How You Can Scale Your E-Commerce Business Globally?

Okay, so a couple other things I wanted to bring up. One is a pain point or kind of a business opportunity. Maybe this exists. If it exists, tell me because I want to use this service. So in e-commerce, most e-commerce brands are just local in their own geography. So most are, let's say most US e-commerce brands basically just sell in the US and then it takes time and then you start selling in Canada and then you start selling in Europe and then, but it takes a long time and The reason it takes a long time is because of the international logistics. So for example, you want to ship something to Canada, they have to pay a pretty heavy duty, like an import duty on the product. So you sell like a $50 product, they're going to have to pay like $20 of import taxes in addition to the shipping. So it just becomes irresponsible to buy. And still some customers do because they can only get the product from the US-based company, but it really sucks. And then the company has to fill out this form. That says these goods are worth $14, and then you submit that at the thing, and then it's just annoying, right? And so I think there should be a company. So there's these brands trying to do these e-commerce roll-ups. I think you should do it differently. I think some enterprising entrepreneur can basically say, look, I will boot up your Canadian operation today. I'll boot up your UK operation, your France operation. I'll do Europe, I'll do UK, I'll do Australia, whatever, right? So basically say, I'll import your brand today, you do no work. So all you have to do is you need to ship me this product to this warehouse. So here's the address, ship me your products. I need like, you know, whatever your normal inventory is, ship 10% to me and let's see how I do. And basically you get one giant warehouse where you're warehousing for all the brands that you're going to work with. And you just say, look, in exchange for doing this, you pay me no money. I will start generating sales for you, but I want a royalty. I want a royalty of, 10 cents or 15 cents for every dollar that I can make.

But what's your point? What, like, how is this, how is this interesting or new?

Uh, because I don't know of a brand that does this that exists. So, you know, my wife has an e-commerce brand. We sell in the US. I would love to be making more money by selling in Europe, but the time, the operational overhead to go to Europe right now is just crazy. So why aren't there more people that are reaching out to e-commerce store owners and basically saying, I will run your international operation and make it a low risk to no risk proposition for them? In order to do so. And I think there's a lot of money to be made given the number of e-commerce brands in the US and how you could— if you're in Brazil or you're in Australia or you're in Canada or wherever, I think you could become the leading trusted, like, kind of like, we are your Canada, go to Canada, go-to-market plan for Canada, and we just do all the work for you.

This is actually quite common in media. So there's Business Insider India, there's Business Insider Australia, there's Business Insider Germany, I believe. And then, uh, um, I think, I believe the Wall Street Journal does the same thing for those same countries, but it's, uh, there was BuzzFeed France, uh, HuffPo France, HuffPo Australia. It's actually pretty common in media. Um, and I— who runs those?

So, so is it run out of the US or they hire a team there or it's a local team there that just licenses the brand basically?

When they report the revenue, it's under licensing. And so I don't exactly know what that means though, because I was trying, I was thinking about us and I was like, man, we have a lot of people who are, uh, English as a second language folks, uh, in Germany. So like, uh, I guess Germany, I guess is one of the most populous. I don't, I don't, I don't know the numbers. I guess it's one of the most populous places in Europe. It's a very business focused. So, you know, the Germans liked us. Um, same with Australia. Australians loved us. And I was like, yeah, let's go do it. But what the fuck do I do? Do I just fly over there and just start recruiting? Like, it's, it's crazy.

I would love to partner with someone.

And then another thing is in particular China and Japan. And there's actually a whole word for this. There's a word. I can't remember what the word is, but there's a word that describes why it's difficult to break into Japan. Um, and the reason is, is that once it's hard to break into an island, in particular Japan, and I would love to have paid someone to be like, hey, Hey, can you be my Japanese, uh, yeah, consigliere, like my, my capo on the ground. I'm, that's, those are all mob terms because I'm, I'm into the mafia now. Uh, can you be my, my guy on the street of Japan and let me know, is this good? Am I getting the right people? I think that's incredibly interesting.

Yeah, exactly. So I'm, I'm, I'm not saying that this doesn't exist. I'm saying there's still a lot of room there because I know a lot of people, I have a lot of friends who are doing e-commerce, right? We, we host Club LTV. There's, you know, 75 to 100 e-commerce brands each doing over $1 million a year in there. And every single one of them, I think, has the same problem, which is that we're all US-focused. And why are we US-focused? Because it would be too much of a lift, too much of a lift to go figure out how to do Australia. It's too small of a pie to like do manpower on or spend brainpower on. But if somebody in Australia was like, hey, look, this is what we do. This is our business model. We help you get sales here and we just take our cut. And, uh, and so I just think that like there needs— there's more opportunity for this. And that's cool that in media it sounds like there's also an opportunity to do it in media too, or it's being done in some way by the big players.

It's being done in some way, but like I remember when BuzzFeed, uh, like we're going through some troubles, they had to lay off like their whole French office. And I was like, BuzzFeed has a French office? What the fuck?

That's the opposite, right? That's— we have a French office and then you have to do things like that when it's like not working out. I'm saying No investment, no consulting fees. You just take a royalty on sales. And these are all incremental sales that I wasn't getting otherwise. And you take care of the whole operational headache, in this case for e-commerce, about like, I just ship your goods to your warehouse, you ship it to local customers. Customers don't have to overpay. Customers don't have to do import duties for every order they make. And so I just think that there's an opportunity in e-commerce to be the go-to brand for every D2C brand. To partner with in each of these locales.

What country would you go to next?

I think Europe is probably the best because you want the next wealthiest, high-populous place. But really, it could work anywhere. It's just like the biggest market is doing it throughout Europe. Now, Europe is made up of so many countries, maybe that's a pain in the ass. If not, like, Canada is the no-brainer. Australia next. Japan is a good one. Those would be the ones. India, maybe. Like, for example, I know a bunch of people in India who did this. So my dad introduced me to these guys and I was like, oh wow, why is these guys' house— their house is humongous. How, you know, what do they do? And it's like, oh yeah, they partnered with Jockey underwear and they just became the Jockey like seller here. They have exclusive rights to sell Jockey in India. Next guy at the dinner table, what do you do? Oh, we're the Domino's guys in India. What? Yeah, we're the exclusive franchisee of Domino's for India. Um, okay. What does that mean? Well, we have like, Indians didn't really eat pizza before this. So we're like teaching people to eat pizza. They fucking love it. Turns out. Uh, and so we have like, you know, 9,000 Domino's throughout India now. Like, oh my God, what is going on here? Uh, so like, you know, local franchisee, but for, for what's this called?

What's the term? What's the term for this?

I don't know. I, you know, maybe I should have gone to business school. I think it's probably just like in brick and mortar. I think it's just called franchising. Um, franchising was the way to spread geographically, you know, when your brick and mortar can only scale so fast. Uh, that's how you would do it. You would franchise out and then the franchise would pay a royalty back to the, back to the master franchise of the brand, uh, of their sales. And they're, they're the local operator, but with e-commerce or with digital media, it's a little bit different, but it kind of has the same problem. So I don't know if there's a new word for it, man.

I think this is wildly fascinating. This is, uh, I didn't think it was that interesting at first, but now I know what you're talking about where I've heard so many stories of the same thing, but not— maybe not of India, but I am the official importer of X, Y, and Z.

Yeah, we're the distributor of X. Or like for you, just think about for your business, right? Like, what could you have sold for more if you had like 250,000, you know, or like 500,000 subscribers in Japan?

And like, I think there's a world where I would have been— where I could have made more money in those markets than I did in America. Because even though America has more people, I don't think the French, or I don't think that the Germans, um, I don't think Facebook kicks as much ass over there as it does here with Instagram and everything. And so I think the ad markets, because I do think that Europe— sorry, Europeans, if you're listening— I do think that you guys are 5 or 10 years behind when it comes to some technology stuff. Um, and the ad markets suck because of Facebook and Google. So like, if you could still capture a little bit of that revenue, I think you could.

Well, I don't know if any of that's true, but what I do know is that it's true.

Trust me.

As you're building— well, I think like everybody uses Facebook everywhere, so that's the part I'm saying. I don't know.

Um, well, sorry, but what I mean is like old media still does quite well abroad.

Okay, that's fair. That's fair. Uh, the thing I'm just saying is like, if while you were building your US business and all your employees are focused on your US business, if somebody said, I love your product, I'd love to license the brand from you, or, or I'd love to be your partner and in the UK or in Japan or in Australia, and I will build, I will use the same playbook. It'll be under your company. I just want my cut for building this for you because I'm taking the proven thing. You would've done it in a heartbeat, right? And so the fact that you didn't means there was an opportunity for some entrepreneur that should have been reaching out to you saying, this is a no-lose proposition. You still own it. You still make money off of it. It's still your name brand. I just get to go, I get to basically take your brand, take your head, take your product, and localize it or distribute it here where I'm from and I know the market.

Yeah. And my product's way easier than yours. It was because it's pixels. It's not anything real. And I would've loved to have done that. And I used to have people email me all the time. And then we had a bunch of people in Russia, some people in Mexico who would just verbatim copy our shit. And I would say, I would have to, I'd find it and I'd be like, you guys stop this. You're not allowed to do this. And then I'd have other people who would email me and be like, hey, can I trade?

Could you stop anyone from doing that? I feel like you can't do shit. If somebody takes your newsletter and they just word for word transcribe it in Russia and they're like, We're called whatever, HustleRU. No, there's nothing you could do.

The only thing that I was able to do, the only thing I was able to do, we had someone do this in Italian, we had someone do it in Russian, and we had someone do it in Mexico. Uh, yeah, Mexico. And I basically shamed them. I said like, I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna call you out. And so I would tweet at them or I would email them. Uh, I, I would just would make it well known. And my network was large enough that someone of someone knew them and they were embarrassed and they, yeah, and they stopped doing it. But no, I couldn't do shit. Yeah. And I had people email me all the time saying, hey, can I do this for Spain? And I would say, yeah, but I don't really know anything about you. I don't know if you've got good taste. I don't like— I know nothing about you. And I would just throw it off to the side and just kind of forget about it. I put my all in it like no days off. On the road, let's travel, never looking back. Life.