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Episode 13 - Shopify - Merchant Interview - Steven Ingram of Lowkey Co

36m 43s

Episode 13 - Shopify - Merchant Interview - Steven Ingram of Lowkey Co

The podcast hosted by The Cut covers topics like e-commerce, Shopify, software, and branding. Stephen Ingram from Low Key Co. shares insights about their distinctive watches containing dirt from the center of Australia. Low Key Co. initially used Kickstarter for funding and later transitioned to Shopify for their e-commerce platform. Challenges include engaging on social media and crafting a compelling brand narrative. Strategies such as involving influencers and creating curiosity around product launches proved successful. The use of apps like Preview on their Shopify site helped in email marketing.

Transcription

6118 Words, 34162 Characters

Welcome to the Digital and Branding Podcast by The Cut. Learn from our insights on e-commerce, Shopify, software and branding. Hello and welcome to The Cut, a podcast where we share insights into software and website development and Shopify e-commerce. I'm Ben De Jong. I'm a director at The Cut. We're based in Subiaco Perth and we've been delivering software, websites and e-commerce solutions for businesses since 2009. This podcast is part of our series of interviews with Shopify merchants. We've been working with the Shopify e-commerce platform since 2010 and their official expert partners. Our interviews with Shopify merchants are all about sharing their e-commerce experience, insights, tips and tricks. You'll find these interviews very helpful if you're thinking about Shopify, looking to change your e-commerce platform or just wanting to hear more about Shopify from business owners just like you. In today's podcast, we're going to speak to Stephen Ingram. He's a director at The Low Key Co. They're based here in Perth. They're a startup with a very interesting story and they have created some very unique watches or timepieces. I don't want to spoil the surprise in the story, so we'll let Steve tell it in his own words. Let's speak to Steve right now and see what e-commerce insights he can share with us. Good morning, Steve from The Low Key Co. Thanks very much for joining us. Can you please introduce yourself and tell us a bit about your e-commerce business? Hey, Ben. Thanks for having me on. My name is Stephen Ingram and I'm a co-founder of Low Key Co. We create watches inspired by iconic places within Australia. Awesome. And I am familiar a little bit with your business story, obviously, and I've had a look at your website. Can you please tell the people that are listening a little bit more about the watches themselves and what makes them unique? Because I know that they do have a pretty special little unique point of difference happening, don't they? Yeah. Yeah, the watches do. The watches actually have dirt from the exact centre point of Australia inside the face, which is a pretty unique idea. That is a very unique idea. So can you just describe that a little bit? There's actually some sort of window in the face, isn't there, where you can see the actual dirt or earth from the centre of Australia. Is that correct? Yeah, yeah. So just inside the face, there's a recessed cavity. It's a couple mill wide, and the dirt's really tightly sealed inside the face there. So there's no issues with the dirt getting into the Swiss mechanisms of the internals of the watches. And I am kidding, of course. Yeah. Yeah. No. No. Luckily, it's fully sealed. Yeah, absolutely right. And they look awesome. And as I said earlier, it's a very unique little point of difference there that's visual and it's got a really nice idea for it. It actually sort of spoke to me a little bit along the lines of midnight oil or something like that. Yeah. Yeah. It would be good to get them to sort of ambassador for the brand. Oh, there you go, mate. There's a free idea for you. Yeah. Can you tell us a bit about the business unit, like your business partners, and how you guys came up with this concept and what that looked like in terms of the initial idea and building it up and then going for it? Yeah. Well, my two business partners, Lewis and Alex Nolan, when we first sort of met, we'd always see each other out at different events. And every time we saw each other, we'd be talking about business, all of these different ideas. And then we all came together and said, "Hey, let's start a brand." At the start, we started in July 2017 and at that stage, we were pretty clueless. We were planning to put a logo together and slap it on shirts and try and sell them. We quickly realized that that wasn't the way to do it. Went back to the drawing board, put a big plan together and decided how we could become a legitimate brand over the next year or so. Okay. And where did that idea for the watches plus the sampling of the heart of Australia kind of come into it? When was that? How did that idea come up? So Lowkey Co's tagline is discover the unknown. And our target audience is people who are looking to get out, looking to travel to places that nobody's really been before and just really live lowkey is the way that our brand works. And we decided the centre of Australia, it's a long way from a lot of places. People will probably find value inside it and you can take the heart of Australia with you on your travels as well. Yeah. Okay. That's an awesome concept. And I guess you guys had to travel there, did you? To look at it and get some samples and... Yeah. Yeah. So we drove to the centre of Australia from Perth. That was, I think it was, we actually got to all the room back in seven days which was quite quick. Yeah. That's hammering away and where is the actual centre of Australia in relation to Uluru then? So there's a place called the Uldunda Roadhouse and that's the centre point of the three, I think there's three different sort of centre points in Australia and the Uldunda Roadhouse is the one that's smack bang in the middle of it. Okay. Right. And did you partake of an egg and bacon sandwich or something at the Roadhouse? Did you mate? Yeah, of course, you know, the coffees, they actually met the CEO there and he was sitting right behind us actually and we were sort of winging it. We didn't know how we were going to get the dirt and then he turned around and started speaking to us and asked him what we're doing and then he goes, "Hey, I'm the CEO of the Uldunda Roadhouse, we can help you out," which was pretty awesome. Do you know, I would never have thought or known that a Roadhouse in the middle of the desert has a CEO. Yeah, yeah, well, I think it was across the Nullable, three of the Roadhouses, I think he's, his name's actually Tony McFazdeen and he's the CEO of three of them. So it's a group of Roadhouses. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, awesome. Unbelievable. So I think you mentioned that you guys got started, what was it, July 2017, so you just over coming up to 18 months sort of thing, are you? Yeah, yeah, that's right. Yeah, that's right. Okay. And can you tell us about what the mechanics were because I know that in your case you've only started using Shopify very recently and you haven't actually started transacting via the site yet, so can you tell us like what the process looked like in terms of getting the business started and what you've been doing up until this point? Yeah, yeah, of course. Well we sort of had to structure it because we didn't, we didn't have the funding to be able to just manufacture the watches and then just sell them. So we actually went through a platform called Kickstarter. Yep, I think I've definitely heard of it and I think most people will have. Yeah, yeah, well that was our saviour, Kickstarter was the best thing that could have happened for us. We sort of structured everything around that, if our Kickstarter campaign was funded then we could then go on to sort of building our Shopify store and really building our community around that after the campaign. Okay, and so what can you share with us sort of the targets that you set with Kickstarter and what that process looked like, how long did that take you and what was involved with that? Yeah, yeah, of course. So building up to the Kickstarter campaign we started our social medias. So we had about three months to build an audience and get people excited for our product and the Kickstarter campaign. We had a $10,000 target for across 30 days and within the first five hours of launching we actually got fully funded, which was pretty impressive. We didn't know what to do for ourselves. Yeah, I still remember that morning and we were just sitting there sort of watching the pledges tick over but the most important thing was building our audience on Instagram because that's how it hits so quickly because they were all ready to back us and get in behind us. Yeah, I've heard, I've spoken to people about these online fundraising and they say the most important part of it is what you do before you launch the campaign as you say have that audience there and ready to go. Yeah, yeah. And there's probably a few lessons around that that everyone can apply to digital marketing in general and certainly running an e-commerce business I would have thought there's a lot to be said for that. Yeah, yeah, most definitely, like as I said it was the most important thing that we had done. If we went into like cold and we didn't have an audience I do not think we would have got funded so much because it sort of worked in a chain reaction effect because we were funded so early then pledges from all around the world started coming in because we were then on like the front page of Kickstarter or like the noted campaigns on Kickstarter. Yeah, you got featured by Kickstarter digital because it was so successful. Yeah. So can I ask you, Steve, around that if you do hit a target so quickly what happens is does your campaign get deemed a success and it shuts off or do you get the opportunity to actually raise above what your target was? So yeah, you still get the opportunity to raise above what your target was, so getting funded in the first five hours was awesome, 24 hours later we had doubled our funding. And the way that Kickstarter sort of works sometimes it will die off halfway through the campaign which it did with us. So maybe about sort of seven days in it you just sort of seen the pledges slope and didn't have too much digital marketing knowledge to be able to actually bring that back up again and we didn't have the funding to do it as well. Yeah, okay. But you doubled your target anyway so it was happy days. Yeah, happy days. Can I ask what are the professional backgrounds of you and your two co-directors? Yeah, well I actually come from a sales background when actually when I was 17 I first started my apprenticeship in electrical and then I've gone from electrical to car sales and car sales to working for sales at Carbacool and Lewis and Alex they were professional free trial riders they both got trades as well but none of us really had a professional business background you could say. And everything that we've learnt online and from actually getting into it and doing it. Sure, well I think that part of your story while the rest of it is a little unusual is probably very, very common to most people who start an e-commerce business they're not trained business people, e-commerce is new to them and they're running with an idea and a passion project and making it happen. Yeah, yeah exactly right. So while this is definitely, this podcast is definitely not about Kickstarter so let's move on and come back to talking about Shopify and I appreciate that you guys aren't transacting yet that's something that's in the pipeline for early 2019 but can you tell us how you came to find Shopify and what did that process look like for you? Yeah of course, of course and you're probably not going to like this one Ben but we started on WordPress. And again I think by saying that you've identified again a very, very common story. So many people start with WordPress Wordcom or some other e-commerce platforms and they experiment all they do some testing and then yeah and then they end up coming across to Shopify for different reasons but yeah sorry please continue. Yeah, yeah so we designed the original website on WordPress and then a few months before we launched like we sort of did some vigorous research we just decided to make the change over to Shopify purely because there was a compatibility with Shopify and Kickstarter again talking about Kickstarter but Shopify actually has a thing called Jumpstart where you can display the progress of your Kickstarter campaign on the front page which was really helpful for us. Within the research as well people were all saying always go for Shopify, Shopify works the best with following the ad to cart emails, using sort of MailChimp and your email marketing, Facebook marketing pixels so it sort of just appealed to us across the board. I think there's a lot of as well as the core e-commerce functionality being nice and simple and intuitive there are a lot of integrations that you can achieve with Shopify that make anything that you're going to want to be doing in a marketing and promotional sense that much easier and more robust as well, they're dependable solutions and dependable integrations. Yeah, yeah most definitely. So how was it, I know you've got your Shopify site live and it's online there and people can go and have a look at it, what's the URL Steve? So it's lowkeyco which is L-O-W-K-E-Y-C-O dot com dot au. Awesome and so I know that site's live and that is your Shopify site and what was it like setting up your Shopify site, what was that process like for you and your business partners? It was really simple like Shopify made it so easy for us with especially with the theme as well it was because we didn't have too much content for the front page and for most of our content was on our Instagrams but it just made it so simple and it made it look really nice throughout the front page, took me only a couple of days, which was very easy. You were the one that did that, you were the hands-on person, were you? Yeah, so we've all got our own traits that are really good, like Lawson Alex have built their own personal profiles on Instagram and things like that, so they had that background with social media. Okay. Meanwhile, I used to build websites and deal with all that sort of stuff so yeah. Yeah, interesting, so everyone's bringing in a different strength to it that's adding value and resource value to the overall operation. Yeah, most definitely yeah. So let's have a quick chat about the challenges so obviously you're still moving towards the stage where you'll be running an e-commerce business in the sense that you'll be generating sales online and doing all that but to this point obviously you're sort of 18 months into the journey. What are the biggest challenges you've experienced as you move towards making this an active and successful e-commerce business? Yeah, yeah, well like there hasn't really been like a massive challenge that we've come up against yet. We did plan everything sort of that we did like a year in advance so everything would be structured and worked the way you wanted and luckily it has come off. Okay, well how lucky are you guys then? People out there are going to be hating on you, mate, because you're just going to be saying it's all very plain sailing and that's an easy. Yeah, well it does take a year to plan that sort of stuff but our biggest challenge is probably building our social media and continuously engaging with them. It's hard to get people to listen and hard to create an interesting enough story for people to continuously come back and one day be a buying customer. Yeah, sure. So can you share some like I guess some things that you've learned and that you've implemented that do work around that space of engagement and getting repeated engagement from people? Yeah. Have you got a couple of tips for us around that? Yeah, yeah, like just the consistency, making the story interesting and not just purely selling the product constantly. Like try and build a story around what you're trying to get out there, don't sell it to them straight away. People don't want to be sold anything on social media. Absolutely. And they love to buy into your story rather than your product. So make it interesting. Yeah. Yeah, 100%. And can you give us some examples that are specifically for low key codes that have seen you implement that idea of delivering a story? What sort of content have you been posting that does that? Yeah. So one of the best things we probably did building up to the Kickstarter campaign, nobody actually knew why we were going to the center of Australia. Nobody knew what we were creating. And everyone thought, you know, they're probably making some shirts or something like that. And as soon as we came up with the story that it is a watch, which was about three months after all these Kickstarter posts, I mean, sorry, Instagram posts. Right. So and then it was sort of a shock to people because they'd seen the whole build up but not knowing what it was and then releasing it and everyone was like, oh my God, that's so cool. Yeah. So you did a lot of content around the actual journey to the center of Australia and the roadhouse egg and bacon sandwich. Yeah. Yeah. As interesting as egg and bacon sandwiches are. Yeah. Well, mate, I imagine after a drive like that, that's probably the best tasting egg and bacon sandwich you've ever had. Wouldn't it be? And coffee. Yeah. Of course. Of course. No, that's really good. And it's good advice. So you guys actually built up, I guess, curiosity around it because you talked about literally the journey to the center of Australia, which is quite unique and unusual in itself. But there was no indication of what the end product was that you were driving towards if you pardon the pun. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly right. Yeah. Nobody really knew except for our close family and friends and then we did probably another powerful thing is when we had got influencers on board, like influencers on Instagram and when we did launch, we got them to sort of push it as well and then it sort of just blew up. I'll ask you another question about the influencers in a minute, but just quickly on that, what was the react if you could sum them up in a short way? What were the reactions like when you released the news that this is what you were doing in terms of the watch with the little sample of the heart of Australia in it? Yeah. Well, it's funny, Ben. You don't really get to see the reaction. We sort of see it as a gray area, but we know people have responded. Whether they haven't liked it or commented, people would ask us in person, "Oh my God, that's so cool." But they haven't left a like or a comment. So it's a gray area that we don't know. You haven't got responses on your socials to that announcement. Yeah. There's a few responses, like a couple comments here and there, people talking to us, but it's not like direct to that one post. So people have obviously seen it and seen this sort of journey, but unfortunately, it's a gray area that we can't track. Yeah. Okay. That's interesting. That's very interesting. So I know we spoke about just before we started talking properly about the fact that you guys haven't really been experimenting with apps and plugins, but we like to sort of talk to people about setting up their site and what they might have planned for the future. Do you have any sort of insights you can share with us around any apps or plugins that you have activated on your Shopify site? Yeah. I mean, as I said, we haven't really used many apps. One that we did use was an app called Preview, and that would, upon exit, it would come up and say, "Hey, do you want to be in the drawer to win a watch?" And they'd sign up with their emails, and email marketing was massive for us as well. Sure. And that's when they're leaving the website, is it? Yeah. Instead of popping up as soon as they come on, we figured if they go to leave, then it will come up then. And you're offering them some sort of incentive to a prize with that mechanic, are you? Yeah. Yeah. And is that working? Are you getting engagement through that device? Yeah. Like, not as much as we'd like. Before we launched, we sort of had, I think it was around 500 email subscribers. Okay. And then yeah, we just, like, 500 was enough, but the Preview app does get a few people, but we haven't driven much traffic to our website just yet anyway. I was about to say, you guys are very early days in terms of driving traffic to the site, and it's not until you get to those volume, that point of volume, that you can start to see that sort of stuff really working hard. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. Have you got some insights that you could share with other people, and maybe it could, you know, it could be people that are in a similar situation to you, to what you were two years ago, when they might be thinking of or planning some sort of e-commerce concept or a new online business concept. What are the top sort of three things that you've learned along the way that you'd share with people? Yeah. Well, the top three things, top one is just to get started, like, start doing something towards it, because everybody has these magical ideas, but hardly anybody executes them. Yeah. And you're going to be spilling down the track if somebody else takes that idea and starts doing it. Yeah. One or two is be original. Don't, like, it's such a saturated market. For most, let's say, clothing brands and watches, it was a super saturated market. So if you're unique, you have a way better chance of standing out. And number three, probably just use Shopify. Sorry to say that again, we just lost you slightly then. Number three, just use Shopify. Oh, well, needless to say, mate, but I think that's a bit of a cop out. Such as I love that comment, I think it's a bit of a cop out, but I'm sure our friends at Shopify will also love you hearing that. And look, I think if people are looking for something that's robust and easy to deploy and simple to work with, then it is pretty difficult to go past Shopify. And that's why we chose it. And as I say, your story about testing other platforms and then finding that Shopify offers more and it's simpler and faster and generally easier is a really common story. Yeah. I'm going to talk a little bit about traffic conversion and notwithstanding that you guys aren't really driving volume traffic, but social media has obviously been crucial to you guys in the run-up and the pre-launch, I guess we could call it. Is that true? And how do you see social media continuing to be an asset for your business moving forward? Yeah. Well, social media marketing was probably one of our most powerful marketing sources. And then that's paid social media marketing, so your Facebook ads and Instagram ads. We found on Facebook, you don't really get much organic reach anymore, unfortunately, for businesses. That's right. Yeah. So Instagram was very powerful for us. And luckily, we sort of didn't have the funds to get anybody else on board. So Alex and Lewis were quite good at Facebook ads already from their previous experiences. And so everything was just self-taught, just YouTubeing, putting on Facebook pixels to our website, tracking people. Yeah. All really powerful tools and I guess that those strategies will be ones that you will continue with as the Shopify site launches properly and starts to gain traffic and you start to sell. Is that right? Yeah. Most definitely. And we know that there's no great rule that's going to make any businesses ads work or your target audience work. So we just have to find out what works for us and just start building on that. Yeah. Totally 100%. And I think having a clearly identified point of difference, being unique, telling a story, not selling all the time, all of those things are really worth considering early on. I think a lot of businesses in general still make the mistake that social, you're trying to sell all the time and I guess in one sense, in a pure sense you are, but the way to achieve those sales is to try and help people or entertain them or give them insights or something interesting that they can engage with and then that sort of content leads to the selling. Yeah. Yeah, most definitely. Yeah. You mentioned influencers earlier, so I wanted to come back to that while we're talking about marketing and driving traffic. How did that scenario play out for you? How did you find your influencers? What sort of people did you choose? What does it look like for you to implement them and bring them on board? Yeah. So our influence is, again, a very powerful thing for us. So the way that we found our influencers, we didn't have the money to pay them. So we did a partnership agreement with an influencer and say, "Hey, we're going to give you a watch and we're going to work with you for the next year and if we're successful we'll continue on working with you." These influencers were sort of micros, so you're looking at 2,000 to 10,000 followers, but sometimes their audience is much better to engage with than, say, someone with 200,000 followers. Smaller, but more highly engaged audience. Yeah, most definitely. So we picked out about 30 props to Alex and Lewis for going out and actually visiting these influencers one-on-one. Oh, they did meetings with them, did they? Yeah. Wow, okay. Yeah. The funny thing was we only had one sample originally for the Kickstarter campaign, so we needed to go out and visit these influencers individually and show them the prototype watch. Yeah, get a photo with them and then come back, send them through the photos. So they worked hard getting out and actually meeting all of these people. And what did that look like, Steve, in terms of if you saw 30, how many were up for the relationship and the deal, I guess, that you were proposing to them? Yeah. I think Alex and Lewis went through about 100 to 200 influencers, so it was cold messaging them, trying to see if they would be interested, trying to find the right people in the right sort of audience. So somebody that loves to travel, their Instagram sort of like works into that sort of scene. And yeah, they ended up with 30, which was good, that's what we were aiming for anyway. So you got 30 finally in the end from about 150 to 200. Yeah. Okay, I see. I see. Yeah. Again, this is a little bit prospectively and I'm asking you to stare into your e-commerce crystal ball, but looking forward into 2019, what do you think will be the most important things about retaining visitors to your website and having them convert into a buying customer? Well, I think it's got to be the same as the first campaign and the way we ran that just on a larger scale. So to create an interesting story, again, we'll be going to the Great Barrier Reef next year and we'll start building the same sort of story, we'll start marketing the Instagram the same sort of way as we did with the first one. Okay. But yeah, just continuously building an engaging audience. And is that trip going to be around producing some sort of new product on the back of it? So it will just be another colorway and another model and we're going to be using the white beach sand from the Great Barrier Reef, not actually the Great Barrier Reef because it is a preserved area, but definitely just near the reef there. Yeah. Okay. Now look, mate, I think I'm starting to rumble you guys here. Is this low keyco? Is this just some sort of random excuse for you guys to travel to the most exotic beaches around the country? You could say so. Come on, be authentic, Steve, own up, be authentic, you're on the internet, people are listening, we want honesty please, mate. Yeah, yeah. I mean, we love getting out and we love making videos and we love sort of seeing those sort of things, but the more that we can share with other people, create awareness for Australia's beautiful landscapes, probably the better off, and that's just the way we can build an audience around it. 100%. Well, I am being flippant, of course, so that does sound like a very, very nice side benefit to this whole business concept, I'll say that, but obviously it gives you your unique selling proposition and some very, very good content directions for the content that you can produce around that, whether that be posts or videos or blog stories or whatever, you're going to have experiential stuff around the brand, aren't you? Yeah, yeah, most definitely, and it's on what we love as well, so all passionate that we are about it, the heart of it, we're going to work, so. Totally. Are you using many metrics, performance tools to measure the performance of your site at the moment? Is that staying a plane to things for you guys? Originally, we were just tracking things through Facebook, and sort of when the Kickstarter was running, we were using a Google Analytics, both on our website and our campaign, but it was like, we didn't really have much knowledge on Google Analytics, we were more, our Facebook ads and our Instagram ads were what we were good at, so Google Analytics is something we're slowly learning right now. Yeah. It's a very deep platform, the old GA, and there's a hell of a lot that you can get out of it, and it's really very sophisticated, I mean it's so powerful, I think much like staying in the business, the best approach with GA is to get in there and make a start, and then gradually explore and expand as you go along and become familiar with the top level stuff, which is also extremely useful, and then get deeper and deeper into it. Yeah, yeah, most definitely, yep. And obviously, the Shopify metrics is a pretty powerful tool in and of itself as well. Yeah, yeah, it was, we could measure the people coming into our site and how long they were staying, and things like that. Everything was linked through to our campaign again, which is quite good. Yeah, fantastic. So let's quickly, before we wrap up, and we're nearly at the end of this conversation, it's been very interesting, so what, do you have three things that would be on your Shopify wish list? Like, are you in a position where you sort of think, "Oh, it'd be awesome if we could do A, B, and C with Shopify," or not yet? Well, that's sort of the reason we chose Shopify is because it could cover all the basic things that we needed to launch our brand, so because we haven't been sort of selling on our website yet, I suppose we haven't really figured out what we're going to really need in the future. Yeah, no, a hundred percent, I thought that might be the case, but it's definitely good to get that reinforcement on why you guys chose it in terms of it has all those assets and key integrations and that simplicity to get you up and running nice and quickly. So what does the future look like, Steve, for you and your two partners at Low Key Co? What's 2019 looking like for you guys? Well, yeah, as I said, it will be the Great Bay Reef trip, will be a big one. We're currently in talks with the Great Bay Reef Foundation and we're actually going to be funding a percentage of our profits back to the foundation. Awesome. But overall, our plan is just to continuously create new meaningful products that create awareness for Australia's landscapes. Awesome. It's a great idea and certainly on the Bay Reef side of things, it's a very, very topical destination at the moment with all the bleaching that's happening and the attempts at recovery and all the political, I don't know, should I say rubbish that's happening around it? Drama. But anyway, there's a lot of talk, isn't there? Yeah, yeah, most definitely. And we sort of, we had planned the Great Bay Reef one before our Heart of Australia timepiece as well. Oh, okay. And we think this is probably going to be the one where we can really scale it up a lot more. Yeah. Well, you'll be tapping into something that's already a hot trend in conversation, I would have thought. Yeah. Yeah, most definitely. Yeah. Okay. So, and Steve, have you got any final thoughts for Shopify merchants or e-commerce business people who are thinking about Shopify or just even starting up their first online store? Yeah. I mean, just when you start, just be consistent because it's so easy to fall behind or just leave something in the dark. Consistency is what was key for us, you know, starting with meetup week in, week out. And yeah, no matter what your product is, it'll start shaping itself over time. Like, it doesn't have to be perfect when you do start. Start with a strategy but allow yourself the room to be flexible and have it evolve as you go along. Yeah. Yeah, most definitely. Yeah. Awesome. Well, mate, it's been really, really nice to have you on board. So thank you very much, Stephen Ingram, one of the three directors of Low Key Co. who have recently launched the Heart of Australia timepieces and are looking forward to a very healthy 2019. Mate, it's been awesome to chat to you. Thank you very much for joining us at the cut. Awesome. Thank you so much, Ben. Cheers, mate. All the best. Bye-bye. Thanks, mate. Bye. So that was fantastic, really interesting chat with Steve Ingram from the Low Key Co. You can check them out, as he said, at LowKeyCo.com.au, a really unique idea there with the watches with the little granules of earth from the very, very heart of Australia into them and some exciting new ideas for concepts. For those guys over the coming year in 2019, we'll look forward to having another catch-up with them perhaps next year. So we're doing these interviews all the time. If you're a Shopify merchant and would like to be involved, just contact me or any of our team at the cut and we'll organise your 15 minutes of fame. We also hold Shopify meet-ups right here in person. They're great learning and networking events. If you'd like to come along or even present your Shopify story, we're here to help make that happen. Thanks very much for listening to us here at the Cut and we'll see you next time. Bye-bye. Thanks for listening to the Cut. To talk with us, visit thecut.net.au and find us on Facebook.

Podcast Summary

Key Points:

  1. The podcast is hosted by The Cut and focuses on e-commerce, Shopify, software, and branding.
  2. The guest, Stephen Ingram, co-founder of Low Key Co., discusses their unique watches with dirt from the center of Australia.
  3. Low Key Co. used Kickstarter for funding before transitioning to Shopify for their e-commerce platform.
  4. Challenges include building social media engagement and telling a compelling brand story.
  5. Utilizing influencers and creating curiosity around their product launch were successful strategies.

Summary:

The podcast hosted by The Cut covers topics like e-commerce, Shopify, software, and branding. Stephen Ingram from Low Key Co. shares insights about their distinctive watches containing dirt from the center of Australia.

Low Key Co. initially used Kickstarter for funding and later transitioned to Shopify for their e-commerce platform. Challenges include engaging on social media and crafting a compelling brand narrative.

Strategies such as involving influencers and creating curiosity around product launches proved successful. The use of apps like Preview on their Shopify site helped in email marketing.

FAQs

The watches have dirt from the exact center point of Australia inside the face, making them unique.

The idea came from the brand's tagline 'discover the unknown' and the desire to offer something unique to travelers.

They used Kickstarter to fund their project and later transitioned to Shopify for their e-commerce platform.

They set a $10,000 target for their Kickstarter campaign and achieved full funding within the first five hours of launching.

One challenge has been building and engaging with their social media audience to convert followers into customers.

They shared content about their journey to the center of Australia without revealing the end product, building anticipation among followers.

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