From Frustration to Innovation: Ben Read, Mercha's CEO, on Building Mercha’s Sustainable Branded Merchandise Platform - Birchal Podcast

In August 2024, Mercha's CEO, Benjamin Read sat down with Emily MacFarlane on the Birchal podcast to discuss the path from idea to MVP and beyond.

From Frustration to Innovation: Ben Read, Mercha's CEO, on Building Mercha’s Sustainable Branded Merchandise Platform - Birchal Podcast

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Podcast transcript:

00:00:00:04 - 00:00:13:00
Emily
Hello and welcome to the Birchal podcast. My name is Emily. I'm your host. And today I'm here with Ben Read, the Co-Founder of Mercha, which is a company that is reimagining the way that other companies look at merchandise. Welcome to the podcast.

00:00:13:01 - 00:00:14:16
Ben
Thank you so much for having me. It's great to be here.

00:00:14:19 - 00:00:16:24
Emily
Thanks for coming all the way from San Diego.

00:00:17:01 - 00:00:27:16
Ben
Yes. San Diego, yes. by way of of, Sydney or Chicago than Sydney then? yeah. So lovely. Lovely to be here, though. I love being in Melbourne, especially when, you can see the blue in the sky.

00:00:27:21 - 00:00:29:01
Emily
Yeah. It's unusual, isn't it?

00:00:29:01 - 00:00:30:11
Ben
It is.

00:00:30:13 - 00:00:46:24
Emily
So I'd love to hear a little bit about why you came up with the concept of merch. I mean, obviously merchandise has been a huge thing. It's been around for a long time. I mean, you look at in the 80s, it's pens, mugs, that kind of thing. Why are you kind of shaking things up now?

00:00:47:01 - 00:01:05:20
Ben
Yes. Good question. So, I guess a, a confession, I actually don't come from the industry, so I'm actually one of the only, people on the team that is not an industry veteran. so my co-founder, Sam, has been in the industry for a long time. He's actually a generational promotional products guy. So his dad was in promotional products as well.

00:01:05:21 - 00:01:36:13
Ben
And, anyways, he, even being in the industry all that time, he at one point had to order merch for a personal project. And he had, you know, been working in, in the business but had never actually had to order something personally. And he went through the process of ordering it. And, went through a competitor, Vaas, who will remain nameless, but after, you know, going on, a website and, you know, ordering a quote, I think 19 emails and five days of back and forth.

00:01:36:13 - 00:01:38:00
Ben
And he still didn't have an answer. Right?

00:01:38:04 - 00:01:38:15
Emily
Yeah.

00:01:38:19 - 00:01:57:23
Ben
And, so anyways, he came away from that experience thinking that there had to be a better way. And, so he had this idea to, to bring the experience online, bring it into the 21st century. And, that's kind of about the time that I got connected with him through, kind of a friend and mentor of ours who's also a, co-founder, lovely guy named Neil Helm.

00:01:58:00 - 00:02:15:16
Ben
And, and anyways, we looked at, you know, the problems that were inherent in the industry. And Sam was kind of educating us on, all of the, you know, the problems that businesses faced, but also a lot of the kind of intricacies of the industry here and things that could be improved. And we realized this is something that is literally like a diamond hiding in plain sight.

00:02:15:17 - 00:02:37:19
Ben
Merch is literally everywhere. I know we talked about it in our branding everything. but that was probably the first revelation I had when I started, learning about the industry from Sam was, you know, I'd be walking around and I'd be at my local coffee shop and I'd see them wearing a branded polo, and then, I'd be in the airport for work, and I would be, you know, walking past guys wearing business shirts with, with logos on it.

00:02:37:24 - 00:02:58:04
Ben
It literally is everywhere if you stop and look around. but the problem is most of it is very low quality. I'd say, you know, I think there there is, a well-known statistic that I think 66% of promotional products end up in landfill. Oh, it's terrible. Right? and like, we were talking about this just before we started, I, I'm a big fan of nature.

00:02:58:05 - 00:03:16:02
Ben
I spent a lot of time in the outdoors. You know, I was just sharing that that story where, at one point, I actually went out of the wilderness for a month and come back. I've always been big into the mountains, and all of the things that I love to do are all in nature. And so I made, you know, concerted I've made a concerted effort for a long time to, you know, think consciously about what we use and what we consume.

00:03:16:04 - 00:03:28:14
Ben
and so bringing that kind of mindset into, into the business, we looked at a lot of what was being sold, and a lot of it, frankly, is made to fail. It's not made to last. A lot of it's made to be single use.

00:03:28:16 - 00:03:29:09
Emily
Why is that.

00:03:29:14 - 00:03:30:03
Ben
Price point.

00:03:30:03 - 00:03:30:15
Emily
Usually?

00:03:30:15 - 00:03:46:06
Ben
Okay. You know, and you know, you can get good quality things that are not super expensive. and there are a lot of products. And if you go in to our site right now, we have a curated range of products. Sam has literally held and felt and touched and tested just about everything on there. we reject most products we see.

00:03:46:06 - 00:04:05:04
Ben
So the the piece that you see on there have already been vetted by us and vetted by the team. but, you know, a lot of it is I'll give you an example. We had, a radio station in Sydney, nameless, and they wanted a I think they wanted 500,000 or million, plastic whistles for a new Jersey thing.

00:04:05:04 - 00:04:27:05
Ben
Right? They did not need or want the whistles to last, right? They were meant to be single use, and we rejected the order. And at that time, it would have been a really lovely order for us to have be money. but that is just an example of a company going and looking for something to tick a box without really thinking about, you know, the underlying cost of that.

00:04:27:05 - 00:04:41:01
Ben
Those things are just getting up in the harbor. They run up in the bin, you know, all of the time and effort to create that product overseas. The, the materials that went into the labor that went into it, the flying it over here, all of those things which we don't always think about when we purchase things. Yeah.

00:04:41:04 - 00:05:00:15
Ben
To just get thrown into, you know, a bin, it just it just doesn't make sense. So, that that idea, and, you know, something that we are really strongly passionate about is that if it's on our side, it has to be made to last and it has to be made fairly. yeah. The term sustainable sustainability is bandied about a lot.

00:05:00:15 - 00:05:16:13
Ben
Right? and, you know, there's a lot of greenwashing and things like that. And, and we're not perfect and we, you know, have a lot of things that we could do to improve, but we, again, stick to that idea of just simply having things that are made to last. Right? Because something that's made to last is inherently more sustainable.

00:05:16:17 - 00:05:17:05
Emily

00:05:18:02 - 00:05:40:15
Ben
so anyway, so that's that is you know, kind of one aspect I think that, you know, has caused this, this issue where a lot of products are, you know, finding themselves at landfill, a lot of promotional products, finding themselves landfill. and the fact is, promotional products are a tremendous asset for a brand. If they are done well, like they are.

00:05:40:16 - 00:05:58:24
Ben
You know, I, I'm wearing my merch t shirt. Of course, you know, I've worn this t shirt, I don't know, 50 or 100 times. And the fact is it's good quality, it's comfortable. It fits. Well, I like the way the branding, you know, is it's subtle. So promotional products can do a tremendous service to a brand if they're done well.

00:05:58:24 - 00:06:17:20
Ben
And if they're, you know, if you choose quality. Right. And the quality these days doesn't have to be it doesn't have to be expensive. We have things in multiple price points that are all good quality. but you know, back to our earlier, you know, to, to talking about the 66% of things that land in landfill. we don't want our customers brand stand up in landfill.

00:06:17:20 - 00:06:37:23
Ben
So we're consciously thinking if we have a good product, it's good quality product and print of which we look at those is two different products. If you provide a good product with good print, that piece of merchandise, whether it's a bottle or a pen or, you know, a t shirt, it can have a tremendous benefit to your brand in the, in the long term.

00:06:38:00 - 00:06:45:23
Ben
but again, the opposite is also true. So, anyways, that, sorry, I went I went on the on a quality tangent. There are.

00:06:45:23 - 00:06:47:00
Emily
Tangents I love a.

00:06:47:00 - 00:06:47:15
Ben
Bit of tangent.

00:06:47:15 - 00:06:49:17
Emily
The cost. I love a tangent.

00:06:49:23 - 00:06:54:13
Ben
It does happen. I get excited and I will do that. So I reserve my right to do that.

00:06:54:15 - 00:07:00:16
Emily
You've got your your children that you actually produced yourself. And then you've got your business which is are the children.

00:07:00:16 - 00:07:09:07
Ben
So that's right. Yep. Yep. And that's a, that's a really good way of looking at it because they, they both have their highs and their lows. Oh yeah.

00:07:09:09 - 00:07:13:03
Emily
as a childless woman, I'm sure that that is true.

00:07:13:05 - 00:07:29:05
Ben
Yes it is. yeah. I mean, look, I'm, I'm a dorky dad. I'm not going to go down that path, but, you love your kids like, like nothing else. and you only want the best for them. And, you know, in a lot of ways, yeah, you put a lot of time and effort into a business. Same as the same with the business, you know?

00:07:29:05 - 00:07:47:23
Ben
So I like to say, you know, that, that I've got three children and this is, you know, my family always comes first. So that's a rule we have across the business in general, across all of us, is that family always comes first. But, but yeah, the business, it's it's my baby and it's Sam Spade, and it's Neil's baby, and it's Brian's baby.

00:07:47:23 - 00:07:57:18
Ben
Right. and fortunately, we've got some great people on the team, you know, that feel that way about it as well? which is, I think why, you know, we're we're seeing the success that we're seeing.

00:07:57:20 - 00:08:05:24
Emily
When you're coming through equity crowdfunding and raising capital in that way. You look at it like you're bringing on board new family members.

00:08:06:01 - 00:08:27:23
Ben
Yeah. It's interesting. I think of a if I step back and think about, you know, the question of crowdsource funding in general. you know, it's a it's I'll step back. I was, I remember seeing Google for the first time when I was in uni. Right. And, you know, at that time, nobody knew Google is going to be what Google was.

00:08:27:23 - 00:08:49:09
Ben
And I could tell you when it was. That'll show my age. But, this is before Google is public or anything like that. And then I remember seeing, you know, a year or two after I had graduated, I remember seeing Google come out and they did what was called a Dutch style auction IPO, which not many people know, that, it's a very different way of doing an IPO.

00:08:49:11 - 00:09:23:21
Ben
and I always like to respected Google for that once I like and respect Google in general, especially now. But, that's another story for another time. But I like that they did that. And the reason they did it is because it was democratizing the investment, in Google at that time. And, you know, there are, I suppose, the older I've gotten and the more cynical I've gotten, I don't like the fact that a great deal of the capital flows, that go into companies at all stages, you know, the whole VC, arena and, you know, private equity and things like that.

00:09:23:21 - 00:09:43:03
Ben
They're held by a very, you know, concentrated amount of people. And IPO's generally first serve the bankers and, you know, the early investors that jump into, into a company and, you know, everyone else kind of gets the scraps, you know, even if you're an if you're investor and I've been a I've been a retail investor since I was about 18 or 19.

00:09:43:05 - 00:09:58:23
Ben
so I've always had a problem with that. I've always had issue with that. so I like the crowdsource funding piece and the fact that it is a way to kind of democratize the investment. And we're an early stage startup. There's risk involved. You could lose all your money. It is what it is. Right. And that's the case for every startup.

00:09:58:23 - 00:10:31:23
Ben
I don't care how well-honed your pitch is. I would say, you know, we've got a great business. we're improving it all the time. You know, we have, an incredible management team, a great plan. I would argue the best product is in our platform. but, you know, there's still inherent risks in doing it. But I think for the people that are willing to take the risks in order to reap the rewards of which investing is all just on the scale of risk and reward, I think the KSF, path allows you to get into companies earlier than, than you would have the option to do otherwise.

00:10:32:00 - 00:10:54:15
Ben
and so therefore for anybody that puts down, you know, whether it's a dollar or 10,000 or, you know, we're an expression of interest now, and we've had a few that have come through much larger amounts. And we kind of expected to see it's not, you know, said it will close all of them. But you know, if you were putting a dollar into something or 10,000 to me, that is worthy of me saying thank you to you for taking a vote on us.

00:10:54:15 - 00:11:20:01
Ben
Right? Because you're voting on us. You're voting on the business. so, yeah, I think we we do look at that way. We certainly look at it, that way, you know, for the people who who have, jumped in and invested in us, you know, at a very early stage of which, you know, there's the four founders, but then we have a few, lovely, investors as well, and a couple of VCs that have backed us early, you know, and we have a lot of, you know, they are like a family to us, in good ways and bad.

00:11:20:01 - 00:11:38:10
Ben
Just like families, usually good ways and bad. but anyways, I do like the idea of the democratization of it. And anybody who's willing to put down a dollar on a company, you know, obviously do your research, but, you know, we we welcome you and we thank everybody who, who comes to the board and, and decides to, to back us.

00:11:38:12 - 00:11:53:23
Emily
So you've obviously gone through venture capitalists previously to raise funds, and now you're at the point of coming through equity crowdfunding. Do you foresee in the future that you'll need to raise more funds to grow and expand into other verticals or horizons?

00:11:54:00 - 00:12:15:06
Ben
that's a question I think you always you know, most companies on their trajectory rely on a number of, funding rounds over time. Right? to me, I look at the funding rounds as we have a set of milestones that we want to hit. So we you know, we've never brought on much funding, as in, we were fully self-funded.

00:12:15:08 - 00:12:21:10
Ben
as in, we bootstrapped it for founders until, 2023, early 2023.

00:12:21:12 - 00:12:22:18
Emily
At the company.

00:12:22:20 - 00:12:32:19
Ben
we launched it officially. So our quote unquote official launch of our MVP or minimum viable product or Sam, like a minimum lovable product, was in February of 2022.

00:12:32:21 - 00:12:34:11
Emily
Okay. So it's really New.

00:12:34:11 - 00:12:52:14
Ben
Year's by two, two and a half years. Doesn't seem like that. Well, sometimes it seems very quick and sometimes not, you know, and we've done a lot of work before then, but that's what we officially launch it to market, which is always a super exciting thing for a founder because, you know, there's a lot of ambiguity that is involved in starting a startup, right?

00:12:52:18 - 00:13:15:04
Ben
And, you know, we have a again, a very, we have a tremendous, team, the four founders and, you know, the other, people on our team, we did a lot of, you know, research. We interviewed customers, we talked to people about the problem. We did a lot, going into, you know, into preparing to, to build the platform, build the business.

00:13:15:06 - 00:13:31:21
Ben
All that preparation doesn't really make that much difference. If you launch something and people don't buy what you sell, right? Yeah. So that pivotal moment where you launch something and then people actually go on the platform and they start buying stuff from you, and then they start buying from you again. That's the, you know, you hear the fancy term product market fit.

00:13:31:23 - 00:13:50:14
Ben
That's really what product market fit is to me. It's do you have happy paying customers? Right. Which we do now. We have and we're fortunate to have, you know, some very big customers, who you know, we weren't pursuing that into the market, but, you know, as an example, there's, you know, Samsung, Samsung. I think people have heard of Samsung.

00:13:50:14 - 00:14:11:01
Ben
You know, it's a it's a pretty big company. They found us, you know, through our, our advertising efforts. And I think, and I just want to make sure it is Samsung. I, I would have to ask Sam, but, it was a big name like that, big consumer electronics company. And I think the, the interesting feedback for them was, we had delivered so they were able to go online.

00:14:11:03 - 00:14:32:07
Ben
They dragged the logo on to the product, they clicked, enabled and checked out in about three minutes. And we have a very refined, production management process in the back end. We built a beautiful, proprietary piece software that, drastically reduced the time to get an order into production, of which production is really where the magic happens in, in custom branded merchandise.

00:14:32:09 - 00:14:49:12
Ben
But it's also tremendously complex. so we built this piece of software that gets in order into production very quickly. And, anyways, we delivered the product to the customer before their incumbent had even provided them with the quote. Right. which, which was which is very interesting.

00:14:49:12 - 00:14:50:13
Emily
That's crazy. It was just.

00:14:50:13 - 00:15:18:12
Ben
Crazy. Right. but yeah. So we so we launched the the MVP in February of 2022. And you know, we again had a kind of period where we it's it's this working isn't not working in the first six months. You're honestly you're just trying to figure things out. You know, you're trying to you're trying to manage a bunch of different balls in the air and make sure none of them drop on the floor and, you know, at the end of the day, what we did, most in that period is just talk to a lot of customers.

00:15:18:12 - 00:15:36:03
Ben
Right? And everybody that came through and bought something from us, we pick up the phone and call them, you know, we call it our high tech, high touch approach was something that was taken from us forex of which Neil, who's a co-founder was CEO of US forex. Actually, there's a small aside. Sam worked for Neil as his first job.

00:15:36:05 - 00:15:55:16
Ben
That's how that's their connection. And so that high tech, high touch approach where we literally pick up the phone and call a customer, it's something that is not, it's not widely used in digital businesses, and especially businesses that, you know, grow to large scale because it takes a lot of time, effort, money, people, hours.

00:15:55:16 - 00:16:06:21
Ben
You know, if you think about like, Facebook as a business, you know, if you ever got in, if you, you know, ever run across advertisements or anything on Facebook or anything, if you deal with it as a company, it's almost impossible to talk to a human there. and.

00:16:06:23 - 00:16:15:24
Emily
We do it every day. Our entire backend is trying to understand why all of our ads are getting blocked by Meta and Nightmare, and you can never get on and you can.

00:16:15:24 - 00:16:31:21
Ben
Never get Ahold of them. Right. And that's by design, right? So by design, we thought it was important because we're a digital business, to just have a connection point with the customers up front. And we started doing that when we launched, and we still do it today. So if you come through and you're first time customer, you'll get a phone call.

00:16:31:21 - 00:16:47:17
Ben
If you place an order with us and you, you probably won't get a phone call again after that unless you want one. but either way, in the early days, in that first six months, we were just trying to figure stuff out, making sure that we were, you know, delivering on our promise of, you know, providing good quality branded merch to people.

00:16:47:19 - 00:17:05:08
Ben
that we're going to, you know, that was going to help build their brand. And, you know, and that's what we did. And then, you know, getting back to the the conversation about, you know, what investments and what funding came to the business. again, we didn't bring any money into the business until 2023, like external money, not bootstrap money.

00:17:05:10 - 00:17:21:23
Ben
and that was just us, you know, finding a couple of partners that we really liked. It wasn't really that we were looking for VC funding. the business has always been fairly strong structurally and financially, so we haven't really needed. It's been very cash hungry. but, you know, we're at the point now where we're growing really fast.

00:17:21:23 - 00:17:39:18
Ben
You know, we grew 130 something percent year on year. So our revenue more than doubled. very importantly, a doubled while we improved a lot of our key metrics. So our average order value went up, our margins went, went up, our operational costs as a percentage of revenue went down, like we did a lot to strengthen and tighten the business.

00:17:39:18 - 00:17:56:07
Ben
So we're in a really good position now. And again, when we talk about funding rounds and whether or not you take future funding rounds, you know, the last funding round we did was to deliver a set of things. And when when you deliver, when you bring in funding to the business, you're doing it to, to reach a couple of milestones.

00:17:56:13 - 00:18:01:14
Ben
So the raise that you're doing now is really to get you kind of to the next raise, if you will. yeah.

00:18:01:14 - 00:18:01:20
Emily
Right.

00:18:01:20 - 00:18:19:20
Ben
Now, that said, like we are, you know, we had, several months in the last year that were profitable. And, you know, we are if we scaled back our advertising push, which we don't intend to because it's a disruption, play in advertising is, you know, super important to that. you know, we could be profitable tomorrow, right?

00:18:19:20 - 00:18:35:01
Ben
So it's a it's a conscious decision because we think it's a land grab. We think we have the best product. We think we're disrupting the industry. and we don't just think like, that's an interesting, feedback from competitors lately, which tells me more than anything that we're doing the right thing of ruffled feathers, which is good.

00:18:35:01 - 00:18:56:12
Ben
We love that. yeah. We, you know, that sort of PR you can't buy, and, you know, and our customers tell us all the time, like, it's just so much easier. but importantly, it's what we have today is literally step one. So we built the, the kind of transaction engine, but the future view of the platform is really, to me, the most interesting piece.

00:18:56:12 - 00:19:15:22
Ben
I love the product and the platform and the technology. That's what gets me up in the morning. That's what I get excited about. you know, we just did this huge UX, UI, user experience and user interface revamp of the platform, which I, you know, I just I love seeing, you know, you do these little things, you know, based on what the customers tell you.

00:19:16:02 - 00:19:35:15
Ben
And then to see it have a result, like that's what excites me. And so this round in this, you know, this crowdsource funding piece, the next set of milestones for me, you know, if we're successful and we get the amount a way that we want to, which I'm confident we will, we have a set of technology milestones that will kind of evolve the platform to the next step.

00:19:35:17 - 00:19:57:21
Ben
And so that's kind of where, where we want to go from here. So, you know, long, long way of of saying we will bring in funding as and when it, as and when it makes sense. And I think now it does in the future maybe it doesn't. You know, when we when we have the platform in Australia, which, you know, we kind of look, Australia is our, you know, we want to get it absolutely humming here.

00:19:57:21 - 00:20:02:15
Ben
We want it to be as good of a platform as it can be before we really think about going elsewhere.

00:20:02:19 - 00:20:04:06
Emily
Australia is a great test for that.

00:20:04:06 - 00:20:34:20
Ben
It's a great test. You know, you have a very high percentage of people who are online. you know, in particular most of the people that go online to research, but and, you know, and ultimately end up clicking by they're younger, they're millennials, they're digital natives. Right? So, you know, for a, for an industry that's traditionally been driven by emails and phone calls and things like that, you know, there's a real disconnect between what most of the industry does and what we're trying to do.

00:20:35:00 - 00:21:02:13
Emily
100%. I've actually had experience in this myself. I used to work for an experiential marketing agency, and, I won't name out clients specifically, but, one of the largest, beauty brands in the whole world. And to get merchandise made, anything that we wanted, it was countless emails back and forth, calls having to get samples to actually ensure that the quality was up to standard for this brand.

00:21:02:15 - 00:21:44:15
Emily
And inevitably they'd come, there'd be a problem, and you'd have to go back and forth. And it was so time consuming, the lead time to actually get the products actually never correlated with the turnaround time that we needed to get these events live. And it was such a headache. I really wish that Metro existed when I worked there, because looking at your platform and the interface and everything that goes into actually creating a business, it makes things a lot more seamless and what you're used to, it's a game changer and I'm sure your competition is concerned about that because you've obviously gone to the affidavit.

00:21:44:16 - 00:21:52:14
Emily
Sam has come into the business, generational promotion. That's an interesting term, actually. Generational promotional material expert.

00:21:52:17 - 00:22:02:19
Ben
Yeah. I mean, he's literally his dad, Steven, who I also know. And he's awesome. yeah, I mean, he he comes from he comes from the game as well. Right. So Sam has grown up through this.

00:22:02:19 - 00:22:19:05
Emily
Yeah. Yeah. It's so interesting. But obviously you've been around for a short time, but there's got to have been some mistakes that have been made or something that's gone wrong. What's been the biggest mistake that you've made and the biggest learning that you've taken from it?

00:22:19:07 - 00:22:39:04
Ben
Yeah, very, very good question. and thank you for your kind words about the platform. We we think it's awesome, but it's nice to hear other people say it's awesome. yeah, there are many, the road to the road, you know, the road of entrepreneurship that start is riddled with, with, with failure. Right. So most things fail.

00:22:39:04 - 00:22:59:14
Ben
And the most important thing is you learn, you you hope to learn from them, right? so I guess the, the two things that spring to mind first are, a simple, just failure to deliver on what we said we're gonna deliver with customer. Right, right. So it's actually a lovely woman, in Melbourne and, works for a big construction company, head of marketing.

00:22:59:14 - 00:23:18:09
Ben
And we didn't deliver. We didn't call her. Like we said, we're going to call her after she ordered. Right. So the high tech, high touch, we didn't call her. the order took longer than it was supposed to, and we didn't communicate that that to her. Right. this was very early days. This was still in our MVP phase, and we're really trying to sort things out and figure things out.

00:23:18:09 - 00:23:42:13
Ben
Right. And we didn't have defined processes or anything like that. so, you know, that was a that was a very, you know, in that early phase where everything is super new and exciting to then have this woman who came back to us, and I was super grateful that she did, because, you know, oftentimes people will have a bad experience with you and they just don't come back and they tell all the people, but they don't come back and give you the feedback.

00:23:42:15 - 00:24:02:11
Ben
She was did us the favor of coming back and giving us the feedback of, you didn't call me the process. You know, from the time the order went through until the time actually received the the order, I didn't hear anything. She taught us so much about what we weren't doing right. and, you know, I ended up sending her a bunch of flowers, and we talked to her on the phone.

00:24:02:11 - 00:24:14:11
Ben
Sam and I both called her, talk to her on the phone, and we convinced her to come back and get another order from us and, you know, address the issues. And she's still a customer today. So that was a really good news story.

00:24:14:13 - 00:24:16:10
Emily
but it was worth its weight in gold.

00:24:16:12 - 00:24:45:19
Ben
It is honestly, it's, you know, you wish for more of it. I think it's the, you know, the curse of of, of starting a business. Is that you? you're always constantly looking for. What's wrong? you know, we don't often stop and look at what's working and what's right. We're always looking for what's wrong. So when a customer, especially somebody like that, who is, you know, that's almost squarely our target market, you know, comes and tells us these are simple things that you just didn't deliver on.

00:24:45:19 - 00:25:03:17
Ben
Right? And they're not, you know, they weren't digital problems. They weren't. We just didn't have a process and we didn't do what we said we're going to do. Right. So that is, like I said, we're worth its weight in gold. so that was one that was one circumstance that, was very early on that we learned a lot from.

00:25:03:17 - 00:25:25:18
Ben
And we've gotten better at, I think, another one was was more on the digital side. So again, looking at the product and we had this idea. So there are a couple of companies outside of Australia, the couple in the US, really more just a couple in the US, but a couple in Europe as well that we kind of look at as inspiration.

00:25:25:20 - 00:25:34:22
Ben
And one of them in particular had this, had this feature that we thought was great and we went out and we basically just tried to build a copy of the feature.

00:25:34:24 - 00:25:35:16
Emily


00:25:35:18 - 00:26:01:24
Ben
And we tried to shoehorn that copy into our existing website, and it just didn't work. And we, you know, it's like, if you mate, if you cook, you're going to burn a pancake every now. And we burnt the pancake and we had to shut it off and we'll have to rebuild. And we're still definitely going to do it, but we just, you know, in the haste of just trying to get things done, we didn't think through really what the customer's journey was going to be.

00:26:02:01 - 00:26:22:15
Ben
Right? We didn't really think through how the UX was going to work. we just thought we were launching this great feature and the feature was going to be really useful. And we spent time and effort and money on it. And people still use the feature. But, we ended up getting, again, really good feedback from, another kind of, it's actually one of one of the people who's invest in the business.

00:26:22:17 - 00:26:40:17
Ben
And he actually went through and tried to use the feature and we were, you know, kind of scratching heads on why, why isn't this working, wasn't working. And some of the problems I knew and I just thought they would be okay. so that was just, you know, that was just bad management, just not, you know, looking past issues that you should have been looking past.

00:26:40:19 - 00:26:49:20
Ben
But he called them out fairly plainly. And so we pulled the feature off the site, and then we'll rebuild that. And that's actually one of the things that we're going to rebuild as a part of the investment that comes from this.

00:26:49:23 - 00:26:53:09
Emily
It was really intrigued to know what this feature is.

00:26:53:11 - 00:26:55:11
Ben
can I tell you when we launch it or will we relaunch it?

00:26:55:17 - 00:26:56:06
Emily
Okay.

00:26:56:08 - 00:27:02:18
Ben
Yeah. I mean, I can tell you what it is like. It's, so merch packs, or onboarding packs. So think about.

00:27:02:19 - 00:27:04:00
Emily
Oh, yeah. Cool.

00:27:04:05 - 00:27:35:02
Ben
So we basically did a merch pack builder, but we, we built it off the back again of a feature that we'd seen elsewhere, and we rushed it and we didn't think properly through how it was going to work with the, you know, the kind of traditional purchase flow, of the site, which right now when you, when you look at the site, you know, again, all we've done at this point, which is again, step one is built a, I would say great transactional engine that gives almost a B to C experience to B2B, right.

00:27:35:04 - 00:27:55:02
Ben
and you go on the side and it all flows and feels fairly seamless. but there's a lot of thought and time and effort. I mean, just the pricing dynamics, every single product on the side has multiple varying price points depending on how many you order. you have the actual physical products might have their own set of tiers, or they might have only one tier.

00:27:55:04 - 00:28:11:07
Ben
They have, and then you add, you know, decoration, which is what we call, you know, the embellishment, whether it's printing or embroidery. So there's a lot of complexity that goes into the pricing edge, as you know, as a result. And we have a mantra I am I have this mantra that, you know, simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.

00:28:11:09 - 00:28:36:19
Ben
And so we've tried to make that as simple as possible. Right. But then we just basically took this elegant solution to buy merch in bulk and tried to mash together this piece, and it just didn't work right. And there were lots of reasons that were kind of plainly obvious that it did that wouldn't work. And there was one particular decision that I made that caused part of the, you know, the journey to break down, it's just one of the things you have to live and learn from it.

00:28:36:19 - 00:28:41:02
Ben
Right? And we burn the pancake and we have to throw the pancake out, and we have to.

00:28:41:04 - 00:28:48:12
Emily
Actually love that analogy. You know, when you make pancakes, the first one's always disgusting. And then, yeah, the last one's the best sometimes.

00:28:48:12 - 00:29:04:17
Ben
Yeah. Yeah. It depends. My kid, my, little boy, he loves to cook. Right. So we have that conversation a lot, but he's got to the point now where again, we learned. Right. So it's for for cooking is just heat management. Right. Get the pan to be the right. You know. Anyway, so the point is we learn from those things.

00:29:04:17 - 00:29:30:02
Ben
And, you know, fortunately it wasn't a hugely costly exercise. And, you know, we still do a lot of, of branded merch packs and some of our, I would say some of our best work has been doing some really cool, you know, like we did one for a huge, a company doing a huge acquisition, you know, and they got all these beautiful branded merch packs, you know, branded with, with their logo and everything with these fantastic products inside.

00:29:30:02 - 00:29:46:12
Ben
All, again, made to last, all made fairly, and they just, you know, went down a treat. So we still do it. but we're just doing it largely manually. Right. So we'll bring that back, that feature where again, that seamless online experience, you'll be able to do that when you when you build your your merch packs as well.

00:29:46:14 - 00:29:49:15
Ben
But that's, that's one of the things that will come next.

00:29:49:17 - 00:29:51:22
Emily
Where your products made.

00:29:51:24 - 00:30:08:10
Ben
it depends. So they're made most things that are made, anywhere in the world are made in China. So, and that's just a fact. We have a couple of, suppliers. So actually, this, this product is done by color, so it's color. You probably know they're they have got a big, big presence, actually, in Melbourne.

00:30:08:10 - 00:30:11:03
Ben
They're in church or Janina. I get that right.

00:30:11:03 - 00:30:18:05
Emily
Yeah. You said it pretty well. Truganina in it, I think. Just try, Australian accent. Okay. And when you set a Nina like a Nina.

00:30:18:08 - 00:30:19:01
Ben
Beautiful.

00:30:19:04 - 00:30:21:08
Emily
That better? You nailed it. I say.

00:30:21:10 - 00:30:40:16
Ben
so they make things in Bangladesh, which, you know, we have this conversation that you end up getting in this conversation, from time to time about where things are made and why they're made, where they're made, etc., etc.. you know, Bangladesh is probably, if you think about the global stage anyways, they they've been bad actors in a lot of ways, actually.

00:30:40:18 - 00:31:02:05
Ben
And they're not bad actors. It's that, you know, the people going in and setting up shop there are forcing them to, you know, produce things in suboptimal ways, if you will. but as color is not that way. Right, as color is actually one of the most, forward thinking, responsible businesses we deal with. They've got a very responsible supply chain.

00:31:02:07 - 00:31:19:21
Ben
They absolutely do not engage in slave slave labor or anything like that. The communities of the people that work for them in those factors of Bangladesh, they are approved, not trashed. People get paired, they get paid fair wages, etc.. So, so, you know, that's an example, somebody that is, manufacture in Bangladesh. But a lot of things get produced in China.

00:31:19:23 - 00:31:38:16
Ben
you know, say what you want about China. You know, there's perception around China being this and that. But, you know, we've we've had people get upset with us because, you know, we sold them a product that was made in China. And, you know, they're made by our manufacturers and our suppliers and our suppliers are all Australian businesses.

00:31:38:16 - 00:31:55:21
Ben
They're all local Australian businesses. And they create the things overseas and they bring them in. They hold them in Australian warehouses, you know. So these aren't just, you know, we aren't just clicking buy and getting something sent over. you know, we again, we're very conscious about the products we sell and we're very conscious about the suppliers who sell those products.

00:31:55:21 - 00:32:20:08
Ben
And, and anyways, China is, bar none the best. They have the best manufacturing discipline in the world, so it makes sense that they make things there. but that said, like, we sell, you know, things by bellroy, you know, is, local, lovely local Australian business, which I just, I love I've been a long time fan of, of bellroy and, you know, we stock their products, they manufacture in lots of places.

00:32:20:09 - 00:32:40:08
Ben
I think, you know, some of their things come from India. I don't know about their supply chain enough to to speak on their behalf, but, they're made wherever they're made. the the important thing is, though, that the people who make them and the businesses that we work with, they're all responsible businesses. There's there are suppliers in Australia that we won't work with.

00:32:40:08 - 00:32:59:10
Ben
There's actually a lot of them. Right. So there are a handful that we work with. and, you know, we ask them to sign a pledge for good, which, you know, says that they do not do x, y, z, which are all things that we just don't believe in, but they're all independently certified. And they all again, they make things fairly and they make things to last.

00:32:59:16 - 00:33:10:22
Ben
Right. so, you know, that that question about where it's made is, to me, far less important than how it's made. And, you know, are are the people involved being taken care of?

00:33:10:24 - 00:33:32:01
Emily
That's great to hear. And I think it's great to hear that in terms of the values of the business, it's multifaceted. It's keeping things out of landfill. It's ensuring that the items, quality they're made to last. You're looking at how your products are made, but at its core, it's essentially this technology business. You've got this great platform built.

00:33:32:03 - 00:33:37:05
Emily
How do you envision AI revolutionizing the way that you guys work as a business?

00:33:37:09 - 00:33:58:02
Ben
Yeah. Yep. I knew the AI thing was going to come up. It has to come up, right? Everybody loves talking about AI. It's all the rage. interestingly enough, when I, so I had a previous, startup, which is B2C and, I was in the process of selling that actually, when I met Sam, and I met him through Neil, who's advising me in that previous business.

00:33:58:04 - 00:34:20:13
Ben
And, anyways, back then, I was interested in a couple of different, you know, next paths. And one of them was around machine learning. Right. Which machine learning is ultimately what is it? Is AI, right. I will transform every industry, every business. It will be far more pervasive to the world and society than the internet has been.

00:34:20:14 - 00:34:30:11
Ben
Right. Just think about that for a second. Right. Think about back, you know, in, you know, 1997, 98, you know, like all internet thing, email thing, you know, the.

00:34:30:11 - 00:34:35:14
Emily
Internet to me was MSN, that's all information when it came out, you know.

00:34:35:14 - 00:34:40:11
Ben
When it came out. So I was in, you know, America, America as I was, you know, AOL America Online.

00:34:40:11 - 00:34:41:12
Emily
Oh that's right.

00:34:41:15 - 00:35:23:20
Ben
Yeah. Which I think I will stick around, but, I will will transform just about everything, you know, that happens in our digital lives, and, and beyond. and, you know, we so that said, that's my future view, of what AI is, people get very excited about AI and investors want to invest in. And, you know, and we find, you know, like, I think if you look at earnings calls, you know, just like manufac just like, setting up shop in China, you know, 5 or 7 years ago, everybody on earnings calls from every public company, it was China, China, China, China, China.

00:35:23:22 - 00:35:32:16
Ben
Now it's AI. Right. So I will be hugely pervasive. and we use it for lots of things. So we use a CRM called HubSpot. You probably heard of that.

00:35:32:18 - 00:35:33:10
Emily
We use it to.

00:35:33:15 - 00:36:07:20
Ben
Yep. So HubSpot is a tremendous piece of software. You know, our chat bot leverages AI, right? so, you know, there are several things actually, when I think about, you know, again, our simple goal for the platform, the technology platform, which to me is really what merch is. Our simple goal is to make it just super easy for the people who need to go and buy branded merchandise, which is, you know, businesses where B2B only we want to make it so painfully easy for them that they just really don't need to think about it.

00:36:07:22 - 00:36:23:16
Ben
Right. And so there's a lot of applications. Then when you think about, you know, what I can do? I mean, machine learning is the simple it's the simple fact of using processing power to teach computer how to do things right. That's at its core, kind of what it is. I'm probably botching that a little bit, but that's kind of what it is.

00:36:23:18 - 00:36:44:22
Ben
and, you know, there are lots of things, again, in the complexity of the back end of, you know, the promotional products industry of which my, my other co-founder, Brian Shanahan, who's a lovely gentleman, one of the things he said early on when, you know, when we were talking about the business, is that a lot of rip and a lot of the value of the business is actually can reside in what happens in the back end.

00:36:44:24 - 00:37:08:18
Ben
and so there will be things that we will utilize, and there are things that we are looking at that will help that do leverage AI, that will help us to do things better, faster, streamline them, etc., etc.. So, you know, artwork as an example, right? Like you can when we launched the platform a few years ago, you know, we had this, you know, we had this concept and Sam was adamant that it hadn't had to work a certain way.

00:37:08:20 - 00:37:22:14
Ben
And I'm grateful that he was very adamant about because it was not easy to do. But we we managed to get it back then. Just the simple aspect of you've got a product, right, a t shirt, and I want to see what my logo looks like on it. So just dropping the logo on the product and looking at online right.

00:37:22:14 - 00:37:45:19
Ben
And back then and this is, you know, again, we launched in February of 2022. It's not that long ago. Back then, the options for the options for tools and services to do that, there weren't that many of them. Now there are literally, you know, I can rattle off 15 like amazing AI businesses that are doing that like that.

00:37:45:19 - 00:38:14:16
Ben
Right. So those little things, I think, you know, it's super easy to get caught up in the whole AI thing and, you know, if you're thinking it as a retail investor, like I, I am invested in Google and Amazon and Meta and Nvidia. Right. All you know, I mean all all of the mega mega tech stocks, all Mega-cap tech stocks, they're all going to invest hundreds of billions of dollars now because they have done they should we will invest in it where and when it makes sense.

00:38:14:18 - 00:38:40:06
Ben
Right. but we definitely pay attention to it. You know, if our goal is to automate and streamline this industry, AI is, at its core, a way to automate and streamline things and a really fantastic and easy way. So without saying, I think that's two leading edge and forward thinking. that's what I'll say about that. Will you use AI if and when it makes sense?

00:38:40:08 - 00:39:05:17
Ben
but we will certainly use it. and you and you over there and everybody who's listening to this, you will all be using AI. You are using it now, if you're on Facebook right now, the ads are getting delivered to you. Meta is probably, the frontrunner for actually using and monetizing AI. So if you're getting delivered ads right now, they're getting delivered to you, mostly by a very advanced AI targeting mechanism, which is making meta a truckload of money right now.

00:39:05:17 - 00:39:09:23
Ben
So anyways, that's my long winded tangent about I.

00:39:10:00 - 00:39:20:01
Emily
Know I don't shut off about it. I to say, I think people that I start to glaze over when I talk about I am the poster girl for it. I'm absolutely obsessed, so I couldn't help myself.

00:39:20:03 - 00:39:37:16
Ben
Oh do it man. It's interesting. And anybody who's not looking at it is a dinosaur. You know, like you have to pay attention to these things as as they come. but I just again, we're pretty practical bunch, you know, like, we, we built the business with a very simplistic set of goals and share in your shared value.

00:39:37:16 - 00:39:59:18
Ben
We want to build the best product. We want to treat our customers really well. We're going to do all the things that any good business does, right? Treat our customers very well. Say what you're going to do and then do it. You know, to my conversation about not doing that, you know, so again, we aren't going to get caught up in the everything AI and you know, like I don't even know if we say the word AI in our in our whole offer document, right.

00:39:59:20 - 00:40:26:17
Ben
Because, AI is a tool and it's a tool like other tools. It's just going to be. I mean, the most interesting thing about it, I think, at this point is we actually don't have any idea how far and wide it's going to impact our lives. But, I would say to think it's going to do anything less than transform everything that is attached to, you know, a digital network.

00:40:26:19 - 00:40:43:12
Ben
at the very least, it's going to be it's going to be impactful. Yeah. It's going to touch everybody and it's going to happen really, really fast. You know, if you think about it again, just the 25, 30 years where the internet's been a thing, I think it will happen a lot faster than that.

00:40:43:14 - 00:40:59:21
Emily
So I'm excited to see how it one day integrates with your platform and really excited to see how your race goes. And, you know, see how it gets affected by having all these incredible new shareholders on board. And I really want to say thank you so much for spending time with me today. It's been such a been an absolute pleasure.

00:40:59:21 - 00:41:00:19
Ben
Thank you so much for having me.

00:41:00:20 - 00:41:02:03
Emily
Pleasure's all mine.

00:41:02:05 - 00:41:06:13
Ben
I love I love going on a tangent. We've gone on several so it was lots of fun.

00:41:06:15 - 00:41:10:06
Emily
So good. Good luck with your crowd sourced funding (CSF) campaign on Birchal and can't wait to see how it goes.

00:41:10:07 - 00:41:10:23
Ben
Thank you so much!