Nasrin's Apparel Brand Is Growing Fast & Profitably transcript

and that just scares me and I think that in business in like building a business so much of the actual challenges that Founders face is they're kind of just like more personal things like at the end of the day what's keeping me from hiring more people more quickly like it's it's like at the very root of it it's like human fear one year after my first episode of opening the books with nazarin Jafari almost to the day we are back I've got nazarin back on the show to talk about what has happened in her business since that initial coaching call that I recorded and passed along to you the link to that is in the show notes go check it out if you have not watched or listened to that episode you will learn a lot from that and you will get a lot of context for this conversation nazarin is back and we're talking about how her business has grown in the last year the highs the lows the challenges everything in between uh if you are trying to grow a business in the early mid seven figures which is where nazrin's business is uh you should listen to this you will learn a lot let's dive in hello nazin how are you hey Andrew how are you I'm good I'm great this is a funny thing to do because often when I do podcast intros with people I say hello how are you and we maybe chatted for a moment before we've stopped but in your case we chat all the time it's not I already know how you're doing because we talk about it daily you know what's going on with you with the business all that kind of stuff uh because you and I have been working together for almost a year now we we didn't start working together right away after recording opening the books but pretty close and so we've been hammering away only at your business for a little a while is that true yeah okay never mind so I was wrong all right uh but yeah we've been working together after doing that opening the books episode tell people who you are and tell people what your business is so they have some context for this conversation yeah sure so hi I'm Nason Jafari I'm the founder and designer of mixed we are an apparel print wear brand fashion brand um completely bootstrapped launched in 2021 now we're looking at um a mid s seven figure business um and yeah BAS awesome and yeah okay yeah based in Brooklyn that's great uh and uh yeah I um we've been we've been out it for a little while in that opening the books episode and we were talking you actually were the one who pointed out before we started talking um about sort of how it had been a year since we had talked you noticed that had been at the time recording this it was a year ago yesterday that we recorded that episode and the the little comment you made to me that I'm curious to hear you unpack is that you're in a very different head space now than you were then uh and so what did you you mean by that yeah I mean so last year when we got on um the podcast it was kind of when the ad account account had just started to take take off um I was still doing ASC campaigns uh not much visibility in terms of the like unit economics of my I mean I had some I had some visibility but I think the big thing was that like everything was on pre-order at that time and so I wasn't dealing with returns in a consistent flow and so I kind of got hit with a big a big big um returns bit about a month after we recorded um I didn't have visibility in terms of what was the daily contribution margin of the business so and and I also didn't have um a cash flow planner which now I have one that just goes out till the end of the year thank you to bill for that so yeah I I think I was I just everything was happening for the first time so it was really exciting but I had no no context I never seen that before not much visit ability in my business to really be able to harness all everything that was taking off and so I think now I've been around the block um the ad account has taken off again and um but this time I kind of especially with your help know how to manage that know how to plan for that in terms of inventory in terms of cash uh and I just yeah I feel more confident that's really awesome and that is not surprising to me to hear you definitely seem more confident when we first talked when we first talked it was like lots of broad questions and unknowns and that's fine there's nothing to be like uh sheepish about there like it you were starting the business you you know You' done it yourself you were just you were like on a you had just reached right around seven figures you were getting right there for the first time and uh and so there's just so much you don't know when you're in that place about sort of what it takes to run the business at that stage you can do a you can sort of paper over a lot of things when the business is that small but as it starts to grow you have to start to figure out all kinds of planning for the business that's a lot different different you know you mentioned a few things there you're tracking daily contribution margin shout out Bill alesandro who uh you can actually listen to still one of my most popular episodes I've ever done was his episode on uh contribution margin I'll link that in the show notes uh and uh and how rigorous he is about tracking that in his business and then he's helped you do the same in your business and I know helped some other entrepreneurs do that you could always reach out to Bill if you're interested in some helping set up some reporting around that um and uh and yeah so that happened we've got a cohort forecast which is something that we talked about then and still talk about it's been at times wildly wrong and at times uh shockingly correct and all over the place this is very normal for a business in your stage uh like it's just really hard to predict growth when you're trying to go from you know one to two in a year we were right around just a little over two million last year right in Revenue um and uh and and you're trying to go from there to 10 uh and and you know over a year or whatever it is you're just you're just going to miss it's the the future is too unlike the past to get your cohort forecast right but we've got it tied in to a cash planner which is awesome so now those two things work together so cash and forecast can go together and the longer we go the better we'll get at predicting your revenue and those kinds of things one of the things that's been really interesting about that is how where the places we've been wrong uh on the forecast has been um you've got like a more conservative forecast that you use and then I've got my forecast and at times you're like you're getting mad at me like Andrew you're way over forecasting this and at times I am and then at times I've been right so it's it's been back and forth uh but um in the midst of that do you um do you want to talk a little bit about sort of the the things that we have and haven't seen coming I'm thinking especially of like seasonality and product drops maybe also would help for people to know what your core product is uh which you're wearing right now one version of it anyway um so if you're watching this that's part of it but uh but yeah maybe you can maybe you can talk through sort of some of those Dynamics in the business I think this is pretty normal for an apparel business um but stuff that we're still kind of learning as we go seasonality product release Etc yeah yeah sure thing so mix uh primarily sells jumpsuits so in terms of if you don't know what a jumpsuit it is it's like a full body pant and top outfit um and I think what's great about it is that visually from an ads perspective it's one and done it's a full outfit um it's really visually striking in an ad uh the downside is that in terms of fit it can be a little bit more tricky there is a higher return rate uh associated with jumpsuits and yeah so we are primarily a jumpsuit brand we have Prince and we do denim um and both have performed really well the denim particularly has really taken off for the brand recently uh in terms of season yeah but your prints have done awesome in the past too it's worth noting like denim is definitely more mass Market but you've got some of these brighter Bolder kind of patterns that have have always been a big part of it I'm think of you know Ruby and some of those where it's like core products so it's not just Mass Market denim it's like you've got these really striking pieces as well yeah definitely and I think that you know in my experience it's not that every product is uh equally as successful what we've experienced has been there's a handful of products that just really crush and people really resonate with they do really well in ads and that really carries a lot of the business and then you know the rest of the 80% of inventory it sells through but just not at the high like at the same volume as something like denim or like you mentioned our Ruby print or pink Nano print um and so I think that kind of speaks to why product drops are so important in specifically apparel and fashion brands is that from my perspective like product just it drives so much of the ad success and AD performance we actually so Andrew was suggesting and I know you've done episodes about this um long form ads where we're basically you know talking through the product giving everything that a customer might want to know or a potential customer would want to know answering any questions or doubts they might have so for us that means talking about the fit talking about the design um talking about the fabric the material um Etc so they're literally literally like three minute long videos of me speaking to camera wearing the piece talking about it I didn't think that that was actually going to work super well for the brand because in fashion it's more about like you know psychology you want it to feel like cool you wanted to feel confident and and my thought was if you had had to describe all of these um physical attributes that you would kind of take away from that but what we've seen is that these long forms have really worked for the brand um but it's also made our Revenue super like peaky in that you know in January was when our first long form which was for the Ruby jumpsuit took off um I think like in in sales it did about like 120,000 in a week um and we've had that experience with the Ruby jumpsuit we've had it with the denim boatneck which I'm wearing now um and a couple different products so the like our standard denim jumpsuit and it's it's great it's exciting it also then creates other issues in terms of inventory um cash planning supply chain um but yeah I think I'm not sure if I answered all your questions or like answered the question you were asking but oh I think you definitely did um but like the some of the Dynamics that are really crucial there that I I think is really common in apparel businesses which is um first of all wrestling with return rates really normal in apparel businesses I think uh that's definitely a challenge for a lot of them uh and in your case it's particularly high that jumpsuits are such a uh difficult um thing to get people to buy online because of the fit element of it they have to fit just right and people feel nervous about if they're going to fit exactly right and yeah that I think I think people feel even a little like customers in my experience in here I'm leaning heavily on what my wife says about buying jumpsuits uh is that just like there's almost a little nervousness about like do I look silly or something in this and if if it doesn't fit exactly right then then you know whatever so um so that's like a really common challenge in peral businesses and I think the other thing there that's that's interesting is is uh the element where each product is sort of its own bet uh that you make you know and some products are going to V even if it's cut exactly the same the design uh changes the outcome of the product significantly the pattern the material Etc or on the other hand the pattern and the material are uh exactly the same but the cut or the design is different you know you're wearing your I think it's the boat neck right is that right yeah yeah that you're wearing right now right but that that the neck on that jumpsuit being different or the sleeves being different or something like that same exact material potentially can sell really really differently and it's sort of one of the challenges of apparel I think uh and and that's those are really really normal things um I think the other thing that I was really and so anyway so what you're getting out there around product drops is this really core challenge in the business which is when you release new products it's these big crucial moments and we've had some of them go great exceed expectations and others really um Miss expectations in some of the product jobs that you've done um and it's so crucial to making this business work is that like new product is one of the core things that drives the business forward um and there's all these Dynamics in the way that that actually plays out uh because we can do a great job on ads we can push you know great media buying we can um do these long form explainers and we can talk about that more in a second I think that's all helped like the long form explainer thing was a big unlock for us it really really worked for this brand uh uniquely powerfully uh but um but in the midst of all that you you know you run that with a with product a versus product B basically the same ad and then you have wildly different outcomes you know and so like I I'm curious how you're thinking about that in terms of future product development as well and and we've talked about the sum obviously but sort of uh as you go to design I think your summer is designed already but you're but you you think about fall or something yeah um you know how are you thinking about the reality that product design is such a crucial part of of what is going to make the brand work or not and trying to hit as many hits as you possibly can yeah yeah yeah exactly so I think like you mentioned product and marketing are kind of like the key levers of growth right now in the business that I'm seeing um to speak to seasonality so what we what we notice is that the spring summer is just those that's the key season for mix because a lot of our Silhouettes and our patterns they're colorful they are sleeveless they're just suited for the warm weather vacation um and what we see in like the fall winter is that people you know they just don't purchase it at the same um rate because I don't think the product is as well suited for the fall um whether because it's not U warm enough or maybe it's just too colorful for people's taste in that season and so um for fall this year my goal is to come out with coats and outer autar and more you know Black jumpsuits going more neutral tones I think before I used to be afraid and think that like ah you know I'm known for prints I'm not able to sell solid color uh more Mass Appeal type items but I think the denim has clearly shown me that that's not the case that I could sell something um that you technically you know you could find denim anywhere else but that there's something about the silhouette or the brand or whatever it is that people like um enough to purchase um at our price point so yeah I think for for fall winter it's about coming out with outerwear coming out with a product that's more appropriate for the season and also like with outerwear and with coats that's the thing that's visible um in that season on someone's body so we get a lot of Word of Mouth the jumpsuit again it's just like it's so visible it's super striking so people are often you know asked where did you get that or like What's That Brand and you kind of lose all of that word of mouth and that visibility in the fall because everything is layered on top of with another Brand's coat and so how can we be that outer layer um I also had this like experience I bought like a couple codes from different brands that like um my friend jok the other day like became my whole personality because it was just a super it was a cool coat you saw it on me every day because it was my outer layer um and I could literally wear sweats underneath but I would still look really good and put together and so that's really what I'm trying to do um for our our fall winter product if you like nazine are trying to grow your business while keeping an eye on your Opex being smart about your Investments you should you must consider working with an incredible team of e-commerce professionals to fill the needs in your business from the Philippines uh go staff incredible Talent I'm not talking about just like virtual assistant level Talent I'm saying like people with deep e-commerce resumés across supply chain operations design marketing all kinds of areas of the business from the Philippines you can find incredible Talent there pay them a premium rate in the Philippines which will be less than you'll pay that same talent in the US everybody wins and you can locate that Talent by going to more now.co AF to work with my friends at more Staffing my entire design and production team is built off of a team that was staffed by more Staffing it's up to five folks for my business and they are great I love them I love working with them they do a great job it has been a very smooth and easy process finding attracting uh recruiting that talent and uh and they've been a key part of my team along the way I just don't know why if you're running e-commerce business at this point and you are already a remote team you would not consider uh finding incredible Talent from the Philippines so go do that by going to more now.co more now.co the links in the show notes and get connected to my friends at more Staffing today so so much of this game we could talk a lot about contribution margin we could talk a lot about cash forecasting we could talk a lot about um you know bidc caps and cbos and Broad targeting and all the things that I talk about a lot I think it all matters and and but when I think about the story of mix right now I think there's like these two parallel tracks which is getting the sort of like uh operational excellence required at the stage of business going I think we've checked a lot of those boxes to be honest with you like there's in it feels like we talk a lot less about that stuff these days and a lot more about like okay like the reporting is set and all those on the other hand there's this there's this parallel track which is like the product and the brand and now like the game for us to keep growing here is every product release at some point every sale there's uh somewhere there's a third thing in there which is the supply chain as you scale that which is definitely a major area of Focus right now but um but I I think uh I think the way you're talking about that is so interesting this idea of like if we can get coats it can be outerwear that can uh that can uh potentially create Word of Mouth it can be a big part of people's personality in fashion that's just like so much of the game and it's funny like these are kind of the areas where I go like M I just kind of Nod along say like great that's what you I'm glad you're thinking about that because this is where I'll be very little help to you on the brand you know um I wear the same three things all the time and you know I'm totally disconnected from the world of fashion but but that's that's part of hopefully the goal of having a good team is that you've got people who sort of are contributing these different areas so um so yeah you tried suits in the fall which is interesting talk about that a little bit how did suits go yeah I mean so suits uh didn't do as well as our jumpsuits did I I think there's a couple reasons here one um the aov was much higher so a full suit set was 420 whereas a jumpsuit is 228 and I'm actually thinking it raiseed the price on that um C to hear what your thoughts are on that but yeah um so one the a was higher two it was more occasion wear and so it wasn't something people could wear every day with where whereas the jumpsuit you can wear that once a week so you might be able to justify a 200 plus purchase if you're going to wear that you know weekly whereas a suit you might have you know one or two reasons a quarter to wear it um so I think the occasion aspect of it and yeah I think I mean I think those were probably the two major ones also it's not I guess it was somewhat fall like winter appropriate but if you wearing it in the winter you might have to wear another coat on top so what I do think the suits did well though is I think it positioned us with a more like um celebrity influencer like performer kind of audience where had a lot and we've seen that right like like significant celebrities posting for free yeah yeah because they love the suits they love the pieces and and oftentimes when I'm doing let's say a profile shoe or a spotlight with a more well-known Creator or celebrity the thing that they'll ask to be shot in is the suit so I think you know um Rachel who has been advising me a bit um recently has had me started to think about uh customer personas and what how is the product assortment that we're creating at mix catering to different personas so there are some people who want that everyday statement wear and you know they a larger maybe as of now a larger percentage of the customer base and then there's also um the people who like who love the denim who are a little bit more like utilitarian there's the people who want the occasion wear so like how do we create product that caters to these this like the full range of the customer base um and also though keeps an eye towards like what percentage of the customer base wants occasion wear versus um more everyday utilitarian wear and I think the the mistake was that with fall we did the entire collection was based around suits which I think was exciting from a marketing standpoint because that we could really shine a light on this new product but to kind of bet all of your eggs in this unknown basket I think that can be where it's It's Tricky and so how can we do a suit capsule you know where it's three pieces where we test the product if the product does well then we do more of that rather than you know putting a lot of money behind product development and you know supply chain behind something that maybe doesn't work as well as you wanted to compare that to Spring your spring launch really jumpsuit heavy with some rompers mixed in as well right which is yeah jumpy with shorts you're a dude like me who didn't know yeah so the spring um the spring drop really exceeded my expectations um we did I think like $75,000 um on launch day uh which I think before then the largest launch to dat was maybe like 40 Grand so almost doubling that uh the denim bat neck which I'm wearing now like led a lot of that a lot of that purchase but you know what I focused with that well I think one that speaks to the seasonality bit again spring summer is when people are really getting excited to wear mixed again even me personally I can see like my my wearing patterns and in the fall winter I don't wear as much mix because it's not suited for the season um and so I can already feel now I'm getting excited I'm seeing like I'm getting the mixed out into the closet I'm seeing our customers like post on their stories that they're starting to wear it um so I think that the seasonality bit helped a lot I think the focus on everyday statement wear so again things that people could when I say every day things that people could wear once a week and really um justify the like higher aov for higher price point for um and I think obviously the prince I think the prince yeah if it resonates then does well if it doesn't then they don't do yeah yeah I think it's so interesting like the how much the differences far and those like fall you know I had us over projected for launch and holiday both they were just not not as big as I I expected us to be awesome there spring I had us projected a little more aggressively and we even exceeded that I think we we we went through it and uh and just kept working a lot of stuff we launched into the ad account worked great so that the launch went sort of the way you want launch to go which is really heavy returning customer revenue on launch where you've got all these customers who are engaged and you're pushing on all that and it's uh it just goes awesome and then and then from there and this is how a lot of launchers go right you you take the new products that you have and those become fod for the ad account and so now we created all of this content and uh and pushed really really far forward and now we've seen some of that slow down a little bit recently um and are trying to figure out what's going on there but had you know were able to get through I don't remember like 150 Grand or something and spend in a month uh you know at a really really strong return and that was based off of new product new content around that new product Etc and so much of this game now is like how do we keep scaling product release uh sales at some point we've hesitated on sales because of inventory concerns but um but those those kinds of moments in this business that are going to drive it forward and over and over again I see this with apparel Brands and sort of like product oriented brands in general I did an episode the other day I released it actually I think maybe maybe it'll be the most recent episode by the time this comes out besides this one about like different types of businesses basically like people starting to think through um I categorized five different kinds of dtoc businesses that sort of push forward based on different factors right and and apparel and there are other categories like this where it's like pretty good margin uh but not incredible um pretty good LTV but not incredible and the way you push the business forward is product release is moments it's the marketing calendar the marketing calendar is the way you do it and so this game becomes as you start scaling up your team like you know you spend less time doing things that other people can do right like I can't design products but we can run the out account we can push on this and you do the things that only you can do which is in your case product design um and planning and then also you make a ton of content as the founder of the brand um you know with mix by nazarin right there in the name you are an Azar you are on the camera you're showing you're really comfortable on camera you do a great job and um and so you you scale up those kinds of things and that's stuff that I can't do for you that stuff that you know we can work with some creators and all that and we're we're efforting that now you know to try to expand out so you don't have to make the content but um but that's the kind of stuff that that you do and I think this is really normal businesses in this stage mid you know early mid seven figures somewhere in there which is about where we are right mid mid seven figures we're we're gonna for sure more than double again this year like it's going to be a good Mo Good Year forward um so much of the game is like how do you expand how do you um begin to take some things off your plate without creating too much Opex and putting yourself into a point where there's just like it's it's just becomes too expensive um to to you know you know have a whole team that you're putting all this time into I know that's something you've wrestled with a bunch is sort of thinking about your Opex and when do you invest in adding to your team versus when when do you stay more conservative um and even we've talked recently I know you're you your your mind is shifting on this kind of point a little bit as well um talk about how you're thinking about Opex how you've thought about it so far you've done an incredible job of like really hunting down costs that are unnecessary in the business so far which is as probably saved your business at points right um being being so careful about that um so talk about that journey and how you how you're think about that yes so I think as like a little bit of context for me I'm uh my parents were both immigrants my dad had um a wholesale business he was like a solo business um Wholesale grocery never hired an employee the way he made money was by saving money and I think just like through osmosis through that cultural thing really soaked up that like um like a penny saved is a penny earned kind of mentality which I think it when you're bootstrapping it's really helpful in the beginning it takes you so far because um you know how to do a lot with a little um I think a lot about where is my time and my money best leverage where is it best spent um and so it's it's helped me a lot I think to get into this like early mid seven figure stage and what I'm I think what I'm rubbing up against now is that in order to grow you have to make more cash Investments you have to kind of grow that Opex um I'll be at the right way in the right places um and that just scares me and I think that in business in like building a business so much of um the actual challenges that Founders face is they kind of just like more personal things like at the root at at the end of the day what's keeping me from like um hiring more people more quickly like it's it's like at the very root of it this like just human fear um I made some like hiring decisions last year that weren't the right hiring decisions that caused just a lot of Heartache had to do layoffs which really sucked um and I think what you had mentioned Andrew in terms of um how can I delegate the tasks that uh that someone else can do and hold on to the taas tasks that I uniquely need to do in this business um was not a frame of reference I had last year I also last year didn't have a Target upside and downside forecast um for how I was planning my Opex so now I have and I kind of come back to every month a Target here's where we are here's where I think we're going downside and upside so I can see if I make this Opex change um for the next like you know eight months of the year how is it going to like what will be the worst case scenario and I think kind of planning for that worst case scenario has really helped me feel more confident about where I'm spending Opex and what that percentage looks like so you know up until now like Opex has been 12% um and I think that that's pretty solid now as I think about um okay you know again where is the time and money best leveraged for me um that is being able to create more content and fodder for creative and the ad account at scale um and then also some kind of like more coordination admin stuff that allows me to focus more on product and content um and so as we add those bits to the to the um Opex that percentage is going from like 12 to 16 is what nothing no like nothing has been um no trigger has been pulled yet but I'm kind of I'm looking at everything right now I'm kind of putting the puzzle pieces in and getting ready to do do that probably like starting next week putting those calls out finding those right people Etc the the truth is you're in the hardest phase of Opex to because I've talked about this a lot on the show but like one of the core principles to me of DC is that it is that like uh the uh the advantage of it as a business model and I do I am team DTC is a business model some people will sometimes dispute that is DTC a Channel or a business model I think it's a business model at least as at least for a while and this is one of the reasons why there's a distinct thing about to see as a business model which is you can run it with a very low Opex you can run it with a pretty low headcount it's one of the advantages of the thing if you have to have a big retail presence or something sometimes that um um in some it creates jobs in the company and marketing people who have to go design stuff and run out whatever anyway if you run D Toc there's there's um there's you can run with a very low opx percentage of Revenue and it scales awesome so like you know we're talking about you know you've got us right now got HF growth um you have a little bit of advisory help from from some coaches and some strategic areas but that's a a small cost relatively speaking um you are uh you've got a little bit of you know help in your in your um office there which you're sitting in and you know packing orders those kinds of things um but then you know you're starting to think more about now how do I like uh get the supply chain to a place where it's getting the attention that it deserves because managing the supply chain especially in apparal business is actually really challenging you've got to manage how much FB fabric you're buying and then how much fabric goes to gets cut and sewn and like all of the different elements of of uh managing an apparel supply chain which is just really different than than running a lot of other Supply chains it requires a lot of attention there's a lot of demand planning stuff that's challenging and demand planning is basically impossible in the stage of business anyway so like we said right you you you launch a you create a product launch and you have to figure out which things are going to sell and which things aren't and you probably have some instincts around that but it's tough so putting some attention on that is going to cost some some money and the thing is it costs about the same amount of money to do that at Mid seven figures as let's say 15 million in Revenue like it probably requires a little more attention but not linearly proportionally more and so the cost of investing in that part of the supply in you know supply chain help or something is going to feel a lot more expensive today than it's going to feel in the F in the near future the same's going to be true you know we've talked about bringing out email marketing help or something like that like same thing it costs essentially not withstanding some Cavo fees or S Lan fees or whatever the case may be right uh it costs essentially the same amount of money to send an email to a thousand people that does 100,000 people uh you know at least on the design and email strategy side and so uh and so an email agency would be expensive today potentially relative to your total revenue but scales cheap and this is really normal in the mid seven figures you're starting to have more stuff to do that is really hard to do on your own and yet you also don't have the economy of scale quite yet and so you have to be really careful about it and do exactly what you said I think what you said there is exactly what I would advise anybody to do create three forecasts take your middle forecast and then give a downside scenario and an upside scenario and the downside scenario protects you from a spot where like you are over over burdening your team and you have to go fire a bunch of people or whatever it is you know um and and by doing that you protect yourself against okay I can make this investment even if the margin expansion that I'm going to get from it is going to come later not now um and and that's the goal so I I mean I love the way you're thinking about that and so far keeping a low up very low up ex percentage of Revenue has been really really helpful for you uh yeah yeah I think it's been super helpful like in the first quar like q1 I was just like happy as a clim very calm um I think the probably the calmest and most confident I've been in the business which to be fair like it it was great to have that period after coming out of per of a period where I really had to turn things around really had to cut costs and make some difficult decisions um so and you know yeah q1 was just it was great like you know cash in bank account moving that into like a high like having enough to make make it make sense to move it into a high yield account um was great and now I'm kind of um back to a place of like okay how can we be maybe a little bit more um like how do we I I don't even know I mean you can tell I'm wrestling with this in real time because it's like how much profit do we want to choose to foro and then put that back into growth versus like just keeping that money and and pocketing it um because I hadn't done that initially and that was a mistake I made which I've now corrected um but yeah yeah um okay let's do a little bit of tactical stuff you mentioned the long form explainer um I remember on our uh opening the books we talked about planning contribution margin we talked about um thinking about you know un economics which is core of the contribution margin plan we talked about getting a cohort forecast and cash forecast in place check check check check you've done all those things to your credit I have coaching calls sometimes with people and I tell them what I think they should do and they go thanks and then they never do it and so you you have been like so awesome about getting those things in place uh certainly with some help but that's how it goes right you need everybody needs help on stuff like that um and uh and so like you've done all these things set at the core of the business and then one of we also talked about uh product releases and sales I remember run that episode we talked about that cycle in uh the marketing calendar there check again like we've we've got a marketing calendar that we're planning out um you know being fluid with it relative to inventory and some of those things but uh that's also normal um and then uh and then we have also we talked about in that episode The Meta ads account and what we can do to push that forward um you had done very well on your own you were getting a three or four to one at the time we were talking you were right in the peak season um but we have moved to a setup that I suggest to a lot of people um I think you were skeptical of both the setup and the the creative at first I'm on team bidat I cannot believe yeah you're not the first to to be skeptical and to uh and also with the long form explainer so um yeah I mean I don't know if you want to talk about our setup a little bit and what your concern was and and some of those things but uh just because I think there's people who listen to this and watch us and want the really tactical input um how have we scaled maybe you want to talk through how we've scaled um our spend uh especially when it's been successful and it hasn't it hasn't always worked perfect or anything like that but but yeah yeah so I'll say my perspective and you can add in whatever tactical um points I so you know yeah when we had done opening up the books our first episode last year um I was running everything on ASC and like you said I was getting three four to one um and so I really believed in ASC because that's all I'd ever run and it was working for me so you know that was kind of like my gospel at the time um and so when you suggested bid caps I I think I tried bid caps at some point but it just wasn't spending much even for what was spending on ASC and so anyways I didn't I just didn't Venture down that that path until you came on it and took over the account in October and my perspective now on bidc caps is that you know like it's it's not a bug it's the future in terms of like whether it spends on an ad or not doesn't it's not you know if it's not spending it's probably because the creative isn't good enough or the algor algorithm doesn't think that it's going to get the kind of return in result you want so um what I really appreciate about the bid caps well let me also backtrack we've seen and I've seen um these bidc cap ads really scale so our our denim or Ruby you know in one week doing 120 Grand like that a lot of that was being driven by bidc caps so my initial my initial kind of skepticism around oh bidc caps don't spend um was completely obliterated when I saw that no they do in fact spend depending on the creative and the product um and I think for me the great thing is that I just like can sleep peacefully at night knowing that I'm not overspending and knowing that it will if it's spending it's a good sign and if it's not spending that's just like a signal for me to create new creative so I'm never like with the ASD I was always looking um updating the ad account and seeing like okay what is my Ras right now what is it you know what's the efficiency looking like um am I overspending and if I was overspending I honestly wouldn't have known like I couldn't have I didn't know if I was or not um and so I think with the bidc cap it just kind of gives me more piece of mind um and it's it's safe so it it decreases my downside um which I think is it yeah great well to and to be fair to you you know when we first started launching them it didn't work that well we had gone from like spring summer things had gone awesome for you and then into the fall I was beating my head against the wall I was going like I remember at the time I was like I'm I'm sorry like I feel like you hired me to like help push this thing forward and I expected our holiday to be really big I projected a really big holiday I was not aing holiday to be big I know yeah go go ahead sorry go ahead what were you gonna say I don't know I I just think um I mean that is like the in the initial onboarding you came on during the fall when which is like our lower season and so I think the expectation just were it was misaligned because you were walking into a brand where you had certain expectations but the reality was something else it was also still such a new and it still is such a new brand that it's hard to say like what's going to do well in what season there was no historical data at the time this is really the only like second year at if you might want to call this scale so um what I do really appreciate that I I want to say is that um in those early months I was kind of like is it worth it to like spend this this money and I think you were just so um you sent me an email saying like I just want us to win together and so like here's what we can do and and that just gave me the confidence to feel like all right like yeah you wanted you're not just trying to like make a buck off of me um you CLE have a lot of different clients you can work with uh and I was really honored that you chose you know to work with me at the size I was um at the time and um but yeah that more so you wanted to win together and and that really paid off um spring summer and I think again seasonality product yeah we we I mean there just was a world where you know percentage of spend deals everybody's always nervous that just like you're just going to run up the bill or something like that because you know you've got a percentage of spend and and all that but this is this is constantly something I say is like I actually think percentage of spend works great for us to work together in the phase that we're at it allow it allowed me to invest at an earlier stage in a business than I otherwise would in a lot of cases because I thought like I I see the upside here we just have to get there together you can't pay me a a flat fee that I could take basically that I would want to take uh there's no way I wouldn't advise you to do it if you you know if You' asked and um and so yeah it allowed us to do that and the commitment is just like no we're just going to go get there together so yeah that was that was um I'm glad that it worked out I'm glad you didn't fire me uh so the um yeah but but so yeah to your point though I had expected it to be better and I was beating my head against the wall and it was just a classic case of I was kind of doubting like gosh is is the is the bidc cap thing not working here do I need to push on when you were running all ASC Etc and just to be clear like I don't have a problem running ASC campaigns um right yeah yeah you're the only account I have with one very small amount it's it's partly it's partly a a returning customer Revenue strategy for us there's no customer cap on it it's probably not worth totally diving into it's a very small part of our spend but the um the ASC is a great tool in one respect which is that it forces you into what I think are a lot of best practices it's broad targeting it um it puts a bunch of creative into one place which allows the machine learning to um increase and decrease spend at its uh per ad instead of running AO like you know you control the amount of money going to each ad set Etc right and so in that respect it gets you really far and you you were doing these like um lifetime budgets a month at a time or something you sort of set a spend and I actually think that that worked pretty well in its own way because it would allow meta to ride up and down with available volume over the course of a month instead of forcing it to spend a certain amount per day so there's a lot of things that you were doing that I actually think worked pretty well and you know if if anybody goes back and watches that opening the books episode you'll find really awesome performance in an early stage which is because ultimately the driver performance is the creative and the product um but the Med buying definitely can help and what we've seen really happen is that when we launch ads that work with product that work we have seen uh this thing where you go 4X 5x to spend day over day with new creative um just like that and that's the thing that I think people just really miss out on when they don't run manual bids is that you your ads can scale so much faster than you think and then they can also suppress spend right when that should and so even this month we've we've again run into some more challenges not I we're doing okay but we're just not doing nearly as well as we thought we were doing it's not business threatening or anything like that but it's just been um it's just been harder than we thought not as good as last year in this in in this time of year in some respects um and the Temptation is always like ah gosh go raise the bids it's something is wrong with the media buying or whatever but the moment you do that the same thing happens every single time which is like your performance just gets worse it's just it's all that happens like it's just not it's just not worth doing in the way that you would expect it to to be help the the the the media buying is the bids the machine learning isn't broken and this is the thing that people are always worried about with bid caps like H it's not spending on the right things that's probably not the problem the problem is the creative isn't good enough Etc and there's another thing that you've done really specifically with our ad account that is really really to your credit which is that you have a really good way of focusing your attention on the next right thing um in a way that I think is pretty unique you you are you are excellent I don't know if I've ever even told you this but you are excellent at this um you um on the creative side we started seeing these long form explainers work well I'll put one in the show notes um so that people can see what these ads are like um and as long as that's okay Naz so people can see at least one of them and um and it is different I you know I hesitated to run these as much as I love this concept um for a lot of Brands because I thought like it's apparel like you just need to show how pretty it is basically and people will click and maybe they'll buy that the classic apparel Playbook you know dpas work great for most apparel Brands Etc um but what we discovered was that jumpsuits maybe are a little different in this respect because they maybe require more explanation here's the fit here's how you button or zip it here's how um stretchy it is or not all of these things that are actually questions that customers have about a jumpsuit before they buy it and uh these long-term explainers and I think it also helps that you're the designer and um and can talk through it all uh in in this unique way um so these have worked awesome for us and you once they started working got into your studio and recorded like 20 of them or something like so fast and you just kept turning I think you've recently we've sold out too much product so you've run out of product to do more but you you were actually stopped from doing even more of them by that and you you are so fast at this and to me this is like one of the great reasons why we've seen some success again we're gonna more than double this year pretty for sure like the the part of the reason for that is that you have turned around and once this created has um worked you've got of been like great let me get you way more of it and we've absolutely hammered that stuff into the ad account by the time we went to their spring launch you had recorded long form creative for nearly every piece in the in the in the um capsule you know so uh yeah I think it's a perfect illustration of how these things work together you find the creative that works you run it through bidc caps in a CBO you separate up by products separate it up by aovs and then you just allow everything to spend if you don't know what I'm talking about go back to that opening that original one that opening the books episode I did with nazin you also get I talked through more of this strategy also in my opening the books with with the guys from beard brand um we really talk through the entire ad account from this perspective there so um so if you're if you're confused on anything I'm saying here go check that out um those will both help you but yeah uh anyway go ahead say something about that you're going to yeah yeah no I just I think you're just really speaking to in the early stages of a business it's all about where do you put your time and your money your energy in the highest leverage places and I think it was really clear that for us that was ads and product and yes there's a like could our email be better yes like could I have like more content seating like Creator seating yes like there was there were a lot of other things U and there still are a lot of other things that are not really up to the part I would like them to be but at the end of the day um where we are in the business now the thing that matter like that's really going to drive us forward is like more ads that really convert and um designing the right product at the right time um in the right season and so I I think that's where lot of um in in like when you're building a business right there's just so many shiny objects there's so many things you can do there's lots of little piles of money everywhere and I think I'm really lucky and that like I'm really comfortable in front of a camera I'm really comfortable making content I designed the clothes for myself so they look good on me so I think that is that's like an unfair Advantage I have and so I'm going to use the unfair Advantage but um and also that the ads have been working so there's that like positive um what's it called feedback that's like just me to do more more so you know if the if there was like a negative feedback loop like maybe I wouldn't be as as great as like focusing on what well then we wouldn't put your time there right because it would be it would be like oh okay well this is not worth not worth your time like and there's just definitely been that element of this process sort of iterative of like okay this sort of thing that has worked in other brands that I first came suggesting you know that didn't work here this these other brands I did this with are apparently too different whatever but then this over here that we have that we tried worked great okay now go repeat a whole bunch of it and so we stopped doing the things that didn't work and we kept doing things that did and I think what you just said is so fundamental to the challenge of the earlier stage of e-commerce of being an operator which is shiny object yeah like you just said like your emails could probably get better but like it just wasn't the most important thing next uh just get a couple of emails out per week uh that's going to be good enough for now and then you know go from there and yeah for the people who also are like really engaged with a million different sources and you're listening to my podcast and four others and you're listening and you're on Twitter and all that stuff e-commerce f all these things are great but the you know the fundamental challenge with all of it is that you have this potential to go and just do too many things because somebody told you the next sass product is like the most important thing you you're so good about this just like nope next important thing is this so let me ask you nazarin maybe as we wrap up here what is the next most important thing for mixed by nazarin what are you working on now what is like what do you think is going to take us from where we are now to 10 million or whatever you so I actually have my three primary constraints stock where I talk about what is the biggest bottleneck in the business like prove why is that like Etc so even though we've talked a lot about ad and product um right now I think our big and we're moving through it but the biggest constraint is actually the supply chain because you know we set up this really great uh content creation mechanism ad creative mechanism we sold a lot but we sold on pre-order uh great for cash conversion cycle not great in terms of uh customer experience and then this the the Ops behind that um and so not like there's no product in the studio like there are some samples on racks but other than that like we we we can only ship out what we receive every day from our Factory it comes in and it goes out and nothing sits on shelves um not the worst problem to have but it's still a problem so right now the biggest constraint is um getting the supply chain up to speed meaning ordering the right fabric at the right time so that we can um move out our right now we do a lot of small ordering so we don't do one big po every couple months because that's just too risky to bet at this size in this kind of brand so what we do is we put in like a PO like a couple times a week honestly and that really allows us to work okay what's working in the ad account right now how can we place a PO against that is the fabric already in stock at our Factory if yes we can get that good those goods to our Brooklyn studio in a matter of like three weeks so that really tight supply chain cycle one we already talked about how supply chain is so important for fashion if you overp purchase your invent you can be dead even if you have a great business so um it's not just about like not overp purchasing but really having this tight po cycle that's aligned with the ad account so figuring that out first um I think that's a primary constraint after that it's how do we create creative at at scale which is not just me making the creative anymore but us seaing that um to different creators influencers customers getting um a variety of different kind of creative that we can use for the ad account as well as more um um editorial and brand kind of focus creative that we're doing I'm doing um with our photographer we're doing like these mixed profile shoots so a mixture of like more bottom of funnel and then like top of funnel brand creative um I think rounds out the picture and then after that um is product so those are like the three things so good you also this a I was genuinely prepared okay that's very see but yeah that's awesome you you also have this awesome habit of like that the fact that you have a do with those three things is so not surprising to me even though I didn't know that because you do something also that is awesome which is like every time we've done a sale or a product release you like the the within 24 hours of the end of the sale you or of the product release you've got a little deck put together that's just like what products move the most what creative is taking off in the ad account the most uh what products move the least what could we have done better what did we do great and taking the time to think through and document these things is going to help you like I mean every time you say I I freak out about it and I pass it along to my team I'm like guys look at what Naz made because it helps all of us just say I do because not everybody does this now I mean it's probably obvious to you but like you know it's really really helpful it it sets everybody up for success for the next time you do it and here's the truth about what you just said which is that by avoiding catastrophic mistakes like you know your your instinct to keep Opex low before um your uh your um your ordering plan you know staying on pre-order is going to maybe hurt your growth a little bit but it also helps your cash um not over ordering means that you don't have this problem of just like sitting on inventory for forever all this stuff as long as your goal is not to make it to100 million like in two years right if your goal is a re more realistic timeline the biggest risk to that goal is that you you like completely break the business along the way and can't get there um you don't you don't have a crazy goal I think right now when we did opening the when we did open the books it was 100 million in 25 years so it was a pretty slower timeline uh now I think we've shortened that sum right I think now you you think like 10 maybe somewhere in that range is is more what you think about that's still totally reasonable I think a 10-y year timeline is plenty of time to build um okay that means you just especially in these earlier stages where things are volatile and challenging it's harder to plan Revenue because forecast like I said the the future is just too unlike the past you know you don't have a big team any that the thing you got to do is just not break the business you got to keep growing and you got to not break the business um just just just keep moving and and to me like all of these things that you're talking about are like perfectly aligning your behaviors with that goal okay what are the bottlenecks what are the things that I should focus on if I really want to keep moving this forward and then how do I not break it along the way basically by not being done on cash so the next thing you're right Supply Chain's gota we we probably can't get as big as we want if everything is on very long pre-order timelines even though it helps our cash now um and so now we got to go fix that Etc okay now we got to figure out at some point how to make it so you don't have to make all the creative because while you're uniquely good at it you also aren't the only person who's good at making creative but you're probably the only person who can design your clo and if if we can release more product more regularly if we can design more marketing moments that's going to be the thing that really pushes us forward Etc so um so yeah moving and shifting towards that along the way again all with this emphasis on sort of not breaking it as well and and and even just like what you said about q1 like having a moment of peace and not being just frazzled all the time and all that kind of stuff is uh is really really impressive so um okay any any last things that you that are your Reflections on your state of the journey right now that you'd really want people to hear before we hang out um I guess yeah I think one one thing is is as you grow a business there's something different that's required of you every stage and I think the the difficult thing is knowing at what stage you are in your business and at you know is this is this kind of the pivot point where you kind of need to change the way you're operating the business and so I think my natural inclination is to be um very like you know Roi driven I want to see like a kind of a return on what I'm doing um and I think that works really well in the earlier earlier stages um and I I guess I wonder at what point do you shift and kind of make I don't know uh not brand bets but um how do you become someone who instead of you know building A10 million business can build a $100 million doll business because I think the foundation for those two businesses are very different and I think the idea that you know you can be the kind of operator who builds a $10 million business and then over and then at 10 million you're going to be able to kind of shift your personality to be the kind of person who can you know build on a100 million business it's it they're different foundations they're different people they're different characteristics and so I I love that about business I love that it kind of forces you to change and um yeah I think I'm just kind of wondering like at what point do I have to I don't know change the way I'm operating things or or maybe I don't at all and that would just be a foolish decision well look you're also fashion and apparel like it you just you're you have to you have a different Pathway to cultural resonance than other than other brands like you just you have to stay relevant in whatever audience that it doesn't have to necessarily be cool per se like you know uh it it just depends on who you're trying to Target I think um yeah but you have to stay re whoever that audience is whoever those personas are you do have to stay relevant to them and you have to have some attention and capture some attention in there and so to me um yeah the way you're thinking about this is right which is like okay there's a longer game here Beyond just the Facebook return on a given day um and and so how do we build for that so that's awesome uh you are a killer it's a pleasure to work with you I'm so grateful that you came on and um contined to be uh transparent about the business with people um and with with this audience I think there's a lot to learn from this conversation so thanks so much for doing that do you want to send people anywhere to reach out for you or should they not reach out to you is there any people should follow you they should just go buy a jumpsuit yeah you can look at the website you can can email me if you want um I'm not much on Twitter I read it but I don't use it so I'm mostly on Instagram yeah okay awesome yeah well go to mix by.com go check out the the um the products there and you can see what nazin is building it's really really cool thanks Naz appreciate it you thanks as always for watching and for listening to this episode of the show make sure that you subscribe wherever you're doing that wherever you're watching wherever you're listening and you can reach out to me if you're interested at podcast ajg.com or reach out to me on Twitter as well at Andrew J Ferris uh and see everything I'm doing at AJF growth.com that's the place to to follow up with me or reach out to see if you would like to work with AJF growth and some capacity as well and uh as always I so appreciate my sponsors at more Staffing my friends there are great virtual assistants can be helpful virtual professionals can change your business go to more now.co to get connected to them and get add incredible Talent from the Philippines to your e-commerce business as well thanks so much I'll see you next time [Music]