He Grew His DTC Brand 240% In One Year Using My Strategies transcript

This is going to be a really fun different episode than I've done for a long time. Today I've got Alistister Room, the founder and CEO of HD London Art, uh, a 7figure e-commerce brand selling wall art to people in the UK at this point. And Alistair, the gist of this conversation is Alistar reached out to me on X and said, "Hey, I've been listening to your podcast and it has worked. It has helped my business grow. I've been doing some of the things you've said and it's really helped." So I said, would you be willing to come on the podcast and talk about how it has helped get you to the stage you're at now?

And maybe we could do a mix of sort of what has worked for you and then somewhere in the call, we'll also switch over to coaching and talk about sort of like, okay, where are you going next? What do you need to accomplish next to keep growing the business? That's exactly what Alistar agreed to do and that's exactly what this conversation [music] is. So today on the show, if you are sort of in that seven figure range thinking about how you've got where you've got, how to get where you're going, I think this conversation is going to be really helpful to you. really cool brand in the UK called HD London Art.

Let's get into it with Alistair Room. Hello, Alistair. Thanks so much for for doing this. Thanks for taking the time. I appreciate it. >> Hi. Yeah, no problem at all. Looking forward to it. >> Um Alistar, tell people a little bit about HD London Art to get started so they have some context for what the business is, what you sell and and some of that stuff. Yeah. So, HD London Art, we are UK only brand at the minute selling large format framed artwork.

Um, mainly just for people's homes. Uh, it's kind of evolved over the time of starting off. I think when it first started, which will be coming up to five years now in January, we were selling more city print, city themed stuff around my city, Manchester, which was my first kind of introduction into e-commerce. And of course, it's always going to look like the golden days looking back, but much cheaper CPAs and my website was horrendous back then, but it it still did the job.

And it's it's obviously changed a lot since then, but it's been a big learning curve. Started off selling the city stuff and soon reached a plateau with that of okay, there's this stuff is only relevant for the two two million people in the city. The the market isn't huge. So after about 6 months there, I had to kind of transition and I knew that wall art was something that was working. I was enjoying it. And then we branched out into the more abstract wall art which picked up traction.

But don't get me wrong, it was really slow at the start, but at the stage I was at, I had a bit of money saved up and it was kind of perfect for me to learn properly a scalable business and it's been that that I have been working on since really. >> That's awesome. Can you tell people a little bit about sort of whatever context you want to give? I said seven figure in the intro. didn't know how specific you wanted to be or were comfortable being there.

But sort of give some people some context for the size of the business, the growth of the business, some of that stuff, so they get their heads around sort of where you're at versus where you're trying to go. And it is important to know you're you're UK only and so as you contextualize these numbers is, you know, a quarter of the number of people in the UK as there are in the US. So um so penetration looks a little different and some of those things. >> Yeah, absolutely.

Um, so we're looking to to finish 2025 on about 1.15 million in revenue, which is I think equates to about 1.4 in Yeah, that's pounds. Yeah. >> Which has been tremendous growth really and really happy with it. And I think that's where I thought it's long overdue that I reach out to you and and send my thanks really because still juggling a lot of the stuff on my own and outsourced many parts of the business, but the ads has been on the meta ads specifically has been the area that I've kept on myself and um I really do enjoy running them and really just with >> guidance from someone like yourself where you know the free content that you're putting out is valuable and I suppose you can't really see it when there's people like myself just watching it, taking in the content and implementing it.

Um, but it's up quite a lot from the previous year. I think it's 240% up if I'm right. So, heading in in the right direction and exciting times for the future and branching out hopefully outside of the UK. I guess I just want to make sure with it that I'm noticing the more success I see, everything seems like a great opportunity and everything beforehand feels like it's going to work and it's it's never quite straightforward.

So, I think my main task from now and into the January is figuring out where to expand to next and making sure I give it a proper push and not just turning some ads on. making sure that the whole funnel and everything is is set up to expand outside of my country because at the minute people are going to be coming onto the website and there'll be UK prices. It may well convert into US if that was where I was to open it up to.

But everything from the the ads, the offers, the welcome flow. It's all UK tailored and it would um it's going to be a lot of work to rejig it. But excited for for when it comes and should hopefully >> Yeah. to say nothing of setting up 3PL relationships and and logistics and and how all that stuff works, which is its own challenge. I, you know, there's some ways in which just kind of flipping the switch on international ads works, >> but also uh it's never going to be really what you what it could be unless you put in a whole bunch of effort there.

I think it's a important thing to to think through. I think you're you're rightly optimistic about it, but also rightly trepidacious about it going like, "Ah, there's going to be some challenges here." Um, yeah, at at the same time. Yeah, >> there's there's plenty of quotes on that that I've heard and it's like >> you can spread yourself too thin. I don't want to be I'd rather become first the number one in the UK market and then branch out when you're >> in a a more comfortable position, but I just I need to make sure that it's it's not something I look back on and regret not doing earlier. >> Yeah, I I do want to talk about that in a second and about sort of my take on that.

I definitely have a thought. I do also want to acknowledge something you said a second ago in your answer, which is that, you know, it's you reached out to me because you assumed I wouldn't know when these things are happening. And you're totally right. Like every time somebody DMs me or emails me and says like, "This was really helpful to me and it helped my business." Like I I know that it's helpful just because people listen and they keep listening and slowly but surely it might, you know, the podcast grows.

But I don't see the stories, you know, and so it does sometimes feel like especially some, you know, the interviews maybe not so much, but sometimes especially when I'm doing solo episodes or something, I do feel like I'm talking into the ether and who knows if anybody's paying attention. So, it's really it's like it's super encouraging to me that you reached out and that's that's part of why I latched on to this. I actually have another episode like this coming up soon uh that I'm doing.

In fact, I'm going to record it later today where somebody else reached out similarly. So, it'll be fun to kind of wrap the year with a couple of those um in those businesses. Um, let's let's talk about what has worked for you to get where you are because like crossing seven figures is no small task. I know most of the stories that get told in podcast and stuff is people with nine figure businesses and crazy monster stuff.

But anybody who has tried to build an e-commerce business, including many of those people who have are very far along, remember well the blood, sweat, and tears of the early days. It's it's not easy on all kinds of levels. So it is always striking to me like I just want to celebrate those stories and say like great job. That's the way the way you make it to a eight figureure business at some point or whatever and who knows what your goals are specifically.

The way you get there is first by making it a sevenf figureure business and first by solving the problems that get you from you know 100,000 to a million to whatever. So they all come in turns. So congratulations first of all. It is it is it is never lost on me how much work goes into doing that. Um I have I have both been successful and failed at it myself. So I I understand both sides of it. But I want to talk a little bit about sort of the key things that have gotten you there.

You're selling abstract wall art and I want to talk first about the supply chain side of things a little bit. You mentioned to me that you've seen some real growth in hammering away at your unit economics and so can you talk about the the margin profile you're at right now and maybe where it was before and what you've done to help that and and some of those things. Let's just talk through that whole supply chain side of the business.

Yeah, of course that's been the like you said you at different levels of growth you come up to different challenges and up to a certain level it'll be one thing and then now it's it's completely different. So for my brand everything used to be done by myself framing the pictures, packaging, sending them out. So for the first year or so I ended up with a manual job where if I got spare time at the end of the day I'd be working on the ads but I had customers orders to pack.

So I understand the process kind of from that way. And at those times the margins were better because it was me doing everything and I was kind of giving up all my time. But now this year we just have one supplier who sorts everything out for me. It's a lot more streamlined and straightforward. And this year, I think going from where we were at last year, it's been the key thing for me has just been knuckling down on every single cost and making sure that the margins are are making sense on the products where there's so for one product of mine, there may be six different sizes, three different frame choices and each one of these with, you know, different costs and different variations to it.

And for me, it's been a case for this year of, okay, costs are rising elsewhere. We're going to have to try and monitor it and up costs where we can do. It's been a a battle and it's definitely something that I feel next year will continue to see the benefits of really getting down to the bottom of everything and attempting to negotiate better prices with my supplier, which has gone well so far. Um, >> how much have you shaved so far?

Like, have you sh as a percentage or or whatever else? Yeah. So, from where we first started, they onboarded me with good prices. And then earlier this year in March, I managed to get around a 10% reduction, which was goes a long way just as as extra profit. But the level of volume that I'm putting through them is huge compared to where it was at. So, only felt fair. >> Yeah. >> And then we we had a few chats before Q4 and it not not the right time to be trying to negotiate better prices or better payment terms.

So, we're going to revisit that again in January and hopefully we can continue to do better deals there because that's kind of where I've I've noticed the most where I'm I'm looking at the stats, I'm looking at the ads and I think I could put a lot more money into this and it would benefit both parties really if my costs were just a little bit lower and the growth would be substantial. really >> so much of of getting those negotiations right is basically being able to make that case to your supplier because suppliers are volume businesses and so it like really really does help them a lot to do more volume and if they can see you become a bigger and more valuable customer a lot of times they're willing to do things to help you get there including financing sometimes margin you know sometimes OQ's all kinds of different things so um so it makes sense that you're saying like yes let me let me just come back and show you like hey we're already putting through a bunch more volume you can see 250% growth It can get it can get better.

You if you can help us, it can actually get better. Like that's that's uh that's I think a really good pitch to make to them. And you have a challenging thing here where you've got wall art. So it's like a bunch of different SKUs at and you're a pretty >> small business. Are you trying to warehouse all those SKs and then predict demand on all the different ones? Like that is that is really challenging or or or how is that working for you? >> No, I think that's what's enabled the growth because it's print on demand still.

So amazing. >> I can launch a bunch of SKs and test samples is what I'll need to do. One per item. And on some of them, the color may not be looking as accurate as it does online. And we can pause on that one. >> Um, but yeah, no stocks, which is um what's helped me with the growth really and it enables me to put a lot more time and focus onto the product, the ads, etc. >> And uh that's amazing. Is are you what is your payment terms on that? when when are you paying paying for it? >> So I >> it's obviously better just because you don't have to store it.

It's obviously better than what most people are dealing with. But >> yeah, absolutely. I know I've had a couple of failed businesses and they were both to do with stock and poorly managing it and it's I think it's scar I'm keen to avoid it moving forward. [laughter] >> So at the minute say that they'll fulfill my orders for November. I'll get the invoice at the start of December and then that'll be payable by the start of January which is quite helpful.

Gives me a lot of time to >> work with my finances and and invest in the back end of the business. It's really helped me to be honest and >> that is a tremendous advantage. >> Yeah, absolutely. And and that sort of growth wouldn't have been possible without that. But don't get me wrong, I I definitely pay a premium for like if I had all the facilities myself, I'm sure I would be spending less money onto it, but it kind of keeps me out of that side of things and I can then just focus on what I'm good at and what I've proven to work so far with the the product, the ads, etc. >> Is there a potential hybrid future?

Like like I I'm assuming there are some products of yours that are disproportionately popular and maybe that's not true. Maybe I mean in abstract wall art I could also imagine that like there is no skew selling more than 3% of your sales or something like that just because of what the category is but so I'm curious about that first of all you just to speak to sort of do you have hero products in any meaningful way or is it just a really wide thing and if so if so >> could you do a hybrid thing where it's like 30% of your inventory is stocked you're pre-ordering that you're getting better margin on it and then the rest of it's all print on demand and that sort of would would be a little bit lower margin for you but better cash and you know less inventory risk.

Yes. Yeah. Yeah. It's a great idea. And with the skew, I've got one product which has a few different formats, sizes, and it maybe in a landscape or a square variant. And I think that'll be around 40% of total sales. >> Whoa. Whoa. For one for one piece of art. >> Yes. Yeah. >> That's fascinating. >> But it it always has from the start been the key. It's always been a similar percent. used to be higher but where you said you can imagine one skew doesn't account for more than two or 3% of sales that is the case for the rest of them.

So this year I've been finding more winners which have been taking up like a a more considerable percent of sales but a lot of the time I'll see the sales coming in and it's something that hasn't sold for ages and it's very much just personal taste for somebody's living room colors. they may need a a certain shade of green and one piece stands out to them more >> and I think from now to last year the doubling down on the products that are on the website I think has enabled that growth because I I'll see for products and when I'm I'm checking on the Shopify stats for let's say last 90 days sales a lot of them will just be a couple of thousand pound where it looks like not much but when you're adding that up over hundreds of products It it adds up to >> quite a big number as I've seen. >> Man, Alistair and his business are a perfect fit as he mentioned for Intelligence because Intelliggeems has the ability to test the exact things that move the needle in the ways that somebody like Alistair could really use.

So, there's all kinds of stuff that a brand like this needs to figure out like how much should you price art at or how much would you price your product at? There's one way to get at that question is to guess, just change the price and see what happens. Another way to get at it is to actually split test your pricing, which Intelligence allows you to do. What about free shipping thresholds? What about shipping costs per order?

What about like first purchase offers for new customers? 10% off, 20% off, stacked discount. If you buy more, save more. Like, there's all of these kinds of questions about different things you should be doing. What about different approaches to your checkout themes, merchandising? There's so much that can really make a big difference in your ability to drive margin in your business, drive profit in your business, and drive a great experience for your customers.

And you can test all of that with Intelligjee. Intelligence is just a critical tool to getting that right. And so go to intellgeems.io and get started testing today. Intellgeems, the way they say it is like it's testing beyond the basics because they're going to allow you, they're going to tie into all of your economics in your brand. So, your actual product cogs, all those things, and then allow you to test all of these complex, difficult, but really important elements of your customers experience with your business, and then at the same time measure all of it because they tie in with your COGS at the level of profit, not just at the level of conversion rate or average order value.

So, they're going to help you actually drive profit in your business. It's a really awesome tool, in my view, just sort of a critical tool. It's why basically all of my clients use Intelligjs for their testing and why you should do it as well. You can get 20% off your first three months by going to intelliggeems.io io and using the code ferris 20 f a r i s20 and get started right away. You don't need a developer. They can they can help you get started really fast.

Ferris 20 f 20 to get started with intellgeems today at intellgeems.io. Okay. So then let's also talk about the ad side of things. When I hear wall art, I think that the ad account my initial instinct that the ad account is going to be like just overwhelmingly like DPA. It's just like catalog ads showing the art and that's kind of what it is. Now that's something that's my instinct. I have not looked at your ad account.

So, I'd be curious if you have found there's been anything where there's any kind of sort of like explainer element of it and um and and sort of what has worked for you at the creative level and when you speak to that, I'd love to also hear sort of like how your spend has grown over time and sort of sort of where you've gotten to. So, yeah. So, how has the spend grown? Where were you, where you at now? And then what kind of creative is driving the value here? >> Yeah.

So for the first couple of years it was the spend split between Meta and Google was about 70% Google 30% Meta but that was coming from my lack of creative so I didn't have the the banks of customer content that I could utilize on the ads but from this time last year I think Meta would have been at around 10,000 per month and we're now at I believe about 20 to 25,000 pushing up to 30 over Black Friday. But what when you say on the the dynamics there are in there >> per month.

You're saying >> per month? Yeah. Per month. >> Yeah. And that's and that's pounds, right? >> Pounds. Yeah. Yeah. >> Yeah. Okay. So, you're you're coming up on a $40,000 a month spend, something like that at a peak moment. Again, there's a quarter of the number of people in the UK as there are in the US. Maybe a third or something like that. So, you have a slightly more limited and you're still early but growing really materially.

That's really good progress. Like that's that's really awesome. >> Yeah. And and I like the fact of that where kind of looking at the amount of people, the reach, the impressions that it's being in front of. And >> even though the UK is small, I still think there's a huge market to go after that have still never even heard of the brand, >> which I think is is possible through the expansion of products and and stuff that appeals to different people.

But yeah, coming back to the dynamic point, they are in there and they do work. I see performance on them goes up and down quite a lot, but they are kind of consistent in there, but I wouldn't say they're the main spender. I presume that's coming down to myself not really. I don't test too much on them. I have kind of one per adset and they're running. They've been running for a long time and I'm sure there's a lot more I could be doing with them and I understand why they would work showing people what they've been browsing.

But for me, I like to think that people will come in from a raw UGC unboxing style video from maybe it's running as a partnership. I' I've seen a lot of success with those recently or from my account and then yeah, the dynamic I assume will retarget them and then usually to get them over the line. the past few months has been very much offer focused. Um, which I think now is the transition of managing that heading into January and figuring out what the the next offer will be really. >> So, you're showing unboxing videos.

Are people sort of showing the context of how the art is fitting into their into their spaces as they do this? So that people cuz I that's the other thing I can imagine just like selling art what you have to do is show people some sense of like allow them to imagine what this is going to look like in their space right so it seems like having a wide range of that including with partnership ads etc. Uh yeah, >> feels like feels like a important part of that messaging. >> Yeah, that's what a lot of it has come down to for myself with before, let's say this time last year, I'd never gifted products to people and I I guess struggled to see how it would work.

And it was a slow process, but now these the content that I've got back is the best content within the account and it it kind of sets the tone for the brand. And >> a lot of it comes down to who I'm gifting to. And like you said with the interiors and it's been a big learning process of at the start I was a bit more naive and gifting to people who maybe weren't the right fit and not briefing them correctly for the the right sort of content.

But now I think I've got much more of a an idea and I've got the the stats and the data on exactly what sort of accounts and what style of video I like and it's essentially people showing themsel with the box. then unopening and showing them usually hanging it onto the wall which will perform best for me inside the account. >> So are you planning then for the future to do a lot more product seating like this? Uh like there's sort of two ways I could see you going here.

One of them would be okay if gifting product and getting content back is working. One way to do it is like how do you 10x that? Okay, you know just like give away a lot more product and do that. Another way to do it would be to think, okay, I have some creators who are delivering me really high quality stuff. I could try to go back to the well with them and gift them more product or actually create paid creator relationships or or something like that.

Are you thinking about either of those for the future? >> Yes. Anybody who's sent me content and I haven't been measuring it too well, but it's something I've been picking up the past month is keeping a track of exactly who's got what, who's delivered the content, and how it's performing inside the account. The only issue I've I've come across really is once somebody's done two or three unboxing videos, they kind of struggle for prime wall space in the house and you getting relegated to the bathroom [laughter] or a room without too much good lighting.

So, that's been a struggle, but trying to navigate that the best. >> I I wondered about that actually as I was asking that question. like are is it like you have a unique element here where right you only have so much space that's funny [laughter] >> but yeah I think managing that and navigating that has been a key part of this year and in terms of gifting for next year it's definitely the aim to increase the the output a lot and the realization I had just before the end of this month was I could gift £10,000 of stock now which I wouldn't be paying for until February I think now so with the payment terms and how that's sort of working.

Yeah, I did recently do another big batch of it. But the issue for that is it's not instant. So I don't like to rush people to send the content back. I don't >> totally >> chasing them up and saying, "Have you done it yet? Have you done it?" Just I think letting it organically work is the best. So yeah, currently waiting for a lot more to come back. But I guess when that does happen and say I've not had a fresh content for a few weeks, that's when I'd just look to repurpose the existing content.

And there's a lot of that of which I I can do and different overlays and styles of ads and stuff like that. >> Is there anything in the structure of the account or the process around the account or anything that you feel like you've learned specifically from my content? Does that I I'm not trying to pat myself on the back here. I'm just curious when you say it has worked for you, what specifically has worked and yeah, what has been helpful to you? >> Yeah, absolutely.

Um I think this is why I reached out to you because I saw Hang on. I've watched all of this guy's videos over the past year and [laughter] the the progress I'm seeing has come from from your recommendations. But >> good. >> I think just simplifying everything within the account. Um beforehand I had many different campaigns, many different ad sets within them, many different retargeting aspects. And I think to hear someone like yourself speak and how confidently you speak about no this setup, you'll thank yourself, simplify it, reduce it.

And for the majority of the year, I did just have one campaign, one ad set on a it was a cost per result goal. All the ads would go inside of there. And alongside that, of course, there's been different campaigns and different adsets, but I've always kind of fighting the self-doubt on them where I'll see a campaign and I think, "Oh, it's the rorowass is looking okay." But I think just getting all of that data inside of one consolidated place has been huge for me to then know.

I think maybe a quote of yours where you'd rather scale one adset as much as it can go rather than just splitting everything finely through through different ones and limiting the learning across all of them and >> trying to keep as as small number of ads inside the learning process >> at one time um as possible. >> Um >> yeah that's that's awesome to hear. And you're running manual bids it sounds like too that's worked for you. >> Yes.

Yeah. Yeah. It's it's worked really well and I have a >> the past I think about four or five months ago I'd set up a rorowass girl to to run alongside that. Um >> hopefully I'm getting all the terms right. Be sure to to pick me up if I'm not. But those two have have worked well alongside each other and >> yeah fingers crossed it will continue to do so. So, I think the the only I'm sure you get this question a lot of the time, but the only thing I'm seeing at the minute is each of them have a lot of ads inside.

I'm more than aware, maybe more than recommended, maybe 40, 50 ads per ad set and >> can just be a bit demoralizing launch spending a week launching the new ads and none of them have spent and you just got to keep going and keep chipping away. But I think that's kind of my key area over the next few months is figuring out how to ensure spend behind other ads and and and let them compete with the with the existing ones. >> It's a it's a tricky thing because it is it is demoralizing.

It's extremely frustrating to watch. On the other hand, it's sort of exactly the value of doing it that way because if you can launch a bunch of ads and you can get new ads that are not going to work, if you can get those ads to not spend very much, that's actually a win for you, right? Because it means you just blow less money on those ads. And so having a bunch of low spending ads in the midst of that is just like it's actually it is the elimination of the cost of the cost center that is creative testing campaigns that I'm always talking about.

And so, um, so it is frustrating, but it is also good. The the one question that is always coming up is, are there a bunch of false negatives in there? And if there are, then it's a problem. If if in fact, like some of those ads could win, but they're just not getting a chance, quote unquote, that's the case. What I have repeatedly retested this because it is a it is a it is a very frustrating like it would be a real problem if if it is a problem, right?

It's it's not what you want. I have so far just not really seen it to be an issue. I've found Meta is shockingly good at figuring out which ads are winners and losers pretty fast and I am yet to see ads I'll just put it like this where I have forced spend to them and that was the difference maker and getting them to work. I just I haven't really seen it. So >> yeah, I'm glad to hear that. >> So yeah. So, so for me it's like it is I mean I totally understand the frustration and I think in a category like yours, especially if you're getting a bunch of content from people, it can be can be really frustrating, but it's not super surprising me if if I hear that you've got some ads that are like your or some products that are sort of 40% of your sales and then you've got content from people that is really good where people are sort of putting it on their walls in the in the right spot that is relatable for others, etc. then to me is not surprising that that content would win for a very long time.

Yeah. Well, that's that's going to be a really relatable uh kind of thing. And so maybe the the challenge for you and maybe we can move now to sort of where your big questions are and how we can think about the future for HD London art, but like the challenge I think is is the question of like what is the actual way to expand your reach because you you don't have a product I think where sort of reexplaining the product in a different way is going to be the way to to sell more of it, right? like you're not you're not going to explain a problem in a solution in a new way with wall art that's going to make it so that it it works better.

So you have to think about growing your spend a little differently than that. And I think that's that is actually a sincere challenge, you know. So let me just kick it back to you uh Alistar. Like what are the sort of top questions on your mind as you think about the next stage for HD1 and art and how how can we think about where the future is? I have some thoughts having talked to you a little bit but uh but I'm curious where where your mind is at with it.

Yeah, it's interesting what you say there with the solution problem kind of stuff. I've pushed for ads for so many people and for so many industries it's relevant and I do struggle with that and >> yeah it's one of the products where somebody either sees it and wants it or they don't. You can't say one of my taglines is don't settle for boring walls which works >> but there's not you can't say this this will make your life better. this >> it's not like a supplement with tangible benefits.

It's very much in in the creative and in the product. So >> that has been where my focus is. But in terms of >> expansion and next things I guess doing outside of the UK market properly. Um, and then another one of your recommendations with Intelliggeems I've I've been working on recently with >> an agency and >> I guess just optimizing everything and a lot of the time as a founder you juggling a lot of things at once and I think just making sure that I am in the right place and that the the stuff I'm doing is is the highest leverage and making sure that people that I do get in places are number one that I'm I'm patient enough to train them up properly over over an extended period.

And hopefully this time next year, I'll be more hands-off with the business and I'll have experts in places doing the the tasks that I've I'm still juggling on my own. >> I think you're a little ways away from it. So, I think you're going to you're going to have to be pretty hands-on for a while and that's probably good um in some ways. And I like that you're close to the ad account at your stage of business. You don't have an agency or anything.

I always say to people like don't bring on an agency until you're you're spending at least 50 grand a month and you're you're getting very close to there now. But and I I suspect in your business you're just going to have some seasonality too. There's going to be an element to where holiday maybe is bigger or I don't know if there's seasonality around people moving or or something like that. You know, it is hard for me to imagine a better fit for the services that move supply chain offers than somebody in Alistair's situation. as I told him on this episode, when you need an extension of your team to go work on your supply chain in ways that will meaningfully open up the unit economics in your business, get you better cogs, better payment terms, lowerQS, faster delivery timelines, and just get you more reliable manufacturing so that you can have your supply chain not be so dependent on one supplier, all those kinds of things.

You should be working with Move Supply Chain to do it. They are so great, especially in this sort of seven figure stage of business. If you're that brand where you can't go chase down a million manufacturers yourself, you don't even know how to negotiate. And in fact, you probably don't have that much negotiating leverage because you're only one brand, Move is perfect for you. Move is built in the Philippines staff with people in the Philippines who have a whole bunch of years working across e-commerce supply chains and they are affordable [music] and also very experienced.

And that combination of deep experience and affordability based in in the Philippines makes them a really appealing partner for so many brands. So go check them out if this is you. The other thing is because move supply chain has a whole bunch of clients, they can leverage their client relationships across a lot of clients on behalf of you in their negotiations. So you can show up to a negotiation with them on your behalf basically with a lot more bargaining power because they can build relationships with suppliers on behalf of a much larger book of business than what you can possibly do.

There's a lot of reasons for it and there's a lot of reasons that I use Move for my brand. Again, I've told this story before, but before I ever reached out to a single manufacturer for the brand that I'm building, they had sourced 60 and reached out to 45. Like, and so, they just are able to go and build relationships with manufacturers that are so much better than what I could possibly do on my own. You're too busy in this stage of business to do it yourself, but you can make a huge impact in your supply chain by working with Move.

Movesupplychain.com is the place to do it. Moveupchain.com. There's so much more I could say about this, but if you're in that stage of business, you should be working with them. Go check it out today. I I have a couple thoughts right away. Let's talk about international expansion first. My my immediate thought on that is I I would wait to do that. Um I I think you probably have plenty of room in the UK still and international is going to create just um a bunch of complexity around all the things you said, your flows, your pricing, your you know, I know that you the UK on average the spending power for somebody is really different.

So you're have to rethink where pricing goes. Um, I think your product would work in America. Like I don't think there's an issue there. But yeah, 3PL's and logistics, like if I have to if I buy it from you and it it takes a month to show up or something, there's a problem there, which means you have to create that relationship. There's just a bunch of different challenges that I could see really getting in the way. And I, you know, I think you've got, you know, there are what 90 million people or something like that in the UK.

That's plenty of market and you probably have not reached that many of them yet. So for me like one of my thoughts is like stay focused there and see like how can you keep solving problems there and as you solve more of those you may you may find there are some things that make it so that when you're when you then go to the US or Germany or wherever the case may be you you end up having a more of a blueprint for like okay here are the different ways in which this fits into somebody's life. >> Yeah I like that.

Thank thank you for that advice. It's it's good to hear from someone like yourself where you're saying it with knowledge and I >> it does cross my mind. My current supplier does have US premises, but all I know so far is the costs are massively different for all the products. It's more expensive. So, >> it would just be a a big headache where I think you're right for for now. Just keep my head down and keep focusing on what's working.

Yeah, >> maybe in the future. It seems exciting when you're not doing it, but it could easily turn next year in a different direction if I'm trying to launch something else alongside it that isn't working. >> What's the margin profile of the business right now? Like just like can you can you tell me about your gross margin landed to the customer as a percentage uh at this point? >> Um percentwise my my cost of goods is usually about 55 to 60%.

And then net margin, I may well get the terms not entirely correct here, but net should be about 20% at the end of that. >> That's after ad spend, too. Yeah, >> that's yes. >> So that' be your contribution margin. But so 55% cost relative to And that's before you swipe a credit cards before you ship it, right? >> Yes. >> Okay. >> Um Yeah. My Yeah. >> Go ahead. >> Yeah. >> Go ahead. the the the costing for me was my cost for the products is is all in.

So product, shipping, everything is included within that cost. >> Okay, great. Okay. Yeah, great. That makes me feel a little better about it. So you're aiming at 20% contribution margin. I I'll tell you, I think the next problem you have to solve is figuring out how to get that down. And I think there's multiple ways to do it. One of them is is what you have said, which is negotiating with your supplier. Another one is potentially, yeah, like some kind of mix of keeping some products in stock and some not.

So you can order in more bulk. But I would I would be hammering that. I think I'd be trying to get to that number down over time to like 35% maybe to 40%. And I think at scale in your category, a real scale that number will probably come down a bunch because it's the kind of thing where just like printing the second one and the 200th one is just going to be a lot cheaper than printing the first one is my guess. And that's what print on demand of course is is awesome for the reasons you've said, especially in your stage of business. like you really derisk the possibility that exactly like you said earlier, right?

Inventory issues put you out of business which is a real problem. So I I think you're doing it right and for the brand that I'm launching like I am not really prioritizing gross margin from day one. I'm really thinking about like can I prove some viability here so that in time we could theoretically get those costs down. So, we're doing a lot of little things to do exactly the same thing you're talking about, which is like, you know, I'm not ordering, for examp I'm launching a cologne business.

So, it's like I'm not launching the cologne with packaging with four different scents where each package is different per scent. Instead, I'm making it so that I can sticker it so that I can order packaging in bulk and then who knows if people buy 70% scent one and 20% scent two and then basically the other two don't move. Then I'm not stuck with like a whole bunch of packaging that I bought for scent four that nobody's buying, right?

So in the early days of the business, I'm definitely prioritizing flexibility. I'm definitely prioritizing that over margin profile because I'm not trying to go super fast or anything like that. But at some point that 55 points of of margin is going to really be a problem for you. I think and so uh it's not it's not out of I think there's very clearly ways you get there. But I would be thinking about is that about negotiating with different suppliers?

Is that you know getting on the phone with my friends at Move Supply Chain and seeing if they could look are there 40 more people you could do this with? That's what we did right for my brand. If is there like a pathway there? Is it about a mix of instock versus print on demand? Print on demand thing is so good for being able to test different art. So, like you could easily use that as a way to, oh, I think this will I think this will sell over here.

I'm gonna print 10 of them and ship them out to some creators because I think they're good and then I'm gonna go over there. But like I would really think about in the next year or so, can you get that 55 down to 50, down to 45? Because you're not going to get it to 35 overnight, right? But like uh but if you could get it continue to chip away at that, I think that would be that would be a really really big advantage in the business to help you fuel a little bit more growth because of course what you'll do if you keep that 20% contribution margin.

What which I think is reasonable. What you could do is just turn right around and take any of the COGS money that you save and put it right back into ads and a little bit more growth and all those kinds of things. And I think if you do that over time, you'll get really far. >> Yeah, thank you very much for that advice. Um, yeah, it kind of is what I'm I'm fighting with on a daily basis of, >> okay, my supplier has has advised me that I I am one of the bigger clients.

I've been down to see it and I can see it's it's taking up a lot of their work, but price-wise, I'm still not I've got a better price than when I first started selling a tiny proportion, but I think there's definitely space to maneuver it. And I think it's about Yeah. approaching it right. And with my brand, the aspect where I think I should have more leeway is the majority of my orders are for a set of two or a set of three pictures where a lot of other brands are just selling single images.

And that's the the single images. I've not >> penetrated just yet. They they still only account for about 10% of my sales. But my supplier is is clearly making I do get a discounted rate if I'm to sell a set of two or a set of three, but like you said, the second and third item costing them nowhere near as much and there will be shipped in the same box. So, there's definitely room for negotiation there. And there is there's plenty of other compan shipping shipping, by the way, is is I'm sorry to cut you off.

Shipping, by the way, is definitely one of the things that there's real economy of scale on, too, where like if you can get that second or third photo in there or or picture in there, that's a that's a big deal because uh it's going to be a disproportionate amount of your cost for sure just because of what you're selling. So, yeah, that I think that's great that you're selling lots of lots of orders like that. >> Yeah, but just yeah, on on the shipping point while it's it's on the conversation, there's that's been fine the whole way through.

And just this week, the past couple of weeks, I've heard that my supplier has started using a a cheaper shipping alternative. One that people in the UK are not too happy about. So, >> that's took a bit of adjusting and feel a bit hard done by that nobody had mentioned it to me. Clearly, they're trying to save cost, but >> it's not great. >> My uh checkout was advising one company and it's coming with a different company.

So, >> that's that's my issue this week that I've got to get to the bottom of. Another thing you could think about with a supplier like that is if you're describing a supplier where you're one of their bigger clients at a little, you know, a million and a half per year, then that's just a relatively small operation, right? Like think about suppliers who are who are >> building huge businesses like >> and is the supplier in China? >> No, it's in the UK. >> Okay.

Yeah. So, I think there's a really interesting possibility here. I really would talk with with Move with the supply chain agency and see what could be done here. Um, and what you might end up doing >> is there's no harm in going and sourcing it and getting some extension of your team to go and find this. It's a huge job to go source a bunch of manufacturers and a bunch of vendors, but it could be a really, really, really big difference maker.

I just did an episode with Nazer Jafari from Mix by Nazarin who I've had on a few times before, and she just was able to get her cogs down another 10, 15% by going from India to China. That's India to China. That's not the UK to China. There's just all kinds of crazy possibilities as you kind of really hammer away at this. And what you might end up with is that your UK supplier is like a really good supplier for your print on demand stuff and becomes a way to be a testing partner, but then you have a second supplier who's much larger and can do larger runs of stuff that you're actually keeping in stock a little bit more.

And having actually like a two supplier approach like that could end up really saving you in different ways to where you could again use the smaller UK supplier for more of the flexibility in the early stages and use the larger supplier for cost savings on on some of these. And of course, the second tier benefit of the cost savings is that it also decreases inventory risk if the inventory simply costs you less money, right?

So, if you can actually get it down to where now your gross margin is 15%, 20% or something like that. If you over orderer a little, it's not as big of a deal than if you over orderer at 45% or something, you know, uh before shipping cost, you know. So, it's just less cash outlay. So, anyway, I I think there there'd be some ways to sort of to approach both of those that I think could really help. Just for the sake of time, I want to I want to go over to your ad accounts and to your creative as well. into the creative process.

One thing I'm really curious about is the messaging component of this. You've talked about sort of like the idea of people finishing their rooms. like have you explored sort of different spaces like what about office focused ads or bedroom focused ads or living you know I and I don't know could positioning different products in different places be a possible way of expanding your reach and for that matter changing the models uh like the creators that you're using right so you could imagine sort of like like a therapist in an office having a different sort of look and feel than a than a mom at a home than a dad in a bedroom you know I don't know you like it would because is that a way to sort of expand your potential reach is sort of just put yourself into different positions where different kinds of people could imagine themselves buying and using your your products. >> Yeah, absolutely.

I think that's where so far I've kind of found one niche within the UK that works and it's kind of like a neutral interior, mainly a woman audience >> where I'll definitely be looking into that in the new year. has kind of been one of the hund things on my to-do list of there are certain pieces that I sell which are panoramic and go really well behind a sofa and you can kind of push those as the perfect behind sofa piece.

Yeah. >> But in terms of branching out and this this is for a bedroom or this is is for an office space. It's not an angle I've gone at on ads just yet, but I'm sure it could work. I guess it all just comes down to how the >> art is is styled and how it's shown in those circumstances with the right people really, isn't it? >> Yeah, I think so. I that's my guess is that that becomes your version of problem solution is that the problem is the space and the solution is your art.

So, it's like how do you make this a welcoming and good space? I'm really I I was looking at your product. I was like thinking about like my old therapist's office like it would fit really well in there. It's sort of like warm and comforting. it's not obtrusive. There's like a way in which it sort of fits that really well. And I'm sure there's other things like that, you know, where where there's other spaces that you could if you just sat and thought about it and you could sort of, you know, again, send out different seed out different products to different different folks.

And I think that that could be really valuable. One of the things I hear in this, by the way, is is your you said, you know, you have a list of 100 things to do. That's like the core problem at your stage of business. Your business is growing. You don't have the money to go like hire a ton of people quite yet, but you have a lot to do. you're actually in a really hard stage in that respect. You can see the future in that.

It is another reason why I talk a lot about offshoring is that it actually allows you to sort of extend your team and expand your team and begin to take on some of these conversations on your supply chain and on you know something like product seeding. Like you should not be doing that at this point. That should be somebody in the Philippines on your team or or something like that that could be like really reliably hanging on to this and going like hey I'm going to find the creators.

I'm going to seed the product. You just got to give me a budget and I'll go do that. And that's the extension of your team. it's not going to be cost prohibitive. You can find somebody really good, you know, and could even grow with you as a marketer along it. So, I I would say that's part of how I'd be thinking about that problem as well. That gives you now now what we're talking about is if you can focus on those couple things over the next year, you've got more creative, more TAM, stayed focused in the UK, more TAM in the sense of we're opening up more spaces, right?

Like uh living room, bedroom, office, like I said, and then cheaper cogs. If you got through this year with those three things all happening, that would be a really big win in 2026. You also mentioned testing and again for the sake of time I'm going to just tell you one more thought I have about this. Another possible way to add margin is actually by raising your price and you probably don't really know yet what your true price elasticity is.

You mentioned Intel gems longtime sponsor of this show for sure. That's one of the tests I'd be running. I'd also be really curious about things like shipping costs and offers. That's going to be I think a disproportionately big lever. It's hard for me to imagine that there's a very clear price elasticity in wall art. Like I wouldn't be surprised if you could get an extra 10 pounds at a relatively low cost of your conversion rate on some pieces.

And so beginning to test that as well as merchandising I think would be another thing I'd be thinking about testing like which products show up first on different parts of your website. And so I do think intelliggeems and conversion rate, not just conversion, but really profit optimization by thinking about offers, merchandising, and pricing will actually be disproportionately large levers for you because you have a you have a category where it's going to be a lot harder to predict, I think, what the like real right setups for all those are.

And if you can get those going in the early days and really move with them, I think there's there's a lot of opportunity there. >> Yeah, thank you very much. the uh the shipping price and free shipping threshold is a big area and it's one that I'm I've been pushing to >> launch on Intellig as as soon as possible really. I've always just done free shipping and and never had a threshold to hit or never had a standard price to charge.

So yeah, it's good to hear that from from someone like yourself. And when I have increased the prices so far this year, I I feel like I'm I'm pushing it too much and then stats wise I look after a month and say it seem to go down. Okay. And just >> your gut is going to be a terrible guide to this. Like I always feel the same thing. I'm like am I charging too much for this or that? You know, whatever. And it's just >> I don't know.

It's just because I'm not a very salesy person. Like so yeah, it's it is Yeah. It's where like the data will really help you I think. >> Yeah. And that's what I need. anytime. In the past, it's just been guesswork and hopefully it works, but with something like Intelligj, hopefully I can really >> get to to grips with it and and make sure everything's been done the correct way. >> Yeah. All right, Alistar, this has been a really great call.

We'll have to have you back. So, let's see. Let's see what happens as as the dust settles in this year. Come back in six months and talk about what what worked, what didn't that we tried, and how it's going and are you hitting new ceilings and whatever else. And let's just like stay up on the story and maybe we'll do another one of these soon. Thanks so much again for your time and sharing this or sharing with uh openness and transparency about your business and congrats on the success this year. >> No problem.

Thank you very much and yeah, look forward to catching up again. >> All right, man. >> There is so much content out there about eight and nine figure brands and what they're doing and how it's working. But the truth is the journey is really different at every stage. And so I'm really [music] thankful for Alistar to come on and talk about what his stage of business is like, what's worked, what's going to go next. He's building a really good business.

This is the stage he's in, and I appreciate so much his transparency in [music] this stage of things. I hope this episode was enjoyable for you. It certainly was for me. You should subscribe if you liked it, wherever you watched or listened to the episode, share it with a friend who could use some uh knowledge from the episode as well. And of course, email me podcastfgrowth.com is the place to do that. You can also go to ajfgrowth.com if you want to work with me and my team on your brand.

Fill out the intake form on the website, tell me a little bit about your brand, and we'll get a conversation going. Big thanks to Move Supply Chain and to Intelligence for sponsoring this episode. Big fan of both of those businesses. The links for them are in the show notes and you should go check them out as well today. Thanks so much for watching, for listening. I'll see you next time.