5-Millionen-E-Commerce-Marke weiter skalieren

0:00Unternehmer/Gast I sell, I have a direct-to-consumer brand. >> All right. >> Uh we are doing over 5 million per year right now. >> Nice. >> I would like to be in 10 million per month. >> What's profit? Jesus. Okay, what's profit? >> Um over 70% sometimes. >> Jesus is coming after you, bro. Just saying. >> Um >> Plus Yeah. >> Yeah. So like I think the problem is going to be manpower because it's just me and my assistant at the moment. We have contractors for like email marketing.

0:27Uh I run my ads. Uh I don't want to delegate it. It's hard because I just kind of Yeah. >> a profile on Instagram or something like that? Like a following? Yeah. >> Yes. >> Okay, got it. And what is >> Like me Yeah, we do have a brand profile as well. Uh >> Okay, but do you have a big following? >> In the brand, yes. Me too. But like uh I'm not the brand. The brand is the brand. >> Okay. Okay. Um Okay, so you're doing 5 million. And again, sorry to stop you there. What was the thing you were selling?

0:56>> Um travel gear. >> Travel gear? >> Yes. >> Cool. Okay. Um and are you carrying that yourself? Did you design it? Are you just kind of affiliating it and selling other people's stuff and taking a >> No, so we started just with one design and after that I just I started just um kind of doing research to improve the design because we saw what the market wanted. And yeah, so we started um improving one design but then we developed another two new SKUs that are completely just really liked in the market. People started liking it a lot.

1:29So right now I'm like kind of like actually I just increased I want to increase the SKU because that actually increased my my my orders number and the LTV as well. Like all the customers have to Yeah. Yeah. >> Okay, so the decision that you're trying to make is should I >> Should I just like we are growing. So like I feel like I have to decide you know, like I know that you do more but like what? More payouts? More what?

1:57>> So >> did you start with the following You started with the following first, right? >> No. >> You started with paid ads and then >> Yeah, all the time for us. Nothing organic. Because I didn't just grow in people like to see I don't know. We just from one day we just we we were in 10 10k now we are like 100k followers. >> Yeah, when were you like I'm going to make a new travel gear and then run ads to sell it.

2:24>> No, I was in the school so like uh I went to school in China. So, in China I started just getting many suppliers and I like the backpack with those factory. So, I decided to uh they are going to be my manufacturers, right? >> Okay. >> And then I just started with that. Like that. >> So, you and then you just thought Okay, so you found a backpack you liked because you were in China going to school. >> And because I was a traveler as well. >> Okay. So, you you were the avatar.

2:49Alex >> Yeah, I was traveling all the time. Not anymore because you need to focus. Like I don't have I cannot be traveling building a brand. >> Okay. Um All right. So, there's obviously a lot of steps from 5 million to 120 million, you know, annually. Um the advice to double the business is different than the advice to to 20x it.

3:19Alex Just to be clear. So, which one would you rather me answer? >> Double. >> Okay, we'll double it. That's the more I mean, spend more on paid ads. >> Okay, so let's go to the other one. >> [laughter] >> That's what it is. Spend more paid ads, make more make more content, right? Um if you want to really get the brand where it wants to be, I would you'll probably get in the neighborhood of somewhere of like this is me just like shooting from the hip here.

3:48Five to seven cornerstone SKUs that are really kind of like your big pillars that that that that like for zooming to the future, right? That's the product lineup. You're going to have the accessories, things like that that are profit maximized. So, you're going to have your your handful of core things that every traveler needs. The thing that you're going to have to build because if you really have run this all paid ads, not on organic, digging your word at that. If that's If that's how you've grown this, then your row as this is what's going to happen.

4:23Is that your your margin So, let's let's say it's like your margin is going to I'm really drawing this poorly, sorry. But basically, your margin is going to start compressing as you spend more and more dollars in advertising until eventually the point where you're spending tons of money and making very little here. And so, the only way that you have to only way you can counteract that is two things. One is product driven, which I think is one of the things that's been helping you probably more than you know. Is that the product it seems like is pretty good cuz if people really love it, you do all this research, blah blah blah, and you were the user, which I think are all the things that are required to make a really good product. Um you're getting some level of word of mouth that for every one person who buys the bag, they send you another 0.2 people who send the bag. So, that offsets CAC at scale, which is word of mouth.

5:12The second thing that offsets CAC at scale is going to be brand reputation. Now, product is the end of that brand reputation Luke cuz you can say whatever you want about yourself, if the product sucks, that will end, right? But the other way of building the brand is how many other people like you can you bring into the brand who are cornerstone associations that that elevate everything. And that then opens up the market overall, and that's where you'll basically you you have to build brand and distribution when you're in a physical products business.

5:45Alex >> Affiliate like an affiliate army and also the affiliate the big affiliates that have like a good reputation. >> I would I would start with the handful of big big guys. Um you can do both. I already want to say that. I like I've done I've built businesses both ways. Um there's advantages and disadvantages to both. Um long-term you'll probably end up doing both. So, you'll have your all your your nanos and your micros and you're trying to activate these people to, you know, post about it and and and send their friends and maybe go from 1.2 uh referrals per person to 1.6 or whatever on the affiliate side. But, the brand lift that you're going to get, especially cuz you're on paid as your primary, that you're going to get from your white list and have different avatars that already have brand recognition or reputation wearing your stuff is going to be more difficult to calculate, but I can tell you when it's not there is that you won't be able to scale.

6:36Alex So, that's what you have to build towards. Is that you need especially as Facebook has probably know the Andromeda updates and we had came out. Right. And so, you need to have more and different types of creatives that are truly net new. And that's where building those affiliate bases are super important. >> Okay. Thank you. >> If you're business owner and you're not growing as fast as you'd like, I'd like to give you a free gift. So, my team and I put together the $100 scaling roadmap, which is basically 200 hours of us looking over all the portfolio companies we've had and what stages of growth they went through and more importantly where they got stuck and how they got past it.

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