Chris Mead: We checked it out, nobody had ever created it before and we're like, wow, we're actually onto something here. All 16 units sold out overnight. People just came to the store and bought them and they're gone. I need to get more and I need to go nationwide with it. I remember when I was first going on dates with my girlfriend, I was like, if we get to 10 sales a day, we'll like, we'll be good. So now we're doing like 450 sales a day. Welcome to Add to Cart, the podcast
[Voiceover]: that express delivers all you need to
Chris Mead: 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
[Voiceover]: of course, keep your customers adding to Cart. Hello and welcome to Add to Cart. My name is Nathan Bush, host of Add to Cart and e commerce strategist at 12 high. In today's episode, our very first international guest joins us to talk about how he created a product that now generates $3 million in revenue and is pushing to become an Olympic sport. Joining me today is Chris Mead who is the co founder and chief revenue officer at Crossnet CRO ssnet. Now, to understand Crossnet, think of volleyball meets handball. A quadrant where four individuals battle it out in speedos and bikinis to take the ultimate crown. I mean, how could you not market that? In today's episode, Chris gives us the full rundown of how Crossnet went from being a 4am idea to generating $3 million in revenue and on the shelves of stores such as Target, Walmart and Dick's Sporting Goods. He also shares his tips around finding a reliable manufacturer, Facebook advertising that works, and getting the attention of merchandising decision makers. He's got some great tips in there. It's an incredible story which I think is only just the beginning and it should inspire anyone with a big idea that they want to bring to life. So thanks to our partners Shopify plus and Klarna, let's dive straight into our chat with Crossnet co founder Chris Meadow.
Nathan Bush: Chris Mead, welcome to Add to Cart.
Chris Mead: Thanks man.
Nathan Bush: Appreciate having on pleasure joining us from Miami, our first international guest which is very exciting for us. Now, Chris, I'm. I'm gonna have a go at describing your product right and tell me if I've got it horribly wrong. Crossnet. So Crossnet is essentially a four way volleyball court. So we're very familiar with volleyball here in Australia. I was, I've even Played in West End. I don't look like anything like the models in your on your website, but it's essentially a four way volleyball court. Four players going out head to head. And it's almost like a game of Thrones of volleyball. Right. You're trying to get to that number one position because that's the point where you score points. Almost like a handball. We call it handball.
Chris Mead: Yeah.
Nathan Bush: So mixture of volleyball and handball. Is that fair?
Chris Mead: That's more than fair, that's actually perfect. So yeah, it's a, it's a combination of volleyball and four square, what we call it here in the States. And you're trying to get to that one square where you could then serve the ball, serve it across free for all, and get points if you stay alive. So the objective is play to 11, win by two, and you can set it up in the park and the beach and the grass, inside, outside, tailgates, everywhere.
Nathan Bush: Awesome. Awesome. So obvious question, how'd you come up with it?
Chris Mead: So we were, is me, my brother, so I'm 27. We came up with it. I was 24, my partners were 22. I was working a full time job in New York, just grinding. It was a 9 to 5. I really was just kind of going through the motions. And we were home one night and we're like, hey, let's, let's kind of brainstorm, let's see if there's something that we can invent. And ESPN was on in the background and it got to be about like four in the morning. And we wrote down four way volleyball net and we googled it, we checked it out, nobody had ever created it before. And we're like, wow, we're actually onto something here. And so we got the prototypes. The next day we just like went to Walmart, like rigged two volleyball nets together, like cut a hole out through the center, had our friends come over and it was just, it was a blast.
Nathan Bush: That's awesome. Was it one of those 4am ideas where you go to bed and then you wake up and you go, is that really a good idea?
Chris Mead: No, on the contrary. I think we got up and we were just pumped. Like we went straight to Walmart and we're like, all right, we got to do this before anybody else thinks about it. So, so we had our friends ready like at, back at the house waiting for us. When we got the nets, we like tied them up real quick and we just started playing and it was, it was so much fun.
Nathan Bush: That's awesome. And then how did you validate that it was a good idea beyond your group.
Chris Mead: I mean, the group validated it for us. Like, we sat out there and we played until like, for like six hours we just played. And we didn't play because we had a product. We played because it was fun. And I grew up at a farm, like a small farm town in Connecticut. So there was nothing else to do is either go back on the couch and watch Netflix or go play this made up game I made two minutes ago. And we had more fun doing that.
Nathan Bush: That's awesome. And did you have to. You made up the product, obviously. Did you also have to make up the rules and the game?
Chris Mead: Oh, yeah, yeah, we made up the rules. I mean, hell, we made up the rules for about two years. Like, stuff would happen that we never expected to happen. We'd like, oh, there's a rule for that. There's a rule for that. So, yeah, we made up our own set of rules. We combined foursquare and volleyball. We grew up playing basketball. Like, that was our sport growing up was basketball. So we added game to 11, win by two, which is like a pickup basketball thing here in the States. So it just was a combination of every single sport we loved. And yeah, now we got a rule book.
Nathan Bush: Beautiful, beautiful. So talk me through the. You've got an idea, you validate, you've been to Walmart, you've created your prototype and you go, all right, we've actually got to make this thing. And having a look at your background, you've been in Uber, a couple of other businesses. There's no manufacturing or product development from what I can see.
Chris Mead: No, not at all. And I guess it was scary at first. Fortunately for us, we had a partner. So our partner, Mike, went to school for engineering, blueprints, cad, all the manufacturing, that's all him. So we partnered with a smart ass guy, super lucky that he, he knows all those skills. So we didn't have to outsource it. Even back in the day, I used to have an idea of like, oh, I'd want to make an app. And I was like, I have no idea how I'd make an app. So I guess we kind of got lucky with him being on the team. But definitely it's possible even if you don't have the skills to find somebody that does have the skills. So he started getting drafting. We got the blueprints down. We found a manufacturer overseas just by searching on the Internet, found a good sporting goods manufacturer, built up a level of trust with them before we sent over the documents. And then we Waited patiently for the sample.
Nathan Bush: So talk us through that process of finding a sports manufacturer on the Internet. Which sounds dodgy. Oh, yeah, tell us about how you got to that level of trust with them.
Chris Mead: It's tough. Especially you have that. You have this million dollar idea in the back of your head. You're sending it out to China and you're like, oh, I really just hope my product doesn't get stolen. So we sent over some, like, NDA and some paperwork. Granted, it's only as good as the protection could really provide for us when we barely have any money to our name. So we found a few that spoke English well, communicated well, we're working on our hours, give or take, and just seemed like we'd have a good conversation, was trustworthy for what we could a few weeks into the business. So we then sent them over. We said, hey, I know you guys make volleyball nets. Can you make this net? And they're like, of course. We'll try putting it together. So we only picked like one or two to start with before. Like, we didn't blast the idea out to 50 people. We kind of just were very secure with one or two factories to start. And we're still using the same factory to this day that we ended up working with.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, that's brilliant. And is there like a portal that you use in terms of finding a manufacturer, or is it literally a Google search?
Chris Mead: Yes, we Google search also AliExpress. If you just go like, Alibaba AliExpress, you type in tennis or volleyball net, you find who's selling it and then message them, say, hey, I have an idea, and we'll get back to you.
Nathan Bush: Beautiful. All right, so, and how big did you go with that initial order?
Chris Mead: We went like 50 units. They wanted to do like a thousand, five thousand. We had some people be like, oh, 5,000 minimum. I'm like, I don't even have $5,000. That's not gonna work. So we negotiated, we played hardball, we said, hey, this is a great idea. We promise you it's gonna work. Just if you work with us now, you'll be very happy in the in the future. Please take a chance on us. We'll pay for everything, like in advance, known terms or anything like that. We'll give you all your cash upfront. Just please only make us 50. Let us sell the 50 and then let us buy back more inventory. So that's what we did. We started with 50, took about a month or so, and then we sold those out and then repurchased 100. And now we're all the way purchasing up to like 25,000 at a time.
Nathan Bush: Wow. Because I think that's an important point for people to understand is that you're completely bootstrapped.
Chris Mead: Right.
Nathan Bush: You and your partners started from scratch
Chris Mead: 100% with like 15,000 bucks or so. So all the cash we had, but if we had took on like 300 pieces of inventory, we would have had no room for marketing or just building the company. So it was really important to negotiate that first inventory order.
Nathan Bush: Yeah. Okay, so you've got your first lot of products, 50 units in from China. Where do you start?
Chris Mead: So we take the first one out, we go to the beach, and we start playing. You get all the pretty girls to come up to you at the beach and start playing. You get a crowd. So we have about 50, 75 people just watching and just staring at the game. People are coming up, asking to play. And we'd get there at like 10 o' clock in the morning. We'd play to 5 in the afternoon, and we'd have a little flag that says crossnet. Go to our website and people would buy, or they'd buy the model that we played with at the beach. They get like a discount on it. And what we found out was that people were buying them, bringing them back to their hometowns and setting them up and doing the same thing we were doing, but marketing for us for free. So then we see, oh, this town in New York got an order. This place in Pennsylvania got an order. And then we'd see sales come from that actual town. So it just like pyramid it down
Nathan Bush: because it is very distinctive. Right. You, as soon as you see it, you go, ah, that's. That's different.
Chris Mead: Exactly. So everybody stops, everybody watches, and everybody wants to be a part of it.
Nathan Bush: Yeah. Cool. And so you had a website set up immediately, and did you start with a Shopify website?
Chris Mead: Oh, yeah, yeah. I built the Shopify website from scratch. Had no idea what I was doing. But we learned, we bought a template, we kind of went through the ropes, and now I feel like I'm a Shopify whiz. So just learn from there.
Nathan Bush: Beautiful. All right, so you're up and running. How long did it get to a point? Where did it take for you to get to a point where you went, this is viable, like, the economies of scale start rolling for us now.
Chris Mead: Yeah. I remember when I was first going on dates with my girlfriend, I was like, if we get the 10 sales a day, we'll be like, we'll be Good. We'll be good, babe. Like we'll be fine. So now we're doing like 450 sales a day, but like at 10, I was like, all right, like we're legit. Like, I don't need to get another job again.
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Nathan Bush: Right.
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Nathan Bush: You talked about that word of mouth and experiential kind of marketing in a loose kind of sense. Did you run any digital advertising as well to support that in the early days?
Chris Mead: Oh yeah, we would take the content that we'd get at the beach. I went to school for film actually, so I'm a film major. So I took a lot of my film and video. Most of the work on the site is actually mine, so I was able to just go to the beach, take out the camera, come home, upload the footage and we'd run Facebook ads on it. So really easy to just keep it lean. Most products these days don't need that $10,000 video. You could get it done with that UGC 6 second clip, 12 second clip and run ads on it. It's gonna work the same, so why put yourself in a hole? So we take that content and then we started getting really good content from like Olympian athletes, like head volleyball players and even like the contents from the eight year olds playing with their moms in the backyard. That's the content that sells. So over time we got more content in the grand brew.
Nathan Bush: And do you repurpose that content into paid channels or do you keep that just organic?
Chris Mead: Oh no, we run the hell out of the ads. Yeah, so we're spending a lot of money on Facebook these days. We have like a cross MVP group that we just created where people could share their best content. And then on the email side we're actually running Contests on a weekly basis, like whoever submits the best video that we could use, winner gets 50 bucks to their favorite restaurant or Amazon or whatever it is.
Nathan Bush: Yeah. Beautiful. And tell us about those Facebook ads. Which ones? And you talked about video. Did you. Would you recommend video Facebook ads over anything else?
Chris Mead: Yeah, for our product at least. I can't speak for every product, but for our video it's best when you see the net and you see people interacting and playing with it because it's just a static shot, people are going to be confused. But if you see the way the ball is going over in different directions, the video works 100 out of a hundred times. So what we did learn though, and it took a, took about a year, was to break the Facebook videos down by your Target demo. So the same video doesn't work for everybody. What we ended up finding was that the video that performed the best wasn't the one of people getting spiked in the face and having a crazy time. It was what the 45 year old mom out in Nebraska is going to envision when she goes out to her backyard at 5 in the afternoon, it's her 12 year old and her 14 year old playing with the dad. So those type of videos that we would never create because I don't have that type of family, we got from our, from people who bought those have done the best and we've run those like crazy because that's real life. People want to see what's actually happening in their backyard. I'm looking out at my girlfriend's pool right now. Like I can envision the game being played out there. And that's why the video actually works well.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, it makes sense. And so that's user generated content. What kind of permissions do you need to get to be able to run that in a paid channel?
Chris Mead: So typically we just have them sign like an agreement, just saying, hey, we're going to use this on Facebook, Instagram, social, wherever you want, check this box and sign off and we're good to go. And then on the flip side, we'll give them like a $50Amazon gift card like I said, or whatever monetary value. Most of the time they're just stoked to grow their own Instagram. A lot of these people.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, beautiful. And any other digital paid channels apart from Facebook and Instagram that have worked for you?
Chris Mead: We do Google a lot of Google Ads, which is good. Google shopping. Yeah, we play around with Google shopping a lot. We're trying to get more into TikTok and Bing as well. We're running ads anywhere and everywhere. But lately it's really been Facebook and email marketing is where we're really driving the revenue.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, makes sense. What do you say with TikTok? It's really interesting at the moment, isn't it?
Chris Mead: It is. I'm not like the one running the TikTok account. I can't be bothered with the dancing and all that. But my brother runs that. He's the founder of our company, so he's, he's good on the TikTok. He puts up a nice video and it matches it with like a poppy rap song. And I mean, one of our videos I think had like a million and a half views the other day. So it's going off and it's getting us content and we have a discount code like in the bio. And I see people interacting like, hey, I just bought the crossnet, use my TikTok code and I can't wait for it to come in. So it's clearly working.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, absolutely huge. I love your strategy. You've got a multi channel strategy. So even though you start as a direct to consumer business, right, you're not just a Shopify store.
Chris Mead: No, we're not.
Nathan Bush: You have a huge distribution network now. Can you tell us about a little bit about your channel strategy and how you set up that?
Chris Mead: Yeah, of course. So right now we sell typically, I would say anywhere from like 85% direct to consumer on Shopify. And the other part of the business is on Amazon and our wholesale relations. So we're in over 300 retail stores, so Shields, Dick's, Target, Walmart, Academy, sports and about 20 others. So there's a site map on our website. You can go to all the stores and pick up the box in person, which is an amazing feeling. And the nice thing about working with them is the consumer doesn't have to pay the high shipping costs. Our game costs, give or take, $20 to ship because it weighs $20. And the consumers, everyone's used to free shipping these days, but we don't offer it because it's not free to us. It costs me $20 to ship it out. So either you can go pick it up locally or you could pay the shipping price if you want the game. And that's why we also have Amazon free shipping though, which is nice. So we have that channel. We started reaching out to the buyers. What I strongly suggest anybody trying to break into wholesale use LinkedIn. LinkedIn has been huge for me, building partnerships, getting on the podcast. But what I did was when I started the company just as a 24 year old I added all the buyers at every store I could ever think of and I'd post about crossnet. At first it was nothing, but now I'm posting oh a million dollars a month. Like they're taking notice so they're aware of my company. So when I do like there's two stores that I'm like trying to go after that for whatever reason won't write back. To me they're like the last two stores in America I need to get into but they're on my LinkedIn and I just like been adding everybody so like they're familiar with Cross that they're engaging with the stuff so eventually I'll get them but so when I send that message out it's a much warmer touch. And that's how I was able to land a bunch of our retail deals.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, I saw another retailer in Australia using a LinkedIn strategy just to target specific companies employees and actually creating content. Like video content. Oh yeah, purely at them. Even though they didn't have a one to one relationship with them. It's so smart just to get their attention.
Chris Mead: Yeah, we try to do LinkedIn ads for our own personal business but the click like price call per click was like two, three dollars. It was just like excessive. So if you're a big retailer and you could use LinkedIn to run ads, go right ahead. It's probably definitely working. But for, for a small business like us, it wasn't worth it.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, makes sense. So tell us about the first big retailer that you landed and how that came about.
Chris Mead: Yeah, so I messaged this guy at Shields, which is a sporting goods store here in America. Think like 35 stores. They have a Ferris wheel. It's a big, big store and they're in the Midwest. So I'm not from the Midwest, I'm not really familiar with their store, but I kind of just googled it, said hey, we'd probably be good there. Sent him a cold touch, got his email off LinkedIn actually and I said, hey man, I think you'd really like this product. Sent him a, we didn't even have videos back then. I had a photo, I sent him a photo. I'm like, hey, I think this would look good in your store. And he wrote back. I don't know why he did. He said, I agree, I'll take 16 of them. So it was for two stores of the 30. I shipped them out to him. Didn't even like, I think we probably lost money on a deal because I didn't really know wholesale pricing versus retail pricing at the time, factoring and all that. So we probably sold them for less than we even make them for. But I got them in the store and they didn't sell for like a year, did not move. And then all of a sudden we started getting momentum from the influencers posting from the like the most random people posting and like the company actually getting viral. And he emails me, says, kris, I don't know what happened, but all 16 units sold out overnight. People just came to the store and bought them and they're gone. I need to go, I need to get more and I need to go nationwide with it. I said, okay, we're going nationwide. So we ship them nationwide and then within two weeks they sold out nationwide. And now they just, they just keep order. They're ordering like 800 at a time now. And it's just, it's a crazy feeling. That's a, that's a really good partnership for us.
Nathan Bush: That's phenomenal. Well done. And so from your point of view, did you say that wholesale represent. Wholesale on Amazon represents about 15% for business? Yeah, give or take. So relatively low. Do you see that as the long term play, the scale play, or do you see direct to consumer continuing to make up a whole business?
Chris Mead: So right now like our profit margin on direct to consumer is just a little bit better than our wholesale. I've made sure we don't work with stores unless we get like a value that I'm pretty happy with the stores these days in that in the outdoor game section is kind of boring. So a game like us is actually like pretty attractive for consumers, fortunately. So. But right now we're turning down like we're turning down stores and we don't have the inventory because we are just scaling at such a crazy rate. So eventually, yeah, I can see the wholesale business being 30, 40% if we really wanted it to be. But right now we have customers ordering that are not getting their order till June because we're. Yeah, we went from selling before COVID We went from selling 70 a day to selling 400 to 500 to 600 a day for the last three months now.
Nathan Bush: That's phenomenal.
Chris Mead: Yeah, it's been crazy.
Nathan Bush: How so let's talk a little bit about COVID Hey, so we're doing this interview in late April, so I probably won't go to air for a few weeks yet. Tell us about the impact on both sales, but also your supply chain to hit you pretty hard.
Chris Mead: Oh yeah, super hard. I mean, we Were we typically prepare like two to three months in advance that we have enough inventory to last us two to three months, give or take a few crazy sales days or a big wholesaler coming in. We had one. I flew down to Texas for a meeting with a buyer. I was expecting to go into 20 stores. She asked me to buy for all 256 stores. So little things like that just really screw up your supply chain. Especially when you're manufacturing overseas and there's a 60 day lead time. So we've gone from being overstocked for two to three months to now being backordered for a few months. But it's a great problem to have. But what we've had to do is just we've rushed delivered units. We've literally put the factory that we work with at max capacity. Like here's all our money. Take it. Just make until we tell you to stop making. And on the opposite end, we just had to hire around the clock customer service to just make sure everybody's happy. We're doing our best to provide clear expectations for shipping dates. But not everybody sees every single bit of detail. So there's just around the clock customer service that we're doing right now to make sure everybody's happy.
[Voiceover]: Yeah.
Nathan Bush: What kind of mood are you getting from your customers at the moment?
Chris Mead: So the ones who have purchased the game and have it are stoked like every like five star feedback. This game is like saving my, like saving my life right now because there's. There's a family that set it up in the middle of their living room and they put the net in between and you see them hitting it. It's like I'm almost gonna hit like the vase and the knock off the flowers off the table. But it's the best video ever. So that's awesome. Yeah. So families are having a great time with it. Their people are going crazy over here, not be able to go outside. So it's nice for them to be able to bond with their family, have a good time, get off the couch and stop watching Netflix, which is the whole purpose of the game in the first place. But now it's really helping. So we got, I mean we got almost 10,000 units out within the last like month. So the families that are having it are loving it. The people who are on this kind of pre order wait list are just patiently waiting. Fortunately we're going to be able to have them by summertime. So it's going to be a great summer for us.
Nathan Bush: Yeah. Brilliant. And how in terms of Managing the expectations around supply chain. How do you wholesalers respond when you go, look, we're trying to push hard. We're kind of pushing to capacity here, but we just don't know. It could be a couple of months yet. How do they respond to that?
Chris Mead: It's tough. I mean, on one side, they're stoked for us. They're very happy with the success of our product. Every wholesaler we work with has seen our product just fly off their shelf. They can't even stock it long enough. So they understand the demand at this point and it's just being transparent. They want to order 1,000 units. I don't have a thousand units to give you. I'm 27, I'm working through it. We're doing our best every day. And they, they know this story I've told them. They understand who we are. We're not JP Morgan, we're not Morgan Stanley. We're not a big bank just with all the financing. We're just people with a great idea. We're trying to keep up. So when you kind of humanize it, they understand obviously they want the product and we're doing our absolute best. So right now I'm taking orders for July and September. So I'm like, hey guys, if you want your orders, I get them made. You want to stock them for Q3 and Q4, come prepared and send me your orders a month in advance pre buy for your stuff. So that's what they're doing now. We have like thousands of orders already like lined up for the fall.
Nathan Bush: That's huge because I suppose, yeah, you're going through both approaching summer and covert at the same time, which would be peak.
[Voiceover]: The new climate has accelerated nearly a decade of E commerce evolution into just 90 days. And just as businesses around the world have pivoted to adapt, Shopify have scrapped their normal plans to help solve the problems merchants face today at Shopify. Reunite. Shopify launched a bunch of innovative new solutions to help you keep up and stay informed on the future of commerce. To see them all, watch the recording@shopify.com au forward/reunite.
Nathan Bush: One thing that I did notice in your post, but also on the website, is a really strong push now towards community because you have, you've invented a game, you've invented a product. It's a whole new, almost like a new lifestyle for people, right?
[Voiceover]: Yeah.
Nathan Bush: And I can see that you've got some great partnerships with even ball manufacturers and creative communities with experts. And you've already talked about volleyball players coming over to Give their expertise. Where do you see community playing a role for crossnet?
Chris Mead: Big time. I see us creating like it's a brand new sport. So it's twofold. The net is used to learn volleyball skills, but the sport, if we grow the sport properly, is what's going to keep our company alive for the next 10, 20 years. So we need to build this community of people going out, waking up on a Saturday and they're pumped to just go to the beach and play cross net so that community, like our, our company lives and dies. I could go make $10 million off the product, but I want the sport to be in the Olympics. I want it to be on espn. And that's where the aspect of community is the most important for us.
Nathan Bush: Yeah.
Chris Mead: So whenever we go back outside, we had events lined up everywhere. So we're gonna have tons of events, tons of tournaments, and we're gonna start it young because we have, we're in over 4, 000 schools right now. So kids are learning how to play volleyball on a cross net, learning the sport, and then by the time they're in high school and college, they'll be able to attend these tournaments and events. So that's a really cool model to see. Go full circle.
Nathan Bush: That's awesome. Awesome. And is it that you're trying to bring people over from playing volleyball to play crossnet or is it bringing a brand new audience in?
Chris Mead: I think it's a brand new audience because I grew up not liking volleyball. I hated volleyball. I went to school, like in middle school and gym class, we would have the volleyball set up. It would be 10 people versus 10 people. And I touched the ball twice in 45 minutes and I'd be like, can we just get the basketball? So now I know there are millions of kids out there who have experienced the same thing that me and my friends did. We would have loved volleyball if we would have touched the ball more, but we just weren't put in a position to do that. So now you have this four way net. You're spiking it every three seconds. You're working on hand eye coordination. Everyone's having a good time. And it's kind of. You have that solo like you're only worried about yourself. You're working on your skills. So definitely turnover from volleyball to crossnet. People who like volleyball could like crossnet, but there's a huge open demographic there for potential users that aren't even into volleyball.
Nathan Bush: Yeah. And so I think that's a really good overview you've given us. You've given us that. You've actually created something that is purely brand new. Not in terms of just a product but in terms of a game, a lifestyle, just total recreation. Right. You've created and talked about scaling and manufacturing and advertising and community and building that up. Where are you at right now in terms of numbers?
Chris Mead: Yeah. So right now this month we are at almost 1.5 million for the month, completely self funded, own 100% of the company with our founders, no debt, just the three of us. This year we're almost at, I think we're probably at 3mil, maybe a little bit over 3mil. Last year we were at 2.5 for the whole year and so we're only a few months in, we're already past 2019 and it happened quick. 2018 we were at 80k for the whole year, we only did 80 grand. So I think this year we could probably hit 10 mil. We have new products coming out, sports only getting bigger. Just it's snowballing. People are going out and playing and their friends are buying it. So it's really cool. It's really, it's really fun right now.
Nathan Bush: That's really exciting when you've got that level of growth but you're also seeing all the opportunity that's ahead of you.
Chris Mead: Oh yeah. There's so much stuff we haven't done, like SMS marketing. We've got like six sales from SMS marketing. Like there's so much stuff we could do like just flip a few switches if we have the time. So when we find the time and like get the right partners, it's going to be real cool.
Nathan Bush: Awesome. So you said it sounds like the dream journey, right? Is that this idea has come up at 4am with your mates and you've kind of gone in and you've started low. It's been completely self funded and all of a sudden you're at 3 million. I'm sure it hasn't been that smooth. Tell us about sometimes where it's gone wrong and some things that you would do over.
Chris Mead: Yeah, so right now it's like smooth. We're all real happy. There's some stuff that happens but right now it was good. But take us back two years ago we didn't pay ourselves out for two years. We didn't get paid a single dollar. We see tons of money in the bank account and we just have to keep investing in inventory and never pay ourselves. So going back I hopefully would have been able to pull some money to survive and live a little bit better. We were all Working freelancers got jobs to just try to make ends meet. So if we were to be able to pull some cash out of the business, maybe we'd been even more focused and help our growth even much better. Now some other areas that we kind of screwed up on. Email marketing. It took us three years to like actually sit down and be like, yeah, we can make a lot of money here. We need to take this seriously. Just since January 2020, we started with $3,000 a month on email marketing. That's all we were making was three grand. This month alone we've made over 200 grand in email marketing in just four months. That progression has been that quick. So if we would have captured emails for the last three years, I don't know what type of gold mine we would have been sitting on. So emails and phone numbers, collecting and building your list quicker, huge mistake.
Nathan Bush: Is there any trick to building that list quicker?
Chris Mead: I think just by having more compelling pop ups and more compelling offers and a B testing the hell out of it. Does it pop up at 3 seconds? Does it pop up at 5, 7 at close? And making sure that it's a smooth navigation for the customers where it's a, it's a fine balance between is this annoying or is this providing value? And also yeah, so that's it for us.
Nathan Bush: It's just something we keep hearing over and over. Right. And seeing is that pop ups work. As much as we hate them as customers and even as retailers, I think we're just so cautious about them because we just worried about pissing people off.
Chris Mead: Of course they work, they work, they work. And like I was just buying something the other day and I literally hovered over the website just to try to find the pop up so I'd save my money. So as much as they're annoying, people are expecting them.
Nathan Bush: Yeah. Yeah. Chris, that's awesome. We really appreciate your time and such an amazing story for our listeners. If we have listeners that are at the early stages that have an idea in their head, 4am idea, what advice would you give them?
Chris Mead: Just get started. Otherwise somebody else is going to do it and you are going to be really sad in a few years if you don't do it and you got nothing to lose. Absolutely nothing to lose. Start small, stay frugal. Every dollar counts regardless if it's your business dollar or your dollar is still one dollar. Like make sure every dollar you spend wisely.
Nathan Bush: Beautiful. Well put Chris. Me. Thank you very much. If people want to get in touch with you, where can they find you?
Chris Mead: You could find me on LinkedIn at Chris Mead. Send me an email Chris Crossnet game.com if you want to buy the game. Crossnet game.com lovely.
Nathan Bush: Thank you very much.
[Voiceover]: What a bloody amazing story. Did you catch the bit in there where Chris mentioned that he wanted to make Crossnet an Olympic sport? I thought that was the moment where he genuinely lit up about what he was doing. It wasn't about getting to 10 or $100 million in revenue. It was about making this thing an Olympic sport. How many retailers can have goals like that? Just phenomenal. That, I believe, is the beauty with what Chris and his team are building. They have created a total blue ocean strategy here. They've built on volleyball and handball concepts that people are familiar with, but in bringing the two games together, they've officially effectively cancelled out the downsides of each. And sure, the product can be copied, but their recent investment in building the brand, registering trademarks and building a community that cares shows that this isn't just a product, it is a movement. Their job is now building the sport, not the product. It's an interesting question to ask ourselves. Are we creating just another choice where we need to compete with other people, or are we creating something unique? If it was up to me, I'd always go for 10 times, not 10% growth. We're going to have all the links available in the show notes, and I can highly recommend following Chris on LinkedIn if you want to keep up with the story, but he also just shares lots of honest founder stories and questions it's really refreshing to keep track of. If you want to keep up to date with Add to Cart, head over to addtocart.com au and sign up for our newsletter. We'll alert you when new episodes are available and give you the summarized versions when you can't listen straight away. Until next time, thanks for listening and keep adding to card.
