The Real Truth About Running an eCommerce Business During COVID 19

welcome to the ecommerce podcast with matt edmondson a show that brings you regular interviews tips and tools for
building your business online
[Music] well hello and welcome to the ecommerce
podcast with me your host matt edmondson uh do forgive my voice i am slightly
recovering from mamflu it's okay i didn't have to call the paramedics uh
you'll be pleased to know but we are we are we are in a in a husky voice today which
i think is ideal for podcasting not gonna lie so welcome to the show whether you're starting out or whether like me you have
been around the world of e-commerce for a while my goal is simple it's just to
help you grow your own online business whether you're an e-commerce whether you're selling digital whatever it is
that's what we're here to talk about and every week i get to talk to amazing people from the world of e-commerce and
i get to ask them all kinds of questions about what they know and how it's going to help us
develop our own online businesses i try and have the conversations that you would get to have if you manage to
sit down like i do and just get an hour with some really amazing people over a cup of coffee you know you get to ask
some questions you get to dig into their story learn the principles and all of that good stuff right so in this episode
of course it is no exception uh we get to talk to christy
sumer now christy is just a wonderful person uh she actually as you're going to hear at the start she runs her own
podcast uh and we're gonna i'm gonna ask her about that you're gonna learn more about that i've actually been on her
podcast i've been on her show and that's how we met and i feel like she's like one of my
twins because our background is very very similar in terms of running e-commerce businesses doing the coaching
doing the consulting and running a podcast and so when christy and i get together
it's always an interesting conversation let me tell you and today we thought we'd just talk about the real side of
running an e-commerce business under the pandemic under lockdown undercoverd
what does it actually mean and for me the reason why this is good to talk
about is when christie will just be brutally honest uh to quote rocky you
know that well-known e-commerce sage the world ain't all uh sunshine and
rainbows and it's true with e-commerce actually that at the moment uh it's not sunshine and rainbows and
actually there are some real big issues around this industry that we need to talk about and that we need to think
about from supply chain issues delivery issues in the uk we've got brexit uh we've got advertising changes with
facebook there's a whole bunch of stuff going on that's making it well let's just say a little bit tricky to run a
successful online business at the moment and so i was really keen to have this conversation with christy because
christy runs her business she runs an e-commerce business a fashion brand
which has got some real great principles great values and ethical fashion brand and so i thought it'd just be great to
talk to a fellow e-commerce business owner who actually is in the trenches on a
day-to-day running a business about what she has discovered
running you know an online business during these let's just call them unprecedented times so here's my
conversation with christy christie welcome to the show great to
have you on thank you for having me matt it's brilliant now we we've known each
other a little while uh because you also have a podcast yourself right um yes i have a podcast called ravenboss
that you were on i think in the summer of this year so that was a really great
episode and got a lot of downloads so thank you for doing that ah raven boss what is break what is the
bravenbod boss podcast well so it's primarily it's a bit more
of a female targeted audience just not intentionally i think maybe accidentally
just for people who follow me online and stuff like that but i have a whole nother business in addition to encircled my fashion line i have a coaching
business as well where i have the podcast i have some online courses and stuff like that so raven boss is really
talking about not only just the nuts and bolts of running an ecommerce business but also the other side of it which is
really important like the emotional and the mindset and stuff that comes into running a business as well
yeah i know it's great and i remember when we talked it was like it was like you were like my twin sister on the
other side of the atlantic because everything you i felt like everything you were doing i was doing jeremy and we
had the podcast we did coaching we ran e-commerce businesses yeah so it's like there was that uh
i didn't come across too many people like us in my journey and so i was like oh this is amazing so
do check out uh christy's podcast we will of course put links to it in the show notes but it's called brave and
boss and you will enjoy that now christy let's talk about um i want to get straight into it because
we are in the midst of a pandemic hopefully we are actually coming out of the pandemic
but you know covet has been a fascinating one uh for businesses e-commerce businesses
especially and what i thought would be great to do with you because i know we're gonna have a great conversation about this it's just the reality of
running a business an e-commerce business in covid because everybody has said i i maybe i
shouldn't say everybody a lot of people have said you know what covid the pandemic has been great for
online and digital businesses right and i've heard a lot of people say this
but i think the reality of that statement is very different and i think
it might have been great at the start of covet i don't think it's necessarily true for
a lot of businesses right now so let's get into that have you found
uh running your e-commerce business encircled in the pandemic
mm-hmm yeah so the first things i'll say about my business um just for the listeners is
that um encircle's a fashion brand so we use all sustainable fabrics and we produce everything locally and we produce primarily women's wear that has
like a really high comfort factor so a lot of like athleisure uh type wear and
we were the original designers of the dressy sweatpant which is a piece we designed ironically in so way
before the pandemic way before it was cool to wear sweatpants to work kind of thing um so we were a little bit ahead of the trend when it comes to work from
homeware um so ironically when the pandemic hit we were pretty well positioned from a product standpoint it
wasn't like we were something like formal dresses or something like that um so our business immediately you know
saw that impact i think after things settled a little bit um you know our sales really took off
because i think a lot of brands you know just everybody was starting to shop online they were looking for
specifically our product uh like loungewear and comfortable items um and that was really great like we rode
that way for a little bit and then we realized because where we're located in canada um at the time early on in the
pandemic we were there was a complete shutdown here for a very long time and we started to run out of inventory
um and all of our factories were closed and we actually got down to two weeks of inventory at one point
um which is crazy so anybody who runs an e-commerce business knows that two weeks of inventory uh when it takes you know
four to six to eight now to turn it is a very scary place to be we're
actually guessing can we make digital products to sell because we were like what else can we
sell um so luckily we were able to get out of that and kind of have um our
supply supply chain reopen slowly but it's been a roller coaster i would say i
think was a really great year for us in a sense because we grew a lot but it was really tough growth because of
supply chain challenges and what's happening i think in that i've heard from a lot of entrepreneurs is
that the supply chain challenges are actually getting worse and we've felt that as well um a lot of hr challenges as well
and cost of goods increases and a lot more competition so it's actually kind of swung i would say in the plus
facebook ads um ios ios updates with email all these things coming
together it's actually a very challenging environment right now to operate an e-commerce business so it's
almost like we've come you know to the high and now we're back down into the low um and we're trying to figure out how to
get out of this um and continue to build our business yeah i think
i mean yeah you've nailed it in a nutshell there the word roller coaster uh and i think um
i think i've heard a lot of people say kovit's been great for their business but in reality
there has been ups but there has i think there have been some massive downs and you've nailed a few right there so supply chain issues i think is
one um getting your goods delivered i think has been an increasing problem you
mentioned that um and so these are all fact staff getting people
to actually do the work has been an issue um in in the uk we've had brexit to deal
with uh on top of that there's all the facebook ads so yeah these are really challenging
times for e-commerce businesses and so it's great to actually have a real conversation about this because i think
too many people just sort of oh it works lyrically it's great it's great so how have you how have you dealt with say
supply chain issues what have what has what have been some of the things that you've learned there mm-hmm
yeah so definitely so for context producing locally one of the biggest advantages aside from like the fair
labor and ethical practices and lower carbon footprint all those great things is that when you make clothing locally
you can make it faster um that's the reality so we could easily make production of a product that we wanted
to sell let's say in november right now previous to the pandemic now what's happened is it's gone from
probably about four to six weeks average turn time sometimes as low as two we could turn products around to more like
to weeks so now it's like way longer cycling times
um so for us like our business model is just not set up like that like we don't plan that far in advance because we've
always been super agile with our design process and how we buy fabric and materials and all that kind of stuff so
we've really had to start to look at our assortment which i think is a really great exercise for any business to do
kind of that old like you know rule like what are the products that are really driving most of your revenue and
then looking like do you actually need these other things in your assortment like do these products serve a role
maybe they're a basket builder maybe they are a lead magnet they're a product that um you know works really well in
paid ads or something like that um but really focusing on less is more when it comes to products is something that we're doing so we're starting to
reevaluate that and then like what products we really need to carry because we've started to get into a lot of
things in the pandemic because people were asking for them we're like yeah let's do basics let's do a basic t-shirt
let's do um this that and the other thing and we start to get very distracted by that so really that refocusing effort i think
is important because when you have a supply chain that's slow you really want to focus on those products
getting those through production as much as possible that are really those revenue drivers for you because if
you're out of stock in your core products you're you're out of luck for sure yeah yeah i i mean i want to come i
want to circle back to this whole refocusing and and the rule i think that's that's really important but
did you under lock down am i understanding this right that actually when the pandemic hit and covered hit
you saw some different opportunities arise uh you know like
everybody started wearing um you know like just like tracky bombs as i would call them
but i mean just like sports clothing type stuff and um
so did you did you find that you were kind of creating more and
more of that type of product take advantage of those opportunities mm-hmm
yeah so like originally we actually pivoted our whole supply chain to making um non-medical masks so when the first hit
we actually saw a huge sales drop um our sales dropped triple digits initially um
so we were like oh my gosh we got to do something and and we have this supply chain here it was only allowed to be
open if it was making um essential goods so we had quite a few factories where we just pivoted completely to making
non-medical masks from organic cotton and like providing them not only for purchase but also for donation as well
so that carried our business through a few months specifically and that is a product that i never thought i would make um to be honest um but it did it
did well for us i think in terms of volume and attracting new customers and we were able to get really high up in
google for that product but it was also very low margin it's a very high touch product like
they're very small and fiddly and they needed people to ship them and we were even having problems finding somebody to ship orders for us because we self
warehouse at um our warehouse in toronto um so we were having trouble finding people to work so we had managers
shipping products uh which is not ideal um so i think it's your question um yes
because we started to see you know demand for you know more like sweatpants and stuff like that where we had like
dressy sweatpants but we would never have like just a pure jogger set like that was just nothing we
would go into our products always have like a really transformative element to them and we kind of got pulled down that
avenue because it started people were asking for them we saw the market it was high trending items so we started making
more and more of those garments and it's fine we were making them out of sustainable materials and in some ways
it fit with our ethos but it's not really the best representation of why i started this brand
and it's easy to kind of start to slide down that path um and then what happened in
probably early in the in the year you start to see um everybody trying to get rid of their
sweatpants so you know the participation of people going back to work and people were thinking it was going to open up
and a lot of brands like i think at one point somebody told me the stat and i'd have to fact check it at like of h
m's inventory was in um you know sweatpants and hoodies and i was like wow like we're people are really
overstocked so when i heard that we start to shift our assortment back to what we make you know more normally
products but again like designing products remotely is its own challenge that we can get into and talk about
because toronto where i'm from has also been one of the cities that's been locked down for the most amount of time
probably in canada i think it was almost days of pure lockdown so oh wow i
mean we've been working remotely and designing products remotely which is just this whole whole thing that you
know and it slows down the process but also changes the product development process quite dramatically from the way we used to do it so so yeah so i think
there's a couple of factors there um and we definitely got down a path where we were making products where
honestly i would never have said we would have made them um five years ago for sure yeah that's really interesting i am
i i i find it interesting how you sort of pivoted your business at the time to go right let's make these masks let's
make these joggers and stuff because this is what people want but um and now you're talking about actually
we're coming out of the pandemic we've we've got a chance just to sort of realign and just breathe again
and start to sort of head back to to where we were so you use the phrase to sort of focus back in on you know the
age rule stripping stuff out um and i think there's i think that's that's an interesting
idea because it's you know sometimes as entrepreneurs we just have to do what makes money to keep
the doors open don't we um as long as it aligns with our culture and our values it's like this is what we're gonna do
um yeah but that usually tends to be for a season and so trying to get that get the ship back on track is that where
you find yourself now mm-hmm yeah absolutely i mean we kind of did what we needed to do at the time because
when when our sales dropped so dramatically like the pivotal point was when the nba in in america closed down
because that like was like the trigger point for a lot of things to shut down in in north america at least um and
literally seeing sales drop triple digits when we were growing up into that point you know high high double digits i
was like super freaked out to be honest i was like oh my gosh where is this going you know i'm much like many
entrepreneurs i'm sure we did you know worst case than best case forecasts like you know worst case being
zero sales best case being like maybe almost last year's sales or half of that um and
how much cash do we have in the bank to last like that's how uncertain things were so yes
we had to make decisions to that we're within our values but we're in areas where we would never kind of go
there just because it just is not our business model but i mean there's a brand i know in canada he he makes
outerwear that's vegan and he's literally switched his whole business to making um surgical gowns for the medical
community um and that's like his main business still actually um because he
saw the demand and he had the factory infrastructure to do it so he did it
um so you kind of got to do what you got to do to like get through that and then ideally you know you come back to what
you really want to do with the business and if you want to continue to run a business of loungewear and sweatsuits and you think that's the opportunity
great but for us i can definitely see that market kind of evaporating and i think there's a lot of competition um we have a coffee chain
here called tim hortons and it's like i don't know how to describe it in uk terms but it's like a very
um like it's like a dunkin donuts maybe i don't know if you know what that is like it's a very like
anyways low-key coffee place they literally just launched a loungewear line and i was like okay now everybody's
watching their live tim hortons has hoodies and sweatpants like now it's time to get out
of it so so yeah for us it just it doesn't speak to the highly differentiated parts of our brand and again like these types of
things like the masks the loungewear the basics those are very low margin products for us to create like they are
very expensive to make ironically even though they're very simple and you can't really charge that high of a price for
them because they are not that differentiated so the more we go down that path the more it takes us off of our
core um core value drivers i think and then also the things that really reaffirm our
brand so so yeah we're definitely trying to like reorient back to that a little bit and we recently launched um a
collection called performance workwear which is basically uh work wear silhouettes made out of activewear
fabrics so it's like a performance scuba micro tencel fabric and it's super stretchy and we've basically put a bunch
of like workwear kind of silhouettes perhaps a little bit of in advance of the car here people are going back to
work but they're not really full time here yet um but that's what we're anticipating is that people are returning to work at some point um in
later this year or early that's really interesting so the um
so you're at this stage now that where you're sort of getting back to what differentiates you as a brand and i
think that's a really interesting phrase i mean you know you're what what makes you stand out what makes you unique what do you stand for what's
your you know your whole your whole mo kind of thing um
and so do you feel like you're kind of rediscovering yourself a little bit now we're coming
out of the pandemic yeah we're actually redoing some customer research right now to um
retouch base with our customers too because like the one thing i realized is that like our business is not the same
but also people are not the same like people are not the same as they were in
um and i think the more we pretend like people are like that it's it's the worst for the business so we really need to
tap back into our customer base which i think is a really big competitive advantage of having a digital business
is that we have a really close community we have a facebook group with over a thousand of our customers in it um and
really talk to them and start to understand what their lifestyles are like now because it's totally different
than it was before and that puts totally different demands on people's closets um
you know people have gained weight over the pandemic myself included people don't wear jeans anymore you know
people aren't going out as much anymore so like what does their structure look like in their wardrobe and how can we best serve them at this point moment in
time so that's opening up some discussions around you know new new sales channels for us potentially um but
also just like what are the right pieces to bring into the assortment and how can we do that almost in collaboration with
our customers to to be where they need to be today um and i think we lost some of that connection over the pandemic
interestingly because like we just were so busy and so you know
busy trying to like launch products and just run the business and we lost that connection so i really want to get back to that as well
that's i love that i love how how you've in in this you've you've stayed
connected to your customer and you've gone back to them and like how can we how can we help you guys now and trying
to understand their life and where they're at and i think there's a big piece of learning there for us is is actually your customers are not the
same you know life has changed for a lot of people a lot of who are your customers
and so understanding who your customers are now is critical because it might be different to who they were a few years
ago right so what are some of the what are some of the things maybe then that surprised you in that
yeah i would say uh well i mean just generally we know about our customers that like they are working from home
most of the time we do have a large portion of customers who are doctors and in the health of
professional communities so those those individuals never work from home um so it's we have to be very careful with our
messaging i think around that um because i think there's an assumption that everybody's working from home and that's
that's not correct there's a lot of essential workers out there going to work every single day um so we've tried to be a little bit
more cognizant of that um i definitely recognize that people don't want to give up comfort um i think once you've lived
in loungewear for a long time you know you don't want to lose that comfort but there is definitely i think a pull
towards looking more polished and put together because that routine of people is really
out of whack right now like i was walking my dog yesterday and i ran into my friend's friend and she was just
saying like she really wants to go back to the office at least two days a week just to have an occasion to get dressed
up for and like who would have ever said that before like it's such a bizarre thing to say right
i resonate with me too i was like yeah i definitely want to like do my hair and like put on some nice pants
um you know but like i also don't want to feel uncomfortable in those pants so we're trying to like really understand
where that intersection is with our customer and like how can we how can we best serve them and then also like
the other thing is that there's been so many so much more focus on shopping locally at least in canada i don't know
about globally as well i'd say globally yeah and so like how do you harness that
a little bit more um because that's also brought in a ton of new entrants into the e-commerce space like we've seen how
much shopify is growing um year-over-year in terms of merchants and stuff like that which is really great
but then how do you continue to build out your brand in that really fragmented environment so so that comes down to
just like again refining your core value proposition and doing that work so we're kind of in the middle of it right now so
i don't have all the answers to be honest because we're just kind of starting that journey um we do run eos
at our business so part of it is the entrepreneur's organizational system so part of it is reevaluating that vision
traction organizer is what they call the vto um and really looking at the overarching vision of the business and
where do we really want this to go and being very focused in our execution towards that
so if i bring this i mean this whole segment started off by talking about
supply chain issues and and and
i guess this whole realignment with core values this distilling of products down to what it is that we need and want are
you doing that with one eye on your core values another eye on what the customers
are saying in facebook and another eye on what's actually possible to be delivered right now you do you feel like you're balancing all these different
balls to try and create a product yeah it's it's like building a plane
when it's flying in the air because we're trying not to like take the parts out we're trying not to make parts out that
are gonna make the plane fall out of the air but we also need to keep moving forward and keep you know
the lights on and keep generating revenue so it's like this kind of uh lock step thing where we're making
changes on the fly and i'd love to shut the business down and just have a big visioning session but
not allow my luxury of my life does not allow for that so yeah it's kind of like making these small
changes and continuing to operate and making these these adjustments as we go
and the plan is really to like come to a point at some point um probably this year um post black friday i would guess
uh where we really start to you know bring that forward more overtly to the
to the consumer so like almost like a mini kind of rebranding exercise if you will where we just really start to
refresh and rebrand ourselves um they're just we were actually ironically rebranding just as we're heading into
the pandemic and we had done all this work with copywriters and agencies and then the pandemic hit and we were like
okay well nobody's gonna listen to this so you know we were so excited to launch it
and it was like okay well never mind but um so we never really fully rolled it out and that actually was not a bad
thing because i think we were going down the wrong track anyways so um i think this has provided an opportunity to just
reevaluate and and refocus like i said and really focus on the lessons more in the business it's easy to get really
distracted when you're growing um and all of a sudden you go from like you know
i don't know like skus and then you have skus and you're like how did that happen like you know we've gone from two weeks
on hand of inventory now we have like four months on hand like it's a totally like wackadoo world right now over here
so we're trying to like really focus on um slimming down our inventory now so now
we're having the opposite problem with too much inventory um so that's that's just part of the roller coaster it is
right like you know you're sitting on no inventory now you have too much you know you have too many new customers now you
don't have enough like it's it's just part of the challenge of e-commerce and i think the tactics for digital marketing and customer acquisition are
changing as well um so we're definitely trying to diversify in that that respect as well
so yeah i mean you you you mentioned sort of uh sort of
the rebrand and refresh and rethinking and all that sort of stuff in in the new year after black friday is
is your is your thinking now you know what we've got black friday around the corner we let's get through that
uh you know we can the plane's flying we can change a few things on the way let's get through black friday and then
come you know december st or whatever it is we've then got christmas for a few weeks but at some point probably
mid-december we're just going to start to think right breathe this is now where we can
go is that the strategy for you right now yeah holiday is really busy for us i mean even up until the end of december
is quite busy um january was really the time when like i think it's the perfect
inflection point for us to kind of do that because i think our where we're going to go with the brand i
think would really suit the conversations that happen in january about like revaluation and goal setting
and you know streamlining and simplification and fresh starts and stuff like that so so for us yeah it's
definitely getting through the holiday season i mean black friday you know in a lot of ways is really about
acquiring customers for the last six months and now really converting those customers um so for us it's not as much
of a brand play um at the end of the day black friday typically is just a promotional execution
so if we do that really well i think we'll we'll be fine um but we're really thinking more about how can we set
ourselves up for long-term success um you know not just but to you
know and beyond um and that's kind of the critical work that we're taking our time i would say doing right now just to
make sure we get it right um because again like there's so much competition out there right now which is
great but most people are still shopping at least in the fashion industry you know from
fast fashion brands that's the reality so a lot of us who are in this like two percent of brands that are involved in
slow or sustainable fashion you know we're all feeding the same customer base
and what we really need to do is bring people in who are shopping at fast
fashion and show them a different way of consuming fashion and that's a really difficult exercise to do but otherwise
we're just gonna all start like cannibalizing the same people you know and we really need to grow that customer
pie and the only way you can kind of do that is through really specific education and tapping into what matters
to the customer and we've kind of started to just get a bit of a red thread around that and like what it is
that really matters at the end of the day because it's different for every customer segment and this is what i think is important for your audience to
do too is to just do that research and start to see what the core motivations are for people buying you know is it the
sustainability is it the ethics is it the product functionality like what is it um so understanding that is really
key to differentiating and then if you can understand that then you can start to pull other people in who may be kind
of on the fringe and potentially purchasing from you um but i think that that is really key for if you're in a
niche market to keep expanding it's that like bringing people in who are never shot before in that category which is a
huge behavioral challenge but um we're up for it for sure
so the let me just touch on fast fashion for a little minute if if i can because it
this whole industry intrigues me and and uh you know the real drive
in the uk for example there's been some commercials been run on tv about avoiding fast fashion and you've got
like famous football or soccer stars in the adverts telling you to avoid it which is just wonderful to see if i'm honest with
you do you have you found the you know the general message of sustainability and
caring for the environment and making good choices around food around clothing and
understanding the impact and all that sort of stuff that kind of thing has have you found that over the pandemic
did people sort of veer away from that or do you feel like people have kind of gathered towards it a little bit more
i definitely think people are gathering towards it a little bit more just in general because there's a lot more
environmental there's unfortunately a lot of environmental disasters that have happened in the last like two years and
people are home people are paying attention they're watching the news um they don't have anything else to do and
they're they're aware they're more aware than ever um and there's definitely a generational component where a younger
generation is it's definitely very um environmentally conscious however i will
say there's still a gap between people's um [Music]
you know what they would say and what they actually do um and you see that
yeah yeah like as an example like i would say um
gen z is like the core shopper of this fast fashion brand that has just exploded over the last like
two years called sheen um and that brand launches a thousand pieces a day
i don't even know how they do that but they do that's a lot of consumption of fashion it's very cheap it's all made in
like far reaches of china poorly made i had lots of products and lots of problems with that brand doing cultural
appropriation all kinds of bad things but yeah they're a billion dollar brand so
somebody's shopping at them and there's a very popular trend on tick tock of people doing these hauls of xi'an so on
one hand you have people outraged that they're creating all this consumption but then they're still purchasing from
them so there's like this gap and i think the gap can often be explained by a lot of things that are a lot more mega
trends so there's a lot of pressure for people to dress a certain way and always be on trend and all that kind of stuff
you know when we talk about sustainability there's a huge privilege component too because sustainable fashion is more expensive so i'm not
generally talking to that segment of people because to me there's definitely like if people
are shopping at h m because they can't afford to shop anywhere else i get it but if you're shopping at h m because
you want to buy t-shirts not just like two t-shirts that's like a consumption issue that's been created
through the media and perpetuated you know so so i think there's like two different kind of things there at play
um food as an example i think is a lot farther along than fashion and same with
beauty i would argue um people are more aware of what goes into products and the more direct impact on their skin and
their health and their body whereas with fashion it's still really nebulous as to
how it's made and like people don't understand like different fabrics and what goes on to
some of those fabrics and how that can impact your body because it's just too far out there you know what i mean we're not there yet um but it's moving in that
direction so i think the more awareness we get into supply chains and stuff like that and they can see
what's actually going on behind the scenes because like at the end of the day this product is all handmade still
like there's not robots sewing these somewhere like people's lives like if we're optimizing on one thing we're
optimizing on labor and that's like a really challenging thing to optimize on because somebody's probably not getting
paid down the line properly for fast fashion to occur um so the more awareness and transparency that happens there i think
the better but there's definitely still it's not i will tell you it's not the core motivator why people shop from us
still so that says a lot because it's a pretty big value of ours as well
yeah i think i think it's it's really powerful and and and what you're doing is great i've
i've been involved in the fair trade industry for a while and um and you one of the things you learn
being involved in that industry is you understand supply chain you know from beginning to end from you know
and not just supply chain as in you've made a piece of clothing and i buy it from you but where did that material
come from who made that clothing where's you know where's that factory located what's that doing to the environment
what's that doing to the local community and just this transparency that comes with it and i think transparency is a good
buzzword and people love it but it i think you still need something
in this day that differentiates you more than just transparency don't you if you're going down that road of
sustainability and and so on and so forth and they're great but they're not the primary reason why people will buy
from you and um i think that that just that fascinates a great you know good on
you for doing what you're doing i guess if you could uh as we're coming out of
it you know christy if you could have a phone call with yourself you know months ago what what what would be some
of the key pieces of advice you would give yourself oh my gosh uh some of the learning that
you've had here i'll probably tell myself to take a
vacation [Laughter] that would be like a key thing
um you know i think
another thing i would probably have done differently would be i think from from the hr management
perspective like being more cognizant of um
like not just checking in on people like having one-on-one coaching discussions but being a little bit more mindful of
employees and what they're they're going through personally um i think it's easy to assume that if
somebody's not feeling well it's their job you know but the pandemic
has showed us that a lot of people are really struggling mentally um and that has never been more prevalent from an hr
perspective for me than in the last two years and those situations are really challenging to manage as a
ceo or leader in a business um but i wish i was a little bit more cognizant
of that and had more tools like now we have things we can offer people but i wish we had more forward thinking tools
for that because i think it was a way larger issue than we ever anticipated um
and i would probably have said like you know turn up those ads in april
because these are the best cpms you'll ever get in your life maximize now because it's just going to
go boom like you are not that great at ads it was just a fluke but
that's very good so what is that what are that are you taking forward i guess you know
let's get let's fast forward through black friday let's you know let's get out of survival mode
what's the learning that you're going to take forward that you're really going to make sure you know what you've already
talked about refocusing you know re-establishing who you are as a business but what what are some of the other things you're taking forward
yeah definitely i think hiring for the business tomorrow not today is important um
because when you grow really quickly which most of us when we're running e-commerce brands we're always trying to
grow um you can really outgrow team members and competencies pretty quickly if you're
hiring for what you need at this moment um so and that's a tricky balance right because you wanna always hire more
senior more experienced people but sometimes you don't have the resources to do it so you have to kind of pick and choose in the areas of the business but
i think that's been a really key learning um you know not and maybe you can't hire somebody full-time maybe you
hire a consultant or something like that or a fractional version of whatever you need but hiring those experts and hiring them
before you think you need them is i think key because it's very um you can
really get a lot of things that kind of start to stack up against you if you're not paying attention to all areas of the
business and having those experts they can kind of proactively tell you where those issues or pain points might be um so
that's definitely one of them um i would say definitely culturally i want to work on
the culture of the business and i'm very cognizant of how like you know how the leader behaves is really important i
work a lot um and so i'm trying to work less actually to show people that is okay um because i realize that's
something that people look to in a business you know even if i'm not telling them to work on the weekends
people will do that because they feel committed to the business and that's the kind of people who attract the business but that's also how people burn out um
so that's something we're being really mindful of how can we bring the team back together in safe ways and
collaborate but also work smarter not harder um in
um and then i think the the third thing would be like processes like i know that
sounds really boring but um processes are really key to to that work
smarter not harder piece um i think we've really learned over the last you
know few years that uh we had loose processes it's not like we had no processes but they were not properly
documented they're not detailed and when you have a process that lives with one person or you know somebody's the train
the trainer for everybody and then that person leaves or gets sick or something like that then your whole business can like collapse on one side depending on
what that process is so um really focusing on documenting those processes and put again like higher planning these
processes for the business you want to be not the business necessarily you are today because again then once you're
scaling you're going to start to run into roadblocks and stuff like that so if you want to be like a million dollar business next year you have to
start to build in the infrastructure and processes now that can support that growth versus like backpedaling and like
i said trying to build that plane while it's in the air um because it's a lot more difficult endeavor to go down
yeah no that's brilliant that's brilliant what are you here's my final question um for you christie
what do you think is going to happen this black friday what are you what are you anticipating now um yeah so i definitely what we've seen
with sales over the pandemic anytime we go on sale our sales are way over
subscribed versus previous years so we've seen massive growth in promotional
activities so as an example we only we really only go site-wide discounting twice a year once in july for around
canada day and then um in black friday and black friday it's usually around a collection so it's not even site-wide um
in july we did more sales in hours than we did in i think
on the black friday weekend last year yeah so and we saw the same trend in
july um you know we did significant amount of sales and we actually at the
time obviously didn't have that much inventory so we actually blew ourselves out of inventory at that point this year we were more prepared but you know the
lift on promotional activations is way up way way up so we're definitely
anticipating that this will be a big event for a lot of brands because
again like you know people have been financially impacted by the pandemic for sure
um so they are you know when you're seeing lower conversion rates on your website or your ads or whatever
a lot of these people are still following you they're reading your emails they're following you on social and maybe they're just waiting for that moment to purchase where they have that
little extra incentive to like push them over the edge like i'm just waiting for the peloton tread to go on sale for like ten dollars to like you
know myself to buy one um you know so like people are waiting in the wings
so there's been i i expect that it's going to be big big for us so we're trying to make
plans for that um logistically but also to set up the right promotions that are
not um margin dilutive i guess if you will so make them really value added um that's
important as well but also make them super exciting for our customers that have been like following us and supporting us for the last few years so
i think it'll be a really big event for e-commerce i still don't think you know brick and mortar is going to be back a
little bit but i still think there's going to be a huge portion of people shopping online and lots of growth sector
yeah i think you're right i think i'm i'm intrigued to see what happens this black friday it'll be really fascinating to see what
what results come out of it and christy listen i really appreciate you being with us i want to be mindful
of your time how do people connect with you how do they reach out to you if they want to get in touch
sure yeah so if you want to check out my brand in circles you can check out our website it's encircled e-n-c-i-r-c-l-e-d
dot c-o um we're on instagram at encircled underscore um my coaching and
podcast website is christysumer.com and then i'm at christy summer on instagram if you want to flip me a dm if you
listen to this episode i'd love to connect with you there fantastic and we will of course put all
of those links that were mentioned in the show notes and you can grab those uh on the website as well
so uh christy listen really really appreciate your time thank you so much for joining us and sharing your insight
uh and i'm yeah here's looking for a brighter right it's just it's um yeah looking
forward much thank you matt wasn't christy absolutely fantastic uh i
really really enjoyed my i've had a few conversations with christy and that was great because um
just the reality of it the rawness of it the truth of it the authenticity of it she was great wasn't she and um i hope
if you're running an e-commerce business at the moment and you're finding it a little bit tricky navigating
the old covid pandemic brexit facebook ads thing but you just take a little bit of hope
from that because you know there there is some hope and there is some strategy so hopefully you got something out of it
i i've got a few things stick out in my head actually from the conversation with
christy one is um she mentioned dead a couple of times and need to take some time off and and one of the things that
i i found fascinating over covered for a lot of people for a lot of online entrepreneurs
because it was so crazy a time everybody was working crazy hours
i often say i to people when i think about the pandemic i don't think i've worked as hard my whole life as i did the last
months and um and you know i planned to take august off i wanted to just take a whole month i've
never done it before i want to take a whole month off and just enjoy some time out it didn't happen unfortunately uh
as we sold one of our uh companies which we're going to talk more about in a future episode actually
as we saw one of our e-commerce businesses and i was like you know what i need to take some time and that was
the thing for me but i don't know about you did you find that under covid you worked harder than you ever have done or
actually was it easier for you i'm curious to know let me know because uh i i know for a bunch of people they
worked harder for some actually they really enjoyed it worked at home just felt a lot more chilled out
where do you sit on that spectrum i i genuinely would love to know so that was one thing that um that christy said and
just reminded me i actually need some to book some time off which i'm gonna do uh tomorrow
and i think the other thing for me was this whole idea chris was talking about um black friday did you hear what she
said the customers are still there but they're just not buying at the moment
and i thought that was a really interesting comment i don't know what you have found with your own online sales do you feel like they're a little
bit lower than you thought they were going to be um and i i just i was encouraged by that
actually the customers are still there they're still reading the emails they're still watching facebook they're just
it's getting to that phase isn't it in the in this sort of time of year so what is it it's october at the time of
recording october and so black friday in effect is around the corner this is the time that people
start to pause purchases in anticipation of what is going to happen on black friday
i think there are things that we can do as e-commerce businesses which mitigate that uh
i'm definitely not a fan of pouring all your hope into black friday i'm not gonna lie i mean there are you know just
like there's ethical questions around clothing there's almost ethical questions around black friday which maybe we should get into in another
episode but i'm definitely not pinning all my hopes on black friday uh so we do you know we're doing things now so
people don't do that i'm just gonna pause until black friday thing uh but if you've noticed a dip be encouraged
actually customers are still there check out your email open rates up is it the same are people still engaging in social
media like they did if that's the case maybe they're just not buying maybe they're just waiting
and hopefully you know sales will start to increase uh in the
coming weeks i mean naturally they're going to start to increase in november time um
especially with black friday i found with black friday you don't even have to discount you will sell more because
people are just in a buying mood right so uh be encouraged with that and i i
thought that um you know the the problems that christy had we've all experienced haven't we like
you know supply chain issues and she she adapted and pivoted to try and make that work for her so she's
realigning what she's selling with her core values with who she is with what a customer wants with what she can get
hold of and i i think there's actually some some wise wise lessons for us there i know we've
had uh with one of the companies i'm involved with vegetology um we've had some supply chain issues on
some of our raw ingredients and some of the costs have just gone a bit crazy so
we have to think that through don't we and um and getting stuff delivered around the globe seems to be much more complicated than it used to be for
whatever reason i i have theories uh but you know it is
what it is we have to face it we have to be aware of it and we have to pivot we have to adapt and we have to change and
we have to make it work for us that's what we do that's what being an entrepreneur is all about so thank you
again christy for your wisdom and your insight if you do want to reach out to christy you can do so with
pleasure i'm sure she would love to hear from you do check out her podcast all the links to christy the notes from
today's show the transcript are on our website ecommercepodcast.net forward slash
you head to that url and you will be able to download those and connect with christy to your heart's content i'm sure
she would love to hear from you she is just a wonderful person so go ahead and do that follow her on
instagram and all that good stuff all that's left for me then to say is
thank you so much for listening to the show thanks for staying with us if you're a subscriber big shout out to you
really really appreciate you taking the time to subscribe to the podcast and keep coming back on a weekly basis listening to the
content that we put out thank you for your reviews thank you for your suggestions thank you for your feedback
much appreciated if you have yet to take the plunge on the whole subscribe thing
i'm just gonna encourage you to do it you know it's the same print it's the same pattern isn't it any podcast you listen to make sure you subscribe make
sure if you're watching on youtube hit that like button make sure you subscribe and all that sort of stuff it genuinely
does help us which is why we say it all the time so i appreciate you doing that uh have a fantastic week uh wherever you
are and i hope that your online business is going successful during the pandemic if there's any questions that you have
from today's show you want to reach out to us we would love to hear from you just head on over to ecommercepodcast.net forward slash
and we'll be we'll be there waiting to connect with you love to hear from you uh that's all from me for this week uh
bless you guys have a great week bye for now