Ken Lau: 2020 and 2021 was all about growth. You know, grow at all costs essentially, and you can burn as much cash in 22. It's a different ball game.
Amanda New: Many more brands kept popping up onto the scene and what that showed us is that maybe customers, they still weren't satisfied with what was on the market.
Ken Lau: If something sounds like it's made up in the industry, like the foam layers, it's probably made up.
[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 retail. Every week, Nathan Bush from E Suite 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 director at ecommerce talent agency esweep. Have you been mattress shopping in store lately? I have, and honestly, it was one of the worst Saturdays of my life. Today's guests could have not only made that experience better, but they could have made it go away completely. Amanda New and Ken Lau are the co founders of Eva, a Melbourne based furniture and homewares brand who are disrupting all of the usual suspects in that space. Not only do they have beautiful design, amazing customer reviews, and are B Corp certified, they also offer a huge 365 day money back guarantee. In this episode, we dive into how that guarantee came about and how they had the confidence to make such a strong customer promise up front. We also dive into Ken and Amanda's backstories. Neuropsychologist meets electrical engineer. It's not something you see every day and in possibly one of the most important pieces of information that you could ever, ever get on ADD to Cart, we dive into the secret world of the mattress industry and share how to select the mattress that's best for you. It's honestly just worth staying for that. If this all gets you excited, make sure you catch our special Add to Cart EVA discount code at the back
Nathan Bush: end of the episode, which will get
Nathan Bush: you a free pillow with your purchase, as well as the very famous 365 day guarantee. It's the perfect way to fall asleep while listening to this show. All right, so thanks to our partners, Shopify plus and Paclio, here's our conversation with EVA co founders Amanda Neu and Ken Lau. Amanda and Ken, welcome to ADD to cart.
Amanda New: Hey, we're so happy to be here.
Nathan Bush: So good to have you here. Amanda, you were saying that you're a listener. And it's always fascinating when I get founders on who are listening. I'm like, oh, geez. I didn't realize, like, people like you were listening.
Nathan Bush: And it was kind of weird to
Nathan Bush: be here, but it's so nice to
Nathan Bush: connect it that we've got listeners now
Nathan Bush: being guests of the show. It's fantastic.
Amanda New: This is a really incredible opportunity because it's now, like, I'm listening to you in real time. And this is great. This is great.
Nathan Bush: When you listen to it normally, you'll hear how much they edit my voice to deepen it and to make it more radio. Like, it's not normal.
Amanda New: I was going to ask. I was like, there's something different today.
Nathan Bush: It's because you've got a camera on. I just don't do anything.
Nathan Bush: All right, so we're here to talk
Nathan Bush: about your business, Eva. Before we get into it, can you tell us what Eva is and what you guys do?
Amanda New: I guess whatever is is. We originally started off as Eva mattress.com and we had. It was basically a single product offering. So it was just the mattress in a box. And everything that we did was all around sleep and bedroom and mattress and stars and moon and blue was our prominent color. And then since then, I guess in the last couple of years, for three or four years, we have diversified away from just being even mat eva dot com. It really just signified that we wanted to be more than just a sleep mattress brand. We wanted to be a home, a home brand, a lifestyle. And that's sort of how we've sort of transitioned over the last four to five years.
Nathan Bush: Nice. Take us back a step. Before that, though, like, not many people wake up and go, I'm going to start a mattress brand. What drew you into that world?
Ken Lau: I Grandma found me that. No, some ran businesses. Yeah. So it was always like a normal pathway for me to run my own business. And it wasn't like, oh, that's weird. But nonetheless, I kind of gone through. I decided to move into, like, all right, I want to have a career. So I did electrical engineering. Decided, all right, let's give this a go, because, like, now that's not norm for me, essentially. So I went to my career, worked two years, but during my whole entire work period, I kind of always ran small businesses on the site during my uni days, during my, know, work time as well, even though it was really hard. And, yeah, two years in, I was, like, really sick of working. I just realized I just really wanted to build something for myself.
Nathan Bush: Essentially you were sick of working, so you started an E commerce business.
Ken Lau: Pretty much, yeah. Well, it's a, it's a little bit longer story than that, but yeah, I, I always want to do run a business at the end of the day and it was challenging. I just didn't have the contents. But two years in I realized like, you know what, I think that I can do a better job than this guys right now. And that's pretty much one of the reasons that I'm like, all right, I'm actually going to do it. And yeah, I got out, I had a little bit saving for my full time job. I had experience in terms of running like small, tiny brands. So I jumped out, quit my job, start two direct to consumer brands on ebay. So the first one was a low end mattress brand and the second one was a mountain bike brand and it did fairly well within the first 12 months. Managed to scale the business up to a million dollars in revenue within the first 12 months, which was great, always great for a kid at 23, 20 thought like, oh, wow, I'm doing great in life. But like all things in life that whatever that goes up will probably come down as well. So I got thrown a couple of curveballs in my life and immediately within the first 12 months, the first curveball that came to me was a trademark infringement from my mountain bike brand. Had to surrender all my stock, which was worth about $50,000 at the time. So yeah, whole entire profit for the year kind of worked out. So obviously if you really deflated with that, the second curveball came quite immediately, was just burnout. I was doing everything end to end because when you're young, you're like, I can conquer the world by myself, I can do everything myself. But you don't realize that to actually scale a giant business you actually need to have great people and teams around you. So those are really important lessons. And I think right after that I was having a tiny midlife crisis and Amanda just finished her owners as well. So like, all right Amanda, let's figure out what we're going to do next. So we kind of like jump into doing some research and I think at the same time, I think direct consumer brands were offering like 100 days or 129 day trials and like, oh no, light bulb moment. That was the customer centricity part that's missing from the diary brands that we've been having. And with my experience in mattresses, I figured like the mattress furniture industry is ripe for disruption with that combination. And man and I Had a chat and said, hey, no, let's break this down. If we sell a mattress of $1,000, we just have to sell 8,000 mattresses to have an 8 million dollar business that's pretty decent. And like, let's do the maths again. To sell 8,000 mattresses to 25 million Australians. Is that possible? It's like kind of. So we figure, like it sounds even
Nathan Bush: better when you say the sentence really quickly.
Ken Lau: Yeah, definitely sound as hard. It doesn't sound as hard, but Obviously I know 25 million was in. Our target market is much smaller back then after being in business a couple of years. But we told ourselves that we can't sell 8,000 mattresses to say 25 million pool. We shouldn't be in E Commerce. So I think that was the reason why we're like, let's jump in hard into this. And from my side, I close the ebay store, liquidated all my stocks, essentially spoke to the manufacturer saying, hey, we want to do more of a premium brand right now. And they were like, great. That's what we specialize in. We didn't like you doing low end stuff as well. So great synergy over there. Then Amanda came in from like the marketing and brand side things, I guess.
Nathan Bush: Great. And when you say that you saw the mattress category as a chance to disrupt, was this pre or post brands like Koala and Sleeping Duck being kind of emerging?
Ken Lau: I would say it was around the same time. I think most of the brands that started were around two or three years apart. So they tend to cluster together. Yeah.
Nathan Bush: Perfect timing.
Ken Lau: Yeah, definitely.
Amanda New: Yeah. I guess what we noticed was so during that time, I think Koala and some of the bigger brands out there, they had been around maybe two or three years before. We were like, hey, this is an opportunity here. But I guess what that showed us was that many more brands kept popping up onto the scene. And what that showed us was that maybe customers, they still weren't satisfied with what was in the market. And really that really gave us the confidence to be like, hey, this is a gap. And given Ken's extensive experience in D2C doing whole brand slash product from start to finish, this is really something we could tap into as well.
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Nathan Bush: and what is it about mattresses? Like the mattress industry just it seems a bit shady from the outside. Like anyone who shops for a mattress would say that they're totally confused, they don't know what to believe because you can't see what's inside a mattress necessarily. And you're just going on, you know, gut feel and a little bit, you know, two seconds of lying on this thing. What have you learned about the mattress buying experience in your time so far?
Ken Lau: So it is a little bit shady, isn't it? And I think I'm not going, I think I'm going on record right now to say that I think do some brands do try to keep it that way. So but actually being in the industry is really, really simple. I think the first thing that you I've learned is lots of brands out there having sales from saying hey, I'm selling a queen mattress for the price of the single. So just think about that. How much margin do they have when the customer actually buy the full price of the queen during non sale period? And think about it again, if they can sell it, the price is single and still keep the light switched on. How much margin do they have? And kind of shows like there's a lot of middleman in the industry and obviously with middleman there's like a lot of fat that is in the industry a lot and lots of margins and mockups essentially. So the second thing that I've kind of learned from this is if something sounds like it's made up in the industry, like the foam layers, it's probably made up. Yeah, it's true. But I guess like on a really high level mattresses and stuff, you need to have really good quality fabric, foams, springs, whatever. Maybe it makes it a good mattress as long as you stay in the high, really good quality stuff. But whoever chucks in the name to it essentially is trying to charge customers a couple hundred dollars more just because of this fancy technology.
Nathan Bush: Gotcha. And as you move into a broader range into homewares, does the business model change? Is the margin still in other products where you find you've had to change the way that you've market or stock other products because there's more or less margin in the wider home ways?
Amanda New: Long story short, yes I guess it's been a huge learning curve for all of us, especially coming from say just the mattress with the fabrics and the foams and the springs to now, for example, the bed frame, which is wood in itself, is a very complicated and very sensitive type of material as well as, you know, the prices for wood has gone dramatically, much higher in the last couple of years. So it's kind of like with each product that we launch, we have to relearn how to do products again because it's a brand new type of material that we need to work with. And in terms of how product development works at eva, so we, for all of our products, it usually takes between 12 to 18 months to develop and basically manufacture and bring it to your doorstep. And that it's a, it's quite a long process, 12 to 18 months with just the one product. And the reason why it takes that long is because we want to make sure that the products that we put out to the world are products that actually are what the customer wants. And that involves a lot of market research, competitor research, through to even interviews with customers and non customers to understand their preferences. From there we also do user testing. So thinking about the prototypes that we make here in Australia, in Melbourne, just around the corner, we actually get friends and family and people in the office that just come on and try. How do you assemble this? Did you like the way it was assembled? Was it easy? Was it hard? How did you think about the back of the sofa? Is it comfy? What would you change? And we infused that all the way through from the first prototype, through the next prototype, to hopefully final golden sample. We were like, okay, this is the one, this is the one that we're going to launch out to the world because we've done so much research and so much testing that when we do finally launch, we are pretty confident with the product we put out.
Nathan Bush: And there's a beautiful design aesthetic that goes throughout your product. So it doesn't look like a jumble of products that's just been put together. You could probably walk into an EVA home and go, oh, this is an EVA home. Because it's got that aesthetic. How do you describe the aesthetic that you're going after?
Amanda New: Yeah, so the aesthetic is definitely one of my favorite parts about products we put out. We actually have four sort of brand pillars that we stand by. They are simple. Making sure that the product is, does what it says it does, honest that you know what materials we make. That's why I guess getting B Corp. Is really important for us as well that it's useful so that it actually, it's there for a reason and it actually does it. And also charming. So just that little element of charm, like having the little sort of tool sort of area on the side. What's called the iPad.
Nathan Bush: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. The storage for devices and things like that.
Ken Lau: Yeah, exactly. So every product kind of has like its own charming factor. Like for example, the hideaway table and coffee table. We provide like free courses essentially because that's a necessity. And like for the sofa, we make a tiny pocket at the side so that you can put your remote control. So there's kind of tiny layers that we're not going to charge customer more, but it's more like it's going to be part of your life because you actually kind of need it for your day to day. So that's where you kind of get it from the user research. And that's only possible spending time with customers, actually asking them the question, what do you actually need in your hub life?
Nathan Bush: Yeah, nice. Simple but functional.
Ken Lau: Yep.
Nathan Bush: And beautiful. One of the things that's on the front page on your homepage and it stands out as it differentiates you in market, is the 365 day trial, which you alluded to before. Ken, can you share with us how
Nathan Bush: does a 365 day trial work on a mattress?
Amanda New: That's a big, big question. No, it's a 365 day trial. It's basically an extension of our original 120 night trial. The only difference is that it's a 365 day trial. And that kind of signif, in a way symbolic of us moving away from the mattress sleepy industry to one that is home and furniture and lifestyle. How it works is that you're able to purchase any product from our store and you get up to 365 days to really try the product in not just your home, but really just seeing if it fits into your life. And because of all the research and all the work we put into product development, we are confident that this product will be with you for more than three to 65 days. Which is why we think that this is sort of our kind of our little token of sort of value that we want to put out to customers. Especially, you know, in the last how many three years, now that the world's been quite volatile, this is sort of our little token of appreciation and value to customers.
Nathan Bush: How did you come up with 365 and how did you get the confidence that moving from 120 to 365 wouldn't send you out of business.
Amanda New: That's a great question. We did a lot of risk analysis. I think Ken and I actually originally had this idea about I think almost two years ago. We were in a car park, we were just riffing off ideas and we're like what if we did this? And then I guess we got the confidence over the last few years it's because we have been sort of building up the foundations for product development, ensuring that the products we put out that they can withstand the test of time in terms of the confidence to do it. It's really scary. I mean it's definitely really scary and it definitely does open up a segment of the market that perhaps before this 365 day trial we wouldn't have opened it up too. But again it comes down to us knowing that we put a lot of effort and time into the products we put out and yeah, we just, we just hope that everybody loves it.
Nathan Bush: Beautiful. And have you ever had someone get to or in the previous version, 119 days or 364 days and then put their hand up and really take advantage?
Ken Lau: Definitely. I mean obviously is a numbers game at the end of the day and I think we understand that some people might take advantage of that and that's okay because the business we have assumed and we've made some assumptions that if this certain percentage is going to do that, that's not going to drive us our business obviously.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, and we touched on margin before but obviously you've got to factor in when you're doing the business model. The 365 day trial along with you have a lot of extras on the site, things like Afterpay $100 off your first order, refer a friend, free deliveries and returns. All these things that eat into margin and the bane of E commerce founders lives. How do you keep track of that margin erosion when you're trying to acquire new customers?
Amanda New: That's a really, really tough thing to do. Definitely. Nowadays where there's been a lot of new companies jumping online, the shift to online shopping. The easy answer is to do it regularly and with an incomparable determination to make sure we keep hitting our KPIs and our targets. We actually do track our budget week on week, constantly have open communication lines. But I think at the end of the day it's really finding that alignment across key stakeholders in the business who are in charge of the margins, who are in charge of our budget, our finances and working together as a team to make sure that if one of us is thinking about let's do 100% discount on a product if you hit this particular cart value or something like that, sort of trusting in each other that we can actually remain strategic and remember where we're going at the end of the day. Of course we can always try to out discount, outmaneuver, outspend other people, but that's not very sustainable for us in the long term because we do want to be a brand that will stick around for the next 15, 20 plus years. And so it's trying to remain strategic in that respect. One last thing that we do is always to experiment and try to diversify our channels. I think things have gotten a lot more expensive as well online. So especially with some of the bigger players recognizing that online is the way of the future. And so bigger players means bigger pockets, which means more expensive. Right. And so it's continuing to diversify our distribution channels and continuing to experiment with trying to find what's the next low cost channel we can, we can use for our products.
Nathan Bush: So in terms of customer acquisition cost, I assume that you're talking about the Instagram and Google effect that we've seen in 2022 around customer acquisition costs rising. And it's not, we're not living in the same world as we were even six months ago. Have you found any other channels emerge for you that can kind of help replace the returns that you were getting from those channels previously?
Ken Lau: I think it's experimentation. I think it's really hard to decide which channel is going to be good and bad. And I guess as I say in marketing, you don't know anything unless you actually test it. So yeah, we are testing every other channel and we are not loyal to Google or Facebook. It's just because it's the best channel out there at the moment. So we are dead. But if tomorrow, if a new Facebook comes about, yeah ourselves and including all the whole entire industry will probably move to this. So long story. Unfortunately I can't answer the question but we are testing a bunch of others, other channels right now. Obviously TikTok is one channel that we are testing to figure out how we can crack into it. And not too sure whether venture is suited for that channel at the moment, but with time we'll probably know.
Nathan Bush: And I did a little bit of stalking on your TikTok channel before our chat and you've got some incredible videos up there that are getting over 300,000 views on TikTok. Do you find that that translates into sales or is it more of a Vanity metric at the moment?
Amanda New: Yeah, it's a little bit of a vanity metric, but I think it's also thinking about why we use that channel. So each channel has different purposes, whether or not it's at the top of the funnel or middle or bottom funnel. For TikTok, we do see it as a brand awareness channel. So really right at the top, getting our name out there, not necessarily thinking about targeting mattress specific users or mattress specific people who are in the market. It's kind of part of our shift away from being just a product focused business or a brand to one that is more holistic. Like we are here for home lifestyle. And so when they're ready and they want to purchase a product in the home, hopefully we'll be that sort of front of mind for them.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, and you've done a great job at that awareness on that channel, especially because from the outside, if you go how do I make a bed interesting in a short form? Video context is not an immediate obvious answer. Can you give us any insight into what your process is, especially around TikTok video creation and how to keep it fresh and consistent?
Amanda New: It's definitely, I guess one of the things we've learned is trying to make it as native as possible because I think as with a lot of online channels, ads aren't particularly what people go onto that channel for. And so making sure that there is a hook at the site of the videos and monitoring that view time, making sure that are these videos we're testing and iterating, are they continuing to engage the user? Some things that we found useful is really just to make as organic as UGC as possible. Very minimal cta because at the end of the day we're not wanting them to purchase right now, but it's making sure that they remember the video or remember the name of the brand when it comes to the point that they are ready for purchase.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And in terms of hooks, have you got any tangible examples of hooks that have worked? Because you've got some videos there that have had. That's obviously been very successful and others that have laid a little bit lower and haven't got the traction. What's really taken off for you?
Amanda New: Honestly, we're still learning. A lot of our videos are very different from each other. We have thrown out videos where it's a little more polished, I suppose. So we have our video designer, him working on putting some scenes together that look a bit UGC versus ones that I've been on where I'm literally Recording myself talking to the camera with my dog Milo, and testing and trying what works for different types of audiences on TikTok. So I don't really have a straight answer there. I think it's continuing to test, iterate and trying to find what audiences resonate with, with your brand.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, makes a lot of sense. And when we were first discussing coming
Nathan Bush: on to add to Cart, I was obviously doing research, but I felt like
Nathan Bush: I knew the EVA brand straight away, even though I'm sorry to say I haven't been a customer yet.
Nathan Bush: But I felt like I knew because
Nathan Bush: you had been present in my news feeds and in the news stories through affiliate marketing, through places like Outbrain before,
Nathan Bush: which I thought was really fascinating. Can you tell us a little bit about Outbrain? Because to me it's one of those
Nathan Bush: channels that I think a lot of us would have seen as readers or customers, but not actually experimented with.
Nathan Bush: How does that work for you and
Nathan Bush: what kind of results are you seeing there?
Amanda New: Yeah, so I guess Outbrain, just to give a quick explainer and Outbrain is a native sort of display advertising platform that allows us to advertise on publisher networks. So I guess in terms of what it looks like is, you know, if you go down to an article, at the bottom of the article there's some of these editorial looking ads like kind of sometimes look a bit spammy, sometimes with questions like how to get rid of a pimple in seven days or things like that. So we essentially use that as a top of the funnel. Again, it is very much brand awareness and by we have been testing with quite a few sort of similar platforms, including Taboola as well. But what we found is that this has been the one that's bringing us the lowest cost in terms of clicks. So again, what Ken said before, it's not about being loyal to particular platforms but, but which platforms work for us the best.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, that makes sense. Makes a lot of sense.
Amanda New: A quick shout out to Colin because I promised I would shout him out. He's doing a fantastic job on our brain for us as well.
Nathan Bush: Good work, Colin. We'll put a link to Colin in the show. Notes.
Ken Lau: Maybe not just going to get a lot of LinkedIn requests after this.
Nathan Bush: Don't go near him, don't poach him.
Nathan Bush: All right, so for you as founders now working together on eva, established business, expanding categories, taking over the world, what
Nathan Bush: keeps you up at night now?
Ken Lau: Very, very good question, Nathan. I think if you run your own business today, that's the main things that keeps you up is up at night. Well, for me there's two things I guess as the business kind of grows and you kind of expand from being just say 2 to 5, 10, 15 or to 30, 40, things become less efficient day to day just because it's like as they say, there's an article saying that if the city, like a city, grows, it becomes more efficient because it's self organizing. But in companies as it grows, it is never the case. So I guess as founders, our main responsibility is identifying the roadblocks across every department, knowing the steps and now once you identify it, you unblock it immediately so you can allow your team to actually move as quickly as they can.
Nathan Bush: You've refreshed your website, the new range is about to drop. You've never had more customer service options. Hey, but take a look over there. That boring pile of packaging boxes.
Nathan Bush: Ugh, ugly.
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Ken Lau: so that's something that keeps me day in, day out. And obviously the second thing right now, which is quite pertinent and probably more something that maybe everyone relates to is just Australian businesses are just not earning as much as they used to and obviously there's a lot of talks about inflation in the macro economy right now and just trying to figure out like what the next 12, 18 months gonna look like because like 2020 and 2021 was all about growth, you know, grow at all costs essentially and you can burn as much cash and 22 is a different ballgame immediately right now you have to figure out, all right, how do I run a sustainable business? Obviously money is going to dry up a little bit more right now. You need to get your fundamentals right so that your business can actually survive and actually be sustainable for long term. So obviously at EVA we've focused on building those foundations over the last four years so we are in a good position. But you know, we still see what's coming and you know it's going to affect everyone. So just trying to be ahead of the curve and try to put things in place today. So that in 12 months time we don't get as affected as we can be, I guess.
Nathan Bush: And where are you focusing your efforts when you're putting those things in place for the next 12, 24 months?
Ken Lau: Obviously right now we're trying to get our supply chain in order. So I mean, if anyone's in E commerce, you know, container prices have gone up tremendously. You know, everything comes in containers. Before COVID used to be about $3,000 a container. Now you're paying off of $13,000. So figure out that's actually the fundamental of what drive inflation up essentially. And next thing is just process improvement, trying to figure out where are the inefficiencies in processes for the teams where the overlaps and double communication. Because sometimes you've got team of five and they could be working on two things in this cross communication. So being really deep into the detail, understanding the details and setting up straight processes so that everyone's aligned is something that we really focus on. And obviously ensuring that margins are healthy, even though we do discounting is something that we pay attention to as well.
Nathan Bush: And Ken, going back to your background, how you said that you started in your early 20s as a lone ebay seller by yourself because that's how you naturally work. What have you learned about yourself going from that style of work to now being responsible for a large and a growing team where everyone's got to kind of work together?
Ken Lau: Yeah, it's a, it's a real, it was a massive learning curve. I think like I've always been a lone ranger and I think maybe young, maybe personality, but I over the years had to learn to obviously give away control and trust in the people because you bring them in as specialists and you need to trust that whatever decision that they're making is for the best of the company and for you as well. So that's obviously a massive. When it comes to slango, that was not easy. And I think anyone being a founder will probably understand that as well. And secondly, I think just understanding your response as founder, that instead of executing and being the tools back in the days where it's all about the first sale, the first customer, I'm going to run out right now to deliver this mattress to this customer that couldn't get up the stairs yet to now actually send processes up and actually saying, hey team, this is what you're going to do. And then figuring out like, hey, if you have like five or 10,000 customers, the way you act to a customer might be this way. But if you have 100,000 customers. You can't be making trips out there. You have to change it. But obviously keep the brand value in tech that you still want to be carrying as well. So yeah, if you have the title of a CEO, basically it's called Chief Everything Officer. You're basically everywhere, wherever there's fires, just trying to unblock it.
Nathan Bush: And as someone who, when you had a full time job, had a lot of side projects, do you encourage side projects with your team?
Ken Lau: Yeah, definitely. And I think I can speak for my team. Amanda can probably speak for half a team as well. I think we're pretty open as teams. Everyone have sidekicks out there. We encourage people to go on podcasts. I think we always see Weaver as a platform where just to be realistic, businesses is where people come together and build a service or product essentially. But I think we're not assuming that people are going to be here forever. That's never the case for business. People are going to grow and learn and naturally they want to do so. And naturally as well, we want to help them. So I guess it's a synergy that when you're in eva, we understand what you want to do. Do you want to run a side gig or you want to be this, like, how can EVA help you get there? And obviously we come to inflection point. Can EVA help you get there? Or EVA is a step in terms of your next journey and that kind of conversation is had with almost everyone that we try to as well. And obviously team grows bigger. You kind of have to like learn to empower your managers to have a conversation as well. Because smaller companies, there's only one layer and two layers. And now once you have three or four layers, you can't be speaking to every layer because then manage, be asking, why did you hire me? And when you're just going to jump straight down.
Nathan Bush: It's a really healthy attitude, I think as a founder, because we see it a lot at E Suite where people view their team as like a family. And I get the intention behind seeing it as a family because it's caring and it's supportive, but really I see teams more as like football teams. And it might just be the way I'm wired where people do have lifespan. Some people may be like a great 10 year person, but then you know at some point you've got to move on. You either move up into management, you move through into other roles as well. But no one ever stays static. And it's not this family unit that stays together forever because it's just not Realistic in business, definitely.
Ken Lau: I follow football, so I understand how it works. It's like, yeah, teams and businesses are like, you know, like sports teams essentially. But I think what one of the biggest difference that and you various companies is like the values that you have. Like in eva, we can call ourselves a family or sports team and we can operate like that. But as long as we are caring and we're human to like the situation, that's the most important part because I think that's cool. You don't have to be a terrible person if you are operating like a sports team. And that's never the case anyway.
Nathan Bush: Makes sense. Now, Amanda, you've come from a totally different background to Ken. You've got a background in neuropsychology. I'm not even going to pretend I know what that encapsulates. But can you tell us how has that helped you build and lead an E commerce team?
Amanda New: Yes. So I guess what neuropsychology is, it's basically the study of the relationship between brain and behavior. So it does involve a lot of sort of cognitive testing, implementing sort of cognitive test batteries and interpreting what the data says. So my specialist sort of expertise back in the day was within sort of aging and dementia. So I was diagnosing the dementia is lots of sort of traumatic brain injury sort of stuff and recommending treatment and other recommendations there. How that translates to E commerce. It does sound like a fairly esoteric line of work is I think there's parallels in terms of data. So being able to sort of critically analyze the data or giving me the framework to ask the right questions, ask questions and a lot of questions when I'm trying to sort of understand what data is good data, what data is bad data. And we know in E commerce there's just so much data being thrown us all the time and just being able to sort of weave through it and be like, okay, what does this mean in. In the light of other factors all around and what's going on, you know, in the market at the moment. The second part to it, which I've noticed is I guess it's the people element. So, you know, neuropsychology, half of it is brain, half of this behavior, it's also people. And I think that's kind of come into the way we hire and sort of the culture that we're trying to build at eva, which is very much people and sort of human centered, making sure, you know, understanding that not everyone's going to be around forever, but what can we do in their Time here at EVA that helps them feel like they are growing and trying to hit their career goals as well.
Nathan Bush: What's easier, neuropsychology or E commerce?
Amanda New: Look, they both have their own challenges.
Ken Lau: Electrical engineering, definitely.
Nathan Bush: Ego selling,
Amanda New: definitely challenges to both. But I do enjoy E Commerce a lot more.
Nathan Bush: Yeah. Oh, that's very cool, guys. You have fascinating backgrounds. I love what you're doing, and I can't wait to see where it goes from here. I've got a sense that this is just the beginning for yourselves and eva.
Nathan Bush: Before we go, a little bit of
Nathan Bush: real world advice, I think, for our listeners. I think they'd appreciate this. If we've got people going mattress shopping at the moment, obviously they're going to check out EVA along their journey. Do you have any secrets to how to pick the best mattress for you?
Amanda New: So the short story is you've got to sleep on it for more than 10 minutes in the store, maybe even up to 365 days.
Nathan Bush: Okay. All right. So just experience it.
Amanda New: It's very much an experience thing. I think everybody's body is different and so there isn't really a one size fits all. It's really trying and see what works with your body and giving it enough time to really see if that mattress is right for you. And also sort of considering the fact that a lot of people who do change mattresses, they might have been on a mattress for the last 12, 15 years, haven't changed the mattress, which is way too long. But when they move on to a new mattress, it might at first feel uncomfortable, but just giving it some time, because over time, the mattress will eventually mold to the way you sleep. And also giving you, and if you've got a partner, both of you guys, an opportunity to try it together as well.
Nathan Bush: You know, the trick that I've got as well is never buy the perfect mattress. Because if you get the perfect mattress at home, anytime you go to a hotel or stay somewhere else, you just whinge about how bad the mattress is because you've got a better one at home, whereas you have a mediocre one at home. Everywhere else seems great.
Ken Lau: Does that mean you don't have great sleep every night then?
Nathan Bush: Well, you got like an okay sleep. Actually, my theory doesn't stack up at all.
Ken Lau: No, that's a fair point. And I think we see a lot of people whinge about, oh, I wish we had an eva, you know, when we go to travel. But yeah, I think like Amanda said, like, bodies and everything else is so different. There's no one size fit all out there, I guess. So I think as a brand, as a retailer, our job is to make sure that, all right, we're going to get the product to you next day, we're going to have GPS tracking work, we're going to work around your lifestyle. You can choose delivery dates up to three months. We got the trial period. Essentially we've taken the barrier entry, those use that was very common in those industry. But then the experience itself is completely up to you because everyone's different, different personalities, body shapes and sizes. Yeah, yeah.
Nathan Bush: So if everyone's experience with the mattress is totally different, but you can control and give the best experience of everything that goes into experiencing the mattress, then you're in a good place.
Ken Lau: Yeah, definitely.
Nathan Bush: So what's next? What is next for yourselves and the EVA team? What have you got your eye on?
Ken Lau: So we'll be launching a couple more products before the end this year, so definitely watch this space. I think apart from that, we'll just really focus in terms of execution and just ensuring that we built the right foundations for growth for the next 12 months and obviously the next couple of years ahead as well. Right.
Nathan Bush: And so if we've got people listening
Nathan Bush: to this and gone. I love what Amanda and Ken are talking about. I love their attitude to business and E commerce. What's the best way for them to get in touch?
Amanda New: Yeah, just hit us up on LinkedIn. Or if you're around Brunswick area in Melbourne, we'd love to go get a coffee. If you've got a dog, bring a dog. You can be my dog.
Nathan Bush: What kind of dog have you got?
Amanda New: It's a feisty Jack Russell Maltese. He thinks he's bigger than everyone in the world.
Nathan Bush: I think you've just scared off all the dog owners that were going to bring their dogs around.
Amanda New: Oh, no, we need an alpha dog to come in to show him who's boss.
Nathan Bush: There are some brilliant E commerce businesses around that Brunswick area though, aren't there?
Amanda New: Yeah, definitely. There's definitely quite a few, but we're always interested in meeting up and yeah, we have a calendarly link that's always open, so just let us know.
Nathan Bush: Brilliant. Amanda and Ken, thank you so much for sharing your story on Add to Cart.
Ken Lau: Thanks, Dan.
Amanda New: Thanks.
Nathan Bush: Still awake, still with us. Of course you are. Because you don't have an EVA mattress and of course because the content is
Nathan Bush: just so unbelievably good.
Nathan Bush: Now, if you want to get your hands on an EVA mattress, we've got a little code for you. Visit eva.com au that's eva.com au and use the code add to cart all one word to score a free pillow with every order over $800 and you'll get the 365 day guarantee. Obviously add to cart all one word as the discount code@eva.com tncs apply. All right, here are the three big takeaways that I took away from our chat with Ken and Amanda. Number one the TikTok experiment. Now I got excited researching EVA and Despite having over 300,000 views on some of their TikTok videos, I was really surprised to hear Amanda refer to those views as vanity metrics. Despite the big numbers, the EVA team are still experimenting with with different types of content and how they can get more viewers from the top of the funnel in TikTok and into real sales. So if you're considering TikTok, don't get put off by big or small view counts of your competitors or other people in the industry. They may not mean anything more important that you get in and start experimenting on TikTok for your audience though. Number two two outbrain as an awareness Channel now, it's not an advertising channel that has come up too often, if ever on Add to cart, but it was interesting to hear Ken say that outbrain brings the lowest cost per click for eva. So if you've seen Outbrain, you might think that it's a little bit spammy or cheap, but given the prices of other channels, it might be worth a shot if you're looking to grow awareness. The third tip that we have is the 10 minute 365 day mattress test. I love that Amanda and Ken took us behind the scenes of the mattress industry. I know it's not E commerce, but hey, we all need to sleep. Their tips for buying a new mattress with confidence were great. When they said if something sounds like it's made up in the industry, that is the foam layers, it's probably made up. They told us to make sure we lie on a bed for 10 minutes minimum. Test it together if you sleep with a partner. No, not in that way you sickos lie down on the bed for 10 minutes and if possible get a mattress with a 365 day guarantee. Of course. To get the highlights of today's episode, head on over to add to cart.com and sign up for our free newsletter each Tuesday we will see send Monday's episode summary links and discount codes for you to go next level on. And if you're looking to explore your next e commerce opportunity, come and visit us at E Suite. We're a dedicated E Commerce talent agency connecting the best e Commerce talent with
Nathan Bush: the fastest growing brands in Australia.
Nathan Bush: Head on over to esweettalent.com where you can download the free E Commerce Salary Guide and sign up up to our weekly e Commerce job emails. Thanks for listening and until next time, keep those customers adding to cart.
