Andy Dunn (Bonobos) - How he created Bonobos, why they sold to Walmart, the current state of DNVBs, and a sneak peek of what he's doing next

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Hello and welcome to the consumer VC.

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I am your host, Michael,
and on this show we talked about the

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world of venture capital and innovation in
both consumer technology and consumer products. If

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you're enjoying this content, you could
subscribe to my newsletter, the consumer VC

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DOT sub stackcom, to get each
new episode and more consumer news delivered straight

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to your inbox. Thank you,
Susan. Lyone for the introduction to our

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guests to day, Andy died.
Andy is a founder of Benobo's. The

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NOBO's was one of the first digignator
brands to ever exist. They eventually sold

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to Walmart for over three hundred million. In this episode, Andy shares the

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founding journey of Benovo's, how he
thinks about the current state of dignator brands

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and a clue about what he's up
to next. Without further ADO, here's

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Andy. Andy, thank you so
much for joining me today. How are

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you doing? Really good, really
excited to be here. Thanks for having

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me. Oh, I really appreciate
you. You take it a time.

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Want to start for the very beginning. What was your initial attraction to entrepreneurship?

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I think it was just not wanting
to work for someone else. I

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can remember having a job where I
felt like there was a really cool opportunity

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to do to make an investment,
and I remember sitting down with a couple

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of the people on the side of
the company that we were going to be

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buying and feeling like, if I
could just get my boss out of the

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way here, I think I could
get this done. But you know,

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in a larger firm or enterprise you've
got to defer to the hierarchy in ultimately,

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you don't get to make the decision. And so I started to think

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about sports and I was like,
you know, it's the wrong analogy probably,

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but when you think about Lebron James
Right, or Simon Biles, no

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one's like, you know what,
you're too young. You got to wait

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your turn, right, like we're
going to lose a bunch of games for

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the next five years until you're ready. And so I like the idea that

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when it comes to entrepreneurship you can
just go and you know, maybe nine

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times out of ten or ninety nine
times at a hundred, you're going to

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screw it up, but at least
it's on you and at least you have

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a shot at winning without having to
wait in line. Yeah, I mean

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that's a that's a really great point. There is no CD already or you

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know, I arqu when it comes
to an entrepreneurship, that you can just

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go and of course there's no age
restriction or anything like that. And he

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started. But of us at Stanford. How did you meet, Brian,

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and how did you settle on pants
for your idea? We met at a

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Bathchor party in Austin, Texas,
I had a friend who hit gone to

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Stanford, a business school with justsb
a couple of years before. I knew

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him and I said, Hey,
you know going to Stanford? Do you

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know? Do you know anyone?
And he's like you got to meet S

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Bailey. And so Brian S Bailey
and I met up in Austin. It

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was a friend of mine from college
actually, from growing up as a Bauchlor

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party and we just hit it off. He just was so kinectic, charismatic,

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funny, devastatingly honest sense of humor, which I love. And you

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know where there's a lot of cultures
out there where you actually don't tell the

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truth, like it's weird. I
just move back from New York to Midwest

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and it's like okay, let's get
to the truth and spare ourselves the niceties.

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S Bailey, even though he's from
the Midwest, grew up in Michigan,

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was one of those people were just
click right away because he was so

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honest. Enables you build a relationship
more quickly, and so when we got

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to Stanford, he actually had a
view that men's pants didn't fit and was

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working on this project literally for two
years to do customer research and buy fabric

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and found a cut and so shop
and I was watching the whole thing thinking

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it's so inspiring these doing this and
this is such an unlikely thing, you

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know, to work. And then
it starts working and he's selling pants out

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of the backs of your back of
his trunk and trader Joe's bags. Though.

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It's one of those things that you
talk about with hundrepressure where you can

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tell something he's going to work.
When you're getting that kind of customer feedback

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in you're actually seeing revenue hit the
books and I think Brian was intrepid and

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got that kernel going and that was
when I jumped in and said Hey,

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let me help you build this.
It's amazing. What was some of that

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customer feedback? I mean, of
course there's so many different pants companies out

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there. What was I mean,
Dad, just love the kind of here,

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like what we're like. Some only
the early feedback of like the product

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and maybe how that help shape with
like other iterations. I remember Brian Talking

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about it this way. The research
from the guys that he talked to was

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we don't like wearing pants because they
don't fit. That well, so we

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just wear jeans whenever we can.
And I don't know if you remember this

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era where a formal outfit was jeans
and a Blazer, like guys were just

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defaulting to Denim or ever they could. Like even when you go out at

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night, you were like jeans and
a blazer, maybe a tshirt of button

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down. And I think what happened
was in s the a premium denim industry

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exploded. You had seven from man
kind. Some brands have gone by the

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side, Raw Republic, earnest owne
AG which is still doing well in the

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men's pants fit, like Khaki's will
pants that you'd wear to work, pants

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that pair with the suit, just
didn't keep up with what was tappening in

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five pocket, five pocket being the
Denim fit where you've got that actual extra

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coin pocket, and Denim was adding
stretch and so there were all kinds of

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ways where it was becoming a lot
more comfortable and men's pants was lagging that.

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So that was Brian's first insight was
guys aren't like wearing pants, so

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they wear jeans whenever they can,
unless they have to. That was number

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one, and number two guys don't
like shopping for pants right. So you

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know, going in and trying to
figure out what does fit is a pain

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in the neck and those were Brian's
insights. And then what he figured out

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was that there was a way to
make a pant that had a curved waistband

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so that if it's fit around your
thighs, it also fit the waist versus

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just the typical straight fit. And
growing up for him playing soccer and hockey,

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it just made more sense for that
athletic building. It turns out a

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lot of our friends at Stanford had
the same problem, and so he started

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selling pants to our friends and they
were buying it and there was like all

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right, well, first this is
the better fit and then second, given

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that we're selling direct, maybe we
can keep that rolling. And that was

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when we have when we develop the
idea to build a brand on the Internet,

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which really didn't have a precedent,
a purely digital, direct consumer brand.

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In two thousand and seven there was
no war be, there was no

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Harry's, there was none of these
brands existed. So we got to be

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the idiots to try to like blaze
the trail on that and we definitely had

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our share mistakes along the way.
Is Native one point out. It's amazing.

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We talk a lot about on this
show about at the early stages you

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have to do things that don't scale
and, of course, selling it out

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of the trunk of your car.
You know, things that scale. How

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did you expand to selling to people
maybe outside of your your group? Was

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that online? are also doing kind
of trunk shows for people that or something

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I of your trunk to people that
you didn't know, for example. How

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did you find those people and at
what point did you actually say, okay,

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we actually start doing activities or putting
systems in check that actually do scale?

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Yeah, they're I love that concept
of doing unscalable things in the early

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days. I think Bill Gurley articulates
it really well in a conversation with pet

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gush on and see on invest like
the best and I remember listening that conversation

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thinking well, that's exactly what we
did. It didn't really make sense at

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the time, but we were just
selling pants to as many people as we

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could. I can remember going to
a friend's wedding in La and I just

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would I had a duffle bag of
pants that I would take out, like

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to the Brunch on Sunday after the
wedding, I just would roll around with

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a duffle bag of hants and in
retrospect that was probably exceptionally rude to be

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like hockey pants and someone's wedding branch, but people thought it was funny.

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He told me years later people still
called me the pants guy from that like

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just traveling around selling pants and I
think the combinat in person selling, doing

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these little pants parties, trunk shows. That got us a lot of word

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of mouth early. When you combine
it with the fact that I think it

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was a quality product and we were
known for having great customer service being really

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fast, which is part of that. We all know the benefit of the

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direct models. You can actually create
a higher empathy, higher energy experience when

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you get to interact directly with customers. At that time mostly were email.

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Now, of course, there's chat
and a host of ways to connect,

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and that got a little bit of
word of mouth going where. I would

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say we then went to second degree
connections. So when we decided to move

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to New York, I became a
CEO, moved to business to New York

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there was just as much bigger pool
of guys who, I think, like

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what we were doing with the brand, and so I started getting emails from

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different people. Hey, can I
just try on the pants? And you

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know, we built the ECOMMER site. I think that was the first phase.

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And I like to tell founders now
you should be able to get your

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business to a million revenue run rate
just on your own personal selling, right

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like you be able to get to
call it Thirtyzero, fortyzero within six months,

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you know, per month, and
then ideally, you know, a

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hundred thousand within a year, just
by the mouth that comes from in person

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selling. And then at some point
you just start thinking about how you scale

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from there. And you know,
for us that that move to hiring a

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PR firm and amplifying the story of
what we're doing. And then, as

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we extended to reach their company,
a little company on Apollo up too,

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or was introducing their advertising platform,
which was facebook. And that was two

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thousand and eight and we were one
of the first fifty advertisers on facebook.

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And, as we all know,
there was definitely an era where that was

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an economical channel to the scale before. By virtue of the company success,

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it over time, depending on your
business model, you know, got more

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expensive. Yeah, no, those
are all like I mean that's just amazing

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to also be one of the first
brands that is able to to sell on

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facebook and of course, very different
growing on spacebook back then. Verse now,

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why did you decide, since you
were also a tech company, you

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wanted to be, and you were
the first disley native, especially in the

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apparel space, why did you decide
to move to New York when you already

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were at Stanford, you were in
the bay, you had the amazing resources

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kind of at your fingertips when it
comes on the on the technology side.

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I had a meeting with angel investor
named Andy Rack Left, who, since

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he and his wife have become close
friends of our family, and I remember

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sitting with Andy. It is office
a benchmark. He had left benchmark but

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still kept an office there, and
was giving him the pitch on Benobos and

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I was shocked when he said he
wanted to invest. It was really taken

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aback, as most of his investments
had done, and consumer. But he

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liked the pants, he was a
customer the pants and I think he'd liked

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the concept of going around the traditional
distribution with this direct model and I remember

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him saying, Oh, I see, and here you're moving to New York.

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How calm and I gave a list
of reasons. I was like,

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well, the PR industry for fashion
is in New York. There's a lot

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more retail talent there. There's,
you know, it's the Fashion Center,

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fashion capital certainly of the US,
up there with, you know, Paris

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and Milan in the world. Designers, merchants, production people all there.

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There's actually manufacturing in New York.
We were manufacturing the time in San Francisco

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and what might have been the last
cut and so manufacturing facility in the entire

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day area. They had like for
people working there. And actually in New

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York City has a much bigger garment
industry. So I went through all these

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reasons. I thought New York would
be a place where brandon technology would collide

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more so than the valley, which
is more technology led. And then Andy

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heard me going to this reasons and
fine, said where do you want with

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and I said in New York.
He goes next time just to say that.

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So I said what do you mean? He's like the company should be

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based for the founders want to live, and I think there was there was

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some truth to that too. I
had spent a couple of years in the

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bay area. Wanted to meet someone, you know, a life partner as

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well. At some point felt like
New York would be a more, more

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fun place to be. It actually
turned out that that list of reasons,

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at least we can't run the money
Carlos Simulator and see what might have happened

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if we built the company in the
bay area. There are some story to

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peril companies in the bay area,
like the Fan, the gap family of

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brands, but it ended up ended
up being amazing. Building the NOOBO's in

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New York and, as we've seen, the direct consumer revolution that has,

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you know, emerged over the last
thirteen years since we started it. Most

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of what? Most of which has
been centered in New York, with in

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honorable mention to la the bay area
is less relevant. No, totally.

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It meant you were really there for
the very beginning when you with that rise

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of New York and all these amazing, amazing Disney to brands coming down of

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New York. What was that like
being there? You know, in the

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early days of that movement in New
York? It was bizarre because it wasn't

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clear that there was anything else happening
in an entrepreneur way. I remember hearing

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about companies, like people were talking
about this company, Guilt Group, and

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that was growing quickly and I was
like, Whoa, this is an ECOMMERCE

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company in Apparel. They're selling remnant
inventor. I remember hearing about that.

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There was some talk about Etsy at
the time and that was kind of an

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interesting, you know, market place
coming up. And then I would meet

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people right when they were starting stuff, like I remember meeting Jen Hyman and

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Jenny flies from rent the runway when
they were straight out of hps, talking

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to them about what they were doing. I can remember the warby Parker founders,

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like the first time, you know, pre launched. They came through

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Nobos and we sat down and we
had a meeting with them just to talk

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about I'm like, Oh, they're
going to do this in eyewear. That's

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interesting. Like the try on hurdle
is even higher there, and I remember

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being like, I wonder if that
worked, and we were fortunately became angel

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investors in the company and got to
see that. I remember they're not being

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any seat investors at all and still
we raised actually our first eight million of

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binobos across four rounds. This is
all before we did the series a from

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over a hundred and twenty different angels
because there wasn't a seed ecosystem. You

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know, we're talking pre layer ventures, pre a lot of the people that

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you now think about a New York
now, I feel like the thing four

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founders, and I know it's hard, but it was bananas because there was

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just wasn't there wasn't much in the
people that were building things didn't even know

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each other. It's just cool to
think how much well New York's done since.

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Yeah, no, totally, totally. We've had a couple other folks

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on the show that we're also kind
of in this early pinnions in New York

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and it just seems like a wild, wild time and almost unexpected. It

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seems like not obvious now. Probably, looking back it's probably obvious, but

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it just seems so much excitement back
in those late two thou early two thousand

248
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and ten. Was it tough raising
money for Benobo's and like how did you

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had you go about meeting and I
guess maybe your strategy when it came to

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fund raising. It was intergalactically difficult. Call. I mean it was so

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hard. It wasn't like I couldn't
get to the institutional vcs. I could

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because the network coming out of Stanford
and we had angel investors who knew people

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and some of them have been venture
investors. And I pitched everyone and everyone

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said now like Oh, for a
hundred, no joke, over the three

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years. And as you know,
as you build a company, you know

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if it's a growth company and if
it merits the investments. I think Aspin

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Nobles did. We did, I
think, the first three years for something

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like two million, four million eight
million. So that's like a nice growth

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business with real revenue. Ultimately you
need more revenue as you scale. And

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so you know, the first round
was seven hundred and fifty grand and then

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the second round was three million and
at that point I thought we were ready

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to do a series A. and
we had to do two more rounds at

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the two million each literally one hundred
and fifty, that thousand dollar check,

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twenty five thousand dollar check, hundred
thousand dollar check at the time. And

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when you think about like seven million
bucks is seventy hundred thousand dollar checks.

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You know, like when you think
about those what I would call like seed

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round two, three and full right, or what people went now would call

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like okay, there's a friends of
family din there was a preseed and then

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I think we, I would say
we had like seed one and seed extension,

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that equivalent of the precede the seed
one of the seed to was,

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you know, over seven, seven
and a half million dollars in the at

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the medium check size was probably seventy
five thou and so the way that we

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raise money was based on a principle
that one of my friends got from his

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grandmother, who, I think got
it from the Christian Science, which just

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supplies infinite so if you make the
assumption that the supply of money, supply

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of risk capital for growth companies is
infinite, which isn't true, but kind

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of this like there's a lot of
money out there, then you reframe the

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challenge in your own mind from I
can't raise money too I must not be

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working hard enough to find the people
that will give give me money. And

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what we discovered it but nobows,
was we were more likely to get money

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from people who were customers of the
brand and who loved the brand more so

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than people thetrictionally invested in in Tech. And so once we figured that out,

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we did weird stuff, like I
found a guy who ordered twenty six

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pairs of pants from Malaysia and started
emailing with him and within six months he

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had flown to New York and he
wrote a million dollar check, which was

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our biggest check in the first four
rounds. All because I was a cruise

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this guy from qual lumps ordered over
twenty pairs of pants, and so we

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started doing stuff like that, which
is really meaning into our most passionate customers

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and networking with him that group to
find investors. Yeah, I know that's

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a great point and I'm also curious
to hear what you thought that you had

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you were at the stage were able
to raise series a, that you realize

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you weren't. What were the reasons
why you weren't ready for a series a?

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I think that there's a paradox of
when you are building something where there

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isn't a president. There is a
good thing about that, which is it

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if what you're doing is nonconsensus or
contrarian, but by definition, if it

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works, it's going to create a
lot of economic value. And yet there

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is a funny thing where frequently the
consensus is would drives follow on venture capital

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from the initial venture. CAPPUS.
I don't mean follow on from the same

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firm, but other venture investors seeing
what other venture investors are doing right.

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In other words, once Suber is
out the gates, if your lift or

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Halo Cap, which was a big
company at the time, others that have

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come along other markets, deed and
China, once there's precedent, other venture

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00:21:30.579 --> 00:21:33.890
investors are like, okay, I
see what's happening here. It's hard to

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be the first company, and so
if you're the very first digital brand,

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people are like what is this is
a pants company. Why would I invest

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in a pants company? I wouldn't
invest, you know, as a technology

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industor in a pants company. And
so you have to create the right references

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and for us, ultimately what that
meant was telling a story around how we

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were basically a vertically integrated Zappos.
We were building any commerceft goods distribution engine,

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but rather than selling Nike, we
were going to be selling our own

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brand. And ultimately I think it's
telling that the people who invested in our

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company were people that it had invested
in, you know, analogous, analogous

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enterprises in the two coleads on our
shoes, a or excel and Lightspeed,

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and excel had the president of having
invested in the company called modcloth and lightspeed

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had the president of having invested in
the company called shoudazzle, and even though

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those companies were different, modcloth wasn't
it's own brand, shoodazzle was was not

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selling vertically in a great product in
quite the same way in those companies.

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In some cases the analogs were started
after we were started. By the time

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we raised the A we were able
to point and say, Hey, this

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models working. Look, look at
where it's working elsewhere in your own portfolio,

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and I think once you create those
references it's easier, but it is

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hard to go first. What are
maybe some things that you thought you knew

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or have an understand of and maybe
just didn't quite quite now? I'd point

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to two things. One is we
didn't know how to build the text act

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and therefore we overtime iterated a lot
on the core platform and I think built

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too large of an internal team over
time. Now there's this little company called

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shopify right and I dream of,
you know, building a direct consumer brand

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in the shopify era by comparison to
what we did, because people that write

329
00:23:26.059 --> 00:23:30.930
ecommerce software are rarely are rarely going
to be as good inside of a one

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00:23:32.049 --> 00:23:36.890
company that's doing it versus building it
for an enormous ecosystem where the whole ethos

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of the company is around ECOMMERCE software
development. So the text act was a

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00:23:41.880 --> 00:23:45.240
real struggle and at one point we
opened an office in California to try to

333
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solve it by hiring talent from there, and it turns out that that's that

334
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was. There are a lot more
engineers there and it's very competitive and that

335
00:23:55.240 --> 00:23:59.910
coming to a pant's ECOMMERCE company isn't
isn't the highest I'm option on the list.

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And then when we did recruit people, which we were successful in doing

337
00:24:02.269 --> 00:24:07.309
most out of Netflix, it was
very hard to run a to office thing,

338
00:24:07.630 --> 00:24:11.059
and there's a separate conversation we could
get into around how I did a

339
00:24:11.099 --> 00:24:15.900
poor job of of running running a
business where we had people who were excited

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about different parts of the business.
I think tech was one challenge. The

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00:24:19.140 --> 00:24:26.089
second, I think, was around
something funny, which is not doing some

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00:24:26.289 --> 00:24:33.329
things that we did later earlier,
primarily being comfortable that the future of digital

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brand building wasn't only digital, it
was digital led and Omni and so we

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were five years in before we launched
our guide shop model, which is our

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00:24:44.000 --> 00:24:45.599
fit to ship, you know,
inventory lights store model. I think there's

346
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now over sixty and we were maybe
five years in before we launched our partnership

347
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with Nordstrom, who are people who
can be trusted with a great customer service

348
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experience, which was always our fear
about doing a wholesale I think if we

349
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had done guide shops, our store
strategy and North Strom earlier, we would

350
00:25:04.589 --> 00:25:10.619
have built up much we would have
had a much more rapid path to profits.

351
00:25:10.660 --> 00:25:15.099
We would raised less capital, because
the paradox of direct consumer is it's

352
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actually a really bad business model standalone
in most categories, because the costs of

353
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marketing and free shooting both ways and
returns, all these things actually create a

354
00:25:25.569 --> 00:25:29.849
big cost structure that make your unity
can not mix, challenging, and I

355
00:25:29.890 --> 00:25:33.009
think that's something under appreciated about D
Toc is it's actually not that good of

356
00:25:33.049 --> 00:25:37.880
a business model in most categories.
How do you, because I know obviously

357
00:25:37.920 --> 00:25:41.200
you invested in companies as well,
especially you know today, how do you

358
00:25:41.359 --> 00:25:47.319
advise or think about when entrepreneurs asked
you how to approach? Maybe I'my channel

359
00:25:47.359 --> 00:25:49.990
or going, you know, into
retail versus setting up their own shop I

360
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usually zig to everyone's up and say
I would actually go offline earlier, even

361
00:25:59.470 --> 00:26:03.630
from the beginning, if I could. I'm speaking to an entrepreneur just last

362
00:26:03.670 --> 00:26:07.940
week who's got a really interesting idea
and apparel and I said you should actually

363
00:26:07.980 --> 00:26:11.819
find a wholesale partner from launch and
he was like, wait a second,

364
00:26:11.819 --> 00:26:15.099
I thought we were talking about D
Toc like you're. You know, he

365
00:26:15.339 --> 00:26:18.890
was flattery about it. He's like
you're the godfather of you to see in

366
00:26:18.970 --> 00:26:22.690
your single wholesale and I was like, I know too much. Like in

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the apparel category, wholesale actually can
be your most profitable business as long as

368
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you pick in enduring retailer to work
with. It's while run who cares about

369
00:26:30.650 --> 00:26:33.079
customers, which there aren't tons of, but they're out there. And I

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saw it when I was at Walmart
after the nobles was acquired. Some of

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the you know, some of the
best businesses were ones where there was a

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really big wholesale business, profitable,
well run, combined with a great director

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consumer business. And what happens is
if you have a large wholesale business side

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by side, you don't have to
spend the same kind of marketing dollars on

375
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your director consumer business, because the
wholesale distribution, which, by the way,

376
00:26:57.710 --> 00:27:03.380
is operating income positive, lower margin, gross margins, but higher operating

377
00:27:03.380 --> 00:27:06.940
income because there's not a lot of
expect fixed costs you have to put against

378
00:27:06.940 --> 00:27:10.740
it, decreases your need to market. And so if I asked you,

379
00:27:10.779 --> 00:27:14.700
what would you rather do? Sell
your product profitably in another channel to market

380
00:27:14.700 --> 00:27:22.130
it, or spend money on this
lifetime value to CAC fantasy? You know,

381
00:27:22.690 --> 00:27:26.490
if you have the right partner,
I think the former is a solid

382
00:27:26.529 --> 00:27:30.720
strategy. So I would do that
earlier. And I think I also love

383
00:27:30.839 --> 00:27:33.559
this concept of like running your brand
out of your own store, out the

384
00:27:33.640 --> 00:27:36.200
gates, like if you've got to
pay for store, if you got to

385
00:27:36.240 --> 00:27:38.519
pay for corporate real estate anyway,
might as well just run the company out

386
00:27:38.559 --> 00:27:44.119
of your own store and get your
own vertical store experience going. And and

387
00:27:44.200 --> 00:27:48.230
I've done that with a couple businesses
I'm involved with where we've actually launched the

388
00:27:48.269 --> 00:27:52.670
company in our headquarters Combo store,
and that's been fun because you get to

389
00:27:52.710 --> 00:27:56.230
see the customer and iterating experiment with
what might become your own for while retail

390
00:27:56.309 --> 00:28:00.339
model. Yeah, no, absolutely. It's always such a great experience of

391
00:28:00.460 --> 00:28:03.380
course you know, because the thing
is too is that I think when folks

392
00:28:03.420 --> 00:28:07.500
think about DDC, they I think
it's natural to only think about online,

393
00:28:07.700 --> 00:28:11.900
but there's also DDC in retail and
that you actually had your own store as

394
00:28:11.940 --> 00:28:14.250
well, and that can be,
I mean, I just said, very,

395
00:28:14.289 --> 00:28:18.329
very powerful. How did you develop
the concept for a guide shops,

396
00:28:18.369 --> 00:28:22.089
because that was, I mean,
truly remarkable as well. It was one

397
00:28:22.130 --> 00:28:26.130
of these like beautiful happy accidents things. We had built a couple of these

398
00:28:26.200 --> 00:28:32.119
fit pods that we thought we take
remotely and take him to a bar event

399
00:28:32.160 --> 00:28:34.839
and have people try on pants.
And we had these things fabric in New

400
00:28:34.880 --> 00:28:40.119
Jersey and they weighed hundreds of pounds. Like it. They were the least

401
00:28:40.160 --> 00:28:44.309
modular, hardest thing to transport ever. It's we just stuck them in our

402
00:28:44.390 --> 00:28:47.789
offices, like not far from the
lobby. And then we were running a

403
00:28:47.990 --> 00:28:51.349
test pilot to figure out the fit
of our shirts. We were trying to

404
00:28:51.390 --> 00:28:53.230
figure out whether or not to go
into a second category and we saw similar

405
00:28:53.269 --> 00:28:56.980
challenges on the fit of a woven
button down shirt. We invited a bunch

406
00:28:56.980 --> 00:29:00.700
of people. I think on twitter
we called it the dress shirt. Alpha

407
00:29:00.220 --> 00:29:03.420
then wanted to come in and try
on our shirts and guys started coming into

408
00:29:03.460 --> 00:29:07.099
our offices in New York and we
have these fit pods that were designed to

409
00:29:07.220 --> 00:29:11.650
be mobile, but we're very mobile. And next thing we knew, guys

410
00:29:11.650 --> 00:29:14.089
were trying on shirt. So like
Ah, these shirts are okay, here's

411
00:29:14.130 --> 00:29:17.410
some feedback, but can I try
on some pants? And so we started

412
00:29:17.529 --> 00:29:21.089
like bringing our pants through. We
had some inventory and guys like I want

413
00:29:21.089 --> 00:29:22.930
to buy him and we like Whoa, we don't have any here, like

414
00:29:23.089 --> 00:29:26.400
no, but just ship them to
me right, and so all of a

415
00:29:26.440 --> 00:29:33.079
sudden we built this little fit to
ship lab in our headquarters and next thing

416
00:29:33.119 --> 00:29:36.240
we knew we were doing a million
revenue run rate out of our lobby and

417
00:29:36.440 --> 00:29:41.349
it's like wait a second, we
can't ignore this, like we're excited about

418
00:29:41.589 --> 00:29:44.950
the direct consumer Internet model, but
you're doing a million of sales out of

419
00:29:44.950 --> 00:29:48.430
your lobby from guys coming and trying
on pants. That became something that we

420
00:29:48.549 --> 00:29:51.950
just couldn't ignore, and that was
when we realize like, let's now test

421
00:29:51.990 --> 00:29:55.859
this out, you know, in
standalone locations, and we did a test

422
00:29:55.940 --> 00:29:57.619
on newberry street in Boston, but
we were scared of the costs of real

423
00:29:57.740 --> 00:30:02.500
states. We did in the third
story of a building and barely anyone wanted

424
00:30:02.539 --> 00:30:03.740
to do that. And then we
finally said, all right, let's try

425
00:30:03.740 --> 00:30:07.089
a street level store. We got
the confidence and and I think we had

426
00:30:07.210 --> 00:30:11.529
one on ourmitted street and Lincoln Park
and one and Katie's alley and DC and

427
00:30:11.650 --> 00:30:15.769
they started doing really well. And
that was the beginning of realizing okay,

428
00:30:17.650 --> 00:30:19.690
we don't need to be afraid of
real estate. You need to you need

429
00:30:19.769 --> 00:30:23.480
to get the right real estate at
the right price ground level. And next

430
00:30:23.519 --> 00:30:26.279
thing we knew we were building building
stores. It was a different kind of

431
00:30:26.359 --> 00:30:30.759
store, but they were stores for
sure. No, that's awesome. That's

432
00:30:30.799 --> 00:30:33.559
awesome and I guess also inside there
is people didn't mind, you know,

433
00:30:33.720 --> 00:30:38.109
actually having inventory in the store and
actually didn't mind delay in terms of receiving

434
00:30:38.150 --> 00:30:42.470
the actual product itself, which I
think is is amazing to totally counter.

435
00:30:42.630 --> 00:30:47.190
And two of it in a way. Everyone talks and retail about instant gratification.

436
00:30:47.950 --> 00:30:51.460
Maybe there's something to that. I
tend to think that's more true in

437
00:30:51.500 --> 00:30:53.940
categories a grocery and CPG, where
you might need the product right away.

438
00:30:55.819 --> 00:31:00.460
In apparel it's not so obvious,
particularly in men's apparel. You think about

439
00:31:00.460 --> 00:31:03.779
it, like how often do you
buy something to wear at a store to

440
00:31:03.859 --> 00:31:06.730
come home and rip off what you're
wearing and put that on and need it

441
00:31:06.769 --> 00:31:10.210
right there? Typically you don't wear
it until the next day. Are Beyond

442
00:31:10.250 --> 00:31:11.450
that. And then once you discover
that, you're like, well, actually,

443
00:31:11.490 --> 00:31:15.569
our customers coming from work, going
out to dinner, you know,

444
00:31:17.049 --> 00:31:21.599
coming from work during the day and
doubling back carrying around your own inventory isn't

445
00:31:21.599 --> 00:31:25.319
necessarily a better experience, you know, doing your own fulfillment. And so

446
00:31:25.480 --> 00:31:27.799
once we built a narrative that this
is more convenient because we'll ship at you,

447
00:31:29.480 --> 00:31:32.480
I think that made sense to a
lot of people that it first didn't

448
00:31:32.480 --> 00:31:34.710
make sense to you. And and
now, of course, clicking collect and

449
00:31:36.470 --> 00:31:38.990
you know, clicked his chip and
all kinds of different options like this are

450
00:31:40.069 --> 00:31:45.869
everywhere. So what was the process
like as well, selling Benobos to Walmart?

451
00:31:47.029 --> 00:31:49.900
How did that come about and why
did you decide that Walmart was the

452
00:31:49.980 --> 00:31:56.299
right partner? So it was extraordinary. I mean we were right about to

453
00:31:56.380 --> 00:32:00.539
do a different deal and it was
going to be with a financial firm,

454
00:32:00.980 --> 00:32:04.930
strategic firm. It was compelling.
It was a compelling deal. It was

455
00:32:05.009 --> 00:32:08.329
going to enable US actually to keep
control of the company. We had some

456
00:32:08.410 --> 00:32:12.650
investors who were going to come in
and they were going to buy was a

457
00:32:12.650 --> 00:32:15.599
cap forty percent stake in the business
and people who'd wanted liquidity. We're going

458
00:32:15.599 --> 00:32:17.720
to get it. Other people would
roll. It was going to work for

459
00:32:17.799 --> 00:32:22.519
the team. And then I had
a meeting with Mark Lori, who'd been

460
00:32:22.759 --> 00:32:27.480
a mentor to me. Excel ahead
back to his company, then called Quincy,

461
00:32:28.160 --> 00:32:31.430
early days diapers and soapcom. It
was an example of the company in

462
00:32:31.470 --> 00:32:35.150
the New York ecosystem that was doing
really well in e commerce. I was

463
00:32:35.230 --> 00:32:38.230
tracking it lessly. Mark had become
the kind of a mentor you see him

464
00:32:38.630 --> 00:32:43.190
once every see someone once every year, two years, and they just spend

465
00:32:43.230 --> 00:32:46.019
an hour and you get the best
advice. And so I got back together

466
00:32:46.059 --> 00:32:52.019
with mark after he'd sold his next
company after Quincy, which was jetcom,

467
00:32:52.140 --> 00:32:54.700
to Walmart, and I remember seeing
that transaction thinking, Whoa, that's a

468
00:32:54.779 --> 00:33:00.009
really rageous bet by Walmart and I
know that that mark wanted to go build

469
00:33:00.049 --> 00:33:02.650
the next Amazon and so he must
have seen something really compelling and joining forces

470
00:33:04.130 --> 00:33:07.930
arguably Walmart scale and balance sheet.
And we sat down and we just mind

471
00:33:07.970 --> 00:33:14.319
melted around the future of the commerce
and the component of the future that I

472
00:33:14.519 --> 00:33:19.799
was closes to, which was around
the power of digital brands and how great

473
00:33:19.839 --> 00:33:24.200
retailers would need great proprietary brands to
win. And we talked in that conversation

474
00:33:24.240 --> 00:33:28.509
about the future of commerce looking a
little bit like the history of Netflix,

475
00:33:28.549 --> 00:33:32.230
which is you start by streaming other
people's content. Let's set aside the DVD

476
00:33:32.230 --> 00:33:36.549
era, but you're streaming other people's
content and then it's some point wake up

477
00:33:36.589 --> 00:33:39.470
and you're like actually, this becomes
commodetized. It's a race to the bottom

478
00:33:39.509 --> 00:33:44.859
on margin. We need to have
our own content, and you might remember

479
00:33:44.859 --> 00:33:49.180
that Netflix started building, you know, creating shows like orange is new black

480
00:33:49.339 --> 00:33:52.259
and house of cards, and there
were a lot of people the time thought,

481
00:33:52.339 --> 00:33:54.140
who do they think they are ago? What did they think they're going

482
00:33:54.140 --> 00:33:59.009
to start to like make their own
content? And of course now we know

483
00:33:59.089 --> 00:34:01.730
that they're pretty good at that right
including, I think you know, Academy

484
00:34:01.769 --> 00:34:07.250
Awards and Emmy's and all kinds of
good stuff. And so my view at

485
00:34:07.289 --> 00:34:09.039
the time, which mark and I
discussed, was I think this is going

486
00:34:09.079 --> 00:34:13.519
to be the future of commerce for
a lot of the big platforms is you

487
00:34:13.639 --> 00:34:17.159
to the development of proprietary brands and
digital brands, and that in fact became

488
00:34:17.199 --> 00:34:22.079
a really exciting way to think about
the future of our company. You know,

489
00:34:22.199 --> 00:34:24.750
being a part of that and being
inside of a really big and,

490
00:34:25.190 --> 00:34:30.550
you know, a big safe tent, which is the Walmart ecosystem. And

491
00:34:30.869 --> 00:34:32.230
and then it was in a it
was a magical experience on a lot of

492
00:34:32.269 --> 00:34:37.110
levels on that for reasons I didn't
appreciate the time. You know, the

493
00:34:37.829 --> 00:34:44.139
CEO, they're doug killing, and
what he's done to transform that enterprise digitally,

494
00:34:44.460 --> 00:34:49.059
sustainability, corporate social responsibility. It
was it was a really, really

495
00:34:49.139 --> 00:34:52.929
fun journey. No, that's that's
amazing. I guess also, stepping like

496
00:34:52.130 --> 00:34:57.250
one step back in before that,
why did you since you were receiving a

497
00:34:57.289 --> 00:35:00.210
couple offers, why, personally,
were you? Did you think that it

498
00:35:00.570 --> 00:35:06.530
was the time was right to actually
to actually have Benobo's get acquired by the

499
00:35:06.610 --> 00:35:09.320
tough a strategic or whether it's to
do almight? So that was two thousand

500
00:35:09.320 --> 00:35:15.920
and seventeen. I've been in it
for ten years and I was getting married

501
00:35:16.639 --> 00:35:22.110
and I remember sitting down with mark
in the CEO Walmart. Doug sat down

502
00:35:22.150 --> 00:35:24.429
for dinner in New York. I
was meeting Doug for the first time and

503
00:35:24.469 --> 00:35:27.309
you he asked me the same question. He was like, why do you

504
00:35:27.349 --> 00:35:30.989
want to do this? And I
remember thinking I'm probably never going to have

505
00:35:30.030 --> 00:35:34.349
a chance to have a kind of
a dinner again if the deal doesn't happen.

506
00:35:34.829 --> 00:35:37.260
I'm just going to be as unbarnish
and as honest I can. I've

507
00:35:37.260 --> 00:35:37.780
SOA why do you want to do
this? And I said, Doug,

508
00:35:38.139 --> 00:35:42.539
I've been at this for ten years, I need a job. You like

509
00:35:43.099 --> 00:35:46.780
then, entrepreneur is not a job, and it felt like I had some

510
00:35:46.900 --> 00:35:52.849
shareholders there were excited to get liquid. I was personally excited to do risk.

511
00:35:52.090 --> 00:35:54.010
You know, you get older.
I was twenty eight when we started

512
00:35:54.090 --> 00:35:58.730
Binobo's. I was thirty eight and
it felt like talk up the win.

513
00:35:58.889 --> 00:36:01.570
I would have been Kay doing the
minority deal as well and kind of going

514
00:36:01.650 --> 00:36:07.639
for the IPL but I just fell
in love with Walmart and my instinct was

515
00:36:07.119 --> 00:36:10.400
let's do it like it's been a
decade and you know, I was that

516
00:36:10.679 --> 00:36:14.320
was a walmart for another three years, so like thirteen years all in.

517
00:36:15.159 --> 00:36:17.590
It felt like the right moment.
I can't describe it there's an intuition to

518
00:36:17.750 --> 00:36:22.230
it. And now with covid and
everything that's happened, which we never could

519
00:36:22.230 --> 00:36:25.230
have foreseen, you know, I
feel I feel fortunate that Benobo's belongs to

520
00:36:25.710 --> 00:36:30.030
probably one of the few places you
can be in retail right now and be

521
00:36:30.309 --> 00:36:35.019
like on a winning, winning team
that's growing, share prices appreciating. So

522
00:36:35.059 --> 00:36:37.260
I feel like we got the right
owner. I think if we've been standalone

523
00:36:37.539 --> 00:36:42.019
private equity, with everything that went
down the last year and a half,

524
00:36:42.300 --> 00:36:44.860
that I think that would have been
tough. Of course it's been a really

525
00:36:45.019 --> 00:36:49.929
tough, tough year and of course
no one had the foresight of covid like

526
00:36:49.969 --> 00:36:52.969
that. But that's also good to
know. You never know how these things

527
00:36:52.010 --> 00:36:57.010
are going to end up. But
that the Walmart really was the rights acquire

528
00:36:57.210 --> 00:37:00.440
for Benobo's and that was and to
be under walmarts wing. That's great.

529
00:37:00.519 --> 00:37:02.880
It's really great to know. And
right right, right now, you working

530
00:37:02.920 --> 00:37:07.239
on something in stealth. Do you
have any hints of or any tea's in

531
00:37:07.320 --> 00:37:10.639
terms of what tracks you currently working
on? I'll tell you this. It's

532
00:37:10.679 --> 00:37:20.590
around this idea of of eliminating loneliness
and helping people in a nonhealthcare way improve

533
00:37:20.670 --> 00:37:22.670
their mental health. So it's got. It's got everything to do with mental

534
00:37:22.710 --> 00:37:27.510
wellness, but nothing to do with
the mental wellness product, and so we'll

535
00:37:27.550 --> 00:37:31.380
be will be in the APP store
in not that long with the password protected

536
00:37:31.420 --> 00:37:37.460
Alpha. It's named after an important
part of a Thanksgiving meal and I think

537
00:37:37.500 --> 00:37:42.139
if we do this the right way, a lot of people are going to

538
00:37:42.219 --> 00:37:44.489
love it, but let's get it
live and make sure that a few people

539
00:37:44.530 --> 00:37:47.010
love it first. I'm excited.
I'm really, really excited for it and

540
00:37:47.289 --> 00:37:52.090
given also like the year that we've
had, it could be more makes sense

541
00:37:52.170 --> 00:37:54.489
as well that that this is the
absolute perfect time for it, it seems,

542
00:37:54.929 --> 00:37:58.210
since, of course, with everything
that would have we been through.

543
00:37:58.250 --> 00:38:01.320
Duram Covid, what's one book that
has inspired you personally, one book that

544
00:38:01.360 --> 00:38:05.880
inspired you professionally? I could answer
this in a way where those are pretty

545
00:38:05.880 --> 00:38:09.000
similar answers, but let's split it
up. I think that moneyball by Michael

546
00:38:09.000 --> 00:38:15.150
Lewis is one of my favorite books
professionally because it's about so it's about baseball,

547
00:38:15.190 --> 00:38:20.070
it's about billy being of the AIDS
and someone coming in with a data

548
00:38:20.110 --> 00:38:25.630
driven approach to a pretty intuition and
scout driven industry and finding a way in

549
00:38:25.750 --> 00:38:30.260
a business that's built on a very
UN leveled playing field where the payrolls are.

550
00:38:30.940 --> 00:38:32.860
You know, I think whatever it
is, Tampa Bay raised one four

551
00:38:32.860 --> 00:38:36.980
hundred and twenty five million and the
Yankees for two hundred and fifty. So

552
00:38:37.019 --> 00:38:38.820
if you think about having to compete
in a sport like that, it actually

553
00:38:38.940 --> 00:38:43.170
is analogous in some ways to start
ups where you just don't have the resources

554
00:38:43.250 --> 00:38:45.210
and how do you how do you
win? And so I loved I loved

555
00:38:45.289 --> 00:38:49.969
that book first of ups Michael Lewis
is a great writer and because the theme

556
00:38:50.050 --> 00:38:55.360
of it is you can unlock ways
to win by being contrarian and doing things

557
00:38:55.519 --> 00:39:00.159
that other people are doing and might
criticize you for, and I think from

558
00:39:00.199 --> 00:39:05.480
this conversation, I think that's a
team we could draw from the startup journey

559
00:39:05.480 --> 00:39:08.760
right which is being contring whether BC's
are willing to back to you or not.

560
00:39:09.110 --> 00:39:14.949
So I love that book professionally.
Personally, I love atonement by Ian

561
00:39:14.949 --> 00:39:19.750
mceuman. It's a novel. I
think it became a decent movie starring Kara

562
00:39:19.789 --> 00:39:22.510
Knightly, but I recommend the book
over the movie and I think what I

563
00:39:22.590 --> 00:39:28.340
love about it is what I think
about what makes human beings fundamentally incredible.

564
00:39:28.780 --> 00:39:32.500
It's empathy, our ability to imagine
the world from the perspective of another person.

565
00:39:32.780 --> 00:39:37.340
Whether we choose to deploy that or
not in this age of tribalism and

566
00:39:37.420 --> 00:39:42.130
division, is is still our choice. The capability is there. I'm reminded

567
00:39:42.170 --> 00:39:45.289
of the love your enemy speech by
Dr King that I try to read whenever

568
00:39:45.329 --> 00:39:50.369
I'm feeling particularly angry. On to
twitter and tonement is a great book.

569
00:39:50.449 --> 00:39:57.440
It just immersing yourself in empathy and
what it means to imagine the world from

570
00:39:57.480 --> 00:40:00.320
the perspective of another person, which
I think is the hardest thing to do,

571
00:40:00.760 --> 00:40:06.639
but the capability that we are most
uniquely suited to know. I really

572
00:40:06.679 --> 00:40:10.389
appreciate you sharing both of those and
really excited to add them to our our

573
00:40:10.469 --> 00:40:15.269
book list. My final question to
you is, what's your one piece of

574
00:40:15.349 --> 00:40:21.389
advice for founders who are currently building
a business? I think that it's okay

575
00:40:22.500 --> 00:40:25.780
to be vulnerable and I think it's
important to have a segmentation of who you're

576
00:40:25.780 --> 00:40:30.980
vulnerable with. Right it's so I
think vulnerability does draw your team in,

577
00:40:30.300 --> 00:40:34.019
but your team also wants to know
that they're going to win. said,

578
00:40:34.059 --> 00:40:38.329
there's only so much of your own
psychological journey that you want to tax them

579
00:40:38.409 --> 00:40:42.809
with. They've got up enough work
to do. I think with the close

580
00:40:42.889 --> 00:40:47.250
member of your leadership team, there's
or a cofounder, you can be more

581
00:40:47.769 --> 00:40:52.760
transparent. Then I think it's really
important to find someone in it. There's

582
00:40:52.920 --> 00:40:55.000
a lot to be said for loved
ones and friends and family. where I'm

583
00:40:55.039 --> 00:41:00.599
going with this is it's really important
to find someone in your orbit, whether

584
00:41:00.679 --> 00:41:06.150
it's a therapist or an executive coach, psychiatrist or some other form of spiritual

585
00:41:06.190 --> 00:41:09.750
advisor, heal or someone who you
can be a hundred percent UN varnished with

586
00:41:10.869 --> 00:41:17.190
about your insecurities and your fears,
your anxiety, is your your jealousies,

587
00:41:17.269 --> 00:41:23.300
your rage, all these human emotions
that tend to be bottled up, because

588
00:41:23.460 --> 00:41:30.099
founders are meant to be these beacons
of positive energy and contagious positive thoughts and

589
00:41:30.340 --> 00:41:35.170
bind a way to processes other emotions
and and so I think it's okay to

590
00:41:35.250 --> 00:41:37.409
ask for help. In fact,
I would actually say it's not okay,

591
00:41:37.489 --> 00:41:43.250
it's it's important to seek it out
and find the right person to have that

592
00:41:43.449 --> 00:41:47.159
experience with the same way that you
approach going out and getting the right senior

593
00:41:47.199 --> 00:41:52.480
IOS engineer, the right CFO.
You should be equally ambitious about getting the

594
00:41:52.559 --> 00:41:58.000
best counselor counsel, Consiliaria, whatever
you want to call it, that you

595
00:41:58.039 --> 00:42:02.230
can and totally, because then that
also means your overall performance in your overall

596
00:42:02.269 --> 00:42:06.190
health of wellness. Mean that's also
tied to it too. And then also

597
00:42:06.349 --> 00:42:09.349
just you know, it's obviously important
to make the right higher into and to

598
00:42:09.510 --> 00:42:13.070
get, you know, the best
Baliarity, but also make sure that you're

599
00:42:13.110 --> 00:42:16.340
a hundred percent right, right and
doing the types of things that actually will

600
00:42:16.380 --> 00:42:22.460
help your make sure your mental health
is in check and to keep you,

601
00:42:22.820 --> 00:42:24.099
you know, on a great path. Andy, this has been so much

602
00:42:24.099 --> 00:42:28.179
fun. Thanks again for your time. Yeah, this is amazing. Really

603
00:42:28.260 --> 00:42:31.650
glad to be with you. I
appreciate it. And there you have it.

604
00:42:31.769 --> 00:42:35.929
It was terrific chatting with Andy.
You can follow him on twitter at

605
00:42:36.050 --> 00:42:38.969
done. Now let's hear from Rohan, from gorgeous. Rohan, thank you

606
00:42:39.010 --> 00:42:42.610
so much for joining me today.
How are you? I'm doing very well.

607
00:42:42.690 --> 00:42:45.199
My cover yourself, I'm doing fantastic. I would love to learn a

608
00:42:45.519 --> 00:42:50.559
bit more about your company, Gorgeous. Yeah, absolutely well, gorgeous isn't

609
00:42:50.559 --> 00:42:53.880
ECOMMERCE focused help desk. We are
an Omni channel solution. We aggregate a

610
00:42:53.960 --> 00:42:59.110
bunch of different channels that brands utilize
to communicate with their customers, things like

611
00:42:59.349 --> 00:43:02.630
email, chat, phone, SMS, social media, Anyway really to get

612
00:43:02.630 --> 00:43:07.150
in touch with potential customers or customers
that are looking to buy from your brand.

613
00:43:07.349 --> 00:43:08.789
What we do with gorgeous as we
build in a lot of automation and

614
00:43:08.909 --> 00:43:13.059
machine learning into the back end of
the product. A lot of times what

615
00:43:13.619 --> 00:43:16.860
customers are asking to brands is where's
my order, what's my shipping status,

616
00:43:16.940 --> 00:43:21.500
things that are very common and very
repetitive, and what we do at gorgeous

617
00:43:21.500 --> 00:43:24.500
as we help brands automate certain things
so that they don't have to spend a

618
00:43:24.539 --> 00:43:28.929
lot of time focusing on those common
and repetitive request us, but that they

619
00:43:28.969 --> 00:43:31.650
can actually spend a lot of time
focusing on things that are much more complex

620
00:43:31.730 --> 00:43:36.690
in order to drive revenue out of
the CX function. So what we do

621
00:43:36.849 --> 00:43:40.519
is we actually integrate with three platforms, shopify, Magento, to and bag

622
00:43:40.599 --> 00:43:44.840
commerce, and what we can do
with those platforms is we can actually bring

623
00:43:44.920 --> 00:43:47.639
in variables from each of the three, things like order number, name,

624
00:43:49.039 --> 00:43:52.840
shipping information, tracking information, things
that are easily accessible without ever having to

625
00:43:52.880 --> 00:43:57.789
leave the gorgeous platform, and that
makes things so much easier for the agents

626
00:43:57.869 --> 00:44:00.869
on the brand side of things to
get back in touch with customers and make

627
00:44:00.909 --> 00:44:04.070
sure that they're helping them in the
most efficient way possible. And I always

628
00:44:04.110 --> 00:44:07.269
like to talk about social media as
well. We have add comments from facebook

629
00:44:07.269 --> 00:44:12.019
and instagram. We have a messenger
and we also have instagram DM's, which

630
00:44:12.019 --> 00:44:15.099
is one of our most widely requested
features all across our customer base that we

631
00:44:15.179 --> 00:44:21.019
can actually bring into the gorgeous platform
and help brands communicate with customers and perspective

632
00:44:21.059 --> 00:44:23.849
customers, you know, perhaps before
they ever hit their website. And so

633
00:44:24.170 --> 00:44:29.769
we're very ECOMMERCE focused. We have
about seven thousand brands all across the spectrum,

634
00:44:29.809 --> 00:44:34.050
from early stage east, from early
stage ECOMMERCE too much later stage measure

635
00:44:34.210 --> 00:44:37.090
companies as well, and we're also
very international. That's awesome. So you're

636
00:44:37.090 --> 00:44:44.400
able to with gorgeous to brands can
consolidates all requests that they get from customers,

637
00:44:44.440 --> 00:44:46.840
all the customers tickets, asking where
their orders are in one location.

638
00:44:47.119 --> 00:44:50.840
Sounds like it's going to save a
lot of time. Yeah, absolutely.

639
00:44:50.840 --> 00:44:52.150
I mean, like God, are
the days where brands are just using email

640
00:44:52.150 --> 00:44:55.389
to communicate with with their customers?
Right, they're using emailed, using social

641
00:44:55.429 --> 00:44:59.949
media. SMS is some thing that
brands are really utilizing, especially over the

642
00:44:59.989 --> 00:45:02.070
last year. So there's so many
different ways to get in front of customers.

643
00:45:02.110 --> 00:45:07.030
Sex is much more of a proactive
activity now than it ever has been,

644
00:45:07.110 --> 00:45:09.500
as opposed to just purely reactive.
And at Gore just we help brands

645
00:45:09.539 --> 00:45:14.699
make things more efficient from from an
aggregation and automation perspective. So you have

646
00:45:15.019 --> 00:45:17.539
over seven thousand customers, which is
amazing. Seven thousand brands. From your

647
00:45:17.579 --> 00:45:22.489
perspective, what does it make sense
for a brand to be thinking about partnering

648
00:45:22.650 --> 00:45:25.369
with Gorgeous or be using gorgeous?
It's a good question. Really, our

649
00:45:25.409 --> 00:45:29.690
baseline set of requirements is that,
you know, they sit on shopify or

650
00:45:29.809 --> 00:45:32.369
big commerce or Magento to and that, with the integrations that we have with

651
00:45:32.449 --> 00:45:38.639
those three platforms, that immediately makes
any brand that's looking to consolidate tickets qualified

652
00:45:38.639 --> 00:45:42.239
customer for us. Right, and
so we have customers that are doing,

653
00:45:42.400 --> 00:45:45.079
you know, say, three hundred
to three hundred fifty tickets a month and

654
00:45:45.360 --> 00:45:49.039
maybe they're just using a couple different
channels, like just email and and phone,

655
00:45:49.119 --> 00:45:52.469
for example, and then we have
much more mature brands on the enterprise

656
00:45:52.550 --> 00:45:57.670
level that are accepting tens of thousands
of tickets and have multiple, multiple agents

657
00:45:57.710 --> 00:46:00.750
on the brand side working to get
back to customers. And one of the

658
00:46:00.789 --> 00:46:04.340
things that we do differently a gorgeous
is we actually don't price based on the

659
00:46:04.380 --> 00:46:07.099
number of heads that you have using
gorgeous on the brand side. So we're

660
00:46:07.099 --> 00:46:10.179
not going to charge you for each
additional user that you have on a platform.

661
00:46:10.500 --> 00:46:14.500
We're actually just going to charge based
on ticket volume and that's how we

662
00:46:14.619 --> 00:46:17.059
determine where on the spectrum you are
and for that reason, it generally and

663
00:46:17.219 --> 00:46:21.769
combination with all the automation we build
and it tends to be very cost effective

664
00:46:21.769 --> 00:46:24.210
for brands. And not only are
they saving potentially on that side of things,

665
00:46:24.250 --> 00:46:29.050
but they're also able to generate sales
through the animation of machine learning that

666
00:46:29.130 --> 00:46:31.090
we have built in, and it
gives a bunch of people access to the

667
00:46:31.130 --> 00:46:35.800
platform. So if someone on the
engineering team wants to hop inners the CEO

668
00:46:35.920 --> 00:46:37.719
wants to hop in, they can
do so and it's not going to cost

669
00:46:37.760 --> 00:46:42.079
a brand anymore that's awesome. That's
awesome. As we're a pushing the holidays

670
00:46:42.119 --> 00:46:45.159
here, what are three tips for
managing the customer experience you have for the

671
00:46:45.199 --> 00:46:50.909
brands? It's obviously in retail the
holiday period is the busiest time. Number

672
00:46:50.909 --> 00:46:54.469
One is personalized all your interactions with
customers. The worst thing that you can

673
00:46:54.469 --> 00:46:58.190
do is a brand is make your
customers feel like they're just a number,

674
00:46:58.309 --> 00:47:01.019
not an actual person. And in
the event where you're not getting back to

675
00:47:01.179 --> 00:47:05.780
customers in a sufficient amount of time, or you're not getting them the right

676
00:47:05.780 --> 00:47:08.940
answer or you're not addressing them by
name, it's very likely that a combination

677
00:47:09.019 --> 00:47:12.340
of these things, or even one
of these things is going to convince that

678
00:47:12.500 --> 00:47:15.050
customer to go to a different brand. I mean, there's so much competition

679
00:47:15.090 --> 00:47:19.849
out there nowadays that consumers are willing
to pay a couple extra bucks just for

680
00:47:19.969 --> 00:47:22.530
that more personal interaction with the brand, and so make sure you're personalizing that

681
00:47:22.610 --> 00:47:27.130
interaction with your customers and making them
feel like you want to have a relationship

682
00:47:27.130 --> 00:47:30.719
with them long term. Number two
is automated. Frequently ask questions. I

683
00:47:30.840 --> 00:47:34.159
talked a little bit about this earlier, but one of the most common requests

684
00:47:34.199 --> 00:47:37.159
we see especially in the DC environment
brands, is you know, where's my

685
00:47:37.239 --> 00:47:38.639
order? What's my shipping status?
When is it going to get here?

686
00:47:38.840 --> 00:47:42.719
Questions that you and I have both
asked in the past as well, and

687
00:47:43.400 --> 00:47:47.110
we're finding that agents are spending way
too much time manually responding to these kinds

688
00:47:47.150 --> 00:47:51.469
of requests and it's not allowing them
to focus on really getting in front of

689
00:47:51.630 --> 00:47:55.909
perspective new customers via a number of
other different channels. And so what we

690
00:47:55.949 --> 00:48:00.659
can do with the integration as we
can bring in the variables like name,

691
00:48:00.900 --> 00:48:06.019
order information, tracking information and we
could set rules in the background to automatically

692
00:48:06.059 --> 00:48:09.539
respond to customers if they were to, for example, ask about shipping or

693
00:48:09.579 --> 00:48:13.090
status of their order. And that's
just one example, but there are a

694
00:48:13.130 --> 00:48:15.289
number of other ways that the brands
can use automation. The important thing there,

695
00:48:15.289 --> 00:48:19.530
obviously, is to not overuse automation. There there's only so much that

696
00:48:19.610 --> 00:48:22.610
you can do with with that piece
of the equation and if you do overuse

697
00:48:22.650 --> 00:48:24.210
it, then that takes away from
point number one, which is personalization,

698
00:48:24.409 --> 00:48:29.559
and number three, find opportunities to
drive revenue through through customer support. Customer

699
00:48:29.559 --> 00:48:32.119
support, as I mentioned earlier,
is no longer just a reactive piece of

700
00:48:32.159 --> 00:48:37.800
the organization. It's much more proactive
nowadays. So Institute live chat campaigns.

701
00:48:37.039 --> 00:48:42.150
Hop on a page in front of
a customer, basically inducing them to make

702
00:48:42.190 --> 00:48:45.110
a purchase by telling them something that
they want to hear or helping them out

703
00:48:45.389 --> 00:48:49.070
and making a decision in terms of
product in her website. Utilize social media.

704
00:48:49.150 --> 00:48:52.269
If somebody comes and comments on one
of your ads and says they love

705
00:48:52.429 --> 00:48:55.260
this product that you posted, respond
to them directly in line from within gorgeous,

706
00:48:55.380 --> 00:48:58.860
and provide them with a discount code
and do some to come to your

707
00:48:58.900 --> 00:49:04.460
website. Institute SMS campaigns. SMS
has is being widely adopted across the industry

708
00:49:04.460 --> 00:49:07.500
now, especially over the last year
or so, and if you have any

709
00:49:07.539 --> 00:49:09.809
product launch, announce at VI SMS. People are on their phones all the

710
00:49:09.889 --> 00:49:14.489
time and chances are they're at least
going to click through that link to get

711
00:49:14.489 --> 00:49:16.449
to your website and take a look
at what you have to offer, especially

712
00:49:16.489 --> 00:49:20.289
if they've been customers of years in
the past. And if they haven't,

713
00:49:20.289 --> 00:49:23.400
then it's a chance to gain you
customers. So be proactive, not reactive.

714
00:49:23.679 --> 00:49:27.159
Is Point number three, and you
know, if you combine those three

715
00:49:27.159 --> 00:49:29.519
things, I think, yeah,
you're going to have a successful B fcm.

716
00:49:29.639 --> 00:49:31.039
No, I love that. I
love that. So and just recap.

717
00:49:31.119 --> 00:49:35.599
Number one, personalize all interaction with
customers. We talked a lot about

718
00:49:35.599 --> 00:49:39.030
on the show about the trend of
personal as a personalizing products. Well,

719
00:49:39.150 --> 00:49:45.030
also personalized was interact with coustmers as
well when they do have maybe some pain

720
00:49:45.150 --> 00:49:49.070
points, and it goes so far. In your second point, automate frequency

721
00:49:49.230 --> 00:49:52.460
or have an fq sheet of absolutely
makes total sense. And the third point

722
00:49:52.500 --> 00:49:57.539
I love, which is turning your
customer experience, for Your Customer Service Center

723
00:49:57.900 --> 00:50:00.900
from a cost center into a revity
driver, and I think that is pretty

724
00:50:00.900 --> 00:50:06.980
amazing idea and also really cool because
then you get then you can also influence

725
00:50:07.690 --> 00:50:10.730
repeat rate and at the same time, if you don't have a great customer

726
00:50:10.769 --> 00:50:15.489
service centered at that's how fully baked
out, and you maybe aren't personalized with

727
00:50:15.769 --> 00:50:17.769
customers, then they might churn it
might lose them to a competitor. So

728
00:50:19.050 --> 00:50:21.639
that's awesome, Rohan. Thank you
so much. Yeah, no, absolutely

729
00:50:21.679 --> 00:50:24.079
appreciate it. If you enjoyed this
episode, I love it if you'd write

730
00:50:24.079 --> 00:50:28.239
a review on the apple podcast.
You're also welcome to follow me. Your

731
00:50:28.320 --> 00:50:32.079
host Mike on Twitter at my guelb
and also follow for episode announcements at Consumer

732
00:50:32.119 --> 00:50:34.880
VC. Thanks for listening, everyone,