E52: Jack Stevens

Richard Hill
Hi there, I'm Richard Hill, the host of eCom@One. Welcome to our 52nd episode. In this episode, I speak with Jack Stevens, the founder of luxury brand Sirluxe Socks and global head of eCommerce at OKA Furniture. Jack has been an eCommerce and SEO at a senior level now for over 12 years and works directly for OKA managing a team of digital marketers and is responsible for the success of the overall international marketing strategy and also runs his own side hustle, selling luxury socks online. An experienced hands on marketing pro, I had to get him on the show and talk about all things eCommerce from both sides of the fence. Some of the topics we cover in this episode include: we talk about setting up a side hustle and managing your time, while setting up his own brand whilst working from home and managing a very busy international eCommerce team at the same time. Jack also discusses which marketing channels work best for him and his team, both in the UK and specific strategies for the US market. If you enjoy this episode, please make sure you subscribe so you are always the first to know when a new episode is released. Now let's head over to this fantastic episode.

Richard Hill
How are you doing, Jack? You alright?

Jack Stevens
Very good, thank you. Thanks for having me on.

Richard Hill
Thank you. Well, Jack shares a very, very, same passion as me which is socks. So we have a fellow love of socks, which I think, well I had to get Jack on. Jack reached out to me a few weeks ago, and said he'd like to be on the pod, so I thought absolutely. Jack's doing some amazing things in a couple of industries. Maybe if you want to just introduce yourself, Jack, and then we'll get into it.

Jack Stevens
Well you've already done a glowing intro. But yeah so I'm Jack Stevens, founder of Sirluxe Sox. So we sell luxury men's socks all made using bamboo. So kind of substitute for cotton, a more sustainable material, which I'll talk a bit more about later. And I also head up the eCom digital team at OKA. So, OKA's a luxury furniture and homewares retailer, 14 stores across the UK, interior design, trade business and obviously online as well. Launched in the States, but 18 months ago. And we are next week opening our first retail outlet in the US as well. So I had everything digital in that business as well.

Richard Hill
Wow, that's incredible role. So very, very, very, very busy chap.

Jack Stevens
Yes. Spare time is a premium. And I had my first my first child in July last year. So he takes up some of my spare time as well. So yeah, everything comes at once.

Richard Hill
Blimey. Okay, so we've got socks. We've got furniture. If you've got to choose one. Only one. Which one would it be?

Jack Stevens
If you ask me in five years, maybe the answer will be socks. Once we, once we've hopefully grown a little bit more. But at the moment I have to say I'll go with the furniture. So really exciting business. Really exciting time for for kind of OKA, I've worked there for coming up to eight years. And I'd say the last the last three years have been kind of particularly exciting kind of time to be involved in the business. So the business was previously kind of founder-run, if you like, and then we kind of brought in some really kind of incredible sort of private equity investment in kind of January 2018 it was so just over three years ago, and since then, business has really kind of changed significantly and started to evolve in a way, and at a pace that no one could have really kind of imagined before, if you like. So, yeah, we've got a really strong set of investors that are really invested in growing the brand and the business long term. Their kind of, previously was much more based around trying to get like an immediate return from an investment or something like that. It might be, OK, we can potentially provide you with the money to do, to do this project if I was to pitch them from an idea or something was all about trying to get something done in a positive ROI within the same fiscal year. Whereas with with the current set of investors, they are much more aligned to the kind of long term vision, we've got a very challenging but robust four year plan. I would say that we're we're all striving, working towards achieving, which is basically scaling significantly here in the UK and then obviously across the pond in the United States as well. So, really, really interesting time to be involved in the business. And luckily as well, if you like, I know a lot of people that have had, you know, challenges, over Covid, the kind of pandemic. We're fortunate to work in an industry, if you like, that has been largely unaffected and if anything has kind of boomed, if you like. You know, people are spending more time than ever in their homes and travelling less than ever. So some of them big purchases that might have been kind of outside of people's previous capacity of what they could afford. You know, they've not spent that two or three thousand pound on a holiday last year and maybe will invest that in some, you know, in that statement piece in a dining room or in a sitting room, or that outdoor furniture that they can afford before. So we've kind of definitely ridden the wave a little bit in relation to that, like increasing demand and interest in our industry, which is which is obviously ultimately a bit of luck of where you're in at that time when this hit, but it certainly kind of helped us to accelerate some growth and build up an even stronger customer base to help us with the kind of like I say, the next challenging four years.

Richard Hill
So I think it's fair to say you've had an incredible 12 months, obviously with Covid and whatnot. And obviously the amount of industries similar to yourself that have done obviously very, very well, you know, despite obviously a lot of challenges out there for a lot of industries. Your industry, you know, we work with a lot of sort of kitchen brands and, you know, outdoor furniture and barbecues and hot tubs and different sort of interior type brands as well. And some of the growth we've seen, obviously, that's what you've seen. So obviously a great time to be in that industry. But we know that you've also got the sock brand. So why did you choose luxury socks, how did that come about?

Jack Stevens
So quite a few reasons, to be honest, and I've kind of always wanted to kind of have a side hustle, as you might call it. And so I was looking at kind of different options, what there was available that was that was feasible. I mean, it's all self-funded. So at the moment, I don't have any kind of like, you know, any angel investors or anything like that. So kind of like self-funded. So I wanted something that was, you know, feasible for me to go and kind of like do myself. I'm very keen for it to be a product rather than a service. I've previously done some kind of like consultancy if you like in relation to helping local businesses get set up online or helping with some kind of SEO, things like that with people. But I was keen for it to be like a physical product, like an actual retailer that I could look to set up. So I looked at all the different options, some of the positives around socks. I mean, I'm into it anyway. I'm into kind of like men's fashion. I'm into socks. From a, if I look at it practically from a logistical perspective, they're small. It makes it easier to store. So cheaper costs from a from a storage perspective. They're cheaper to ship. When you're looking at fashion brands, I was keen for it to be in in the fashion industry somewhere because I didn't want there to be any kind of potential conflict of interest with my role OKA. Like if I started my own kind of interior design or home thing would have been the CEO knocking on my door saying what's going on here? So I was keen for it to be in the fashion industry. From a size perspective, which was a really interesting part as well. I mean, retailers in the fashion industry are rife with exponential returns rates due to people kind of ordering three sizes or something and then sending something back, especially for new retailers that are not familiar, familiar with the kind of differences that you can get in sizing. So, you know, with ours we offer two sizes at the moment. So it's seven to nine and a half and then ten to twelve. So we capture most most of the market there with just two sizes. Are you a Small or are you a Large effectively? That's kind of the model that we've got at the moment. Potentially might look to expand that in the future to kind of smaller sizes if we look to expand there into potentially women's as well. So the potential for lower returns rates as well, which was something that was like an attractive proposition for it. I did some market research in relation to how many people buy socks, how regularly they buy them and how many pairs that they own. You know, the the average person was over twenty pairs of socks that they own. The frequency in which that they were purchasing was at least twice a year. So there was a good opportunity there for you know, I don't want it to be that kind of one purchase that then is kind of five years and you never hear from them again. Obviously at the moment we're trying to acquire as many customers as we can to build up that customer base. But I think moving forward, as we evolve, hopefully as a business and a brand, there'll be like a much better opportunity for, like repeat purchase from customers as well, which again, makes it an attractive proposition, if you can. New customer recruitment's expensive, right? So if we can reduce down reliance on that longer term and have like a more robust customer base that, you know are going to purchase two times, whatever their frequency is, whatever their 12 month frequency might be. Two or three or whatever, that kind of reduces the reliance on expensive new customer recruitment.

Richard Hill
So we've got quite a lot of things there I think if we just step through them. So obviously thinking about the guys that are listening and thinking that maybe they're thinking of maybe starting something, I think I'm keen to go back and talk about that conversation that maybe you had with your boss at OKA sort of to see, well, you know, I think there's a lot of people that are maybe like well, you know, I'm doing X, Y, Z as my career, as my job. But then I would love to set up something, but that initial jump. It's not really a jump as such because it's an investment, because obviously you're still doing, you're still working at OKA. But you know, that initial conversation you're going to have with your your boss, I think that's something we'll touch on a minute. But we're ticking those boxes of right: Returns, what's the returns rate potentially going to be? You've got a couple of sizes so not too bad. You've got the logistics, you've got price point, and then you've got the fact that in reality, people will need more than one pair of socks and two pairs of socks and so forth. So there's a lot of, you know, and quite easy to store and ship. I think that's a crucial one, isn't it? When you're getting, when you getting started with something, how are you going to start? Where's the stock going to go if you're going to have stock? And quite often it's in the spare room or in the garage, I guess.

Jack Stevens
And that's that's that's where mine is at the moment. It's kind of all stored on site here, if you like it in my home, until kind of get to a stage where I kind of run out of room, if you like. But yeah massively important stuff, you know, logistics can be really expensive. I'm very aware that there's loads of different kind of logistic providers out there, depending on the size of stuff. Depends on your business model if you're trying to create like an initially profitable business. And, you know, I mean, like I said, I'm self-funded so I'm conscious around trying to, Year 1 not turn a profit. Absolutely not. I mean that would be great, but I don't see that happening. But like from second year to to have a kind of a business model that has kind of like strong margins, still driving value for the customer. And is a really strong product. And these logistical side of stuff is what can massively eat into kind of your margin opportunities. So, yeah, there was definitely some some key factors in that. And the product as well. So talk around the bamboo side of of why the product is made is something that was really interesting to me. So not just to kind of jump on a bandwagon, but certainly across a lot of industries in fashion and retail and even in homewares as well, the whole sustainability, eco impact that businesses are having is is a really key part to try and minimise where we can. I learnt a lot around the different kind of like fabric options that there were for the production, was really taking into that kind of quality of what you can produce with bamboo and how great that material is and how sustainable that material is. Now there's some processes that you go through to actually get that bamboo to be a usable fabric that are not sustainable, which I'm very clear to kind of outline. But the actual product itself, the bamboo is is an amazing material that's that's really sustainable compared to cotton. And like water consumption is massively less. You can you can produce 10 times as much bamboo in the same area because it's chopped. It's not farmed like cotton is, it's reduced on like labour impact. You basically don't have to like, you basically don't have to water it. It's pretty self-sufficient. It helps the soil. You see there's loads of like really positive environmental benefits of using that vs. kind of cotton production as well.

Richard Hill
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So going back to that initial conversation with the team at OKA then, you know, you're sort of saying I'd like to do this on the side. How did that go?

Jack Stevens
Well, my boss is really supportive ultimately of, she's very output driven. So if we're delivering what we need to deliver and and so far working from home has saved me so much time from like a commuting perspective. And just being at home more has allowed me more time to kind of be able to do two with no trouble at all. So I'd say that I've, there's absolutely, I've not done less work for OKA, it's just that I've had more time to be able to to focus on this as well. But like I say ultimately there's no conflict of interest there. I think they were kind of impressed in relation to the the passion for the entrepreneurial spirit, if you like. And what's good and challenging is at the moment, my role at OKA is very, has evolved over the last few years. I've got a team of 14 and I used to have a team of kind of three, if you like, a few years ago. And we really like expanded our in-house capabilities. And therefore my role has naturally evolved to being a little bit more strategic rather than hands on in the weeds of stuff, which is which is a new challenge in itself and something I find really interesting. But having this kind of side part as well with the socks business enabled me to kind of keep some of them skills sharp. I'm using, full end-to-end I speak with the suppliers. Again, that's not something I have to do in the OKA world. We've got merchandising, buying teams, you know, teams of 20 that kind of manage that side of the business right the way through to kind of like fulfilment, marketing, even keeping your skills sharp from an SEO perspective, Bing, Google Search Console and seeing stuff like, I didn't used to go in that stuff for OKA at all very often.

Richard Hill
Logging into your ads every morning if you're running ads and -

Jack Stevens
Exactly. Yeah. Checking your own ads, setting up campaigns. I mean, like I said I've got teams of people that run our kind of performance marketing within OKA, so there's no requirement for me to be setting up ads or to being in the weeds of stuff. And I think it's a really good thing to kind of keep them sort of skills sharp. It's like it is an interest as well. It's not something that, I don't see it like a job to an extent. It's something that I love doing. I have a passion for eCommerce, a passion for like digital marketing and fashion as well. So for me, it's something that, yeah, I pick a lot of it up mornings, evenings, weekends. So it's not like, oh, I've got to sit down and do some work. I love it.

Richard Hill
It's fantastic, isn't it, that you've got a great balance but a very, very busy chap at the same time. So how do you manage the full time role and the side hustle? I know obviously in lockdown I guess we have got more time in terms of the commute and those extra hours that we're saving. But how do you manage, obviously, you said you've got a fairly young baby as well in the family. So you're a busy, busy guy.

Jack Stevens
He gets me up at five a.m. every day.

Richard Hill
Like an alarm clock.

Jack Stevens
Exactly. So I have loads of time to work in the morning.

Richard Hill
Yeah.

Jack Stevens
It's a challenge is a challenge finding time. However I totally agree that the the lockdown, if you like, is the one of the key things that it's provided people with is more time, I think more time at home, more time to kind of think to gather your thoughts. And not having time is a poor excuse, in my humble opinion. If you like the amount of people I speak to and be like I'm just so busy and I've watched four episodes of The Crown over the weekend. Well, don't do that and maybe put that two hours into doing something that's a bit more productive if you're struggling for time. So, you know, I think there's definitely a benefit for the fact we've had more time from less commuting, more flexibility at home that's certainly helped. And I'm going to see how I have to manage that once we actually get back to more of an office space scenario. But I think you make time for the things that are important to you. It's around prioritisation and yes, you have less free time, but there is enough time in the day to do the things that you need to do. I think if you if you prioritise them. A little bit less Netflix.

Richard Hill
I think that's great I think a lot of people will relate. You know, if they've ever used or used in the last month, 'I've not had time. I've not a time.' Just think well how many seasons or episodes have you watched of hours on Amazon X, Y, Z or Netflix, X, Y, Z, cancel each one of those out, you just missed a 30 hour session on creating X or improve in Y or setting up up your Google Shopping or whatever you need to be, whatever's on the list that you've not quite got to because you've not got time. Yeah.

Exactly that if it's 30 minutes a day and I'm not I'm not advocating someone to to kind of work from 5 a.m. to 10 p.m because that's certainly not what I do. And kind of getting out and about and, you know, mental health's super important. I know it's a bit of a buzzword to an extent, but I'm a huge advocate and I know we talked about the start before we started this around, you know, getting out and walking every day and getting out and and now the weather's improving, the sunshine and fresh air. I'm a massive advocate of that really kind of found that be beneficial to myself. So I'm not advocating working from 5:00 a.m. till 10:00 PM. Far from it. But there's always that that time you make time for the things that are important and to go back to the fact that for me, it's a it's a passion, it's an interest. It's not something that I find massively arduous all the time. There's some times where I think do really have to do that? But a lot of the time it's something that I'm interested in, like people are interested in other stuff or reading or whatever it might be. It's an interest. And when it's an interest and a passion it's less, it's less of an effort to do it.

Richard Hill
It sounds like you've got a very good balance. You know, it really does. Really does. OK, so obviously OKA, you're very established, a lot of stores. Obviously, you've got a whole team there in your marketing department. What channel would you say gets OKA the best results at the moment?

Jack Stevens
So within within my team, so the kind of digital function, the areas I'm responsible for at the moment that I run is through customer acquisition and retention. So I've got a performance marketing team, an SEO team and a CRM team and then like an online trading and content team, if you like. So I'm an SEO guy historically. That's kind of where I started my sort of digital marketing career kind of ten, fifteen years ago whenever it was. So I'll be biased towards SEO just because it's it's close to my heart. But I think, from a best results point of view, it depends how you kind of categorise best, most measurable, most efficient or best, the best at what is, there's obviously a discussion to be had there. But I certainly think that from an SEO point of view, that's something something still quite romantic around, not quite knowing exactly what's going to work to an extent. And the kind of buzz, if you like, that you get of checking rankings. I know it's not just going - and seeing where you go but, you know, tracking a data, see how you're performing and trying to develop a really robust strategy that's suitable for your your business. And I think if you if you can get that right, it's an incredibly powerful tool and it requires a hell of a lot of work to actually get to the stage where you think that it's working the way that you want it to work. But from our side, we do some incredible work across all of the areas, I'll be very kind to my team here.

Richard Hill
They'll be listening to this episode won't they.

Jack Stevens
Of course they will. So yeah I love all you guys, but -

Richard Hill
Hi SEO team. And Paid Ads.

Jack Stevens
And I definitely think if you can I mean, free traffic, I know it's not free. You pay for your time, effort, resource. You know, the the output, the outreach.

Richard Hill
Building that. Yeah.

Jack Stevens
We get out what we put in effectively. So things like that don't just, don't just happen overnight, but definitely - go on.

Richard Hill
Fair to say then obviously SEO is nudging it slightly. But obviously on the on the performance side, on the paid side specifically, you are running Search Ads Shopping Ads, Facebook Ads and they are successful or am I putting words in your mouth there or?

Jack Stevens
Yeah. If you can you can you can say that. So yes, 100 percent. So we've actually been through an in-housing activity over the last 12 months, which been really interesting for our business. So we used to run all of our performance marketing activity if you categorise all them things plus a bit more under that one umbrella with with an agency and one person who kind of managed the day to day with that. We've actually gone through a process of in housing, just as part of our investors are very keen to have in-house specialities. In the time that we were working with an agency was totally suitable for where we were as our business at that stage. And they were very keen to start in-house and bring in specialities. And and for us, bought in some strong people. And for the last the last year, we've we've done incredibly well. So, yeah, we run a broad range of activity across all of your major platforms with a lot of other kind of like areas where we're looking at various digital media partnerships and some kind of like higher impact stuff. One of the key things we're looking to try and improve is our overall brand awareness, which I would say is is fair to say that in the UK needs improving. So in the wider community, if you like, it's it's it's low within our specific target markets it's much stronger. However, we want to definitely be growing our brand awareness so that, the vision is that if we are able to grow brand awareness and start to become part of people's consideration phase, we're now thinking, right I want to buy something beautiful for my dining room, for my living room, whatever it might be. And they're thinking that OKA is an option as opposed to at the time where we generally pick them up if we're not doing, depends on where in the funnel the activity is based on, then eventually it's a longer term strategy. But eventually your performance marketing budget is going to become more efficient as people start to consider you right at the consideration phase as opposed to potentially when they're a little bit further down the funnel. And so, yeah, we have a broad range of activity and it's been incredibly important for us in the United States as well, because when we've launched there, we don't have a good SEO standing from the start. We're effectively starting from scratch. We don't have a way to drive loads of traffic through an email database because we started, it's very small. So we're heavily reliant on trying to drive people through, like engaging ad formats and finding where the audiences are kind of meeting and talking about and where we can be involved in them conversations. So it's been incredibly important for us from the first 18 months of our life in the United States.

Richard Hill
So going back to the, obviously you've gone from agency, having agencies or an agency managing the bulk of the performance side specifically and possibly other areas as well. And obviously making that decision to bring it all in-house was quite heavily driven by sort of that sort of next level that you're looking to get at or get to, because the investors are, have got sort of strong targets and whatnot. Talk us through that sort of transition. You know, I think there'll be people listening in that, you know, maybe I shouldn't be asking this question because we're an agency at heart. But I think it's an interesting journey, isn't it? Because, you know, a lot of people we speak to, you know, they they might be doing it in-house and then they want an agency, you know, go through the way. But obviously, you get to a certain size, you may try what you've sounds like you've succeeded at doing, but it is horses for courses, isn't it? Different firms want different things. And obviously, people, people move on, which can leave problems with a company, you know, if they lose that one, two people. Whereas if you've got an agency, you've got a bank of people, 10, 20, 30 people potentially to rely and pull on. Talk us through that sort of transition from agency to completely in-house.

Jack Stevens
Pros and cons, 100%. And it totally depends on the type of business you are and where you're at and your sort of journey. And I'm not an advocate either way to an extent. I think that where we're at in the journey at the moment is suitable for our business. However, that's not to say that in three or four years we we might need a slightly bigger infrastructure of support with an agency in some parts, I don't know, like I say, some digital media partnerships or whatever it might be. So there's this total validity and depending on where you're at as a business. Now, for us, the transition was was relatively kind of easy to an extent, I'd like to think. So we were able to hire you know, already had someone sort of running some some parts with the agency and they left. And I had a strong head of performance marketing in, bought within effectively a couple of other strong people that are more helping with some of the strategic side of stuff and then more in activation as well. So so for us, the transition was was fairly easy. We brought in competent people that knew how to operate on platforms. They knew how to help with, you know, one of them came from an agency, some of the people we hired so was able to help with the whole media planning side of stuff. They had the experience of looking at stuff a little bit more holistically and defining a media plan for us, presenting that to the relevant stakeholders and getting by in that way. So for us, fairly smooth in that way and then we were able to phase out the agency as we felt like we had to kind of control, obviously, along with our contracting terms, being wound down in the same thing. And and since then, yeah, we've been, just 12 months since we've been -

Richard Hill
So 12 months in, so far, so good. So we'll maybe have to have a regroup in 12 months to see how you're getting on? So going back to the, I think SEO slightly edged it on the on the channel. What sort of things are working for you specifically in that area of eCom, SEO? Obviously, we've got a lot of eCommerce stores primarily listening to the podcast. Any sort of nuggets you can give the guys that's specifically working for you on the SEO side of things at the moment?

Jack Stevens
Yes, I've got some interesting things about SEO and specifically in eCommerce. Before I worked in eCom, I used to work for Direct Line and Churchill, the big insurance brand, if you like. And after that, between that and OKA, I worked for the Ambassador Theatre Group, the biggest theatre group in the UK. Both of these were big brands in their space. So from a search relevancy perspective, I use the insurance example for this one. So if you're searching for car insurance, home insurance, Direct Line is the biggest insurer in the UK, so from a, Google, wants to show you the most relevant results, the results that people would expect to see. So I always feel like it's the big brand bias that we always kind of like is talked about, you know, actively across the industry? And we certainly benefit from that, no doubt about it. So if you search, I mean, this is right at the start the kind of real emerging of of the price comparison websites. Your Money Supermarket, your Confused.com. They started to really present the biggest challenge. The Money Supermarket kind of team did an incredible job with their sort of content production, relentless content production of really high quality, they had a team of like 15 people just churning out content that was good as well. It was all really relevant in the space and they really started to kind of do incredible stuff in that way. But we always had that, what do people expect to see when they when they are searching for home insurance or car insurance terms? So always had that sort of bias towards us. Now, fast forward to OKA. We have the absolute opposite challenge now. So we are not a big brand compared to if you're searching for furniture, you're searching for lighting. You don't expect to see OKA as a consumer. And Google wouldn't necessarily expect to show you for these kind of big headlines terms. They're expected to show people like John Lewis, IKEA, MADE.com, the big boys, people that are spending tens of millions every year on kind of above the line advertising, whatever it might be. The big brands that have got a hundred stores across the UK, etc.. So I think the biggest thing that I've kind of learnt is to really, it's not to like set your expectations low, but it's to be like targeted in what you do. It's better to get 20 percent of a 1000 a month search term than it is to get zero percent of one hundred thousand one because you're trying to go after, OKA will never rank for the term furniture. Do we even want to? Probably not. We'd get loads of volume. It would be such such a high up in the funnel. It'd be like super high bounce rate, really, inefficient for us and openness around, you know, we're using SEO to try and get people at that point have searching, they're looking for they are searching for a product. They are searching for a service. So if we're a little bit more targeted in the keyword set and the phrases that we're going after, we can be more effective that way, there's no point spending loads of time, effort, resource money on trying to rank for terms are ultimately kind of vanity terms and not really suitable for our business. We sell high priced items, so we really need to try and manage that expectation at this stage of the search intent of that journey. Yes, we see the opportunities to try and massage people to spend that little bit more on the on the higher quality item. But yeah, really trying to be targeted with what you're doing, but productively targeting and kind of managing that expectation with the people, because I bet people listening to this podcast, they all have that boss, that one term that they just want to show for, like whatever it might be, whatever industry you work in

Richard Hill
It's funny, isn't it, how as SEOs and business owners and you you're checking your terms, see where you're ranking and sort of, even even myself, you know, hands up. You know, I I check terms myself and I know, and they just become obsessed over terms, you can become obsessed with terms that aren't going to really drive your business in reality. And you spend too much effort there, you know. And I do that in a fashion for myself, you know, for my agencies and it's more of a like a hobby for me, if you like, or as a you know, I spent a lot of time playing with stuff on SEO myself still. But the reality is, you know, the amount of stores that are out there that are going after the wrong strategy, full stop and trying to rank for things that are just right out here against brands that have been doing it for 20 years, spent probably 50 million quid on X, Y, Z. As a newer business to any industry, you know, the guys that are listening right now, you know, you you know, it's unlikely you're doing 400 million a year like many firms will be in every single industry. So if if you're doing the, you know, the low millions a year, OK, pick the right fight, go into those sub-sub-cats and then research those sub-sub-cats potentially and find, you know, product categories, sub-categories, sub-sub-brands, you know, the three, four, five word terms. But, you know, many, many of them can add up to obviously some serious search volume a lot quicker. You're getting returns on your investment and SEO in several months potentially or fewer months than maybe waiting years and going, 'Yay! We're on page 1 for furniture.' Yeah, but we just did 300 grand and we've sold nothing. Yeah.

Jack Stevens
Picking your categories. Yeah. It's a simpler way to put it. I totally agree. That's the sort of the sort of strategy that we kind of adopt here is really trying to be refined with our targeting, but still obviously making sure that we've got enough volume there and and enough activity, et cetera, to support actually driving some volume through them terms as well. And as another sort of side point, I'm I'm an advocate of kind of getting your house in order. It's very I think it's very tempting as well to be let's do some kind of sexy content marketing, because that's potentially the more exciting part of the of the SEO world, if you like. Oh, we've reached out to these three people that they're really interested in covering. If we developed a piece like this, it's going to be whatever the format might be, you know, the creative side of stuff. It's certainly the part of the ecosystem, if you like, to get some maybe some more of the headlines, but you don't invite people around your house before you've built your extension. You need to get the foundations right and I'm a big advocate of-

Richard Hill
Have a good tidy up, yeah.

Jack Stevens
Yeah. I'm a big advocate of kind of having your your technical SEO in place and something that, you know, people will probably look at the OKA site and thinking you've not really got that going. And we we've got challenges at the moment with our capacity to to be as technically sound from an SEO perspective as we want to be. We are on an archaic platform, which ultimately we're retiring and we're migrating to a new platform in kind of in the autumn this year, which is as close to a silver bullet as we'll ever get in relation to having starting from scratch and being able to kind of build build the site from scratch with SEO sort of at the heart of the project, if you like, and making sure that we're right because we're going to get hit by the core web vitals update in May, no doubt about it. I'm very conscious that that's going to happen. I'm kind of looking at minimising the impact is what we're planning to do rather than really trying to benefit from it. I think until we re-platform later this year and have a more robust platform that enables us to to really influence change in these areas. We are going to struggle. But I'm definitely an advocate of trying to get your technical SEO in a good place before you start to drive loads of links and content to it for sure.

Richard Hill
It just gets left, doesn't it? Quite often. Unfortunately, the going after these other things that actually hang on a minute. You can spend a lot of time and and relatively easier, well not always in fact, obviously there's some limitations with platforms and things like that. But if it's you know, if it's if it's content on page, if it's you know certain size speed issues, some core web vitals things you can you can fix quite easily, obviously, then there is limitations depending on platforms and hosting and things like that. And, you know, I think eCommerce is naturally, quite image heavy. So you've got you've got challenges there potentially, but yeah, I think, you know, quite often there's a lot of work that can be done in-house and literally with the team within those businesses without necessarily engaging agencies and techs. To a degree, that's what they're maybe 70, 80 percent. And then quite often then you do have to bring in that sort of specialist skill potentially. Obviously, you've got your team. So it's a little bit different. But okay, so I'll change it up a little bit. So obviously, you've been doing this a while. You've seen a lot of things. You've no doubt tested a lot of things and all the different areas of performance and brand and working in the US, UK. What was one big mistake that you've made that's kept you up at night? What's one big thing or what's something that you think, oh, yeah, back in 2014 we did X, Y, Z, and it was a nightmare?

Jack Stevens
How many mistakes have I made and which one do I pick? No, I think there's been there's been a few things that we've kind of done that have ultimately been been been failures, if you like. So I think a couple of years ago, maybe three or four years ago, it's fair to say that in some of our performance marketing activity, we kind of think we wasted a lot spend, I think. And in in hindsight, I think we should have pushed back on some of what we really wanted, some of the KPIs to be some of this activity. So just appearing on like a big homepage take over on the Daily Mail, for example, is something that we did. Not homepage takeover that was more of a wrap around on some of their pages. Now, we spent a lot money on that and poor potential, a poor brands sort of like experience, for example, do we want to be linked with that sort of Daily Mail type of type. I mean, we're definitely more in line with, you know, Times, Independent sort of people. Conscious I think we wasted a fair amount of money maybe three years ago in some of our strategy and some of that in some of the big formats that we did that I don't think we really potentially had a really clear idea of what we wanted to get from that activity. Now not everything. We do have to have a positive ROI. If you're investing in brand activity and you're trying to grow your brand awareness, for example, and you've got a supportive set of investors or an amount of your budget that you're putting towards brand activity and the output for that is eyeballs on the prize or video views or impressions of this. And that is your KPI, then that's fine. I don't think we had this. I think we we did some kind of big format stuff and we we spread it across a few things that I really think the the kind of impact had diluted and hindsight's a wonderful thing. And, you know, no one's perfect. I think we made a decision at the time. I think this feels like a plan that might work for us. But then in hindsight, when we kind of done the kind of analysis at the end of it, if you like, I think there was a lot of mistakes we made in how we set up that particular kind of part of the media plan and that we didn't have, we're not flush with big budgets at that time for sure. We don't spend 10, 20 million a year on performance, marketing or kind of general advertising, we don't do any TV above the line stuff. So for us, we need to be quite efficient with what we spend and we still do now if we're growing. We're starting to spend a bit more as we're able to to kind of share that with driving positive ROI, the new customers are an acquisition rate that everyone's really happy with. We still need to be efficient with it. Yeah, I think one of the biggest mistakes we made is trying to be too diluted in trying to do some of these big formats and really not getting any kind of impact for and wasting a lot of money, I think, not, a lot of money for us as a percentage.

Richard Hill
It's all relative, isn't it? Everyone's got their sort of numbers they're working, to and if you're, you know, you know, doubt, as you said, that that big sort of national press buy would have been, you know, it's not going to be 500 pounds is it, it's going to be in the thousands, you know.

Jack Stevens
It was a bit more than £500.

Richard Hill
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's going to be tens of thousands, no doubt, you know. So, yeah, I think, you know, thank you for sharing that. You know, I think it's just nice for everyone to hear that, you know, obviously you're a fairly substantial eCommerce store. You know, running in multiple countries, but not everything works is is the reality. But in the same breath, obviously, you've got to try things, but you've got to try things and sort of manage those budgets, you know? So if things don't work, it's not it's not game over. You know, it's you know, you're managing the expectations of the management, investors, et cetera, you know? But, you know, if there's maybe five, 10 percent of budgets that are used to to test and try new areas or test new areas within your existing performance, potentially performance marketing. So I know we have quite a lot of listeners around the world, UK, US. What would you say is the difference? You know, the difference between your two strategies between UK and US? What are you seeing? You know what's sort of quite strikingly different between the two? What sort of takeaways could you give the guys?

Jack Stevens
I think the the biggest, for use of the word, mistake that people make is is like calling it the US. It's, it's a yes, it's a country, but it's it's 50 states that are all bigger than the UK. It's a monument. I don't think, I certainly wasn't probably aware of, just the scale of it, man, and ultimately that's what's attractive about it. There's three hundred and seventy million people that live there. There's a huge amount of space, but it's so big. And you can you again I talk about being targeted in relation to kind of, appreciate the example was more around like keyword set from an SEO perspective. But like I said, we're in acquisition mode, if you like, in the States. So we are heavily reliant on new customer recruitment to hit our sort of revenue and targets for the year. So compared to the UK where we've got like a robust customer base and we've got existing customers, lapsed customers that we can reactivate. And then obviously new customer recruitment important as well, but. With the States in acquisition mode, so we need to be really targeting in a different way with how we go to target customers, because you can burn through your advertising dollars so quickly over there. By just doing super generic campaigns and trying to target people that are searching for stuff, but really we sell, maybe niche isn't quite the right word, but a niche product, if you like. That's not going to be suitable for everyone from a price point perspective, from a style perspective.

Richard Hill
Yeah, it's like a taste thing as well.

Jack Stevens
The thing that's different is that it's it's it's huge. It's just a massive place. And I think you really, we've certainly kind of started to target some of our activity from an advertising point of view, which is the performance marketing stuff we run is is the key channel for us at the moment in relation to new customer recruitment. Yeah, we do some targeted recruiting pieces across direct mail as well, which perform well for us. But the majority of it is coming through how we're targeting people digitally, which I think is a kind of a complement to the strength of our brand, that people are investing in these products without being able to go and see them from a new brand in the market that they haven't seen before. They haven't probably heard a lot about. We starting to really refine our targeting in key areas where we know our customers are and wouldn't be surprised that -

Richard Hill
You mean location wise, so different states? So rather than the UK. Typically, you know, you've got to search when your Shopping Ads are running, if we say Google, for example, you've got them running in the UK. Typically I think you can see, what happens is you set up the campaigns in the US and you target all the US and then it does and you're thinking, why hasn't that worked? US is what? Are we talking 10 times bigger? Not quite. You know, ten times the size. Why is it not ten times the volume? Normally like it doesn't work out the gate like that. So you're saying, I think, you're going in specific locations, geographical targeting, different different states. Maybe talk us through that and give us maybe a specific example, because I think I think a lot of people we speak to, you know, that it's that I think it was quite a misunderstanding how to tackle that on Paid Ads.

Jack Stevens
Yes, even more specific than states. So, yes, like we look at we look at state information. We target stuff around that. We don't totally discount the rest of the US, but we know we've got clusters of customers in in key areas along like the East Coast. So New York, you know, up to something like around Boston area. I mean, we how we entered the US market was in Dallas, in Texas, where we we bought a sister brand, if you like, that we retired about a year later and that was our entry point. So we know we've got a cluster of customers around there. So we did target marketing around there and then some on the West Coast in areas that you would expect around L.A. and San Francisco. So we're not talking about states even necessarily being more targeted in relation to setting up specific campaigns for like audiences that, you know, are based there and like basically lookalike audiences based on people that you recruit from this specific area and like I say we've got a I think, a fairly modest budget to try and drive a hell of a lot of volume from. So being targeted from a local perspective is if you know, you're, appreciate you'll have a variety of people listening to this that work in entirely different industries. That's just what works for our customers. I'm not saying go and invest all your money in places in Dallas or whatever, but for us, this is where we know works for, for us at the moment. And efficient customer recruitment is absolutely critical for us kind of being able to get to the place where we need to be in four years at the moment. So I 100 percent advocate being really targeted, understanding where your customers are and focussing your marketing efforts around that as we look to try and evolve some potentially out of home offerings and stuff. Just start to make an impact in in an area. Just saying we're going to launch in the States is a recipe for disaster.

Richard Hill
So focus on a, rather than the 52 things, I've lost count of the states. That's not right. How many?

Jack Stevens
Fifty states isn't there.

Richard Hill
Fifty isn't there, of course. Yeah. Fifty states in the US, you know, we're looking at potentially some of the in-house data that we've got from existing, you know, maybe that's, you know, some of our Facebook data, our existing data areas that we may have already touched on already and then focussing on obviously a lot tighter areas to start with and then building those out. OK, so we always like to finish every episode, Jack, with a recommendation, book recommendation. What would you recommend to our listeners?

Jack Stevens
Now, I've not listened to all 50 episodes so far, so I'm conscious you've probably had one or two of these already. So had two. So Shoe Dog, Phil Knight. Have you had that on before? Probably, yes.

Richard Hill
We have, we have but that's fine. It's a fantastic book. I absolutely love that book. Yeah. It's right behind me somewhere. Somewhere there. I think it is.

Jack Stevens
On your shelf behind you. Yeah. Really superb book. I enjoyed reading that from start to finish. And another one as well is Let My People Go Surfing by Yvon Chouinard, I probably pronounced that totally wrong with my with my twang of my accent. But he's the the founder of Patagonia, like experienced climber, if you like. And, you know, Patagonia is a brand that's very aligned with sort of minimising impacts on the environment. They do a lot of work to try and, you know, bring give back, if you like, and his journey from effectively making a couple of bits of climbing equipment for him and his friends to developing this huge global brand. Similar sort of story, if you like, but very, very different. Very different like brand ethos, very different journey that he's taken to kind of get there. And the stuff that they're doing now is still really admirable. I think it's quite a short book. Super easy read and one I really enjoyed for sure.

Richard Hill
Yeah, that sounded fantastic, actually. I think the next time when I'm actually on holiday, whenever that will be, I think that that sounds right up my street, to be fair. So, yeah. Well, thanks, Jack. Thanks for being on the eCom@One podcast. The guys that are listening and want to find out more about yourself, more about the brands, what's the best place to to do that?

Jack Stevens
Can go on my LinkedIn profile, which is just /jackstevens at the end. You've got Sirluxesocks.com and of course Oka.com. So yeah, reach out if you've got any, got any questions.

Richard Hill
Thanks, Jack. It's been a pleasure. I'll speak to you soon, thank you.

Jack Stevens
Cheers Richard.

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 eComOne, the eCommerce marketing agency.