TRANSCRIPT
This transcript was completed by an automated system, please forgive any grammatical errors.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
customer, custom, neon, guess, product, work, clouding, people, customer retention, business, little bit, handmade, fun, side, b2b, purchase, team, sign, conference, talking
SPEAKERS
Mariah Parsons, Kit Henseleit
Mariah Parsons 00:05
Greetings and welcome to retention Chronicles, the podcast with learnings from expert e commerce brands and partners. I'm your host, Ryan Parsons. If you're here, you're either on a quest for ecommerce enlightenment, or you accidentally clicked the wrong link. Either way, I am thrilled you stumbled into our corner of the internet. And I hope you'll stick around. We've got pearls of wisdom for everyone, whether you're running a multimillion dollar business, or simply just starting out on your entrepreneurial journey. Before we unleash the brilliance of today's guest, let's give a shout out to our podcast sponsor Malomo. Malomo is so much more than just another Shopify app, their post purchase wizards making beautiful and branded order tracking smoother than a jazz solo. So our amazing founders, like our guests can keep their customers happy and up to date while they track their orders. So hit that subscribe button, like it'll increase your LTV overnight, and go listen to her other episodes. Echo malomo.com That's gomalomo.com. Get ready for insights chuckles and perhaps a profound realization or two with this newest episode of retention. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to retention Chronicles. I am so excited for this episode here today. A little bit of background. So we are joined by kit and we are friends just for like the past two months. But it feels like forever. Right kit? And really does. Yes, that yeah, we met at retail innovation conference Expo. Rice abbreviated. I don't know if they officially call themselves rice. But for this purpose, I'm going to say that they do. And it's a conference mainly focused on retail, as you can imagine from the name but in Chicago. So we met probably I think was it. When did we meet officially it was it was like one session, right? But it
Kit Henseleit 02:05
was the session first? Yeah, that's right.
Mariah Parsons 02:09
either the first or second session, and just hit it off. So we spent literally the whole conference together to me, and we have to give clear a shout out as well. Because she was also hanging out with us. But she either. So kindly let you take this podcast on solo. She's busy doing some other stuff. But it is great to have you here today. So thank you for making the time.
Kit Henseleit 02:34
No, thank you very much for having me. I'm really excited to be here. Yes,
Mariah Parsons 02:39
we're gonna dive into it all. First, though, give our audience a little bit of a background on yourself. Obviously, tell them where you're tuning in from because that's it just they're gonna hear your accent. And then we'll dive right into it. Awesome.
Kit Henseleit 02:55
Thank you Mariah. Well, I'm Kitt. I'm tuning in from Australia, it's the morning here, and it is the middle of winter. So experiencing a little bit differently to what Mariah is experiencing right now. But I am the global operations manager at Custom neon. We sell custom led neon signage. And yeah, it's a whole lot of fun. And I'm excited to get into the questions. Yeah,
Mariah Parsons 03:20
I had so much fun looking through. Because obviously when we met in person, like we're not sitting down and like actually looking at all of your beautiful branding and like all that fun stuff. But you know, I had to do it after the fact, especially prepping for this because we talked about it in person. And so it was just so much fun. I was like, Oh my God, I feel so like attached to the brand, just from knowing you and Claire where I'm like, Oh, that's so good stuff on social and your website and everything. So it's fun now to kind of have a little bit of slow time after the conference and like, see what you all are doing with custom neon, and the just the space that you're in with being able to tap into so many different areas of the market. Because like, yeah, signage is we talked about this in person, like signage is just, it is all over the place. And so it's a really fun playground for you all to be in. Because you can be at, you know, you can work with retailers, but you can also work on the direct to consumer side, you can work, you know, in different stores in different outlets. And they can look in like look like all different things, even though it's all through you all. So it's a great space.
Kit Henseleit 04:25
Yeah, it's a really fun product to work with, because you get to kind of feed. You know, a lot of people in our business have a creative side. And it gets to feed that most of the time just because of the product that we're around and the things that we're getting to do every day with it to help other brands. So
Mariah Parsons 04:44
yeah, yeah, and for listeners as well, you all sell. I think I hinted at it, but b2b and b2c. So this will be a very fun conversation for us because as you know, we're mostly in the E commerce b2b side with the Malomo side of things, but our customers obviously are are b2c or DTC. So it's a fun, you know, everything is related, but everything's just a little bit different. So we're gonna dive into all of that. But I want to make sure that we also talk about clouding over because it's a part of your experience. So give our listeners a brief background of clouding over as well.
Kit Henseleit 05:18
Yeah, so cladding over is my little, I guess, side project that Hi, you know, work on when I have a chance. But essentially, it's resin, homeowners and furniture. And it's something that my partner and I do, we design it and then we have it manufactured and they've really unique pieces for people's home and people have kind of really liked, you know, having that option and having a really unique piece. And we've kind of really enjoyed that journey so far as well.
Mariah Parsons 05:50
Also, another thing that I think I was in person stalking clouding over your social media with you that you had it, and we're just having so much fun. Okay, so now clouding over is also like you're dipping into retail and then E commerce as well, because I remember us talking about a specific store, you had them in, in their stores. So you're partnering with retail retailers in Australia? Um, how have you seen just like high level some differences between what you're doing with clouding over? And then what you're doing with custom neon? And how are they similar? Because I always love to, like, hear about how what you've been learning in custom neon influences and what some, like newer challenges. Yeah,
Kit Henseleit 06:37
100%. I mean, the biggest challenge always, with custom Neon is that it's I mean, the name is very literal, in the fact that everything is custom that we do there. And I've tried to bring kind of a little bit of that over into clouding over in terms of things being kind of more made to order. It's not a custom product. As such, we can make, you know, amendments to it and changes, but it is kind of very small batch production and manufacturing and a little bit of exclusivity around it. But each of the products is still unique just because of the handpoured nature of resin. So you're still getting that unique piece. But I'm just not having the challenges of having to, you know, tweak and offer, you know, kazillion variations for something, which has always been a challenge at Custom neon. So
Mariah Parsons 07:35
real quick when you're looking at, obviously you have like you said that handmade like that, that that one one time piece or one one solo piece or a standout alone piece that is hand poured. And that's where you're getting like different designs and your name for the brand comes from the inspiration of the sky and clouds. Yes. You know, you have like weaved in to the art itself. With the exclusivity factor. Are you tapping into like any? What would you call it? Like? Not flash sale? Like a like a drop? Like
Kit Henseleit 08:14
a drop?
Mariah Parsons 08:15
Yeah, what does that call it? Why am I blanking? A price? Yeah, I don't know. There's a kid.
Kit Henseleit 08:22
I don't know what you're talking about. But yes, we haven't done it yet. We do hope to kind of do it in the future. I don't, I don't want the business to rely on that, you know, moving forward, because that's something that you've got then got to essentially keep up. I would do it for probably some colors, you know, in the future. But I don't want it to be so exclusive, that people kind of struggle to be able to get one because the purpose of me doing it is trying to offer something that's affordable, but unique, which is you know, hard to come by. Yeah,
Mariah Parsons 09:02
yeah. And you're dipping into that like almost FOMO marketing as well, where it's like an exclusive factor. This is a piece that you can like take pride in that nobody else has that specific piece. And it has a little bit of that price point that you're getting to the like art appreciators of the world right like you're you're proud of what your what is in your home and the furniture that you have and like a story behind it. So I think it's something something that's really cool and I'm very much enjoying just knowing you and like seeing seeing the social media so I hope our listeners will go and follow you obviously, both with custom neon and with clouding over. So as we're talking about kind of the differences and I love that you brought up like customization because it's a it's something that in my field I know we discussed as well where it's the post purchase experience. You want to be able to customize something you want to have it be branded but there's also a little bit of a like template, a templatized version that you can say like, Okay, this is what works time and time again for versus different for different brands. And so I would infer that for custom neon, because you have all of the different bells and whistles that someone could have on their site and truly make it custom to like their font colors or whatever they wanted. Do you have any of that, like, I guess, best practices in the industry? Because like, we have never had someone on this podcast, who's in the signage space? So I think it'd be really interesting for our listeners to know just like a bit more about like industry practices, I
Kit Henseleit 10:38
guess. Yeah, I you meaningful post purchase, kind of, yeah,
Mariah Parsons 10:42
for like, the whole customer journey, and then we can go into post purchase. Yeah, yeah.
Kit Henseleit 10:46
I mean, yeah, like I said, it's a challenge offering something kind of so custom, because, again, no two products ever the same, and we don't hold any stock on the shelf, we do have some pre designed things on our website, so that people, you know, if they, after something very kind of specific, they could just go there and get it, but it hasn't been pre made. So there's still things that they can customize, like their coloring, their mounting option, etc. So, you know, we use a lot of different programs. And they're all kind of slightly adjusted to be used how we need to use them, nothing's kind of like stock standard in this business. We have to make kind of amendments to suit what we're doing and the volume that we're doing. The only really things that we can standardize more of the post purchase things where we're, you know, sending them they're tracking with their name, and we're kind of linking them to all the tutorials. And so, you know, they can, they're educated. Yeah, and so that they can, you know, look at them and look at the specific one that they've purchased for their sign. So, we kind of stay pretty standardized kind of post purchase, it's all the customization through the ordering that they don't even really understand or see. Right, they know that purchase, but on our end, they're not they don't know, you know, all the things that are going on to make sure that order arrives to them perfectly as expected. Yes, yeah.
Mariah Parsons 12:24
So I know that there's also a lot that falls under your responsibility as global ops manager. And you've also been at Custom Nyan for a while and we were relating to that of just you know, throughout the years, you've see how a company grows and how it changes. Just anywhere from like, internally, personnel and, you know, different goals and like different metrics that you're hitting and performance and all that fun stuff. So what has been, we kind of talked about, like, the differences between custom neon and clouding over? What has been if you can recall, like, one of the bigger challenges, we can talk about both or just focus on one, whatever comes to mind first, yeah, what's been one of the bigger challenges that you've either face? Or are still facing? And how have you solved it? Or are trying to solve it actively? Yeah.
Kit Henseleit 13:18
Yeah, I've been at Custom neon for five years. I guess they're in the infancy stage then because wasn't even hadn't even been operating for a year. And Jess and Jake, who founded the company had just started it out of their garage, it was one of those kind of like startup stories where they've purchased some signs for their wedding. And then just as on maternity leave, she's, you know, then hiring them out, you know, just from home as kind of like a little bit of a side gig. And then all of a sudden, there's interest in, you know, it, you know, evolved like that. So it's snowballs into a massive kind of a global company. So one of probably the, I mean, we've faced many challenges.
Mariah Parsons 14:06
startup story right there. Yeah. As you snowball as well. Yeah,
Kit Henseleit 14:11
most small businesses, but a lot of logistical things that we probably all didn't have a lot of experience with, you know, how are we going to ship this to the customer? How are we going to make sure they arrive safely? We have gone through a lot of, I guess, iterations of you know how best we do that in the business. But probably the biggest challenge was going to a global scale. Needing to hire teams remotely in America, the UK, and then you know, external contractors and managing that while I guess keeping what was really fundamentally important to us, which was a really strong culture, that custom neon and kind of keeping that and trying to transition that into different cultures that maybe aren't used to having, you know, bosses in Australia, and kind of, you know, the way we operate. So I think that was a big challenge, not just the, you know, internal business side, but also the external. So, customers in the USA, you know, we're running ads and wearing at speaking with Australian accents, and that doesn't necessarily really resonate with, you know, the US market, it's a little bit confusing. So then, you know, we had to really start thinking about those finer details of if we're going to grow in this market and grow to the size that we want to in this market, we're going to have to shift, you know, a few things. And make sure I guess, we're being a little bit more relevant in these areas. Yeah.
Mariah Parsons 15:55
And from what you've told me, you all have been able to do that, where now, majority of your audience is in the US, and hence why you were just in the US for Yeah, Chicago conference, but then also seeing, you know, teams and had some other objectives that you are here, overseas for. And I know, that's another thing that we talked about is just the difference between cultures. And obviously, like, I think a lot of people would understand, you know, time zones, you just have to be very communicative, if you're working asynchronously. Um, what have been kind of like, has there any, has there been anything that has surprised you, while you've been expanding globally, beyond, you know, like, the, I guess, the more expected things of like scaling issues, and making sure that, you know, anything from your logistics, to warehouses to all of that, all of the, like data, and all of the operation side of things is, can be supported by the platforms that you're using? Has there been anything else that's been surprising?
Kit Henseleit 17:01
I guess, customer expectations was something that kind of shocked us a little bit, moving into different markets, because, you know, Australia's essentially quite removed from the rest of the world. That's essentially, all down here operating, you know, ourselves. So I speed of, you know, a custom product was kind of an expectation that, you know, we obviously do meet for our customer. But I think they're a little bit surprised when we say, you know, this takes three to four weeks to be delivered. And I think they're a bit like, why shipping should only take, you know, 24 hours, cuz you're used to, you know, you're much bigger. So am I, right?
Mariah Parsons 17:53
Yeah. Ruined, I
Kit Henseleit 17:56
guess. Yeah. I used to a lot more, I guess, accessibility a lot, things a lot faster, a lot more on kind of your time. But, you know, we obviously have a schedule, we've got a production line, we've got customers globally, all over the world, that we're, you know, producing foreign shipping out to. So I think that was one and also expectation about kind of product, obviously, in the US, there's a lot of traditional glass. Neon, and, you know, we absolutely appreciate and respect that art form. It's beautiful. We're obviously bringing something different to market in terms of something that's, you know, easier for people to move around with, you know, take places businesses to you not as breakable, yeah. Energy efficiency, you know, customization, things like that. So, we're kind of brings something different, but I think at the start, it was, when it was like a new product that we were out here kind of selling, it was a little bit harder for people to kind of accept and understand that it was handmade. There might be very small differences between you know, the proof that you've seen and then the product that you get, because someone has literally handmade it it's not machine made. Yeah, like that curve might be a little bit. Yeah, exactly. And, you know, we've come through that it's definitely doesn't present as much of a you know, a challenge anymore, but I would say that's in terms of differences of, you know, like locations that was probably one that we found to be most challenging. Yeah,
Mariah Parsons 19:45
that's a great one to call out like different customer expectations. Because I think it is, like we again, we see this at Malomo with the if you are proactive and tell someone before they're frustrated. about something that like, oh, you can expect, blah, blah, blah, you can expect that this might be delayed or in my you know, if you're ordering like ice cream online, right, like you need to be at your doorstep, when it gets to your house so that it's not melted. Or if you're ordering the food or whatever beverage you have to sign for, if it's alcoholic, all those little nuances that maybe as a consumer, you're not thinking about the brand has to take on that responsibility of sharing with their customers, okay? Expect this because it will be something that you'll bump into in a in a couple of days or a couple of weeks whenever you're getting your product. And so if you can kind of get ahead of that customer frustration, or potential customer frustration, to tell someone, okay, this is a hand made product, it's going to take longer, because it has to go through the whole production line, it's handmade. And then on top of that, we're also shipping it globally to you in a different container in a different continent or country, then you have to, you know, you can set those set those expectations, expectations, so someone isn't disappointed. Yeah, that is, you know, it's so small, but it makes so much sense. Yeah,
Kit Henseleit 21:10
and it's a fine line, I think to that has been a learning curve that we want to give all that information. But we also don't want it to be information overload. Because there's already so much information about it being a custom product, and how this kind of whole process is going to work. It's easy for people to kind of skip out on those, you know, little bits of information that we really hope they understand, you know, before. But, you know, it's a fine balance between, you know, what information we actively try to put in front of the customer? And what information we have available for them to find out themselves. But it relies on them going and actually looking. Yeah, the extra
Mariah Parsons 21:56
effort is on them. Yeah, yeah. Do you have any sort of guidelines or, like examples of, you know, maybe what's making the cut that like, Okay, this, they need to absolutely know this about our product versus like, this is a nice to have for them to know about, but it's not essential enough that we need to, you know, it falls into the information overload categories. Do you have any, like, idea of where you kind of split those lines? It's okay, if you don't, because it's a very general question. The,
Kit Henseleit 22:28
I guess the main one that is a need to know, is, you know, our color our colors and the expectation around again, because that product is handmade and actual tubing and lighting is handmade in it's kind of like batches, there can be slight variations, you know, in that every time even if it's the same color.
Mariah Parsons 22:50
Like, like a pink might not be as like, as vibrant as maybe a picture or something like that. Yeah, so
Kit Henseleit 22:56
we do have a lot of disclosure around, you know, what you're viewing and seeing right now. Might not be exactly as you see it, you know, when it arrives still going to be beautiful. Here's heaps of examples and options so that you can see because, you know, it's going to change based on your lighting, it's going to change based on kind of the surrounding colors surrounding. Yeah, variables that are in your, the
Mariah Parsons 23:22
quality of your camera, like the camera settings, all of that fun photography, stuff that I vote no, very minimal stuff about.
Kit Henseleit 23:30
Yeah, so kind of, that's probably the most important thing that we try to make sure they're aware. Yeah. Okay,
Mariah Parsons 23:40
awesome. Do you know, in terms of like the product line and actually producing a sign do you have like, like, what, like, what kind of numbers are we talking about when you're looking at it? Like you have sort of a global market, but you have a custom product? Is it like how many people would you say is part of that aspect of custom knee on
Kit Henseleit 24:02
the manufacturing side?
Mariah Parsons 24:04
Yeah. Ah, there's a lot.
Kit Henseleit 24:08
Yeah, I would. I mean, I would say 50 You know, and that's fairly good chunk. Yeah. Our engineers product, you know, development team to our manufacturing team. We've got a really strong team because, you know, we're often thrown you know, left of center ideas from people that want to do something and we're very much yes, people here at Custom neon. We really find it difficult. It
Mariah Parsons 24:43
showed in the two days we spent together. Yeah, like let's do this, this. I love it.
Kit Henseleit 24:48
We really want to be able to bring a customer's vision to life, no matter how kind of obscure or challenging it might be we we always have the resources to do it because of this team. It's just, you know, working it out, and, you know, going through that process with them. But, you know, we've got manufacturing facilities here in Geelong in Australia with Texas, Los Angeles, and also in Asia. So I got to visit our Asia manufacturing facility earlier this year. And it was incredible to see the amount of people who are involved in, you know, helping us develop these ideas being innovative. Being Yes, people with us. Yeah. And us kind of helping each other, come up with new ways to do things.
Mariah Parsons 25:48
Yeah, yeah, I love it. So I want to continue the train of like customer expectations. Are there different expectations when you're looking at the b2b versus b2c side of the business? Like, are there other, I guess, nuances when you're dealing with a certain sector or a certain customer? Or is it pretty much, you know, once you're talking to someone, it's the same same general process that you're going through that we just kind of outlined of, like, you know, this is the education, this is the need to know, this is like how long it's going to take for us to manufacture and to ship it to you this is, you know, there's going to be this slight variance of the product, is it pretty similar with the with how you're selling? It
Kit Henseleit 26:34
is similar, however, I would say for our b2b customers, and, you know, within those b2b, the commercial side of our customers, they like, definitely a little bit more in depth information, even just about the product, product specifications, is this UL listed, because it's going into, you know, building complex that requires that. So there's definitely kind of, I guess, a greater level of detail involved, sometimes, for our b2b, commercial side versus, you know, the parents who want something for their nursery with their child, or, you know, the daughter who wants to buy their dad, a man cave sign for Father's Day. They don't really care as much about the, you know, finer details, they just are excited that it's a custom product. We've given them the same information about the variances and this is what to expect, and they're just happy to, you know, ride through that process. But
Mariah Parsons 27:38
yeah, it maybe doesn't have to be as perfect or as specific. Like you said, yeah,
Kit Henseleit 27:43
just just less details needed for consideration, I guess, because they need don't need to take as many things into consideration for their dads mankind.
Mariah Parsons 27:58
How many signs have you created? That's a man cave.
Kit Henseleit 28:01
We've done ceremony. They don't necessarily say man cave, but you know, they're going to a man's cave.
Mariah Parsons 28:08
Yeah, it's like, right. It's like, den or something like, yeah, there's I'm sure we could pop off with amount of names that you're like, I know exactly where this is going. Yeah,
Kit Henseleit 28:18
yeah. It'd be like Tony's bar. Oh, yeah. Yeah. stuff. Yeah. So the Yeah, the options we've seen a lot in the last six years. So yeah.
Mariah Parsons 28:31
Okay, awesome. So another question for you, can you one of the best things that I was when we were talking that I remembered was just all the incredible opportunities that you all have had with really cool events, like really innovative, kind of like campaigns or event marketing or initiatives just because of the people that you're meeting or just because of the nature of your product? Because it is, it can be so adapted to what someone is, you know, whatever campaign that they're working on, so can you tell us, you know, some of the ones that you were telling me about, I think our audience would love to know. But just the campaign's that you all have been able to, you know, kind of launch into and get custom neon signs at these great events, and really specifically in retail, like, get get your name out there.
Kit Henseleit 29:23
Yeah, yeah, we've we've, you know, had the privilege of working on many, kind of, like you said, amazing projects and opportunities. Some of my and I'm lucky that I've got to see them all come into fruition being here for you know, such an extended period of time, but definitely some, you know, my personal favorites that I've worked on personally have been a collaboration with coach. They kind of came to you know, we were in discussions a couple of years ago after meeting actually At the retail innovation conference in Chicago, which was amazing. And they were looking for a product that was more along the sustainable, you know, what, what was custom neon doing in this sustainability space. And I kind of pitched a product idea that we hadn't really done yet. Using our off cut scraps of rope, neon rope, to upcycle them into, you know, a multicolored again, one of a kind sign for Coach. When I pitched that I had no idea what they would doing. Yeah, on their hands.
Mariah Parsons 30:41
No idea that it would actually land. Yeah, absolutely
Kit Henseleit 30:43
no idea. And then all of a sudden, you know, that they're interested, we're talking about this. And I find out that it's for a sub brand of coach that they've created called coach topia, which is upcycling leather scraps from their, you know, production into one of a kind, one off, you know, handbag. So it was literally a match made in heaven with, you know, the idea that I'd pitch first, you know, what they were trying to create. And since then, we've partnered on 10s, of coach topia signs which have gone all over the world, which is incredible. I've been lucky enough to visit the one at the grove in Los Angeles. Every time I'm out there visiting the team, I pop into the store. Yeah, you know, because I'm so excited about it every time. Yeah. And you know, since then that relationships turned into, you know, even more collaboration, we recently assisted with a fit out in there, cat Street store in Japan. And it's incredible, it's very visually appealing in terms of it's got a lot of animation, a lot of things flashing and different things turning on at different times. It's just a really fun installation. That I hope to go and see in real life on there.
Mariah Parsons 32:06
Yeah. Oh, I'll have to look up that one up. You said it was cat Street. Pass, right? Yeah. Okay. Okay, cool. And to give you credit, because I know you won't give it to yourself, you would done that just going up to talk to their team. And you said at the retail innovation conference in Chicago, but like that does not take we were both talking about that team effort to like, go up and introduce yourself to a stranger and you're in operations, right? So you're not your quota or your KPI or whatever, you're not being you're not trying to pitch someone you're just networking to go and meet people and make make sure that that 70 What is it 17 hour flight? Yes. 17 hour flight is worth it. Right? Like, yes. So I give that credit to you of, you know, it's not an easy thing, especially post pandemic of just trying to go up to people, introduce yourself, learn about what they're doing. Especially panelist, I think we learned you have been to the conference before but my first year, we were just in awe of how much people like to connect and want to talk to you. But you just have to make the effort, right of like, going up to them right after they hopped off stage and just saying like, I really liked this, I have a follow up question or, you know, can we stay connected, because you seem like a cool person. And I want to see what you you ended up doing or the things that you were talking about with this launch, I want to see, you know, four months down the line. But that means so I commend you that you were obviously able to work on such a great, great campaign, but then also have the bravery and the courage to go up to someone and just say, like, I'm going to introduce yourself, and you know, that's gonna be that because it is not an easy thing to do. Yeah,
Kit Henseleit 33:49
it can definitely be a little bit intimidating. And that was actually the first conference that I attended. So you know, right, yeah, bailing someone up on the side of the stage from coaches, you like, you know, I've seen Giovanni, who's, you know, a senior, yeah, you know, part of the team and, you know, having a conversation, and then actually, you know, following it up, obviously, very appreciative on his end of, you know, actually putting me in touch and giving me custody on an opportunity to see if we could, you know, assess their production in any way. And it turns out, we could, but yeah, it was all from that one conversation. So, yeah,
Mariah Parsons 34:28
a lot of integrity to and goodwill on the other side of, you know, saying I will, you know, introduce you and yeah, actually doing that so that you all could create absolutely a plethora of custom neon sign. Um, okay, so a little bit of a pivot more into customer experience side of things. Because customer retention is it's an every facet of the business. Whether you're looking at b2b b2c, whether you're looking at Custom neon clouding over or SAS like Malomo? agency side everything right? So can you tell us a little bit more about how you all are thinking about customer retention and repeat orders? When you have a custom product where maybe, you know, you said, you see someone have, let's say, a b2b, b2c side, they're ordering the man cave sign, but then you have the example of coach topia where, okay, we've now been able to work on other things, other initiatives that they are rolling out on the b2b side. So can you talk through like, as a team internally? How are you trying to tackle customer retention, we have all these amazing facets of the business, but like, you can't maybe make a blanket statement because some customers are more likely to be repeat buyers just because of, you know, their size of their business or what they're buying for in the first place.
Kit Henseleit 35:53
Yeah, I would actually say that has been a challenge as well, we've literally been so busy, essentially, from the get go that that was something that we didn't focus on enough in the early years of the business, because I guess we didn't have to write. At that time. We were just like, Nick, a lot of people
Mariah Parsons 36:17
don't, it's just that you're sprinting in a hamster wheel. Yeah,
Kit Henseleit 36:20
yeah. But now that we are where we are, and we've got kind of the customer base that we do under our belt, we are turning to understand the importance. Most of the time, you know, most people who hit our website, they're hitting it for the first time, you know, they're they're kind of like, you know, one time kind of going there, but obviously, the people that we're working with, because it's such an end, personalized, individualized service that we're providing, well, we're working so closely, and one on one with these people through the whole kind of process, our design, sales and design team. You know, we obviously have a huge opportunity to keep re engaging with those customers. So just recently have kind of implemented a few things internally. To be helping our team know, the kinds of customers that we need to, you know, go back to get in front of, you know, check in on have they opened a new restaurant, you know, in the last three months since we sold the last sign to them? Do they have anything coming up? Have they won an award that we can, you know, congratulate them on? I guess it's keeping that really personalized service and being very prompt and helpful. Again, we're very much yes, people. So we really try to make, yeah, everything come to life for them. But I think it's about really honing in on that reengagement for those particular kinds of customers that we know have the potential to repeat purchase from us. Right?
Mariah Parsons 38:02
And is that mostly, like looking at data and like customer behavior, that you're kind of, you know, saying like, okay, they someone in this industry, likely with us has, you know, this was a three months, like you said, like this buying cadence of, you know, opening a new restaurant, and then maybe would need a new sign or you the diving deep into, you know, like sales notes, like any of that kind of more, I guess, like less numbers, but more quantitative data,
Kit Henseleit 38:36
it's probably more you know, we obviously have things where we can filter out, you know, our straight to our b2b customers. And then going deeper into that we're looking at, you know, the last communication we had the deal value of what they spent with us. But everybody's doing this more on an individual level, because it's essentially kind of their customer. So our sales and design team need to be very aware because I'm not looking at it and you know, sending stuff out to anybody there. I mean, I am looking at it and advising like, you know, we should reach maybe reach out reengage with this person or engage with this person, but because they know the customer because they've worked with them one on one phone calls emails throughout the whole process. It's really on them to be looking at you know, the data like the value what kind of you know, we've got a broken down into hospitality celebrity, but like, you know, yeah, very specific screws. Yep. Yeah. So that they can Yeah, go back to them look at you know, when was the last communication with this customer? You know, it's time to reengage and see if we can assist them any further. Okay, yeah,
Mariah Parsons 39:58
that makes sense. It's always so fascinating to hear how people are working through customer retention. And there's the beauty of customer retention, and the difficulty of the customer is different for everyone. So it's like, There's no way around it right? Like, yeah, there's a lot of things that you can do so that you can improve customer retention, but to like, get to the point, where you know, okay, now is where we need to focus on it. Yeah, it's a little bit of a struggle. And we see time and time again, I've just, I think when you're building a brand, it's really, really essential that you are getting things right. And like just acquiring customers, and just like you're seeing, Oh, my God, a sale is a sale, right? But then once you get to that turning point of, okay, we've made X amount of sales from these, these wonderful people. Yeah. How can we enter that? Yes. How can we tap back into that? How can we be better? How can we make sure that we're being of a great partner for them, right, even if it isn't the right time, or that we're staying top of mind. But we're also looking into our partners and invested in like their journey and seeing what they're doing and all the cool, innovative stuff. So it's always it's always a fun time to hear, which is why I love this podcast. I'm just like, yes. How someone is even attempting to tackle it. Because we're all human. We're all just trying our best out here. I think all founders relate to that, you know, yeah.
Kit Henseleit 41:27
Yeah. And understand operators to Yeah, yeah, it has definitely been challenging. And we've actually started sharing with our team kind of showing them directly, you know, what percentage of deals, you know, signs that you sold this month, we're from repeat clientele? That's because there's a direct correlation between that percentage and the revenue that was able to be generated, you know, as that percentage rises, the revenue generation rises. So yeah, it is definitely something that we're putting a lot more focus on. Now. Moving forward.
Mariah Parsons 42:07
Well, I don't want to wrap us up. But I know you have to get started with your day and I'm ending my day. Yes. Is there anything you want to share with the audience before we log off anything that you're looking forward to? Could be anything from promotions to launches to? I don't know, just something that you're eagerly awaiting.
Kit Henseleit 42:28
We have always got lots going on at custody on it. It literally never ends, product development, things we want to bring to market. But yeah, I won't. I won't say too much about any of them. Because sometimes they take a little bit longer to actually come into fruition then we'd all like but that's just the reality of us. Small team and big dreams. So that I mean, on our radar, obviously, is black Friday's fast approaching, even though it's only July. That's, that's what we'll be gearing up for over the next few months. Okay,
Mariah Parsons 43:02
well, yeah. So are you starting? You're starting now. It's that's also another fun topic that I just like to ask people, when are you starting? Good Old Black Friday, Cyber Monday? Planning? Yeah,
Kit Henseleit 43:13
we're starting now. Our marketing team is you know, all over it, we've got better and better at it. Again, with that kind of volume and that amount of customization. Things have to shift a little bit. So it's really important that we're communicating really clearly with our customer. That we're communicating really clearly with our team during that period. You know, this the Christmas, Christmas plays a part in it because the Christmas cut off dates are kind of mingled in with that and it's just a really busy time for us.
Mariah Parsons 43:43
Yeah, the buy buy date together by this time. Yeah, yeah. Yep. It's a fun fun time that Yeah, yeah, we love it. Well, I'll let you get back to that fun stuff. But thank you, kid. This has been amazing. I'm so happy we got to me and I know we're gonna be continuing to have these conversations on the microphone and off the microphone. So thank you for making the time I know. You know, the time difference doesn't make it super, super easy, but it was so worth it. Yeah,
Kit Henseleit 44:11
super appreciate you chatting with me. Mariah. Loved it. And yeah, I look forward to chatting further.