Michael Janke: There's a picture of our product saying, found these, bought these, love these. And I was just like, is this hair? And I click on the Pro. I'm like 330 million followers, right? This is legit.
Andre Sofanow: Those are stickers that you smell them when you drink your water and your brain is tricked to believe that you're drinking flavored water while in fact it's just regular water.
Gary Tramer: We have guinea pigs, which are our children. I could send them off to school with different variations of patches. They would come back with welts and go, yeah, that one didn't work. Let's try another.
[Voiceover]: Welcome to Add to Cart, Australia's leading e commerce podcast that express delivers all you need to know in the fast moving world of online retail. Here's your host, Bushi. Welcome to another episode of Add to Cart. I'm Bushie and I'm joining you from the land of the terrible people, otherwise known as Brisbane, Australia on Add to Cart. We welcome everyone to share and listen to ECOT stories. The more diverse, the better. I want to especially welcome the traditional owners and the original storytellers of the land that we are on, our indigenous and Torres Strait Islander listeners to join us in our e commerce conversations and our community. Now, speaking of community, we are excited to have the Add to Cart campus open for access. What's the Add to Cart campus?
Nathan Bush: I hear you say.
[Voiceover]: Put simply, it's a learning community for e commerce professionals and it feels like it's what we've been building at Add to Cart for many years. Free to join Campus has lunch and learn webinars, the latest e commerce resources, a job board, and a heap of ways to learn with industry professionals and your peers. Whether you're an e commerce manager, a founder, or simply finding your path to a career in E commerce, we'd love
Nathan Bush: to see you in there.
[Voiceover]: Register to join campus and@addtocart.com how many times have you heard people say that they've got an idea for a business that's so perfect it's destined to be a success? There's certainly no shortage of people trying to come up with products that tick all the boxes for e commerce success. And my guests today are no exception. The difference is that they seem to have nailed it. At least that's what Kim Kardashian thinks. Today, I am talking to Michael Janke, Gary Tramer and Andre Sofanow, co founders of natpat, a brand creating wearable stickers for kids infused with essential oils that offer a range of solutions to everyday problems. There's A patch to repel mozzies, one to aid sleep, and even a sensory patch to alleviate stress and anxiety.
Nathan Bush: Might need that on my future interviews.
[Voiceover]: NATPAT started as a D2C brand and is now stocked in retailers throughout as well as the US and the UK. In this chat, we delve into NATPAT's channel marketing mix and how it works. The team shares how they position themselves as the original and best in market and how they combat the copycats. We also hear the story of how Kim Kardashian endorsed their product without them even knowing about it or paying for it. The guys have also given us a deal on natpat, so the code coming up at the end. So, thanks to our partners, Shopify plus and Deliver in person, here's our conversation with Michael Janke, Gary Tramer and Andre Sofanow, co founders of natpat. Michael, Gary, Andre, welcome to add to cart.
Michael Janke: Thank you. Thanks for having us.
Gary Tramer: Thank you.
Nathan Bush: Pleasure all three of you. You know, this is. This is monumental for us, three co founders at once. Who's looking after the place while you're here?
Michael Janke: Well, it's sort of monumental for us too, so it's quite funny. So we actually probably only see each other physically maybe once every six weeks. So we, whilst we're all buddies and we're all in Melbourne for a very long time, Gary's up in the Sunshine coast in Queensland, Andre's in Noosa, I'm down in Melbourne, where we started. So technically I'm in our head office hq, but it's also just me in the office, so we're humorously a fully remote company.
Nathan Bush: Sounds like you got to bring HQ up to the Sunshine Coast.
Gary Tramer: Yeah.
Michael Janke: I mean, to be fair, Gary and Andre get together a bit more than I do and the weather, I think, is a little bit better.
Nathan Bush: Beautiful. Well, thank you for joining us. We really appreciate having all three of you on here.
[Voiceover]: Let's kick off natpat.
Nathan Bush: For people who may not know or have come across natpat before, can you explain what you guys do? I had a lot of fun researching and having a look at all the products, but if you can share it with everyone else, that would be fantastic.
Michael Janke: What brings me great joy in my life is describing what I do in the way that I overheard my kids describing in telling their friends what their dad does for a living, which is I sell stickers on the Internet in its very basic form. Now, I do tell folks that sometimes and get a bit of an eye roll. And then when people sort of understand the scale and what that actually means, they seem to be a little bit more interested, but we sell what is essentially stick on superpowers. So these are little stickers that, for the most part, infused with natural oils or essential oils. And they, you know, they're there for remedies, everything from fighting back mosquitoes to. To battling bedtime and getting to sleep. They mostly. Kids use our products and love our products, so they're. They're fun, but more and more adults use them. The. We started off as a company actually just called buzzpatch, which is our. Was our first product. And that's what we named the company actually when we started, which was the main mosquito repellent that we're probably most recognized for. And we, shortly after that, started rebranding because we realized that as an e commerce business, having sort of one product or the company named after one product doesn't really allow enough scale. So now we're called natpat, which can be short for a bunch of things. But the branding folks we worked with and we agreed thought it was better than, you know, saying natural patch or buzz patch. Nat path. That's us.
Nathan Bush: There we go.
[Voiceover]: I've had this before.
Nathan Bush: I had this with Kalani kidneys. I didn't put the pieces together that Keenies is actually short for bikinis. Like, I'm just an idiot.
[Voiceover]: And then for yours, I was like, what is natpat?
Nathan Bush: What does natpat stand for?
[Voiceover]: That makes sense.
Michael Janke: Well, you know, it's really funny and we're really scrappy, but we worked with some really great branding folks, and we wanted to move away from patches. We wanted to move away from just generic terms. And the team sort of came up with natpat. Now, first. First, like, sort of look at that. Was like, we could have done that. But I guess that's the same with everything, right? You know, you look at paintings on the wall, you say, oh, you know, my kid could have done that. But turns out we love it and our customers love it. And it's always funny when people start referring to us online and we're like, all right, the branding works. It really does work.
Nathan Bush: It does. And Gary, what is the most popular product today? So obviously started with mosquito stickers and then, as Michael said, expanded out into all ranges of solutions. What is the most popular today?
Gary Tramer: It's a question about who you ask. I think if we ask us, Buzzpatch is still by far the most popular because of the pain point. But if you ask somebody with young kids, I don't know. Nathan, do you have Kids?
Nathan Bush: Yeah, I've got two kids, eight and nine.
Gary Tramer: Okay. So they're probably sleeping. If you ask my sister who has a three year old and a one year old, sleep is the problem. And so for parents of that age, it is by far the most popular. If you ask people that have kids that are a little bit older and their kids are wild and they get to that time of the afternoon where it's just tantrums, then the Zen product that calms them down is by far the most popular. And we actually just launched a tick repellent as well in the northern hemisphere and I think the early signs are showing that is the most popular. So different regions, different folks. There's one for all.
Nathan Bush: There we go. So I'm. You guys were all tech founders previously, right? So were you all together in the same tech company beforehand?
Michael Janke: Well, this is my favorite story about our company and if we achieve nothing else with this business, it's that Andre is in Australia. So Andre is actually originally from Belarus and we met 10, 11 years ago. I think it was then or maybe 10 years ago, 11 years ago when we had a little side hustle going, little E commerce business or medium sized E commerce business. And Andre was this, this little kid really that we met on Upwork who we originally hired to do some analytics work for us. And we, you know, there's actually some very funny photos that we look back on and go, he really was a little kid. But we brought him out to Australia for a little visit because we wanted him to sort of run, run ads for that business. And anyway, we brought him out to Australia and the short version is that he loved it here and decided to move to Australia. And so Andre then moved over to Australia, was working in that business and we promptly sold it about six months after he arrived. So he was sort of out of a job and we said, hey, let's start another business together. And it took us a few years, but we finally did start this business together, which is now natpat. Andre is now an Australian citizen with his wife and his 2 year old. So it's this amazing story where Andre was pulled out of Eastern Europe and landed squarely on the beaches of Noosa now. And yeah, that's sort of fun. But yes. So Gary and I have been actually so known each other for a little bit more than 10 years. It's becoming up to about 40 years now. Showing our age. We went to school together, grew up about 100 meters from each other and have been up to mischief since about the age of Three, Gary and I have been doing software in and out of software for the last 10, 15 years. And I guess we treat this business in very much a way or approach it in very much a way and decision making very much a way that is similar to software companies and how we built and ran software companies.
Nathan Bush: Andre, is that how you remember it? Like, what was your response when you've come over with this tech company and then the guys go, actually, we've got an idea. Stick on stickers for mosquitoes.
Andre Sofanow: Well, as Michael said that it took us a few years before that. We have very lean, MVP driven people who try different things. And maybe it took us like five or seven different other business ideas. You can't imagine how crazy they are. And they didn't work. They all tanked even though we throw in all our knowledge there before we landed on netpad. So it took us some refinement to find a market fit. Right? Like we all talk about all the founder product market fit. It took a situation, but it was fun just to experience. That was fun to fail. And it was fun just to see those early signs like, you know, the science where product takes off the market. Reception is amazing. You're like, I'm onto something, I'm onto something. And we all had other things going and at some point you're like, okay, that's all in. Let's go all in on this one. And to this day, this has been fun.
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Nathan Bush: When you say stickers with natural ingredients to repel mosquitoes, you're like, oh, that's amazing. Like, how do you even do that? My head goes, how would you even execute that and certify that it works? And obviously I have no experience in that world at all. How did you get up to speed? And I might throw this one to Gary. How did you get up to speed with. With making sure that what you're developing is actually working.
Gary Tramer: So Michael's got a view. I think going back to when we were kids, there was always a way to figure something out. And we learned. Michael and I had a startup which we raised a very small amount of capital from friends and family maybe about 15 years ago, which was. Do you remember the entertainment book that the schools used to. So this is going to sound not revolutionary at all today, but back then it was. We thought, what if we created an entertainment book on an app that you could just get social recommendations? And we. The short story is we raised the money, we put it all into product development like devs. We didn't consider marketing. We just watched the social network, which was. And we thought we were going to be the next Facebook. And. And the business had not. It didn't. It didn't succeed. And we learned very quickly that marketing would be. If we ever did a business again, marketing is how we would lead. So to Andre's point, we launched with something that we felt would have resonance and then raced to find the way that we could fulfill. Now, to be fair, we were doing this in parallel. So I'm going to say I've got a background in chemistry, but I don't. I got like a D for chemistry in year 12 and then I did biochemistry for one of my degrees in. I knew something. I knew how to Google things and I knew how to put it together. But it was a fast track of finding the best formulators in the world. Michael and I are good at bashing down doors and getting answers to things very quickly, finding testing laboratories. And we were very lucky that during COVID Australia's best mosquito testing facility was not being like, there was no use, but there's no one using it. So where it could take a year, a year and a half to test these things, they said, we've got cages of mosquito that are doing nothing. You know, come on in. And we actually brought in a video guy and I was there in the lab coat testing different formulations. We've got all the video.
Michael Janke: It's hilarious.
Gary Tramer: So we were able to formulate test very quickly, much faster than I think anybody else in the world could have done, given the timing. And, you know, we have guinea pigs, which are our children. I could Send them off to school with different variations of patches. They would come back with welts and go, yeah, that one didn't work. Let's try another and iterate. So we learned a lot very, very quickly. And I would say now I would be a foremost expert on repellents, natural repellents. Anyway, certification, the process with different jurisdictions, it's been a wild and very fast learning curve, steep learning curve.
Nathan Bush: But dare say you'd get a better chemistry score today.
Gary Tramer: I don't think I would. We have chatgpt there, so I think that would help.
Michael Janke: I might add to that, though, that. So Gary is certain, I guess, the most conservative when it comes to. Out of all of us when it comes to the question of does the product work, doesn't the product work? And it's so this fun thing. And Andre, you know, points us out all the time. But, you know, in our journey, it was probably a little over a year into after we'd started the company. You know, we were always questioning, you know, is this real? Is this company going to work? And, you know, by this stage, we were probably over eight figures in sales, but we were still questioning, going, you know, should we go all in on this is, you know, what's the future? What's the future? And because it was always a question of how good are these products? Like, how. How much longer is it going to last? And there was sort of two parts. This one is like customers were buying it, right? And they kept buying it and rebuying it. And that's like, you can do all the testing you like in the world, but, like, if customers aren't buying it again, there might be a few reasons, but one of them most certainly is going to be that, like, it's. It's not of value, meaning it's not working to the degree that it's worth paying for. And so customers are buying it. But, you know, I can point to, you know, this moment in time, which was when Kim Kardashian actually posted about using our product. And it was this really funny thing where it was like I was just sitting, sitting. I was actually overseas and I was sitting looking at my phone. A notification pops up because I'm logged into the company Instagram account saying, Kim Kardashian posted about you. I really remember distinctly it was 8pm where I was, which was in Paris, and It was about 4am local time in Queensland where Gary and Andre were. And my wife had just stepped out, the kids had just gone to sleep. Just. I remember screenshotting this, going, this Will be funny. This will be like some. Someone who's pretending to be Kim Kardashian, probably asking for free products or something. Anyway, so I opened the notification and, you know, it's like, Kim Kardashian says Kim Kardashian's posted a story. I'm looking at his story, and it was just really simple. It was a picture of our product saying, found these, bought these, love these, you know, that sort of thing. And I was just like, is this her? And I click on the problem. I'm like, 330 million followers. Like, this is legit. And, you know, I remember messaging Gary and Andre saying, wake up. Like, wake up, get up. And, like, for 10 minutes, I'm just like, you know, seeing this tirade of abusive messages going, something big's happened. Like, what to do? And, you know, at the same time, I messaged my wife had stepped out, and I said, oh, is this interesting as a joke? And she's like, yes. And she came rushing back to try and explain to me how social media works. And, like, I get it. I know, but we were having fun. Anyway, eventually Gary wakes up, and eventually Andre, I think, was changing his son's nappy at some point and then looked at his phone, looked at the notification, walked away from his child to pay more attention to the phone. But, you know, we sent a DM to Kim because we don't know where she bought our products from. She never asked for anything for free. She usually charges a million dollars to do a post like that. And so we said. So we sent her a message saying, you know, thanks so much for posting about us. Really appreciate it, but didn't ask for anything, didn't do anything. And she just wrote back going, you know what? I found these. My, you know, one of my kids is really allergic to mosquitoes. They're so cute, they're fun, and they work. And it was sort of that. That last couple of words they work that, you know, Andre points out. And I can very distinctly point to that time where Andre points out going, well, this answers the question, right? Is this legit? Is this a real business? Is this a real product? And it's like, if, you know, perhaps the biggest social media personality in the world who can get anything she wants, she's a billionaire. She. People send her free products all the time. If someone like that finds us, pays for us to solve a problem, it sort of means that someone who can get anything for free can or has enough money to buy anything she likes or solve any problem she has. If she will go out and buy our product but not just buy our product but actually be so enamored with it to actually post about it, providing something that might be a million dollars of value to us for free without even prearranging them. If someone like that can come out and say these things, it means it's real, it's legit. And all the testing at labs in the world doesn't matter how good or how bad or they say the product is and what the efficacy is. It's like, well, this is the evidence, right? This says it works.
[Voiceover]: Was there any further back and forth
Nathan Bush: with Kim after that or just one and done.
Michael Janke: You know our view on that. And it's sort of, it's an interesting approach. You know, some people would say, oh quick, you know, message her and try and do collab deals and ask her this, this that our viewers like just be grateful. It's clear she's actually just a real human with real problems. Like, you know, like any other customer of ours that has, was buying a product was having, you know, similar, similar issues of yeah, real mosquitoes, the kids are getting bitten. So we were just very polite and said thank you. Like, you know, that was it, no pressure, you don't need to post anything. And it was sort of funny because I think like maybe a year later or nine months later she actually posted something again about us. It must be mosquito season back where the. And I remember saying thank you again. And she's like, oh my God, they're wild at school. I'm, you know, I've sent them all to school for all the kids because the whole school's getting eaten alive. And I think it's just that sort of thing. It's, you know, don't. My view is if, if an influencer ever does anything for free like that, that is unexpected. It's not to try and hound them. People are hounding them every day of their life. You know, just try and do something different. Try and be thankful without any pressure to do more and be thankful you got the first bit and maybe there'll be more a year later.
Nathan Bush: Love it.
[Voiceover]: And Gary and Andre, when you got
Nathan Bush: that phone call bleary eyed 4am that morning, what impact did it have for you operationally when you get someone who's sharing your product and your brand to that many people around the world, what were the operational impacts of that?
Gary Tramer: Forget operationally. I actually remember waking up, it was like five. I don't know when it was, but it was. I go to bed early so I got it in the morning. And just from a timing perspective, it was probably two weeks after the war on Russia and Ukraine started. And Michael didn't say anything about Kim Kardashian. He just said, shit's blowing up and opened cnn. And I'm like, it's World War Three.
Michael Janke: I thought.
Gary Tramer: And I looked at it, I was like, there's no news. I was like, what are you talking about? And then he sent me that photo. And as a anti climax to what I thought was World War Three, I was like, oh, is that it? And I said that to him. I was like, okay, great. Kim Kardashian, big deal. You know, whatever you think about her, I'm not, I don't follow that stuff. And he perfectly was like, no, no, I don't think you understand. Like, this is, this is the world's largest influencer. We know what she charges for a post. Whatever you think of her is one thing. And, you know, impressed by her empire. She's chosen our product. So it started a whole discussion about influencer marketing with which we don't really do. We still believe even today, Michael has strong views on this, which is, you know, we want authenticity. We want to be able to represent. We want the brand to be represented ethically. We don't like paying for somebody to pretend they like us. So it was just a great moment in time. Recognition and validation for the effort we put in.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, absolutely. Did the orders flow in immediately or did it kind of fast track plans to push into more international markets?
Michael Janke: Yeah, it was off season for the U.S. i think from memory we recorded like, you know, four times volumes of average daily sales for maybe four or five days. But it's like on surface level of pure, like if you look at pure in and out or direct response, like it was interesting, there's a bunch more money for it for a week. But I guess the long. It's one of those things where you can really go longer term value of validation. You know, we were, I, you know, I even remember we're having trouble at the time trying to get verified tick on Instagram and Facebook. And it was one of those things like we sent it to our apps and went, surely this is enough.
Andre Sofanow: It was not enough.
Michael Janke: We had to go. I think we got a little press article. No, actually we. That's, I guess another funny story about why we applied and won a trophy, which is, I know it's not behind me, it's somewhere over there just to get a blue tick on. On Facebook and Instagram. But yeah, so the validation I think helps longer term. I know in a lot of the retail stuff we were doing, like, you know, retailers are always asking, how does it work? Will people buy it? It's like, well, we can point to our sales volume online, but also, hey, like Kim Kardashian talks about it and she's not a paid influencer.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. In having a look at the product, doing a bit of research, I. I struggle to think of many products that are more desirable for a D2C offering than what you've got, because obviously are consumable, you run out of them, it's subscribable, it's hitting a lot of problem points that exist in real life. You're not inventing a new problem point. And the size of them, I can imagine from a packaging and a postage perspective, really nailed the D2C offering.
[Voiceover]: Was that a key consideration when you
Nathan Bush: were weighing up whether this was the big idea, that it fit a lot of those D2C boxes?
Michael Janke: So a lot. You know, it's interesting and you're actually spot on and you're very attuned to this. Obviously, people say, why did you start the company? And there's some real truth in the fact that we looked at a product. We were looking for a product that fit a marketable sort of framework and something that worked for direct to consumer. And that framework was really consumable. Product can fit in an envelope. So shipping can be free. Cost of goods, you know, or the unit economics, relatively good. The ability to advertise it to a target market that will make pretty quick decisions on purchasing, all played into it. But we didn't start the company looking to solve problems with stickers. We didn't start the company looking to deal with mosquitoes. What we were looking for for all those years and all those iterations of different ideas was something that worked within a framework of works well for direct to consumer.
Nathan Bush: That makes sense. But now I understand that you've expanded beyond D2C. Got a wholesale element, you've got Amazon marketplaces in there. Tell us around what the world looks like now from a sales channel perspective for natpat, both in terms of sales channels, but also markets.
Michael Janke: So I'll start that with like, it'd be great to sell everything direct to consumer, but it's not where the consumer wants to buy from all the time. So I think it's important that you know when thing when you're a new company, your niche, you're desirable. And for us, we'd start a new category. We weren't just copying, you know, we weren't another badmouth any other companies but we weren't just reproducing something that existed already gone.
Nathan Bush: Then badmouth them, give it, give them help.
Michael Janke: No, no, no, no, whatever. We're not just another apparel company or I don't know, dime a dozen water bottle companies that have copied the original innovators. So you can be niche, right? People will accept being niche then after some time. Particularly in the US People want, they want your niche product but they want to know what the shipping time is going to be, what the return policy is going to be. So that's when they start looking at Amazon in particular in the US Like I think that's Amazon's big power is as a consumer what the delivery is going to be and you know what, what happens if you're unhappy. You know how to return. And the wholesale piece I think which is now really, it will be the biggest part of our business. It's currently the smallest part. But the wholesale piece is just about convenience. Like you know, we know when we go into a retailer that what will fly off the shelves is based on people already have seen our advertising, marketing, seen other people wearing our patches and then they finally see it in the store and they go oh yeah, that's my point of conversion. So it becomes the convenience side of things, you know. So when we started we were 100% direct to consumer. Then you know, we went to Amazon and Amazon was 20% of the business. And now the truth is now Amazon and direct to Consumer probably about the same size and there's different, different parts that are good and bad. So Amazon's really good for single unit sales for us in terms of unit economics and shipping. Whereas direct to consumer, I would rather sell something on Amazon as a single pack than our website.
Nathan Bush: Do you get a lot of first time customers through Amazon as well?
Michael Janke: We think so, but hard to know what we see. So the power of having the direct to consumer side of the business is it essentially funds funds and makes popular everything else. So Andre who runs the marketing and gets to be in charge of 15 odd million to spend a year gets like he sees that, that correlation more than anyone else which is spend more money advertising for direct to consumers sell more on Amazon. So we see that and you know, it's this thing but we fund that off the direct to consumer side. And it's the same with retail, right? We, you know, retail sales we see volumes also move from the retailers that we get the reporting back from. We see the volume move partially seasonality, but partially based on marketing and advertising spend. But having that direct to consumer side, it's, you know, we will hold on to that for our dear lives because that's what funds all our advertising, all our marketing because we can measure the direct response there really easily.
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Nathan Bush: And Andre, from attribution perspective, when you've started with D2C and you're pumping, you know a lot of your investment and time and focus into promoting, building a brand and trying to attract customers to the ddc. But you're seeing that halo effect whether it's in Amazon or your retailers. How are you attributing or justifying your spends in different channels if it's not directly correlated?
Andre Sofanow: So we do run tests, lift test studies or hold out tests for different geographical locations. And our view is evolving over years, right? And right now we are in a position where pretty much 30% of our revenue is Shopify. 30% Amazon and another 30% would be retail. So it's easy for us to see the list when we put out or increase the spend was the correlation or the outflow effects do not compete with each other. The beautiful part like when we start the business, maybe retail will take away the share of this product or maybe you know Amazon we should not push hard there now they're very complimentary. Like Michael discussed, you don't want to buy one pack on our website. We actually don't want you to buy one pack on our Website. We want you to buy new products where we test new offers, want to give you the bundles on Amazon. We definitely would love you to come back and buy there. We don't want to acquire you through Amazon. That's why it's just compliments and, you know, unit economics works incredibly well. But if you would love to try like very small pack, under 10 bucks and you're skeptical, go to retail, go to your convenience and it's those serve totally different customers. We see that it's not the same person buying all three things, it's totally different audience. And we're trying to add another touch point across the journey to find people who shop online, to find people who shop on Amazon and find people who just shop on retail. Answering a question. We just run lift studies. We run lift studies and hold out geographical tests to see the halo effect.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, that makes sense.
[Voiceover]: So you find, if I've got this
Nathan Bush: right, you find that each channel has a distinct audience rather than customers discovering you in one and then bouncing across channels based on what's convenient.
Andre Sofanow: Well, obviously there is overlap, but we do see a big incrementality in adding each of those channels together. When we run out of stock, for example, on Amazon and that happens, right. It's a big issue for the whole business. Or when we're out of stock in retail, that's another thing. So it's definitely the customers are not flexible enough just to move around. They are very incremental.
Nathan Bush: And Gary, as you've expanded into that wholesale retail market, have you had to change anything about the product? Because there is quite a range of products that you've got now for different problems, different solutions. Have you had to change anything to make it work in the retail environment, whether that be packaging, stock levels, displays.
Gary Tramer: So the answer is yes. We were, I'd say we were super clever in the fact that with obviously Andre's skill in D2C marketing, what with a 30 second Facebook ad, you can create the story. So what the pack looks like is sort of secondary in retail. You know, it's. We. I was freaking out for like six months before we moved into Target because I thought, I mean, the pack doesn't communicate and the amount of people that we'd spoken to about how to package claims and terminology and the design and does this feel like, you know, does this feel like it's something that you would spend 10 to $15 on shelf? And I spent many sleepless nights obsessing about, oh my God, how are we going to make this work? Michael was trying to temper me, keep me calm. Andre was like, it's going to be fine. So we spent a lot of time, I spent a lot of time trying to figure this out. Many freelancers, many discussions, so many conflicting opinions. What we landed on was we already knew a lot more than what we thought we knew. But the truth was we went to the U.S. michael, Andre and I, we went and we walked every aisle of every major retailer and in the US there's many more than Coles and Woolies. So we, from morning till night, multiple days, we went through and we took photos and we looked at it and we looked at the competitors, not direct competitors, but what other companies would do with their packaging took inspiration. I actually got photos where Andre and Michael and I in a hotel room making designs, cutting them out, creating mock ups, going into retailers, putting them on the shelf, trying to imagine what they would look like, font size, everything so it would stand out on a shelf, which is actually an amazing exercise. And to Michael's point of how scrappy we are, nothing like the visceral approach of doing it yourself. We came back from the US as self taught packaging experts and it made me feel nauseous about the amount of time that I'd spent with other experts, realizing that now we really know what we're talking about. And yeah, we're updating our packaging for retail, moving into a case format, a collectible format, which is beautiful, it's got an amazing feel. It's collectible. The patch material improved the actual design, the aesthetic, the hierarchy of claims, all these things has been taking a very data driven approach to each aisle and each retailer and looking at what else is out there. And now we know we've nailed it. Like we feel really confident that we've done and we've done it ourselves internally mostly, which is just amazing. And so we're actually in the process now of manufacturing that next level and then bringing it to the world, you know, sort of end of September, October. So in the next three to four months. So yeah, super pumped.
Nathan Bush: That's very cool. I love that tip that you've got around. Do the mock ups, get them in the store yourself, see how they look alongside the other products. That was a really great tip from a, from the time you started natpat or even Buzz before that. Since then, I can see that there's a lot more competitors, a lot more players in market. How do you create a competitive moat around what you guys have so that no one else can play in the space that you're in?
Michael Janke: Yeah, listen, it's super frustrating to have built a category. And the best way I can describe how we realized we'd built a category was, you know, we have people cold emailing us all the time saying, we can do your marketing better, we can do you this better, we can do you that better. And one of them I took a zoom call with was a Amazon specialist. We can do your Amazon listings better. Guaranteed to do better. Anyway, so we took a zoom call and this guy decided that he wouldn't do any research before he jumped on the call. And so he gets on the call and he's just like, yeah, you know, I can make this better for you. What you're taking on, the market isn't big enough. I can get more for you. We're like, well, can you? And he goes, yeah, let me show you. Let me show you how much you know, how you know the markets, how much of the market you've taken at you. And so he lives, you know, he's screen sharing with us and he pulls up this chart. He's like, is weird. I've never seen this before. The market is growing year on year for two years. Once we were two years old and you're taking more and more of it. You created this market. It was like, yeah, we did create this market. Thank you. So copies are like really disappointing. The, you know, it's the homegrown copies, as in like Australian companies that copy us, that really disappoints me the most. It's like, I don't know, like, you know, we're Australian, don't copy us. There's one guy on Twitter who constantly promotes it. How good a D2C and E commerce guy he is. And you know, I have an email sent to him when I first noticed that copied out products. Just say, hi, take this down, you're in breach of our trademarks. Stop self promoting yourself like you can do better. One morning only. And you know, it was that thing. Oh, sorry, didn't realize we'd copied you. The same guy. It's like, you know, you search our brand on Google and like he has ads coming up with our brand name in his title.
Nathan Bush: I'm definitely searching that after this, actually.
Michael Janke: It's frustrating, but it's also, you know, we see so many of it. It's like, well, at least you're always, you know, they're always at best one step behind. Sometimes they're more than one one step behind. And that can be on design, on packaging, on all the visual elements. You see online what our biggest Concern is that it is a category that I guess we created the market for. So our biggest concern is that if a consumer tries one of these other products, they are inevitably inferior and the risk is that they're turned off the concept of stick on remedies and that it's not that they have bought from that company and just won't buy from that company again, it's that the risk that they put us into the same bucket as that company and just say stickers don't work. That's our biggest concern. And so what we spent quite a bit of time, effort, money on last really 18 months is making sure it's really clear. So, so like we certainly have a first mover advantage. So we one, there's a, there is a lot of effort that goes into maintain what that means to be a first mover advantage in other areas to buy our product in retail, for example. But also, you know, when we first came out we were just round stickers, right? Round stickers with fun emojis. We did some trademarking around it but like people copied us and near enough copies, you know, I have a bag that sits rightfully in its place on the floor in my office of products that have copied us. But we went, all right, let's look at this a little bit more carefully. Like people, we want to be a bit rough on consumers and if they buy the cheap version or the inferior version, people should know that they're wearing the cheap and inferior version. So our way of doing that was like great, let's have a really distinct shape, a registrable shape. So even as a consumer, if you see someone, you know, wearing a round sticker, you know, it's the cheap one, you know, they've gone for the cheap version versus you know, ours is sort of that shape.
[Voiceover]: So it's a little bit of a,
Nathan Bush: I can't see it exactly, but it's like a little squiggly kind of rectangle.
Michael Janke: Yeah, yeah. We call it the smile curve. But have as a distinct shape, a brandable shape and really make that get across. We actually worked. It's a real joy and probably most of your listeners won't be seeing what's behind me, but we really wanted to go something unique in terms of our design work, in terms of our, you know, what visually you associate with our products. And so I was very fortunate that my co founders gave me a lot of rope to go and hire a, an artist, actually an Australian Melbourne based artist to go and re illustrate, you know, what is this Natpat world. What is a natpat species of characters, which is, you know, that's actually on a canvas behind me. And so that's something we're introducing more and more into our product and making sure the brand is just really strong out there. You know, we do. Part of our permanent team is in house legals. So we do the usual, you know, chasing our trademark rules reports, violation reports, all those sort of things. That's. But I would say that that is just become standard operational procedure. But our key is actually staying ahead with design, product quality, brand recognition and, you know, it's all in the brand, really.
[Voiceover]: Well, it makes sense.
Nathan Bush: I mean, from what I'm seeing is that you're not just a mosquito patch that anyone can. Not anyone, but you can claim to have a mosquito patch, I suppose, and get that to market. But you're creating an ecosystem here from both a product and a solution perspective, but also from a branding perspective as well, which makes a lot of sense. What areas do you think that opens up? So if you were to expand beyond your current market of solving problems and tell me if I've got this wrong, solving problems for parents with kids, do you see what you've done so far, opening up other expansions or areas that you could play?
Andre Sofanow: Yeah, so we absolutely always think that ideal customer for our parents or caregivers and always think what else or how else we can serve them better. But at some point you always want to go beyond that core audience and for us, caregivers to pets is the next big thing. We are thinking about stickers for pets that help them with anxiety or stickers for pets that repel ticks. You know, there are more pet owners in United States than parents. So that's another huge market for it. Now that's one side, another side of things. We are just trying to find innovative way where to apply those stickers. And one of those will be very interesting for Gen Z audience. And those are stickers that you smell them when you drink your water and your brain is strict to believe that you are drinking flavored water while in fact it's just regular water. It's inspired by Mr. Beast, air up and so on and similar concept, similar application to the brain by just in a patch elastic format. So those are like three completely new growth channels. Pets, parents and just younger audience that we can, you know, play with. And I'll see what happens there. Like, you know, there is so much overlap afterwards as well.
Nathan Bush: That's very cool. I love that thinking with the sticker still being the form or the medium, but opening up opportunities for different audiences and different problems.
Andre Sofanow: Yeah, we're trying to, you know, trademark this aroma wave technology which is a way to deliver certain things to certain human beings or pets. And we, Gary has spent so much time researching different materials, how to build out those stickers, oils that go into that, like not all mosquito stickers are equal. You can tell the same about all other products. And we are strong in that regard and trying to, you know, to put that transmission mechanism to all other areas of life.
Nathan Bush: Beautiful gents. Great conversation. I can, you know, I love the thinking and I love that first mover advantage that you've got and how you've been able to capitalize on that both intentionally and accidentally. I suppose if you call it with Kim K, if you call creating a great product that she values accidentally. But you've given us so many ideas there. If people are interested in checking out natpat, the range and potentially getting in touch with you guys because I get a feeling that you are naturally curious and you are hands on the ground problem solvers.
[Voiceover]: Tell us about who do you like collaborating with?
Nathan Bush: Who do you like hearing from other business owners? Do you like, you know, get together with others? How do you get, get your inspiration?
Gary Tramer: So one of the things that actually worked really well for us is we are constantly scouring for information about other brands that are, that are winning and probably two or three steps ahead of us. And then we just reach out, we reach out, we try and have a conversation. And it's actually quite interesting because if you were to look at my WhatsApp feed and my WhatsApp at the moment, there are, and I won't mention the brands, but there are, you know, VP of Sales or VP of packaging or VP of marketing of some of the world's best consumer packaged goods brands or DTC brands that as a brain fart comes in before I even bring it to Michael or Andre, I will, you know, channel it on WhatsApp to this, these individuals and say, hey, we've got this design or we've got this challenge or whatever it might be and they'll come back with feedback. And instead of having a coffee catch up or a lunch, it's literally a WhatsApp communication. So we are quite proactive as a company in reaching out. I know we're part of different, like, what do you call them, MJ's, like the startup community or Slack communities or CPG communities or D2C communities. Just trying to learn as much as we can. So anyone that's doing something one, two to three steps ahead of us in terms of size or product development or retailers they're in is always fascinating for us to learn from. We're super curious and we love filling the gaps.
Nathan Bush: Beautiful. What's the best way for people to get in touch if they think they fit that bill?
Michael Janke: Any of our first names. NATPAT.com gets us on email.
Nathan Bush: Take it easy if you think you can beat your Amazon ratings. Probably don't reach out if you're that person.
Michael Janke: Yeah, exactly, exactly. But we're also, I mean and Gary's right, we hang out in a handful of various slack groups. I'm actually one with a bunch of touring founders in some CPG ones workplace six a bunch of slacks are good as well. Like we often find people that we have questions to ask and people will often find us and it's always interesting. You know, I think the key for us is like, I don't know, how can we learn and, and then offer as payments something we can, you know, pass on, pass back, teach and you know, it'd be great to hear from other founders particularly who dealing in product based goods who are selling, you know, globally who are eight figures multi. Eight figures is, is where we're at, is great to hear from and just sharing ideas like, you know, our biggest challenge is always, you know, how do you find more, more audience, more eyeballs and we, you know, love chatting to people and sharing with people. We're fortunate that in, in the world of meta, we're one of the largest spenders in Australia. So, so the meta team or our meta account managers put us in contact with some of the other leading brands. But yeah, just, it's sort of lonely. Right. And I get, I guess everyone gets that but I don't know, new ideas. You know, Gary wants to make a cartoon from our product as an idea of how could we launch a, you know, a cartoon series on Netflix. It's those sort of ideas that are, I mean it's fun for us but it's also like, yeah, this is novel, this is interesting. This is not, you know, what a standard, you know, consumer packaged goods company does.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, definitely. Well, I feel privileged that you've shared your story so far and some of those ideas that you've got because you are definitely thinking differently than a lot of people and I really appreciate that fresh approach that you bring in and that curiosity that you've got to continue learning and scaling this business. So thank you so much for all three of you for taking the time out Today. I really appreciate all your time. Great to hear the natpat story and I'm sure we're only at time the same start of it.
Andre Sofanow: Pleasure.
Michael Janke: Thanks so much, Nathan. Fun chatting with the three of us actually.
[Voiceover]: Who would have thought stickers was such a lucrative and big business. But I love how the guys have thought about this as an ecosystem rather than just a product to fit a solution because it has created a moat
Nathan Bush: for them against all the ripoffs coming through.
[Voiceover]: So with that in mind, if you want the original and the best, we we have a special offer for you for NATPAT. Use the code add to cart24 or one word add to cart24 to get 15% off the first 250 orders. From add to cart listeners, head to natpat.com to claim your discount. All right, there are three lessons that I really took from this conversation. Number one, create your own moat early. The team had some great lessons on how they contacted Combat the Copycats. After all, they essentially created the category and inevitably there are always going to be those who want to take the easy route and move in. Firstly, they've made their products stand apart by making their sticker patches a unique shape. The napat ones have the wiggly edges easily identified as the original, but they haven't stopped there. They've also invested in an artist design world, a whole ecosystem, a whole brand to enhance the brand and make it unmistakable. Number two, get hands on with your packaging. The team were nervous about the move into stores, especially internationally, and how their packaging would hold up in this environment. Instead of going out and hiring the biggest and the most expensive packaging consultants, they actually found the most valuable. Lessons were learned by creating mock ups and physically going into stores to see what it looked like on the shelves and against other products products. So don't be afraid to go old school to find out what works best. And number three, level up for mentors. The team identifies brands who they admire, who might be two or three steps
Nathan Bush: ahead of them on their journey, and
[Voiceover]: then they reach out to them and approach them for advice. Most of the times they're pretty open. The beauty about this is that it's looking ahead and it's also looking sideways to other categories or even brands who may not be in the direct line
Nathan Bush: of sight to where they want to
[Voiceover]: head, but have walked the path before in terms of the big strategic moves
Nathan Bush: that they want to make.
[Voiceover]: So I love this. Identify the brands that are two or three steps ahead. Reach out, ask for advice. You never know what you'll get back. 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 canvass@addtocart.com
Nathan Bush: now.
[Voiceover]: 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.
