Mike Angel: The one thing a lot of brands don't realize is like, you can't dip your toe in a new social platform. It's about coming up with a full strategy and executing on multiple ways. If you don't have a community, you're not a brand, you're just a company. 2020 is the year to sort of get on TikTok, so I wouldn't leave it past the end of the year.
[Voiceover]: Welcome to Add to Cart, the podcast that Express delivers all you need to know in the fast moving world of e commerce. Every month, Nathan Bush from 12 High and an E commerce industry expert will share the news, research and insights that you need to know to keep you at the top of your game and of course, keep your customers Adding to Cart.
Nathan Bush: Hello and welcome to Add to Cart. My name is Nathan Bush, host of Add to Cart and e Commerce Strategist at 12 High. Guys, have you heard of a little app called TikTok? Yeah, apparently TikTok's been in the news recently and the guest that I have joining us today is is Mike angel, who if anyone knows anything about TikTok outside of the TikTok bubble, it will be Mike. Mike is the co founder of VOP V O P. Now put simply, VOP is a website plugin that allows brands to take their TikTok videos and put them straight onto their website. Now wait until you hear from Mike on the numbers that he's seeing on what those TikTok videos do to e commerce conversion. Mike himself is just a fascinating guy. He started as a developer and is now a founder who still develops. He's worked for some stellar names in the ecommerce space including Shopify, Culture Kings and Black Milk. We touch on his journey and what he's learned as one of the younger elder statesmen of e commerce in Australia. So let's get into it. Thanks to our partner, Shopify. Plus here's our conversation with VOP co founder Mike Angel. Mike angel, welcome to Add to Cart.
Mike Angel: Thanks for having me. Excited to be here mate.
Nathan Bush: It's going to be fun. Now we're going to talk about TikTok and I actually had to go on and check the news just before we got on this because you don't know what's going to happen with TikTok and I didn't know where we'd be at.
Mike Angel: It changes every day so I've actually stopped tracking a little bit because it's just so wild, it's insane.
Nathan Bush: I don't know as a founder how you even keep up with it where you've got so much for your business in TikTok. So before we, before, before we get into the TikTok chat, why don't we give a little bit of background on yourself and what you're currently up to, to give everyone a bit of context?
Mike Angel: Yeah, so I obviously come from a background of E commerce. I used to work at sort of companies like Black Milk and Culture Kings. I actually even then work for Shopify. Basically I've built a few apps before. I actually sold one off about five years ago. I said I'd never do it again, but here I am, I'm back at it. Um, so basically we're building. It's. It's a social commerce company. We've obviously started with TikTok, but it's not about that. It's actually about solving bigger merchant problems and helping them push the boundaries of E commerce. I guess I got out of that side hoping to push, not just push one brand forward, but obviously be able to help multiple brands do some cool stuff and obviously help grow. So, yeah.
Nathan Bush: So how does it work? So social. Social commerce platform, yeah. Obviously from when, from what I've seen, it's very TikTok based. But listening to a couple of conversations that Holly's had recently, it sounds like not all your eggs are in the TikTok basket.
Mike Angel: No, no, they aren't. They are for now. We obviously start. We obviously had to start with a feature and it was the one feature that no one else had, so we definitely started with that. So, yeah, we definitely, it's. It's definitely just social experience. So what we have today is the TikTok feedback. People are probably more familiar with platforms like 460 which do the Instagram version of it. Obviously social is changing to. And TikTok shows that into sort of a short form video and there's just some differences. Like all our embeds all have to be sort of vertical video based. Basically we build them for mobile first to make sure that everything's scrollable and all that sort of stuff. So we've definitely just taken an older sort of system and turned it into what it needs to be today to keep being innovative, I guess.
Nathan Bush: Yep. So. So you effectively, at the moment you're taking brands, TikTok videos and allowing them to put it onto their website so that people who may not be on TikTok and are shopping can see the TikTok videos and it's kind of not wasted content.
Mike Angel: Yeah, definitely. It's about building social proof. So it's, it's shown to sort of even help conversion rates up to sort of 1 or 2%. So definitely getting social content next to your products definitely helps to enforce a purchase for potential customers.
Nathan Bush: Tell us more about that conversion rate metric because that's pretty interesting, right?
Mike Angel: So yeah, so the good thing is I have some good metrics that I suppose no one's ever got to see. So what people don't know is we actually designed the Insta whole social embedded on E commerce is actually we designed it at Black milk sort of 10 years ago. So that was actually the first version. Then Olapic copied our solution and they rolled it out and then 460 came along and copied them and it's kind of progressed instead. So we ran a lot of tests back in the day and being the first, you obviously got to see what life was like without it and what people's reactions was when you first installed it. So yeah, we, back then we had a sort of a good conversion rate was sort of 2 to 3%, but when we turned it on it jumped up to 5%. By being able to get all the sort of social content, it obviously comes around building a brand as well. But when you want to embed social content, you basically you've probably got a community that you want to start showcasing anyway.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, that's really interesting. Hey, because the social content itself isn't shoppable, right?
Mike Angel: We do, we do have obviously when we show content, we make it easy to see which products are in there. So when a brand imports their TikTok content, we actually allow them to link the products to that piece of content. And that's what I mean, we've started with sort of that embed thing. But what we actually have and what we'll be rolling more out of is we have a link between content and products and actually their E commerce platform. So anywhere that basically you see content today, a bit of social content, we're definitely going to start building tools that you don't have to leave where you are. You can basically interact with that content and probably use it more like a widget rather than an image or a video like it is today.
Nathan Bush: Gotcha, gotcha. And you're built at the moment in terms of vop, you're built for Shopify.
Mike Angel: Yeah, so we started with Shopify. We do actually, we have a universal solution as well. But yes, as you know, everyone's sort of on the Shopify anyway. And the most innovative brands that have all come to us and that we want to work with, you actually realize they're all on Shopify anyway because I suppose Shopify breeds innovation by making everything so easy to keep moving forward. So we find most of the brands we work with are Shopify.
Nathan Bush: I suppose those that are on Shopify can move fast, right?
Mike Angel: Exactly. Everyone else is worrying about their back end servers
Nathan Bush: and tell us about some of the brands you're working with because some of them are pretty exciting, right? Yeah.
Mike Angel: So we, we were lucky enough to get like Princess Polly is our sort of biggest one only because they've just got insane growth and they're definitely pushing into the US market hard, which is really exciting to see. We obviously have culture kings, which comes from obviously my old relationship with them, which surprisingly they've actually gave me the hardest time trying to install it.
Nathan Bush: They know where the skeletons are with you, man.
Mike Angel: Yeah, exactly. And then we got lskd, we got Olaplex, which is a beauty company. We've got White Fox Boutique, who's down in Sydney. We've spoken. We actually do some other stuff for some US brands. So we have Dolls Kill. We do actually, we actually do sort of TikTok monitoring for some. A few brands as well. So we actually have some other stuff that's not just the feed, obviously. We have all this content and we're actually, we have a lot of data that we can use. So some brands are leveraging that as well.
Nathan Bush: Yeah. For those who don't know a lot about Princess Polly, what can you tell them? Because when you speak to Wes and the guys there, it's phenomenal. The story that they've made out of Burley. Right. And Wes, if you're listening, we're going to get you on the show one day. They are just a powerhouse, right? Yeah.
Mike Angel: 100 and it's, it's such an amazing story because they, they kind of went through a rough time, like five years, six years. That was a while ago now. But then they really just turned it around and that's what I mean. They're growing crazy. Like I deal with Kim there who runs the marketing and that's what I mean. They know they're onto exactly what needs to be done and they know exactly what they want to do. And they're great to work with because they really, they know what they want so they can communicate to us exactly what they need. And we definitely, obviously leverage that to just help build out tools that merchants actually want. Our biggest thing especially my background is definitely just building tools that actually create real value for merchants because there are a lot of tools that seem pretty cool but at the end of the day, they don't always drive a conversion back.
Nathan Bush: And from those examples, you don't have to go into specifics because I understand that they're clients, but do you find that they're creating content that just appeals to their, to their customers, their viewers, or are they now creating TikTok content with a view that it is going to end up helping their e commerce conversion?
Mike Angel: It depends. So I suppose most brands are still just starting out. Princess Polly is actually the best example because the one thing a lot of brands don't realize is like, you can't dip your toe in a new social platform. It's about coming up with a full strategy and executing on multiple ways. So they obviously went down the path of obviously paying for the content, making sure that they keep creating content. They don't leave it a day where they're not making content. The one thing that brands are obviously finding the hardest about TikTok is it's actually the first real authentic platform and anything non authentic is, doesn't get any traction at all. So brands are obviously definitely finding a little bit hard to show the side of them that people want to see, but they're obviously sometimes a little bit nervous to show. So the good thing is brands that are a little bit nervous about that, the good ones are going out to influencers and getting content creators to create their content. Because the good thing is they know how to create good content and they know how to bring your brand into that sort of content. So the ones that are doing well are definitely using people that are on TikTok that know what they're doing and learning from them, then possibly building their own content based on what does well from what they get created.
Nathan Bush: Makes sense, hey, because so many times people are looking at TikTok and they might have downloaded it and they're looking at it and going, oh, do I have to be the dickhead who does the song?
Mike Angel: Yeah, everyone's. Everyone's first reaction is like, oh, do we have to get on and dance? I meet a lot of brands and it's. Yeah, it's the first thing that comes out of everyone's mouth. And the answer is yes, you'll do well if you get on there and start dancing, especially if you're a CEO. That's it, that's it.
Nathan Bush: There's a challenge. But TikTok do that incredible thing right, where they've actually one of the first social networks that I've seen that are matching brands with influencers to create content. They've Actually got their own marketplace, right? Yeah.
Mike Angel: So people don't see the other side of TikTok. So they're actually very well comfort over like well run company in that they, they've put a lot of money into content creation. Like there's actually stories where they would go out and buy sort of equipment for good creators to make sure that they were creating even better content and give them ideas. So they're actually doing really well on that side. And then they've got a content, they've got a creative marketplace and I think they just announced a billion dollars to creators to keep making cool content. So they're definitely not going anywhere. They're definitely going to dominate the space and they already have, they already own the space. Reels came out obviously with not much good feedback.
Nathan Bush: What do you think of reels?
Mike Angel: I think it's great. It's. It's going to be great for people that don't have any interest of going to TikTok. The idea that TikTok people are going to come across, that's what I mean. It's an authentic platform and like the fact that Instagram versus reality is a term kind of suggests how unauthentic Instagram is. So those people are very interested in coming across. But the people on Instagram, I think their style of video is just going to be different. Reels will be a different sort of content where it's more about status and showing the fake side of the business rather than the authentic. Which is a shame because like I don't know, for me being in E commerce the trend of brands that are doing successful are authentic brands and definitely. And authentic in like just their messaging but also how they create products and how they. All that sort of stuff.
Nathan Bush: Yeah. It's interesting, isn't it? Because we have seen like Instagram do have history there and being out basically they stole snaps functionality and stories.
Mike Angel: Yeah.
Nathan Bush: And now trying to do the same TikTok. So it's interesting to get your perspective that you just think it's a totally different ball game for them.
Mike Angel: Yeah, it's just what it's just if they're getting into the vertical video content and I. And to be honest I think it's a smart move from them. So we actually do a few other things with some other brands about taking the video content and putting it into ads and the one thing you see is that the short form video converts better than anything else I've ever seen.
Nathan Bush: So yeah. Do you think that TikTok will start integrating commerce into the platform itself? Which. And is that a threat for you at pop?
Mike Angel: No. So like, platforms that implement Instagram are still around today and to be honest, Instagram is actually kind of doing quite well, I feel, in adding commerce functionality. They've still got a long way to go here in Australia, but the US checkout functionality is actually pretty good, so they've actually already done it. So someone we've obviously talked to is Steve Madden in the us and they're actually the beta for the main client, obviously testing out the commerce functionality. I'd say that it's had. I know it's had actually really bad outcomes, but it's because the E commerce functioning, they've actually pulled the stuff out of China, out of Douyin and actually just kind of replicated it into obviously the TikTok app. The thing is, it's their UI and sort of how they happy to buy is very different. So they're going to have to work for a long time, I think, to get it right. And the other thing is TikTok is actually about like entertainment. It's not really a place of commerce, so it will obviously generate some sales for some people and there's some brands that are computer. We get brands that are purely built from TikTok now and they've started a business and it does really well for them. So it's not so much the commerce functionality that does well for brands, it's a place to build a community. So the brands that are starting up that are there, it's actually because they have a million people following them. Those people aren't so much about buying and the app, but just being able to discover the products, I guess makes sense.
Nathan Bush: Tell us about a brand that you've seen come out of nowhere. We've obviously seen a lot of influencers come out of nowhere with TikTok, but what kind of brands have you seen come out of nowhere with TikTok?
Mike Angel: It's surprisingly, it's. It can be the weirdest thing. So the one that does really well on TikTok is obviously products that you just generally wouldn't buy, but they're somewhat interesting to watch someone use it. So like even examples of that, there was this roller, like honestly there's roller door, but it. What did it do? I can't even remember what it did. I have to, I have it saved. Oh, well, see, this is, this is
Nathan Bush: what happens when older people start getting on the platforms like TikToks. We start watching videos about roller doors.
Mike Angel: Yeah, yeah. The One thing about TikTok is you never know what you're going to see, but you'll appreciate everything they show you. So.
Nathan Bush: Yeah. Are you on TikTok yourself?
Mike Angel: No, I'm. I'm not. I don't post. Holly, my co founder, she's. She's doing quite well. She's got a million views on one of her posts. So.
Nathan Bush: Holy moly.
Mike Angel: We call it Tick tock famous now. So she's there.
Nathan Bush: That's awesome. Now you've got a really strong development background as well, right?
Mike Angel: Yeah. So I started out as a agency back. I built my first website like 24 years ago now. So it's really long time.
Nathan Bush: Do you remember what that was?
Mike Angel: The very first one was I used to play world. Not World of Warcraft like original Warcraft. So it was a bit of the clan website. I thought that was cool because I was in a gaming clan back then
Nathan Bush: before it was even a world.
Mike Angel: Yeah, no, exactly. It was still basic pixels back then. It's a horrible looking game if you look back.
Nathan Bush: Awesome. And you build a website around that.
Mike Angel: Yeah, there wasn't. It was like I think it was 14 when I made my first commercial website and it was a classified. Local newspapers wanted a platform to sell. Obviously their classified section online got destroyed by ebay because it launched later that year. But it was cool to obviously make websites back then.
Nathan Bush: That's awesome now. And you're still hands on with development or do you kind of have.
Mike Angel: Yeah, so the couple. The current pop is made by myself. We obviously have a bit of a team now we're building out. But yeah, no, I definitely jump in. That's what even my role at Shopify. I was actually an engineer so definitely know how to build product. And yeah.
Nathan Bush: I'm assuming you've been deep in TikTok and TikTok code.
Mike Angel: Yes, I've been very deep in TikTok Toad. So I definitely. The good thing is I do get all the privacy side because of actually we actually have to work around all the. The inner workings of TikTok. So yeah, it's a lot of the news is obviously overblown to an extent that people want it to be.
Nathan Bush: So what's your. What's your view? Because I was on TikTok and I loved it but then I got freaked out by that Reddit thread where there was a developer who went on and you probably saw that and basically pulled it apart and went this is all. This is where. How it's worse than Facebook, how it's worse than Instagram and it's tracking your location. Yeah, what's your view on how it compares to the social platforms that we commonly use?
Mike Angel: Anyway, my first thing off the bat is like, for me, TikTok's not like it has social functionality, but at the end of the day for me it's. It's definitely more like YouTube than like Facebook where you're sharing all your information. So my first thing is, I don't know what people are worried about that people like, all TikTok knows about me is I watch garage door videos like that. I'm not too concerned about it. So even in the worst case they were doing something which I like, they haven't. There's nothing I've seen. And there's actually a lot of reasons why they have the stuff they have. Like, people complain it attracts you on the, on the website and that, but it's actually all there to obviously stop bots from posting. Because obviously the one thing when you're a platform that people obviously don't talk about is that everyone's trying to post random spam on you all the time. They obviously got in trouble for checking the clipboard, but like, that's what I mean. It was the same thing. They were just checking that people weren't copy pasting spam into sort of comments the whole time. So there's definitely a lot of justification on why these things exist. And they can obviously be seen. You can obviously blow them out to be the negative side or you can say, oh, actually, actually they've got a better platform because they've got these features and to be honest, everyone else has them. Everyone's just been in development long enough to not be able to reverse engineer your app. So you can't really pull Facebook apart anymore. They definitely close all that down.
Nathan Bush: Yeah. Okay. So, yeah, not much or any worse than what we're already using. And do you think it's propaganda in terms of China versus Western world kind of coming into it?
Mike Angel: Yeah. And that's a bigger political discussion and I think that it's the basis for all of it. Obviously it's just the two superpowers, button heads and obviously trying to hurt each other and prove who's the biggest one out of the two.
Nathan Bush: So.
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Nathan Bush: So going back to the brands that you've seen using TikTok really well outside of VOP, if someone is going, oh, I might download TikTok now and I'll have a look around and maybe I'll get on and follow a few e commerce brands just to see what they're doing. Who would you recommend? Before I talked about Princess Polly, someone
Mike Angel: who does it really well and they've done it really well from day one is Gymshark. So I definitely follow them. They obviously do it really well. Some other brands, like surprising, like Chipotle does really well. They obviously work with a lot of brands and do some cool stuff.
Nathan Bush: They're just doing cool stuff across the board really.
Mike Angel: Yeah. So obviously once companies figure out social, like social is a really hard one to crack but once you do, you can obviously really dominate by showing like obviously getting involved because you're actually, well technically you're talking to your consumers and the best like where they actually are. So you can obviously get really good traction.
Nathan Bush: And do you find the teams that you speak to, do they have a dedicated social team or do they outsource it or. We've already talked about using influencers and video and content creators to create the actual content in terms of managing and driving the social agenda.
Mike Angel: Yeah. So we definitely. Every brand that we work with has an internal team and it's. So basically we're still, we're very early in what will become sort of the industry of sort of that vertical video. So basically the only brands that will like that can work with us right now are the really innovative ones and everyone else will follow. So how even E commerce trends work is it's always the innovative ones that start show how that it works and they obviously show the how everyone else how it can be done and obviously how it can be leveraged. So that's where we're at today. That's what I mean. Brands. The list of brands that we sort of talked about before Someone posted on LinkedIn the other day the top 10 innovative brands based it was out by social bakers and it's actually the same list of our first customers and the ones that will just jump on board straight away. So definitely we definitely will start with those and it trickles down into everyone else. I'd say the next wave is probably the innovative consultants and definitely probably the innovative agencies. We're already starting to talk to some plus agencies that Want to do some cool stuff that obviously the brands they work with want. So I'd say that's the next phase and then we'll probably get into the brands people know, like the Nikes and the. All those sort of guys, because those guys, they definitely seem innovative, but they definitely wait to. For something to be proven out and then they definitely just jump on hard and push it.
Nathan Bush: And what are they waiting for? Are they waiting to actually create the content or are they creating, Are they waiting to kind of, I don't know, link it into E commerce? Is it, is it what comes first really the desire to have that video content online or be genuinely part of that community?
Mike Angel: I think, like, so. And a brand, if a brand, if a brand comes to us or we talk to a brand, the first thing is that if there's. If it's a no, it's not a no, we don't want to. It's a no, we don't have any content. So definitely the hardest thing is to obviously create the content to begin with. And it's. And it's definitely hard to build content, especially as a brand. You probably have like Instagram where you have millions of followers. It's really hard to go back to zero and start doing content and you get two likes. And as a, like, if you're the social media manager, like, oh yeah, we jumped on TikTok and got two likes, it seems really bad. So it's actually a hard thing within a company to say, hey, we're actually going to be dedicated to this. We're going to get two likes for the next six months. But after that, once we become the dominant one and we fought through it and that's when you get the reward. And that's where companies, that's why the innovative brands do really well. They know to fight through the pain and you kind of have to back yourself that this platform will be something and you have to be the early adopter and know that by doing it early you're actually the first six months. And the first few years of a platform is the easiest place to get growth. So if they do it early, they actually learn that they get a huge advantage. And most companies jumping on later can't even catch up to them because they become the example of the best ones doing TikTok and they just constantly stay at the top. So there's definitely value in jumping on earlier. I just know it's very hard for brands and it's a hard thing to justify, but it's definitely worth it.
Nathan Bush: How long do you think we've got of that early mover competitive advantage here to get to that easy follower?
Mike Angel: I think fashion's definitely dominating all the leading fashions probably jumping on board. The one thing is it's definitely industry based. So like if you people obviously most of E commerce is fashion but there's obviously opportunity that if you're the first in the market you can do really well. We were talking about a pet company. They were a vet. Like people don't see it but like e commerce extends past just obviously buying online. So like someone like a vet pets do insanely well on social media. So even a couple like something like that, they can just jump on social media and be the first one really innovating in their space. So it's more about being the innovator in your space even though the platform may be saturated. And just to answer the question, for brands, I think there's still like a year probably for TikTok to really jump on, but I'd be making sure that, well, 2020 is the year to sort of get on TikTok, so I wouldn't leave it past the end of the year.
Nathan Bush: 2020 is the year of a lot of things. So jumping on TikTok. Right. But I think that's a really good tip because we live in this bubble, right, where if you're in E commerce or if you're in marketing, you kind of feel like everyone heard about TikTok and it's already blown up and it's already big, but it's still really early. It's, it's.
Mike Angel: Yeah.
Nathan Bush: Nowhere near maturity. Right. And it was funny when you were just saying about fashion being predominant on there. And it is when you go on there, you see a lot of fashion on there when it comes to brands. But I loved your tip about reinventing your industry and one of the examples that just came to mind here, because it's just sitting here is like even books, like how could you reinvent books using short form video?
Mike Angel: Yeah, yeah.
Nathan Bush: Just everything everywhere you look. It's just if you think about a short. Short form video is really interesting. Now is the stereotype, I suppose of the normal TikTok user, young female, is that accurate at the moment? Is that what you're seeing as the primary audience?
Mike Angel: I would say no. Well, yes and no. So TikTok is. So how social platforms work is they obviously have recommendation engines, but TikTok actually goes well above like from. I can just tell from an engineering endpoint they do it a lot more segmented than anyone else. So once you first jump on, you actually see generic content and they just kind of show you stuff that you might like so they can start figuring out which sort of bucket you fit in. But once you get past that and you start liking some content, you'll actually notice that you fall into a segment. And these actually segments are quite big and they're actually every demographic, so there's actually a whole community. Like I don't know if you. I think there's all hashtags like over 30s, over 40s, like it's. And they're actually really big exact metrics. Like they obviously they're hard to get, but there's definitely. Everyone's on there. The one thing that they do have is the typical like new generation are only on. And I thought they were on Instagram and stuff as well. But definitely from being in this now and talking to a lot more people is that they have no interest of ever installing Instagram and have actually a lot of them have never used it before. So there's definitely a whole segment of people that are only on TikTok and are probably only going to be on the few. The new generation of sort of social media coming through because they definitely. They've just got different values, especially around authenticity and obviously all the drama about social tracking and Facebook and Cambridge and they just like to stay away from all that stuff. So they.
Nathan Bush: It's interesting, isn't it? Because I like what you said before about it's a better comparison to YouTube than it is to Instagram or Facebook and I think you're seeing that come through with some of those audiences that you're talking about where they're just consuming content rather than trying to interact.
Mike Angel: Yeah, well, that's what like. I think another platform that's kind of like not looked at as much is like, like Twitch is very similar as well. It's got that. It's a very similar audience in. There's these obviously channels popping up that aren't even gaming anymore that are actually these younger demographics and new, new, new audience.
Nathan Bush: Just touching on that algorithm that you talked about because it is fascinating, right? And it doesn't take long to figure you out in a way that I don't think Facebook or Instagram does very well. I somehow really quickly I feel I fell into this Aussie bogan territory where all I got. Yeah, I got was like dirty jokes and pranks on people and stuff like that. And I was like, who put me in here? Like, how am I getting all this stuff? Yeah, what do you know about the. What do you think TikTok's doing differently algorithm wise to be able to make this relevant?
Mike Angel: Yeah. So it actually comes from the history of TikTok. So the company, obviously people in the herd of ByteDance but they started out as a news aggregator so they, they built out machine learning to be able to show you the best news article and then they found it was starting to work really well on videos and they could segment videos to people and get really good at doing it. So actually they've actually been in a machine learning company ever since day one. They've obviously just found that it became very useful into a social media platform. Other social networks kind of show you things that you have followed. So you kind of tell the interest of the social platform. This is the stuff I like. Whereas TikTok has never done it to use the app. You don't even need to sign up. You just actually just start watching stuff and it can profile you and you never need to tell it who it is and it can actually get quite good at telling you what to watch. So yeah, it does a machine learning on a user by user basis. I'm sure the cost of their servers are ridiculous because of it, but it works.
Nathan Bush: Do you think it signals kind of almost like a new phase of. And I don't think we'll even call them social platforms anymore, whatever they're going to be called. But where they're coming from, a machine learning, they're understanding the customer first or the viewer and then creating something for them rather than the Facebooks and the Instagrams were like, here's this platform, here's this community that we've got. We hope you join up and then we'll learn something about you as you join.
Mike Angel: Yeah, it's. Well, it's. I think even tech companies, it's becoming a whole thing. It's. I definitely think it's an industry that's changing and collecting data is definitely. That whole process is changing a lot I think. I think it's going to change a lot over the next few years. It even seems like specific countries are definitely. It's kind of the drama with TikTok now is that countries seem to be. They're gonna start pushing towards their own social channel like networks that are within their own country and within their own country because the laws. I, I would hate to be Facebook right now. The laws are so different everywhere in the world on where you can and where you have to serve stuff and what you can and can't do. So there's Definitely just gonna be compliance and I think the compliance is gonna be on a geographic basis.
Nathan Bush: That's interesting. And do you this might be out of date by the time we go to air but the whole Trump, Microsoft, TikTok ownership debacle, what's your prediction of what will come come to play there?
Mike Angel: I originally thought they were going to sell like once the Microsoft deal I thought they were going to announce. I think the fact that they also dragged WeChat into it became probably changed the situation. There's actually reports that TikTok is going to file the lawsuit sort of by next, early next week. So I think they're now going to fight it, which is in my mind good and bad. I don't think it should be done. I think it should be allowed to operate. I'm definitely like a globalist, global company should be allowed to exist. Where they're from, this shouldn't matter. But I think they're going to fight it. And how that sits with Trump's 45 day ban might get a little bit hairy, especially for the users of TikTok. It sucks that the consumers are brought into the middle of it when it's kind of a political thing more than anything.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, no, it's going to be fascinating. And just for context, we're recording this on the 13th of August so we don't know where it'll end up by the time this goes to air. Now Mike, I just want to turn back to your journey because we've touched on a little bit, but you've worked with some incredible companies, right? So Blackmail Milk, for anyone who doesn't know is like probably one of the first is, was like the benchmark e commerce company in Australia in the early days, incredible community. And then you've, you've worked at Culture Kings Shop and also Fast, which I'm sure we're going to hear a lot, lot more about in the, in the coming months.
Mike Angel: Yeah, they got a countdown of their release coming soon.
Nathan Bush: So yeah, I'm sure Dom will make plenty of noise about that. All of those companies, when I looked at them I went, oh, that's an incredible list of places that you've been and contributed to. And for me the connector between them all wasn't just that they're all innovative. Right. They all are to a certain extent and they move fast, but they all have communities that surround them that are just so passionate about that product. So you look at Shopify and the community around Shopify, Black Milk had that Fast is getting that and I think VOP And Culture Kings definitely has it right.
Mike Angel: Yeah.
Nathan Bush: Do you agree with that? And if so, where. What is the secret sauce to creating customers who are as passionate about what you're doing is what you are. Yeah.
Mike Angel: So I suppose it is deliberate. I definitely. I've been at a couple of companies that weren't so innovative and I obviously didn't fit. So I definitely believe in building communities and I think it's definitely what makes a brand a brand. If you don't have a community, you're not a brand, you're just a company. So I think the secret source is just interacting with. It's caring about them and actually doing stuff for them and getting them involved. I suppose it's open as I even try and do it with Bobber. People obviously see my LinkedIn posts and stuff, but it's not being afraid to open up the inside of your business. I'm happy to ask a dumb question about the company. And most of these brands are. They'll be like, do you like what we're about? To design a community is when you're all involved in it. So when you're building a company, obviously people see it like you've got your internal staff that help make decisions and you've got this stuff like. But the other part is you're actually these consumers as well. So you can obviously let them drive the process and provide feedback and because at the end of the day, they're probably the ones that they actually do all the marketing for you. So something when I talk about with Black Milk is that the marketing spend was $0. We actually never spent anything on marketing because that was actually. It was all about community. Once you build a community, the rate of growth is you. It's all just free marketing at the end of the day. So although it's hard to do, it's actually the return on investment of actually just spending the time. And actually I remember, like finishing work, I would get on the train and post on Tumblr just to obviously help build a community or repost everyone's post so that everyone felt inclusive. So, yeah, it's about feeling inclusive and building it so that they're part of whatever you're building. I feel.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, I think that's a fantastic point. And it's the openness I really love. I love the radical transparency of Ray Dalio and all that kind of philosophy. But it's also taking opportunities like you were talking about. Right. So those, those Black Milk days would have been in the early days of Facebook. Right, where all. All posts were Organic. And yeah, the algorithm didn't kind of make the same 2%. Yeah.
Mike Angel: So Facebook was different. So one of the biggest features that made Blackmilk a success was actually when you had a company page, your community could actually do posts on your page and it was all actually one thing. So it was actually more like a Facebook. Facebook pages used to be the more like Facebook groups. So they actually did really well off that. But it was actually halfway into Blackmilk that they got Facebook got rid of it because there's obviously a lot of brands that don't like their community getting involved. So they actually stopped it which actually hurt the company a bit because well it didn't help. They just moved to a Facebook group from then on. So yeah, yeah. It's funny that social media actually the early days of social media was actual for me, real social media. Yeah. Now it's very much just like this is the message I want to put out to consumers. So it becomes. It's actually more like a marketing advertising channel now rather than actual interaction between the community and the brand.
Nathan Bush: The publisher network.
Mike Angel: Yeah, yeah. Some brands obviously do obviously still get communities and they build it but there's no real platform that does it really well anymore.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, that's fascinating. I mean I think we're. It's going to be so good to look back on this conversation in 12 months time and just see how far it's come and the movements that have happened because I feel we're in that similar stage of social in that social is reinventing itself through platforms like TikTok and the Opportunities to there for people who are, who are brave and move fast. So tell us what's next for vop? What's on your radar and where are you moving?
Mike Angel: So that's where we, I suppose we call ourselves a social commerce platform for a reason because we will be bringing out a lot of variety in what we do. So as I mean so for me we sit on the intersection of social and commerce. So if there's user generated content we're going to bring it in some form and obviously help brands obviously leverage that to either increase revenue or increase their community. So things like reviews and like we're obviously doing TikTok now. We will definitely be the first to announce a reels one so we definitely will get into more platforms. The fact that a Snapchat chat, that one doesn't exist today is definitely something we're going to solve. Like even an example of Colch Kings we sort of ran, we created a whole Shopify store That was Snapchat releases only. Like there's some cool stuff that you can do for social channels. So we'll start to build some of those out into real products that every brand can leverage and you don't have to have a development team to do it. So we're going to be bringing whatever these social innovative companies are doing and we're turning them into products that every merchant, the one plus billion people on Shopify, can do themselves without obviously having to pay a ridiculous amount. Because that's what our solution is. Only $50 a month for most sort of decent sized brand. So yeah, making everything social commerce affordable.
Nathan Bush: So beautiful and where can people go if they are interested and they want to find out more?
Mike Angel: Yeah, so get VOP.com is our domain. The other thing is for people like Shopify, you just jump on the Shopify app store, you can look at things there and or if you want to get Updates, jump on LinkedIn and you'll see my massive amount of updates.
Nathan Bush: I love your post. You just never know what's going to come out. It's fantastic.
Mike Angel: Yeah, I don't have much structure to it.
Nathan Bush: Legend Mike, it has been so good to chat to you. I've loved following your journey so far away from Black Milk through and I think what you're doing with VOP is really exciting. So keen to see where that goes and appreciate you sharing all your inside knowledge on TikTok.
Mike Angel: All right, thanks for having the chat.
Nathan Bush: It's been good. Cheers.
Nathan Bush: Has Anyone done a TikTok check in the last 24 hours? Still up.
Nathan Bush: Good.
Nathan Bush: Trump hasn't taken it down. Fantastic. Has it been bought by Microsoft? Disney Chat roulette? No. Okay, fantastic. We are still relevant for this episode. I was actually starting to get a few nervous sweats as as Mike was talking, thinking about all the changes that are happening to Tick Tock and whether we'd be able to get this out before it's out of date. But I think there's some fantastic, fantastic there for anyone who is considering TikTok or already on TikTok, because TikTok is moving fast.
Nathan Bush: Right.
Nathan Bush: But we are still in this growth stage as E commerce practitioners. We are in this bubble where it feels like everything that we hear about and talk about in E commerce we've been doing for years. But in reality there's still plenty of legs and Easy wins in TikTok. Mike's recollection of how Black Milk built their brand in the early days of Facebook really showed how business can transform by jumping into platforms early learning and developing communities before they go really big. But keep in mind that was only eight years ago. Doesn't it feel like a lifetime ago where you could get free organic engagement on Facebook? Now is that time for TikTok. But if you are doing it, please heed Mike's advice, go all in and be authentic. This is different social media and I love my analogy that this is more like YouTube than it is like social media. Now. If you were listening last week when we had Anna from Kester Black on, you may remember that we had a giveaway and that giveaway is still active for the next week. So all you've got to do to win $100 Kester Black voucher is to go onto itunes. Leave us a review, take a screenshot and see. Send it to hellodtocart.com the most entertaining review will win the $100 voucher.
Nathan Bush: We'll announce it next week.
Nathan Bush: If you're looking for more e commerce news, case studies and research, sign up to 12High's High5 newsletter. Every week I read all the e commerce news and send you the five things that I've found which I think will help grow your business. Visit 12high.com hifi h I g h 5 to sign up for free. Thanks for listening and until next time, keep adding to card.
