35 Burst results for "Store"
Mark Levin
Target Holds 'Emergency' Meeting Over LGBTQ Items
"Target they had their emergency meeting as they described it Emergency Emergency meeting not to get rid of their gay pride merchandise but to move it around in some bigoted stores in the south right We're still sticking with this We're not backing down Target holding an emergency meeting over its controversial pride merchandise the damage control mode coming as it desperately tries to avoid a so called Bud Light situation A target insider telling Fox News digital quote we were given 36 hours told to take all of our pride stuff and move it into a section that's a third of the size from the front of the store to the back I think given the current situation with Bud Light the company is terrified Fox News contributor Douglas Murray kills us now Douglas your reaction Well several things First of all of course they're trying to avoid a Bud Light moment I mean the buds share prices fell 25% in one week So of course target want to avoid anything like that Second thing is first of all we've got to be clear about this They call it pride merchandise Nobody has a problem with the LGB bit of this equation The problem that has erupted in America is the tea bit And it quite wrong for a company like target first of all to say pride when what we're talking about is clothes that are for people who believe that they are trans specifically for men who believe they're women To wrap all of this up in pride I think is a great insult to many people in this country Because they were selling a bathing suit that had that had instructions on how to talk So without getting too anatomical of course this is about this is about women's bathing costumes adapted for a man Now this also goes to one of the other things I've said for a long time on this It is worth noting in the whole trans issue The extent to which it is women who are repeatedly inconvenienced not
Mark Levin
Anheuser-Busch & Target Are Trying to Break the American Family
"Corporate America wants to break you they want to break your family they want to break this country then they want to destroy what used to be a traditional family Now you may say all right Ben well that's a pretty generic statement there Back it up with facts All right let's back it up Anheuser Busch their market value has plunged to staggering 15 plus $1 billion since they hired a dude with a penis dressed up like a chick To partner with them for transgendered pride Put this dude with a penis on their Bud Light cans for a special promotion And then use that dude with a penis to then talk about womanhood even though it's a dude Now after you saw what happened in heizer bush you would then if you were a business person a businessman or woman and you were the leadership of a large company that you would say you'd go internally and say hey if we got anything planned like the get anywhere close to what I just have and hundreds of bush let's just shelve that for a while That's what a smart businessman would do or woman or board Unless you're trying to break the American family And that's exactly what they're trying to do Proof of that is target Not only to target say no no no no we're not going to learn from Anheuser Busch because we want to break the American family And in essence we're going to do it too is what they're saying They're saying we're so big we're too big to fail We're target that we're going to dedicate maximum square footage to the front of the store to indoctrinate every child that walks through a store with a massive billboard that may be you're not a boy or maybe you're not a girl You don't need to be you're non binary You don't have to choose
Mark Levin
Women Have the Buying & Boycott Power Against Target
"And I want you to understand why target decided to have an emergency meeting It wasn't because they thought they got it wrong It wasn't because they're going to stop doing not just a month of gay pride but basically two months right Because it's not even gay Pride Month yet and they've already got their massive square footage of gay pride propaganda for your family to indoctrinate your kids with out there We're talking probably hundreds and hundreds of thousands of square feet is what they have dedicated to gay Pride Month at target stores It's not about selling products It's about indoctrinating your children It's about turning your children against your beliefs I post this up on Instagram If you want to see it by the way I put a ton of what target was selling on Instagram You can follow me Ben Ferguson podcast there but I said men did our part with Bud Light We made it socially unacceptable for in man culture to drink woke beer The target battle will only be one with strong moms standing up for their kids And that's the truth because the majority of people that go to target are not men It's women Women did you know this And we had this debate the other day and there was a million statistics back it up But did you know that women are actually the number one spenders in families Makes sense They're buying they have more buying power than the men do Yes men will buy big things sure We'll buy a car Right We'll do things like that But women are the predominant spenders of the dollars that come into a family household I'm not criticizing women for that either I want to make that clear but women traditionally especially when they have kids the ones are spending the predominant amount of money that comes in the house Meaning women have far more buying power Or that also translates into boycotting power than any man does
AP News Radio
Post-Serena, women's tennis heads to French Open led by Big 3 of Swiatek, Sabalenka, Rybakina
"All of the questions about who would step up once Serena Williams walked away from the tennis store seemed to be getting answered with three names. Arena sabalenka and Elena rabaka. As the start of the French Open approaches on Sunday, defending champions via tech is ranked number one, sabalenka is number two and is number four. A 21 year old from Poland is the reigning champion at Roland Garros and the U.S. open. A 25 year old from Belarus won the Australian open this January by beating Rebecca in the final and won Wimbledon last July. I'm geffen cool Bach.
CoinDesk Podcast Network
Sam Altman's Crypto Project Worldcoin Raises $115M
"We love talking about WorldCoin. It's really surging into the headlines in recent weeks, largely around the hype and interest relating to artificial intelligence, AI. Now, word of this raise had been leaked a little bit. According to sources, this is going to be in the works and enough. Today, they announced that they've raised $115 million in a funding round led by Blockchain Capital and involving A16Z, Bain, Capital Crypto and others. Let's talk about WorldCoin. I think this is less a bet on the value of another coin and more a bet on the importance of systems that may counteract the rise of AI. That's very much a big part of what is being announced here by Blockchain Capital in a post written by Spencer Bogart. He talks about this proof of personhood concept as being the real secret sauce behind this project as the AI rises up. I'm going to toss this one straight to Jen for her initial thoughts. WorldCoin certainly been in the news quite a bit of late. What do you make of its most recent back end? $115 million. This is crazy. I feel like we haven't spoken about a raise this big. In at least a year, maybe we have all the days just kind of blend together for me. But Zach, you're right. I think about two weeks ago, we spoke about this new product that they launched that offered up a solution for authenticating humans in the age of AI through this biometric retina scanning orb. I think it's really interesting how they've been able to pull their narrative together. Now they're offering a solution to an issue that we've been discussing as AI accelerates faster and faster. They also have this crypto wallet that's part of their product that's supposed to be this really stripped down, much simpler way to hold your coins and store your assets. I think that they've developed a really interesting narrative, especially given what's going on in the news right now with wallets and AI. They have some big backers here. They have A16Z. I think I saw Bank Capital there. I think that they probably were able to craft a really compelling story, get that in front of VCs and raise this money. I think it's a strong and good bet for VCs who are waiting out the bear
AP News Radio
Target to Pull Some LGBT-Themed Merchandise After Backlash
"Target is the latest company to suffer backlash for LGBTQ+ support and is pulling some Pride Month clothing, I'm Lisa dwyer. Target is removing some items from its stores and making other changes to its LGBTQ+ merchandise nationwide ahead of Pride Month in June after an intense backlash from some customers, including violent confrontations with target's workers. Targets said the customers knocked down pride displays in some stores, angrily approached workers and posted threatening videos on social media from inside the stores. Target declined to specify which items it was removing, but among the ones that garnered the most attention were tuck friendly women's swimsuits that allow trans women who have not had gender affirming operations to conceal their private parts. There are close to 500 anti LGBTQ+ bills that have gone before state legislatures since the start of this year. The American civil liberties union says that's an unprecedented number.
The Dan Bongino Show
Target Expects $500 Million More in Losses Due to Rampant Theft
"But target already has a range of its own financial problems and they really they're not in any position to take on a Bud Light style boycott right now So a lot of bad decision making going on here but here's what CNBC reported this past week This is from last week Wednesday Target expects organized retail crime fueled losses to jump by $500 million this year Target expects people to steal nearly a half $1 billion in merchandise this year from their store More than they were already stealing Targets at Wednesday the organized retail crime will fuel $500 million more in stolen and lost merchandise this year Compared with a year ago targets inventory lost called shrink if you've ever worked in retail you're familiar with this phrase They say it in all the trainings We need to minimize shrink Although target target is now officially selling products to assist with shrinkage Target's inventory loss called shrink totaled about $763 million last fiscal year Based on calculations from the company's financial filings with the anticipated increase shrink that is stuff that's stolen This year would surpass one $1 billion Target is staring at a $1 billion in stolen merchandise from their stores right now In the Biden economy
The Dan Bongino Show
Target Partners With Satanist Brand to Create Items for ‘PRIDE’ Merch
"Target the big retailer partnered with a satanist to create a couple of items for the pride collection Is it an amazing by the way the bigotry that's going on here So they've got an entire section of the store that's cast in rainbow colors that they say is for Pride Month The rainbow famously a symbol of God's promise not the flood the earth again in the wake of the flood And now being used to advance the financial interests of satanists How about that Target has been selling products made by the Satan brand Abraham including a messenger bag that said we belong everywhere across trans flag colors and planets a tote bag with the message two queer for here beneath a UFO and a cure transphobia not trans people sweatshirt In other words abandoned gender confused people Don't help them Allow them to descend and to destroy themselves And give them an assist will you That's what the sweatshirt's message is So that's what target has been selling And here's what the Instagram of ab says I imagine what it would be like for a younger version of myself to see something more specific more tailor made than a lackluster rainbow flag I wanted to create a range that would embrace younger me and tell him that who he is is more than okay That being trans special and wonderful and that the closet is not made for him to thrive in That's what it says according to a prey lens Instagram post announcing the collaboration with target At pralines owner is a self described gay trans man based in London What is a gay trans man I'm pretty sure that's a straight woman A gay trans man The brand sells shirts pins and stickers with the design of a pastel goat head and the message Satan respects pronouns Quote get ready for this I can't even believe I'm reading these words Satan loves you and respects who you are
AP News Radio
TikTok files lawsuit to overturn Montana's 1st-in-nation ban on the video sharing app
"A first of the nation ban on TikTok enacted by Montana lawmakers is being challenged in federal court. I Norman hall. TikTok lawyers argue that Montana's ban is an unconstitutional violation of free speech rights and is based on unfounded speculation that the Chinese government could access users data. According to the lawsuit, TikTok says it has not shared and would not share a U.S. user data with the Chinese government. The federal government and about half the U.S. states have banned TikTok from government on devices, Montana's new law prohibits all downloads of TikTok in the state, the platform and app stores could face heavy fines for violations. I Norman hall
The Dan Bongino Show
NYC Mayor Eric Adams Says 'Social Service Kiosks' Will Combat Theft
"I can't even read this I can't read this for the straight face Install install kiosks in stores to connect would be thieves with social service programs Can you imagine You're walking out with two grand where the stolen stuff from CBS right And the deescalation trading You have to go to the kiosk over here and before you steal our merchandise and it will connect you with social service programs This guy's gonna be like where's the kiosk This is the left Tony this thing's worth money steal the kiosk to That thing's right out the door They'll unplug the kiosk right over the shoulder right out into the waiting minivan where they'll throw this stuff Is this the single dumbest stupid idea you've ever This guy was a former cop This guy did I not tell you this guy's an idiot I'm sorry man I know sell praise things But what am I gonna do There is still people out there who believe that this guy oh my gosh look at this guy Finally a Democrat who's not a crazy person He's the craziest person of all Like these guys like the captain of the crazy brigade Kiosks in stores to connect would be thieves with social service programs
The Breakdown
Ledger's Shocking Move: Has Our Trust Been Betrayed?
"Every Saturday, I ask what the week before will be remembered for when it comes to crypto and the larger economy. And to me, there are two big things that stand out this week. The first is, of course, ledger. For those of you who haven't listened to the ledger episode from earlier this week, the TLDR is that on Tuesday they announced a feature called ledger recover. Now ledger recover was a way for people who were maybe new to the space or who are just generally insecure about keeping their own seed phrase on a piece of paper, which is how ledger normally does things. This new feature ledger recover would allow them to effectively have a backup. And the way that it would work is that the ledger device would send out a copy of the seed phrase split into three parts. It would go to ledger and two other companies, and the person would have to use ID verification services to request to have it come back. Now you might already have spotted some of the issues here. All of a sudden, a hardware wallet which is supposed to be a self sovereign device and totally outside of the realm of tamper ability, has introduced a whole slew of new weaknesses. There's a KYC and identity verification process, there's these three companies that are involved, but the biggest thing that had people upset was that in the past, ledger had made it seem like there was no way for the device to ever send out a seed phrase, however that seemed to be changing. Because of the device could copy that seed phrase and then encrypt it to send it out in these three parts, didn't that break the relationship that people thought they had with their ledgers? Now, over the next couple of days, ledger really dug itself into a deeper and deeper hole. At one point, it's team tweeted technically speaking it is and has always been possible to write firmware that facilitates key extraction. You've always trusted ledger not to deploy such firmware, whether you knew it or not. It's important to understand that at the end of the day, any hardware wallet solution to user chooses to go with will always require that person to trust the developer to build and maintain a secure device to store your assets. This was exactly the wrong thing to say. And just further outrage the community.
AP News Radio
Walmart boosts outlook after a strong first quarter and rising online sales
"Walmart, the largest retailer in the U.S. reports strong sales in the first quarter. Walmart boosted its outlook, reporting that sales rose 7.6% to $152.3 billion in the first quarter ending April 30th, yielding a net income of 1.67 billion, adjusted earnings came to a dollar 47 per share, exceeding Wall Street expectations, CEO Doug mcmillon spoke on an investor relations call this morning. Sales growth was strong globally, including growth of 26% in ecommerce. Earnings reports from Home Depot and target this week point to profit declines, while recent government data revealed that Americans are barely keeping up with inflation. Walmart's financial performance hints at ways that consumers are weathering higher prices, like trading name brand groceries for store brands. And the drag grocery and consumables categories like paper goods, we continue to see high single digit to low double digit cost inflation. We all need those prices to come down. I'm Jennifer King.
The Breakdown
Ledger Recover Announcement Leads to Massive Crypto Uproar
"For the last 24 hours, all anyone has been talking about is ledger. It's a story that hits from so many angles. It's a story of technical challenges and tradeoffs and crypto UX. It's a story of let's call them challenges of corporate communications and marketing, and it's a story about the fundamental principles of self sovereignty that underlie the industry. So let's try to parse through it, shall we? On Tuesday, ledger announced a social recovery feature called ledger recover for their popular line of hardware wallets. Now, this feature sent crypto Twitter into a frenzy as we will see. Security experts warn that this feature was unsafe in its fundamental design and potentially revealed previously unknown security design flaws for all ledger users. So first, let's do a quick definitional explanation of what social recovery actually means. Social recovery is a design feature that's common in lots of crypto storage setups. It's offered by a range of companies in the industry. Now, there are a multitude of different security designs for this feature. One low tech version, for example, would be splitting your seed phrase into multiple sections and handing single parts to a group of trusted friends and family members. This would allow you to recover the entire seed phrase if you ever needed to. More complex implementations use multi sig wallets and trust a group of different people or companies with the individual keys to the multisig. This setup allows a group of these trusted key custodians to collaborate and recover your wallet, even if you've lost the keys. Now, importantly, all social recovery setups carry some amount of trust and risk alongside. Primarily your trusting that your social recovery delegates won't collaborate without your instruction to recover the wallet and steal your crypto. With growing crypto adoption, many believe that social recovery is a potentially important way to allow less technical users who don't trust themselves to store a seed phrase to access non custodial crypto storage solutions.
AP News Radio
Target wrestles with cautious consumers and theft at stores
"Target reports another quarterly profit decline. It's not too often you hear about shoplifting as a serious issue for corporate earnings, but it's there alongside rising costs as one reason major retailer target has posted a decline in profits for the 5th consecutive quarter, and a cautious outlook for the current period. The Minneapolis based company sales rose 0.6% to $25.32 billion in the first quarter ending April 29th, beating analyst expectations, but Q one net income slipped to 950 million nearly 6%, target reports that customer traffic was up with shoppers focused on buying necessities like groceries, but they're still snapping up affordable clothing, the company says theft is hurting its profitability and predicted it will lose over a $1 billion to thieves this year. During a call with the media CEO Brian Cornell, said they came into this year clear eyed about what consumers were facing, with persistent inflation and rising interest rates. I am Jennifer King
Dennis Prager Podcasts
COVID Losses Caused by Workplace Absences and Store Closures
"Greatest losses stem from workplace absences and lost sales. The latter would do primarily to close stores, reduce air travel and limited public gatherings. Why did we have all of that? If they let big stores open, remember that? At the height of the pandemic in the second quarter of 2020, our survey found that air travel fell by nearly 60%. Endured dining by 65%, and in store shopping by 43%, how do people survive that? Indoor dining by 65%. I remember asking over and over. How come I can take off my mask and eat three inches from the person next to me in an airplane, but not 5 feet away from somebody in a restaurant. Nobody had an answer to that. Crush restaurants. Anyway, the left doesn't like. Small businesses.
AP News Radio
Retail sales up 0.4% in April from March, buoyed by solid job market, easing inflationary pressures
"Buoyed by a solid job market, retail sales picked up in April. The commerce department's latest report finds retail sales increased 0.4% in April from March, the first increase since January, led by a 1.2% bump at online retailers, as 0.6% increase at restaurants and bars, and an increase in demand for new cars and auto parts, with a strong employment market Americans are still spending, but there has been a broader pullback amid high inflation and rising interest rates. Report categories that were slightly down included gas station sales department stores, electronics and home furnishings. In addition, Home Depot posted disappointing first quarter results today, U.S. store sales were down 4.6% after years of explosive growth during the pandemic. Jennifer King, Washington
AP News Radio
Stars beat Kraken 2-1 in G7 to advance to West final, Johnston scores day after 20th birthday
"The Dallas stars defeated the Seattle kraken two to one in the decisive 7th game of their second round playoff series, advanced to the Western Conference Finals against Las Vegas. Jake gottinger stopped 21 of 22 shots for the stars. Dallas coach Pete deboer now 7 O in game 7s in the playoffs. It was our best team game of the playoffs. I knew our group would respond to have all year individually and collectively as a team and they didn't disappoint. Rope Hanson, why a Johnson scored for the stores while Oliver Björk's fan got the lone Seattle goal. Bob Stevens Dallas
AP News Radio
Vending machines are the latest tool for fighting opioid overdoses
"Vending machines are becoming the latest tool for fighting opioid overdoses. I'm Lisa dwyer. Vending machines that have long been stocked with snacks are getting repurposed to distribute lifesaving supplies to fight the opioid epidemic, a growing number of cities and local governments are using vending machines to distribute the overdose reversing drug naloxone. The machines are often set up at libraries post offices and other public buildings. They dispense naloxone and other items for free, including first aid kits. Interest in the approach is expected to grow after U.S. regulators recently approved Narcan the leading naloxone brand to be sold without a prescription. That switch allows the nasal spray to be stalked and convenient stores supermarkets and vending machines. I'm Lisa dwyer
The Optimized Store Owner Show
"store" Discussed on The Optimized Store Owner Show
"People are multi platform users. So they might see you on Facebook, and they go on Instagram and they go on YouTube, then they go on Pinterest and they go on SnapChat and they go to their emails and they want to see you everywhere. And so if you can be other places without having to pay for it, then just do it. You might not see an ROI then, but I promise you it's having an effect even if you can't necessarily say. So if you've got the capabilities and resources to do organic, it absolute must do it. Eventually you want to get to a stage where you're not relying on at all. Everything is organic. But that does take time. Right. And I guess it was a partial small question. Are you guys doing any SEO at all for your clients as well? The ones that have gotten to a larger spot or do you not really focus on search engine and in that way as much? Yeah, we bring in so we don't have that capability in the house. So we bring in outside people to do it, but yeah, it's part of the strategy because it's when you look at the LTV so search for most of the prize that we do this for, we can look at the LGV based on the marketing channel. Search and SEO has some of the highest LTV. So for us, if we have a brand where there is an opportunity to have a lot of search traffic or use that as a strategy, we always always do that. We just technically don't do it in the house, because we know we can find people without better than us. Like I could bring in a team to do it and maybe lay on another line of go buy an SEO agency, but it is a strategy that 100% works and we see, I have a very good LTV. It's just harder to scale. And so it's one of those things where it can actually be a little bit harder to scale as well. Awesome. Just to be kind of courtesy of your time like I said, I want to this has been extremely value packed and you mentioned a couple of things in here, but I want to know people for listening. They where do they find tools? What tools are working right now, where should they go and do free trials or whatever else? What kind of software would you suggest? And if they're affiliate links or whatever we can link those up to, but I'm just curious what software do you like what's working right now and where should people go check out? So the two softwares are using quite a lot right now. High risk attracting software and magics, which is a, which is a platform AI software. Those are the two that we pretty much use all the time. So back to iOS 14, Facebook moved attribution window from 28 days to 7 days. In addition to that Facebook's reporting isn't that great. It kind of looks a lot of the sales. Then if you added Google, you add in all the other channels you add in email. It's hard to know exactly where your sales are coming from. And especially for us, our entire strategy isn't really built around us, which a lot of businesses return on that spend. A lot of agencies a lot of marketers build their strategy around its own ad spend. We look at LTV as specifically like 60 to 90 day LGV. We're trying to maximize our profit and revenue in generating 60 to 90 days..
The Optimized Store Owner Show
"store" Discussed on The Optimized Store Owner Show
"So if you were to start today and you're not going to run and you're not the marketing agency, you're just yourself with your knowledge. How would you take a clothing brand or a pale brand or anything like that to how would you scale to 7 figures if it's chin's company and you started a T-shirt line or you started on clothing line, how would you take it to 7 figures? Sure. So I'd actually take it even one step back. So that in two ways. So if I was going to start a DTC brand from scratch, I would find the hungry audience first. Because from what we've seen audience can make or break a brand. So I would actually find an audience and see if there's a nexus between a hungry audience that has a need and something that I enjoy doing. If I can make those two things haven't fantastic and I know that I will have fun running this brand long-term. Life gets so much easier when the audience is starting. Look for starving audience. It's so much easy to do. We've had clients we've worked with. And it's like, it's hard because the audience doesn't have that desire. There's a great advertising book by a guy called yuji Schwartz. And it's called breakthrough advertising. But there's a quote that is great. And the quote is you can not I'm going to paraphrase. You basically can not manufacture desire. It's a marketer's job to harness existing desire and put it to your products. So we always want to look, I want to look for the desire first. With that being said, let's identify that desire. Let's say it's a T-shirt rhino, the power run. I would start first because the first thing we want to validate the products. I want to make sure that we've got a market for the price. So I actually start with either affiliates or influences. Because you don't really want to stop pumping money into it to acquire customers unless you are really upset..
The Optimized Store Owner Show
"store" Discussed on The Optimized Store Owner Show
"To some of those Facebook, Instagram ads, and getting them to be profitable, what are some elements that you're testing or maybe there's maybe you guys have some sort of order of importance, right? Of things that you test first to see if it's actually going to work. Sure. Yeah. So this question would have been also differently before iOS 14s because I assumed he has kind of changed and I don't know if we're going to go into that depending on how crude up your listeners might be on there. Absolutely, we've talked about it. So yeah, you can speak directly to it if you'd like. Okay, so yeah, so I was 14 has kind of changed things in terms of how we approach testing. The interesting thing about iOS 14, it hasn't affected every brand of every account the same. It had different impacts on different types of businesses. We've been seeing across the price of we look after the niche brands have been affected a lot more than the mass market brands. And so that kind of leads us to our testing testing hypothesis. We typically like to test created first because grave is going to have the biggest impact. For the longest time, Facebook's algorithm was pretty good at being able to work with very, very large audiences. You load up the creative. And it did its own thing by being able to find where the best customers were. That's not we have to now test that idea before we can just run with it. Before we can get good creative, and we knew the algorithm would do its thing. Now we have to make sure it's doing the same because iOS 14 is kind of made some accounts have weird random results. So we got to do a little bit more testing to make sure that we're validating our ideas before we move forward. So creative is always the very first thing that we test. You know, we want to figure out which audience is going to have the best potential for scale and the best potential for profits. And so that typically comes out from crave. So you can use targets into an extent. We found creative has the biggest lever. A risk that one of the quickest ways you can do it is with UGC creative because UGC's typically the brands and a good job of gathering customer testimonials and UGC. That's a quick way of getting instant feedback on whether that angle works because if you go through customer testimonials and you go through the UGC, they typically hit a lot of the objections that customers might have. And they typically fit themselves nicely into the avatars. So we'll get like three or four different types of UGC and then we'll test those because they usually fit into different avatars..
The Optimized Store Owner Show
"store" Discussed on The Optimized Store Owner Show
"That just added so much more value to the episode too that we didn't mention. So yeah, definitely go follow them on TikTok too. I haven't saved up here to go see some of these videos that are doing crazy good. But yeah, what is the best way for somebody to support the boutique? How can they shop with you guys? What's the best way? So our website is Jackson grace boutique dot com, but then of course we have our app, which most people prefer. It's super easy. You can just go to your Apple or Android store or Google Play Store. I think it's called and you just search jacks. And then the plus sign, grace boutique and it's jexi. I know I have kind of a crazy name. Nobody half the time couldn't figure it out and understand it, but it's named after my kids and then my face. So it works out, but yeah, just searches Jack's plus 9 grace boutique, and then you'll be able to find us..
The Optimized Store Owner Show
"store" Discussed on The Optimized Store Owner Show
"On Instagram story, kind of asking like, yay or nay, then we'll put the little votes up. And if there's enough nose, we don't touch it. If there's a ton of yeses, like extremely a time, then I'll know to get more than one pack of that item. But if it's kind of hit or miss, and there's like at least ten, 12 people that maybe want or don't on the other side or whatever, I'll still get it, but maybe only one pack. So I try to listen to the customers and sometimes you just see something as a, I guess experience knowing buying for 5 years now, you kind of know what stuff might not sell so well, but you're like this thing is I can tell this pattern these people are going to love this. I'm going to get two, three, four, how are my packs this one? So. That's a good point. I want to clarify maybe a little bit more detail to what you just said there. Two, three, four, more packs. So yeah, if you do find something that you like no matter who it is for how many of how deep are you buying? So how many for each size are you buying how deep are those? So it depends on the season. It depends on what the item is. If it's a shirt that I'm like, hey, I know this is gonna sell really, really well. I'll maybe do I'm trying to think of how you would type the Paxton or tell them at Mark because they usually come in two two two packs. So a two pack is one. I might do anywhere from four to 8 packs if it's something I know is gonna do super duper well and it's the beginning of the season. So I'll have the whole season to sell it. Now if I find something awesome for summer, but I don't find it till the end of July, beginning of August, I may do two or three packs, knowing they'll sell well, but they won't sell past August because people September they're one sweaters, even though it's a 100° in Orchard. But that's good. Yeah, I was going to say we're in Texas and it's crazy how hot it is for how long. But it's like so hot. It's crazy hot. Okay, I think that gives it I think I give some really good insight because I would say that more I think it's something that nobody really talks about. I mean, I don't know if you're part of the boutique hub or not. But they may talk about it inside of there. But I know that it's a common question, which is, hey, I'm just starting out or have been doing it for a while, but I still haven't figured out my inventory. So this gives good insight into that. Yeah, when I started, I definitely did one pack of stuff because I was too scared. I didn't know what would do well or not and I was scared to hold on to it. So at the beginning, I definitely told my customers like, hey, if you like it by it now, you might not get it again because I'm only getting one pack or something like that. Yeah, and I think it's a little scary too, because it's a financial commitment. You're just kind of sitting on it at that point. Yes. So speaking of along that lines of getting rid of things, especially for inventory and for seasons. And we're about to transition if you have an already transition. I'm sure most people are transitioning to fall whenever depending on what this episode comes out. But how do you manage getting rid of or making a transition happen, getting rid of the old stock and bring in a new stock? Do you have a strategy for that? Yeah, so we have a very, very successful event that we do twice a year at the end of each season. So coming up, I think, at very end of August, very beginning of September, is usually when we do this one. We do a fill the bag sale. And I have seen a lot of boutiques try the fill the bags though, but they do the bags so cheap that they're losing so much money. We try to still do our bags because we are boutique we're not Walmart. We don't want people to get that Walmart vibe when they're shopping. But we do fill the back cell at the end of each season and we do depending on the season we'll do two or three big bags, Brown bags. We have a very large bag that we usually do anywhere from one 80 to two 60 to 80 it just depends on the season because you know in the summer you can fit more in a bag than you came in the winner. And then the lowest bag I think we offer is either 80 or a hundred or a 120, something like that. It differs. We tested each bag. But I basically price those to make sure that I am either breaking even with wholesale, you know, obviously, you might have one customer who gets really clever and stuffed way more sneaks in a boot, which is we allow that. But you might lose a little bit on some bags, but you might gain a little bit on some bags and it really is an event our customers look forward to. Aside from Black Friday, there are two busiest days of the year. We do the best sales on those days. And it's really awesome because leading up to them, I try to do a couple of weeks of sale normal sale on those items just to kind of tease people a little bit like if they can buy it for X amount versus the fill the back rather than before they fill the back sale, but we still we cram our racks full. We do have some that are marked off, but we balloon the racks that are included. And we have a line that wraps around our building. People wait an hour to two to check out. Sometimes there's so many people it is insane. And it really really has blown up and been super successful and the customers love it. They have fun. We have customers that come from two, three hours away just to come for the fill the bag sale with that will bring their whole family and they'd be like, yeah, this is our annual. We do this every year. Together as a family. So it's been really awesome because it's fun for the community. We're exhausted by the end of that day and week. But it's so worth it and it really helps clear inventory out that maybe has sat towards the end of the summer or maybe it shipped to me too late and I didn't get it till the end of summer and it won't make it into fall. We don't want to hold on to it until the next season. If it's something super nice, sometimes it will hold on to it if it was really expensive. But yeah, that's what we do. And it's been really successful. That's awesome. I do want to touch a little bit on what you said earlier with listening to customers. And making sure that you're just in tune with what the customers want. And even this event that you're talking about that you do twice a year, it's again going back to that. It does, this is one O one to fundamentals, right? Listen to your customers, know your audience. And even the other events, it's something that you've seen us super successful and you sort of double down on the and I think it's working amazingly for you. So kudos on that, that's great really, really good. Hey so owners are you ready to grow and scale your online business predictably and profitably? We've created a free 15 minute training that will walk you through the 5 key areas every online store needs to achieve financial success. You can grab the free training by going to optimize store owner dot com slice E comm training or clicking the link below in the DuPont's description. Again, that is optimized, store owner dot com slash E comm training. I just want to go a little bit deeper into that because I know that brick and mortar. So in most of the people that we do work with, do we talk to, do you have an element of the brick and mortar? But maybe how exactly do you only do it for the brick and mortar or is there an idea or strategy maybe you can think of for those who are doing an online R two? Because that's an amazing idea. But maybe you can talk to specifically.
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"store" Discussed on The Optimized Store Owner Show
"That's truly incredible. I think that the first question that I pop into my head when you mentioned the pandemic and how the community helped you through that process was the pandemic that forced you to do the website or did you have the website and Shopify all along from the beginning? When did that come into play? Yeah, so we had the website at the beginning, but like I said, I never paid for marketing. I had just had a baby when we moved into the second location, plus my other kid, plus one thing you might not know, Marine Corps recruiting, they work 90 to a hundred hours a week. So I did not really have any help. I did not have the time or the resources to grow. So I knew that I could probably do better if I would pay for marketing. I just couldn't do it yet. I wasn't ready. I didn't have the team available just lots of factors of why I couldn't, I was too scared to pay for the marketing because I knew it would probably help a lot and I wasn't there yet even though obviously the money would have been awesome. And this year is the first year we finally started paying for marketing for the online store and the online start of it. And we started in March or April, I think and it definitely, we started growing a little bit more online for sure with that. So that's helped, but still, I mean, even the in store stuff, I've blown away with the growth and the support. So whenever you're speaking of, you mentioned 80% was in store and then 20% online, which is awesome. Great position to be in because most people that I talk to that is the position, whether your personages are a little bit different numbers. But it's still like the 80 20 and usually within a year or so, it can flip where it's 80% online, 20% in store. But yeah, it's definitely possible. But I'm curious what has been your organic strategy. If you didn't ever do anything for marketing, how did people was it just word of mouth? How exactly did you post it on social media? How exactly did you continue to grow organically without ever having to pay with anything or pay for anything? So I would say we made sure to post consistently to Instagram, Facebook. We scheduled our post, one of the biggest factors that I hear a lot from our customers and the community and people that have stayed with us from the beginning is that we are relatable. So there's some boutique owners out there that I just look at and I'm like, oh my gosh, they're perfect. They have the perfect everything. They're gorgeous. They're nice, they're cute. They can try on every piece of clothing and make it look great. But our staff, I just try to be more relatable and down to earth, not that it's a bad thing to be ordered. So we've definitely had some gorgeous models here and stuff to help us out. But we have some curvier models that we make sure to show all the time that look like real people. So that's what we get feedback on a lot is that they feel like when they come into the store, they are judged. They can come in in their pajamas and we're going to treat them the same as if they were coming in in a Rolls Royce with Louis Vuitton Oliver. We don't treat anybody any different here, whether we know that customers only going to spend $5 or where we know that for customers are going to be our $500 spender. We want everybody to be the same and we try to show that on social media so that people feel comfortable and want to come and be with us and shop with us. Just because I think, you know, it's great to have the perfect looking model for your clothing sometimes, but sometimes the average person might get turned off to it, so we try to do a little bit of both to make sure that everybody feels comfortable and it's all inclusive place here for everybody no matter who you are. Absolutely. And I was going to say I think I could see that from one the quality of the photography is obviously you probably have and maybe you have a pulse on that a little bit more. Now and knowing the edit photography background. One of the questions I would really want to ask is, and we get this a lot from boutique owners who are really just trying to grow and scale is how do you project sales, but more so importantly, I think it's the inventory side. So in the early days, maybe we could talk about, okay, well, I had to sell 8 shirts, so it's pretty easy to keep track of inventory. But how is it now that you're boutique is doing what it is now? How are you trying to buy either at market or other places? How are you managing that inventory so that if something is going to sell well, you get enough of it or something isn't going to sell well, you don't buy it more of it. Right. So at the beginning, it was definitely full blown wing in it just based off of what I would see online with anything that was popular. I know when I first started, I think a company called LuLaRoe or something was popular because I was the name of it was really popular with a pattern ligands, women's women were going crazy for them. So I made sure to keep those in stock just based off that. Plus, I would ask some of my other younger girls that are in college. What are you guys wearing the game days? You know, help me pick this stuff out. And we would kind of browse together. And now it's got to the point where I think one of my biggest things that I noticed sometimes when I go to other boutiques, a lot of the style is everything is the same. There's all the neutral tones or maybe they're all a bright storm. Maybe they're all a western store. And I think this might go against the rules of the boutique world that you want to kind of find your brand and everybody wants to know what it looks like when they come in. I might go against that rule, but I think it's worked for us because I don't stick to one look or one brand. So when I'm looking for inventory, I'm going to make sure, okay, I need to buy for my teachers. My mother's who want to cover up and wear baggier stuff or still look classy when they go to school and teach or work at the bank or their mom and they've got a bend over a hundred times. They want to look cute, but be comfortable. But I also need to look for the college student, who wants to be a little bit more showy and trendy. But then I often need to look for my mom's age in her 60s and find a couple little things that she might not want to shop at belt. She wants to look trendy, but be modest and not look like she's trying to be 20 again. And so I try to keep that in mind when I'm shopping, it would be awesome to order everything that I liked, but I would say a huge percentage of the stuff might not be something I would even look at. But I think that's where a lot of people fail as I think a lot of people might get into the boutique owning world. Thinking, oh my gosh, I love clothes. I love style. I'm gonna buy everything that I like because then I can steal a piece and then I can wear it and, you know, I'll sell it to all my Friends, but they're missing that huge market of people who might not like that. And so a lot of these boutiques in our town, which I like I said, they're great for what they are, but you might go in. And if I'm a mom, I'm not gonna be able to find one piece of clothing for me. Or if there's an older woman store a college girl might come in and she's not gonna be able to find anything for her, we're here. If you don't browse, you might think, I don't know what this is for me because I have something for everybody. You just have to kind of walk in and look a little bit harder. So your college girl's gonna come in and she might see her first top that she looks at is like a more work appropriate teacher. Mom type of top and she's gonna be like, wow, but wait, oh, wait, there? That's my kind of shirt over there. I like that. It's more distressed, vintage, look or whatever. You know, we have had a couple of even older women that have come in and be like, oh, is this the college shore? I don't need another boutique. You know, we have enough those in this town where my stuff and I'm like, hold on, hold on. You just looked at the front table. There's everywhere. So I think that's really important when gauging for inventory is to look for everybody not just what you like, but what you know is popular based on trends based on what you've seen people wearing or asking for. I do ask my customers a lot. As well, we have a VIP group and I try to ask them, which I was opinions, you know, yes or no on this when we go to Mark, we try to ask, we'll do like a yay or nay and we'll do.
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"store" Discussed on The Optimized Store Owner Show
"All right y'all, that's all I have right now, but enjoy this episode and let me know what you think. Rachel, thanks so much for joining us on the show. Thanks for having me. Absolutely. I wanted to give a little context, but maybe from your perspective of how we met, because I think it's important because we're going to talk about that a little bit, but maybe you can give a background how our conversation started how we met each other. Okay, I know it was, I think, on the comment sold Facebook VIP. I think and I don't remember what I posted to be honest. I remember maybe in a comment, asking you, I'm assuming you work for a comments hold or you just really know a heck of a lot about it. But I was something to do with maybe the app or improving our social media. I had noticed that you seemed like your comments. You had some skills and I wanted to reach out and kind of ask how we could improve from an outsider's perspective. We can criticize ourselves all day long, but it's great to seem like an outsider perspective it was something with experience to see what we need to change. And then our discussion just kind of went on from there about the details and now this. Yes. And I think the main thing that I wanted to summarize from that is that your boutique was after working with several boutiques and clothing brands, you're at a different level. And we're going to talk about that here in a second. I think you can help a lot of people which is why I actually come on the podcast because you achieved a certain level of success that I think a lot of people strive to get to and you did it without a key ingredient, which I think is super crucial. And I'm curious and I have Christian as two to hear some insight into that. So maybe you can give us a little bit of background about your boutique, what it looks like whenever it was starting out in the beginning. And then maybe how it started and then where you're at now. So beginning to now okay, so I honestly to be quite, I came in with zero experience with boutique stuff. I'm also not a super pressy girl. You know, I'm most of the time, making sure we have t-shirts available for Jackson gray so that I can wear comfortable big baggy clothes because I'm a mom and that's kind of what I was going for and we moved we actually got moved to the area where I now Georgia from North Carolina. My husband was in the Marine Corps and we were only supposed to be here for three years. And prior to that, I had done photography for ten years. And if anybody's listening from Georgia, it is hot as Haiti's down here. It is humid. You basically live in a sauna and you're swamped with gnats, nonstop. So photography was just I was over the nap. I was over the sweat during every wedding. I was shooting. I just God called me away from it, and I wanted to meet more people in the community beyond just taking their pictures. And I noticed when I was shopping in town, there's a lot of great boutiques. We have probably 20 plus boutiques in this town, it's insane, because we're our college town. And Georgia southern is here. So there's lots of young, beautiful girls who aren't moms yet, and they've maybe got the great figure to go out and show, you know, a crop tops or they're haven't had a baby yet, so they may be the helmet gained that little mom pooch that some of us have. And I just was not able to find any clothes that fit me the way I liked comfortably that were good quality, where I could go in and feel like the employees weren't judging me for being an older mom with a little bit of curves. And I was like, you know what? That would be awesome. I've always loved business. My dad is a huge businessman and it's just rubbed off on me, my whole life. And I was like, you know, even though I'm not huge on clothes, I love to make women feel beautiful and confident. And so that's kind of initially what started it. And I started in the back of a, I mean, literally the office I'm sitting in right now is probably the same size as my first store. It was very tiny. It was like a giant closet and a walk in closet size store. And I remember when I started it, I was like, all right, my rent is $200 just for this back room. That's nothing, but at least if I sell like, what is that? 8 shirts at $25. I'll least make my rent. That'll be I can handle it, and then we'll grow from there. It took off. We had moms coming in on stop we had college girls who maybe wanted to be a little bit more modest or curvy, college girls who weren't finding stuff in town either. And it just continued to grow from there. And within a few months, I had to move. I think it was only two or three doors down from our store that we started at to a bigger location. We stayed there, maybe not even a year, maybe a little bit over around a year. And we continue to grow and I was like, oh, man, this is an awkward time. My husband was getting medically retired at the time. We actually had got orders to 29 palms, California, and we're supposed to be moving. And I got really scared and was like, oh, I'm not going to be able to make it in California with the clothing differences, the cost, everything we were going to be like an hour away from your closest Walmart. So nothing was going to be biased. I knew it wouldn't work. It was kind of great about it and it was like, God, if you want me to keep the store, you got to show me a sign like do I sell it? Do I manage it from afar for a while? We're about to have to renew our lease, but I don't like this building. We've got to find something else. If we do stay, left the store right after I thought all that and praying and down the street was the store that I was like, man, I wish I could get that store one day. It's gorgeous with lots of Windows. They were putting up for rent signs on the front. And I was like, oh, that is actually that might be my turn, so I called and I was like, you know what? We don't even know what's going to happen with my husband. We knew he was getting medically retired, but we knew he would have to find a job. We didn't know if we'd have to be here or in another state we didn't know. But I just decided to take a leap of faith, rent it out. And after he got medically retired, he found a job here. We were able to stay. And we just continue to blossom where we're at, and this location. And the community here has supported us like crazy. And I think I may have told you this. I think about 75 to 80% of our sales are in store because one of the things you mentioned that I forgot to say, I guess is we had never paid for marketing at all. So we really relied on the community and they showed up, especially when the pandemic happened and we closed for a couple of months. They supported us even our local customers supported us by shopping online. We offered free delivery. So I mean, that's kind of the growth story, and I've just been surprised by the growth every time we grow. I kind of, when shocking when you told me that I was in the successful range, I was like, man, I really didn't even realize because I don't think my focus has stayed on the numbers because that's not what it's about to me. I know numbers are important. Sales are obviously huge and important. But I tried to keep my focus more on the customers. And making them happy, then maybe that's just one of the big steps that's taken off. So I don't know, hopefully that's that's a good story..
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"store" Discussed on The Optimized Store Owner Show
"6 of them to kind of mold your strategy to help take your brick and mortar business online. All right, thank you guys so much for listening to this. If you are a brick and mortar business, and you're like, how the heck do I get this to go online? Please go over to bit Brandon ICO. Shoot us an email. Do you want to start a new project? We'll at least give you some more information about it. And if you're super serious, you would like a 45 minute strategy session about how to take this online. It's completely free. Go to applied up, bit branding dot CEO. You'll pick a time that works for you and then fill out a questionnaire that just answers some few things to help us learn more about your business. And then we'll sit down with you and for virtually more than likely, do something like maybe zoom, and we will cover how.
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"store" Discussed on The Optimized Store Owner Show
"You don't have to tell them, hey, don't come into the store. And that's not the point. It's just giving them more options. And just letting them know. So that way when you launch, you have a much better chance of like, hey, let's get some sales that I think those first three or four sales are so important because they just help boost your morale. I got this website. And now I've got actual sales. So you've got momentum going forward. And that's really what it's for. It's not really to make a bunch of money. It's just to help you get that momentum to tell you that you can do it, which you can. I'm telling you that right now. But just go out there and kind of prime your audience to have them ready to purchase some things online for you and just kind of support you. Yeah. And I think with that, as well, I want to add in another tidbit. When you're looking into building something like this, and Aaron mentioned some of these things about purchasing may become an in picking up in store. These are all things that you can set up through Shopify. And as far as their shipping, so when you're thinking about building this, another big thing to consider is shipping. And looking at different ways that you can do that where right now, a lot of people are doing curbside or pick up, again, that's something that you can do within Shopify. Very easily. And it's free to them. And it just thinking about those options ahead of time will also help you with this whole process. So thinking about weighs on, how do you do shipping? And it could be that you already have some sort of shipment partner like FedEx or UPS or whatever, and you get calculated rates. These are all things that you can connect to with Shopify as well. Yeah, another good option for you is ship stations, not really related to this, but ship station shops like all of them like UPS FedEx, everything USPS. And we'll give you the best rate for us. So a ship station is pretty cool, not an ad. Maybe they should sponsor us, but.
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"store" Discussed on The Optimized Store Owner Show
"Got Paramount plus now at this point. I was just looking at that last night. What show are you currently watching right now or what are you guys bingeing through anything? We used to say Netflix, but I think that's now irrelevant, right? Because we all have everything. So what are you currently binging? I have a month subscription to Disney+ because WandaVision intrigued me, so I binge to that. And then I'm going to try to get through as much of falcon and Winter Soldier as I can before my month expires. So far, it's been pretty good. Oh, I see what they're doing. They're just going to IV drip the marvel content so that just as one series ends. I might glam onto another. So to answer your question, that's what I'm doing. But I myself, one of my favorite things to do is I don't know if it's like an active protest, but sometimes I will watch YouTube on my TV. As opposed to watch TV on my TV. And there's one YouTuber who I personally think is like one of the most compelling storytellers across any platform. He's called the empa lemon it's short for emperor lemon, EMP LE MO N and he does a number of it is a series called never ever. Where he talks about either like a show or a person or a moment in history that under no circumstances could ever be repeated. So I don't know if you guys are big Simpsons fans, but his most recent episode was about how there will never ever be another episode like Homer's enemy, which is like the pivotal episode of Simpsons with Homer clashing heads with Frank Grimes. I love that series. And I know that doesn't sound like a streaming service thing, but you know, that kind of content is in competition with Disney. And I just wanted to get that content shout out because some of those episodes I rewatched like three or four times because the storytelling is so compelling. Yeah, I think you're on to something there in general, right? Which is that the more that we find community or niches like with what we like. So you and Christian could definitely watch WandaVision and stuff like there's that community of people there, right? So they're good at Disney+. Then there's another group of people who are community. They just love maybe they're old TV shows, so they found them on Netflix and they're gonna watch just that. So everybody now has the choice. It's not just like cable where we had this is what was available to us..
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"store" Discussed on The Optimized Store Owner Show
"So for the video, it's like underneath the desk that makes something like what we have like an actual drawer. But what kind of products are people using or are they starting? Are they doing it more so for problems that they have? Or is it just something they know about? Or how exactly are they picking products to? Yeah. And one of the things about scaling upwards is to try to not come so much from the view of being a fellow consumer, but you do have to be a marketer. And I think the key thing of being a marketer is being a thought leader. And not only looking for the solution to the problem, but looking for the problem as well. Life, for instance, with the self stake in drawers, is that people didn't really like, I don't know, people don't really think about that because we just our desk is everything on it. And so there is the immediate solution. And then there's the underlying philosophy behind it, which is how do we rethink the space around us? What if we can find the things that we can stick to our walls, stick to our ceilings? Now I have not only marketed a product, but I've also engaged people intellectually in a way that they haven't considered before, which by the way, this is mainly hypothetical. My store is rather slow going. I'm a bit of a slow learner. But that's okay. Now, as for a lot of the people that I've talked to, there are some niches that are proven effective. Pets is a fantastic niche. Everybody wants to take good care of their pet pets are highly emotional niche and we just, I don't know, maybe maybe dogs or cats aren't as discerning as human beings. I guess it does depend on the breed to some extent. But solving problems for pets is the same thing as like are you concerned about maybe your pet does your head like to go out at night? Maybe there's a way to put a little bit of the spark a sparkling keychain on there just so that they have a little more visibility. That's just me kind of like pulling an item out of thin air. So pets are big. Babies is another one. You'll notice that emotionality is a through line here. Parents are very enthusiastic and are highly emotionally connected to their child. So they want to do everything that they can to raise their child. Not only safe, but also happy, whether that's a toy or one product. I remember seeing quite a while ago during some may onboarding was this a cereal bowl that had a gyroscopic handle to it so that no matter how the baby was moving the bull around it would always stay even the reducing but not preventing spilling. Jewelry is pretty good too. The margins on Julie were quite good. The issue is packaging and preference. It's a very different thing to wear the jewelry and still be satisfied with it. So it can work, but there are a can be tricky. Some of it is also just observing what's going on in the world. I'm not the first person to talk about the coronavirus even today. And to and so in the last year, how have the trends changed? There's a lot more DIY. There's a lot more people trying to do things on their own. So you can see some increase in say home gyms, for instance, more people working out.
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"store" Discussed on The Optimized Store Owner Show
"Source the orders from there. So it wasn't like we had one direct supplier. We weren't getting it directly from the luxury watch companies. We were getting it from the authorized dealers. And here's the beauty of it. The authorized dealers, many of which it being the Washington were from the old school mentality. And it didn't really occur to them to even have a website let alone be participate in ecommerce as it is now. And so what the company was doing is they would reach out to these authorized dealers and explain what's going on and say, look, some of these watches, you're having a hard time moving. But we have a global market at our disposal. If you are willing to source through us, then we can get that product moving, whereas otherwise we would have just been sitting collecting test. So the point there is that I think most people have participated in ecommerce in some way. And I think if you just take the broad look at it, it is all just commerce at this point. At what point are we going to understand that we no longer need to separate the Internet side from the mortal side? It's pretty much the same now. Absolutely. So I think you can probably shine a light on a lot of things here. And I'll do my best. Okay, yeah, we're setting the stage pretty high here. Or the bar weather. So what I would think, what I would be interested in is there's so many different Shopify themes, right? So what's the difference between you guys have been around, you guys obviously have a team? What makes it beautify different? What have you guys figured out from using your theme compared to others? I think at the end of the day, people wanted to make sure that it looks good and it has a good conversion rate, but what kind of sets you apart? What do you guys seeing in the industry as far as Shopify themes right now? Sure thing. That's a great question. Some of it is value. There are a number of add ons right now. We have 40 41 add ons available. And a lot of these add ons will parallel an app that somebody else might have to install separately, which increases management could make things a little bit messier on the back end, but also could increase prices too. So while a lot of them are free, oftentimes in order to scale, what you end up happening is what ends up happening is a number of those apps will then have to scale in terms of are you using the free plan? Do you have to use the master plan? You have to use a grandmaster deacon plan. Well, now all of those apps have increased in price as well. So over time, instead, if you just upgrade to one of the more premium plans on beautify, you actually save exponentially the more you scale..
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"store" Discussed on The Optimized Store Owner Show
"Is spam. Then you know the equilibrium for you probably is at 30 now. Hey so owners are you ready to grow and scale your online business predictably and profitably? We've created a free 15 minute training that will walk you through the 5 key areas every online store needs to achieve financial success. You can grab the free training by going to optimize store owner dot com slice E comm training or clicking the link below in the DuPont's description. Again, that is optimized, store owner dot com slash E comm training..
The Optimized Store Owner Show
"store" Discussed on The Optimized Store Owner Show
"Theater, the volume was too loud. It was painfully loud. Like painful. Like we had to close your ears and you know, that movie, I don't know if you saw it, but I like half saw tenant because I only saw half of it because we left because it was so painful. And we like complained like three times, we went to the people were like, can you guys check the volume in this and we were convinced we weren't crazy. I was with two other people. We all were looking at each other. Like, this is insane. So I've seen tenant. I haven't gone back to actually watch it again, because I wanted to see it in theaters. And yeah, that was a brutal. That was a brutal experience. So I have to still have to see it. For what I saw, I liked it, but I also felt like I was being tortured the entire time. So it was a little I feel like I heard about that not just being a problem for that theater, but it was all good in general for that movie was kind of wonky. Okay. All right. So it's kind of interesting. Yeah, suspicious of that too. I was like, I can't believe they'd be messing it up this bad, but they were definitely messing it up. But I also look suspicious that something was going on. I was like, I don't know, it seems a little intense, like, too intense. Like we've all seen inception, super intense, but watchable and great and powerful. Sometimes weird's gone out with tenant. I don't know. Yeah, I've seen it in his entirety. And it's weird. Yeah, it's good. It's good, yeah? It's one of those that you have to watch, you know, three or four times to truly get the whole thing, I guess. But I didn't do that. I just went to YouTube and started watching a bunch of you know explained. Yeah. I got to revisit..
The Optimized Store Owner Show
"store" Discussed on The Optimized Store Owner Show
"It's nearly a service as much as it is a product company, I get this kind of sometimes how I think of it. To me, everything they just talked about were some of the key characteristics that made me buy. One of those key components that made me buy the actual coffee wasn't just because you were on our show. I mean, yes, that could play a part, but at the same time, I think it was the article on Instagram from the river journal where you kind of compare the complexity of the different flavors of coffee to wine, I drink wine, so that resonated with me. And then you also talked about how people should buy coffee as a produce on a grocery store. And then yeah, when you were talking about the freshness and then when I found out that, yeah, it's also like, I'm not just buying it, and, you know, it's been on a pouch or whatever, I don't know. It's something that's fresh. It could be sometimes where I don't know maybe you're waiting a couple, a little bit longer, but you know that you're just waiting for that bats that it's getting a small batch. That also cut my attention. So there was definitely a lot of little things subtle things here and there. That made me like, huh, I actually do want to try this. And when we talked about the Newton's flavors and the fruitiness and less of that burnt tasting. I was like, okay, I feel like most of my life, the coffee that I have tried, it's always just that burnt flavor of coffee or overly crane with a lot of creamers and milk and sugars and all that kind of stuff. And I would say the last thing and I think this is where your photographer background comes in is I don't think I've ever seen cold brew coffee on a delicate wine type glass looking thing with ice in it. That was like, this looks like wine to me. I don't know. I'm very excited to try it. Yeah, well, thank you for touching on all those things. They're all, yeah, that's definitely like I just kind of do things differently when it comes to this, you know, the cold brew space. I genuinely think that there's that there's not a place for a serious coffee drinker to be to be participating in the productized version of cold brew right now. You either make it at home or you go buy something at the grocery store and find out that it's underwhelming, and you're like, oh, well, I guess I can't buy these bottled products or these canned products because I don't think they're very good. And I think that there's just like I honestly think that in a few years, everyone will be doing what I'm doing because you can and these products shouldn't be sitting around on shelves for a long time. There is an actual legitimate all business aside and I'm a purist in this regard. Either it should be fresh and great or it just shouldn't happen at all. Or you can make it yourself. Don't buy a product. Don't interact with any business, just like buy.
The Optimized Store Owner Show
"store" Discussed on The Optimized Store Owner Show
"Prior to that, it was very very experimental. It was like taking glass bottles and wrapping them in a ton of bubble wrap and crossing my fingers and in almost every case it worked out, but it wasn't really a sustainable method. And I knew that from when I was doing it, but I just kind of had to go through those motions to be able to find out the next thing. So yeah, so I landed on that, which works well for me. And it keeps it nice and fresh. It's not fragile. So that's important, of course. And it's relatively light. So, you know, kind of some of the key attributes that you want with like a mailing type product. I think that that particular packaging works really well for that. But yeah, so I see that being a really core product even moving forward. I feel like I kind of landed on that in a good place. Some kind of working on branding that a little more and working on that specific thing. But yeah, everything kind of before this has been a bit experimental and then not really not leaning into a too heavily knowing that in two weeks I might find something better. So I don't want to order a 10,000 quantity or I don't want to get a bunch of graphic design work done because I might be on to the next thing in a few weeks or a few months. So yeah, that's been an interesting iterative experimental process. That's pretty cool. That's a good approach to do what you're doing especially starting out and kind of getting your feet with what it works, what doesn't work, and like you said, I mean, me as a graphic designer, I would fool in on like, yeah, so it doesn't make it look beautiful. And all this, but I like how you're kind of stepping back a little bit and saying, let's figure this out, nail it down, make sure that we actually have a product and be able to ship it correctly and be enjoyed correctly. And then kind of worry about those other things. I think that's really cool. Yeah. It's a philosophy that's born out of I mean thinking a lot, but also out of necessity, it's kind of it keeps things cheaper in some regard. Making less mistakes. So just being conservative about the way, because again, this is a self funded project as of now. I have a lot of resources that I could tap into from myself, which we'll talk about. I'm sure I do photography work as well. I do some graphic design work. I do some website where I'm kind of this Jack of all trades, which was part of the my interest in small business..
The Optimized Store Owner Show
"store" Discussed on The Optimized Store Owner Show
"Number one, how to stop the scroll on Facebook and Instagram to lower your cost to acquire a customer. Number two, why piss the Lake would continue to thrive even if you took away all of their social advertising. And number three and how to build a brand that continues to grow without giving a discount. All right, y'all I know you're going to love this episode, so let's get into it. All right, hey Ryan, thanks so much for jumping on the optimized owner podcast really excited to chat with you. Yeah, thanks, man. I'm glad to be here. Awesome. So Ryan is the CEO of a pistol. We'll get into a little bit more of that here in a second. But just real briefly, what is pistol Lake? We ethically manufacture men's clothing in Los Angeles. Everything we do, we cut dyes, so manufacture all right here in LA. And everybody that works at the factory works in a safe environment. They're very much still sweatshops in the U.S. and we certainly do not have one of those. Everybody gets paid over minimum wage. They all have healthcare. And we make things out of organic cotton, French Terry and kind of some just regular basics. But what we're really stoked about is the fabric uday that we've invented that's made out of recycled water bottles and eucalyptus. And what's rad about it is that it kind of has all the bells and whistles of like a Nike drive it, like a wick sweat doesn't get stinky, it doesn't wrinkle. But instead of kind of looking technical or like a gym item, it just looks like regular clothes. That's I mean, you're literally describing what I want. I went to a shield, which is like a local sports store. I don't know if you heard of them or not. But I went there and I was like, I want something that looks professional for the office, but I'm an athlete, I guess, as by nature or whatever I like to be active and not always and I love the feel of that clothing..