Lightning-50 Podcast

Transcript highlights:

• “We launched the business in April 2020, the week the world went into Covid lockdown. It was a very lucky time to be launching an e-commerce business and it’s been a really exciting growth journey ever since. We started as a direct to consumer business, but we now sell in Sainsbury’s, Waitrose, Boots and now also internationally in Germany, France and the Netherlands.”
• “It’s great to be featured on the Lightning 50. There’s been a bit of luck on timing but I think a lot of it comes down to having a great team. They’re really passionate about our mission, really focused on delivering a great product to our customers. A big part of our growth strategy is focus – so we’ve just tried to do one thing. You get an aluminum case and you get biodegradable refills, and that’s all we sell.
• “We’ve constantly using customer feedback and insights to improve our product. We’re on our seventh iteration and we’re constantly tweaking things to make sure we become the best we can be in deodorant before we move on to other products. That’s definitely helped us grow so far. Plus, sustainability is a really big macro trend – people are looking for easy options where they don’t have to compromise and hopefully Wild is fulfilling that need in the market.”
• “About 50% of our business is subscription-based which makes buying deodorant something people don’t have to think about. We deliver them in a large letter format that fits through your letterbox and you get three refills at a time. It means we can reduce the price and be competitive for a natural product compared to what people might be used to paying for deodorant.”
• “We’re operating in a market that’s been crying out for innovation for a long time. A lot of the brands feel quite dated and gendered. Many are focussed on how long they can work for and I think people now don’t necessarily want to use the chemicals that stop you smelling for a week. If natural products can work on a par then people are willing to give it a try. That inquisitiveness has helped us and then it’s been down to us to make the product good enough to keep our customers coming back.”
• “Growing any business at over 300% in a year is challenging and hard to predict. Our operations team has to work really hard to keep up with demand and our growth rate. It might seem like growth is linear but it’s actually more like a squiggly line. We have quite dramatic ups and downs – you’ve gotta hold your nerve a little bit when things aren’t going well, and make sure you don’t get too carried away when things are.”
• “We have a simple technology stack. We use Shopify and we use Recharge, which handles the subscription side of the business. We use Brightpearl for all of our inventory planning and software management. We use an analytics company called Conjura to kind of help us with our data insights.”
• “In the future we’ll focus on building on our existing tech and not over-complicating it. I think we’ll try the US but it’s a very scary market and there are a lot of challenges there, so I think we would go into it with our eyes wide open and be very patient. It would add a lot of complexity to our business but it’s a huge market with lots of opportunity, so it would be silly not to find ways to navigate that.”
• “We’re working towards B Corp accreditation. I really feel if you’re gonna be a sustainable brand, then you’ve got to walk the walk. Like anything in business, it’s about prioritizing the big things, the things that really matter, have the big impact, and then optimizing the small things once you’ve done that.”
• “Ranking in 5th place on the Lightning 50 is testament to our team’s hard work. They’re really young, super ambitious, and you know, they should be really proud of it. But we’re also very grounded. We won’t get too carried away – what we can do in the long term is more impressive than what we can do on a year to year basis.”

Transcript highlights:

• “Unisex has been big thing in the last few years, but we’ve been unisex for nine years. We’ve prevented ourselves from going into shoes or jeans and stuff like that. We’ve just kept things streamlined with affordable unisex clothing that’s really easy to wear.”
• “A platform called ASOS Marketplace, which is for independent clothing brands, was key to our early growth. We ended up becoming the number one independent brand on it and things took off for us. But all of a sudden we were getting thousands of orders and we would wake up at 4am and go to bed at one o’clock in the morning. It was a steep learning curve.”
• “You think growing rapidly is gonna be like ’this is amazing’ but actually it’s terrifying. You’re just trying to put the fire out. It was definitely a pretty rough few months. I used to have to manually enter the address for every single order into a shipping system and then print the label off myself.”
• “We’ve been with Shopify from day one and I still think it’s the number one e-commerce platform – you just can’t go anywhere else but Shopify. We also use Brightpearl. It integrates with Shopify so easily and it’s easy to use like Shopify. It was a perfect fit for what we needed to do. Brightpearl has been a massive help – we don’t know what we would do about Brightpearl, it just makes our life much, much easier.”
• “We’ve been working hard on developing the website. We have a product launch coming up and we’ve managed to create a way to push that collection live on the website with ‘coming soon’ banners, but prevent any customers from buying it. We can then run Facebook and Instagram to the collection page. It creates hype before a collection drops.”
• “We’re also using a tool called Rebuy which is an onsite personalization tool. It pops up after you’ve paid to say ‘here’s an item that you might wanna add to your cart’. It really helps us increase average order value so that’s really cool.”
• “The two crucial things for maximizing growth are people and planning. Make sure you’ve got a strong and committed team around you and then plan as much as possible. There’s so many curve balls that life can throw but if you’ve planned, you’ll still get there one way or another.”
• “It’s amazing to feature on Brightpearl’s Lightning 50 and we’re really grateful to have that. We’re really enjoying growing our business for sure. I was shocked to be honest. I didn’t even know we compared that favorably.”

Transcript highlights:

• “We like to say FRW is the world’s most sustainably-made rave fashion. That’s arguably a pretty small segment of the apparel industry, but also arguably the most fun! We really enjoy what we do, making clothes for people that go to music festivals like Coachella and Glastonbury.”
• “Me and my now wife Alyssa started the business after going to festivals together. Alyssa made us outfits and people were always asking where we got them. We decided to start an e-commerce brand. I remember in school seeing the graphs of e-commerce adoption over the next 10 years and being like, well, clearly that’s a pretty safe space to go. So all those things led to the moment of us being talented enough and hardworking and competitive enough to just take the risk and start the business.”
• “We invested just over $300,000 in new sustainable equipment on the manufacturing side in the middle of the pandemic because we knew it was the way out, especially with supply issues. We also focussed on building a community of followers. Then when society started to open up and festivals started again, it was like a rocket engine was attached to the business – it’s just been absolute growth ever since.”
• “Inventory Planner was a key investment for us. The insight into what’s selling quickly alongside our ability to quickly create new items meant we could start doing weekly collection drops. That accelerated this really awesome growth.”
• “We know exactly which products people are really responding to because Inventory Planner is connected to Google Analytics and Shopify – these things have come together to turbocharge our growth.”
• “People resonate with our commitment to sustainability. You can have the best inventory planning system on the planet but if people don’t like your stuff, it doesn’t matter. We have a 48% retention rate currently and around 26% of our customers come back and make a second order within 30 days.”
• “There’s a lot of really exciting technology coming to the market and audiences are tuned into that, specifically things around artificial intelligence being able to understand the customer experience using natural language. That would mean they could answer a question in an even more relevant way than maybe a Google search. We’re currently working on integrating an open AI dolly for an image generator that we then use to print on our products. That’s really cool and exciting.”
• “Being named on Brightpearl’s Lightning 50 is definitely positive reinforcement. But there’s still a lot of work to be done. So it’s cool to get the validation and we will continue to provide the best products possible to our customers and we will certainly have as much fun as possible doing it.”

Transcript highlights:

• “In the beginning I would take the product to garden shows but I got quite disheartened standing in a rainy field and sometimes selling absolutely nothing so after a couple of years we pivoted online with a £1,000 e-commerce site. We started spending with Google and within the first six months we’d maybe spent £3,000 pounds on advertising and generated £60,000 in sales. The website has driven our growth ever since.”
• “We were initially limited by the amount of physical inventory we could keep. In the first five years, we had to turn advertising off in our peak season because of over demand, which was kind of great but also frustrating.”
• “We now hold a very significant inventory – maybe 50% of our forecast sales for the next year. That gave us flexibility during the pandemic and meant we could offer a speedy service to 95% of people. We weren’t having to say order now and we’ll deliver in three months. Everyone was totally overloaded so delivery times took a little bit longer, but consumers were perfectly happy to accept that because of the one off nature of the pandemic situation.”
• “Because of Brexit, we had to stop shipping from the UK into Europe in February 2021. I had to find a solution which was ultimately incorporating a new company in Europe. That was a massive challenge, but the result is that in 2022 our European sales were 40 or 50% higher than they were in 2020 – we’ve had massive growth in Europe. Brexit has meant we’ve had to invest in Europe, which is kind of ironic.”
• “Our front end is the main technology that’s driven our growth. We re-platformed from Magento to a German platform called Shopware. Our web store is driving 90% of our sales. The other 10% comes from marketplaces including Amazon. So our orders come from our website and go into our ERP (Odoo) and then out to our warehouses.”
• “One of our major USPs at Lazy Susan is that we have a huge amount of user generated content – about 95% of all the images on our website are user generated customer photos. We donate 10% of our profits to charities and every time we receive a photograph we donate a minimum of about £20 to charity. Last year we donated somewhere around the region of £130,000 to a variety of different charities. We try to stimulate the user generated content because we end up with images that we simply couldn’t replicate with a professional photographer.”
• “About 20% of our orders are from repeat customers and we’ll be really working hard on increasing that next year. We plan to slightly reduce our marketing spend and focus more on CRM. We’ll be using Klaviyo to find ways to retain customers, despite currently only having a very narrow product range.”

Transcript highlights:

• “We rely heavily on e-commerce – about 80% of our sales are coming through our two websites in the UK and the US, but since the beginning of this year, we’ve branched out quite heavily into B2B. We’ve started selling through Nordstrom in the US and John Lewis in the UK, both of which have been very, very successful and very quickly shifted our revenue mix.”
• “We have never been people to look too closely at our competition. I think if anything we were always worried that we might just copy their mistakes. Instead, we’ve tried to do things our way and that definitely helped along the way. But, while it meant we were able to think outside the box, it also meant there were some things that we should have been doing earlier, such as SEO. We didn’t have a background in SEO so we avoided it for the first few years. Then we hired an SEO expert and our organic search volumes have gone through the roof – it really has shown us just how much opportunity there is.
• “There’s a number of things that we did quite unusually – hiring a CFO as the first employee is probably not what most businesses would do. Usually a CFO is probably one of the last hires that you would look at. But one of the things I did very early on was ask: are our unit economics scalable? We said ‘if we’re gonna scale this, let’s scale this profitably’ so we made some early changes which helped.“
• “We want to be a brand where organic is the main drive of growth, where customers recommend our products to their friends and family because they’re good products and they had great service. At the end of last year, we changed our customer acquisition strategy. It meant the first six months of this year were incredibly stressful but we’ve managed to achieve 60 to 70% organic traffic to our website, which was probably the inverse last year, so we’ve seen a big change very quickly.”
• “Like most modern brands, we’re using a whole myriad of different platforms. I’d say Shopify is definitely at the center of it all for us – it gives us the flexibility to plug in different solutions and upgrade solutions very easily when the time has come. We used to use Klaviyo for CRM but we realized as part of our shift into more organic channels that we needed to upgrade to Ometria for more flexibility and functionality.”
• “We’re currently doing a massive push into upgrading our demand forecasting as well as our merchandising function. A lot of this currently sits in spreadsheets – but it can be done better by technology.”
• “To be ranked 24 in Brightpearl’s Lightning 50 is amazing. We’ve done so much work and having these milestones really validates that our hard work is paying off. It’s not just hard work for the sake of it, but it’s actually taking us places and probably at a faster rate than other companies, which is very exciting.” 

Transcript highlights:

• “It’s been a crazy few years of growth for us! The business was started in 1992 by my parents on a bit of a shoestring and it grew organically until I joined in 2011 and we took it online. It’s grown from a team of around six people to more than 50, thanks to our online growth especially since 2019. ”
• “We used to think being based down in the depths of Devon was a barrier to growth because of logistics and staffing and things like that. But actually it’s become one of our big strengths because we can get our heads down, focus on what we are doing, and not get dragged down by focusing on our competitors all the time. But ranking in the Lightning 50 is like reading a bit of positive customer feedback – it really makes all our hard work and late nights worth it.”
• “Coming out of the pandemic we had to keep a close eye on how demand might slide plus we had to deal with the supply chain problems. It was really a case of keeping up and adjusting and we’ve continued to grow, so we’re really pleased about that.”

Transcript highlights:

• “In the last three years, we’ve really focused on e-commerce. We’re actually one of the few companies in our space with a 100% e-commerce model. That’s been key for us.”
• “The business started out from a small warehouse and on the first day we shipped about four packages. Our goal was to be in strategic locations and we’ve since expanded to  Cincinnati, Las Vegas and Jacksonville, Florida. And we’ve come a long way – just this last month we’ve shipped approximately 16,000 packages.”
• “We’ve invested heavily in our marketing, including SEO and PPC. We also attribute a lot of our growth to our huge returning customer base – we ensure we take care of them. We’ve previously done phone-backs on every order, just to say thanks for ordering with us, and that’s something which customers don’t forget and keeps them coming back”
• “We’ve been able to work on controlling some costs to keep our revenue in lock and step with our gross sales. It means we aren’t just seeing sales shoot up but not seeing our revenue increase. It’s helped us grow our team – and the business.”
• “Before Brightpearl we used to just kind guess how much stock we needed – we never truly knew. Our inventory management was very messy and inaccurate. Brightpearl keeps our inventory accurate – it’s been a game changer.”
• “We love technology. We’re looking at adding technology to allow our customers to do more customization as well as loyalty stuff and things we can do to make the customer experience better. That’s where our focus is right now: working with developers and our tech stack and saying ‘all right, how do we get better?’”
• “To have ranked in 14th place on the Lightning 50 as a business from Fargo in North Dakota is pretty cool. We’re certainly honored to be in that position.”

Transcript highlights:

• “Kick Game started nine years ago but our growth has truly been phenomenal in the last three years. Essentially we’re an omnichannel sneaker reseller – we have a Shopify online store and six physical stores in the UK, and in recent years we’ve been really focused on our product and marketing to help us grow.”
• “During Covid we grew a lot faster than we thought – my operations team were holding down the fort as the orders came through. There’s been a shift towards athleisure and streetwear becoming more high-end fashion, and that’s trickled down into sneakers globally – in the US and the UK. It’s a combination of hip hop music and the rap scene fuelling it; customers seeing talented artists wearing sneakers, so that’s organically fuelled us from an economic standpoint.”
• “We’ve really focused on online content through different channels. So it was the digital side combined with a real life focus that has helped us a lot. Over the last 24 months we’ve really evolved our website and we’ve been gearing up for when the retail world finally goes back to normal. We always knew people would come back to the high street, so we wanted to lead with digital but also gear up for the fact that real-life retail was still important. We’re using our physical stores to engage with our customers and create in-store digital content and encourage user-generated content; basically pushing those two sides so that they coalesce from a marketing perspective.”
• “We started our first YouTube shows at the start of Covid. Our Covent Garden store closed, which we’d just fitted out – so we set up a pop-up and used that space as a way to connect with our customers and community. We started a show called ‘Just In’ – promoting what was hitting that week in terms of sneaker drops, hidden gems, etc. One of the Founders is close with a number of rappers such as Fredo, so we got him into the store, for example. The Youtube show format has been done in the US, but we wanted a British take on it, and the show has really developed in the last few years – it’s entertaining but comedic and we have fun with our guests. Tiktok has been very successful for us as well but Youtube has definitely been our main point of focus in the last few years.”
• “We grew faster than we expected and that was a huge challenge for the operations team and tech team – all the systems supporting our growth were very strained, so we had to scale quickly. We were using external developers and now we’re setting up our own in-house team so we could keep up with demand while also filling the gaps, operations-wise.”
• “Once stores reopened we had to move quickly – so there’s also been challenges around that, in terms of recruitment and ensuring our team really pulls together and is passionate about what we’re creating. We’re 150 strong now and when the team feels they can step up, we feel invincible, so after what we’ve experienced we now know we can get through huge challenges and be really proud.”
• “Christmas is approaching so things seem less daunting now we have a strong team to get us through. The economic climate makes things interesting – it’s going to have an impact but we seem to be in a category that’s a bit insulated. Our customers are prioritising footwear it seems, perhaps because a lot of our base is younger customers that still live at home, so thankfully we are heading into Christmas with a lot of positivity.”
• “Over the last 12 months we’ve really relied on tech to support our growth. Because of the unique nature of our business we have to track every single pair of shoes, know where it is, who it belongs to, and what we bought it for – so there’s been a lot of work linking the website and ERP system behind the scenes. We’ve recently expanded into the EU – which we pulled back on post-Brexit but now we’ve done a lot of work to set up a warehouse over there and have systems there as well. WMS systems don’t really fit our business model so we’ve got an advanced inventory system to carry out a lot of processes for us.”
• “Having an in-house development team has helped massively, we’ve found that completely remote teams don’t work for us entirely – the day-to-day challenges we have in retail are sometimes better investigated in person.”
• “It’s fantastic to have made the Lightning 50 – I knew our numbers were strong but didn’t realise we’d rank so highly. The founders and myself are over the moon. It’s a huge pat on the back for our team and a huge cause for achievement and we’re having some drinks for it tomorrow night.”

Transcript highlights:

• “We’re an Irish-founded athleisure company founded in 2017 with three co-founders – and it’s been a bit of a whirlwind five years. I don’t think we planned for Brexit and a once-in-a-century pandemic when we launched, but the brand is all about the mission to make life richer and build a community around exercise and socialising, so it managed to cut through. We’re not a gym, per se, and we don’t really sell coffee – but those two aspects of our name encapsulate the notion of socialising through exercise.”
• “It’s a direct-to-consumer model so we spent almost two years purely online, then opened our first pop-up store. Turns out, people really like pop-ups and the omnichannel experience. Fast forward a few years and we have 11 stores across the UK and Ireland. It’s been hectic navigating the changes but it’s also been amazing, what we’ve achieved.”
• “In terms of our core foundations, the DTC model is crucial. We don’t have any wholesale relationships; our growth has been achievable because we have a direct relationship with all our customers. With the supply chain issues and delays that occurred last year, we could communicate that directly to our customers without relying on another entity to do it for us.”
• “Covid helped. We put a lot of things into practice when the opportunity was presented to us, but we are under no illusions – we were lucky that cultural trends around Covid lent themselves to our brand. Our mission and passion to socialise around exercise; it was very difficult to do that over lockdowns. We weren’t just talking to our customers about products but about staying healthy and staying connected to people, so that really helped us get our message across.”
• “Our other core brand value is sustainability. We are on a challenging and long road to becoming a B corp and we’ve made that part of our messaging. We are not yet a fully sustainable company – but we are very up front about the steps we have taken to improve sustainability across our team and through in-house processes as well as supply chain and so on. All of those things have bubbled together and we’ve become a brand that seems to be resonating with people.”
• “Our marketing strategy includes events, e-commerce, digital growth and community – all growth levers and forms of acquisition. We’ve done a huge amount of analysis in the last 12 months and we can see the value of customers that come through our events for the first time. Customers that are omnichannel are more high-value than an online only or just a store customer. We’ve found that when a customer has that full breadth of brand experience, they’re more likely to be a huge fan of the brand.”
• “It’s hard to measure but we’ve been running events since year one of the business, we’ve run over 300 events for our community. It’s nice to be able to tell now, through the data, that it’s not just part of our passion and brand vision but it actually contributes to the business, brings customers in and creates more revenue.”
• “My multi-faceted role is more of a reflection of how people want to interact with brands now. Everyone needs to understand the customer journey – from an event to an e-commerce experience – and make sure everything along that customer route is working together. There’s elements of community to my role but it also includes events, e-commerce, digital growth and marketing – it covers all touchpoints of the business.”
• “Supply chain is a constant challenge – I bow down to our supply team and how they keep on top of everything. When everyone thought the world was going back to normal it wasn’t, supply chain wise. There seems to be a levelling out now, which is great as we approach such a busy time of year – but it has been a rollercoaster.”
• “We try to follow best practices when it comes to digital marketing. Everything is built on Shopify then we use Klaviyo for CRM segmentation and email flows etc – that’s been crucial to growth and being able to scale. The business has just got to that level where you need bespoke tech, which is where you get into fun things like ERP implementations and so on – and we’re understanding that at certain stages you need additional robust platforms to field the growth. It’s great getting demand – but if you’ve no way of meeting it, you’ve shot yourself in the foot.”
• “Last year we reached approx £20M in revenue, the majority of which was online. The retail stores play a crucial role – there’s a lot of people who want that touch and feel relationship, and to make sure they’re comfortable with sizing – but the really encouraging thing is that omnichannel person. When their first interaction is a store or event, they become a more valuable prospect online. So we’ve accrued a lot of very valuable customers with our omnichannel approach.”
• “We’re not looking to expand into every town as I don’t think every location needs a Gym + Coffee – it’s not that kind of utility store – it’s more about whether the location will draw use. There’s a running group in Liverpool who come to the store on a Wednesday evening, leave their stuff there and meet afterwards. They’re intended more as community hubs and we host events there too, to fulfil that promise we make through our marketing and online experience.”
• “Black Friday is a crucial period for everyone in our category – a lot of our groundwork all year round is prepping for the last 9 or 10 weeks of the year. We’re not sure, as everyone seems not to be – whether it’s going to work this year. There’s a cost of living challenge all over the UK and Ireland so I don’t think we’re in the same headspace this year. You have to react accordingly, make slightly different plans and stay relevant. Everyone knows there are discounts but if you are a brand that people engage with, you’ll need to offer something more than that.”
• “It’s incredible to have come in the top 10 of the Lightning 50. You have your head down in the early days just to get everything off the ground, and through Covid too. We now have about 180 people working for us – and you might say the recognition isn’t needed, but it really is from time to time. To be ranked against other companies that you admire – it’s important to celebrate those things. To be gaining traction in the UK is a fantastic achievement for us and testament to all the work our team has put in.”

Transcript highlights:

• “We sell direct to consumer, which is a little different to how things have been done in the past in our industry so we back that up with great customer support. That’s one of our differentiators. We sell within the US – we have a distribution center in Kansas City and we leverage a lot of technology to automate some of the time consuming things so that we can keep our team lean and focus on the higher level things that our people are so great at doing.”
• “Ultimately I think our growth is down to focusing on customer experience. It sounds a little cliche, but we believe in treating people the way we would want to be treated. We’ve developed our products to be an end to end system so when people are purchasing the products, they are confident that it’s all gonna work when they go to install for their customer. We have a forever warranty, which proves we stand behind our products. We’re shaking things up and being a little different.”
• “One of our biggest challenges has been the supply chain challenges which happened during the pandemic and continue to linger. That’s affected our customer experience with things being out of stock. To help, we use Inventory Planner – we’ve really been dialing that in over the last six months. We used an Inventory Planner consultant to help us configure our settings so that we can plan better because the sales cycle is so long on our product.”
• “We got on board with Brightpearl in early 2019 and we have nothing but great things to say about it. We use the warehouse management system and went through the beta test to integrate with Sage Intacct, so that is key for our accounting and finance. Brightpearl opens up a lot of opportunities as we grow.”
• “Gorgias is a crucial tool in our customer service. It takes customer tickets out of the inbox and integrates with all our social channels. It means our customer service team can work together on tickets and use live chat on the website.”
• “Content has been really important for us. We do a lot of content on our Cable Academy, such as how-to articles, videos, infographics, tips for using our products. That has helped tremendously with SEO and ranking on Google. It’s a way to build brand recognition as well as driving more traffic to our website.”
• “Being recognized in this year’s Lightning 50 alongside some of the major players in e-commerce means a lot. We’ve come a long way in just a few years – we started as a small seller on Amazon and now we could be considered a midsize business. We’ve got more than 20 people on the team and have really scaled in the last few years. It’s one of those things where you look up and think ‘wow, it’s happened so quickly’.”

Transcript highlights:

•       “Quite simply we make awesome-flavoured porky snacks. There’s so much emphasis on exercise and wellness these days, why not just enjoy time with friends and be a bit indulgent? ‘Life is for living’ was our initial vision and we still work on that philosophy.”
•     “What a rollercoaster it’s been! We thought it would be a fairly easy journey, but going through the Covid era and now into an energy and economic crisis. It means we’re always ducking and diving, wheeling and dealing and taking things as they come; it has been a challenge, definitely.”
•     “Our performance brings in about 3M a year. Overall the pork scratching market brings about 28M, so we’re really proud of that. There’s a ceiling for how you can market pork scratchings, though – so we’ve started to sell other flavours like barbecue, and we’ve branched into beers, utensils such as burger flippers and barbecue tongs; complimentary products that align with our brand and core offering.” 
•     “You can’t sell a typical bag of pork scratchings online, so we’ve made it into a gift, created something tongue-in-cheek and truly unique that you can buy either for yourself or for a loved one. We put them in cards, combined with sauces, beers, ciders and peanuts.”
•     “We’re very proud of the fact that we’re omnichannel. We started six years ago with a vision to de-risk as a brand by selling through as many channels as possible.”
•     “The creme de la creme is our Pork Scratching Advent Calendar which got huge PR and great exposure, and was a great way to accelerate our DTC arm. Online has been a really important way for us to show product development, engage with customers and to spread our risk so that during periods of uncertainty like Covid, we’re geared up to sell directly to people rather than rely on supermarkets and supply chains that are outside of our control.”
•     “I don’t think the huge growth will continue as it has – in six years there hasn’t been a moment where it just shot up like a rocket, there’s been a lot of foundational work to get where we are now.”
•     “We thought the way people responded to Covid would continue – it hasn’t, it’s slowed right down. But we’re in a good position to take advantage of changing consumer habits. As people have gone back to bricks and mortar we’re developing that side of our business more – and with the cost-of-living crisis we want to offer desirable items that are of better value to customers. It’s important to evolve the business and not rest on our laurels based on the Covid effect – the market is changing, so we must too.”
•     “We have looked at subscription services – but it’s tough to find someone who wants pork scratchings every month – so we look at it as a gift. We do offer perhaps a three month subscription to give your Dad at christmas, for example, just to make it a bit more consumer friendly and reasonable. It’s about adapting so it suits the customer.”
•     “This year has been interesting to say the least – supply chain was a huge issue. Our industry has very few suppliers and one burnt down recently – the others were unable to access the materials needed because of the Ukraine war. Now the material has started to boost, but cooking our products uses a lot of energy which is sky-high right now in terms of cost. So the brand needs to go through constant evolutions to survive these times – but we are not afraid of changing. Being smaller than the big guys makes this possible, and it’s the reality of being a small business.”
•     “The tech available to support small businesses now is phenomenal. One app we use is Gorgias which interacts with our Shopify website and allows you to prioritise how you communicate with customers. Shopify has been great and how it’s evolving is fantastic. Also, all of our orders also go into an ERP system which allows us to monitor our accounts, CRM, warehouse etc all through one space. The time and money we’ve invested into that has allowed us to really understand profitability, by customer, channel and location, and allowed us to make better decisions we wouldn’t have been able to otherwise.” 
•     “To come 16th and be the winner of the Toys and Gifts category is brilliant. We’ve got a wonderful team who are incredibly dedicated and knowledgeable and work tirelessly day after day. I’m very proud of the team for getting us there.” 

Show Notes | Series 2, Episode 4 | Naturecan

About our podcast
Brightpearl’s Lightning 50 E-Commerce Growth Hacking podcast, hosted by Caroline Baldwin, is a bitesize podcast that gets under the hood of highly successful e-commerce brands to discover the key technologies they are using to power growth.

About our guest
Naturecan is an e-commerce retailer of CBD wellness products based in the North West of the UK. Since launching in 2019 the brand now sells direct-to-consumer on a global scale, and focuses on offering safe, effective and premium hemp-derived CBD products, as well as vitamins and minerals. With an impressive 220% YoY growth level it ranked 6th in the Lightning 50 list of UK brands and was the second fastest-growing Health & Beauty brand in Britain. For this podcast, we spoke to Andy Duckworth, CEO and Founder of Naturecan.

Transcript highlights:

●       “The globalised product is our goal – to branch into USA, Asia and Western Europe – that’s what I’d say is our ‘secret’, as it were. My other tip is to harness your supply chain – getting your products to the customer quickly, and understanding the quality of your product in-depth, in regards to what is going into it at every stage of the production process.”

●      “We focus on people – that’s our customers, as well as our staff and in-house team – and the quality of our product. Those are the two things we pride ourselves on.”

●      “Regarding growth, this year we will top 10M in revenue. The growth behind that is strong, so next year we’re expecting a strong boost in growth again. It’s just hitting global markets – it gives you more opportunities for success. Different markets grow at different rates but putting it all together really boosts revenue.”

●     “We prepare well in advance for Black Friday, Cyber Monday – so going into the golden quarter we’re well positioned to see growth. We plan for it literally all year round; when it’s over, we start planning for next year’s the following day. You’re missing a trick if you don’t prepare fully for this period so we make sure we focus on it.”

●      ”CBD is a strange subset of wellness because Facebook and Google are only just getting used to letting you market it. The more traditional channels are less switched on globally, so we have to improvise. Word of mouth is important, but that only works when customers have used the brand, so I’d consider our customers to be the best form of marketing. Once you’ve attracted customers it’s then vital to continue talking to them via email, informing and educating them about products coming up, etc. to encourage repeat custom.”

●      “The North West is a bit of a hub for e-commerce and there’s some great talent coming from up here – it must be what goes into the water in Burnley.”

●     “Our biggest challenge was the pandemic – it helped us in general but it does impact your freight costs, for example – moving stock around costs more than it used to, marketing costs more as more businesses move online – but we’ve still managed to cut through. It’s been relatively smooth compared to others so we’re lucky in that way.”

●     “We’re using a mix of strong WMS and 3PL software, and excellent integrations to pull stock in – that’s where Brightpearl comes in, as we know exactly where we’re at with stock. Working capital helps a lot, as moving stock costs a lot more these days so having capital helps mitigate that.”

Transcript highlights:

• “I started 15 years ago when I was pregnant with my first child and grew the business to what it is today. As a single mum of three I’m very proud of that. I think working mothers can do anything.”
• “When we first launched it was before e-commerce had exploded. We had diaper bags and crib bedding and literally went door-to-door trying to sell it that way, asking bricks and mortar stores to sell our products. We also went wholesale and to market. As I was pregnant when we started, I actually ended up taking a six week old around New York to sell to stores there for the first time. That was when we got mass merchants like Nordstrom, one of our first very large accounts.”
• “Our biggest transition was four years ago where we went from wholesale model to direct-to-consumer. It was about wanting to talk and communicate to our customers ourselves – rather than have a middle man. Our stores were talking to our mums, and we wanted to have a touchpoint with them. So we started a website, completely closed off our wholesale model and figured out SEO all by ourselves.”
• “These days I could talk all kinds of dorky SEO things with you – and now we have multiple channels on social media, we’ve started our own podcast and a youtube channel, and have great touchpoints with our customers to find out what they’re looking for and what they need. We’ve gone full circle – going from being excited to ship 100 items a day to now; if we’re not shipping 50,000 in a day we’re worried.”
• “We have no bricks and mortar stores – I do own a second company called Nursery Couture which is a freestanding flagship store in Texas. It acts as a focus group where we get to ask mums what’s trending and so on – but aside from that we’re all online. Not to rule out bricks and mortar – there’s something about expecting your first baby and walking into a store and being able to touch and feel things – but for now Caden Lane is completely online.”
• “I always wanted to be an entrepreneur and I traded that 9-5 for a 24/7 job. It is a lot of nights, evenings and weekends as I live and breathe this company. It’s been a rollercoaster with a fair share of challenges but it’s awesome to be recognised for our hard work. It’s been a lot of effort from a lot of people – our whole company is primarily women with some fantastic men, but mostly a lot of working mums and stay-at-home mums. We just bought big new offices in Texas, and our growth is credited to this amazing work family that I’ve built. We’re close to 40 people now.”
• “We’re still growing – the crazy growth started before Covid. A lot of people talked about how Covid affected e-commerce brands – especially in homeware, clothing etc – but we really weren’t impacted hugely, growth wise, by Covid. We were growing already and had great momentum when the pandemic started. We try to stand out from the rest and it’s just been growth after growth.”
• “What makes us different is we only sell through our website, so not through Amazon or Etsy, etc. It’s 100% our own site so we really own the process ourselves and are responsible for the customer experience from beginning to end. I like to think we run a very unconventional business the way we do things – we want to do what feels good to us. Our growth numbers prove I should probably write a business book or have a reality show because clearly it’s worked!”
• “We haven’t done any international expansion yet but have huge demand for it. It’s crazy expensive to have something shipped across the pond and I don’t think that’s fair on our customers – we want mums overseas to enjoy our products at a reasonable price. I’m excited to learn more about the UK and what your parenthood traditions are, and I hope we get to touch even a small market of new mums across the ocean. We hope to do that right after the holidays this year.”
• “Every year Black Friday gets more and more insane – it used to be one day, but now we’ve already launched our Christmas pyjamas (October) which is crazy because it’s still so hot in Texas but people are excited so early on. Taking a cue from last year, we saw a backlog of shipping issues and inventory issues and it was tough to keep up and manage costs. Many had the same problems – there’s no question that costs have increased for every company around the world on multiple levels. We’re managing it as best we can as we want to stay affordable for everybody; that’s very important to me. I want it so that a first time mum who is 25 years old can still afford to give her newborn the best.”
• “We use Inventory Planner to help us project sales trends and give us a forecast for what we’d potentially be selling in the next 60 or 90 days. We’re using it to optimise our run rates for products, watch ageing of products and manage our inventory altogether. This is a conversation our COO would love as he’s obsessed with Inventory Planner.”
• “We use a variety of platforms and apps – we are hosted on Shopify which has all these extensions to different developers who have honed in on different concerns in e-commerce – rewards programs, inventory management, how we use our shipping labels, tracking info. You don’t even have to be a developer to use it, they really make it user-friendly. I studied Marketing in the late 90s and we barely knew what e-commerce was back then. These days you can major in development or coding and it’s crazy to think what might be coming up 10 or 20 years into the future.”
• “What I really want is something that’s not available… I’ve had lots of experience in bricks and mortar retail and what I think e-commerce is not able to replicate is that emotional connection you get when shopping in person. That amazing customer service and help, educating you on what you’re buying. Not chatbots – someone who has passion and is really interested in the product and helping the customer. I really hope there’s an app or software that answers this problem in future.”
• “I love that we scored so highly in the Lightning 50. From a woman’s perspective, working women in general are much more humble about their success. I spend so much time working hard without taking a moment to step back and look at what we’ve done. So I think that means the most to me – the recognition. I think women should be a little bit more boastful and able to say, ‘I’m badass – look what I did’.”

Transcript highlights:

• “Passenger is part of the outdoor industry – which has grown massively in the last few years – amplified by Covid of course. Some European data said the outdoor market for apparel has grown a lot in the last year, and we’ve not seen it slow down. People are still indoors working remotely and they need that outdoor time.” 
• “We see Passenger as a brand for meaningful escapism, getting outside, reconnecting with nature, themselves, their friends – and that’s been our mantra from day one. We make responsible clothing and accessories in that area.”
• “The business has been going for 10 years. I started three years ago with Justin Stone (Executive Chair of Passenger) and we had experience building a brand called Surfdome, which aligned with so many of our ideals around what we wanted the business to be. So we turned it into a DTC business rather than wholesale. In 2019 our revenue was half a million, in 2021 it’s 11 million, so we’ve seen really really strong growth. That’s a result of switching to a consumer e-commerce focus, and building that out.”
• “We always say “Adventure first, product second”. Sustainability along with nature has always been a brand focus. For us it was always a case of wanting to put back more than we took, so we designed and produced everything as sustainably as we possibly could. It’s really hard – there’s a lot of big decisions surrounding what you do and don’t do – but our team even takes the lead on a lot of it, so it’s a bottom up process driven by everyone in the company.” 
• “Sustainability is so important but we want to do it at the right value. We don’t believe there should be a premium price attached to sustainable products; it should be for everyone so we can all make a difference. One of the things we’re aware of is all our little actions can add up. We are not perfect and have a long way to go, but we’re making steps. It’s essential that we keep sustainability in our business DNA.” 
• “We’ve been really lucky with fantastic suppliers so our product is exactly where we want it to be. The challenges over the last 18 months have been operational – shipping costs went through the roof last year, so we had to spend where we didnt want to so we could get products in and sell them.” 
• “We’ve been fully focused on trying to build a technical platform that allows us to grow, because from day one we wanted a sustainable, scalable business. As businesses go through stages of growth, you’ll find one system works at one stage, but at the next stage it doesn’t.”
• “We’ve recently pivoted the business again to be 100% direct-to-consumer, then we opened up wholesale again with John Lewis, so had to integrate other services again. That’s where Brightpearl came in for us as it allows us to plug in to different services and grow easily. It enables us to manage our future direction.” 
• “Our Brightpearl integration was swift, we got it live in 80 days. It helped us manage the wholesalers side but also conduct a big warehouse move very easily. As we look at future growth, whether it’s wholesale clients or opening up around the world – it’s important that we have that essential, central hub where we can manage our orders but also account for them.” 
• “Tech-wise, we’ve been on Instagram since day dot; social in general has played an important role in our customer acquisition but really we’re all about being operationally efficient. For years we’ve worked with Shopify and a WMS called Peoplevox. When systems are tight and work together, we don’t need to hire too many people and can keep our fixed costs low.”
• “The low-code no-code movement is exciting to me – there’s a lot of very interesting stuff around being able to build your own apps using tools like Air Table or Stacker HQ, because it’s hard to find a service that does exactly what you want. It’s better to build it on a low-code no-code basis than use your development team. Companies that enable businesses to build apps and platforms cost effectively will be big, in my opinion.”
• “The Lightning 50 win is great. Everyone sees it internally as a mark of recognition of what we’re able to achieve – but it also shows us what else we can achieve. We see a clear pathway over the next few years to make us into a 100M business, so this is a stepping stone – a marker that we’ve made the right decisions along the way and a validation for everyone involved. But there’s plenty more to come from us.”

Transcript highlights:

• “Fresh beer is the best beer – you can ask any brewer in the world – but until we launched Pinter you couldn’t easily get it at home. It’s crazy that you’d take a single-use container to work but throw away tens of bottles of beer a week because you can only get it bottled. Pinter is a step forward in sustainability in that sense as it’s the only beer in the world that comes through your letterbox. One fresh batch is the equivalent of 17 bottles of beer.”
• “It took us a few years to arrive at the concept, but one of the key things was making sure you could deliver it through a letterbox so you could be at work and still receive it. Companies spend hundreds of millions of pounds trying to deliver to people but you usually have to sign for it. Pinter can come all through the day without signature, so it’s a convenient e-comm solution. Historically beer hasn’t been a great e-commerce fit due to that; it’s been easier to go to the shop – but Pinter solves that.” 
• “A huge amount of work went into inventing the product in the first place, and customer appetite was already massive when we launched. Around 30 days after the launch we were included in a list of best inventions of the year, other press followed, and we were run off our feet from then on. We were ready for it – so I think the key thing was the amount of time spent on development.” 
• “We’re in our second full year but in the first we reached about £6M in revenue. In the last quarter of 2020 we had no stock at all. It was a lot to do in the time we did it in – and immensely difficult to operationally deliver. It was me and just a handful of other people at first and we were physically packing it ourselves, but in 15 months we had 211 staff. In the last year we’ve been focused on building a better business in all senses.”
• “A big challenge for us was we tried to do too much at the beginning. Our revenue was growing enormously but each thing we were doing could have warranted its own department, and we spread ourselves too thin. When we refocused as a business we restructured to build teams, outsourced manufacturing and dispatch – and held onto what was super important to us personally, like product development. One of the biggest learnings for us was realising we couldn’t do everything.”
• “We use Shopify and Klaviyo and get a single customer view powered by our software analytics – so the amount of insight we get about our customers is next level and these systems are massively helpful for that. We don’t want to reinvent the wheel on how we send emails or manage data, but make sure we are really adding value. For our case it’s customer service, and proving how to make the best beers possible with the best tools. We’ve also launched an app about making beer at home – keeping it simple and just focusing on what would benefit our customers.”
• “I used to run music festivals which have strong customer fan bases. With Pinter, something we didn’t see coming was that brewing pints sits at this crossroads between crafts and socialising. This social community just grew and is massively engaged. It’s been amazing for us as they’ve offered a huge amount of support and they really hold us to account to make sure what we do is world class. Without our community we wouldn’t have as strong a business as we do – they really are an invaluable resource.” 
• “Subscriptions allow you to get a better price on your beers – and they’re already competitively priced, so it’s a big saving on high quality beer. Subscriptions have increased a lot for us as a portion of our overall base. Early on, we didn’t have the ability to buy both products and subscriptions in one transaction – now that we do it’s gone a long way to contributing to our popularity.” 
• “We’re a young company, so everything is quite uncharted so far in terms of demand. Christmas is a super busy time for us for both new and existing customers, but we have a strong supply team and have built in lots of resilience. The World Cup is delayed this year so that will be another big event – most people won’t be going but will be watching it at home with friends. So it’s very difficult to forecast the effects of Christmas, this event and our natural growth this year. Forecasting is one of our biggest challenges for the coming season.”
• “This year has been the most difficult year for us as retailers – keeping everything together while we grow so fast and working ridiculous hours – so to get the number one spot in the Lightning 50 is awesome. You work hard seven days a week for so long, and it inspires you to carry on. It makes it all worth it.”

About our podcast

Brightpearl’s Lightning 50 E-Commerce Growth Hacking podcast, hosted by Caroline Baldwin, is a bitesize 15-minute podcast that gets under the hood of highly successful e-commerce brands to discover the key technologies they are using to power growth.

About our guest

Swansea-based Au Vodka is a luxury vodka retailer, and the fastest-growing vodka brand in Europe. Founded by young entrepreneurs Charlie Morgan and Jackson Quinn aged only 19 and 22, in just five years the brand has grown phenomenally, from starting out on the shelves of a few Selfridges stores to becoming a buzzing online sensation worth £2.5M. The retailer stocks its vodka in premium stores such as Harvey Nichols, UK supermarkets including Tesco and online marketplaces such as Amazon, as well as its Shopify Plus website.

Primarily due to its huge social media following, the brand grew an immense 10,170% in 2019/20. For this podcast, we spoke to Jordan Major, Head of E-Commerce at Au Vodka.

Transcript highlights:

•     “In the past three years we’ve seen exponential online growth, and social media is to credit for that. The gold bottle is quite iconic at this point – it’s Instagrammable and works well in the right influencer’s hands.”
•     “We were turning over £29k in 2019, by the end of 2020, £2.5M. A massive factor in this is we react to trends and capitalize on them. We leverage social media marketing and paid ads to build relationships with our audience, rather than simply selling to them and letting them go.”
•       “I was looking at other brands online and how they were marketing themselves. We wanted to replicate that extra level of service and the online perks – but for booze. There’s nothing special about buying from a supermarket, but when you buy from us online you get a unique experience.”
•     “During Covid, people were spending more time on social. So we scrolled through TikTok to see what trends were happening and thought, why not feature influencers with a bottle? Everyone was on furlough, sitting at home with nothing to spend their money on, so why wouldn’t they treat themselves? We used the most appropriate influencers for our brand, like rappers, Love Island stars, even local celebs in Wales. We had a good idea of who to use and at what time.”
• “Growing the e-commerce side involves challenges you don’t think of when you’re a small business – getting your products, marketing and warehouse sorted is something that only becomes an issue when you’re bigger. The sheer number of orders that need packing per day; that upscaling is a huge challenge.”
• “A new bit of tech for us is our WMS [warehouse management system], so we can get insights about stock flow, when things are dispatched, etc. The tech allows us to pack 150/200 orders a day when we were doing 50 before – and like cavemen; with sheets of paper blowing around, manual orders and hands-on packing. Since we brought on a WMS, there’s been a massive increase in productivity.”
• “I was ecstatic when I found out we’d won the Lightning 50 – especially considering the other great brands that were shortlisted. The rest of the company takes the e-commerce team more seriously now we have a couple of awards under our belt!
• “One tip – trust the people in your team, whether that’s four or 40 people. I’d never be able to handle our e-commerce platform now without my staff. Rely on them to help you and let go of doing everything yourself.”
• “We recently switched to Shopify Plus and we’ve seen huge benefits to that. Things you take for granted – like insights, customer reports, sales flows – again are things you don’t consider when small but when you’re bigger they become invaluable.”

About our podcast

Brightpearl’s Lightning 50 E-Commerce Growth Hacking podcast, hosted by Caroline Baldwin, is a bitesize 15-minute podcast that gets under the hood of highly successful e-commerce brands to discover the key technologies they are using to power growth.

About our guest

Holland Cooper is a British luxury lifestyle brand specializing in women’s fashion. Launched in 2008, the brand started out on the events circuit, promoting its statement tweed garments at top events such as Cheltenham Races. Since then it’s built huge popularity in the premium sector for its country-inspired ‘investment pieces’, and operates DTC via its Shopify Plus website, as well as wholesale to independent outlets such as Jules B and Millbry Hill. The brand grew 243% in 2019/20. For this podcast, we spoke to Founder & CEO, Jade Holland Cooper.

Transcript highlights:

•   “British tailoring is at the heart of the business and why I started in the first place. I noticed women tend to buy a luxury key piece but everything else high street – so I wanted our products to be at a price point that meant they could wear everything by us – for walking the dog, riding, skiing, a night out. Our staple garments aren’t intended for a season or trend but much longer.”
•     “In the beginning we were all about the events circuit. It was before social media kicked off, so nothing like now when the website and online has become a central tool and asset to our business. The website is our shop window and the gateway to global sales.”
•     “Our huge growth during lockdown was due to a number of factors. One thing was I started to personally engage with our customers through Instagram, and they started to really connect with our brand and who we are. I became more open about what was happening with us rather than maintaining a polished, ‘closed book’ front. I now respond to every single customer message, even if it’s 400 a day.”
• “In growth you will always face challenges – Covid was an enormous challenge operationally, logistically, from a stock perspective – and we had to manage that as a team. It’s how you learn from those bumps in the road and get better and stronger for the following year. We have great people on our team with real expertise, it’s a collaborative effort – and you have to be able to trust them so you can move forward.”
• “My main advice is when your business is growing, don’t be afraid to change up your systems. Every year you’re almost a different business, so your requirements will be different. Something we’ve been good at is picking systems that will grow with us, and Brightpearl has been great for that. When you’re multichannel there’s a challenge to find a system that fits with everything, but for five or six years it’s been a great connector for us and I think it will continue to be.”
• “We’re also using great tech for B2B like JOOR [a wholesale management platform], because wholesale has grown dramatically for us. There are further things we’re putting in place for other parts of the business, like more advanced warehouse systems, sample development and sample trackers.”
• “As you get bigger, all departments need streamlining systems. You need transparency, connectivity and communication across all of your departments so the business flows seamlessly.”
• “We’re striving to be bigger and better every year and getting the Lightning 50 recognition along the way is fantastic. Our consumers love the brand, we’re extending into overseas markets and it’s an incredibly exciting place for us to be in.”

About our podcast

Brightpearl’s Lightning 50 E-Commerce Growth Hacking podcast, hosted by Caroline Baldwin, is a bitesize 15-minute podcast that gets under the hood of highly successful e-commerce brands to discover the key technologies they are using to power growth.

About our guest

Biscuiteers Baking Company is an online handmade biscuit company in the toys and gifts sector. Founded in 2007, Biscuiteers’ luxury products are currently stocked in John Lewis, Selfridges, Harrods and Fortnum & Mason. The company has also collaborated on bespoke biscuits for the likes of Mulberry, Boden and Burberry. IT recently saw a £1.25m raise on Crowdcube. For this podcast, we spoke to Lauren Juster, the brand’s Sales and Marketing Director.

Transcript highlights:

• “We’ve always thought of ourselves as an ‘online first business,’ that’s how we started. Although our bricks-and-mortar stores have helped us expand the brand, Google is the high street of the world, and it gives you the ability to scale. E-commerce is at the heart of our business and it’s where we see our future growth.”
• “Our USP is that we do iced biscuits – they have to be done by hand. That was challenging operationally when things exploded during the pandemic but, once we got our heads around it, it was a blessing… We were able to be totally agile, able to respond to the trends and demands of the pandemic. We watched the trends and responded to them. We launched a gym bunny collection, ‘date night in’ and DIY kits at various points through the pandemic.”
• “One of the challenges for us has been getting all our data in one place. Having various spreadsheets along with multiple apps and tools wasn’t working for us. It was creating lots of inefficiencies – we were spending time looking for stats to inform decisions we wanted to make quickly. Linking up systems [via Brightpearl] has been fantastic – it’s so important for scaling.”
• “We knew we couldn’t handle another Christmas like the crazy one we had in 2020 without a centralized system in place. We made a conscious decision to find a partner to work with to centralize all our operations. We implemented Brightpearl in just three months. The key was doing it during our down period in the summer months.”
• “We’re toying with the idea of developing an app – so many of our competitors have an app and see success with it. However, apps can be expensive and high risk – we’re exploring a PWA (Progressive Web App), so we can dip our toe into the app world. We already have loyal customers – the app will help us push that forward.”
• “My tips would be to stay true to your business mission and values – going off piste to chase growth won’t give longevity or a brand that customers can connect to. Also, watch the trends in what people are buying. Social media has been a key listening tool for us – you don’t have to go far for customers to give their input. Talking to your customers is a great way to be sure you are creating something people actually want to buy. 
• “It’s super exciting to rank on the Brightpearl Lightning 50 – having the recognition off the back of such a challenging year feels extra special. The Lightning 50 is chock full of exciting brands so to be in their company is the cherry on top – we’re really chuffed.”

About our podcast

Brightpearl’s Lightning 50 E-Commerce Growth Hacking podcast, hosted by Caroline Baldwin, is a bitesize 15-minute podcast that gets under the hood of highly successful e-commerce brands to discover the key technologies they are using to power growth.

About our guest

Founded by Made in Chelsea star Jamie Laing, Candy Kittens is a 100% vegan confectionery retailer. Aimed at the millennial market as ‘vegan sweets for grown-ups’, the company launched in 2012 and has since become the fastest-growing confectionary brand in the UK, and stocks in every major grocery store as well as wholesalers, independents and online. The retailer grew 608% in 2019/20. For this podcast, we spoke to DTC Lead at Candy Kittens, Moynul Hazari.

Transcript highlights:

• “At Candy Kittens, what sets us apart is not just great tasting sweets but having a positive impact on the environment. Sustainability is key for us – we avoid animal gelatin and palm oil, we’re a carbon neutral business, and our pouches are recyclable.” 
• “Our brand has grown organically quite a bit – but when we recognized the potential of online we were lucky that we got investment backing from our MD and the board. The investment went into marketing, customer acquisition, D2C and digital – and also on partnering with some really great agencies that we might not have been able to work with before. It means we have the exact right people with specialist knowledge, and that really helps us to grow.”
• “Another thing that sets us apart is we don’t market our sweets to kids; it’s very much a gourmet treat for adults. Our biggest base is 18-35 year old females. As far as online, we’ve also focused on our product mix. You can just pick up the sweets in-store, but on our website you can make items up as gifts for a birthday or Christmas, so it has that bit extra.” 
• “Having great foundations in place before scaling was absolutely key for us. You really don’t want to be in a position where you’re spending money to drive traffic, then find out you have an issue with supply chain, product, an integration issue, or inefficient customer service. You might get sales in the short term but will suffer longer term with your returning customer rate, so getting the foundations right is essential.”
• “We did a lot of testing and trialling. There’s nothing wrong with failing, but as we always say, ‘Test fast and fail fast’.”
• “We focus 90-95% of our marketing budget on Facebook Ads, and the rest on Google Ads and Pinterest. That comes with its own challenges. The recent IOS update was a big challenge for online businesses; we now have to be more cautious and change our strategy for the long-term to focus on that first set of customer data. But challenges help us to think outside the box, as it’s about how we can pivot and spend our money more efficiently – maybe in different technology or in email marketing, for example.” 
• “It’s so important to know how various tech and software can transform your business, and have an understanding of how each software complements each other in exactly the right tech stack. We use Shopify, which I personally swear by – and technology that supports Shopify is essential. We invested in Klaviyo last year which completely changed our email marketing metrics and generated revenue. We use Recharge for subscriptions, Gorgias for customer service, and Yotpo for loyalty programmes and referrals. A really important one is 3PL for your warehouse. Having streamlining in place to manage your stock and orders is absolutely vital.” 
• “Attribution tools are more important now than ever before. We want to use tech to map the customer journey in more detail, so we can then optimize our site and create more personalized marketing. Beyond that, a great tip is to build a community online. SMS marketing has made a comeback, too.” 
• “Making the Lightning 50 is a massive achievement. You can really get lost in the operations of e-commerce and it’s great to see our hard work pay off by being recognized in this way. It’s huge for us.” 

About our podcast

Brightpearl’s Lightning 50 E-Commerce Growth Hacking podcast, hosted by Caroline Baldwin, is a bitesize 15-minute podcast that gets under the hood of highly successful e-commerce brands to discover the key technologies they are using to power growth.

About our guest

Cyberjammies is a UK-based nightwear and loungewear retailer. Founded in the early 2000s as an e-commerce only brand, Cyberjammies now sells its high-quality, ethically-made garments in stores such as John Lewis, Next and Very, as well as via their successful Shopify Plus webstore and two sister websites. After a steady 50% growth period YOY, the retailer grew an immense 372% in 2019/20. For this podcast, we spoke to Mark Tweed, Brand Director at Cyberjammies.

Transcript highlights:

• “Cyberjammies is over 20 years old and that whole time we’ve been dedicated and fixated on making great nightwear – at first for ladies but now for the whole family – using sustainable fabrics and ethical manufacturing wherever we can. Quality is what we pride ourselves on.”
• “In the pandemic we were fortunate in that while many other retailers were having a tough time, our growth rate was astronomical as everyone’s work wardrobe became pyjamas and loungewear.”
• “For any brand to grow significantly, automation is absolutely critical – when you go from hundreds to thousands of orders, you want as little interaction with those orders as possible. In that respect, Brightpearl has been instrumental for the growth of our business. Ten years ago our business was very spreadsheet-based, which was slow, painful and inefficient – ever since we’ve had Brightpearl and those processes are now automated, it’s allowed us to get on with what we’re good at.”
• “Brightpearl is the hub of our business – it links everything together. We’ve got two websites as well as Cyberjammies (both have seen similar growth as they’re also nightwear focused) – and we’re also synced with other retailers such as John Lewis and Next.” 
• “We’ve migrated to a 3PL warehouse which has staff conducting scan in/scan-out processes – this made our lives a lot easier. We moved warehouses right before Covid, so it was a stressful period, but the warehouse very quickly received our stock and we were trading as normal within a couple of days. This had a huge impact on the business, both during Covid and through to now.”
•  “Aside from automation, talk to your customers and constantly talk to them, in a way that they find appealing. Offer them small items like a scrunchie that goes with their new robe or a new pattern of a pyjama set they’ve already bought. Always offer more. We spend a good amount of money on Facebook Ads and Instagram Ads and we’re looking into TikTok – it’s not something I use myself! But from a business view, it’s something we need to stay on top of.”
• “Getting so high [top 10] in the Lightning 50 is such great recognition. We’ve added it to the bottom of our email signatures, that’s how important it is to us – we want people to see it and hear about it. It’s something we can use to celebrate our team; a point of external recognition, so we really appreciate it.”

About our podcast

Brightpearl’s Lightning 50 E-Commerce Growth Hacking podcast, hosted by Caroline Baldwin, is a bitesize 15-minute podcast that gets under the hood of highly successful e-commerce brands to discover the key technologies they are using to power growth.

About our guest

Furniturebox is an online furniture provider based in the South West of the UK, popular due to the speedy delivery of its high-quality, reasonably-priced furniture, as well as great customer service. After launching in 2016 the brand initially sold via online marketplaces such as Amazon and eBay, then additionally began selling through their own Magento 2 website from 2019. Shortly after this, the events of 2019/20 saw the retailer make 267% growth. For this podcast, we spoke to James Ewens, Head of E-Commerce at Furniturebox.

 “As we started out on marketplaces we had learnt a lot about the kind of product we should be selling when it came to operating through our own website. So we’d positioned ourselves very well – then Covid hit, which meant more people were interior decorating and furniture stores were closed, and we saw a huge spike in sales.”

Transcript highlights:

• “We tend to describe ourselves as a tech company that sells furniture online – because everything we’ve done has been about using tech to further our growth. As this is different to a traditional furniture company who may have started out selling in showrooms, it’s likely this ‘tech first’ mindset has likely given us the edge over the competition.”
• “Brightpearl is the foundation of our tech stack and powers everything we do –  without it we’d have no order management system, no inventory management, no purchase order management – but we’ve also brought on a lot of other tech to bolster what Brightpearl does for us.”
• “We use Inventory Planner for demand planning and stock forecasting, that’s been an enormous boom for us. During Covid, when demand was fluctuating manically – when stores were open, then closed, then open – Inventory Planner was our key tool. Without it we would have really struggled.”
• “When we doubled the product range we realised we needed a smarter way to store product info, so we invested in Pimberly which has been another key partner. So Brightpearl, Inventory Planner and Pimberly are really the three tech tools that have made us a success story.”
• “Brightpearl has a very robust API so we can plug things into it really easily. The Pimberly connector was done in three weeks, and when you think about the number of products we have (it’s now up to 14,500 SKUs) that’s a real testament to how brilliantly it integrates.”
• “The most exciting part of retail tech now is AR and VR; the ability to bring the experiential aspect of being in a store, into the home. A lot of the big retailers are already doing it, but how that eventually evolves in the shopping and browsing space is really exciting.”
• “Tech is the answer – never be afraid to invest in tech. Your tech stack drives everything you do – efficiency gain, product launch gain, turnover gain. We’re in a world where tech is so important, so my top tip for growth is never be afraid to invest in it.”

About our podcast

Brightpearl’s Lightning 50 E-Commerce Growth Hacking podcast, hosted by Caroline Baldwin, is a bitesize 15-minute podcast that gets under the hood of highly successful e-commerce brands to discover the key technologies they are using to power growth.

About our guest

Maplin is an online electronics specialist. The well-known brand was a mainstay on the British high street going back to 1976, but closed its physical stores in 2018 to relaunch as a fully online retailer. Today the brand sells everything electrical, from computing, television and audio equipment to entertainment systems and smart gadgets. The brand grew 495% in 2019/20. For this podcast, we spoke to Ollie Marshall, Managing Director at Maplin.

Transcript highlights:

• “At Maplin we sell everything from routers and gaming supplies, through to the weird and wonderful products we’re known for such as metal detectors, smoke machines and soldering irons.”
• “We relaunched as an online only retailer in January 2019, so spent that year getting back on our feet, rebuilding the team, tech and supply chain. Then as lockdown kicked in, we worked very hard to keep wheels in motion – as people wanted working-from-home equipment to use during the day, straight through to music, games consoles and entertainment devices for their evenings. Though a lot of our growth was natural due to restarting the business, Covid’s effect just sat perfectly with our category of products.” 
•  “When we relaunched as online only it meant we could reimagine what a supply chain was. We work heavily with a concept called dropshipping, so we don’t fulfil all of our orders but work closely with a number of suppliers who conduct service on our behalf, and that means we can be very agile. For us, operationally, our technology and systems have been a huge competitive advantage for us.”
• We work with a Magento e-commerce website. For dropshipping and distribution, that’s in-house, built in C#. I think fraud is under appreciated as a lever of growth – the more you sell, the bigger chance of fraud – so we work with a company called Signifyd to protect us from that. We use Akeneo for product information and Swogo for automated bundling so we can increase those basket sales. There’s so many more, but those are the ones that effectively keep the whole machine running smoothly.” 
• “I get a lot of inbound marketing from tech vendors, but I do think the best ones tend to rise to the top in terms of coverage and word of mouth. You just need a good feel for what your business actually needs. I also consider the culture of the business, their support, level of service – those are all big factors for me.”
• “Cost of commodities is a huge challenge for us, such as shipping costs and shortages overseas. Container costs, for example, have gone through the roof – and will only go higher in 2023 when new legislation comes in around lowering emissions. To tackle this, we’re working with a company called Quiver which offers 3PL for more sustainable, diverse delivery options.”
• “As you grow, things like returns become a massive problem. When you’re bigger in scale, you need a real process around it – a high volume ‘exit plan’ for these returns. ASOS is a great example of a company who has done this really well.”
• “Partnerships are a fantastic way of growing your business. We’re about to partner with B&Q, and we already partner with fulfilment providers Gorillas and GoPuff. There are huge benefits to diversifying in this way.” 

About our podcast

Brightpearl’s Lightning 50 E-Commerce Growth Hacking podcast, hosted by Caroline Baldwin, is a bitesize 15-minute podcast that gets under the hood of highly successful e-commerce brands to discover the key technologies they are using to power growth.

About our guest

CoolBlades is an online hair and beauty retailer specialising in salon-quality hair styling products. Founded in 2005 by a husband and wife team of former stylists, nearly 20 years later it’s now a leading online supplier of hairdressing products for top salons, beauticians and trade stores. Moreso since the pandemic, they sell direct-to-consumer. The retailer operates primarily via its website as well as through Amazon, and grew 191% in 2019/20 after salons closed during the pandemic. For this podcast, we spoke to Rupert Hughes, E-Commerce Director at CoolBlades.

Transcript highlights:

•  “We were going at a steady rate, making sure we had capacity to grow nicely over the next five to ten years – then the pandemic hit. Because all the salons AND trade stores were closed, everyone came online straight to us. The equivalent of a year’s worth of stock was sold within 10 days. A few thousand combs – which would usually have lasted a year – sold in a week.” 
• “One of the things we’ve learnt is the importance of thinking ahead and making sure you have capacity built into your systems. We were lucky in that we’d moved warehouses only a year before the pandemic, which was a bit of a risk and an extra cost for us – but if we hadn’t that capacity for stock, we wouldn’t have coped.
• “Having capacity to think ahead also applies when it comes to software. We put Brightpearl in place in 2017 – our system before that was very slow and clunky to use, and simply wouldn’t have coped with the pandemic sales spike. Implementing Brightpearl was an investment, but it had features we could see real benefits of, and sure enough, when things took off overnight we were able to manage.”
• “There’s a lot of customization you can do with the Brightpearl platform which automates day-to-day tasks such as invoicing, auto-fulfilment of orders, or ensuring particular shipping instructions with a particular courier. That functionality takes a lot of the boring tasks away from staff and allows them to concentrate on the parts of business where we really deliver value, like talking to customers, etc.”
• “I initially came on board to do some SEO work for CoolBlades, so when the pandemic hit, the brand’s Google ranking was very strong – that was definitely a large contributing factor to our success during lockdown.”
• On website sales v. marketplaces] “When we sell through the website we have more contact with customers, we want to make sure our traditional customers get great service and their questions answered – whereas marketplaces allow us to sell volumes of orders we wouldn’t have been able to achieve otherwise.” 
• “When we introduced Brightpearl it gave us the ability to allow back-end systems to talk to the website in real-time, so we could fulfil orders more quickly, extend fulfilment promises to customers (Next Day delivery etc), and we could keep prices and inventory up to date. Prior to BP someone was having to do that manually every morning, which was a horrible task and it meant things got missed.” 
• “You can clearly see the month we put BP in, sales went up – the only real reason for that is because high-selling products we weren’t constantly keeping in stock were now always in stock. It made a massive difference.”

About our podcast

Brightpearl’s Lightning 50 E-Commerce Growth Hacking podcast, hosted by Caroline Baldwin, is a bitesize 15-minute podcast that gets under the hood of highly successful e-commerce brands to discover the key technologies they are using to power growth.

About our guest

Powerhoop is a fitness provider that specializes in weighted hula hoops for exercise. When CEO Karyn Seroussi found a weighted hoop when visiting family in the US, it inspired her to develop a fitness program with top fitness trainers on her return to the UK. Since then, Powerhoop has become a multinational movement and lifestyle brand that not only sells weighted hoops via its Shopify-powered website, but runs an online streaming service for hula-hooping fitness classes. The brand grew an incredible 2,960% in 2019/20. For this podcast, we spoke to Founder & CEO at Powerhoop, Karyn Seroussi.

Transcript highlights:

•  “We sell weighted hula hoops which are great for exercise – and provide a fitness program for using the hoops. We developed our own premium hoop with innovative features like adjustable weights, and we make them with non-toxic materials in the UK.” 
•  “There was a lot of buzz around the hoop – but we weren’t really reaching much of the population other than gym goers who go to classes. So we hired a new e-commerce expert to the team who had a wealth of knowledge about digital marketing, and that really was one of the main contributors to our growth, as it meant he’d put fantastic infrastructure in place before the pandemic hit.” 
• “The pandemic meant home fitness equipment was in high demand. We were excited that the concept was catching on and more people were buying them. The influencer network we’d built meant word was getting around that hooping is a great way to get in shape in your living room.”
• “Influencer marketing has been important to our success, no question about it. We don’t pay lump sums to whoever is big at the time – we choose people who genuinely love our products. The influencers were our bread and butter because they posted referral codes, and the online hype meant our customers would get super excited about the hoops before even taking them out of the box. ”
• “Longevity is important. You can sell a product and walk away and be done with it, but we wanted to keep the conversation going and not have the hoop workout get boring. So we had our top trainers develop recorded online classes and we set up our streaming platform, Powerhooptv.com. A streaming platform is great if you have value or expertise to offer. Basically, the streaming subscriptions feed into product sales, and product sales feed into subscriptions.”
• “We started out with a custom built e-comm platform which we found very clunky, so we switched to Shopify which was much more user friendly. That really allowed everything to flow.”  
•  “It’s definitely validating to be on the Lightning 50 – we’ve worked for several years to be the best in our field and it means so much to the team to be recognized.”

About our podcast

Brightpearl’s Lightning 50 E-Commerce Growth Hacking podcast, hosted by Caroline Baldwin, is a bitesize 15-minute podcast that gets under the hood of highly successful e-commerce brands to discover the key technologies they are using to power growth.

About our guest

Truffle Shuffle is a retro 80s and 90s apparel retailer based in South West UK. When Founder, Pat Wood wore a Dukes of Hazzard t-shirt into a local Bristol nightclub in 2004, he received so many compliments that he tried selling a couple on eBay. 15 years later, Truffle Shuffle has maintained its cult status as a one-stop-shop for all things nerdy-retro. Selling DTC via its website and operating on a bespoke, self-built e-comms platform, the brand grew 235% in 2019/20. For this podcast, we spoke to the MD of Truffle Shuffle, Pat Wood.

Transcript highlights:

• “We’re a non-stop nostalgia shop. I’m an 80s nerd, one who was daring enough to buy a t-shirt from an American website in 2004 – and that daring nerd thing is core to our business. Our adage is that all the products are made for fans and by fans, and we get their input on new products whenever we can.” 
• “Growth has never been a huge driver for us at Truffle Shuffle – then 2-3 years ago we thought it was time to ramp up to a larger level. Our one driver was to increase our product mix, bring on some higher priced apparel like dresses, hoodies and accessories and increase the average basket spend for core customers – who used to be in their twenties but are now in their thirties with more disposable income.”
• “We had achieved double digit growth leading up to the pandemic – then all the shops shut and our growth reached triple digits. We were prepared for gentle expansion but it ended up extremely steep, but we were able to keep stock coming in thanks to our proficient buying team who worked tirelessly to keep up with demand.” 
• “We’ve always created our own bespoke tech – a leftover from starting in 2004 when e-comm platforms weren’t a thing. The landscape has changed since then, and as a startup today I wouldn’t go down that route as there’s plenty of great solutions out there. We could install Brightpearl and Shopify for example, and probably be in this same position – but our legacy platform has been built and customized over 18 years so works well for us.”
• “Our original team has been with us for over 15 years, and we’ve got a great staff retention record. That nurturing of staff and a great team culture really makes us what we are.”
• “The strategy we’ve been working on is being more bespoke and finding our niche again. It’s a crowded market with few barriers to entry in e-commerce, so you need to have your product and service absolutely nailed.”
• “Realistically you’re not going to get anywhere close to sustainable growth if you can’t serve your customers in the way you expect to be served. When we started, two weeks’ delivery was fast – now two days is considered slow. Similarly, if you don’t answer your customers’ emails, they’re no longer your customers. There’s a huge amount of things to get right in this landscape and so you need to get that foundation down before you consider growth.”
• “We always look at new tech and whether it’ll work for us; Klarna is a great example – it bulldozed the entire retail landscape and I can’t think of many retailers now that aren’t Klarna merchants. We’re also looking to integrate WhatsApp for customer service.”
• “In 2004 we were growing 200-300% every year for the first few years, but we’d long forgotten those levels of growth. To be back on the scene and have the Lightning 50 to shout about is an absolutely wonderful achievement – and a great indicator for us that our team does a fantastic job, year in, year out.”