E43: Helen Rankin

Richard Hill
Hi and welcome to another episode of eCom@one, and today's guest is Helen Rankin, who's the managing director of Cheeky Wipes, a UK e-commerce business Helen has ran for over 13 years here in the UK. How are you doing, Helen?

Helen Rankin
I'm doing really well, thank you as well as can be expected, given lockdown and everything.

Richard Hill
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Well, thank you so much for coming on the eCom@One podcast. I'm looking forward to having a good chat, finding out more about Cheeky Wipes and more about your journey over the last 13 years. That's I guess, in e-commerce world 13 years is a long time. A lot of different things you would have seen so it would be great I think to kick off with a bit about the motivation behind Cheeky Wipes, where it came from and that journey from sort of pre 13 years to today.

Helen Rankin
Yeah, sure. So Cheeky Wipes isn't my first online business. So when my when my husband and I got married, which is about 16 years ago, we went looking for a photo guestbook to stick pictures in and get your guests to sign them. And we came across a product in America called the Adesso Album, which was custom made with Polaroid pictures. And I thought it was a great idea. You couldn't get them in the UK anywhere. So I approached the lady that makes them in America and said I'd really love to distribute these in the UK for you, get a business plan and set that up. At the time I was working for, I just had a baby and I was working for Egg, the online credit card company, and it meant I was commuting backwards and forwards to Derby, which I live on the south coast of England so that's a fair old commute. And I was sort of looking for something I could do which would give me a better work life balance, would mean I didn't have to do that commute, you know mummy guilt, all that sort of thing. So I launched Instant Forever, which which is my first business. It went really well for about three years until Polaroid ceased production of Polaroid cameras, as they were. And and that meant I was having to wind down the business. But obviously I really got into the business. I knew what I was doing and I sort of thought, what else could I do? And what I thought what really was, I think they say that necessity is the mother of invention, and that is really true for me. So, again, when Archie was born, I was having a flare up of eczema. I've had eczema since I was five years old. It never quite grew out of it the way the doctor said that I would. And I was using cloth nappies with him and I decided to use, I couldn't use disposable wipes. They really, really, really irritate my skin. At that point. I couldn't even put my hands in soapy water. It was really bad. And I started using cloth wipes and went through a process of, OK, well, what do I do to make these cloth wipes easy to use, as convenient as a disposable wipe and what to do when I'm out and about, how do I make them wash well? And from that I set up my own system. So it sort of seemed obvious to me that when I started to wind down Instant Forever, well, maybe I could take these wipes that I really enjoy using and maybe I can make them easy for other people because, you know, my friends are using disposable nappies, but they could still use these wipes. You know, it's better for the environment. You know, there's no nasty chemicals in them and you'll save yourself a lot of money. So that let me set up then Cheeky Wipes and had the usual issues with trying to find manufacturers, which is all brand new for me. I'd never, I've never done any manufacturing. So that was and continues to be a learning curve. And you learn from your mistakes. So yeah, we set up Cheeky Wipes, it was it was twelve years ago, back in, 12 and a half years ago now and that was back in October and at that stage I was thirty seven weeks pregnant with baby number three.

Richard Hill
Oh wow.

Helen Rankin
It was quite memorable. At trade shows, you've met Vicki Denby who runs Mummy and Little Me. She was one of my very, very first customers and I think I stood out for being so heavily pregnant.

Richard Hill
So, yeah. So through through necessity and through sort of, trying to figure out something really right at the beginning that you could do from home and get that balance, work life balance or to have something a bit more on your terms. You know that initial idea came and now 13 years later, obviously, I know you've got a very successful, substantial, substantial business. I'm sure it wasn't all plain sailing all the way through 13 years of of learning, trying, testing, trying to figure stuff out. You touched on manufacturing there. What advice would you give someone who's thinking of starting a business because I think obviously there's a lot of, a lot of a lot of experience you've got there, from more than 13 years with a couple of ventures and obviously Cheeky Wipes now, what advice would you give to the guys there maybe listening to the podcast and thinking, well, you know, I'm a bit worried about this, a bit worried about that. And you know what what sort of what what little gems would you give the listeners?

Helen Rankin
I think I think the most important thing is not to be afraid of failure and turn that on its head and view it as an opportunity to learn, an opportunity to improve. I mean, we've had we've had some way back when we've had things go and we had this great idea for doing like a pop top box, the wipes come in in reusable plastic boxes, which got a nice sturdy clip on them. But at one stage we thought it was a really good idea to do pop top box, which was a great idea. But the mechanism was it was one of those Brabantia bins and the mechanisms over a period of time rusted and they didn't put quite as well. Plus, it was a domed lid and our customers came back and were like, yeah well a domed lid is lovely, but we can't stack them. So for us, it's we very, very much view the design process as an iterative process. And we've got a really good example of that going on at the minute. So we've just launched nappies, Cheeky Doo-Doo nappies. The name has come about because every baby show we come to, people say do you do nappies and we go, no we don't do nappies. But now we can say Cheeky do do nappies. The issue with that is one thing that we, it's one of our core values. Something I feel really, really strongly about is that we all have to use the products ourselves. So everything that we sell, the bites, the period pants, the cost sanitary pads, I don't think you can sell something with integrity unless you use it yourself. You believe in it. Obviously the problem with that is my babies are no longer babies mine are now from 16 up to, you know, down to nine. But but between myself and Claire, who runs my warehouse, we have you know, we've got 16 years of cloth nappy experience between us and what we we knew sort of nappy we wanted to use, which was a two part, nappy. We worked, we were really both really clear on that because I think they're bombproof. We've worked with a lady called Penny Broderick who set up the UK Cloth Nappy Libraries Network, who has got years of experience with all different styles of nappy. So we've worked we've been working on this for 15 months. And but rather than go out with a big girl single launch, we have done a very small production run of thousands. And it sets we're selling them at just over cost price. And but in return for that, we are asking our customers to give us feedback. We've positioned it as this is a better run. We think the grant we want you to help us make them fabulous. And and in exchange for your feedback, you're getting a really good price. So we that's that's how we work. And we think it works really well.

Richard Hill
Yeah. Yeah. So if you're listening to the podcast and think about the products that you're thinking of starting in or manufacturing, you've really got to believe in them, you've got to test them yourselves or your close family friends. You've got this big disconnect, potentially just very tunnel vision because we think this product might be quite good. But until you actually try it, it seems that, you know, got to get that feedback initially so that smaller quantity run. You know, it's funny actually, I was having a conversation with my kids yesterday. We have a lot of conversations about business ideas and things like that, which is great. And we were looking at watch straps and I was saying to the boys about, you know, some of the margins that are available on watch straps are really, really, really great. We're really into our watches, me and boys are. We found some sources for watch straps yesterday and the various sorts online, the idea is we're going to we're going to probably I'm pretty sure we're going to import sort of two or three hundred samples. Obviously, we've got to test them, you know, so, you know, not just buy them and just sell them without testing them. So we want to get some samples, which I think is quite often a lot of people overorder initially. And then actually they're poor quality at the end of the day, potentially quite, quite, it can be quite common depending on price points or things like that. But it reminds me of a story of when I used to import products, days, it was probably 12 years ago, I think, but probably about 18 years ago, we created a brand around computer accessories - keyboards, mice, speakers, those sorts of things. And we were, I can't remember exactly why, but we brought in mice, don't know if you can see it from here, probably not. But mice, but mice rather than at the moment they're ball-less, they don't really have balls in there, they're optical but back then they had balls in. And we brought the mice in but we shipped the balls separately. I think it was to do with duty, something to do with duty, I can't remember exactly. But when we got them we had 10000 mice and 10000 balls. So we had to then physically put them all back into the boxes, which that that alone was ridiculous. Yeah, but it transpired that the balls didn't fit the mice.

Helen Rankin
Oh! Oh no.

Richard Hill
We had thousands of mice balls, which were literally good for nothing. They were just scrapped and then we had to re-import. But the mice balls, it was a complete, complete it was a nightmare. Now that sounds you know, I don't think people would make that same mistake now because that product's been reiterated 20 times and you can't buy that. But I think, you know, just having a test run rather than committing to thousands of thousands on spend and volume of product. So you tested it, yeah, I think that's it.

Helen Rankin
It's that thing of you will make mistakes, but you will never make that mistake again. And that's the thing, and you learn from your mistakes. And, you know, very few people are going to set up their own business and know everything about everything, they'll likely specialise in one area. And mine was more into marketing, that was my background. So people tend to come from or, you know, that might have a background in manufacturing or whatever, but you're not going to be good at everything across the board. And most people can't, you know, sort of employ people straight up. So you have to get up to speed really quickly and you will make mistakes.

Richard Hill
It's inevitable and you've just got damage limitation and then try to make them as small as possible, potentially.

Helen Rankin
I have my 'What would Sir Alan Sugar do?' moments. So when something you know, it's like a variation of what would Jesus do, but is when things go really wrong, when, you know, that really hits the fan it's like, OK, what would Sir Alan Sugar do in this moment? And it really works for me because allows you to take a step back from that 'oh, what have I done, I'm so stupid', you know, to 'OK, this is a problem that needs to be solved'. What would Sir Alan do? And it gives you that that that ability just to step back and be a bit more rational.

Richard Hill
I was listening to an audio book yesterday called The Obstacle is the Way. And one of the one of the bits stood out for me in there was, so you're, so you've you've had an idea launching a business, whether it's, you know, importing these SKUs, whatever they may be. But you've just been called into the boardroom, you know, boardroom of one or two or however many people. And it's failed. So it's failed and you haven't even started. Why has it failed? What could it have failed for? Why has it failed? It's almost like telling yourself it's failed already, not because you're not going to do it, but then trying to figure out all the areas like, oh, we forgot about the import tax, we forgot about the law around this, we forgot about that. So all the things that it could have failed for, why have you been called into the boardroom for failing with that task? I thought that was quite cool, so covering that and covering that, yeah, The Obstacle is the Way.

Helen Rankin
Yeah I like that.

Richard Hill
So obviously thirteen years-ish, with the business obviously. And a few years prior to that, with test ideas and various other projects, obviously very busy lifestyle. You mentioned that you've got obviously, four children as well. And I think a lot of people listening to the podcast and just everybody that's, you know, busy, more than ever now, I think obviously with people being at home more so, a lot more pressure from probably the personal side, family side. How, what advice would you give to people about that sort of work life balance?

Helen Rankin
I think I know I I will struggle if I don't have time for myself. And whether that is getting out mid afternoon for dog walk. I live by the sea, it's beautiful, it's space and it literally gives me head space. And so for me something like that or exercise is actually really important. And I think I'm I'm a better mother and a calmer mother when I have that, when I have that space. Yeah. And then come back and, you know, jump back and jump back into work, jump back into, you know, managing the kids home school and at the minute or whatever. To be fair, I think in our house we call it more forest schooling. It's a little bit more random. So yeah. So I think that that taking time is, and I think that's one of the benefits for me running my own business, is I can be flexible, you know. I can get up and answer emails early early so I can spend a bit more time with the kids or that I could do whatever I need to do, and that is a huge, huge plus for me to run my own business.

Richard Hill
Yeah, yeah. I think that's great. I think the guys that are listening now, you know, you really should have a think about, you know, I think it was just there's too much emphasis on you know, I think you look at social media and 'I'm always grinding' or whatever the word, all these sort of the 'oh, we should always be working and always be pushing'. And it's like, well, no, I agree with you. I think you've got to have this this balance and stepping away from that day to day, whether it's, you know, if you're if you live by the sea, that's amazing, that's like my dream sort of thing. Yeah. Just have a break, scheduling those breaks, scheduling that downtime just to get out and about and have a, gives you a bit more time and more clarity on things. You can come back even stronger potentially, rather than just trying to do the 60, 70 hour weeks or whatever it may be as a business owner or an e-commerce entrepreneur. Yeah it can get a bit much at times. So 13 years you'll have seen a lot, as we said we touched on. But amongst those times, no doubt, a lot of challenges have come your way. What sort of specific challenges would you say you faced in your business and how did you overcome them?

Helen Rankin
So one of the biggest challenges I've had is actually scale, getting going from a lifestyle business which was providing me with a decent income. We had two years ago, we had six of us running the business and we've now got thirty five other the staff. And that came about because I was taking the kids away to Center Parcs in Belgium, I think. And we stopped at the Channel Tunnel, as you do, and we were getting books and things. And I picked up, I was like well I've got a bit of time out of work and said, oh, I know I'll read a book about work. So it was a Harvard Business Review. But you know the sort of thing I don't get time to do day in, day out. And yeah it was Harvard Business Review that a series of six books and I thought that looks interesting, I'll pick that up, because I always find being away from work gives you actually quite often the headspace to think about the big picture, not the daily grind, not the have to get this done, still have to get this done. But one of the big picture stuff for me is much better done away from work. So I picked up these Harvard business reviews and I just was reading things and I thought actually this is, I could do more than what I'm doing right now. But I'm aware that I'm not sure where to take it from here and how to make it bigger. So I started working, Claire, who runs my warehouse, I already met her uncle on several occasions. He's in his 70s, but comes from a publishing background, had been bought out by part of the Daily Mail group, had also done some sort of venture capital and bits and pieces and had mentored for the Prince's Trust. So already had that background. So I approached him about two years ago in May. I said, Right, I'd really like to scale this business. I don't know how to do that, I could do with a steer, I could do with some direction. Would you be prepared to work with me? And we've spent the last sort of since then just just working on scalability. So that that has it's for me, the biggest challenge was letting go and delegating because I did so much myself, not saying I'm a control freak, but I definitely have got issues.

Richard Hill
Yeah I can relate to that.

Helen Rankin
And it's been that for me, has been, I think I found it once I got into it, I find it easier and easier. But that letting go and relinquishing responsibility. Oh my God, I struggled with it. But you know, here we are now, January 2021, I've got a marketing manager, a marketing system, people, I've got a PA and they just help everything flow so much better. And it gives me time to do the real value adding stuff like this, for example, you know.

Richard Hill
I think that's great. I think too often I think everyone can relate to that. You know, you try and do everything you do, marketing, the sales, the production, the manufacturing, the website guy, the girl, you know everything. And I can do it all. Well, hang on. But, you know, you can't, you know that, you know, out of those things is probably a couple of those things. You know, the vision and the bigger picture is where you need to be, but the reality is you're down in the trenches, you know, trying to figure out how AdWords works or whatever it may be. Whereas it's then identifying your superpower or two, you know, I think is is one of the is is what you're saying. And then, I'm really just, you know, trying to find somebody that that can help, which I think can be quite a challenge. Obviously, you were very fortunate there that, you know, you've had an amazing experience there and found somebody and, you know, that was a friend and family scenario. But I think that's great advice. Really, really good advice. I think, you know, people that are listening in, whether that's, you know, doing whether they've just done their first million or a million per month, depending on what they want to do. You know, there's whole levels, isn't there, that that as a business, if you want to go to if you can get some experience in the business, like a mentor, trusted adviser, that can come in with that experience. And really just, save you a lot of a lot of pain potentially, and speed up that process because they've been there. We've got the T-shirt, you know, and so something like that is that sounds like a monthly type commitment you have with this person?

Helen Rankin
I just ping things back and forwards to him then once a month, the whole senior management team sit down together and have a review of where we're at with everything. And I think I think the challenge as well for me in that is the letting go, but also taking the advice that I've been given, because I often my initial reaction is no, why would I want to do that? And then I sit with it and I think about it and I think about it a bit more. I think maybe you have a point. Maybe that's quite a good idea. It's so hard to do that.

Richard Hill
I can so relate and I think a lot of people listening in will be like exactly, and then that night, you know, actually, no, actually, we just. Oh, actually, yeah. That's a good idea. It wasn't mine but it's a good idea. Yeah. And that's always a tricky one, isn't it. Yeah, and I think you know, the guys that are listening in, you know, when you start going from that one man band back bedroom idea, which a lot of people listening to the podcast will be at or gone through and you go you make that first hire, then you do your first whatever it may be, your first 10 grand, 100 grand million, whatever it may be. You know, there's points where you've got to step back and have that have that mindset where you need help at the end of the day, you know, as you can make some very expensive mistakes along the way. So we very rarely interview an e-commerce store owner without asking them about their most successful sort of online marketing activity. What sort of advice would you give them, what's been what's been really good for you on this online marketing side?

Helen Rankin
We've got several things that are our social media paid advertising does really well. And Facebook and Instagram. I think that's because the products that we sell are very much people care about them through word of mouth and that sort of thing. So that whole social element really, really works well for us. And I think that's probably our biggest revenue driver. Then aligned with that is all of the work that my team do in and in the social media posts themselves. So, you know, we find the giveaways work really, really well for us. I think our giveaways get well over a thousand interactions every every time we run them, we do them every Friday. Yeah. And I know that we've just put a link tree on our social media, which means we can put one link on our bio that then takes people to link to that, can steer them to the right place depending on what they're looking for which is something that's been very useful for us. But yeah, Pay per Click also does well, but yeah for us Paid Social is our...

Richard Hill
Paid Social, yeah, yeah. So with paid social then and I know TikTok, what would you say about that? Has that generated results for you specifically?

Helen Rankin
Interesting because we have just, we've literally just done, started on TikTok within the last month and yeah we are getting you know, it's still very, very small compared to Facebook and Instagram where we've got, you know, I think we've got well over fifty thousand followers on on Facebook and Instagram but on TikTok we're still very, very I think Izzy's only been doing it for the last month. But what she's found that really works well for us is product reviews and sort of more instructional videos. And she did a really good one of how to fit a baby nappy, which again, is linked into these new nappies. But, yeah, we're literally just getting off the ground with that, it's very very new for us.

Richard Hill
Early days. Yeah, that's seems to be the consensus overall. I'll have to get you back on maybe six, 12 months and do a TikTok episode maybe so maybe.

Helen Rankin
And Izzy's our new marketing exec, and she's you know, she's in her early 20s, so it's much more her thing than my thing. I'm having to get my daughter, who's 12, to show me TikTok, I don't know how it works. Yeah, it's definitely more of a young people thing, this makes me sound really old, but yeah.

Richard Hill
I feel your pain. Yeah, it's similar to our agency and my children scenario. Yeah. Yeah. My son, I'll say, I'll say oh I saw this video yesterday and I will have seen it on Instagram, but he's obviously seeing the same one on TikTok and he goes well dad what are you doing on TikTok? I said I'm not on TikTok, I said I'm watching it, I'm watching it on Instagram. Yeah, yeah, yeah. OK, so obviously tried a lot of things over the years, you know, in the marketing sphere, you know, in new product testing and various other things. But what would you say is one project, you know, not every project is a success, I think and I think it's something, it's good to talk about because I think typically, you know, the people that are listening in wherever they are in their journey, especially at the beginning of their journey, you know, it can be quite afraid, you know, or, you know, you can take a situation that maybe doesn't quite go to plan, it can really derail you. But the reality of life is, you know, things do go wrong. What would be one sort of project that was challenging for you, maybe a waste of time?

Helen Rankin
I've probably got a couple. So we had one way, way, way back where we had one set of wipes come in and the overlocking hadn't been finished quite at the edge. Hundred thousand wipes. And we had to get them re-overlocked in the UK one at a time because there's no point, it would have cost us more to ship them back to have them finished edging. Yeah. So that was, that was a challenge. The other thing we launched Muslins and again, this is coming back to what you were saying earlier on. By doing small production runs, we decided that Muslins would fit well with our brand in theory, they should fit well with our range. And we wanted them to be multicoloured because quite often Muslins are sort of, you know, a bit meh. And we, what we got this lovely rainbow and Muslins created, hundred thousand of them. And they just I mean, we did sell them all eventually, but they didn't sell anywhere near the way that we thought. And we had one hundred thousand of them. So we don't do anything in that sort of volume going forth. But we were so certain that it would be, it would fit really well with our product range, but they just didn't.

Richard Hill
So that quality control piece, you know, I think the guys that are listening in, you know, it's easier said than done because you might get, you know, one of one of the things, unfortunately, is that you get a sent a sample that is A*, but then you commit the deposit and you commit to 100,000 of whatever it may be when they arrive, when you've paid that final, obviously, that's the whole other discussion around terms. But, you know, when that 100,000 appear and you open that first box and think they're not quite like the samples we got, or maybe we missed it on the first QC check at the front end and they are the same one. We're now stuck with 100,000 of something that's now going to cost us money, potentially are definitely going to cost us money to rectify here. So it happens to all of us. It can do.

Helen Rankin
As I said earlier, it's it's a learning experience. So it's what you take from that. And again, which you know.

Richard Hill
Yeah. Yeah. So that's the marketing piece then. Influencer marketing. Do you do it, does it work. You know, where, where what would you say to the people listening in if they're looking at maybe getting started with influencer marketing or progressing their influencer marketing?

Helen Rankin
Yeah, it's a it's a really interesting one as a business. We don't do really pay for influencer marketing. It just it doesn't sit well with us. And we you know, we are honest and we we have integrity and that's really one of our core values. You know, we're paying somebody who hasn't used our products to talk about them just doesn't sit well with us. In saying that we've had some amazing influencer posts, Part Time Working Mummy is one who really supports our products, loves our products. She did a fantastic piece, a story on period pants and why you should use them and why they weren't something to be scared of. And she was so honest. It was it was brilliant. And we we had a huge spike in traffic from that, which is great. And it wasn't paid for. It was her actually using the product herself. So, yeah, it's a it's a it's a bit of an interesting one, and of course, you get all the you know, the mommy bloggers to, you know, I've got 12 followers and want some freebies and things like that, and it's rooting them out as well.

Richard Hill
Yeah. So your your take on it is really working with people that are passionate about the niche or their followers and they're doing a genuine review or genuine content around the product rather than saying something positive because they've been paid to do that. So I think, yeah, that'll resonate with a lot of listeners because most most businesses obviously want what they want to genuinely want, you know, genuine, you know, genuine content out there, genuine feedback, genuine social media presence that's genuine ultimately rather than some, yeah, something that's just been created because you pay them whatever it may be. So, yeah. So I think the advice there would be that that's up to the individual brand. But I mean, I completely agree with Helen in my personal opinion. You know, you you want you want to be associated people that fit your culture as a business, your culture as the business owner and leader. You know that you know, you want to be doing this a long time. And usually things that last a long time, I think, roots down to those core values and culture within the business and they align with your team all the way through. And then and then you attract similar people in your as customers potentially.

Helen Rankin
There's a lot, authenticity and integrity is really important for us. And and that that comes right across the board.

Richard Hill
Yeah, great. So obviously 13 thousand, sorry, 13 years. I know you said 12 and a half years but I'm going with 13 years, 13 years, you know, hundreds and hundreds of thousands of orders going through the business, how do you increase engagement with those existing, that existing customer base? Or is there any tips you would give to maximize long term value clients? And obviously, that's a long time. It's almost like dog years. It's like 70 years.

Helen Rankin
And what's fantastic is that we have customers who bought the baby wipes kit back in, you know, five years ago who are now buying our Welcome to your Period Kit for the baby that was born there, which is amazing. I think. I think because the products, because the wipes kit, you know, when we launched 12 years ago, we were an outlier. That war on plastic wasn't a thing. Blue Planet wasn't a thing. People were not aware of the plastic and wipes and the plastic pollution problem that we've got. So we were an outlier. And the people who bought into the product, loved it. And in that way they became advocates. So we do really well with them, customer referrals. We've got the Mention Me referral program, which I have to say I would recommend anyone absolutely, fantastic team over there and really easy integration. So, yeah, so that that customer advocacy is really important to us. And one of the ways that we we generate that is our customer service team led by Jo are amazing. They go above and beyond to try and resolve any issues because problems do happen. Royal Mail lose stuff, people get the wrong things sent to them, people make mistakes. But what, how you how you turn that around is how you can generate customer advocacy. So we, our customer service team are brilliant. We also make a point of doing a tailored welcome email to every customer. We've now got the staff and that's not some auto-bot generated thing. This is, literally we employ somebody to do that. And because people will have questions and it's nice to know that you can actually just reply and go actually, I'm not sure about this. Yeah. Um, so yeah that sort of, that again really drives, and you know if you look at our Trustpilot scores. And that is something that we, we take really seriously. Every product review that comes in is read by someone and any negative ones get a personal response from Jo who manages all the customer services because stuff does go wrong, you can't get it right all the time. But yeah, we're really proud of that, actually. And I think that that advocacy is is driven by by that experience that people get from us.

Richard Hill
I would say pause the podcast right now and just go back five minutes and listen to that again, because I think that's fantastic. The little gems, that referral program, but ultimately making sure you are giving the best customer service. You know, you said, you know, things do go wrong. Absolutely. Of course they do, you know we make mistakes as businesses every now and then, things out of our control or even in our control. Someone has a bad day, the knock on effects can be can be an unhappy customer potentially. But how you deal with that situation? Yeah, absolutely. You can have you know, you can really stand out and end up with a superfan rather than, you know, an unhappy customer, you can literally turn it around so quickly by just really dealing with that situation, if it arises, which it will if you're doing thousands of orders for an e-comm store. So it's inevitable that maybe it was wrong or that it was late or it was broken or obviously whatever, it never arrived. Whatever it may be, you have an opportunity to get in front of that customer and really show them, you know, that culture, ethos of the business, of being real, you know, you know, focused on that customer service. That Trustpilot piece, obviously there's other review tools out there, depending on where you are with the business. But, yeah, some great, great, great takeaways there. So 2021. What would you say the plans are for Cheeky Wipes this year?

Helen Rankin
Well, we've we've got sort of ambitious growth targets. We're looking at a 50 percent uplift whether we achieve that or not. With Covid, I think I think Covid is starting, furlough, and people being laid out of work. I think that is beginning to bite. And so we are we are going to hold tight, hold on their hats, do our best to keep getting the getting the word out there about reusables for the masses because one of the things is we we think that that should be at an accessible price point across the board. And they're not always. Yeah. So we're going to continue to get that word out there. Our biggest products are our period pants so it's a massive opportunity on those. And in terms of other sort of projects that we've got on, you know, ongoing projects that every company will have. So we're looking at the brand and how new products fit within the brand and the brand and working on. There's also, we've got a project on, about updating our our our dispatch system or our stock management system, which is looking at a new piece of software and that, you know, that's not an overnight job either. So there's all those sorts of things going on sort of in the background. But yeah, we've got some fairly ambitious growth targets as well. So watch this space.

Richard Hill
50 percent growth target on turnover for the next 12 months, that's that's some big growth, isn't it? But I know a lot of things have been accelerated, as we know in e-comm at the moment. So I look forward to touching base of, um, in January, February 2022 and we'll we'll see how, we'll do a version 2. So thank you so much for being on the podcast. There's been some amazing takeaways there and I always like to end every episode with a book recommendation, anything you like. What would you recommend to our listeners to read?

Helen Rankin
I've got three actually, so I read a lot. I've got to say those Harvard Business Review books. You can get them, I think there's one on strategy, change management, essentials, leadership, they're just so really they're not huge books, but they're really inspirational. I find them so anyway. Yeah, um, another sort of more factual book is Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker. Oh, really fascinating. I love books like this. It's it's it's literally about how our brain works, why it's necessary to sleep. You know, how your memories impacted by sleep. It's fascinating.

Richard Hill
I'm buying that straight away.

Helen Rankin
And then for a bit more of, I have to read every night to fall asleep. You know, I've done it since I was a child. And the best fiction I've read recently is called The Heart's Invisible Furies by John Boin. Absolutely cracking read. It's set in Ireland. And I think every chapter I was I was either crying with laughter or I was crying because it was so sad or sometimes in the same chapter. But yeah, don't put off by the name. But it's a really, really, really one of the best things I've read in a long time.

Richard Hill
Oh wow yeah. There'll be a few Amazon purchases happening in a minute. Every episode I do it's like, yeah got that one...ooh not heard...ooh. I mean I think, yeah, books everywhere. Yeah. Well thank you. Well thank you so much for your time. For the guys that are listening and want to find out more about yourself, Helen and the brand, what's the best place to go. Where's the best place for them to go?

Helen Rankin
It's cheekywipes.com and yeah as I say we do reusable baby wipes, cloth sanitary pads, period pants and reusable makeup remover pads are sort of our core products. Anything reusable.

Richard Hill
So cheekywipes.com?

Helen Rankin
Yeah, cheekywipes.com.

Richard Hill
Thank you. Well, thank you so much for being a guest on eCom@One and I'll speak to you again soon.

Helen Rankin
All right. Take care, thanks Richard.

Richard Hill
Bye.