Felix: Today I'm joined by Chip Malt from Made In. Made In is a premium cookware brand creating inspiring tools for the modern cooking. Was started in 2017 and based at Austin, Texas. Welcome Chip.

Chip: Hey, thanks for having me.

Felix: Yeah. So you actually worked for another Shopify Masters podcast guests prior to starting Made In. Tells about where you work and what you did there.

Chip: Yeah. So before I was at a company called Rhone, which does high end men's athletic apparel. We were a Shopify plus customer. Started with that company. Really early was an employee number four or five there and really helped build out their eCommerce brand. And we did that all through Shopify.

Felix: Very cool. And then one of the things that you mentioned that you did over there was in 2014, you helped lead the redesign of their platform, or I guess a website with the Shopify partner development team. Tells us more about that. What was involved in a redesign?

Chip: Yeah, I mean it was kind of a classic tale of a young company started in a kind of like kick off and gain traction and realize that the branding, the look and feel, the functionality. All that wasn't up to par with kind of the products we were selling. We're selling a price point that was one and a half, two times the price of Nike and the branding and look and feel of the website had to match that. So about a year, probably a year and a half into the company we went through with a Shopify partner on those rocket code of that time. And I think they merged with an additional Shopify partner. But we went through I guess kind of like a nuts and bolts user experience update for the whole website.

Felix: Yeah. So someone wants to do something like this, redesign their site to improve the user experience, elevate the brand to add a little bit more luxury. Sounds like what you guys are going for, where do you even begin? Like how do you begin to think about what to work on, what to change first?

Chip: Yeah. Usually when we think about redesigns and we take this into maiden as well now. We like to look at the funnel, the marketing funnel and go bottoms up. So for us, like we really focused on the product pages first. If we spent all that time and effort getting someone to the product page. We wanted to show off the products in the best possible light. So great imagery, great functionality, whether that's kind of like zoom rollover or anything that that user would want to see once they get to that product page and have expressed interest in a certain product. That really was the beginning focus.

Chip: And then from there, kind of going up that funnel. So collection page and homepage as well. And we obviously use things like Google Analytics to see where people are dropping off, our drop off rates higher than they should be at certain parts of those funnel to either focus or make larger or smaller changes on the website. But generally when we look at it we'd like to start kind of at that product centric portion and then work up towards more of the brand pages, the homepage, the about us page and so on.

Felix: Got it. So start as close to the bottom of the funnel, in your case, the product pages as much as possible because I'm assuming that has the highest impact on I guess the sales and conversion rates for the businesses, for the website. So based on what you've seen from other eCommerce stores, what is it about a product page that you see is usually maybe wrong or it can be improved on the most if someone had to kind of focus on only one or two different things on the product page? Based on what you're kind of seeing in the ecosystem right now of other stores, what do you think people should probably focus their attention?

Chip: Yeah, I mean, I think kind of outside of UI, UX and layout, I mean obviously beautiful imagery. Photo and video are becoming more popular. Or video in particular on product pages are becoming more expected. Depending on the product you sell things like 360 views. And really to give that user who's expressed an interest a real good idea of what they'll be purchasing because that is, I guess the pro and con of a DTC model is you are speaking directly to that consumer. You do have that one to one relationship but they don't have the ability to touch and feel that product. So anything that you can do from kind of a photo, video side or asset side to make them feel comfortable with what they're going to get in the mail five days later is super important.

Chip: And then, I mean, obviously there's some kind of low hanging fruit functionality, things that we look at, like always having a call to action visible on the screen at any point in time. So whether they've decided to scroll down the page and look at reviews, whether they've scroll down the page to look at kind of the nitty gritty details, descriptions, maybe FAQ, like there's always that quick opportunity to just add to cart. It's super important.

Felix: Got it. And in your case, you recommend that call to action being to add to cart if you are on the product page?

Chip: Yeah, generally both from kind of a conversion standpoint as well as a functionality standpoint. If someone's expressed interest in a very specific product, we want to cater to that products and not send them to an about us page, kind of send them really anywhere else in the website, but continue to hone in on that exact product.

Felix: Got it. Okay. So, now that you were working at Rhone for a bit and what gave you the itch to venture out on your own?

Chip: Yeah, I mean, I guess there's always there. I mean, I was a computer science major in college and started a few businesses with some of my roommates in college around like web design and things like that. So I think that itch has always been there and ended up kind of going back to business school doing a lot of courses in the computer science department as well, and big data and big data analytics.

Chip: And so I think with that in like kind of the experience that I got at Rhone, I had a really cool role at Rhone. When I was there, I was very cross functional really everything from demand forecasting and website analytics and behavioral analytics down to kind of demand forecasting, sorry. And the customer acquisition. So got a really good cross section of the entire company.

Chip: So kind of with my past experience and I guess knowledge in the web design domain. And then also with the experience I got at Rhone, it was really encouraging to go off and branch out and do my own thing. And I actually had a really good childhood buddy I grew up with since I was five in Boston and he had spent his life in the kitchen industry and I think we were seeing at that time, this was 2015, 2016, how well Casper's were doing in Brooklyn and we're doing and all these home brands where the home was really becoming a place where people were starting to invest in, they were starting the old kind of incumbent brands were kind of fading out and these new brands were coming in and making people really excited about investing in pillows and sheets and the kitchen could just wasn't touched.

Chip: And my childhood buddy, I guess he's grandfather in 1929 started a business outfitting and supplying high end restaurants with kitchen supplies. And that was really the last vertical to fall from kind of a brand perspective. There was no one really doing anything in the kitchen space. So I called him up and said, hey, like I kind of have this great experience from both the web, mobile and analytic side plus the experience at Rhone. Do you think we can create a brand, you have the product knowledge in this space to speak to the new customer for people who want to outfit their kitchen and feel attached to a brand in that space. And he was from day one just like, absolutely. This is a no brainer.

Felix: Got it. So the kitchen wasn't touched, like you mentioned there was no direct to consumer brands that were really basically revolutionizing the way that people were buying kitchen products that were ready to invest in kitchen products. How did that this was going to be a business model that would apply well to the kitchen space? The ones that you were seeing with like you're saying the sheets and pillows and mattresses. Like how did that kitchens was a place to disrupt next?

Chip: Yeah, I mean for us I think we saw this, there's two parts of that. One, we saw this huge behavioral divide and how kind of the modern consumer is behaving with respect to food. So our age group the 30 year olds they're going and they were spending so much time curating perfect recipes on all these great recipe websites. They're taking masterclasses taught by Thomas Keller. They were really investing in kind of cooking as a craft, not a chore. They were going and they were spending 30 bucks on a grass fed steak at a Whole Foods. They were really caring about organic this and organic that and putting all this thought and attention into kind of half the process. And then they would get home and they would cook it on something that was a hammy down or scratch from 10 years before, completely rusted out and kind of just ruined that last part of the process.

Chip: And really that is what resonated with a lot of people that we spoke with. We obviously did interviews with customers or potential customers beforehand. Ask them how they got their cookware. Do they even know who makes their cookware? And what we found was that the brand affinity in this space, it really, the brand awareness in this space was super low. So for us it was a different challenge than we had at Rhone, at Rhone people always are in the market for a new workout short, a new fashion item, things like that. For us it was about creating a brand that people finally cared about in the back of the house kitchen. And that's what we realized.

Felix: So you saw that in the landscape and the competitors out there, there was no true brand affinity, no brand awareness from potential customers of these products that already existed in this space. What does that mean for the kind of marketing that you have to do? Especially like you're saying, compared to an industry like Rhone, where people are constantly caring about brands and caring about constant on a lookout for premium products, what does that do about the way that you get approached to marketing when there is very little brand awareness for your competitors?

Chip: Yeah, what we really did and what that meant for us was that dictated how we went about creating the actual products. And that's actually what drove the name Made In. So what we realized was that food is a place or kind of an area of your life that there's a huge emotional attachment to. So whether you're home for Thanksgiving and gather around the table with your family or your recreating a grandma's recipe from three generations ago, two generations ago, like food always has an emotional attachment. A lot of people you talk about the latest travel or vacation they took and a lot of times all they talk about is the food that they ate. And so what we wanted to do is we wanted to recreate that emotional attachment on the product side.

Chip: And so what that meant was creating and developing really authentic supply chain. So take our knife for instance, our knife is made by a fifth generation knife out of central France, this small town in central France. They invented the modern chef knife, the look and feel that Germany actually copied this town. We went out there and we spent a week with her family after kind of a back and forth of a year developing this knife and created a really, really awesome chef knife in a way that is one of the few places in the world that still creates knives the authentic way.

Chip: So our goal with Made In is that Made In means that the products are made in the best places in the world with the best craftsmen in the world that they can be. And our goal is that you have just as much of an emotional attachment to the product that you actually cook the food on as the food and food experience you have afterwards.

Felix: Got it. So you saw this emotional attachment people have with food and especially their travels with food and you want to do to develop a supply chain that allowed you to create stories that also attaches as emotional attachment to your products, to places in the world. And you mentioned this was one of your competitive advantages that being able to be one of the brands that has authentic sourcing from actual craftsmen, from historic parts of the world. Now when you are, I guess maybe let me start with the source and how did you begin to do that? That sounds like if you're one of the first people to do this, it sounds like a lots of kind of trailblazing that's involved. How were you able to going on the process of sourcing from craftsmen?

Chip: Yeah, I mean I think there's two portions to that. One, again, my co-founder was third-generation kitchen supply, so he had a lot of industry connections and he's able to really speak and talk in a language that I think a supplier really appreciates, like he's very knowledgeable about metal. He's very like very knowledgeable about what makes a pan really good versus mediocre versus bad. He came in with this really great industry knowledge, which helped us at least talk the talk when we got the opportunity to talk to manufacturers.

Chip: But to be honest, there was a lot of ground and pound. I mean, we talked to maybe 50 manufacturers before we had two that were even a potential. A lot of people said, hey, like no one's going to even buy kitchen supplies online. A lot of people said we've been around, we've been making cookware, knives for 500 years. Like, why should we take a bet on spending our resources on a startup that you might fail in six months kind of thing. So it was a lot of convincing. It was helpful that we had an industry tie through my co-founder. But we were lucky to find partners who really believed in us and took a chance with us really when we were launching.

Felix: So once you have the supply chain with the products made from historic parts of the world, the best places to make those kitchen supplies, how do you use the competitive advantage, that story in your actual marketing?

Chip: Sure. So if you look at our website or a lot of our marketing materials, whether that's on Facebook or any of the promotional pieces that we put out on really any of our channels that we advertise on the factories and the craftsmen have a large part of that story. So again, not harping on the knives, but one of our best performing assets comes around really the knife maker talking about what makes a good knife from a bad knife and all the hard work and effort and the people that put their kind of names behind this product.

Chip: So really from like a eCommerce and direct to consumer perspective, like hopefully that gives the consumer at the end of the day, the acknowledge and comfort that the product they're purchasing from anywhere from $89 to $155 is going to hold up is worth it. And it's really made to last. And so it's a requirement for us if we're launching into a major vertical, whether that stainless clad pans, whether that's knives, carbon steel, that we're able to take a camera into the factory, show the production process, talk to people who are actually producing the products and we'll be in the future and showcase that to our audience.

Felix: Got it. Was there any pushback here with taking a camera into the factories to kind of show, I guess what goes into making a product?

Chip: Some places, but to be honest, not really. I mean, these are people that are absolutely 100% proud of what they do and what they've been making. So I think more than that, they're actually really proud to show off what they've spent their lives mastering. I mean, for our stainless steel clad pans, which are made in America right now, they are they go through about six or seven people before they're finished and each one of those people has been working at that factory for between 10 and 40 years.

Chip: There's actually a father son that are working together at that factory and finish most of our fry pans there. That's their specialty. And so I think it's something that they spent their whole life absolutely mastering. And finally we're able to come in there and give them a voice, give them kind of their moment to shine. And we really appreciate all the stuff that they do. All the hard work they put in. So I think it's gratifying for both sides.

Felix: Yeah. I'm not sure if you had a script involved or anything, but what is the prompt that you would give to a craftsmen or someone that's in your supply chain to get them to tell the story of what goes into creating the product?

Chip: Yeah, I mean, a lot of times it's their history. I mean, we don't need to prompt them too much. It's for us, it's getting them to tell their story. A lot of times they'd been working there for 40 years. We have one factory that was actually started in the early 50s to create cookware. That was the original purpose of the factory. And it actually ended up getting shifted over to some more stuff in the late 40s. And then actually never even made cookware.

Chip: And by the time we approached them 50, 60 years later asking them if they could help us create cookware. They were unbelievably excited. It was still family owned. They were happy to get back to their roots, happy to get back to the way that it was originally created. And so like a prompt wasn't even necessary. It was really just capturing their excitement and authentic experience creating the products.

Felix: Did you hire, did you have to hire an agency or company to help create the videos or is it something that you did on your own?

Chip: Yeah, actually, interesting enough, our fifth hire was a full time videographer and I think that's unique for a company our size, but again, kind of doubling down and betting on what we thought was an emotional attachment to a product and kind of a differentiator for our brands. Like we wanted storytelling to be an important part of our brand. And so that meant that meant that we brought that in house very quick, a lot quicker than I think most brands would at our stage. And that was probably one of the best moves we made, kept us nimble. We go on the road together, three or four of us and we're able to capture manufacturing videos, partnership videos with chefs instead of going through a lot of the back and forth and costs of agencies.

Felix: Very cool. And how important do you find that is it to have this thing be video-based? Can you tell a similar kind of story through other mediums like text or is video that compelling?

Chip: So for us, I think what's cool is really how these products are made. And we look at kind of a YouTube as a proxy and there's just millions of views for people Googling how to this and how to do that in terms of like how things are made. And so I don't think texture or pictures or gifts or any of those kind of media, other mediums would really tell the story that we're looking to other than video.

Felix: Got it. Now, once you are able to create these video assets, where do they go? How do you actually use them like tactically in your marketing?

Chip: Sure. So everything from the about us page. So if you want to dive deeper into how our products are made, who's making them, et cetera, like those exist on the website and that's something we'll continue to do. We both do outbound marketing being with that. So obviously like on Facebook or Instagram the factory stories play a large role. We do cut downs for those onto Instagram stories and make sure to include those as part of our marketing mix because we really want when people hear about Made In and go in and click on our Instagram and that's kind of like the first window to what your brand stands for. We want to make sure that the factories always have a presence there and it's not just kind of like pretty food and things like that. It's really ingrained in these craftsmen.

Felix: Got it. So this is really kind of the top of the funnel for a lot of us kind of branding focus. Like what's the next step that you want someone to take after seeing a video like this?

Chip: Yeah, I mean, we generally send those factory videos in terms of like tactically right to either a product page really deep link those straight to a product page that is from that factory. So there is a direct connection between kind of the maker of that into what they actually made, whether that's a collections page or a product page. And we see that obviously work really well for us. People that have a kind of awareness of the quality and effort that went into that and not to overuse the word, but the craftsmanship that was created to make that product.

Chip: And then it's all about exploring kind of the features of that. So for us a lot of times we found that people don't really understand how to use exact pieces of cookware. It's maybe they cook eggs at home and cook twice a week. And they mainly use frying pans and maybe a stockpot for pasta. There's also 15 other cooker pieces out there. So that's where it kind of the website is, there to further instruct help people understand this may be a really great product, but also here's what it's used for.

Felix: Right. And you also have speaking about the emphasis on video for you guys. You also have a whole section of your site. There's all basically tutorials, instructions from very famous chefs. So tell us about the chefs that you have been able to collaborate with.

Chip: Yeah, I mean that was completely organic to be honest. And I think we're actually struggled with trying to tell our consumers how we're not paying to work with those chefs. Like I think people are so used to paid endorsements in our field that they assume that everyone that we feature on that site is from just like a contractual agreement. But what actually happened with that and which was super interesting was a lot of these chefs approach us because they heard about the manufacturing stories that we're talking about here. They said things like I've been around and for 10 years had been turning down sponsorships from kind of the name brands because they didn't really stand for anything. And I've been waiting for a company like you guys to come along and really stand for something.

Chip: And so that brought a lot of inbound interest from chefs starting with Tom Colicchio at the end of 2018. He was our first real chef ambassador. He invested in the company. And then over the next year three or four more high profile chefs invested in us Grant Achatz and the Alinea group, Nica Konas one of the best restaurants in the country invested. Brooke Williamson in out of LA top chef winner. Absolutely awesome chef out there. She invested as well. But then in about 90 to 100 restaurants ended up coming in and buying and with them we really like to bring them into the fold. We think we love to have one to run relationships with these chefs and make them kind of the part of the meeting community. And it was really like, it all stem from really that focused on the authentic craftsmanship that ended up attracting these chefs who at the end of the day, I mean cooking is their craft. And so I think they appreciated the synergy between those two.

Felix: Makes sense. Okay. So I want to take a little bit of a step back. So once you or able to have this kind of founding team with your partner that what were the first steps to actually setting up the business was a sourcing first, you focus on marketing and branding first, what was the main focus early on?

Chip: That's a good question. We actually kind of struggled with that when we were starting the business to be honest. We ended up settling on not even touching website brand marketing until we figured out the supply chain. We felt like that was going to dictate the brand. So we talked to manufacturers all over the world and what we ended up, we wanted the brand and the look and feel to match the people we were working with, which ended up our first line was a stainless cladding line out of the United States.

Chip: I don't know if you watch our videos it's not a perfectly high-tech polish factory. That's like pristine and looks like a doctor's office or something like that. It's really like kind of old school, American manufacturing nitty gritty. People are working hard and things like that. And we wanted that effort to be kind of then go bubble up into the brand that we created. So when we talk about our brand, it's authentic. It's not 100% refined. It's human, things like that. And so I think if we went the other way, if we started with a brand, we started with a website, we started marketing and then figured out the product, we would have had a mismatch there. That didn't really make sense.

Felix: Yeah. I think there's something to be said about truly believing in your product too. We truly believe in your product. I think in a lot of the marketing and the genuine authenticity about the marketing certainly shines through. So once you did get the supply chain set up and then a website set up, where did the first sales come from?

Chip: Yeah, besides our moms and dads, we were actually were fortunate enough to have a pretty good press launch. Again, we were a first mover in this space. There wasn't too many other brands doing it, really any brands doing it. So it caught a lot of press's attention. And over the first year it continued to just get press traction. And I think that was important. I mean, PR was one of the first things we invested in. We invested in that about six months ahead of launch so that we could kind of build hype and gift and seed editors and things that I had no idea what I was doing in that realm. And so that's kind of been a thesis of ours or our motto of ours if we have no idea what we're doing, like that should be something we either hire for or outsource. So that was a focus of ours pre-launch.

Felix: Got it. Okay. So if you're looking to hire a PR agency, what do you look at? How do you determine if they are going to be good fit for what you're trying to do or not?

Chip: Yeah, for us it was, there's two things that were important. One was that they had a knowledge of food or hospitality. I mean, we were working with or ended up working with some of the best chefs in the country and we knew we were going to end up getting there. So they had to have some knowledge or experience in the hospitality industry. And then the second thing in the CPG industry, so whether they're working with a company like round or another I guess consumer good and can pitch for both editorial as well as things like gift guides, et cetera. Like those were the two most important things for us.

Felix: And once do you have a peer agency or a consultant? Like what's your involvement? Like how do you make sure that you are doing your part so that they can do their job?

Chip: Yeah, we always talk about that because I think people complain about not getting, and we did too, like not getting enough press. And then a lot of times just have to look inward NCF. I guess you're generating enough interesting stories. And so it's something we're cognizant of. I mean, whether that's refreshes a product line or new launches or things that kind of keep the brand fresh.

Chip: But for us, I mean we're constantly pitching and thinking of new ideas in terms of either the chef partnerships that you mentioned or there's some really interesting and authentic stories from the products that we work with and trying to tell those as well through press. I think like Shinola and companies like that did a great job of I guess bringing awareness and I guess consumer interest to the people who are actually making products. And so from a PR perspective, they paved the way for a lot of our stories.

Felix: Do you find that the kind of content and the kind of stories you have to tell changes depending on the level of awareness of your customer? Like someone's coming to your side and taking a look at a product, videos or learning from this chef. So I can imagine that a certain videos or kind of content works better for them versus someone that has it's just browsing a publication somewhere and then seeing content of yours. Like, what is the type of content that works best at the very, very top of the funnel?

Chip: Yeah, very top of the funnel. I mean from surveys we've done and kind of looking at the analytics behind our site. The manufacturing stories do very well from pure top of funnel as well as some of the direct consumer kind of messaging around direct to you customer service, things that retailers really don't focus on and really about changing that buying experience.

Chip: So I think everyone or every consumers is pretty aware of kind of the terrible, especially on the cooking and cookware industry, like the walking into a bed bath and beyond and looking at a shelf of 9,000 things that you have no idea and getting kind of pitched by a salesperson, like that buying experience stinks. So we really focused on really I guess streamlining the buying experience, talking about how that will benefit the consumer as well as the product theory philosophy.

Felix: Do you guys have like brainstorming sessions or how what is a process to come up with more stories to try to pitch or to get out into PR?

Chip: Yeah, we have two weekly meetings on that. I'm the first one internally and kind of talking more about the marketing funnel and the question you asked around that a team meeting, everyone from the kind of brand marketing side down towards the performance marketing team. I think it's the beginning portion of that is reviewing last week's efforts and kind of the analytics behind that click through rates, conversion rate, CPAs, things like that. And figuring out what's working and what's not and all the AB tests we ran that following week and then building up those. And then the second is a weekly meeting with their RPR agency, which it's also a two way feedback section. Like here's what's coming up. Are people interested in this? And then they deliver feedback back on yes or no.

Felix: Got it. Okay. So you mentioned that you invest in PR six months ahead of launch, which is probably one of the first times I heard of someone being this kind of I guess for thinking about getting PR ready for launch. What is the story that you tell before launch even before the product even exists for purchase?

Chip: So from a PR perspective and kind of leading up to our launch, because through the first three months of that was getting the product and seeding it to editors and building relationships with them. So they understood the brand and the story and what we were going after. For us we saw the brand evolve pretty heavily. I mean, I don't think that gates, a lot of people told kind of that pure direct to consumer story, hey, this is a product that compete with all clad on a performance level but cuts out the middleman and is half the price.

Chip: Like some that story you've kind of heard over and over again. But this was really the first time that the food writers were writing about it. And then from that kind of that brought the initial interest in wave. But for us like we obviously think our brand is a lot deeper and more authentic than that. So moved from pitching that story into kind of that more depth and awareness around the craftsman side of things.

Felix: Got it. Okay. So we'll talk a little bit about, or I should talk a lot about analytics because that's I think where you have the strongest expertise is around analytics. You spent a lot of time at and doing this and you mentioned that your day to day is spent around looking at the funnel, analyzing a lot of the metrics. So just want to share some of the things that you've been able to do. So you mentioned that again, you're responsible for the website analytics, behavior analytics, customer analytics, and optimization, create optimization. And again, that was at Rhone and today you're doing a lot of those similar things. So let's talk about this kind of at a high level at first. So what are some of the most important metrics or reports that you like to look at on a day to day basis?

Chip: Yeah, I mean, and this is something that was a big learning curve for us for the first probably three to six months or six months or so, was that cookware buyers behave completely different than my past experience at Rhone, which was apparel and kind of more fashion. Which as I mentioned earlier, talking to you that fashion buyer could be a one click buy. It could be something that someone's always in the market for and they just it's Tuesday and they're bored at work and they see something I'm pretty sure, and they come out and buy it. We do not see that behavior in cookware. We always say you talk about like our marketing meetings. Like we always say, people don't walk out of their house on a Tuesday, really saying I need to buy a new fry pan.

Chip: It's a different full funnel marketing cycle and problem that we have that we solve. And so that means that we have to break down our marketing funnel a lot more granularly. So that means like from a KPI perspective at the top of funnel we're looking at bounce rate, we're looking at qualified traffic a lot of metrics around that. And then middle and down funnel, that's where we started to look more conversion focused. But it is a much more, I guess, segmented marketing approach and a much more full funnel marketing approach. And that's something we learned over the year.

Felix: Okay. Can you say more about that? Like what is it differently? What do you look at differently between a product or a brand or industry where people are constantly shopping for the product costume and look out versus a product where people may not even be aware yet that they have this particular problem that they need to solve?

Chip: Yeah, so I guess one, it dictates the channels that you're super interested in and investing in, right? It's Facebook and Instagram have gotten so good at figuring out who's the market for what product. It really acts almost as of severe competitor to Google, SCM and search some things like that. It knows who's buying what and who's in the market for one. So I think for us that dictates both like how much efforts we view those channels as more down funnel channels and how much money and effort we put into those. But what that means also is that we can go up funnel and not worry so much about conversion and expand our reach into other channels outside of kind of those traditional ones.

Chip: We've obviously like podcasts and TV we've tested and spent money behind because for us it's more about the awareness of that at that stage. Like we're more pushing up funnel and looking at awareness and things and then investing kind of at the back end of the funnel as well. So it's really like a, I don't know how to describe it, but it's a different approach than we took with fashion where it was really easy to capture kind of in one channel a full kind of conversion cycle approach.

Felix: Got it. So there's much, much longer sales cycles for what you guys are selling. How do you measure something like awareness, especially if you are advertising on podcast or TV? How do you know if it's working or not?

Chip: Yeah, I mean, we look at everything from percentage of viewers who look at a review page or about us page or some sort of signal that they're interested in more about the brand than just kind of the homepage or things like bounce rate and stuff like that also go into it. But we look at a lot of path through the website. So pages per visit, pages for each user. We've invested a lot more into kind of understanding those aspects of what is qualified traffic versus what is not. We're using some AI modeling that predicts kind of user behavior and how likely they are to convert based off of really up funnel activities.

Chip: And those have been trained over kind of two years of data that we've gathered. But really for us, I think that is the exciting part is trying to figure out which of these actions that people are doing at the top of the funnel really correlate to what's happening at the bottom of the funnel. So whether that's watching one of our videos, which shows if they do that, it's a clear action that they're interested in the brand. Whether that's looking at our, about us page, visiting a factory page, watching chef tutorials, any of these things kind of dictate to us how interested they are in either cooking or inmate in that help us kind of determine who's interested in the product at the end of the day.

Felix: Got it. Okay. So when you do learn more about your customers, learn about what kind of behaviors or actions a visitor has taken up funnel by like watching your videos, which determines that they are highly qualified and more likely to purchase later. What do you do with the kind of data? Like what kind of changes have you made to the website or changes to your marketing based on knowing the behavior of qualified traffic?

Chip: Yeah. So I guess tactically like two things like speaking specifically about the watch video component now that is something, one we invest in as a brand, but two as you mentioned is correlating to people getting interested in the brand end up converting. So making our videos a lot more prominent, putting videos on a product pages which didn't exist before. Putting videos in the factory pages on the homepage. On our website right now on the homepage. There's a carousel of all the chefs we work with and videos we've done with each one of those and we have some other exciting kind of like video based stuff that's coming out in the next year or so.

Chip: So to your point like that has dictated a ton of what we're doing on the UI perspective and obviously we test into those changes and things like that. But it's hugely looking at that analytics really drives what we do and kind of the UI and web perspective as well.

Felix: Got it. So for someone out there that wants to be more data-driven with their decision making but doesn't want to get overwhelmed, I think it's hard for you to tell us what metric to look at. But maybe what are some questions that you think someone out there that's a complete beginner that is looking to again be more data-driven in their decision making? What kind of questions do you think they should ask themselves to determine what they should be tracking, what they should be looking at?

Chip: So one of the questions we asked ourselves, and I think it's really important for anyone starting out or trying to get more data-driven or analytical, is where to focus your time. And I think when you're internal out of brand you know so much about every portion of your website that you're afraid to repeat yourself, to put the same video on different pages. But if you actually dive in and just look at purely the path that people take through your website and if you're dropping most people off on either a product page or a homepage from your advertising or if you have a lot of organic search results that are going towards your homepage, you'll see that maybe 5% 7% of your traffic goes to the about us page. And when we started off some of our highest converting videos or highest value videos were living on that page that only seven of a hundred people were getting to.

Chip: And we were afraid to put that on our product pages as well, or a collection page or something else like that. And that is where most of the traffic was going. So I think that the number one thing to look at is really like that behavioral flow through your website and making sure that your best assets get in front of the most people possible.

Felix: Got it. So also not to worry about repeating yourself with the content, is that what you're saying? Like not to be too, I guess worried about having the same piece of content multiple places if that leads to keeping the customer in a longer in your funnel.

Chip: Yeah. And if you think that's core to your business value because as consumers you get 500 emails a day from brand. You get, you probably see 30 Instagram sponsored ads a day.

Chip: Like to assume that a user just because you're kind of frequency count is going up and to assume that a user has seen that ad or that video or whatever you're trying to promote is probably wrong.

Felix: Right. I think the thing I've heard is that you're much more likely to get annoyed by your own advertising than your customers are because you probably think that they're seeing the same thing every day. But just because you are surrounding yourselves by so much that you believe that they are also seeing as much as you are. Cool. So you mentioned-

Chip: And we think about our brand that same way too. I think it's something that we struggled with that at Rhone and we also struggle with that at Made In is constantly feeling like we need to overhaul everything and do brand refreshes because the brand is stale on the brand is stale and we've been looking at it for the last year and a half.

Chip: But for us 90% of our traffic, 85% of our traffic is new every day. They've never seen our brand before. So again like figuring out where to spend your time, like you probably don't need to go through a brand overhaul when you're two years old. You need to be focused more on other things.

Felix: Right. And speaking of that, you mentioned that one of the biggest issues is that early on people may focus too much on optimization and you mentioned opposition matters at scale. Well you should do early on is focus more on innovation and instead of focusing on small AB tests early on that don't move the needle. Like things like changing the button color. You mentioned, you say that you should try to fail bigger. It look for kind of bigger jumps in innovation. Tells me more about this. What are some examples of innovation versus, and I guess an optimization in your example, it's like a changing the color on a button, but what's an example of an innovation that you guys took?

Chip: I'll give you an example. More of first of the negative, like the optimization thing I'm talking about in a negative connotation, which for us, like early on we were looking at a target CPA or a target row as in our advertising and we were working with an agency and what they really wanted to do was test headline, copy, test really small iterations of description copy, product on white versus product on red, versus product on this or that.

Chip: And while those all drove very incremental gains or learnings, it wasn't a meaningful impact in the brand. What we did early on was we made much larger bet.

Chip: So let's think about like going out and investing in a brand video all about the founders and the storyline. And why we created the product and really humanizing the brand, test that whole vertical versus pure craftsmanship story versus pure product stories. That costs a little bit more upfront to do because we had to produce three videos. It took a little bit more time a couple months to get those out of the gate and into the world. But instead of driving incremental value, the winners of those, which are the craftsman story, the humanization story drove kind of double digit gains which would have taken us a lot longer to get there if we were incrementally testing. And so for us, like that was the bets we were going for first was figuring out really which major portions of the brand we're going to drive business impact and not some of the smaller things that I think people get caught up on.

Felix: Yeah. I think even knowing this and hearing your advice, people still might switch to premature optimization, I guess optimization too, too early. How do then when you should make this switch and focus from these big bets into the smaller optimizations?

Chip: Yeah, for us, I mean, I think we had very clear business goals upfront and we were clear from the optimizations that we were doing that it wasn't going to either get there or really surpassed the business goals that we were looking for from an efficiency standpoint. So like a marketing spend standpoint or a CPA standpoint or return on ad spend standpoint. Like we could have kind of nickel and dimed our way there, but it would've taken a lot longer.

Chip: So in that aspect or when you're faced with that situation obviously it's like, hey, let's blow this thing up and let's try a lot bigger bets to see if we can make stepwise jumps. Also like the thing we struggle with, especially the way marketing channels work right now is that everything's based off of lookalike audiences. Everything's based off of similar traffic. And kind of this algorithmic more or less like trading of marketing. And so maybe those first 500 customers that you get aren't actually the next 10,000 customers you get in a sentence. Like their early adopters may not be the massive doctors. So for us it was also going farther and wider and spreading messages bigger, which incremental testing SSL, they wouldn't have gotten us there.

Felix: Speaking of ads, you also mentioned that a lot of times you spend your days on optimizing ads. So what does it mean to you to, when you are sitting down and your goal is to optimize the ads themselves, what does that mean to you? Like, what do you focus on doing?

Chip: Yeah, so we're focused on really every one of our KPIs on each part of the channel. So going, starting at the top of funnel and looking at engagement rates, bounce rates, click through rates, dollar per visitor all those things. And making sure people are interested in those ads that they haven't faded in terms of engagement. So they're not reaching the same people. They're not getting boring, they're still telling the brand messaging. And then moving down the funnel getting more conversion focus. So are these ads doing what they're supposed to? Are people adding to cart? And our people initiating checkout, are people going from initiate checkout to final purchase and things like that. So each part of the funnel it's different. But each morning we go through each one of those each one of those parts of the funnel. Look at every single ad that and how it's performing over the last day and two weeks and a full month and measure those against each other. And then see if we need a refresh creative.

Felix: And these are mostly like Facebook ads or where are you spending most of your dollars? Which platforms?

Chip: Yeah, so we're podcast, Facebook, Instagram and TV right now. So not too many.

Felix: Yeah, I think probably what's most familiar with a lot of listeners probably around probably around like Facebook ads or what's your strategy there? What's your testing strategy whenever you want to start? Hey, a new campaign, like how should it be set up?

Chip: Yeah, so we do light AB testing. We obviously, I guess like the way you Facebook AB tests on their channel. Like we do some of that, but we also just do a lot of putting things out in the world and seeing the response into existing campaigns or ad sets. For us I think we'd rather fail quick and often and Facebook is a great platform to do that because you can Jack up spend and figure out if an ad's going to work in an hour or not.

Chip: So for us we'd come up with a bunch of iterations on ideas and products and messaging and creative lines and throw those really all into the world together and see which ones rise and which ones fall. And really our motto is to kill out quick. Because anything we can save on understanding if an ad will trend towards where we need it to be long-term, we can invest that back into testing a new concept.

Felix: So if you want to take this approach of failing as quickly as possible, learning that ad's going to work or not, you mentioned that you thrown an ad out there and you Jack up the span, you could probably find it within a day, within an hour maybe. So what do you just launching? Like $100. Again, it's like one ad or something or like what does this look like tactically if you need to get these answers as quickly as possible?

Chip: Yeah, we look at it on an impression basis. So has that ad reached 5,000, 10,000 impressions and is it trending towards where we've seen other ads at that stage go? I mean, in our minds, we have here are ads that are really kind of long-term the best things we've seen and we understand the life cycle of where those start, how those optimize over time, et cetera. And so now at this stage, having looked at it really every day, we're able to identify pretty quickly if that looks like it's going to be on a path based off of it's reached this many people, like it should be already trending this direction.

Felix: Guys, so you look for the trends of a new ad against the kind of trajectory of these hero, these kind of control ads that have been running and have been beating all the other tests that you've been running. So what makes these hero ads, these controls I guess how do you look at them to consider them a success and what metric are you looking at?

Chip: Yeah. so return on ad spends kind of are our bread and butter in terms of KPI. I mean, if we're selling, the hard part about what we do is we sell everything from a $790 million kit down to a $59 pan. So looking at CPA is a little bit of a misnomer because if we're getting a hundred dollars CPAs and that $59 pan, it's we're going to be out of business. If we get $100 CPAs in our $700 kit it's a great business. So for return on ad spend is really the most important metric we look at.

Felix: Now looking at your best performing ads and what attributes of the ad, the imagery or the text or the copy on it, what is it about these ads that have caused it to perform so well that you will continue to kind of duplicate into all the other tests that you're doing? What is it about those best becoming ads that you believe makes them best performing?

Chip: Yeah, I think some of it is I think the most important thing obviously is the actual creative. So the photo or video or carousel or whatever you're doing from that perspective, that's what is everyone's first focal point. They're not even going to stop and look at the headline or the description if the creative meaning the actual asset photo video isn't appealing or interesting or thumb stopping. So that's the most important thing that we look at.

Felix: Got it. And you mentioned that you've been able to drop your CPAs to by almost 100% year over year as you learn more about who your customer is, what they like. So tell us more about that. Like what did you learn about who your customers are and what they like over the last couple of years?

Chip: Yeah, for us, I mean we do have a higher price point product. So a $69, $59 fry pan, although it's kind of half the price of all clad is still an expensive pan for most people out there. So I think the most interesting thing we've looked at and we've overplayed our audience onto everything from Oracle data, which takes it in segments it and gives everyone kind of a unique profile and demographic information and things like that down to the stuff that Google and Facebook should spit out to us as well.

Chip: The interesting thing about cooking is it really appeals to everyone, which is both good and bad because that means we can go into channels that have wider reach and are less pinpointed. So TV, radio, things like that where you may not know who's on the other end, although it's mostly people above 30 who have disposable income or something like that. That's been the biggest learning. And so for us it's been less about telling a very pinpointed message to a male who's 33 who lives in a coastal area, something like that, which for a lot of brands like that is their customer. For us, it's really how can cooking improve your life? How is our cook are better? And like, why should you pay attention to cooking in general?

Felix: Makes sense. Okay. So you also mentioned that you've been able to increase the number of returning customers by 50% year over a year over the last year by focusing on features like the drag along products, retention optimizer and cross sells and upsells. Let's talk about that. What is it that you do but these drag along products that allows you to increase the number of returning customers?

Chip: Yeah, so something we learned at Rhone as well. I mean there's always kind of a hero product that may drive a ton of your sales, but there's also a hero product that is the first product in consumers first basket that leads to the highest repeat purchase rate. And that is a super interesting product to look for. And so that kind of comes out confusing, but basically like what product is in the person's first purchase that ends up leading towards the most repeat purchase rate and honing in on that product, basically the penetration product for your brand that brings the most customers back. And for us that was a carbon steel frying pan or a sauce pan, which aren't really the hero products of ours, but somehow we're a penetration product into people falling in love with the brand and coming back and buying more.

Chip: And so for us like then that dictates marketing efforts if people purchase one of those products. If we lead with those products it determines our life cycle marketing in a lot of ways. And then in terms of kind of the retention optimizer and other tactics you mentioned there those are super interesting to look at because as an eCommerce business a lot of your money's made in the LTV standpoint, like what people do after the conversion. And for us like anything we can derive any more value we can derive from second, third, fourth, fifth purchases. That's money that we can then spend to go acquire more customers and increase the velocity of our business growth. And so we're lucky enough now to have kind of our early cohorts repeating up to a 60% or 70% which was kind of way higher than we thought. And I think pays I guess is it gives the tap to all that efforts we're doing on the retention side.

Felix: That's very interesting and never heard this phrase based all about this penetration product into your brands so that they basically buy one product and now they're bonds kind of ecosystem of all the other products that you might be selling. So first of all, how do you notice, well, what is the tools that you use, the reporting that you use it, what do you do to determine what is that product that will most likely get you a customer that is going to be returning?

Chip: Yeah, the kind of like easy way to look at a lot of that stuff are the drag products. There's a feature in Shopify that is in, I believe the analytics and it's called basket analysis or something like that. Like that is a really good way to see at least like basket makeup and see what products are being bought with other products. And that is a good, I guess like first step into looking at, hey, if people didn't actually buy these together, people in bought them the first one, then they probably didn't want that second product at some point later. Or there's a high likelihood that they will. For us, we take all of our exports of our raw Shopify data, we put that into a red ship database and run SQL queries off that to figure this stuff out.

Felix: Got it. Now, when you do know that what this dragged lawn product is like, what do you do with that information? Like what do you, are you changing your marketing? Are you like remarketing them with that particular product for existing customers? How are you using this information?

Chip: Yeah, so that dictates obviously the kind of initial prospecting and brand awareness product from the marketing standpoint. So the things that are going on Facebook ads things that are going in our email welcome flows, kind of those first touch points and then the drag along products come in, the retargeting across sales or upsells or post-purchase flows or anything in the kind of after purchase segments.

Felix: Got it. Then you mentioned that you also use some other tools like the retouch it optimizer tells about how you use that.

Chip: Yeah, retouch it optimizers. Cool. It's just a really good graphical way to see how your customers are aging. So obviously your most valuable customers are a function of how many purchases they've made, how much they've spent with you and how long since they've purchased. And that retention optimizer tool preferably shows that to you really easily and well and lets you know kind of how those cohorts are aging.

Chip: And if you see a lot of your best customers trending towards, hey, they spend 1000 bucks with you and they bought three times, but they haven't bought with you in three to six months and you have a product that people do buy often. Like that means you're probably not spending enough time on nurturing your customers that you already have. So maybe you need to invest more in email marketing. Maybe you need to invest more in retargeting, like something like that. But I think it's both slightly tactical but also is a really good visual way to see how your full funnel marketing is performing.

Felix: Well, what other tools or apps you use to help you run the business or make decisions for the business?

Chip: Yeah, we use Looker as a BI tool. It's a little bit more of a heavy lift in terms of implementation, but that's super important for us to be able to visualize. Everything from revenues down to basket analysis, down to channel analytics as well as marketing performance. That all comes through the BI tool, Looker we use Segment which is really kind of an interface that sits on top of Redshift and extracts all of our data from multiple channels and pushes it downstream into things like the Redshift, which ends up going to Looker.

Chip: So a lot of like the data structured tools are super important to us. I mean, we've invested a lot in data structure. And then obviously platforms. We use Blueshift which is a ESP and artificial intelligence tool to analyze both kind of behavioural flow through the website as well as put out our email communications.

Felix: Awesome. So madeincookware.com is a website. What would you say is the most important metric that you would like to spend all your days, all your time focused on over the next few months?

Chip: Return on ad spend. It's the number one thing everyone looks at.

Felix: Awesome. Thank you so much for your time, Chip.

Chip: Awesome. Thanks Felix.