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[Voiceover]: Welcome to the Checkout. We catch up with previous add to cart guests and ask them five quick questions to get to know them better and lead you with a little extra inspiration to get through your Friday. Here's your host, Bushy.
[Ad]: Today's checkout features Kelly Walker and Julie Benhammo from Clipster. This is the duo behind a brand that's turning everyday frustrations into must have accessories. From keeping hats secure, to making sure glasses don't disappear, to keeping designer bags off pub floors. Their clever clips are now selling 40,000 units every month across 12 countries. In this chat we dive into Julie's accidental bulk buy disaster, Kelly's midnight impulse purchase that didn't quite live up to expectations, and the e commerce brands that are inspiring them right now. Let's get into it.
Nathan Bush: Kelly and Julie, welcome to the Checkout. Thank you so much for joining us. We had a brilliant chat earlier a couple of weeks ago talking about what you've built with the amazing business of Clipster, solving problems from originally how to keep your kids hats on their school bag, but now solving problems for what are we talking? We're talking about farmers who are losing their cobras all the way through to people with vision impairedness, through to ladies who want to keep their handbags off pub floors. Amazing. So we've learned about Cliftsa, but I want to learn more about you both. So I've got five quick questions for you. Number one, what is the weirdest thing that you've ever bought online? Kelly, I'll start with you.
Kelly Walker: So the weirdest thing that I have bought online and it was this is like midnight Instagram shopping was something that can break your windscreen if your car falls into a river. I have never ever seen or thought I had any need for this product whatsoever. But at midnight on Instagram, that is
Nathan Bush: such a late night purchase.
Kelly Walker: Yeah. And not only Did I buy it for me? I bought it for all my friends, too.
Nathan Bush: What did they. What did your friends say when you gave them that?
Kelly Walker: Oh, look, to be honest with you, by the time it arrived and it was such a piece of rubbish, I was like, oh, my God, this is going straight in the bin. But at the time, I thought it was literally going to be life savings that, you know, everybody should have one.
[Ad]: That is funny because you, as we
Nathan Bush: discovered in our main chat, are a problem solver. You are continually creating new products to solve problems. That's one of the oldest problems going around being, you know, that fear of being trapped in a car. You must see it come through on Instagram feeds all the time. These new products coming out, claiming to solve problems. Can you tell the real ones from the bullshit ones pretty quickly or do you get suckered in?
Kelly Walker: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. But, you know, I'm only human. And midnight on Instagram, I have no experience.
Nathan Bush: Julie, what about you?
Julie Benhammo: So for me, it's not the product that's weird. It's the quantity that I get wrong all the time. So it's back to school and I send my tickets to school and I needed a Sharpie to mark their clothes. They're like 2 and 4 to write their name on their clothes. And turns out I bought 250 Sharpies, not one. 250. So if you ever need a Sharpie, you told me, because I could literally open a store. So I tend to like buy a thing and then it comes in the wrong quantity. Like, I have like, like 30 sticky notes. Like 30 packs of sticky notes and 250 Sharpie.
Nathan Bush: Anyway, well, if we say Clipster, launching a gift with purchase soon, you know,
Julie Benhammo: you know where it came from.
Kelly Walker: Black Sharpies for everyone.
Julie Benhammo: And you get a sharp and you get a shirt.
Nathan Bush: All right, number two, which retailer has most inspired you recently? Julie?
Julie Benhammo: So I think we have two just because they come up a lot in conversations internally lately. One is July. Like, it's an Australian brand. Love what they do, love how they're communicating, love who they work with. I think they're so smart and really, really inspiring for me and really, like at the top of my list in everything. The second one would be who is Elijah? I think that comes up also a lot in conversations. We've heard them on your podcast. So I think, yeah, I think those
Kelly Walker: are my two look. I'll say E commerce wise. I'll say bed threads. The amount of product that they have on their website and the ease with which you can shop I just think is fantastic. I've always looked at that website and thought that is a website that is doing some serious heavy lifting and I think it's really clever.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, nice. They, they do a really good job online too I think merchandise and showcase their products in the best light. It's incredible. Number three, name a piece of tech that you or your e commerce business couldn't live without. Kelly.
Kelly Walker: For me it's Shopify. I just absolutely love the Shopify app. I look at it so many times. I can look at my or our business from so many different angles. I can run any sort of report that I want from it. So yeah, Shopify for me.
Nathan Bush: Do you remember the moment that you turned off the Shopify Ding when you got a sale?
Kelly Walker: Do you know, I just realized actually it wasn't a moment but I realized I haven't heard it from for a long time because I've had it on silent. But exactly the first two years it was amazing and I'd have it so loud and I remember, yeah I'd be out with friends and I'd be like oh, it's another sale. That's a. And then it just got embarrassing. So that's why I. Yeah probably about a year ago I stopped that and
Julie Benhammo: that sound is in one of my kids cartoons like intro and every time I'm like oh. And turns out it's not. It's just them watching tv. Every single time I'm like oh. And no it's not. So yeah.
Nathan Bush: So what about you, Julie?
Julie Benhammo: I think Shopify obviously like and I don't even know how we would run this business without it. A second one that for that we've discovered recently but that's growing and doing amazing is profit peak. So which I know you've had also on your podcast, Carla and David, amazing people and what they're building is absolutely insane. And if you run a business and want to be profitable and understand everything about your customers, I think it's a, it's a must have.
Nathan Bush: I'm really keen to just ask you a follow up question on that because Kelly, you mentioned in our main episode how important cash flow is for you and to remain profitable like eagle eye on that which is so, so, so smart. Especially when you've got all this opportunity for growth like you go crazy if you wanted to but cash flow keeps it alive. And you mentioned there the Shopify reporting. What's that extra layer that profit peak gives you on visibility around making sure that you're hitting the right numbers.
Julie Benhammo: So it's like, the spending you have better visibility on, like how much you should be spending on ads or how much you should not be spending on ads. And also you see the entire customer journey. So you're like, okay, maybe that was not attributed to meta. Or maybe that was attributed to Meta and understanding, like, are we going crazy because we're just generating revenue? And. And, you know, it happened that before. We were like, oh, my God, we did this much sales today, but we were not looking carefully enough at profits, and that changed everything for us.
Kelly Walker: Yeah. So it has a look at our AdSense and shows us which ones are performing the most effectively, the most cost effectively. It also has a look at what sells together, so that can help with bundling and things like that.
Nathan Bush: Do you notice a big discrepancy between the attribution that meta is claiming versus what you're seeing through profit peak?
Julie Benhammo: Yes, but. But to be fair, also, we don't have that many SKUs. We have quite a few, but compared to, like, other brands that they have, we don't have that many SKUs. So there is a discrepancy, and there's always a discrepancy, but it's not as shocking as if we had, you know, a thousand SKUs, for example.
Nathan Bush: Okay, cool. All right. Can I ask you to recommend a book or a podcast that our listeners should immediately get into? Julie?
Julie Benhammo: So we have the same one, Kelly and I, and that's how we bought it, actually, because we were talking about how my passion is building businesses and building brands, and she was saying the same thing, and I was like. We were like, our absolutely favorite podcast is how I built this by Guy Raz. And my. Yeah, so where it's like, I don't know. I love this part. I feel like this part of my life at this point, but he doesn't know it.
Kelly Walker: Yeah, Guy Raz is. Is amazing. But that podcast I recommend to everybody because it is just so inspiring. And these businesses that have. That have become so successful, it's so easy to think, oh, well, it was the right time, or they had lots of money, or they just got this, you know, straight linear line to success. And that's not what happens at all. It's a roller coaster for all of us. And I think that that's just such a great reminder of just don't give up. So I love it.
Julie Benhammo: So yours also is pretty amazing.
Kelly Walker: Oh, of course.
Julie Benhammo: Your podcast also is pretty amazing.
Nathan Bush: I've almost got Guy Raz's budget.
Julie Benhammo: Same here. We know. But you know what? So Guy Rise is very inspiring and like that podcast is very inspiring. But what I really love about your podcast is there's always concrete takeaways and actionable things and you always learn something that you're like, okay, can put that in, like implement this right away.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, I love that. That's. We try and get a mix of that inspirational and practical cool. As long as our listeners can take away a couple of things each episode, I'm happy and I just like being here because I like learning every day and I get to learn from great people like yourselves. All right, number five, last one I have for you. What is your biggest challenge today, Kelly?
Kelly Walker: So I guess my biggest challenge is prioritizing me and my well being. I've got a very, very busy business. I've got three kids, two dogs, and I really, really want to start meditating every day. I notice the days that I do and definitely the days that I don't. So I really want to make that a consistent, a consistent thing this year. That meditation exercise gets done every day.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, I love it. It's not, it's easier said than done though, isn't it?
Kelly Walker: Exactly. There's always so many things to do, but you, it's really important.
Nathan Bush: What about you, Julie? Is it your biggest challenge is getting Kelly to meditate?
Julie Benhammo: That's one of them. I mean, it's pretty similar, but I'm, I have a 2 year old and a 4 year old. I'm new in this country and it's finding that balance that does not exist. Turns out it was all a lie. There's no, there's no balance here. It's that juggling act of being there for them because they're small and they need me and we're new here and me and my husband are the only thing they have here. And also building a business with Kelly and it's startup mode and we, you know, like all hands on deck and be there for the business, but also be there for my family. So I think if you talk to any mom, any working mom, they would have the same answer. And I guess for me it's fairly new. Still. Still. So I'm still trying to, you know, manage that guilt, but also that, that like feeling of accomplishment because look at what we've done here. And like, you know, so it's just a juggle.
Nathan Bush: Well, sounds like you're juggling it very well. Even though I know that it's natural not to feel like you're always juggling it well. But, you know, what you're building is incredible and the impact that you're having on so many lives, as we heard in that main episode, from nurses to farmers to all sorts of people is just incredible. So I hope you keep solving more and more problems, getting the word out there, and we can't wait to keep track of all the amazing things that you're doing.
Kelly Walker: Thank you.
[Ad]: To hear more from Kelly and Julie, jump back into the main episode where they share how Clipster went from a homegrown idea to an internationally stocked brand. They give their secrets to scaling profitably and the unexpected ways that customers are using their products. In fact, they are giving them the ideas for their products. It's a masterclass in customer driven product development. Thanks for listening.
Nathan Bush: And until next time, keep adding to cartoon.
