E66: Matt Edmundson

Richard Hill:
Hi there, I'm Richard Hill, the host of eCom@One. Welcome to our 66th episode. In this episode, I speak with Matt Edmundson, CEO of the Jersey Company, MD of Kurious Digital, and fellow eCommerce podcaster. In one way or another, Matt has been in eCommerce since 2002. Matt and I speak openly about building and scaling eCommerce brands in this episode. Okay, let's go. If you enjoy this episode, please make sure to subscribe, as you're always the first to know when a new episode is released. Now, let's head over to this fantastic episode.

Richard Hill:
How you doing, Matt?

Matt Edmundson:
Yeah, good thanks Richard, excited to be here. I love the fact I'm talking to a fellow eCommerce podcaster. It's fantastic.

Richard Hill:
It's quite a unique club, isn't there? There isn't that many of us I guess.

Matt Edmundson:
I don't think there is. And there's certainly not that many of us in the UK. I think there's a handful of us, and so it's always great to connect with fellow British eCommerce podcasters, that's for sure.

Richard Hill:
It's a club of about five people I think, that I know.

Matt Edmundson:
Yeah, I can name about four or five of them and that's about it, yeah.

Richard Hill:
So yeah, looking forward to this one. Obviously I know you've been in eCommerce a long long time. You wear a lot of different hats. Obviously a lot of experience and a lot of different things you've got going on now, but if you were to sum up your passion in one sentence, what would it be? About eCommerce.

Matt Edmundson:
I love to wake up richer than when I went to sleep. I say this to people all the time. I appreciate that might sound a little bit shallow, and of course there's a lot more depth to it than that, but fundamentally the thing about eCommerce, the fact that people buy from my website whilst I'm asleep is just fascinating to me. And it was a thing that caught my eye 20 odd years ago, where you just kind of thought, "Goodness me, I've gone in in the morning, I've opened the computer, and people have purchased from me. And I didn't do anything other than sleep." That was phenomenal.

Matt Edmundson:
So I love that. I love how you can reach people and connect with people all over the world. This conversation is happening because we're both into eCommerce, and I think it's an extraordinary connector. I think it's just a wonderful, wonderful industry to be in.

Richard Hill:
Yeah, hear hear. Couldn't agree more. I think that I can still remember the PayPal noise that I used to have set up on my phone back in the day. "What's that?" "Oh, nothing." Changing the sound notification.

Matt Edmundson:
It's funny what you remember isn't it? All those little things.

Richard Hill:
You openly talk about failure in business and failure in eCommerce. And obviously, been in business for a length of time, obviously trying a lot of different things. What would you say is one of the biggest failures that you've come across, and how did you overcome it?

Matt Edmundson:
I think there's so many ways to answer that question. I think if I look at some of the failures that I've had, and I was to say, "What was the force of that failure?" I think my arrogance would be... Reality is the answer. The belief that because one business has been successful I could make any business successful. You're kind of like, "I am the kind of eCommerce. I am going to start another business and create an empire." And nobody buys a single thing, and you just feel dejected and humiliated a little bit about it.

Matt Edmundson:
We've set up about 20, 21 eCommerce websites, and a chunk of those failed. So even me, with me experience, with my expertise, with my understanding, I can't always make everything work. And you know what? I'm okay with that. I think there's something about failure that we as a society, we try and avoid. I don't know about your kids, but my kids, when they were at school, everybody won the child of the week award. It just kind of went round in a rota. And my son realized this, and he's like, "What's the point? Why do I need to try? Because I'm going to get it anyway."

Matt Edmundson:
It's like we couldn't teach our kids failure. It's like we couldn't teach them about first and second place, we couldn't teach them about winning and losing. And I appreciate not everything's about winning and losing, but there's something about failure which is quite magical, I think. It's heartbreaking at the time, but you can learn so much from it, and you can look at those things and go, "That's where I made the mistake, was right there."

Richard Hill:
Huge learning isn't it?

Matt Edmundson:
Yeah it is.

Richard Hill:
A huge [crosstalk 00:04:46] process, and I think just pushing through that rather than, "I'm not going to take any risks, I'm not going to risk anything or try anything, because what might happen?" And usually it's like, "What is the worst that can happen?" Obviously if you're putting absolutely everything on the line, that's a slightly different topic potentially, but what is the worst that's going to happen if you try something and, as you say, 21 eCommerce stores, and not every one.

Richard Hill:
And absolutely, absolutely the same. The amount of things over the years that [inaudible 00:05:16] been involved in, and definitely got a few failure hats that I could pull out the closet, sort of thing. Obviously a lot of eCom stores building various teams, working with various teams. How would you say how important culture, and a culture first business, is?

Matt Edmundson:
That's a fantastic question. I think I always say that for me as the MD or the CEO, whatever language you want to use, the founder, the guy that leads the business, the most important thing that I can work on in any business is culture. And I say this to a whole bunch of people.

Matt Edmundson:
It's funny, I've done talks on culture to prime ministers in the past. Not our prime minister, but there's definitely been people in the room that have run countries, and I was shocked when they were there. And for me the thing about culture is, there's this really interesting phrase, and I can't remember who said it, but it's a really interesting phrase that says "Culture eats strategy for breakfast."

Matt Edmundson:
And I think it's totally true, and it's one of the things I've noticed time and time again that actually, it doesn't matter what strategy I create. If the culture in my business is fundamentally flawed, that strategy will never, ever gather any kind of momentum. D'you see what I mean?

Richard Hill:
A hundred percent.

Matt Edmundson:
And so I have to work on the culture, I have to work on the values of the people that work with us. To the point now, whenever we hire people, we have a really interesting graph that we plot people on.

Matt Edmundson:
It's like a quadrant. So if you think about the vertical axis, on the vertical axis we measure competence, which is traditionally how you look at a future hire. What's their competence level? How good are they at their job? If they're a coder, how good are they at coding? And this is all the information you get from their CV and all that sort of stuff. But we introduced this horizontal axis back in probably 2011, because I was always struggling with the fact that we hired competent people but the business would still not do what it needed to do. And so we added this horizontal axis. It came after a conversation with a friend of mine in a coffee shop. And on that I just wrote the word culture.

Matt Edmundson:
And so we wanted to measure culture. How well connected to the culture that I'm trying to create in the company is this person? And what I found was, if you had someone who was very competent but they were technically redundant to your culture, so they had high competence but low culture, the top left quadrant if you like of our graph, I quickly realized these people were terrorists to your organization. This was your quintessential sales rep who was all about the commission and got the sale regardless of the problems it created for the company. And they were like terrorists, because they brought in so much revenue, but they were horrible to the organization.

Matt Edmundson:
So you as the MD or the boss, you were never sure. "Should I keep them?" And you'd kind of go, "Do I get rid of them? Do I keep them? Do I get rid of them?" And you'd go between these different things. And so we quickly realized that actually, the best people were all the people on the right side of this graph. People who were strongly aligned to our culture but their competence wasn't great always made better hires than people who were competent but culturally misaligned. But if we could find that person who was high competence and high culture, we call these superheroes. These are the people that you go out of your way to hire.

Richard Hill:
I would say if you're listening right now, you should pause and rewind the last 90 seconds, because I think if you listen to this podcast, you're here to scale your business, and the only way to do that is with the right people, and the only way to hire the right people in my opinion, and I believe in Matt's opinion, is culture first every time. And I think as you're starting out on your eCommerce journey and going from one to five to 10 to... you maybe make a few decisions that are not culture focused or not culture first. So I think that's a great bit of advice there Matt, thank you for that.

Matt Edmundson:
Yeah, I think it's so helpful. So helpful. Whenever we go into any company, the first thing we ever do, we get them to plot out all their staff. Where are your team right now? It's a really eye opening experience. And here's the other thing. I don't think you can take someone who is culturally misaligned and align them to your culture. I think it is almost impossible to do that.

Richard Hill:
Yeah. It's hard to change certain things that are ingrained, isn't it?

Matt Edmundson:
Well, you found it out, right? You've got as many stories as I have on this kind of thing, hiring people over the years.

Richard Hill:
Yeah, hundred percent. Right, so let's talk website platforms. I know you have your own. Tell us about that. It's not something I know too much about. Tell us about that, tell us how it fits into the eCom platform ecosphere.

Matt Edmundson:
Ecosphere, I like that.

Richard Hill:
[inaudible 00:10:09]

Matt Edmundson:
Yeah, I like it. You should trademark that straight away.

Matt Edmundson:
We do have a platform, because I don't know about you Richard, when you started your eCommerce, we were talking about this earlier, talking about Excel spreadsheets, right? When we started in eCommerce, there wasn't a Shopify, there wasn't Magento, there wasn't Wix, there wasn't Squarespace. There was WordPress, but they didn't do eCommerce websites. So if you wanted to do stuff online, you had to either get a agency in to write that code, whereas what I did was I figured out how to write that code, and I would stay up late at night writing the code.

Matt Edmundson:
Over the years as our business has grown and our online business has grown, that platform has developed. I don't code any more. It is way beyond my skill set. There are much more clever people involved in it than I am right now. Over the years, that platform has evolved to what I think it should be to run an eCommerce business. And because of that, over the years people have come to us and said, "Can we use your platform?" And we were like, "Sure, you can use this platform if it makes sense for your business."

Matt Edmundson:
And it doesn't make sense for everybody's business, doesn't make sense for everybody, I appreciate that. But there are certain types of businesses that we've found it works quite well for. So it wasn't a plan, just like you found this out with your agency. It's not a plan, it's just enough people ask you for help, eventually ... I'm a bit slow to the market sometimes, I kind of go, "Well, maybe there's something in this." So yeah, that's kind of how it came about.

Richard Hill:
I think that'll resonate with everybody listening, because that's how most eCommerce stores... In a way, it's like, "Do you know what? I might actually just buy a few of those things and see if I can sell a couple. If I can sell like five a week, that's like a hundred quid." And then five years later you're doing like a million quid a month. So yeah, that need for your own platform.

Richard Hill:
How would you say, if an eCom store was looking at a Shopify, a Magento, BigCommerce et cetera et cetera, what's the USP with your platform, would you say?

Matt Edmundson:
I think we work really well as a platform if you want to outsource your fulfillment. Because we have a fulfillment service, that's one of the things that we have done over the years, is we've started doing fulfillment for other people. Because that platform integrates really well with that fulfillment service, that's a great thing to do.

Matt Edmundson:
I think we kind of sit between Shopify and Magento, if I was going to position it. Shopify, for me, is the MacDaddy of eCommerce platforms. It's great if you're starting out, it's quick, it's user friendly. They've cracked it. They've figured it out. But I would often find, even with our own web development team, whenever we started a new business, we'd always start on Shopify, because it was always quicker, easy and cheaper to test an idea on Shopify than have the guys develop it out.

Matt Edmundson:
But I would find that Shopify would have limitations quite quickly for us. And it did not have the bespoke nature that we needed it to have. The customization, the ability to do exactly what I needed it to do. And because, certainly on Jersey for example, which is a beauty website, there was some quite bespoke work that needed to happen around, "I've bought these products, but I now need to choose some free samples to go along with that." And so it was always the ability to make the website do what I wanted it to do, which was a big draw for me.

Matt Edmundson:
Then I look at Magento, and I have to be honest with you, and be totally straight, cards on the table, I've never used Magento and I never will. And every client that I've ever worked with that has used Magento has got nightmare stories to talk about. That's not to say Magento's a bad platform, I know people who've used it with great success, but I think for me the cost of Magento and all that sort of stuff is just out there for me. So that's kind of where I'd position what we do.

Richard Hill:
So if you're listening in and you're sort of in between, you may be on Shopify now, you've got things going, you've got to a certain stage, and you may be looking for certain customizations and more of a discussion around a bespoke addition to a platform, then your platform is probably the one to ... possible discussions there with Matt.

Richard Hill:
So, obviously worked on a lot of projects. Worked on a lot of your own projects, worked with clients, obviously you're doing both sides of the fence if you like. Be good to tell our listeners about a project that you worked on specifically that got results for either yourself or for that client. What you did. So whether that's a particular brand you've been working with or one of your own brands. Things that you did that grew that brand. Any specifics that can help our listeners? Might spark an idea for them, think "Do you know, I didn't think of that," or they may be already doing a bit of what you're suggesting, but then another level up actually.

Matt Edmundson:
One of the game changers that happened at Jersey... I'll tell you about Jersey because it's easier to talk about your own stuff than client. You're never quite sure what you should or shouldn't say.

Matt Edmundson:
With Jersey, we moved the business from the island of Jersey to Liverpool, which is where I'm at right now. I don't know if you remember, a few years ago there was a VAT advantage that Jersey companies had for trading, and then that kind of went by the wayside. We moved before that disappeared, but we moved over, and one of the things that I noticed about the company Jersey, because at this point I was getting much more involved. A friend of mine drew for me on a piece of paper... It's amazing how many of these conversations I have. We're in a coffee shop and a napkin and a pen comes out. I like diagrams, I'm just that kind of guy. And he drew for me a triangle on a piece of paper, if you can picture this. And in one corner of the triangle he wrote the word price. In another corner of the triangle, he wrote the word quality. And on the final corner of the triangle, he wrote the word service.

Matt Edmundson:
And he said to me, "These three things here, you can have a company that's got really phenomenal customer service. You can have a company that sells at a really good price. Really great value price, or discount pricing. Or you can have a company that sells really high quality products." This is how he defined these three corners. And he said, "As a business, you can only choose two. You can't choose three." In other words, you can sell a high quality product at a discounted price, which is where Jersey was, so we had a quality product at a discounted price, but our customer service really, really struggled. We didn't have the investment into customer service. So they were the two that we chose.

Matt Edmundson:
When we moved from Jersey to the UK, I deliberately transitioned the business from a price-quality model into a service-quality model. So we had quality product, and we didn't focus so much on low prices. We focused our energy on building a good customer service model. The results of that were fascinating. We did this 2010. 2011, my sales dipped, and they've been growing ever year since then. My sales went down, and at the end of that year, I thought, "Goodness me. I've taken a gamble here, and I don't know if it's actually paid off. Because my sales have dipped." I remember wrestling with it. "Do we go back to what we were doing?" And I thought, "No, no. There's definitely something in this." 2012 we had record sales growth.

Matt Edmundson:
It took a few months for this transition to kick in, but when it kicked in, that had one of the most profound impacts on our business. That wasn't down to tax breaks or VAT advantages or anything like that. It was just down to customers all of a sudden getting a level of service that matched the products that we were selling to them.

Richard Hill:
So if we went in there a little bit more then, the guys listening in that think, "Do you know what? Yeah. We've been banging out a thousand orders every hour," whatever. "But we know our service needs some love, and needs some work." What would be some very specific areas that an eCom store should look at to really up their game when it comes to service? Which in turn's going to obviously affect the brand, going to affect the return rate, the average lifetime value of customers coming back, no doubt. What sort of specifics, hands on things can an eCom store do to improve customer service?

Matt Edmundson:
There's lots, right? Some of the things that we did, internally we invested in technology that enabled us to make sure that every order we sent out was sent right. There was thousands of pounds' worth of savings just by sending the right order out rather than screwing that up, having an annoyed customer, resending collections and all that sort of stuff. There's a lot of practical things like that, and there's the fundamentals that you've got to get right, like shipping and returns and what makes sense for your industry. We put the phone number in a big, prominent place on the website rather than hiding it in the corner, and we liked it when people called, and we had no time limits. But one of the things that we did do, and this for me is the key to customer service and getting it right, was we aligned our culture and our values and our customer service.

Matt Edmundson:
We wanted to make sure that customer service was a key part of our culture. What that meant was, if a customer called our office with a problem with their order, then the customer service rep, if I've hired the right rep, they're going to treat that customer in a way which I think is appropriate. We wrote this customer service manifesto, and it basically said, "You are to treat customers as if you were that customer." "Treat them how you would like to be treated," I think was the phrase that we used.

Matt Edmundson:
There's one story, there's [Greg 00:21:00], who used to work for us at this point in time, and Greg was... great guy, really compassionate, lovely guy. He picked up the phone, and on the end of that phone was a guy who had called, and it was a Friday morning, and he said, "Listen, I placed an order yesterday and it's not arrived. The postman has been and gone. I need that order." And so Greg looked up his order and he'd chosen the free shipping option, which is three to five days. What Greg could have done at that point is, he could have said, "I'm really sorry, it is what it is, deal with it." But Greg being Greg, being the right kind of person, said to the guy, "Why do you need it so urgently?" Tried to understand what the problem was. And he said, "It's my wife's birthday tomorrow, and this was going to be her present."

Matt Edmundson:
Now, Greg is married to a beautiful lady called Martha, and he understood in an instant the problem of not having a birthday present for your wife on the morning of her birthday. He knew why this guy was upset on the other side of the phone. And Greg said to him, he said, "Listen." He said, "This is going to arrive in three to five days' time, but I'm sorry it didn't arrive," and this guy's, "No, I'm really sorry, I should have ordered the next day, I don't know why I didn't, blah blah blah."

Matt Edmundson:
What Greg did, without anybody's permission, and you can do this if you're a values led organization, he went to the warehouse himself, he repeated, picked and packed that order, but he wrapped it in gift wrap paper, so that when the guy got it he didn't even have to wrap it up. He got a birthday card, got everybody in the warehouse to sign it, including me. Had no idea what I was signing, just "Happy birthday" to somebody I didn't even know or expect, but this was not an irregular occurrence, so I just signed this card. He put in the box a box of chocolates, sent it out on a next day delivery to arrive by nine o'clock.

Matt Edmundson:
Now, you know as well as I do, a Saturday delivery is not the cheapest option, and a pre-9 AM is definitely not the cheapest option. So he gets this present, he literally walks to his wife, gives her this box, everything's wrapped, chocolates, cards, everything. The wife's over the moon. I don't know a thing about this until Monday morning, when the husband calls me and said, "I need to talk to you about Greg." Tells me the story. D'you know what? That guy still buys from Jersey. Right? And this was what, 10 years ago when this happened? Still buys from Jersey.

Richard Hill:
Still thinking about the wife getting a card from like 40 random people.

Matt Edmundson:
Yeah. Well he just explained it, he just said, "These guys are amazing, this is what they've done." Things like that, you cannot find in a marketing book. Right? It's not a Facebook ad strategy, it's a humanity strategy, and it's treating people like you'd want to be treated, and understanding when you do that, the repeat rate goes up. So this was the outcome of changing our business model, was the repeat purchase rate shot through the roof.

Richard Hill:
Yeah, that's a great story that, Matt, I think. I think a lot can be learned from that, just going a mega extra mile, but making it almost a norm where you can.

Matt Edmundson:
Yeah, Greg didn't need permission, and do you know what Richard? I worked it out. I wrote it out on a piece of paper. That cost me 27 quid. And I still remember the number to this day, I don't know why I remember the number. But by the time that we'd collected the order that was going to arrive a few days later, we'd paid for the extra shipping and the time and all that sort of stuff, the whole thing cost me 27 quid. But I would not have been able to buy the advertising that I got as a result of that 27 quid.

Richard Hill:
Yeah. How many people has he told? How many people has his wife told? Yeah, just the reviews. The ripple effect is everlast isn't it? Ultimately, always trying to do the right thing by your customer, but that's like going another level isn't it? Good for you Matt, that's great.

Matt Edmundson:
Don't get me wrong, if there's Jersey customers listening, going, "I've never had that customer service," we are people, we get it wrong sometimes. But it's just that relentless focus on customer service.

Richard Hill:
Yeah. I think next time I order from you guys, I'll just put a little note. "P.S. Can Greg do my wrapping please?"

Matt Edmundson:
Do you know what, I'm not joking when I say this, Greg would constantly get gifts in the post. Genuinely. People would send him gifts because he had treated his customers so nicely. He was sent an 80 quid cashmere jumper from a lady who he'd just treated nicely. And we would obviously give him a lot of grief, like, "Does your wife know about this? Does she know what's going on?" But he would regularly get gifts in the post from customers. It was extraordinary.

Richard Hill:
Just going back to that culture piece, obviously Greg likes being where he is, and that you've got somebody like Greg in the business just says it all, doesn't it, about the type of company you're running? About the type of people you're employing, with that culture-first. Whereas if you've got somebody at the warehouse like, "Well no, we sent that. Tough [inaudible 00:26:10] or whatever." It's like, "Well, hang on a minute." That attitude, compounded over time, the opposite, is a serious problem isn't it? Whereas you've got [crosstalk 00:26:19] like Greg, who is just going over and above, and that makes serious moves in an industry or in a department, if somebody is in there leading the way, and that ripple effect within his team, the people that are working with Greg, are also, "Oh I see, this is how we do it." But you're hiring those people in the first place and focusing on that. Hiring for culture first. Brilliant, love it.

Richard Hill:
Okay, so. Let's talk podcasting. You're definitely in the top five podcasters of eCommerce in the UK. There's five others, I think.

Matt Edmundson:
Yeah, I'll take fifth. I'm happy with fifth, that's fine.

Richard Hill:
Yeah. Oh, I'm fourth. Yay!

Richard Hill:
We were just saying weren't we, we've got a very similar podcast count at the moment haven't we?

Matt Edmundson:
Yeah, we have.

Richard Hill:
We've got a very similar footprint, I think.

Matt Edmundson:
It's quite fascinating isn't it?

Richard Hill:
Yeah. It's obviously quite new for the both of us, isn't it? [inaudible 00:27:21] a year or so for you. So obviously, a lot of guests on the podcast over the years, and a lot of advice been shared and given and whatnot. Is there any standout guests that have shared one or two bits, or one or two bits of advice that really stand out? I know that's quite a tricky question, because I know there'll be dozens and dozens and dozens of them, but [inaudible 00:27:42] things that stand out from guests.

Matt Edmundson:
There are, and I could pick each guest and... I can still remember the majority of guests, the things which they talk about. And I have to be honest with you, I don't know if you're like me Richard, I take copious amounts of notes, and so I have pages and pages of notes whenever I have a guest, and we take those concepts and those ideas, and I sit down with the team after recording the podcast and go, "What can we learn from this, guys? What can we put into place? What can we do?" And I noticed your recent guest was... have you had Lauren on recently, Lauren Schwartz?

Richard Hill:
Yep.

Matt Edmundson:
Yeah, she was lovely talking about ad copy, and just getting to pick her brains. Remarkable guest, remarkable lady, and we've had all kinds of people like that.

Matt Edmundson:
I think some of the things that have stood out, we had one guest on, I think it was last season. I'm trying to remember when it was now. Yeah, we had one guest on last season talking about email marketing, and one of the things that she said, which actually, you know when you have the penny drop yourself? And I've been in the game a long time. She was like, "The whole purpose of email marketing is so sell the click, not the product." And I thought this was really, really interesting.

Matt Edmundson:
Her whole theory based around this idea of email reputation, so if you were sent an email and you opened it and you clicked through to a website, you had a massively strong email reputation where that email service provider is concerned. So if I send it to a Google account, they're monitoring how many emails they're getting from me, how many people are opening them, then how many people are clicking through to the website. And so she talked a lot about email reputation, but she was like, "Sell the click. And if you can do that, if you can sell the click..."

Matt Edmundson:
And so we took this principle, this idea, and started to integrate it a little bit with our email marketing. So we would start to do things like pixelated images in our emails, which just said, "Secret offer, only available to VIP customers." And it would have a question mark over it, "Click here to find out more." Well, when we did start experimenting with this idea of selling the click, the open rates and click through rates of our emails changed, actually. And I thought, "Goodness me." Just with that one simple thing, "Sell the click."

Richard Hill:
Sell the click, rather than the end result, it's the next step, the next step. So an email's a bit like subject line first, first bit of the paragraph first, next-

Matt Edmundson:
Exactly. And you-

Richard Hill:
Rather than trying to write, the main thing is to make sure we've got a good offer. Normally people will just drop a couple of products in and discount them, job done. Well, ultimately, there's quite a bit to it.

Matt Edmundson:
There is.

Richard Hill:
Yeah.

Matt Edmundson:
There is. So sell the click. Think about what's going to get somebody to click through to your website. What's going to get them to press that button? D'you know what I mean? I'm just checking now, that was our Episode 52, Why everything you know about email marketing could be wrong. That was with [Gabby 00:31:01] actually, and she's lovely, Gabby, Canadian lady. Have you had her on your show?

Richard Hill:
No, no.

Matt Edmundson:
You should get her on, because she's just fantastic, I really like Gabby.

Richard Hill:
We'll link the episode, so you guys listening in, you'll be able to click the link and have a listen to that one.

Richard Hill:
Okay Matt, so obviously, dozens and dozens and dozens of episodes on your show. Obviously dozens of, literally, eCommerce stores that you've ran and run, and work with obviously lots, lots of different companies. What's one or two things that you would say you see coming up as the future piece for eCom? What are the couple of things this next year or two that these guys need to have their eye on? The things that maybe are going to come and they're going to miss it, or miss that early adopter stance on?

Matt Edmundson:
I think one of the things that I think there's been a move towards over lockdown is, there has been an awareness, more so than ever, certainly in the UK, of Amazon, and Amazon's business practices. So I think customers are looking for a reason not to buy from Amazon. And actually, if you can create that compelling reason, you can do really well by drawing people away.

Matt Edmundson:
I'm not saying ignore Amazon at all, I just think the things which draw people in to your website now are things like authenticity, transparency, figuring out who you are as a person, having that sense of brand identity. Knowing when to stand for something, having a voice. Just doing something, not different for different's sake, but just standing out from the crowd. And I think if you can do that, if you can literally put your heart and soul into the business, as well as just the hope that this is going to somehow make you wealthy and rich, there is always a place for you, I think, in eCommerce.

Matt Edmundson:
And I think as the world gets bigger, and as information becomes more and more, what people are genuinely looking for is human connection. We've learned this through Covid, right? And it might sound a bit airy fairy. It's not a formula. But it's fundamental humanity. We crave connection with like minded people. And this, again, comes down to, this is my company culture. This is what we stand for. Who are you going to attract? I'm going to attract people that have similar values to me. So the customers don't ever think about buying from Amazon, because their value is not what Amazon offer. Does that make sense?

Richard Hill:
Yeah.

Matt Edmundson:
And so their loyalty is really quite strong. And so for me, it's wearing your heart and soul on your sleeve for your business. It's being out there, it's doing the live streams, it's doing the videos, it's doing the podcasts, it's doing whatever you need to do to connect with people, and then making sure you stay connected with them. Because for me, the secret to eCommerce is not in the first sale. It's in the fifth, the sixth, the seventh sale to that customer. And so growing that repeat business shouldn't be an afterthought, it should be your main thought, your main portion of marketing budget. We had this debate with [Chloe 00:34:24], she did the eCommerce Summit a few weeks ago, which was phenomenal, and she did a great job. Do you know Chloe?

Richard Hill:
Yes.

Matt Edmundson:
Yeah, she's been on? Yeah, she's lovely, Chloe. And we did this whole thing on, is it about customer acquisition or is it about customer retention? Obviously it's about both. And how do you split your marketing budget between retention, and how do you split your money between acquisition? And for me, because so many of our customers are retention, I just literally look at the percentage breakdown. If 60% of our business comes from customer retention, that's where 60% of my marketing budget needs to go. And it's just a simple thing in my head, so I don't know if that's helpful, if that answers your questions, but I would be looking at those two things, I'd be looking at retention, and I'd be looking at just that brand-

Richard Hill:
Getting that brand message across, that personality, the brand, yeah. No, that's brilliant. I think that's a brilliant end to a very, very informative 45 minutes or so. Now I always like to end on a book recommendation, Matt. Do you have a book that you would recommend to our listeners?

Matt Edmundson:
So many of them. I just love learning and reading. What I might recommend, actually, is not so much a book, but the latest app that I've downloaded, which is one of these book cheat things. Okay?

Richard Hill:
Oh, yes. Yeah yeah.

Matt Edmundson:
And I came across this after a review on... I was watching something on YouTube, and it was called Short Form. I'd never heard of it before, and it's a bit like... There's an app out there at the minute, I can't remember the name of it, it'll come back to me, where you can sort of, in five minutes, digest the key points of a book.

Richard Hill:
Blink list is one.

Matt Edmundson:
Blinkist, that's it, yeah. And so I tried that for a while, and it was great just to get the summary and I kind of read it and I thought, "Do I want to take that, therefore, and read this book?" Whereas what Short Form does is, it gives you that overview, but then it goes into a little bit more detail, and just gives you a bit more stuff to get around.

Richard Hill:
I like that. I like that.

Matt Edmundson:
And I think it's brilliant. And so I've just been reading a book by Matthew Walker, Why We Sleep, because bizarre as it sounds, I'm fascinated by sleep at the moment. What it is, why we do it, what does it mean and so on and so forth. I spend a third of my life doing it, I figure I should know at least a little something about it. So I've been reading books about sleep, which has been fantastic, so I would recommend that app. Short Form. Try that out.

Richard Hill:
Brilliant, brilliant. Yep, no, I will be downloading in about three minutes' time I think.

Richard Hill:
So for the guys that want to find out more about you Matt, and connect with you, what's the best place to do that?

Matt Edmundson:
Yeah, it'd be great. Simply head over to Matt Edmundson dot com, and you'll find all the social media links there, and all the ways to get in touch with me. Matt Edmundson dot com. Be great to meet you.

Richard Hill:
Lovely. Well thanks for being on the show Matt, I look forward to speaking to you again. Thank you.

Matt Edmundson:
Thanks Richard, been brilliant. Thanks.

Richard Hill:
Thank you for listening to the eCom@One eCommerce podcast. If you enjoyed today's show, please hit Subscribe and don't forget to sign up to our eCommerce newsletter and leave us a review on iTunes. This podcast has been brought to you by our team here at eCom@One, the eCommerce marketing agency.