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Scaling a Scent: How Adam and Raquel Bouris Put WHO IS ELIJAH On The World Stage | #450
In this episode of Add To Cart, we chat with Adam Bouris, co-founder of WHO IS ELIJAH, the Aussie fragrance brand making waves globally. Adam shares the wild story behind their brand name, how they got into David Jones in just five days and the bold decision to cut down from 800 wholesalers to just a few key players like Sephora. Adam shares his plans to expand the brand globally, the role of free samples in their marketing strategy, and how Adam manages both business and family life as he and his wife gear up to take on the world.
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About your guest:
From cabinet maker to world conquering entrepreneur, Adam Bouris is an accomplished entrepreneur and true Aussie all rounder. With a background as a Director and Co-founder of several companies spanning various industries, Adam eventually co-founded his own brand WHO IS ELIJAH with his wife in 2019. Since then, Adam has been instrumental in transforming the business from a garage startup into Australia’s fastest-growing fragrance brand. Under his leadership as CEO, WHO IS ELIJAH is now making its mark on the global stage, expanding into key markets including the Middle East, UK, and EU.
About your host:
Nathan Bush is the host of the Add To Cart podcast and a leading ecommerce transformation consultant. He has led eCommerce for businesses with revenue $100m+ and has been recognised as one of Australia’s Top 50 People in eCommerce four years in a row. You can contact Nathan on LinkedIn or via email.
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- Broadcast on:
- 29 Sep 2024
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who the fuck is Louis Vuitton, this is what I would suggest everybody do is like drop your emotions and your ego and just go and dig into the data. I was a cabinet maker not that long ago and I think that there's so much opportunity for everyone out there and just got to get started. Welcome to Add to Cart, Australia's leading e-commerce podcast that express delivers all you need to know in the fast-moving world of online retail. Here's your host, Bushy. Hello and welcome back to another beautiful smelling episode of Add to Cart. My name is Nathan Bush otherwise known as Bushy and I'm joining you from the land of the terrible people here in Brisbane, Australia. Now how the hell would you sell a cent online? Today we are going to take you behind the scenes of someone who has mastered the art and turned selling a cent into a global business and a global brand, one of the best brands that I've come across most recently. From working out of their garage to being stocked on the shelves at David Jones within four days of pitching an amazing story, today we are talking to Adam Boris who alongside his wife Raquel are rewriting the rule book on modern perfume with genderless sense and a relentless drive to expand across the globe, who is Elijah is shaking up the perfume industry both here in Australia and overseas. Adam's wife Raquel first conceptualized the idea for this e-commerce brand in 2017 after coming across a cent that caught her attention during Coachella. As a young entrepreneur who has been a director and a co-founder of multiple companies across a range of industries, Adam has joined her on this journey taking the role as CEO and helping scale the business for success. In this episode we hear how Adam and Raquel landed their first major retailer in four days without even trying the cent. We talk about how they pivoted to e-commerce during COVID and talk about some of the challenges and opportunities of scaling such a brand globally. We dig into some of the specifics, especially around selling perfumes because we've never had a perfume brand on before so I was naturally curious around some of the unique e-commerce pieces when it comes to selling sense online. Adam also shares the strategy behind their brand's unique growth including why they chose to pull their fragrances most recently from 800 wholesalers to focus on online channels. That's the opposite of what a lot of e-commerce businesses are doing at the moment so that is really interesting to hear. Now before we get into today's conversation I want to invite all you Melbourneians to come along to the e-commerce social. It's happening on the 17th of October at the corner hotel in Richmond. We've already sold out of our GA tickets but there is a wait list available. So if you are keen to come along come and join the wait list. If you're a retailer or a brand I'll be releasing those tickets to you slightly earlier and the rest of the wait list will be released about a week before the event. So come along. It's $20, $10 will go to our friends at Thread together. It's going to be a great night with panelists including Mike, founder of ZeroCo, Emily Elvi who's an e-commerce consultant and Nathan who is the co-founder of Pear. We've had Pear and ZeroCo on before so it's bound to be a great night. Lastly, if you haven't already please sign up to the weekly e-commerce newsletter. We have just relaunched it with a lovely new format on a brand new platform. Really excited at what this allows us to do and how we can interact with you. Head on over to addecart.com.au to sign up to the newsletter or come join us at the e-commerce social. You can find the event link on our socials or over on the website. Now a big thanks to our long-term partners Shopify Plus and Deliver in Person for their continued support of this podcast we couldn't do without them. Let's dive into the chat with Adam Borris, CEO of Who Is Elijah and uncover the story behind the Australian fragrance brand who's shaking up the global market. Adam welcome to addecart. Hey mate, it's great to be here. Great to have you here mate. I was just talking in our earlier conversation about a great painting you have behind you. Tell us what that says. He says who the fuck is Louis Vuitton. I love it. I love it so good. Which stems nicely into where I want to kick off. Brand name. Yeah. Who is Elijah? I've done a little bit of research so I think I know the answer but tell us where did the name who was Elijah come from because it's not it's not a usual name right? Yeah it's super unique. It wasn't one of those strategised, thought about big planned names. It came about when Raquel and my wife found out she we were both on a Coachella trip together and we just met. Did you meet on the Coachella trip? We met just prior and we very coincidentally had the exact same trip booked like Vegas beforehand and Coachella same hotels, same dates like it was wild. That's weird. But at that point when you booked it you'd be thinking you're going over as a single fella. We all was going over on a box trip with my mates as a changed strategy a bit. Yeah so she, when she found the fragrance oil in Coachella and brought it back to Australia and started looking into it. One of her friends, Matt was her best friend at the time, he was in econ as well and they were sort of both starting it together. He just loved the name Elijah and in the beginning the brand and ABN everything was Raquel X Elijah. So Raquel and Elijah essentially and the logos and everything with that. And then Matt didn't work out with Matt as a business partner and one day Raquel was sitting in her office where she was working and she just looked at the name and just like "who the fuck is Elijah?" And that's how it happened and you know it's been this really good thing for us because it drives this curiosity of like who is Elijah and I think it's been a really important thing for us as we're growing for sure. I'd love to hear some of that growth story but in terms of people discovering you one of the best stories that I heard was about your David Jones story around in the early days of getting wholesale or going after wholesale before you're even like common for you. But they signed you up within five days without even smelling it, is that right? Yeah like nowadays it takes you know 12 to 18 months to like get in the right place at the right time and pitch the right person and all that stuff and again Raquel you know she just doesn't take no for an answer but in this case you didn't even get a no she just went and found these people on LinkedIn emailed them it was just after COVID so like everything was just opening back up again and obviously we didn't know that David Jones wanted like new nurse and all these heritage brands on the shelf and she just emailed them and say he's a he's a deck no she emailed them saying hey I'd love to send you samples and they said send us a brand deck and she's like what the hell is a brand deck so she googled what a brand deck was and found a graphic designer to help her make one turns around in a day and sent it back to David Jones and they said it was the best brand presentation that they'd seen in a long time and they just said yes on the back of that and the samples hadn't even reached the HQ yet and within five days they'd placed the PO so it was like it was wild and that was a big moment obviously for us to be in David Jones but nowadays they get into a new retailer cycle to big team effort yeah and had you been in the fragrance game before Elijah? Definitely not, I definitely not Raquel, definitely not, she was a EA for the C suite of men from Crystalbrook Collection, a big hotel, Saudi Arabian hotel chain that moved to Australia. The Coachella trip happened and then she just started it in the boardroom of that office and I actually, I had a kitchen design business and I manufactured and designed really high end kitchen in homes around Sydney, I also during that time I started a bow tie, I commend bow tie business for no reason with one of my mates and I got that into a partnership with Gary V and VaynerMedia and VaynerSports in the early days that didn't work out then I started a retail app actually this is when I first came across you a while ago actually where we could, you could create a website from a piece of content and you could purchase the products from the content without leaving it, multiple brands all at once and then who was Elijah started, I sold my kitchen company, I found NTFL, the bow ties and we were centimetres away from funding for the app and it just never came through so I went full tilt into who was Elijah and here we are. Was there a moment where you went actually, who was Elijah is the best bet, we've got to go all in, was there one moment that kind of flipped that? Yeah I was starting to get so low to be fair like of what was going on, for me at the time with the other companies I was trying to move along and I was having some success in them but the demand for who was Elijah was just coming naturally and it wasn't forced whereas tech startups and other startups you were really trying to create and bring that demand to life whereas who was Elijah was always chasing, was always like trying to catch up to the demand and when I sort of figured that out I was like well you know let's just the products great, let's let it do its thing and I'll build underneath it because it's going and we need to catch up. Amazing and what do you think drove that initial demand? I think you know there was a lot of, at least in Australia right so now we know how small Australia is comparatively to the you know global markets or fragrance and all these other things but we didn't know that at the time and it was just something brand new and the name was cool and Raquel was cool and you know there was a bit of hype around this little brand that just came out of nowhere that is now in David Jones and adorbutian outselling some of these brands like Creed and these other things in these big retailers and it just kept going and we were late to the party in this social to be fair like we didn't run socials or ads or anything for like two years which is wild today, imagine not running ads for two years. What year were we talking that really took off that you went all in? So 2018 Raquel started and we're still in the garage, 2019 was still in the garage, 2020 was when it kicked off late 2020 because I think that was like COVID was early 2020 and then at the end we were sort of like back in the clear again, online became a big thing end of 2020 for us in all of 2021 so I would say our kick year was probably mid 2021 to be fair. Okay, I could imagine that would be tricky though right because COVID and perfume doesn't go well together when you think about experiential and getting people to try on new sense and stuff when people aren't socialising they're not shopping in person, that's bloody tough. I think it's one of those things as well like most brands at the time, we just had no choice. We were so wholesale dominant during COVID, the peak of COVID when everyone was at home locked indoors like 70% of our revenue was 80% was wholesale and we lost it overnight. Like everyone but also we had just started to find our brand voice online just before it happened so we sort of just leaned into it, we went heavy on influencers and brand partnerships and gift with purchasers and everyone was trying to do something in e-commerce at the time to make their business go and we were this new kid on the block that was just saying yes to everything. So we did get through it, we had a really good year, obviously you know ads and people were at home wearing perfume because you know they still wanted to smell nice and it was a little bit of comfort that they could get up and have a shower and do their little work out at home and then you know put on some perfume to start their work day. Isn't that bizarre psychology isn't it because it's a well-known thing, the lipstick effect where people spend on little luxuries during you know difficult times but that idea that people are isolated at home, stuck at home and they're putting perfume on almost like as an emotional blanket to make themselves feel good. Yeah and the people who would take you back somewhere if you've had moments in it and you know even before I started who was Elijah, we started who was Elijah that used to happen to me all the time with like holidays with mates and different times of your life and I think people like leaned into that and they needed some sort of happiness during that time so they'd transport themselves back to a fun time with perfume. That scent that Raquel smelt at Coachella to kick off the journey that must hold a pretty special place in your hearts now. Yeah it is. It was this fragrance oil from India that she had to track down and buy wholesale from this little market you know and it was the base of what was used to be the first fragrance but the first fragrance ended up very different to it because of the complexity of what that oil was but we actually then as we got better we brought it the actual oil to life not that long ago in this fragrance called Desert Night so we did bring it back and we did this Coachella theme and all that so it's pretty cool. That's very cool. Good opportunity to go over for a trip yourself right? I've been too many times now I think we said at the end we went this year and we said we might call it now after that. Different when you've got kids and a business to run as well right? Yeah then. Tell us about where you are at now because if people haven't come across who is a larger or looked into I'm really interested for you to set the scene because what's come across so far is how fresh you are to the industry and your approach which we're going to dig into because I've got a few questions around how are you doing a few things which I've really caught my eye. But I think that freshness has really caught a lot of the market and went oh this is different this is like this isn't Johnny Depp on a poster like we really need this and we really respond to it. So can you tell us about how you're set up now in terms of wholesale D2C and the markets that you're in? Yeah so when we first started we were like all wholesale and then we came to be 70% wholesale of 30% online, COVID happened and then we went so 50/50 after COVID when we were back to normal and last year we had some really big wholesale moments that probably went the smartest moves for us like price line taking a brand on and a few other bigger decisions like that but now today we had about 800 wholesale accounts around the world up until about two months ago, two months ago we cut them all except for the majors so like David Jones, Sephora, the airports and as we go into new countries it's our strategy to launch into a new country is with the best retailers. So what we were finding was wholesale was like we can't control the supply of the product and everyone's going through tough times especially wholesalers, small wholesalers so they're discounting the brand and they're doing things that we are out of our control right so we had to make a decision to remove them all and so that clean slate it. What was their response to that? What was the market response because you built up such a beautiful brand and high demand with your customers, like imagine some of those wholesalers were like oh you're serious? Yeah look some of them said look we saw this was going to come eventually because they could all see what was happening online and how big it was growing and look some of them were a bit upset and I think that we just have to in those moments thank them for everything they've helped us do and then try to make it a soft landing for them and move on as best we can but you know it's part of it but when we yeah once we did it it felt like a bit of a relief from us as well because all the internal workings required to manage all that and just turn it all off like just just button it's off so obviously the revenue comes off with it but we had to be confident that out online would pick up and last year I took on all the advertising myself and really gained that control of meta and the platforms and TikTok and all the media bling so it gave us confidence that we could actually sell the product online at scale so with the confidence of that then we removed the whole sale accounts now we're at 75% online revenue and 25% retail revenue do you feel that's the right balance? I feel like the right balance for the next six months and it was more of like a cleansing moment for us just to like regroup and like where we're heading with retail is like big global retail so we're just about to launch into boots into the UK that big pharmacy there we've got distributor meetings, distributor partners in Germany, distributor partners in the Middle East, distributor partners in Asia all locked in so that's our play is that getting into big Sephora like retail in these new markets get brand credibility there and then come through without online you know out online plan so in the new markets if you're launching with the major retailers you're obviously getting the foot traffic and the eyeballs and the experience and are you holding back a certain range or certain products to funnel those people towards D2C we sort of look at it more like the retailers done all this work to build brand credibility in these places and we want people to like experience the product to its fullest in a new place because we don't like turning on as you would know turning on meta brand new first day in Germany is it's not going to be an easy it's not going to be an easy do right so we're all about give give these guys showcase and everything and then once we start to find the foot traffic and we start to you know capture that repeat customer online it'll be a six to twelve month process when we start to build that up once we bring in new products we'll then decide whether we give exclusivity to this retailer or we hold it ourselves and yeah it's really about just going guns blazing getting these retailers on board making them happy don't be caught in a big contract with them try and keep it month to month because eventually then pull back in and get the seventy five percent online and twenty five percent retail so those big retails they will sign months to month rather than a extended agreement oh look they won't sign month to month but what they will do is they'll have like a you can sort of negotiate the exit time with them you know some people would say it's a twelve month exit twelve months on notice period sorry but you know you just negotiated down to three or six or you know we try to get it to three in the beginning because it can all be like you know happy in the beginning on you sign whatever you want to sign but things change quickly and you need to be able to move quickly so the retailers are happy if you're really spending marketing spending them and you're pushing it and you know keep them happy for as long as you can and then you know part eloquently and you know everyone's happy and I bet that they're happy to hear from you that you're after a small handful of flagship stores per territory rather than being in anywhere so that's like you're already showing a commitment to them right yeah and that was our problem here to be fair like we thought it was cool to be in eight hundred stores and it's not it's not cool to be everywhere you know you really want to control that supply and feed it to the right people and I do think that it did hurt us in some of our early global expansion plans as well when they sort of do their you know due diligence on us and they see that we're just happy to be everywhere so we have to sort of rebuild that understanding of who we are and that messaging that we don't want to do that we have to do that by action just cut a lot of people and prove to these big retailers that that we are you know gonna feel to them only and and do it that way so yeah it's been a bit of a 12 month plan that's very cool I bet it makes your stock forecasting a lot easier now rather than a hundred wholesalers yeah it's much easier now I was doing it up until I know two months ago for the whole time and I got it wrong lots but yeah we've got someone now we might have one perfect you might have no idea like is it a long lead time so they're fragrance the actual liquid itself it's made in Australia just not far from our warehouse and then we import the bottles and the packaging and everything ourself and then we make it in-house yeah so providing the way we have it set up the liquids relatively on hand available you know within a couple of days and the raw materials for the packaging the way that we have it set up it's pretty much the same with the way that we cycle the stock from this location in Australia from China so we have been very lucky with that that we can sort of make to order and because it's fragrance it's not seasonal racket t-shirt you can we can sort of sit on excess and it's going to sell anyway whereas t-shirts go in and out of style and you have to get it right and usually you're under all your over and fortunately with us we can just you know if we got thousand units extra well we'll just sell it another time so you'd rather be over stocked than under stocked at any point yeah over stocked in our suppliers not over stocked in our HQ and so we've consumed the invoice for it but yeah we're trying to it's you know everyone will say it's a balancing act and especially when you get into global stuff it becomes more of a headache it's okay having two accesses here in Australia but now moving it to the UK and the Middle East it's it's going to be a headache yeah so even over there you're still going to manufacture here in Australia and then ship it over there fully formed for Australia the US and Asia we will do it from our HQ but UK the Middle East and Europe we will do it out of the UK is that because of things like dangerous goods or duties or just literally close to customers like first and foremost but like dangerous goods and that's a nightmare I could imagine I don't know how you even think about that from a global perspective yeah well you have to be in you know close to customer because even the last mile delivery of the you know Australia post people around the world they all have to be you know DG qualified and they all have their own restrictions and per carrier is different so you have to find the right 3PL that has all of that knowledge and we've moving the 3PL is an horrendous exercise and we've done it maybe two or three times now overseas and it's because we didn't find the right person in the beginning so now we've got our team set and after two years of moving around yeah it feels good to be set now that's awesome so you force say that you'll have two main offices or warehouses globally yeah looking in the next Raquel and I we're going to move over to the UK in February and going like set that up properly for 18 months and then I think the US will come on board within that time and we'll probably go and do the same thing in the US and then have three main places that is massive like does that blow your mind that you're setting up global page queue Australia US UK yeah look it's only come to life the last four or five months with some really key partnerships that if we've been working on but yeah look it's I've always just sort of said you know like why not us we can do it and you know there's never been a easier time to go and do this it's easy to catch a flight it's so much information out there and we've got young kids they're not in high school yet so we're just going to go on an adventure for the next four years and try and build something huge amazing I love hearing that's so much fun so much hard work but so much fun but exciting the opportunity that you've got ahead of you yeah tells let's note out on e-commerce a little bit because there are a few little features that you've got on your website that I really want to understand and I want to come back to when you talked about taking performance in house because it's the theme that's coming through a decard of the moment so we'll park that one for the moment but I was just having a look around your product pages especially because they are beautiful product pages that you've you've done when you are creating a product page for a cent is there anything different that you need to think about because obviously can't smile is there a different that you need to think about that maybe someone manufacturing and selling a t-shirt might not have to think about yeah look we try to tell a little bit of a story in the product pages but what like I don't think that people understand what citrus what the german what saffron like no one I'm a CEO of a person company no one knows what that stuff smells like you know so unless you're a proper fragrance guru which there's not many of them you sort of need to you know explain more than what the ingredients are obviously t-shirt you can say it's green and it's made of cotton it's easy right but for us we sort of try to give like in some of the product pictures like we try to bring some of the ingredients in there so people can actually see what they are sometimes and obviously in there we have like a lot of the reviews are super important but we have that video review thing in there which is cool it's called Tol Story it's called Tol Story so it's like for people who haven't seen it it's like a story the circle stories that you see in the cover of Instagram but they are underneath your product descriptions right yeah that's right so we can you know least brings them like visual and some like communication from customers that have posted for us onto the product page and I think like something that's important which probably goes really more is we just realize that it's difficult to smell a scent and difficult to see fragrance you can't see it so this is very brought in that two-mill free sample in there and we're just really trying to think of ways where like everybody is but what are the blocks what is going to stop someone that's just coming for the first time and risk free purchase you know here's a bunch of people that have said they love it it's nice and clean it's nice and crisp here's the main couple of ingredients that you can associate with like a pair or you know something else or a cherry or whatever and then we really sort of rely on the hype of socials and the brand building to get us home at that check out to get us home bring us home I love it the two mill samples really cool so does is it a two mill sample for 50 and 100 mill purchases yeah yeah we brought it in actually when we signed with a door beauty years ago now we weren't doing it and they were selling heaps and we hadn't figured out how to sell online yet and I just went to their page and like what are they doing they're selling our product and you know they were giving this two mill free samples so like I would just do it and it just made heaps a sense and it did for a long time and then we actually moved away from it about 12 months ago because we were bad infantry planning for it and we're just telling people that we wanted people to try our discovery set product because we thought that would drive more conversions versus the single unit thing because they would get all sense versus one cent yep and then we went full circle like not that long ago we brought it back and it's yeah it's much better that's awesome so and from what I understand you select a few complimentary fragrances per fragrance that customers can choose from as a gift with purchase essentially when they purchase people yeah so they'll if they're going to buy a hundred mill or a full size bottle we'll give them the corresponding two mill samples to try out if they don't like it they can send it back and full refund and we also will suggest another two mill like complimentary you know something that's similar or maybe we're going that month let's just try and do something completely different and give them different options to choose from they'll get the free sample if they spend over X and you know otherwise they pay ten dollars for it so it's a good lever to pull on but it's also a good value for the customer at the same time do you track customers who you've sent a sample of a different fragrance and the conversion on that yes not as detailed as I would like but last year for Black Friday we were launching Oceanize the bright blue one that we have in December or January and we were like again it's sort of we're trying to get use the two mill sample in a product launch as a marketing tool right we're trying to set aside at the time we set aside 6,000 of them to go into orders and luckily we have extra stock because we did 22,000 orders for Black Friday and 22,000 two mills went out as samples and you know I just noted it down as marketing expense for product launch and we converted like it's our best launch of a product ever because we get so many people had to have the scent and they tried it and it's just it's a really cheap easy way for us to sample the product so definitely a simple sample before they could even buy the full size product like was it even available when you sent the samples there it wasn't available so we give them like yeah you give it to them for free then we followed everyone up on socials like hey if you got Oceanize can you give us their feedback people were loving it so then we turn that into ads for the launch and we just sort of rinse and repeat and then we did a pre-sale for it and you could see everyone they've got samples in the pre-sale like it was all those guys so it's really cool yeah did you have any customers were like well I've got my sample I've run out of my sample I just need that I just need the Oceanize now I'm like we're getting a bit around waiting for it yeah look at the two mill samples they you know you get about 50 sprays out of them and if people really love it they'll smash it on a weekend and and they're sort of they come back quickly why and dry until you release it I love it you mentioned the discovery sets which is another brilliant idea I think can you give our listeners a little bit of an overview on how they work and where you see them play especially in your customer journey like like you said you played around with them a bit in where they fit where do you see them now in that customer journey yeah it's evolved so much to be fair so the discovery set for everyone is all of our fragrances in small two mil vials in one product so it's this I always refer to like you can't sample all your t-shirts we can sample all of our fragrances so it's a very very cool tool for us to use and up until maybe six months ago we thought that people would only buy our fragrances if they first purchased the discovery set we just thought that's what people would do so for the first two three years when we really got going that was our biggest focus like let's give away discovery sets let's do collabs and partnerships and it's a relatively low cost products for us to make so let's just scale it and we came into some huge problems with it to be fair from like a cost perspective so like it's one of our lowest AOV products and it was generating most of the revenue for a while so we stuck in this like really low AOV what are you selling them for at the moment at the moment they're $80 because it's up to 11 or 12 now and they used to be $65 so some like unit economics like $65 selling price say $10 to make it $10 to ship it and sometimes $10 to $15 to market it plus percentage of operating expenses and it's getting pretty thin and but as our mentality this is what I would suggest everybody do is like drop your emotions and your ego and just go and dig into the data because we thought that was our main product and even to the point where we're like we got the price of the cost of goods down on it over the last two or three years so like let's give it away for free we're not making enough money out of the product let's give it away for free and we'll give away we say let's give away a million of them for free over a year that was like luckily we only got 10,000 but let's give away a million of them for free and we'll give it to it for free it was one dollar acquisition on Facebook which was like pretty wild but it was a free product so our fulfillment cost which was normally 15% or 12% was now 80% like way more picking park fees all of it went up through the roof right so we sold 6,000 in like two hours when we did it in the US and did you make the customers pay for shipping pay for shipping yeah so there was a little bit money little bit of money brought back in we realized very quickly at that point that it was probably not the smartest idea to give it to it for free but we knew that there was demand for it because we sold 6,000 in two three hours so then we redid it and like let's do let's do it for thirty dollars and let's give people a thirty dollar voucher to come back and purchase a full size so it's still free essentially but there's an upfront commitment and we're getting better customers because you know it wasn't free from the beginning and then so we were out for six weeks we ran this and our previous it was about 50% of revenue before for the six weeks it was about 85 to 90% of the revenue and all the focus for the business and with the full price it should have been 15% fulfillment 15% marketing you know as it goes down and we dropped it to 30 dollars it was 60% fulfillment 60% for marketing and we were like literally burning cash like crazy because we're convinced that this product was what everyone did it so we did a deep dive into the customers over the last 18 months and we found that there was a segment of customer buying full size products without samples without discovery set and these guys had the best lifetime value and we realized over four years of data that the person that bought the discovery set was the least likely to come back and spend more money on fragrance they would just keep coming back the discovery set discovery set discovery set so because we was all talking about so we used to think this was our hero product and then about three or four months ago again we just we stopped talking about it as much as we used to we put it back to full price and now we go off now we're we're seeing the value in these higher value customers that are just they're going straight to the 100 mil where they're going straight to a 50 mil and our like those profit went like right off and everything was fixed amazing and are you finding that there are customers who are loyal to ascent versus those that will just flip flop around everything and you can identify them pretty easily yeah look most people like nomad is like oh it's our hero it's like move the needle first like crazy most people that buy nomad they just you can see like on last time we if anyone's got that you can see them go nomad nomad nomad they just stay with nomad but a lot of people you know they will get you know a full size of the one they love and then they'll come and test out like a 10 mil or a 5 mil or something else and then we can bring them to that full size product when they're ready so you've got your OG people that just like we'll just do anything buy anything that we give them but the majority of people they sort of between two and three cents that they'll stay around yeah yeah cool like a going out center everyday cent work cent maybe yeah exactly and you know people that's how they purchase and we've sort of set our website now to reflect that like you know as well so it does does help I think one of the the most interesting things that yourself and Raquel have done from the start is that who is a larger is set up as a genderless brand when that comes to marketing when that comes to data and understanding the customer does it actually make it easier or does it make it harder not having kind of a big line between male and female yeah look I think you know when we started in 2018 2017 2018 like genderless to us then meant it was for everyone and that you could wear a more male now smelling fragrance if you're a female and vice versa and Raquel it really was because Raquel would always wear fragrance that I had and you know he was just genuinely like it that way and like I think for us when we're doing our data it's you know because we're not going to get the data of the genderless you get male female right so we just know that a lot of females will purchase all of our cents and we have a lot of males that we don't market to really at all and they come in and they buy a lot of the more commonly purchased fragrances from females so we just try to look at it like here's a product this is how we're going to try and get you to smell it through a sample or something else and then you decide how you want to be when you wear it and how you want to show up and how it makes you feel and I think the term over the last few least the last two years has sort of become quite a spoken about term but for us it's we just want everyone to be happy in their own skin and we think that our fragrances will get you there amazing and that's the freshness that you bring in right so this is the theme that's coming through it is like you're not just following the playbook of the perfumes that have come before you you strike me as someone who's really invested in the numbers and knows the numbers I was you know we were just saying before I saw you at a panel at online retail and I really loved your insights there so even what you were saying before around knowing the percentage of you know of the sale that will be down to freight that will be down to operational costs that will down to cost of goods like you know that's in your DNA interested then as you come across to managing the ad platforms you would have all that information in the back of your head that a lot of marketers running those platforms might not have how important do you think that's been in creating your meta or your google strategies yeah look anyone listening but any e-commerce like you have to know the whole picture like you can't just choose to see a version of the picture that you like that looks the best I think that's sometimes what you do you like well this is actually really good over here I'm going to just like pretend I can't see that tax and that other expectations and all those other bills and all those other things that come along with it and I've always liked numbers and I've liked how they I didn't do math I didn't do business at school I didn't do any of that I just I realized how important it was in real life and in business that the numbers make the decisions and a great marketing on the back of great structure is really good but careless marketing can crush a business if you're overspending and if you're not aware of what's actually going on on the whole scene so when it comes to taking over meta and google about 18 months ago now I just knew when I got to the marketers will give you these different types of metrics that they want you to see these agencies and if you have the ability and the understanding of the platforms and the understanding of your P&L then you can sort of go back to them and you can either call bullshit on their on their performance or if they're doing okay that profitability is still really low then you can explain to them that we have to make it we have to make a change here or we need to think of a different way because it doesn't matter how hard we're trying at meta if you guys are telling me that it's great and it is great but the bottom line is still you know showing negative and I've done everything I can in my business to fix it then we have to try different avenues but it's the most rewarding when you get a handle on your P&L and you get a handle on on what's moves the needle into business it's very empowering and we didn't have it for the first few years when I wasn't really I wasn't really dialed into the business as much as Raquel was I was in and out a bit and really one of my advisors Paul Wadi have sure you know him we are yeah no Paul yeah yeah he we sit down and we talk about it and he was really the one who like led the way for me and showed me that the importance of it and how valuable it is but why don't you learn it it's you can't unlearn it and it's exciting when you're logging into meta for example what are the key metrics that your eyes are drawn to what's what's gospel for you obviously everyone's going straight to Roast right that's just how much am I spending how much I'm making and obviously I do go there a lot right now and Toby one of my coaches he's telling me all about frequency and reach and how important that making sure your ads are continually going to new people versus this overlap of existing people and that can be a bit of a trap for people so frequencies and reaches like probably equal to Roast because you could be going to the same people and well as good but you're going to burn out of these people quickly versus spending money to acquire new people might be a lower Roast but you're bringing in new people who eventually will convert to higher Roast people so that's like a really important one obviously learning Google and TikTok TikToks pretty easy I would suggest everyone to get one TikTok quickly before the whole world is fully on there I actually wrote notes yesterday listening to Simon beard I'm like okay I've got to go learn this now because he's telling me it's coming so I better go learn it that's awesome and as you expand into new territory is you know business is going to get much more complicated do you foresee that you'll continue to keep the performance ads in-house or will you then go upset the foundations for it I'm comfortable about using agencies again yeah we had it in the house for 18 months and only this year again about two three months ago I knew that this global growth was coming so I did move it back to an agency and now I'm going back to an agency after knowing it it's much easier than not knowing it so I can have this like really good conversations with them I think the challenge the unknown challenge that I'm needing to figure out is whether we should have multiple agencies running their own geolocations because of what they know and what someone in Australia might not know about the UK and what someone in the UK might not know about the US where you know traditionally you sort of keep it in house with one person and you let the ad performance do the directing but that's sort of where I'm not sure where to go with it at the moment yeah that's gonna be fascinating I love that challenge though it's a good challenge to have so you've given us a bit of an insight into what the next 12 months looks like international expansion taking the family up and moving which is big in itself what are you what are you most excited about look I'm excited for the adventure to be fair I'm excited for the unknown I'm excited for the growth that's coming I am someone that needs to be the likes to be in control of most things I don't have to be in control of everything but my team here is is really set now and I think I probably could get out of the way of them and let them be them and again running being the I guess I'm out of the econ part of the business I can run that from anywhere because it's agency led down and that's important but I'm excited to feel what it's like to start up again in a new country I'm excited for that and obviously very lucky to get a chance where we can start again from not the start but from considerably further down the line and already traction in these areas so and I'm going to be flying around a lot of the next three to four years and back and forth and my sons five my daughters two and I just sort of said to Raquel that I just want George my son to be in a stable place when he goes to high school so we've got you know five years of whatever comes our way how good that's so exciting I love that mate and you have I think anyone listening to this can be really inspired by your story so far because it is just the start of the story and you know if we get the chance to catch up again in five years when you know you're back and George has settled into high school wherever we are that's a wild thought that in your shoes that will look totally different and you know things can happen so fast and especially when you come at it from a fresh perspective willing to get into the detail but also look for quick moves make quick decisions and I think you and Raquel are a great example of that and how Aussie businesses can really you know go into new categories and take on the world so thank you so much for sharing that with us today I'm like no worries it was great and yeah look anyone listening you know I was a cabinet maker not that long ago and I think that there's so much opportunity for everyone out there and just got to get started so yeah it's been great to be here and it's been great to chat awesome mate now if people want to keep an eye on your journey and follow along what's the best place to do that I am just Adam Boris on Instagram who is larger is just being suspended so we're trying to fight to get that back at the moment what hell why are they just said that there was an account that's associated with you guys that's doing something not platform specific so we just should get back to them tomorrow that five days you know Instagram's just a heart racing yeah where's have you got that I think about 150,000 there so it's not been too bad and yeah Raquel you know I think a lot of people follow on with Raquel she's probably posted a lot more than me young behind the scenes building it up that Raquel is just Raquel Boris so yeah follow along love your work cheers Adam cool thanks mate that was so cool to go behind the scenes on who was Elijah with Adam I swear I have opened up that website and shown at least five people some of the branding and the photography and the product pages from who is Elijah since our chat one that you should definitely go and check out here are my three takeaways from that conversation number one sometimes not knowing is actually the biggest skill you can have as you heard Raquel managed to get who was Elijah into David Jones in just five days without them even smelling a sample it's a really great lesson sometimes you've just got a knock on the door yourself trust your pitch don't wait for the perfect moment and create your own opportunities sometimes not knowing can actually be a blessing because you don't know the size or the scale or the format that people expect and you can catch them by surprise number two be ready to pivot COVID hit who is Elijah hard much like the rest of the e-commerce industry but it wiped out 80% of their revenue overnight when wholesale disappeared now instead of letting that slow them down they pivoted to e-commerce they leaned on influencers and said yes to as many partnerships as possible instead of retreating into their shell and trying to cut costs they found creative ways to stay in the conversation even when their primary sales channels were cut off but even more than that it would seem that perfume would naturally decline during COVID when people weren't going up people actually needed that little boost it's a really great lesson that when times are uncertain instead of just backing off you really need to lean on those creative muscles and think about how you can change your strategy to lean into those uncertain times and number three let the data do the talking Adam's love for numbers really stood out for me as we heard they thought that their discovery set would be a top product but when they looked at the data they found it wasn't driving the long-term loyalty that they expected turns out customers who went straight for full-size products had way better lifetime value it went against logic and it's such a great example of why digging into your data is always better than relying on assumptions I think there's another lesson here too that when it comes to samples and trial products it's worth playing around with them to find the ideal place in the customer journey to cross-sell and upsell products sometimes samples aren't necessarily the lead in they are the upsell post the first purchase now if you love this episode feel free to share it with a friend or leave us a review on Spotify or Apple podcast again a huge thanks to our sponsors Shopify Plus and deliver in person for making this podcast possible before you go we'd love to invite you to join our free e-commerce learning platform add to cart campus meet other professionals and learn from e-commerce experts to take your business and your e-commerce career to the next level register to join campus at addtacart.com.au/campus now if you enjoyed today's episode make sure you share it with a friend or a colleague or even better leave us a review on Spotify or Apple it really makes a difference