E07: Brie Read

Richard Hill:
Welcome to another episode of eComOne. And today's guest is Brie Read. Now, Brie has an eCommerce brand business in the UK, which is just celebrating its second year birthday and it's doing about 3,000 orders a day. So I'm really excited to speak to Brie today about some of the things she's done to build a brand so quickly in the UK. How are you doing Brie?
Brie Read:
Doing really well. Thank you very much for inviting me on.
Richard Hill:
Thank you so much. So I think it would be good to kick off and sort of go straight into really about your career journey. What sort of brought you to where you are now over the last few years?
Brie Read:
So my background is really in data. I'm a complete data nerd and love anything to do with numbers and patterns and how those things work. So my career very much started in analysis and understanding from a kind of a background marketing and how that all worked and then suddenly there comes the desire to go, "It works so terribly and people don't measure it right. And I'm sure I could do a better job."
Brie Read:
And then eventually one of my bosses went, "You think you could do such a good job, you run marketing then." I was like, "Okay. I will then" and actually did a quite good job of it. That's how I ended up in marketing rather than staying in data analysis.
Brie Read:
I think it's been a really interesting journey. I've worked for some great brands, the Postcode Lottery that does a huge amount for charity, Diet Chef, worked for Sainsbury's for a while. So being able to understand how those big companies work as well as really kind of gutsy little startups and how that works, too.
Richard Hill:
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So obviously seeing a lot of things from smaller businesses to these big brands but ultimately a lot of what you're focused on has been looking at the data and seeing what you can find within those smaller brands, big brands, et cetera. And that brings us to today where you're two years in with Snag Tights. So tell us how Snag Tights came about.
Brie Read:
I had a really embarrassing experience, which I've told a lot of times now and people must be sick of hearing. But I was walking down the streets, a really posh street in Edinburgh and I could feel my tights falling down. You know, you can wriggle them up if they go mid thigh length, you can kind of pull them up. And at one point, they actually went underneath my knees and at that point you kind of know there's not much that you can do with that. They're going to fall down.
Brie Read:
So I actually had to take my shoes off, take my tights off, put my shoes back on in the middle of the street and then look around and see if anybody was watching. It turned out that everyone was watching me, and it was one of those simply humiliating experiences that you then have to talk to people about. Otherwise, you do that thing where you play it back in your head a million times and go, "What could I have done differently?"
Brie Read:
So I talked to a lot of people about it and all my friends of all different heights and sizes, and what came back from them was none of them liked tights. None of them felt that that was something that was good in their lives and they all had these horrible tights experiences to share. So being the data nerd that I am, I thought I had to understand what this looked like in a more objective context.
Brie Read:
So I commissioned a representative sample survey from Google of 3,000 women in the UK and it came back that 90% of them, nine zero, said that their tights didn't fit. Again, because I'm a data nerd, I knew that the tights market was worth $38 billion. So you've got $38 billion market and 90% of users say that the product isn't fit for purpose. I was like, "There's probably an opportunity in here somewhere."
Richard Hill:
There's something in there maybe. Yeah, yeah.
Brie Read:
You know?
Richard Hill:
Okay. So we got the data, we thought there's something there. So what was the next step then? How did you go with that data?
Brie Read:
So that was really trying to understand why they didn't fit. That was buying every pair of tights I could get my hands on. It was measuring them. It was fitting them on people. I got a really great team of women together who were the kind of fit models to explain what was wrong with the tights for them. We kind of broke it all down and then we're able to build back up a new product which fits in all the right ways. Then it was about finding a manufacturer for that product and going from there.
Richard Hill:
Yeah. Okay. Do you manufacture in the UK? Where are you manufacturing?
Brie Read:
We manufacture in Italy, which is kind of the tights capsule of the world, tights country of the world. Anyways, it's where you go to get really good tights.
Richard Hill:
It's the tights city. Yeah, I got you. Okay. So we did the research. I mean just finding... We have people that are listening in, people that are maybe looking at setting up an eComm brand and they've maybe identified a product set or a set of products. How did you find a supplier and a manufacturer? What recommendations would you have there for that?
Brie Read:
It just takes a lot of work. I think it takes a lot of Googling, a lot of speaking to people, a lot of picking up the phone. I'm quite an introvert. I don't really like phone calls or anything like that, but you have to kind of push yourself out there and actually ask for opinion.
Richard Hill:
Sorry about putting you on Zoom.
Brie Read:
It's fine. You do have to push yourself out there and ask for recommendations and kind of chase it down because it's not in their interest to facilitate your new product. You need to make a really strong argument to them, as your kind of first people that believe in you, that they should work with you and that your idea is big. And presenting to them and being able to convince them is just as important as trying to convince an investor. You have to put the same amount of effort into it.
Richard Hill:
Yeah. So blood, sweat and tears in a short version.
Brie Read:
Mm-hmm
Richard Hill:
Yeah. Really? Yeah. Okay. So I think for the guys that are listening in, too, obviously two years is such a short period and I think I said at the beginning that you're doing about 3,000 orders a day.
Brie Read:
Yep.
Richard Hill:
Where would you say in terms of... I know you're doing quite a few different things. I've had a good look at obviously the website and some of the Facebook ads library and things like that and seeing some of the things you're doing. So maybe if we kick off with Facebook ads. What things would you say to the guys listening in that I've got stills that you might be able to give them some points on Facebook? Because I think Facebook has been quite a big channel for you guys, isn't it?
Brie Read:
Yeah, no, it's great. I used to... Directly before Snag, I run a Facebook agency, so Facebook is really close to my heart in terms of a channel. You know, there's lots of great things about it. The first one being that it's accessible to anyone and you're just as capable of having an awesome Facebook ad as a huge brand. And as a tiny brand, I think it really levels the playing field.
Brie Read:
Facebook is a lot more unstable now than it used to be six months ago or a year ago, and I think people are getting a lot less consistent results. I think in some ways that's all about treating it as something that you have to keep testing all of the times. There's no easy answer. There's no one campaign that you can be running forever. You have to keep interrogating it, keep testing it.
Brie Read:
I think I spoke to someone recently and they said build in into your mental model of it its instability, and I think that's really key rather than expecting it to behave in a normal way. If you expect it to behave in an inconsistent way, it helps you build your approach and your campaigns a lot better.
Richard Hill:
Okay. Okay. So always, obviously keeping an eye on it. Obviously, some things that were working may not work, so you've got to obviously ke- I see you've got a lot of ads out there, a lot of different ads you're using, a lot of video in your ads. So you get your customers to send in video. Is that a type of thing you do?
Brie Read:
Yeah, we do. Yep. So we do competitions. We get a lot of UGC anyway. We have little bit of a kind of DAF, the videos. We did a big competition asking people to film some videos for us, which is where all the new video ads come from. We've got brilliant response and some completely crazy and creative videos, which are great to have out there. So we try and be as real as possible in all of our advertising. We don't use any models. Everything you see are our actual customers.
Richard Hill:
Yeah, you can see. That really comes across I think for me. Obviously, looking at your brand before we jumped on the call, I was taken aback by just how real... I think it looked real and just very... You know, it just looks very real. You know, a lot of very creative people as well that are sending their videos in. You know, you just sort of stop and have a look, and I found myself spending quite a long time looking at all your ads.
Richard Hill:
So yeah, it was giving me ideas. I don't sell tights, but obviously, at the agency we have a love of other products that we do represent. So yeah, a lot of inspiration there. So I would recommend that anybody that is listening in, you have to maybe go to the Facebook ads library and have a look at Brie's ads on Snag Tights. Obviously, you get a feel of the creatives you're doing, the videos you're using, the UGC, the user generated content that's coming in.
Richard Hill:
So Facebook ads, what was there on Facebook ads? Do you know what your split is around remarketing and new audiences or did you do a lot of remarketing or...?
Brie Read:
We don't do huge amount. The majority of what we do is around first customer acquisition. I mean we have a very short purchase journey, so most people buy on their first visit to the website, which I've never seen for any other brand. But it's really nice and we've got a very high conversion rate on the site as well. So our conversion rate on the sites sits about 10%.
Richard Hill:
Wow.
Brie Read:
You know, one out of every 10 people that comes to the site buys anyway. So retargeting is a much smaller part of what we do. We also try very much to listen to our customers and what they want. One of the reasons we don't do email marketing is because no customer has ever asked us to email them twice weekly with a newsletter. So we don't do that.
Brie Read:
New customer has also asked us to follow them around the internet with loads of really strong retargeting. So again, we don't do that. We try and put their needs and their happiness first and consider it a co-owned brand between us and the customers. We take that really seriously.
Richard Hill:
So you're very customer centric, very brand focused. Customer focused, should I say? So what sort of things have you done then? What sort of things would you recommend that people could do to really push that customer-centric brand?
Brie Read:
I think the big thing is you firstly have to genuinely mean it. I did a talk quite a while ago now to a group of marketers and I was talking about how sizing, acceptance and body positivity are really important in brands, and somebody put their hand up and went, "So do we actually have to mean it or do we just fake it?" And I was like, "No, you have to mean it. It's the key part of it."
Brie Read:
So again, with being customer-centric, I find a lot of brands say they are, but you really have to genuinely mean that. Sometimes fun stuff you think would be awesome, customers aren't that excited about and that means you don't choose those things. You know? It's like you have to make decisions that are to your detriment sometimes and that's okay.
Brie Read:
But for me, the big part of it is to keep those conversations with them light and keep asking them questions. So any decision we have in the business, we put out to our social audiences and we listen to what they say sometimes. We did one recently where we asked for new product suggestions and we got 4,000 comments, which was a lot to read.
Richard Hill:
Yeah.
Brie Read:
But we did, we read through. We answered every single one of them because that's also a commitment. So if we ask someone to talk to us, then you can't not talk back to them. So you have to commit the people and the resources to answer every single comment or interaction that you get on social, which is something we do as well.
Richard Hill:
So social obviously plays a huge part. Posting on there, asking your followers and your brand ambassadors and all the people that are on your pages that have bought your products, et cetera, are being collated. I mean collating 4,000 comments and making decisions from it. How would you go about that? Or thousands of bits of feedback.
Brie Read:
Well, I mean, I read it all myself and I go through it and I make notes and you do little tallies and you see what comes up again and you make sure that you've got a really good feeling for it. People are taking time out of their day to share that stuff with you. So the least you can do is read it properly and understand it and take it on board and use that when that's a really important tool. That's like, again, you use it when you need the help to make a decision, not just for the sake of it, if you see what I mean.
Richard Hill:
Yeah, yeah. Understood. So in terms of the technology you're using and platforms, so I think it's... Is it Shopify?
Brie Read:
Yeah. It's Shopify.
Richard Hill:
Big, big fan?
Brie Read:
Huge fan of Shopify. Brilliant, brilliant service. You know, I get asked a lot about whether or not we would switch out into something else or whether we want something bespoke, and Shopify does everything we need, a more brilliant platform.
Richard Hill:
I heard on Remy you built a site in a day. Is that right? Or they're enough.
Brie Read:
Worse than that. So my brother built it in two hours in a pub, actually a pub in Victoria Station in London.
Richard Hill:
Oh, my God.
Brie Read:
Yeah.
Richard Hill:
The headlines just get better and better. Built in a pub in two hours, 2 million pounds a month I think you're doing on. You know something] is just dum, dum, dum, dum. And I also hear... You're like, "What's he going to say next? What's he good to say that?" That you're very much focused on the virtual side of things with your team as well, so-
Brie Read:
Yeah. We're a completely virtual team.
Richard Hill:
Which I think in light of the situation that we're in right now with COVID-19, obviously a lot of people, well everybody, pretty much, not everybody, but 99% of the population that's at home obviously. I'm guessing you're at home right now while we're chatting.
Brie Read:
Yep.
Richard Hill:
I think virtual working... We're working remotely should I say? What sort of things could you say about that or recommend about that? Tools, the way that you communicate with your team?
Brie Read:
Yes. We use WhatsApp a lot. We tend not to do a lot of... I hear lots of people are doing Zoom meetings and stuff like that. We tend to use WhatsApp basically because it lets people contribute when they are most engaged. So for me, the problem with meetings back in office life was always you've got one person who's worried about their cat because it's sick. You've got one person that's got cold. You've got one person that is really hungry. None of those people are getting together at the same amount, at the same time to be super productive in the right way because everybody's schedule is different.
Brie Read:
So we do kind of really weird meetings where people can contribute when they have and they are inspired to say something around it. So we'll start a WhatsApp group on a subject and someone will write something and maybe nobody writes anything for eight hours, and then you'll have three people that contribute once. We find actually meetings like that get much better results because everybody's contributing when they're super passionate and thinking about it and they've put the effort in rather than just going, "Oh, I don't care because I'm hungry so I'm not going to contribute."
Richard Hill:
Yeah. I'm not even there. I'm not even there. I'm just thinking whatever. I'm on my mobile or whatever. Whereas, they've got the time to then respond…
Brie Read:
Yeah. To think about it.
Richard Hill:
Yeah, perfect.
Brie Read:
I think it's not just about creating virtual versions of things that you used to do in an office. It's about going where can the virtual tools help me to do things in a different way and make sure that people are productive in a way that's good for them and not just for you or the person that's holding the meeting.
Richard Hill:
Okay. So you spend a lot of your time working from home then? Or are you in a... You go to the warehouse? You know, the sort of the logistics side of things or are you-
Brie Read:
You have to go to the warehouse sometimes, spend the vast majority of time working from home or whatever hotel is designated home at the moment because there's a lot of traveling to do with managing the supply chain and everything as well. So yeah, I tend to work almost entirely off my phone as well rather than using a laptop, which I find really helpful because there's pretty much nothing you can't do on your phone now, which is great.
Richard Hill:
That's another one for the headline. So we've got mobile, two hours.
Brie Read:
Yeah. We're weird. Actually, we genuinely like to do things differently. So we've kind of got a motto, which is if you want extraordinary results, you have to do extraordinary things. So if you're just doing the things that everyone else does, you never really can be better than them better, better, and you're going to be the same, right?
Richard Hill:
Yeah.
Brie Read:
So if you want to do things that are completely different or really push the boundaries, you need to try completely different approaches.
Richard Hill:
Yeah, brilliant thinking. I'm thinking we've gone literally like whirlwind from zero to two years. You're doing huge numbers along obviously... And it all sounds so simple. I'm sure it's not quite that simple. So over those two years, you've gone from shipping out your first pair of tights to shipping out 10 pairs of tights a day to a hundred pairs of tights a day to 500. Obviously, there's some huge milestones there. I mean, what would be your advice to people listening in?
Richard Hill:
I think a lot of people that are listening to the podcast will be on their $100 a day or their $200 a day and aspiring to get to that, whatever their level is. There's always another level, isn't there? Whether that's... you know. Obviously, everyone's got their own aspirations and whether that's all the values or all the numbers or square footage in their warehouse, which are unlikely to be one of those.
Richard Hill:
In two years, you've gone from one order a day, to the 3,000 plus orders a day. What are some of the advice you would give out to people listening in that are looking to scale?
Brie Read:
I think there's two things for me really. I think the first one is that you can never be complacent with what you've got. So as soon as you're going, "Oh, I've got a hundred sales a day, that's great. I'm going to enjoy it," you're going to be stuck at that level just from a psychological point of view. So however many orders you have coming in a day, it can never be enough.
Brie Read:
So you have to have that mindset right from the start, which is, "10,000 orders yesterday. Oh, but we could have done 12." You have to keep pushing yourself and you can't back off in that enjoying it, just being like, "Yay. I've achieved this." It's always good to celebrate achievements, but you can't rest on your laurels for any amount of time, I think, which is hard.
Brie Read:
I think I must annoy people a lot with that because I'm like, "This is great." And I'm like, "Well, but it can be greater. What more could we do?"
Richard Hill:
So you already completely forgotten about the 3,000 orders a day. You're focused on the next thing.
Brie Read:
Yeah, you have to. You have to constantly be focused on the next set of numbers.
Richard Hill:
Sorry, go on.
Brie Read:
Sorry, go on. I was just going to say that the other thing is about building an organization where change is the norm. Because if you're going to be scaling to that degree, you live in constant flux. So anybody who isn't great living with lots of change, anyone that likes conformity and normal days that are the same every day isn't going to work in your organization. You have to build it to be an organization that is constantly in flux with people that love being in flux all of the time.
Richard Hill:
Well, having the key people in the business being very, very strong at change and adapting and knowing that we will never... You know, same as yourself. Very, very key that those people are able to adapt very quickly and know that that 3,000 orders, "Yay, we'll celebrate for two minutes but Brie is going to want 10,000" or whatever that number is. So that warehouse is going to grow, the team is going to grow. Because there's so many things, isn't there?
Richard Hill:
Obviously, within that business you've got... Obviously, there's a marketing one thing, but if we decide to set that for a second, you've got that whole logistics warehouse team, people, recruitment. There is so many moving parts obviously within an organization that's doing that amount of orders, that recruitment. Have you got any sort of tips on recruitment for the guys that are listening in, that trying to get key people in their organization?
Brie Read:
I think with recruitment, again, we always start by asking our customers. With absolutely everything we do, we start at that point. So if you've got somebody out there who's already a massive fan of your brand, and you bring them in to any role, they're going to love being there a lot more than someone that's never heard of you.
Brie Read:
So, we always go out to our customers first with anything like that. We've got lots of hires who are people who were customers first and also have these amazing skills in different areas, and get somebody who inherently understands your brand but also loves working there because it's a little bit of a dream for them. You know, it's something that they've wanted to do. I think that makes it a lot easier to cope with how difficult and stressful stuff can be sometimes.
Richard Hill:
Yeah. Understood. Okay. What would you say would be your biggest tips for people that are listening in looking at styling a brand that they're actually just starting out, they're just thinking of starting? Whatever it may be to build a brand, what will be a good start point?
Brie Read:
Well, then the first thing is to have product market fit. It seems really obvious and stupid, but the amount of people that I talk to are like, "I've got this great idea" and it's a great idea that's relevant to one person one day a year, every five years in your life. That's not going to make a brand.
Brie Read:
I think for me there's a concept of dwell time, which is how long a person spends engaging with your brand. So if you're wearing a pair of tights, somebody wears those for eight hours a day, that's a high amount of dwell time with your brand. So your brand is important. They're thinking about you every day. You need to do that.
Brie Read:
If you sell, for example a travel neck pillow that you use once a year, your brand is much less important in that sale because it's much more a product based sales. I think you need to understand where you fit in. And neither one is good nor bad. It's just about being realistic. If you're selling Blu Tack and you want to do a huge brand thing around it, you need to think is that necessary for this type of product or is it just about this product being better?
Brie Read:
So I think there's that thought going at the start, and then I think the big one for me is actually working out how big your market size is. This is always the bit that I do when somebody pushes an idea or ask me for their opinion of an idea is going, "Who is your audience? How big is that audience? What percent of that audience do you think you can take? And how much money does that put at the maximum part of this business is worth?" A lot of time we'll go through the numbers and go, "Actually, it's not big enough."
Brie Read:
I think that's a really key thing. If you don't work those numbers out beforehand, you can have really unrealistic expectations of a product. We see that a lot, for instance, in the baby market. There's about a million babies born every year. So your baby market is never going to be bigger than a million babies every year. So as much as you have aspirations for your product, that's as big as it gets.
Brie Read:
So either you think of something that you can do every one of those years. So you have a million babies, and then when they turn two, you've got another product. When they turn three, you've got another product. Or you think about five products that each one of those babies needs. But you have to try and put that context around it. Otherwise, you don't really understand the market for your product.
Richard Hill:
So for Snag Tights. What's next in terms of... Are you staying tights? So obviously, it's Snag Tights, but are you going to stay with tights or have you got ideas? I'm sure we've got plenty of ideas, but is there any sort of exclusives maybe you can give us, the products that are maybe on the horizon?
Brie Read:
We've got lots of really interesting products coming up. We've got over the next couple of months, something that people have been asking us for ages. I'm not going to tell you what it is, but keep looking because it's going to be really good. And yeah, we've got some great stuff.
Brie Read:
We're moving towards biodegradable or doing a lot of work around biodegradable tights, and if we can make those. So there's a lot of eco-initiatives that we're doing and just really focusing on markets that we're a little bit less well known in like the States and seeing how we can push those as well.
Richard Hill:
So pushing more there while you have already more so in different-
Brie Read:
Yeah.
Richard Hill:
With that said, do you think you'll ever open stalls and bricks and mortar type businesses or one of those?
Brie Read:
No, for a couple of reasons. One of them is margin. Again, because we consider ourselves a co-owned brand with our customers, all our extra margin, we pushed back into lowering our price so we can keep our prices as advantageous as we possibly can so we don't have the margin to be able to do bricks and mortar stores.
Brie Read:
I also think that's fundamentally changing. We did a survey last year, which was looking at people's shopping experiences on the High Street and 70% of people said they'd cried in the changing rooms of a store because the bricks and mortar purchase experience and fashion is just so tough. And again, that's not an area that we want to be part of. So I think it's much more about helping people have great shopping experiences in places that they're comfortable in.
Richard Hill:
Yeah. So probably not then is a reality.
Brie Read:
Yeah. Yep.
Richard Hill:
Plus with what's going on at the moment. Yeah. Are you having any challenges with logistics at the moment, getting 3,000 orders a day out? Is that starting to bite at all at the moment?
Brie Read:
We are. I think we're lucky we've got quite a good stock holding, but we are seeing a reduction in demand at the moment just as people sort themselves out really. I think you can't push that stuff. This is a scary time for people. They're living life. Their living experience of life is so different normal.
Brie Read:
You just need to give people the space to deal with what they have to deal with and try and do your bit. So we've got a great scheme at the moment where we're giving free tights to NHS frontline workers and we're also just doing loads of stuff to try and entertain people at home.
Brie Read:
So craft projects, great music lists, happy kind of interesting projects and photography things people can do and really just trying to keep people happy and amused. They've supported us. So this time when it's really tough for people, we want to be there to support them.
Richard Hill:
I think that's brilliant. I think it's so important now, isn't it? Right now, you see the brands that are doing it right, which a lot are, and obviously trying to contribute and help. And then you see the other thing that's just like, well, that's really going to adapt in the long run.
Richard Hill:
When all is said and done, everything's going to go back to normal, and it is. It might not feel like it to some people right now, but it will. It's just a matter of how many sleeps or how many weeks, but it'll go back to normal. But obviously, some brands will flourish and they will flourish very well because of the way that they represent themselves over this time, whereas others obviously will not.
Richard Hill:
I think it'll be a very interesting three, six months to see obviously what brands are doing, how they react to anything. Over this last week, there's been a lot of very quick stuff that's not very good or just very... It's just not very honest I think. It's just not brands at all. Whereas I think like as you say, I think you just got to take a bit of a breath and thinking, "Hang on a minute. How can we help? What can we do? You know, we can entertain them." I think it's brilliant. Yeah. Thank you, Brie.
Richard Hill:
I think final question for you. I always like to end on a book recommendation for my podcast listeners. So what would your book recommendation be?
Brie Read:
My favorite book is Frank Herbert's Dune, and I think everybody should read it. I think it's particularly interesting at times of crisis and when people are feeling a little bit off kilter. It's really about how you thrive over adversity, and when things are completely bleak, how you can keep going. Yeah, for me, that's just a bit of a bible for life, but I think it's particularly important just now.
Richard Hill:
So it's one to reread then for yourself, is it?
Brie Read:
Yeah, yeah.
Richard Hill:
Yeah. That's a joke. Yeah. Frank Herbert's Dune.
Brie Read:
Yep.
Richard Hill:
Yep. Right. Okay. We'll get that on the list. Brilliant. Well, so for the guys that are listening in that want to find out more about you Brie, obviously you've got Snag Tights. Is there any way specifically guys can find out more about you over and above that?
Brie Read:
Yeah. On Instagram, it's briefromsnag or you can find me on LinkedIn as well.
Richard Hill:
Yeah. Fantastic. Well, thank you very much for being on the podcast, and I'll speak to you soon. Thank you.
Brie Read:
No problem. Thank you very much.