Felix: Today I'm joined by Joe Parenteau from Fable. Fable creates premium quality home accessories that make designing a perfect space effortless. It was started in 2019, and based out of Vancouver. Welcome Joe.
Joe: Yes. Thank you. Excited to be here.
Felix: Yeah. So you started this business, because you wanted to find a specific type of perfect gift for your mom. So tell us about that. Tell us about the story of how you came up with the idea behind the business.
Joe: That all happened in 2018. So my mom had gone through this kitchen renovation. She was really excited about it. And my sister and I actually decided we were going to outfit that entire space for her. And after searching high and low in Vancouver, I was able to find some pots and pans, maybe at the store called TheBay, if you're familiar with them. But what I was really struggling with was the dinnerware and the dining room table in itself.
And after going in and out of many different box stores and traditional sellers, I was as frankly overwhelmed and frustrated. And I ended up settling for some dinnerware from TheBay for my mom, which is lovely, but the biggest challenge I faced was that it was a 12-inch plate. And I don't know if anyone would know this, but a 12-inch plate is not the standard diameter to fit into your cabinet.
And what this turned into was this big, expensive set that I bought her, I was really excited about, she couldn't use for her dinner plates. And she had to store them into the top shelf, completely sideways. She's really short, so she couldn't reach them. So I was just very appalled and frustrated with this experience.
Felix: Got it. So an experience that you have faced, you wanted to find something perfect for your mom, and you mentioned that it was overwhelming and frustrating, and led to you purchasing a product that your mom couldn't get much use out of. How did that lead you though, from making this leap from having this problem for yourself into wanting to start a business behind it?
Joe: So that was the first time I had really encountered that or actually really encountered trying to buy home decor anywhere than IKEA at that point. And it was about a year later when I was actually trying to upgrade my own home. I was now working at a tech company in Vancouver. I was getting my first place, and I thought to myself, "Hey, I don't really go to the bars or do that. So I have a lot of friends over, we do wine tastings. Why don't I upgrade my IKEA dinnerware to something that it's a bit more special, a bit more memorable and something I could really show off to my friends, I guess?"
And so I turned to the same stores, because that's really was all that's available in Vancouver. And I went up and down the street, if you've been to Vancouver, it's called Granville South, and up and down, in and out of all these home decor stores that claim to have the most beautiful dinnerware and home accessories. And again, I was faced with the same challenge that I couldn't find dinnerware that I really enjoyed.
And even the greater problem was dinnerware that matched. I'm not an interior designer, and I thought it was, and I found it very challenging and very frustrating to find plates that would match cutlery, that would match wine glasses, that would match mugs, that would essentially set my entire table. And it's a mishmash of different pieces, and I really couldn't put together a set that looked great.
Felix: Got it. So now what's your background? How did you even begin to go down this path of ... Like you mentioned, you're not a interior designer. Was this your background, anything involving in home decor or anything like that? How did you even know what steps to take to build a business around a industry like this?
Joe: That's a great question, one I ask myself all the time, because that was not my background at all. My background was I was previously an accountant. So, I worked at an accounting firm. I'm from Regina, Saskatchewan. So I'm from the Prairies. Nothing to do with tech whatsoever. And I ended up moving to Vancouver in seek of warmer weather. And what I found was this accounting company called Bench Accounting.
And I was very fortunate to join when they were a bit younger, and I was one of their early on employees. And I got to take advantage of that entire tech experience and watch the company grow from 30 employees all the way up to 250, by the time I had left. And at that point, I was amazed and jealous and envious. And I really wanted it for myself to go create a startup. And I think at that point, I was really just looking for the right idea, the right problem that I was really passionate about, or that really got under my skin in the right way. And it just so happened to be these two experiences with dinnerware.
Felix: Got it. So the business, like we had mentioned when we introduced you, was in the quality and premium home accessory space and your most recent background is in tech. And you mentioned a couple of times. Do you see yourself as a tech company more so, or maybe as much as a home accessory business?
Joe: I would say we definitely view ourselves as a tech company and an innovator, honestly. I think we've taken a lot of what we have learned from our experience in tech, and both of the co-founders are from tech as well into, into Fable. And just the way that we work and the theories that we apply to the problems we're solving is very much with that tech high-growth mindset.
Felix: Got it. Can you say more about that? What is it about? What have you adopted from your experience in the tech industry as apply in this space?
Joe: That's a good question. I think even some of the most basic concepts where we talk about MVPs and trying to just get something in the market that you can test and you can see how people adapt to it, as opposed to trying to develop the most perfect product in the entire world. And for us, we really look at Fable as a journey and something we're constantly iterating on and constantly building upon.
So one thing we learned at Bench was that concept of get something into the wild, get something in the hands of users. See what they think, listen to their feedback and iterate on it and make changes really quickly. And I would say at the core of Fable, that's really how we operate and how we've progressed the company.
Felix: Got it. Definitely familiar with the process in the software space. How does it change or what differences are there when it comes to physical products, like what you're selling, when it comes to taking this tech in startup, especially tech startup approach to launching a business and developing an MVP?
Joe: A lot longer lead times for things. So in tech, my experience was, "Oh, we have this bug here, and it can be fixed in minutes." And I guess, well, our website can do that. But if we create a product that has a deficiency or a serious issue, that actually has a lot of work to go back and replace it, and it's not a quick fix that you can do in a week or two or in a quick sprint. It's actually something you've got to go replace over the next six months, because you have to go develop it and create it, and the supply chain components.
So I found that we need to think a bit more longer term. Maybe not as quick and as agile, because we've got to plan for some of these longer lead times for the products.
Felix: Got it. So tell us about the MVP. When you first decided to launch the business, what was the product that you started with? What was the MVP version of that?
Joe: So when we launched the business ... We talk about the business launching in November, 2019. We had actually already launched a different MVP under a completely different name and learned a ton. So we took the approach of ... I think we sold maybe 200 dinner plates or something, something very, very small. And we were really excited about it, but we ended up starting by sourcing some products from Alibaba. So not really designing them ourselves.
We were really looking to find a creator that could do mass production for us. And we didn't really have a huge hand in the design side of that. What we found is we learned very quickly, it's very important to find the right creator that matches what you guys are looking for. And we did not have a focus or as much of a focus on sustainability at that time either. And we actually ... A lot of the products that we received, and I don't think many people know this story, but a lot of the products that we received actually all came scratched.
So we had 200 plus dinner plates, completely scratched. And I remember Max, Tina and I sitting in our storage space with all 200 plates on the ground. We were trying to count all of them and photograph all the scratches to try and get reimbursed, and it was a complete nightmare. And I think that was the learning point for us, when we said, "We're only going to work with suppliers who think about the world in the same way we do."
Felix: Got it. So this is a step that a lot of people take where they're sourcing products from Alibaba instead of creating it themselves. And it's a step that a lot of people take when starting a business. And you mentioned that it was a learning point for you. Now looking back, was this the right first step though? Do you find it was a valuable first step or if you were to go back, would you have skipped this from the beginning?
Joe: It was certainly valuable. I will not discount that. I learned a lot at that point. I would skip it if I would've known that it was the wrong first step, absolutely. But that all being said, I'm really proud of our journey and where we're at. So I wouldn't change the past, but I do wish we wouldn't have had to do that. And I would not recommend someone doing that going forward.
Felix: Got it. Now you mentioned that once you learned that lesson, you now knew that you had to find the right suppliers that had the same worldview, same values that you had. Can you say more about that? What exactly were you looking for in this second round and how did you find them?
Joe: So I think one of the really positive outcomes of that situation was we had some products, a very small batch, very low MOQ that we were able to get in the hands of consumers. And as soon as we were able to get them into the hands of these consumers, it became even more clear what they were looking for. There was parts about that product that they really enjoyed. And some of the essence of that product still exists today.
And there was things that they did not enjoy, and they did not love whatsoever. And that helped guide us to figure out who we wanted to work with and what that system needed to be. To shed, I guess, some light on that, when we would share the products with people, one of the things they would turn to with the ceramics is they really wanted to know who made it, how it was made at what types of materials.
Was it non-toxic? Was it good for the earth? What's our look on sustainability? And I think part of that is because we're in Vancouver, and it's very much in that mindset in that location. But that being said, people, when they think about ceramics, they think about the earth, and it reflects them back to sustainability. So we were able to take a lot of those conversations, a lot of those customer interviews and those learnings, and then really just apply them into our next iteration of Fable.
Felix: Got it. Now when you went through this process of finding a new supplier, new manufacturers to push forward these kind of values of sustainability, the materials that you guys value, the way that it's produced, how did you find the right supplier now that you knew that these were the new list of criteria?
Joe: I wish I could say it was some glorious effort, but it wasn't really. We identified two locations that we felt makes a lot of ceramics. We were able to narrow it down to Portugal and China. Both of these countries compete for ceramic creation. And what we were able to find was a government database from Portugal that had every list of every person who makes ceramics. So it was a business list. It was hundreds of businesses that make ceramics. Not just dinnerware, just any type of ceramics.
And what I would do is I would stay up in the night, because we are on very different time zones, eight hours difference. And I would just call all these locations, especially not many of them have a website. So I'd have to call them all and just ask them, "Hey, do you make dinnerware? This is what we're trying to make," and follow up email after email. And what we were able to do is really narrow that list down to 10 key different creators in different teams here in Portugal.
And what that then transpired into was me quitting my job and flying over to Portugal the very next day to go meet with them all.
Felix: Wow. So that's a pretty big leap of faith. What did you see about the business, or what did you see about that opportunity that made you so confident to do all of that?
Joe: And I think a lot of this comes back to our original launch or most MVP version of Fable and the feedback we received from customers. And it was a lot of validation on that. The problem we were trying to solve existed. There wasn't a clear solution out there for them at the time. And they really wanted us to go solve it, and they were really passionate about that. And it became more and more clear that working a full-time job in the tech industry was not going to allow me to make Fable successful or to allow our team to do that.
Felix: Got it. So how long did this process take to find this new supplier as you were making these calls and reaching out to all these different suppliers to see if they were up to your standards?
Joe: Maybe two months. So not very long at all. From the moment that I found that list on the government website through the moment that I met them in Portugal and we had purchased the first purchase order, it was about two months or so.
Felix: Got it. And so when you landed in Portugal, you were just going to hit up these 10 different creators that you had found. And then what was the exact mission once you landed in Portugal?
Joe: It was rent a Fiat and start driving and go from location to location. And I had a list of criteria questions the team and I had created, the two other co-founders, Tina and Max. And what we would do is I would go visit these different creators. I would share with them what we wanted. We had some samples of the different pieces and the styles we were hoping to go create. And these teams would always say, "No, no, no. We can't do that. You're the wrong fit for us."
Or, "Hey, we can. This is what it would look like. Here's some pricing, here's some different things that we've done in the past." And then I would call Max and Tina every single night, and I would video time them and shared. Say like, "Hey, this is what this looks like." Or "What do you guys think?" And we just went through that process really quickly. And I think I was in Portugal for about 10 days, and we had made the decision by the end of those days.
Felix: Got it. Now you went to Portugal armed with knowledge about the changes that you wanted to make from that first attempt that you went through with Alibaba, but how did you find your very first customers to put your MVP in front of to get this data?
Joe: So some of the first customers we ever found was we relied on friends and family to really spread the word. But after we ran out of that sales channel, we actually did a few different things. Lots did not work, and one did work. I'm happy to share them all, but the one that did work really well was when we attended a local, very small, almost like a craft show, but for local small businesses in Vancouver.
And they had maybe 2,000 people walk through this location on these weekends, and we would buy a booth for like $300. And we didn't have any products to sell, mind you, at this point. So we couldn't really sell anything at this. What we would do is we'd show people the pieces and we would just put it in their hands and try and understand what they liked about it, what they didn't like. We would pitch them almost as if we were cold calling and be like, "Oh yeah, these plates are like this." Or "They have this feature," or "They have this."
And what we found really quickly is by reading the person's interaction with them, how they lit up when we said certain words, or they would be like, "Oh, that makes no sense. Why did you say that?" We were able to take that feedback and really quickly, live, instantaneously, and then apply that to how we plan to actually use our go-to-market strategy when we were about to launch in November.
Felix: Got it. Was this just one event that you went to, or how many times did you go through this before you had a solid or a comfortable enough understanding of your market that you moved forward with in everything else from going to Portugal and finding the right manufacturers and so on?
Joe: We did that event three times, and mind you, this was after, when we had found our creators. We did this event three different times, and it was really around product positioning and product marketing. A few of the other things we did, I think that the second runner up that was worked really well was ... In Vancouver, there's a street called A in Granville South. And it's where all of the home decor stores are like your Pottery Barn, Williams-Sonoma, EQ3, CB2, Indigo. They are all on the same street, and mind you, they are for most countries or most cities.
And what we'd do is we'd stand outside and we would offer people a $50 Amazon gift card to be entered. And we did this draw, where we could just interview them and ask them questions about their dinnerware. So we would pretty much just stand out there every Saturday for a few hours and just ask people questions and take as many notes as we could to try and obtain as much information on what people cared about when they think about their dining room table or their home in general.
Felix: Got it. And I'm assuming this is an evolving process that you're always trying to learn. At what point, though, were you confident in the positioning of the brand, of the messaging for you to go ahead with actually launching the business?
Joe: I'm not quite sure I was ever a hundred percent confident. I think I knew that we had something that could work, but I knew that it was never going to be a hundred percent right. And I knew there was still going to be work to do. I think we knew we had good product positioning from a marketing standpoint the day we launched. I think that was the time when we said, "I think we are onto something here that could actually work."
Felix: Tell us more about that value proposition. What are you proud of that makes your product stand out from the rest of the market?
Joe: I think our unique insight that we continually come back to is our products have a story. Our products are created by people. We feature those people, and we're really proud of where they come from and the products' heritage. I think that a lot of main brands, they put a veil between you and the product, and they say, "We designed this," but won't really tell you who made it. That's not really important. What's important is it's a plate.
And for us, we've removed that. And we like to think of it as more, "This product has a story, and it came from somewhere, and it has a very rich and interesting story. Let us share that with you." And I think that that is one of the most overarching product concepts across our entire brand.
Felix: Now, how do you put that front and center in your marketing that there's a story behind? How do you actually use it in your marketing?
Joe: I think that it's a very evolving concept on that front. It's right now, if you were to look at our site today or at our marketing today, it wouldn't be as much on the imagery. It'd be more on the language and the copy, but I'm actually in Portugal right now to do shoots with our different creators. So it's going to vastly change here very quickly, where we'll be able to share video content of those creators all the way through still photography on those creation stories.
So it's definitely something we're always building on. And I would say we're not even a hundred percent there yet.
Felix: So this is interesting. The approach that you've taken with the business is almost like a creator-first approach, making sure that you ... It's like a table stakes for you to find a creator that would actually have a story that will resonate with your target customers and your market. Does this pose any challenges that you've run into yet or trying to ... Is it hard to find creators that have a story that match up with the story that you want to tell?
Joe: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. It's definitely poses a challenge for us and it makes things very tricky and not easy. For example, we are always looking for new products, and we have a lot of products we're really excited to release next year. One of the most prominent being ... I don't know if I should say this, but it's going to be glassware, but it wasn't an easy process to go find a glassware creator that had a story that we could be really proud of that focuses on sustainability, that focuses on ethical craftsmanship.
That wasn't an easy task. And quite frankly, that's over half the battle is finding that. Then the second part, which is the actual product in itself.
Felix: And I think that there are other entrepreneurs out there that might not have taken this creator-first approach, but can still dig into the creators of manufacturers, the story behind their product and how it's created. How do you pull those things out? When you're on the ground or when you're talking to the people that are involved in creating this product, how do you pull out the story from them?
Joe: It's a long list of Q&A questions we've built out and that we ask each creator, which it wasn't that way at the start. It was a lot of we didn't quite know the story, then we had to re-ask them it. But it's really now transitioned more into a process for us, like, "Here's the set list of 30 questions we need you to answer. Let us know what the responses are." We have an interview with them. We chat through all the answers. And we then make sure that they're really aligned to our standards and to what we're looking to or who we're looking to work with, rather.
Felix: What's your personally favorite question to ask a creator?
Joe: My favorite question, because I think I just find it really interesting, is really wrapping our heads around their employees and their staff, and are they fairly paid? Because I think that that just resonates really well with me, and it matters a lot to me. Are they fairly paid, and are men and women being paid the same amounts for the same roles?
Felix: Now, you mentioned that one of the differences in the software startup world and the world that you're in with physical products is that there are longer lead times and basically less room for error, right? It's a lot more costly for some of these, if you were to make a mistake. So what steps have you taken to avoid and protect against these kinds of missteps when you're trying to do this rapid development in the world of physical products?
Joe: That's a really good question. We do a pretty rigorous sampling process now that I think we didn't quite do at the start. So we really do request a lot of samples. We really test all the products ourselves and you use them ourselves for a long period of time before we're willing to even go potentially sell the product. We also do I think pretty standard things, which is different third-party certifications for safety and hazardous in some of those components, which I think are really table stakes at this point.
But for us at the start, it was a lot about speed. And I think the learning lesson for us has been to slow down a little bit, because these could be costly mistakes if you release a product that isn't up to the standard that you had hoped, because there is such a long lead time on them.
Felix: Now, we had mentioned already that home accessories, this industry is not your background. And it's a reason that causes a lot entrepreneurs to pause where they feel like they don't have the expertise or the pedigree and experience within an industry that they have to discover that, that they've wanted to disrupt and come into, to build a business around. How did you overcome these gaps that you're coming in, no background in the space, and wanting to come in and be a player?
Joe: I wish I had a really interesting story here, but I don't. A lot of Googling and a lot of YouTube videos. A lot of asking friends and family. And I would say we've been very fortunate to have some great mentors on our team. These mentors have founded other direct to consumer brands, which have really helped accelerate us, and they've been able to pass along these learnings to our team. So it's been a challenge, but we've been relying on a lot of different people to help support us in that front.
Felix: Were there any specific obstacles that you can remember due to you being a new entrant into the space that were particularly challenging?
Joe: Yeah. I think the challenge was we didn't really know anything. I think it's a challenge and an advantage. We had no really expectations of how things worked. So we came in and thought, "What's the quickest way from point A to point B?" And while I think we were able to shortcut a lot of traditional processes and you skirt around those, which helped us operate with a bit more speed, there's also some challenges.
Like a really simple one like, "Who is the best freight forwarder to work with when you're exporting out of Portugal?" I had no idea. So I'm calling all these different freight forwarders that I Google. And Google is not super helpful if you google freight forwarder. It doesn't really tell you. It's more meant for a consumer, not for a business. It's actually hard to find that information that, "Oh, you could work with X," or "You could work with Y, but Y is better from this location to this location." That was hard to overcome.
I know another interesting challenge was, "Which port should we be exporting out of in Portugal, and it has the quickest boat times, so we don't have stops off in London randomly? Which pro boat providers should we be using?" And it's challenges like that, that while you can have a lot of mentors in the world, we didn't even know to ask those questions. So we've been just faced with different challenges, because we didn't even know that that was going to be a problem.
Felix: Now, once you did settle down in those 10 days in Portugal, how long did it take to get your first production run that was ready to be sold?
Joe: Four months. Four months until we had the product in Canada.
Felix: Got it. And what was the launch strategy once you had those products?
Joe: Well, I think one of our insights was that it was going to be very hard to launch to an entire country or an entire continent of United States and Canada. So we tried to keep our marketing efforts very focused and very in one geographic location and try to be someone to a smaller group of people. So we actually launched particularly in Vancouver only, and we did a few different things, and by the way, a lot of things that didn't work. I can talk about those too.
The first thing we realized though in Vancouver is that no one had ever heard of us or our products. And it was going to be really hard for people to trust our brand online. So we ended up trying to find as many different influencers, or I guess just in general, influential people on Instagram or on Facebook that we could gift our product to. So we reached out to hundreds of different content creators asking if we could just gift them our product.
And by the way, at this point, we hadn't fundraised anybody. We were completely bootstrapped. We had no money. So we really were in a position where it was like, "We can't pay you for anything. All we can do is give you our product. If you like it, we appreciate if you share it. But there's no obligation. Just take the product. Let us know what you think. We'd be excited to hear."
And what we did is we curated these groups of content creators who had an audience in that region, in the Vancouver region. So what ended up transpiring was, I think it was 30 to 60 different content creators all around the same time, because everyone was getting delivered their products on the same day, posting about us, how excited they were about our products. And I think that was what really kickstarted us to sell in that location and really how that same strategy of by market, by market is really what we look at. And we still do today.


Felix: I like this approach. It's definitely a unique approach of launching where you're focused on one geographic area. I'm curious, how did you settle on choosing to focus on a geographic area versus things like demographic or based on some interest and focusing all your marketing in one interest, for example? Why geographic?
Joe: I think that ... Again, I don't know if there's any mathematical science behind this that actually proves this point right, or we just got very lucky. But one of our early concepts was that in order for a person to buy a product or to trust a brand and to want to commit money to something, they probably need to hear about it from three to five different times. They need to see it. They need to hear it. And ideally, someone they trust has talked about it, or they've heard it from someone they trust.
So our concept was that if we know the audience is ... If we can center an audience into a very particular location, it'll be easier to get that many touch points out to those people and be much more cost-effective.
Felix: Got it. Now, how many influencers did you launch with initially?
Joe: I'd have to pull up the old spreadsheet, but I think it was anywhere between 30 to 60, within the first 10 to 15 days.
Felix: Got it. So it's certainly very doable for anyone that wants to do this. And you mentioned that it's still something that you do today. I'm assuming that it's a much more expanded program. Tell us about what it's evolved into.
Joe: It's evolved. It's a lot more robust now. It's much more sophisticated. We actually have a little bit more tracking. We have different ways to graduate these different partnerships into different paths, whether that be ... We don't really do affiliates for example, but whether that be a content creator that we're constantly re-gifting things to you when we release new products, which would be on the more very basic level, but all the way through ...
We recently did a full product launch with a content creator, and we actually were able to co-collaborate on a color line and launch it together. So the partnerships progress in different ways, but it's definitely much more sophisticated now. We have software that helps us track everything and it's not in a Google spreadsheet, fortunately.
Felix: Got it. So you mentioned that you're constantly working with some of these influencers, and influencer marketing can be hard to track to measure the success. So how do you do that today? How do you measure the success of a given influencer that you're working with?
Joe: Today, we give them a swipe up link that they can send people into, and then we use a standard 30-day cookie on that to track the success. But in the past, we didn't do that. In the very early days, we gave out a 10% off discount code and we just tracked off of those sales from that point. But we've actually moved to this software called GRIN. Would highly recommend it as you're starting to hit a bit more scale.
And it helps you pretty much manage all of these different campaigns and really lays it out in a most simple, intuitive platform that I've ever seen.
Felix: So you had mentioned that collaborations is also a different approach that you've taken with unique colors, which it sounds like a bigger level of effort. How do you determine whether you are working with an influencer to do this larger scale collaboration versus more of a traditional influencer marketing partnership?
Joe: What it came down to was we really liked this person. We were able to meet with her a few different times, and once in person. We had done some smaller works in the past together, and we knew that her audience, her demographic, was really excited about what we're doing, but we also really loved what she was doing. She is a nutritionist. So very focused on food, but also a nice level of lifestyle is built into her content. And it was just really a great match.
And I guess we just really liked working with her. So for that reason, we felt like she aligned with the brand. We decided that maybe we could approach her with this idea. And we came to her with this concept and it seemed to work out.
Felix: And when you do reach out to a new influencer, what seems to work to get their attention? What do you find that influencers care about?
Joe: That's a good question. We just reach out on DMs. We just send a DM really quick, and we say, "Hey." We share about why we like what they're doing. We try and engage in their audience and be a part of their audience. So I don't think we would ever just really reach out to someone who we weren't already really excited about or who we had been watching from afar for a little bit of time.
 


What we do for our prospecting for different content creators is we'll find ones that we're interested in. We'll follow along. We'll join their community, engage in their community, get more involved with what they're doing. Really understand what they're doing, and then we reach out on a DM just asking if they'd be interested to do something together.
Felix: And most of these are through Instagram?
Joe: Yeah. Through Instagram or email. We've done both. 
Felix: I mean, the promotions that these influencers are doing, where they're posting content, that's mostly through Instagram?
Joe: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. We haven't been able to get on the other platforms yet, but we're really excited. We're hoping to be on TikTok here in the next couple of months.
Felix: Got it. And it sounded like you had mentioned that there's a link that you give them for swipe ups or meaning Instagram stories. Is that the approach that you've seen that has been most effective with stories versus a post on the actual feed?
Joe: Yeah. A hundred percent would recommend an unboxing video on the stories.
Felix: Got it. Now, what about managing all of this? And when you have influencers, like the 60 that you start off with, you mentioned that it was done in spreadsheets before. What do you do nowadays to ... Or is it still through spreadsheets to manage all of the influencers that you're working with?
Joe: We use a tool called GRIN. And GRIN allows you to manage and oversee all these different campaigns and different partnerships with different content creators and different influencers. So we put them all into the system and we can do our emailing and messaging out of there. We can also track the results. And also we can capture all of the different photography and different stories through this system as well. So it allows us to get access to those assets. So that tool in itself has been a game changer for us.
Felix: Got it. Now, what about direction? When you do have an influencer that agrees, that wants to work with you, what's your involvement in the results, the deliverable and available when they're producing content? Are you giving them any guidance? What's been useful for what you guys have been doing to actually get the result that you're looking for?
Joe: We don't give any guidance, honestly. Because we're gifting the products for free in most cases, we don't ask for anything in return, and we just ask if they like it to share about it. And I think we do a lot of our work upfront to understand the type of content that they already do, the brands that they work with. And we try and understand who they are before we even reach out and want to associate ourselves with them.
So most of that work is already done upfront, and then we really let them take it from there.
Felix: Got it. Okay. So Vancouver is the first place geographically that you started. You concentrated all your marketing efforts there with the influencers. Where did you go next?
Joe: We went out Eastern Canada. So we went to Toronto and Ottawa, and focused our efforts out there.
Felix: And what was the decision behind that? How did you decide, "Okay, now that we have been successful in Vancouver ..." How did you decide to say to go to Toronto next?
Joe: It was twofold. So the first part was that we import our products from Portugal, and we were taking them all the way from Portugal and taking them all the way around the Panama Canal and up to our warehouse in Vancouver. And we realized that that shipping time was crazy. It took so long. So we decided that we were actually going to open a warehouse on the East Coast. But since most of our sales were on the West Coast, it made that decision more challenging.
So it was a no brainer for us to move our marketing efforts out to the East Coast to reduce the freight time of getting our products into Canada, because we could cut that lead time down in half if we just didn't have our warehouse on the West Coast. So that was part of the decision. The second part was we were really fortunate in the spring to get accepted into a tech accelerator called Techstars in Toronto.
So our team was actually moving out to the East Coast anyways for this accelerator program. And what that then enabled us to do was we could be more a part of that community. So it was a no brainer for Toronto to be the next stop.
Felix: Makes sense. When do you know when it's time to expand once you've ... You mentioned Vancouver to Toronto, and you've expanded since then. How do you know, "Okay, now it's time for us to target another city?"
Joe: I think for us, it was just around our growth goals and how many different customers we wanted to have join the Fable family and how many customers we wanted to acquire. And while Vancouver is a very big city, we were also conscious that we weren't going to be able to expand forever in that location. So when we took a step back and we thought about the growth we wanted to see in 2020, it was a lot about we needed to have a bit bigger of an audience to try and obtain customers from. So for that reason, it made sense for us to start looking into another market to expand.
Felix: How many cities would you say you're focused in today?
Joe: Just the two regions. I would now call them regions, maybe less cities. So the region of the lower mainland of British Columbia, the Pacific Northwest, you could actually call that. And then the second region would be that Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, that region as well. So that's eastern side of Canada.
Felix: Are there any differences that you're finding that you've gone from city to city?
Joe: Yeah. The people are very different in good ways. The subtle things of what products people are exposed to in different cities is vastly different. And what shapes and colors people like in different cities is completely different, all the way through. As we're more prominent in Quebec now, we get a lot of questions in French. So luckily, we have someone that's bilingual that can help out with French questions, but it's definitely a bit different as you move across the entire country.
Felix: Got it. Now, the website, we'll talk a little about the website. Was this designed in-house? Did you hire an agency to create this website?
Joe: It was designed in-house. And I think the site you're seeing right now is maybe our sixth iteration. We've gone through so many different ones that we thought we liked. And actually just the other day, someone posted in our Slack channel, the very first iteration. And it's so embarrassing to look at. But yeah, we've gone through multiple different iterations. We did it all in-house.
Felix: Well, that's good that you're embarrassed by the first iteration. It means that there must be some improvements. So tell us about that. Six iterations in just a couple of years. What were some changes that you've made throughout these iterations that made a big impact on things like getting your message across better or conversions?
Joe: I think a lot of it stems to the photography. Again, we did a lot of photography in-house at the start. For this most recent iteration, we actually hired an agency to help with some of the photography, and the photography level has drastically gone up. And I would say, what has mostly helped with the raising conversion rate was introducing more lifestyle photography.
So more photography where people can relate to the pieces. They could see the pieces in their own home. Less just the standard e-commerce photo of a plate on a white background, which is where we started.
Felix: I think that makes a lot of sense. When it comes to the lifestyle, the kind of context that you have your products in. How did you determine that? How do you determine what's going to resonate with the target customers in terms of what should the lifestyle be?
Joe: A lot of different customer interviews and customer feedback has gone that. We're very fortunate that we actually brought on this great creative director in the summer. And she's been able to really help spearhead that on the different style and the different approach to what does the Fable brand look like and what does it feel like? But a lot of it has always stemmed from our customer feedback.
Felix: And what are you looking for in that feedback? The use cases, what their home looks like? What information do you find is most useful when it comes to getting data points to give a photographer when they're doing a shoot?
Joe: Yeah, exactly. Learning more about their home and their space, their lifestyle. Are they a business executive that lives in a small condo that travels around all the time? It’s a very different style than someone who lives in the suburbs, has a family, a bit more of a slow living style. That drastically shifts how we think about lighting and shadows, for example, or even the spaces that we feature our products in.
So yeah, it's a lot of that. It's a lot about trying to really understand who that person is. What do they do for work? What is their family like? Do they have a dog? Don't they have a dog? How old is their kid, roughly? Where do they live? And really trying to dissect that information to help influence our decisions.
Felix: And these interviews are being done with the customers from the past?
Joe: Exactly. Yeah, exactly.
Felix: How do you typically recruit a customer to get this feedback? I think is obviously super valuable, and yet you had mentioned has a big impact on things like conversion rates when it comes to influencing the photography that you have on your site. But how do you even begin to recruit customers to get this information out of them?
Joe: In the past, we would just send them an email and ask them if they wanted to do this for X, Y, Z gift card or to be entered into a draw for X, Y, Z product. Honestly, in the most simple way. We do also a lot of our customer research. We have all the addresses, because we have all the shipping addresses. So we're able to build different demographics off of some of that information as well. So it's twofold.
Felix: Got it. So you had mentioned GRIN is the application that you use for the influencer marketing campaign management. Are there any other apps that you rely on as a business to keep the things running?
Joe: Yeah, we use Gorgias, if you've ever ... I'm sure a lot of people know of that, but it's a great tool to manage all of your customer support requests. It links right into Shopify. So you can edit orders right out of Gorgias. And you're not fumbling around in the Shopify UI. But Gorgias is fantastic. Some of the other tools or apps we've added on in the past, which I really love would be In Cart Upsell.
That allows your customer to add on those add-on items right in the cart, and you can get those nice product suggestions. The other one we use is a review platform called Loox. It provides all the reviews your customers submit. And then it features them in a really unique way that I think stands out. But all of the images are there, and it really encourages your customer to take an image of their products in their home.
Felix: One thing you had mentioned to us was that one of the biggest factors to your success is not just the influencer gifting and the influencer marketing you've been doing, but also the spread of word of mouth. What do you think are the biggest factors to a product or a brand that is conducive to this word of mouth marketing?
Joe: Yeah, that's a good question. I think we've been very fortunate, because people and myself included, when I cook something at home, I'm going to stand over it and take an overhead photo and post it on Instagram. So you better bet my friends are going to find out that I cooked up some Erin Ireland's lentil meatloaf. You better bet they're going to know I put all that effort in.
 


So at that point, a lot of our customers are also taking #dinewithfable, and they're really excited because it's in their new Fable plates. So we're really a part of that part of their step in their life is when they share what they cooked and they share what's going on in their home, that Fable is featured there.
Felix: This almost has to be like in the DNA of the lifestyle that you are capturing with the product. It's almost like something that is hard to design into a product. It has to be something that's already, I don't know, a part of the process, a part of the behavior that your customer takes, where in your case, people like taking photos of the food that they have cooked or food that they're eating.
So it sounds like something that's hard to develop, but you almost have to choose into the right industry or the right category that encourages people to share photos like that.
Joe: Yeah, I totally agree. I imagine if you're a debt consolidator company, it's pretty hard to get your customers to be bragging that they use this app or this tool. I imagine that that's an uphill battle, and it's hard to do. So I think we're very fortunate that we picked a product that is conducive to sharing and sharing on social media.
Felix: Certainly great in hindsight for you, for anyone out there that's thinking about starting a business. Sounds like such a big wind to your backs to have something like this, to have a product that is, again, that's just shareable, that has content that's shareable. So fablehome.co is the URL for the website. And you had mentioned a couple of times during this interview about how lots of things haven't worked along the way.
What has been the biggest lesson that you've learned this past year that you want to instill in the business practices or instill in your own life, again, that you've picked up in this past year that you want to take advantage of moving forward?
Joe: I think the biggest learning for us is when something's not working, to move away from it quickly, and to take that feedback in, no matter what sunk cost is. And I think that we're finding that with some of our pieces early on, I think the example was when we first launched our plate collection in 2019 that we have today, we launched actually with this glaze, a very matte glaze.
And we, for a long time, were getting customer feedback. "Hey, this glaze, it's not great. It leaves these artificial cutlery marks. It's not that great. I'm not super happy with it." And we just kept going around in circles as a team of like, "Oh, maybe we can explain it better. Maybe we can change this or change that," as opposed to just getting to the root caused and cutting it off where it was and cutting our losses essentially and moving glazes.
And it took us maybe six months before we decided, "Okay, now's the time. We can't get around this. We need to actually go back to the drawing board and re-examine this thing." And I wish we would have taken in that customer feedback earlier and made that adjustment right away, because we were essentially just digging ourselves into a hole for a period of time.
And I think that was a learning lesson for us that if something's not working, understand the root cause, and just try and fix the root of the problem. Not try and just trim around it.
Felix: Sounds like a lesson there too is also don't swim upstream, unless you have to. Look for where the current is going. Look for what's working rather than trying to pass together what's not. So thank you so much for your time, Joe. Again, fablehome.co is the website. Again, thank you so much for coming on and sharing your experience.
Joe: Thanks. I appreciate it.