Felix: Today I'm joined by Tyler Macke from SendAFriend. SendAFriend allows customers to send stuffed animal care packages with customized notes anywhere in the world, and was started in 2018 in Bayside, Jackson, Missouri, and hit $5 million in sales in 2020. Welcome Tyler.
Tyler: Hi, how's it going?
Felix: Good. You mentioned to us that you started this business because you wanted to give back. What led you to this particular cause or this particular type of business specifically?
Tyler: I think my journey in e-commerce really just started coming towards wanting to build a brand with a purpose. I come from a graphic design background and branding background. When I was very young, I got started in Photoshop and all that kind of stuff. And I think I always found myself really enjoying working with brands that had a purpose. So as my e-commerce career moved forward and I got more involved with different brands, I quickly learned just how much I liked those brands with a purpose. And so that's really where SendAFriend started, was just, one, wanting to start something for myself, and two, wanting to start something that I could give back through.
Felix: So it sounds like you had some experience already running some kind of business or service in the past, working with other brands. Can you speak more to that? What was your line of profession prior to starting the business?
Tyler: Yeah. Really early in high school, I got started, like I said, in Photoshop, and just quickly fell in love with graphic design. What's funny is, I started in the gaming community, doing designs for YouTubers and things like that. When I was a kid, I was just having a lot of fun with it and that was just something I enjoyed. I was gaming all the time anyways, so it was just kind of like an extension of that. But that quickly grew into me wanting to get more involved in graphic design. And so by the time I was like a junior in high school, I started taking some logo jobs for things that weren't gaming related and started to expand my skill set, got more involved in Illustrator and the whole Adobe Suite in general, and improving my skills and all that kind of stuff.
And so by the time I was a senior in high school, I'd already had a decent portfolio working with either e-commerce businesses or local companies, or like I said, this gaming community, I had all those examples. Some stuff just fell in my lap and I got started working with an e-commerce company when I was in high school, and that's what propelled all this and got me really into the e-commerce world instead of just graphic design. From there, it was just a continuation of what I was doing already and mostly just using my graphic design skills to work on the e-commerce business.
I think that's always a great thing, being able to start in the graphic design world allowed me to do a lot in e-commerce. I think a lot of e-commerce revolves around graphic design, whether it's branding or product design or website building. And so that's just where everything started, and one thing led to another and I was working in the e-commerce world.
Felix: What were some of the key lessons that you learned from observing and being inside with these brands that you're working with that you certainly wanted to apply when you started your own business?
Tyler: Well, again, I think it really comes back to, I really wanted to start something with a purpose. One of the big brands I was working with was a dog-based brand, and one of the coolest things they did was every Friday, they use their Twitter audience to promote GoFundMes, and I always thought that was such a cool element of their brand that it just got people so involved and so loving into their community. That was just one small little detail that I saw that I really started to enjoy was, okay, you can build a business, you can build a brand, you can do all this sales and revenue, all this kind of stuff, but at the end of the day, do you have a purpose behind it? Do you have a mission? Do you have something you can believe in? And even when things are tough, can you still believe in that?
And I think that was one of the core things with SendAFriend, making sure I had that mission at the core.
Felix: Got it. So giving back, that was the main thing you wanted to start a brand like the ones you've worked with, where they had a cause behind them. How did you decide or settle on the product category of stuffed animal care packages? Did you have different options when you first started and narrowed this down, or how did you discover that this was the one that you wanted to go to market with?
Tyler: Yeah. It's so funny, when I was graphic designing and I was more in the freelance world, I enjoyed it, It was really fun working with different brands and all that kind of stuff, but it gets to the point where it's like, "Man, I really want to do this for myself." So it came to a point where I really started focusing on, "Okay, what business can I create for myself?" And so with my graphic design and branding background, a lot of the time, my ideas were starting as logos or starting as names or starting as like the brand itself, because to me, that's what I knew, that's what I was used to doing.
When SendAFriend started, it was just probably one of 10 different names or ideas I had thought of that just had a ring to it or had a thought to it. And the more I thought about SendAFriend, the more ideas I had about it really and it's just the one that stuck. So it was just a gradual process, like I said, it was just one of many little ideas or little names or little logos or something I had in mind, but the more I thought of SendAFriend, the more the idea came into fruition. I don't honestly know what moment I thought of stuffed animals as the product, but just SendAFriend, it's very innocent, very young, so I think toys and stuffed animals came very quickly.
I think within a couple of days of me really saying, "Oh yeah, this name has a ring to it," within a couple of days of me saying that, I think I had a lot of these core elements of the brand figured out. I think the box was one of the first things. I think the box is one of the staples of our brand that someone loves you box. And that was one of the first things that happened too, right after the stuffed animals, was I created this box and I was like, "Wow, it'd be really cool to have a moment with SendAFriend. The name SendAFriend already implied you're sending something to a friend or you're sending a friend to someone, and so, what better way to send someone that kind of friend than a bright blue box showing up on their door that says, "Hey, someone loves you."
This is completely out of the blue, "Someone loves you." And you just have that thought like, "What is that? "What is this?" And that was the whole magic of center. And from day one, was I guess, the product and the experience that came with it. But again, it just came back to that name, it was just so funny how it happened, it just came back to the name and evolved off that, and the more I thought about it, the more things made sense with it.
Felix: Yeah. It's interesting that you took this approach of your ideas starting off with the brand itself, but then maybe even the name itself or the colors itself. And to some degree, I think a lot of entrepreneurs start their ideas or at least start narrowing down the ideas by looking up domains, "What kind of domains can I land first?" Now, with this approach of the brand first even before the rest of the backend of the business gets flushed out, what did you find the pros and cons of this brand-led, almost like exploration of business ideas?
Tyler: Yeah, I definitely think it has its pros and cons. And especially now that I've gotten into SendAFriend and it's started to see a little bit of success, I reflect on like, "Could I replicate this?" You know what I mean? "Could I take what I did with SendAFriend and start this brand first? Was that the right thing to do?" And I think it does definitely have its pros and cons? I think one of the pros is, like you said, domain names or usernames or stuff like that. You can usually start there and make sure your brand's going to have a good social presence or a good online presence and make sure it matches what your brand is. But it definitely has some cons too.
I mean, I started this approach with other brands in my head before SendAFriend really came to fruition, and a lot of the time it just doesn't stick. You'll have a great name in your head or you will have this great idea for a logo or branding or something like that, and you just can't find the product that fits with it, or can't find an experience that fits with it or whatever it might be, so it definitely has its downfalls. And part of it with me was I had the graphic design and branding experience, so for me, that's just what I knew and that's what I started on. It wasn't even really intentional at the time of me just starting with that, that's just what I knew.
And I think another downfall of that was, I didn't know how to source a product, I didn't know how to order packaging, I didn't know how to do any of that stuff. It just really started with the graphic design and going from there. It was a big learning curve when I had this brand that I already believed in and knew I had the product behind, I had the mission behind and all this kind of stuff, and now I had to figure out pretty much every other piece of the puzzle and learn from nothing with all those pieces. So yeah, it definitely has its pros and cons. I don't know if I'd be able to replicate it again or not.
Felix: Now, just to almost level set and make sure that the definition that you're working with, what would you consider a brand? What are the facets of a brand? If someone out there says, "I want to improve my brand, or I feel like I need to improve my brand," what are the areas that you would need to focus on to capture the brand of a company?
Tyler: I think to me, a business is selling something, but a brand is more of a feeling, it's more of an experience, it's more of a look. It's how you feel when you're experiencing that business. There's plenty of businesses, and even in e-commerce there are tons of stores that do incredible numbers with just a business that they don't even really focus on their brand or what their core is or what their mission is. But to me, if you go brand first and you're focused on, "What are our values? What are the feelings of people, when they experience our store, what is the experience like for them?
To me, that's the brand. That's how you keep people coming back. That's how you can even get people in the door sometimes when someone else experiences the brand and says, "Hey, this was really, really cool. You should experience it." I think that's a brand, whether it's stuffed animals or whether it's a beauty product or something else, I think, you can really come down to, branding is that experience that you're giving somebody and not just the product you're selling.
Felix: And what is your approach, maybe what is the approach that you would give as a piece of advice to someone where they're trying to figure out whether they have values? What's the feeling? What's the experience? Is it based on like guts, intuition, or is it something that you can almost discover through some kind of exercise you can do?
Tyler: I don't know. I think there's definitely exercises you can use to discover it. To me, it was definitely more intuition of just, this is what I wanted to do, I wanted to have a brand with a purpose and that's what was really the driving force from day one, was the brand and the mission and this experience. And especially with SendAFriend, I always say, "We're not selling stuff, animals, we're selling this experience." There's some companies that might really just focus on their product, and that's what they strive at, and that's completely okay too. But I think SendAFriend is an example that proves if you can focus on your brand, you can sell just about anything, if you focus on the experience and while you're selling it.
Felix: Got it. Now, do you formalize this any way? Do you have a document that you can use to teach others, or as people join your company or you work with partners and vendors? How do you communicate this so that you approach a business with a united vision of the brand?
Tyler: Well, I think that's what, again, the graphic design background gave me. So I would say, if you're an e-commerce and you don't have that graphic design background, definitely find somebody that you can trust. I think designing and the elements of design can really influence your brand and how it feels and how it's being experienced, whether that's the logo or the packaging design, or whatever it might be. I would definitely recommend locking that in, whether you're going to do that yourself, whether that's something you thrive at, or whether you find somebody out there that can click with what you're thinking in your head.
You might not be able to put that idea into Illustrator or into Photoshop yet, but find somebody that can, so they can really send that to the vendors, then say, "This is the look and feel we're going for," or send that to a marketing agency saying, "This is what our ad should look like." I think that's super important, especially nowadays with just so many brands out there, it's really important to set yourself apart, and a lot of that can come from the look and how you present yourself in a design sense.
Felix: So for someone like you, who's on the other side of this where you do have that graphic design background, the product design background, website design background, for someone that is looking to work with someone like you, what would you say is the best way for someone to... what can they bring to the table in the ways where they can help contribute the most and guide, I guess the project the most, when it comes to working with someone that has that experienced that you're looking for?
Tyler: Well, I think as a designer in my experience, let me restart there, with a background in design, it was really important when clients would come to me and know what they wanted. So if you want this brand or you want this experience, you should know what that looks like or know what you're at least going for and have a way to articulate to them. So whether that's recording a video of yourself saying, "Hey, this is what I'm going for," or whether that's examples of similar brands that are similar fields or something like that. Again, it comes back to that intuition, it's just kind of like, "This is how I feel about it, so this is how I want other people to feel about it," sort of thing.
But as long as you know what that is, I think it shouldn't be too difficult to communicate that to somebody, whether that be a little drawing you did on a piece of paper of, "Hey, this is how it should look," or just describing that, or something like that.
Felix: Got it. So there's some kind of language that you can speak to a designer, and some way to communicate that, even if you are not necessarily someone that is... Obviously, the more that you have the skill set of someone that can design, the more helpful it is, but the way you describe it sounds like it's possible to bridge that gap even if you don't have that kind of background.
Tyler: 100% yeah.
Felix: So the brand first, you mentioned. And you said that at some point, whether it be in the middle of the night, in a shower or some point, you match this brand up with a product, the idea came to your head about the kind of product that you want to piece together with this. What were the first steps once you had decided that you wanted to create these stuffed animal care packages?
Tyler: Oh, well, again, it's so crazy for me because it really does just all come back to my experiences and what I knew at the time when I started SendAFriend. Once I had the logo and the brand and I knew I wanted stuffed animals, I still was really focused on what I could control, which was the design elements. And so from the product, and I started with the packaging, like I said, that Someone Loves You box came so early in some different creation. That was one of the first elements I created. I think before I even sourced stuffed animals, that box idea, that unboxing experience really came into my head as like, "I want that to be one of the most impactful moments of SendAFriend, is this brand, this experience."
So from there, it was then trying to, like I said, figure out the other pieces of the puzzle and try to figure out, "Okay, I know what my product needs to be, so how do I get that?" And that just came down to a ton of research. And there's little things too, which is funny to me coming back onto Shopify Masters. I had heard people on this kind of podcast and these kinds of articles talk about sourcing products and how to do that, how to go about that. So early on, I knew that wholesaling was a lot easier than manufacturing, so when I went to actually pick my product, I knew, "Okay, let's try to find something that I can wholesale first that I don't have to go through the whole custom manufacturing process and all that."
And so early on, I found a supplier in the US that was able to wholesale basically a line of stuffed animals that kept the brand consistent, kept the products consistent, and I went with that for the first about year and a half, almost two years. We stuck with that wholesaler and used that as our product. And that was all in an effort to lower the startup costs basically and make it something that was a little bit more achievable. We had lower minimums so we had less risk and all that kind of stuff. But that was one of the next things, was definitely just finding that wholesale partner.
And that took a little bit of time too. I would say from day one of having the branding and the name in my head, it probably took at least three months to find that wholesaler after going through trial and error of talking to companies, being on the phone with companies, getting samples, looking at pricing, all that kind of stuff. It definitely took a while, a lot of work actually for a while to really find the product we wanted at the price we wanted with the communication we wanted and all that kind of stuff. And part of that for me was the education. When I was looking for a wholesale partner, I was totally transparent, I was like, "Hey, look, I have not done this before. I do not know the standard procedures here, I don't know how invoicing works. I don't know how any of this really works."
So I was like, "We're looking for this product, I know what I want, but I'm going to need a lot of guidance." And I think the partner I ended up finding was really open to that and they understood that this was a learning opportunity for me too and they want it to be that partner that was able to teach me those ways, and say, "Look, that's not a problem. We want to help you. We want to be a good partner here." And so that was really huge, once I found that partner to work with, that was a huge moment for the brand too that really just started propelling things when I had somebody that I could trust and that helped me find the right product and all that kind of stuff.
Felix: Yeah. So you mentioned that you were at this crossroads of going with a wholesaler instead of manufacturing yourself. And I think a lot of people out there that are looking to start a business might have like almost a purist point of view or a perfectionist point of view, where they want to just manage the entire thing or have the entire thing done in-house or originate from them rather than going with a wholesaler, like you had mentioned. Now, based on what you've told me so far, it sounds like you jumped to the decision to go to the wholesaler pretty quickly. Was that the case, or did you find yourself grappling with this idea of like, "How much control do I need over the product?"
Tyler: Yeah. I think that's something to keep in mind that's going to be really brand specific or really businesses specific. So for me, like I said, we aren't necessarily selling stuffed animals or selling this experience. So for my business, it wasn't as important to have full control of this stuffed animal and how it looks and how it feels and all that kind of stuff. I just needed to find something that was quality enough, that we all felt like, "Yes, this is quality. We're not going to have any customers that have issues with this or anything like that." We basically just needed to find a product that was good enough for what we were going for.
I understand that it's not a case with a lot of businesses, especially if you have a unique idea where you actually have to manufacture something. So for us and in my specific case, we were fortunate enough to find that product through wholesale. But definitely, there's still that perfectionist point of view where it's like, "We want this to be good. We want this to be quality. We want customers to be happy with this." We were fortunate enough to find that through a wholesale partner where we didn't have to go through custom manufacturing. But I think part of me knew like, "Okay, we just have to start with this too." You have to start somewhere.
And for the sake of startup costs and for risk and all that stuff, this route made the most sense for us and I knew maybe later down the road that we would have more control over it if we wanted to, or if something that we weren't happy with, we could always adjust that. And I think that's something to keep in mind too if you're looking to start a business, you're going to want things perfect, but you have to understand that that will come with time as well. It's almost always better just to get going and get started than to worry about all the perfect details from day one.
Felix: Definitely. Now, you mentioned that when you first started approaching these wholesale partners, you were frank with them and said that you didn't know much, this was your first attempt at this, you didn't know much about it. Do you recall some of the things that you learned along the way, either just through your own experience or through these partners, these wholesale partners teaching you that you felt were very critical to your success with the business?
Tyler: Well, I think it's something that every industry is very different. When you get started in these processes of finding a manufacturer or wholesale partner, you're not going to know what to say from day one, but as you start emailing some of these companies or these partners or these people as sales reps, whatever it might be, really just take notes on what they're asking and what they're looking for. So from the first person I emailed, they're immediately like, "Okay, how many are you looking at ordering? What size of the animal are you wanting? Can it have bean bags? Can it not have bean bags? What kind of polyfill do you want?" All that kind of stuff.
They're obviously asking those questions for a reason, so if you're going to keep with that business and keep sourcing products, take note of what they're asking because when you reach out to the next partner, now you know what they're going to want to hear or what they're going to ask anyways. And so that became super efficient. After maybe two or three inquiries and knowing what these companies wanted from me basically and the questions they were going to ask, I was able to put almost all that information into the first email with my future reach out, for the future companies I was looking to work with. And so that was really important. Just make sure you're paying attention, take notes, make sure...
Every industry is going to be different, I can never say there's going to be one thing you have to provide to wholesalers in every single industry or anything like that, but just start somewhere and start taking notes and keep track of what they're wanting to know because that'll help you down the road too.
Felix: Yeah. I think one of the concerns that an entrepreneur might have, especially a first timer when it comes to being honest and frank with these partners that you are doing business with is that they worry about being take advantage of, about coming in, admitting that you don't know and pretty much putting your neck out there, you might get taken advantage of. Based on your experience, how real is this type of fear? Did you find that there was any business partners or wholesale partners that took advantage of that? Or was this something that your approach of being honest and upfront always panned out in a positive way?
Tyler: Right. It's definitely scary when you say that kind of stuff, when you're vulnerable and you're like, "Hey, look, I don't know anything. That's definitely a scary feeling. And there was moments where I'm like, "Am I going to get taken advantage of in this situation?" And I think the way I combated that was just making sure I was diverse in who I was reaching out to, making sure I was getting information from multiple sources, and cross checking that, getting to the invoice step with every single company and saying, "Okay, is pricing fairly consistent? Or am I being taken advantage of somewhere?"
All that kind of stuff was important, but I think the thing to note at the end of the day is, any of these partners, any of these wholesale companies, any manufacturer, they're more than likely going to be in it for the long-term just as you are. If they get started with you and your business is doing well, they're going to make more money as you make more money, as you get more sales, if your product is growing. And if they're a trusting partner, they're going to get that business. So I think that's something to keep in mind, is, most of the time it's in their best interest to be honest with you and be fair and all that kind of stuff.
But don't just rely on that by any means, make sure you're doing your homework, make sure you're checking with multiple sources, all that kind of stuff, because I'm sure there's wholesaler and manufacturers out there that would take advantage of those kinds of situations. And that's sad, I wish there were partners out there that just wanted the best for everybody, but that definitely happens. But at the end of the day, again, I think they're just wanting the best for both sides, and a lot of the time, they're going to be willing to help you, or to some degree help educate you on what the standards are or what to expect when you go through the process.
Felix: Yeah. That's a good point, that a true business that cares about long-term health of their business is not going to want to steal a couple of dollars off of you and lose your business or lose their reputation in the long term. So when you first approached this wholesaler that you started working with, was there a minimum order quantity that you had to meet? What was that first production run, what did it look like?
Tyler: The first wholesaler I found was kind of a middleman of wholesaler actually, so their minimums were really low and that's what really was positive in the start, was we didn't have very high minimum order quantities. Now that I'm manufacturing, I think my minimum order is like 1500 for a stuffed animal, for just one design. But in the past, it was not like that. I think when I first started, the minimum I had to order was just a case of like 24 or something like that. So it was, it was super easy to get started and super easy to have a large catalog. So from day one, we had like 10 animals because I was able to just get like a case or two of each.
And so that was really important. And I know you're not going to find that in every industry, again, everything's going to be different. But we were fortunate enough to find that partner that had those low minimums that reduced our startup costs and lowered the risk as we were getting into the business.
Felix: So since then you've transitioned to manufacturing this yourself?
Tyler: Yes. So as the business started growing, and this is just something to keep in mind with the processes, as the business grew, we reached the point where we were buying everything from the wholesaler. We were basically making them go out of stock every time we placed an order. So it reached a point where it's like, "Okay, now we have to custom manufacture. Now we have to get our own designs made." And that happened in March, I believe, of this year as we really started growing. So yeah, the process completely transitioned. We had to go from wholesaling and we were comfortable with that, and it was in the US so shipment times were like a week or less, we were getting our product quick and it was easy, to basically going with full manufacturing, and we had a full sampling process, we have 90-day lead times and all that kind of stuff.
So that was a really harsh transition when we came up to it. But it was actually a really great learning experience because we already knew the wholesale world, we already knew what we wanted, we already knew the product types we liked, we already knew the fabric we liked, we already knew what we were going for at that point. So it actually made it a lot easier to go through that process than it would have if we tried to do that from day one.
Felix: Now, that you are manufacturing your own products, are there certain, I guess, changes that you've made with the product itself that it's more in your control?
Tyler: Yeah. So with our service, our care packages are always the same size. So one of the first things that we did when we custom manufactured was to make sure that every design was perfectly tailored to fit our box. And we had some wholesale items that were a little bit too big or a little bit too small and all that kind of stuff. So that was one of the first things that we standardized, the size. Past that, there were some fabric options that we knew we've liked better than others. When you're wholesaling from multiple lines of animals or multiple lines of plush, basically, there was different fabrics that we encountered, and we knew which one we liked, and so we were able to tell the manufacturing partner like, "Hey, this is the type we like, this is what we're going for now."
And so, yeah, it definitely helped just having that wholesale experience and already knowing what we were going for just so that we didn't have to go through months of sampling or months of manufacturing and changing the designs and all that kind of stuff. Basically, we had the perfect stuffed animals for us from our first time custom manufacturing and those items we still are ordering to this day.
Felix: Got it. So you had mentioned at the beginning of the show that the business was started in 2018, so two, three years ago. It hit five million in sales in 2020. What was the growth during this time? Talk to us about the growth of the business from that first year to second and third year.
Tyler: Yeah. So the first and second year of the business were really slow. I was in the graphic design world, I was still freelancing, I was doing a little bit of agency work here and there, and so it was mostly a side project. And it was really a struggle for me because I believed in SendAFriend from day one, the mission, the idea. Everybody I had talked to about it just would rave about how good of an idea that is, and that was really what proved the concept to me was everybody I mentioned it to thought it could work. There were people around me that believed in it too, my mom believed in it, my family believed in it. So it was really hard for me just to put it on the back burner and be a little side hustle for as long as it was.
And it finally reached a point where I didn't go full-time with SendAFriend until January of this year. So prior to that, it was very slow, business was really low, there's maybe five to 10 orders a day, and I kept trying different things and I kept trying different marketing efforts, I tried some influencer stuff, I tried some theme page marketing, I tried some Facebook ads. I was trying to do it all myself, which was the problem, but anything I was trying to do wasn't getting me the results I wanted. That was a big struggle for me. Believing in this brand so much and knowing that it was a good idea. In my heart, I just knew it was a good idea and knew it could succeed in the e-commerce world. And dealing with those hardships, it was tough.
And I think that comes back to the branding idea and why SendAFriend had a purpose. That's what pushed me through the two years of slow business and losing money on marketing or losing money on ads or this or that. It was just that I knew in my heart that I believed in it and then it was a good company and that I really wanted to see it do something. And so it wasn't, like I said, until January of this year when I went full-time with it and I tried to do more of my own marketing again, and I basically wasn't taking on any other work, so I needed income from it in some capacity. And I finally decided, I was like, "Look, I needed to stop trying to do everything myself and I need to at least hire out like the marketing or something like that."
I came from the graphic design world, I didn't know how to market a product. I was doing the logo design, I was doing the park design, I could build a website, but I didn't know how to acquire customers, that was one of my biggest downfalls really. That was really a big turning point, was in I think February of this year, was when I brought on a media buyer to really help me with my ad strategy, with my Facebook ad account, and just overall business logistics of how to do this and how to grow it, how to scale it, all that kind of stuff. That was one of the biggest turning points when it really started growing this year.
Felix: All right. Okay. So let's break that down. So you had mentioned that beginning of January, 2020, you went full-time with it. Once you went full-time with it, what did it allow you to focus on? What did you focus your attention on when you were able to focus on the business full-time?
Tyler: Well, it's always funny to me because it wasn't like I had a singular focus still. When you're trying to build a business like this and you're trying to bootstrap it from day one, you're basically doing everything. And the fact of the matter is that that doesn't work when you're doing other things. So if you're trying to keep your business as a side hustle and you're trying to do 90 million things for your business on top of your day job, it's just most likely not going to grow as quickly or just not going to grow at all while you're doing that. So when I was able to go full-time on it and say, "This is my focus now," I was able to wake up and say, "Okay, I'm going to start working on SendAFriend instead of at 9:00 PM at night after I did all my other work for the day."
That's when things just really started happening. It wasn't like I had a singular focus, but it's when I just could put my full attention on the business and say, "How can I make this work? What is failing? What is working? What can I focus on? What can I outsource to other people? All that kind of stuff." And that was when I quickly realized, "Wow, my downfall here is the actual marketing and paid acquisition side, that's something I need help with." So I started looking for freelancers or agencies that could help me with that. Yeah, it was just going full-time that really allowed me to have that focus on it and really allow me to think about it.
You just really can't be thinking about your business when you're doing something else. I know not everybody has the ability to just quit a day job and do something else, but I think a lot of the time when you're there and that's the only thing you're focused on and you want it to succeed so badly, that's when it'll happen when you actually can focus on it.
Felix: So during this time, you were able to just spend time thinking and realizing that the last couple of years you've been trying to figure out the marketing yourself, it wasn't working, you realize, "Okay, I should hire out for this." Tell us about that process, because I think this part is also a big, scary step for a lot of people where lots of your money is going into marketing and it could easily burn a hole in your pocket, or it could burn through your piggy bank very, very quickly. So tell us about that. What was the process behind you recognizing that you needed to hire help and then finding someone that you trusted?
Tyler: Yeah, it was definitely a process. Like you said, a lot of entrepreneurs, especially when they start up, are perfectionist and they want control of everything. It's really you want to make your business exactly the way you want it to be, and so it's really scary when you say, "Okay, hey, I need to outsource some of this or I need to let somebody else take some of this control." But I think it could be a really important step. I think you need to be honest with yourself and say, "Okay, where are my strengths and where are my weaknesses? What can I focus on in the business? And what do I need to outsource?"
And when I did that, marketing was the point that did it. So I was lucky enough to have some experience in the industry, in the graphic design world. And I had worked with e-com in the past so I had some connections here and there that I could start reaching out to and say, "Hey, I'm wanting somebody to come in and do my Facebook ads primarily, or my paid acquisition strategy," and I was able to get some connections off that, started having conversations with a lot of those freelancers or agencies and ultimately, decided on one person that I just really clicked with. And so I think the important step for me there was finding somebody that I could feel like I could actually trust, was a really huge thing for me.
And so the media buyer I bought on was somebody that now I consider like one of my best friends really. That was really important just to find somebody that I was okay giving up some of that control to and that I felt like they were doing good work and I could believe in and could trust and all that kind of stuff. And that, again, took some time too. It wasn't something I found overnight, it took multiple calls with different agencies and freelancers and like an intro call and then a follow-up call then, okay, what would this actually look like, kind of call. So it wasn't quick by any means to do that, but it was a very, very important step for my business and I attribute a lot of the success of SendAFriend to that paid acquisition strategy that we established earlier this year.
Felix: Got it. Is there a working agreement that you recommend for anyone out there that is thinking about hiring a media buyer or someone that handles their Facebook ads or any paid acquisition? Is there a specific type of arrangement that is best to protect, I guess, protect them as an entrepreneur?
Tyler: Every agency and freelancer is going to have their pricing structure, and you can sit down and weigh the pros and cons of that. Some people will be hourly, some people will have their monthly price, some people will be a percent of ad spend. In my case, it was a percent of ad spend and that was something that worked for me very well early on. Again, I was really worried about the investment in the company and the risk, basically. Again, I knew I believed in it, but you don't want to sink a ton of money into it if it's not going to give you anything. And so the percent based of ad spend really worked well for me early on to say, "Look, I'm only really going to pay you when ads are doing well, basically."
And so it was a two-way street, the media buyer wanted to help us succeed because that allowed them to succeed too. And so that was a good relationship to establish from day one was basically we're both putting our hearts into this, to both get things out of it. And so that was good for me, but that might not be good for everybody else, you might find an hourly rate works best, where it's just a direct amount of hours for this amount of work or whatever it may be. There's definitely pros and cons to every pricing structure, and it's just what makes sense for your business.
Felix: And for years, it sounds like what worked well for you is that there's this alignment of interests where the more successful you are in the businesses, the more successful the person you hired is as well.
Tyler: Correct. Yeah, that's definitely what it was. And again, it was just that risk too, there's less upfront costs, there's no setup fees. And again, it was just somebody that I had conversations with that I could feel like I could trust. So I think in the day it really didn't come down to the hourly rate or the money making the decision, it was, this is somebody I click with, that I can trust, that I know is going to have my business's best interest in mind and all that kind of stuff. So that was honestly more important to me than the money was at the time, but the pricing structure definitely was appealing as well.
Felix: Once this media buyer came in, what were some of the strategies there you guys decided to deploy right away?
Tyler: Well, earlier this year I when TikTok really started to see an uptick in popularity, one of the ideas we had early on was to implement basically TikTok-style content and do our media buying strategy. And that was actually one of the first things we saw great success with was shooting... We literally would shoot our product ads on TikTok, export them, edit them into Facebook format and run ads with it. And that's what we saw at work early on. And that just came from me and that media buyer having conversations around what is our brand, what audience responds to our brand, all that kind of stuff. And then saying, "Hey, like, there's this new style of content that's working well, this UGC style, this user generated, just authentic content that's working well."
And so we found an easy way to replicate that. Again, SendAFriend it's this experience, it's this unboxing, that's what the product is. So it was pretty easy to do that through UGC style video with TikTok and all that.
Felix: Got it. So you're creating content on TikTok, the app itself with the editing and the filters and all of that, and then exploring that in running as a Facebook ad?
Tyler: Correct. Yeah. And that's what we saw work really well early on. I think one of our concepts was that people in our audience were most likely Gen Z or early 20s or something like that, and were most likely consuming meme style content a lot of the time. And so what we did was say, "Okay, instead of creating an ad that doesn't fit that mode at all, what if we create an ad that looks like one of the pieces of content they're naturally consuming." And I'm sure a lot of other brands are doing this at the same time and even before we were doing it, we didn't pioneer that by any means, but it really worked well for SendAFriend and saying, "This piece of content that is now ran as a sponsored ad on Facebook or Instagram, it looks the same as the content that is already in that person's feed."
And so it was really easy for people to stop and watch it and consume it the same way that they're consuming all their other content. And we were able to sell this indifferent product through those videos. And it worked very well basically from day one.
Felix: And were you creating the content yourself, or are you guys shooting on a phone yourself or how was that?
Tyler: Yeah. The first ads that took off and some of the ads that are actually still running were shot here in my apartment at my front door, on my kitchen counter. It doesn't take a studio or hiring an agency or anything like that to create good content these days, it's really just about the idea and the messaging. And so yeah, 100%, a lot of that stuff was just in my apartment, basically, in my living room or wherever it might be. And that ended up being some of the content that performed the best, even over content that was more professionally shot images or something like that.
Felix: What is your process for coming up with the ideas for context? I think one of the key features or attributes of e-commerce business dev that can thrive long-term is just constantly churning out new ad angles or new content ideas to test. What is your process for testing new ideas out?
Tyler: Well, I think part of my process is just that I'm 21 years old and I constantly use TikTok anyways. So I natively know what the trends are on TikTok or what kind of videos are working well, or what kind of videos are going viral or what isn't. And so for me, it was fairly easy to say like, "Oh, I was scrolling through TikTok last night and I saw all this concept and we can apply it to SendAFriend." And I think part of that is just being an entrepreneur, you're always going to be thinking about your business, so anywhere I was seeing videos or memes or pictures or whatever it might be, I was always subconsciously thinking, how can I apply that to SendAFriend? And some of the ideas would just really stick.
And SendAFriend, it was fairly easy, there was this very unboxing style experience that happens when someone receives one of our stuffed animal care packages. And that's a trend that works very well on social media. You see that on YouTube all the time of people just unboxing things, and that was something that was picking up on TikTok as well. So that was the main trend we went after, it was just unboxing our care packages and showing this cute little experience that you can send to somebody and people seem to really grab ahold of that.
Felix: Now, how often are you creating new content for us? How many new pieces of creative are you creating on a regular basis?
Tyler: We're creating content all the time, almost. From early January and February when we first started using that TikTok style, it's definitely evolved a lot from that now, that content isn't working quite as well now, but we're definitely finding ways to adjust it and make it work. And that's just another point, is always being flexible with the content you're creating and trying new ideas. But I would say, we're shooting at least a handful of videos every week. And then there's definitely times like maybe once per month where we're sitting down and shooting five or six different videos and editing out maybe 20 or 30 different concepts with that, whether the captions are changing or the messaging is changing or the music's changing or something like that. Little variations to that content were really important to us to test too and see what messages people were responding to the most.
Felix: Got it. So the user-generated content, at least that piece of it, is that still a focus or is that still working well for you guys?
Tyler: Yeah. We're still seeing the whole concept of UGC work very well. The whole idea of instead of a brand selling a product to a person, it feels more like a person selling the product to a person. And that whole concept seems to hold true and something that works well on Facebook right now. You're seeing that with a lot of other brands too, I'm sure, where content from users or from influencers is doing the best. And so that concept is still definitely working very, very well. We've just found little micro adjustments to make to that, different ways to edit it, different messages to sell or different stories to tell that are working well in that space now.
Felix: Is this still coming from content that you're creating or are most only from what you guys are creating or are you also partnering or hiring others to create this content?
Tyler: It's definitely a mix now. So I would say early in the first three or four months as we started to grow, we started to realize, "Hey, we probably need some influencer strategy." And so a lot of our content now comes from organic influencers and people who are creating content for us, and then we'll use that content in our Facebook funnel or other platforms as well, but we still create a lot of our own content too. I'd say it's maybe 50/50 now, where half the videos are stuff that we're conceptualizing, we're creating, whether it's in one of our houses or in the office or something like that, or one of our cars even or Fitz influencer content that's coming from TikTok mostly.
Felix: So when you are working with influencers or influencer marketing, mostly the ad spend is on TikTok?
Tyler: Yeah. And actually we don't even spend much on influencer marketing, we really have a more micro influencer strategy where we work with... We basically just look for people who are maybe up and coming or people have smaller audiences and we'll just message them and say, "Hey, we'd love to send you SendAFriend, all we ask is that you post some piece of content with it." We really don't put any rules around it. And that's allowed people to be creative with SendAFriend content and not just turn out the same piece of content every time.
And there's actually been some of our best content that came from that, where people just posted whatever they wanted to post, ended up being a great basically advertising piece of SendAFriend. And so that strategy has worked really well for us to get a lot of content all the time, whereas some people who may be paying for influencer content or spending a lot to get the big ticket influencers, you're only going to get a few piece of content doing that, whereas with our strategy, we can basically send free care packages to just about anybody and more than likely to get a video in return.
Felix: You mentioned you're working with micro-influencers, but your market is super wide. So how do you know what kind of influencers to find that will be a good fit for a park like yours?
Tyler: Oh, that's cool, that SendAFriend is really, anybody can receive a stuffed animal care package, it's not limited to a kid or a girlfriend or a boyfriend or mom or dad, it's really anybody. And so when we're finding influencers, it's fun. We can partner with just about anybody in any situation. We've partnered with animals. We have a monkey that creates content for us all the time. We have a set of corgis that create concepts for us all the time, but then we have the standard, we have family pages, we have like mommy blogs, we have relationship pages. So it's really cool to work with such a diverse group of influencers and see what content they create, because it feels like almost all of them put their own little spin on it.
So, I don't know if there's ways to apply that to other brands, but I think at the end of the day, some people's target audiences aren't as narrow as you think. Sometimes anybody could use your product or you really need to think who could use this product and how can I hit more people? I know there's industries that definitely are very narrow, but a lot of the time it can be fairly open.
Felix: Now, when they do, when these influencers are posting content, what's the call to action or what is the way that they would end up back to the prospective customers that are watching these videos? How do they end up back on your website?
Tyler: The only thing we require with TikTok or with these micro-influencers on TikTok or Instagram is that they either use our hashtag or our app. And so that way we at least get tagged in the video. And if people want to learn more about SendAFriend, they know where it's at. The other strategy we use is pretty much with anybody that posts content, whether they're small or large, we always try to comment and engage with that content, whether it's a quirky little comment like relating to the content, or just saying thank you.
We always try to get into that comment section as our brand page so that if people are watching that video and maybe they're scrolling through the comments saying, "Oh, where did you buy this?" Or something like that, our brand is there ready to go. They can click on our page, learn more about SendAFriend and then eventually get to our website.
Felix: Got it. Now, when it comes to the paid ads that you're running on Facebook, is it driving them to like a specific product? Or what is the goal of the ads that you're showing on Facebook?
Tyler: Pretty much all of our traffic goes directly to our homepage. I think our website's fairly simple, we don't have a very large product catalog or anything like that, so most buyers are taking a very similar buyer journey. And that's something I like about SendAFriend, we're able then to help customers learn more about our story. So obviously, a TikTok- style video of a quirky unboxing with some music or something, isn't really going to tell people the core values of SendAFriend about giving back and spreading love, but once they get to our website, that's really the focus is, "Okay. Now, you came for this video, you're interested, but here's all these other pieces of our brand and this is why you should buy from us, and this is why you should spread some love.
And there's all the good these care packages can do basically. So we focus on our mission on the website, we focus on our different partnerships we might have, our charitable aspect, we focus on reviews of customers having these amazing experiences with SendAFriend. And so that's been a really fun funnel for us as we can pretty much drive all of our traffic to just one page and say, "Here, learn more about SendAFriend, go through the process." And it seems like a lot of people enjoy that and are learning about SendAFriend.
Felix: Got it. When we were building this business, one thing you had mentioned to us was that there's lot of logistical nightmares and there were bottlenecks as you were growing as a business. And I'm assuming lots of it probably kicked up this year as you're growing so quickly. And you mentioned the storage space was a big thing, and then moving to another warehouse, tell us about that. Tell us about what kind of issues you ran into as you were scaling the business?
Tyler: Yeah. Especially with how aggressive the scaling was, especially early this year and through the rest of the year, there was bottleneck after bottleneck. It was really just about solving those. And I think like in business and an e-com, a lot of this stuff really is just problem solving, for example, storage was an issue. In the first part of the year, SendAFriend was run out of my brother's old bedroom at my parents' house. My mom was fulfilling every single care package by hand. You can't keep doing that when you scale. So it reached a point where, "Oh, no, the bedroom has filled up, and now the extra garage we have is filled up with all SendAFriend's stuff." It came to a point where it's like, we can't keep getting products here.
I think that was in March after a big Valentine's Day push when that first started happening. And by April 1st, we had an office space then. So it was just about moving really quickly and saying, "Okay, what is limiting us right now?" It was literally that we could not store any more animals, and we couldn't hire people to come out to my parents' house and work there. We had like a couple of family friends that were helping, but that was about it. And so that was one of the first bottlenecks, was how can we employ more people? How can we store more products? And how can we get more products out the door with more space basically?
And it was pretty obvious we needed an office, we needed a warehouse, we needed somewhere to store this product, have multiple fulfillment stations, have multiple employees running at the same time, all that kind of stuff. And so that was one of the first big challenges was finding an office building, finding the warehouse space to accompany that, and finding something that worked for our business and all of our needs since we were doing fulfillment in-house and all the other kinds of things.
Felix: Yeah. One thing you mentioned here that I really liked is about how everything in this journey of an entrepreneurship is about problem solving because I think there's a lot of times people might get this mindset of thinking, "Oh, when I source the right product, then I'll be done solving all the problems or my problems will go away. And if you have Facebook ads, all my problems will go away." But it's a new problem after another. I think that it's the sooner you get into that mindset or accept that that's what it is. There's something good about business, something to a large degree that that's life. Now, what would you say is the main problem that you're focused on these days with the business?
Tyler: Now that we've gotten through this year and we've mostly relied on Facebook ads to really push the business forward, I think that's one of our biggest problems now is how reliant we are on Facebook. We saw that through the holiday season just how expensive Facebook ads were. That was especially true this year with just more retailers and more buyers, excuse me, more buyers online and all that kind of stuff. So Facebook's definitely becoming an issue where it's getting more and more expensive to get a customer.
So one of our main focuses for 2021 is how do we take some of that control from Facebook basically, and how can we acquire new customers on new fronts? And so now, instead of just doing micro influencer stuff, we're trying to get involved in more macro influencer things. We're trying to get involved in organic search, we're trying to get involved in other media buying platforms like Snapchat and TikTok, and actually using paid ads on those platforms. So now it's really about just diversifying our marketing channels and acquiring customers on as many fronts as we can, so that we're not as reliant on Facebook paid acquisition for customers.
Felix: Yeah. That sounds like lots of different avenues you're going down, and you mentioned more media buying platforms, Snapchat, more focused on organic and expanding the pool of influencers that you're working with. How do you manage all of this to make sure that you, A, can decide if, hey, this is a good shatter or not, and basically not run it. There's marketing chaos that you could run into if you decide to go after everything all at once.
Tyler: Well, I think having processes in place is obviously good, so we already have our Facebook media buying process in place, we have a good system for approving new content, creating new content, all that kind of stuff. So I think you should definitely have your original channel or your first few channels really locked in and know what you're doing there before you branch out to too many, but past that, it's just about starting those new processes on the new platforms. And so for me, with organic search and SEO work, it is about, "Okay, now I have to start the process of finding either an agency or freelancer or employee that can help us do that."
And so I'm actually currently in that process of having interviews with different agencies and freelancers and figuring out who is best suited for our business and who is best suited for our specific line of work and all that kind of stuff. And that's just true to everything that we're doing is just now, okay, we have these current processes in place, now we just have to, again, problem solve and get to the next step and how do I get there? And it's just one thing after another. And I think part of it is just being ambitious with it and saying, "I'm not scared of this, I'm not worried about this, I'm just going to dive deep and figure it out." And at least that's my mentality with it, and it seems to be paying off so far.
Felix: Awesome. You mentioned your backgrounds in website design, was the website, SendAFriend.co also designed by yourself?
Tyler: Yes. The current website is probably the third main redesign of SendAFriend. The first site was very different from that. The second one was similar with some changes, and now this new theme is where it's been for a while. But yeah, primarily, all the designs are done by me. I do have a development agency now that helps me actually implement design. I'm not a strong coder, again, mostly focused on graphic design. So I usually will design the website, how I want to, or design a certain element and then send that over to the development team to let them do their magic on the website. But the core theme that's up right now is still designed by me about, I think six months ago before we really or about a year ago before we really started to grow.
Felix: Got it. Now, you mentioned this as the third redesign, what kind of changes did you make along the way with each redesign? What kind of changes did you want to make sure that you were putting in?
Tyler: A lot of it was conversion-rate focused. So I know early on probably for the first year of having SendAFriend our conversion rate was less than 1%. And when you start looking into standards and e-commerce and standards in the industry, that's really low. And so I knew that was a problem. And to me, I was trying some different things, I was trying maybe website copy or changing little things like colors of the buttons and stuff like that. But I think I finally reached a point where I was like, "Maybe it's the website itself, maybe it's a theme, maybe something about the customer journey on this website isn't working."
And so I used services like Hotjar to record visitors and look at heat maps of what people were doing and really found out that like 80% of people were just wanting to get to the Shop All and see all the animals. And so on that second and third redesign, that was the focus was just showing people the stuffed animals as soon as possible on the website and keeping them scrolling, basically, keeping them looking through all the new animals you might have or the different cute designs and all that kind of stuff, and really focusing on the product first.
Felix: Got it. That makes sense. What about some apps that you use, are they either on the website or off the website to help you run the business?
Tyler: For business, I guess organization, all that, we primarily use Notion, which is one of my favorite tools now for organizing your business. And then in conjunction with that, we use Slack for all communication, and we use Google Drive for all of our storage. That's really our three big tools. And then outside of that for design, we use Figma, email we use Klaviyo, and text messaging we use Postscript. But those big three; Slack, Notion, Google Drive, are the core of SendAFriend and how we manage and organize everything in our day-to-day lives, whether it be email design files, or new ads or new creatives or whatever it might be, that's all stored and managed within Notion and Google Drive.
Felix: When it comes to email marketing, and you mentioned Postscript for SMS, are you sending marketing messages, or how are you using those channels?
Tyler: We've used Klaviyo for email for about a year and a half now, and that's been one of our biggest channels to keep expanding on as well. We drive about 25% of our revenue from email now, just with the optimizations we've done through our automated flows and having a consistent campaign, sending a schedule. And so I'm really proud of our email work, we send really cute emails and that's usually how we keep our audience engaged if we personify the animals all the time and act like they're going on a field trip or doing this or that. And it seems to keep people engaged and keep them opening our emails. So that's been a really good avenue for us.
And then about two or three months ago, we got started with Postscript for SMS, which I feel like is probably one of the most up-and-coming channels now for e-commerce is getting SMS marketing. And we've seen some great success with it as well. I think we on average drive about the same revenue from our SMS campaigns as we do from our email campaigns. And on SMS, we only have like one fourth of the subscribers that we do on email. So it's been a great channel so far to generate some revenue, recover abandoned carts and things of that nature.
Felix: And these people are getting on these lists for SMS or email, are they past customers or how do they land on your list?
Tyler: We use email capture on our website. For us, we have a spin a win sale basically, where people can win a different discount by inputting their email and their phone number. And so that's just been a great avenue for as soon as someone lands on SendAFriend within basically the first seven seconds of them being on the website, they get a pop up. And being in the email world in the past, I had done some email design and some marketing with email agencies, and I learned very quickly how important capturing email is really early on the customer journey. And that allows you to do a lot of other things, like send them a follow-up email if they abandon their cart or did something like that.
So it's a really great way to collect emails without just collecting from purchases. And so that's been really important to grow those email lists and be able to drive more revenue through them because of getting their emails so early on in the journey.
Felix: Got it. So SendAFriend.co is the website, and you had mentioned to us about the focus right now into the future for the business when it comes to the marketing side, what about the product side? Anything that you're working on that's in store for this coming year?
Tyler: We found over the past like three months or so through the holiday season that we started releasing these bundles where basically instead of just the stuffed animal, we're adding socks, stickers, maybe a food item, maybe another comfort item or something like that to the care package and able to get a little higher of an average order value out of it. So that's been something that the audience has responded to really well. We see a lot of customers come back and purchase another SendAFriend because of these bundles. So that's been what we've really been focused on the product side for 2021, is making sure we basically have a bundle for every holiday and also have bundles for different events.
Like we'll have a birthday bundle or an anniversary bundle or something like that people have, and they can use that as a reason to send a care package. And that's been a good product change for us, it's allowed us to, like I said, increase our average order value, which has helped on the advertising side, helped on the profit side, all that kind of stuff. And that's probably our biggest product development, but I think at the core, SendAFriend is stuffed animals in boxes and that's what we do well, so I don't see that changing too much anytime soon.
Felix: Awesome. Thank you so much for your time, Tyler.
Tyler: Thank you.