Guest Shaun on Growing a Bootstrapped 7-Figure Sock Brand

with the limited edition drops, we get 50 to 60% return in customer rate on those drops on that one on two days, we kind of rip through them. And that brings like the the net margin up over all the year, you know, closer to 30, which really, really helps because I grow based on purely on that, you know, I've never had any bank loan or debt or anything like that. So we just grow with the profit, basically, which is just a fun challenge. But the limited edition really helped that and people come back because they want that color they got last year. Ah, they want that again, that always releases on black Friday, that one they want, you know, all that kind of thing. So yeah, it's like a having a subscription brand, I guess, in a way, with those drops. All right, welcome to the Underdog E-Com forecast, where two E-Com brand founders are figuring out in real time. Yeah, we're not here to preach. We're here in the think of it, making mistakes, testing all sorts of ideas, really sharing the journey of how we've been growing these brands from day zero. Hopefully you learn a little bit. Perhaps come away, that's my ideas that save you time and money. And so you're tired of the same glittery, did you see advice from those nine figure gurus? You're here in the right place. Let's get into it. Welcome to Underdog E-Com podcast. We've got Sean from Creeper Sox with us today. So a rare guest, usually it's just David and I vibing it really, but we're happy to be here as a three this time. And we've got some re-interesting stuff to talk about in terms of just, you know, Sean's business, you know, David and I love talking about all things E-Com. So be cool to get into it. So Sean, yeah, welcome. And I want to tell us a bit more about like just quickly, like, reset, like, summary, like, what Creeper Sox is, why you started it and where things are now, just for listeners. Yeah, good day. No, thanks for having me on. It'll be awesome to talk about it, and I'm looking forward to it. So yeah, I am a New Zealand. Sorry if I talk too fast and you don't catch everything, but I'm in the South Island of New Zealand. So down at the bottom of the world, and I started Creeper's December 2021. So a good five years ago, before that, I am, I was a physiotherapist. It's a physical therapist for those in the US, and we had our own physiotherapist practice for 10 years or so. So for the first, first couple of years of Creeper's since birth, we started, I just ran it as a side gig, and it was kind of planned to be that. I had, I did, I do a lot of trail racing and hiking, but a lot of running and racing on the trails. And when I was working in Australia a while ago, you know, 15 years or so, maybe a little, no, not quite that long. I got a period of toes ox, it says like a spot prize from another brand, and I was like, this kind of, this partly stalls the problems I have of being like on my feet all day, get hot, sweetie feed. I just say it when I get hot, I'll just sweat out my feet. And then running 15, 20 Ks plus, you start blistering and friction on your toes just because it's skin on skin rubbing. So I was like, oh, there's a good. And so I wore them for a while, but after a while, I was like, these could be better. The form, they've got the form factor. The form factor is good, but their material wasn't the best it can be. And they're relying on the form factor rather than combining that awesome materials we can have with the form factor to make it just purely for runners, ultra runners, hikers. So yeah, yeah. So just launched that late 21 in New Zealand for a start. So that was largely that year was mostly New Zealand and shipping a bit from New Zealand to Australia. I can stop there. I don't want to ramble on for too long. This is super cool. I think it's classic Econ Founder story. You know, there's a million of these and it's so cool to hear everyone where it's like, there was this thing. It was cool, but it could be way better. So I made my own and here we go. Yeah. And it was just for me. I was like, oh, I make the best stop for me. And then I was like, there could be a few more people out there like that. Let's give it a go. Let's just test the market. And that's what the first year was really it was, it was testing the market, checking that I have the right in my mind. I had the right kind of avatar in the person that I wanted in the problem itself, but you got actually like test there. And that's the proving around that first year and getting reviews and all that things build trust before launching in Australia and the US in 23. Yeah. Yeah. So it's I think for I was going to jump in and say for people that are listening and not watching because we have the YouTube. But we also have Spotify and all the all the things toe socks, which I had never I don't know. I think it was Yushan that had sent me a couple of pairs via Twitter DMs like a year or two ago or something. It was a while ago. Yeah. I'm thinking what an what an idiot. I should have brought them and showed them off here. Foolish me. They're in my drawer or in my sock drawer. But these are toe socks. So it's like a totally different experience and any other sock out there because each of your little toes has its own little compartment in the sock material. And I'll be honest, I still don't love wearing them because it's like the most awkward feeling to get over. And for some reason, I'm like, my toes just can't handle it. They can't handle it. It's like two different. And they are like that it's not for everyone. When I started that round out, I like they know that not for everyone, that's fine. I want people to that little hate it. I don't want to try and be in the middle there. So they are for certain people. And the people that get a discount from the toes, some people don't mind wearing regular socks and having their toes kind of pulled together because you know, regular socks all have a last aid in them. Pretty much all of them. So they have this like pull towards your toes. They pull your toes inwards and they just hold them to your skin on skin. So you can have this bloody awesome fabric in the socks. And it's like they're like moisture working this and that fast drying. But that's only around the foot. You still got or in between your toes, it's still going to sit there being clammy, smelly. And if you're like doing distance running, that kind of thing, the skin on skin rubbing and then moisture increases for the friction coefficient. And that causes issues. So yeah, only for some people. And there's kind of why I called it creepers too. Just to get ahead of it, because people look at them and go, "Oh, that's creepy even though it's just the shape of your foot, David." But I want to get ahead of that and be like, "Yep, sweet, good, get past that. Try that out though." And you'll notice the difference of it solves that problem for you. And it's memorable too, which is okay. Yeah, I think that name is cool. I was going to ask about that. Nice. Yeah, that's it. I was just thinking, I need to try this, because I've got, I don't know, maybe a similar problem, maybe worse than you. In terms of my feet, smell terrible when I've been like working out and stuff as well. And so I play tennis a lot. And so yeah, I have that a lot. But Marino Wool, I know, I've tried just general socks with me around clothing and stuff. I was like, I first saw it on my dad. I actually did a trip to New Zealand for work when I was a kid and he brought it back back. And I was just amazing. He brought some 10 different Marino Wool things and it's amazing fabric. But yeah, I suppose, how do you, like, one thing I was thinking a lot about is like, when you have something, I agree that it's like, it's really, it's almost, it's great to have something that's a bit polarizing, because it puts you, it almost gives you position, you know, in terms of like, you know, a viewpoint on things and people can attach them to that. But at the same time, is, is that hard as well as the sense of that every order that comes in, especially if they're very new to it, it's getting, maybe if they're searching for it, for it, there's different because they're already in market. But if it's like a net new customers and things, is that, is that, is that being, was that difficult at the beginning? Well, maybe you were, maybe I don't know if you're getting necessarily returns, but were you getting people with not understanding it or getting, was it, was it hard to deal with? Or was it, was that part of the education side of it? Was that a big part of trying to get a lot of people like that? Yeah, I think choosing the right people to market too, is, is important. Because then you can talk to not the suckers like a nice to have, or talk about the form, fact that you can just purely talk about the problem solved. And the people were like, well, I've tried to solve that problem with so many things, I've brought these new shoes with hundreds of dollars, I've tried this and that. Heck, I could, I could try a pair of socks and if that sells it, that's, that's an easy win. So, I think talking to the problem is the biggest thing. I think 40% into our customers regularly already wear toe socks from like, well, non brands like a ginger and stuff. And then it's like, we want them that material, that performs really, really well. But the other 60% we're, we're regular socks and stuff like that. So, I think for those talking about the problem that it solves is a big thing and, and just getting the overall awareness of how it solves that by getting the feet on people they trust. But the polarizing thing about them also is, is, is it slightly hard, because people look at them and go, oh, that's weird, or I don't want to be seeing it out in public. I don't want to take my shoes off at work. And all this got to stop that people, why over it? I'm like, whatever, this is cosmetics. But that also makes it very, very good for marketing. Yeah. Girls stopping. Yeah, so it's, it's, it's much more positives than negatives. And why is it a bit of like when, when barefoot was like, oh, weird, when it felt like barefoot shoes were like, weird when they first came out, and it was like, well, you're wearing something. And now everyone's like, everyone's wearing barefoot shoes, and it's just like, become like, it's just like, it's, it's got past that tipping point where it's like suddenly on mainstream, and now it's huge. Yeah. Yeah. We went, I went to the Barefoot shoe expo. We said a stall there last year, and I didn't. And it was, it was just unreal how many people came through there, all, all looking and searching for barefoot style shoes, which aren't more people think of, some people think of it as just like the, the vibe from five finger shoes. Right. That does like normal shoes. Well, you know, they're normal shoes, but they have like a natural shoebox and not overly padded and that kind of thing too. So the rise of that has really helped as well. And like, even though all my marketing and all that kind of thing targets, like ultra runners and trail runners, because that's for me, I guess the lowest hanging fruit, you could say. We also have lots of people that wear them. They're like going in the gym, playing tennis, biking, We house workers and steel toe boots massive, but also there's this just warm marker that already knows about them and knows their benefits, I don't have to do much for which is that the minimalist barefoot shoe population which is now not a small wear little niche, it's everyone getting into it which is cool, so that combined with I think trial running growing at 6.8 maybe more might be 8%, it's quite a high percentage each year compared to I think road running is growing at 0.5% per year, it's just a lot of tailwinds which helps. So getting into the, I was going to say we're getting into the marketing side of things I think is hinted on I think, first of all where was your first major source of sales from, was it the typical Facebook ads, was it more organic content, where were you seeing now, where is it now as well and how has that changed? So I guess the first few months I started off without much or any paid marketing at all, so it was just like posting on and talking to people online, Facebook groups, trial running groups, all that kind of thing and just jumping on if I see people that have done a race or event and going like oh blisters listen to that I can just mention there and say hey good day, you know try this out and then sponsoring some competitions and giveaways and that kind of thing, so that worked really really well and then when I started doing advertising on Meta, it just became a lot more consistent and I guess easier. The more I learned about it and the more I built up that repertoire, so that's largely what it is still now, it's just purely advertising on Meta for the paid side of things and sponsoring athletes and just yeah, doing a click-ass product really, that's the bottom line. Yeah, products so key, we've talked about that in a few different parts but it's like, I feel like it's underrated in some ways and doesn't get enough acknowledgement but there is a decent amount of acknowledgement in e-commerce that product is really, really important. There's so many pieces of the puzzle but I think it's just like, you can't go, you hit walls so often in the different ladders that you're climbing, whether it's revenue or whatnot, winning the products just subpar and you can do it and you can force your way through those walls, certainly, especially if you have like, I feel like I've seen people in the DDC space that are like, oh they're professionals at x, y and z skill sets and their product maybe is kind of lackluster but that doesn't matter because there are like stars that paid ads or something. It comes down to the product so much it just can back all the claims up and everything so yeah, it makes a huge difference so I think our first port to sort of, yeah, was largely minima-ware then after that I started running ads and shifting to that as the main thing once you know that you can be easily our first sort of profitable stuff, it just makes sense to scale that way where it's much more consistent and where you get to the point now where I guess we're building outside to be customer base that we have about a 30% returning customer rate I think. So just that flywheel starts happening where it's you get more and more returning customers and more word of mouth from that as well. So even though we've relied hugely on the media advertising, yeah a lot more now comes through word of mouth and just people seeing the socks out because people like show on them off, you know. So when you say in there that like you've been mostly like first will order profitable even on on paid ads is that is that being that correct to say? Yeah yeah from the get go. That's that's achieving itself I think nowadays anyway I feel like a lot of people just kind of almost depend on that returning customer side of things to bring in enough profit. So is there anything that you've found that has worked really well? Like first of all say would you mind saying that what say would say your average order value and and and and say average car can how and how are you kind of you do anything's particular to combat that in terms of is it a case of trying to push up average order value and get more people to add things to the basket or is it a case of actually yeah trying to bring down the car or is it you know what what have you found that she's like being the most important thing there. Yeah all of the above so average order value is about 100 is your own dollars which is 65 US or something like that. So three to four pairs on average you know per order. That's that's gone up about 25% in the last year through various things with I've just put up prices for the first time in five years a little bit. So that that's helped a little bit because I needed to do that but it's that average order value has gone up a lot I think because we've started doing we've we've added more products I think September last year we added we only had three heights three styles of socks one color we added two more so we've got five now so that really helps but just improving like landing page improving the product page but more so we do quarterly drops of limited edition but live in addition colors so we always have black and stuff all the time otherwise I just can't keep up with growth and stand start with boots trapping it I don't want to spree myself to thin and be bogged down by inventory because I kind of have just in time for fulfillment on terms of inventory planning so to keep some people happy that don't just want black we we I started doing color drops I think in early 24 just like one color of the time one color of style you can see a bunch behind me on the wall here and they started selling out really fast I'd sell out in one on two days because I'd just run a couple of couple thousand pairs so through 24 and 25 we refined that in 25 I've got to doing it every month so I will like I do purchase orders I do inventory planning once a quarter so four times a year and that's when I plan out all the more colors with it and then I've scattered those drop them once a month to create revenue spikes I think like Taylor Horde come at yeah yeah he talks about revenue spikes a lot and that really helped and then black Friday last year we did three or four editions at once colors at once and that average order value was jumped way high and I was like oh shit I'm really missing a trick there I just had to spread them out you know every month I'll do three or four colors in each in one chord and one collection drop and that really really helped lift the average order value and build even bigger spikes people don't want to always somebody want to collect all the colors and they don't want to always like buy and pay for shipping each time done by a whole lot of ones and I get free shipping so there that's made a big difference that the limited editions have been so awesome like we we're profitable on every order anyway um with the core collection if it was that only it's like 20% net margins but with the limited edition drops we get 50 to 60% return in customer rate on those drops on that one or two days will we we kind of rip through them and that brings like the the net margin up over all the year really unclosed at a 30 which really really helps because I grow based on purely on that you know I've never had any bank loan or debt or anything like that so we just grow with the profits basically which is just a fun challenge but the limited edition really helped that and it almost turns into a foe but last I subscribe so to get from band brand you know so people come back because they want that color they got last year they want that again they're always releases on black friday that one they want you know all that kind of things so yeah it's like a having a subscription brand I guess in a way with those drops and it also means with things like black friday I don't need to run any extra discount or sale other than our base evergreen one because there is a reason for people to come back because I'm releasing the best and most popular and most wanted colors then wow this is amazing this is something yeah it's amazing oh david and I've talked a lot about this kind of the peaks idea and like how much how like we see that in a lot of other brands like how a bunch of impact it has it's really cool to see it like especially as a bootstrap brand like in in the flesh it's really cool to see yeah it's on it's amazing it's it's funny for socks that you can put those drop days you go online and there's a few thousand people sitting there waiting on the way of thought you're like what what I was like it's going on who are these people but I might people yeah my people that's so good that like that retention model of getting people back in the door with something that works and they love and just kind of like copying paste in with different designs and like I was cruising through the limited editions and it's it's pretty sweet that's such an impressive addition to the brand and it sounds like it's helped bottom line and top line everything basically lifted up over the last year or two um yeah I'm curious like have have you thought about doing like a soccer the soccer month subscription kind of thing because it seems like you're almost there but you know I who knows if it's better yeah I thought about that but I don't need to um like I I I try to say no to more things because I come up with all these ideas and that kind of thing and I'm like no logistically that adds more complexity we don't do it you know that's that that's soft smart that's a big thing I've got it I've got to really try and minimize things because otherwise I get I get stuck chasing shining you ideas so no to keep it manageable with like me doing everything except for customer service it's I want to keep it keep it simple so doing that quarterly drop is just it really makes a big difference and and Jack you were asking before about other things that have helped increasing average order value like I said that's done that at the same time lowering CAC or stop it from lifting that's better yeah so yeah so yeah yeah especially in the US like customer acquisition costs in Australia and New Zealand is a lot lower and I think in the first two or three years that really helped where the USC USA might have been profitable but not Not much, like almost break even. 23 and 24 but because New Zealand and Australia were like five to six times rowers that really really helped the US and helped me build that as my priority because I'm like that's the hardest market to break. I want to do that. Even if Australia is easier. Yeah so lifting the cake with one multi market even though I mean having inventory in three locations was really really good and that was manageable because I only did purchase orders you know ordering every quarter and then and through that time I was able to lower the cake and all that kind of thing to make the USA comfortably you know profitable. Someone with that good net margin refining landing pages. I'm come at always testing some kind of iteration in new page with some split testing with AB testing so I always forget you spending this money on advertising putting as much in good effort into that landing page is really important and of course testing against landing on product page and home page but for me the landing pages are always outperformed and you can sometimes just get this landing page that's just far better like just recently I told you guys I had a new another landing page just a slight change to my either green one they had been able to beat for like a year. I mean I changed it up to be gotten more aggressive and talk very much more closely to the person I'm targeting and who my ads are talking to and I was like a 20 mid 20% improvement and conversion right so yeah that helps and then just refining how I run my ads you know I just I just slowly build up the winners in my scaling account and now that there's 40 or 50 there that that really really helps yeah wow yeah it's interesting I think so so with the like the market side of things so was it so was it museum Australia than the US and did you go did you go to Australia because you kind of felt like you maybe was starting to hit the thresholds of what you could do in New Zealand already or you and and the same thing for the US or is it just kind of like well I might as well sort of thing might as well yeah yeah no it's like I haven't hit the ceiling of the lemon in any countries by far it's just that we had started getting orders from Australia and I was like right I'm gonna test the marketing over there while while sending from New Zealand from the office here and it worked really well and the average order value is like $15 to $15 higher you know I just a just bigger orders and same with the US as well I'm compared to New Zealand average order value just higher so Australia was like a similar return on ads spend but higher order value and obviously the population is like yeah seven eight times as big so yeah yeah so put an extra purchase order and send it to a 3PL and and Melbourne yeah simple nice and easy when you have really good fulfillment partners which is cool and then a few months later to the US when 3PL Matt tied away he was happy to take me on with you know like $100 a week once I got to that threshold in the US I was like sweet a 3PL should be happy to take a risk on me so before that I was yeah shipping them which was it gets a bit much when it's international and all that kind of thing yeah yeah is it there's an absolute yeah I was some wondering about obviously when you have three different warehouses and I've been in that situation I've actually consolidated most of it down to one and just what we I mean because what we use based like Shopify markets and manage markets like we just ship DDP labels from the US yeah I know so but I used to I used to ship everything out of the UK and then I set up country in the US and it made a lot easier because our main market was there anyway but the reason I asked is because one thing I did find when I was starting to separate things out I find it I was in nightmare keeping track of not just keeping track but like being able to keep everything in stock because you know if you you might sell out of a say like a color in in in Australia and you maybe still got a significant amount of quantity in the US and then you like well I can't I go like I can't I've I restock it if I want to launch a new color I still got the old color that hasn't sold out in the US and then you know some people in the US might be you know whatever it is like the different stuff happens where you like you're trying to you have to split your messaging because people in the US you have to talk to them a different way because they've got that product which you haven't got in New Zealand and like I don't know that's how I felt anyway with a lot of it in the sense like yeah I was asking them got around there a bit by simply having the wine color and always having the wine color a bit like the Henry Ford quote you can have any color you want as long as it's black so it's the same styles the same color across you know all inventory locations that's easy and if I need to I can transfer between the houses I try not to though because it's it's not as easy fast or straight so it's same ones which is cool till there was no biggie there so no different styles I don't the the ads I don't need to change the landing page I barely need to change between markets it's the same messaging it's the same people I'm talking to I might just change the landing page purely just the dollar amount or the you know for the free shipping to a child or kilometers to miles yeah but for me keeping the skew range really limited and evergreen if you ignore the limit edition runs which I order the right amount so it runs out within three to four weeks anyway but for the core collection that's evergreen so I'm all good there and it does add complexity like I ran a report last week about I looked at the core collection and I was like right I looked through the last two years when I've run out of a skew and based on my regular run rate outside of that how much sales would I have lost for the core collection only and the last two years of 300,000 US dollars finally it's on a table yeah which is so there is that but then I'm okay with that because that's my approached inventory management is to have just in time fulfillment like I when I do the planning I'm like right I'm planning to order three months worth of inventory it's going to arrive and my lead time's like four four and a half months so I've got to analyze how much is going to sell before then how much to be left then how much I need for when it arrives for three months plus a buffer time of 14 days so I have very little room for the era yeah so I do naturally because of that I do run out but if I were to go hey I'm going to avoid those stockouts by just ordering double the amount of time I need I'll just be shooting myself in the foot so I would rather run out a bit and just build the FIMO because with the limited edition the whole model is FIMO so so essentially when you're ordering so you say you do your POs quarterly your or such that that stock is coming in maybe at least one quarter of not two quarters later is that right yeah yeah exactly so like the stuff I ordered this week as arriving in four and a half months yeah yeah and then that'll last three months yeah exactly so I'm ordering right now for March onwards it's pretty interesting yeah I think I think Dave and I are learning a lot here yeah I know I'm just sucking it all up this is like yeah so many gems yeah I love yeah oh and one thing with when we launched in the US when I was saying that for a year or two it was okay but really the other markets were popping it up I realized after a while I was like I was like man I'm really leaving more money on the table sales on the table here by not being on Amazon because you know we we barely use it over here in New Zealand on Australia as well but I was talking to someone they're like yeah everyone sees your ads in the US then half them all go sweet cool go to your website and then the other half be like I'm going to go to your Amazon and try and get free shipping in easy returns and I'm like I'm so I tasted Amazon with the full by merchant with just them shipping the orders shipping from the 3PL and it's like instantly just just turned it became 10% of sales overall and I was like that's cool and then after like three months I'll talk to someone else and they're like hey if you're doing it be in for full but for full by merchant Amazon actually depresses your listings a bit and doesn't show you as high as they would if you were doing it and I was like I said hey test it out so I did a purchase order to Amazon so then I had full inventory locations and and yeah once that got there and I was going to stop there and they were fulfilling it and doubled their Amazon sales which is cool so Amazon I think now is 20% of sales the USA overall is 60% so it's the main market now but that no advertising on Amazon is just capturing the demand that I'm creating through meta wow wow yeah it's yeah I was like oh shit there you go it's a main wild and I had to know about like is it is it just you I mean there's a lot of stuff going on here I mean are you doing it all on your own yeah I have I have one person that does customer service for me so she's here to customer service which is awesome because that started taking up so much my time and you know I also am head of product head of advertising head of athlete management all that kind of thing but everything else is me and that's all good I have made everything pretty well I've set it up so that doesn't take me too long I can I can do all that within a 30 40 hour week pretty comfortably and still yeah yeah it's all good so you know I do Monday's I'll do advertising Monday mornings I do half day of like I do advertising and then clear out emails and stuff like that and then choose to do something else get a bit of reconciling and testing out different things so yeah I've got a lot of systemized pretty well and making a lot of sense for me where I don't I don't want to be bugged down by I don't all these specialists doing different things eventually maybe but right now each one of those roles that you could bring someone on for takes me a few hours a week whereas customer service was trying to take me like 20 hours a week I'm like okay that's something that I can hand off if I find an excellent person which I I did it. and Valentino that does it for me is amazing. But the other stuff I can't hand that off, it's just, it doesn't take enough time and I really like doing the marketing and all that kind of thing. I know the product, I know the customer, all that. Yeah. Yeah. And how have you, have you found that it's like, maybe with, especially I suppose this year with how much AI, have you delved into that much and are you finding that's helping also you speed things up or we have to do more as one person or if you're not, have you felt like it's changed many things? Yeah, I did a little celebration of the day when I was doing the inventory, the purchase order creation. I was like, but it took like half a day, rather than two days because it just, yeah, the AI is really, really useful for the back end stuff, for the doing the analyzing. It's just, it's just so good now that I can, you know, for like Amazon, I use salaboard, which helps me manage inventory and create the purchase orders too. But I've always find like that and then with the Shopify, when I use a SIST, it's always not perfect. They don't always pick up the out of stock days well and all that thing. So now I feed those into Claude and I can pull reports from Shopify for my limited editions to see how much they sold and like the three days, seven day, two day windows. I give it a whole little windows and go like, analyze that. See when every single size sold out and adjust the curves that they sell out in six weeks. And then I can double check everything all the reports from the inventory things with I've got this really good prompts for Claude now just to run through and check everything. And yeah, it's really, really cool. Get the historical run rates from the pre, the period last year. Before we got the stock, when we got the stock and everything and it's just that used to take me ages. And you know, I like a bit of math but it still would take a long time. So there's just really speeds things up and each time I've done it over the last couple of quarters, I've kind of refined the SOP that I have in Notion, which Claude also has access to. So I could be like, hey, go through the SOP in Notion, read that, what do you need from me? Feed all the reports to it, run that. Give it the purchase lot of template, feed it in there, and then do a bunch of double checking manually myself and with AI as well. So that's probably the one that's made the biggest difference because it's like even at the moment, I'm sold out with six. Six, excuse me, the most popular excuse on Amazon. The Amazon sales have dropped like half in the last week or two because the inventory was just calculated wrong. I had relied on the software I was using and then you can, you know, you can tick, and it's glued out of stock days. But often with Amazon, they have like one or two peers going in and out as they get returned or how it was just, it wasn't by having it right. So it wasn't picking up on those out of stock days. So it brought the daily run rate way down and really underestimated how much I needed to order. And now, you know, losing, leaving on the table, like $1,000 a day and sales, which is like, damn. But it's just, it's a tuition fee. It's a tuition fee that's all it is. And it means I can refine things really well. So that's a big one. And then customer service, AI, we don't use it too much. I think it answers like 25% of tickets. I could do more, but I try not to too much. It drives up a lot and helps us. But it answers a lot of frequently asked questions, which is nice and kind of triageous things. We make it very clear. When it's AI, there's a signature that says, hey, this is our quick response triage agent, just to filter out all the collaboration requests and free product requests. And it's here. So it's very useful for that kind of thing. That's it. I don't use it for marketing. I don't use it for product creation. I mean, yeah, for like add, creating statics or videos or anything like that. I'll target demographic, I'll people are very much against that. The outdoorsy people in the sphere, you know, yeah. - So you doing all the ad creation yourself as well? - Yeah. - So yeah, wow. So like video statics, like you do it all yourself. - Largely statics, yeah, it's largely statics. And I do get videos, but that's pretty easy. The videos we get from athletes largely, they're just posting it like on Instagram. And I'm like, hey, that's awesome. Can I test that and ask them and put it in the account. And if it works well, then I'll just get used to rights off them and generally it can be pretty raw. It works well. And I'm going to start doing more of that. Like I'm just working with rendezvous at the moment and to get a bunch of runners to shoot videos with a finished 100 mile race and that kind of thing. I've just, you know, just taken a knock off and talking about how good they fit, how good they fit. Look, because that has worked really well for us in the past. And otherwise, from my point of view, I'm just creating statics with what works. There's too many things that grab attention. They normally have to have the toes and the socks and the color drops work best. And then I claim, you know, I'd like a review or quote from a customer or just something that calls out the problem. And that works really well, really well. So we do that. And like if you see our ad library, you'll see that most of the ads are with colored socks, even though none of them are in stock. Pretty much none of them are in stock. But they still have the best return on Aspen. Which is pretty cool. I mean, it creates a little bit of rage in the comments and veteran stuff. But that's all engagement, you know? And I wouldn't get them up there if they didn't really work and outperform the other ones. So another benefit of those limited edition drops is that they provide a very good photographer. The husband of one of our sponsored athletes who does the photos for us each quarter of limited editions. And they're really good lost off photos, but he knows what to get for me. Then I can use those to create ads as well. So I can use those to create like a dozen new statics every Monday and put them in the testing account. And yeah, yeah, the colors work very well. So limited editions don't only create a spike. They create a spike of content as well. - Wow. And do you mind me asking us to just clear about your, so you talked about testing account and things of that? Is that your, is that what you're running ads? Is that do you have scaling campaign or testing campaigns? How do you do it? And then you see maybe every Monday or something what's working and then you move into a different campaign? - Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I don't know if it's the best way to do it, but it works really well for me. It's, yeah, yeah, just, so I've got a testing campaign, which is campaign level budget worth a few different ads. It's spending on the theme of it or anything like that. Or when I've created them each week, I just do a different ad set. Then I can slightly turn them off. And then I'll read chicken on it each Monday. And the ones that have spent enough, I'll either turn them off if they're below the average or I'll shift them into the scaling campaign and just keep rolling with that basically. And then for each of my markets, the main markets, which at the moment is Australia, New Zealand and the USA. I have a scaling campaign, campaign, which I'll duplicate the winning ones into each of them, but they hit different in different countries. Some of them go well and scale well and some don't, depending on the country. So that's simple, yeah. And that's all campaign level budget. - Re-interesting. - And I just. - What do you, oh, sorry. I was gonna say, but I think but those scaling campaigns for each country, it's just one ad set, which limits me to I think 50 ads per ad set. So it kind of makes me review them every now and then if I want to add more to it. So I can turn some off or remove them. But yeah, that's it. Go on, David. - I'm curious looking forward, like what you're gonna, like other challenges or wins that you're looking to unlock in the next year or so with the brand? - Off you, but largely continuing with what we're doing, but also keeping working with athletes. They add a lot of trust and legitimacy to a brand. We are legitimate and all that kind of thing, but it's like people look at it and go, "There's so many different brands popping up out there, especially a pair of brands. They're having athletes that people know and can relate to, makes a huge, huge difference." I did a review recently. No, I did a recently of a bunch of customers. A few thousand. And they say, "Hey, what made you first? "See the brand, what made you buy?" That kind of thing. And I think it was about 11% of customers said they first heard of the brand or first saw it because of an athlete wearing them. Whether it was our sponsored athletes or not, it's probably here at 50.50. Whereas how much we spend on sponsoring athletes is probably about 5% of spend. You know, so that's something that is at the moment undervalued and working really, really well, which is cool. And others always rather try and sponsor some athletes and support them than give it to me to be fitters. So, yeah, that's one part of it, but otherwise continuing with what we're doing and trying to stay in stock, really. Do you think you'll ever make socks that are not toe socks? Nah. No, nah, stuff that. No, I once a month or so put regular socks on and I just can't do it, man. But I did make some of it like a thample, once they're like, so they're kind of, they're not too tight. They're slightly wider toe socks and they are pretty fantastic. But it's just like there's not the gap, there's not the market opportunity there that were filled, labs already. Like with toe socks, there's only really other one on the brand that was already pre-existing. Other people knew about, there's lots of smaller brands as well pop up here and there, but none of them are in retail stores. None of them are scaling in their ads really well. So those are big opportunities there. Like we've even got some retailers come to us just purely because they want another option in toe socks. And so that helps a lot. Whereas regular socks, there's so much out there and there's already some companies doing it really well. With Marino Wool, like Icebreaker and Smart Wool and stuff, even though, Yeah, I would, I would claim that our yarn is better, but we'll stick with tights up because the the size of the market, the opportunity there is just massive and even with, I don't know how many, we're gonna probably sell to 100,000, 250,000 socks this year. That is just a drop in the ocean, man. It's. Oh, yeah. There's no need. I could. How? There was no need. Yeah. A lot of laser focused you are in like, this is what we are, this is what we're going to make and there's, you know, you got the horse blinders on, I think, in a lot of ways and it's. And what we're taking is mentally. Yeah. Yeah. I think. Yeah. Also, I just, I'm, I'm like inspired by how like the goal of simplicity here as well in terms of like, like respecting your own time and how much you can do with it and actually focusing on what really what matters and not getting distracted by all the other things that can happen because like, you know, it's like, you know, there's so many things out that you could do, you know, go, go all in on TikTok shop or, or, you know, there's just so many things you could do, right? And it's, and it's, it's, it's, I think you've done such an amazing job of just nailing down what's working and not letting those things kind of just basically pull money away. Yeah. Yeah. That's right. And I get that it probably puts all your eggs in one basket in terms of relying on one advertising channel and that kind of thing too, but I'm like, it works. You know, it works. And if I can do that at a smaller scale when we're doing 50k, yeah. And like, why not still do it now when we're doing, you know, mid seven figures or whatever. So I don't know, I don't mind it. There's always a backup like I always run Google ads is like a, at a small budget each day. And I slowly refine that as well. So that's good, a good, good row is not as good, but that's there as a backup. But it's just like it is what it is. You've got to be a bit bossy, you got to be a bit brave. And don't just diversify for the, for the heck of it, eh? Yeah. Yeah, it's got to be simple, it's got to be manageable. Absolutely. I'm curious. What's your like D to C wholesale breakdown? Is it like, are you just no wholesale or any wholesale or what's up? I'm building it up now. So in New Zealand, Australia, wholesale is 10%, 11%, which is close to build up the last year or two really well. It's, and that's 95, 99% of that is organic. So that 30, 30 to 40 retailers, we've got through Australia and Evian at the moment. All came to us, bar two, I think, because they had, had people coming in asking for them. They wanted another option, the socks, or they had seen our ads with the athletes in it like Phil Gore, who's a world record holder, the world record holder for backyard ultra running. All in New Zealand, Sam Harvey, he's a New Zealand. He's a second best in the world, and that really helps. So you hit a point where you saturate enough of the market where the people you want to hear about it, start hearing about it. They start seeing people with them and they come to you, which is nice. And then the US, starting to build that now, we've got 10 retailers there and we're just building that, but I'll actually get a little bit out of there. And I think it takes a while for that flywheel effect to take into effect, obviously, like the US is 10 times bigger than Australia and New Zealand. So I think that'll happen organically too, but I'm just pushing the boat out a little bit. That's really cool. I assume wholesale is pretty much the only you're ever green and none of the limited edition drops, or that's all D to C. No, I'm starting to give them access to them now. It was, you're right, for simplicity, but I'm starting, yeah. So we're given the B to B, the retailers access to limited editions now, which so far is working well, because initially I was like, hey, you guys, you'll better buy them once and that's it. You know, you won't be able to restock all that kind of thing, but they're like, no, that's cool. We don't mind having seasonal colors. They absolutely love the fact that we've got a low skew count. The buyers love that. But they also like being able to pick and choose some colors as seasonal lines here and there. So that's working well. And because I open up sales to them one week before I do the D to C for the drops, again, it's another spike and another thing. A lot of our retailers are all monthly anyway, but it gives them another option and reason to jump on and buy and gives us another revenue spike. Yeah. Which is interesting. So much, so much good strategy there. This is really, yeah, really curious. Yeah, I just stumbled upon it. Try pick, let us try pick, see what works. Yeah. Amazing. But not too many things. I think that's like the big takeaway for me at least. Because, you know, staying your lane, you know, focus on the things that are working. Hit the gas pedal when you're already going fast, but not into new neighborhoods that you haven't explored yet too much. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They're like things which should have a really good reward. It's risky, but it's also there's, it's not. It's hard when it's just like at all. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And we're getting closer to the end of time, I think. I appreciate all the time here. Jack, did you have any other questions for Sean or John? Do you have any questions for us? No, man. And I've got time. You just ask away. It's all good. I think, I mean, I probably could keep asking you tons of questions, but. I suppose, I suppose I think I suppose one other question of you. And if you don't mind answers, I'm cut into understanding around about margins you're working with on, on, you know, cost a good soul versus say RRP. And, and have you seen, as you said, you reached increased surprises recently. Have you seen that impact at all sales volume at all? Do you, and, and do you think if you wanted to, you could increase it more, or do you, and do you think, have you done any price testing, I guess, is what I'm asking? And the way margins said the moment. Yeah. Um, so gross margins, I think, do you see, is that 78 percent? Yeah. Before discounts. Maybe, I don't know. But yeah, so solid, they were, because of the last two years, I've improved our stocks a lot, and I've shifted to a custom yarn, which is more expensive. So with scale, you would think our costs are good, so I would get lower, but honestly, it's, it's gone up. So it's almost doubled. Because of the chain is an improvements I've made. Yeah. And then as well as that in the last year, Superfire Merino costs just the raw price of the wall to the young manufacturer has gone up 50 percent. And then it gets passed on to us. So that was bringing the gross margins down, you know, and like low 70s. And that kind of affects everything down the chain. So I had to raise the prices a little bit. We're still well below all the comparable premium Merino stocks, but that got the margins back up to where they kind of should be. So that did that chain anything. I didn't split this a lot beforehand, because I just knew I needed to do it. And they were, we were people often coming down to help cheap our stocks are, but we did that. And what did it do? For the amount we raised, the price, our price, we're not 15 conversion rate went down 5 percent. So we maintained two thirds of the gain of the price of the increase we put on there. Oh, so that worked well. Yeah, for sure. Well, amazing. Yeah, Sean, thanks so much for being on. I think, so I think I've learned a huge one. I think so many people could learn a lot from a story, because I, I think that we're constantly surrounded by like so, just like so much busyness and stuff with e-commerce. And there's so many things you can do. And like, I think, yeah, there's anything I've taken away from this is like how much you can do just narrowing in your focus on things. And and kind of like I said before, most respecting your time and understanding where you are in your business and being able to launch from that and actually build on things that are working. And obviously the drops side of things as well, I thought was really interesting and I think that's, that's amazing and and how that's helped build the peaks in the year. So yeah, thanks so much. Yeah, and that's built this built the email and SMS list as well. I'm like, that's been another thing I didn't mention as well, like having the early 150,000 subscribers email and SMS just as huge for those drops especially. I only send out SMS full times a year, and then this is for those drops one time a quarter when it says really powerful and then emails get like 40 to 50% open rate. So because I don't use it much, probably should, but can do it all day. Right. That's so good. It's so good. I'm going to extend that. Appreciate it. And you're right, anyone, yeah, I know you see a lot online and everyone's that you've got to, you know, you get a certain point. You need to hand off things to people or you need to take on take on debt to build inventory and things like that. But if the, you can, you can, I'm not saying everyone can, but you can with the right product, you, you need to solve a problem. It needs to be a good product. If you're not solving a problem, it is just bloody hard. So solve a product. So solve a problem and have a specific person you're talking to. You know, like I can talk to so many different people in the marketing, but it's just, it's known as effective when you try and talk to everyone you talk to no one. Like we had the Indiana Paces that wanted us to make socks for them last year. And I'm like, no, that's basketball. That's not running. And it's just like we get golfers all the time. We get all the different people and I was like, no, no, we stays day in our lane because you need to be talking to one person about one problem and one problem that solves that. And there's also why we had the same yarn and fabric across all of us. It's just the best, my consistent saying. You can do it. Oh, keep it simple. Keep it simple. Oh, it's so good. I love it. Well, thanks, Sean. Thanks everyone for listening. And let us know we should talk to you next. We're curious to talk to some more folks out in the community and hear more stories because he comes wide and vast. And we're always just picking up nuggets here and there from awesome operators like Sean. Thank you. Thanks, ice.