In this episode, James Friedrich, owner of Ambler Mountain Works and founder of Venturing Up, talks about pricing strategies for entrepreneurs. Drawing from his extensive experience managing a $60 million product portfolio at MEC and his own entrepreneurial journey, James explains how to set prices based on your products’ values and avoid common pricing mistakes in order to maximize profit.
James introduces the Pricing for Profit methodology taught in his free email course. He also provides examples of well-known brands that use value-based pricing to illustrate how companies could potentially charge more for their products.
Whether you’re a fashion brand owner launching a product or looking to create healthier margins on your products, James’ advice will help you to price confidently, attract ideal customers, and build a thriving, standout brand.
About James Friedrich
James Friedrich is the owner of Ambler Mountain Works and Venturing Up. He was formerly a senior merchant at MEC where he ran a successful $60 million product portfolio. He started his career as an entrepreneur and his goal with Venturing Up is to provide entrepreneurs with the knowledge, mentorship and community he wished he had when he started out many years ago.
Focus on the unique value your product provides to set prices that align with what your customers are willing to pay.
Narrow your target to a specific audience with clear needs to improve customer engagement and justify higher pricing.
Clearly communicate the benefits and features that make your product worth the price.
Conduct your own research to avoid relying on competitor pricing that may not reflect your product’s true value.
Experiment with pricing changes periodically and use sales and margin data to refine your strategy.
Maintain healthy cash flow by pricing your products to ensure strong margins and efficient inventory turnover.
Revisit your pricing regularly to stay competitive and ensure profitability over time.
Interview themes
What is value-based pricing?
Value-based pricing is a method where a company sets its product or service prices based on the perceived value to the customer rather than solely on production costs or competitor prices. This approach aligns prices with customer perceptions, ensuring that businesses maximize their profitability while delivering products that customers feel are worth the price. Value-based pricing requires a deep understanding of customer needs, preferences, and the unique benefits that the offering provides.
Through Venturing Up, James provides a free Pricing for Profit email course that is a step-by-step process based on value-based pricing. It teaches entrepreneurs to evaluate, test, and refine their pricing strategies to achieve profitability and sustainable growth.
What are the benefits of value-based pricing?
Increased profit margins: By pricing products based on their value to customers, businesses can charge more than cost-plus or what market-based methods typically allow. This leads to higher profit margins.
Stronger customer loyalty: Customers are more likely to stay loyal to a brand when they feel they’re receiving value that justifies the price. This builds trust and long-term relationships.
Differentiation from competitors: Value-based pricing highlights the unique benefits and features of a product, making it stand out in a crowded market.
What are some examples of brands that use value-based pricing?
James Friedrich highlights Yeti as a prime example of value-based pricing. Yeti disrupted a market of $50 coolers by offering products priced three to five times higher, focusing on premium features like extended ice retention and unmatched durability. By redefining the cooler category and building a high-end lifestyle brand, Yeti demonstrated that customers willingly pay more for exceptional value, driving the company to billion-dollar success.
Apple is another brand that James mentions as an example of using value-based pricing. Apple dominates its categories with products consistently priced higher than competitors by focusing on performance features customers care about—sleek design, intuitive usability, and status appeal. Rather than competing on cost, Apple builds products that justify their premium price through unmatched customer experience and perceived value.
How do you know if your pricing is working?
Success is not just about how many units you sell—it’s about profitability and sustainability. Business owners should measure metrics such as:
Profit margins: Are you earning enough to cover all business expenses and reinvest in growth?
Sales trends: Are your sales growing or stagnating?
Inventory turnover: Are products selling quickly enough to maintain healthy cash flow?
James suggests periodic price testing. For instance, raise your price slightly for a set period and compare revenue and sales performance to a baseline.
What are some common pricing mistakes?
Copycat pricing: Assuming competitors have done their homework can lead you to set prices that don’t reflect your product’s value. For example, if everyone else is pricing similar products at $20, that doesn’t mean your unique features can’t command $30 or more.
Undervaluing your work: Entrepreneurs often let fear or self-doubt lead to underpricing. This mindset can hurt your margins and make it impossible to scale.
Overbuilt products without value alignment: If you add costs to your product that the market doesn’t value (e.g., unnecessary features), you’ll struggle to achieve healthy margins.
How could selling lower volumes at a higher price point be beneficial?
James explains that selling lower volumes at a higher price is not always a bad thing. Increased pricing boosts margins, which could offset a drop in sales volume. He advises entrepreneurs to focus on overall profitability rather than sales numbers alone. Raising prices while delivering strong value increases margins and improves cash flow, which supports long-term growth.
What does it mean to niche and increase?
According to James, “niche and increase” means to identify and target a specific audience whose needs align with your product’s unique features. This helps differentiate your brand in the marketplace and allows you to increase prices by delivering tailored value. For example, a pediatric dentist can charge more than a general dentist by addressing specific needs for children. This targeted strategy enhances perceived value, justifies premium pricing, and builds stronger customer loyalty and market presence.
01:51 James Friedrich's Journey: From Merchant to Entrepreneur
08:31 Lessons from Failure: The Birth of Venturing Up
15:46 Pricing for Profit: Strategies for Entrepreneurs
20:54 The Value Equation: Aligning Price with Perceived Value
28:57 Niche Targeting: The Key to Successful Marketing
33:43 Testing Pricing Strategies: Metrics and Adjustments
39:56 The Psychological Aspect of Pricing: Overcoming Fear
43:36 Future Goals: Expanding Ambler Mountain Works
Transcript
Glynis Tao
Welcome to Chase Your Dreams, a podcast for fashion entrepreneurs who want to build a purposeful and profitable clothing business so they can make a living doing what they love. I'm your host, Glynis Tao, an apparel business consultant and SEO specialist with 20 years apparel industry experience. I'm also a mom to a wonderfully energetic little boy named Chase.
James Friedrich is the owner of Ambler Mountain Works and Venturing Up. He was formerly a senior merchant at MEC where he ran a successful $60 million product portfolio. He started his career as an entrepreneur and his goal with Venturing Up is to provide entrepreneurs with the knowledge, mentorship and community he wished he had when he started out many years ago.
Welcome James, it's so nice to have you here today. Thanks for joining me on the podcast.
James Friedrich
Thank you, Glynis. I'm super stoked to be here and excited to be talking to you.
Glynis Tao
Amazing. I mean, there's been a few changes that happened the last little while. I just want to get caught up here. I know about your background a little bit that you were working at MEC as a senior merchant there for about seven years?
James
Seven years.
Glynis Tao
Wow. Yeah.
And then most recently you decided to step into entrepreneurship and become the owner of Ambler Mountain Works. So that's really exciting. I think I want to touch a little bit on that in this interview. But can you just tell us a little bit about your background and how you first got into product world?
James
Yeah, for sure. And I think the story of my background is actually kind of also parlays into why I ultimately acquired Ambler Mountain Works. But I'll start at the beginning. And so my journey and product really began for me probably when I was around like 12 or 13 years old. And this was in the early to mid nineties. I'm dating myself by saying, by giving the years here. And at the time I was really into skateboarding and the trend in skateboarding was baggy pants, super, super baggy pants. At the time you couldn't buy those baggy pants. I have to buy oversized pants. You know, like I was wearing like size, like 38 pants as a 12 year old. And so I wanted to be able, so I had this thought in my mind where I was thinking, I want these baggy pants, but I want this gigantic waist. Maybe I can modify a pair of pants or do something to kind of get these, these really baggy pants I was looking for. So what I ended up doing was cutting open the inseam on a pair of existing pants. And sewing in a strip of material to turn them into, turn them into another, like a super baggy pair of pants. And that they turned it, they turned out awful. You know, it was a, I didn't know how to use a sewing machine or anything like that. But ultimately I could wear them. And that was just something about that was so inspiring and exciting that I could kind of like take and create, or in this case, modify something to, into what I was looking for. That it kind of started me down the path of getting into products. And I kept going from there.
I kept making more clothes and eventually kind of throughout my high school careers, I really got into designing and sewing clothes. I made all my own jeans. was dyeing denim. And I ultimately also figured out how to, you know, buy small amounts of like Gore-Tex and I got into outerwear, doing seam sealing and all these things kind of at home and really got into apparel and clothing design from probably about 12 years old to 17 or 18 years old.
And then my passion for snowboarding kind of kicked in and I, and I went off to the mountains and did a couple of years of snowboarding. And when I came back from, from the mountains, I wanted to be able to kind of continue to work in my passion of snowboarding. At the same time I, as I had gone to, into university and I was at the time studying engineering, I said, okay, how can I blend this like passion for snowboarding and this kind of love of like creating things.
And ultimately I thought, hey, you know what, I'm going to try and build a snowboard. And I took on this project of kind of building and constructing a snowboard. again, kind of like the, kind of like the, what I was telling you earlier about the super baggy pants. I took on this project and I was able to find materials and figure out how as a person as a hobbyist, you can actually build and construct your own snowboard. And that's what I did. Again, it wasn't perfect. There were a lot of issues with it, but it was so inspiring to me that I could build something I could go out and ride. And then I was blending this passion, this passion for snowboarding with some of my technical background that I continued to build more and more snowboards.
And ultimately when I graduated from university together with a close friend, we launched our own snowboard company. So we designed and manufactured snowboards and sold them throughout Western Canada, both direct to consumer and through wholesalers under the brand name Class 5 Snowboards. And that was a really cool experience. Ultimately, that business, that company, Class Five Snowboards, I put my heart and soul into it, but ultimately it wasn't successful.
And that experience of kind of putting all your energy and time and money into something and having it not turn out, was just a, just this huge blow to me. And it took me a long time to kind of like recover from that. But ultimately that's, you know, kind of fast forward to where I am right now and acquiring Ambler. That's ultimately what drove me to do that and the work I do at Venturing Up. My mission, kind of like a dual mission here, is that the pain that I experienced through that failure, I want to help as many people as possible avoid that pain in their own lives. At the same time as building a successful business, building and growing a successful business and using that business and the experience that I have in that business to be able to help other people. So ultimately that's why I've kind of come to, you know, come to acquire Ambler and super excited to be working in Ambler. It's because it just aligns with that long-term mission that I've had. And that's where, know, my roundabout way of kind of telling you why I'm here today as the owner of Ambler.
Glynis Tao
Yeah. Thank you for sharing that story. And I think I knew a little bit about that because I think you shared it during your talk at Apparel Camp.
James Friedrich
Yes.
Glynis Tao
Sort of where I think we first met and I heard your talk and speaking about your experience with how you've managed such a huge project portfolio and all your experience with that. I was like, this is really incredible. That's kind of what sparked me to want to reach out to you and talk about it more. And also because you have both that corporate experience working for a big brand. cause I also saw that you worked at Mustang Survival.
James Friedrich
Yeah, that's right. So when things kind of were wrapping up with Class Five, I was looking kind of like, okay, I'm looking where would I go next? And I found this company in Vancouver, Mustang Survival. And it just seemed like at the time a perfect fit for me because they were making very technical products, but they were apparel based products. So we were making, you know, life saving equipment that was made from apparel. it kind of blended this background that I had of, you know, designing and making my own clothes, but also this engineering and technical engineering background I had. So I got a job there as a product development engineer, bringing, you know, designing and running new product development projects and bringing new products to market. And that was just such a wonderful experience working for that company.
There was so much, so much learning that happened there. But the one question that I would always kind of like sit in the back of my mind was we would technically be able to execute on a product, like design and create a product where it would meet the product specifications. But that didn't necessarily mean that the product was going to be successful in the marketplace. So just because we could technically design something didn't mean commercially it was going to be successful. And that kind of exploring that question along with the passion that I had mentioned earlier around the, you know, that pain of helping other entrepreneurs kind of kept pushing me to look at what's further up the chain. What are the inputs that come into product development projects? How do we create products that are successful? And I moved from being a product development engineer into being the commercial product manager for Mustang. So I managed the recreational product portfolio, all of our sailing, fishing, and general recreational products that you would find through retailers.
And that was such a great exposure into dealing with, you know, retail buyers. At the time our big accounts were people like Bass Pro in the U S Cabela's in the US, those people who are familiar with boating. There's a big company called West Marine that has like, think 180 doors in the US something along those lines. So dealing with these large retailers, especialty retailers as a product manager was so just, just really unlocked this whole new world of sitting between developing product, working with their sales teams and understanding what these large retailers want.
That whole experience at Mustang was just like, there was just so many positives and so much learning I took out of my time there that kind of informed me and helped me as I've been, you know, in the various stages, other things I've done throughout my career.
Glynis Tao
That stepping stone towards becoming a senior merchant at MEC, which was your next role. And then, like just kind of going through your journey of how you became a senior merchant at MEC to founding Venturing Up and then now becoming the owner of Ambler Mountain Works. I think now this like, you know, explains a little bit better and I think I have better understanding of what was going on. I think your why or your reason was always wanting to help other people, to avoid the pain that you had went through when you had first started your business, right? Classified snowboards and anything that was, so that was always that driving force, right? Behind everything that you did.
James Friedrich
Yeah, there was always some part of that was just there because that pain, the pain was deep. So it was always kind of in the back of my mind and when I left Mustang to join MEC and become a merchant, it was just kind of a dream come true in some ways. Working for MEC had always been something that I had in the back of my mind. I just, I really loved the values based organization. I loved the products that the company dealt with. I loved at the time it was a co-op and I loved the co-op structure. And so being able to like move into MEC and get a job as a merchant was incredible.
The cool thing for me that I found and the insight that I was able to gain from MEC, when you're working within a brand or within your own company, you're kind of just, you're a little bit siloed. You get to see what other brands or companies are putting out there in their marketing or what's on display on the store shelves of various retailers. But you don't quite know what's happening behind the scenes. Like how is one brand performing against another brand?
What's the standard in the industry and the cool part about working for that I found about working for a company like MEC is you really got that behind the scenes look. And I got to deal with hundreds and hundreds of companies and over my career, thousands and thousands of products. And you get to see, what's working and what's not working and what brands kind of have everything together and both outwardly and inwardly or vice versa. And it was, it was just such a, you know, this breadth of experience that I got to gain from that, that I don't know how you'd be able to get an experience like that elsewhere because you're not going to get exposed to all those behind the scenes numbers. Like, this brand, they're crushing it, but nobody even knows them. They're just like, they're a small brand and they're just doing so well. They're not even on the radar for everyone else.
Or this big brand that everyone thinks is amazing. Actually they suck in all these areas and you don't get that insight because you can't see behind the curtain. And being able to kind of experience that firsthand with MEC was awesome. And it really provided me with a lot of insight that ultimately led to why I started Venturing Up. Cause I was reflecting on my career and that pain from Class Five and and now with this breadth of experience in a lot of different areas. I was like, you know, maybe there's a way I can kind of like be involved with entrepreneurs now and help them, help them in some way, which is, I think it was like two-ish years ago that I started Venturing Up and alongside working at MEC and consulting with startup engineers, startup entrepreneurs to help them kind of like launch and grow their, launch and grow their product businesses.
Glynis Tao
How did your experience managing a $60 million product portfolio at MEC influence the methodology that you teach in your free email course, Pricing for Profit? Actually, by the way, you can access James's course, Pricing for Profit, on your website, VenturingUp.com/free course, right? So I just wanted to spend a little bit of time talking about that and just sort of how your experience sort of played into your role in helping entrepreneurs and Venturing Up.
James Friedrich
Sure. Yeah. And as it relates to the pricing, like, you know, what I saw is, and I think a lot of people have experienced this too. When you're in a product business, you know, the price of your product, the cost of your product, and ultimately the price of your product, the difference between those two being your margin. That's what, that has to pay for everything that you do in your business. That's all your profits. That's all the, you know, non-product related expenses.
Everything that happens in your business is based on your margin. So your price is really, really important because it's ultimately what's going to define your profitability and the potential for your products to sell. As you know, having worked on so many products, I've seen every pricing strategy out there and I've seen it be successful for one reason or another, and also not be successful for other reasons.
And what I want to be able to do with the Pricing for Profit email course was to be able to address the common challenges that I saw with small entrepreneurs as it relates to pricing. And the first thing that we want to be aware of is that entrepreneurs can sometimes feel that their cost is too high and that they, because they're not getting any economies of scale.
Often as a startup business, you're kind of just squeaking in, you're getting the minimum order quantity from a factory or on a, with a supplier or a trim or something like that. And you're kind of, your costs are always, your product costs are always at kind of the highest they're going to be when you're starting out because you have no volume to put behind those product costs. So a lot of times people felt, and I certainly felt it too, that my margin was getting squeezed because of my costing.
And that's, that's true to some degree, but what I wanted to shine a light on with Pricing for Profit is how much opportunity there is for you as a small entrepreneur to get it right on your pricing. And you know, the way I like to think about it is like, you can spend three or four months trying to reduce your product costs by a few dollars, or you can spend like five or 10 minutes increasing your price by that same amount. And the leverage that you get on pricing, the return on investment and turn on time you get from pricing just can't be matched.
But you can't just go around changing your prices to whatever you want just because you feel like it. So with Pricing for Profit, we provide a step-by-step system, a systematic process that you can go through to really evaluate how your product creates value in the marketplace and to set a price that provides you profit. But also your customers and the people who buy your product are going to see it as being valuable and ultimately purchase your purchase product.
So that's what, that was just a huge leverage point that I saw a lot of entrepreneurs struggling with. So yeah, you can, you can download that. It's a 10 step email course. If you just go to venturingup.com, you'll see it. You can sign up for that. You'll get those emails and we'll walk you through step by step exactly how to do that for your business. It’s totally free. Yeah, so if you're interested, I would check that out.
Glynis Tao
Yeah. So I would recommend anyone listening with the product-based business to go check out James's course because it's a different way of looking at pricing. would say compared to typically how, you know, how I've always done it and how I was taught was looking at your margins, right? And just like making sure that you have enough margin, you're calculating at maybe a 50% gross margin. Yeah. But you actually discouraged costs plus pricing model, right? Talking about how businesses shouldn't only determine the price based only on their production costs alone, but to look more into the product value.
James Friedrich
Yes. Yeah, totally. And that's that's exactly
There's a saying out there and I've heard it before, but I'll kind of paraphrase it or steal it here is that like, nobody cares how much the product costs you to make. When we go buy something on sale at a store and we see it 50% off, we don't think of that, you know, that product's getting sold for the same as it costs them to make. Or if we know, a product costs thousands of dollars.
We don't, we don't know what the costs are and we don't as consumers, we don't actually care what the costs are. What we care about is how is that product providing value to us? And if we can take a value-based lens to our pricing, that means that we can effectively create a price for that product that's based on the value it creates in the marketplace. And if our costs are low, then we can compare to the value that we're creating, then we get that margin, and that margin can be higher than a 50% or a 60% margin.
But the reverse is also true, where if we have built a lot of cost into our product, but the marketplace doesn't value those costs that we built into our product, then our margins are going to be tight. The market doesn't value what we've done. And both, I've seen both those examples, but at least when you have the value-based pricing, you've done some of that methodology. Even if your costs, you're seeing, you know what, I've maybe overbuilt my product. You have some idea of what to take out of the product to reduce those costs and bring your value back in line.
I'll pop one more in there. The other one that I see as being really common is copycat pricing where you just have a product and you just look in the marketplace and you see everyone else is selling their similar product for $20. So guess what? That's going to be my price too, $20. This product is just worth $20. And that again, it's just, there's a whole bunch of bad things. The number one thing that's built into that is that you've made an assumption that everyone else has all done their homework and they've magically picked the perfect price for the product.
So you assume that everyone else has it all together, which in my experience, most people do not, right? You get to peek behind the curtain of a bunch of different companies. Most people, they're all kind of like struggling in the same way that you are. So don't assume people are smarter than you and do that research. And there may be an opportunity for a product, let's say a product priced at $20 for there to be a $30 product, a $40 product or a $50 product that's just been unexplored in the marketplace.
And I'll give just a little example of that. If we rewind maybe like 10, 11 years ago in the cooler market, you used to go to the Canadian Tire and you would buy a Coleman cooler and it would be, I don't know, 50 or 60 bucks or something like that. And then along came a brand named Yeti who took a totally different view on the cooler market.
And came out with coolers that were three, four, five times the price point of, of what a Coleman cooler would be at a store like Canadian Tire. But they backed it up with reasons like why that cooler was so great, you know, how long the ice would last in it, that you could stand on top and all these other features. And guess what? There's a huge market there. And now Yetis, you know, they opened this giant marketplace. Yeti’s well over a billion, I don't know what the actual revenue is, but it's, you know, a dominant player and opened up a brand new category of these high-end coolers. And guess what? There was a value, there's a place in the market for something like that, that nobody had been exploring. And that can be available to you too.
Glynis Tao
Yeah. So that's great. So that's another example of just using the concept of providing value or what you call that. Is that how you describe the value equation in your course about how you leverage this? Can explain how entrepreneurs can leverage this equation to be able to align the product price with customers' perceived value?
James Friedrich
Yeah, sure. So the equation that I've used, and I got this a number of years ago from engineering actually, is that we were looking at these large projects that were multi-million dollar projects. Some projects might be $5 million and one project might be $2 million. Well, how do you compare which one's better? These are just vastly different things. And there's an equation that I learned called the value equation, which is that we see value as being the performance of something divided by the cost. And we can think about this. I'll give you a couple of common examples of how that equation might apply.
The first one is Costco. So you go into Costco and people would say, is Costco good value? People, people generally say, yeah, Costco is great value, right? Why is Costco such a great value? Because when you, when you go in there, you get a lot of stuff or you get a big package, right? You're getting a lot of things and what you're paying for that is probably similar or less than what you might pay at a regular, a different store. So the value equation there is saying the performance in this case with Costco is I'm getting a lot of things for cost that is relatively the same. So that's great value. That's really, that's really good values. Okay. Well, there's one example and that seems like an obvious one. many people will be like, yeah, Costco is great value.
Another way of thinking about the value equation is when we think of low cost or products that were lower price, we often call them value. It’s really good value. But when things get higher priced, our language changes to being like, that's really valuable. But it's the same thing, right? We're saying the same thing as like there's something behind that.
And another brand that is creating high value products, but we kind of use the word valuable more is Apple. So Apple doesn't have low priced products. Apple's products are typically the highest priced products in the categories that it competes in. But we don't see those products as being or crappy or anything like that. We see those products as being amazing and highly desirable. And again, because of the value equation, what Apple's done is they understand the performance that their customers are looking for.
They're looking for products that are beautiful, products that are really easy to use, products that give them some level of status when they're using them. Those are all the performance characteristics that Apple's building into their products.
And as such, they can charge a higher price for them, but the value equation still holds because those performance characteristics are high, but the cost, even though it's higher, is still justified based on those performance characteristics. So again, we see that as being really valuable. So using that value equation to your advantage is really about understanding what the performance that your product creates relative to the cost of your product itself. And that's kind of the heart and soul of value-based pricing.
Glynis Tao
And in your course, you actually teach people how to calculate that or how to come up with that equation.
James Friedrich
Totally. We go through a step-by-step process of being able to take that value equation, define the performance of your product, go out and objectively measure that performance as it relates to your cost and and be able to, you know, it's a step-by-step process to be able to get you into the target range for your pricing so that you have a confident kind of objective based approach to start your pricing from.
Glynis Tao
Okay. Awesome. Let's move on to customer targeting niche market focus. Sure. So in your course, you discuss the importance of targeting a specific niche.
How can entrepreneurs effectively identify and target a niche and what impact does this have on pricing?
James Friedrich
Yeah. So niche is niche or just a target market in some way is so important because if we end up targeting everyone, we kind of end up targeting no one. And the example that I'll give is, you know, just the difference between target markets is I'll say, let's imagine I have a few kids and I need to take my kids to the dentist and there's a regular dentist and there's a dentist that specializes in kids. So those two dentists, if I took my kids to them, those two dentists might do the exact same thing to check my kids' teeth and clean them and whatnot.
But the dentist that has said that they're specifically a kid's dentist is likely to be able to charge a lot more and also be able to speak to exactly what they're doing. As a parent who has a kid who needs to go to the dentist, I'm to be way more engaged and intrigued and open to looking at that dentist, the kid dentist, only because they have targeted the person that they're servicing. And when we can kind of niche down and target specifically who we're going after, it allows our language to be more precise. It allows the value propositions from the value equation to be more specific to the pain that that person might be feeling. And it just increases the likelihood that we're going to be successful with our product.
And now, Glynis, I know you do SEO work and some marketing work, and I'm sure that if a client came to you and knew some very specific target market information, it's going to be a lot easier for you to execute on the backend because you have an idea of who, okay, who are they going after and what keywords might be associated with that target and how can we write SEO copy for our website that's going to kind of like appeal to those keywords, but also to that target demographic. It just makes the entire process, everything you're doing become easier and more streamlined by having a tight target market.
Glynis Tao
You're absolutely right about that. Even in my work it all goes back to your ideal customer and who is it that you're trying to appeal to that you're trying to attract? Cause if you have no idea, you're not going to know what to say to them. So everything that you do from your pricing, your marketing, the language that you use, you know, what you say to them even like for me as a starting point, when it comes to keyword research, right? We need to know who's your audience.
James Friedrich
Exactly.
Glynis Tao
So that we could choose those right, the right keywords based on what it is that they're looking for.
James Friedrich
Yeah, exactly. And you know, I know for a lot of people starting out and I've had this fear myself is that sometimes we look at these target markets and we niche down to like a more precise target market and we can sometimes feel like, Ooh, geez, we're cutting out all this potential by going more niche. It means I'm not going to have as many opportunities to sell my product or services.
And the first thing that I want to say to this is you're not getting married to this person, right? Like, it's not like you target this person and that's who you can target. That's the only person you can ever target for the rest of your life. You know, you've now set this in stone. It's a target market that can change. You can add target markets. You can adjust and refine these things over time. So you don't have to feel locked into something that somehow a target market is going to limit your potential.
But what it is going to do is again, provide you that ability to kind of talk to someone specifically, and it's going to be far more likely that you'll get some traction going. And then yeah, you can adjust and refine along the way. And ultimately like, you know, learn and change who might be the right for you.
Glynis Tao
Yes, I totally agree with that. Let's just move on to pricing strategy and testing because in your course, you recommend assigning performance scores to product benefits. I mean, without getting into too much, but maybe you just sort of explain how companies can objectively measure these scores and how it helps in setting the right price. And maybe you could just touch briefly on this. We'll recommend the listener to go sign up for your course on how to do that, but maybe you could just sort of explain.
James Friedrich
Yeah, on the outset, what we want to be able to do is we can't ignore, if you have a product, we can't ignore that there are other products in the marketplace that even if they're not doing the exact same thing that your product is doing, there's probably competitive products around your product. And so we have to understand that those exist and that they have a price associated with them and that the marketplace can see that price. So in some ways, those competitive products are helping to define what the value is of your product.
So the Pricing for Profit methodology essentially looks at your product and the feature sets or the performance characteristics that you're creating and also compares those to the feature sets and performance characteristics of the competitive set to help you understand where your value lies.
Now, what's really interesting is if you've designed something into your product or the way that you're positioning yourself or bringing your product to market is unique in the marketplace, well, then there's no market value associated with that kind of those unique characteristics. And that allows you to set higher prices on those unique areas because there isn't a comparable thing in the marketplace that the consumer can judge against.
So, that's the essence of the process is to be able to kind of like use these objective measures and objective methodology to help set your pricing and then take that product to the market and start doing some testing with it and seeing how the actual product performs in the marketplace with the pricing that you set.
Glynis Tao
Amazing. How often should businesses revisit and test their pricing strategies and what key metrics should they be tracking during these tests?
James Friedrich
Yeah. So it depends a lot on the business and the type of product. I'm going to take the assumption here that the person listening to this podcast is going to be in a more fashion based business. So that means they're coming out with, you know, a seasonal product line. Maybe twice a year or four times a year. And for someone like that, you're not going to be able to change your pricing mid season. That's not going to work with your retail partners or with your consumers, because that's just the way the industry flows there.
But I would certainly be looking at your pricing every single season and the performance of your pricing of your products every season and how those metrics might impact a future season for you. If it's a product that is more of an evergreen product that's living and isn't seasonally based then I would be reviewing that product again every like, you know, three months or six months to see how the pricing is affecting it.
If you're in a direct to consumer channel, primarily direct to consumer, you're in a wonderful position because you don't have retail partners to worry about. And then you can actually change your products, your pricing of your products, kind of as you want. I wouldn't change them all the time, but you can certainly experiment with pricing a lot more. And especially if you're not a big company, it's unlikely that your consumers are really going to notice some price experimenting that's happening for you. And it gives you a lot of opportunity to test and refine pricing. The main thing is that you want to be able to leave a product at a price for long enough that you're seeing a sales result that follows it. If you're changing prices too quickly, you might not be getting accurate data.
So what I would recommend is that you take a period of time with a look at a baseline for a period of time with a product and look at how it's selling, make a price change, leave it at that price change for some period of time again, to be able to compare those two. Did we sell more? Did we sell less? Did we sell the same? And be able to refine just, you know, reviewing those two hopefully somewhat equal periods of time to create that objective difference.
The one thing I will mention on price comparison is that if you've increased the price of your product and your sales went down in terms of like the number of units, let's say it went down, that might not be a bad thing. If your margin is increasing, you might be making more margin on slightly less revenue than if you kind of sold more products for a smaller price. So just really look at the facts kind of behind your products there, because sometimes having a slightly lower revenue is a good thing. If your margin is increased, it makes your business simpler and there's less to do there.
Glynis Tao
Yeah, I know. Cause sometimes people think that they're focused on the number selling more of one thing, but are you pricing your product too low? Is that a sign of telling you that maybe you priced your products too low? If it's selling, you know, so much of this one thing, right? But are you actually making money off of it? Whereas if you increase your price of it, maybe you'd sell less, but you'd be making more.
James Friedrich
Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And I've seen that come true many times.
Glynis Tao
Yeah. I think people are sort of afraid of how to price their products, especially when they're first starting out. And I've encountered so many startups who are just sort of like, I'll just mark it up this much because, you know, I have to be competitive be aligned with what's out there in the market, but they're not pricing it for profit. I'm like, you're not going to survive if you're thinking of going in with the mindset of losing money from the beginning.
James Friedrich
Yeah. Your margin is so important there and the mindset you're talking about, the fear and the entrepreneurial fear of not pricing your products high enough. There's a psychological component to us as business owners and entrepreneurs where sometimes we feel our work isn't worth the price that the market might be willing to pay for it. It's almost more about us in that sense than it is about what the market thinks.
And that's the goal of the Pricing for Profit exercise is to kind of take yourself out of the equation and look at the objective information that's available to you to make those decisions. And you may be surprised yourself about what you find when you look at it that way.
Glynis Tao
And so the goal of Pricing for Profit, it says on your website, with a properly priced product, you'll realize an increase in revenue, improved cash flow and more profit.
James Friedrich
Exactly.
Glynis Tao
Yeah. So I mean, what other things would come out of pricing products properly, besides cash flow, maybe even customer retention. So I guess the question is how can a well priced product impact other areas of their business, such as cash flow and customer retention?
James Friedrich
Yeah, well, cash flow is directly tied to the product pricing and margin. And in most product businesses, your biggest expense is going to be your inventory. You're spending a lot of money to bring this inventory in. And then there's these physical products that are sitting there that can be turned into cash. And if you're not cycling that inventory over, that could be what causes the issue in your business not to succeed.
So cash is king in a product business, which is kind of the big impetus behind the Pricing for Profit is being able to properly price those products that you're maximizing your cash flow. Cause in the beginning, if you can get your products moving, your cash moving, things cycling through, that is an opportunity for you to grow your business. A business that's gaining momentum in that way, cycling through products, cycling through cash is one that in the marketplace, people are going to be seeing as something that's working, there's going to be momentum, excitement behind it. And it's just all of those things that come and help you ultimately sell more products and help your business to become more successful.
Glynis Tao
Before we wrap up, I just want to ask for entrepreneurs who are looking to prove both their pricing and profit margins. What is the key advice that you would offer based on your experience?
James Friedrich
Yeah. Well, niche and increase is kind of what I say in my head.
So niche in the sense of niche down your target, understand who you're going after. And when you've niched down your target market, there's an opportunity for you to increase your product price because you're going to understand how your product creates value for that target market. And there's going to be an opportunity for you to increase there.
I would say niche and increase are the things that kind of pop to mind.
Glynis Tao
Before we end off, mean, like, how are you going to use your experience that you gained from everything you've done so far and to now run Ambler?
James Friedrich
Yeah, well, I'm super excited. I mean, it's a full circle moment for me to be owning Ambler and ultimately my mission is to help as many entrepreneurs as possible as well as growing a successful business. And I feel so fortunate to have had all the experiences, good and bad, that I've had throughout my career, because even those times are really challenging and hard. Those are the times when you often learn the most, even though you didn't kind of feel that way, maybe at the moment. And all of that experience, I'm excited to kind of put it into practice with Ambler. And my goal is ultimately to be able to take that experience that I've had throughout my career and the experiences that I'm going to have with Ambler and be able to use those to help other people. And so that's my goal. I don't know exactly how that's all going to pan out or work yet, but that's the intention and I'm just really excited to do it.
Glynis Tao
Yeah. I mean, can you share with us some things that you're looking to do with Ambler?
James Friedrich
Yeah. Well, there's a lot of opportunities at the company. Jackie and Christian, who were the previous owners, they owned it for 15 years, did an amazing job of running and building this brand up. So my goal is to be able to just capitalize on the amazing work that they've done. And what I can see is that there's a geographic opportunity for Ambler in Eastern Canada, looking to increase our geographic presence there. There's a number of brand opportunities and some product opportunities with the company.
And so kind of exploring all those and above that, we do some amazing custom products and I'm really excited to dive into and grow that custom area of the business. So if anyone's listening to this and they're looking for small run custom headwear, come check us out at amblermountainworks.com. We have an awesome custom program and would love to help you out in making your custom hat dreams become a reality.
Glynis Tao
Amazing. And your products are made in Canada still, right?
James Friedrich
Well, everything Ambler does is either made in Canada or Fairtrade from Nepal. So it's just a super strong values based company, which aligns perfectly with me. And so, yeah, it's either Fair Trade Nepal or made in Canada. So it's awesome to be able to, you know, from a value standpoint, just work in personal alignment with those things. And I'm super excited about it.
Glynis Tao
I'm so excited for you, James, and just so happy to see how everything you've done has come together for you. And, just excited to see where this all goes.
James Friedrich
Yeah, thank you. I am too. And I appreciate being on the podcast, Glynis. I'm super appreciative of the time being able to talk to you and have this experience.
Glynis Tao
Amazing. And where could people find you if they want to get in touch with you?
James Friedrich
Yeah, for sure. So if you want to get in touch with me, you can check me out at venturingup.com. I'm also active on LinkedIn, LinkedIn James Friedrich. Friedrich is spelled fried and then rich. And check me out on LinkedIn, give me a follow, or you can also check out our products on Ambler at amblermw.com.
Glynis Tao
Amazing. And you can access James' free step-by-step email course, Pricing for Profit, through James' website, is venturingup.com. You'll be able to find it there. And I'll put a link in the description for this podcast right down below in the description area.
Thank you so much, James, for being here today and sharing your entrepreneurial experience, product and pricing expertise and insights with us today.
In this episode, Mia Umanos, CEO and founder of Clickvoyant, illustrates the transformative potential of Google Analytics 4 (GA4) for e-commerce businesses. She explains how using data-driven strategies can significantly boost revenue, and she provides concrete examples of how the approach has helped her clients make more money without increasing their ad spend.
If you're navigating the complex world of e-commerce, this conversation will open your eyes to the often untapped potential of GA4. Understand what GA4 is, what it’s used for, and whether your business is ready to hire a GA4 specialist to configure your website, interpret the data, and offer strategic recommendations that drive growth.
About Mia Umanos
Mia Umanos is the CEO and founder of Clickvoyant, an AI-powered analytics firm for e-commerce companies. She is a 15-year veteran of marketing analytics who grew her career from Junior to Director of Analytics inside Omnicom and JWT Agencies.
Mia has a talent for breaking down complex data concepts, empowering e-commerce business owners to understand their customer behavior and intent to make data-informed decisions. Her passion for analytics extends to education, where she leads workshops on Google Analytics 4 (GA4), making advanced data insights accessible to both new and seasoned entrepreneurs.
Adopt a data-driven approach to navigate growth and avoid plateauing in sales.
Invest in foundational analytics knowledge to make informed e-commerce decisions.
Use Google Analytics 4 to gain in-depth insights into customer interactions and behaviors.
Use shopper behavior data instead of gut-feeling to enhance user experience and increase conversion rates.
Track product efficiency ratios to focus on top-performing items and streamline inventory.
Prioritize optimizing existing products and website design before adding new products.
Design your website for your ideal customer.
Interview themes
What is Google Analytics 4 (GA4) and what role does it play in the sales funnel?
Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is an enterprise-grade tool that is free. It tracks shopper behavior when they are on your website. Mia explains that GA4 bridges the gap between the top and bottom of the sales funnel, focusing on insights in the middle funnel.
While GA4 can track initial traffic sources (like organic search, social media, or paid ads), it’s designed primarily for understanding user behaviors once they’re on the site. This middle-funnel focus allows brands to capture actions such as browsing product pages, adding items to carts, and navigating between categories—critical behaviors that indicate customer interest and intent.
GA4 also supports the bottom of the funnel by tracking key conversion metrics, such as purchase-to-detail rates and cart abandonment. These insights allow brands to address friction points in the checkout process and identify patterns in customer loyalty and repeat purchases. GA4’s comprehensive view of user engagement across the funnel helps e-commerce brands to increase conversions and optimize the entire customer journey.
Why is it important for e-commerce businesses to shift from gut-feeling decisions to data-driven strategies?
Mia notes that many business owners hesitate to engage deeply with analytics, feeling overwhelmed by the data. However, data can provide a clearer picture of customer behavior and site performance, enabling more informed decision-making. For example, data can reveal product efficiency ratios, shopper behavior, and engagement metrics—which help business owners determine what’s working and what’s not on their e-commerce website.
Mia believes that embracing data analytics helps businesses grow sustainably by aligning strategies with actual customer preferences and behavior rather than assumptions. This shift not only minimizes risks but also creates a foundation for scalable growth.
How can Google Analytics 4 help businesses understand customer behavior and optimize conversion rates?
GA4 captures user interactions, such as clicks, swipes, and product views, giving business owners insight into which items customers engage with most. This data can guide improvements in site structure and product pages to boost conversions. For example, understanding which products are frequently viewed but not purchased allows brands to tweak those specific pages, improving descriptions or images, to encourage a sale.
Mia stresses that GA4 is not just another dashboard, but a source of actionable insights that help optimize the user experience, directly impacting sales and growth.
What role does data analytics play in identifying and enhancing product efficiency ratios?
In GA4, the "cart-to-detail" and "purchase-to-detail" metrics provide insights that can be indirectly related to a product efficiency ratio by showing how efficiently products move through the sales funnel from viewing to purchasing. Mia often looks at the “cart-to-detail” and the “purchase-to-detail” to see how many shoppers view a product and proceed to add it to their cart or complete a purchase. If a product has high views but low add-to-cart rates, there may be issues with the product itself or how it’s presented on the page.
This data helps e-commerce brands understand which items are truly performing well, so they don’t waste resources on producing items that don’t sell. Focusing on these ratios allows businesses to avoid the common mistake of simply adding more products to drive revenue, instead enhancing what’s already working.
How can adjusting navigation elements on a website influence customer shopping behavior and average order value?
Mia shared a powerful example of how a small change in website navigation led to a significant increase in average order value. For a luxury brand, Mia’s team removed the “Sale” option from the top-level navigation, replacing it with “Just In.” This stopped customers from seeking out sales immediately and instead directed them to the latest, high-ticket inventory. The result? The average order value increased from $300 to $750 within 45 days—without any additional advertising spend.
By strategically adjusting navigation, e-commerce brands can influence where customers focus their attention, encouraging them to explore full-priced, higher-value items rather than defaulting to discounts.
Through data-driven insights, e-commerce brands can create a personalized experience that aligns with the expectations and motivations of their core customer base, ultimately enhancing user engagement and conversions.
Why and when would an e-commerce business hire a GA4 specialist?
Hiring a GA4 data analyst brings expertise in setting up, interpreting, and acting on data in ways that maximize the tool’s potential. This professional guidance helps e-commerce brands make more informed decisions that align with their growth goals, using data beyond what a standard GA4 setup would provide.
Investing in GA4 entails a few critical steps and resources to fully leverage its capabilities for e-commerce. First, while GA4 is a free tool, integrating it to capture detailed shopper behavior requires a setup beyond simply installing a pixel or a basic Shopify integration. This setup might include configuring the "data layer," a technical component that gathers metadata about shopper actions like product views, add-to-cart actions, and purchase flows.
According to Mia, for many e-commerce brands, the initial setup can range from a $2,000 to $10,000 investment, depending on the complexity of the website and the level of detail desired in tracking. More extensive analytics services for businesses ready to optimize conversion rates scientifically could go up to $6,000 per month.
The benefit of this upfront cost is that it provides a foundation for ongoing insights and adjustments to the site, making it a cost-effective long-term investment compared to monthly fees for other analytics tools that may not offer as robust or tailored a dataset as GA4.
At what point should an e-commerce business invest in using GA4 to drive more revenue?
Mia advises that businesses should focus on using GA4 when they have moved past the initial stages of e-commerce growth and are beginning to see steady website traffic and sales. Specifically, when an e-commerce brand is generating consistent revenue and has around 500 to 1,000 monthly visitors, GA4 can provide valuable insights to help understand shopper behavior and optimize the site for conversions.
This stage is also when businesses often see customer acquisition costs rise, revenue growth plateau, and return on ad spend (ROAS) begin to dip—indicators that a deeper understanding of user behavior is needed to drive further growth.
For businesses that are pre-revenue or just starting, Mia suggests holding off on extensive analytics investments until there is sufficient data to analyze.
Chapters
00:00 Transforming E-commerce with Data-Driven Decisions
07:13 Understanding Google Analytics 4: A Game Changer
14:01 Leveraging User Behavior for Business Growth
20:58 The Power of Product Efficiency Ratios
27:47 Building a Data-Driven E-commerce Strategy
34:56 Navigating GA4: Simplifying Data Analysis
41:56 The Importance of Data Architecture and Layering
Transcript
Glynis Tao
Hey, fashion entrepreneur, are you basing your business decisions on gut feeling versus using real data? Well, it's time to get over your arithmophobia. That's fear of numbers. I have GA4 expert Mia Umanos here with me today to help you feel more comfortable and confident using Google Analytics 4 for your e-commerce business.
Mia Umanos is a 15 year veteran of marketing analytics who grew her career from Junior to Director of Analytics inside Omnicom and JWT agencies. Her talent for balancing math and human empathy turns her projects into gold. She lifted revenue up $4 million in 90 days through conversion rate optimization, created a sustained 40% increase in ad revenue for a major publisher, and won a Google News Initiative data grant for a Nobel Peace Prize winner. She now leads Clickvoyant, an AI-powered analytics firm for e-commerce companies.
Please join me in welcoming my guest, Clickvoyant CEO and pioneer in using Google Analytics for sharper insight, Mia Umanos. Welcome, Mia. It's so nice to have you here today. Thanks for joining me on the podcast.
Mia Umanos
Of course, thank you for inviting me, Glynis. I really appreciate the invite.
Glynis Tao
Yes, absolutely. I'm happy to have you here. We had met through a mutual friend, Carol Shih of Qode Space, whom I had interviewed in a previous episode talking about the importance of community to overcome entrepreneurial challenges. So how did you first meet Carol?
Mia Umanos
Well, we were actually in San Diego at an event for female founders and I was pitching Clickvoyant artificial intelligence on stage and Carol immediately found me and was like, I work with hundreds of e-commerce companies. They all need this. Who are you? Let's be friends. And we proceeded to be inseparable the entire conference.
Glynis Tao
Amazing. Yeah my first impression of Carol was that she was just a very friendly, approachable person.
Mia Umanos
Yeah. And hilarious. Just I can't stop laughing when we're together.
Glynis Tao
That's so great. So Qode Space is also a partner agency with Clickvoyant, right? Can you tell us a bit about that and how you work together?
Mia Umanos
Yes. So Clickvoyant is an analytics only agency. All we do is data analysis for e-commerce companies. And so a lot of times Carol will refer to us analytics and the development as the plumbing of all e-commerce shopping, which is that we're kind of, you know, chummy because a lot of times it's the last thing that merchants and designers think about when, you know, you're very busy thinking about the business, the lines, planning the logistics, sourcing materials, all of this stuff.
And when it comes to this underbelly of code that lives, it's often because you can't see it or touch it, the last thing to think about. And yet the entire business is dependent on what we do. And so we feel like, you know, the invisible superheroes of e-commerce because if none of it works, the data nor the development, then all of the, you know, line planning products, it's for not.
So that's how we work together. And she's the CEO of a company which does the code for Shopify stores. And I am the CEO of a company that does the analytics for Shopify stores.
Glynis Tao
Okay. That's great. Thanks for explaining that. So what made you decide to become a data analyst and like, how did you first get into this industry?
Mia Umanos
Well, I mean, the first getting into this industry was actually the bio is a little old. It was almost 20 years ago. So I first got into the industry around the time that MySpace was the primary social media platform to talk about. So it was a long while ago. And I think that my path begins really in journalism school.
I wanted to be a science journalist. And what I really liked about that was, I like to write and I like to distill complex concepts into something that is more palatable for the layperson to understand. So I like to do the digging to figure out what is mathematically, scientifically going on and what's in the soup so that I can level up and tell the story about how it all works to the people who need to know about it.
And so my transition from broke journalist into data analyst was very natural because I could take the data from these websites and explain how behaviors are being impacted. And people understood it. Not a lot of data people can do that. If you've ever worked with any data people, lots of times you're opening up these different dashboards that you have access to and your eyes kind of gloss over and you just want to put it down. So I like to be the person to say, well, magically, here's what it says.
Glynis Tao
Right. So we're covering a big topic today and that's Google Analytics 4. So I just want to jump right into it. We'll be focusing on using GA4 for e-commerce sites as our listeners are mostly e-commerce store owners.
For those unfamiliar with GA4, can you explain some of the key differences between GA4 and Universal Analytics?
Mia Umanos
Sure. Well, I think I might start a little bit further back and say, you know, in the world of e-commerce, there's usually three things that you need to look at the data to know if your business is healthy or unhealthy. And the first part is some kind of paid media dashboard. So if you're at the point where you can start spending money to try to get people to your store, then you're going to want to know how much are you spending? What is your return on ad spend? Like how many dollars do you get for every dollar that you spend? And you're going to want to see the revenue at the end of that. So the revenue is usually something that you get from a Shopify or maybe some of you are in commerce even or big commerce, but that's data on the backend. It's like what comes out, what products are being sold? What is the margin? What coupons were being generated or used? And that's what we call marketing upper funnel data as the ads and then the lowest part of the funnel, which is what is happening on the checkout.
But what is missing between those two is your middle part is like, what are people doing actually in the store itself? So all of the ways that we're comporting ourselves, like we’re making the sale, we're showing the slide, we're showing the season, that's merchandising. And the merchandising you know why your grocery store gives you that tag, right? They want to know where you go. They want to know what you're picking up, what you're putting back, because they study your behaviors to see like, well, what do you want to buy? What are you considering and what do you want to buy? Not many merchants fill in that gap, but that's where Google Analytics comes in.
So Google Analytics is the place where you get all of your e-commerce website data, but it's not out of the box. And that's one of the real differences between Google Analytics Universal, which some people might know as the old Google Analytics. I actually know it as the second Google Analytics, because I've been doing this a long time. There used to be a method of tracking data and a data architecture, which is kind of a big vocabulary word, but data architecture used to be just how do we access the data and how do we store it.
So the data architecture of Google used to be on a thing called Urchin. Then it moved to a thing called Universal Analytics. And now it's moved to a thing called Google Analytics 4. And Google Analytics 4 is free. Google has always been free. But what Google Analytics 4 is is an enterprise-grade tool for free. So that just means that there's a lot more that you have to do to get the data in there than just
put on a pixel on Shopify or turn on the Shopify integration and I'm done. There's a lot more to get that shopper behavior clicks and swipes and gallery views. So, you when I say a lot more, I'm talking, okay, this can be anywhere from a $2,000 to a $5,000 to a $10,000 investment, depending on how big your site is and how complex it is. So when we're talking about a $2,000 investment to get this information inside Google Analytics, let's compare that to what sometimes companies of like a larger size are paying, a Triple Whale who has many clients who are under one million in annual revenue, charges seven, minimum $700 a month.
So if you think about these other tools here that are $700 a month, you make a $2,000 investment over the long term, your $2,000 investment upfront will give you data forever for free. I mean, forever is a superlative. But I'm being fantastic to make a point. So that's it. Google analytics is enterprise grade. It takes a little bit more muscle to get that shopper information in there. But when it's in there, you can use this free tool forever more to learn about how people shop. In your store, what do they look at? What do they put back? Cause that's not data that's in either of the other platforms.
Glynis Tao
Okay. So the Google Analytics 4’s job primary function is to serve like the user behavior, right? It's to give you that data?
Mia Umanos
That's how I liken it. I mean, there are stages, honestly, Glenis, of analytics maturity. So in the stage where you have, you know, you're doing a data analysis and you're subscribing to a Triple Whale to $700, you're probably past a couple thresholds.
In the very beginning, Google Analytics can actually function as the only tool, right? Or that plus Shopify. So it's like, I've got, there is a component of Google Analytics that will allow you to do paid media, ROAS analysis, how are these channels performing? And when a company matures, there are some limitations to those reporting that.
Basically if you've passed a certain amount of spend that you're going to want a bigger gun, guess that'd be a bad analogy, but you know, so there are stages of knowing when to invest in analytics. Google analytics can do a lot of these things. Think revenue items sold forever should always come out of Shopify, like the most direct data point that should come out of Shopify. But anything beyond that, like, okay what are the campaigns? Google tracks that too. How much are we spending? If it's in Google ads, you can track that too.
Google analytics can also take your spend from your other platforms, Pinterest or TikTok and put it into there. And then you can see how your campaigns are performing. So it can do a lot of things. Is that a nebulous answer?
Glynis Tao
Scratch the surface right now or even like what it's capable of doing. Level of knowledge, would just say I, you know, it's the tip of the iceberg. I don’t know that much about it's full capabilities of what it can do. And it can be a very powerful tool if you know how to use it properly. And I think that's kind of the challenge that a lot of business owners have is they don't even know where to start to look.
Mia Umanos
Sure. And I mean, this is why I love talking about this to merchants and even startup founders, like I do a lot of, you know, webinars speaking, do the class, obviously I have it. I digitized that clash just last week, so it could be on demand anytime. So if anybody wants to use that class, the coupon code is girlboss and you can get in there for $7. At the end of the day, Glynis, like we talk about when a data driven company and the education that I do for these, we were talking about some big brands are not even using it in the way that I use it.
So I'll give you an example of how helpful this actually is. One company apparel, you know, when you're making apparel, dresses are always like number one. I feel like it's like dresses are so number one, lot of the time, unless you're like jeans, right? This company, a big company, was only using these products that I was telling you, like they have a Triple Whale, they're looking at Shopify. After the class, they said, I think we realized that we were just looking at dashboards and then going about our business. We weren't really thinking about shopper behavior in any way, and we weren't really changing any of our strategies as a result.
So in this instance, what we saw were people because we implemented for them all of these user experience, navigation, merchandising variables. And then they could see people who were shopping on sale and clicking there actually had an average order value of half the average order value for the whole site. And it was in their top level navigation. So you get into the site, some of these sites before and you could see Sale like, you know, if you're Forever 21, that probably makes sense. But if you're a luxury brand, why would we be putting Sale at the very top level navigation?
So we took that out. This is a luxury brand. We took it out of the navigation. We stopped training people to shop for sales and their average order value went from $300 to 750 in 45 days. No more ad spend. So, right? Like that's basically doubling the revenue without spending any more on ads with one small thing that we don't even think about.
Glynis Tao
That is incredible. And they wouldn't even have known that, I guess, if you hadn't come in to take a look at the data in terms of what people are clicking on, right?
Mia Umanos
Right. Because it was just like, you know, if we do a sale and this is very, I think, you know, fashion stores are very like... And I think that there is a true need for a sale, but I think that sales should be strategic pillars and a revenue model versus desperation. Right. Or as like, you know, it's you're training people to shop for sale when they're going on your site, what are they looking at? Top level navigation. So it's Dresses, Tops, Just In. So we actually replaced it, we didn't just take it out but we replaced the word sale from the top level navigation with Just In. So we're training you to come to shop for our high ticket, most recent inventory, and for you to want the latest from us, not to come here and shop for whatever's discounted. I mean, I myself do that. I'm an immigrant's daughter. I'm very motivated by getting it for 75 % off. That to me is a badge. But you know in some instances it doesn't matter. So when you're like, when you're changing your website and you're making these design choices, you're making the design choices for your best customer.
Glynis Tao
And that's where the data starts to lead you. like, the other thing is like we had another swimwear company come to us and say, we've been around for 10 years. We do not know. We knew who we started out with and we don't know who our customer is now. Like we started out with this like surfers, we're surfer girls making the swimwear brand for surfers and outdoor women. And then 10 years later, after so many Wunderkind apps and so many things and you're like, who are we attracting? We have no idea because the algorithms, the ads are just sending your, it's an algorithm, sending people your ad and then people are buying and you don't know who they are. So that's why it's critical to have the behavior, because the behavior starts to signal affinities for certain products, price ranges and so forth.
Glynis Tao
Okay. It's so powerful. Just this example that you've given me, you know, by removing the sale banner off, how it just increased your average order from 300 to 750 instead of like making it a sale right off the bat on the top. People just go on and click on that. Right. And then that's what they're trained to do. But if you actually switch it out and I guess you're using that data to understand like, okay, what types of things are people looking or looking on, I guess, when people land on the site? And then understand and then change that out to your new products, right? Is that what you changed the banner from the sale to new or just in? Is that what you ended up doing?
Mia Umanos
Right. It wasn't technically a banner. There were no banners on this particular site because it's luxury, you know. And so it was in the navigation. Like when you go and you first go to a website and you see, all in the navigation, it was at the top. And so they switched that out with new, just in, just in or new arrivals, new lines. And then somebody you train them to, to look there. And, know, I mean, people who are sales motivated are also good customers. And we, and they will find it. They will find the sale. And this is the thing that we, this is what data does.
When you get shopper behavior, it starts to elevate the different stories of who she is. Who is she? Who is this kind of shopper? How do I need to comport this page for her? You know, the wedding dress shopper, what is she like? The event, the occasion shopper, what does she care about? Or the price sensitive shopper, what does she care about? And you can make these different featured edits to comport, to call to them and be more empathetic to like comport your pages and your store to be more empathetic to that person. And that's the power of digital that you could never do in a department, right? Or, you know, everything is like the best line. If you walk into in-store, it's like just whatever we think is the most stylish thing.
But on digital, you can really start to comport the merchandising to the motivation of that person who's there that day. And it's just by creating these trails and on a homepage, you know, here's this for you, right? Or there's a navigation that's clue one. Where am I going? Mia is going to go to sales. Mia is going to go to clearance, right? But somebody else might go, I'm a lover of this brand. I want to see what's the new line. They're going to click there. So you find these like different clues on the homepage. There's a lot of things there as well.
I mean, we, you know, people like carefully, artfully craft home pages. And sometimes they don't realize some of the things that they might be doing to basically change behavior when you're creating all of these things. So here's another example. Some of the things that we're discovering about the behavior data in a merchandise store is like, you see this all the time, Shopify home hero, then some headline and then some triptych. Right? It's like.
Glynis Tao
And a triptych is three images, right?
Mia Umanos
Yes. When we see three images across, we often see the most clicks in the middle.
And if you see two, a diptych, two images across, we see fewer clicks to something like that. So, and this is just a hypothesis, but it's like, the data is going to tell you one thing and then what you decide about how shoppers behave is another. So what I'm going to say to you is my hypothesis. I see the data. I'm making a hypothesis. My hypothesis is that a triptych allows for an eye to be drawn somewhere in the middle. Humans see with their brain, not with their eyes. So it's taking shortcuts. the one in the middle, right? I don't know which one to pick. I'm going to click the one in the middle. When there's a diptych, it's often used as a comparison. It's like there's, these two are equal. If they're both equal, neither of them are important. So these are the hypotheses that I start to think of.
You know, I'm, I'm, I might, I might be a data person, but I am at the root, just interested in people. I'm interested in people. I'm interested in behaviors. This is why I wanted to be a science journalist at the beginning. Like I'm most interested in why they do that? That's so interesting. So when I say, you know, data and scientific method, they're very intertwined. And so I'm always like, very, very obsessed about the shopper behavior, why they are clicking on things that they're doing. And you know, can I help get them to the places that they actually want to go?
So that's why, you know, when people take a look at what I put in Google Analytics, they're like, holy crap. This is a lot of stuff.
Glynis Tao
So they may not necessarily need to be tracking all that stuff. Is that what you're saying?
Mia Umanos
No, I'm saying that most companies don't, that they don't track all that stuff. Our clients do this because they now have seen the power of like, well, when I understand how shoppers behave, now I can change my site according to what is converting better, which leads to a transaction.
Glynis Tao
Yeah. So what do you start with first, like maybe kind of walk us through your process a little bit when somebody comes to you, right? When they come to the store and they're like, I'm, what's the number one problem that people have?
Mia Umanos
Yeah. So, this is great. Actually the number one problem, the real trigger to become a Clickvoyant client is that a company can get to a million dollars in annual revenue just by slugging it out and dragging through the mud and sleepless nights. It can get to a million in a year it can, but it doesn't have to.
Getting to a million dollars in annual revenue and now you're spending ads, what's happening with the companies that come to me is like, Mia, we've been doing it like this forever. And now our growth is plateaued. We're flatlining. And not only are we flatlining on revenue, we're also increasing the cost per customer acquisition. And our ROAS is going down. Like a ROAS, when we started this company, it was like a four a five and now we're at like a two. It's terrible. Like we're barely breaking even. Right. And so they come to me and it's like, well, I have these two pieces. I got Shopify, I have Triple Whale. I have an upper funnel and a bottom of the funnel. I have nowhere else to go, but now start looking at my site.
But the companies who look at their site and are obsessed with shopper behavior from the very beginning, they're not going to have to go through that pain. Right. Again, like for a small company, like a $2,000 investment. Lord knows you're spending way more on other things, right? It's like, okay, I'm getting the data. I can understand how shoppers behave. I see what they add to cart. I mean, it's probably not appropriate if it's like a pre-revenue company, obviously. But when you start to get to a place where like, all right, I've got like a thousand visitors a month, you know, I've got a thousand people looking here a month. Like, why aren't they buying? That's enough data. Or even like five or 600 people a month. It's enough to start looking at.
Why aren't they buying? Why are they buying? And how do I comport the site design to make sure that it's easy for them to navigate, easy for them to understand why I'm the one that they want to buy from.
I mean, it is like a little bit of an easy process, maybe it's easy to me, but I know that you just took the course, so maybe you have a different opinion. But it's like looking at all of the things that we have, like all the plugins, the wunderkind, the quizzes, all these things, the size function, like accordions on a product, you tell the page and look and see it. Do you have that data? And if you don't, those are usually the places that we start.
It's like navigation. What are people doing in a product detail page? Where is the add to cart coming from? Is it from an upsell widget? Is it from a rebuy app? Is it bundling upselling like versus let's put in those data points. And when that doesn't become enough, you add more. So you're enriching the data as you're maturing your business.
Glynis Tao
Okay. I think one of the things that stuck with me, I remember the first time I took the course and you telling me the story about how a lot of companies think they want to increase revenue. So the first thing they do is, you know, adding more products. Right. But how you able to look, you know, kind of dig in deep and see, understand the customer behavior and help them to increase their average order value, increase sales in turn without even having to, you know, add more products, that sort of thing.
Mia Umanos
Yeah. I mean, I think it's like when you're a business and you want to grow, you're going to grow in the ways that you know what to do. So I know that when I make a product, people buy product. Right. And so I think that that can be one of these ways that, you know, most companies who are just maturing to understand analysis and their data. I mean, before they get to that stage, they'll just say, yeah, let's release more things and then product will start churning out. I mean, the real root of true business growth in an e-commerce setting is to understand your customer acquisition cost, your new customer, basically your customer acquisition cost, the product efficiency, meaning, of these products, what are my favorite metrics to look at? So we should get into that. My favorite metrics to look at are like a cart to detail and a purchase to detail rate. Those are the percentage of people who view a product or the percentage of people who add to cart or a percentage of people who purchase a product over the total amount of times that that product was viewed. So if you've got a high view and a low add to cart rate, it's either the product or the page that's not doing it. But what we like to see, if there's like an add to cart rate on all these pages or a purchase to, a good metric to get to is a 6% view, like a purchase to view rate.
If you get, if 6% of views end up in a purchase, it's a pretty good marker. If you're below that, I'd be concerned about that product. So a lot of companies don't know how to look at their product efficiency ratios on a site. Some of them are like, I've never even heard of this, even mature businesses. So if a business that's starting out, like a lot of your audience is like, okay, this is a metric I need to pay attention to. How much does it cost to pay, you know, how much does it cost to get a customer and what is my product efficiency ratio?
Because I'll tell you, we do a lot of analysis on here's all the revenue that you're creating and here, a lot of times, a metric that I see a lot is 98% of your revenue was generated by 5% of products. Think about that. Almost 100% of your revenue is generated by 5% of your SKUs.
Like think about all the churn expense overhead to make those other 95 products. Right. I mean, we're not all Forever 21. We can't just churn out garbage, right? Like we can't do that as a business. We have to pick. And so when we like, I think that the more merchants know and startup companies, anybody, whatever you're selling, start to look at product efficiency ratios.
Like if you say, okay, this is going to set me free from having to just churn out products. There are other ways to grow my business.
Glynis Tao
Okay, so just to emphasize what we just talked about is an important metric to look at would be the product efficiency rate, which is something that I just, I don't hear about that often. I'm not sure if many people even know about it. I mean, is that what you come across with a lot of people? Don't even know about this? I guess it's like average order value, you know, customer acquisition, you hear conversions.
Mia Umanos
It's really not known. Actually I was just talking to another client of mine, a jewelry company, and she said, Mia, you really need to go out there and start talking to some of these accelerators for e-commerce accelerators, because we went through product, logistics, line, business model. There was nothing about a DTC analytic strategy.
A DTC analytics strategy in e-commerce startup accelerators. I was like, what the heck? That's insane. So I mean, that's why I'm out here now. I'm like, I'm going hard on content because she told me that literally over like a week ago. And I'm like, okay, I'm on a mission now. Like if that's true, you just went through a startup accelerator hosted by a very well known e-commerce startup accelerator and you did not have any analytics training, then I'm going to die on that hill. I don't care. That's my new thing. I'm going to die on that hill because there's so many great brands, right? So many. And like I'm particularly fond of female run startups. It will always be, I mean, I will always make myself available. I am a female founder myself. So I know how hard it is.
Glynis Tao
Yeah, I mean, they've got a million things going, right? They're juggling a lot and, you know, wearing a lot of hats and they're probably not focusing like, or even know, you know, they don't know what they don't know, right? So I think it's just having that awareness, first of all, which is what you're doing. But there's so many things that are taking away their attention, right? What they think they should be focusing on. You know, I think it's like social media is a big one. They think that they should be doing, spending their time on, but not really looking at a lot of the numbers. I find that that's what they're not looking at. And I think it's maybe because, you know, if they are even able to have the data, get the data, but they won't know what to do with it.
So what advice would you give to businesses that are starting out with GA4, or they feel overwhelmed by the data? How can GA4 be able to help them simplify and streamline the process of identifying meaningful trends and the data and that sort of thing?
Mia Umanos
Yeah, I mean, I would say like thing number one is like if you have really expensive tools that you're spending money on, to just stop that right away and start looking at Google Analytics because you're not mature enough for a $700 a month tool. It's like, and Lord knows you can't burn through cash, right? You cannot burn through cash. if you're spending, so that's like thing one, don't just go and start to like spend a ton of money on a tool that you're going to ignore. Cause frankly, that's what happens a lot. $100 a month is a lot of money.
So the second thing that I would say is take the GA4 class, wake up, get a grip on it. It's easy to take. I'm easy to talk to. The concepts are hard. But I mean, you say to me like, what did you get out of it? Like, if you get nothing but a better understanding of what it's for, I've done my job.
Glynis Tao
Yeah, that's what I would say. I got out of that, your course and the course we're referring to is your four-day GA4 boot camp, which was amazing. I mean, you know, I wouldn't say I'm like an expert, a GA4, I'm not even close to that, right? Like I understand a bit, I use it as a tool and I do SEO, but you know, like I just know the basic basics really, but I think your course really just opened my eyes to what is possible out there and I feel like I know a little bit more about it now.
And at least that's sort of now on my radar, right? When I'm talking to clients and stuff and hearing about like certain problems that they're having with their websites, maybe not performing or whatever, you know, they're not hitting their goals and, OK, then I could perhaps prescribe something to help them do that or to an expert like you, if they want more help with it or something like that, at least I know about it.
Mia Umanos
Yeah, absolutely. I think getting it on the radar the most is like step one, know that it's there, know what it's for. It's for website shopping behavior. If you're having a problem there, you've got that in your bookmark. Right. And then I think the next thing is, you know, like taking the course is helpful, but as well, like take it in little bites, like don't try to, you know, boil the ocean.
Just like if you're thinking about, okay an add to cart rate or Google Analytics called the cart to detail and the purchase to detail. Those two metrics and you're looking by product, it's going to help you understand what products are performing and what ones aren’t performing so good. And again, if they're not performing good in those two metrics, it's either the product or the page. So you get two things like one thing you could change easily, which is the page and experiment there. And if that doesn't work, then you know it's a product. Put that thing on sale. And move on.
Glynis Tao
Yeah. And don't wait too long to do that. Yeah.
Mia Umanos
Right. Absolutely. Yes.
Glynis Tao
It'll move fast enough, I think, and sit on it, hoping that, OK, maybe it will pick up or something. And then maybe they just lost that opportunity or something where they moved it a lot faster.
I know we're sort of running out of time, but there's some terminology I just want to cover when it comes to analytics and the two words that come up a lot often. In your course, you mentioned data architecture and layering.
Can you just please explain what those two things are?
Mia Umanos
Yeah, absolutely. So data architecture just refers to the structure of how the data is built in Google Analytics. So basically, Google Analytics, a lot of people turn it on and they put on the Shopify integration go, this isn't very helpful at all. And it's because they haven't put all the shopper data in there. Now, when you put the shopper data in there, there are some considerations for how you're going to get it out, which is, okay, I can do a CTA click, but I also want to know what that was, what it was, what did it say? Did it say shopped now? Did it say shop the season? What did it say? You want to know, because you want to know how you're talking to your customers.
So the data architecture is of all the things that we want to track. Where do I put it? It's like organizing a garage or organizing your kitchen drawers or your pantry. It's like, okay, well, you know, anything that's a button click is going to go here and it's going to go to things that are the add to cart type is going to go here. So are they POS? Are they user experiences? Is it messaging? That's what we refer to it with data architecture. The way that it's going to be familiar to most of your listeners is like, well, when you're deciding on the navigation, you're deciding on the architecture of a website. So it's going to be dresses. And then within dresses, it's going to be petites and regular or whatever, right? In pants, it's going to be jeans. It's going to be, that's also a data architecture, your navigation. So your data architecture is really just the way in which we structure the information so that people can access it. And your website navigation, that's your data architecture for how your customers can access your products.
In GA, the data architecture is referring to how are you or your marketing people going to access the information of every click and swipe that happens in the store.
Now, the second piece, which is the data layer, the data layer is a bit of code, actually, that lives on your site. It doesn't have anything to do with the front end, but it's all these little pieces that live in the code that is exchanging between Shopify, Google Analytics, and your ad platforms.
So for example, in the data layer, there'll be things that when you're looking at a product detail page, inside the data layer will be things like product name, red dress, product category, dress. The name might be something snazier like Alyssa, the Alyssa, right? That's your product name. The category is dress. The item category two might Fall 2024 line. So there's this, it's the metadata that is passing so that other places can pick it up. That's the easiest way that I can think about it, like these secret messages that you're putting into your data that nobody's really seeing, but that allows you to know that when that product, the Alyssa dress goes from cart to view or viewing to a cart to a checkout, that all that metadata is passing so that you can do that analysis later and say, Hey, everything from season 2024, fall 2024, is tanking as a bad product efficiency. We had a bad line planner that season. So that's what those two are about.
Glynis Tao
Okay. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense now. When you're speaking meta tags and that's totally, you're speaking my language. Yeah SEO, we do look at site structure as part of the technical SEO checks that we do. Right. Making sure things are categorized properly, put in the proper collections folders, right? And products are named properly. And then I look into your URL structures and all that stuff as well, because it tells search engines what the product is.
So I think the same goes with Google. Well, it's, yeah, the same search engine that we're using. The better you're able to categorize, organize things on your website, not only does it make a better user experience for your customers, it also helps with Google.
Mia Umanos
Sure. And I mean, at the end of the day, there's like a data analyst human, and then there's the data analysis algorithms and we need the data to be in a certain structure to be able to do our jobs. So that's why if you have a bad structure, it's hard to show up. And as well, if you have a bad structure, it's hard to analyze shopper preferences because it's the same outcome, different products. But that's what metadata really, yeah, that data layer is the metadata on products and shopper experience that we need.
Glynis Tao
Yeah, absolutely. And so before we wrap up here, what size businesses do usually work with? You had mentioned some costs here in terms of like a $2,000 investment. Is that generally how it works? Like you have a package or like how can somebody get started if they want help from you?
Mia Umanos
Yeah, I mean, definitely not pre-revenue. I'm happy to get anybody into the classes. I think when a company is starting to generate revenue and they really want to start, they want to make all the right moves and they don't want to make any mistakes and they want to be data driven and not product driven.
Actually a CFO of an e-commerce company told me recently this week, she said, well, a lot of these e-commerce companies are either building a business or they're building a brand. And one of the other two is neglected often. And a lot of times in the beginning, you're building a brand. You're like, I just want people to know who I am. Right. But to build a business you really need to be data driven. So if you're in a stage where you're building a business and you bought into that, then in the beginning, we start at $750 a month to help with support as a retainer.
We also scaled to $2,000 a month for deeper services. And we also do conversion reoptimization where we're actually scientifically testing websites. And that starts at $6,000 a month. So, you know, not for beginning, really beginning companies, but for companies who are you know, at the stages where we really don't want to make too many mistakes. If you want to take an engineering approach to our business, we're building a business. We're not just building a brand. If you're in that mindset, then it makes sense.
Glynis Tao
Amazing. So I know we just really scratched the surface of what GA4 can do. And really for a deeper dive, I recommend you take Mia's four-day GA4 bootcamp.
Mia Umanos
It's just an hour a day too. It's not like four days. It's an hour a day.
Glynis Tao
It's an hour a day over four days. But you'll learn how to harness the full potential of Google Analytics 4 to drive better business decisions.
Do you know when your next workshop is going to be?
Mia Umanos
Yes, it's November 18th. So Monday, November 18th to Thursday, November 22.
Okay, amazing. And maybe you can provide a link where people can sign up for that. Where can people find you if they want to get in touch with you?
Mia Umanos
Well, strangely, I'm the only Mia Umanos in all of the internet. I don't know how that happened, but I am the one.
So you can search for me. You can find me on LinkedIn, but my email address is mia@clickvoyant.com. I have an open door like most founders. I have a very soft spot for you.
Glynis Tao
Amazing. Well, thank you so much Mia for being here today and sharing your expert insights with GA4 and data analysis with us.
In this episode, RozeMerie Cuevas, fashion designer and founder of Jacqueline Conoir and JAC by Jacqueline Conoir, shares her experience and lessons learned from over three decades in the industry. From her first fashion show debut at a nightclub in Vancouver at age 18, to establishing her Vancouver-based brand in 1986 with just a small tight knit team, to eventually expanding into the Chinese market in 2013—RozeMerie credits teamwork, adaptability, and a tremendous amount of hands-on effort to make it all possible.
If you’re a fashion entrepreneur, this conversation will inspire you as you hear RozeMerie’s sound advice on how to create long-term success by building a strong brand DNA and making smart operational decisions.
About RozeMerie Cuevas
RozeMerie Cuevas is an icon in the Canadian fashion industry as the designer and founder behind two Canadian brands, Jacqueline Conoir and JAC by Jacqueline Conoir. Growing up, RozeMerie spent her teenage years sewing clothes for herself and for her friends but didn’t consider pursuing a career in fashion. She never thought of herself as a “designer”, but after her first fashion show at age 18 that impressed the attendees—RozeMerie realized that for her, being a fashion designer was possible and that she should go for it! Studying economics and commerce at the time, she decided to change course and apply for fashion school. Soon after, she packed her bags to attend the prestigious ESMOD School of Fashion in Paris.
Upon her return to Vancouver, RozeMerie created the women’s fashion brand, Jacqueline Conoir—the name in honor of her late mother. Over an impressive 36 year career, she has not only created and run successful brands but also received numerous design and influential women in business and business innovator awards in Canada.
In 2013, RozeMerie expanded into the Chinese market after a serendipitous meeting with a Chinese brand developer. That new partnership led to rapidly growing JAC to 100 stores in major cities in China within three years. By 2021, JAC further solidified its position by welcoming the founder of the Alfini Group as a key shareholder, enhancing its management, development, and operations. This strategic move aims to establish JAC as a leading international designer brand.
Establish a strong brand DNA to make yourself identifiable.
Create engaging experiences for your customers to create a strong customer base.
Respect and adapt to different cultures and business customs when entering new markets.
Focus on taking one step at a time when building and expanding a brand.
Empower your team and lead by example.
Interview themes
What does it mean to have a strong brand DNA, and what are the benefits?
A strong brand DNA means having a distinct identity that resonates deeply with your target audience and consistently reflects the core values and mission of the brand. For RozeMerie, the brand DNA of Jacqueline Conoir and JAC by Jacqueline Conoir is centered around empowering women to feel confident and capable in any situation throughout their career journeys. This is reflected not only in the clothing designs, which are meant to make women feel strong and noticeable, but also in the stories of customers who have worn the brand throughout their careers, using it as a tool to project success and confidence.
Additionally, the Jacqueline Conoir brand DNA involves a commitment to high quality and a unique style that stands out, which has allowed it to build a loyal customer base. The consistency in these elements—empowerment, quality, and distinctiveness—has been key to establishing and sustaining the brand’s identity in a competitive market.
How does teamwork help a fashion brand succeed?
RozeMerie believes that no one can achieve greatness alone, and she has always prioritized building a strong, collaborative team. Stating that “without your team, you’re nothing,” she advises brand owners to lead by example while empowering their team to take initiative and contribute their best. RozeMerie’s approach to teamwork has created a sense of ownership and pride amongst its members, contributing to sustained growth and the ability to navigate challenges.
How to ensure brand consistency and quality when expanding rapidly in a global market?
Ensuring brand consistency in a new market requires a lot of training and communication. When JAC expanded in China, RozeMerie Cuevas took a hands-on approach to training her team. She was deeply involved in the process, personally overseeing the education of her staff on the brand’s DNA, quality standards, and customer interactions. RozeMerie relied heavily on visual and practical demonstrations, using fashion shows and store presentations to clearly communicate the brand’s identity. She attended store openings across China, to make sure that each launch reflected the brand. Through this meticulous and culturally aware approach, she was able to maintain a consistent and memorable brand experience across all JAC stores in China.
How do adaptability and cultural awareness drive international success?
In order to thrive in a new global market, entrepreneurs must understand the business customs and respect the culture. For example, in the fast-paced business landscape of China, decisions are implemented rapidly. RozeMerie learned that she had to make quick decisions, but with much careful consideration prior to communicating them out loud. In regards to culture, when introducing her brand to the Chinese market, RozeMerie quickly realized that while still staying true to her brand DNA, she had to make small adjustments to her designs, such as raising necklines, in order to appeal to her Chinese customers. Her openness to adapt and learn from her team in China allowed for a positive reception of her brand and fueled its expansion—establishing over 100 stores across major cities in just a few years.
Why must creative entrepreneurs understand the business side of running the brand?
Even if your aim is to focus on the design side, in order to be a successful creative entrepreneur, you need sufficient business knowledge to create long-term success. In the early stages of her career, she made mistakes in budgeting and inventory management, such as spending too much on certain materials or not controlling inventory effectively. She advises young designers who want to focus primarily on the design side of the business to educate themselves in business. Even if a designer wants to partner with someone to handle the business side, they should still have an understanding of basic finance and operations to avoid the common pitfalls of running a creative venture.
Chapters
05:25 The Origins of Jacqueline Conoir and the Brand's Unique Vision
11:54 Challenges Faced in the Early Days and Overcoming Them
21:55 Scaling the Business: Expanding into the Chinese Market
39:13 Advice for Aspiring Fashion Entrepreneurs: Building a Global Brand
Transcript
Glynis Tao
Today I have the pleasure of hosting an extraordinary guest. RozeMerie Cuevas is a true icon in the Canadian fashion industry. RozeMerie is the designer and founder behind two Canadian brands, Jacqueline Conoir and JAC by Jacqueline Conoir.
RozeMerie's fashion journey began in Paris, France, where she studied design and pattern making at the prestigious ESMOD School of Fashion. Over an impressive 36 year career, she has not only built iconic brands but also received numerous design influential women in business and business innovator awards in Canada.
In 2013 RozeMerie's vision took a global turn when she ventured into the Chinese market. A serendipitous meeting with a Chinese brand developer led to a groundbreaking partnership catapulting the JAC brand into China.
Within just three years, JAC expanded to 100 stores in AAA department stores across major cities in China, a testament to RozeMerie's exceptional talent and strategic foresight. The growth didn't stop there. In 2021, the JAC brand welcomed a strategic development partner, the founder of the Alfini Group as an important shareholder. This collaboration has strengthened the brand's product management, channel development, and operational capabilities, paving the way for even greater market recognition and share. The ultimate goal, to establish JAC as a top international designer brand, both in China and worldwide.
Welcome RozeMerie, it's so nice to have you here today. Thanks for joining me on the podcast.
RozeMerie Cuevas
Thanks, Glynis. Thank you for such a nice introduction. Very kind words. Thank you.
Glynis Tao
I had actually first heard of the Jacqueline Conroy brand in the early 90s when I was a student at Kwantlen College, which is now KPU.
RozeMerie Cuevas
You're now dating me.
Glynis Tao
Me too. But I just can't believe that when I was sitting down to write these interview questions, I was trying to just think back to the time when I first had heard of your name and your brand.
And so yeah, that long ago, which is crazy.
RozeMerie Cuevas
I often get calls from ladies or you know, some of our customers who find the product in vintage stores now. And they're like, I just found a Jacqueline Conoir in a vintage store. And they're just so excited about it. So yeah, we've been around for a long time. We've had an amazing journey.
Glynis Tao
Yeah. And so now fast forward almost like 30 years later. We were sitting right next to each other at the BCAG meeting. So I turned over to you and asked you, how are you doing? You told me that you were living in China and you had met your business partner, you had moved to China and established your name brand in over a hundred retail stores there. So at that point I knew that I needed to have you on the podcast to share your story.
RozeMerie Cuevas
Yeah, it's been an incredible journey, I must say. I mean, you know, when I started at 22, I had no idea what would happen and where we would end up. But it has been an extraordinary, you know, a lot of challenges, a lot of, you know, triumphs. Just a really incredible journey. So yeah, I'm happy to share.
Glynis Tao
Yeah, absolutely. So before we get into all that, let's go back to the early days and talk about the brand's origins. What inspired you to start JAC by Jacqueline Conoir, and how did you come up with the brand's unique vision?
RozeMerie Cuevas
Well, I guess the story starts, how did I get into fashion design, really? I never thought that I would be a fashion designer. It was not even an idea in my head that I could be a fashion designer. I simply sewed my own clothes when I was young and there were not a lot of fashion stores in Vancouver at the time.
My dad was very old fashioned. And so he didn't, you know, we weren't allowed to shop at what sweet 16 or whatever it was that was super fashionable at the time. So I just made my own clothes and then slowly I started making clothes for my friends. But I really never thought that was a, that was something that you would do as a career. I was actually going to school for commerce and economics. And I ended up in school and studying and I thought, what am I doing here?
But anyways, my cousin suggested that I do a fashion show at Richards on Richards, which was the hottest club in Vancouver at the time. And I thought, what? Fashion show me? No, it's impossible. But anyway, somehow he convinced me. So I arrived with my clothes, you know, in garbage bags. All the designers arrived with their clothes on rolling racks and pristine bags. And I was just mortified. I thought, I need to hightail it out of here.
But I didn't, I just stayed and the show went on and I was in the bathroom hugging the toilet bowl because I was so nervous. But at the end of the show, the women came into the bathroom and speaking of the fashion show and mentioning that the black and white scene was a designer that was only 18 years old. And they were talking about me and they called me a designer. And at that very moment, I was like, well, maybe I better go to school and see what this is all about. And so I packed my bags and off to Paris and went to ESMOD and it was one of the best schools in the world at that time, applied, accepted and away the journey went. So it was a really incredible start.
And then the way that we came up with the brand was my mother had passed away when I was five and her name was Jacqueline Conoir. And so the brand is actually in honor of her. So then when we rebranded to JAC, the brand name is J for Jacqueline Conoir, A for Andrea, my second daughter, and C for Celine, my first daughter. So it became JAC. So yeah, and the motto for JAC is JAC lives freely, leads by example, loves life, projects success, inspires, empowers action and knows exactly what she wants.
So the brand really was catering to empowering women, making them be the strongest that they could be, giving them the ability to walk into a room and really make a difference and allow their powerful inner side to shine. Let us worry about the exterior, you know. They focused on their ability to create success and be successful. And so that's how we created our career, our brand was all about empowering young women. And till today, we still have women who contact me by email saying they wore our garment all through the rise of their careers. And they went from being store managers to being CEOs and company owners.
So that really, really has been amazing to watch over the years. Yeah.
Glynis Tao
Wow, that's amazing. Yeah. Thanks for sharing that story and sort of the behind the brand's name. Because that was a question I was going to ask you. Where did the name Jacqueline Conoir come from?
RozeMerie Cuevas
So everyone wondered why is the designer RozeMerie Cuevas and the brand is Jacqueline Conoir or JAC. So really it was a dedication to my mom who passed away when I was very young.
Glynis Tao
Okay. That's very sweet.
RozeMerie Cuevas
A lot of logistical marketing, you know, challenges, but nevertheless, it's what we decided to do and I'm happy I did it.
Glynis Tao
Yeah. And so from that vision that you started with, has it changed much from the original vision to what it is now?
It has always meant to be high, very high quality, reasonably priced, and affordable for most women. And it's always been there to, you know, really empower women, you know, by the way they dress to walk into a room and really show their presence. So Jacqueline Conoir, woman will, you know, walk into a room and you'll notice her.
I have customers emailing me saying that they'll wear a Jacqueline Conoir or a JAC outfit and people will stop them in the streets. So that's always really a great feeling. So it's a brand that has a particular DNA that just stands out just a little bit. So, yeah, women have been wearing it throughout their careers to advance themselves and make a presence when they walk into a room.
Glynis Tao
Well, the message must be strong enough to resonate with so many people, right? And touch them in a way that makes them feel that way. There's that connection between you and like the brand and themselves, and feeling embodying those, those feelings that makes them feel right?
RozeMerie Cuevas
Yeah.
Glynis Tao
So let's call it talk about some of the challenges that you faced. What were some of the biggest challenges that you faced when you started the Jacqueline Conoir brand and how did you overcome them?
RozeMerie Cuevas
Well, I mean, I think as in every business challenges come and go and come and go and you tackle things. And I think every business has a seven year life cycle where, you know, you have to tackle all the challenges, but then you also have to reinvent yourself. So I think it's an ongoing situation.
But I think some of our major challenges in the beginning, the very, very beginning was everyone wanted international brands. No one wanted local. It was very different than today where everyone wants to support local. It was a completely different mindset in the 80s and the 90s. Everyone wanted Italian fashion, French, German, anything, or American, anything but Canadian.
And so it took us a while to establish a name for ourselves, establish that we are a great designer brand, that we had great quality, that we catered to the right demographic. And we actually made a name for ourselves by doing these really amazing feminine suits. Business suits in that time for women were very square and boxy, big shoulders.
And we came in with these very beautifully fitted shorter skirts and great fitted jackets with the shoulder pads. And immediately you could recognize a Jacqueline Conoir on the street. I think some of our challenge was to make ourselves identifiable, which we did by giving ourselves a particular DNA. We created massive events because the marketing was a bit challenging.
In the beginning, we couldn't get the media on board. And so we ended up creating amazing fashion shows and events, invited media, and slowly people started to really recognize the brand and want to be connected to it. Because everything we did, we did to the best that we could. So I think initially the challenges were getting people getting acceptance, getting media coverage, finding financing. So we were a very small business, so we needed to find financing.
So what we did is we continuously applied for competitions and we were nine time Matinee. At that time, the Matinee cigarette company used to sponsor the fashion industry, but now that's no longer acceptable. But in those days, we were nine time grant recipients and each time we won a grant, it was $35,000. So that was amazing as a designer to have that kind of injection of cash. So those are the three major challenges in the beginning. And then as we grew our business, the challenges were finding real estate that was affordable and then also growing our customer base in our VIP database.
And we did all of that through, again, really, really fabulous events and just make people feel like a family. That's continued for about 25 years. And then like anything, you know, you have a life cycle. And so in 2011, we rebranded and added JAC to our repertoire.
And it was a younger, edgier collection that attracted a different customer, but that also our existing customer really enjoyed as well. And so we added that brand and then in 2013 is when we decided to go global. And we were ready to really expand the brand. My kids had grown up. I was still very interested in fashion and didn't want to give up at that time.
And so we were looking for a partner to go international. We couldn't do it on our own. So that was another challenge.
Glynis Tao
So how big was your team at that time, at that point?
RozeMerie Cuevas
I would say we were 10 people. We were 10 people. A couple in our marketing department, maybe four or five people in our sales department. I did all the designing for so many years.
That's what I love to do. And then I had an assistant that I worked with constantly. So there was about 10, 11, 12 of us at any given time.
Glynis Tao
And did that just build gradually over time? Like from the inception of the brand, like originally were you the one doing everything?
RozeMerie Cuevas
Absolutely. My first few years I was doing the designing, the pattern making. I'm also a pattern drafter. So I was doing the patterns, the cutting of the fabric. I hired one sewer, one seamstress, but I was also sewing. I was sewing on buttons, just you name it. I was doing the fabric buying. I was doing the selling. When my daughter was born, I remember having her in the changing room and a little bucket seat and I'd sell and then I would design, then I would breastfeed, then I would, it was all really all encompassing. was really crazy, actually.
Glynis Tao
It's amazing, though, now looking back. What you have done. But I think, you know, I'm interested to know in terms of how you were able to balance the creativity part of and the more practical aspects of running a business because a lot of times designers come out of design school, fashion school, they're designers, they're not business people. So how did you manage that?
RozeMerie Cuevas
That's a really great question and something that all the young designers should actually understand is there's two parts to a business. There's the creative side and then there's the business side.
And you're right, a creative person doesn't actually understand the business side. So we made a lot of mistakes. We spent way too much money on so many things that we shouldn't have. We didn't keep our inventory under control. We bought things that were way too expensive for us and we should have held off. We should have bought the real estate that we were renting instead of continuing to rent. So there were many things that we should have done that would have put us in a better place in terms of business and profitability.
But again, you learn as you go. So any advice that I would give to a new young up and coming designer who, I mean, you choose either you want to be the creative person and just do that, or you want to be the creative person and have knowledge of the business side of things. Therefore you can actually understand when you do get a business partner or when you merge with someone or when you're working for someone else, regardless, then you understand the business side of it. You understand the expectation and limitations of the creativity.
So, but I mean, there's a lot of ways to be creative and stick to a budget. It doesn't mean because you need to stick to a budget that you can't be creative. I mean, we were extremely creative. We put on shows for 500, 600 people. And we did it on such a small budget, you know, so you get good at it, you try to manage it.
And my husband, my partner at that time, he was the one who actually managed all of our events. And he did a great job at that. And so we looked like we were a massive company. And yet we only had, you know, 5 to 10 people as a team.
Glynis Tao
Yeah, even though you were trying to figure it all out somehow you managed to make it all work.
RozeMerie Cuevas
Yeah. In normal circumstances, a designer will leave the business within the first three years. And so we made it past the first three years, then we made it past the next three years and then following three years and then 38 years later, we're still here. So it's baby steps. I think it's baby step by step.
Glynis Tao
Yeah. Putting one foot in front of the other. Okay. So let's talk about scaling the business.
So from where you were then at that point, right, where you were more of a smaller startup, local brand, that time you were still mostly a Canadian brand based in Vancouver. Did you have retail stores then?
RozeMerie Cuevas
We did have retail stores. And we did them differently at different times. So sometimes we had a retail store on Granville Street. And then at one point we decided we were going to go off the main grid of retail streets. The rent became super expensive. And so I opened up a private 5000 square foot studio where we did all of our design and our sales and our shows. It was a multipurpose, huge warehouse space, which was very innovative at the time. And everyone just got on board and loved the experience. It was a shopping experience. We did little mini trends and shows and so on. So it was really fantastic.
But by about 2013, 2011, the manufacturing in Vancouver had really started to disappear. And so we were having trouble finding manufacturers to produce our kind of product. And so we really had to, we had a choice. We either had to find other places to manufacture our products, alternative manufacturing facilities or locations, or we just shut her down.
We weren't big enough to attract a large manufacturer, let's say in China or in other parts of the world, we just didn't have the quantity. And so we were stuck. So at that time we either were going to go bigger or we were going to just shut it down.
And so we tried a to meet up with a few different investors and the different partners. And it just so happened that we managed to meet a really great couple who had just landed in Vancouver and they were looking to meet like-minded people. And we were in the fashion industry. And so they came around and viewed our product, viewed our shows and they invited me back to China to just to see what their manufacturing facility was like.
And I said, look, let me bring the brand. Let's just see what happens when it's over there. And so we brought the brand over and showcased the brand to about 200 buyers and people jumped on board. And very quickly we decided we were going to be partners and off I went to Shanghai and to Hangzhou and that's where we set up the brand and very quickly we expanded. Everything happens in China speed over in China. It's very fast. So either you're on or you're off so within four years, actually we expanded to 110 stores. That was very quick.
Glynis Tao
Sounds like it all happened very quickly.
RozeMerie Cuevas
It was either we jump on board and try it or shut down the business because of the lack of manufacturing facility.
Glynis Tao
So this all happened out of this need where you were thinking like you needed to look for manufacturing. But you didn't think it would actually turn into what it is now like having over 100.
RozeMerie Cuevas
We were not thinking that we would actually expand that quickly. I had no idea it could actually happen that quickly. And we were happy with the business that we had. It was a great business. was giving us a really great lifestyle you know, the community supported the local design and it was just a great little business. And the idea of having it go international, obviously was something that we always wanted to do, but we really just didn't know it would happen at that time.
And so it just happened really by accident, not by accident. We really worked hard to make it happen. I brought the two rolling racks over. I asked them to let me put the product into their fashion show and made a real statement. And people really got on board with the brand. But initially the first three days when we were there, I was sitting there with two rolling racks in a huge sales meeting with 200 buyers and no one came over because they were busy buying the other brands. And then finally, after the third day, I thought, okay, I've got to do something. I have to get their attention somehow. So I went over and grabbed a few of the ladies and a few of the buyers. And I said, look, come over, take a look at the brand. And of course they were terrified of me because I was a foreigner.
At that time there weren't that many foreigners in China. But anyways, somehow we started communicating and they tried on the product, they loved the product before you know it, everyone had come over to the two rolling racks. And before you know it, my partner came over and said, let's do business. What can we do here? And so that's how it happened really. And then very quickly, four years later, we had 110 stores, but it really took a lot of work, a lot of work.
Glynis Tao
It didn't feel quick like that, right? Like, that's kind of the part that I want to get to, like really the meaty stuff. What really happened in between those years, like from when you first landed, set your foot in China, presented to 200 buyers, you know, did your thing and impress them, obviously. I'm sure your experience came into play here, right?
RozeMerie Cuevas
I mean, absolutely. I know the brand, I have a particular DNA for the brand. I was able to speak to women that I actually couldn't communicate with because of the language barrier. So I had the ability to communicate the DNA of the brand somehow. I don't know how I did it through visual fashion shows and so on. But also I was able to dress the women and give them a look. And they came out of the changing room feeling like different women, very powerful. And that's what the DNA of the brand did and does.
And so anyways, that was part of it. But then, you know, we negotiated an agreement and our agreement was a three page agreement and a handshake. I didn't go in with like a thousand page legal document. We didn't focus on that. We just focused on step by step. Can we get the brand being manufactured here? Can we design it here? Can I design 180 styles four times a year?
Because we had quadrupled the size of the collection. Is all of this possible? And so with a three page agreement and a handshake, you're relying on each partner to do their part. So I did my part, which was creating the creative look, the DNA of the brand, training the team in China, doing presentations, designing the boutiques, going into the stores, promoting the product, doing the social media, everything that and anything that I could do, I was doing.
And it was also teaching because their whole idea of what a brand was, it was very different from my idea of what a brand was. Everything had to be spotless. Everything to the final detail had to be perfect. And that, you know, in China, things at that time were very efficient, cost effective, but attention to detail was not the first thing on the list.
And so that needed to be taught to the entire team and quality needed to be taught. And so there were a lot of things that I needed to teach the team. And so step by step, you know, we built the brand over in China and step by step, my partner opened one store, then another store, then another store. And to each of these stores, I would go and again promote the brands, be present to promote. So in order to actually promote the brand, I was traveling to all parts of China. So North China, South China, East, West, wherever we were opening stores. And, you know, sometimes it was freezing cold and sometimes it was like 45 degrees and it was incredible also to visit so many different places. So yeah, it was just an incredible journey, but working seven days a week and 15 hours a day was the norm actually.
Glynis Tao
Was that your first time going to China?
RozeMerie Cuevas
It was actually my second time. The first time I was invited to China with a delegation of about another 20 Canadian companies. That was about six years prior to that. Interestingly enough, I also had an offer to bring the brand to China at that time. But at that time I slapped them with a thousand page contract and it went nowhere.
So the second time around, I realized that I had to go in step by step and not, you know, scare them away with this. Not I’m a prima donna, go in holding all the cards. My tactics were a little bit different the second time.
Glynis Tao
So that's what I want to ask you about your scaling global expansion into the Chinese market. Now that you brought your brand into China and have your business partners on board and they're helping you open up stores, you're doing all this step by step, getting the brand out there and stuff. Did you have to like, do things differently? Like in terms of how you approach business here, because I mean, you did mention some of how they see what is a brand is slightly different than how they see brand here in North America or in Canada.
So what were some of the differences that you experienced during this whole process? And did you have to adapt your design process, your styles, the sizing to fit the Chinese market?
RozeMerie Cuevas
Well, there were. So when you do business in another country, I do think there are a lot of aspects that come into play. And you definitely need to hear the voice of the people of the country that you're selling in. Cultural differences played a huge role. Just a small example, I love white flowers. So anytime we have an event, the, you know, the room is full of white lilies. And, but in China, white is referred to as for funerals. So anytime you have white, everyone for a funeral will dress in white, which is totally the opposite of what we might do here in North America.
But in China, everyone dresses in white and there's a particular belt they wear and everything is white flowers and so on. And so when the team was telling me, you cannot have white flowers for an opening, I was just at the beginning, I was almost irritated as you know, why could I not have these white flowers? It's such a simple request. But, you know, sure enough, a week later, a few weeks later, I see a funeral procession, you know, going down the street and everyone is in white. And so I think I realized that I needed to respect. My team really wanted us to do well. And so the idea that they were giving me or the information they were feeding me was really to help us be able to do the best that we could and respect the cultural differences. You you don't want to be showing all white flowers when that makes reference to a funeral. And also the design of that particular belt, we often had belts in our dresses, yet, you know, when it's that kind of belt, it is also again referred to a funeral. So we eliminated the belts, we adjusted the flowers,
Another thing is the low cut front line. In China you can go in short, short hot pants as you possibly want, but there's no cleavage. So the neck lines were raised just a little bit. And so yes, of course we adjusted certain things because there are cultural differences and it's important to respect the country that you are in, but they're so minor. And it's not that they're not accepted in another country. It's just, you need to be aware of certain things so that you can adjust it. Maybe the design was like this. We just kind of made it around this area. So you balance things out.
Glynis Tao
Okay. So was there a big learning curve for you at that in the beginning?
RozeMerie Cuevas
Absolutely. The learning curve was tremendous. I also realized how fast things happen in China. And so I had to get on board making decisions very quickly. I would ask for something. Or I would just think about asking for something. And the next morning it was on my desk. And I hadn't thought about it clearly. And so I had to really think very, very carefully about what I asked for because it would be on my desk the next day.
Another huge challenge that I had to get used to in terms of manufacturing. So because China is very cost effective and less quality at that time and our team was very cost effective. So, you know, I would say I need this blouse and I need this print on this silk blouse and here's the sample, give me a price. I would get this top back, I would get the price, we would put it into production or you know, put it into sales, put it into production. And then a week later, the store manager would call and say, the customer washed the t -shirt or washed the silk top and the print is gone. So I'm like, wow, that's interesting. So I call the manufacturer, asking why the print had actually disappeared. And he said to me, well, you didn't tell me that the print needed to stay. If you had told me the print needed to stay for a few extra RMB, the print would have stayed.
And I was just, but isn't it common sense that the print should stay? But the way of thinking is completely different. The primary key at that time was the cost. So if you want to lower costs, well, the print may not stay. It may stay, but it may not stay. Now, if you identify quality as your number one item, then they'll give you a different price. So I had to really think about what I was asking for, how I was asking for it and be very clear on what I wanted. And so that was a very big learning curve. Where in things that we just assume here, you can't just assume over there.
Glynis Tao
You have to be very clear on what ask for and how you communicate that as well. So do you have any issues with the language? Do you speak Chinese or Shanghainese?
RozeMerie Cuevas
I've learned some Chinese, you know, the colors, the sizes, the garment types and categories and so on. But the actual language to speak, it's a very difficult language. I really try. But when you're working 18 hours a day, it's really hard to then learn a new language.
Glynis Tao
Yeah. But I guess if you're in that environment, maybe you pick it up.
RozeMerie Cuevas
A lot. And we built a team that actually spoke English.
Glynis Tao
How many other Canadian designers can you think of that you know?
RozeMerie Cuevas
There are a lot of small businesses, I know a few businesses that have gone over and tried like Aldo shoes went over and tried a few times. LaVie en Rose went over a few times to try but all didn't manage to get on board there. But then there are companies like Lululemon, they're very successful in expanding their products into the Chinese market. There's North Face, there's Arcteryx, there's Canada Goose. So mostly activewear and outdoor wear have been very successful in opening the market in China.
Glynis Tao
Yeah, because I'm just wondering, you know, what was it like to be a completely new brand, to just show up in another country and then just open up shop there, right? You're not known.
RozeMerie Cuevas
As a small designer, as an independent designer, it's really impossible to do what we did without a partner. It's very difficult unless you have really deep pockets but even then you need to know the business culture. And the business culture is very different. It's all about who you know and who you can connect to and how you can make yourself noticed. And there is a whole ton of government sponsorships for individuals who will partner with Chinese partners. And so there's a lot of tax breaks and rent incentives and subsidies that you can apply for when you actually have a partner.
There are a lot of ways to do business in China. You do need to figure out how to maneuver it all. And I have so much of that knowledge in my head and firsthand experience, so I'll be looking to guide other companies who are interested in going into that market.
Glynis Tao
Yeah, absolutely. Because I think you would have a wealth of knowledge with that having experienced it. Actually, another part of this why I was so interested in reaching out to you, wanting to talk to you about your experience of bringing your brand into the global market was that I was talking to a friend of mine who's a local designer here based in Vancouver, and she's been doing it for a number of years. She's very strong technically, strong technical design, know, pattern making all that stuff. She's trying to break into the market here in Vancouver and having a hard time. She's got a strong brand DNA, it's got a particular look, but I'm like, I don't know if maybe this is just not something that's very Vancouver, like, you know here we're more laid back, West Coast lifestyle into more of the outdoor recreational stuff.
But I'm like, maybe you want to explore another market, like don't just limit yourself geographically to Vancouver. What would you say to someone like that?
RozeMerie Cuevas
Well, it's really hard, I'd have to see the product first to be able to make any advice or to give any advice, I think. I mean, it's a very tough industry, the fashion industry is super tough, and it's changed tremendously over the years, people's needs have changed, the way people spend money has changed, the way people go out has changed. And so I'd have to see the product first to understand the product and whether it's a viable product for a particular industry or community.
But I mean, we also had a tough time, a tough go at it at the beginning. I remember we had pasta for dinner every single night until we could get the brand going. And it really took us at least 10 years to get the brand really going and a really good customer base. But the way we did it is we just made designing and developing the brand part of our lifestyle. So we would do huge events and that would be our entertainment or we would, I don't know, I can't remember exactly how we did it, but every night we would invite customers to the boutique and we do special events. And I was just working all the time, all the time. There was no balance between life and vacation and this and that it was like seven, 15 hours a day for sure.
Glynis Tao
And that was before kids?
RozeMerie Cuevas
Well, it was before kids, during kids, with kids.
Glynis Tao
Everything in between. Yeah. You managed to make it work.
RozeMerie Cuevas
The fashion shows they came to all of our events. They were at the booth at this, you know, our studio after school. They were just part of it.
Glynis Tao
My goodness. Are your kids involved in your business at all?
RozeMerie Cuevas
No, they have their own careers. You know, they saw how difficult it is.
Glynis Tao
No, thanks.
RozeMerieCuevas
Yeah, you have to have the passion for the industry, the passion for the business, and if you don't, it is tough. I think to do this business, you have to really love fashion. You have to love what you do, be prepared to put in the time.
Glynis Tao
What personal qualities or skills do you believe have been most instrumental in your success as a founder?
RozeMerie Cuevas
I think I'm really strong at leading by example. I think that's one of my key reasons for success. I empower the team. I think that without your team, you're nothing. So really to be able to empower your team, put the team before yourself is really important. You have to have a lot of stamina and you have to really be able to inspire people and motivate people. I think you have to also believe in yourself and know exactly what you want and just go for it.
So those are all messages within our JAC message. So JAC lives freely, leads by example, loves life, projects success, inspires, empowers action and knows exactly what she wants. So that is the JAC woman. That's our JAC team. So no matter how you cut it, those are the important elements of knowing what it takes to be successful.
Glynis Tao
And those I guess core values or what you would say has been is woven into the JAC DNA brand DNA.
RozeMerieCuevas
And also surrounding yourself with people who believe in you and people who are strong individuals in what they do as well and so I definitely could not have done any of this all on my own. First, it's the people who are around me that were supportive, that helped, that were always there to lend a helping hand. And then there's the team who worked endless hours and really gave their all to make it a success. So I think, and it's a team effort, no one person does it individually. So I think when you acknowledge that, I think it's karma. Life is karma. You give out what you get back. And so that's what I believe is actually the key to any success.
Glynis Tao
Amazing. Is there anything that you would have done differently in your journey with your business?
RozeMerieCuevas
If I would have done it again, I would have done everything possible to buy the real estate in which we were doing our retail stores. I think if I had to do it again, I would definitely buy the real estate. Instead of paying rent all those years, I would have done my best to manage to buy the buildings that we were renting. After all, real estate is what actually goes up in value tremendously.
Glynis Tao
Right. Any final advice that you would give to aspiring fashion entrepreneurs who want to build a global brand?
RozeMerieCuevas
Well, I think I would tell them they should talk to as many people as they can, speak to people who have experience and who have gone through the challenges. And although the challenges today are very different than they were maybe 20 years ago. There is a common thread so learn from the people who have already done it. Again, believe in yourself. Don't give up, but have a clear vision.
Glynis Tao
Amazing. Where can people find you if they want to get in touch with you?
RozeMerie Cuevas
You can post my email address. I'd be happy to take emails. No problem. Yeah. Thank you so much. And your brand Jacqueline Conoir brand is on Instagram and all social media.
RozeMerieCuevas
JAC is on Instagram. I have a Facebook JAC by JC or RozeMerie Cuevas. Also, I think I've given you all those links. You're welcome to post them. I'd be happy to speak with people if they need my help.
Glynis Tao
Thank you so much, RozeMerie, for being here today and sharing your insight and knowledge into the fashion industry.
In this episode, Carol Shih, founder of Qode Space, a Shopify web development and creative agency, shares her journey and the ethos behind her business and community work. Her approachable and outgoing personality, combined with a deep understanding of the challenges and nuances of being an Asian female entrepreneur in tech, allows her to connect and uplift others who face similar challenges and experiences. Not only does Carol share valuable advice for e-commerce business owners, she also shares about the impact of creating meaningful connections, embracing one's identity, and openly giving and asking for help from peers in the industry and wise mentors. As she balances her professional goals with motherhood, Carol also shares her honest perspective around “wanting it all” and how certain aspects of American Westernized culture can create challenges for mom entrepreneurs.
About Carol Shih
Carol Shih is an Australian-Taiwanese immigrant and the founder of Qode Space, a female and minority-owned web development agency. With a focus on Quality, Community, Transparency, and Purpose, Carol is committed to fostering inclusivity in the tech industry for women and minority leaders. She aims to balance the industry by delivering outstanding and high-quality design development work for e-commerce business owners. Additionally, Carol serves as a senior partner for Major Asians, an organization dedicated to providing exclusive and unique branding strategies to the AAPI community.
Leaning on your network and mentors can provide valuable support and insights as a founder.
The vision and mission of a company should align with its core values and target audience.
Understanding customer behavior through data analysis is crucial for effective website development.
Avoid the common mistake of trying to replicate competitors without considering your own unique customer base. Using data and analytics is crucial for making informed creative and development decisions.
Balancing design aesthetics with conversion optimization is a challenge, but it's important to prioritize functionality and best practices for better conversion rates.
Having mentors and a supportive community is essential for overcoming entrepreneurial challenges.
American Westernized culture which tends to be more individualistic than other cultures can create challenges of isolation for mom entrepreneurs who think they have to do it all.
Qode Space aims to continue supporting e-commerce clients for web development as well as be an incubator for young females in tech, and support Asian-founded brands.
The A Major Asians podcast highlights and supports Asian-founded brands and aims to create a more inclusive community.
Interview themes
How does being in a community benefit entrepreneurs both professionally and personally?
Carol’s community, including peers and mentors, has played a crucial role in her journey. She relies heavily on a network of female entrepreneurs and industry experts, and has found that mutual support and advice have been essential in overcoming challenges. Her network provides her with resources, guidance, and a collective of like-minded individuals who collaborate to navigate the complexities of entrepreneurship together.
As a mother, Carol says she “wants it all”, to be a successful business owner, a good mom, and serving her community. As an Asian immigrant to the US, she observed that in American Westernized culture, there is a lot of personal space and people who want to keep to themselves—which in turn creates isolation for female founders who feel they have to “do it all”. She credits her “village” (partner who is a hands-on dad, friends who offer to babysit, helpful professional network) for enabling her to manage her professional and personal life effectively.
Why should entrepreneurs spend and invest in market research?
Investing in market research to look at data and analytics allows you to make informed creative and development decisions. Carol stresses that data analysis in business, particularly in user behavior, is essential for understanding customer interactions with your website, such as where users click, linger, or fail to add items to the cart. Many brand owners invest heavily in creating visually appealing content for platforms like TikTok and Instagram without knowing if it effectively attracts and engages users or improves sales conversions. Entrepreneurs often make the common mistake of trying to replicate competitors without considering their own unique customer base. Carol advises businesses to focus on analyzing and understanding one's own data rather than comparing with competitors.
What can entrepreneurs do about their strengths and weaknesses in order to build a successful business?
Carol advises entrepreneurs to assess their skills honestly, identify gaps, and seek out partners or employees who can complement their abilities. Recognize your limitations and borrow the strengths of others to create a more balanced and effective team. Focus on what you do best so that you can maximize productivity and efficiency in those areas.
For example, while Carol excels at networking and business development, she recognizes her limitations in finance and technical project management. To compensate, she partners with individuals who excel in these areas. This strategy not only strengthens her business by covering all bases effectively but also frees her to devote more energy to her areas of expertise, driving growth and innovation.
How does personal experience as an immigrant to the US and Asian culture impact business and purpose?
Carol initially moved to the U.S. from Australia at 19, aiming to expand her opportunities. Her professional journey began in the digital marketing agency world, heavily involved with fashion e-commerce. After gaining extensive experience and realizing the underrepresentation of Asian and female leaders at the top tiers of businesses, she felt compelled to take control of her own destiny. This realization led her to join and eventually take over Qode Space in 2018, aiming to break through the glass ceilings she encountered and drive change within the tech industry.
Carol envisions transforming Qode Space into an incubator for young women in tech, emphasizing the need for enhanced STEM education in North America. She advocates for programs that engage girls in coding, SEO, and data analytics, aiming to empower a new generation of female tech leaders by providing essential skills and knowledge.
Furthermore, Carol plans to devote more time to A Major Asian Podcast. The platform highlights the unique challenges and successes within the Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) community. It allows Asian entrepreneurs and leaders to share their experiences, challenging stereotypes and celebrating achievements. The podcast seeks to inspire and empower its listeners by promoting a deeper understanding of the diverse identities within the AAPI community.
Chapters
00:00 Overcoming Challenges and Leaning on the Network
10:13 The Vision and Mission of Qode Space
15:26 The Common Mistake of Replicating Competitors
29:39 Using Data and Analytics to Inform Creative and Development Decisions
32:57 Balancing Design Aesthetics with Conversion Optimization
38:37 The Importance of Mentors and Community Support
43:53 Impact of American Westernized culture on mom entrepreneurs
46:40 Future vision for Qode Space
50:49 Major Asians: Highlighting and Supporting Asian-Founded Brands
Transcript
Carol Shih
You know, it's a constant three wheel problem that keeps coming up. And I think that how do I overcome it? There's many different ways. One, I utilize my community. I think a lot of us are on texting basis for that reason. I'm open to sharing my challenges and I find a lot of female founders doing the same thing. So I always say, it's kind of like your phone a friend list. I would text you like, my gosh, this is happening to me. Do you have an SOW issue? Can I share?
And I really lean on my mentors as well. I try to gather a lot of very knowledgeable mentors in my industry. And I lean on them to give me some insights, whether or not it's a growing pain of mine or it's a personal challenge when it comes to becoming an entrepreneur. So it's leaning on my network and leaning on the shortness of my knowledge and gaining more from the people around me.
Glynis Tao
Welcome to Chase Your Dreams, a podcast for fashion entrepreneurs who want to build a purposeful and profitable clothing business so they can make a living doing what they love. I'm your host, Glynis Tao, an apparel business consultant and SEO specialist with 20 years apparel industry experience. I'm also a mom to a wonderfully energetic little boy named Chase.
Carol Shi is an Australian Taiwanese immigrant and founder of Qode Space, a female and minority owned web development agency. With a focus on quality, community, transparency and purpose, Carol is committed to fostering inclusivity in the tech industry for women and minority leaders. She aims to balance the industry by delivering outstanding and high quality design development work for e-commerce business owners.
Additionally, Carol serves as a senior partner for Major Asians, an organization dedicated to providing exclusive and unique branding strategies to the AAPI community.
Welcome, Carol. It's so nice to have you here today. Thanks for joining me on the podcast.
Carol Shih
Thank you so much, Glynis. You did such a great job introduction and for a lot of these guests, I think I want to bring you everywhere I go now. Like, you're such a good intro.
Glynis Tao
I'll help you do your intros. If you want me to. I don't know. Thank you. I've never been given that compliment. So I'll take it. We had met through the 10th house, which is a membership community founded by Rebecca Minkoff and Ali Wyatt. That's part of the female founder collective. We chatted a few times and really hit it off. One of the things that really struck me about you is your outgoing personality that's very open and approachable.
You're like one of those people who's funny and easy to get along with and you make people feel at ease.
Carol Shih
Thank you. I, to be honest, you and I have been connecting for so long, I forgot how we met. So good, good note to bring back to 10th House.
Glynis Tao
No, I had to do some digging there.
Carol Shih
But yeah, and I did remember it stood out because 10th House was such a big organization with so many female founders. And one, it was easy for you and I to spot each other because we were both in tech. And two, we were also one of the few that are Asian and female founders in the group, I feel like. So I don't know, I feel like you and I connected right away there, but thank you for the compliment. I am known to be quite the talker. And I think that's why I got invited to your podcast.
Glynis Tao
And you're also a mompreneur like me too. You have a little boy, right? And how old is he?
Carol Shih
Yeah, I have a little boy that's about two and a half, almost three. And I am also in my second trimester welcoming a second one soon.
Glynis Tao
Congratulations.
Carol Shih
Thank you.
Glynis Tao
So we're going to be talking more about balancing business with motherhood a little later on in this podcast. But first, let's talk about you. Something I recently found out about you is that you are super connected. You're like a super connected person. Like you've introduced me to a few really awesome people in your network. You come across to me as being extroverted. Are you an extrovert? Would you say?
Carol Shih
That's a good question. People think that way. But in order to be perceived as an extrovert is not just, you know, you're very outgoing, but I think that as an extrovert, you depend on that based on how you gain energy. And to be honest, even though my husband's very quiet, he's actually more extroverted because he likes to be with people and he gains energy when he's outside. Whereas I have the spark of energy to go and network and connect with people. But then I want to be at home three days straight and talk to nobody.
So I don't know, I think it's an introvert extrovert kind of a thing. But but I am a super connector. Because I feel like it started off when I was an immigrant, and I'm still an immigrant. I'm Australian Taiwanese. And I came to the States when I was 19. And I realized that when I come here with no family, I don't have anyone to depend on but myself and my network and my community. So I was very big in joining in communities, being in part of organizations. Even when I was in college, I was like the Taiwan Student Association president because I really want to be inclusive and bring people like me together. And I guess that extended to my career. And I just found a lot of success when I bring in the right people and connect people to the right groups. And it's, it's a passion of mine. And I think I can still see that.
Glynis Tao
Okay. So it's something that you saw as a need that you needed to do, I guess, when you first moved to the States, and just kind of became more natural to you. And then you built your community and network that way.
Carol Shih
Yeah. I mean, I came in and I think the label that I got was I'm a FOB, fresh off the boat. I speak fluent English. I went to an American school in Taiwan. But I don't know anything about the American culture, lingo, slang, how to use a credit card. I came from a country that only uses cash, right? So a lot of times how I survive is asking questions, be shamelessly asking questions.
And I start to realize that's kind of what community is for when you build yourself around good friends, people you trust. Some people use this like a church group, some people use this like different organizations. And those are your kind of safety net to ask these dumb questions. And of course, back in the day, not gonna share our age group, but we didn't have Google to always give you the answers. So we have the neighborhood and the people around you to kind of support you and give you some tips. So yeah, I find that very valuable and I still do. I still think that helping people is the most genuine way to build long-term relationships.
Glynis Tao
And so you still apply that to your business. Like, do you have any tips to give to someone who, you know, wants to start building their network?
Carol Shih
Yeah, I think that I work a lot with brand owners, business owners, and I always tell them like, listen, let's say you are a brand owner for a shoe company. You are an expert at making shoes, which means that your network is probably through textile production manufacturer, right? You might be an expert in all that, but that's not part of just doing business, right? You also have to know 3PL. You have to know, you know, maybe some development work, web development, or like e-commerce, marketing. Like there's all sorts of things that's outside of your wheelhouse and you just simply can't do it all.
As much as you want to be a unicorn, if you spend time and try to go outside of your expertise, you really stretch yourself too thin. And I think the best way to approach it as a business owner is to recognize number one, your weakness and your strength. And once you know that, my suggestion is find the people around you that will fill in your weakness.
Like for me, I'm like you said, I'm very good at networking. I'm very great at business development and sales per se, but, maybe I'm not great at finance. I am not good at like maybe understanding project management when it comes to technical skills internally. So I have to lean on a great partner that can really fill in my weakness.
And I think that recognition, I found that very early on in my career to understand like, I need somebody like you who understands SEO and I need a good partnership. So then when clients ask me, hey, Carol, do you have anybody that you know that can do SEO? Then I know where to pull you in. So I think you and I already see a lot of examples of how we can work together based on our weaknesses and strengths.
Glynis Tao
So true. So, let's take a little step back and talk about starting your company, Qode Space. Can you tell us a little bit about your background and what inspired you to start Qode Space?
Carol Shih
Great question. So like I said, I came to the States when I was 19 and I'm an Australian citizen. And I knew that early on I wanted to stay in America to expand the opportunities. So in order to do that, I picked a very broad major in order to apply from working visa all the way to getting a green card. And so I picked communication and marketing. And while I was doing all of that, I had to start applying for a job right after my senior year in college. And it was very difficult because even though it's a very broad major, I have a lot of options. Not a lot of corporate companies supported work visa sponsorship, as well as green card. So it has to be very specific. And I was very lucky and I'm still grateful today because I fell into the digital marketing agency world. And at the time that digital agency was heavily invested in fashion e-commerce. So I then dove right into fashion, which was also one of my passions at the time.
Prior to that, I interned at Louis Vuitton. And so that was an easy step in for me to understand the fashion life cycle. And then I step into fashion e-commerce where I touch a lot of big brands such as the Juicy Coutures of the world, Seven for All Mankind, Splendid Alamos, especially a lot of denim brands because that's where the digital agency was growing from. So the Paige, the Hudsons that was born in LA, I was able to touch that as an e-commerce business from front end to back end, meaning like I was involved in studio production. I was involved in front end, back end, warehouse production, as well as marketing, SEO, paid search, paid ads. And I became an account director there.[
After seven years, I touched more than like 40, 50 brands, including beauty and fashion, some CPGs as well. And that's kind of how I gained all my experience. And then after that, of course, there's rise and fall of digital agency. Unfortunately, I got laid off due to the, I don't know, was it the political climate at the time or was it just how, you know, businesses get acquired, but I was let go. And then I worked at Alibaba for also a year and I gained a lot of cross-border experiences.
And after that, I kind of hit an epiphany. I realized that, you know, I work for so many years tirelessly without vacation. I finally got my green card obtained, but you know, I'm really working hard for another brand, for somebody else. And people like me and like you who are Asian and female, I don't see a lot of us at the top. I don't see us at advisory boards. I don't see us as CEOs, C levels. I always see us as middle management and we work so hard. And when it's time to cut budget and when it's time to let people go, we are always the one on the chopping board. And it was very hurtful for me because it kind of hit that, this is where my glass ceiling is. This is where I cannot move forward anymore. And so that was really hurtful and.
You know, again, through luck, while I was looking for a job in between, Qode Space was actually started by two developers, and they were great developers, but they didn't have any connection when it comes to building a business, networking, building in leads. So they were like, hey, Carol, you know, why don't you come forward and help us out? And then gave me a little equity. And that was 2018. And then before we know it, the two founders actually exited and I took on Qode Space in all, and I also found another partner, also a mom and also minority.
We really aligned on our core values and we rebranded Qode Space two years ago and it's been flying off since.
So it's a fantastic journey and I learned so much and as well as for myself and as well as how that industry works right now.
Glynis Tao
Amazing story. Wow. Thank you. I didn't know all of that background on it. I didn't know that you had acquired the company. Okay, so what were some of the initial challenges you faced when you started Qode Space? And how did you overcome them?
Carol Shih
My goodness, Glynis, how do we even? That's the big question.
Glynis Tao
Let's get those out of the way.
Carol Shih
You and I talk about this, right? I think being especially an agency owner, we worry about three things. It's client, sales and employees. So it's like always playing whack-a-mole. You're either worried about your sales pipeline. You're like, how do I survive next month? Right. Or you worry about the current clients complaining or you have to update or fix your operational system. There might be a pricing issue. There might be you know, technical issues within your services that you're providing. And if everything goes well, you might have an employee issue who's telling you like, I need a raise. I want more from this company or, you know, it's a constant, constant, a three wheel problem that keeps coming up.
And I think how do I overcome it? There's many different ways. One, I utilize my community. I think a lot of us are texting basis for that reason. I'm open to sharing my challenges and I find a lot of female founders doing the same thing. So I always say it's kind of like your phone a friend list. I would text you like, my gosh, this is happening to me. Do you have an SOW issue? Can I share? Like, can you share your insight to me? Or, and I really lean on my mentors as well. I try to gather a lot of very knowledgeable mentors in my industry and I lean on them to give me some insights, whether or not it's a growing pain of mine or it's a personal challenge when it comes to becoming an entrepreneur. So honestly, it goes back to what we talked about in the beginning. It's leaning on my network and leaning on the shortness of my knowledge and gaining more from the people around me.
Glynis Tao
Yeah, that's so interesting. And important to be able to have a community and network people who you can turn to for support. I'm just wondering, like, women seem to reach out more maybe, and share their problems, maybe more so than men would. I'm just guessing because sometimes I think men maybe it's harder for them to kind of admit that, I need help with something, but in the case of women, I find that almost all the women I know, women business owners are just there to help one another and to support one another. And there's just like so many like now, fortunately, like communities, groups, just like the 10th house, right? I was talking about earlier that has all these people there that not allowed us to meet, right? And now, feel like we're like peers to one another as well. And we're sort of on that texting basis, which is, it's nice, right?
Carol Shih
Yeah. I mean, I feel like it's also culture. I mean, in the beginning, it was difficult to be vulnerable and admit that you don't know something, especially in our world as female founders and as Asians. We're always taught, at least in my culture in Taiwanese, it's like, hey, you're a girl, shut up and go to the corner and just do what you're supposed to do.
But it's hard to raise your hand and be like, hey, I need help. How do I do this? What does this mean? How do I get to the next level? And I think it's trial and error. The more I do it, the more, just like you said, these female founders just gather and lean in and be like, I got you.
Let me help you, let's go on a Zoom call and I'll share everything with you. No gatekeeping, let me just share my insight. And that was so heartwarming. And I realized, like, I need to do the same thing. The more I extend myself to help, the more help comes my way as well. And you're so right. It is that female founder community that I found a lot of comfort and also found a lot of success.
Glynis Tao
Yeah, absolutely. Let's just go talk about, okay, I want to ask you about your company's vision and mission statement. Because I saw that it's, you have it on your website. Do you want to talk about that? What is your mission and vision of Qode Space? And how has it evolved since its inception or has it evolved?
Carol Shih
It definitely evolved because one, the founders changed. And two, we kind of honed in on our branding and realized that we need to step out and put a lot more emphasis on who we are and who we would like to serve. And I think that the uniqueness of being in the tech industry and in the web development industry, like we're not just doing marketing or social ads, where it's a little bit easier to market.
We are actually experts in web development, which means we are doing engineering work, development work, which is a very foreign ground for a lot of owners, right? Because when it comes to development, it's always like, you just, you know, zeros and ones. And a lot of times there's a lot of miscommunication as well as translation issues.
And that's kind of where I come in is to bridge that gap because I understand both business owner perspective, business perspective, and then I also understand development and engineering progress and process. So to bridge that gap, I think we kind of stand out. Number one, we are all female founders and we have extensive knowledge when it comes to development work. This is not just a men's world where everybody is in computer science, but there is a high rise of women that's in the tech world right now that have great knowledge, especially like my partner, her background used to be in SpaceX and she manages a team of developers as an excellent quality assurance. Nothing passes her eyes. She's the best quality assurance person I've ever met. And having her as a partner really gave me more confidence to sell who we are. And I think that that identity really brought us into our core values. And one of the biggest ones we added as of last year when we were rebranding is transparency.
So on top of quality being first, that's the reason why Qode Space starts with a Q is we put quality first, which is something that in the development world is very challenging. Cause you never know, people are like, I built a beautiful website. And then we flip and look under the hood. It's like, man, this was garbage. This is like Jenga. Like if I add another line of code, your entire website breaks.
And you're an SEO expert, you see through that immediately when you see how taggings work, product tagging, everything is a mess because they charge high, they shorten their timeline and whether they did it cheap or did it expensive, nobody knows what development really means. So I really pushed out quality.
And we talk about community, which is how our entire network was set up. And then we added being purposeful, who we intentionally wanna work with. And that's where, again, our female and minority identity comes in. We really wanna give out our talent and our skill sets to those that are more in need, who don't always get the eyes of the big agencies out there. And then we added the fourth core value, which is transparency. So, you know, a lot of people, especially you're talking about challenges, a lot of people from the same industry people have laughed at me when they looked at my proposal and be like, you're showing too much Carol. You're telling them way too much of our secrets because line item by line item. I tell them exactly how many hours it's going to take. Even though it's an estimate, it's like building a house. Yes. Building this bathroom could take like, you know, five to 10 days, right?
but I still give out that range for people to understand this is the effort that's gonna put out. I'm not everybody does that. They padded hours at random places, they lie or they add other services that might not even take that long, but then they'll say that's 40 hours, but you and I both know it takes 10 minutes because they're lying or being deceitful to people that doesn't understand development.
So I see through a lot of that working in the tech industry and I really, hone in and really, really kind of push for that four major core value, which brings into our statements that are and mission statement is that we're here to support help, even though our approach is a little different. And even though our margins not be as high, but we're not here to grow fast and big, we're here to grow long term as a boutique agency that serves.
Glynis Tao
That's great. So your your four core values, quality, community, purpose and transparency, right? Yes, so great values. I just wanted to ask you a question just sort of like, what is a common mistake that you see for most econ brands when it comes to their website development work? Like sort of the back end stuff, you've sort of touched on it earlier and I find having too many apps installed slows down their site. And, you know, most of them are not necessary. Like, is there anything else that you have seen?
Carol Shih
Yeah, good question. I think like, even when you say multiple apps, like way too many have really drags down the website. But I think it comes from the mindset of a business owner. And I see a lot of business owners get triggered when their competitor is doing something new. So for example, if you're a pet brand, like you're, you're selling pet products and you see your competitor coming out with like a new feature, like, Ooh, a bundle or like a buy one, get one off or something like that. Or they did a refresh or rethink or something like that, that in your eyes you might feel like, my gosh, you're making so much money because of this new update.
And then they come to people like us as a third party service provider and be like, I want the same thing. And the first thing I'll always say is number one, you don't know how much they invested. And number two, you don't know how much they are putting into researching what their customer wants.
And this happens so often because even if your competitor is selling the same thing as you, your customer behavior could still be different because you have different marketing strategies, you have different approaches and you have different eyes on your brand. So I would always say, and this is something that's so important and I'm still continue to tell my current clients and the new clients that I see is that spend and invest in market research.
User behavior research is so important right now. Data is key. Your data should be telling you exactly where to go. If you don't know how to build your website, you don't know what features to add, you don't know what apps to do, and you're just twiddling your thumb, and let me tell you, your marketing team will always ask you to spend, because you spend more, you get more. That's just how the marketing world works. Because you're fighting before the Q4 big hit holiday season,
Glynis Tao
So everybody wants you to know like, hey, spend now, spend now. And then so you can gain a tub of the funnel. So then by Q4, you have enough email lists so you can blast and then you have drip campaigns and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. They're all true, but at the same time, Q1, Q2, and Q3 even towards the end is a great time for you to data layer your website, making sure that your GA4, your Google Analytics or any reporting you're there.
You have a data analyst to tell you what those data mean. That's not your expert. Find somebody to tell you what is my user behavior? Who is he? Who is she? Where is she clicking? Where is she not adding to cart? Where is she lingering too long? Is she clicking onto the videos? And a lot of brand owners spend so much money on branding, content making, because of TikTok and Instagram.
They're just spending so much money on creating beautiful photos and beautiful videos. But do you know if people like it? Do you know if people aren't clicking into it? Do you know it's helping your conversion? And that's where the user behavior analysis comes in. So I always say, don't look at what your competitor is doing because they will panic you. It's just like back in school, right? Everybody else is getting a certain grade and you're like, why am I getting this? Before panicking and start self-doubting.
Look at where your mistakes are. That's pivot accordingly. And because everybody is a little bit different. So I would say that's like one of the most common things is I have to have a come to Jesus talk with a lot of my, my clients and say, okay, let's just, let's take a deep breath. Let's do some breath work at the zoom meeting. And number one is let's look at your Google analytics. Let's pull that up and see what that looks like month over month. And then we can use that data to see how you wanna tweak the website accordingly.
Glynis Tao
I think that's one of the big things that you mentioned on your site, I noticed that put an emphasis on that your agency is mission. It's like you're driven by data, right? Like you use data and analytics to inform creative decisions and development decisions, the creative designs and development designs.
Carol Shih
Yeah, I don't feel good when I tell people to do something that I know down the road they're going to change it again. I mean, money is scarce right now. It's not like back in the day, fashion people just have like tons of money to just change things, you know? I always say, let's do some A-B testing before you put all your eggs in the basket. Right? Let's change it up and see if this landing page works better than the other. Let's see if this add to cart button moving it up is going to help you with your conversion, right?
And I always say that because I think that it's maybe it's the Asian in me, spending money, you got to spend it smart, instead of throwing money at it and hoping it works.
Glynis Tao
Yeah, so true. And I think with maybe a lot of designers, creatives, especially they're very emotional and very have the emotional connection, perhaps more to their brand and design. So maybe it is very hard for them to step outside and look at things more from an objective point of view. But, you know, it's business at the end of the day, they need to make sales. So they need a website that converts.
Carol Shih
I mean, all the pretty stuff, you know, that you see is important. The pictures, but you're so right. It's the emotional talk always, always because it's your baby. Number one, nobody wants to hear that your baby's ugly, right? Nobody wants to hear that. But sometimes it's our job, right? To be like, listen, we got to do something about this. Like, I know you think it's beautiful, but this is not a magazine spread. This is an e -commerce website. And there's still such a thing as best practices. We still have to follow that rule because it connects to conversion, right? Unless you're like the Gucci, the Louis Vuitton's of the world, you don't care and your website is more of a brochure and you have tons of stores that you can still drive in traffic. Like we really look at, the science. We need to look at the data, right? So yeah, the emotional part of it is so true.
Glynis Tao
Yeah, it's a hard part for my job as well to have to crack and overcome it as well. I just kind of have to be gentle. You can't say someone's baby's ugly. Yeah. Sometimes, you know, you just gotta tell them the truth. Somebody has to break it to them.
Carol Shih
Yeah, I'm a little too straightforward sometimes and I have to be like, so I just wanted to let you know. Show you some examples. So I feel you.
Glynis Tao
Most of your clients when they come to you, are they looking for a new site or are they looking to refresh or are they looking to replatform?
Carol Shih
I feel like a lot of the brand owners, going back to what we're saying, their expertise lies within their product. So when they come to us, a lot of times there are probably, there might be some glowing issues, like glaring issues about their website. Like, I'm just not converting and I don't understand why. Or I know my performance is really bad because I opened up my mobile site and 60, 70% of your traffic always goes through your mobile. And we would run a free audit, which by the way, audience that are listening right now, we do offer free audit. And it has been a tremendous help for a lot of business owners because it's a report showing you where your website health is at.
And when you take a look at that, that's basically letting you know what issues you have on your website. And that is when we have more conversation. But I want to say a lot of times clients come to us with a glaring issue that they must fix immediately. And that issue usually leads to 10 other issues. It's whether the previous development team didn't really do a good job building your foundation or you know, you over exceeded like you and I talked about, you just downloaded way too many apps and you don't understand that certain theme could help you eliminate half of those apps cheaper because apps on Shopify store could be very expensive.
One of them's $30, $40, $100 per month. And then before you know it, you're spending like 20K a month on all these apps when you can spend $300 for a theme that has half of those features up there. Then that project became re-theming because that re-theming project is gonna help you save money down the road. So a lot of these explanations, a lot of the planning is what I do is, okay, let's stop for a bit. Let's look at your whole P&L and financial planning for 2024, 2025. If you go this route, this is how much you're gonna spend. If you go the other route and just make us do better cleanup, it will be a patchwork. And then a year later, you and I are gonna have another phone call about how to spend more to save more.
So yeah, it really varies. I always go back to do an audit first. One, let's do an app audit. And I want to tell you, nine out of ten times, too many apps. It's like the biggest one. I was like, all right, we got to cancel 20 of these apps. You really don't need it. And then number two, it's always tied to performance.
Glynis Tao
So interesting. I kind of think of it as like, you know, when you start to have car problems, it starts with this, like, it's the cars making a funny sound. And then you're like, shoot, what's that? You know, I better go take it to the mechanic and get it checked out. And you're like the mechanic, right? And they bring this, this website to you. And they're like, I have a glaring issue. Obviously, it's so do we, and then you open it up and look under the hood.
Carol Shih
I always tell my clients, I was like, I feel like I'm like a plumber because you never go and call a plumber until shit hits the fan.
Glynis Tao
Literally. Yeah.
Carol Shih
And by the time I'm in, first of all, plumbers visit you and we already have to pay them whether or not there's an issue or not. Just for them to show up. Yeah. And that's kind of how we are. I have to get a developer that knows, understands the function of a website, pop up of the hood. And you know, a lot of times this is not a problem. We just have to fix your piping. You know, not a big deal. Couple hours, we got you. But majority of the time, because the shit hit the fan already. It's like, you got a molding issue. You got pipeline disconnection. You have this and this, this and this. And you know, and it never feels good as a business owner to realize that I really need to use this bathroom and how long is this gonna take and how much is it gonna be?
So it's always a big headache and they treat us really like a plumber. It's like, they're just like, can we go anywhere cheaper? I'm like, yeah, of course, of course. There's a whole country, India, that you can find that is a lot cheaper. But again, it goes back to quality, right? And transparency and how much trust we have with each other to know that I'm really here thinking for your good. And I'm building a much better foundation so that in the future, when you call me, it's for maintenance, not because really things are flying around.
Glynis Tao
So I just wanted to go back and talking about, you know, your business and sort of overcoming challenges part. If you had, do you have any mentors or people that have worked with you throughout your entrepreneurial journey? Who has been your biggest supporter and mentor through your entrepreneurial journey and how important is the community? We've kind of talked about how important it is already how your community support has been in overcoming challenges?
Carol Shih
Yes, I have mentors, but I also like to call them my office therapists. Because a lot of times, you know, it's during panic moments, right? When we're like, my gosh, what am I going to do? And in my previous digital agency, I came across a female VP that was always so even keen and I watched her as she is in a room full of dominant men and she can speak so powerfully and so confidently and that draws me near her. And I think one of the questions I asked her was like, how do I be like you one day and not let my anxiety or my insecurity drive my conversation with my team? Then we talked a lot more about, you know, managing up, right? Managing our own insecurities and really putting a mirror in front of myself and understanding where I'm vulnerable and where I need help as a leader. But I think like every season, the support that you need, especially entrepreneurship, we keep growing, we push ourselves to a new level. Your mentors and the people that you need around you keep changing.
And I think that's one of the best things I love about networking is I also learn from my peers. And like right now, I joined the senior partner in the firm, Major Future, and then we branch out to do Major Asians. That group also was so beneficial for me because I then learned about the beginning stages of building a brand, like brand DNA, understanding brand story.
And then later on, they start building a website, which is where I come in. So I realized that my expertise lies within about stage three, stage four of a branding cycle. Whereas the branding part of the DNAs and beginning of stages and you then come in more like stage one, stage two. So then my mentors change and my expertise has to change and I continue to learn. So in that field, I try to find people that are like-minded.
I ask a lot of questions. Again, I think I'm relentless in asking questions. I pull people in like you and I go, hey, let's get on a call. I just wanna ask you some questions about what else I can learn more and how can we mutually help each other out. So it's a constant learning stage being an entrepreneur in my opinion.
Glynis Tao
Constant learning and constant juggling because not only do you have a business, you also have a little kid as well. So it's like, I feel this constant juggle of not feeling guilty when you have to do your work and then you're like, not being able to pay attention and play with my kid right now, because I got to get this thing done or I'm like with my kid, but then I'm like, shoot, I got to apply back to this client. So how do you balance running your business with the demands of motherhood?
Carol Shih
I think that was like the most common question I get. And I don't know if I particularly like that question of like, hey, how do you do it all? Because men don't get asked that question. Men don't really get asked that question when they're an entrepreneur. How do you do it all? You're a dad and you're like an entrepreneur. You do everything.
Honestly, when I get asked that question, I think about my husband. He also works from home and I am so grateful, so lucky that he's a very involved dad. He's the one who picks him up. He also cooks and he is very involved in the day to day of my child. Hence the reason why you and I can get on calls and I can pick up sales calls or go to conferences and moderate events at night and all that.
And when you say like, how do I deal with guilt? I think the mom guilt never leaves, right? It's like, we're never doing enough. And that's something, it's biological. Like the baby comes out of us, we know how they feel. And it's, even if I'm not there, I'm thinking about them, right? And now I'm pregnant again. One, I'm like, why did I do this again? Did I forget how difficult this is? I'm gonna do this all over again. But it's also part of like, you know, a certain age group, we want our kid to have siblings, we still envision being that family that we always wanted. And it's like, you want it all.
I don't think it's like, how do you do it all? I think it's because we want it all. We wanna be a business owner. We wanna be a great mom. We wanna be a great leader. We wanna be a good friend, you know? And how do we balance that out? It's like every day is a little bit different. And if you have an amazing partner and you have amazing community, that's why they say it takes a village.
And the American Westernized culture, I know you're Canadian, I'm very much looking forward to seeing if I can move there. But I am already Australian, I already have two passports, maybe I need to calm down. But I truly think that I learned that the hard way about American culture is that there's a lot of personal space, people wanna keep to themselves, but that part really has been hurtful to a lot of female founders is that, you gotta do it all. And I just don't believe that. And I feel like it's all about your community and your village that helps you out. I have great friends that are willing to step in and be like, hey, you and your husband should go take a break. We're happy to watch your kids, you know? And that's like without grandparents' help as well.
So I don't do it all, but I want it all. And so every day it's whack-a-mole. Like today I might not be a hundred percent of a mom, but I know I did amazing being a founder. And some days I am very tired being a founder, pushing for leads, getting conversions, right? But I know today I spent a lot of time with my son in the backyard and we played catch. And I think in his eyes, I scored a hundred percent.
So you just have to, you know, tell yourself, don't score yourself too low. I think you're doing the best you can. And that's what we strive for in life.
Glynis Tao
Amazing. I love that. I think I need to find a better way to rephrase that question in terms of the balancing cart, but maybe it's more of an integration. It's like part of your life, you know, your work, your life, family, it's like, things that you want, you want to do it all. But how do you get that done? How are you, you know, and some, some way, somehow, we figure it out. Like, you know, not like it kids come with a manual, right? They're not born with a how to guide how to parent, how to, you know, so, you know, I have to give credit to all those hardworking mommas out there.
Carol Shih
Not easy. Yeah. You're on the same boat.
Glynis Tao
Let me just ask you quickly about the Major Asian podcast that you are working on. So how did this all come about? How did you get started on it? And why was the reason like that you got involved in this project?
So Major Asians stems from the Major Futures Foundation and organization. And they are a New York founded branding firm with a handful of very talented senior partners. And I came in as a new senior partner around, I wanna say like three months ago. And I think the couple of Asians in there, found us to have a lot of mutual connections as well as mutual interests in really being inclusive in supporting Asian founded brands. And we also see a huge opportunity where Asian brands such as the Korea, Singapore, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong's of the world that want to enter into the North America region, especially like with the buying power of North America.
I think a lot of Asians brands are looking to see, well, you know what, if you're already manufacturing in our country for so long, we want a piece of that pie as well. And you and I both know like when we go back and visit Asia, we always want to bring some of these brands back. We're like, my God, this face mask is amazing. Or like the snack is amazing. We want to like, you know, blow it up here in LA or in Vancouver or in like all these different places that has a large population of Asians.
And especially during AAPI month, we talked so much about how to, I think one of our quotes are, you know, rising tide, raise all boats. So, and there's also a saying in Chinese that, you know, the good nutrient flows within your own family. You don't really share it out. And so that kind of brings us to hone in on this Asian community of how do we support each other to elevate the brands that want to expand in the North American region. And I think there's also culturally a trust that is unspoken, especially with Asian communities. It's like, if you're Korean and then you bump into somebody in, let's say, like you said, like Canada or somewhere that's like the diversity is not as widespread and you see another Korean. Just like me, when I see a Taiwanese in the middle of a random place in LA and we don't find ourselves very often. It's like immediate connection, immediate trust. And that's just kind of how that connection works. And we're kind of rolling off of that. So that's kind of how Major Asians came about. And that podcast we are starting is focusing on highlighting a lot of Asian brands that are starting off as a startup here in the United States and in Canada and what their journey looks like and really just highlight a lot of these brand owners and product owners and see where they're going and how can we support as a community.
Glynis Tao
Amazing work that you're doing and I love that and I feel like there is that connection just between us as well, both as being you know, Asian women, business owners. I mean, I don't think it doesn't matter what geographically where you are, whether you're American or Canadian, I still feel like we face a lot of the same things, same issues. And so that's great that you are part of this podcast to really spread that awareness and talking, actually just talking about these issues that the AAPI community is facing and addressing that through your podcast, using it as a platform, right? To bring that awareness and have those conversations often don't talk about?
Carol Shih
Always. I think, like, especially as Asians, we suck at talking about our own problems. We suck at asking for help. Right. And so I was telling my partner, so I was like, we just got to ask some tough questions. And I remember I was at an Asian founding network event, and I was hosting my small group. And I kind of had to force people and say, like, hey, go around and tell each other, how can we support? Why are you here in this networking event? And then you kind of see everybody like, well, you know, we're just here to network. And I had to stop and I go, no, no, no, no, no. You and I both know you came in here for something, right? Do you need an investor? Are you looking for a web developer? Are you looking for an expert? Let's be bold and ask because you never know what you're going to receive.
And then you start seeing the people start opening up. And I think that's such a cultural thing, right? No matter what Asian you are, we're always about being respectful. Don't ask, don't be too bold. But I think that's a mentality we need to change because one, people can't read your mind. And two, we need to overcome that culture in order for us to grow to another level. So it's time for us to really stand up, ask ourselves what we want and how can we get the universe to help us out by speaking out loud about what we need.
Glynis Tao
Cheers. Here's to that, you know? I want to give you a high five. It's so hard to have those conversations. And even as Asian women ourselves, kind of like, yeah, we know that's there, but we just don't want to talk about it. Let's just kind of pretend it's not really happening.
Carol Shih
And just not talk about it ever. And like, I love one of my mentors, she told me she's like, what's the worst is going to happen? I don't know, we're gonna get no, then you get a no. And then you move on. And once you recognize the biggest damage, it's not your reputation, it’s just people going, sorry, I can't help. That's it. Let's keep asking.
Glynis Tao
Yeah, it's an automatic no if you don't ask.
Carol Shih
See, you get it. We all get the concept, but it's hard to step out of your comfort zone.
Glynis Tao
It really is. And it's like taking me almost a lifetime to learn those lessons. Yeah, it's a process. But that's awesome. And before we we end off here, I want to ask you about your future plans for Qode Space and A Major Asian podcast. What do you see yourself, both your company and podcast? Where do you see yourself in the next five years?
Carol Shih
Five years is far. I'm a planner myself. I'm a Virgo and I love to plan. And I think the last couple of years being an entrepreneur, I learned to not plan too far because our long-term plan is like, I'm gonna be a millionaire and I'm gonna get in five years. But I think there's always that realistic step that you really need to plan out. And for me, the short-term is I am pregnant right now, I'm having a baby in November. So my biggest thing is I wanna take a maternity leave and really take care of myself because I need to make sure I am watered so that I'm able to provide for the team and for my family. So the biggest thing for the Qode Space future is looking for somebody to fill in my spot during maternity, which we already have things planned out.
But in the long-term, I see Qode Space really being an incubator for a lot of young females that want to learn more in tech. I am very big in education. I think that whether it's Canada or United States, there's a lot more investment that needs to happen in the STEM program to encourage girls to learn about coding, to learn about like what SEO is, what paid ads are, and a little bit deeper into data analytics, push them to do some computer science classes, you know, which is again, still an unpopular category in a lot of the educations.
So I see Qode Space continue to grow as a boutique agency. And I see myself investing a lot more time in A Major Asians because my passion personally is still to be very inclusive and support the people that look like me, that understands the struggle. Because I think being an immigrant here in the United States really taught me one, of course, the importance of community, but also to support. And I think that brings me so much joy when I see the younger version of me getting that help when I didn't have it back in the day. So that's kind of like always been my strive and my motivation to keep pushing on to do what I do.
Glynis Tao
So from that point, I just let me ask you one more question. What advice would you give to aspiring entrepreneurs based on your own experiences and lessons learned?
Carol Shih
I think that I always say this. If you're looking at your business, James Clear said, you don't rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems. And I think that's a quote that I really pulled close to my heart because I'm an operational and process person.
And I think that before you're thinking too far, like you said, where is your five-year, 10-year plan? I think before you even do that, you have to look at your systems in your business and see, is this system really going to lead me to that goal that I want? So one, asking for help, understanding your own weaknesses and surround yourself with people that will be willing to help you to kind of fulfill that weakness, but also really understands that your system, the process, your operations, everything should align with your long-term goals. So I truly live that by the heart.
Glynis Tao
Amazing. Where can people find you if they want to get in touch with you?
Carol Shih
You can find me on LinkedIn. I do post quite a bit there. You can also add me on social. My social name is Carol Shih, but my Instagram name is K-A-R-O-L and Z as in zebra, karolz. And my husband is a photographer, so a lot of the photos is a lie. I do not always look like that in person. Glynis knows that, but yes, you can find me in a lot of places and you can also find me on QodeSpace.com when you contact us.
Glynis Tao
Thank you so much, Carol, for being here today and talking to me, sharing your journey, your entrepreneurial journey with us. I had such a blast.
Carol Shih
Thank you so much. This is such a wonderful podcast. We'll be spreading the word for you and I appreciate your friendship and your partnership. It's been so great connecting with you.
Maggie Lord, founder of Rustic Wedding Chic, shares her journey of starting, scaling and selling her online publication while balancing motherhood. In this episode, you will learn about how Maggie started with blog writing and eventually worked with vendors in the wedding industry, diversified her revenue streams, and adopted new digital platforms to grow her audience, up until she sold the company to David’s Bridal. Maggie also talks about her current role as a strategic advisor to female-founded brands and shares her advice for aspiring entrepreneurs.
About Maggie Lord
Maggie Lord was an early pioneer in the online digital wedding media space, establishing her media company Rustic Wedding Chic in 2008. As a founder and CEO of Rustic Wedding Chic, Maggie led the company for 12 years before it was acquired by David’s Bridal in 2020. Maggie is also the author of six books. Today, Maggie has become a sought after strategic advisor to female founded brands allowing her to focus on sharing her knowledge and expertise with other like-minded entrepreneurs, startups, and small businesses. Maggie and her businesses have been featured in the New York Times, Fast Company, Forbes, Business Insider, Success Magazine, and much more.
Prioritizing and setting boundaries is key. When her children were younger, Maggie would tackle the most challenging business tasks during uninterrupted times, like during her children’s naps. Now that her children are all in school, she maximizes work productivity when they are out of the house so that she can fully engage with them when they are home—thus balancing professional commitments with quality family time.
Diversifying Revenue Streams
Having multiple revenue streams to buffer against market volatility is crucial for maintaining business sustainability and encouraging growth amid changing market conditions and consumer preferences. Rustic Wedding Chic initially relied on display ads. With the decline of ad effectiveness around 2013-2014, Maggie shifted towards branded content and affiliate marketing, then launched a vendor directory for rustic wedding services.
Starting a Business
Take the first step without overthinking the entire process. Start small, validate your idea, and gradually build from there. During her own wedding planning, Maggie identified a gap in the market which lacked digital resources for rustic weddings. She created Rustic Wedding Chic as a blog to fill this niche, gathering and sharing curated content and images from photographers to inspire and assist other brides. It quickly established a significant following due to the uniqueness and timeliness of her platform.
Scaling Sustainably
Focus on building a strong foundation before expansion, and master one area before adding new elements. Understanding the capacity for fulfilling increased demands is important to avoid overextension. Entrepreneurs should consider strategic timing and resource allocation to ensure that when opportunities for scaling arise, the business is prepared to handle them without compromising quality or operational stability.
Selling a Business
When preparing to sell, businesses can reach out to their ideal potential buyers. Maggie crafted a shortlist of potential buyers who could benefit from a direct relationship with her established audience. She contacted key decision-makers, sharing her intent to sell and explore possible synergies. These preparations allowed her to approach the sale thoughtfully, aligning with a buyer, David's Bridal, that matched her business’s needs and future growth potential.
Chapters
00:00 Balancing Motherhood and Entrepreneurship
09:32 Building an Online Presence
16:09 Diversifying Revenue Streams
36:37 Challenges for Entrepreneurs and the Role of a Strategic Advisor
46:22 Balancing Business and Family
53:59 Future Projects and Writing a Book on Business and Motherhood
Transcript
Maggie Lord
You know, the reason why I shifted to this after leaving David's was because I was so desperate as a, especially I was a young entrepreneur, right? I was like 27, 26, 27 when I launched Rustic Wedding Chic. You know, I was desperate over those years. If I could have had an advisor or, you know, quote unquote, business coach, someone who I met with a couple of times a month explained my challenges. I think I would have not woken up in the middle of the night so many times questioning, did I do this right? Is this the right direction for the company? You feel very isolated when you're an entrepreneur.
Glynis Tao
Welcome to Chase Your Dreams, a podcast for fashion entrepreneurs who want to build a purposeful and profitable clothing business so they can make a living doing what they love. I'm your host, Glynis Tao, an apparel business consultant and SEO specialist with 20 years apparel industry experience. I'm also a mom to a wonderfully energetic little boy named Chase.
Maggie Lord was an early pioneer in the online digital wedding media space, establishing her media company Rustic Wedding Chic in 2008. As a founder and CEO of Rustic Wedding Chic, Maggie led the company for 12 years before it was acquired by David’s Bridal in 2020. Maggie is also the author of six books. Today, Maggie has become a sought after strategic advisor to female founded brands allowing her to focus on sharing her knowledge and expertise with other like-minded entrepreneurs, startups, and small businesses.
Maggie and her businesses have been featured in the New York Times, Fast Company, Forbes, Business Insider, Success Magazine, and much more. You can find full information on Maggie at maggielord.com.
Welcome, Maggie. It's so nice to have you here today. Thanks for joining me on the podcast.
Maggie Lord
I'm so excited to be here.
Glynis Tao
So one of the reasons why I was interested in having you come on as a guest was because I wanted to learn about how you established yourself in the online digital wedding media space, sold your company to David's Bridal and became successful in business simultaneously while raising kids. Because I'm actually going through that myself and I only have one child. You have three boys, is that right?
Maggie Lord
I do, I have three little boys and yeah, it's certainly been an interesting wild ride to be an entrepreneur and have children. So I'm always open to sharing my thoughts about how people can do that the best because there's really, there's not a lot of playbooks that help you understand how you can do things successfully on both sides of that.
Glynis Tao
No, exactly. I mean, there's business books and then there's parenting books. Very rarely are they merge the two together. So I'm really glad that you're speaking about it. How old are your boys?
Maggie Lord
Yeah, so I have three and they're 13, nine and six. And so we've got a lot going on. And I think the most interesting thing is that because I was an entrepreneur before I had children, they've grown up only experiencing me as an entrepreneur, as a mom and watching me, you know, kind of dominate both sides of that, of being a mom and a business woman. But I think there's a lot of women who I've spoken to over the years who had children and then went on to do an entrepreneurial sort of journey for themselves. And I think it's sometimes harder to mesh those two things once you've kind of established being a mom first. So my kids have only known me as being, you know, my job has always been, some sort of entrepreneurial something.
Glynis Tao
Oh, that's great. I mean, it's sort of a role model to them, I guess.
Maggie Lord
Yeah, I love to share with them about, you know, entrepreneur ideas and things that they that you don't have to set up a formal company if you just have an idea. Like, I think it's important for kids to know that you can create a job that you have out of a dream or a passion or something.
And, you know, I tell them all the time my first entrepreneurial journey was when I was six and it was called Maggie Shell Shop. And I would go to the beach on the weekend and collect shells and then sell them. And I figured out very quickly, like that was endless inventory and it was free because I was taking it from the beach. It only cost my time, but then I could sell them.
And, you know, by the time I was in third grade, I was like selling binders to the girls in my class with like puffy paint pictures. And so I always had that like part of who I was and so when my kids come to me with like a crazy idea, I'm like, yeah, you're an entrepreneur. Of course you can do that. Why not?
Glynis Tao
Wow, that's interesting. I didn't know that about you that you had that entrepreneur spirit ever since you were a kid. Do you think your boys will have do the same or any of them showing that sort of that side of them?
Maggie Lord
I think they will. I think a little bit, they're all very sports minded. Like if you ask them all today, they're all gonna be some sort of pro athlete when they grow up. But, you know, I think what is interesting is to allow kids to have fun with the very simple things like they wanna have a lemonade stand. Like that's fun. And yet there's like really good lessons of like, well, how much are you gonna charge? Because how much did it cost for you to buy the ingredients?
And, you know, so I think when my kids have ideas like that and I have one who he's nine and he has a little podcast and he just talks about sports. Like I was like, yeah, sure. We can buy some inexpensive equipment. Like, sure. So yeah, there's signs from them that, you know, at least they feel like it's a safe, fun thing that they can try.
Glynis Tao
Oh, that's great. Yeah. So I'm always interested to talk to other mompreneurs about how they did it. And you're living proof that it's possible to create a successful business while embracing motherhood.
During my research, I found out that you used to be a middle school science teacher. And when you were planning your wedding, you were frustrated by how hard it was to find inspiration except for in physical magazines. So you decided to create your own blog called Rustic Wedding Chic. And you were able to grow that business fairly quickly within a year or so after starting the blog and you were able to leave your teaching job. That's amazing.
Maggie Lord
Yeah, so, you know, as I walk people through what I did was that, you know, I was teaching at a middle school and, you know, enjoying it wasn't my passion, but I was also finishing getting my master's degree at the time. And so, you know, being a teacher and going, you know, going to school for a master's degree, like the time that you need to do both those things kind of worked out well.
So I enjoyed it for sure, but I'm obviously very entrepreneurial. I'm a very creative person. And so, when I got engaged to my husband, this is 2008. So there's no Pinterest, there's no Instagram. And we live in Connecticut. We were planning to have a very rustic lakeside wedding where my family has a summer house in Northern Wisconsin. And there was no way to communicate to the vendors what I was looking for, right? This is even if you go back, like this is...and not everybody had a smartphone. I had a Blackberry that took really grainy pictures. So I couldn't even email great ideas to my vendors. So I had to figure out a way to communicate what I was looking for. And I started finding really pretty pictures on photographers' websites. So if you're a wedding photographer, obviously you show off your work. So I would find those pictures and I was trying to email them to the vendors and I was like, there has to be a better way.
There was a handful of wedding blogs as we called them at the time, right? It was just more of like a personal blog. And I loved them and like Style Me Pretty was big at the time. But none of them kind of really filled the niche that I was going for. And so I started reaching out to wedding photographers and saying, I love this wedding that you have on your site. Could I, you know, I now have a, you know, a little blog called Rustic Wedding Chic just for, you know, rustic and barn sort of weddings. And they were very happy to share their photography because they want, you know, and I linked back to them. They wanted to be able to get their images out there. And, and so we quickly built a large collection or library of amazing images and weddings. And it really was almost, we had a readership like instantly. It was amazing.
So if you look at the wedding content world today, there's hundreds and thousands of places you can go for content. There was probably five or six back then. And so talk about being like right place, right time. I was definitely fueled by this passion of what a bride was struggling with to try to plan. And so we I quickly created this whole idea that like I could be this 360 planning tool for her where she could find resources and inspiration and vendors. You know, and because we were so early in the game, if you typed in rustic wedding, anything to Google, we were the first, you know, six, seven, eight things that would come up in Google for years. And so establishing ourselves at that time, it really was important. I would have had no way of knowing how saturated the wedding market would become with content, but obviously we were in it in an earlier time, which clearly helped why the brand took off the way it did.
Glynis Tao
That's amazing. And indirectly, you were doing SEO.
Maggie Lord
Yeah, no, it's funny. I mean, I, you know, doing a lot of consulting work now, like, you know, SEO is a part of everything and there, I didn't have a strategy for that particularly, you know, and I...
The clients that I work with now are at all different stages in their business journey, but like, I didn't create a business plan. I didn't sit down and say, how am I going to take over this niche? You know, like I just didn't, I, I kind of built it on what I, I was the perfect consumer because I was going through the stage actively of trying to plan a wedding. And so I was like, would I use this? Yes. Is this something I need that I can't find? Yes. So I didn't spend a lot of time creating major business plans and things and it just really unfolded quickly for us.
Glynis Tao
You identified a problem, which you had and came up with a solution.
Maggie Lord
Right, which is, as we all know, that's how the best companies and brands are built when they're solving a problem for someone.
Glynis Tao
So how did you identify your target audience and what strategies did you use to reach them? I mean, you said that there are very few blogs out there anyways at that time. So like, as soon as you launched, like, did you already start having people like readers join or did you have to like, did you do any kind of marketing around that or?
Maggie Lord
Yeah, I mean, we didn't do much marketing, to be honest, there was no like major launch, right? Like we set up a blog platform and had amazing pictures and it, you know, it was growing. But because we were so early to the game, like I said, if you typed in rustic wedding, anything to Google, we came up first. And so we were able to kind of get a very nice organic readership and didn't have to pay for, you know, to get the consumer to see us or to engage with us. And we were able to, you know, really talk about things in an organic fashion because they were finding us in this way.
You know, I will say there was a big turning point when Pinterest became a thing, Rustic Wedding Sheet jumped onto it very early. Like there was no Pinterest business yet. It was just like this Pinterest platform, you know, and someone invited me to be on the platform. And because back then you had to like get an invite from someone, I think. And that was a game changer because people started to find us by the time we sold, I think we had over 10 million monthly impressions of content just on Pinterest alone. Yes, Pinterest became a huge thing for us as we jumped on Instagram early too, because we knew it was like the visual, what we were really doing was inspiring the bride with visual content, right? And then of course, tangible resources that she needed, but the imagery was important. So we had a ton of readership come in through Pinterest and then later through Instagram as well.
Glynis Tao
Ok, because I really answered sort of the next question that I had about like, what were some of your most effective marketing strategies that you employ to scale your business? And it sounds like Pinterest and Instagram were the two platforms that helped support you and build that audience.
Maggie Lord
They did. And then one thing that I was really passionate about was because we were obviously like a digital first company I wanted to find ways to connect with the bride offline as well. So just about maybe two, two and a half years after launching the company, I landed my first publishing deal to write a book. And that was great because what I wanted to do was connect with her offline and online. And so, and it established us like me really being an expert in this area. So by having a book on the shelf at Barnes and Noble, and also having an online platform, that really helped expand our readership. I mean, when I wrote the first one, I had no, I didn't, I wrote six over the next couple of years, right?
I didn't think that it would be that vast, but it was really great because we were able to diversify how we were inspiring her. You know, and we went through a lot of different ways of being able to license our name to product. We did stationary cards with the company, you know. We did a lot of different things so that we were tackling kind of a lot of ways that we could inspire her and talk to her and help her with her wedding journey. So we were digital first, of course, but it was really a big plan of mine to be able to go and expand outside the digital space.
Glynis Tao
Okay. And how many rustic wedding sheet books did you end up publishing?
Maggie Lord
Yeah, so between 2012 was when the first book was released. And the last one that I wrote on weddings came out in 2019. So yeah, there was six total in that time frame.
Glynis Tao
Okay. Can you share a particular challenging period for Rustic Wedding Chic and how you navigated through it?
Maggie Lord
Yeah. So, you know, we really relied in the beginning, the revenue model for the company was having brands advertise with us, right? That were related to the wedding industry so that, you know, the bride could get everything that she needed. She'd come to us for inspiration, but so it was all about the ads. And we did phenomenal in the early days with just the display ads from, you know, served up through Google.
We, you know, I remember somebody said to me, you're sleeping at night and you're making money because if someone's on the site and they're clicking on ads. And it was true, we were printing money from that ad strategy.
And in about 2013, 14, people in the industry, if we all lived through it, would call it the ad apocalypse. Everything changed. Display ads were not producing revenue like they were. Brands were shifting to branded content, content on the site that they would pay for that for you to write blog posts. The consumer...also got very smart and stopped clicking on the display ads, right? They're like, it's a lot of noise. It's a lot of mess.
And so we had to pivot and change very quickly as we just watched every month, the revenue that we'd be making from the display ads would just go down, down, down, down. And at the same time, we had to shift to working with brands on branded content on the site. So we'd write a story about their wedding registry company or I mean, we worked with Macy's and Ikea and a million other different companies and they wanted their stuff to stand out differently. So we had to shift to that model.
And affiliate was starting to happen where you could talk about a product or a company and get affiliate kickback from it. And what I learned kind of going through this mess of thinking, oh my gosh, I can run this company for the next 20 years on just this revenue model, right? It looked like it would never break. And I have multiple friends in the same space that we kind of came up through the digital ranks together and everybody suffered from it. Every company had to shift and change.
But I think my biggest suggestion to people is that one, diversifying your revenue stream is always a good thing, right? Because you can't just rely on one always working forever. And so in 2013, we pivoted quickly and we did not have a vendor directory yet. I was fielding emails from bride saying, I'm looking for a barn wedding venue in Michigan. And I'm like, well, I live in Connecticut. I have no idea.
And there were some wedding directories out there, but they were very general. None of them focused just on this niche of the wedding industry, this rustic kind of barn country sort of feel. And I realized if I built it quickly, we would be able to, you know produce revenue from that stream as well. And we quickly, you know, onboarded like 2000 vendors signed up in like the first two weeks, right?
And so, you know, that we had to pivot and change over the years how our revenue was gonna be structured. So navigating through that and looking back, I would always tell companies or brands or entrepreneurs that I, you know, having a couple of different revenue streams is never a bad thing because if one isn't performing the way you want it to, you have others to fall back on. And I think that's something I keep in mind today and it's something I talk to all my clients that I consult with.
Glynis Tao
Okay, I'm really glad that you brought that up and explained how your revenue model worked and how you're able to generate income from the blog. So it was mainly in the beginning, display ads, right? Is that what you're saying? Like those banners that we see on blogs, right?
Maggie Lord
Yeah, so I mean, you could work with a couple of different networks and like, you know, there was a Google ad platform and there was one that was specific to just like the wedding industry at the time. And, you know, what we wanted to do was to really work with, to have great display ads that complimented why she was on our site, right? So it would be for wedding invitations or florals or wedding dresses or bridesmaids dresses, but she still came to us for kind of resources and inspiration and good content.
But when it shifted, we had to then work harder to sell those same placements from us, right? So brands wanted to have more control. And so, we had to go out to a brand and say, well, here's six different ways that you can advertise on our site. And so it just, it got a little bit more challenging than when you would just work in these great networks where they would just feed you great ads to put up. And then, you know, you were issued a check every month. It was amazing.
Glynis Tao
Okay. So that worked for a while and then kind of started not to not work.
Maggie Lord
Yeah. Industry wide that on all digital platforms, it just, you had to diversify. You couldn't just rely on display ads anymore. You know, there was so much that was changing, you know, with different, the way people search for things and how smart the consumer got. And brands wanted to have different ways of showcasing, you know, their product or their brand. So you had to just shift with the fact that that's where digital communication and advertising was going to move in a different direction. And we had to move with that.
Glynis Tao
Okay. And then so you came up with the idea of creating a directory or guide. Is that right?
Maggie Lord
Yeah, we started the rustic wedding sheet guide and it was vendors from across the country in different categories that could, you know, pay us a certain amount every month and you know, they could be showcased and have beautiful pictures and have all of their information listed. And they knew that they were getting a much more qualified bride looking at their content and looking at their site, as opposed to if they were listed on a general wedding, you know, information page where a bride might have zero interest in an outdoor barn sort of venue, but the brides who were coming and who were our reader, they were already interested. And so they were getting a much more qualified ride by spending their ad dollars with us.
Glynis Tao
Oh, okay. Yeah. So in a way, because you already established and you built this audience that's, you know, you're catering towards them. Right. And then so, okay, that really makes sense. And then so was the guide then mostly like your biggest like revenue?
Maggie Lord
It wasn't our biggest revenue. It was definitely a piece of it. I would say still the ad side of things was definitely the largest revenue piece. It's just, we had to switch from having some sort of network or communication group get feed us the display ads. And we worked individually with brands, right? So brands could come to us and say, what are the ways that we can advertise? And we could come up with a lot of different ways that we could work together.
So the advertising side of things, having the digital placements available for companies was definitely the number one revenue source for us.
Glynis Tao
Okay. And was influencer marketing around at that time?
Maggie Lord
I remember when it started, you know, and we, back in the day, we used to work with a company. Now it's like to know, it's like a whole different thing, but it was called reward style. And we could write an article about, you know, the 10 best bikinis for your honeymoon and link back out to these products. And we would get, you know, affiliate money that way. And it, it worked. The thing with affiliate that's really hard is that, you know, you have to, you don't make that much off of one affiliate link, right? So you've, you, you have to find other ways. Like it's definitely can be a piece of someone's revenue model, but it's really hard for that to be the only thing.
So we did dabble in it, we did play with it, refined it over the years, but we found that brands really still just wanted to spend their ad dollars with us. So after more than a decade of growing your wedding website, in 2020 you decided you were ready to sell the business. So what led you to the decision to sell Rustic Wedding Chic to David's Bridal?
Just an FYI for folks who are outside of North America, David's Bridal is the largest American Bridal store chain with more than 300 stores located across the US, Canada and UK.
Maggie Lord
Yeah, it is a question I get asked often, obviously. It was a big decision because I started the company. We never took on investors. The company ran off its own profit. I didn't have a large team. And so it had been successful for more than 10 years at that point. Over the years, I had a lot of interest would pop up every once in a while from competitors would reach out, lifestyle, digital groups would reach out asking if we were interested in selling. And for whatever reason, those just kind of like weren't the right time for us or I didn't feel like it was the right fit or was getting some sort of like crazy low ball offer. And I was very happy running rustic wedding sheet, because I was able to balance motherhood and I loved being an entrepreneur and I loved really owning my own kind of journey and being in charge of my own destiny a little bit.
But before 2020, in 2019, I kind of crafted this idea. I came to my husband and I was like, okay, I have done it all. I've written six books, we have millions of monthly readers, we've licensed our name, I've done so much and I've done it all now, having multiple kids over the time. And I was just like, this is the point that we're at, that either we have to grow significantly and I need to bring in a lot more staff and we need to start really stretching the boundaries of where we're going. Cause I don't think it can just stay where it is. It was successful, but it wasn't, it needed to grow.
And I always equate it, I'm like, it's like the child who is ready to go to college, but instead stays in like their parents' basement. Like it needed to go to college and it needed to go onto its next big thing. Like it was time. I was like, I've raised it, it's gotta go, it's gotta go to college. It's gotta go onto its next big life. Or it's just gonna kind of stay stifled a little bit. So my husband was like, okay, that sounds great, you know, whatever.
And I went down the path with a couple of companies that I thought was gonna be a great fit and we got really far down the line and acquisitions are tricky and hard and there's a lot of people who have a lot of thoughts on both sides. And I got close to a deal with one company that I thought was gonna just be a dream. I loved the CEO and it just, the stars didn't align at that time with their business. They wanted it to happen, I wanted it to happen and there was just a couple of bigger things that the pieces didn't come together the way we wanted. And so that was a little bit of a heartbreak that was in the fall of 2019.
And after that, I was like, you know what I'm gonna do is I'm just gonna put my short list together. Like who do I think would be a great person to purchase us? And for what reason? Like I don't think it can be another content site. They probably have all the content they need. Like who else can benefit from the direct relationship we have with brides? And so I put a short list together and I emailed a handful of people in power at those companies that either some I knew some I had, you know, didn't know at all.
And just said, look, I think we're going to go on the market, but before we do, I'd love to see if there's, if there's a way that we can make an acquisition work between us. Because I probably I had given myself, I had no idea what was coming in 2020, right? But I had said by the spring of 2020, I'll probably go on the open market. So if anyone wants to buy us, they can, but it would be ideal if it was done privately before that.
So in January of 2020, I kind of created, like I said, this short list, started emailing some people, had some interest. And I got an email back from the leadership at David's Bridal. And we had a meeting in Manhattan on like March 6th, none of us knowing the world was gonna shut down. And just as heartbroken as I was that that other deal fell through, when I had this first meeting, the stars really did seem to align for what David's bridal was looking for. You know, I had long thought David's was a great resource for our brides. We talked about them a lot, but we didn't have a pre-established relationship at that time. They had a lot of new leadership come on. Um, when I met with them and you know, it was like a year or so they had a lot of leadership changes, a lot of fresh ideas, a lot of smart, interesting people in the room and the stars really did kind of align.
COVID hit like two weeks later, like there was, my kids weren't in school, like everything was kind of shut down and I didn't know what was gonna happen but we were able to continue our discussions and we got it done.
Glynis Tao
Wow, just sounded like the perfect match. And I mean, was it something that they were looking for as well? Like, were they on the lookout for it, like, before you reached out to them? And then they just suddenly went, wow. Or was that something like you, you know, planted the seed and then got them thinking about it?
Maggie Lord
I think it was a little bit of both. I think they, you know, most companies, if they, if they establish a relationship with a customer at one kind of point in a journey, any way you can move up funnel is like really important and mostly in wedding dress shopping, they would interact with the bride around nine, 10 months before her wedding day. Whereas we at Rustic Wedding Chic, they would start reading us 12 to 14 months before her wedding day. So, you know, I think any brand would want to move up funnel of how they can start communicating with a bride.
You know, I think they certainly understood how digital content can help their company. So I think it was a little bit of like, I'm sure they had thought about it. I don't think they were actively looking for an acquisition at the time, but I brought this idea to them and we kind of saw how all the pieces could go together.
Glynis Tao
And just a quick question, how big was your team at that time?
Maggie Lord
Yeah. So again, when I say that I sold in 2020, everyone assumes that it was like COVID related, but when the wheels were in motion, it was all before COVID. And so we were still kind of running at our regular capacity of I was the editor in chief and CEO. I had someone who oversaw our community and the vendor directory for us. And then from there, I had probably about six contract employees who handled different things, things from social media to some editorial, to advertising and other things like that. So I would say, including some contract and part-time employees, we were a team of about six.
Glynis Tao
Were you the one creating most of the content and writing all the blogs? I did. I wrote 99.9 % of all the content for 12 years, which is why, like, I was a little tired, not gonna lie. You know, creating, we pushed out two new features, two new published posts every day, Monday through Friday for 12 years. There was a couple of times that I brought in a slight little help to write some articles here and there. They never performed as well. They, their style, I would always, there was a reason it was like, it wasn't up to my standards or, oh, I wouldn't have, you know, pick this picture or whatever. And so that is why it gets hard to run a company when it's, when our readership was in the millions monthly, because they're constantly looking for new things. And so to keep pushing out the high level of content that we were doing, which is where I saw that it needed to have a larger team and kind of go on to its next.
Glynis Tao
Okay. And that's sort of the reason why you decided that that was the next step that you needed to take in order for this business to grow. And be able to sustain itself because I guess you really took it as far as you could go with what you had and your resources that you had at the time, right? But you saw that it had more potential.
Maggie Lord
Exactly, and that's kind of how I felt. And I was very proud of what we had accomplished for all those years. But, you know, I, people, it was interesting. People were like, is it going to be hard for you? It was your first baby. Like, how are you going to, like, are you going to be sad? And I was like, no, I am proud of what I created and I loved it. I like, you know, breathed rustic wedding chic for all those years. And it was very much, of course, like part of my identity, but I kind of felt like, you know, as opposed to feeling like, oh, it's my first baby. I'm so sad that it's going to like leave me. I felt like the proud mom who was like, yes, go fulfill your life. Go do those important things that you need to do.
So I was, I was very, very happy to hand it over to start a new journey. I went to work for David's for a couple of years, which was a great, I had never worked in corporate America. I've always either been a teacher or owned my own company. And so I embraced kind of the whole different world that working for a large corporation like that is. And I learned a lot and had a lot of interesting conversations and a lot of different views on things and a peek into, you know, larger business world and, you know, was happy to spend that time there, but then also very, very happy to get back to doing something more entrepreneurial.
Glynis Tao
Okay. Like, how was it like for you when you were handing things off? Because you know how you were saying earlier about when you wrote 99 .9 % of the content and having to do, you know, give it to someone else to do it like, how were you involved in that process and just being able to get it right, you know, the way that you wanted it to continue?
Maggie Lord
Because it was COVID, it was such a weird time and weddings, right? Like there were no weddings at that time, everything was shut down. So it was like people weren't craving as much content. So my transition with David's was very seamless, as in like I transferred everything over. Like I you know, transfer of knowledge, explain why the bride uses us and how, you know, things should be written and all of that. And then I just started a whole different job at David's completely, right?
And so it was kind of like one day I was like thinking everything about rustic wedding chic. And then I started a new job at David's and I was on a completely different path. So, you know, it was, it was a good transfer of knowledge of like, this is why someone likes rustic wedding chic. And these are the reasons that someone would want to continue to read Rustic Wedding Chic. But because of the landscape that was happening, both in retail with the David's Bride of retail stores, obviously during COVID was different. And then the way the bride was planning was all different. It was a little hectic. I kind of like handed things off. And like I said, I was often running as an executive at David's in a completely different direction.
Glynis Tao
Yeah, interesting time as well. I guess nobody would have expected. So now you work as a strategic advisor to female founded brands. What are some of the common challenges that you see entrepreneurs facing? How do you advise them to overcome these obstacles?
Maggie Lord
Yeah, it's a good question. I think, you know, the reason why I shifted to this after leaving David's was because I was so desperate as a, especially I was a young entrepreneur, right? I was like 27, 26, 27 when I launched Rustic Wedding Chic. You know, I was desperate over those years if I could have had an advisor or, you know, quote unquote, business coach, someone who I met with a couple of times a month explained to my challenges. I think I would have not woken up in the middle of the night so many times questioning. Did I do this right? Is this the right direction for the company?
You feel very isolated when you're an entrepreneur, especially even if you have a team. Most female entrepreneurs that I work with, their team, they're great and filled with passion, but they're very junior, right? You don't often see, you know, especially if you're a solo entrepreneur and you don't have a full C-suite built out, you're making decisions based on what you think.
And like, I can't tell you the amount of times at dinner I said to my husband, what do you think about this? And like he'd say, what do I know about the wedding industry? I don't know. I think it's a good idea. And so I think why it works so well for me to work with other female founders is that I was so desperate to figure out, you know, am I doing the right thing? You know, is this a good decision? Is this a good business decision? That I think the challenge I see the most from entrepreneurs is they just don't have the infrastructure to support where they're going and what they're doing from someone who's kind of lived through it and gotten to the level that I'm at, right?
So they can talk to their team, but they don't have an external sort of person to speak to. So I think that's the biggest challenge I see with most of the people I work with. And then it's you know, very isolating and hard. And one of my clients the other day said, well, I was thinking of hiring a therapist, but I actually just hired you instead. You've become like my entrepreneurial therapist, right? Like a therapist for entrepreneurs because it's someone to talk to about the full picture.
Because I've also lived through, I had a one week maternity leave with all of my children. Um, cause I had no one else to run the company. And I always said, if I'm not running it, it's not making money. Right. So it can't just sit there and be dormant. Like it. It very much had to continue. And so I've lived through the challenges of having, you know, one kid, two kids, three kids, um, you know, the overwhelming sense of think the biggest thing I hear is like, I'm just one person. So how can I be running my company, pushing out social media content, you know, like looking for new ideas.
Like there's 150 things as a founder and CEO that you want to, you should be doing every day and you can't, you're at capacity, right? And so I work a lot with my clients about where is the areas you should be spending your time and energy on things. And I told a client the other day, she said, do you think this is a good idea? I said, if it takes less than 45 minutes of your time, sure, go explore that new idea, but give it 45 minutes and then transition back to, you know, your day to day core business.
Glynis Tao
So what advice would you give to entrepreneurs who are looking to start and scale a business? And would you also talk about like how is your experience as a founder influenced your approach as a strategic advisor and business coach?
Maggie Lord
So I think if somebody wants to start something, I think the first step is the hardest, but just do it, right? I think a lot of people get caught up in, well, I need to create an LLC and I have to have a business plan and I need investors. And that may all be true. You may need all of those things, but that shouldn't hold you back from taking the first step.
I, you know, people tell me all the time, oh, I have this great idea for a thing, but I don't even know how I would start. And I was like, do you have a name? And then there's most of the time, like, oh, I do have a name. I had this great name that I came up with. Let's just start there. So, you know, I think with entrepreneurs, I always say, if you have something you want to start, take some small steps forward. Don't look at the big long road ahead of you of, oh, well, I've got to get a bank account and business taxes and an accountant and like, it's scary, it's too much. Just look at what you can do and start with to then take those next steps. So that's my advice if you're gonna start something.
If you wanna scale, I think it's about focusing in on where you're scaling and realistically how you can scale. Because as an entrepreneur, I'm very much I subscribe to the idea of like, let's try a lot of things and let's see what happens and let's see what sticks. I would come up with an idea for something on rustic wedding chic and I could create a whole new page on the platform that day if I wanted to. But I think sometimes when you're trying to scale a business, you'll look at too many options. So someone might say, oh, I'm gonna start selling my product on TikTok shop and Instagram shop and I'm gonna start doing this and that.
And I'm like, that may all be the right way to go about it. But I would start with one and then build, right? So if you're going to scale your brand, let's pick one avenue that you're going to start with, kind of do it well, and then add on those other pieces. Because if you are a founder and an entrepreneur and you've founded a brand and you're, let's just even say you're doing okay, you know, that is very much like the foundation of a house.
You can't build the other layers until, you have a really good base for what it is. And then just, you know, adding on gradually so that when you do start to scale one, you can do it in a way that you can handle that scale that you created because I have worked with companies and brands who they are lightning in a bottle, right? And it's the most amazing thing and like, and it blows up and gets a ton of attention but they actually weren't prepared. They don't have enough inventory or something like that.
So when you scale, I always say you have to do it and create those levels of scaling in a way that you know you're prepared for what the ideal outcome is. Cause if you say, Oh, I'm going to go start selling on TikTok shop and your stuff starts selling, but you end up, you know, you end up with 500 orders and you only have 12 products. That's a problem.
Glynis Tao
Okay, so I like the metaphor that you use. It's like building a business like building a house, right? First start with this foundation. Be good at one thing, really good at one thing, and then build from up from there. Build up the layers. And then, yeah, also having the right infrastructure as well, right? Because, I mean, being successful is great, but are you able to deliver?
Maggie Lord
Yeah. I think that happens a lot where, you know, especially if you're going to be in an e-comm business or something where like you have to be prepared for, if you want to scale, you have to be prepared for what that scale looks like from, you know, a financial standpoint, but also from like a human resources standpoint, right? If you start selling 5,000 of something, but you make every single one by hand, like that's not it's not a great way to be able to, it's not sustainable scale.
Glynis Tao
And what types of businesses do you work with currently? Are they, you know, sole partners? Are they service type businesses? Are they product based businesses?
Maggie Lord
It's a little all over the map, which is nice. I like, I have a wide variety of clients right now. Some are, you know, in the product business, which is great. Um, CPG, I have other, um, amazing clients who are in like services or like their own sort of, um, consulting brands. Um, it's, it's really, it's all over the place, which I love. And it's been really nice that most of the work that I get is through word of mouth from someone who says, oh, I've been working with this amazing advisor. And you know, I've learned x, y, z, and then they say like, Oh, who's that? And then that person just refers them to me. And that's it's really nice to know, because it means that like, I am really helping them on their their journey.
Glynis Tao
That's amazing. So we have a few minutes left. But I want to make sure that we have enough time to go talk about balancing business and family.
So I was really intrigued when I read your story, especially about the part about how you were able to simultaneously create a successful business while raising kids. As a mompreneur myself, I'm always interested in knowing how do you manage to balance the demands of your business with your responsibilities as a parent?
Maggie Lord
Yeah, it's, you know, I mean, it's a huge question. And the thing that I think is most interesting is that it changes based on what sort of timeframe you're in with your children. You know, I was an entrepreneur first and then, you know, and gotten married and then a little bit at a year, you know, two years, I guess, after getting married, like we had our first son and then four years later had our second and two years after that had our third. And so when they were infants, it was impossible, right? Like the demands of my business were so high and the demands of being a mom to a newborn were equally as crushing that, you know, a lot of tears a lot of how, what am I doing? I'm answering emails at two o'clock in the morning when I should be sleeping.
You know, I nursed every single one of my children while typing crazy emails to people, you know, but I will say that it's, you know, and they, you know, they would go as they got older, they went to preschool. And so then there was a couple of hours where I was like, I have uninterrupted time, you know, all of that is good.
I wrote years ago, I wrote an article, called The Naptime Entrepreneur. And it became a series in Entrepreneur Magazine about balancing motherhood and having children. And I said, when my kids were really young, what I focused on was during their nap times, I did whatever the hardest part of my job was gonna be, I focused that on that time. So when they were napping for two hours, I tackled the thing that I needed the most on, you know, uh, interrupted focus time for, um, you know, and that, that was probably would be like advertising or something with like bookkeeping, whereas like I could, I could kind of create some content while other chaos was happening.
But I think where, what I've learned now with the stage of life that I'm in, that they go to school, right? All day, they're all in, you know, school all day is that maximizing the time that they're not here so I can maximize my time with them when they are home. So my kids get out of school at four o 'clock. I pick them up at four, I don't work anymore. My computer's closed. You probably won't hear an email from me unless a client desperately needs something. I maximize the time when they're someplace else, at school or if your kids are really young and they're with a babysitter or daycare, things like that.
Um, you know, that, that is, I think kind of the healthiest thing. It's like, when you have this attention with them, be with them, you know. I mean, I've certainly done multiple, like I said, I nursed them and answered emails. I'd be cooking and holding one and like, you know, trying to text something on my phone. And that never feels as good as focusing, you know, on that, but it's, there's no, the day to day is always different, right? And for most entrepreneurs, your day to day is not the same.
And it, so you kind of just accept the chaos of how crazy it is being an entrepreneur and being a mom. But I always said, I would rather accept that chaos and be in control of my time. Than the flip side of kind of like the years working in corporate where you're not as much in control of your schedule and time. And I don't wanna miss anything that happens at school. So if I have to be there at 10 o 'clock on a Tuesday for a poetry something, I can go. That to me is worth it to the ups and downs of entrepreneurship. That to me is worth it. So, I think for my biggest advice is that talk and share with other entrepreneurs because a lot of people just feel like, oh, I'm the only entrepreneur in the world that can't fix this, can't make this work, can't, you know, and it's not true. And so by vocalizing it and talking about it with other entrepreneurs, I think it's a good thing.
Glynis Tao
Great advice. I know I can imagine what the chaos looks like. You were nursing a newborn and trying to send an email out at the same time and just all the emotions too, because I remember after having my baby as well, I just couldn't even think. You know, because body is just going through so many hormonal changes and everything as well. You would just be like feeling your mood changes were like, so, I mean, how are you able to even like stay focused?
Maggie Lord
I'm not saying like, when I have told clients or things that like, I took like a week maternity leave, like that was not good. Like I would not suggest that to my current clients. I would say, set up time so that with you, you know, having children is important, set that boundary, you know, have somebody else in the business step up for a little bit.
I've had clients who have said to me, Oh, well, if I want to go have a baby, will you come in and be our interim CEO? Because you know how to run a company and be, you know, and I just, I think there's creative ways to step away and take a true maternity leave. That as an entrepreneur, it's really, really, really hard. I was very jealous of a friend who was an entrepreneur and she had had children right before me. And she was like, she took some weeks off. And then after that, she's like, I will only email between like, you know, 10 and two, like every day for the next six weeks. Like, do not expect to hear from me. Like she gave like three day, like return around time on an email. She was very conscious about those boundaries.
Mine was very, I guess more messy where I was trying to do it all at the same time. But I would, I am an advocate for you. I firmly believe you can be an entrepreneur and take some maternity time both for you and for your baby.
Glynis Tao
Okay, that's great to hear that. Do you know if there's any like groups out there that help, you know, like mompreneur type groups, I guess, or if you are a part of any of them, like moms, support moms who are going through this, who have businesses.
Maggie Lord
I think there's probably some, I don't know any off the top of my head, I know that there's a lot of female founder groups, right, that you can join and pay money to be part of and stuff. I'm sure if you look around that there are some that are focused on kind of the mompreneur world and as it's changed and shifted for sure over the time. But I think, you know, talking to anybody who's lived through it helps current entrepreneurs know that like it can be done.
Glynis Tao
So before we wrap up here, can you provide a sneak peek into any exciting projects or plans that you have going for the future?
Maggie Lord
Yes, I do. I have some, you know, I'm a serial entrepreneur as I have been called. So I love working as an advisor to female founded brands. I love consulting with brands. It definitely, it's kind of like fills my cup every day. I'm so happy for the trajectory of where I started with Rustic Wedding Chic to kind of end up at this point in my career.
But I was just asked the other day, like, would you ever write a book about business and motherhood? And I don't know, I kind of have the itch to like write a book again. I just have to kind of think about what that would be. You know, so I'm excited about that. I have a fun kind of exciting, perhaps thought process for a company that would kind of relate to kind of this, the ages that my kids are in.
But again, it's like, I'm very busy. And so the idea of starting a whole other company, you know, kind of seems daunting where, cause on a day to day, I love working with my clients so much, but I think probably if I could sneak away some time, I would love the idea of putting more of my thoughts around business and motherhood and entrepreneurial thoughts into some sort of back into the writing world.
Glynis Tao
I think that would be so amazing and so helpful to a lot of people going through this journey of entrepreneurship and motherhood. I'd love to be part of that. If you ever do decide to embark on that venture. So where can people find you if they want to get in touch with you?
Maggie Lord
Yeah. So you can go to maggielord.com and you get to read a little bit about my history. You can see the current clients I'm working with. I'm really flexible with my clients. There's no packages you can read about. I kind of meet with someone and I hear like where they are in their business and what their needs are. And then we kind of craft some sort of, you know, understanding of how working together would look. So, you know, you can go to maggielord.com and read more about me.
Glynis Tao
Amazing. Well, thank you so much, Maggie, for being on the podcast and sharing your inspiring story of how you, were able to balance your business while embracing motherhood at the same time. Thank you so much for talking to me today.
In this episode, Kristi Soomer, founder and CEO of ethical clothing brand Encircled, shares her insights on entrepreneurship in the fashion industry.
Summary
Kristi Soomer emphasizes the importance of understanding your customer and differentiating your brand. She discusses the evolution of Encircled from a travel clothing brand to a versatile athleisure brand. She also shares her motivation for starting her own business and the initial hurdles she faced. Kristi highlights the value of finding support and mentoring, as well as the need to adapt to industry trends. She offers advice for aspiring fashion entrepreneurs and gives a sneak peek into upcoming projects for Encircled.
About Kristi Soomer
Kristi Soomer is a visionary entrepreneur and sustainability advocate known for her work as a founder and CEO of the slow fashion brand Encircled. With a background in management consulting, retail and supply chain management, Kristi brings a wealth of expertise to the sustainable fashion space. Holding both an MBA and bachelor's degree in business administration prepared her for the challenges of disrupting the traditional fashion industry.
Encircled, under Kristi's leadership has become a beacon for ethical production, eco-friendly materials, and versatile garment design. As a certified B Corporation, Encircled exemplifies Kristi's commitment to making a positive impact on the environment, her team, and her customers.
A sought after speaker and thought leader, Kristi shares her insights on sustainable fashion at conferences, events, and podcasts, inspiring others to embrace conscious consumption. Kristi Soomer's dedication to her community, philanthropic efforts and passion for ethical practices are demonstrated through her coaching and online education business at KristiSoomer.com, where she helps up and coming entrepreneurs learn how to scale their businesses through coaching, her eCommerce Maven podcast, Facebook community and mentoring.
Creating a Clear Point of View and Focusing on Customer Needs
Kristi Soomer emphasizes the importance of having a clear point of view and focusing on customer needs in order to stand out in the overcrowded fashion industry. Encircled's commitment to sustainability, versatility, and comfort has resonated with customers looking for more than just fashion–they seek clothing that aligns with their values and lifestyle. By staying true to its core values and continuously listening to customer feedback, Encircled has been able to grow and evolve while maintaining its unique position in the market.
Adapting to Industry Trends and Staying Resilient
Adaptability and resilience has allowed Encircled to navigate business challenges and thrive. The pandemic experience underscored the need for effective risk management to plan for uncertainties and prepare for various scenarios.
Support and Mentoring to Navigate Entrepreneurship
Having mentors and a supportive network can provide guidance, encouragement, and practical advice, making the journey less isolating and more manageable. Resources such as Marie Forleo's B-School and the Time Genius program helped Kristi Soomer refine her marketing strategy and connect with other entrepreneurs facing similar challenges.
The Role of Content in Marketing
Much of Encircled's success is credited to its content-driven marketing strategy, inspired by Marie Forleo's B-School. By providing educational content and helpful tips, Encircled has built a strong connection with its customers, offering value beyond just selling products.
Commitment to Sustainability and Transparency
By being transparent about their progress and areas for improvement, Encircled builds trust with consumers who value sustainability. Kristi Soomer explains that the brand focuses on creating durable, timeless designs to reduce overconsumption and openly acknowledges the challenges and limitations they face in achieving full sustainability.
Chapters
00:00 Understanding Your Customer and Brand Differentiation
06:16 Starting Encircled as a Travel Clothing Brand
09:57 Creating a New Category: Wander Leisure
11:50 Motivation to Take the Leap into Entrepreneurship
16:34 Initial Hurdles and Overcoming Challenges
25:38 Transitioning to Full-Time Entrepreneurship
30:11 Navigating Changes and Adapting to Industry Trends
36:41 Lessons Learned from the Pandemic
39:26 Advice for Aspiring Fashion Entrepreneurs
43:59 Exciting Projects and Future Plans
45:48 Contact Information
Transcript
Kristi Soomer
It's very hard to break through in the fashion industry unless you have like a very clear point of view. And that's where I think it's really important to work or any product based business to really work on understanding who your customer is, because there are a lot of brands out there selling a lot of similar things and stuff comes around. So like there's not a lot of new stuff out there. It may be a new positioning, which is a different thing. That's what as an entrepreneur you bring to the table, you know, your own point of view on it, your own take, your own way you bring it to market. So I encourage people to think more about that and how they're going to go to market and what their brand looks like and their values as much as possible. Because I think that is what becomes a differentiator at the end of the day. Anybody can make a t-shirt. It's super easy. But can you tell a story with that t-shirt? Can you emotionally connect with that t-shirt? What values does that t-shirt bring to the world and to your customer's closet? That's more challenging.
Glynis Tao
Welcome to Chase Your Dreams, a podcast for fashion entrepreneurs who want to build a purposeful and profitable clothing business so they can make a living doing what they love. I'm your host, Glynis Tao, an apparel business consultant and SEO specialist with 20 years apparel industry experience. I'm also a mom to a wonderfully energetic little boy named Chase.
My guest today is Kristi Soomer, a visionary entrepreneur and sustainability advocate known for her work as a founder and CEO of the slow fashion brand Encircled. With a background in management consulting, retail and supply chain management, Kristi brings a wealth of expertise to the sustainable fashion space. Holding both an MBA and bachelor's degree in business administration prepared her for the challenges of disrupting the traditional fashion industry.
Encircled, under Kristi's leadership has become a beacon for ethical production, eco-friendly materials, and versatile garment design. As a certified B Corporation, Encircled exemplifies Kristi's commitment to making a positive impact on the environment, her team, and her customers. A sought after speaker and thought leader, Kristi shares her insights on sustainable fashion at conferences, events, and podcasts, inspiring others to embrace conscious consumption.
Kristi Soomer's dedication to her community, philanthropic efforts and passion for ethical practices are demonstrated through her coaching and online education business at KristiSoomer.com, where she helps up and coming entrepreneurs learn how to scale their business through coaching, a podcast, Facebook community and mentoring.
Welcome, Kristi. It's so nice to have you here today. Thanks for joining me on the podcast.
Kristi Soomer
Thanks for having me, Glynis.
Glynis Tao
This feels like a dream come true, because I've been hoping to talk to you for a while. I've been following your work and I'm a huge fan of your brand, Encircled. As a matter of fact, I'm wearing one of your tops today.
Kristi Soomer
Yeah, I was like, that kind of looks familiar.
Glynis Tao
Yeah, I love it. I love the color. You're an entrepreneur, podcast host, business coach, mentor, not to mention dog mama, to sweet little doodle named Harlow, who by the way has more Instagram followers than I do. How do you find the time to do it all?
Kristi Soomer
Well, I don't have kids. So that’s part one, I'm just a dog mom, but I do keep up with her post. I think I'm actually more regular on my dog's Instagram than on my own. Like, I find it easier to post content on there for whatever reason. And I think that's kind of the case for a lot of people because social media is where people tend to overthink what they need to post and stuff like that. Especially I find within the space that we operate. So dog Instagram is just a much easier place.
But how do I find the time? Well, I mean, most of my time is spent in Encircled. The majority of my time goes into operating and running the business. But I do have like the other things on the go, like my podcast and Facebook group and stuff like that and do some coaching and mentoring.
Um, but that's a very small portion of my schedule and I'm just, like I've, I've become pretty good at like time blocking and really being focused with how I use my time. I'm a huge advocate of Marie Forleo’s Time Genius program, which I've been through and I also coach in as well. Um, and it's really about changing your mindset on time and not, um, trying to be the most productive person ever, but instead being like really focused on your efforts and doing like less almost to get further ahead with what you're working on.
So it's a balancing act for sure. And every week is different. And some of them, especially around key holidays like Black Friday and Christmas and stuff like that can be kind of messy. But I've tried intensely over the last few years to cut back my hours. And I think I've been pretty successful at it.
Glynis Tao
What I admire you most for is that you're an innovator, leader, disruptor, and champion of small business. Not only have you built a successful business, you are dedicated to helping other business owners achieve success as well. You're also very open and transparent about sharing strategies you use at Encircled. I know the story of Encircled and how you got started, which involves solving a pain point that you had, but I want to talk to you about your most recent business announcement.
You decided to make some changes recently and create a new category of clothing. Do you want to talk about that and what led you to your decision to return to your roots?
Kristi Soomer
Very up to date question. I love it. Since this announcement was just made last week. That's great. Yeah. So originally Encircled started as a travel clothing brand. Essentially I was in my most recent previous career, I was a management consultant. So prior to the pandemic times, management consultants pretty much traveled on site to clients and most of my clients were not in Toronto. So I was living out of a suitcase, flying, you know, back and forth to New York, sometimes Calgary for like years, not just like weeks.
And so I started to really challenge myself on the notion of traveling light and being stylish because you can't check a bag. Everybody will make fun of you and the consulting world. And you don't want to do that because you don't want to spend extra time at the airport. So I started, that's my original inspiration behind designing the Chrysalis Cardi, which was like our hero piece that I launched with back way, way, way back when, which is an eight in one garment that can be transformed and it's made out of the same lovely fabric of the Evolve top that you're wearing.
Um, and then over the years, you know, we've still always had that travel ethos, I would say at the heart of everything we do, but we've definitely shifted, I think a lot in the last, like, probably since around like 2017, we really focused more on talking about minimalist wardrobes and capsule wardrobes and, you know, kind of doing more with less.
And while I think that resonated with our customer, it's a hard concept for people to wrap their heads around a little bit. And I think sustainability in itself is a very complex topic in any industry, but for some reason, I guess maybe I'm a bit biased. I feel like fashion, it's incredibly complex because there's so many nuances to the sustainability continuum. And I think over the years, I've changed my opinion a little bit on sustainability from just purely looking at like the fabrics you're using to not only that, but the longevity and the utility of the design being as like, as important, if not more than the fabrications. Because one of the biggest things I know in the industry, and I'm sure you're a well aware as well, is that like, it doesn't matter if you make 8 billion tops out of a sustainable fabric through one of the fast fashion brands, like if they're not needed, and it's over, it's fueling like over consumption, and then they're going to fall apart in a year anyways, you can't wear them. We're no farther ahead.
So I think our move to creating a new category, which we're calling Wander Leisure, is really a push to come back home, not only to our roots, but also to where our customers are today. And I would say that's kind of our niche has always been like this like elegant athleisure. So like not your everyday kind of yoga pants kind of stuff, but a step up from that and stuff that people can wear not only to work, but on the weekend or to trip to your city or Paris and not look like a tourist and be comfortable.
So I don't think we're really changing as dramatically maybe as it seems, although we are being more focused, I think, with our designs and actually slowing down our product development cycle quite a bit. But it's more so that we're changing how we articulate it to our customer, because that's what we want. Like I want the designs I'm most proud of are the ones that, like your Evolve Top, I designed in 2013, 2014 maybe. It's like almost 10 years old and it's still timeless and many customers still wear them. So to me, that's a marker of sustainability is creating clothing that's timeless, elegant, wearable, comfortable, and that's sustainable. So it's really just another take on it. We're not giving away any of our core values at all, but we're just really changing kind of our focus a little bit.
Glynis Tao
That totally makes sense. I'm looking at your website, and you know, it's the message is really clear in terms of like, this new, or not new message, but it's saying travel inspired, elegant athleisure that takes you places. We make wander leisure travel inspired, elegant athleisure that takes you places. That's like, you know, it gives you really clear ideas to like, okay, what is it that you do? And you know, what is the idea purpose behind your your company? And I love this, like, this word that you invented. Chic comfy, compact and clever styles consciously crafted to never compromise on fit, function or quality. I mean, it speaks to me. And that's why I still love these designs. Oh, and I see the Evolve Top is on the website homepage on the front homepage too.
And like, you know, I subscribe to your e-letters and I read every single one of them. And I just love, you know, the little tips that you give to people. Styling tips are how to create a capsule wardrobe or how to pack, you know, better for trips. So it's, it's really neat. Like I really like what you do. And it just, to me, seems like you really know who your customer is.
Let's talk about a little bit how before founding Encircled, right? So you were working as a strategy consultant. Can you share a memorable moment or experience that motivated you to take that leap into entrepreneurship and launch your brand?
Kristi Soomer
Yeah, I think for me,
Like it started with the idea originally. So just like I came up with that word, wander leisure, I think just like a moment when I was packing for, ironically, my first yoga retreat I'd ever been on, I was on the bench, they call it, or on the beach in consulting when you're not assigned to a client. So I asked my manager, can I go on vacation? Cause the cancellation just opened up in this yoga retreat my friend's going to.
And now that seems like very normal, but I guess back like 10 years ago, or even that would have been more, that would have been more like 13 years ago, yoga retreats were not like super well known. So I'd never been on one, but I did yoga. So I was like, let's go last minute book trip going like two days later, packing for my trip, overpacking because you know, I've never been on a yoga retreat. What do you bring? I don't know. So I started just like shoving all this stuff in this huge suitcase that I had and it broke.
And I was packing the night before and it broke and I was like, Oh my God, what am I going to do? All I have is a carry on. This is a crisis. I can't call my friend because it's like four in the morning and I'm packing. So I'm like, I just got it. Okay. What, what do I not need to bring? And then I'm like, why am I bringing like all this stuff? Like I need a cardigan for the plane, but what else? I wouldn't really use it there. Like, so that was like a pivotal moment where I was like, okay, I need to like think more compact with how I'm packing and why do I have so much like single use items that are not multifunctional that could be. So that was like one moment.
And then I think the real pivotal moment, at least in my career, I would say was, and I'd already kind of started Encircled at this point and had it kind of running as like a side hustle to my full-time job, but it was the Rana Plaza factory collapse. And that was in 2013. Um, and I was still actively in consulting and my vertical was retail. So, and I was going to Montreal and I was on the ferry. Uh, that's how old I am to the Island airport in Toronto, which is now a tunnel. Um, and I overheard somebody from one of the brands talking about how their brand was involved in this. And I wasn't supposed to hear this conversation clearly, but I did need to hear it. And the way they were speaking about it was so disrespectful to the people that were involved in that. And it just made me really question.
They didn't work for me or anything like that or work with me, but they're in the industry. And it just hearing that made me like sick to my stomach. Cause I'm like, these are people's lives who are lost making clothing that weren't even being properly paid in the first place. They were literally locked in to this building and could not leave. And it just made me think like, who am I helping with the work that I'm doing right now. And the answers weren't what I wanted, you know?
And I think that's tough and that's definitely a very privileged position to sit in because I was in what I believed was my like dream career, but I didn't want to help more big businesses do bad things ultimately. So I realized that if I wanted to create change in a positive direction, it wasn't going to be through this role and it wasn't going to be in this industry even. And I think that's very true. Cause now if you look even like we're like 10 years later there's not much change that's happened in the mass fashion or fashion vertical in terms of sustainability. Like it's moved very slowly. The biggest change has come from the creation of all these other brands kind of starting up and bringing new ways of working and new designs, new materials.
Um, so I really wanted to be at the forefront of that. And that was like pretty pivotal in thinking like, you know, at the end of my life, do I want to be known for restructuring brands and firing people and cutting 50 cents out of a manufacturing cost? Or do I want to be like a champion of creating better lives and the workers who make our clothing and educating consumers on, you know, where things are made and the value of quality and cost per wear and utilization of clothing in the industry.
So that was a pretty pivotal moment in making the decision, I think, for me to go forward and actually quit my job and go into the business full time.
Glynis Tao
Wow, that's an interesting story. I didn't know that part.
Entrepreneurship comes with challenges. What were some of the initial hurdles you faced when starting your clothing brand and how did you overcome them?
Kristi Soomer
The first one would be not knowing anything about manufacturing a garment for sure. And back when I started, you know, it's not like it is today where, you know, there's Upwork and a lot of resources online and, you know, myself included creating courses for digital marketing. Like it wasn't as big and accessible as it is now the information kind of gig economy. So that was a big hurdle, I think was figuring out actually how the fashion manufacturing process worked, how to get a garment made, which fabrics to even used, you know, that's very still much a black hole. I think when you're trying to make a garment, even for us today, because there's like, you think as a consumer, you're like, Oh yeah, there's, there's modal, but there's modal jersey, there's modal scuba, there's modal rib, there's tubular rib, like there's so many variations on one thing, there's fleece, there's French terry, like what are the differences, like where it's certified, like just figuring out even that was so difficult. So that would have been like a big one.
The second one would be, I think, believing in myself as a challenge because I came from a very non-entrepreneurial family. My parents believe in like working at a corporation forever. So I didn't have a lot of family support. I didn't have a lot of friends who are entrepreneurs. It's not like it is now. Now entrepreneurs are like, you know, superheroes and everybody wants to be an entrepreneur. It was not like that. It was like, don't quit your day job, girl. So that was really hard because I didn't know what I didn't even know. And there wasn't a lot of communities to help support you at that time. So that I think that was a big one because I just didn't really I don't know, I had a great idea, but I didn't realize it, I think.
And then, yeah, just figuring out the technicalities of selling online. This is like early days Shopify, my original site was not built on Shopify, it was built on Magento. And just understanding even how to run a web store and figure out shipping and all that kind of stuff. Wow, that whole logistics side cannot be underestimated.
Glynis Tao
Yeah, absolutely. So many moving parts to running a clothing business.
So, I mean, going back to, you know, when you sort of like, well, sort of coming from a family where, you know, wasn't really entrepreneurship wasn't really supportive, like, okay, stick with the corporate job, you know, like, how did you stay motivated during those times? Like, you know, did you have anybody that you worked with, or coach or mentor or something to help you like, get through those more of the challenging times?
Kristi Soomer
Mostly I didn't tell people what I was doing. I hid it. I hid it from a lot of people. Not that I lied, but I hid it because I didn't want people that I didn't want my family to know. I didn't want my work to know because I didn't want them to think I wasn't serious about my job or like somehow maybe stealing time from them. And then my friends, I would periodically like have them try stuff on or whatever. But I don't think anybody really thought I was being serious about it.
But I did, you know, one of the communities I early on got into was I took a program called B-School by Marie Forleo and she had a large community of entrepreneurs and it's global. So we had like a little Facebook group for all the e-commerce retailers. And that was like my first kind of connector network, I would say, of people kind of experiencing the same thing. So like, how do you do this on Shopify? How do you upload that? Like, how can you make this graphic? Like how did they do this? Like and that was just like incredibly supportive in terms of getting me forward.
I was hoping that I would have more resources but I found that the local community wasn't as supportive of my initiatives and that's not meaning to slight anybody but I think I didn't come from a traditional fashion background and my business was really commercial. Like I'm not a like couture designer and I think a lot of the agencies in Toronto and organizations kind of cycle around those like higher end designers. So there wasn't really a space for me to be supported there.
Although I will say, I found one of my technical designers through like a resume database at one of those incubators. And she was invaluable to like the first few years of my business. So you kind of have to pull from resources where you can get it and where you feel like most supported.
And definitely I found like online was the place. And now it's so great because there's so many great online communities and mentors and coaches and stuff like that. It's really such an up level, even for me at this stage in my business to find somebody who's, you know, a few years farther ahead that can see what you can't see.
Glynis Tao
Yeah. So you mentioned Marie Forleo's B-School. I also was in that program. I took it when probably around maybe 2011, 2012. Yeah, it was only when the program was around for a couple years then, and I still had my own clothing brand. But I was struggling with like, a lot of the same things that you mentioned. And like, but I came from a fashion background, in manufacturing background. So I had product development and garment manufacturing experience, but I didn't have the business experience. And so that's what why I turned to B-School.
And I thought, was very early on like one of the maybe first you know kind of online programs that were available but it had that community feel to it and that you also get the support which is great and um yeah you're currently mentoring um for them as well right?
Kristi Soomer
Yeah I mentor in both programs B-School and Time Genius I've actually been doing mentoring in B-School for almost eight years, maybe, it's been a while. So, so yeah, and Maria is amazing. As you know, like she's really committed to constantly like revisiting the content and expanding it. And now she has a whole mentor team, you know, in there helping in the comments, and it's a variety of people like it's me and there's a couple there's another e-commerce entrepreneur, there's, you know, life coaches, there's website designer mentors, like there's a real rich perspective in there.
Sometimes I want to go in and ask questions. I can probably just DM them. But like, she's really done a great job of staying current with what's happening in digital marketing, because I think that changes quite a bit. And I will say, like, to her credit, like I took, I mean, I have an MBA, I went to business school, and I have an MBA. And when I took her program, I was like, whoa, I've been thinking about this all wrong.
Um, and it's because like my tactics and my background were all corporate marketing, which does not work when you have no money. It just does not work. So what I was trying to do was adapt corporate marketing tactics to a small business. And like, it was not working. And I took it in 2013. And the only reason I know that is because it was soon after I launched my business and I had hired a PR agency because that's what corporate people do. And they had kind of run out of steam after three months, because I only have one product. And they were like, I don't think we can promote you anymore. We've been there, done that. You got lots of placements. And I did get lots of placements. But then all of a sudden, I had no marketing plan. Like as soon as they left, I did $138 in March 2013 in sales. And I thought to myself, you are never going to be full time in this business. That is crazy bad. That is so bad. And it was my friend who bought it bought a cardi, like it wasn’t even somebody I didn't know.
And I laugh about it now, but like, some of the early tactics that I started to use were from B-School because they were content driven. And actually you still see that as you mentioned, to this day in my business, we do a lot of content creation in the business, not just like outfits, but like actual educational content and packing lists and all this kind of stuff. And a lot of that was inspired through that program.
And it's so value added and it creates just such a nice connection with your customer because you're truly giving them something other than just trying to sell them something, but you're giving them a lot of value as well.
Glynis Tao
So it sounds like in your early days, I guess when you sort of started Encircle, like you still were working at your job, right? Like you hadn't quit your job yet at that time, like when you had, when you do, you were doing in Encircled at the same time. And because you were like am I ever going to be able to like do this full time?
I had the same experience too. I was working as a product manager at Reebok and doing the business on the side until I was kind of forced out of my job. And I was like, well, I guess this is the opportunity for me to do this full time and never look back. But the learning curve was just huge.
Obviously, you know, now we know you've managed to be successful over the years and have been able to scale the business. Did your previous experience as a consultant, like, help you in being able to, you know, plan and establish your business? You did talk about it a little bit, but yeah, did you draw from a lot of that experience from your work into your business?
Kristi Soomer
Consulting is that like the reason people hire consultants and probably the reason people hire coaches and mentors is because it's like an objective view on the business. So when you're a business owner, you're not as objective, no matter if you have a consulting background. So from that sense, no, but I would say my whole career was helpful in structuring the business and even my school, like I think my MBA program, I went to Queens University in Canada and that was really transformative from a framework perspective. So that's why I think I'm such a strong operator is because I do have a strong framework for operating the business and the business is, as you know, fashion businesses are really finance driven. You really have to understand the numbers and be really good at forecasting and inventory and manufacturing and stuff like that.
Of course you have to be good at design, but the fundamentals that underpin it need to be really strong. So I think my education and career set me up really well for that. So I worked for some amazing consulting firms, but I also like a lot of shaping of my career happened when I worked at Colgate-Palmolive, which is a consumer packaged goods company that's run like, you know, the tightest ship you'll ever run. And like that taught me so much about like profit and loss statements and marketing spend and all these things, you know, that are really important for a business. So I'd say that's like been really helpful. And I don't think I, you know, I quit my job in 2014 and I had been in my career for almost 11 years, which is like very stupid, probably to a lot of people who are thinking, why would you do that?
But it's not like what happens today. People graduate university and they've already got a business on the side or something. They don't even bother or sometimes they don't even bother going to school or college and they just start their business. That just wasn't really as much of a thing back then. And I'm grateful for every lesson. And I always say this to people who are doing a side hustle. There's always something to learn from your business and having that side business you know, although it was hard because I wasn't home a lot. So I would literally like pack orders on the weekend. And I dropped them on the way to the airport in, you know, Canada Post mailboxes, and I'd have the driver pull over and like stuff some in there. And then I go to the next one, I stuff a bunch in there. That's kind of how I worked. And so that was hard.
But I, there was also I didn't have to worry about money as much, you know, that whole financial stress point was relieved from having a career. Like I wasn't like constantly stressing about that. And so that kind of was, I think, a big game changer. So I always encourage people if they can kind of do both, or at least keep some sort of consistent income while they are starting their business. I think it is it does reduce that like anxiety that comes from being an entrepreneur that we all know comes with it either way at every level, it reduces it for a little bit and allows you to focus on, you know, what matters most and to hire out stuff as well.
Glynis Tao
Sort of like what would you say was the tipping point for you? Like, what was the thing that you did that, you know, got to really like, boost you, your business?
Kristi Soomer
Yeah, I would say like every year, especially early on, you know, the business was like kind of doubling every year. And I think it hit its point where it was becoming unmanageable by me, uh, part-time for sure. And I was starting to realize like, if I want this PR opportunity, if I want this, I want to do another product. Like everything was moving so slowly because I could really only do it on like Saturdays and Sundays. Um, and I'd have to take vacation to work on the business. So it's becoming like prohibitive, I think. So I had to decide.
Um, and I don't remember the specific revenue, but I think it was around, I would guess like $150,000 or something like that. Like I was doing a decent amount of revenue through the business a year. And I was like, okay, I've got something people are like interested in what I'm selling. So like, what if I actually put my full-time effort in and what will happen?
Um, so yeah, I would say like over the years, it just started to kind of grow. Obviously as you get bigger, it doesn't double every year. And then during the pandemic, we had quite a bit of growth, like a lot of brands did for sure, just with people shifting to online shopping and being kind of in this space where we literally make sweatpants you can wear to work. So we were in the right spot at the right time kind of thing. So yeah, but it does get harder as it gets, your business gets bigger to grow and the tactics always change.
Back in the day, like, especially when I first started, like working with bloggers was such a big and influencers, they weren't even called that back then, was such a big unlock for our business. Like we could do a blogger partnership, you know, and we would make like $20,000 in like 24 hours. Like it was crazy. Now it's like so much more fragmented. So you kind of have to, as a business owner, as you know, like adapt your skillset all the time to kind of the changing channels and the tactics and the strategies and, you know, Facebook ads are always shifting and all that kind of stuff. So you really have to become a Jack or Jill of all trades when you're an entrepreneur, which is, it's tough, but I think it's really fun too, cause you get to learn about a lot of stuff and continuously challenge yourself.
Glynis Tao
Yeah, absolutely. And you share a lot of that knowledge on your podcast, especially exactly what you've been doing, what's worked and what hasn't worked for your business. And I love that. I really, I've listened to almost all, if not all your podcasts, because you offer such valuable advice. It's just valuable. It's, you know, practical. It's stuff that you can do. It's, you know, it's not anything crazy. It's like stuff that's actually doable. And knowing that, you know, you've tested it out for your own business, knowing that it works. It's like, wow. I think that's great.
I know in the past three, four years, you know, there's been a big shift in terms of consumer behavior and, you know, the way industry trends are going. How have you adapted to all those changes? Like, have you obviously had to adapt your business model? Like, how did you navigate through all of these changes?
Kristi Soomer
Yeah, so...It's been a little tough because like somewhat ironically, I'm sure this happened to many brands. You know, in 2020, we were going to expand into physical pop-ups. Like we had booked a bunch of like collaborative pop-ups with another brand in person and we had booked all these shows and events. And then, you know, all of a sudden you can't do any of these. And so that was tough.
Um, but you, and we used to do a lot of in-person events and retail in our studio even. And then all of a sudden we're like, can we even open our studio? Can we even ship from our studio? So we had to like really adapt quite a bit. And because of where we're located, like some of our manufacturing shut down, like there was a lot of like, um, uncertainty, especially during the first like six months. Um, so we, we adapted pretty quickly to you know, selling masks. We were one of the first brands in Canada to move to that because we had a manufacturer who was like ready to make them and already had like everything set up for that. And those really carried us through the first few months of the pandemic for sure. And, you know, it was crazy. You would like go on the website and we get a sale like every second when we restock them, like it was, it was insane.
But that led to a lot of discovery of us as a brand, which was nice as well. So once we had manufacturing back open, we were able to like get back into production and kind of business as normal, but not really for a few years. So you just kind of have to roll with the punches. It's, you know, it was an incredibly difficult time. I think any entrepreneur will tell you that. And, you know, even from everything, from getting materials to, you know price increases, to getting people to work for you, and like all the things. Like there was just so many things that like, I hope we just have the next decade and it's just like cool and calm. That'd be nice. Cause I think a lot of us like really went through it, but you know, all you can do is just do the best that you can and adapt and be gentle and kind to yourself through the process because you know that like other people are going through the same thing as well.
And that's where I think community is really helpful also is to make sure you're supporting yourself with like, you know, different communities, because oftentimes what you're thinking, you're probably not the only one experiencing it. So it's good to have that community so that you don't feel so alone.
Glynis Tao
Yeah. Just exactly what you said. I mean, during the pandemic, we were all in it. So it's not like you felt like you were the only one going through it. You know, the entire world was.
So in that way, I felt like it's never been a time like something like this in history and like within the past hundred years, that was like global, that everybody was in the same situation at the same time and all having to adapt to this.
But like, would you say now, you know, did the pandemic help you in your business in terms of identifying certain things? Doing things differently? Has it changed the way you did business? Do you think you came out stronger?
Kristi Soomer
That's a great question. Would I do it again? No. No. If I'm honest and transparent like I am, no, I would not wish that on anybody. But I'm definitely more resilient. And I think, you know, all the business owners that I know are in some way, because it showed a lot of us that, you know, we can adapt to whatever is thrown at our way. And some businesses were just dealt a crappy hand. Like it was just like chance, right? Like if you're in the right category, like thank God we weren't selling like luggage or something during the pandemic, that would have been a lot harder to like deal with, right? So I think in some ways, some brands got really lucky. Some of them did not. Like restaurants, I think struggled a lot.
And we lost a lot of great restaurants, I know in Toronto. So it's like, it's like neither good or bad. It's just like, it happened and we deal with it and we move on. But the things I learned for sure were like, you know, nothing is certain. And I think too, I think a lot of us got that reality check that like, you know, as an entrepreneur, like stuff is always out of our control, but there's usually like stability somewhere.
And I think the thing with the pandemic was that it was like really out of control and there was no stability in your external environment and then internally. And it's just like, whoa, okay, that can happen. And for a lot of us, like we had never experienced anything that unstable in our lives. So I think from that perspective, it was eye-opening to not only build resilience, but also to build awareness that like we have to plan for some of these things.
Those things that people talk about in risk management that we laugh at, because we're like, oh, that's stupid, that'll never happen. They can happen. Like nothing's out of the field. So I think about that a lot when we're planning production, when we're how we structure our business, where people are located, who serve the business. We're definitely much more hybrid model with a huge portion of like remote freelancers now just because of the way things have shifted. So I do think we took whatever positives we could out of it, but yeah, it was a very challenging time for sure.
Glynis Tao
For aspiring entrepreneurs in the fashion industry, what advice would you give them based on your own experience and lessons learned?
Kristi Soomer
I would say it's very hard to break through in the fashion industry unless you have a very clear point of view.
And that's where I think it's really important to work or any product based business to really work on understanding who your customer is, who you're serving and how you're either solving some sort of problem for them or creating some sort of joy for them. Because there are a lot of brands out there selling a lot of similar things and know, we see it all the time that fashion is very recycled in terms of silhouettes and you know, now 90s fashion is back again, much to our horror, you know, stuff comes around. So like, there's not a lot of new stuff out there. It may be a new positioning, which is a different thing of old things. And that's, that's what as an entrepreneur, you bring to the table, you know, your own point of view on it, your own take your own way you bring it to market.
So, I encourage people to think more about that and how they're going to go to market and what their brand looks like and their values, um, as much as possible. Cause I think that is what becomes a differentiator at the end of the day. Anybody can make a t-shirt. It's super easy. Um, but can you tell a story with that t-shirt? Can you emotionally connect with that t-shirt? You know, what, what values does that t-shirt bring to the world and share your customer's closet? That's more challenging.
Glynis Tao
Yeah. And, um, I mean, you have very strong values as a brand and seem like it was something that you had, you know, from the beginning had your set core values. And that's carried you through all these years. And the more or less I guess the values have remained the same in these past 11 years?
Kristi Soomer
Pretty much. Yeah, I think I mean, they haven't really changed that much. I would say maybe the way we articulate them has sometimes changed. But like, we've always been really comfortable. Versatility has always been at the core of what we do. The thoughtfulness of our design is always integral. And then obviously, our ethics have always been there.
We've always been made in Canada and always strive to do the most sustainable thing with our fabrics as possible. So yeah, they've always been the way they are. And I think that's a testament. I do believe that our customers see that we live our values and we're really authentic about them and we're transparent when we can't achieve something. Some things are just not realistic for small brands and some things are just not far along enough to deliver on product quality and stuff like that yet. Removing spandex out of every product would be amazing, but there's benefits to spandex that people don't understand in terms of longevity and rebound and fabric and fit.
So like there's things that we can't solve for yet, but it doesn't mean we're not thinking about them. So we're always very transparent with our customers to let them know, you know, where we're doing well and where we're maybe, you know, still a work in progress.
Glynis Tao
I love that. Um, what's your look for 2024?
Kristi Soomer
Yeah, so I think it's really positive. We're coming out with a lot of new styles coming up, really inspired by our customer where they are today. As you mentioned, when I started Encircled in 2012, even I've grown up with the business, this is like 10, 12 years later, and I'm even in a different phase in my life. So we're really designing for the woman who is living her midlife journey.
And we really want to be a part of that. So that's something we take really seriously into how we design. So I'm very excited to kind of roll that out a little bit more in terms of how we're executing on even pants or like tops and dresses and stuff like that. Like we have some really great designs that are functional, yet comfortable, yet elegant and dressy that we're launching over the next like six months that are planned out. And I'm really excited about them all.
So I'm really happy to see our customers reactions because I feel pretty confident in them and the new directions. So, so yeah, it's looking good.
Glynis Tao
Oh, amazing. Can you provide any sneak peek into any exciting projects or plans a brand has for the future?
Kristi Soomer
Yeah, so we are coming out with, for years people have asked us for dressy sweatpants, which is one of our best selling products. Without pleats and without ruching like less of a sweat pant kind of looking sweatpant. So one of our new products that's coming out in February is called the Wanderer Pant. And it is basically like your go to like, kind of like tapered leg work to weekend pant made out of dressy sweatpant material. So it feels like pajamas it’s so comfortable, really elegant. Um, our designer’s done an amazing job at making jersey not look like jersey, which is really difficult to do. Um, so it has, it looks actually structured, but it's not, um, it's soft. So I'm really excited for that pant. I think our customer is going to love it. Um, it's really modern and fresh and it's like one of those pants you can wear anywhere. Um, and everywhere. And that's the beauty of our dressy sweatpants and other designs that's been around forever.
So this is, I think, one of those designs that will be in people's closets for a really long time. So we're really proud to bring that to market next month.
Glynis Tao
Oh, I'm excited for that as well. I have a pair of the dressy sweatpants. I'd like to see the next evolution of it. Yeah. Where can people find you if they want to get in touch with you?
Kristi Soomer
Yeah. So you can check us out at Encircled.ca. That's E-N-C-I-R-C-L-E D.ca.
We're at @Encircled_ on Instagram and you can find me at @KristiSoomer on Instagram or TikTok.
Glynis Tao
Thank you so much for being here today and sharing your valuable insights into entrepreneurship, the fashion industry and business scaling with us.
