Adam Bouris: Who the fuck is Louis Vuitton? This is what I would suggest everybody do is like drop your emotions and your ego and just go and dig into the data. I was a cabinet maker not that long ago and I think that there's so much opportunity for everyone out there and just gotta get started.
[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.
Nathan Bush: Here's your host, Bushy. Hello and welcome back to another beautiful smelling episode of ADD to cart. My name is Nathan Bush, otherwise known as Bushy, and I'm joining you from the land of the terrible people here in Brisbane, Australia. Now, how the hell would you sell a scent online? Today we are going to take you behind the scenes of someone who has mastered the art and turned selling a cent into into a global business and a global brand. One of the best brands that I've come across most recently from working out of their garage to being stocked on the shelves at David Jones within four days of pitching an amazing story. Today we are talking to Adam Boris, who alongside his wife Raquel are rewriting the rule book on modern perfume. With genderless sense and a relentless drive to expand across the globe, who is Elijah in is shaking up the perfume industry both here in Australia and overseas. Adam's wife Raquel first conceptualized the idea for this e commerce brand in 2017 after coming across a scent that caught her attention during Coachella. As a young entrepreneur who has been a director and a co founder of multiple companies across a range of industries, Adam has joined her on this journey, taking the role as CEO and and helping scale the business for success. In this episode we hear how Adam and Raquel landed their first major retailer in four days without even trying the scent. We talk about how they pivoted to e commerce during COVID and talk about some of the challenges and opportunities of scaling such a brand globally. We dig in to some of the specifics, especially around selling perfumes because we've never had a perfume brand on before. So I was naturally curious around some of the unique e commerce pieces when it comes to selling scents online. Adam also shares the strategy behind their brand's unique growth, including why they chose to pull their fragrances most recently from 800 wholesalers to focus on online channels.
[Voiceover]: It's the opposite of what a lot of e commerce businesses are doing at the moment.
Nathan Bush: So that is really interesting to hear. Now, before we get into today's conversation, I want to invite all you Melburnians to come along to the E Commerce Social. It's happening on the 17th of October at the corner Hotel in Richmond. We've already sold out of our GA tickets but there is a wait list available so if you are keen to come along come and join the waitlist. If you're a retailer or a brand, I'll be releasing those tickets to you slightly earlier and the rest of the waitlist will will be released about a week before the event. So come along. It's $20. $10 will go to our friends at Thread together. It's going to be a great night with panelists including Mike, founder of Xeroco, Emily Elvy who's an e commerce consultant and Nathan who is the co founder of Pear. We've had Pear and Xeroco on before so it's bound to be a great night. Lastly, if you haven't already please sign up to the weekly E Commerce newsletter. We have just relaunched it with a lovely new format on a brand new platform. Really excited at what this allows us to how we can interact with you. Head on over to add to cart.comau to sign up to the newsletter or come join us at the E Commerce Social. You can find the event link on our socials or over on the website. Now a big thanks to our long term partners Shopify plus and Deliver in person for their continued support of this podcast. We couldn't do without them. Let's dive into the chat with Adam Boris, CEO of who is Elijah and uncover the story behind the Australian fragrance
[Voiceover]: brand who's shaking up the global market.
Nathan Bush: Adam, welcome to add to Cart.
Adam Bouris: Hey mate, great to be here.
[Voiceover]: Great to have you here mate. I was just talking in our earlier conversation about a great painting you have behind you. Tell us what that says.
Adam Bouris: It says who the fuck is Louis Vuitton? Which.
[Voiceover]: Which I love it, I love it. So good. Which stems nicely into where I want to kick off. Brand name.
Adam Bouris: Yeah.
[Voiceover]: Who is Elijah? I've done a little bit of research so I think I know the answer. But tell us where did the name who Elijah come from? Because it's not a usual name. Right?
Adam Bouris: Yeah, it's super unique. It wasn't one of those, you know, strategized thought about, you know, big planned names. It came about when so Raquel, my wife, the founder, she. We were both on a Coachella trip together and we just met.
[Voiceover]: Did you meet on the Coachella trip?
Adam Bouris: We met just prior and we very coincidentally had the like exact same trip booked like Vegas beforehand and Coachella, same hotels, same dates. Like it was wild. That's weird.
[Voiceover]: And you thought at that point when you were booked it, you'd be thinking, you're going over as a single fella.
Adam Bouris: Yeah, I was going over on a box trip with my mates, so we had to change strategy a bit. Yeah. So she. When she found the fragrance oil in Coachella and sort of brought it back to Australia and started looking into it. One of her. Matt was her best friend at the time. They. He's like, was in Ecom as well, and they were sort of both starting it together. He just loved the name Elijah. And in the beginning, the brand and ABN and everything was Raquel X Elijah. So Raquel and Elijah, essentially, and the logos and everything with that. And then Matt didn't work out with Matt as a business partner. And one day Raquel was sitting in her office where she was working and she just looked at the name and just like, who the fuck is Elijah? And that's how it happened. And, you know, it's been this really good thing for us because it drives this, like, curiosity of, like, who is. Who is Elijah? And I think it's been a really important thing for us as we. As we've grown. For sure.
Nathan Bush: I'd love to hear some of that growth story.
[Voiceover]: But in terms of people discovering you, one of the best stories that I heard was about your David Jones story around in the early days of getting wholesale or going after wholesale before you're even, like, common for you. But they signed you up within five days without even smelling it. Is that right?
Adam Bouris: Yeah. Like, nowadays it takes, you know, 12 to 18 months to, like, get in the right place at the right time and pitch the right person and all that stuff. And again, Raquel, you know, she just doesn't take no for an answer. But in this case, she didn't even get a no. She just went and found these people on LinkedIn, emailed them. It was just after Covid, so, like, everything was just opening back up again. And obviously we didn't know that David Jones wanted, like, newness and all these heritage brands on the shelf. And she just emailed them and say, here's a. Here's a deck. No, she emailed them saying, hey, I'd love to send you samples. And they said, send us a brand deck. And she's like, what the hell is a brand deck? So she googled what a brand deck was and found a graphic designer to help her make one, turned it around in a day and sent it back to David Jones, and they said it was the best brand presentation that they'd seen in a long time and they just said yes on the back of that. And the samples hadn't even reached the HQ yet. And within five days they placed the po so it was like, it was wild. And that was the big moment obviously for us to be in David Jones. But nowadays to get into a new retailer, it's like, it's a big team effort.
[Voiceover]: Yeah.
Nathan Bush: And had you been in the fragrance game before, Elijah?
Adam Bouris: Definitely not. I. Definitely not. Raquel? Definitely not. She was a ea for the C suite of men from Crystal Brook Collection, a big hotel, Saudi Arabian hotel chain that moved to Australia. The Coachella trip happened and then she just started it in the boardroom of that office. And I actually, I had a kitchen design business and I manufactured and designed really high end kitchens in homes around Sydney. I also, during that time I started a bow tie, like a men's bow tie business, just for no reason with one of my mates and I got that into a partnership with Gary Vee and Vaynermedia and Vayner Sports. In the early days that didn't work out. Then I started a retail app, actually, this is when I first came across you a while ago, actually, where we could, you could create a website from a piece of content and you could purchase the products from the content without leaving it multiple brands all at once. And then who was Elijah started? I sold my kitchen company, I failed ntfl the bow ties and we were centimeters away from funding for the app and it just never came through. So I went full tilt into who's Elijah? And here we are.
[Voiceover]: Was there a moment where you went, actually, who is Elijah is the best bet. We've got to go all in. Was there one moment that kind of flipped that?
Adam Bouris: Yeah, I was starting to get fomo, to be fair, like of what was going on for me at the time with the other companies. I was trying to move along and I was having some success in them. But the demand for who was Elijah was just coming naturally and it wasn't forced. You know, whereas tech startups and other startups, you're really trying to create and bring that demand to life. Whereas who is Elijah was always chasing, was always like trying to catch up to the demand. And when I sort of figured that out, I was like, well, you know, let's just the product's great, let's let it do its thing and I'll build underneath it because it's going and we need to catch up.
[Voiceover]: Amazing. And what do you think drove that initial demand?
Adam Bouris: I think you know, there was a lot of. At least in Australia, right. So now we know how small Australia is comparatively to the, you know, global markets of fragrance and all these other things. But we didn't know that at the time. And it was just something brand new and the name was cool and Raquel was cool. And, you know, there was a bit of hype around this little brand that just came out of nowhere that is now in David Jones and Adore Beauty and out selling some of these brands like Creed and these other things in these big retailers. And it just kept going. And we were late to the party with social. To be fair, like, we didn't run socials or ads or anything for like two years, which is wild today. Imagine not running ads for two years.
[Voiceover]: What year are we talking that really took off that you went all in?
Adam Bouris: So 2018, Raquel started and we're still in the garage. 2019, we're still in the garage. 2020 was when it kicked off, late 2020, because I think that was like Covid was early 2020. And then at the end we were sort of like back in the clear again. Online became a big thing end of 2020 for us in all of 2021. So I would say our kick year was probably mid 2021, to be fair.
[Voiceover]: Okay, I could imagine that would be tricky though, right, Because Covid and perfume doesn't go well together. When you think about experiential and getting people to try on new sense and stuff, when people aren't socializing, they're not shopping in person, that's bloody tough.
Adam Bouris: I think it's one of those things as well. Like, like most brands at the time, we just had no choice. Right. We were so wholesale dominant during COVID At the peak of COVID when everyone was at home locked indoors, like 70% of our revenue was 80% was wholesale. And we either. We lost it overnight. Right. Like everyone. But also we had just started to like find our brand voice online just before it happened. So we. We sort of just leaned into it. We went heavy on influences and. And brand partnerships and gift with purchases. And everyone was trying to do something in E commerce at the time to make their business go. And we were this new kid on the block that like was just saying yes to everything. So we did get through it. We had a really good year. Obviously, you know, ads and people were at home wearing perfume because, you know, they still wanted to smell nice and it was a little bit of comfort that they could get up and have a shower and do their little workout. At home and then, you know, put on some perfume to start their work, work day.
Nathan Bush: Isn't that bizarre psychology?
[Voiceover]: Isn't it? Because it's a well known thing, the lipstick effect, where people spend on little luxuries during, you know, difficult times. But that idea that people are isolated at home, stuck at home and they're putting perfume on almost like as an emotional blanket to make themselves feel good.
Adam Bouris: Yeah. And look, people, fragrance will take you back somewhere if you've had moments in it. And, you know, even before I started who is Elijah? We started who was larger. That used to happen to me all the time with like holidays, mates and different times of your life. And I think people leaned into that and they needed some sort of happiness during that time. So they transport themselves back to a fun time with perfume.
[Voiceover]: That scent that Raquel smelt at Coachella to kick off the journey. That must hold pretty special place in your hearts now.
Adam Bouris: Yeah, it is. It was this fragrance oil from India that she had to track down and buy in wholesale from this little market, you know, and it was the base of what was used to be the first fragrance. But the first fragrance ended up very different to it because of the complexity of what that oil was. But we actually then, as we got better, we brought it, the actual oil, to life not that long ago in this fragrance called Desert Night. So we did bring it back and we do this Coachella theme and all that. So it's pretty cool.
[Voiceover]: That's very cool. Good opportunity to go over for a trip yourselves. Right.
Adam Bouris: I've been too many times now. I think we said, we said at the end, we went this year and we said we might call it now after that.
[Voiceover]: Bit different when you've got kids and a business to run as well.
Adam Bouris: Right, yeah.
[Voiceover]: Then tell us about where you are at now. Because if people haven't come across who was Elijah or looked into you, I'm really interested for you to set the scene because what's come across so far is how fresh you are to the industry and your approach, which we're going to dig into, because I've got a few questions around how you're doing. A few things which have really caught my eye, but I think that freshness has really caught a lot of the market and went, oh, this is different. This is like, this isn't Johnny Depp on a poster. Like, we really need this when we really respond to it. So can you tell us about how you're set up now in terms of wholesale D2C and the markets that you're in.
Adam Bouris: Yeah. So when we first started we were like all wholesale and then we, we came to be 70% wholesale, 30% online. Covid happened and then we went to 50, 50 after Covid when we're back to normal. And last year we had some really big wholesale moments that probably weren't the smartest moves for us, like Priceline taking a brand on and a few other bigger decisions like that. But now today we had about 800 wholesale accounts around the world up until about two months ago. Two months ago we cut them all except for the majors. So like David Jones, Sephora, the airports and as we go into new countries, it's our strategy to launch into a new country is with the best retailers. So what we were finding was wholesale was like we can't control the supply of the product and everyone's going through tough times, especially wholesalers, small wholesalers. So they're discounting the brand and they're doing things that we are out of our control. Right. So we had to make a decision to remove them all. And so that clean slate it, what
[Voiceover]: was their response to that? What was the market response? Because you built up such a beautiful brand and high demand with your customers. I can imagine some of those wholesalers will be like, are you serious?
Adam Bouris: Yeah, look, some of them said, look, we saw this was going to come eventually because they could all see what was happening online and how big it was growing. And look, some of them were a bit, you know, upset and I think that, you know, we just have to in those moments thank them for everything they've helped us do and then try to make it a soft landing for them and move on as best we can. But you know, it's part of it. But when we, yeah, once we did it, it felt like a bit of a relief from us as well because all the internal workings required to manage all that and just turn it all off, like just button it's off. So obviously the revenue comes off with it. But we had to be confident that our online would pick up. And last year I took on all the advertising myself and really gained that control of Meta and the platforms and TikTok and all the, all the media buying. So it gave us confidence that we could actually sell the product online at scale. So with the confidence of that, then we removed the wholesale accounts. Now we're 75% online revenue and 25% retail revenue.
[Voiceover]: Do you feel that's the right balance?
Adam Bouris: I feel it's the right balance for the next six months. And it was more of like a Cleansing moment for us just to like regroup and like where we're heading with retail is like big global retail. So we're just about to launch into Boots into the uk, that big pharmacy there. We've got distributor meetings, distributor partners in Germany, distributor partners in the Middle east, distributor partners in Asia, all locked in. So that's our play, is to get into big Sephora, like retail in these new markets, get brand credibility there and then come through with our online plan.
[Voiceover]: So in the new markets, if you're launching with the major retailers, you're obviously getting the foot traffic and the eyeballs and the experience and are you holding back a certain range or certain products to funnel those people towards D2C?
Adam Bouris: We sort of look at it more like the retailer's done all this work to build brand credibility in these places and we want people to like experience the product to its fullest in a new place because we don't like turning on, as you would know, turning on meta brand new first day in Germany is not going to be an easy, it's not going to be an easy do. Right? So we're all about give, give these guys, showcase them everything. And then once we start to find the foot traffic and we start to capture that repeat customer online, It'll be a 6 to 12 month process where we start to build that up. Once we bring in new products, we'll then decide whether we give exclusivity to this retailer or we hold it ourself. And yeah, it's really about just going guns blazing, getting these retailers on board, making them happy, don't be caught in a big contract with them. Try and keep it month to month because eventually then pull back and, and get the 75 online and 25 retail.
[Voiceover]: So those big retailers, they will sign month to month rather than a extended agreement.
Adam Bouris: Oh look, they won't sign month to month, but what they will do is they'll have like a, you can sort of negotiate the exit time with them. You know, some people will say it's a 12 month exit, 12 months notice period. Sorry. But you know, you just negotiate it down to three or six or you know, we try to get it to three in the beginning because it can all be like, you know, happy in the beginning. You sign whatever you want to sign, but things change quickly and you need to be able to move quickly so the retailers are happy. If you're really spending marketing, spend with them and you're pushing it and you know, keep them happy for as long as you can and then, you know, Part eloquently. And you know, everyone's happy and I
[Voiceover]: bet that they're happy to hear from you that you're after a small handful of flagship stores per territory rather than being anywhere. So that's like you're already showing commitment to them, right?
Adam Bouris: Yeah. And that was our problem here, to be fair. Like we thought it was cool to be in 800 stores and it's not, it's not cool to be everywhere. You know, you really want to control that supply and feed it to the right people. And I do think that it did hurt us in some of our early global expansion plans as well when they sort of do their, you know, due diligence on us and they see that we're just happy to be everywhere. So we had to sort of rebuild that understanding of who we are and that messaging that we don't want to do that. We have to do that by action, just cut a lot of people and prove to these big retailers that we are, you know, going to filter them only and, and do it that way. So yeah, it's been a bit of a 12 month plan.
[Voiceover]: That's very cool. I bet it makes your stock forecasting a lot easier now rather than 800 wholesalers.
Adam Bouris: Yeah, it's much easier now. I used, I was doing it up until, I know, two months ago for the whole time and I got it wrong lots. But yeah, we've got someone now.
[Voiceover]: What kind of lead time do you have on perfume? I have no idea.
Nathan Bush: Like is it a long lead time?
Adam Bouris: So the fragrance, the actual liquid itself, it's made in Australia, just not far from our warehouse. And then we import the bottles and the packaging and everything ourselves and then we make it in house. Yeah. So providing the way we have it set up, the liquids relatively on hand, available, you know, within a couple of days and the raw materials for the packaging, the way that we have it set up, it's pretty much the same with the way that we cycle the stock from this location in Australia from China. So we have been very lucky with, with that, that we can sort of make to order. And because it's fragrance, it's not seasonal like a T shirt, you can, we can sort of sit on excess and it's going to sell anyway. Whereas T shirts go in and out of style and you have to get it right and usually you're under or you're over and fortunately with us we can just, you know, if we got thousand units extra, well, we'll just sell it some another time.
[Voiceover]: So you'd rather Be overstocked than understocked at any point?
Adam Bouris: Yeah, overstocked in our suppliers, not overstocked in our hq. And so we've consumed the invoice for it. But yeah, we, we trying to. It's, you know, everyone will say it's a balancing act and especially when you get into global stuff, it's becomes more of a headache. It's okay having two accesses here in Australia, but now moving it to the UK and the Middle east, it's going to be a headache.
Nathan Bush: Yeah.
[Voiceover]: So even over there, you're still going to manufacture here in Australia and then ship it over there fully formed.
Adam Bouris: For Australia, the US and Asia we would do it from our hq, but uk, the Middle east and Europe, we will do it out of the uk.
[Voiceover]: Is that because of things like dangerous goods or duties or just literally close to customers?
Adam Bouris: Close to customers is like first and foremost but like dangerous goods and that's. It's a nightmare. I could imagine.
[Voiceover]: I don't, I don't know how you even think about that from a global perspective.
Adam Bouris: Yeah, you have to be in, you know, close to customer because even the, the last mile delivery of the, you know, Australia post, people around the world, they all have to be, you know, DG qualified and they all have their own restrictions and per carrier is different. So you have to find the right three pl that has all of that knowledge. And with moving a three pl is a horrendous exercise and we've done it maybe two or three times now overseas and it's because we didn't find the right person in the beginning. So now we've got our team set and after two years of moving around. Yeah, it feels good to be set now.
[Voiceover]: That's awesome. So you foresee that you'll have two main offices or warehouses globally?
Adam Bouris: Yeah, look in, in the next, Raquel and I, we're going to move over to the UK in February and go and like set that up properly for 18 months and then I think the US will come on board within that time and we'll probably go and do the same thing in the US and then have three main places.
[Voiceover]: That is massive.
Nathan Bush: Like, does that blow your mind that
[Voiceover]: you're setting up global hq, Australia, us, uk?
Adam Bouris: Yeah, look, it's only come to life the last four or five months with some really key partnerships that we've been working on. But yeah, look, it's, I've always just sort of said, you know, like, why not us? We can do it. And you know, there's never been a easier Time to. To go and do this. It's easy to catch a flight. There's so much information out there. And got young kids, they're not in high school yet. So we're just going to go on an adventure for the next four years and try and build something huge.
[Voiceover]: Amazing. I love hearing that. That's so much fun, but so much hard work. But so much fun, but exciting. The opportunity that you've got ahead of you.
Adam Bouris: Yeah, tell us.
Nathan Bush: Let's nerd out on E Commerce a
[Voiceover]: little bit because there are a few little features that you've got on your website that I really want to understand and I want to come back to when you talked about taking performance in house, because it's a theme that's coming through add to cart at the moment. So we'll park that one for the moment. But I was just having a look around your product pages, especially because they are beautiful product pages that you've. You've done. When you are creating a product page for a scent, is there anything different that you need to think about? Because obviously can't smell online.
Adam Bouris: Is there anything different that you need
[Voiceover]: to think about that maybe someone manufacturing and selling a T shirt might not have to think about?
Adam Bouris: Yeah, look, we're trying to tell a little bit of a story in the product pages, but my, like, I don't think that people understand what citrus, what bergamot, what saffron? Like, no one, I'm the CEO of a perfume company, no one knows what that stuff smells like, you know, so unless you're a proper fragrance guru, which there's not many of them, you sort of need to, you know, explain more than what the ingredients are. Obviously T shirt, you can say it's green and it's made of cotton, it's easy. Right. But for us, we sort of try to give like in some of the product pictures, like, we try to bring some of the ingredients in there so people can actually see what they are sometimes. And obviously in there we have like a lot of the reviews are super important, but we have that video review thing in there, which is cool. It's called Tolstory. It's called
[Voiceover]: Story. So it's like, for people who haven't seen it, it's like a story. The circle stories that you see at the top of Instagram, but they are underneath your product descriptions. Right?
Adam Bouris: Yeah, that's right. So we can, you know, at least bring some, like, visual and some like, communication from customers that have posted for us onto the product page. And I think, like something that's important, which will probably go through in more is we just realize that it's difficult to smell a scent and difficult to see fragrance. You can't see it. So this is where we brought in that 2 mil free sample in there. And we're just really trying to think of ways where like everybody is, but what are the blocks? What is going to stop someone that's just coming for the first time and risk free purchase? You know, here's a bunch of people that have said they love it. It's nice and clean, it's nice and crisp. Here's the main couple of ingredients that you can associate with like a pear or, you know, something else or a cherry or whatever. And then we really sort of rely on the hype of socials and the, the brand building to get us home at that checkout.
[Voiceover]: To get us home, bring us home.
Adam Bouris: I love that.
[Voiceover]: The 2 mil sample is really cool. So is it a 2 mil sample for 50 and 100 mil purchases?
Adam Bouris: Yeah, yeah, we brought it in actually when we signed with Adore Beauty years ago. Now we weren't doing it and they were selling heaps and we hadn't figured out how to sell online yet. And I just went to their page, I'm like, what are they doing? They're selling our product and you know, they were giving this 2 mil free sample. So we're like, oh, we'll just do it. And it just made heaps of sense and it did for a long time. And then we actually moved away from it about 12 months ago because we were bad infantry planning for it. And we're just telling people that we wanted people to try our discovery set product because we thought that would drive more conversions versus the single unit thing because they would get all cents versus one cent. Yeah. And then we went full circle like not that long ago and we brought it back and it's. Yeah, it's much better.
[Voiceover]: That's awesome.
Nathan Bush: So.
[Voiceover]: And from what I understand, you select a few complementary fragrances per fragrance that customers can choose from as a gift with purchase essentially when they purchase.
Adam Bouris: Yeah. So they'll, if they're going to buy 100 mil or a full size bottle, we'll give them the corresponding 2 mil sample to try out. If they don't like it, they can send it back and full refund. And we also will suggest another 2 mil like complimentary, you know, something that's similar or maybe we're going that month. Let's just try and do something completely different and give them different options to choose from. They'll get the free sample if they spend over X and you know, otherwise they, you know, pay $10 for it. So it's a good lever to pull on, but it's also a good value for the customer. At the same time, do you track
[Voiceover]: customers who you've sent a sample of a different fragrance and the conversion on that?
Adam Bouris: Yes. Not as detailed as I would like, but last year for Black Friday, we were launching Ocean Eyes, the bright blue one that we have in December or January. And we like, again, it's sort of. We're trying to get use the 2mil sample in a product launch as a marketing tool. Right. We're trying to. All right, we'll set aside. At the time we set aside 6,000 of them to go into orders and luckily we had extra Stock because we. 22,000 orders for Black Friday and 22,002 mils went out as samples and you know, I just noted it down as marketing expense for product launch and we converted like it's our best launch of a product ever because we so many people had to have had the scent and they tried it and it just, it's a really cheap, easy way for us to sample the product. So definitely.
[Voiceover]: So did people have samples before they could even buy the full size product? Like, was it even available when you sent the samples out?
Adam Bouris: It wasn't available. So we give them, like, yeah, you give it to them for free. Then we followed everyone up on socials like, hey, if you've got Ocean Eyes, can you give us the feedback? People were loving it. So then we turned that into ads for the launch and we just sort of rinse and repeat and then we did a pre sale for it and you could see everyone that got samples in the presale, like it was all those guys. So it's really cool.
[Voiceover]: Yeah. Did you have any customers who are like, well, I've got my sample, I've
Nathan Bush: run out of my sample.
[Voiceover]: I just need that, I just need devotionals now.
Adam Bouris: I'm like, we're getting a bit antsy around waiting for it. Yeah, look, the 2 mil samples, they, you know, you get about 50 sprays out of them and if people really love it, they'll smash it on the weekend and then they sort of, they come back quickly, they're high and dry
[Voiceover]: until you release it. I love it. You mentioned the discovery sets, which is another brilliant idea, I think. Can you give our listeners a little bit of an overview on how they work and where you see them play, especially in your customer journey, like, like you Said you've played around with them a bit in where they fit. Where do you see them now in that customer journey?
Adam Bouris: Yeah, it's evolved so much to be fair. So the Discovery set for everyone is all of our fragrances in small 2mil vials in one product. So it's this, I always refer to it like you can't sample all your T shirts. We can sample all our fragrances. So it's a very, very cool tool for us to use. And up until maybe six months ago, we thought that people would only buy our fragrances if they had first purchased the Discovery set. We just thought that's what people would do. So for the first two, three years, when we really got going, that was our biggest focus. Like let's give away Discovery sets, let's do collabs and partnerships and it's a relatively low cost product for us to make, so let's just scale it. And we came into some huge problems with it, to be fair, from like a cost perspective. So like it's one of our lowest AOV products and it was generating most of the revenue for a while. So we're stuck at this like really low aov.
[Voiceover]: What are you selling them for at the moment?
Adam Bouris: At the moment they're $80 because it's up to 11 or 12 now. And they used to be $65. So some like unit economics, like $65 selling price, say $10 to make it, $10 to ship it, and sometimes 10 to $15 to market it, plus percentage of operating expenses. And it's getting pretty thin. And but as our mentality, this is what I would suggest everybody do is like drop your emotions and your ego and just go and dig into the data. Because we thought that was our main product. And even to the point where we're like, we got the price of the cost of goods down on it over the last two or three years. So like, let's give it away for free.
[Voiceover]: We're not making enough money out of this product. Let's give it away for free.
Adam Bouris: Let's give it away for free and we'll give away a million. We said let's give away a million of them for free over a year. That was like, luckily we, we only got 10,000, but let's give away a million of them for free and we'll give it to for free. It was $1 acquisition on Facebook, which was like pretty wild. But it was a free product. So our fulfillment cost, which was normally 15%, 12% was now 80%, nearly like way more Picking pack fees. All of it went up through the roof. Right. So we sold 6,000 in like two hours. When we did it in the US
[Voiceover]: did you make customers pay for shipping?
Adam Bouris: Pay for shipping? Yeah. So there was a little bit money, a little bit of money brought back in. We realized very quickly at that point that it was probably not the smartest idea to give it to for free. But we knew that there was demand for it because we sold 6,000 in two, three hours. So then we redid it and we're like, let's do, let's do it for $30 and let's give people a 30 voucher to come back and purchase a full size. So it's still free, essentially, but there's an upfront commitment and we're getting better customers because, you know, it wasn't free from the beginning. And then, so we were out for six weeks. We ran this and our previous. It was about 50% of revenue before. For the six weeks, it was about 85 to 90% of the revenue and all the focus for the business. And with the full price, it should have been 15% fulfillment, 15% marketing. You know, as it goes down, we dropped it to $30. It was 60% fulfillment, 60% for marketing. And we were like literally burning cash like crazy because we were convinced that this product was what everyone needed. So we did a deep dive into the customers over the last 18 months. And we found that there was a segment of customer buying full size products without samples, without Discovery Set. And these guys had the best lifetime value. And we realized over four years of data that the person that bought the Discovery set was the least likely to come back and spend more money on fragrance. They would just keep coming back to Discovery Set. Discovery Set. Discovery set. So because we were so we're talking about. So we used to think this was our hero product. And then about three or four months ago, again, we just, we stopped talking about it as much as we used to. We put it back to full price and now we go off. Now we're seeing the value in these higher value customers that are just, they're going straight to the hundred mil where they're going straight to a 50 mil. And now like gross profit went like right off and everything was fixed.
[Voiceover]: Amazing.
Nathan Bush: And are you finding that there are
[Voiceover]: customers who are loyal to Ascent versus those that will just flip, flop around everything and you can identify them pretty easily? Yeah.
Adam Bouris: Look, most people like Nomad is like our, it's our hero. It's like move the needle for us like crazy. Most People that buy Nomad, they just, you can see like on lifetimely, if anyone's got that, you can see them go, nomad, Nomad, Nomad, Nomad. They just stay with Nomad. But a lot of people, you know, they will get, you know, a full size of the one they love and then they'll come and test out like a 10 mil or a 5 mil or something else and then we can bring them to that full size product when, when they're ready. So you've got your OG people that just like, we'll just do anything, buy anything that we give them. But the majority of people, they sort of put it between two and three cents that they'll, they'll stay around.
[Voiceover]: Yeah, yeah, cool. Like a going out center. Everyday scent work. Scent maybe.
Adam Bouris: Yeah, exactly. And you know, people, that's how they purchase. And we've sort of set our website now to reflect that like, you know, as well. So it does, does help.
[Voiceover]: I think one of the, the most interesting things that yourself and Raquel have done from the start is that who is Elijah is set up as a genderless brand. When that comes to marketing, when that comes to data and understanding the customer, does it actually make it easier or does it make it harder not having kind of a big line between male and female?
Adam Bouris: Yeah, look, I think, you know, when we started in 2018, 2017, 2018, like genderless to us then meant it was for everyone and that you could wear a more male smelling fragrance if you're a female and vice versa. And Raquel, it really was because Raquel would always wear fragrance that I had and you know, she would just genuinely like it that way. And look, I think for us when we're doing our data it's, you know, because we're not. You don't get the data if they're genderless. You get male, female. Right. So we just know that a lot of females will purchase all of our scents and we have a lot of males that we don't market to really at all. And they come in and they buy a lot of the more commonly purchased fragrances from females. So we just try to look at it like, here's a product, this is how we're going to try and get you to smell it through a sample or something else. And then you decide how you want to be when you wear it and how you want to show up and how it makes you feel. And I think the term over the last few weeks, the last two years has sort of become quite a spoken about term. But for Us, it's. We just want everyone to be happy in their own skin and we think that our fragrances will get you that
[Voiceover]: amazing and that's the freshness that you bring in. Right, so this is the theme that's coming through. It is like you're not just following the playbook of the perfumes that have come before you. You strike me as someone who's really, really invested in the numbers and knows the numbers. You know, we were just saying before I saw you at a panel at online retailer and I really loved your insights there. So even what you were saying before around knowing the percentage of, you know, of the sale, that will be down to freight, that will be down to operational costs, that will. Down to cost of goods like, you know, that's in your DNA. Interested then as you come across to managing the ad platforms, you would have all that information in the back of your head that a lot of marketers running those platforms might not have. How important do you think that's been in creating your Meta or your Google strategies?
Adam Bouris: Yeah, look, anyone listening? But any e commerce, like you have to know the whole picture. Like, you can't just choose to see a version of the picture that you like that looks the best. I think that's sometimes what you do. You're like, oh, this is actually really good over here. I'm gonna just like pretend I can't see that tax and that other expectations and all those other bills and all those other things that come along with it. And I've always liked numbers and I've liked how they. I didn't do math. I didn't do business at school. I didn't do any of that. I just, I realized how important it was in real life and in business that the numbers make the decisions. And great marketing on the back of great structure is really good. But careless marketing can crush a business if you're overspending and if you're not aware of what's actually going on on the whole scene. So when it comes to taking over Meta and Google about 18 months ago now, I just knew when I. A lot of the marketers will give you these different types of metrics that they want you to see, these agencies. And if you have the ability and the understanding of the platforms and the understanding of your P L, then you can sort of go back to them and you can either call bullshit on their, on their performance or if they're doing okay, but profitability is still really low, then you can explain to them that, that we have to make it. We have to make a change here or we need to think of a different way because doesn't matter how hard we're trying at Meta, if you guys are telling me that it's great and it is great but the bottom line is still, you know, showing negative and I've done everything I can in my business to fix it, then we have to try different avenues. But it's the most rewarding when you get a handle on your P and L and you get a handle on, on what moves the needle into business. It's very empowering. And we didn't have it for the first few years when I wasn't really, I wasn't really dialed into the business as much as recall wise. I was in and out a bit and really one of my advisors, Paul Waddy, I'm sure you know him. We, yeah, he, we sit down and we talk about it and he was really the one who like led the way for me and showed me that the importance of it and how valuable it is. But once you learn it, you can't unlearn it and it's exciting.
[Voiceover]: When you're logging into Meta, for example, what are the key metrics that your eyes are drawn to? What's gospel for you?
Adam Bouris: Obviously everyone's going straight to roas, right? That's just how much am I spending, how much am I making? And obviously I do go there a lot right now. And Toby, one of my coaches, he's telling me all about frequency and reach and how important that making sure your ads are continually going to new people versus this overlap of existing people. And that can be a bit of a trap for people. So frequencies and reach is like probably equal to roas because you could be going to the same people and roas can look good but you're going to burn out of these people quickly versus spending money to acquire new people might be a lower roas, but you bringing in new people who eventually will convert to higher roas people. So that's like a really important one. Obviously learning Google and TikTok. TikTok's pretty easy. I would suggest everyone to get on TikTok quickly before the whole world is fully on there. I actually wrote notes yesterday listening to Simon Beard. I'm like, okay, I gotta go learn this now because he's telling me it's coming so I better go learn it.
[Voiceover]: That's awesome. And as you expand into new territories, business is going to get much more complicated. Do you foresee that you'll continue to keep the performance ads in house or will you then go, I've set the foundations for it. I'm comfortable about using agencies again.
Adam Bouris: Yeah, we had it in House for 18 months and only this year again or about two, three months ago, I knew that this global growth was coming. So I did move it back to an agency. And now going back to an agency after knowing it, it's much easier than not knowing it. So I can have this like really good conversations with them. I think the challenge, the unknown challenge that I'm needing to figure out is whether we should have multiple agencies running their own geolocations because of what they know and what someone in Australia might not know about the UK and what someone in the UK might not know about the us where, you know, traditionally you sort of keep it in house with one person and you let the ad performance do the directing. But that's sort of where I'm not sure where to go with it at the moment.
[Voiceover]: Yeah, that's gonna be fascinating. I love that challenge though. It's a good challenge to have. So you've given us a bit of an insight into what the next 12 months looks like. International expansion, taking the family up and moving, which is big in itself. What are you most excited about?
Adam Bouris: Look, I'm excited for the adventure, to be fair. I'm excited for the unknown, I'm excited for the growth that's coming. I am someone that needs to be the likes to be in control of most things. I don't have to be in control of everything. But my team here is, is really set now and I think I probably could get out of the way of them and let them be them. And again, running, being the, I guess I'm head of the ecom part of the business, I can run that from anywhere because it's agency led now and that's important. But I'm excited to feel what it's like to start up again in a new country. I'm excited for that and obviously very lucky to get a chance where we can start again from not the start, but from considerably further down the line and already traction in these areas. So I know I'm going to be flying around a lot over the next three to four years and back and forth. And my son's five, my daughter's two and I just sort of said to Raquel that I just want George, my son, to be in a stable place when he goes to high school. So we've got, you know, five years of whatever comes our way.
[Voiceover]: How good. That's so exciting. I love that, mate. And you I think anyone listening to this can be really inspired by your story so far because it is just the start of the story. And, you know, if we get the chance to catch up again in five years when you, you know, you're back and Georgia settled into high school, wherever we are, that's a wild thought. I bet in your shoes that it will look totally different. And, you know, things can happen so fast and especially when you come at it from a fresh perspective, willing to get into the detail but also look for quick moves, make quick decisions. And I think you and Raquel are a great example of that and how Aussie businesses can really, you know, go into new categories and take on the world. So thank you so much for sharing that with us today, mate.
Adam Bouris: No worries. It was great. And, yeah, look, anyone listening? You know, I was a cabinet maker not that long ago and I think that there's so much opportunity for everyone out there and just got to get started. So, yeah, it's been great to be here and it's been great to chat.
[Voiceover]: Awesome, mate. Now, if people want to keep an eye on your journey and follow along, what's the best place to do that?
Adam Bouris: I am just Adam Boris on Instagram. Our who Is Elijah is just being suspended, so we're trying to fight to get that back at the moment. They just said that there was an account that's associated with you guys that's doing something not platform specific, so we just should get it back today or tomorrow. But five days of no Instagram. Jester. Heart racing. Yeah.
[Voiceover]: Have you got there?
Adam Bouris: I think it's about 150, 000 there, so it's not been too bad. And yeah, Raquel, you know, I think a lot of people follow on with Raquel. She's probably post a lot more than me behind the scenes building it up, but Raquel's just Raquel Boris. So, yeah, follow along.
[Voiceover]: Love your work. Cheers, Adam.
Adam Bouris: Cool. Thanks, mate.
Nathan Bush: That was so cool to go behind the scenes on who Is Elijah With Adam. I swear, I have opened up that website and shown at least five people some of the branding and the photography and the product pages from who Is Elijah? Since our chat, one that you should definitely go and check out. Here are my three takeaways from that conversation. Number one, sometimes not knowing is actually
[Voiceover]: the biggest skill you can can have.
Nathan Bush: As you heard, Raquel managed to get who Was Elijah into David Jones in just five days without them even smelling a sample. It's a really great lesson. Sometimes you've just got to knock on the door yourself, trust your pitch, don't wait for the perfect moment and create your own opportunities. Sometimes not knowing can actually be a blessing because you don't know the size or the scale or the format that people expect and you can catch them by surprise. Number two Be ready to pivot Covid hit who is Elijah? Hard, much like the rest of the e commerce industry, but it wiped out 80% of their revenue overnight when wholesale disappeared. Now instead of letting that slow them down, they pivoted to e commerce. They leaned on influencers and said yes to as many partnerships as possible. Instead of retreating into their shell and trying to cut costs, they found creative ways to sell stay in the conversation even when their primary sales channels were cut off. But even more than that, it would seem that perfume would naturally decline during COVID When people weren't going out, people actually needed that little boost. It's a really great lesson that when times are uncertain, instead of just backing off, you really need to lean on those creative muscles and think about how you can change your strategy to lean into those uncertain times times. And number three, let the data do the talking. Adam's love for numbers really stood out for me as we heard they thought that their discovery set would be a top product, but when they looked at the data they found it wasn't driving the long term loyalty that they expected. Turns out customers who went straight for full size products had way better lifetime value. It went against logic and it's such a great example of why digging into your data is always better than relying on on assumptions. I think there's another lesson here too, that when it comes to samples and trial products, it's worth playing around with them to find the ideal place in the customer journey to cross sell and upsell products. Sometimes samples aren't necessarily the lead in, they are the upsell Post the first purchase. Now if you love this episode, feel free to share it with a friend or leave us a review on Spotify or Apple Podcast Podcasts. Again, a huge thanks to our sponsors, Shopify plus and Deliver in Person for making this podcast 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 to now. If you enjoyed today's episode, make sure you share it with a friend or a colleague. Or even better, leave us a review on Spotify or Apple. It really makes a difference.
