Felix: Today, I'm joined by Brian Berger from Mack Weldon. Mack Weldon is a pioneer direct-to-consumer and a one-stop destination for men's essentials and was started in 2012 and based out in New York. Welcome, Brian.
Brian: Thanks so much for having me.
Felix: Yeah. So the idea behind this business all started due to a frustration that you've had with shopping. So tell us more about that. What was the problem that you were trying to solve?
Brian: It was really specifically the problem of shopping for underwear and socks. I hated the experience of going to department stores and having to sift through a never-ending sea of product. I was never able to find what I bought the last time and really liked. And there was a whole bunch of things about it, in addition to those that just felt really kind of broken and at odds with what should really be a convenient experience because guys typically buy things, especially these kinds of things on a replenishment basis and nobody was making it easy to do that.
And so to me, a light bulb went off at that moment of, there's got to be a better way. And so we set out to reinvent men's basics and a big part of that was customer experience driven, but then there was obviously a very significant component that was product driven.
Felix: Got it. Okay. So those two things, customer experience driven and product driven. I want to talk about that in a second. But before we get there, this problem that you face yourself, did you know that others had this issue? How did you know that there was a demand or that this problem was larger than yourself?
Brian: Yeah, that's a great question because I think entrepreneurs spend a lot of time trying to assess the market opportunity and whether or not there actually is a problem. And for me, I would say I was solving for myself as a consumer and I'm not particularly high maintenance or low maintenance. I'm sort of right in the middle as it relates to shopping and clothing and the degree to which I care about those things. And so really just informally surveying a lot of guys. And what was particularly interesting was when you get into conversations with guys about their underwear and T-shirts and socks, they actually have a lot to say.
And this was at a time when people were like, "Well, you're going to talk to me about my underwear," but it's sort of like a click the door open and there's a lot of thoughts there with respect to not just the shopping experience, but also just what they love and don't love about the product that they are currently loyal to. So there was a lot of that sort of informal kind of surveying peers, friends, family members, those kinds of things. And then we did some, I would say light, more official market research where we sent a survey out to say 100 people who we were close to and then we asked them to forward it on to 10 more people.
So we got a decent number of responses just to test out certain things, but there wasn't a ton of testing. I think we sort of believed in our gut and then validated by information that we received from others that this was a pain point and that if you could solve for it, then you had a real opportunity. And another big aspect of it was this notion of replenishment. Once there's royalty, the process of replenishment should be really easy. And buying stuff through a retailer or a department store just isn't. By design those places are engineered to always have new, ever-changing assortments of product. They don't get excited about having the same old thing over and over again. So that just results in a bad experience. Customers want to know, once you find something you like, you want to know you can go back and get the exact same thing again and again, just like Starbucks, just like McDonald's, just like... So we were able to tap into that.
Felix: Got it. So it sound like one theme that you're hearing was around replenishment, were there other kinds of themes that surprised you during the early research, either formally or informally that had a big impact on the direction of the business?
Brian: I mean, just a lot of discussion around technical details and functionality, which was great because we were focusing on that. We were like, "How do we match up Lululemon and all the good things that they do for performance apparel and Calvin Klein who was like the 800 pound gorilla in boxer briefs and premium men's underwear?" So how do you match that up? And that was our product strategy. And what we found was that there was a huge appetite for product innovation and features and benefits that more directly address the customer experience, for example, undershirts that are a little longer so they stay tucked in and a little more fitted so they don't bunch up. V-necks that sit below your collar button. So if you're wearing a dress shirt and the top button is unbuttoned, you don't see the T-shirt underneath it peeking out. Things like that.
Felix: Yeah. So you had mentioned earlier about how there were two kind of angles or two areas that you wanted to focus around, around customer experience and also product-driven. And you mentioned that there's a lot of room for innovation, that appetite for innovation in this space. Well, between those two things, when you first start a business, those could require lots of investment in both directions. Which one do you think was more important to focus on at first?
Brian: I think they're equally important because we could have designed the best product on earth, but because our go to market strategy with digital first, if we didn't design a customer experience that felt unique and interesting and compelling, it was going to be hard to get people to engage with our product. It's not like we were relying on Nordstrom to do it for us. And on the flip side, we could design the best customer experience on earth, one-click ordering, whiz-bang first, all the things, but if the product didn't deliver, then it would all be for nothing because we wouldn't be generating that good first impression and loyalty that is core to our business model. So we really spent equal time on both things.
Felix: Got it. Can you describe to me what that first kind of commercial, the first attempt at putting something out commercially was, or what was the experience like, what was the product?
Brian: It was pretty intense because this was before you were able to kickstart things and really advance the sale or beta test product. We effectively built and invested in a lot of foundational things. So a website, a brand identity, and not only the product development, but the actual inventory itself. So we had made a pretty significant economic bet prior to having sold a single thing. And part of that decision was, should we focus on one product? Should we focus on a handful of products? And we ended up choosing the latter strategy because we felt that if we want to maximize brand equity, we would need to tell the product story across multiple products. That it would reinforce what we were about from a product standpoint.
And it was a bet, but it was a bet that paid off. We invested in a real proper launch where we had PR, we had influencers, we had organic PR people we went out to just through our own networks. We leveraged friends and family and our personal networks to virally market, not only our site, but our social feeds. We did a major press push where we did deskside with editors. It was a full-on process. And we also had some marketing. We wanted to test some digital marketing so that we would have some of those initial metrics to help determine how we were going to build and grow that side of our business as well.
Felix: Got it. Yes. So this big bet, even before you sold a single thing, it's definitely a story that is counter to what you typically would hear about how to start a business, especially when it's a startup like a brand like yours. So you mentioned that there was a big launch with PR influencers, an actual product line, rather than just selling one product. And for everyone of you, there's a bunch of folks that did not make it, making this kind of a bet. What do you think that you guys got right though that allowed this big bet to pay off?
Brian: Well, I think that we always thought about this as a brand and a bigger opportunity versus, can we sell a specific product? I think a lot of what you see now and what you see in the DTC landscape, you see a lot of singular or highly focused product campaigns being executed really well on Instagram and growing meaningful businesses, but there really isn't much beyond that. It's just really how quickly and how efficiently can we drive the sale of this one product. For us, we were looking at brands like Lululemon and Patagonia and Nike that really earn the right to do other things over the course of time.
And so we felt that in order to do that, in order to put our best foot forward there, we would need to make a bigger upfront bet because we didn't want to be seen as, "Oh, just a company that makes cool socks." Or, "Oh, just a company that makes cool underwear." We really wanted it to feel bigger than that in a consumer's mind and give herself the opportunity to do more. And again, that was just a choice that we made, it's not necessarily one that is a one-size-fits-all situation.
Felix: Right. So the big piece of this was that you wanted to be able to tell this cohesive brand story. And I think this is an area that feels very kind of vague, I think, to a lot of entrepreneurs about how to build a brand. Can you talk to us about what that means to you? What does it mean to have a brand? You mentioned Lululemon. How do you build a brand like that?
Brian: Well, it's multifaceted. It's a brand strategy. It's a narrative. It's a point of view. And I would say that piece of it, we probably spent the least amount of time on them. We're actually spending a lot of time on it right now. We're coming to market with an evolved brand strategy that will position Mack Weldon the brand and why it's important for customers to associate with us from an emotional perspective. There's an aesthetic piece of it, what does it look and feel like? There is a product piece of it, which is, what is the product strategy? Is it fashion, is it technology and innovation?
And so really nailing that and being very specific about that. There's on product branding and marketing. How do we have these design signatures on the product that tie it all together so that when consumers are wearing the product there are certain things that are visible and notable and distinguishable to us? So it's a series of things that are tangible. What the product is and what your approach is and how you market. What is your point of view and what is your narrative? So it could be a sustainability narrative, it could be an innovation narrative, which is what we chose. It could be an altruistic one, one-for-one. You see, Warby Parker is a leader in this space. They were very big on this one-for-one model. So it's not all just sort of fluffy subjective things. There are very specific things when you get down to it.
Felix: And the kind of investment that you're talking about in branding has a huge payoff, but also it can take longer than probably what a lot of people are thinking about when it's going to think about how I should spend my time? How do you know if you're headed in the right direction as you are making changes, as you are deciding elements of your brand? How do you know if it's actually giving you the results that you want?
Brian: Well, I think there are things that you measure and look at day-to-day. You look at metrics like new customer conversion rates, and then you look at, just to determine is it resonating, it's longer-term metrics, like repeat rates and repeat frequencies? Are people buying more in each success of purchase? Are they coming back? What does it take to get them back? Are they buying more of the same thing? Are they buying cross category? So there's a lot of those types of metrics you can do to gauge the efficacy of your value proposition. And then at the brand level, there are things that you can do to track the awareness and consideration of your brand just by surveying segments of the population. So those are two ways.
Felix: And when you first launched, what were the products that you had on hand?
Brian: Yeah, that's a good question. So we launched with underwear. So three different styles of underwear, boxer brief, a trunk, and a brief. We launched with T-shirts and we had a V-neck and a crewneck version of the T-shirts. We launched with socks and we had solid socks and patterned socks. And we launched with undershirts, V-neck and crew neck undershirts. So it was not a small assortment out of the gate. And it was scary.
Felix: Yeah. I can imagine it must have been a hectic process during the product development too now that you had all these different lines you wanted to launch with. Talk to us about that. What was the process behind that first round the product development for that launch?
Brian: It was really hard. And we were fortunate in that, through a lot of shoe leather ended up partnering with a person/small agency that remains a long-term and integral partner of ours that really helped in that initial product development and their whole way of working is they take concepts from the ideation phase all the way through the commercialization phase. And so, everything from design, development, sourcing, production, and ultimately landed goods in a warehouse. And so we were able to, through that process, really get to, not only a very high quality of differentiated product, but we were able to have it delivered on time, on budget and without any issues, which is also critically important. If one thing goes wrong in those early days, it could be pretty catastrophic.
Felix: Yeah. That's an amazing partnership. For someone out there that is looking for a partnership like that, what would they even be searching for? What kind of agency or what kind of company would they search for if they needed someone to help them with this piece of it?
Brian: For soft goods and hard goods like bags and accessories there are many agencies out there that do full package solutions for emerging brands and companies. Part of, I think, the entrepreneurial journey is figuring out how you're going to get your product made, if it's a product type of business. And getting to the right place, I think is a little bit of a predictor on how successful you're going to be because there's a lot out there and the choice isn't always obvious. We had choices to go and do this direct, which we do a lot of now, more than 50% of our business is direct relationships that we have with manufacturing partners. But in the early days, obviously we wouldn't know where to go or how to get stuff sourced and would have been a much more labor intensive process, time intensive process than what we ultimately ended up with.
Felix: Yeah. Now, when you are looking for either an agency like this, or any other kind of partner, given your experience, how do you vet who's going to be a good partner to work with?
Brian: The best source for anything, whether it's a marketing agency or this type of an agency or tech-related is to just call references. And the best kind of references are back channel ones where they don't know your calling. So find out who they partnered with, look on their website, do some LinkedIn searches and then go and try and reach out to somebody to get a real honest perspective on how it all went.
Felix: I like that. When you do hire an agency, the one that you worked with, what's your involvement, especially since you mentioned that they helped tremendously and during this entire process, what is your kind of involvement to make sure that at the end of it, you have a deliverable that you expected?
Brian: That's a great question. And it really depends on, if you're doing a photo shoot, for example, there's a process that you go through where you pull inspiration boards and swipe. And that's all really meant to help inform the end product that you're looking to get. And it's not dissimilar here where you're looking at fabrics, you're looking at trends, you're looking at design boards, which are just like CAD designs and then you go through a prototyping process. First proto, second proto, third proto.
I remember the first prototype meeting I went through, I literally almost jumped out the window because I had never been through this before. And what was presented to us was so far from a finished good. And there are just things you need to know, when you get prototypes, they're in available fabrics and yarns. They're using available trim colors. You know what I mean? So it could look like a Raggedy Ann doll because of that and not because of anything else. So those are just the things that you learn. And then as you go through each iterative process, it gets closer and closer to what the end result will look like. But in product development specifically, there is a prototyping process. It's usually three or four rounds before you get to final, like, "This is what we're making."
Felix: Got you. So there's stages to it that you can do your due diligence and your own kind of QA along the way. Now, you had mentioned that a lot of your relationships now with manufacturers are direct. What are some of the important lessons and skills that you learned you had to learn in order to be able to, like you had mentioned, transform or shift half of your business, your production now to having these direct relationships? What are some important things that others needed to learn in order to be able to execute this piece of it effectively?
Brian: Hire great people with experience to do that vetting. I've never managed those types of relationships in my background. We hired the head of design for Calvin Klein underwear, and over the course of time, he brought over members of his team. So they had preexisting relationships. They had vetted at scale some of the best manufacturers and mills and some of the spaces that we play in and they were able to forge and formulate those relationships.
Felix: Got it. Now speaking of hiring, one thing you had told us was about how hiring an aggressive and brilliant team for the business you need tomorrow versus what you may need today is an important distinction. If you need a resource, it's probably too late and you've left some opportunity on the table. Tell us more about that. Did you learn this lesson the hard way? Did you already notice coming in? Tell us about your experience with that particular line of thinking.
Brian: I mean, I think that there's two things at play. One is you're always trying to be really efficient with your resources. So you're never looking to overstaffed, at least we never were. And then the other thing is that there's this, I think you have this kind of false perception that if and when you need somebody, you're just going to snap your fingers and in 60 days you're going to have somebody sitting in a seat. And that's just not the way it works. Talent in this market for what we do is highly, highly, highly sought after. You've got really, really hustle to get good people. And so when you need someone, when you really need someone, you're anywhere from 60 to 120 days with an earnest search to getting a high quality candidate in a seat. And then they're ramp up and all the other things.
And so my point is just that, be really honest about your hiring plans and what your needs are going to be and try to formulate a plan, or at least get a process in place that you can activate in short order to get good people in because it's hard.
Felix: How do you expand as almost this fog of war to know what's coming and what do you need next? How can you have more foresight into what areas that you might need to start hiring for today so that you have them ready in three months from now when you really need them?
Brian: Well, I mean, I like to think that in order for people to be effective in their job and also feeling like they are developing in terms of their career development, you really need a 70-30 split of their time. So for example, if somebody is working at a 100% capacity all the time, then they're likely going to burn out and they're likely not going to be able to expand their portfolio of skills beyond whatever that one thing is. And so I think as you look around at your team, if you've got a bunch of people working at a 100%, then that should be a pretty good alarm bell to say, it's time to maybe add some resources here so that we can give people some capacity to think about other aspects of the business to help show whether or not they could be effective in evolving their skillset and to just really get the best out of people.
So that's one thing. And then the other thing is that, early stage companies are riddled with single points of failure, like one person doing one job that's critically important to the company. And I think that it's always important to look around as to who those people are and what functions they're serving and what you would do if they disappeared one day. And think about what a succession plan looks like for those roles.
Felix: And for folks out there that are hiring for the first time, what are some of the early lessons that you learn about hiring?
Brian: It's really important and it's really hard and it's something that you should take very seriously. And by that, I mean, having a real process in place, one that involves multiple people screening for very specific, but different things. So maybe one person's screening for skillset, maybe one person screening for culture and values, and maybe one person is screening for some other attribute, sort of things that are going to make somebody successful in a startup attributes like tenacity and self-starting and things like that. Make sure you have a real plan going into it, make sure you have a real process for getting all the information aggregated as you move somebody through the process.
And I'm a huge fan of giving some sort of project or test or something where you can either actually test somebody's skill set or competency, or just get a sense for their ability to synthesize information and to present it back in a clear and cohesive way. Just learn so much in that process. And it takes the subjectivity out of it like, "I like that person or we had a great conversation or we grew up in the same town." Those are things that matter, but they're not really important to me. They tend to carry too much of a weight in the hiring process.
Felix: Makes sense. And once someone is hired, talk to us about what you've learned about onboarding, how do you make sure that a new hire is able to hit the ground running?
Brian: Yeah. I mean, that's an area that we've made enormous strides in. I think the first impression is really important. So making sure that that person and that hiring manager has a 30, 60, 90-day high-level game plan for that person, making sure that the person's schedule is full of meetings for the first whatever week or so of their onboarding so that they're getting to meet, not only get to meet people from the standpoint of assimilating them into the company, but also they're learning who the key cross-functional partners are for them. And then just more, kind of culturally, we do this thing where you have a lunch buddy your first day and that person is from a different department and they take you out to lunch and do that.
So having everything ready, being really buttoned up about it, not treating it casually, don't have the person start at nine o'clock on a Monday when you're going to be digging out of your emails, make it 10:30 or whatever time you're going to be coming up for air and really overinvest in that process is very important.
Felix: Yeah. Definitely get the seriousness of what you're talking about. I think for a lot of people hiring is just about kind of flying by to see if your pants are just trying to piece it all together as the person joins a company and then plans just one day at a time, but you have clearly explained the importance of having that all outlined way beforehand. Now I want to talk about the, so you mentioned that there was this big launch was a few product lines. What happened after the launch? Once that launch was done, how were you able to continue the momentum of the brand and the business and the attention?
Brian: Oh, man, that was really scary because the first fear was, "Are we going to sell anything? We have a warehouse full of inventory that costs us a lot of money." Then that quickly flipped to, "Oh, no, we're going to sell out. We've got all this demand that we've generated, how are we going to meet that demand? And now we're going to buy more inventory. And what does that flywheel look like?" And so it's just a series of escalating calculated risks that you're taking, but in a consumer business, you can't grow, you cannot make it work if you're not prepared to own the product, to meet the demand. And in our world, in the DTC or the e-comm world, it's particularly stressful because you don't really have any visibility into the demand.
The demand can come as a function of a really successful Facebook campaign and then it could be gone. It could just go away. It's not like a traditional business that's sold in a department store that knows what its purchase orders look like. 80% of its demand is accounted for before a purchase order is placed. And then maybe you buy a little extra just for opportunistic things. This is different.
Felix: How do you de-risk that when demand can just go away? 
Brian: It's very hard to do. You can optimize your supply chain to the best you can and it really is, some of the companies that have had a lot of success have supply chains that are very responsive and very flexible and they're able to get back into product in a very short period of time. So they don't have to forecast as much. In our case, we have some natural benefits to our product category and that there isn't a whole lot of seasonality, or fashion risk, or studiversification.
So what we have is evergreen. So if we overinvest, we just sell it in the next period. It's not like it's a ski jacket, and if you don't sell it all by February, you're going to be marketed down into the abyss. So it's not a one-size-fits-all type of answer, but I think that being as data-driven as you can be and really trying to shorten up the supply chain as much as you can without taking on risk, those are all ways to do it.
Felix: Yeah. And in the opposite direction where demand for a particular channel that was performing well just dries up for some reason, what's the response? I think that this happens a lot to alot listeners out there where something just might be working for them all of a sudden stopped working. Like a Facebook campaign, for example, just stops working. What's the response at a higher level to deal with, all of a sudden, a channel just kind of disappearing?
Brian: You have to figure out alternative ways to try and make it work. There are obviously other ways of distributing product if need be. If it's a seasonal product, you can decide whether or not you want to put it out into a discount channel or sell it through a third-party, maybe cut a deal with a retailer that isn't going to compete with you and your channel. Maybe you want to say, "Hey, let's just donate the inventory." Is a great example. Is a really good example. Everybody who made masks is now sitting on hoards of masks because demand for masks is virtually gone.
So what do you do? So we did something where we had people at the [inaudible 00:31:37] center handing out masks to newly vaccinated New Yorkers several weeks ago when the mass mandates were still in place. And it wasn't where we are now. That was kind of a cool, kind of PR strategy, customer acquisition strategy. You can donate them to countries or places where they're not as far along against fighting what's going on. So there are things you can do, maybe generate some marketing off of it, but I think if you have a core fundamental distribution problem, like the ad that you're using to drive your core business are no longer working, I think that's a bigger problem and requires a real strategy to fix.
Felix: Yeah. So it sounds like some creativity is required whenever that does happen. And so this launch that you had that led to pretty much, you said selling out of your production line, what pieces of it do you think were the biggest factors along with this launch? I think a lot of people are also doing these big launches, are there for the first time or product line launches. What do you think were some of the biggest factors that you got right that had a big impact on being able to sell out?
Brian: I think that in addition to more traditional PR, like a PR agencies setting up meetings with editors for us to go out and introduce the brand and showcase the product, was our hustling and getting the brand and the story in front of editors that don't necessarily subscribe to a traditional PR type of approach. And it was really those editorial features that really moved the needle for us in the launch period. But what it also did was it created content now that was going to live on an evergreen basis about the brand. So when somebody writes an article about you and then somebody searches Google for Mack Weldon, now they're seeing a third party endorsement of us. And that really helps make the marketing more efficient because you have hopefully a higher conversion rate now that somebody is seeing a validation of your brand.
Felix: And after that launch, what was the area of focus, the ones that was done because you had mentioned a lot of the stuff you had in warehouse was all selling out? And wasn't the next area of focus to produce more, to focus, doubling down the marketing? What was the next?
Brian: Yeah. I think it was really making sure the supply chain was going to be able to deliver for us. And then also the other piece was really proving out the marketing strategy. Can we demonstrate that we can cost effectively acquire customers through paid channels? Sorry.
Felix: Okay. So proving out the marketing strategy. Tell us more about that. What was the strategy here to acquire customers through paid channels?
Brian: Yeah. So one of the first hires we made with somebody who really had a lot of expertise in not only customer acquisition, but retention. So what we wanted to do was we wanted to build out case studies to showcase that we can spend a budget that would hopefully grow across, mainly it was Facebook and search to get customers in and then demonstrate that those customers exhibited a certain behavior over a reasonable period of time. Starting to prove out this customer unit economic equation. Spent X to get a customer. The contribution of that customer on the first order is this, the equation is positive, negative or neutral. And then all subsequent transactions by that customer that didn't have a marketing cost associated with them then add into the profitability. We were trying to tell that story because we were going to be setting out to fundraise and we knew that that was going to be an important question that we had to sure demonstrate for investors.
Felix: Now you mentioned that there was this focus on retention, right? Not scare that customer for the first time, but how often are they coming back and buying more? Now, when you took this approach of differentiating between retention and that first time customer, are there just different types of customers that are more likely to return or is there a different marketing approach to get a customer to come back and repeat purchase?
Brian: Well, there are different types of customers for sure, but I mean, at scale, you're looking at averages. So now we segment and target different types of customers in different ways, but at that point in time, we were just looking to demonstrate that we could do it at a reasonable level of scale.
Felix: And when you look back on it, what seemed to work? What was working to retain a customer?
Brian: I think the product is a big part of that story. They have to obviously like what they previously bought, but we're dealing with guys, there has to be some sort of a nudge to get people to shop. And so really compelling email marketing with thoughtful subject lines and great creatives, really highlighting the features and benefits, really straight to the point. That was really our strategy and it worked quite well.
And then over time, we developed more of a lifecycle email approach where we're now, in addition to mass customer marketing about product, a new product launches, we're doing much more tailored messaging to different customer segments. So a customer who's 30 days out from that first order is getting a certain type of messaging flow than say maybe a repeat customer, a repeat loyal customer that's in the highest tier of our loyalty program.
Felix: And one thing you also mentioned to us was that one of the key factors in your success was your ability to feel and remain disciplined and to stay focused, especially early on. And you said here that there're so many opportunities to lose your way in every area of your business, from product to marketing to people. And especially again, as an early stage business, your most precious resource is time and capital. Anything that takes you off of looking at those two things puts the entire thing at risk. So talk to us about that. I think the idea of focus is important, but it's sometimes hard for folks to identify. Is this actually in a focus or not? So what's your approach to identifying whether I am staying focused, you're being honest and truthful to say, "Yes, I am being disciplined and I am being focused," versus not?
Brian: So I think with respect to that it's, with respect to time, it's really just a function of making sure that projects are well-defined and teams are very clear on what the objective is and how it's going to be measured so that you're not spinning your wheels in search of an objective that isn't what is in line with the strategy. And capital, same thing. It's really trying to have your arms around what things cost and what their ROI looks like before you're charging down the path because oftentimes it can be too late. I mean, I think with respect to marketing, digital marketing and things of that nature, cost can escalate really fast. So you have to really have controls over how you're defining success and then really making sure that you have visibility into that on a relatively real-time basis.
Felix: Now I want talk about the website. So you've been in business for almost a decade now. So I'm assuming the site has evolved a bunch of times along the way. Talk to us about some of the big changes that you've made to the website to have had the biggest difference or most impactful differences to new customers and conversions?
Brian: Well, we've replatformed to Shopify. So that was a big change. We went from essentially hosting and maintaining our own e-commerce code base to Shopify, which was a pretty bumpy transition that had less to do with Shopify and more to do with just how the transition was managed. But now that we're there and we're comfortable and settled and we've got real pros working on our platform, it's been fantastic. And it's really enabled us to focus on the things that matter to our business, like what the digital customer experience is, and providing a best in class checkout flow and analytics and integration of apps and all that good stuff.
And in terms of what are the most important things to drive customer acquisition or conversion, I mean, it starts with speed, really. We spent a lot of time in the early days of Shopify, really trying to optimize for speed, site speed. They can take for granted how important that is. And so that was a pretty big needle mover for us. And then there's just other feature driven things. How you lay out the product detail pages, the imagery that you use, search functionality, how you organize the navigation], those kinds of things.
Felix: Yeah. You mentioned the importance of this digital customer experience. What are you looking at when you are looking to change a site to improve the digital customer experience? How do you measure something like that?
Brian: Well, we A/B test everything, not everything, but the important things. If we're making a change, we look to A/B tests to understand whether or not the test is the same, better or worse than the control.
Felix: Yeah. Have there been any changes recently that you have tested that have had a big lift?
Brian: Well, we recently added search which was a really big upgrade for us where we integrated a third-party application that is, I think a big important, Shopify app called out, I think it's called Algolia. So we were able to integrate a really good search app as we've grown the product line. Having that there has been really positive in terms of discovery. And then the other thing that we recently did was we really, pretty much, we totally reorganized our nav in a much more intuitive way. So customers are able to find products that they may not fully associate with us just due to the fact that we have a better nav.
Felix: Oh, that's awesome. So you mentioned Algolia as an app. Are there any other apps that you are big fans of or that you rely on to keep the website or the business running?
Brian: I mean, we're very happy customers have a Happy Returns. Happy customer, Happy Returns. It's really made our reverse logistics and returns workflow so much more streamlined. We previously had a custom app built for returns that was really complicated and overengineered and something that we were spending a lot of time on. And so Happy Returns and that smooth integration has not only delivered on a better technical experience, it's also resulted in a much better customer experience and it's saving us money as well.
Felix: Awesome. Anything else?
Brian: Those are two that come to mind that really relate specifically to Shopify. So we use Looker for analytics. We use Snowplow for data. We use something called Toolio for our merchandise planning.
Felix: Awesome. Yeah. Definitely a data intensive business that you're looking very closely at data. And have there been any findings when you're looking at data that would surprise you, that just wouldn't reveal themselves elsewhere, just to give people an idea of how much of a story that data can provide. Do you have any examples of things that have come out of just analyzing a data that just wouldn't appear from a qualitative observation?
Brian: There are some things, like we have a loyalty program that has certain, spend thresholds associated with it. And I think that we generally have the beliefs that some of the tiers of the loyalty program were driving behavior customers would spend to get to that level. And that if we were to remove that level, that interim level, would our average order value go down because customers weren't reaching? They no longer had an incentive to reach. But the other, the counter thought was the customers even know about that middle tier? Is it even part of their consideration?
And so it's great to be able to have the data to test that and understand, "Well, if we remove this feature, our average order value is going to go down or are they going to stay the same or potentially go up because that feature is applying a discount that may not even be understood by the consumer at the time when they're filling their card up." So that's an area where we're able to test and understand what the impact is. And in that particular case, we learned that it didn't really have a big impact. And in fact we were giving people a benefit that we weren't really getting any credit for.
Felix: Yeah. So it sounds like sometimes data can tell a story, but also bring up more questions that you now need to answer.
Brian: Always.
Felix: Yeah. So mackweldon.com is the website. And I'll leave you this last question. What do you think has been the biggest lesson that you or the company has learned over the past year that has had an impact on the direction of your business moving forward?
Brian: Well, what we've learned is how much we can do in a resource constrained environment, not necessarily a resource constraint environment, but we faced enormous adversity in a sense that we were all of a sudden all working remotely and we couldn't meet to do creative things or product reviews or all the things that we have historically done, but we were able to not only adapt, but also thrive during that time and thrive in the business, thrive in the sense that we were able to meet our customers where they are or where they were in a very honest and authentic way.
And so I think that's really great because everybody now knows what is possible, even when our hands are somewhat tied. How do you execute a great marketing campaign when you can't enter the studio and do a new shoot? Well, you go into the archive and you find assets that meet the objective and then you have a really great editor come and stitch it all together and you do it all remotely and you put it out into the market and it works. That is a huge confidence booster to the team. So now when you have a budget and you can go to a studio, how much more potential is there? Or maybe you realize that, "Hey, you don't need to spend that kind of money to get a great result."
Felix: Awesome. Amazing. So thank you so much for coming on and sharing all of your experience and advice, Brian.
Brian: Thank you so much for having me. It was great chatting.