Scott Austin
Hey everyone, Scott Austin here. And for this week's podcast, we have a guest who's a ah brand owner from Japan. And I'm going to let him introduce his brand, Bizod Trinos from Wonder Looper. Why don't you tell us a little bit about Wonder Looper?

Bahzad Trinos
Yeah, that's right. So my name is Bezet Trinos and I'm the co-founder of Wonder Looper. We founded it. We founded this company along with my wife, Risa Saito, just a couple of years ago, actually during the pandemic. And, you know, we had our regular job, which we were working for a a denim company, and we just found ourselves with a little bit of extra time. And it started off as a small part-time chain stitch embroidery customization service where we were taking people's t-shirts or their items and we were, you know, embroidering designs or their names on these pieces. And it went from, you know, we were kind of embroidering, you know, these generic blank t-shirts for people and we thought, well, maybe we, you know, we have a lot of experience in the fashion retail world, apparel world, production world.

Bahzad Trinos
let's just make some of our own t-shirts. That way, our chain stitch embroidery that we do, which is so beautiful and nice, could match the quality of the t-shirts that we are putting them on. And you know being obsessive types, we went from you know trying to source and make sort of a basic t-shirt to going all the way to making some of the craziest t-shirts and knitwear available on the market today.

Scott Austin
yeah I love the fact that your embroidery was so good that no t-shirt was good enough for it. So you had to make a t-shirt worthy of your product. that that's That's an interesting space to be in. and So that sounds to me like your brand is more luxury or high end. Is that accurate?

Bahzad Trinos
Yeah, we're we're definitely in a space where you know you're paying over $100 for a t-shirt.

Scott Austin
I would call that high end. Yes.

Bahzad Trinos
Yeah.

Scott Austin
oh so how did How did you decide that this was the space you wanted to be in for this brand? right you know Did it start with the embroidery first and then you decided on the t-shirts?

Scott Austin
Or where did you get the inspiration to go and and try to you know make a t-shirt to the level that had never been made before? That's a pretty high bar and a pretty audacious goal.

Bahzad Trinos
Right.

Bahzad Trinos
So previous to Wonder Looper, my wife and I, ah we worked for a denim company. And you know in this space, we are also make artisanal crafts craftsman level denim products. So all the denim that we would make and produce was here in Japan on old machines that have been running for, you know,

Bahzad Trinos
basically the old machines that were making denim the original way and I could it's kind of a ah ah sloppy way of explaining it but I have a a live stream that we do literally two hours a week every week where we talk about denim so like we're very obsessive about fabrics and craftsmanship and how things are made And we do have an audience that follows us that knows that you know we are these obsessive types. So for us to make a t-shirt really only had to go in one direction. And that was you know sourcing the best materials, the most interesting ah ah machines to make these t-shirts on. In fact, the t-shirts that we

Bahzad Trinos
that we make are made on these old knitting machines that are over 100 years old. And they they make a fabric that is lightweight and airy and stretchy. And it's unlike any modern machine today. But the problem is that they're so old that they also knit at a very, very slow pace. It takes um about an hour to make one meter of fabric.

Bahzad Trinos
And that basically means one t-shirt an hour, which is far from mass production. But it is an art and a craft in itself to keep these machines running. And so there are people who are interested in those fine details. And then we also go into the details of you know where we source our cotton. We're very particular about it. And so these are coming from basically the artisanal world of cotton, where they're coming from a single farm, organically grown. And you know we can go into many of the details there as well. but these little things. And while it's not, I would say, the most mass market thing in the world, there are people out there who are just as obsessive about detail as we are. So we create products for these kinds of people.

04:08.76
Scott Austin
Yeah, that's that's awesome. so I would have assume that your brand is a very important part of building that e-commerce experience. right It's not just building the the best product, which you're definitely doing. You also have the best brand to go along with that.

04:21.82
Bahzad Trinos
Sure, I mean, every everything that goes with the brand, you know whether whether it's you know the ah the stories that we share on our social media, you know we have a, I would say, a pretty strong community that we we we grow through our you know Instagram, we do YouTube, we do livestream.

04:22.37
Scott Austin
and and

04:37.90
Bahzad Trinos
So we try to do our best to educate ah you know our fan base ah so that they know more about the products that we make and basically can see the process unfold ah you know before their eyes.

04:51.50
Scott Austin
So how many different, ah you know, you mentioned you're doing, you know, videos and live streams and stuff like that. How many different forms of content are you doing? Are you doing video? Are you doing, you know, long form copy? You know, but what types of content are you putting out there?

05:04.86
Bahzad Trinos
Yeah, so we do ah Instagram. So, you know, photos, short videos, that type of stuff.

05:10.83
Scott Austin
Yep.

05:11.33
Bahzad Trinos
I think we do ah we do YouTube. We do two types of YouTube content. So there's, you know, product driven content. So if we're doing a release for a sweatshirt or a T shirt or whatever it is that's coming out, we make a ah breakdown video of essentially all the details about this product from from how it's made, you know, where the con comes from, you know, what's special about it.

05:33.06
Bahzad Trinos
that type of thing. So you can watch a video, learn absolutely everything about that product. And you know if it's for you, then you know you might go out and purchase it from our website or through one of our retailers. And then we also host live streams where we you know engage with our community, we answer questions. So you know sometimes customers have questions about how do i what size should I buy? um you know What's so special about you know this type of construction versus that type of construction? um you know where Where does the con come from? you know Have you ever considered this? So sometimes it's it's not only just an education thing that we do for our customers, but it's also sometimes just a brainstorming thing that we do with our customers because they give us instant feedback

06:12.90
Bahzad Trinos
on the spot. they'll develop They'll tell us the things that they like about our products. They'll tell us, you know, have you you know considered making this that or the other thing. And sometimes through these live interactions, we might come up with ideas for future products. So i we we try to do a lot of different things and the live streams usually run for an hour to two hours.

06:34.00
Scott Austin
Oh, that's incredible. I always tell my clients that any opportunity they have to have a two-way conversation with their audience, their customers, is absolute gold. And it's really hard in the online space to do that, but you've actually embraced the online-ness with the live stream and have that that dialogue going back and forth. that's most people Most brands should be doing the same thing you're doing. I i think it's really well done.

06:54.67
Scott Austin
um So with Wonderlooper, you said you know you got started during the COVID timeframe. Was this the first e-commerce store that you owned the brand and and and made all the decisions for?

07:05.30
Scott Austin
Or had you done that in your previous stores also?

07:08.50
Bahzad Trinos
Well, this is our first brand that we owned completely, but my wife and I, we also managed other companies.

07:13.18
Scott Austin
Yep.

07:15.16
Bahzad Trinos
So, you know, we've built out e-commerce spaces ah before several websites, several brands that have been quite successful.

07:23.46
Scott Austin
yeah Yep, yep. So when when you came to the Wonder Looper decision to like be on an e-commerce platform, was it any decision for you? It was just no brainer Shopify's the way to go.

07:33.05
Bahzad Trinos
no-brainer Shopify is the way to go. you know yeah i was I remember e-commerce pre the Shopify days where you know you had to have a developer and they'd build a website and they'd build some, I would say crappy backend for you, which hardly worked.

07:35.15
Scott Austin
Yeah.

07:45.65
Bahzad Trinos
And you know if your server goes down or something happens, poof, your website's done. And that literally happened to us before. And I just remember being like, okay, what do we do now?

07:58.18
Bahzad Trinos
I discovered Shopify and We had our website back up and running within days, working properly, and like just the smoothness of it all. So I've been using Shopify for over a decade, well over a decade, and absolutely no-brainer. That's that's the way to go.

08:16.66
Scott Austin
Yeah, well, now that I think about it, I've been using Shopify since 2013, so it's over a decade now for me, too. And for me, it was the same thing. We thought we were going to have to build our own e-commerce platform for a startup that I was working at.

08:27.72
Scott Austin
And all of a sudden, we realized, oh, no, someone's done this before. And we could just jump on board their cloud-based service and not have to build any of this.

08:31.02
Bahzad Trinos
Right. and And it was like 30 bucks or 20 bucks a month. Like how how much better, you know, what more can you ask for?

08:38.82
Scott Austin
Yep, yep. Yeah, absolutely. It's it's wonderful. so In in you know the Shopify decision, that's an easy one for you to make. Another big you know tool in an e-commerce platform is going to be your email system. and And what did you choose for that? And what was your decision making process there?

08:58.22
Bahzad Trinos
Well, I've used many, you know, I've kind of jumped around, but, you know, I would say over the past six years, we've been using a platform called OmniSend, and I use that for the other companies that, that you know, I work with, and i i it was no brainer to use it for Wonder Looper.

09:01.46
Scott Austin
Yep.

09:17.80
Bahzad Trinos
You know, I've used other ones in the past, and I just remember when there was this sort of Shopify, I don't want to name names, but, you know, other, email, commerce, platforms, there was like this, yeah, I mean MailChimp, so like, I don't want to disparage anybody, but you know, there was this cutoff where

09:28.44
Scott Austin
You mean male champion?

09:35.56
Bahzad Trinos
there was this non-native connection going on. And it was like this rush to, well, you could either figure out how to use it now with a connector or jump over to a intuitive you know already connected service. And I remember trying to figure out this you know new connection thing. And you know as as as comfortable as I am in the e-commerce space, I'm also I like things that just work. So if they don't just work, I don't want to use it. I don't want to have to dig around. Everything just needs to work intuitively, easily, because I have other things to do. So I switched over. OmniSend had a direct and direct link. you know It brought in all of my information very easily. you know We had a significant amount of email subscribers. So you know we were able to leverage our

10:31.64
Bahzad Trinos
the amount of subscribers yeah we're bringing over and to get some good pricing. um And it's worked flawlessly since the beginning. So I've used it with our ah other companies. When it came to Wonder Looper, no brainer, bring it over. I already know how to use it and it works great.

10:48.06
Scott Austin
So you don't have to worry about that learning curve. You've already gone through all that and you know the feature set, you're comfortable with it. Yeah, because I'm a Klaviyo person myself and I have not used Omnisend. And I would assume that they're fairly similar, right? Omnisend, I sure has flows and campaigns and gathers all all your customers. Does it give you good reporting and and and a lot of feedback on what's working well and what's not working well on your emails?

11:12.63
Bahzad Trinos
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you could definitely dig into individual campaigns. You can AB b campaign things. um so There's a lot of you know depth on this end if you want to get in depth with it.

11:25.75
Bahzad Trinos
If you don't, you know they've got like a ah basic you know ah but splash screen at the start.

11:27.00
Scott Austin
Yup.

11:30.55
Bahzad Trinos
It tells you, know here's how many subscribers you got this week. Here's you know your the performance on your last campaigns. So you could get ah a quick overview of things. But if you want a deep dive, you can you can do that as well.

11:42.26
Scott Austin
And how how important is email in in your mix? You know, for most of my clients, I always tell them that your goal with email should be 25 to 33% of your revenue, one fourth to one third of your revenue should be, you know, attributable to e commerce or to email. is it Is that, you know, is your business at those levels? Or is it is it significant for you?

12:01.31
Bahzad Trinos
You know what, I'm going to be honest with you, I don't have those numbers offhand because for me, you know, we are a company that, you know, we have products available on our website, but our products tend to be sold out.

12:06.40
Scott Austin
Yep.

12:13.36
Bahzad Trinos
So we'll we often do we'll do launches. So here's the new product that comes out. And while I expect the inventory to last a while, it doesn't. It just kind of.

12:24.91
Bahzad Trinos
sells through in a day or two and, well, that I don't have much inventory on my website. So that's sometimes a a big challenge for us to you know constantly keep stalking things. So our email is often used as, for me, it's about community building. And so you know while there is Instagram and Facebook and things like that, I find that those platforms, they have a lot more control over your audience than an email platform does.

12:53.39
Bahzad Trinos
when Instagram or Facebook decides to change the algorithm in terms of what they want to show your audience, the people who've already subscribed to you who are interested in your content, sometimes, in fact, most of the time, your content is not reaching your audience. You can see in your own analytics that it might only reach, you know, up to 10, maybe 15% of your audience unless you want to spend, you know, a lot of money on on Marketing and I'm a small company and quite honestly, I don't want to spend any I don't want to spend that much money on marketing I spend no money on Instagram or Facebook. I just I just don't do that

13:25.17
Bahzad Trinos
I put my money on on email because with email marketing, if you signed up for my email, that email is going into your inbox. It is reaching its audience. So we use email in a lot of ways to keep customers informed with what we're doing, what's going on, what events are coming up, what's in the production pipeline. So it's more of a newsletter that we send out to our customers to just keep them informed with what we're doing. And it I think it works great.

13:56.30
Scott Austin
So you're not doing as much as like, you know, we're coming up on Labor Day weekend here in the United States. So you're not doing like Labor Day weekend or or Christmas sales as much. It's more, you you know, one to many publishing on ah on a calendar of, you know, the old the old school newsletters, right?

14:11.11
Scott Austin
Which, you know, you send out once a month, whatever the frequency is, which used to be a good best practice.

14:11.56
Bahzad Trinos
Yeah.

14:15.39
Scott Austin
And most people gotten away from. But I like what you're saying in that in your brand, because you're sold out most of the time, you're not trying to generate demand. The demand is already there.

14:26.00
Scott Austin
It sounds to me that you're doing building the brand instead of generating demand with your emails.

14:31.19
Bahzad Trinos
Yeah, I think so. Building community. I think that's, for me, that's the most important thing because, you know, number one, your community is your customer base. You know, they're not always going to buy everything, but I find that the people who are engaged with us are, they're very interested in the process and they're interested in fabrics and they want to learn. So, you know, you can come, you could learn for free. If you want to buy something, you can have something. If you want to buy something because you like us and you want to support us that way, that's cool too. but You know, I try not to be a company that's always trying to sell you something. I i would rather you're you you like what we make. Here it is. It's available for you. I'm not trying to, I'm not here to convince you of anything. It's just, we make good stuff. If you like it, here it is. Here it's available for you. And ah alongside that, here's a lot of information about, you know, the kinds of products that we make.

15:26.00
Scott Austin
Well, and what I love about that is, you know, one of the things I always say is that if you don't tell your story, then your customers, your advocates can't repeat it, right? Because people love to tell stories.

15:34.40
Bahzad Trinos
Sure.

15:35.86
Scott Austin
When they show a great product, they love to tell the story behind that product, whatever that story is. And it sounds like you guys are doing a really good job in telling that story and how unique your products are, how the, you know, the machinery is, is old and therefore limited supply.

15:49.65
Scott Austin
And that makes these even more valuable and rare and scarce and,

15:52.69
Bahzad Trinos
Oh,

15:52.84
Scott Austin
And they understand all that, which probably means when they're out you know wearing wearing your clothing, they're telling their friends those kind of stories because you've shared them with them. And that gives you that word of mouth marketing, which increases your demand.

16:01.33
Bahzad Trinos
I'm

16:04.08
Bahzad Trinos
Absolutely. Sometimes I'll see, you know, there's there's message boards for like this genre of apparel. It's kind of like, you know, better menswear. And yeah every now and then, you know, I actually, you know,

16:16.59
Bahzad Trinos
way, way back in the day, the way I got into fashion and apparel was through message boards. You know, I i was interested in dressing better. I'm i'm talking like the late 90s, you know, and, you know, this is a pretty early time for a lot of this stuff where if you wanted to learn something, you know, you had magazines, but, you know, that did always didn't have all the information. So you you had to go online and online. You didn't know who was saying what. So there's a lot of word of mouth and rumors. And so you had to weed all that information out. And I learned a lot about better menswear, construction, and all these processes through these forms. These forms are still very active today, and nowadays, you know I would say that there are a lot of people who are way better informed, and I certainly try my best to dispel a lot of you know rumors and you know things that are just incorrect.

17:04.47
Bahzad Trinos
you know I'll go in there and I'm still active on the forums and i and I talk about it and I'll see people talking about our products online. And I'm like, well, that's pretty cool but that you know I could see somebody in Germany or somebody in you know the United States or or wherever on their local forum talking about our products and you know how how much they like them and what they've learned about them. So it's pretty cool to to see how that all works and you know plays out.

17:30.12
Scott Austin
Yeah, absolutely. and in In the email side, are there flows or campaigns you've done that have been you know the ones that are the best for you that you know have you gotten you the most return that youre you keep reinvesting in? you know what What are the best practices, you know let's say you know two or three of them, in email that you've learned and execute?

17:50.04
Bahzad Trinos
Yeah, I think ah there's two kind of pretty basic and I would hope obvious ones is like you have like your ah yourre you your cart. ah you know, abandoned cart flow.

18:02.86
Bahzad Trinos
So, you know, somebody's checking something out, the abandoned cart email, somebody's somebody's checking something out on the website, and they decide for whatever reason that now wasn't the right time to make that purchase.

18:03.64
Scott Austin
Yep.

18:14.41
Bahzad Trinos
So, you know, we have a flow where if you left something in your cart, you might get an email from us saying, hey, there's something in your cart, it's still available, you know, check out while you can because you know, supplies are limited, that type of thing. So that's always been ah a great flow for us. Another one that has always worked really well for us um is customer feedback.

18:39.82
Bahzad Trinos
You know, you build your brand on customer feedback. So if you can build out a flow that says, hey, if you like your product, you like the product experience, why don't you leave us a review? And if you didn't or if you're not satisfied with the product, send us an email. Let us know what's wrong with it. Let us know what was wrong with your experience so we can try to you know make things right with you. So that's always been great. And that way, you know, if somebody isn't happy with something, we can find a way to remedy that. I want customers to be happy with their product. So um or their experience. Maybe they they had a problem with shipping. Maybe they had a problem with you know the way the navigation of the website works. So that also allows us to you know improve in a lot of ways.

19:21.79
Scott Austin
it It sounds to me like you're doing something sophisticated in there. It sounds like what you're doing in yourre in your send, you know, give us a review email is, hey, you know, we would love to get a five star review from you.

19:33.60
Scott Austin
If for any reason, you know, you haven't had the best experience, please respond to me now so we can answer that. Are you trying to have them give you any negative feedback outside of the reviews and and do that directly through the email?

19:39.69
Bahzad Trinos
right

19:44.33
Bahzad Trinos
i mean Look, I would prefer that the negative feedback came in you know directly to me so that we can try and rectify that.

19:51.29
Scott Austin
Yeah.

19:51.75
Bahzad Trinos
um you know Because sometimes you know you might see a negative review online, you reach out to a customer and you say, hey, I wish you had told me about this because I would have fixed that problem for you.

20:02.60
Bahzad Trinos
And you know you end up fixing that problem for the customer and they're always, you know not maybe not always, but oftentimes they're like, oh, thank you so much for reaching out, yada, yada, you know you really made my day. but they don't change the review.

20:14.69
Bahzad Trinos
you know So the review stays online for other people to see, and like that could maybe be a negative you know negative towards you, even though that that situation was rectified and the customer ended up being happy anyway.

20:16.54
Scott Austin
yeah yeah

20:26.31
Bahzad Trinos
So I would much rather deal with the problem and leave the customer with a good experience. And whether or not they want to post about that experience later on is up to them. but um You know, we we on our you know shop app, for example, we only have five star reviews and like their people are certainly free to post whatever they want.

20:48.29
Bahzad Trinos
You know, we don't we don't we don't.

20:49.79
Scott Austin
Yep.

20:50.58
Bahzad Trinos
So ah based on that, I mean, I think we've been doing a pretty good job.

20:56.83
Scott Austin
Yeah. And one of the things that that I have found that works really well when you're trying to get feedback from customers in email is if you make the email a you know plain text, h you know not an HTML, but just plain text email, then people actually, because for a lot of my you know clients, we actually set one up right after they make their first purchase.

21:07.93
Bahzad Trinos
Mm-hm.

21:13.57
Scott Austin
you know it's It looks like it's coming directly from the owner.

21:16.45
Bahzad Trinos
All right.

21:16.57
Scott Austin
and People respond to that, like the owner sat down that morning at ah eight o'clock in the morning and wrote that personally out for them right then. they're like And they get the best feedback in those emails.

21:27.05
Scott Austin
Every time I tell a client that this is going to happen, they laugh at me because they don't believe it.

21:30.11
Bahzad Trinos
No, it's a good idea.

21:30.71
Scott Austin
And then a week later, they're like, it is it is fantastic to to do that relationship building stuff you're talking about, a nice little text only with your name on the bottom.

21:31.03
Bahzad Trinos
no

21:40.80
Scott Austin
you know You'd be surprised at at how much you'll get from that.

21:41.12
Bahzad Trinos
A hundred percent. Yeah. Yeah. When things look real or they are real, people engage with it a lot better.

21:48.04
Scott Austin
Yes.

21:49.15
Bahzad Trinos
So, uh, I think that's a good idea.

21:50.59
Scott Austin
Yep. And just, you know, less businessy and less brandy kind of stuff, a little more personal.

21:56.13
Bahzad Trinos
Right.

21:58.24
Scott Austin
So, you mentioned reviews, are you using Omnison for review or do you have a separate review platform?

22:04.43
Bahzad Trinos
No, that's Omni fan. And then, uh, that'll go on like a Google review or like a shop review.

22:12.25
Scott Austin
Yep. So you're using shop Shopify Shop, which always gets confusing to me.

22:15.35
Bahzad Trinos
Will you? Yeah, Shopify shop, yeah.

22:19.68
Scott Austin
and And is there any like campaign you've done in the past that has worked well? Or like, what's, what's an experience you've had where you've learned from it? Like, we're not going to do that again in email.

22:31.29
Bahzad Trinos
Um, you know, our campaigns, like I said, are mostly newsletters. So the, the, the vast majority of the emails that we send out and we send out one newsletter a week. Um, and the only exception to that is like, if we have a drop, so, you know, newsletters, we tend to, we typically send out on Fridays. And so if we have a product release, usually that might happen on a.

22:52.22
Bahzad Trinos
it It actually varies dependently, but you know the the email will be you know maybe one day before saying, hey, this product's going to drop at this time on this date. and So be aware you know just because our our products tend to sell it very fast. And then you know we'll send an email right when that product launches. so ah

23:13.37
Scott Austin
Yeah.

23:14.17
Bahzad Trinos
i they you know When you look at the analytics, like those types of emails tend to get a lot of you know sales generated from them, but you know whether that email is the real cause of the sale or not, i i'm going to go with you know it's kind of inconclusive.

23:28.08
Scott Austin
yeah

23:29.64
Bahzad Trinos
I think a lot of people were already They've had their decisions already made that email didn't make the decision for them. It might have reminded them or, you know, that was just their their way of ah clicking through to the website. But, um you know, we don't have like we don't we're not heavy on sales where I do find that, you know, sometimes you'll see websites where sign up, get 10 percent off, ah you know, they're very heavy with the deals. But I find that.

23:56.32
Scott Austin
Yes.

23:57.06
Bahzad Trinos
Those those kinds of things are just built into the price of the product. So, you know, ah certainly some customers are going to be enticed by that. a I'm going to save 10 percent off. Yeah, I guess. But that 10 percent was already factored in. So, you know, we don't do that with our products. Our products are pretty, you know, we're they're priced accordingly. we We're not very big with the discounts. We might do ah you know I tell our customers the only you know discount we'll do for the entire year is Black Friday and so we'll do a Black Friday deal and that's it. Aside from that, you know the price is the price and you know hopefully we have inventory on the website when Black Friday comes around but you know we we try not to heavily market in that way and so you know it's kind of hard to say

24:41.34
Bahzad Trinos
you know Which campaign is generating the most sales? you know Is it ah because I did a flash sale or is it because I offered to buy one, get one? you know We don't really do that on this on this store, so um yeah.

24:56.88
Scott Austin
Yeah, attribution is always a fun one where, you know, but like you're saying, maybe email gets 15% credit, not 100% credit, and then, you know, everything else adds up and does it, but

25:03.63
Bahzad Trinos
Right.

25:06.42
Scott Austin
Because if you add up all your attributions, it's way over 100%, right? every Every platform says, oh, I'm 50% of your revenue, and you got four platforms, it's 200% of revenue kind of thing.

25:11.84
Bahzad Trinos
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

25:15.45
Scott Austin
And there is definitely overlap there, but but I find those directional. um And I noticed you have a drop coming in a couple of days, it was on your website earlier today, and you're doing the the email signups already where they can get notified when that drop comes.

25:28.40
Scott Austin
And i would I would imagine that the conversion on those for you for email address collection is pretty good.

25:29.01
Bahzad Trinos
That's right.

25:33.73
Bahzad Trinos
Yeah, those are pretty good. OmniSend does have a functionality where, ah say something's out of stock, you can sign up and it'll send you an email letting you know when that item has come back.

25:48.86
Bahzad Trinos
we We don't utilize OmniSense version of that. we We use another platform to Shopify. I actually don't even remember the name of the app, but there's a lot of apps for like back and stock notifications, just because the app that I use on Shopify is a little bit ah more robust in terms of its reporting.

25:59.98
Scott Austin
yep

26:06.39
Bahzad Trinos
I can actually see what people have signed up for. And that also gives me a good indication of what's popular, um what sizes I need to carry more of. Because for example, if I'm if I'm doing a production run of something, you know it's not an even split down the road from small you know all the way to double extra large.

26:23.02
Scott Austin
Yep. Mm hmm.

26:25.82
Bahzad Trinos
you know your Your mediums and your larges tend to be you know skewed higher in terms of what you're selling, but how much more you know if i if I carry you know like five smalls, This is just small numbers, but say I carry like five smalls, 10 largest, 10 extra, five smalls, 10 mediums, 10 largest, you know, five extra largest and you know, five double extra largest and I sell everything out.

26:50.45
Bahzad Trinos
I don't know what I didn't sell. right So those back in stock notifications, when people sign up for that, it allows me to say, hey, you know what? There's a lot of people signing up for extra large. Maybe I need to carry more extra larges down the road. So I would say that you know investing in a good um back in stock you know platform allows you to not only try to get those sales back when those items do get back in stock, but it also allows you to you know better manage your inventory ah so that you have the right things. now

27:21.44
Bahzad Trinos
OmniSend does have a smaller version of that where they'll simply just send an email out to the customer letting them know that something's back in stock. The reporting part isn't quite there yet. But I would say that the one thing that I do like about OmniSend is that their customer service and their access to actual humans exists and that was something that I didn't have with some of the other platforms where you know I was always sent off to go like go read the documentation on the website and try to figure out your problem here or there's a forum where you can you and other confused people can talk about how confused you are

27:54.67
Bahzad Trinos
Uh, no, thanks. I like talking to a person and the person will take my feedback and say, Hey, you know what? A lot of people have been asking for this. So we're going to add this to like the development, you know, schedule. And we're not promising that it's going to come out right away, but we recognize that it is a feature set that, you know, people want. And I've definitely talked to the on these end people, I've sent them screenshots of the types of things that I want. And they said, yeah, man, we're going to build that out. And.

28:19.61
Bahzad Trinos
I have to say that from my use of OmniSend over time, some of the functionality that you know maybe wasn't there when I first started is there now. Or maybe it wasn't as robust as it was you know when when I first started with them, but it's more robust now. but And that's through feedback and you know actually being able to tell them what you need, ah what works, and what doesn't work. And it's quite interesting because I remember when I started with OmniSend, you know they had all kinds of features that I wasn't getting with the other guys.

28:49.42
Bahzad Trinos
And I was just i was so excited. And you know it's like five minutes ago, I didn't know this stuff existed. And now I'm complaining about how this doesn't work perfectly. And that to be fair, I wasn't complaining that much.

28:58.80
Scott Austin
Yeah. Good problem to have.

29:00.00
Bahzad Trinos
It was it was working great. But you know they they do upgrade, and they are constantly building upon their platform. So that that's another thing that I really like about them.

29:09.11
Scott Austin
Well, I'm impressed that in a Shopify app, you actually get to, you know, communicate with the human, um, cause that's rare in, in the Shopify app world.

29:15.82
Bahzad Trinos
Mm.

29:17.39
Scott Austin
It's kind of the Wild West and, and you know, There's small teams and there's large teams. We actually, you know, Jay Puma make a couple of apps and, you know, we like to give good support, but it's, it's you know, it's hard, right? And, but you're not only do you talk to a human, but they're you're actually having a conversation it sounds like.

29:27.55
Bahzad Trinos
Yeah.

29:31.76
Scott Austin
And that's even rarer that they actually listen to what you're saying instead of just giving you their best practices.

29:32.26
Bahzad Trinos
Yeah, I would have. Yeah, I would have quarterly calls with my rep and like I could access them anytime. So if I if I wanted to have had a problem, I had a question, I could schedule a call with them and we'd have a call like like we're having today and actually talk out the problem or another great thing that they would provide um was ah you know, in these quarterly calls, they'd also go through best best practices and show you how to use things. So like if if they find that through their network of all their, you know, retailers that they work with, if there's something that really works, here's what a lot of people said really works. Here's what we would suggest you give it a try because we've seen it work across, you know, the email marketing world. Maybe it's going to work for you. So I always i always really appreciated that they didn't just provide a platform, but they also

30:24.85
Bahzad Trinos
showed me how to do things.

30:28.40
Scott Austin
Yep. Yeah, that that is super rare in the Shopify ecosystem to to get that level of support. That's nice. Now, and we were talking about the the drop, you know, do you when you have a new drop come out, do you let customers know what the actual quantity counts are?

30:43.09
Scott Austin
do Or do do you create that sense of urgency, saying that we're down to our last 10 or anything like that?

30:46.70
Bahzad Trinos
yeah

30:49.15
Scott Austin
Or is it is it not exposed to them?

30:49.97
Bahzad Trinos
um I would say that sometimes we do like if I have a production run of like, you know, 300 t shirts, then we'll say there's only 300. So, you know, get them. ah Sometimes it's not, you know, it like, for example, like we might restock a t shirt. So, you know, our restock is X amount and like, I don't feel like I have it's really necessary to And now it's, oh, there's only this many of this t-shirt because I'm going to probably get a couple.

31:13.71
Scott Austin
Yep.

31:17.90
Bahzad Trinos
I will restock that in you know eight weeks anyway. So it's not really something I want. I don't want to create false urgency where there doesn't need to be. you know if there If something is limited and it takes me one year to restock this item, I'll say it takes one year for us to restock this item because you know there's the the cotton itself is very rare.

31:37.21
Bahzad Trinos
The machine ah the machines are slow. And even even then, You know, there's only so many of these machines operating and getting a production slot is difficult. So, you know, if you know it's going to take a year to get this again, I'm not saying it's never going to be available again as your one time only to buy it. It's just if you want it now, you kind of got to get it now. But if you, you know, otherwise you've got to wait a long time to get it again.

32:04.08
Scott Austin
Yeah, you know, what I like that I'm hearing you say is, you know, it's what I call aggressive marketing, right? There's a lot of brands that do ah aggressive marketing, and the synonym for aggressive marketing is flat out lying, right? And it amazes me how many brands flat out lied, I just can't stand that.

32:14.24
Bahzad Trinos
Sure.

32:17.44
Scott Austin
But you know, that that is what it is. And it sounds like you're you're the opposite side of that. all And and your're you're like exactly, exactly

32:23.97
Bahzad Trinos
Oh, I don't want to lose trust with these people. These are these are these are my customers, right? And so i have I have to be open. I have to be honest. If something is rare, it's rare. If it's not rare, I'm not going to tell you that it is.

32:35.61
Bahzad Trinos
And you're absolutely right.

32:36.90
Scott Austin
Yep.

32:36.81
Bahzad Trinos
There are a lot of companies out there that You know, oh, only five left. There's 12 of these and shopping carts waiting. Oh, you know, ah save 50% off. I'm like, you always save 50% off.

32:47.94
Bahzad Trinos
Like there's just so many B.S.

32:49.20
Scott Austin
Yeah.

32:50.62
Bahzad Trinos
deals on websites going on. And certainly they do it because it probably works. But that's just and that's just not me.

32:58.26
Scott Austin
Well, I do think it works, right?

32:59.80
Bahzad Trinos
So i'm I'm not going to do that kind of stuff.

33:04.22
Scott Austin
I just think it doesn't work for the long term, right? those companies are selling products, they're not building a brand is the way I think about that. Where you know you're trying to build a brand and have a customer lifetime value of X amount you know from each of your customers over time, where they're just trying to you know clear their shelves as quick as they can on a given week and not thinking about what their brand is going to be in a year's time.

33:10.57
Bahzad Trinos
Sure.

33:24.06
Bahzad Trinos
Absolutely.

33:25.76
Scott Austin
and that you know that the you know In your your drops, I'm just, you know, are you only sending one email? It sounds like you're only sending one email. And I'm surprised by that for two reasons. One is, I i find, you know, you want to send this, even it's the same email we just announced or dropped twice in one day at least, just because not everybody reads every email and all that kind of stuff.

33:44.79
Bahzad Trinos
Yeah.

33:45.23
Scott Austin
And the other thing I would do is a day later or two days later, if they sell sales are rapid, would say, hey, we are selling out of these quick, you know, if you were waiting for this drop, get it now because it is going to be a while before they come back in stock.

33:58.72
Bahzad Trinos
Right. I mean, we build up to the release in the sense that, um you know, through our newsletters, we're telling people what we're working on, where it is in the production line, when they can expect it. So, you know, there's an email saying it's coming out tomorrow. But if you've been reading the newsletters, you've probably read already that it's, you know, coming out on that day. And like you said, not everyone reads everything. And so like sometimes there's a little bit of, you know,

34:27.88
Bahzad Trinos
reused information in one newsletter to the next newsletter. I try to keep it fresh, but you know sometimes you just got to drive the point home that this product is going to be coming out on this date, and you say it in one email, and then in the next email, you mention it again, you mention it again. So you know by the time it actually comes out,

34:46.60
Bahzad Trinos
You know, they know about it. And then, you know, the next newsletter, I'll say, OK, well, you know, it was a great launch, you know, very successful. We're very busy packing up all your orders. Maybe we'll post on Instagram showing us packing the orders or like, you know, showing the the shipment is, you know, FedEx picked it up and it's ready to go. And we annoyed our FedEx guy because there was so much stuff to pick up that day. ah You know, so that'll all end up in the newsletter and you know they'll hear about it you know one way or another.

35:12.27
Scott Austin
Oh, that makes sense. Yeah, because you have that weekly heartbeat with them, where you're checking in and telling them the status. Yeah, that that I hadn't thought about that. That took makes total sense. Now, because you're sending out these weekly emails, you know, what do you do to keep people from unsubscribing? And how do you get people to subscribe in the first place? How do you how do you build your list? And how do you you know, do you have any best practices on maintaining that list?

35:34.64
Bahzad Trinos
Yeah, building my list is, you know, when you make a purchase, people will often sign up for the email marketing.

35:39.70
Scott Austin
Yep.

35:42.17
Bahzad Trinos
um of Of course, when you go to our website, a popup will show up. We have ah you know a link on our social media, on our Instagram, like if you go to our, we use a link tree in our, you know, and click, you know, if you click on our bio, there's a link and then, you know, there's like a newsletter sign up there.

35:53.91
Scott Austin
yeah yeah

35:58.25
Bahzad Trinos
And, you know, when we talk about, anything, um you know, we make a YouTube video, we say, hey, you know what, sign up for our our newsletter, because there's great information in there. We give you not only, you know, you know, they' there it'll tell you the latest product information, but it'll also just kind of give you an insight scoop of what's going on. And then, you know, as far as retaining customers there, I try not to I try not to bombard them with too much, you know, buy, buy, buy, buy, buy, you know, people, they don't want to their email boxes are filled with that already. And it's like, you know,

36:30.08
Bahzad Trinos
you know, i whether it's from like, you know, the electronics retailer or the clothing store or whatever, there's a lot of those emails. So if you create an email that's a little bit more informative, here's some information, here's some news for you, it's more like, a you know, you're reading in the news article, maybe you're on your way to work, you know, you're you're having a coffee on your break, and this is some information that you're you're interested in receiving rather than, you know, being ah just a,

36:57.08
Bahzad Trinos
I don't know what the word is, but a receiving end of you know an ad.

37:01.99
Scott Austin
Yeah, yeah you don't you're not selling all the time. you're You're actually joining them in an interest that they have and having a conversation with them versus a one-way communication like buy from me so I can make money.

37:14.26
Bahzad Trinos
Right.

37:15.30
Scott Austin
and it It goes back to the part of the respect that you your brand has for your customers, which is showing through in everything that you're doing. you know I like the fact that you said you have the link tree and the YouTube.

37:25.81
Scott Austin
Do those channels actually get you new email addresses? or Does the collection there work?

37:30.92
Bahzad Trinos
Um, it's hard to tell from YouTube because, you know, there's no direct, um, but, uh, I would imagine that they work, you know, sometimes it's like, you know, deep, deep diving into these things and you trying to tweak them perfectly.

37:37.24
Scott Austin
Yep.

37:44.80
Bahzad Trinos
I don't know. You know, we're, we're pretty constant with our messaging, letting people know, you know, if you, if you want to. You know, there's a lot of ways that you can experience our brand, whether it's just Instagram, you see the pictures, you know, you engage, you like, you leave a comment, you don't leave a comment. That's fine. Then, you know, if you're a little bit deeper, you know, you're watching our YouTube videos, you're subscribed to our YouTube channel. and It's not a huge channel, and but, you know, it's not it's not like a you you know, a fun channel in the sense that like, it's not general entertainment, you know, it's not like one of those kind of channels where, you know, it's a little, it's educational and the live streams are, you know, two way communication.

38:23.72
Bahzad Trinos
So, you know, our YouTube channel is growing slowly, but surely, but it's also a very dedicated audience. And, you know, I would say that within that dedicated audience, it's also the newsletter people. So, you know, it's, ah I'm not trying to cast a wide net.

38:35.20
Scott Austin
Yep.

38:37.94
Bahzad Trinos
I'm trying to cast, you know, a net for people who are very, you know, tied in and interested in what we're doing.

38:44.35
Scott Austin
People that care a lot about their clothing more than the average person, so they're going to engage with you and all those details that the average user would not appreciate those details.

38:48.20
Bahzad Trinos
Absolutely.

38:54.77
Scott Austin
It sounds like yeah you know, you're an concerning customer that you're

38:56.21
Bahzad Trinos
Sure, I mean, you know, the but also like, right, you know, i'm I'm not like, there are, you know, even on our YouTube videos, you know, someone will say, well, I'd never spend $100 on a t shirt. And I'm like, great.

39:09.07
Bahzad Trinos
Like, you know, like, you know, I'm not I'm not trying to tell you that you need to or that you should. I'm just telling you that this is how this product is made. And that all of that justifies the price. It's it's not a cheap T-shirt. It's a very expensive T-shirt.

39:25.24
Bahzad Trinos
But if you want something that's made with all of these details, well, then unfortunately, that's what it costs. And this is not a mass market product. So if you want something very special, very niche, this is the price. But even then, I think it is a good price for what it is. you know there's There's always things that are expensive in life, but for what it is, it might be a good price.

39:48.37
Scott Austin
yeah Do you have like a way that you explain that to customers, like the Ferrari of t-shirts? Is there some little trick you use to try to to get that across?

39:55.08
Bahzad Trinos
Yeah. ah You know, sometimes I try not to make, you know, Ferrari, i I don't know, is it is it a good equivalent? Is it is a Ferrari of good value?

40:06.06
Scott Austin
Well, I actually think you're more like the Bentley of t-shirts, right? it's It's classier instead of flashier kind of thing. but

40:12.08
Bahzad Trinos
Maybe those Bentleys lose their value real fast, I hear. I don't know. I don't know. We drive a 98 car, so like I don't know, you know, we're we're very humble people in a lot of ways, but

40:20.60
Scott Austin
yeah well

40:25.37
Bahzad Trinos
you know I'm not trying to sell somebody on, if you buy this, you're going to look rich. you know i'm not I'm not a luxury brand in that respect.

40:34.56
Scott Austin
Yep.

40:35.23
Bahzad Trinos
It's more of an appreciation for the craft.

40:35.88
Scott Austin
Yep.

40:38.66
Bahzad Trinos
And you know if you know you know, there's no logos on any of our products. you know If you wear one of our t-shirts, You know it's one of our t-shirts, but the average person is never going to know it's one of our t-shirts.

40:52.94
Bahzad Trinos
So you know we we try to keep but branding on the very low end. The only thing that you'll see is like our inside tag is you know kind of big, but who sees the inside tag if your shirt?

41:02.12
Scott Austin
Yep.

41:03.58
Bahzad Trinos
Only you. So it's all for you. ah and Yeah, I mean, it's I during our live streams, I actually rail a lot on the luxury industry because I find that they provide little to no value for their customers. um And while some or many of their products are well made for the price, they're just that's not what you're paying for. And i I definitely try to educate people on that and where it's like, if the logo or the brand has a value to you, then certainly

41:35.87
Bahzad Trinos
you know If you're willing to pay for it, you're willing to pay for it. And those companies, they're they're doing they're doing great. They're making lots of money. Maybe I'm doing something wrong. But you know i'm i'm not I'm not interested in you know trying to create value off of a name alone. I want people to see the value is in the product and the craft.

41:52.28
Bahzad Trinos
And you know that involves a lot of storytelling, which is difficult to do. Whereas you know if you're trying to sell people on Flash, that's a lot easier. you know If you have a famous celebrity in an ad campaign and you have the money to do it, you hire the celebrity, you hire the stylist, you take them to a beautiful location, beautiful photos, you've got all the money to spend it on marketing, put up billboards everywhere.

42:17.37
Bahzad Trinos
Yeah, you could turn up an average product and make it look like it's gold. that's It's not hard in the sense that it takes the only problem there is money.

42:27.67
Bahzad Trinos
You have the money to do that. Some people do, some people don't.

42:30.30
Scott Austin
Yep.

42:32.17
Bahzad Trinos
You know, but it's very hard to train a lot of staff and say, hey, well, this sweater is beautiful because it comes from cashmere from this region and and not that region because this region has better cashmere for this, that, and the other reason, you know, and you can explain all the way from the way that it's collected to its spine, to its diet, and why the diet process is much more special.

42:55.93
Bahzad Trinos
It's trying to explain that to staff and then have them tell that to customers and why your products are great. It's never going to happen. That's why it doesn't happen anymore. You know, everything is flash.

43:07.06
Bahzad Trinos
So um I despise that.

43:08.92
Scott Austin
Yep.

43:11.36
Bahzad Trinos
I just I hate the idea of spending, you know, I see luxury brands are selling jeans or T-shirts for four figures for $1,000, $1,500.

43:22.75
Bahzad Trinos
I'm like, there's nothing you can do. quality-wise that could justify that price. All the rest of that price is just in the flash.

43:30.66
Scott Austin
Yep.

43:32.27
Bahzad Trinos
And if you're interested in the flash, sure, pay for it. But I hate it. i as As someone who loves product, I hate when people do that.

43:42.14
Scott Austin
Yeah. Yeah. Well, why does somebody buy a Bentley to say that they have enough money to waste on a Bentley, right?

43:47.84
Bahzad Trinos
I suppose. I'm sure it rides nicely, you know, but it's it's and not yeah it's not it's not for me.

43:49.03
Scott Austin
hey Yeah. Not that nicely, but no. what Yeah, exactly. Well, and you you started off that that explanation there like saying maybe I'm doing it wrong.

43:57.88
Bahzad Trinos
Yeah.

44:01.10
Scott Austin
Like, no, you're not right. There's there's no one way to build a brand. And you know, what I what i see you doing is trying to build a ah brand that has a long term permanence based on quality and in values behind the product and the sourcing of the product that people truly care about and makes them feel better.

44:22.17
Bahzad Trinos
I think so. it's it For me, it's about maintaining trust with your customer and you know delivering high quality and value.

44:23.20
Scott Austin
Where you know,

44:31.27
Bahzad Trinos
and you know if I think if you can just do that, everything else will work. and so i just We just have to focus always on making the best thing possible.

44:42.91
Bahzad Trinos
and price it for a reasonable price. you know Again, our products are very expensive. like gonna You can go ah to Costco and buy a five-pack of t-shirts for 30 bucks.

44:53.37
Bahzad Trinos
And I can tell you everything wrong with that five-pack of t-shirts for 30 bucks. But I can also tell you, hey, you know what? 30 bucks for five t-shirts is a pretty good deal. But here's what you're not paying for.

45:02.31
Scott Austin
Yep.

45:04.29
Bahzad Trinos
And those things, if you knew about it, well, then maybe you might rethink those types of things. But you know that's a that's for the livestream.

45:13.80
Scott Austin
Yep, yep, makes sense.

45:14.80
Bahzad Trinos
but yeah.

45:15.13
Scott Austin
So um last last email question for you. Do you do any sort of list cleaning process? You know, do you do you have a a way where you you take old stale emails and take them out of your out of your your pool?

45:27.35
Bahzad Trinos
Yeah, you definitely have to do that every now and then because of course you're charged by how many email subscribers you have on your list. So um sometimes there's people who sign up with you know bogus emails and spam and this and that.

45:34.39
Scott Austin
Yep.

45:39.50
Bahzad Trinos
OmniSend actually has a service where they will cleanse your list for you. It costs a couple of bucks, but you know every now and then when your list is like you know three or five percent of like what they will deem a questionable emails or like no good emails,

45:55.99
Bahzad Trinos
that you you can have them wipe the list for you. And that's that's great. it' ah It also helps with your deliverability because if you're sending a lot of emails that are getting bounced back and things like that, then it hurts your ability to end up in somebody's inbox. So you definitely want to make sure that you're not sending, you know, to to to spam accounts, things like that.

46:16.12
Scott Austin
Yeah, so the Omni said services ah sounds like what they're doing is they're they're looking at a master list of known bad email addresses or questionable email addresses and seeing if those exist in your list and removing them for y'all.

46:28.30
Scott Austin
Is that what it's doing?

46:28.35
Bahzad Trinos
That that's probably what they're doing. im I'm sure they have, you know, through their entire network network, they've got all kinds of information. So, you know, known emails, known bounced emails, this kind of stuff. I'm sure they're able to capture all that in some kind of master list.

46:40.57
Bahzad Trinos
And hey, we can wipe these from your list for you. Just just a couple of bucks. Like you could figure it out yourself.

46:46.97
Scott Austin
Yep.

46:47.55
Bahzad Trinos
There's definitely a way that you can do it yourself. But you know what? For me, time is money, and like if it takes me an hour to figure it out, or if it costs me 10 bucks to clean the list, I'm going to pay the $10 to clean the list.

46:58.97
Bahzad Trinos
I got other things to do.

47:00.33
Scott Austin
Oh, is it literally as cheap as 10 bucks to clean your list?

47:02.06
Bahzad Trinos
Yeah, it's it's it's cheap. Yeah, it's not a lot of money.

47:05.06
Scott Austin
Yeah. Oh yeah. That is an absolute no brainer. You're right. So as as we wrap up our time here together, is there is there one piece of advice you'd want to give you know other brands that are starting out and and trying trying to build a brand like like you've been pretty successful at doing?

47:19.53
Bahzad Trinos
Yeah, I mean, i for me, always honesty and show the process and don't...

47:28.47
Bahzad Trinos
Honestly show the process and well honesty. you know Be honest with your customers. Be yourself. um don't try to Don't try to say that you've created the ultimate anything if you haven't. right If it is, then talk about it all day long. If it's not, you can talk about, hey, it's it's a great product at a great price, great value. If you're making combs, making toothbrushes, whatever it is, know talk about the process and make sure that you're trying to deliver value to your customers. you know trying to Trying to fool people with fluff you know I think that it doesn't work in the long term.

48:01.39
Bahzad Trinos
Buy now, save 50% off and that was you you know you're the entire MO from the beginning. Don't do that kind of stuff. Or do it. I don't know. Maybe you're one of these websites is laughing at me right now and saying, no, I do it.

48:12.89
Bahzad Trinos
I make millions of dollars doing that all day long.

48:13.39
Scott Austin
yeah

48:15.04
Bahzad Trinos
um For me, I think my my greatest success has come from just being honest with your customers and um yeah, just that it's just ah it's all about honesty.

48:27.65
Scott Austin
Well, that's great advice. I appreciate your time today.

48:30.93
Bahzad Trinos
Thank you very much, it's been a pleasure.