that are too difficult to use. And that was the biggest learning, the biggest frustration. And again, we got all of that feedback through our customer service team and talking to our customers and we acted on that as soon as we saw it become a problem. As soon as we found a better solution, we pushed a button on that. And yeah, and with that, we've been able to kind of launch a whole new set of initiatives and a whole new set of perks for our customers that we're. Yeah. That we're really excited to launch by the end of this month.
[Voiceover]: Beautiful. Well, if you're listening to this, there is a very good chance that the loyalty program, the new loyalty program for Freddy is live. So make sure you jump on the website and have a look. I think we should go live around the time that you launch, so the dates might overlap there. Very excited to see it. Now, I want to just change topic for a little bit in that you started getting the distribution rights to Freddie for Australia and New Zealand back in 2014, almost 10 years ago. Now, I know absolutely nothing about acquiring distribution rights. How do you do that?
Joel Azzopardi: We secured the distribution rights for Freddie in Australia and New Zealand in 2014. And in short, like we. We discovered the brand, I was living in Europe at the time, identified the potential the brand would have realized it wasn't in Australia, as in it had
[Voiceover]: no presence at all.
Joel Azzopardi: Not.
[Voiceover]: You couldn't buy online or in store?
Joel Azzopardi: No, not at that time. And ultimately we co founder and I put a business plan together which we managed to get into the right hands at Freddy and ultimately took a lot of risks. I have an incredible wife, Noni, and co founder Kenneth, who's been on this journey with me since we started and who I credit to helping build the Freddie brand in our regions over the last nine and a half years. And I think in addition to having a strong business plan, acquiring distribution rights to a brand also requires building really strong relationships with the brand and having a real passion and belief in a brand. So my co founder, Kenneth and I both have digital marketing and E commerce backgrounds and we were able to use our knowledge to identify some opportunities for introducing and growing the Freddy brand in Australia and New Zealand. And we were able to convince Freddie that we were the right team for the job and they took a chance on us and we very quickly became the biggest Freddy distributor globally. And yeah, been growing into other countries as a result of that. So, yeah, so kind of, in short, find an opportunity, put a really strong case together and make sure you're able to kind of get it into, into the right hands. But along the way, yeah, you're definitely going to have to take some risks and be bold in your approach. But yeah, that's, that's, that's basically how we started.
[Voiceover]: And what are the positives and the negatives of a distribution model? I can imagine that you're inheriting a brand style guide that you've got to keep to. You're limited to the product that's coming out of the primary brand. But then what kind of freedom do you have in the territories that you work in?
Joel Azzopardi: Yeah, so we're really lucky. And as I mentioned, it all comes down to really building that strong relationship and being able to convince the brand that, like, that we're invested in this 110% and that we live and breathe this. And for us, our biggest thing, being a marketer myself, is making sure that we 100% protect the brand and that there is that consistent kind of tone of voice and brand image globally as well. And yes, there are the basic kind of guidelines that we do need to follow, but we've also been able to kind of build, build trust with Freddie as experts within our regions as well. And they understand that we know what our consumers in Australia and New Zealand want to see how their style differs from European styles, for example, and how Communicating with that audience differs. So we've been able to just really own the brand from the ground up and we've been able to grow the Freddie story that has that rich almost 50 year old history and be able to kind of tailor that in a way that our customers within our regions will truly resonate with. So I mean we do all of our own content creation, we create all of our own marketing and advertising. All of the images and content that you see on our website is all done by us. We really rarely use the content, for example, coming out of Italy because ultimately our customers just don't resonate with that. There's different cultural differences, but there does need to be that level of consistency behind the brand so that if someone goes to the Freddie Italy website or our website or walks into a Freddie store in Milan or our one in Melbourne, they know immediately that okay, yes, this is familiar. This is the brand I know and this is the kind of experience that I would expect from a brand like Freddie.
[Voiceover]: You've refreshed your website. The new range is about to drop. You've never had more customer service options. Hey, but take a look over there at that boring pile of packaging boxes. Ugh, ugly to time to give that some love. Luckily Paclio is here to bring some joy to your customers. Delivery and unboxing experience. It's been ignored for way too long. With vibrant colors, cool designs and eco friendly credentials, there are no more excuses for boring boxes. Even better, Paclio is Australian owned and operated with same day dispatch and 14 day returns. There's nothing boring about that. Check out the Paclio range of easy ecommerce packaging options@paclio.com. that's Paclio P A C K L E O paclio.com and you mentioned that you took on yourself and your co founder took on risk when bringing the Freddie brand into Australia. From a commercial perspective, we've had a lot of D2C founders talk around what it takes from a capital and an investment point of view to start a D2C brand. Does that differ a lot from a distributed model?
Joel Azzopardi: To some degree. I think the terms we signed to become the exclusive distributor in our countries. So like in this case it's Australia, New Zealand and we basically own the brand and have exclusive rights to those sales channels and are solely responsible for growing the brand in that region. I think with that comes minimum commitments that we need to agree to. When it comes to inventory we buy and the ability to show a strong growth plan and be able to kind of stick to that. I think the only real way it differs from a B2C E commerce brand is that we're limited to sales in the regions we have that distribution agreement for. So in our case, we weren't able to open up, shipping and begin advertising, selling products outside of Australia and New Zealand as there's other distributors in those regions. So I think that's the biggest difference and I think at times that can be challenging, particularly with how digital the world is at the moment with brands, advertising on social media and whatnot. So it's, it's making sure that you have those controls and things in place and ensuring that the customer understands, hey, okay, I want to. I want to buy Freddie. This is the channel to do that.
[Voiceover]: Fantastic. And so you have expanded into other markets. You've got the rights for Freddie in the USA and recently expanded into the UK as well. Congratulations. That sounds like an incredible adventure. And they must have a lot of faith in the model that you've set up here in Australia. What were the steps that it took for you to expand into those markets?
Joel Azzopardi: Thank you. And yeah, like, there were quite a few things to consider. I think for us it was very important to have a local presence and distribution network on the ground in each country. The first step to consider operationally is how to set things up. For example, in the usa, we considered opening a US branch of our Australian company, but there were a few limitations with that. So we ended up opening a company in the usa, which initially proved to be quite difficult as we didn't have any local directors at the time. And once we were able to kind of get through those hurdles, we then had to open a bank account, which surprisingly was very, very difficult, particularly in the us and we had to jump through a lot of hoops just to open a bank account to accept payments over there. That was a massive learning curve. And I think from there, like, the next steps is building out your tech stack, building an online store, which for us being a Shopify plus partner was one of the more seamless parts of the process, which was really great. Like that we knew that was something that we could turn on within a matter of days. And that really helped give us that confidence to go into those new regions. And then it's deciding on how you're going to manage your inventory. And for us, like, we partnered with three PLs in the UK and in the USA and it's important. The main reason for that is because it is important for us to ship locally to our customers to ensure they're getting their orders really quickly, to ensure they don't have to deal with things like custom charges and added costs. And it also enables us to have a seamless local returns process as well, which is really important and gives those customers confidence to buy. And it's kind of like once we have all that set up, it's then slowly growing our teams locally as well and ensuring we had a local customer happiness team in every country. And then we're kind of slowly building out our marketing and finance and HR teams in each of those regions as well, to ensure that we are really doing and producing that localized content.
[Voiceover]: That's great. And I can assume that you're getting efficiencies of scale now from your tech platforms and plugins. Do you manage all of that from Australia?
Joel Azzopardi: At the moment, we have a core office in Cremorne in Melbourne, which we have around 20 staff at. We are working across all regions here, but we're slowly kind of building up, I guess, our tier two offices in the US and in the uk because there are just some, some of that kind of local knowledge and some of those people that you need to have on the ground as well. But. But yeah, there are definitely some efficiencies of scale that we're able to kind of take advantage of. Particularly, yeah, by having a platform like Shopify, we're able to duplicate a lot of our products, a lot of our content, even though we have, we got four individual websites and at times that can be very time consuming to update or make changes. But by having it all centralized and being able to kind of work with a single team across each of those four websites has enabled us to really do things quickly and efficiently. And by having that established knowledge and that established team, it has enabled us to kind of really quickly grow into other regions as well. So, for example, when entering the UK market, we literally signed the contract and started selling through our own website in a matter of three weeks. So we're able to do that really quickly. We're able to mobilize a logistics team, get stock there on the ground, set up our websites, set up a business within that time frame as well. Thankfully, being able to open bank accounts in the UK were a lot easier than the us, but here we're open, do that fairly quickly. And within a matter, like I said, of three weeks, we're able to kind of start sending orders out and start. Start driving out our marketing efforts to grow the brand in that region.
[Voiceover]: Who would have thought that setting up a bank account for a bank to be able to take your money would be the Hardest thing of setting up a E commerce business in a new territory.
Joel Azzopardi: I reckon I can write a book just on that alone. It's. Yeah, it's pretty interesting.
[Voiceover]: Amazing. And so now that you have expanded Australia, New Zealand, uk, usa. I can imagine all of these markets are at different stages of the Freddie journey and perceptions by the Freddie customer and the potential Freddie customer. Where are you spending a lot of your time and attention? What channels are really working for you at the moment?
Joel Azzopardi: Definitely influencer marketing and word of mouth and referrals are big ones for us. We find that these channels are key at that top of funnel for driving intrigue and awareness of the Freddie brand and our products. We invest a lot in localized content and storytelling for each of our territories as well. And I guess as customers move down the funnel we of course invest in Meta and Google and those other digital platforms where we're driving that remarketing and driving that different messaging to be able to kind of take that customer on that, on that purchase cycle journey in order to then convert. So certainly investing in a lot of those digital, those digital channels and I guess as we talked about earlier when I guess retaining those customers is a big one for us as well. So yeah, I think definitely from the top of funnel, our biggest investment is around that influencer side of things throughout the middle and that remarketing, it's that Meta and you kind of Googles and then, and then we really utilize things like email and our own social channels to really drive that repurchase.
[Voiceover]: Great. And you were really early on the scene for influencer marketing and I read that you have a little bit of a formula for it now. Any secrets you can share around how you actually make influencer work and be scalable?
Joel Azzopardi: Yeah, like we, I mean we've invested a lot in influencer marketing internally and we've built our own internal platforms and processes that we've been able to scale. I mean there's a lot of apps and, and sites out there that promise to help kind of build influencer marketing campaigns and strategies. And we tried and tested a few of those but for us they just weren't meeting our expectations and our needs and how we were able to do business. So we kind of, we decided to build something ourselves and I think what we find is the key part of to the formula is really having a very personalized but streamlined process from start to finish. So from that initial outreach to the final debrief post collaboration as well, I think being really responsive and having clear communication guidelines and building those genuine relationships with influencers who genuinely love your brand and products goes a very long way. And I think if there is any secret, I think that is the one that has resulted in many influencers approaching us and wanting to work with us again and again. And it also empowers those influences to want to create unique and amazing content for us. So it might sound fairly straightforward and fairly basic, but it is really truly building that those relationships. But being able to do that by utilizing technology and systems and processes to be able to really scale that in a cost efficient way.
[Voiceover]: And given that you've been doing it for a while now, I'm sure you've been burnt a few times by influencers or wasted a lot of money or wasted a lot of time. For people exploring it and looking to put more resources into it, do you have any tips or things they should avoid to stop any mistakes that you might have made along the journey?
Joel Azzopardi: That's a very good question. And yes, it does happen. It's been, I guess, really savvy when it comes to business. Ultimately it is a business transaction depending on what agreements you have. But it's really setting those expectations. I mean, regardless if it's a product for post or if it's a paid collaboration, we make sure that we agree to those terms in the form of a contract from the beginning. We discuss and agree on what payment terms are and having before kind of anything gets sent out or any money is handed over. It's just really making sure that we set what those expectations are. And thankfully it's gotten a lot better. And I think, yeah, part of that is just potentially the reputation that we've kind of been able to build as well and the people and how we are quite selective about who we work with. And as I said, we want to work with people who genuinely love our brand and genuinely want to communicate the benefits of the Freddy brand to their audiences. And I think by working and being selective with those people that we, we do work with, yeah, it is very rare now that we would get burnt, but that came with experiencing that very early on.
[Voiceover]: So less about trying to convince influencers that they should be wearing or promoting your brand, but navigating or steering towards people who are already passionate around what you do and can see the benefits in it.
Joel Azzopardi: Yeah, exactly right. You're going to get a return tenfold by doing that. Because consumers are so savvy now. They can see right through influences and people that aren't being genuine about what they're promoting or if it doesn't even make sense And I think what we're really big on is it's just really communicating the benefits and the problems that we solve to our consumers and that it is the right fit for the people that we work with. So, yeah, I think it is. That's absolutely key because you're not going to get that return and the customers are going to see right through people that aren't being genuine.
[Voiceover]: Yeah, absolutely. So I loved our conversation around customer happiness and how much you value that and put an emphasis on it. External to Freddy, what brands do you look up to that have that same customer happiness perspective? Are there any out there that you go, this is a great roadmap for what we want to do with customer happiness?
Joel Azzopardi: I've always admired Virgin and obviously Richard Branson and Virgin disrupted many industries and the drive for that came from frustration from his own poor experience with other brands. And I think if I were to pick one that always comes to my mind, it's definitely Virgin and I think they've shown how vital focusing on customers and staff is to the success of any business. And I think that's something I 100% agree in and has always been on the back of my mind find. Yeah. Throughout this entire journey. So, yeah, that would be the brand.
[Voiceover]: Great example and a good bit of fun as well.
Joel Azzopardi: Right. That's right.
[Voiceover]: So we were talking before we started recording and you're about to head off on a trip to the other territories. But I'd love to know from you what is next for yourself and the Freddie team? What have you got your sights set on for the next 12 months?
Joel Azzopardi: We want to disrupt physical retail. So we really believe in physical retail and its role in complementing E commerce. And we have an incredible concept store here in Cremorne in Melbourne where customers can Enjoy Barista May's St Ali coffee while they discover our range of Freddy products. And we're opening a new physical store in Miami beach in a couple of weeks time, which is something we're really excited about, but it won't be your standard clothing store in a shopping mall and we're doing things very differently. So, yeah, that's kind of what's next and what's on my agenda over the next few weeks. But yeah, definitely, it's kind of really changing up that physical retail space.
[Voiceover]: Definitely a trend and I'm not sure if, you know, Australian brands are leading the world here, but there's definitely a trend coming through. We just saw July open their beautiful Bondi store, lskd, hitting their first. I think they are In Miami as well, aren't they?
Joel Azzopardi: Their first store, I think was San Diego.
[Voiceover]: San Diego. That might have been it, yeah. But not just going out to create stores with full of product but actual experiences. And it's, it's really nice to see brands emerging from, you know, mainly online and into challenging what a physical store can look like and taking it to the world.
Joel Azzopardi: Yeah, definitely. I think it's as much as I'd love to just be a brand that was solely online, there are, there is that demand to touch and feel and to experience a brand and, and for us, that's ultimately what we, what we're trying to do. It's taking the brand into that physical environment and showing customers that Freddy experience because to them it's not just that, it's not just that transactional relationship by having the Freddie name on your, on yourself and being proud to wear our products is a lifestyle and it's a lifestyle that our customers, customers choose and that's the lifestyle that we want to kind of bring to that physical retail environment and really engage with our customers and hopefully discover a whole lot more beautiful.
[Voiceover]: I'm very excited for you and I'll be keeping a very close eye as you roll these out. Finishing up. How can people get in touch if they've heard something from you today? They go, I'd love to follow up with Joel or check out the website. What's the best way for them to do so?
Joel Azzopardi: The best way is definitely LinkedIn to get in touch or if you're in the Cremorne area. Yeah. Come and visit our store at 100 Green street, which is also where our HQ is. So, I mean most days and we have amazing coffee here, so yeah, definitely come and say hi.
[Voiceover]: No excuses there, is there?
Joel Azzopardi: Not at all.
[Voiceover]: Joel, thank you for joining us on Add to Cart.
Joel Azzopardi: No worries. Thanks for having me.
[Voiceover]: Now, I'll be honest with you, I didn't know a lot about Freddy before I started researching, but I just love how Joel has taken a traditional designer brand with a big legacy behind it and not only made it relevant for an online audience, but introduced it to Australian and now US and UK audiences. What an awesome achievement. Here are the three biggest takeaways that I took from our chat. Number one, get local. Local presence matters, especially if you want to make an impact in customer service and marketing. It doesn't matter that this is an international label. Freddie prides itself on customer happiness and service. The only way to do this is to know the customer, speak their language, get back to them in under an hour, surprise and delight them. This can only truly be done by getting close to them. If you're trying to do this from distance, you are kidding yourself. Number two, don't overcomplicate loyalty. As you heard Joel say, Freddie are shaking up their loyalty program and moving over to YOTPO so that loyalty can be easily understood and integrated with the checkout process. Let's face it, loyalty only stretches so far. Don't lose the sale because you've bamboozled the customer with loyalty offers that are difficult to attain. 3. Natural influences Freddie isn't a brand for everyone and Joel and the team are okay with that. Rather than try and attract influencers over to promote and get excited about Freddy, they incentivize and contract existing customers who are content creators. This makes them not just influencers, but real recommendations 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 links 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 E Suite. 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 au where you can download the free Ecommerce Salary guide and sign up to our weekly ecommerce job emails. Thanks for listening and until next time, keep those customers adding to car.
