Amelia Trumble is the CEO and one of the three Founders of Retold Recycling. Amelia is an Australian native who moved to New York 15 years ago to work as an ecommerce professional.
While at Estee Lauder running ecommerce for MAC Cosmetics, she met her 2 Retold co-founders, Alan Yeoh and Noelle Sadler. Together the 3 ideated on starting a business that would do good things for the world and get them out of the corporate grind - after an “a-ha moment” decluttering her closets, the idea for Retold was born.
A convenient and mail-based textile recycling service that diverts unwanted items away from landfills and recycles them sustainably! In addition to being the CEO of Retold, Amelia also consults on the side for businesses seeking ecommerce strategy - predominantly in the beauty, fashion and obviously, sustainability space.
Amelia now resides in LA with her 5 year old daughter, Alta!
In This Conversation We Discuss:
- [00:45] Intro
- [02:04] Working your way up to Ecomm roles
- [04:05] Building a business from a personal need
- [04:56] Vetting a business idea through extensive research
- [06:34] Adapting processes to align with sustainable vision
- [07:28] Finding the right partners through persistence
- [09:34] Adapting returns labels for sustainable shipping
- [11:11] Ensuring cost-effective, trackable returns process
- [12:22] Integrating subscriptions with rewards and emails
- [13:07] Episode sponsors
- [16:21] Testing go-to-market strategies for audience growth
- [16:59] Exploring new traffic strategies beyond meta ads
- [18:01] From DTC to retail with strong customer support
- [18:43] Expanding into eco groceries and boutique retailers
- [19:44] Expanding retail vision after Shark Tank success
- [21:24] The real Shark Tank experience
- [22:15] Showcasing sustainability in holiday gift guides
- [23:04] Leveraging key eco moments for business growth
- [24:17] Creating toolkits for successful partner outreach
- [25:00] The real value of customer connection in Ecomm
- [25:50] Creating solutions from customer-driven insights
- [26:44] Enhancing user experience with new site updates
- [27:24] Declutter effortlessly and sustainably
Resources:
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Honestly, I can't say a bad thing about Shark Tank, except that probably took a couple of years off my life actually being in the tank that day, but totally worth it. Welcome to Honest Ecommerce, a podcast dedicated to cutting through the BS and finding action will advice for online store owners. I'm your host, Chase Clymer, and I believe running a direct-to-consumer brand does not have to be complicated or a guessing game. On this podcast, we interview founders and experts who are putting in the work and creating real results. I also share my own insights from running our top Shopify consultancy, Electric Eye. We cut the fluff in favor of facts to help you grow your ecommerce business. Let's get on with the show. Hey, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of Honest Ecommerce. Today I'm welcoming the show Amelia Trumbull. She is the CEO at Retold Recycling. She's an ecommerce lifer and we're here to chat about her business. How are you doing today? Great. Thank you. Thanks so much for having me on. Thanks to chat. So, if I'm listening to this and I don't know, retold recycling, what's the elevator pitch? What's the type of product you guys are offering over there? Well, if we're talking through elevator pitch, I like to always say, what do you do with your old socks and underwear when they're not fit for purpose anymore? And the answer most people give is like, well, I throw them in the trash, of course. And then that always brings up the conversation of textile-based landfills because most people just aren't aware that they're contributing. So retold is a service that my co-founders and I set up. We launched in 2020 and it's a really easy and convenient way to recycle your unwanted clothing and any household items directly from your home, your order, our bags, from our D2C website, fill them up with all of the things that you don't want anymore. It comes with a label attached. So it's super easy just to pop in the post, send it off to us and we make sure nothing goes to landfill. That's amazing. Alrighty, take me back in time. Where does this story start? Well, it depends if you want to focus on the e-com story or the retold story, but maybe being this is an e-com podcast, maybe I can talk a little bit about my career. So yeah, as you said in the intro, I'm a bit of an e-com lifer. My first job out of university was actually working for a very small D2C gardening website start up back in Australia. So you know, it's your first e-com job where you're updating your CMS and trying to work out how to do your site refreshes and publish and all of that kind of good stuff. And since then I've had many different digital roles, but predominantly worked in e-commerce. Like when I was living in Australia, I headed up e-com for a very large beauty retailer there called Mechabuty and they had a couple of different sites at the time. So I oversaw all of that kind of in like a general management role in terms of like owning the P&L, owning the site experience, owning customer service, multiple arms there, but I've got a bit of an itch to get off the island. So I decided to move to New York and I was very, very lucky to secure a role in the online division of Estee Lauder. And I started working on Mac Cosmetics and I was on Mac for my whole tenure at Lauder, but after about six years having worked my way up in the online team at Mac, I also took on some other brands who ended up having a portfolio of six brands that I oversaw globally for all of their e-com business. So again, full P&L strategy planning, go to market and then interacting with our sort of like internal center of excellence on the tech side. So it's a pretty chunky role, fair bit of burnout at the end of that and basically went off to sort of work out what I wanted to do next and consulting just fell in my lap. So I started consulting, but in parallel, a couple of my friends that I'd worked with at Mac, we'd always talked about starting our own thing and doing something good for the world. And around that time that I started consulting, we bought the idea back and it was just like a conversation that converged with me doing a renovation of my very small Brooklyn apartment and needing to declutter a whole lot of clothes and not really finding an easy and sustainable solution. And that's really how retail was born. And so a bit of a mashup of all things colliding and yeah, it's made for a beautiful story, I think anyway. I think it's fantastic as well and it's authentic and it's true and so let's kind of take it from there. So you realize that there isn't a solution out there for your problem which was you had clothes that you didn't want to throw away, you didn't want them to end up in a landfill. So let's talk about like how do you go from like having a good idea to like having maybe like a business? Yeah. Well, that's a good question like we actually did a lot of work out front to vet, do we have a business? Like we, so it's two of my friends from Mac where my co-founders, Noel worked on sort of like the social and digital side of things and Alan is a customer data specialist and he worked on CRM. So I sort of let out on more data, see in tech and they obviously helped on other parts but we all converged to really think about the business model. And you know what we knew was the problem exactly as you said is that there was nothing that was very easy for you to be able to do at home to be able to get rid of things in a sustainable way like I was Ubering big IKEA bags of old clothes to a good will and then the good will would be closed and then we just like closed through and all over the ground outside which I was like no good coming of this. I could have also ubered things to like a farmer's market on a Sunday and found like a green collection but that was also very inconvenient. So yeah, there was something really out there and we just actually went about researching the category because all of us were marketers like we didn't know anything about recycling. So we met with a lot of different recycling companies all who fascinatingly were like yeah we'll work with you like we can do that like we can help you and then when we vetted out sort of the convenience solution around like our yellow bags and having the mailing label attached and the customer being able to put like anything in there, the good stuff that's new with tags all the way through to those old undies that I mentioned before. When we went back to a lot of these recycling companies they were like what do you mean like you want us to sort that you want us to take mixed materials and it was just a hard no. So it ended up taking a year and a half of just literally asking anyone with a pulse basically like do you know anyone in textile recycling or has a sorting facility or for we found our current main partner that we work with who was able to see our vision and they kind of like adapted their process to be able to take our business model. So we were very lucky in that respect. So that's kind of how we like vetted could we be a business but of course we naively made like a million mistakes along the way as most founders do but yeah we sort of a large portion of what we were setting up because we're all marketers we really thought significantly about you know obviously the web experience but also customer data and a lot around the recycling data that we wanted to provide. So one example of that is like from day one we're launched with a ticker on our website that you know explained how many tons of materials we've actually diverted from landfill. So we wanted to like be very upfront with that customer communication. So yeah I don't know if that really answers the question of how we've entered the business but there's a lot there. Oh no it did and it's I think one thing I want to highlight from what you shared is it took you a year and a half to find a good partner and that resonated with me because I remember reading something last week or the week before on Reddit about I don't know if it was a guy or a gal on there kind of saying that they couldn't build their MVP because you know their first partner like just you know that they prepared what they couldn't do it and then loan the hold through kind of you know people asking questions within the comments is they just went with like the first person they asked. And I think that's a that's a mistake you got to talk to a lot of people to find the right one and it's kind of why I wanted to highlight that. Yeah I mean we have a similar story actually where we kind of did a little bit go with the first person that we met with so on the logistics side we had a very interesting problem to solve where we wanted to have the mailing label attached to our yellow bags. I can do a bit of a show and tell it's probably going to be horrible noise wise but because of our own video so this is a one of our yellow retal bags and it has the mailing label attached. What size is that to explain for the listeners? It's about the size of a pillowcase is like the best way of describing it and you can get around five pounds of textiles in there like cram it in pretty significantly. So we wanted to send those bags out to people's homes with the mailing label attached and you know we needed we wanted to be able to generate those labels up front but have no value attached to them and they're really like we had no idea what we were doing when we're trying to find that solution and actually a good e-commerce friend recommended working with a company called First Mile who's sort of like a at the time a slow freight aggregator in a way where they would find out a way of doing making those solutions for you and shout out to our rep who's actually called Chase as well. We were assigned to him we were one of his first clients and he really came up with this very innovative solution to kind of use like a returns label that another partner could generate for us. Now we've moved on from that but being able to send all of those labels out to all of the customers without any value attached obviously saved us thousands of dollars and it's only activated obviously on scan when the customer puts it in the post but it's just that kind of thing you know I think is something that like you having the architect a unique solution like that and almost like Jerry rigs something that exists for another category I feel he's very like the entrepreneurial story so we were lucky that we did go with that first recommendation to work with First Mile we still work with them today and have a great relationship but it then took us a lot of work to find the actual solution that we needed for the bag labels. Yeah no that's a unique problem and I've obviously I've been on the website and I've spoken with you before so I understand the product a bit more but I want to explain to the listeners as to what what that actually looked like and why that was a big problem is basically you're sending these bags to folks they fill them with the stuff they don't want and then the bag has a shipping label already on it that mails it to your facility for them. Correct. So it's very easy but it doesn't ever come back to us it goes to our recycling partner yeah. Now maybe a lot of listeners don't know this some anyone that's any conversations but you print a shipping label label you are paying for it when you print it usually so to find out a way to have a shipping label on a bag that you're not being charged for to put out there because I'm sure there's a redemption rate where half these bags don't get used they get destroyed lost whatever that's a huge huge problem solve yeah and the other the other layer of it all well actually there's multiple layers is that we needed to be able to track everything because we wanted to know what was going to our partner one you know we needed to pay them for their work and whatever else but we needed to know the weight of every bag that was going from the customer to the depot for sorting and so we could capture that tonage of what was being diverted and then on top of that we also launched with a rewards program for our subscribers from day one where we gave them rewards and so basically we not only needed to know did a bag go from Amelia to this sorting facility we needed to know was Amelia a subscriber and did her bag go and therefore unlocked rewards for her so there was a lot of work behind the scenes in terms of the tracking getting all of the reporting behind the scenes being able to ingest that firing off emails from our play video etc so yeah there's a fair bit a fair bit in the center absolutely but it was great that we had the year and a half trying to find our recycling partner to kind of work through all of those kinks too to be honest I guess hey Shopify store owners have you ever wondered if your store is leaving money on the table imagine increasing sales without spending more money on ads sounds too good to be true well it's not I'd like to introduce you to store tester store tester is a done for you conversion rate optimization service for Shopify merchants could your store benefit from increased conversion rates higher average order values and improved revenue 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are searching clothing recycling near me or textile recycling and um the great thing about having the word recycling in your brand name is that um that works very well for us and we have some great rowers on adwords um right now we're very focused on brand and differentiating ourselves from some of the other like adjacent players in the market so we're doing a lot of work with PR and um you know sort of like basically using like other methods like affiliate programs working directly with influencers obviously we have a very robust organic social you know our you know communicating our brand messaging all the time um we've done a little bit of podcast which i think works advertising i mean um which has worked quite well because it's a longer format to tell a story and explain how to use retold um so yeah we're trying a whole lot of things i can tell you what doesn't work really is just like straight up meta advertising um we've tried it many many times retargeting all of it like it just doesn't seem to convert and it's quite a you know a crowded space when we're looking at the customer we're trying to target so that's why we've tried to flip it and and go after um traffic in some other ways but honestly like the thing that we're most proud of is the word of mouth and our um like refer a friend program or even just you know when we run a social giveaway and our customers tagging their friends in the comments to try and win stuff like we actually have a very significant response because what we find is our customers are like obscene advocates for what we're doing um either they love the convenience or they love the eco aspect and hopefully they love both and that just means they shout loud and proud about retold so we're very lucky for our passionate audience awesome and i know that recently uh you guys have expanded a little bit uh not only do you see any more about you're moving into retail let's talk a bit about that yeah so we're working with um some agents to try and get us into eco grocery so that's in progress right now basically pitching um some grocery chains here on the west coast but also working with some more boutique retailers to get us in the hands of you know gift shops um eco stores uh you know basically you know sort of our network that we're already tapped into we're sort of you know following up and rolling all of that out right now um and then the next frontier will probably be some of our larger fashion partners and um being able to you know sell our little box i've got another show and tell here um so these items will be available in retail stores within the next couple of months and then we'll probably look to sell them on our data see as well particularly around the holidays because it's just such a giftable item it's great like if you've got an eco obsessed friend or family member like to be able to give some bags for around fifteen dollars is pretty cool um but yeah there's a lot of expansion happening on the retail side one thing that we haven't talked about is that we were on shark tank last year and we amazingly had a you know gift from the universe that mark cuban smiled upon us with a deal and his whole vision for us was like very broad distribution you know in the tank um he was like this needs to be available in every seven eleven in america so that's basically our charge and what we're going after absolutely i kind of buried the lead there uh you know what other what other things about shark tank you know our listeners love shark tank stories so what else can you share to share with us about that that whole experience well i mean i was like horrified like it's very personally traumatic day so i was you know it's so much pressure and you know you're so scared and like being in that tank is you know very very very intimidating um but honestly i can say like for our business it was completely transformational in the doors that it's opened being able to one say that we're you know on the show but also you know be able to associate ourselves with mark has opened so many doors for us like honestly it's been less about the cash that we received but more about the relationship and you know we work in very closely with some people in his team at mark human companies and um you know they're absolutely fabulous and support our business um in so many different ways so honestly i i can't say a bad thing about shark tank except that you know probably took a couple of years off my life actually being in the tank that day um but totally worth it so is there something about the shark tank experience that you think like a average person wouldn't know i mean that it's actually real like they the sharks walk into the tank and don't know anything about your business other than your names and the name of your company um so your pitch to them upfront is completely real like you are cold pitching them um so that's pretty fascinating the production side of the business does diligence on you to a certain extent before you go in the tank so you you are like a legitimate business and there's no enormous red flags um but yeah like i we're all like oh surely they know like there's something pre-crafted about you know whether you're allowed in the tank or not but they really didn't know um so i thought that was scary but great at the same time absolutely now uh we're recording this just on the precipice of q4 2024 we've got Black Friday Cyber Monday Christmas around the corner what does that mean to retold recycling well how are you guys thinking about you know tackling marketing this year yeah so i mean traditionally we haven't been like a holiday business obviously um but now that we have our retail packs like i think we will play more in that space um and tell more of a gifting story um we also have a sustainable store on retold recycling.com where we sell items from other brands that we love um and they're very giftable too so we we talk about that we're kind of do our gift guide storytelling um we're obviously promotional for Black Friday Cyber Monday it's such a huge volume time like why not get amongst it but honestly during q4 our biggest moment is actually national recycling day which is in november um so we play a lot there and play a lot on the b2b site as well with a lot of different companies and brands that we partner with to bring their recycling story to life so it's almost like we have a pre-black friday in november before black friday um so it's a you know our team's absolutely slammed but it's a key tentpole for us so november national recycling day and then also earth month earth week and earth day in april um our our big moments absolutely it must be uh i feel like business is like yours that have uh you know obviously amazon made prime day just made up day but like when you have a business that's side to something that is outside of q4 and like the main shopping seasons i feel like that's uh you know just uh an extra advantage to your business yeah i think so i mean it gives you space to play um you know obviously you know we're just after labor day and we did a labor day sale but we were like one of many um but we definitely have sort of like the right to shout loud during those key eco times and i think a very important part of the business that we think about it's not just like obviously selling our bags but it's also providing education materials and you know setting up events whether it be like webinars or in-store events etc on behalf of partners so giving them the toolkit and the credibility to sort of like roll out to their audience during those pick times so it's very layered for us it's not just you know we started promo mid nine and we've got four emails planned and we're watching our conversion like we would normally think in the econ world there's a lot of um omnichannel activity and activity of a half of partners as well so yeah it's a pretty um nuanced and busy time for us now is there anything i didn't ask you about that you think would resonate with our audience um i don't know i mean like i'm honestly happy to chat with anyone so find me on LinkedIn whether you want to tell like econ war stories or you know learn more about recycling but i mean i think the great thing and you know why i've obviously always you know worked in e-commerce for such a long time is just the connection to the customer um being able to get that direct response whether it be in the form of sales or reading chat transcripts of someone who's having a problem and being able to fix it on the fly reading our reviews um shout out to our friends at a kendo um you know all of that kind of thing i just love that close proximity to the customer and that's something that i'm obviously thinking a lot about as we do moving to um sort of like having wholesale SKUs um and then you know one you know important thing that has come up for our business that actually stems directly from you know the customer feedback is we created a scraps bag more show and tell um i can tell i just have a whole heap of bags just like sitting on my desk but basically this is another bag that was born from the feedback from our audience saying hey we do a lot of like sewing and quilting and crafting and we have all these like scraps like will you take them and of course we were saying yes but behind the scenes our recycling partners we're not really loving it it's a whole lot of you know fluff goes everywhere as they're trying to sort through the clothes and everything in the bag so we created the dedicated scraps bag so it's that kind of expansion that we get very excited about because we're like directly listening to the customer we now have the infrastructure you know um that's sort of like ready for us to roll out more and more products so we're very excited about that and then the other thing that i'm personally like super pumped about is hopefully in october we're actually going live with a new D2C site obviously still on Shopify but our current site's actually like our MVP site from like pre-launch so we've obviously you know made a million updates but we're really really excited about a new lick of pain and the exact tech stack that we want with the theme with all of the capabilities so e-comm nerds you know we'll totally understand how much i've been loving that process being able to update everything so that's coming later in the year too Amelia i can't thank you enough for coming on the podcast today and sharing your story uh you know just one more time if i'm listening to this and i've got a closet full of nonsense and i need to recycle it what do i do jump on retold recycling.com and order some of our bags send them to your house do a big declutter and you just need to seal them up and pop them out for your post person or put them in the closest USPS mailbox and follow us on retold at retold recycling on instagram or tick tock and follow on and you know learn some great ecotips and really you know work on your recycling practice awesome thank you so much yeah thank you we can't thank our guests enough for coming on the show and sharing their knowledge and journey with us we've got a lot to think about and potentially add into our own businesses you can find all the links of the show notes you can subscribe to the newsletter at honesty commerce dot co to get each episode delivered right into your inbox if you're enjoying this content consider leaving a review on iTunes that really helps us out lastly if you're a store owner looking for an amazing partner to help you get your Shopify store to the next level reach out to electriceye at electriceye.io/connect until next time
On this episode of Honest Ecommerce, we have Amelia Trumble. Amelia is an Ecommerce lifer, who is most now the CEO of Retold Recycling (and still doing some digital / e-commerce consulting on the side!).
We talk about building a sustainable brand, ensuring cost-effective & trackable returns process, the real value of customer connection, and so much more!
