Rug Love: The Miss Amara Story

Nothing cleared a room faster than saying we sell rugs online. We realise that people don't necessarily buy a product, they buy a look, so we use content extensively. Our team are so passionate about rugs, it's crazy. They call themselves Rug addicts. World Rug Domination, one Rug at a time. Welcome to Add to Cart, the podcast that express delivers all you need to know in the fast-moving world of e-commerce. Every month Nathan Bush from Twelpy 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. 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. Remember when you'd sit down, usually after you've just had your VN-E-A-F-A-D-Z-E-R-T and watch Hey Hey at Saturday. And it seemed like at every ad break there was a large, shoudy man who had a rug stall that was closing down. The good old days, eh? Well today's guest has created an online rug business called Miss Amara, which uses beautiful content, styling services and amazing customer service to modernise the business of rug retail. Today, they're on track to surpass $20 million in revenue and a shipping to Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and soon into the US. Co-founders of Miss Amara, Alex Tanya and Aaron Weller join us to share the story of why and how they are conquering the difficult world of rug retail. In this conversation, we cover how to engage with customers to the point where they become content creators and your biggest ambassadors for a really low cost. We also cover how augmented reality boosted their conversion rate by up to seven times why Alex Hand wrote 400 notes to customers during COVID. And they also share some of the practices they put in play as a couple to keep both their work and their home life happy. And please, forgive my quirky voice. When we recorded this, I was only a few hours away from losing my voice totally. How good a podcast. So thanks to our partners Shopify+ and Signet. Here's our conversation with Alex and Aaron from Miss Amara. Aaron and Alex, welcome to our Descartes. Thank you so much for having us. Yes, thanks so much for having us. Pleasure. Awesome to have you guys. Now, where are you joining us from? We're actually joining you from Hong Kong today. Beautiful. And is Hong Kong the normal base? It is. We actually relocated here for personal reasons, but it was really great to be here when we started making our own product because it just meant that we were, you know, we could get on a plane immediately when product was ready and touch and feel the rugs and roll around on them and all of that. So that's kind of why we moved. Yeah, well, based on Sydney prior and like a large portion of the team's based over in Sydney as well, some of them over here in Hong Kong. The our suppliers are in Turkey, in China and India. So it's a lot closer to our suppliers. Yeah. And Hong Kong was a great base for us to get somewhere quickly. So to give listeners context in the product that you're rolling around on, can you give us an overview on Miss Amara and what you guys do? Yeah, sorry. Some countries. No, that's my fault as a host. It's not your fault. Yeah. So we sell rugs online if you haven't actually heard of us before. We are Miss Amara. We have an e-commerce store, missamara.com.com.au, we're in the US, New Zealand and Hong Kong, and we sell rugs online. Beautiful. And how long have you been doing it for? Since 2014. Yeah, seven years now. Can't believe it. Your old Fogies in the e-commerce game now. We are. And rugs. Why rugs? I couldn't think of a worse product to sell in e-commerce than rugs. Do you know what? And ask us that question. And I joke about it because I'm like, when we were first starting out and we would go to those networking events and things, I would just say, like, nothing cleared a room faster than saying we sell rugs online. I don't know why. I think rugs had a really, really bad wrap then. They really did. They really, really did. And no one wanted to touch the space, but on the other side of things, because no one wanted to touch it was such a great opportunity. You know, I guess when you ask why rugs, I can take you back to kind of the history about why we started, Mr. Morrow. Yeah, let's do it. Yeah, take you back to the OG days. Okay. So Aaron and I, I guess we both come from a technology background. And I guess when Aaron was working at an SEO agency, he and a few of the other guys working there uncovered a bit of an opportunity. So they uncovered that a hell of a lot of people were searching for rugs online. So you know, where do we buy rugs? How do I buy rugs online? Delivery of rugs online, things like that. And it kind of got us thinking. So we were like, oh gosh, there's so many people searching for rugs, but we didn't know that many people who bought rugs. So literally we started asking our friends and our families and we were like, hey, have you guys ever tried to buy a rug before? I mean, you tried to buy a rug? Yeah, yeah, no, I tried to buy a rug before online as well, prior to this Morrow and yeah, the experience was terrible. It was terrible. So we asked our family, we asked our friends and everyone had the same experience. So out of all of our friends and family, I was the only one who actually bought a rug, but everyone at some stage in their lives wanted to buy a rug. And so the story was exactly the same. It was literally word for word. So yeah, I really wanted to buy a rug at some stage. And you know, a lot of people got into that inspiration phase where they would hop on to Pinterest, you know what it's like when you're trying to finish your house and pin looks and everything looks so beautiful. But when it came to the actually experience of buying the rug, they would go online and it was just awful. So what I mean by that is, you know, at the time, it was a very masculine industry in terms of like you had that cliche of Aladdin flying on the rug and that was it. Or I mean, I don't know whether you guys, whether you remember Nathan, but they used to have those TV commercials where they would just be a guy and he'd just be yelling at you. I don't know what came up with that. And everyone was closing down. The rug store was closing down. Always closing down. Must must get in there. Last chance. Buy a rug. No, no, no. And it was literally like a guy shouting at you. It was awful. And then in terms of the online experience, you know, the e-commerce players at that time, they would literally get 50,000 skews and they would just dump them on a website, the product photos, no rhyme or reason, no inspirational photos. So people would go through decision paralysis. So eventually every single person put that need of buying a rug in the too hard basket and they never bought one. Or they went to a physical store or they went to a physical store. Yeah. Because rug buying regardless of online or offline is a pretty difficult task in itself right because of not knowing where materials come from, not knowing quality. It's a product you probably buy once every five, ten years. That's a hard thing in itself, but then to transfer that to online as well without the touch and feel. What kind of tactics did you guys put in place to try and give people that real experience? Yeah, yeah. I think and that's something that we really identified at the beginning was when we started in this tomorrow, we wanted to remove those barriers to buying online. I mean, and that's not even online. That's also like, I guess, physical side of things as well. But particularly online, like, you know, buying a rug is dimensionally going to be the biggest thing that you buy in your home. Like it's bigger than a bed when you roll it out. It's dimensionally like the biggest thing you'll buy for your home. So we knew that people as also probably one of the more expensive things you'll buy. The rug isn't cheap. So in your head, you're like, gosh, this is a big commitment. You know? Yeah, it's a big commitment. Also, like, you know, it's really important because it can really make a break its base, like choosing the right rug. So yeah, that's why we set out to basically remove those barriers. So the first thing that we did was a try at home service. So the two components are we do free shipping. So all our products are free shipping. Our customers don't have to pay for the shipping. And then we have it at a try at home service. A customer can buy from us and they receive the rug and if they don't like it within 30 days, they can send it back to us and we'll cover all the costs. So along with the runs and original condition, we'll cover the shipping there and the shipping back. Yeah, so our company will outlay for that career expense. Yeah, yeah. A lot of the time is quite sizable. Yeah, sizable because also we're shipping large products. But that's all part of kind of our offering and it's really important part of it. So the other thing that we do is we also, we realize that people don't necessarily buy a product, they buy a look. So we use content extensively. So it's probably one of the biggest things that we use to basically make sure people understand what the rug's going to look like in a hood. So we'll work with different people with and basically work with different people and get real shots of rugs in their home. And that's really what sells the rugs. Yeah, and I know for us, especially with our social and our Instagram, we definitely aim at the very least to inspire people. So you might not be shopping for a rugged some stage. At that point in time, you're following us because you want to be inspired by beautiful content. And some point in your life, you might want to buy a rug and hopefully you're going to do it from us. When Australian fashion brand AGE wanted to set up its international omnichannel presence, they wanted to focus on mobile and chewiness and flexible payment types. And of course, they turned a shop 5+. In just a few weeks after implementation, they saw their e-commerce conversion rate, saw by 135%. So stuff e-commerce streams are made of. They also saw a reduction in bounce rate, increased pages per session and a longer session duration. Now they're ready to take on the world. To read more of AGE's story and see other case studies, visit the customer section on shopify.com.au/plus. Is that part of changing the tone around how you sell rugs? Like you mentioned before, around that male, shouting voice being known for rugs? Was that when you first launched Miss Amaro? Was that original? That approach to rugs? That content-driven approach? No, it was probably something we figured out pretty early on. So probably in the first probably year or year and a half, I think we really figured that out. It was something we kind of learned over time. We did a bit of market research into who is the decision maker in the household and surprise, surprise in 95% of the cases, it was the female. So we were really excited that, where was that female brand that was connecting with those customers? That's where we came up with the name Miss Amaro. Miss is obviously that feminine touch. Amaro is kind of a nod to the Middle Eastern origins and where rugs were made. I was wondering about the Amaro side. I didn't know that. Yeah, yeah. That's one of the other things that we did as well. We have interior status in house, who basically the customer comes along and there's a lot of different rugs and they need help making that final decision. So whether they're kind of further down the path, they need that kind of having interior status will give them that confidence to make the decision, the final decision, or maybe they just want to basically get some options from interior status. So we hire interior status to help our customers make a decision on what they want to buy. So do those interior status work one-on-one with customers or is it more from a content perspective? One-on-one. They get a completely free styling advice, customized, consult with an interior designer. So yeah, I guess when we first launched, we were like, well, we could hire customer service agents, but what we really want is we want our customers to be speaking to people that they would see as authorities in the space that know design, that know how to choose the right rug for each space. That makes sense for us. So we hire interior designers and it's really, really simple. So they just ask the customer, great, you're looking for a rug. Are there any key criteria like to have kids, to have pets, those kinds of questions? And then we might show them a few different styles and say, hey, you know, out of these five pictures, which style do you gravitate towards the most so that we understand their style and their taste? And then every customer gets a curated collection of rug specifically for their space. And we also ask them to send us photos of their space as well. That's pretty amazing to get photos like when we talk about customer data, to have photos of your customer's space that your products are going into. That's pretty phenomenal, right? They are so happy to send photos like sometimes they'll actually call out interior stylists and say, hey, do you mind if I face time you because I literally want to walk you around my house? Yeah. So how does the work of the moment is at live chat with those stylists? So the live chat are generally the first responders and they will collate the data. So in terms of like, okay, does this customer have a pet? Do they need it to be kid friendly? And the first responders of the first responders, they're maybe an interior stylist there that can just a lot of the time a customer's on site and they're ready to purchase and say, hey, I just want to run this rug by you. This is my space. Do you think it's going to work? And they literally just need that an arch. And so that they they feel an authority has looked at it and said, yeah, that's going to look great. Go for it. But if that person requires a more in-depth styling consult, we may pass them on. We're now starting to book these styling call so people can actually go into our stylists calendar and book a time with them. That's cool. So your customer service and your stylists are separate teams and separate services? No, they're part of the same team. So what way we structure is they're part of the same team. But we in terms of when they're available first, the customer like, you know, the customer's coming along because we do 24/7 live chat because we want to make sure that someone always adds the basic questions for a customer that's ready to order to basically be able to get the kind of the basic questions. But then the styling team is ready if somebody wants some styling advice. Awesome. I love when e-commerce businesses set up their customer service team to not just be the complaints department that they set them up to actually be a sales team as well. And that's it. Our team are so passionate about rocks. It's crazy. They call themselves "Rogadix." Don't go caught. So if we've got that in place at the moment, because I've got the feeling and obviously browse the site that you deliver this exceptional service, you deliver some really great inspirational content to get customers really excited, do you find that they give you more leverage over price? Not to be so promotion or price-reliant if you have those foundations in place? Definitely. So if you look at our competitors, we are definitely more expensive. We still run promotions because it's an important part of the sales process. But in terms of you look at our pricing even taking into account promotions, we are more expensive, but we do offer a lot more than our competition. So it really does allow us to add that back. And it's funny that you ask that Nathan because a lot of customers, one of the really common tickets that we get in customer service is customers will send through a ticket and they'll say, "Hey, I've noticed this rug. I can get a similar rug at this competitor for however much. Can you match the price?" And we actually respond back and we always say, "Unfortunately, we can't match the price, but we can also offer the Tried at Home Service. If it's not right, it's completely risk-free. Also, we can have an interior stylist look at your choice and look at your space and see if this is going to work for you and set you up with the best chance of success at this rug. Nine times out of ten, they will always say, "Okay, that's fine, I've purchased." Space to value doesn't like when you're not always cheap as it just goes, "You know we're going to be around. We're going to be here for you, especially in a product like that. It was funny just to cast my mind back to the conversation we had with Pip from Jumbled. Have you seen her stuff?" I haven't. It's a really cool retailer out of Orange here, but does a lot of home-ware stuff. It's not cheap. They sell a couple of grand artwork pieces, and she was saying that a lot of their customers hesitate even when they're buying two $3,000 pieces to pay over $100 in shipping. It's kind of like, "Well, if you're buying something worth that much, wouldn't you want to pay shipping?" Her thought was that offering, not offering shipping, actually made people question whether things would arrive safely and in good nick. Have you had that problem at all with offering free shipping on your hands? It's the easy answer. Shipping's definitely a challenge. Definitely a challenge. It definitely breaks my heart when we offer that really, really high level of service. Let's say at the very last mile, a courier may have had a bad experience with a customer that lets it all down. But we have a product that's extremely challenging. Unfortunately, we have a product that the internally couriers call us ugly freight. A lot of people even accept that. Yeah, because Rudd's packed up to three meters long and up to 55 kilos, basically. Even for one person to carry a rug, it can be almost impossible. It's a work in progress and we're definitely looking at improving the delivery. But as you mentioned, it doesn't come cheap. Do you have many people taking you up on that change of mind return service? We do. People definitely take us up on that. Probably less than you would expect. But definitely people take it up. That's all factored into our pricing and everything like that. It's not something that alarms us or anything like that. But definitely people make use of it. Yeah, awesome. You guys obviously put so much effort into customer happiness at the core of your business. What would be your number one tip for keeping customers happy the long term? Okay, I'll go first. I would definitely say, listen and always tell the truth always. So, I mean, especially with our customers, all the way that we've trained our customer service team is Don't talk, just listen. So even with our interior stylists, they might ask them some questions, but their job is really to get as much information as they can from the customer. And similarly, if a customer's had a bad experience, they're not gonna wanna know all the reasons why they had the bad experience at the end of the day. They just want to be heard. They might want to vent and that's fine. It's a big purchase, purchasing a rug and if it doesn't go perfectly, where they're to listen to you. And as I said, always tell the truth. All right. Yeah, I think you covered off the same thing as I would have said. And to give you an idea, like I guess the transparency piece is really important. Like Alex said, it's not the customers don't always wanna hear every little detail about what happened at the end of the day. You've gotta listen to them and make sure they're being heard. But at the same time, like when transparent, like for example, during COVID, like a lot of companies, we definitely had really big supply chain challenges. We had increased in demand and then at the same time, supply chain disruptions, especially our suppliers in India, that were shut down for two or three months. So at the same time as you had really big increase in demand, we had big disruptions in the supply chain. So we take pre-orders. So there's a big challenge there about originally, we had some original dates there and they had to change multiple times as we had, and it wasn't just suppliers in the end that had supply chain issues. It's been across the whole supply chain, like in the ports in India, then getting the ports in Sydney, getting container on a ship. And you know, like previously it was very predictable and we could predict all that quite clearly. And we could communicate that to the customer in a really clear and concise way. But during COVID, that kept changing. So customers started to get more and more frustrated. So we had to really, really sort of explain to them exactly what was happening and sort of be quite open with them. And then the folks actually write, wrote a really big open letter about just some of the challenges that we faced. I have about 400 customers letters. Oh, why? And I said them a bath mat and I said, I'm so sorry. What kind of feedback did you get from customers when they were able to handwritten a bath mat? Oh, look, I think a lot of people really appreciated it. And we definitely got photos of the bath mat and they said, "Bath mat was so. " I think they just really appreciated being kept in the loop. With our customers, they're never just a number to us. They're real people. And I always put myself in the same scenario. Obviously, I'm a shopper online as well. And I ordered things and the same thing happened to me. And I felt that frustration. And obviously, although it's not in our control, it's a lot of things you want a customer to experience. So I mean, yeah, except the other day, like they're frustrated either way, whether it's in our control or not. Exactly. Yeah, so. And do you think that it helps when you've got the founders still involved in the business and central to it all where that transparency and communication comes from Alex and Aaron, rather than a brand or a corporate entity? Does that help keep customers happy? Definitely. I would say definitely. So when I did a few things, I mean, before I sent out the apology, I also sent them an email. And in that email, I gave them my direct email and said, "Hey, guys, like, this is what's happened. I'm extremely apologetic. If you have concerns, here's my email address. It's my real email address. Please email me. And I did get a lot of emails back. And I think they were, I mean, the aim is always to be approachable with our customers and to feel like they have a direct link to us." Yeah. And people want to buy from people. Exactly. Obviously, brands really important, super, super important. But they also want to know there's another person at the end of the line they can speak to and who they can, you know, so it's really important that we're involved. And I think that really helps. And people know that as well as also the rest of our team as well. Has there been any one particular customer story in terms of customer happiness that's really stood out to you guys where Ruggs really made a huge difference in someone's life? So we actually have, do you know Slack? So we have Slack and we have a channel and it's called Customer Feedback. And I just think, you know, no matter where you work in a business, if you work in operations, if you work in HR, if you work in product, it's so important for our team to see that Cinderella story and what we're doing for customers. So as I said, customers always send us photos of their house. And when they get there, Rugg, they are beyond excited. We don't ask them to send photos back. But almost always, they will send us a photo back and they'll say, this is my, this was the stylist and it's always the same story. She recommended a Rugg, I never thought I would go for it. It's not normally my style. I'm so in love with it. Here's a photo of my baby playing on it or my dog playing on it. And we just post those daily because it's just, it's so important, I think, for our whole team to see that. And we've actually just started sharing them on social. So we've started a little regular piece that we run called Life Rock Stories, #RealLifeRuckStories. And just I think there's no better thing to show customers, as I said, as that Cinderella story that may go piece. And the fact that they're real authentic customers and that we always ask for their permission obviously and they're always so happy to share their name and their location and yeah, something that's really important. That's so cool. Because one of the things that I love when I was browsing the site that I loved what you do is you do the full, win a full refund competition. Can you tell us about that? Because that kind of goes along a similar train of thought, doesn't it? Yeah, definitely. So as I said, people are always sharing photos of their makeover. And that's honestly, we just, every single time we still get goosebumps. Like we love seeing them, our whole team. So we just, one day we just thought like, if this is how many we're getting back that people are sharing, like what about the people that aren't sharing? Like how can we actually see all of them? We wanted to see them and we wanted to, yes, we wanted to get the content. But we just love seeing them and that's the truth. So what we did is we said, okay, guys, like you've gone away, you've bought a rug, you've used our stylist advice, show us how you styled it now. So we asked customers to just take a photo of their space and just tag us in it. That's it. Or use our hashtag. And every month what we do is we choose our four favorites and we share them on our Instagram platform. Because as I said, nothing is more authentic than a customer's real house and their real experience. You know, that's better than any influence I could ever do for us, a real life rug story. So we chose four finalists and we posted them and we said, hey, these are the four finalists of the month. You have to vote for your favorite. So that's when we put the call out to our customers to vote for our favorite and all they have to do to vote is just to simply like the post. They like the most and tag two of their friends. So at the end of that voting period, the customer whose space was liked the most gets a full refund of their rug. So they get that rug for free. And then we randomly draw a voter where the voter and two of their friends they've tagged gets a free $250 gift voucher with us. That's awesome. Yeah, and that's kind of a bit mental. Yeah. Yeah. Because that's one of the things that a lot of brands are struggling with at the moment is organic reach and real content for those social. So it's kind of solving two problems at once, isn't it? Definitely. Yeah, solid voting. Now if we take it to the other end of the scale with technology, I noticed that you put a lot of effort into augmented reality. And you mentioned before that a rug can drastically change what a room looks like. And I'm assuming this is what your augmented reality is trying to help customers get their heads around. Can you tell us how that works? Yeah, sure. So basically we've wanted to do augmented reality for a very long time. From day one. From day one. From day one. Yeah, basically from day one. But we were very picky about how we implemented it. Like a lot of solutions, a lot of like frameworks and stuff that are out there. That you can do it in like a mobile app. Or you can do it through a specific mobiles and things like that. Who wants to download another app these days? No one wants to download another app. Not if really has an iPhone or the latest iPhone. Like there's a lot of limitations. So we really wanted to make sure something was really easy and didn't take users from our website. So it's really kind of the key thing in browser and be able to basically be used on any phone or desktop, which was really key. And so basically we've got a solution in place now that does that. So you can take a photo of your room or from your phone or you can just upload a photo of any room. And you can try any rug inside the room. So you can change any rug. You can choose the size. So you can see different sizes. How old you can turn it around. And very realistically shows it in your room. Now it's not perfect because again, it is in browser. It's really good. I think it's pretty good. It's pretty good. Like definitely for in browser tech, it's definitely very good. And it really just gives that customer a way of seeing what the rug sound like. And yeah, it's really, really works. We know customers who use the tool have a much higher chance of converting. than customers who don't use it. - Yeah, brewing. And did you develop that yourselves, or did you partner with someone together technology up? - Good question. No, we partnered with another company to help us with that, yeah. - Yeah, beautiful. And you may not want to give it away, but do you have any figures on what kind of uplift in conversion you see from those who use augmented reality versus don't? - Yeah, yeah, sure. Depending on market and scenario and stuff, like between four and seven times. - Wow, that's massive. - Yeah. - Yeah. And I mean, a lot of people, you might think that we, you know, developed the augmented reality solution from a sales perspective, but also if you think about it from the other end, it's drastically helped with our return rates, right? Because if you can actually visualize that rug in the space by clicking a button and not ordering a 50 kilo rug, and go, oh, I don't quite like those colors with my couch, and then move on to the next one. Then, you know, you've obviously, we've saved a lot in terms of that whole return process. - We've talked a lot about B-Corp retailers on past episodes of AdDecart. Our packaging partner's Signet recently helped nail polish brand Sienna Byron Bay achieve B-Corp status and 99% plastic free orders from start to finish. By switching from bubble-lined mailer bags three years ago, to Signet's Gemi Protective Packaging, not only is Sienna's practices better for the environment, it keeps the nail polish better protected. Visit signet.net.au/blog to find out more. - Do you find many people are using that AR to then share what their rooms might look like with either partners or just into their social feats? - Yeah, absolutely. So people are sharing it on social, which is so exciting. I go on to Instagram, tag all the time. - We get tagged all the time, and people are actually organically, we have arranged out to them at all, but they're doing tutorials on how this is how you use the Miss Amara VRS, which is like insane for us. - I was asking you tutorials, we're asking for feedback from them. - Yes. - Like, what is this one better? - So it's two ground holes. So they will choose like 10 different rods, put them in their space and ask their followers to vote. So which rod do you like better? A or B, B or C, and it's just, it's been so great for us. - That's cool. And do you have to shoot your products any differently than what you were before to enable it in? - No, not at all. We just use the product photos to create a 3D model, to create that augmented reality environment. - Yeah, but I think for every product is different for rugs in particular, obviously rugs are flat, which makes it easier to build a 3D model from. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - As opposed to like, you know, maybe another product, like a couch or a table or something like that, it's gonna be a little bit more complicated. So I guess from that point of view, like yeah, it is a little bit easier, it's just been hard to get texture and stuff like that on a rug. - Oh, cool. And is there any other e-commerce technology that you guys just couldn't live without? - I think that's an interesting question, because I think when it comes to particular technology, outside like obviously AR, like I think in terms of the way we look at technologies, always about what's the problem we're trying to solve? As an end result, we actually cycle through a lot of different tech at different times. So in terms of like, is a particular piece of software, anything that we use, and that we would recommend, it's never the case, it's usually like looking at what's the end goal that we're trying to achieve. So for example, you know, we started with Magento, and that was challenging, and we moved it for Shopify, and it's allowed us to move a lot quicker. But you know, we have never ruled out that we'll look at, will we outgrow Shopify at some point? Will that be a point where we need to look at something that gives us more flexibility? But for now Shopify is brave for us, because it's allowed us to grow very quickly, it's allowed us to implement things very quickly. But so it's always about like, what is it that we're trying to achieve? What's the strategy and what are we trying to achieve? - About my mind. - Yeah. So for example, like product recommendations is another one. That's really important to us for our product. You're using product recommendations, because people definitely don't know what they're going to buy in terms of a rug the first time they come in. You know, we all know that they're looking for a rug. Like we know that they're looking for a rug, but we don't necessarily know what it is. So those product recommendations are super, super important. But we've been through like two different vendors now, and then we're on to looking at our third vendor to basically do that. And also like looking at doing it ourselves in the house. You know, there's a kind of things that we're weighing up. So whenever I kind of stuck to a particular technology or platform, it's more, yeah. - So now it's your question, no. (laughing) - But I can not imagine it only gets harder too, because what you got, how many countries do you sell into now? - Yeah, good question. We sell them to four countries now. - Four countries. - Australia, Hong Kong, New Zealand, US. - So that's four currencies as well. - Four currencies. You have four different stores as well. So, you know, we operate the more separate Shopify stores because there's localization that we do. So first of all, charging the local currency. And then also like delivery is different by country, quite a lot, and pricing because of the delivery and that side of things. - There's a lot of work in there with four different stores, isn't it? - Yeah, definitely. - So like every technology solution as well, we'll look at, we obviously try to find when the works across all the markets, but sometimes it might be one works on one market, but not the other. And how do we implement it across all of them to kind of make still that seamless experience? Our head of ops has gray hair for sure. (laughing) - And just last question on the country piece, have you got warehouses in each country or are you shipping centrally? - Not in each country. So we have our, like our main warehouse, right now, it's in Australia. So it's a warehouse we run ourselves. And we run ourselves for a reason is because again, rugs of bulky, standard warehouses actually is quite challenging to store rugs in. They're not really built to store rugs. So yeah, Australian warehouse services, Australia, New Zealand and Hong Kong. We are looking at setting up out, we're in the process of setting up a warehouse in New Zealand. So we are gonna go down that process, set one up there. But for Hong Kong, it's a relatively smaller market. So we do ship from Australia most of the time, except for like a returns warehouse in Hong Kong. And then in the US, we use like another warehouse, a third party warehouse for now. Just while we've launched that, we've only been there for three months now. So we wanted to use a third party warehouse, but it took us a long time to get that warehouse to find a company that could actually support rugs. And they still have there instead of-- - And it's COVID. - And it's COVID, yeah, we couldn't go visit them. - No, it's COVID. - We couldn't go visit them. - No, it's COVID. - Videos, tours and stuff like that. And still because they haven't done rugs before it's challenging for them. So yeah, one of those challenges is telling a bulky, ugly freight. - So. - Oh, good fun, hey. Does that explain why you've gone into party shirts now? (laughing) - That's a whole 'nother story. - We just see if we find shirts a lot easier. - You gotta hear the story, okay. So basically for as long as we could remember when we were in tech, we used to do this every Friday, we did party shirt Fridays, which meant like every single person had to wear the most offensive, colorful in your face shirt always. And we just, it was such a great cultural piece because even the most sheltered of people and we would just have so much fun with Fridays. And it's company policy, we still do it every Friday. We've expanded it to party shirt dress, jackets, pants. The other day someone said, oh, I'm wearing party underwear, which I don't know how HR feels about that, but so that was our company policy that we did that and we just found it was so great for our culture. And then I guess Aaron approached me when the opportunity for YP Threads came up and he said, you know, look at this business, I feel like it's very us, what do you think and kind of ask me about it? And it was not something that I thought that, you know, I definitely didn't jump at the opportunity, but what kind of pushed me to it was, when I went on their social, I really saw a lot of, I mean, they're completely different businesses to miss them are right, but I saw so many similarities in terms of the community engagement. So, you know, people with rugs, they loved to take photos and share, as I said, it was the same thing with YP Threads, like they loved to have photos of themselves in these loud offensive shirts and they were sharing it off the back of themselves organically. And every day we would get custom attags and shares and all of that, there was a little Facebook group that had formed just of the YP Threads community. So, it kind of had that X factor that, you know, Miss Amara had and that's when I kind of said, yeah, let's do this. Obviously, we have the team set up and that was really kind of beneficial. But gosh, I remember when we did acquire the business and then we had to explain, like, give live chat a bit of a 101 on the brand voice and the culture and how it's going to be different to Miss Amara. Yeah, polar opposite customers. Whole opposite. Very similar business. So, obviously like a direct to consumer business using content really extensively, like same tech platform or very similar tech platform in the back end, you know, we run out in warehouse and everything already. So, it's a bit. It's in terms of that side of it, it was bolt on. There was definitely a lot of work for us around, yeah, the brand piece and the brand voice and the product as well. Obviously, there's still some learnings and stuff for us there, for when we took over the business. - So do you have a very big crossover with the team who might be working on both brands at the same time? - So in terms of logistics, it's the same team and marketing is the same team, but content. - And cost and cost. - Content and customer service are separate. - Yes. - So kind of the key components around where it really does differ for the customer, basically. - Yeah, nice, 'cause I was thinking, yeah, from a content perspective, it would be hard to switch from that Missamara mindset at times and then going into the party. - And being into the brand and tone of voice is just so important. So, you know, I couldn't just, you know, get one of my Missamara customer service stylists all of a sudden start talking to, you know, a completely different demographic. It just was not gonna work. And let's just say like the tickets are very different. (laughing) - When you acquired YP threads and you got onto the covers there, was there anything that you found about that business that you went, oh, that's really interesting. We can apply this to Missamara. - Interesting. - Putting me on the spot there. - Yeah. - There's such different products. - Yeah, there's such different products. - There's definitely a lot of learnings, I think, other way around. - Yeah. - From the Missamara side to the YP side. - But yeah, I can't think of anything up from my head right now, sir. - I mean, one interesting thing is that like, I think I'm sure that there's something in our nature as humans that we are drawn to color. So that's why, you know, party shirts, like they're so colorful and we're naturally kind of like drawn to them. That's why every guy wearing a loud party shirt puts it on their Tinder profile and gets stems about the shirts and every guy at that barbecue wearing the offensive shirt is going to get people asking them about their shirt. The same kind of thing we kind of, we started putting more of our colorful rugs out there in terms of like content because the natural buying behavior that we've seen is that if we share colorful content, really bright content, humans are naturally drawn to it and they're going to click on it, but they leave with the safer option. - Yeah, they see the statement piece and then I go, wow, that looks, you know, but then they end up going with the safer option which they feel a little more colorful with the safer option. - Yeah, that's really interesting. Because especially as we're kind of, I feel like we're coming out of that minimalist direct to consumer design and design starting to get a bit more brave again. - Yeah. - That's really interesting what you're saying about, actually go really brave, but then still have those safe options for customers. - Yeah, and that's, it's funny as well because we did a survey recently to our customers. So randomly, if you're on the website, you'd get picked to do a survey and we just asked one question and was what brings you to Mr. My today? Oh, I was sure that it was going to be, you know, the free styling or the tried at home service or like one of these amazing USPs that we assumed that customers would say, but they literally just said the range. - That was the most common one. - That was the most common response and by like far and away, the most common response. So they really appreciate having those brave options and those colorful options in amongst the neutral options and the safe options. - Yeah, it's really interesting as well. You can see some of those colorful, like those more statement pieces that can get a lot more interactions but then yeah, you look at the sales figures in comparison and they end up super interesting. - Yeah, it's quite interesting buying behavior. - There must be psychology around it. - Yeah. - Oh, big time. We all want to be the peacock, but we probably not all brave enough to be the peacock, right? (laughing) That was interesting what you were saying there around the range. Do you find that range is really important? Once customers shop with you once and have a really great experience because my feeling is that customers actually don't want to shop around. Once they find something that they like and they have a great experience with, they want to kind of go just look after me. Do you find that the range is more important for those customers coming back to give them something new? - Definitely. I mean, in terms of our range, we definitely try and not only offer what we think the customer might want, but so I had up the product team in terms of the designs and I'm also also looking for product gaps in terms of our range. So what is actually not available in Australia at the moment when I'm doing like a product release for Australia? So like one example of that is, so I mean, I don't know how verse two iron rugs, Nathan. - Yeah. (laughing) - But the really locks wool burba rugs that are like handmade and Morocco that kind of feel. So the only place you could really get that was a really high end store where I'm talking it would be like $20,000 in Australia and dollars and there was really nothing else in the market like it. So okay, we knew that people wanted them and they weren't available at an affordable price range. So we really tried to make sure that we service that gap and yes, obviously the cost of the product is more, but we didn't have to charge $20,000 in Australia and dollars. We could do an in-between price that made everyone happy and because actually we work directly with the suppliers, you know, they get more back. The customers are getting a better price and yeah, we, the product gaps is something that we definitely look at in terms of our range, but in terms of the repeat customer, as we said, yes, we definitely do get customers who I'm even surprised, you know, they're like, okay, I've got a rug now for my study, my bedroom, now we'll want to the kitchen and we're like, oh, okay. Dream customer. Dream customer and then they're saying, you know, I've referred my grandma who's never shopped online before. I've referred my sister and Lauren, that's like really what we love. Yeah, that's cool. I know you guys also own a digital agency, like it just feels like we're layering on business as a ontover here. I'm like, how do you even sleep? Tell us about the digital agency and how that, was that pre-Mr. Morrow? - Digital agency is actually post-Mr. Morrow. So when Alex and I moved to Hong Kong, I was invested previously in SEO and digital marketing agency in Australia and when I left Australia, I sold out of that agency and we came to Hong Kong and you know, when you moved to a new country, you see a lot of the challenges when you go there, but Hong Kong's a really interesting market. It's in some ways it's very advanced and some ways it's quite backwards. Physical retail here is huge, it's absolutely huge and rents and stuff are insane because everything's such an enclosed space. People are used to kind of walking out and going to the local store or something like that. So as a result, a lot of digital and marketing has lagged a lot in Hong Kong. So we realized that after setting up Mr. Morrow over here and sort of going through the process of work and a business and sort of trying to find things in Hong Kong as well and just normal process that you do in a new country. Like where do I go for this, where do I go for that? And just realized like there's just a lot of things like missing, like you know, people or companies just aren't out there getting visible. So we realized I was an opportunity to start an agency here. Taking the knowledge we've done from building businesses in Australia as well as building an agency in Australia and taking that sort of digital knowledge both on digital and marketing side to basically improving what the offerings were here in Hong Kong. What we wish we knew when we started a business. Yeah, yeah. And have you had the awkward situation where you've had, not so much a competitive as someone and very close to Mr. Morrow wanting to come to your digital agency for help and you've had to go, this is a bit close for us. We've had definitely situations, not where it's too close, but in fact, situations where it's helped us. So like they, you know, it's, it's, there's not a lot of, I guess, pure play of rug companies, especially in Hong Kong. I'd say we're the only one in Hong Kong. In terms of that, like most of the time if they sell homewares, it's usually a plus to say, hey, actually, you know, we own Mr. Morrow as well. So we really get homewares. So you know, you're in good hands. We haven't had that awkward conversation where we've had to say, no, because you sell just rugs. It's not going to work just because, yeah, it's unlikely to happen in such a small market. Yeah. I get you. Now, the last layer that we'll put on top of this story is that you guys, as I understand, actually a couple working together in this business. Yeah, yeah. Way to make her awkward right at the end. Yeah, I was like saving that one up my sleeve. In the run, we've got here. It's right at the start. I was like, I'm going to keep that one. I'm going to hold it back. How does that work for you guys when you're managing so many businesses and you're so busy and working as a couple? How do you do it? Honestly, we love it. Like we can't imagine anything else. And I feel like a little bit of a responsibility here to speak, because I think couple founders get a really bad rap. I mean, I will share that at one stage, we were looking for investment. And it was actually like a big turnaway point that we were a couple found out. But I just think about it in terms of the way that we operate is we're very clear, like work is work, and personal is personal. But we also have very clear things that we own, right? So what we're in charge of. And I know that I have the final say on anything kind of creative, stylized, brand wise. And I know Aaron has the final say when it comes to finance and all of those decisions. So we keep that really separate, but it's worked for us so well. And I think it's funny because I always say to someone, because they'll say, "Oh, I could never work with my partner. I could never work with my partner." And you know how, if you're working a job and you're partners working a job and you come home from a really hard day, and you'll turn to your partner, and you'll try and explain to them what happened at work. So you have to explain who Jenny is and what happened with Mark and the argument that happened and all of that. We literally can come home and just be like, "How about that thing that happened today?" You don't have to get each other up to speed. We know everything that's going on at all times. Is that just the rest of the channel that you guys talked to each other? Oh, that's another story. No, no, no, no. We talked to each other. And the funny thing is, when we first started doing it, we had this rule that as soon as we came home, we wouldn't talk about work. And that was our rule. But what we found is that made us so frustrated. So I think what we've kind of accepted is a lot of the reason why we're together as a couple is because we're interested in business. And we're interested in, you know, we have similar interests in terms of entrepreneurship and things like that. So rather than kind of deny that, we're like, let's just lean into it. You know what? Like we like talking about business. We just need to make sure that we have that personal time as well. Yeah, most of it's still really important to make sure that we have that personal time and that non-work time. Well, we're during that time like, hey, okay, let's just have now and not talk about work. But it always comes back, but it's about putting in that effort to have that sort of bit separate. You do need a break from work, and that's really, really important to make sure you kind of refresh and that sort of thing. So always talking about it all the time. Eventually you're going to get exhausted. So you do need that time where you can just kind of unwind and you know, have other conversations. So instead of like setting really boundaries like this time we can't talk about in that time, we don't. We're a bit more fluid with it. So a lot of the time we do talk about it. We want the same things. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's the difference when you're working with your partner. Your goals are their goals, their goals are your goals. And I mean, that's really important. I think it would no matter what business partner you have, you need to have the same goals. You want the same things. You want the business to go on the same direction. We have the same. We're aligned on what we want personally in terms of our goals and what we want from our business perspective and the values about how we get there. We're completely aligned there. We're very, very similar in that way, but we're very different in terms of our skill sets. So I think that's why it works so well. And we both really, really love what we do. Like we really love businesses that we're running. We really really really enjoy to us. Yeah, yeah. Exactly. And that's the thing. You say, you know, you can obviously be very protective around work bleeding into personal, but then on the other hand, I'm sure you've got a lot of personal that leads into work as well, which kind of works for both sides. Yeah, that's really, you know, it's right. It's when I know like, for example, I'm going through something personally. I'm aware of that. Whereas maybe if he was just a business partner, I wouldn't be aware of it. I wouldn't know why he was stressed out. We know when we can, we need to alleviate pressure off one or the other because we see if someone's working too much or working overtime. Yeah. So we know when to kind of step in. And in terms of like case studies, in terms of like couple co-founders, you know, you've got Canva. Yeah, Canva's a really good example of. For co-founders, right? Eventbride as well, couple co-founders. So I definitely think that there are advantages. So if anyone's listening and they have, you know, I don't want to start something here, but if you're thinking about doing it, I would be the biggest advocate. 100%. That's brilliant. Do you remember what that investor said to you that was Andy, couple co-founders? Honestly, I have a screenshot of the text that I read all the time just to give myself a little bit of validation. Well done. You've, you've kicked that one haven't you? Basically, I think they just said it could be problematic in hyphens that it could be problematic. And look, at the end of the day, I completely understand where they're coming from, right? I guess also, I think that we're quite realistic in terms of like if let's say, for example, our personal relationship breaks down, we will still be able to separate the business. And personally, we have a plan for that, not that I think we'll ever come to that. We might take dive into that, into that. The thing is about working together as well. And that's the important thing is if it's work, it's work. And we understand that. Like, so we can have a frank conversation with each other at work about, you know, performance with each other. And that's something we can have. And we can always say, hey, look, take it back. This is, this is a work conversation. So I think personal, and we're able to, it's really, really important to separate that work on personal side and really be clear about that conversation. And we're able to do that. We know that work is work, and you know, personal is personal. So when it comes to work, then we can, we can have those conversations. And we're working in it's about work. And if it's personal, it's something different. We can, you know, it's a different kind of communication. I don't, I personally, I don't think if anything, people should be scared, although I think people should aspire to it. You know, if you're in, in for life with this person, then in for business as well, and it kind of makes sense. And it's something that we're really proud of, to be honest. And we say as well, like we see it as if we were both running separate businesses, we, we wouldn't actually see very much of each other. We would actually be, because we work very hard. And you know, in running a business, you've, you, it takes a lot of time. So we wouldn't actually see each other that much of both running our own business separately. So the fact that we're doing it together, we do actually get to see each other more and spend more time. I mean, not the time of work substitutes for quality time. I will say that. You just didn't get out of date night then, did you? No. But even even if you're working together and it's not work, it still is, we are going to work every day. You do get to see each other. Yeah. If we imagine if we weren't, if we'll separate it during that time, we'd actually, yeah, there'd be a lot less time with each other. We'd bring our dog to work as well. Yeah. You know, that's cool. It's a family affair. How like? Yeah. I've loved that chat. Yeah. Yeah. So this one, world-run domination, one rugged type. That's what we always say to everyone. So I mean, really for us, like the next 18 months, US is a really big focus for us. We don't want to lose sight with the other markets, but they're still really important, especially Australia, which is our biggest right now. But we know US for us is going to be huge. We've done tests there. We've just launched there, you know, already seeing what we're doing there is really working well. So this is going to take us a while to kind of build up there. In the future, past maybe 18 months, we'll be looking at potentially Europe, which is obviously a whole beast in itself. So a lot of different smaller markets there. Another really important thing to us is continuing to improve our sustainability. So we do a lot already, but we really want to like sort of accelerate that even more. So how we're looking at ways and how we can reduce our carbon footprint. So whether it's offsetting the carbon that we're already creating or whether it's reducing the use of air freight and things like that. The really big one for us now is recycled fibers. So we use a lot of PET, so PET yarn, which is basically recycled bottles. So we're using a bit of it now. We really want to accelerate. We're trying to develop more and more products across using those recycled fibers. And also we do things like recycled leather and a few other things there, but really expanding that range. And then also in the third one inside of that sustainability piece is like reducing non-degrable waste. So we're looking at sort of how we can create all the waste that we're creating is degradable, especially on the packaging side. Yeah. This is a fair bit of packaging and packaging and rug. We want to see how we can make it degradable basically. That's awesome. Big goals. Yeah. Big goals. Yeah. And then if anyone wants to reach out and talk to you guys, check out Miss Amara. What are the best places to go? Funny thing is my Instagram was too activated today. My Instagram, I was going to say Instagram, DMs. When I get my account back up, like, why is it down there? DM me on Instagram. That happened. No, they think that I've breached the laws for some reason, but I swear that I haven't. So Instagram, if you're listening, like, I swear I'm doing the right thing. No, but you can obviously reach out on LinkedIn. Yeah, LinkedIn for me as well. LinkedIn Messenger or send me an email. Beautiful, guys. Love your work. Thank you so much for sharing your story today. So fun. Yeah, thank you, Nathan. Thanks, Nathan. There were so many threads in there that I really wanted to pull and explore further. Aaron and Alex were fascinating guests. One thing that stood out for me is that they found a few really low cost techniques that they know that will work for them and they've really made the most of them. The tactic of rewarding customers for sharing photos of rugs in their own home serves so many purposes. It makes their customers their biggest ambassadors. gives them content to share wider and provides real inside into customer's lives that no data mining exercise could really uncover. It's really, really smart. It's a tactic I'd steal if I could. To finish up, I have three resources for you. Firstly, if you're a first-time listener of Ad2Cart and you want to stay up to date with new episodes head over to ad2cart.com.au and you can sign up for our weekly newsletter. We'll let you know every time a new episode drops, as well as giving you my three takeaways from each episode and a link to the transcripts so you can know that this is an episode that you want to dive straight into. Secondly, if you want a weekly roundup of the best e-commerce case studies, tools and research, sign up to the high-five Friday newsletter, which is delivered to inboxes at 8am every Friday morning. I read all the e-commerce news and send you the bits that I think you can take action from. Sign up at 12 high, 1, 2, hhh.com.au/hi-five. And the last thing if you are looking to explore your next e-commerce opportunity, head over to e-sweettalent.com.au. We are a dedicated e-commerce talent agency connecting the best e-commerce talent with the fastest growing brands. Check it out, sign up to the email and get in touch with me if you want to discuss your next move. Until next time, thanks for listening and keep those customers adding to car.