Nathan Bush: It's like you've got the ultimate dad tinkering shed that makes money.
Ben Hare: I think this is probably a good general principle is there's actually not one method that suits every customer.
[Voiceover]: Conversion rate or site optimization always comes down to one of two things, increasing desire or reducing friction.
Ben Hare: Bad ideas sometimes just means a crazy idea and they're often the best ideas.
[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. Here's your host, Bushy.
Nathan Bush: Welcome back to ADD to cart. My name is Nathan Bush, otherwise known as Bushy, joining you from the land of the terrible people here in lovely Brisbane, Australia. Today, I am thrilled to welcome not one, not two, but all three directors of Tiny Me. Ben Hare, Mike Wilson and Nick McLennan. These guys are the masterminds behind one of the most ingenious brands in personalized kids products, Tiny Me. Now, they've been on the scene for over 18 years ago. I met them about a decade ago and they are stronger than ever. Today, Ben, Mike and Nick talk us through their journey from their humble beginnings to scaling internationally to the UK and beyond. What began as a humble operation in Mike's spare room crafting their very first customized wooden name puzzles, has grown into a global enterprise innovation and a really, really smart retail operation. Some of the smarts they have in the back end will blow your mind. Together they've taken their mass customization approach and delivered it at scale and today they produce an entire range of customized products all made to order. In this episode, Ben, Mike and Nick share the highs and the lows of international expansion, their behind the scenes tech innovations and how they balance the logistics of running such a complicated mass customization brand, all while raising 15 kids between them. It's a lot on the plate. I'd like to invite you in to join my weekly e commerce newsletter. Every Tuesday morning I deliver my opinion on one trend in the retail industry. Plus five unmissable e commerce stories that you need to know about. It's totally free. You can sign up now at add to cart.comau subscribe. As always, a huge thank you to our partners, Shopify plus and Deliver in person for making this episode possible. Now let's get into it. Here's our chat with Ben, Mike and Nick from TinyMe.
Nathan Bush: Mike, Ben and Nick, welcome to Add to Cart.
Mike Wilson: Thanks for having us.
[Voiceover]: Good to be here.
Nathan Bush: To be here. Great to have you all here. I've got three directors all here together. What a privilege. Thank you for taking the time on this Friday afternoon, guys.
Mike Wilson: No, our pleasure.
Nathan Bush: All right, let's get into it. I was lucky enough to meet you guys. It was probably 10 years ago now on a Nora bus tour. Nora used to do the bus tours. Do you remember that?
Mike Wilson: Yep.
[Voiceover]: Good.
Mike Wilson: A bit over 10 years now.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, would have been over 10 years. And it was so cool because I remember it was the same one that you did. We stopped in to catch of the day at the time. We had Gabby give us the office tour and stuff. And we came into your office. And I remember just being blown away by the smarts in your place around the mass customization that you've done and the processes that you've created to create personalized product across such a huge range, which we'll get into shortly.
Nathan Bush: But the other thing that I was
Nathan Bush: blown away by was the amount of kids that you had between you all. That blew me away. And I was pre dad that stage, so blows me away even more now. What was the most difficult to get
Ben Hare: right, the kids or the business?
Mike Wilson: Mm, yeah, it's tight. It's a. It's a tight one. Yeah, we spent a lot of time on both of them.
[Voiceover]: Yeah, they're both giving, I must say. Yeah.
Nathan Bush: If only kids could follow a process.
Ben Hare: And what. What happens at home falls over into work. And what happens at work falls over into home. So we do. We do try and get them to
Mike Wilson: conform, but we have had about 6 of our kids work for us now.
Ben Hare: So you.
[Voiceover]: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Mike Wilson: Because I've grown up a bit since. Since then.
Nathan Bush: Yeah. So how many kids are we talking in total between you?
Mike Wilson: Fifteen. Fifteen.
Nathan Bush: And how old's. Who's got the oldest kid?
Mike Wilson: That's me. Yeah, she's 22.
Nathan Bush: Okay.
[Voiceover]: Yeah, she's in today.
Mike Wilson: She's in today, actually. Yeah.
Nathan Bush: Someone's got to do the work while you're here chatting. That's phenomenal. So 15 children between you. So goes to show, you know, you're in the category of children's products, essentially, so you've got great experience there. For those who may not have come across TinyMe, can you give us the overview on what TinyMe is and what makes you special?
[Voiceover]: Yeah, all right, I can jump in on that. So sort of on the site, we'll often sort of say the world's cutest personalized kids products. So we essentially. The TinyMe brand, we've got another brand of Pico, but mostly known for TinyMe, and it is all kids products. And we pretty much sell to mums of kids about 0 to 6. Occasionally dads bias, but dads and uncles. But it is mainly, if you look at our Facebook demo, it's 98% females, very biased towards mums. And yeah, everything we do is sort of. Because it's personalised or customized, is made to order. So we manufacture in Melbourne and we've got another factory in the UK as well. And so we design our own range to sell it purely through the tinyme website. And then everything we sell, we make. So, yeah, that's sort of it.
Mike Wilson: We've got 10 different country websites now, so we've kind of do. International is a pretty big part of the business. It's not quite half the business, but it's not that far off. So that's a pretty key focus for us. So strategically as well, we've been building up on that. We launched our first international site back in 2011, so it's been quite a while that we've been playing the international piece and now we've got the UK factories sort of building that even further.
Nathan Bush: When did you open the UK factory?
Mike Wilson: 2022. So pretty fresh. So straight after Covid. Pretty much as soon as we're allowed to travel again, which in Victoria was quite late in the piece. We got straight on to implementing that and we had it. We shipped our first order. Well, first travel over there was February 22nd and we shipped our first order in May. So we moved pretty fast on that to get it up and running.
Nathan Bush: Yeah. Okay. And is that a key part of getting personalization right? Is manufacturing close to the customer?
Mike Wilson: It doesn't have to be like. Because we've been servicing international markets for over a decade before that, all from Australia. So making it in Melbourne and then shipping globally. So you can do it, but it's more about the customer experience. And I think you're seeing that frontline retailers generally is getting stock closer to customers so they can have a faster sort of fulfillment that's a little bit tougher for mass customisation because we have to make the products. They actually have to put a manufacturing facility, not just like a. A warehouse or a 3 PL or whatever you do to make it a bit quicker. So I think it's important for that customer experience to get it faster. That was a big motivation for us. And also being in Australia, it's a long way to ship halfway around the world. So the cost and the time associated with that is probably the main motivation for why we did it, to improve that customer experience for those customers, sort of UK and Europe. But it's not Essential, but it's in
[Voiceover]: the house in that in mass customization which has become so much bigger since we started. If we're just doing books or posters or coffee mugs, we'd be on one of the platforms where, you know, they order it and we can distribute that to some of them. Now got, you know, 100 different manufacturing locations globally. So it's sort of software that integrates that with people but which means you're sort of forced to kind of lies common denominator products which in the case of a book, papers, paper so it doesn't matter. So it's differentiated by what's on it. So we'll then try and more differentiate on. We kind of have to otherwise to compete on more interesting ways of making products or more interesting products in and of themselves. Doesn't mean we don't do books because we do. But it's just like, yeah, we wouldn't have as much competitive advantage if that's all we did. Why bother being a manufacturer when there's others that can do that for us?
Nathan Bush: Yeah, that makes sense. You've got some fascinating products in there. I was doing the research. I went down a bit of a rabbit hole in your product catalog. Obviously you mentioned books, but school bags, backpacks. But then you start getting into puzzles and some of them the, you know, left field stuff that you go, oh, I wouldn't have even thought to customize those products. Where do you get your ideas on where you can go with the product range from a customization angle.
[Voiceover]: It's multiple. We've got a lot of ideas. That's never been the problem. A lot of it's even just seeing what's around like even what's on Etsy, what's on. On the many, many, many competitors around like oh, that's interesting way of doing something. Then it's often even from the technology standpoint. So what you see new machines because say Nick and I met studying industrial design so it's sort of more manufacturing and we've always really been into machines. So it's like new technology comes out whether it's 3D printing or it's, you know, AI for the software layer or what can we actually. And that will often inspire a product. Now the problem is that's we can sort of nerd out on that and
Mike Wilson: you've got to make sure someone just sort of.
Ben Hare: We can get very inspired with products that no one's ever going to want to buy.
Mike Wilson: Yeah.
[Voiceover]: So we've got to watch that.
Nathan Bush: But you'll have fun doing It, Right, yeah.
Mike Wilson: So it's still like that's where I come in.
[Voiceover]: Yeah. So you've got to have fun doing it and then actually keep. Well, we're getting better. Like asking even just early on, like asking around the office. So just giving that to the audience and just finding out early on if this is just like just a cool way of making something that no one wants or does it actually deploy you want it.
Nathan Bush: What's your best selling product or category?
Mike Wilson: At the moment we're probably strongest in the back to school categories. So particularly things like name labels, personalized bags. But it's quite broad though. A lot of the gifting categories, like our puzzles are pretty big as well. So that was our first product, so that's been around the longest is sort of wooden puzzles. But yeah, so it's pretty broad. But definitely those back to school categories are probably our strongest.
Nathan Bush: Yeah. So you're coming up to peak season very soon. Well, I suppose now you're international, are kind of. You've got multiple peaks.
Mike Wilson: Yeah. So northern hemisphere July, August is really big for back school. So we had a pretty big one for UK and US and some of the other markets, but just finished and then you have a bit of a lull September and then you come up for Christmas and then you got January goes nuts for Australia. So yeah, it's nice having Three peaks now rather than just used to just have the two.
Nathan Bush: Yeah. What kind of lead time do you have to work to there? So do you have to be an organized parent to be able to get back to school on time? Like are we talking long lead times to have mass customization delivered to the doorstep?
Ben Hare: No, you don't have to be an organized parent. We have sort of a couple of different models in the way that we make and ship products. So we've got a lower cost that takes a little bit longer and you pay a little bit more and you get expedited production. Because we make to order, we don't only do express shipping on those, we can actually do express production. So we can, you know, go to the front of the list if you pay a bit extra, that sort of thing. So there's the opportunity that and most of those we ship next day. So we actually put an order on before midnight tonight and we'll dispatch it tomorrow. For the ones which are not those express ones, we're still shipping them in typically within a few days. And then there's the delivery time on top of that, depending on where you are. But you know, across town, Melbourne and Sydney, it's usually only a couple of days, but some of the international markets
Mike Wilson: mostly get it in two days. Yeah. So yeah, rush orders next day and standards about three typically. But it varies a little and even
Ben Hare: when we were shipping all the UK stuff from here before we put the facility over there, they would all still get their orders before a significant half of Australia because the shipping in Australia
[Voiceover]: can be very slow and that does freak people out. It's probably not the best way of saying it does impress people because also sometimes they might have ordered a backpack, a puzzle, a drink bottle, a mix of stuff and then again, depending on how it's going, if it's to say crosstown Melbourne, they might have ordered at night time and they get it the next day. Could we have them dispatch depending on how the freight providers are going? Certain times they've got a bit slower but. And that's essentially been one of the main, it is a main differentiator. So if we're just making one product, it's not too hard, like we've got competitors just saying, doing just labels. But if you're mixing those products, imagine a few thousands of orders, let alone each order's got a few different items, you've got thousands of items going through production with all sorts of different machines. So trying to load balance that so it doesn't just get out of a complete mess and trying to get some of that dispatch within. Essentially it's measured in hours on rush orders. So. And we do pay, you know, obviously pay rush, the sort of disorganized parent tax that can be. Yeah,
Nathan Bush: that in a lot of ways, yeah. A lot of retailers are struggling to even separate express versus standard delivery, let alone create a pipeline of product that is express versus standard delivery as well as the shipping must be a finely tuned operation. How often are you kind of going back and refining the processes in terms of that manufacturing cycle from the moment you receive an order through to getting it out the door, or is it kind of a set it up once and you're done?
Ben Hare: We're constantly upgrading it, changing it, fixing it or not fixing it so much as just implementing new features. But that's been not just some of it sort of hand to mouth like we have a problem, we solve it. But a lot of it's actually we've been working towards some master plans, so to speak, ideas over a long period of time and making sure that the short term features are sort of building blocks towards grander plans. And we've been doing that for a long time. So some of Those grand plans have already come to fruition and the facility that we've got is pretty awesome. What we can actually do in a huge amount of the work that we do actually is what you don't see when you look at the website and you get your order. The production facilities have been talking about is where so much of the smarts. And you mentioned you witnessed some of that when you did the tour here.
Mike Wilson: It's a lot cooler now.
Ben Hare: Yeah, it's a lot cooler now.
Nathan Bush: Plenty cool when I saw it.
Ben Hare: It's pretty awesome now and if you can imagine something that we haven't done, let us know because we're always open to better ways of doing it. It's pretty highly tuned now but it's also flexible. We're just in the last couple of days today I've been building some sort of automation systems into the system to manage where people go when and things like that.
[Voiceover]: A lot of it like you do it too and you can see the physical stuff and a cool machine is a cool machine. And then a lot of the stuff we build ourselves will be because we're not selling to anyone. We'll be cable ties and all sorts of. It won't necessarily look pretty but it's very cool. So between 3D printing, laser cutting and cable ties and a bunch of electronics you can make cool machines. But it's the software layer behind a lot of that that's so I can talk about how awesome. I wasn't actually that involved in any of it at all but so I can probably brag the most because it's, it's, you know, I'm stepping back a bit but it is, it's very, very, it's very, very impressive. And then it's also. It's good for multi site as well now. So we built it when we're re platforming we built it so it could be. It's two sites but we could, you know, you could run six sites and that'll be in sync. Then if one stocked out of something else it can divert to another factory. And just to help out, it's like
Nathan Bush: you've got the ultimate dad tinkering shed that makes money.
Mike Wilson: Yeah, yeah.
[Voiceover]: We do talk to a few like at the events they got some beer cartel. We get a few tinkerers that like we'd start geeking out on this stuff and they. Yeah, you can talk tinkering with people quite well with our, with our kids.
Nathan Bush: So what was the last idea that you thought of from a product perspective? That you're like yeah, we're going to go and do this and push the product range or the product offering into a new direction that you're like, oh, I'm not sure this is within the confines of the process or the system that we've built that you really thought would push the boundaries a little bit more. Is there anything that comes to mind?
[Voiceover]: Usually if it's a new process, we'll start that in high level R and D and sort of prove it out without trying to spend too much money on new machinery or new. Is it possible?
Ben Hare: One of the things is that the combination of the digital side and the physical side is a really big part of what we do. We do essentially digital production but with physical stuff. So probably the one that comes to mind for me would be the QR label, which I think you've seen. And because putting a QR on a label is pretty easy but building the whole infrastructure behind that so that those QRS are all managed and the system that's more of a service as much as it is a product that we're selling there. So that was a pretty big branch out in one sense. Now we've got in house dev, so we developed all of that in house from top to bottom, all of the service support of that as well as the physical product and everything in between. And yeah, so that's probably which one that comes to mind for me.
Nathan Bush: That was so cool. So the idea there is that the QR label goes on the child's product and that when scanned is it a name and kind of like a. Whose is this?
Ben Hare: Yeah, that's right. And you manage that as the user contact details. Contact details. So you can dial from the. It's not an app, it's just a web based thing. But you can dial from it or you can sms, you know, coordinate with your phone.
Mike Wilson: Mike's the biggest success story. He's already saved over a thousand bucks for his kids because they just keep losing.
[Voiceover]: And me like, yeah, we've left hockey sticks on the train and got carbon fiber hockey sticks, left another one and I mean so I keep, I think I've had five items found and two of them are over 300 bucks. And so yeah, good, good household use of it. But we've got ones you can stick on clothing, ones you can stick on hard objects, you know like once you can iron on.
Nathan Bush: So I reckon I'd save a thousand bucks on my kids school hats just by finding them again every year you
Ben Hare: can buy iron on ones and there's ones that stick on Fabric.
[Voiceover]: So yeah, yeah, we had one last week actually on my daughter's soft shell and as soon as it's at a school and put a logo on it, 150 bucks offshell, so stuffy 25 version from Kmart anyway, so I'm glad we get that back. But that has been a mix of like, yeah, a lot of user interface design because the product, in that sense we've been selling labels. So the label itself wasn't a new product for us, it was more just a bit. And that's when we actually saw coming years and years and years ago, like, oh, we should do QR labels then. No one knows what a QR is. When you can't on an iPhone, which a lot of our users, you can't use it and then they put them on iPhones and then Covid happened and then for better or worse, everyone found out what a QR label was. And so, you know, my mum, 83 year olds are fully across what QR labels do nowadays. So the timing was, we thought, yeah, let's get going on that one.
Nathan Bush: So it's a really interesting example, isn't it? Because like you said, you'd always done labels, you'd always printed labels like that. But the value of a QR code, like how do you value that for a customer then? Right, because if you're able to print a lunchbox with a QR code on it, which means that it might not get lost, it might get returned, you might get a longer life out of that lunchbox. How do you put a value on that? It's almost a service, right?
[Voiceover]: It is, yeah.
Ben Hare: Yeah, that's right.
Nathan Bush: Tell me about the website RE platform that you just mentioned there. Just having a look at your website, there's a lot to it and it's a. I could imagine that it's a. Not a complex, but it's a different user journey for most customers because there is that level of creativity, discovery. What could I do with this customer? Almost has to think, how can I make this creative if I have to upload my images or the names or pick the pictures that I'm using? How did you go about that process of re platforming and what did you go to?
Mike Wilson: That is one of our biggest challenges is the paradox of choice, I guess we call it because you've literally got billions of different options on our website. But somehow you've got to present that in a way that's really frictionless and because otherwise people freak out and don't buy. But I guess we've been working on that for a long time. So I mean we've had in house developers since 2009 back then like a long, long time ago. You know we've been through multiple re platformings over the years and we just keep testing stuff. So you know the UX design is pretty. Is very collaborative. Well everything's very collaborative in our business because everything's so integrated in terms of our business model. So we get a lot of different perspectives in there but we try out different things at different times to split, test and work out which ones are working best for our customers in terms of the user experience. But having the in house developers here just makes a massive difference because they're totally in that process. So it's not like we're just giving a spec and they execute on it. We're constantly talking about how hard is it to do this and they. And they're hearing all the different ideas and very much in that kind of sort of the design element is done collaboratively with a whole bunch of different perspectives whether it's our designers or our marketers or our devs or us very different.
Nathan Bush: Debriefing in an agency.
Mike Wilson: Yeah, absolutely. And I think would be quite hard for us actually to do it with an agency because. And it keeps changing. Like every product we launch we pretty much have to design that. Now there's similarities across a lot of products but there's also differences depending on the product. So that's just something we have to keep kind of coming back to. But yeah, but ultimately we look to also try and modularize things as much as we can. If we can sort of reuse elements in different ways to make that smoother and particularly if you end up having to re platform that's kind of nice if you don't have to rebuild the whole thing. You know you're just changing part of the stack.
[Voiceover]: But yeah, that's philosophically we definitely think like we're on Adobe we moved from at that stage we didn't have a. I don't know we looked at sort of I think big in Shopify when we re platform and neither of them had a. Those two at that stage had a back end. You could do 10 localized domains. They've got that both got the now so we just did you know, out of a. For other reasons. The shortlist was those three and then we went with Adobe but we're always sort of thinking on sort of core custom builds. How do we get that built in a way which is as least hard coded into Magento or Adobe as possible or at least hard coded into Shopify. And so some things you have to but generally try and keep that stuff. So it could move from Adobe to Shopify or something without too much effort. And then again that's where again if that's the bit we're differentiating on, that's the bit we want. We're happy to spend time on that. Whereas a lot of the normal cut and checkout now we've just redone our cut and checkout but more just in line with the more e commerce best practice, not mass customization best practice.
Nathan Bush: Amazing. And what was you mentioned that you've done a replatform a few times now. What was any surprises out of RE platforming this time compared to the previous times you've been through it this time
[Voiceover]: was a few years ago now we moved from M1 to M2. We're pretty early on to you know what I'm talking about. But maybe and probably listeners David Magento 1 to Magento 2 which is Adobe Commerce. Not too many surprises.
Mike Wilson: Pretty much every time we've done a RE platform we've actually launched new websites. So like when we first went onto Magento In 2011 we actually launched the tinyme UK website onto Magento. So back then we're on Xcart and the brand is called Moo back then. So we actually did a rebrand and a whole new site into the UK and so it kind of de risked it. We didn't have many customers. We didn't have any customers there really at that stage. So you kind of launched a whole new thing and you. And also for us we could progressively roll out our product suite so we didn't have all the products at once. And we did a similar kind of thing. Most of our RE platforms we've had that same kind of philosophy. Like I think we did Singapore. We launched Singapore. That's when we launched new markets is that we need to replatform. We have launched the new markets without replatforming but often, you know, we've. I think we did Singapore on another. On another one of our RE platforms where we, you know, we kind of start fresh and we're not risking existing customer base and then we can migrate across you get the learnings. Because one thing you always underestimate when you re platform is just how much refinement you've put in over the years. Even though you come at it afresh from a design perspective thinking oh this is all looking good and that kind of stuff, invariably it's not as Heavily optimized as what you've just had. And so that just takes some time to then work through, split, test different things and try them out and get them better. So there's always, there's often that element in the first particular first few months where you almost take a bit of a step back and to go forward, even if it's actually a much better design overall, it just doesn't have the level of refinement. So de risking that has been quite good for us.
Nathan Bush: Yep. When you are designing and I think this applies to most retailers, especially those with lots of variants, do you have any tricks or rules that you apply when it comes to trying to reduce that paradox of choice? Like is there any kind of guardrails that you put around product pages or home pages to go? Actually, no. Let's make this simple for customers. We will never do this.
Mike Wilson: We never say never. We just try stuff.
[Voiceover]: Depending on some products we've got where you've got to choose a design and color and then you've got to put personalization in and then you've got a whole bunch of other options. A lot of, you know, potentially sort of upsells cross sells that are sort of linked to that product. So there's just sometimes there's been too much going on. So I sort of thought in that case that's actually split into two totally separate stages. And so and we a b tested that to prove it out in certain hard coded form to find out do we invest actually in building that properly. And so often we'll just have the idea and then, yeah, go from there.
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Ben Hare: Well, one thing we've found, and I think this is probably a good general principle, is there's actually not one method that suits every customer because some customers want lots of choice and that's actually what's going to convert better for them. And then there are other customers who don't possibly even depends on what time of day it is and what the kids are doing and you know, what they're buying and who it's for and all sorts of things.
Nathan Bush: How much brain capacity is left at the end of the day.
Ben Hare: Yeah, exactly.
[Voiceover]: What's going for someone, for someone they don't even know. Like to tell me what's a good seller for boys. Like it's, you know, that sort of thing.
Ben Hare: So and so sometimes actually providing multiple methods or ways in which a customer can experience the choice and giving them the choice to make the choice, if that makes sense. So but that's, I mean we've done some split testing around when we've done that and you can, you can try giving heaps of choice and it can convert well and you can try giving little choice that converts well. But if you actually provide both, the whole thing converts even better because there's one person goes this way, one person goes this way. If you can make that UX really easy for them to feel like they're getting a lot of choices, they want it and otherwise they're getting a good curated experience from. Generally speaking, it's all pretty curated in our case. So we're not giving complete open slather when it does come to what choice is given. It can be hundreds and thousands of options, but it's all actually designed by us. So it's sort of curated to an extent and then filtering and all that sort of stuff obviously laid on top of that helps out.
Mike Wilson: I think that thinking through the different pathways that different customers are doing is really, really important. But then trying to create a UX so that they can kind of seamlessly move between those as they want to. That's the hard part. That's so special.
[Voiceover]: And we do have a few underlying like I got it from one of the conferences you would have been at turnouts and I remember someone saying conversion rate or sell optimization always comes down to one of two things. Increasing desire or reducing friction. And it's true, everything you do a sale is increasing desire, better merch images, increasing desire and then heaps of stuff around reducing friction. And they're quite good guiding philosophies. The other one is again just constantly getting our team to think from the customer's perspective. They're sitting and designing two 27 inch side by side screenshot and then a User we always like in dev mode, put it on an iPhone s and then pretend it's in full sun and there's two kids in the background crying because that's actually the reality of how they're using a website.
Nathan Bush: Sounds like a torture chamber for developers.
[Voiceover]: Yeah, it's just the life of a mum. That's a good idea.
Mike Wilson: We should get a recording of that just to make it really authentic and
[Voiceover]: so on the design team of mums with young kids and they fully get it. But you do need to constantly. Do you remember the whole mobile festival push? We were really on that very, very early on and nowadays it's a bit obvious but again it's just. That's the other thing is just thinking how's a customer actually going to interact with this and constantly that plus the data informing things.
Mike Wilson: We also using tools that sort of play videos of the actual customer experience. So when we go live, we've used those over the years and I say sometimes it's quite frustrating. It's kind of like you see them scrolling. It's kind of like, no, no, click that button.
[Voiceover]: No, no, that one.
Mike Wilson: It's kind of like, yeah, there's something wrong here. They're not seeing we doing next. And you know, you say you change stuff and it's. That's been a really valuable tool just to really get to see what the customer is experiencing.
Nathan Bush: Are there any tools in that space that you really love using to see that customer journey?
[Voiceover]: Been through a bunch. So we've just hotjar which everyone's used. We're actually using one called Posthog mainly because it had recording in and we're using it for sort of other DevOps type capabilities. We generally go for what we don't have to pay much for because we're cheapskates. So there's some really, really good stuff out there we just don't want to pay for. So we'll generally go for the cheaper options which we'll get by on.
Nathan Bush: So yeah, smart move saying that on this podcast because now you won't have all the enterprise salespeople calling you after this goes live still call us up.
Ben Hare: We do sometimes get stung though because we burst through the threshold of the freebie system without realizing we've had that.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, I could imagine.
[Voiceover]: I suspect in the sort of the cartel world enterprise software, we've probably got a bit of a reputation. They're great guys, I love them. They just didn't buy anything off us
Nathan Bush: to them see them at conferences, they keep going for the cheap ones. Tell me about the marketing approach because I think there would be obviously the life cycle of parents. Especially when you're talking that zero to six, you're continually refreshing your market, introducing new people to the market who may not even be thinking about customized product until they see it. How do you attract new customers into your funnel?
[Voiceover]: Can you tell us about how to attract new customers, Nathan? Because it's hard. It also works is getting a bit old too. So like fortunately some in the marketing team, it feels like it's constantly rolling with the punches and it's in the ring and there's another round and there's another round and then it is very hard. So again, what was, you know, what was working last week isn't working this week. And certainly what was working 10 years ago, you know like, you know when PPC was shooting fish in a barrel, it was like 6 cent clicks or something and, and so things changed but there wasn't as much demand there. So it's constantly trying to experiment and then how do you get the bandwidth to make sure, you know, you put the time into finding the new channels? We've been through the same as lots of going to the conferences, chatting to others that are like, you know, customer acquisition costs going up or you know,
Mike Wilson: like we're big on measurement though. So you know, the key is to try stuff, see what works, do more of that, do less of the stuff that doesn't work and sounds well, just quite straightforward. It's the hard things actually executing on that obviously but, and finding those ideas. But you just got to keep reinventing. I think that's what we found over the years with marketing. Like the e commerce industry has changed massively in the time we've been in it. Like when we started, well we started the same year as Facebook so that there wasn't any social media sort of really in the early days we started before the iPhone so there was no mobile. So stuff's really changed so now years now but that just means you have to keep reinventing yourself. But that's one of the things we like about E commerce. You know, it does keep changing. You have to keep trying stuff and, but you know, just got to keep measuring and trying and, and then coming back to it. And for us, like you say our customer does grow out of us for tinyme and so you got to try and tap into that next generation and keep trying to reinvent yourself.
[Voiceover]: We've generally had a bit of a, because we're sort of more from a product background, product design background. Ideally you're trying to have a product that you don't have to market that hard to sell. But that is a bit idealistic. Like even if you do have that, you know, competitors come in and you're going to have to market. So it's a tough one. I reckon it's something that people. Some like, well, I think we're pretty good at it and some people are just. That's, you know, probably why they become a marketing agency.
Mike Wilson: That's.
[Voiceover]: That's their sort of thing.
Nathan Bush: That's right. Do you find you're more successful in being reactive to customer queries? So if you think about search at those peak times around I need a new lunchbox or personalized lunchboxes or whatever it is, or in being proactive around videos that showcase the product and kind of putting it in front of customers when they weren't even expecting it or had it on their minds.
[Voiceover]: Yeah, it's a bit of a mix. It depends a bit on what algorithms are doing at the time. So if organics like to say, typically Google's historically been more keyword driven, so it's more with buying intent and serving up to them at the right time. Whereas the socials have typically been more okay, interrupt them and get them interested and then bring them on board and then warm them up with email and the rest of it. We've always tried both and certain times again, which had like years ago, massive organic reach, you could do heaps of that, sort of just warming them up. So we really have had a bit of a mix. And again, some types of products are a bit more like a label. You don't necessarily overthink it and so that's going to be a bit more transactional. I just need to get the stick on labels. I'll just, I'll just go find them. Whereas a decor piece, I might really be a bit more considered and work out, take my time.
Nathan Bush: I could imagine that word of mouth is really strong for you, especially with parents tight communities. When you've got schools and preschools, everyone kind of sees what everyone else has got. Do you do anything to foster word of mouth or to encourage it?
Mike Wilson: The biggest thing we do, we focus a lot on NPS because, well, that's, you know, we're asking the question, are you going to tell someone else? And we score very highly on NPS generally. So compared to industry averages that we generally see. So that's definitely been at the heart of our kind of strategy. But what does that come down to, though? It's around good product, really good service fast and reliable. You know, all those things sort of come into play into what drives nps, but we find it's a good lens to keep us focused on the customer and do that because if you're going to the best way to get word of mouth going is to give an awesome experience with a good product. So that's kind of what we focus on there really to keep it going. You know, at times you do certain things like, you know, throw a brochure in to show more of the product range and that kind of stuff. Here you might just tell someone else about this, but mostly we think it's about that the quality of the experience that is what drives it.
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[Voiceover]: We're just not the sort of brand that's not a massive part of someone's life. Like it's not like even a kids fashion brand where they might buy heaps and heaps of items over, you know, 10 years of that brand. If they love that brand. We've got a bit more of a limited range. So even someone that's a massive tiny me fan will only have. There's only that many personalized products they'll have. So also just being cognizant of that. So again really over it. Like we need to do it more. But we're really trying to often get just so they even do remember us even if they had a great experience because it can be like I love that thing. What was it again? I got two years ago. And so again if we're just on all of our social, all of our interactions, all of our packaging, it's really pushing the brand, the brand, the brand so it does actually get recall. Even if someone is predisposed to telling a friend they've got to remember who we are. And that is a bit difficult when you're a bit of a. Literally just a nation as a matter of where we know our product and we live and breathe it. Most people just don't. It's just that was that nice puzzle I got. So I've got to make sure they do remember it.
Nathan Bush: That's really interesting because my gut would have said the other way. My gut would have said that you are a really emotionally attached part of people's lives. Because if you compare a school bag with your kid's name written on it, and as part of the product versus school bag that's bought at Kmart, I can get rid of that Kmart bag after a year at school if it's battered and torn and worn. But this one, if my kid's been through it and they've had their name on it and it's been a big part of their life. To me, there's a little bit more of an emotional attachment to your product. Do you get that kind of feedback?
[Voiceover]: Definitely get the more emotional attachment to a product. It's probably just a gain that like Kmart, they're probably there every other week. And so there's. There's that many more touch points, physical touch points. So you definitely get it, but it's just hard to get that. And also, even it is a kid's product. It's funny one the kids product, but the parent buying it so often the parent buys it, they know the kids likes it, but they're still not the one putting on that. I just love the fit of this because they're not trying it on. So, yeah, it's an interesting one.
Nathan Bush: What's been the craziest request from a personalization perspective? I know, I remember when we were in there 10 years ago, 10 plus years, is I remember seeing your list of things that you can and you will not personalize on. And it all made a lot of sense. Has there been anything come through that you're like, oh, I just don't know if we can do that?
Mike Wilson: We did have one from Tasmania. Yep. Someone wanted to put labels that said Hawes Rock or something like this and didn't feel like it lined up. With the TinyMe brand, we curate our design range so we don't get heaps of that kind of stuff. It's often ticks. We do photo products though, so sometimes in the photo products you get some stuff that you sort of think, oh, yeah, that's a bit interesting in terms of what comes through. But we don't get a lot of weird requests, if you know what I mean. Because, I mean, sometimes you do get. Someone calls up and said, oh, will you do a bespoke order for this or this or this, and can you do this? And our general response is no, because our model is really around building this mass customization pipeline rather than doing bespoke individual jobs for people. So we tend not to get lots of that stuff. Like we're building sort of processes and frameworks that has customization built into it, but it's all from our curated design and product styling. And so we don't actually have heaps of opportunity for people to get too exotic, shall we say?
Ben Hare: What we do definitely get, though, by nature of our business, is the numbers of different ways in which people spell their names and name their children. Nowadays has gone off the charts. And so we get names come through and occasionally you'd see a name and you think, oh, that must be a spelling mistake. And so you might think of stopping the order and calling the customer. And it wasn't a spelling mistake. And so we just tend to not do that ever. Now, even if it's like a plain day name that looks like it's got two letters around the wrong way, the chances are it's deliberate.
Mike Wilson: Yeah, most names we'd have 10 different variations on how to spell it.
[Voiceover]: And now we do any language. So we do. We'll get ones that never even heard of the language, let alone the name.
Ben Hare: Because it's got like a thousand languages we could do.
[Voiceover]: Yeah, yeah,
Nathan Bush: that's hilarious. And last question on product before we move on, because I. I want to understand a little bit more about how you three are working together. But you mentioned before about AI and incorporating AI into your processes and your product development. Where are your heads at on that? Because obviously AI is moving so fast. New product drops every month, every week, every day. And to incorporate a lot of AI into your existing processes that are working so well would be a risk when it could be outdated very quickly. How do you incorporate that?
[Voiceover]: I think we're probably like about where most are at in terms of. We're seeing like every team thinking, I can use this to help with copyright, I can use this to help me do the research and put to tabulate it into a spreadsheet and all that sort of just pretty cool stuff. And that seems to be something new every other week. So that's probably where we're seeing like most people, just efficiency gains in business as usual. On the design front, we haven't got any product yet at this stage that's kind of using AI to on the fly, generate our artwork. We're using it again because Adobe is actually just smashing it, which I didn't think they would, but they're just doing some awesome stuff for the design team. So they're just making life a lot easier for us, let alone all the other design our prompts. So I'm pretty bullish on it, like most. I'm trying to get that, like, we often talk to the team in terms of just, you've got to make sure you're willing to change, change systems. And in terms of the lifetime of our business, which is 18 years, I think it's changing at a faster rate than it's ever changed. So we just want to make sure. Yeah, we've certainly got our eyes open and doing the quick test because sometimes it can be pretty, pretty quick to get the gains. On the manufacturing side, it's certainly into that sort of software. It's certainly emerging and there's opportunities to sort of almost get into it with guide rails because again, you'll have a, you know, Amazon will have an AI product, but it's essentially sort of ring fence to do this specific stuff. And that can be another good way of kind of getting into it without actually having to be experts on AI. It's becoming more and more accessible and then also sort of seeing where have we historically had some degree of competitive advantage and where could that get eroded overnight because of AI. So sort of on the productive paranoia side as well as the, you know, the optimist, how can we leverage this side? Anything to add guys on that.
Ben Hare: I think in terms of having it installed in systems, there's not. We haven't done too much of that yet where it's like piped into some existing process. But in terms of the ad hoc use of it in all the different teams, in sort of the way Mike's said, which I think, yeah, everyone's pretty much doing these days, I'd say just about everyone in the business is doing a little bit here and there. I'm using it quite a lot personally and I find that it's really helpful.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, it's amazing once you start experimenting and I think there's a moment for most people where it clicks that you go, why am I trying to solve this myself?
[Voiceover]: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Nathan Bush: Oh, yeah, it's.
Ben Hare: We're all learning a new skill set though, which is how to test it and how to fix it and what it can't do and recognizing when it's wrong.
Nathan Bush: Yeah. Yes, exactly.
Ben Hare: I got it to give me a recipe for pizza dough last night and I didn't have time to read it so I messaged it to my wife and she was ringing me up before saying really 100 mils of water, you know and the, the I think the quantities were all.
Nathan Bush: Or did she, did she just throw it out?
Ben Hare: No, we're actually. We've got about 10 people, 10 kids coming around for pizza at our house tonight. So she's got a.
[Voiceover]: She'll get there. Probably not a lot though we must say a good amount of the AI stuff we've used in turn Lee has just been jokes Nick.
Nathan Bush: Writing.
[Voiceover]: Getting it to write songs about people in the business. Like really high value business stuff. We're going to probably move on from that culture.
Mike Wilson: I'll write you an intro song to the truck.
Ben Hare: I'll send you an intro song to the podcast.
Nathan Bush: That'd be awesome. That'd be awesome. We'll put at the start of your episode. Gents, I'm fascinated because obviously known you guys for a long time but you've been in business. Mike, I think you started this 18 years ago in a spare bedroom. And gents, you've been together for 16
[Voiceover]: years, is that right, Nick? Almost 18. So okay. We started selling product in sort of late 2006 and then that first product we made was a name puzzle and then Nick and I met studying at uni and the place. Yeah so we. I was using their machinery so I worked at the same place as Nick but I didn't know how to use the machine. So Nick, Nick actually made them with my old man. He opt out. I paid him in two minute needles and so sort of involved in the business. And then not too long after that I'd probably spend a year sort of getting a site built and just freelancing design freelancing to pay the bills in the meantime. And then so Nick joined pretty early on and then Ben was pretty early on in the business. So Ben. We're actually second cousins so we've known each other. That's why he's saying that's right.
Nathan Bush: You know Nick, do you feel left out right now?
Ben Hare: Well it looks like there's a genetic.
Mike Wilson: Yeah, that's right.
Ben Hare: That's not related to.
[Voiceover]: And so that. So when Nick and I running the business and we're both mates at Ben and then Ben was doing his MBA while working at Goldman's and then so we'd sort of talk to Ben about just what do you think of this Sometimes it was like, can you look at this contract? Ben doesn't love contracts, but he's very good with them and I'm not good with them and also don't like them. And Nick's.
Ben Hare: I don't like him.
[Voiceover]: I don't like him. And you're better than me, but not as good as Ben. So we chat to Ben quite a lot about the business and then we were wondering about getting someone on board for. So a bunch of things that two designers didn't have in their skill set. Ben was doing his mba, learning about all this stuff, you know, not that you can't put into practice as asset fund manager at Goldman's, but he can get paid stuff all doing it for us if he left his job.
Mike Wilson: It was a really compelling offer, that one.
[Voiceover]: But so, look, it was a lot bigger deal for Ben because I was the designer getting paid stuff all season, sort of just starting up my own thing. But yeah, so that's how we ended up, the three of us sort of together. We don't actually have a CEO, which, I don't know, I wouldn't actually recommend that normally to a business. It just actually really works for us. And we've got a very grace. We've got a very, very good dynamic where, I don't know, like, we all love each other, we all are good at arguing with each other and then apologizing if it gets personal and then genuinely wanting the best for the other person. And I think it's a. You're not normally going to get that dynamic between three people in life, and I'm a bit of a realist on that. So you're generally going to need to have someone that's sort of a. I think it's generally a better structure having a CEO, but it works really well for us. Anything to add on that, guys?
Ben Hare: It's good having three, because when someone punches the other person, there's someone to catch them before they hit the ground. There's a bit of that goes on. It's really not too violent, generally speaking. But no, we do actually get along really well. We all know each other's strengths and that's.
Mike Wilson: I'm trying to think if I miss something. Not like that at all.
Nathan Bush: I was about to say the Mike's got you just below the table there. Don't say anything that undermines what I'm saying here. Yeah, I see what's going on.
Mike Wilson: Yeah. I think generally, though, we like, we have vigorous debate, but it's all a good spirit and I think having Three of us. It's a great forum for that because you've always got someone testing and challenging your ideas. And I think we've built a culture around that with our team as well. So we encourage our team. You got to say what you think, you got to sort of throw it out there, and you've got to be willing to also have what you do say critiqued. And so if that becomes normal and everyone does it in the business, then you get a really. It's a really positive culture for actually innovating and taking things forward, because no one takes it personally. It's not like I often sort of say to people about our business that sometimes people ask you, whose idea was that to do a certain thing? It's kind of like, I don't really know. Like, most of the things we do, it's really hard to know whose idea it was, because invariably someone brings something up, it won't work in the way they've brought it up. But then we test and we debate it, and we critique it, and we knock the corners off it, and we find we turn something that was an okay idea into a really great idea. But it's a pretty collaborative process, and that. Tough to describe exactly how that kind of works, but it means it's very hard to sort of attribute, sort of say, oh, that was my idea. You know, we operate like that, but then I think that our team operates like that as well.
Ben Hare: Well, it starts with us being totally open to debate what we think. And we've got very different strengths, the three of us, which is one of the reasons we work so well together. But like Ben saying, that's what we. We. It starts with us, and then we teach our team to do the same. And so we. We have vigorous debate, but we have it with our team, and we absolutely encourage that. Because the last thing you want is for people to have good ideas that they don't suggest, or even bad ideas that they don't suggest. Because quite often our good ideas start out as bad ideas. It's a bit of a catchphrase that we sometimes say, I've got a bad idea about how to solve this problem. And we love those ones because usually there's something that a bad idea triggers. You know, bad idea sometimes just means a crazy idea, and they're often the best ideas.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, that's a really cool way of framing it. It gives people permission to kind of put it on the table.
Ben Hare: Oh, for sure. I mean, we. We force them into it, and then
[Voiceover]: also, they're definitely the ability for someone. And this is in any culture, if you've got one where they're just going to take. They've got a real problem with your idea, but you're the boss, so they're not going to say anything. So we just got to make sure that they. I was literally just the meeting before this one. So, like, by the way, we've got too much going on. So even if I'm saying let's do this and you just know maybe we shouldn't be doing that right now. Just. Just reminding them, just. Mike, you're always telling us I come up with lots of ideas and a lot of them are good. So they need to be sort of saying maybe don't do that. So we need the culture of that in the business and I think any business does. But I must say, some businesses, you could be generally more siloed and it would be okay For a lot of aspects of our business. It's not all aspects like something like payroll. We don't need everyone working out how to do payroll. It needs to get paid. But a lot of other aspects we do need the devs working with marketing, working with compliance and risk, working with design, working with engineering and how it's going to be made all together. And I love that stuff where no one could actually do this by themselves. You've got to get the band together to get it really humming. So like a lot of people find work a real strain and sometimes it is really, really hard work. But I think having a really good culture makes work just a lot more fun.
Ben Hare: Yeah, it's actually this is a little bit off the track, but it's one of the reasons that there are a lot of businesses where people are working from home nowadays. And post Covid the slow progression back towards working on site or some days a week, we just as soon as possible went back to 100% at work and we don't really have anyone working from home unless there's some very difficult situation or, you know, some anomaly. And that's why, because we just have to have everyone together because we just were doing this stuff together all the time and we love working with people
Mike Wilson: and our team was punching the air. Like there was a note of celebration when we were let out of lockdown and everyone could actually get back into work again.
Nathan Bush: Oh, really?
Ben Hare: People were pumped.
Mike Wilson: Like it's because we hire people who embrace that kind of culture and want
Ben Hare: to collaborate and there are other people sometimes we've wanted to hire someone and they've wanted the flexibility that we're not offering and that's been their choice to not take it. And that's okay because if you don't really like working with people, you might not like working here.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, yeah. And you clear with that up front. So, Chance, that's been an amazing conversation. I am in awe of how long you have been successful in E commerce, but what stood out for me in even how you were talking about each other in that last piece around the love that you have for each other still after all these years as some sort of family, friends, but also in business, is an incredible achievement, I think above and beyond the business itself. And I think that's incredible because yes, you are successful business. You have innovated and you're staying on the front end of that innovation. You've gone through all those business cycles that we've had over all those years and you've won all the awards and we didn't even touch on that. All the industry awards that you've won and you continue to win, which is incredible. But to hear that last piece around how you operate as a trio and the respect and the love you have for each other was amazing. So thank you for sharing that.
Ben Hare: Yeah, no worries. Thank you, gents.
Nathan Bush: I'm going to wrap up there. Nick, Mike, Ben, what is on the cards for the next 12 months?
Mike Wilson: Good question. We do have a strategy, so about some of it, but the two key prongs on our strategy really for growing the business is continually innovate on new products. So we're always thinking about sort of where we can bring our unique sort of mass customization skill set to products and where it makes sense. That's a big part of our strategy. And then the international piece continues to be on. We've invested a lot in that in recent years. It's been going pretty well for us and just continuing to sort of grow. The offshore piece is probably. They're probably two of the key prongs that we're sort of focused on and then apart from that, just a lot of general excellence across the different areas. You know, we're always trying to get each part of the business better to. And there's, there's lots to do in that front still.
Nathan Bush: So amazing. Keep going. Now, if people want to learn more about TinyMe or get in touch with you, obviously not to sell enterprise software, what's the best way to do that?
Mike Wilson: Yeah, probably hit us up on LinkedIn or something like that. Like always happy to chat to people in industry and. Yep, so that's probably the way to Go about it.
[Voiceover]: I want to learn more. Yeah. On the site we've got a 14 chapter about us. I think it is.
Mike Wilson: It's quite entertaining.
[Voiceover]: It goes on and on and on.
Ben Hare: So I publish it actually.
Mike Wilson: It's actually person written so it's not ar written micro most of that. It's quite entertaining.
[Voiceover]: About 15 years we sort of had the next chapter every few years. But yeah, that certainly does give you a feel of the whole history. But yeah, product range. Just come to the website and buy heaps of stuff and help our kids. School fees. That'd be good.
Nathan Bush: And buy more hockey sticks.
[Voiceover]: Yeah, that's right.
Ben Hare: They're sorted.
[Voiceover]: It's okay. Got them back. The QR codes is all right. So yeah.
Nathan Bush: Gents, thank you so much for joining me on add to card.
Mike Wilson: No worries.
[Voiceover]: Thanks Adam.
Nathan Bush: Cheers.
Nathan Bush: That was so much fun getting back
Nathan Bush: together with those guys.
Nathan Bush: I don't think I've had an in depth conversation with them since before COVID And it was great to hear the story from the start of how they've transformed Tiny Me from a spare room project into a global high tech operation, all while managing the chaos. I couldn't imagine it of 15 kids, but between them I especially loved the respect and the love that they still have for each other as founders after all these years. I think that is probably the most remarkable part of it all. Here are the three takeaways that I think every business can learn from. Number one. Made for you, manufactured nearby. TinyMe's commitment to personalization goes far beyond simply customizing products. It's about making the whole experience seamless. By customizing, they could have easily blown out delivery expectations by weeks or even months. But they are still committed to getting it to the customer in a short time frame and surprising them. Part of this is about manufacturing on demand and nearby. As we heard through their setup of the UK operations. For them, that's their moat, that's their point of difference and it's really important that they protect that. And the ingenuity behind being able to deliver that mass customization premium experience at scale is a hard one to master. It's only taken them 18 years. Number two, the power of process driven innovation. One of TinyMe's biggest strengths is their manufacturing system. We heard Nick get so passionate about this and you can tell that he spends hours tinkering this every day. It's a finely tuned machine that can can handle countless customizations without skipping a beat. They're constantly upgrading their processes, whether it's using automation, building in house tech or tinkering to make things run smoother. Now you don't have to be a mass customization brand to benefit from the power of process driven innovation. But if you are looking around and you are feeling like things are spiraling out of control or you do not have a handle on how things are working, do not run away from process. Many people see process as stifling innovation, but as we heard today, it can actually accelerate and enhance innovation. And number three, say yes to bad ideas. TinyMe's really creative culture shines in how they develop new products. They actually encourage their team to come up and share bad ideas as a starting point and this allows the team to build off each other other's suggestions to land on unexpected winning solutions. It also means people don't hold back their ideas because they think they're not worthy or they're a bit silly. It's actually encouraged. So don't be afraid of bringing the team together, share ideas and especially encourage the bad ideas to be put on the table in a safe environment.
Nathan Bush: Now, if you've enjoyed this episode, please
Nathan Bush: consider sharing it with a friend or leaving us a review on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. A big thank you to our sponsors, Shopify plus and Deliver in Person for making this episode possible. Before you go, we'd love to invite you to join our free e commerce learning platform Add to Cart Campus, meet other professionals and learn from e commerce experts to take your business and your e commerce career to the next level. Register to join campus@addtocart.com
[Voiceover]: now.
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