Felix: Today, I'm joined by Akram Abdullah from Nominal, which is a Nominalx.com. Nominal is a brand that blends culture and fashion to create meaningful accessories, and we started 2018 and based out of Phoenix, Arizona, and is a seven figure business. Welcome Akram.
Akram: Thank you so much. I really appreciate it, Peter. Felix. Yeah.
Felix: Tell me more about the idea behind the business. So meaningful assessors, where did the idea behind this business come from?
Akram: Essentially when we first started, or I guess late 2017, I had this idea of changing the background of my phone to a wallpaper that had a certain quote, a certain phrase, sometimes even images of people that I really looked up to. I did that because they constantly reminded me every single time I unlock my phone, they reminded me to get that positive mindset. Whether it be a background that has the word faith or patients or whatever it may be, or my favorite quote. I just use that to have that positive reassurance constantly many times throughout the day.
I shared this strategy with many of my friends and family members, and I told them it really does help get your mind right. What else do you have with you in your pocket 24/7? Then I thought to myself, how can I really scale the same concept? I thought I should incorporate these meaningful words and these meaningful quotes and old languages onto jewelry on dependence, and then now clothing and basically all things session. That's how it all started.
Felix: That makes sense. I think I get what you're saying about how you had to explain to your family and friends that, hey, these small adjustments, small visual cues, essentially in your life can make a difference, and to start off with the back on your phone, but then you said let's scale this up to more tangible items with accessories. Was that a difficult thing to communicate to people that once your friends or families that, hey, these ... the reason why you're creating this brand is because you recognize that there are meaningful benefits to having, again, these visual cues surrounded in your life?
Akram: At first, I really thought that it would be, but I was surprised and that's why we started the business so quickly and why it took off. I was surprised that everybody really loved the idea right off the bat, and everybody wanted to hold the word that is so sacred to them. I think everybody has a word or a quote that just really means a lot to them and they want to keep it as close to them as possible, literally on their chest or on their arm or on their finger. So it resonated with people pretty quickly. It didn't need too much explaining or any kind of introduction. It was pretty self-explanatory what the piece meant to people.
Felix: Got it. Okay. At this point when you thought about this then made this leap from, okay, let's scale us up from a wallpaper on your phone to again physical goods, did you have any background this time? Did you have any kind of business or any background in creating a product this?
Akram: Yes. I've been an entrepreneur my whole life. All through high school I would you buy and sell iPhone, iPads. I would buy hats from China and sell them on Amazon and eBay. So I've always been buying and selling. It's been a passion of mine. My dad has his own real estate company, Fix and Flip. So then when I graduated undergrad, and in undergrad I studied business management with a focus on entrepreneurship. During undergrad, I worked with my dad within his business. I would help him with his properties. So I always grew up in the entrepreneur environment. Then I worked with my dad for a few years within his business.
Then I started my own business before Nominal, a business called [Kufi] Artists, where I would take verses from the Quran and I would basically get them cut out on wood or engraved on wood and then sold as wall art. I did that for a little bit. That was the first time that I started experimenting with an online store, and I did it through Shopify as well. Then I started my MBA program. I did do my master's in business administration in 2017, finished that in 2019, so one year after starting Nominal. That's my background. I did have some entrepreneurial background as well before Nominal.


Felix: Got it. Now, what were the first steps? So that you decided to scale this up, create these products, what were the first steps of getting it done?
Akram: The first steps I would say would be proof of concept to make sure that there's actually demand out there and make sure that this actually is a product or an industry that people would be interested in. I did create a few samples first. Started off with bars that had engravings on them faith, love, patience, happiness. Meaningful powerful words like that. Also, started off with name necklaces. That way people can really represent their identity, where they're from, the language they speak, their culture, things like that. I started out with samples just within the community, presented it to everybody, and then everybody really loved what it was that I was offering. Then from there I went into the bulk production. But first I guess before bulk production, I had to make sure that I was very confident in the manufacturers that I was going to work with.
This is the recommendation I have for a lot of people when they're looking for a manufacturer, you don't sample from just one, you sample from multiple. So I sampled from four different manufacturers, and then I went and took that jewelry and I put it in a bowl of water for 30 days each and then I put it outside in different weather conditions for 30 days each, and then I went basically what the manufacturer that provided me the best quality. We do offer a lifetime warranty on all our pieces, and we can competently do that because I found that manufacturer that has the best practices and the best materials. I was very patient within the sampling and manufacturing steps within the business.
Felix: Yeah. That's a good point about how you're a patient. I think early on there's a lot of encouragement to just get rolling, get started quickly, don't spend time planning out too much. But you took your time where I seen you recognized the parts that needed to take time. How did you know that that was the way to test these samples? Because people from other industries might want to follow in your footsteps and say, "Let's work with multiple manufacturers, get some samples in to find who is the best long-term partner," and they get them back and they might just do a visual check and see how it feels in their hands. Does it feel cheap or high quality? And that's it, but you went pretty far. It took you 30 days essentially to verify what's the best quality manufacturer to go with. How did you know what to look for in what's considered high quality?
Akram: I did a lot of research first, and I also asked a lot of questions to the manufacturers. As I reached out to so many to get bids and to hear what it is that they have to say, their pitch to get me as a client, I started to realize that some manufacturers would talk about the different amounts of coating of gold that they would put on their jewelry. First, I didn't even know that was a thing. But then one manufacturer told me they do one layer of gold plating, then another told me two, and then another told me three, and one told me four, and four is the most that I've seen.
Then I asked if they can do five. I decided, let me try to take it to another level. Just from me reaching out and asking so many questions and they were the same question to so many different manufacturers, I realized that they all had different answers, which made me realize that everybody does something in a different way. It was from that moment on that I realized that I do need to make sure I ask as many questions as possible, and then I decided to go do some research just on gold in general and jewelry in general. I looked through a lot of reviews of other companies that sell jewelry as well to see what it is that customers are asking and what complaints they're having.
I thought that a lot of customers, their main complaint with jewelry was that it changes color or it leaves a certain mark on their skin after a certain period of time, or they can't swim with it, they can't shower with it. I made sure when I was speaking to the manufacturers that I was able to handle those objections. I want to make sure that they never need to take it off, I want to make sure that we can offer that warranty. I would say just proper research, take your time, look at reviews for other companies, ask questions. Then that's how we came out with our final product.


Felix: Yeah. I want to reiterate this point, I think it is important too, about when I asked you that question, it was a more so what did you look at that you cared about in terms of jewelry. But the way you gave an answer was that you didn't just go off of what you thought would be high quality jewelry. You went to see what other potential customers were saying about what they cared about jewelry. You don't have to wait until you get your own samples to do that. You can just go look at what the competitors or other jewelry brands are, or whatever your industry is. Look at what their customers are asking about or complaining about, and then you go bring those questions to your manufacturers. All right. Now you've mentioned you create a few samples, you got a few back from different manufacturers and you mentioned that you started to put out there into your community, I'm assuming to get feedback. Was this your local community or where were you putting these samples out?
Akram: Both local communities, just within my friends and family. Then with my business that I did for about a year before I started Nominal, it was called Kufi Artists. As I mentioned earlier, it was an Arabic legacy wall art company. I actually started off with the pieces only being in Arabic. Until this day, we still do specialize in the Arabic language. But because I had that business, I was already very niche. People were purchasing Arabic calligraphy designs. I decided let me take some pre-orders within that business for these pieces that I now have. At the time, they weren't Nominal branded. They were just Kufi Artists branded. So I took some pre-orders with the small amount of followers that I had, and I got a little bit of traffic on that website.
I took the orders over there, and then I thought that there was a lot of proof of concept and that people were loving it. I realized that there's more opportunity here than there was in the wall art that I was doing. So I decided let me stop Kufi Artists, let me take a step back and focus more on jewelry and accessories and fashion, and get out of the wall art game. Then I started looking for a name for this new business, and that's how I came across the name Nominal for the business. But basically, yes, I took some pre-orders from my last business and then started working, decided to go all out with the new business.
Felix: Got it. So this was untested product basically that you brought to them because you wanted to get it tested and see what they thought. How did you present this to an existing audience when you have a product that you're not sure if they're going to like or not? How do you message it in the right way so that you don't have your past customers like, "Hey, why'd you send me a crappy product?" I mean, I'm not saying that's what they said, but how do you make sure that you message it correctly to your existing customers?
Akram: I think it comes down to setting proper expectations, and then also pricing it properly. I wasn't super confident in the product. I mean, I was confident, of course, in the aspect of quality because I did sample multiple times and I did take my time with it. But in terms of the confidence when it comes to demand, I didn't really know that yet. I decided to go ahead and present it with a very low cost. I was only selling them for about $20 at the time. With that, you can't really have that high of an expectation from a customer standpoint. Then I also reassured them that there's no risk when you purchase from us, from Kufi Artists at the time. We say the same thing right now with Nominal. There's no risk because no matter what, you're going to leave happy. If you don't like your product, we'll give you a refund or an exchange or whatever it may be. I did preface it with that, and then when they see that there's no risk factor, then they're able to purchase with confidence.
Felix: Did you get any feedback that led to redesigning the product or going back to manufacturer to make any tweaks?
Akram: Definitely. Not so much from a quality standpoint, but more from a length standpoint. For example, maybe the pendant was too big or it was too small or the necklace chain was too small or too big, or people wanted to be able to make it smaller and bigger without having to buy another chain. Then we started offering extensions within the chain itself. That way, it's multipurpose and they could wear it with different outfits. We did learn over time based on feedback. We do accept reviews on our website, which is very valuable. I think a lot of people sometimes run away from reviews, but really reviews is just an opportunity for feedback. A one star and two star and three star reviews are sometimes the best reviews. That's where you get your new ideas. Yeah, definitely, we continue to make adjustments.
People said they want more options, they want more colors. First we started only gold, and they said where's silver, then they said where's bronze. Then we started offering more of those colors. People ask, "I want more customizable options." Then we started doing that as well. So basically, we always kept an open mind, open ears, looking for any feedback possible, paid attention to what questions people were asking and just made sure that we addressed them.
Felix: Got it. Now, when you were launching this with this beta group of these new products out to your previous customers of your past business, you mentioned that you recognized that there was a better opportunity here in a different category. What did you see exactly that made you realize, let me basically ... I mean, does that business still exist or did you close that down and focus on Nominal?
Akram: I closed that down and focused on Nominal. The reason I did that is my previous business was an art, and so really only I could create it. People were buying from me and I felt like that wasn't scalable, and I felt like it was in general just more of a difficult business. I was selling wall art. In order for someone to buy wall art, number one, this is an item that's priced much higher. There's that. Then number two, you need the space within your house, and then number three, just from my standpoint, it takes longer to create and it's a lot more fragile when you ship it. So there's a lot of opportunity for it to get damaged during transit. There were just a lot of ... Of course every business has obstacles, but I felt like this specific business had even more obstacles.
I also found myself to be more passionate about jewelry and accessories than I did about art. I've always been big on watches, I've always been big on jewelry, necklaces, bracelets, rings, and so it's been a dream of mine actually as a kid to start my own line, my own fashion brands. So I felt like this would be perfect. I would always have this constant energy and passion and laser beam focused if I can just take my passion for business and have it be right side by side with my passion for fashion. That was the transition. I really love jewelry and design, and so decided to just go all out in that direction.
Felix: Two years, basically 2018 to now, to seven figure business, you came out of the gates racing. How did you the kind of attention and traffic to even get those kinds of customers in that first few months or a year?
Akram: I would give all the credit to probably three different industries or three different avenues within business. The first would be, I would say we have a mission in place. Every single month we choose what we call deed of the month where we choose a certain cause, a certain country that we don't have a percentage of proceeds towards. We always use the word shop with purpose. We want to be able to have a platform where people can really make a difference with what it is that they purchase, and we're able to use that platform to raise awareness towards different causes and important issues. That's the backbone of our business. Every single month, as sales grow, so does the donated amount. I think it's important for us, and for business in general, to give back to not just their local community, but give back to the world.
Then when people purchase, they want to purchase knowing that their money has gone to a good place. I would say that was the first thing that really helped us grow, just putting a lot of purpose behind our brand and providing a story and real change. Second would be, we went through a lot of conventions. We had a lot of trade shows, more and more each month. We went to Houston, we went to Nevada, we went to Toronto. We had a plan for UK but that got canceled with Corona. We went to New York, we went to Chicago, D.C., California, so many different States. Basically any state or even country that offered an opportunity for us to set up a booth, we went. That way we really got to be in front of the customers, and with each convention we would grow as well, and we would have more and more tables.
We started out with one table, then two, then three, then four, then five, then six, literally all the way down to 16. We went as one person, and then all the way to 12 people would travel all from Arizona or would fly people out from different states to this one convention, and we would basically run the show. What's great about convention, and I do highly recommend it, is that you get to get in-person feedback. You get to put personality behind your brands. A lot of people, they'll see your Facebook or Instagram ads, but every single brand runs ads these days. So when they see you in person, they're like, "Oh, I saw this ad." Now they're able to put a physical memory to it.
Some people are hesitant to purchase online, and when they see that you're real, they get reassured and they build that confidence. We give them an in-person experience. On top of that, we listen to their feedback. So we even pay attention, and I tell everybody, take notes as to what people are asking. Are they asking a certain question over and over and over, and we keep telling them no, that means we need to figure that out and make sure that we offer it next time. For example, we had adjustable rings. People said, "Oh, do you have rings in different sizes? I don't like that adjustable ring." People kept that question. We decided, okay, clearly this is something that we need to offer. We discontinued the adjustable rings and now we offer rings in different sizes.
Those questions don't always come online. A lot of times they're only asked in person. We just really try to listen to what it is that they're asking us, we take notes on what they're asking us, and then we even pay attention to what they're saying to each other. A lot of people come with their friends. They say things to each other, we catch on and then we take notes and we try to make an adjustment to our business. I know I'm speaking a lot, so feel free to interrupt me at any time, Felix.
Felix: Yeah, so you mentioned ... Were those the two things or was there another one that you mentioned you credit the success to?
Akram: Yes. One more as well, so that would be influencer marketing. Influencer marketing has been huge to us. I think there are certain strategies to do proper influencer marketing. From the very beginning, we of course didn't have any budget at all. We couldn't afford to pay anybody. Even somebody that told us their fee is $50, that was way too much for us. We just did our best to ... I think it just comes down to sales 101 where you reach out to a 100 people, 10 people respond, you close three. We just did that. By we, I mean me and my wife at the time. We would just send as many emails and DMs as possible, and we'd get some responses, some would respond with a quote that we couldn't afford.
But we didn't end the relationship there. We said, "You know what? No worries. We unfortunately can't do this collaboration at this time as we don't have the budget for it. However, we still love to give it." Every single person, we still tried to send them three items, and just make it seem like it's a gift, and it is a gift. A lot of times what ended up happening to our favor is they would still post and they would still tag us because they really loved the item. I think influencer marketing just worked very well for us versus a lot of other products because they actually ... Jewelry is something that you wear, and so they end up wearing it.
Even if they don't tag us in their pictures now or in their videos now, and then maybe some people, some of their followers ask, "Oh, where'd you get your necklace," and then they might end up tagging us. Or we can now ask a permission for that picture from the influencer if we could repost that on our page. Although we didn't pay them, now we have content and this content is someone that a lot of people follow and they see ... We build that credibility through a famous person wearing our product that we didn't really pay for aside from just the cost of shipping and the cost of goods.
Felix: Got it. Okay, I want to now break down these three different avenues that you mentioned starting out with the mission first. Well, you mentioned that ... I've heard of the businesses doing this too, but they typically would just have one mission that they stick with throughout the entire thing. So you have a new mission every single month. How do you handle that logistically? How do you set this up in a way where you find a cause that matches up with your values and then set it all up so that you can actually donate a portion of the proceeds to them?
Akram: It's difficult to be honest with you, Felix, because there are so many people around the world that need help, so many countries that need help. It's hard to choose one over the other, and that's why we try ... That's why instead of having one focus towards one country and have that be a part of our mission throughout the lifetime of our company, we change it up every single month. In that way, we can really provide help to as many people as possible. For example, February of 2019, we did a medical camp for Yemen where we raised a few $100. Then March of 2019, we did a bread for Syria campaign for Syria where we raised $2,000. Then we built a water well in Mali, where we were able to raise $2,500, just through our sales and food donations as well.
We donated money towards an Academy for orphans in Africa and Palestine refugee families within May. We change it up each month. Of course, there are a lot of months where we end up going back to a previous campaign and just raising more money towards it. So it just depends on what's happening in the world. Right now, again, actually we're raising money towards Yemen because there are a lot of starving families there right now, and with corona, it makes it 10 times harder for them to continue to live their lives safe and healthy. So they need help desperately. We try to base it on urgency and who is maybe not getting attention that should be getting attention. Maybe there are a lot of causes that already, or a lot of businesses, a lot of brands, they're already focusing on certain groups of people or certain countries, but no one's focusing on Yemen, for example. So then we decided to focus on Yemen. Every single month is different. We discuss internally as to where we want to donate proceeds to. Yeah, that's how we do it.
Felix: Got it. Okay. Now the trade shows conventions, and these are being attended by retailers or actual customers that end up purchasing and using the product themselves?
Akram: I would say with each convention, there's probably 50 to 100 booths, sometimes up to 400 booths being the biggest one that we went to Chicago the last few years. Then by booths, I mean 400 small brands like us. I wouldn't say big brands. It's not Macy's or any of those brands. It's just small up and coming brands or mom and pop shops that are local. I would say probably half of each convention, people fly out like us. We've flown out to every single one. Unfortunately, there aren't really any trade shows in Arizona. Then they had their own group of people in terms of customers that come visit.
We sell towards customers, not towards other businesses, if that's what you were asking. It's not B2B, it's B2C, business to consumer. With every single convention, a lot of them are annual, so people know to expect this the next year and they try to advertise it towards the entire United States, sometimes even globally. People fly from other countries to come visit. Yeah, every single convention is different, but they have their own group of audience and it ranges up to 30,000 people. I think that was the biggest one that we've seen.
Felix: Wow. So are these conventions ... you'd have to pay to have a booth set up at these, correct?
Akram: Definitely, yeah. Yeah. It typically ranges between $500 for a booth all the way up until $1,300 for a booth, and we've been as big as nine booths.
Felix: Wow. So now looking back with your experience going to these traces, are there ways to identify which ones have been more worthwhile than others, especially when you might be starting out and you have a tighter budget?
Akram: Yes. Yes. I would say I would try to focus ... I guess it depends on where each brand is located. A lot of brands, conveniently for them, they're located in either New York or Chicago, and that's where the majority of the conventions are, New York, Chicago, D.C. area, and so they can drive there. So if that's the case ... Because that's where the majority of the expense comes from. It comes from the travel, the hotel, the flight, the food that you need to bring. But if you live in that area and you can drive, then you should probably go to every single one of them. Some, yes, do make us more money and get us more exposure than others. For those, we still decide to go to just about every single one, but we don't necessarily go to every single one again. Based on the previous experience, the first year's experience, we make adjustments as to whether or not we want to include them within our list of next year.
Some conventions we've cut from our list. But the majority of the conventions, we continue to go over and over, but we might just have less booths. Maybe we realize, okay, we don't need nine booths over here. There's not that many people. We'll only get nine booths if we realize within a previous year that every single side of the booth gets busy, occupied, we're selling on every single corner, et cetera. But if we feel a lot of the booth in terms of the real state of the booth is not even getting attention, then we decide, okay, that's a waste of money. Let's cut it down to maybe four booths instead of five or six booths so that we can save at least on expenses.
Felix: Got it. Now what's the game plan? When you're going there with, you mentioned, 10 people or more, how do you make sure that you guys capitalize on this trade show when you're going there? Are there certainly best practices that you've found works well to try to sell out or sell as much as you can?
Akram: I would say that we need to focus on display and experience, and relationship building as well. We try to talk to as many of our fan base, whether old or new, whether they've been following us on Instagram or whether they saw us the previous year at the convention. We try to just really have conversation with them, get to know them, find out how they found out about us, whether or not they already own something Nominal, get to know them on a personal basis instead of just say be transactional. That way we can give them the best experience when they can really have that memory, and we can even maybe follow each other's personal Instagram pages.
I would say that's a lot that we pay attention to. Of course when building our team to decide who's going to the convention, we do try to focus on the interpersonal skills as well. Then from a display standpoint, we want to make sure that it's set up in a way where people want to take pictures of the booth. We try to make it look pretty, we try to get a lot of attention, we get neon sign, we get grass walls. We have beautiful display pieces. So we really do want to be a shiny booth within the entire convention place, within the entire whole. We try to really get a lot of attention and build curiosity through our booths.
Felix: Can you say more about that build curiosity? I think that's important because, again, you're there with hundreds of other booths in that space, and if you want to sell, you have to stand out and make the best you want to come to yours. Any advice or tips on how to design a booth that will attract crowds to your booths?
Akram: I think a lot of boots will make the mistake where they ... We go with the mentality of less is more, but at the same time ... And by that, I guess I just mean that we try to have a very minimal clean look. That's the theme of our brand, minimalism. That's how the word Nominal even came about. I was looking for a synonym for simple, minimal, and then I came across the word nominal, and then I ran with that. So we try to be as accurate with our brand name as possible. But we have a very unique look to our brands. Then we also try to incorporate certain things lights. I think it's important to have lights. We always have this neon light that we bring with us, a big neon light.
It's so beautiful to the point where people ask if they can take a picture with it. That's happened many, many, many times. What we did on our last convention is we even got a hanging ceiling banner, which cost a lot of money. It was about almost a $3,000 investment, but it got a lot of attention. No matter where you were within the entire hall, you could be super far away where it takes 10 minutes for you to walk all the way to us, you could see the big hanging ceiling banner. It was 20 by 20 feet, it had our brand logo on all four corners of it. I would say, try to incorporate lights, try to incorporate a unique design, don't overcrowd your space. Don't try to put products on every single corner.
Many confuses customers a little bit as to what it is that they're looking at. They may get overwhelmed as well. We want it to be pretty clear what it is that we're selling. We put a little stand next to each product that explains what the product is, like a museum or art gallery, where you see a piece of art on the wall, and then it talks about it a little bit on the right or left side of it, gives a name to the product. That way we can also keep the customers looking and engaging with the product and with our booth for long, and they really start to invest within it. I think the more time that you can get someone to spend at your booth, the higher the likelihood it is that you're going to convert them. We try to give them something to read, and storyteller a little bit with them. Yeah, I would say those are some keys.
Felix: Awesome. Cool, let's dive into influencer marketing. So you mentioned that when you started down this thing, you had no budget and basically you went with the approach of a numbers game, try to as pitch as many people as possible, and if you cannot close them, you can at least send them a gift and that still might result in results that you're looking for. What was the approach here? How did you first amass the list of who you should be reaching out to, especially if it's a numbers game? How do you figure out who you should even be bothering to reach out to?
Akram: Our niche right now is for the most part the Muslim market, those that are of middle Eastern or basically ethnicities, Asian ethnicities. We decided to focus within the niche, and then also those that spoke the languages that we were advertising, whether it be Arabic or Urdu or Punjabi or things that. We tried to find the influencers that were within those demographics. There's a little feature on Instagram that helps you find more people. Let's say I land on this one specific profile that matches our demographic. Their followers are likely to purchase our products because they speak the language or they're of the same religion or whatever it may be where. Where it says following, there's an arrow that point downwards. If you click on that arrow, it'll show similar profiles.
I don't know how the Instagram algorithm does all that necessarily, but it's typically pretty accurate. Then we go through all those profiles that it recommends that are similar to this one profile that we landed on. Then with each person that we now newly just found through that feature, we're able to find more and more and more and more and more. We just try to focus and make sure that their demographic is similar to ours. I think that matters. A lot of people will make the mistake where they'll spend money or send products to just about any influencer, anybody that has a lot of followers. I think that's incorrect. It's not the best strategy, so a waste of time and money. You need to make sure that their demographic is similar to yours. You need to make sure that your two markets align well.
Then even from a location standpoint. At the very beginning, we don't have the means to ship internationally, especially because sometimes the packages will get lost. So it's not just about the shipping cost, because typically the customer pays the shipping cost if it's below a certain minimum cart value. But sometimes the package may get lost or it may get delivered to the wrong address, or even if it breaks, we offer a warranty. So then we have to send it again, and if we send it again, then the customer doesn't pay the shipping, we pay the shipping because it's our fault. Then we'll be in the negatives for that order. So at the very beginning, since we have limited budget and there's a huge market within the United States, let's just focus on influences in the United States.
Influencers in the United States, the vast majority of their followers are typically also in the United States. Those that have our influencers in London, their followers are likely in London or in the UK, or just in Europe in general. We tried to focus, we really narrowed down our market, who it is that we want to ... where our target audience is, and then we find influencers that meet that criteria.
Felix: Got it. Now what's that pitch? When you reached out to them, I'm sure you've refined it over time since you reached out to so many. Is there an approach that seems to get the attention the best way?
Akram: Definitely, yeah. I would say that you need to really level with them. You need to not copy and paste messages. I think that copying and pasting is the lazier route, and you will get some responses and you will be able to close deals, but it’s just simple conversion. If you want to increase your percentage, you've got to personalize the message to that influencer. Go on their seats, spend a little bit of time, see what event they just posted out or see whether or not they just had a baby or whether or not they just got married or something about them that you learned just by scrolling through their profile, even if it's not for that long period of a time. Then we mentioned it, so we use their name.
Then, for example, I'll say, "Hey, Sarah congratulations on your baby," or, "I hope you came back home safe and sound from your trip to London. I just wanted to reach out. Our company name is Nominal, we specialize in meaningful accessories, Arabic inspired jewelry. I would love to send you some free items. Take a look at this link. I attached some images of what our best sellers are." We personalize each message and we also attach images because sometimes someone may not want to click on the link, but the image is already there. Images, you could see the thumbnail as well.
When you see the thumbnail, maybe it catches your eyes. So we try to gauge their ... We try to get their interest in different avenues, even the email itself. If there's a lot on your website, then it's important that you just try to make their lives easier, try to get them to spend as little time as possible to become interested in the email that you just sent out.
Felix: Makes sense. Now, a product like yours at the price point in the industry that's in it, it's ripe for trying to get those repeat purchases. How do you encourage that? How do you encourage customers to keep on returning and buy more from you?
Akram: A few different ways. I mean, with each order, we get their email and we send them emails. We do some email marketing as well, and to try to remind them that we're still here and show them the new product. This is in case they're not already following us on Instagram. if they're following us on Instagram or our Facebook page, and maybe that's how they found us from the very beginning, Then we just try to constantly post and engage with them and get their feedback and send out surveys every now and then, and we'll do Instagram Live. I think if you don't continue to update them on what's happening within the brand, then they may feel like nothing new came out or they may feel like they've already done what they could with you.
They already purchased the favorite products, but if they don't know that you have new products that could now be their favorites, they can add to their collection. That will just never happen. So you got to make sure that you make them aware of what it is that's happening with your company through your different marketing channels, email, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter. We use Pinterest as well. So every single platform possible, we try to use. Maybe they don't use Facebook as much as Instagram, so we make sure we post on Instagram. Maybe they don't use Instagram, they only use Facebook. We got to make sure we post on Facebook. We just try to make sure that they're at least following us on one of our platforms, that way we can advertise on that platform and just continue to have their interests.
Felix: Is it that a new product releases is usually the best way to get them to come back and purchase?
Akram: Product releases, and then we also send an automatic email about 10 days after we've shipped their product asking them for feedback. I think that's important because it shows them that we're not afraid to receive a bad review if that's their experience. We care about what it is that they have to say. If someone had a bad experience and we just left them in the dark and didn't really see whether or not ... We didn't show them that we care that they could have possibly had a bad experience. Once we send that email out, they typically respond and they provide the potential bad experience, and then we make sure that we address it and take care of it, and either offering them a replacement, a refund. We do whatever it takes to gain them back.
I would say that a lot of the way that we get those return customers to come back. We also include within our packages ... We don't always do this. It's seasonal. Sometimes we'll put a piece of marketing material that provides them with a discount for their next purchase. Sometimes we run ads that target someone that has already purchased, not someone that hasn't purchased yet. There's specific methods like that from an email marketing standpoint or from a flyer standpoint for people that purchase for the first time or from an ad standpoint, they only target second and third time potential buyers.
Felix: Got it. One thing you mentioned to us before the interview was something I think is really important, which is you mentioned too don't wait for the perfect idea opportunity, don't spend so much time creating a business plan, just get started because there's no such thing as a perfect idea or opportunity, and the business plan that you're spending so much time on any way, 100% of the time, change over time anyways. Was this a lesson that you learn yourself or why was it so important for you to get out ... this messages to get out?
Akram: I actually learned that from one of my entrepreneurial professors during my undergraduate years at ACU. Within a lot of my other business courses, they would have us go through different assignments that are related to business plan creation. We would always do that. Then finally, I got to her class and she spoke that she actually disagrees with a lot of these professors and thinks that you shouldn't necessarily have a business plan. Yes, you should have some kind of direction as to where you're going to head, but if you spend so much time trying to perfect it, like a whole year or two years or whatever for this perfect product, I mean, the entire market can change by then
By the time ... Right now you have a certain plan, but the whole world could be different six months from now, and then now your plan is going to change. So you might as well just get started and make adjustments along the way. Have a little bit of a direction. For example, if you know I live in Arizona, so Nevada is North of us, let me just take notes. Even if I don't know the exact direction, even if I don't know the most optimal route to get there, let me just at least start heading there instead of waiting to get on the internet. I mean, we've changed our business so many times.
Our business literally changes every single month, whether it be a new system that we put in the back end or something design or packaging related, or if there's something within the details of the quality that we need to change, or even a manufacturer that we just feel isn't providing us with the quality or the delivery time that we would like, and now we need to make an adjustment there, or there's product that we just want to discontinue because it causes too many problems, or our attention is just more valuable in a different industry.
I mean, the business world just changes so quickly. I mean, even right now with corona, people may have had plans to open a restaurant or open a gym or open a barbershop or whatever it may be, and then COVID-19 just shut it all down. You just never know what's going to happen in the world, and so there's just no such thing as a perfect opportunity. You just got to get started, and the earlier you get started, the earlier you can start making mistakes. If you look at mistakes the right way, you can make adjustments to those mistakes and whoever started first will win, I think.
Felix: Yeah. I mean, again, that kind of feedback, the real feedback of trying something and they're working or not working is way better than trying to think, hey, thought experiment about whether it's the right thing to do or not. I think what you're speaking on is that by spending as much time pausing and planning, you delay execution. I think another piece of it too is that you spend so much time on worrying about step nine and 10. You take your focus away from being present and taking step one, and now you've reduced the chance that you taking, executing the thing right in front of you a lot better than before.
So I think there's definitely something to be said about getting started right away, but then I think the point that you made was to pay attention to the results and be able to interpret it the right way so that you can adjust on the fly. I want to talk a little about your website. So at Nominalx.com is the website. Was this a designed in-house, did you hire out to get this website built?
Akram: Designed in-house. Yeah, definitely designed in-house. I started building it myself and I got the little experience that I had building the Shopify website before Nominalx.com, which was Kufi Artist. I had a little bit of Shopify experience from there. But I mean, Shopify, to be honest with you, was such an amazing platform. I love it so much. It always blows me away. Building a website is not as hard as some people would think. I think everybody should try to build their website on their own. I built the majority of the website, and then my first full-time partner over here, his name is Akhmed.
He came around about a year, a little over a year after I started the company. We're about six full-time right now and a few part-time. But he was the first full-time timer over here and he's also obsessed just like me with anything UI, UX related, website layout, backend, the abandoned carts, all converging related things. Now it's a combination of me and him that build and create, optimize the layout and everything, but all in-house.
Felix: That's great. So you mentioned that you do spend time optimizing it and making sure that you can squeeze the most dollars out of the website. Have there been any changes that you've made recently that have made a big impact on conversions?
Akram: Yes. Yes, actually. I would say one of the most awesome features that we added just a few months ago, actually. So we select a few items every single month where we donate 25% of those proceeds towards our deed of the month campaign. So for example, this month we're donating 25% of six different items towards Yemen. From before people just needed to know which items those were, and so maybe they will add it to their cart so that they can ... at least one item within their cart will donate towards a good cause, and then they didn't really know maybe exactly how much was being donated or maybe they didn't even know about our date of the month. Maybe they didn't even know that this item was donating a percentage of proceeds. But now when you add the item to your cart, and I'm doing it right now, I'm on my laptop.
I click add to cart, It'll give me this pop up. It'll say 25% of your deed of the month items are being donated to the hunger crisis in Yemen, $20 from this order is going directly to the cause. It's an awesome feature because it automatically does the math on the items within your cart that are a part of the deed of the month campaign. It doesn't matter if it takes 25% and then it lets you know how much of your cart is being donated towards the cause, which I think is awesome and just provides a lot of transparency to the customer. It makes them feel good. They know that they're purchasing from a company that's really making a difference, and they're able to really be with us and make that difference themselves. So I think that's an [crosstalk]
Felix: Is there a significant decrease in cart abandonment by putting that there?
Akram: To be honest, I wouldn't say a significant decrease. Our conversion right now is probably on average around 2.75%. But it was at one point around closer to just two. In some way I think that a difference in 0.5 or 0.75 is not a lot, but really a lot in terms of conversion. I would say that it's definitely helped, yes. I think we were probably stuck around 2.25 for a while, but right now we're at about 2.75% conversion.
Felix: Awesome. Now what about some apps or tools that you use to power the website or just power the business as a whole?
Akram: Some of the apps that we use would be ... We use a lot of that to be honest, which is crazy because the first year before Nominal, I didn't even know that sort of thing. I'm going to pull some examples up now. A recent one that we just added is Klaviyo, the email marketing platform. We're using that. It's fantastic. Yotpo is a fantastic app for reviews. That's where we get all our reviews from, they manage the reviews and they just provide us a very user-friendly service. They send automatic emails to customers after a certain amount of days that they've purchased. We have a service ... It's an app called Surveyor, S-U-R-V-E-Y-O-R.
Basically, on the order confirmation page, when they're all complete, it provides them with a survey which gives us information to ask them, "How did you find us? What was your experience with us? What did you run into? What didn't you find?" So it gives us a ton of feedback that's very useful. We didn't have surveys for a while, that has been game-changing for us. Another app called Showcase where we're able to sync it with our Instagram account, and then any picture that we post on Instagram, we're able to tag the items within that picture, the actual item that we're selling on the website, and then once we tag those items within the Instagram pictures and now showed that tag within that product listing, which is super cool.
Within each product listing on the website, you upload certain images, and then now every time that we post on Instagram, any picture on Instagram that contains this product will now show also on that same product listing page. That's pretty cool. We do affiliate marketing as well. So basically we give people the opportunity to make 5% back on each purchase. It's called Leaddyno affiliate marketing. Free Shipping Bar, this one I probably should have mentioned earlier. Free Shipping Bar is fantastic. We're able to create settings for different countries that provide different free shipping minimums.
So when someone adds something to their cart, let's say, we shipped for free to Canada and the United Kingdom above 100 USD, so now when people add, let's say, a $50 item to their cart, it'll say, "Spend another $50 and get free shipping." That has also been fantastic for us. We've been able to increase our average cart value and increase our conversion through that. For the most part, those I would say are our best app. One more would be Best currency converter. When someone lands on the website from a different country, it detects the IP and changes the currency, the price of our product for that currency, and that way they don't get scared or they feel they're shopping locally. That's really good as well.
Felix: Awesome. Now, one thing that I noticed about your website is that you have a lot of coming soon products at the top of the landing page, a home page. What was the idea behind this?
Akram: We have a big sale coming up, actually. We have a big sale, July 17th. We add these items ... This sale is going to be discounting a lot of existing products, and then also it's going to be including a lot of new products as well. For the new products, we'd to put them on the website, even before they're available. You can't purchase it, but you can add it to your wishlist. We add these items so people can start engaging with it and start looking at the pictures, they can start adding it to the wishlist, that way when the sale goes live, they can check out immediately.
Yeah, all of those coming soon items are coming back on the 17th of July. It builds hype as well. We for the most part advertise on Instagram. Maybe someone isn't paying attention to Instagram, but is shopping on our website. If they don't know about the sale through Instagram, they're going to find out now through the website, through the coming soon. It's going to get their attention.
Felix: Have you done this before, this approach of building up hype before a sale?
Akram: Yeah. Yeah. We try to do it more and more each time, and every single sale we do our best to beat the last one, and we typically do. I think building hype is definitely important for the success of a launch or a sale.
Felix: Give us the game plan for that. Let's say that you have a plan to do a sale like the one that you're running. You have these products that are going to go on sale listed clearly and plainly for people to add to their wishlist. How far out do you start promoting it and what are you doing to promote a big sale like this?
Akram: We've had to plan this out months in advance so we can start designing and then sampling all these new products. Then by the time we finalize a sample, then we factor in the lead time for the bulk order and then make sure that we have the bulk order in time. But with each sale or each big launch, we try to launch at least particular items. So we start building hype about 10 days before the sale begins or the launch begins. Even before ... 10 days before is when we post the first picture of the new item, of one of the new items, And then we post two to three times each day. For example, today this morning, we already posted one new item that's going to be a part of the sale.
Yesterday night, we posted another new item. So we just keep posting new items to continue to build the hype on Instagram and really get everybody engaged. But I guess our timeline would be 10 days before the sale begins, and then we post two to three times each day, each post being a new item or an item that was a hot seller from before, but sold out and will be at restock within the sale. We really try to overwhelm our customers almost with how many new items that are going to be available.
Felix: Awesome. Nominalx.com, N-O-M-I-N-A-L-X.com is the website. I'll leave you this last question, which is, what would you say needs to happen this year for you to consider the year a success?
Akram: I would say of course we have certain revenue targets. We also want to donate more than a $100,000 this year. I think we will get there because we're already at about $70,000 donated this year. That would be a huge accomplishment for the company. That's been a goal that we set right at New Years. As soon as January first hit of 2020, we had a team meeting and we spoke of what things would be so awesome, how would we feel so accomplished, how can we create actual change within the world with our company as a platform?
Aside from all the sales goals and growing the teams to a target number, we of course have to always remember that at the end of the day we want to be able to create as much change as possible. So we set a donation goal, and that's money that we're donating based on purchases that people are making. There's a difference between donations and raising money. These are actual donations made by us, so it's the different campaigns. Our goal is 100,000 and I think we will hit it.
Felix: Awesome. Thank you so much for coming on and sharing your experiences story, Akram.
Akram: Thank you very much, Felix. Really appreciate it. Huge fan of you and your work.