Richard Kelsey: We started it because we had real passion for craft beer and we wanted to share that passion with others and just show them that there are so many great beers that are available. All of a sudden there's this category that's just accelerated at a huge rate and I don't think it's going to slow down at all. Start with a bang at the start of the month. End with a bang on Christmas Day.
[Voiceover]: Welcome to Add to Cart, the podcast that express delivers all you need to know in the fast moving world of e commerce. Every month, Nathan Bush from 12 High 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 Esweep. Look, I know another beer company and I may be a little bit obsessed, but it's my podcast and as my mum said, I'm following my passion. Richard Kelsey is one of the co founders at Beercartel. Started in a Kennard shed in 2009, Beercartel was one of the first online beer businesses in Australia. Today they stock over a thousand craft beers, have created a new tradition with their very famous Advent beer calendar and have just launched their equity crowdfunding where you can buy a share in the company. But even if you're not into beer, there's so much that Beercartel do differently that you can draw inspiration from. Richard shares how they've put a focus on creating unique gifts and their own gifting occasions. He's also sharing why they've continued down the subscription and membership model and why they commission and publish their own research to be perceived as industry leaders. So, thanks to our partner, Shopify plus and Signet, here's our conversation with Richard Kelsey, co founder of Beer Cartel. Richard Kelsey, welcome to Add to Cart.
Richard Kelsey: Yeah, thanks. Great to be here, mate.
Nathan Bush: You are going gangbusters at the moment. Just launched your equity crowdfunding. That's pretty exciting.
Richard Kelsey: Yeah, it is, it is. It's something we've been thinking about for a number of years. We had planned on doing it last year prior to Covid, and then Covid came and all of a sudden we were just bombarded with orders and trying to think about a new way of kind of operating and everything. So we had to kind of abandon it last year and just make sure our ship was sailing smoothly and then we've come back to it this year. So it's really exciting to be going live with.
Nathan Bush: It's really interesting in terms of the capital market at the moment for Australian e commerce businesses. Obviously we saw people like Adore Beauty and Booktop List on the ASX a couple of weeks ago. We saw Flora and Fauna acquisition as well. There's a lot of movement in the space. What made you go down the equity crowdfunding route?
Richard Kelsey: I think for us it's kind of in part just where we are at this stage. So I think there's a pretty big appetite when you start getting to a certain level of sort of revenue. For us, we're still, I think, really strong with our customers. We've got a great relationship there. And so when we look. Look at the other sort of breweries and the success that they've had, it kind of made sense as a sort of starting point to do this. Doesn't mean that down the track in the future we can't go down that route, but at least this is a great starting platform to kind of accelerate things a bit further and then go from there.
Nathan Bush: Really beautiful. And with the capital raising, what will that enable yourself and Beer Cartel to do so?
Richard Kelsey: Beer Cartel. Ever since we started back in 2009, we've always been focused on online. We actually have a store as well. But when we set the business up, we set it up with a online viewpoint back in 2009. So we were online before Dan Murphy's and when we first started there wasn't much of a kind of online world, so people weren't really buying online. But we've always had the view that over time that would kind of evolve. And we've definitely seen it last year with COVID and it's continuing to evolve now. So our idea is that we're going to use these funds to grow the online side of the business. So the main thing is around the website improvements to that and the e commerce world. So conversion rate is such a big thing. So driving up that conversion rate means that for every thousand people that come to the site, we get extra purchases, which is always huge.
Nathan Bush: Absolutely.
Richard Kelsey: As well as that, we're also sort of. So we've got a monthly beer subscription. So we want to continue to really grow that. And then we also want to have another kind of side of the offer, which is a sort of membership side where people are rewarded for, I guess, becoming a loyal customer with us as well and then give them great offers through that. So yeah, lots to kind of work on and yeah, we're really excited with
Nathan Bush: it and how does it work on the other side that the community that you're asking to contribute and invest in the business, what are the benefits for them?
Richard Kelsey: Yeah, so I guess with crowdfunding it's kind of two tiered and so there's obviously you're getting share in the business and so future growth of the business, if you realize a sale or anything down the track in the long term future, then that means that it's sort of whatever gains you get there, that that's money back to your pocket as well as that you also crowdfunding often has incentives to invest and so it's then providing a level of incentive that whatever it may be. So whether it's getting free shipping or a discounted rate or opportunity to get one of our advent calendars. Yeah, there's lots of different incentives, incentives that you can kind of throw into the mix as well.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, it's a lovely way to bring your community in into the business. I know with the Outland denim, they use Birchill as well, which is what you guys are going through. They do a fantastic job of they've got a Facebook only page for investors from that fundraise as well as you get really good discounts on jeans to kind of really amplify the advocacy and the buy in of the brand beyond just the money and the investment.
Richard Kelsey: Yeah, exactly. And I mean for us, we've always kind of had a community side of things. So we've got our own Facebook group at the moment. It's got coming up to 7,000 members of that. When we started Beer Cartel, we started it because we had real passion for craft beer and we wanted to share that passion with others and just show them that there were so many great beers that are available beyond what are at the every bottle shop and bar and everything. And so that kind of community side of things is something that we've always wanted to have and always sort of nurtured. And so it just makes sense to kind of then put it into a investment offer as well.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, absolutely. Oh, that's really exciting. So what's the kind of date or the timeline that you're looking at for that activity?
Richard Kelsey: So we're obviously in the eoi, the expression of interest phase at the moment. We're about a week deep now. What will happen about roughly around about a week's time or so will be that the investment will open and that will be for around about two weeks. From there we're going to see how it all goes. Hopefully it all goes amazingly well and that there's a lot of people that are really positive towards it.
Nathan Bush: Beautiful. And we'll add a link into the show notes if people are interested, so they can go through to the equity crowdfunding page on virtual as well. We're recording this in mid May, so I believe Expressions of interest open 1st of June. So more than likely expressions of interest are out by the time this is released. So just to give a little bit of context. Cool. Now, there's so much you mentioned in there, from UX through to subscriptions, but I want to take us back a little bit to when you launch. And as you mentioned in there, you. You were one of the first, or if not the first in delivering beer online before Dan Murphy's, you started as a subscription business. What's been the most significant changes for Beer Cartel since then?
Richard Kelsey: I guess there's been a lot. So when we first started, we had like a little Kennard storage shed that was actually smaller than the room I'm in now. And so we started with one of those, and it was in the kind of wine side of the Kennard storage. So it was these tiny little rooms. And the idea was that we could then just fill it with cases of beer. And then each month we'd actually come in and. And basically pack all these boxes all around the kind of wine area. So all the people going in to get their boxes of wine and everything, they kind of had to step around us and everything. So we started with that. We had one shed was going okay. We then got another couple of sheds. But we realized back then, because E commerce was just in its absolute infancy, we needed to have an actual store as well. So bought a location that had a store and it came with a warehouse in 2011. And the great thing that we kind of when we purchased it. So the store itself is in the worst location you could possibly imagine. So it's in like an industrial area. It's got no street frontage or anything. But we saw that it had a warehouse, and so we thought, well, if online goes well, which is going to be our focus, then there's that sort of growth area. And so we started from there. And for the first few years, it was that sort of bottle shop side of things that really held us up. And then online started to grow from there. And so online, particularly in the last five years, as craft beer has really taken off, that's taken off as well. So it's been an amazing sort of journey to see, I guess, from like the sort of craft beer side of things. We've seen lots of different trends. So when we first started, there was. Bottles were basically everything anybody drank from. Well, not drank from, but bought from. So always drink from a glass. It's the best way to enjoy your beer.
Nathan Bush: It's a craft beer way, isn't it?
Richard Kelsey: Oh, totally. So yeah, at that stage, bottles were all the rage and if you actually tried to sell beer in cans, people would. They'd look the other way and just dismiss it completely. But now it's gone a complete 180 degrees and if something's not in cans yet, they're really missing out.
Nathan Bush: So what kind of styles of beer are you seeing coming through that are so different from when you first started out?
Richard Kelsey: So the main one is the Hazy IPA or New England ipa. So it's something that's kind of come on the scene about in the last five years. And it's this beer that is very hazy, as the name suggests, quite opaque, like a bright sort of yellow, bright golden color. It has lots of sort of fruity notes to it, but it has a low sort of level of bitterness. So in the past, IPAs, which stand for Indian Pale Ales, have always been quite bitter. Whereas now that they're making beers that are really drinkable and you don't sort of have that bitterness to them. So that is really taken off, particularly because they're so Instagrammable and if you look up like Hazy IPA on Instagram, they're just everywhere and there's these amazing images that people are showing all the time. So yeah, that's one that's really taken off a lot.
Nathan Bush: What's your beer of choice at the moment or something? Or a beer that you've really enjoyed recently?
Richard Kelsey: Yeah, it's interesting. I've started getting on an alcohol free beer called Heaps Normal. So it's very, very good. So that they started off in July last year and it has been amazing. Just saying for us, we didn't sell alcohol free beer at all basically last year. All of a sudden there's this category that's just accelerated at a huge rate and I don't think it's going to slow down at all. So I think in part it's people moving to a sort of more sort of health conscious way of living. And it's also the fact that there's. The beers that are being produced now are such a good quality. So what I'm finding is I struggle to have a night where I don't have a beer, but I think it's okay to have an alcohol free beer.
Nathan Bush: That's what I've found is like I often do a month with no drinking. The hardest part is because I love my beer and trying different varieties of beer, like I don't ever stick to one. It's the hardest part is just taking that enjoyment of beer, the actual enjoyment of trying different varieties and discovering new things for a month. I'm like, I can't try anything new. So it's great to see so many options opening up in the non alcoholic space.
Richard Kelsey: Oh totally. When I, when we were in lockdown and I thought I'd first give the alcohol free a guide that there wasn't that the beers that are available now. And so I ended up having these 500 mil big long necks from Germany of a alcohol free heft beer, Hefeweizen and it's a really nice beer but there's 500 mils of it. I didn't quite need it each night and yeah, so I'm glad to have these other ones that are now on the scene.
Nathan Bush: Mind you, you probably look like a hardcore drinker taking around 500 mil. Now one thing that you guys do really well, and you mentioned it early on is UX on the site. You've obviously invested a lot of time and money into UX and you've won a lot of awards for your online experience. For you, what's the secret to designing a great online experience for E commerce?
Richard Kelsey: There's a couple of things I think that you've always got to start with something but then you've got to evolve it over time. So what you've got is your first iteration definitely shouldn't be your last iteration. I think that's core. The other thing is both myself and business partner founder Jeff Hewens so we came from a market research background. Even before we got into E commerce we were used to kind of taking people through a UX kind of design of different websites and getting them to give their feedback. So meant that when we created Bear Cartel, we kind of then imagined that for ourselves and imagined how people would be stepping through it. So I guess we've always had that as the sort of foundation and then it's putting in the sort of conversion rate optimization stuff over the top.
Nathan Bush: When Tamburlaine Organic Wines were looking to push their expansion nationally and internationally, they realized that their custom built POS focus platform just wasn't going to cut it. They selected Shopify plus as the foundation for their expansion. Plus allowed Tamburlaine to create tiered member pricing using scripts, introduce web chat and see Customer Churn Analytics. The result? A 30% conversion rate boost within the four first six weeks of migration. Now that's something to cheers to. To read more of Tamburlaine's story and see other case studies, visit the customer section on shopify.com au+ on the conversion rate optimization. This is a might be a bit of a hard question. With all your years of history, has there ever been any surprise, test or change that you've made that you want weren't expecting to increase conversion as swiftly as it did?
Richard Kelsey: We had. Well, it was interesting. We actually had one that kind of went the opposite way. So we had one where we thought if we had put something into the when people added something to their cart, it would actually tell them how much of their case they had left. The idea was to get them to fill out a case of 24 beers to get them to make sure that they maximizing the amount of beers they're getting for the postage that they paid. But we found the way we actually designed it, people were actually then abandoning their shop rather than keeping on trying to do it. So we had to really review that and change it completely to kind of get around it. So that was probably one of the most interesting ones and ones that went the absolute opposite way of what we were hoping.
Nathan Bush: Is it because people felt like it was a big task then to fill out a carton?
Richard Kelsey: I think it was the communication messages and yeah, I think it was around that we were telling them that while we were saying, you've got room to have another 23 other beers, whatever it may be, I think they felt that they had to then put in 23 other beers. So it was just kind of changing that around. So in the end, what we did was we had a little sort of dropdown that just said, how full is my car? It was something that was much more subtle, whereas before we had it in sort of big writing of what it was. And I think that change definitely helped a lot.
Nathan Bush: That's awesome. That's a great example because it's so tempting to always upsell or get people to add more at that cart level, but it's fraught with risk as well because you're so close to a transaction.
Richard Kelsey: Oh, absolutely.
Nathan Bush: Now you mentioned there your research background and Jeff's research background as well. You, you guys have done some really great stuff in the craft beer category and have come out as industry leaders with your Australian craft beer survey and your top 50 craft beers rankings over the years. How hard have those research pieces been
Richard Kelsey: to pull together to pull together, it takes a fair bit of time and effort. The good thing was that because we came from the research background, we knew how to do it. So we had tools that kind of made it easier to get all the data and everything. Still doesn't mean that you save time on the interpretation of what it all means. But yeah, it's definitely a big project. So each year we have around about 20,000 people take part in the survey. We've been doing it for five years and the idea is that it's done to help the industry. So if we knew the industry, people know that they need to do research, they don't know how to do research. And so we thought what we'd do is create this big report and then make it available for free on our website. And yeah, so we've been doing that for the last five years. It's amazing the amount of attention it gets each year. You often find write ups of different breweries and they'll then reference that the Bear Cartel survey, which is really nice. It's also won quite a few different awards. So we won an Aurea a couple of years ago. We won an award with BigCommerce as well, which I do like cash awards. Very good. We had a cash award from BigCommerce and we also had one from SurveyMonkey which is the platform we did the survey on. So they were pretty awesome. And it's something that we just love doing each year. It does take a lot of time and effort, but the rewards doing it are pretty good as well.
Nathan Bush: Brilliant. And you mentioned SurveyMonkey as a tool to help collect the data. How do you go about getting those 20,000 participants? Is that off your own database that you start with or do you go out and collect by a database to be able to put this survey to.
Richard Kelsey: Yeah, so it's multiple ways. Basically what we said to the industry was if you help promote this survey, then we'll give you an industry report for free each year. And so there's hundreds of breweries each year, breweries, bars, beer festivals, beer media that all help promote the survey. So we give them a link to share and we say please share it with as many people as possible. So it's definitely driven by everyone else, it's definitely not us. The good thing about that is it also means that it just is such a broad range of people that are answering the survey. It's not just our own database. And so that means that it's much more accurate for the craft beer industry as well.
Nathan Bush: Brilliant. And I'M assuming that there's a great level of expertise required in being able to craft the questions and analyze the output in a meaningful way. If other brands are considering running a survey or doing a piece of research that don't have your research background, how would you advise that they go about that?
Richard Kelsey: I guess the starting point is probably to look at what there is in the industry and what's been done beforehand previously. So you can often find different reports that are available online. The other great thing is tools like SurveyMonkey have a battery of different survey questions that you can use. So definitely use that as a starting point. And then there's also just googling best practices for surveys to try and get way of kind of asking things in a neutral sort of manner so that you're not kind of giving a bias or anything and also thinking about the different options and how people are going to answer it. So one of the biggest kind of challenges is when you go through a survey and they've asked you a question, but you get to it and there's not an answer that actually reflects what you feel or how you think. And so if you can sort of anticipate that and think about how to kind of create that sort of battery of answers, that's definitely going to help as well.
Nathan Bush: That makes sense. And then with those results, you said that you see your community and other beer producers publish a lot of articles about them. What about traditional pr? Because I've seen this survey every year can guarantee that it'll pop up in news.com or mainstream press. Do you actually have to see that or are they now knowing that you run this survey and they come to you for content?
Richard Kelsey: It's a bit of both, really. So yeah, we will get people out of the blue contact us to comment about the survey, but then we also definitely do put it out ourselves. So we put out a press release to the web on our website. We then share it with our sort of beer media and then we try to approach that the sort of mainstream media after that. I've been less successful in getting the mainstream media direct myself, but it's great when they then contact me off the back. So that works as well. I'll take it either way, really.
Nathan Bush: Oh, it's been such a great strategy and you guys have executed it so well. So you should be applauded for that. If anyone wants to check it out. It's a great case study. Now I want to go back to the subscription model because it's fascinating to me that you're running A few different models with beer cartel. Obviously we talked about the physical store which isn't the focus. We've got the subscription which you started out as. You also sell beer, just D2C one offs. And you've also talked about a membership model evolving. How do you see all those models working together?
Richard Kelsey: Sure. So I guess at the core at the moment the main thing we sell is beer and then beer gifts. So beer gifts are a big sort of part of our business as well. We create them because we knew that particularly for males, they can be really hard to buy great presents for. And most males absolutely love beer. So it's kind of like a no brainer present. And the amount of people that give our gifts and just say, I can't believe how much my husband loves this or whatever it may be.
Nathan Bush: I sent one last week. I sent the 24 pack of the top beers to someone to say thank you for the work that they did. It was brilliant. Such a great idea.
Richard Kelsey: Oh yeah, cool. Yeah, it is. And it's amazing that it's one of our best selling products as well. But yeah, so we've got the beers that we sell, we've got the gifts and then we've got the beer subscription. The membership model I see is basically just a reward for those people that buy beers from us on a regular basis. And the idea is to, while we know that most people have two, three, four different places that they'll buy beers from, what we want to aim for is to kind of be the number one choice that they're looking to buy beers from. And so that's the idea behind the membership model is to reward them with discounted or free shipping, a discounted sort of price on beer. And so that we hopefully kind of engage with them more often. And so I think that's the kind of core part of our business. And so the membership is just additional kind of way of driving that side of that business. And then we've got our beer subscription. And so the beer subscription around since 2009, it's still as a portion of our business, it's not absolutely massive, it's still got lots of opportunity. But yeah, I think there's huge opportunity in growing those both in tandem because basically when you buy beers for beer subscription also means that you can also add them to your website just generally as well and you get them at a discounted rate because you're buying them in bulk. So it's just great beers that people can access as well.
Nathan Bush: Absolutely. And obviously you were one of the first in the subscription online subscription model in Australia. I'm assuming back then you would have had to build all the technology yourself.
Richard Kelsey: Yeah, I think when we very first started it was Excel based and yeah, lots of Excel checking and I don't even know if we had. I can't even remember quite. I think it was actually through eway we had a reoccurring charge that was done through there. And so we had that, I think until about 2015, when we then went to BigCommerce. And when we went to BigCommerce, they didn't actually have a subscription offer themselves, so we had to get one created a custom sort of app created and then we used that for a number of years and now we've got one through Bold Subscriptions, which seems to work and we've been doing that for the last two or three years.
Nathan Bush: Amazing how far it's come in that you can buy a subscription platform as a plugin now compared to when you started.
Richard Kelsey: Totally. And it makes it so much easier. Excel is challenging to manage things and when you've got so many different places you got to look, at least now it's saying, okay, you've got your order, it's all gone through and everything else, you just really need to fulfill it. So it's a lot easier now, that's for sure.
Nathan Bush: Absolutely. Now, apart from your surveys, you are also very famous for your beer Advent calendars. How did you guys come up with that idea?
Richard Kelsey: Yeah, so I think we've been doing them for about five years and there had been some that were created in the US and I can't quite remember if there was one before us in Australia. I think there possibly was from Bridge Road down in. Down in Victoria, which is a brewery, and they do their own one, and then they get a few of their sort of friends to sort of collaborate with them. And so the very first year we created one, we actually bought the Bridge Road one and we sold it through our site and that went really well. And so we thought, okay, we're onto a bit of winner here and create that own the next year. It was something that we kind of said, okay, well maybe sell 200 of them. And each time we'd get them all packed that sell out. And so it was basically, I think, from. So they get sent out, say mid November, late November, and it was basically every day there was someone that was having to kind of chase their tail and produce some more Advent calendars to send out to people. So I think we ended up selling about a thousand odd Then. And then after that we did one more year where I think it was, it was all sort of core range beers or beers that breweries had themselves that they just make each year. And then the last two, maybe three years we've had completely exclusive beers. So they're beers that are not found elsewhere. And it's, it's an amazing thing. So that the advent calendar is basically a big box. You've got 25 days. So you meant to start on the 1st of December and go through the 25th with a different beer each day. And so we work out the order of the bears, we make sure that you're not having big boozy bears during the midweek type thing. Want to start with a bang at the start of the month, end with the bang on Christmas Day.
Nathan Bush: Almost like a concert set list.
Richard Kelsey: Absolutely, absolutely. So there's a lot of time and effort that goes into it and a lot of planning. So we've got to work out which brewer is going to brew which beers, what's going to be cool about each of these beers. Each day we'll have like a photo that we'll put on and we've got our Facebook group where we kind of talk about it each day and people have their comments and say whether they loved or hated the beer type thing. So it's been an amazing product and it's so much fun to do just because of that sort of social aspect of it as well.
Nathan Bush: It's a whole event, isn't it? Better than Christmas himself?
Richard Kelsey: Well, it actually is, yeah.
Nathan Bush: And are you still packing and making the 24 packs yourself or do they come to you now pre made?
Richard Kelsey: No. So to give you an idea, I think that it works out to be around about 50 pallets of beer that come in. So you're getting two pallets of beer from each brewery and then you've got. I don't even know what it is. 20 odd pallets of beer. 20 odd pallets of cardboard. So we get that sent to A3PL and then they get busy picking and packing and putting it all together. Yeah, we just would have no way in heck of being able to do that ourselves. We had one year where we got it produced off site and then sent back to us. And I think there was one day where we were filling up the whole Australia Post truck and our warehouse isn't really kind of set up for that much volume. And so it really put a lot of pressure on us. And so we said, okay, going forward we just have to get this Dispatch from our 3 PL it's something that I personally don't even see the sheer volume of stuff that goes on with it now.
Nathan Bush: But it's cool that you've got a great process for that now and you can focus on building that community and the content and the excitement around it, not just worrying about getting the product. Product out the door.
Richard Kelsey: Exactly, exactly. And so yeah, I think there comes a point in time where you go, okay, well how are we going to keep growing this business and where do we need to focus? And that's just one less thing that we need to worry about. So means that, yeah, we can spend our time on the whole, I guess the event of the Advent calendar rather than the sort of packing it and everything else.
Nathan Bush: And you've just launched your Christmas in July Advent calendar. Surely that's taking a piece.
Richard Kelsey: Last year what happened was after we had our cardboard from what was the year before for the Christmas one, we had whole number of boxes that we could make up. And so we thought what we'll do is actually create one for Covid. So an isolation Advent calendar. And that went really well. People absolutely loved it. And with every year we have people saying, you need it do a Christmas in July one. We've had this ever since we first started. So we thought, okay, well why not let's do it this year. And yeah, we've got a pre order on with that at the moment and I think by the time that this is done put out that that pre order will absolutely be over. So.
Nathan Bush: So good.
Richard Kelsey: Yeah.
Nathan Bush: I love that you are just giving beer lovers around the country an excuse to drink every night and you're slowly filling in all the months. It's great.
Richard Kelsey: I was thinking, how could we do this as a subscription offer? So Advent calendar every day of the year type thing.
Nathan Bush: Oh, goodness, it's dangerous. The other thing that I came across as I was doing a bit of research was Brouquet's. Am I saying this right?
Richard Kelsey: Yeah. So Bruquet's, that's our sort of sister business that we purchased back in 2018. Basically because we knew that beer gifting is such a sort of big opportunity online. We were going to go down the road of actually starting a beer gifting business from scratch. And it happened that the owner of Brookes at the time was looking to sell his business. And so it was kind of a perfect timing for us. So we took that on and we've kind of taken it from what it was and then sort of grown it from there. So it's an exciting business. And the Idea is to trying to find for every gifting occasion that there's a beer opportunity type thing.
Nathan Bush: Can you describe what a brouquet looks like for anyone who hasn't seen one?
Richard Kelsey: Sure. So I guess the original bouquet was. It was like a hessian sack that then had either three or six beers. And the idea is that bouquet name is a play on bouquet. And so it's a bouquet of beers. And so for. Instead of giving flowers, you can give a bouquet of beers type thing.
Nathan Bush: Can't wait to see someone throw one over their head at a wedding and just
Richard Kelsey: be a heavy thing to be knocked with. Yeah. So we started with there and we've grown that. And we've also got a kind of a can version, which is. It doesn't quite look like a bouquet of flowers or anything, but it's a big box with the cans lying down. And those really go well as well. So they're probably our biggest kind of seller of the lot. And particularly for birthdays. So birthdays. And this is the same with Beck Artel. Very popular on that side as well.
Nathan Bush: With so much focus on gifting, does that make it hard from a customer data perspective, knowing who's buying for themselves versus who's buying as a gift when you're coming to do personalization and segmentation?
Richard Kelsey: Yeah, you're absolutely right. So that there's. Because you've got two very different customers. You've got your gifting customers and then you've got those that are just buying for themselves. It is a challenge, but I guess with the technology that we've got out these days, it actually makes it a lot easier to try and work out that. And so that's something that we're kind of working on at the moment, particularly to try and enhance that personalization and make sure that people are getting the sort of right messaging for who they are.
Nathan Bush: Awesome. But you can tell very easily whether it's a gift or whether it's a purchase for themselves.
Richard Kelsey: Yeah, largely. I mean, one of the easiest ways is just if the billing and the shipping names are different, but it's also the type of product. So if it's birthday beer box, then we know for sure that there's a gifting present type thing. And the same if it's a Father's Day one or a Valentine's Day one or a Christmas one. Those are all sort of very much gifting moments. And so it makes it easy in that regards to work out who's who.
Nathan Bush: Banana skins, pumpkin dodgy avocados and E commerce packaging. Our friends at E commerce packaging supplier Signet are helping retailers reduce their carbon footprint with their new range of compostable mailers. Made from plant based materials, these mailers will break down to organic fertilizer once composted either at home or in industrial disposals. Talk about giving back to the planet. Signet have over 5,500 packaging solutions that help leading E commerce businesses step up their packaging game. Visit signet.netau to find out more. Rich this has been fantastic. I love getting a little bit of an insight to a brand that I've been following and buying from for a long time. We talked about the equity crowdfunding at the start. Obviously that's a huge focus for you guys at the moment. What else is on your radar coming up?
Richard Kelsey: So the Advent calendar, we plan that months out, so we're kind of underway with that at the moment. We'll have Oktoberfest that hits in September, October, so that's always really big. And then the other big one for us is Father's Day. So Father's Day last year was absolutely massive in part because it was when Melbourne was in absolute lockdown. And yeah, everything just suddenly went through the roof with that. So it was interesting just to see the huge shift and the amount of people from Victoria that were buying Father's Day gifts from us and be interesting to see sort of how it then unfolds this year. But yeah, for us we're very much so while we have our day today, which is out just selling of beers, the gifting periods are such a huge part of our business as well. So we very much live with that from Valentine's Day at the start of the year to Father's Day to Christmas, that the massive kind of events that we need to plan and execute on
Nathan Bush: with such a wide range of SKUs. Because you do have you stock so many different types of beers.
Richard Kelsey: How many total around about a thousand at a time and we get 20 to 30 new beers every week with
Nathan Bush: that wide range of SKUs and a bit of seasonality with the different events going up and down. And then you had Covid on the top of that, which kind of threw predictive analytics out a lot. How do you keep track of and forecast what you're going to order in?
Richard Kelsey: Yeah, it does make it hard. It's a bit of art and a bit of science really. So. Well, particularly for the gifting periods, we kind of look at how we've gone in the previous year and then how we've gone in this year with other gifting periods. And will that sort of translate? Yeah, when we went into Covid last year, the numbers and that the amount of orders that were kind of coming in were just so much higher than we were used to. So we were completely chasing our tail at the very start. But I think after about two or three months and just changing the way we did things, we'd also split our business into two and we were half working from home, half in the warehouse. I think you sort of evolve over time and you work out what works and what needs to change and where your sort of pressure points are. So it's always a sort of moving feast. But yeah, I think it's trying to use data in the best way possible and then add in kind of yet sort of our own brains on top of that to try and work out the approach for forecasting.
Nathan Bush: Brilliant. And then we'll let you go. So what's the best way? If people listen to this and go love to reach out to Rich or the team, what's the best way for people to get in touch?
Richard Kelsey: If you want to reach out to me, either connect to me on LinkedIn or shoot me an email richardercartel.com you can also. Yeah. Follow us online. Facebook Join our group, Beer Cartel Craft Beer Collective. We're on Instagram.
Nathan Bush: You can also buy into the company.
Richard Kelsey: Absolutely.
Nathan Bush: Thank you so much for joining us and best of luck with the crowdfunding.
Richard Kelsey: Oh, thanks for having me.
Nathan Bush: I've been a long time fan and reader of Beer Cartel's Australian Craft beer survey and the results from their top 50 craft beer beers in a short amount of time. It's become a highly anticipated and celebrated piece of research and as we heard from Richard, the benefits of it range from PR to new partnerships to expanding their customer database. Not a bad result from a really strong idea and a well formed survey monkey survey. But whether it's a survey research or something else, I think that conversation with Richard really shows that there's great insight into becoming a thought leader in your industry and how it can open up brilliant and unforeseen opportunities. What's your opportunity to put your mark and show that you are at the forefront of what you're selling. To finish up, I have three resources for you. Firstly, if you're a first time listener of Add to Cart and you want to stay up to date with new episodes, head over to addtocart.com and you can sign up for our weekly newsletter. We'll let you know every time a new episode drops as well as giving you my three takeaways from each episode and a link to the transcripts so you can know that this is an episode that you want to dive straight into. Secondly, if you want a weekly roundup of the best e commerce case studies, tools and research, sign up to the High Five Friday newsletter which is delivered to inboxes at 8am every Friday morning. I read all the e commerce news and send you the bits that I think you can take action from. Sign up at 12high12h I g h.com au forward/high5 and the last thing if you are looking to explore your next e commerce opportunity, head over to esweettalent.com au you. We are a dedicated e commerce talent agency connecting the best e commerce talent with the fastest growing brands. Check it out. Sign up to the email and get in touch with me if you want to discuss your next move. Until next time, thanks for listening and keep those customers adding to card.
