Dream Dust Launch, EU Warehouse Expansion, Hiring & Product Number 3 - Doc the Journey Ep 33

Yo, what's going on? Episode 33 of Documenting the Journey slightly late on this one. Just haven't filmed because I've been incredibly busy and as always, I never plan. What I'm saying is I really should start doing that. But I guess the past month, well, not month, two weeks since I got back from Bali and so on, has been really head down getting ready for this thing to launch. Dream Dust, you can probably see that, which obviously I've been hyping up a lot on. Well, not only hyping up, just talking about on Twitter and so on for a long time. And this has taken way, way, way, way, way longer than I'd planned. You know, the lead time and this was meant to be eight weeks, end up being 24 weeks, which isn't great if my suppliers are watching. Not good. Definitely fix that for the next one. And it's the first time, obviously that we've launched a new product. Well, we've launched a few SKUs with accessories and so on, but I don't really count those because they're not like primary hero products and really. Yeah, like we've obviously scaled to a certain point only in the UK and with one SKU in terms of paid ads, we've only been running ads in the UK primarily until last week, which I'll get onto. But my plan for this year, horizontal scale, which is basically how I'm thinking about it, how to grow profitably to the levels I want. And it's a combination of a few things. I think it's new channels like Amazon retail, et cetera. I think it's new territories that is running ads in Europe, localizing fulfillment and potentially the website as well, depending on the countries. And obviously new SKUs, I think new Skus being the biggest one because a bit of me thinks this could actually be. It's just gut feel, I could be wrong, but I think this could be a bigger product potentially because it definitely solves more of a clear, concise customer problem of I can't sleep, I want to sleep better. Isn't that pretty much everyone? Whereas Rainbow Dust, if I'm honest, I mean, at least my perception of it is it's bit more of a luxury. It's not like you can't get caffeinated feelings from other things. Obviously it's not just caffeine, but people probably view it as more of this is a luxury coffee sort of substitute rather than, oh, this solved a clear problem. So yeah, there are obviously sleep products on the market. There's plenty of them, probably More than products like Rainbow Dust. But at the same time I think it's a much bigger addressable market potentially to clear a consumer problem. If I can't sleep, I think, you know, I've been using this myself for the last three months and it genuinely works really well in my opinion. And I always make products for me first. And yeah, as I've said a billion times before, I think it's the perfect second skew because it's the clear day and night offering. So yeah, this is launching in two days time. I'm recording this on Saturday 28th. This is launching Monday 30th at 6pm along with the I chase my dreams while I'm awake 80s movie which is literally 10 plus minutes long. It's the most ridiculous piece of content I have ever scene for a brand. Brad is maybe is a fucking genius and the work ethic is just not even comparable to anyone else I've ever seen. Like it's true passion. So he is a gem. Could not do this shit without him. We've brought this vision to life which almost started as a bit of a joke because you'll see the movie on Monday, but take it with a pinch of salt. I'm basically taking the piss out of myself. There's an underlying satirical tone, so don't take it too seriously because it's a bit slapstick in kind of the style. But yeah, it's just been super fun doing that and I definitely get excited by creating products and this side of the business a lot more. So yeah, that's what's happening at the minute obviously Dream does Launching Monday gonna be pushing bundles and you know, day and night bundle subscriptions, all that stuff massively. So I'll be interested to see how it does basically because we've only got 4,000 units which I was fairly conservative, didn't want to over order. But I've already ordered 10,000 more at much better unit price before we've even started selling it. So maybe that's a bit risky, maybe I'm jumping the gun. But the plan is with this launch wise, effectively run it organically only for probably the first month. By organic I just mean don't run specific ads to it. All our ads are still going to like Rainbow Dust. Obviously there'll be crossover people will go to rainbow this ad and then hopefully buy this. But you know, primarily focusing on existing customers, selling it to the existing list of 30,000 plus customers, whatever it is now. And obviously subscribers like the holy grail for me would be people subscribe to both, you know, ltv, AOV is just going to be mad compared to what it has been if that's the case. Other things that are going on. We've got a EU warehouse now we're using. Well, probably shouldn't even say this on here, but we're test launching with Jack Fulfillment, which is Connor's warehouse. Obviously a friend and investor in the business who's a fucking beast. We're testing that. It's like a loophole because it's way more simple to launch there than to launch with our Jack, James and James warehouse in the eu because that would have required different packaging and so on for Netherlands jurisdiction rules or whatever because that's where the stock would have been in Northern Ireland, obviously still part of the uk, but it has, it's a loophole legally where you don't have the issue shipping into eu. So that's been really smooth because previously we ran ads to the EU and we basically had to turn them off because everything was taking like four weeks because it literally just got stuck at Customs actually. Nothing we can do. It's kind of fucked. And even when we tried prepaying Customs duties like Avalara, tax services, whatever, that just didn't work. So yeah, basically stopped running ads in the EU for like four months previously and now running ads again. So CPAs in Europe has been very, very low. Like Germany is our second biggest country out of everything and we've not even run paid there yet. So that's interesting. I think Germany, Netherlands, EU as a whole, but particularly those who could be massive. So that's another big thing we've kind of, this is step one in the right direction for that. Obviously it makes stock management and so on much, much harder because there's two locations suddenly, but that's just how you scale and yeah, something to deal with. The other thing had a nightmare with Amazon recently. Amazon got disabled eight days ago, started working the new agency who to be fair, very, very good. I think we're gonna get on very well. I met them in their office last week, which was different to the previous setup I had with two agencies. It wasn't working so well. But yeah, just as they started scaling because Amazon was getting to like 1000 pound plus per day with one SKU one country and like really profitable margin wise, like 40% margin which you just don't see on the website. So the plan was to start pushing that a lot more. We're launching Dream Dust on Amazon and the Mugs on Amazon on Monday or a few days after Next week. But then Rainbow Dust got disabled entirely like eight days ago. So we're trying to fix that. I'm sure there's a solution, but it's very frustrating cause that does kill Amazon revenue. What else is going on? Yeah, so Flo Florian, who I think watches this stuff, he's been doing customer service since the start. Started as like a podcast viewer, I think, reached out to me, was doing, did a free month and then became like part time customer service. But now I realize he's actually very invaluable to the business. So he's come on full time as effectively operations manager who just broadly operations person. And yeah, that's working really well. So he's managing all the warehouse stuff, stock stuff, a load of stuff. Basically all the stuff I don't want to be doing, at least a large chunk of it. So that's me. Good. I'm also now hiring for a full time, I guess social media manager, whatever you want to call them, social media exec, someone to obviously run social channels. But influencer stuff, which we haven't even touched yet, brand partnerships, viral marketing ideas, just someone that can get their hands dirty in the business day to day. And if that's you, by the way, then fucking drop me a message. But I put a LinkedIn job up last week, got 500 plus applications in like two days. So I had to turn it off because I'm just not gonna go through that. But I need to get better at hiring. I'm very, very conscious of that. Typically the best people I've worked with in the past have come through either like friends, worked with them or there was some connection. Whereas now, I mean that's probably not going to always be the case. So I need to be better at hiring people that have actually gone out and put a job description together, found someone cold. So that's what I'm trying to do. That's another thing that's happening. And then I was going to show you a sample of something. I don't know if you can see it just off screen. Product number three is very much in the works. I don't want to wait nine months to launch product number three. I think in my head, Rainbow Dust, Dream Dust and product number three is a brutal trio. And I think that could be very, very, very, very, very scalable, if not potentially more than both Rainbow Dust and Dream Dust. But I keep saying that. So let's see, that's in the works. I think that's probably going to be realistically at least three to four months off from terms of launching, but yeah, that's exciting. And then also product number four, which is a different, slightly different product is on the way as well. I'm trying to keep it relatively simple and focus on going deep and improving products that we have rather than just launching a shitload of new SKUs. But given we launch with one SKU, I think there's obviously scope to launch the second one, which we are doing, and the third one. But I think three or four primary SKUs, at least three SKUs for 20, 23, I think is going to be the plan and I think that makes sense as well as accessory SKUs, which granted, ask, but I don't really count them when I'm saying like primary SKUs. So, yeah, that's kind of the plan. Yeah, I've pivoted the business to be much more profitable in the last two months. Like blended roas is like almost doubled because I've kind of just changed the approach. We probably went a bit aggressive on ad spend in the first six or seven months, which think has paid off because we built a lot of momentum, a lot of eyeballs and a lot of customers and subscribers. But yeah, I'm trying to now grow. I've got a bathrobe trying to grow way more efficiently and it wasn't necessarily as efficient as I could have been at the start, but at the same time it was the start and we built a lot of momentum. I kind of view it as like building up like a snowball, but now we need to carve that snowball into a nice statue or an ice statue, whatever you want to say. So sorry, my throat is fucked. So, yeah, that's pretty much what's going on. I could ramble all day. I've said a billion times I will start doing more specific videos. I probably will. I just haven't sat down and spent more than 10, 15 minutes doing these videos before. So, yeah, that's what's going on. In the interest of being raw and transparent, I just kind of keep it like this. But this is the Big Daddy, the full movie dropping in two days. I've not actually seen the final full thing yet. I've seen little clips here and there. Very, very, very excited. At the end of the day, it's kind of a bit of fun. It's not actually necessary, but I do think overall, over time doing this sort of thing, which just 99.9% of brands aren't doing, in fact, I don't think I've ever seen a brand go to this extent for a product launch. I just think it's worth it long term and ultimately I'm having fun with it, keeping it unique, hopefully doing things my way slash hour way which other brands aren't doing. And yeah, just fucking trying to do shit that my 12 year old self would have been excited by and have a reason to have a financially logical reason to do it. So obviously selling a lot of products is a requirement as well but yeah, I'm excited. So cheers for watching. As always. I say this all the time but drop a comment if there's anything specific you want to see, our podcast, guests, et cetera because obviously we're churning the pod again. Been trying to get a few weeks ahead on episodes. We did two last week, two next week, two the week after I believe. And yeah, cheers for watching as always. Subscribe and see you in the next episode. Peace. Oh yeah, Space goes to the fucking moon and dream death to the moon. Let's go.