Bettina McLeod: I sent out a hundred boxes and of those hundred ninety nine of them bought. Most people don't want a refund, they want service. They just want you to help them to make a decision about a product. The people who are client facing there is not one of them here who hasn't either owned an E commerce brand themselves or have run my brand because I make them.
[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. 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 E commerce talent agency E Suite. Now, if you thought there were pretty much just two main ways to shop online and in store, you would be mistaken.
Nathan Bush: Of course there's another option.
Nathan Bush: There's always options and today's guest has developed one which brings the store to your home. Bettina McLeod is the founder and the CEO of Try Home, a digital platform allowing brands to offer customers a way to touch, feel and of course, try on products from the comfort of their own lounge room. With a background in buying and selling e commerce businesses, Bettina realized that much loved quality brands were missing out on sales because customers haven't been able to get their hands, quite literally their hands on the products. By developing tech to support this process, Bettina and The team at TryaHome have seen average order value increases of up to 88% for brands such as her own Siren Swimwear, one of the early adopters. In this chat, Bettina shares why she believes customers don't want a refund, they just want service. She also shares how her team developed an influencer feature and how Try at Home is gearing up to send everyone's favorite Aussie brands to lounge rooms all over the world. So thanks to our partners, Shopify plus and Paclio, here's our conversation with with Bettina McLeod, founder and CEO of Try at Home. Bettina, welcome to Add to Cart.
Bettina McLeod: Hi, how are you?
Nathan Bush: Good, thanks. Now you've come straight off the back of winning a really important award, the osmumpreneur Digital Innovation Award.
Nathan Bush: What was that like and what did that mean to you?
Bettina McLeod: Yeah, look, it was a great honor to be recognized in the space of digital innovation. The interesting part about that is it's not the first time that's come Up. We were kind of recognized at that from retail Global, like, kind of pinned us as the top three in the innovative space. Same with online retailer brands were coming to us and going, hey, you guys are the most innovative. Stand here. Blah, blah, blah. So it's the industry who's been telling us that we're the innovators. So that's pretty cool.
Nathan Bush: Do you see yourself as an innovator?
Bettina McLeod: Yeah, I think that my space in business has definitely been looking at problems and then coming up with solutions. And over time, you start to see things very differently. Instead of just seeing the possibility of fixing something, you see the possibility of what could be. And so, yeah, I think I've definitely stepped more into that space than ever before.
Nathan Bush: That's a perfect segue. So I'd love to hear around the possibility of what you saw with Try at Home, which is what we're here to talk about. Can you share the problem that you were solving and the opportunity that you saw with Try at Home?
Bettina McLeod: So I buy and sell businesses. That's kind of what I do. And about 10 years ago, I bought an E commerce brand from a couple of ladies on the Northern beaches of Sydney. It was a beautiful brand. It's called Siren Swimwear. And that brand, it had a huge following of customers who absolutely loved it and would share it on Facebook and talk about it. But the stats said that they weren't actually buying anything. So I was like, okay, I got a lot of fans, but does that really count now? I'd come from bricks and mortar before that. And so this whole recognition of, hey, I've got 3% conversion rate, yay. I was like, I don't even get that. Like, in a bricks and mortar store, if you're not converting 90% of who comes to the door, there's something wrong. So I recognized that this low conversion rate was a real issue. So what I did was I did a survey to my Facebook customers and got their phone numbers, and I rang 100 of the top fans and said to them, hey, thanks for liking and sharing, but why aren't you buying anything? And they've all said, well, we need to try it on. Where can we try it on? So I said, well, look, I don't have a store in Melbourne or Adelaide or Sydney. Can I say send my store out to you? And so I would box up package of five and send them out to them. And they're all different styles. I sent out a hundred boxes, and of those hundred, 99 of them bought.
Nathan Bush: Wow.
Bettina McLeod: Yeah. And many of them Bought multiple items. And so that was kind of where Try at Home was born. Because I went, oh, my goodness. That's all they need. They need to touch it, try it and feel it in the comfort of their own home before they have to make a decision.
Nathan Bush: And what was the biggest barrier they were getting over? Was it the style? Was it the fit, Was it the quality?
Bettina McLeod: It's all of the above. Because when you come to a new brand, if you're familiar with that brand, let's say it's a brand that you walk into in Westfield, it's, you know, country road, you know, their sizing is really small. Trying another brand, you know, it's really big, you're familiar with it, you know what the quality's like, et cetera, when you're an online store store, and your pure play in particular, it's people don't necessarily know what your brand is like. And so you've got to be able to get across to them the ethos of your brand. Why, why the brand is created, why it's there, what the market is that you're really catering for and what the quality of the product is and how it's going to fit on your body. And we recognize that there was all these virtual tools out there, but that doesn't cover what it actually feels like on me. We want to try and address. Does it feel like, does it flow? Does it feel it like? I've got a wool jumper on right now? Is it itchy? Is it soft? Like, you can't tell that from a picture. So being able to just touch it, try it, feel it is what they wanted, just like you would if you were to walk into any bricks and mortar store.
Nathan Bush: And that's an incredible conversion rate. What do you consider a good conversion rate online now?
Bettina McLeod: Well, we have phenomenal results with conversions. So Emma Sirens brand over 18 months. When we did this testing, we tested it in Australia and in America and to prove that it works here. But will the same thing work over there? We had a 66% increase in our average order value over the whole entire 18 months. It got as high as 88%. That was huge. We surveyed thousands of customers and they told us There was over 600 replies. We had 52% of customers said that they wouldn't have even tried our brand if we didn't offer try at home. And the other stat that was interesting that came out of it was that we reduced our return, our refund rate, from 30% down to 1%. Virtually everybody bought because we had this Exchange service that worked and captured. Most people don't want a refund, they want service. They just want you to help them to make a decision about a product. So we were able to integrate all of those things over time into the platform.
Nathan Bush: I love that quote. Most people don't want to refund, they want service. There's a really nice way of putting it. So talk us through the solution. So from that moment with sirens, where you've gone, okay, maybe I'll send you out five here to try. How have you turned that into try at home? And what does the offering look like now?
Bettina McLeod: So what I recognized was that the front end offering of try at home is highly desirable to a customer. They want to be able to make a selection and they want to be able to touch and try them. What I didn't expect was the absolute nightmare chaos that it created in the back end of your every business. So for years I battled through with girls in the back office juggling pieces of paper, and I don't know whether that order's out, whether it's come back, how many they return, how much am I charging them. It was complex and we ended up changing across four different platforms of which it ended up that no platform could do exactly what we needed it to do. And that's why we end up creating the tech. But it also proved that when you plug in a whole heap of random apps, so we kind of had about 20 apps to make this function. None of the apps talk to each other, so you can't get accurate data. Now when we built it as a platform end to end, so we're not just a front end app, we're actually an entire platform. When we built it like that, we discovered that we were able to get data off every single point and we could shift the needle, even if it was 1% on every single point across that. And that made it really exciting because then I was able to build a whole set of settings within the app to be able to trigger different functions in the different parts of the customer journey, which ultimately always focused on what the customer wanted. And when you please the customer, the customer at the end of the day ends up buying more. So, yeah, that's basically how it's worked.
Nathan Bush: Hey, hey, hey.
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Nathan Bush: Actually listen to the rest of this
Nathan Bush: app and then get your little scrap
Nathan Bush: scrolling fingers over there. We're going to save the link for you in the show notes. So let's talk through that customer journey, can we? So if I'm shopping on sirens and I see the sign for try at home, am I adding five items to the cart? How does it work from a user perspective?
Bettina McLeod: From a user, they go and put one product into their cart just as they normally would. They go to a brand, they stick a product in the cart, but often that's as far as the customer gets because they see the price point. Let's say it's $200 for a wool jumper and they go, that's I really like it. But. And then they hesitate and they always hesitate around those factors of I'm not sure if spending $200 is worth it because I don't know what it feels like, don't know whether it's going to fit me, how it's going to look on, etc. It's at that point and on the product page we do have that. You can buy it or you can try three things for a deposit, but once they get it to the cart, we basically say to them, if you would like to buy it, it's $200. If you would like to try, add two more products to the cart, you can try all three for $99. So it's a bit of a no brainer. You're either buying one product for $200 or you're getting to try three for half the price. So it's good value. And that's one of the things that we recognize that customers want is they want value when they're selling, spending their time, it takes time to shop online and it takes time to select items. So being able to give them good value for their time is really worthwhile for them. So then they just check out with their deposit and the products get delivered and then they log back into the brand, into their portal and in the back end of that portal it shows them all of the pictures of their products and they get to just select, keep, keep, return, whatever the selection is and Then tap to pay. So it's a really simple process. And then it allows them their return label, which they don't even need to go to the post office. They can just stick it on and stick it in into any red post box and then it's tracked to come back. But at that process when there is a return. So we build a model around returns. We also link them back into now, would you like to do an exchange for the product that you are returning? So even if they bought things, we can send them back into that loop to continue shopping again. And we kind of have a really good flow around that because we run as a platform, not just as an app that touches one piece.
Nathan Bush: And is that original amount that $99 in this case, does that come off the end purchase price or is that refunded if they buy?
Bettina McLeod: Yeah, so it just comes off whatever they purchase or refunded if they. Well, we're really good at rescuing refunds. So as I said before, it's not that customers usually want a refund and often the brands are like, it's so much easier if I just give them a refund. Because trying to handle an exchange is a nightmare. It requires back end admin and people emailing backwards and forwards and lots of communication and many, many days we put all of that back in the customer's hands so that they can shop 247 on their own, including exchanges. And unlike a lot of the exchange portals, we can exchange like product for anything you like, not just like for like. It's not just swap a size or swap a color. It's I don't want to top anymore, I want a dress. That's fine, we can do that.
Nathan Bush: Gotcha. And if they don't buy anything, do they cover the postage back? Does the customer ever pay if they choose not to buy any of the items sent out?
Bettina McLeod: The brand has the setting ability as to whether how they want to charge. But we have algorithms that tell us exactly what works best, what converts the best, what makes the most in the customer's orders. And if the brand wants to charge a restocking fee, there is a setting in there. But once again, there is a reason for having all of these settings. And that's kind of what we go through in that onboarding process with each brand. Because every brand is unique and we specifically spend time with them to work out what settings they should trial. And then we go back and refine the settings. Each month we meet with them with our client success team to work out how they shift the needle Just one more notch and I can give you a good example of that if you like. I just had one in the last week which was super, super cool. So we have this kids brand called Billy Cart Kids. They're these little orthotic sho. They're the cutest little things. And in July she was offering try three. So they got to try three in the cart and check out. And her conversion from a buy order to a tri order, the increase in the average order was 34%. Now when she switched her, you know, we run all of these data analytics on all the brands and we came back to her and we said, look, we've noticed some patterns and we think that you should change your tri number from three to four. So we increased it to four products and that was in August. And her average order value went from an increase of 34% from a normal buy order to 93%. So these are the capabilities of the data that we collect to be able to define, really pinpoint every setting to go, hey, if you shift this, this is what's going to happen. And so we spent a lot of time with the brands, just educating them on some of the things that they're being told in the industry that are just the mistruth. So for example, when I was running my trials on sirens, I went to the US and offered try at home service out of Australia. Try at home service with shipping fees of 15 to $25. Right in the land of no shipping, like free shipping everywhere. We were charging maximum shipping rates. And what happened? We had orders from every single state in America except for Alaska. I don't know that they're options.
Nathan Bush: It might not be your audience.
Bettina McLeod: Yeah, and they didn't come from Hawaii because we weren't advertising there, but the rest of America, every single state, which really screwed up our marketing because we were hoping just to hone on one area of America and really selling well there. But the fact was that customers value the service way more than they value some free shipping or 10% off or whatever, whatever. So we kind of broke all of those myths and we spend a lot of time with the brands going, look, we know you're doing this because this is industry standard nowadays, but let's see what works with your brand and your customers and let's keep as much profit in the brand as possible and the happiest possible customers that you can because they'll become your raving fans. Which is what happens with try at home customers. They love, love, love it.
Nathan Bush: And from a brand's perspective, then with those recommendations, do you see them changing other things such as packaging to be able to do this more efficiently? So if you're sending four shoes out, rather than doing four separate boxes of shoes, are they coming up with new packaging and shipping solutions?
Bettina McLeod: Yes, they are. And it's amazing because it's really helping them to refine their costs within their brands. Anyway, so we've got a hat brand at the moment that's got these beautiful hats, but they're like, my hat box only fits one hat at a time. And so she's building a hat box that's just a few centimeters higher and then she can stack the hats in there and she can get three hats out. Now, of course, you try three hats products, you're more than likely going to buy more than one because they're so hard to buy, you know, they're so hard to find and to get that right fit and feel. And if you've got a quality product, we ask these questions to brands all the time. If you were at an event where you could physically get customers to touch and feel your product, do they love them? And if they say, hands down, yes, all I need is to get it into their hands, it's like, that's exactly what we do, is we just get your products into the customer's house.
Nathan Bush: Absolutely. And of those customers that say you're receiving five hats, I understand you've got a certain time frame as a customer to return the items that you don't want. Is it five days?
Bettina McLeod: Once again, that's a setting.
Nathan Bush: Gotcha.
Bettina McLeod: And there's some really cool things that we do with those settings. So I did a trial one day where I went, you know what? I'm on sale and I need to be able to get a fast turnaround in my stock so that if that person didn't buy that item, I can make sure I can resell it again. So I change my shipping to express shipping for the price of normal shipping and free returns. And you have two days to try it on. And so I just sped up the time frame and it spread up the churn of the product and we were able to keep the customer happy, but also get that flow going.
Nathan Bush: Yeah. So important in fashion especially.
Bettina McLeod: Yeah, yeah. But there are things to. Once again, things to consider with a customer. When you put the customer first, it always works out better for the brand. So what I also discovered in doing that experiment was that the most acceptable time frame with. With this particular type of product that you're trying on and fitt five days was Much better because a lot of people wanted to try it over a weekend and so they needed to be able to get the parcel and go, okay, I've got time to actually make a decision. We also know though, from the stats that the longer they keep it in their house, the more likely they are to keep more products.
Nathan Bush: I was about to say, because customers don't like returns, retailers don't like returns. Customers generally don't like returns. It's part of the process that no one really enjoys doing. Do you find that you have retailers increasing their basket size because customers get these five items and go, I'd rather keep them now rather than go through the process of sending them back.
Bettina McLeod: That's one of my things that I don't want customers to do. I want them to buy better quality. And this is what we look for. We're looking for quality brands with quality buyers. We want them to buy quality and if it's something that they don't like or didn't fit, please send it back. Because a, we gain much better data for the brands when they send returns and they can tell us what's wrong with that product if you get the same. We did this experiment with a brand who said exactly the same thing. And they had cycling gear, you know, for cycling and the cycling pants for women. They were getting very low returns. But we went on to some sites that were resellers of like marketplace kind of resellers of products. And the brand was always used and they go, oh, I've never actually worn these. I've tried them on. That was too difficult to return. So the brand didn't even know. And we found hundreds of these comments about how their cycle pants were too tight and they didn't. They made the returns process difficult. And they all mentioned and I would never return and buy from that brand again. So sometimes the brands don't even know the harm that they're doing by making returns difficult. So we want to make it easy for them to return. And we also recognize that it's got to be simple and easy for the customer. But buy better quality products so that you're not just buying a $10 t shirt and go, oh well, it's only 10 bucks. I'll keep it. Because we're the second largest landfill country in the world for fashion. So yeah, we've definitely got a problem there with us lazy Aussies wanting to not send anything back. Maybe that says something about having to deal with the post office.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. Have you had any brands be Fun with the messaging or the content that goes around it. I can imagine that if you're sending someone five hats, there's a great chance to send a video explaining what great hat fits are like and explaining the products that they've got. Is there anything that goes above and beyond just sending the product out?
Bettina McLeod: Yeah, look, brands, creative brands are always creative marketers. And there is some fabulous things that I've seen out there marketing. Some very, very cool and some very cheeky ones. But there is also ways that you can send things to customers that they really enjoy. The extra effort that you go to. Whether I got, I get hooked on some of the brands that we bring on. We brought in this beautiful sheet company and I'm like, oh, my goodness, these sheets are amazing. I need to get some. And so here I am ordering all these sheets and they've got these beautiful tissue paper and these beautiful handwritten messages. And I was like, handwritten messages are lovely. But most importantly, it's about making sure that customers actually get some of the core products that your brand sells. So what I've identified with a lot of brands that we've been working with is that they have core ranges, but it's often not the core range that gets sold online. So let's say they're a dress brand. They've got this lovely dress. People go, oh, the hot pink is in. I'm going to buy this hot pink dress. But if they were sent out a black slip cami basic T shirt, and it could be an expensive T shirt that they have in their range that they know when people put them on their bamboo and they feel amazing or whatever, they would go, oh, this fits with these other things in my wardrobe. This would be fantastic. I will keep this as well. So we've actually got some features that we've got. We've tested them extensively and now we're building out the feature in the tech to be able to offer some VIP products if you like, so that it's an extra service to these customers who go, I don't know what. I don't know about what I want from your brand, but it is an easy way to be able to get more products into the customer's hand and still the customer have a really good experience around it.
Nathan Bush: And those features seem to feed into your original vision that you spoke about, around being able to take the shop front into people's homes. So I can imagine that where you are today, in terms of the offering, it's going to be very different in a couple of years. Time.
Bettina McLeod: Yeah, we've got. I can't tell you too much. We'll have to come back.
Nathan Bush: I was going in for the scoop there.
Bettina McLeod: We do have something that we're working on, a very, very exciting product that is part of my big vision for this and the need that's out there and what the customers have told me. And so, yeah, we've got a release in the first second quarter next year that is going to be very, very cool, but all tied to the same thing. It will definitely help Australian brands get to other countries. So we want to be able to get Australian brands into the uk, into Europe, into the us. US customers. It's something like. Can't remember what the last stat I saw something like 98% of the US customers do not shop outside of the US and they love Australian brands, but they'll only buy them over there. So it's breaking these borders. And now, after Covid, this is a perfect time to be able to set up that functionality so that brands in Australia can get their products international and not just get them out, we know how to do that, but actually successfully get them back in that reverse logistics chain cost effectively. And that's what Danny, our CEO COO here, does. He's an expert at that internationally, getting that whole reverse logistics thing. So he's building out some of that for us as well. So it's really cool.
Nathan Bush: Very exciting. I love the sound of it. So we were talking just before we jumped onto the pod around the last, you know, the development effort that you've put in and you've got about to launch some great new features and bring on some brilliant new brands. Tell us about, from a technology perspective, how brands can integrate Try At Home onto their existing E commerce platforms and what that process is. Because we talked about, retailers don't like processing returns because they're often clunky, multiple systems, all that sort of stuff. So can you talk us through, from a retailer's perspective, how it's integrated and then works in managing those orders?
Bettina McLeod: So our core product is through Shopify. So we're in the Shopify app store and we're building out our integrations for BigCommerce, WooCommerce, Magento and private custom platforms. At the moment, we'll be able to work with all of those and our platform, because it's a full, extensive platform. We then plug into their warehousing system, wherever that may be. Now, that could be our beautiful mumpreneurs who have got gorgeous little products that they're still shipping from home. Or right through to 3pls or own warehousing system. So we integrate into all of those and we integrate into whatever freight setup, you know, they use as well. So it's pretty seamless. Actually. We can do an onboarding integration within an hour. So yeah, it's pretty simple.
Nathan Bush: That's great.
Nathan Bush: And then from a process perspective, from
Nathan Bush: a warehouse perspective, as you're getting returns in, is there a portal that's used to keep track of what's out with customers at the moment and what they expect to come in?
Bettina McLeod: Yeah, so there's a really cool order management system that we use. And so the brands have this dashboard and it basically, instead of if they're, for example, if they're a Shopify store, they're used to seeing all of their orders there. But we're really extensive in being brand friendly. It's like, I don't just need to see my orders, I need to know exactly what to action and when to action it and what not to touch. Because our system's doing it for them. So basically it gives them a dashboard and says, you know, go here. These are the things, actions that you need to do today and the rest of the process in between, they can see. And so it kind of gives them this range of all of the different statuses, different colors, etc. So that they can see in those chunks and they can refine them into how many orders are out, how many are coming back in. We're working with our data guys right now to be able to give some really cool analytics around that so that you know exactly what to predict. I mean, a lot of the bigger brands are asking us, if we've got this much stock out, what's the likelihood of what we're going to sell off that. So we are able over time to be able to give them, hey, you got this much out, you're going to make this much money. So all of those things are really helpful as well as what I need to action as far as you don't have to touch exchanges, you don't have to communicate with the customer. The system pretty much does all of that until you get to an absolute end point of a refund. And then if there is something to be actioned there, we also have the ability for them to be able to slow that process of, to be able to communicate with the customer still if they want to. So otherwise they can automate the system to go no process or refunds, don't want to, don't want to touch it. So they can set that up in the settings as to how they want that to function. Basically, the system allows two things. It allows obviously a significant increase in conversions, a significant increase in the average order value and a drop in the refunds. But it also automates so much of what's happening in the back end. It reduces that staff weight in the back end, particularly on that customer service side, while still keeping the customer service at a premium.
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 at that boring pile of packaging boxes.
Nathan Bush: Ugh, ugly.
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Nathan Bush: really interesting point you made around forecasting and keeping track of inventory. I can imagine there'd be some accountants that would have heart attacks at the thoughts of try at home. How do you do most of your retailers see items that go out as still stock on hand or do they see them as sales?
Bettina McLeod: It's interesting around does this sit on the balance sheet? Everybody has a different system. We're actually building some integrations for zero, so we will be able to just directly put these into and I imagine we will also build some settings around that. So if people want it to sit on the balance sheet, it can sit there. If they want it to sit in sales until it comes back, all of that. So yeah, we'll be able to direct their inventory where they where they're wanting it to sit.
Nathan Bush: It's a really compelling offer, especially from exactly what you said from serving a customer as well as the uplifts and the growth that you can see and the ease of processing. Do you get any objections from retailers when you first tell them about the concept?
Bettina McLeod: Yeah, same old questions. There's the same three questions they basically ask around. Is this going to increase my shipping rates? What happens if people don't return anything? And what's the other one? There's a third one as well. I can't remember off the top of my head. But all of those things, once they get into the flow of it, they just become insurmountable. They just disappear. Because the, the upswing in what they get is just so much greater than what that slightly raised cost might be to their shipping or their process of redesigning some packaging or whatever it might be. And we also help brands with collaboratively being able to get the best rates with shipping in 3PL. And we work with 3PLs who understand this return model. I'll just give you an example there. A lot of the brands that have come to us are already using 3 PLs and their charge rates for return is $5. Now, $5 does not fit into a try at home model. Whereas we've got warehouses that understand we are shipping a lot more out and we are expecting the return. And so we have three PLs who do exactly the same thing for 55 cents. So part of the process of talking to the brand is what are you doing right now and what are your biggest problems and how do we solve them? Because we don't just solve the problem of can a customer try the products at home from your site automatically. We solve a whole heap of other business problems. Another example where we're working with a brand at the moment who's $100 million brand and they came to us and said, love to try at home. That's fantastic. We want to do that. However, our biggest problem, because you're dealing with somebody in a department, in the ecom department there, the biggest problem is these influencers. And I'm like, what do you mean? I use hundreds of influencers to try on our product ranges every month and facilitating getting their product out to them, like getting them to select the product, getting it out to them, getting them to try it, do their reels, et cetera, and then send it back. And being able to track all of that is a, a nightmare.
Nathan Bush: That's a great use case.
Bettina McLeod: That is really cool, isn't it? I know. I went, oh, that's genius. I can create that into a feature. So we went away and I went back to my text team and I'm like, we need an influencer feature.
Nathan Bush: That's brilliant.
Bettina McLeod: Yeah, yeah. Our functionality absolutely caters for that. Influencers can go in, they can select their try items, whether it's three, five, whatever the brand lamps, and then they can be sent out the stock and look, if they don't, don't return their stock, they'll be charged. So yeah, it saves the brand and it also saves the brand having to run around and chase. Like it's very hard to track all of that. So running around chasing all of that is just an I remember.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, especially when you've got influencer agencies or whatever agencies managing the influencers. They don't want to be managing products. So if the influencer can get the product straight off the site, work it out themselves. Closes all those loops.
Bettina McLeod: Yep, absolutely.
Nathan Bush: Last question I have for you on that is then tying all this up. So how's the commercial model work for Try at home? Where does a retailer pay?
Bettina McLeod: So it's a free app to install and the fees are very similar to Afterpay. So pretty much all brands have got Afterpay. We take a clip of what is produced and yeah, that's basically how it works. So it's a bit of a no brainer. After pay, split payments into four, we split payments into two and offer the Try service and offer the return service and offer all of the other features and settings and things that go on.
Nathan Bush: Now I'm looking at your screen at the moment and you've got this beautiful office on the Gold Coast. Very jealous with your water views there and you've got a great team around you. I've met a few of them now at events and organizing today's chat. They must love working with you. Someone who buys and sells E commerce businesses at the forefront of ideas, always looking for new ideas. Do you find that your experience and enthusiasm feeds into them? Have you found that your team are now starting to start their own side businesses as well?
Bettina McLeod: My team are amazing. We're really careful about how we hire. All of my team own shares in the business so they're all very heavily invested in the success of other brands and we look for people who really want to help grow brands. You know, that's where my passion is and theirs as well. So that's really cool. However, the people who are client facing there is not one of them here who hasn't either owned an E Commerce brand themselves or have run my brand because I make them. So I kind of get them in and go, okay, this is what you've got to do is you've got to become the brand owner for a month and you've got to see all of the issues that occur with brands. You need to understand them, et cetera, et cetera. The thing that we're finding hard right now, I said to one of the girls the other day, one of the new girls who came in and she's been running the brand for a month and I'm like, how's it going? She's a breeze. And I'm like, have you had any problems, you know what? And I said, how long do you spend on running the brand? And she goes, 10 minutes a day. And I'm like, oh, okay. We have made it that easy. And it's so refined that it just, it's a system that runs itself. So yes, it's a bit of a test baby for us and it gets passed around in here.
Nathan Bush: Oh, it's so good. We had Simon Molnar on talking obviously about his experience with Ice Jewelry and how it's fed the idea for afterpay and now flagship. So I think there's something really nice around having your own retail brand that you can try and find these opportunities. But then I love what you've done, taking us to the next level and bringing your team into to use that as to be a retailer.
Bettina McLeod: Yeah, they get a lot of experience out of it and we can test things and trial things. We don't just go out to the brands and go, hey, give this a go. It didn't work. We're like, give this a go because we know it works.
Nathan Bush: I love that approach. So good.
Nathan Bush: And you're growing the team at the moment.
Nathan Bush: How are you finding the E commerce talent pool on the Gold Coast?
Bettina McLeod: Look, it's interesting that the Gold coast is limited in our scale of people to employ here. However, there are not a lot of opportunities on the coast in this fast growth startup, very exciting space, E commerce tech, it's a pretty cool space to be in. So. And I'm not from this background and I am absolutely 1000% in love with tech now and would definitely stay in tech. I love it. So look, a lot of the talent that we have come across to us just, they absolutely love it because there's not a lot of opportunities like this around. So they're loving the fact that we have a great lifestyle here on the coast as well as really progressive products and innovation that we're putting together and we're working with the latest technologies. We've got a very solid tech team here with a really great cto. So yeah, it's been great finding the right diamonds here on the coast.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, definitely diamonds. We're finding that same in fringe areas of the coast. Byron Bays, the Gold coast, the Sunshine Coast. There's less, but there are definitely diamonds and some great opportunities in there if you look hard enough.
Bettina McLeod: Yes, absolutely, absolutely.
Nathan Bush: So you've given us some hints, but what's next? What's next on your radar for yourself and the try at home team besides
Bettina McLeod: the next product that I can't tell you about yet that doesn't help us. I can tell you about expansion plans. Every day we have brands reach out to us from Dubai, the us, the uk, Spain, Italy. They're coming from everywhere. So we have just recently been selected as one of the 10 brands to go into the US maps program. So it's backed by the local government and the federal government and the state government and the federal government and about 12 of the best in residence entrepreneurs that there are, I think next week I've got mentoring sessions with VUV from Go1, so it's going to be very cool. And that program, we work with them for the next six months to prepare our brand for entering into the US and then we'll be doing our US road trip over there mid next year and introducing our brand in those countries and setting up our teams over there. So middle of next year we've kind of got the map of going to uk, the US and Europe and integrating our sales and client success and our onboarding teams into those countries and then piecing together this whole big global map that we're going to do. So yeah.
Nathan Bush: How good? Massive. Twelve months coming up. So if we've piqued the interest of retailers in Australia or potentially team members who want to come and work with you on the Gold coast, what's the best way for them to get in touch?
Bettina McLeod: Probably best through our website. So go to our website tryathome.com and you'll be able to find our contact us page or our jobs page. I think there's like nine positions there or something at the moment that we're looking forward growing very rapidly. We've got a backlog of brands that we're about to do a big onboard for. So yeah, we're definitely ready and prepared to scale up, but I do want to find these great brands with quality products. So if you're a brand out there, there, we're looking for men's brands, we're looking for plus sized brands, we're looking for interesting products. Don't define us just as fashion. We work in homewares. We've got some really cool key features coming up for the beauty industry and for the health product industry. I had, about two years ago I had lunch with a guy who was selling protein powder and he went, how can try at home help me? And I went, I don't know, let me think about it from a customer's perspective, which is always my first thought. If I was a customer and I was going on to your brand to buy a protein Powder. And let's say I'm buying vanilla. If you had a tick box there that said, can I try a sample of strawberry and chocolate, I'd probably tick that. And so then when I receive it, and one of the things I know about samples is I try samples. I get samples all the time. I go to trade shows and get all these samples. I try the product and go, oh, I love this. And then I'm like, first of all, it's too hard to read to work out what it is that I need to order. And secondly, I got to go find it. That's just way too hard. How about you just send me the real product and the sample. I'll try this sample and then I'll go, I love the vanilla. I love the chocolate. I love the strawberry. I wouldn't order it again, but it. I'll use that container. And all of a sudden, you tripled your sales.
Nathan Bush: Yeah. Love that idea.
Bettina McLeod: Yeah. So we're building out that feature at the moment.
Nathan Bush: Is there a brand in the top of your mind that you would just love to get, that you've got on your vision board that you want to put out in the universe and say, this brand needs to be on try at home?
Bettina McLeod: Yes. There's a brand that I'm a renovator. So I'm doing this beautiful renovation here on the Gold coast in a house I'm turning into a Palm Spring style renovation. And I want to put down these beautif rugs. And there's a brand that I want to get on board because I want to try the rugs before I buy them. It's like, I need to try one here, I need to try one there, and I need to work out which coloring is going to be best. But I cannot do that from a website where the coloring looks different even in their photos on every single picture of the same rug. So I'm like, how do I trust that? I just. I don't know. Because I. I want a particular color of this peachy color. And if it's too pink, it'll be wrong. And if it's too orange, it'll be too. It'll be wrong.
Nathan Bush: Do you want to name them? We can put public pressure on them to offer the service.
Bettina McLeod: I bet. I better not. They know who they are.
Nathan Bush: Patina's coming for you.
Bettina McLeod: That's just my personal thing that I'm looking for. But there's lots of things.
Nathan Bush: Hey, if you start the business, it's your choice to go after whoever you want to go after.
Bettina McLeod: Yeah. Yeah yeah yeah yeah. There's a lot shoe brands, there's all sorts of stuff with it's difficult to buy without trying to it so and just interesting fashion. I'm going to be spending galore. I'm going to be a super shopper soon.
Nathan Bush: Super shopper and sampler. Bettina, thank you so much for joining us on Add to Cart and sharing the try at home story so far.
Bettina McLeod: Thank you. Thanks Nathan.
Nathan Bush: I really enjoyed that chat with Bettina and I can tell you I was not lying when I said the Tried Home stand was absolutely perfect buzzing at Retail Global earlier this year. It's going to be a real fascinating one to watch. Here are the three takeaways that I took from our chat. Number one Retailers Helping Retailers I absolutely loved that Bettina makes sure that her client facing team on the Tried Home team. Those team members have experience running an e commerce business. As we've heard, Bettina has her own e commerce businesses but she makes sure her team does as well and this means that they know first hand issues that they need to help their customers with at Triathome and have empathy with what they're going through. Such a smart move if you're in a service or tech business for Ecom.
Nathan Bush: 2.
Nathan Bush: Service before refunds I really liked when Bettina said most people don't want a refund, they want you to help them make a decision about a product. Let's lets face it no one likes refunds and despite what you think in your deepest darkest moments customers aren't refunding for fun. If you can service the pain point leading to the refund, everyone is going to be happier. 3. Touch feel convert Bettina shared some of the conversion and basket size uplift from customers who have had the try at home offering delivered. She's adamant that they're a connection between having the product and a number of products in your home in your own hands to what gets converted. So how are you going to get handsy with your customers to increase conversion? 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 send Monday's episode some 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 the fastest growing brands in Australia. Head on over to esweettalent.com where you can download the free E Commerce Salary guide and sign up to our weekly e Commerce job emails. Thanks for listening. And until next time, keep those customers adding to card.
