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Kerryn and Aaron Langer from Arms of Eve | Checkout #445

In this checkout episode, Kerryn and Aaron Langer, founders of Arms of Eve, an Australian jewellery brand, share how they balance the demands of running a business as a couple. We dive into their weirdest online purchases (including an inflatable unicorn and a device for escaping submerged cars!), and why Mecca is their favourite retailer. Kerryn and Aaron also share their essential tech tools, their favourite podcast, and what they believe is the future of retail.


Links from the episode:


Check out our full-length interview with Kerryn and Aaron:

Building a Multi-Generational Brand: Insights from Arms of Eve’s Founders | #431


About our guests : Kerryn Langer and Aaron Langer from Arms of Eve. 

Kerryn is a traveller and lover of life and obsesses over items of beauty and has worked tirelessly in fashion to be exactly where she is now as founder and creative director at Arms Of Eve.

Creative leader with experience across media, music, marketing & ecommerce. Aaron is now leading business strategy and growth for Arms Of Eve.


About your host: 

Nathan Bush is the host of the Add To Cart podcast and is an 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.


Please contact us if you: 

  • Want to come on board as an Add To Cart sponsor 
  • Are interested in joining Add To Cart as a co-host 
  • Have any feedback or suggestions on how to make Add To Cart better

Email hello@addtocart.com.au We look forward to hearing from you!


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Broadcast on:
12 Sep 2024
Audio Format:
other
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Here's your host, Bushy. - Today's checkout features Karen and Aaron Langer, founder and CEO of Arms of Eve. Arms of Eve is a jewelry and accessories brand that channels self-expression. Starting life at the Sydney markets, Arms of Eve now boasts celebrity customers such as Margot Robbie and Hailey Bieber, and is soon to open its fourth and its fifth store. - Aaron and Kerry, thank you so much for joining us on the checkout. I can't wait to get to know more about both of you. We had a brilliant chat in our main episode around what you've established with Arms of Eve. Hey, started in the Sydney markets and have expanded into the iconic, into close to five retail stores now and being seen on some of the biggest celebrities around the world. Incredible story, but let's learn more about you both. I've got five quick questions. - Okay, let's go. - Number one, what's the weirdest thing that you've ever bought online? - Oh, that's gotta be me, 'cause I-- - Oh yeah, for sure. - One of the recent things was, if you should ever find yourself in your car trapped underwater-- - Oh my God. (laughing) - Oh my God. - It's a device that breaks the window so you can escape. - Okay, is this like driven by phobia, a nightmare? - It's driven by being in the black hole of the internet. - And-- - What about that breath and you wanted to get the other night and tell your-- - Oh, like you could-- - How are you not getting that? - You could breathe into it and test your metabolism on what you need that day if it's protein or carb. - I'm like, why don't you just eat less? (laughing) I'm not testing that. - Okay, too much information. - Okay, let's go. - Well, the magic bullet, just give us, tell us what we've gotta do. I love it, they're great. And you surprised me because we were talking about how to record this with two people at once. I'm like, oh, look, you can do this different laptops, and you're like, don't worry, I got it sorted. And you've gone out and you've found the awesome mics where you can both record into one. I'm like, oh, thank you, done your shopping for me. So now I'm gonna be recommending what you've bought. - I'll send you the link for that as well, yeah. - Thanks for doing my work. All right, number two, which retailer has most inspired you recently? - I think Mecca, I mean, they like, they blow me away. I think, yeah, maybe because my daughter's so obsessed and I spend so much money there. And so do I, actually, that's be real. Yeah, I think they're brilliant. Then they kind of never on sale, so I've got a brilliant curation of products there. Staff is so, you know, the experience is excellent. The website's excellent. There's so many things that I think they're doing a brilliant job. - Are you an install shopper at Mecca? - And yeah. - Both? - Both, yeah. - Both, a gift, a lot of cards. - I'm the channel. - Yeah. - Yeah, I do see me now, like, I'm all on the channel, I'm all there. - Yeah, we're all on, I'm all there. - I'm all there. - I'm all there. - I'm all there. - Yeah, let's go. And Mecca's amazing. It's like we're creating an Omni-Religion. I love it. - It's a sunny health, I'm going. - Name a piece of tech that you or your e-commerce business couldn't live without. - All right, I wouldn't say it's a piece of tech. I'd say it's a person full of tech. It's a developer. You can have your Shopify theme, but at the end of the day, it only can do so much. And when you continue to evolve as a business and you really want things to be more customized, the only way you can do that is with code. And if you don't have a good developer who really understands what you're trying to achieve from conversion rate and experience and UI and UX, but that code is everything. So having a developer that you can pick up the phone or send an email to is gold. - So you're on Shopify? - We are. - And a lot of people, well, Shopify's thing is that it's making it commerce accessible to a lot of people that may not have previously been able to code or understand the tech and all of a sudden you can suddenly comment store. Obviously, that reaches the point where, if you want to differentiate your brand, you need to do the customizations. Where do you spend most of your time customizing that you need a developer for? - The add to cart, the checkout phase, the clean input and clean output and loyalty and grading. - Like navigation. - Almost every aspect, like we have touched and custom, it's very heavily customized. I mean, the theme that we used is not necessarily a Shopify theme, it's from a place called In the Sandbox or Out of the Sandbox, I'm not sure. And it's a theme that is really customizable, like highly customizable. So we wanted ultimate flexibility, but in order to make any changes, like you do need to have a developer who's able to do those changes. So, developers, there's developers and there's developers. There's people that are good at certain things and really not good at other things. So it's really about understanding what your needs are and what you really need from that developer in order to choose that developer. - And the communication between that is essential. - Yeah, well, the project management around developers, because-- - You don't hear from a developer for a few days. - Like how I went down that black hole and found that device to break glass if you're underwater, like developers can go down a path and it could take weeks and you have to really understand that because at the end of the day it's cost and you really need to, you wanna get things live. So it's really that balance. - And with your focus on continual improvement and small changes and done is better than perfect, what's your preferred relationship with a developer? Is it in-house, agency, offshore? Where do you see that relationship? - Oh, sure at all. - We have been everywhere. We've used the sort of upwork resources that are in some foreign country. - Which had me amazing. - You know, it's worked for us to get to a point, you know? But I think like when your business is reaching different levels of maturity, you need different things. Right now we're searching for like an agency that we're constantly can work with. That's on the same time zone that, you know, we can project manage quite tightly. You know, eventually love to have in-house. Like that's the biggest, that's the dream. (laughing) We'll geek out on that. Like I said, we'd love to- - Yeah, I'll even geek out on that, I'll even like join that. - You have to have a developer sitting in our office is like the biggest dream ever. - Best friends forever. - But moving, you know, I don't know like your point there around as you evolve as a business. So it moves almost from a resource to a partner to a team. - Absolutely. - Yeah. - All right, number four, can you recommend a book or a podcast that our listeners should immediately get into? - Oh, there's a lot out there. - That book, and we were just saying like a diary about you. - Diary of CEO is pretty awesome because- - It's simple, it's to the point. I love when a friend gave it to me. - Yeah, it's really digestible, very easy. - Yeah. - But you're a podcast person. - Yeah, I'm not all very self-healthy. I mean, I love them. - Oh, J Shetty. - J Shetty. - We listen to a lot of J Shetty interviews. - Well, then I go find the people that he's interviewing and then go down their podcast and then down their rabbit hole. I'm all about your self-improvement and maybe more Zen without the Cai even with the small improvements of being more Zen. - You know, there's so much out there, but I think it's about finding things that are really like you can really relate to. And when you find that thing, it's like it feeds you. It's like such good information because you're out there, you know, we're all running these D2C businesses and you feel like you're in this abyss, but there's a lot of information out there. - Yeah. - There is, and I think you're right, is that you can't listen to everything. You've got to find the ones that really resonate with you and they're your people almost, like. - Absolutely. - Yeah. - You're our people, Nate. (laughing) - You're our people now too, like you're part of the gang. - All right, number five, what is your biggest challenge today? - Balance is good. I mean, you know, especially for us, husband and wife, partners, - Kids. - Parents. - Teenage kids, all like, cleaning. - I think the biggest challenge goes to our therapist. (laughing) - I enjoy it, yeah. Yeah, yeah. - I mean, I think what Kerry said is right, it's balance. You know, like, and now as addicted to this business, as Kerry was when she started it. And, you know, we're living this kind of this same life right now, so it's really about carving out space. - Yeah, it's a bit enmeshed, so we're trying to kind of-- - You know, it's like this trip to visit our suppliers, like-- - We are really enmeshing. - We're like, you know, it's a family holiday slash-- - But I'll go to Mongo, we're all doing a three day family where there's no tech yurt. - We're flying up north to Inner Mongolia and sleeping in yurts and horseback riding, and-- - I need to take our take out, we're good. - Off the grid. - Off the grid, completely. - I love it, I love it. I could imagine, okay, I've got no idea, you know, how you create those boundaries between everything, because whether it is kids, whether it's the business, there's always so much more you feel what you can be doing, and when do you go, enough's enough? Like, where do you draw the line to be? - Yeah, we draw the line when enough is enough at the end of a day, but like, it never ends. The inboxes have never emptied, like, it's-- And you know what, I think that that's how life needs to be. Like, there's always things to do, and there's never a dull moment. - Yeah, I love it. And that's the theme we got out of our main conversation, which I loved, is around that continuous improvement. Things never stop evolving, never stop changing, there's always going to be more to improve on, and I think you guys are doing that so well. So thank you so much, Kerry and Aaron, for joining us on the Checkout. It's been a pleasure to get to know you. - Thanks, Andrew. - Thank you so much. - Thank you. - To hear more from Kerry and Aaron, jump back into episode 431, where Kerry and Aaron share why they love the Japanese concept of kaizen, and how they apply it in their business to make continual little changes, even when it isn't perfect. We discuss their multi-generational customers, and what they do, to cater with customers who range from Gen Z all the way through to baby boomers. And we get nerdy, talking about some of the most recent changes they've made online to simplify their user journey and increase conversion. Thanks for listening, and until next time, keep adding to cart. (upbeat music) [BLANK_AUDIO]