Dear Manager Mark, do you read Forbes? The Hush Blankets Story.

Foreign.

Welcome to E Commerce Growth Stories. This is your hostess with the mostest, Juliana Jackson, aka the CLV lady. And also I am the Chief Evangelist for OmniConvert.

And this is Derek, Chief e Commerce Technologist at EcoMmerceTech IO. And we're here again for a new episode of E Commerce Growth Stories.

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I'm doing well. Thank you guys for having me. I'm excited.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean there's so much history to your story that I have to figure out where to start. But first just let me share a bit of info about you to the audience in case they don't know you yet. Aaron is a Canadian theater entrepreneur. He co founded Revitalize when he was just 18 years old and now he is the co founder of Hush Blankets, a company that he co founded together with Lior Ohio and they are really, really, really, really dominating the sleep industry. So first question for you that I'm trying to ask everyone, how did you get into E commerce and how did you get into E commerce when you were 18?

Good question. I mean when I was 18. So when we started providing size was all about our brick and mortar store. We had one location in the neighborhood that I grew up in. The people would come and you know, we'd sell the smoothies and the sibyls. It was all healthy food. And as we started to expand, I started to realize that expanding from brick and mortar is expensive. Right? You need to take all the money you've earned in the last few years and then pour it into a physical location and then build that location and then eventually market it. And you know, a good brick and mortar store gets money back within, you know, three to five years. And as a young 18 year old, I'm like, that's, that's way too long. You know, like I want, I want to move way faster. So when I met Lior a few years later and he was in the software side of E Commerce, I started to realize that instead of to enter a new neighborhood and brick and mortar, you need to open in that new neighborhood. You need to actually have a flagship location and do all that. But to expand with E Commerce, you essentially just need to expose yourself digitally to that neighborhood and then you can eventually facilitate through delivery and all these different types of distribution. So that's kind of what sparked my interest with E Commerce, how all at the time, how easily it's, it made me feel it would be and then kind of just snowballed from there.

That's crazy. And like you went from healthy food and very mindful type of stuff to a very mindful type of the sleep industry. Right. But it's such a big switch from food and, you know, healthy and drinks and whatever to blankets. So you are selling the most popular weighted blanket in, in Canada. Right. And probably more in more, you know, regions in America at the moment. You're very popular in Romania too. But tell me why blankets and how, you know, how, how did you get to, to this product and yeah, tell us about, tell us a bit about the product and how you got to sell blankets.

Yeah, so my partner Lior was, before he even met, he was volunteering at a camp for children with special needs, all different kinds of special needs. And they had this stim. And actually a lot of organizations have a stimulation room. A lot of public schools actually in Toronto have a stimulation room. And it's a room where kids can go and there's a bunch of toys and things. They can relax, they can take a nap. And way back they had this kind of like weighted pad. And he felt himself like constantly hiding in this room and using this like pad to like go to sleep. And then years later when we became friends, we realized that that pad was never actually made for adults. They always made these weighted devices for children. They never made it for adults. But adults are anxious too, and we have a hard time sleeping as well. So we were kind of left out. And then we actually did a little bit of research and realized that there were some brands out there that have been selling adult weighted blankets. And so we're like, oh, well, problem solved. We'll order one for ourselves. Because we were selfish. We just wanted it for me. And once they arrived, we realized that they were just horrible. They're these big weighted beanbags. And, you know, they would sound like a rain stick at night, and you'd sleep, and all the weight would be on your shoulder and none would be on your legs. And I was just so. We were so frustrated that we were just like, can't be that hard. We got to make one that actually works. And then, you know, that's kind of that inspiration that started it. And then we started, you know, dissecting and designing and diving into the materials and really developing a product that would work for me and for us. And then we knew if it met our standard, that hopefully would meet, you know, the massive standard.

Aside from that fulfilling your own need, which is always a great way to start a business. And where most businesses stem from, did you do any market research with, like, strangers saying, would you buy a weighted blanket? Like, did you know the size of this market and how big it could be? Did you just kind of guess at it, have a feeling based on your own instincts?

It's a good question, actually. So as we started our research, there was a Kickstarter that just started in the US and it was for one of our competitors and ended up being one of the largest Kickstarters of all time. This guy was on, like, CNN, breaking news @ the table, speaking news. A blanket. Yeah, it was insane. And, you know, the hype around it was nuts. And we were just like, I'm just going to order one from this guy, because he's obviously figured it out. But what we later realized was the demand was there. But he was actually just a really good marketer. He was still selling that same product we had a problem with in our early stages. And he's got a long list of products that he's really good at, creating hype. And then he sells a product, and he moves on. He moves on to the next thing. So what we realized was that he might have not seen the potential that we did, because a lot of the people who were buying the weighted blanket for him specifically, they actually had a pain they wanted to improve, a pain in their life. And for him, it was more of just like, he wanted to sell as many blankets as possible. So we kind of came and said, maybe we can actually take care of this problem for our people. And that's when we have his blanket. And we said, okay, how can we make it better? But we knew the demand was there because we saw what he did and it was. It was insane.

So, all right, so here are the takeaways from this. This is somebody else is validating the market for you, which can sometimes be a good thing or a bad thing, because you are first at first thinking, well, they've. They validated the market. They've also conquered the market. No reason to enter.

Right.

But the second thing was, was that you noticed the differentiation factor in how you would come at it, which is product differentiation to somebody that might just be doing pass through business and some marketing differentiation and then stemming from there. You know, this goes directly into everything that Juliana preaches, which is being retention focused and caring about the consumer. And you said, we can build a product that people really love and become, you know, a digitally native vertical brand around this product and this experience. And that person doesn't see that. That person just sees cost of customer acquisition, lifetime value, make a buck, and then I'm done. And so I think all of those things combined are where opportunity really lies for success and growth. And so I think you were in the little bit of right place, right time, of course, but you had to have the dedication and the skills to notice and invest. What was the initial investment like? I mean, obviously you had to do a lot of product research. How many blankets did you go through to get this right?

Yeah, I mean, so we're, like you said, we're huge believers. So me personally is. And innovation through iteration. Right. I don't. I think it's a lot harder to invent something from scratch. You know, a lot of people come to me and they're like, you didn't invent weighted blankets. And I'm like, well, I'd probably be dead. Because they've been around for almost 100 years. And a lot of products are actually just one or two innovations away from actually working for the general public. So when we saw what was available, and still today you can go on Amazon and find a blanket $50. And if you go on our website, you can see the differences. Those products that were out there when we first started are still there. But we knew we can iterate into a niche that solved the real problem. But yeah, I mean, when we started, we didn't have a lot of working capital. So Leor and I said, you know what, why don't we start with pre orders? And we created a website, you know, simple Shopify website. Overnight, spent like old school. Typical story. We spent like eight hours all night. We built this website photoshopping photos did this whole thing and we threw it out. And we said, are we gonna make any sales? Obviously, first day you make no sales, and we're like, we need to drive traffic. And one thing that we noticed that was really exciting. And if I were to restart a brand all over today, and if I had to recommend is I would say if there's search for what you're selling, whether it be on Google or Bing or whatever your main search tool is, then there's. There's already people looking to buy your product. They just don't know about you yet because you haven't. You're not out there. So we knew, okay, we need some sort of validation because when you start a brand, you put all these hours in and no one's buying your stuff, it kind of gets depressing. So we need to. We needed that one or two Shopify notifications that we made a sale. So we said, if we can bid on our search terms. And our search terms at the time were like weighted blanket. It had hundreds of thousands of searches a month in Canada. We knew if we can just get a portion of those searches and our website was any bit good, we can validate this. And we did that. We had no product yet. And once we launched, I think it was on day two or three, we made a first sale, and then it kind of just started. Third sale, fourth sale, fifth sale. Next thing you know, we have like 20 sales in a week. And that gave us the confidence to go, I had my other business at the time. We were at his business at the time, okay, let's liquidate all of those, make our first PO. And it was like 70 or 80,000. We gave, put all our eggs in one basket because we had those 20 sales that made us feel good and give us the motivation to, you know, we have to fulfill these orders, right? 20 people were waiting on us. So that's where we started. And we kind of just snowballed from there. And I mean, the sales never really stopped. And then, you know, that's when you become a marketer. You start figuring out what levers to pull and do all that fun stuff.

That's crazy. You know, when I met you guys, I met you because I found you on YouTube, right? I watch a lot of stuff on YouTube. And I think the way, you know, I don't know how I got to the pitch that you guys did to in Dragon's Den and when you got that investment. And for people that don't know, Dragon Den is like a shark tank type of show. So I saw that video when you had all the, you know, the jury dressed up in your blankets and sit and sleep in them. And I knew back then, I was like, yo, I have to talk to these people and see what they are doing, because it was incredible. So I would like, if you, because we're here in the beginning of your history with Hive Blanket, tell us how, because there's a lot of people that want to go for investment, right, and ask for investment. How did you go there in the show and ask for them? And I know you won it because you really, really killed the whole pitch. So just tell us more about how you did that. How was the experience?

Yeah, it was quite funny, actually, when we. I was following one of the dragons on Instagram and she posted a story, like, swipe up to submit a form to audition. And I was just like sitting on my couch one day and I was like, all right. I just typing out this form on my phone. And a month or two goes by, we get an email saying, hey, you've been invited for an in person audition. So, you know, we grew up watching this show. I mean, every entrepreneur has been watching Shark Tank and Dragon's Den and, you know, it's like an inspiration for all of us. So we were completely unprepared. We drive to this audition. It's in a random, like, school somewhere. The producer is sitting there. We forgot some of our blankets and we only brought, like, some of them. We had no pitch set, we had no evaluation concrete. We walk in, it's us, and I think it was one or two other people. And we're like, wow. Because we went, there's the Toronto one, which is like the main, like thousands of people go. But we went to, like, some random one, like, far away, because we didn't want the competition. And we sit there and we. We watched this other gentleman go. And I mean, I feel terrible, but his idea was a ladder that doesn't fall, right? So it has like these two things on the side and if you tilt, it'll catch itself. And I think he had someone in his family get severely injured from a ladder falling. So he invented this amazing product. The only issue was, is when he actually demonstrated it, it fell an older guy.

So that sucks.

Yeah, it wasn't good. And then we went. So, you know, our pitch was so bad. It wasn't that bad because we didn't get injured. So we had, you know, we just kind of threw the blankets on the producer. We're like, how do you feel? She's like, we Feel pretty good. And we're like, exactly. So we left thinking, no way we're getting a call back. And then I guess they had to choose one of the people who were there. So they chose us. We were young. I mean, we had some good energy, but everything was, was off the wall. And then the next one was the pitch for the show. So you essentially just sit in this room and you know they're like, you're up and then, you know, they put the mic on you and everything a.

Little bit more polished the second time.

Yeah, they made us like, they made us send them our pitch and like, in fact, they adjusted our evaluation. Like, it's really about tv, right? It's not, it's not about the investment. In fact, we never actually ended up taking the investment we did on the show though. So it's really, really about TV and creating that, you know, that drama behind it. And they, they're really nice enough to promote our Give Back program, which is like something we've always done, but we just don't tell people about it because deep down we're convinced people don't care. So we just kind of always did it and they highlighted it and essentially once it aired, it almost doubled our business overnight. Right. It really, we really were able to connect with Canadians and it really validated who we are and what we're about.

So it was really cool things here on this. The first thing is you got to tell us about the Give Back program. And I want to know why you think people don't care. Because I've seen cause marketing have pretty good impacts on actual top line revenue for businesses.

That's actually a good point. So I mean, I don't want to say that nobody cares, but I don't think it's a massive.

You do it for you.

But yeah, I don't think it's a massive needle that moves. I mean, we donate 1 in 10 blankets that we sell, then we donate 1 of 5 of the children blankets we sell. So we donate almost a million dollars worth of blankets a year to thousands of charities across the city. And it's, I mean, we've gotten a lot of good things. Got a partnership with Deja Ardan and it's been great. But you know, we notice a lot with like, our particular product is not like, it's not like if I were to have like a really nice T shirt brand and then we donate a portion, you're like, you know what, I'm gonna buy my T shirt from Dan because they actually have a social Cause our product is very like, you know, it's more of like a problem solution type product. So it's not. It is a luxury item. It's expensive, so it's not like, you know, oh, I'm gonna buy one of those because I want to be fancy or bougie or whatever. It's more like, I'm gonna buy one of those because I need a better sleep and I want to feel better. And I don't really like the way things are going for me right now. And I need something I need to change. So for us, a lot of our sales come from that pain. It comes from the pain that either me, myself, or somebody I love is not at 100%, whether it's with their own personal life, whether it's for their sleep, whether it's their anxiety, whatever that pain is. And it's worked for me, so I'll buy for them, or nothing else is working for me. I'm gonna buy it for me. And it just so happens that we donate, so you kind of, you know, you feel good and maybe there's. Maybe there's a little bit less buyer remorse, but I don't think it's a main needle for us.

All right, Yeah, I get what you're saying, and that is incredible that you're donating so much. Oh, my second question is escaping me. Oh, it was about throwing the blanket on the producer. You have a product that is kind of like, I don't know if I want this, but if you put it on me, I might, like, actually really love it. Right. It's like, I need to try it before I buy it kind of thing. And you said you come from a brick and mortar background of sorts. So how do you get this on people and convince them to buy it? You know, when we're selling through E commerce primarily?

That's a great question. I mean, it's. Yeah, it's exactly what it is. The second you feel that the blanket come on, you're just like. You have this like, oh, like, feeling, right. Everything just comes out of you just like, wow, I can't believe this is real life. So we have a 100 night trial, right? So we don't label it as try before you buy because we've seen, we've tested that, and there's some stats about people who just love to try things. But there is a security behind the fact that, you know, if you think it might work for you and you're not entirely sure, go online. You have a hundred nights to sleep with it. We've got customers that after five days, message us and say, like, hey, I want to refund it. Just be like, you have, you know, 95 more nights. And then two weeks later, they're like, wow, I'm so happy you told me to keep it. Right? So. And we did that for a reason. You know, keep track. Trying the product. It does take time to get used to. I mean, I remember our first sample of the one that we run now, and I received it, I was like, oh, my God, it's the worst thing ever. Then I kind of just kept sleeping with it, and I was like, wow, this is really working for me. So it is an expensive ticket. And because we're not brick and mortar and you can't just, like, put it on you, we have to find a way to get it in your home, in your bed, for X amount of nights. Kind of risk free, right?

So we've generated that anxiety behind buying this product.

You know what I mean?

Supposed to be reducing anxiety, but, like, right before I hit that buy now button, I'm like, do I really want to spend $200 on a blanket? Am I crazy? Like, but then like, like, like you say once. It's. Once it's on you. And I'm thinking about buying one right now. I'm not even kidding. So I think the throw blanket is perfect for our downstairs couch.

On that note, like, we get. We actually cause. Sometimes we cause a little bit of anxiety because we're. We're like, the throw has been sold out for six months, right? So. So everyone's like, you know, I ordered this thing two months ago. Like, where is it? And they're like, you're making me more anxious. But it'll be back in stock in February, which is really soon. But yeah, like, there's. That's kind of been our little circle of, like, selling out and causing anxiety and trying to solve it at the same time. But, yeah, that's. That's pretty much it.

I have a question, Aaron. You were talking about brick and mortar, and the reason why I named this episode Dear Manager Mark, are you reading for us? Is because I saw LinkedIn that you used to work at Porch Check, right?

Yeah, yeah, that was my first job when I was 16.

Yes. So let's see if Manager Mark watches or listens to this. How much did the. So just for people that don't know, I have to share the LinkedIn post right here in the chat, because I have it ready. Because I. I really started liking you a lot after this because I Related. I mean, more than I used to, because I related with your story a lot. I've been told so many times, you cannot do this. You're not good for this. This is not gonna happen for you. So when reading, I think you inspired a lot of people that felt just like you, you know, and gave them a push. So tell us, how did you feel when you started selling the blanket in that store? But also, how did you feel back then? And, you know, did that influence the way you guys are really operating in the. In the e commerce world right now?

Like, definitely. You know, I was. I was entrepreneurial when I was really younger. I was always selling, like, hats. I was a lemonade stand kid. You know, I was always on the corner trying to, you know, I bought stuff at the garage sale and flipped it on kijiji or ebay and stuff. So I was always very, like, consumer centric, right? Like, I was always dealing with the buyer. And when I dealt with the buyer, you know, I would never be rude to buyer. It doesn't make any sense, right? For me, it's always like, you know, we're bartering. I'm trading something that you deem more valuable than the money, and you're giving me money which I deem more valuable than this product, and we're just trading. And I never believed in being rude or having. Having that be a negative transaction. It should never be a negative transaction. We should both be happy because we're trading value. And then when I got my first job and I was in this environment and it was almost like, we hate the customer from this specific manager. Because growing up, it was my favorite store and I come in and it was different locations and stuff. The people were so warming and it was so fun. And we would talk sports and I would buy all my sports stuff, and everything was so nice about it. And then when I got this one manager, when I finally got the job at the place that I love, he was unfortunately a little bit miserable and started, you know, showing me the dark side of dealing with people. And, you know, I would see his employees would be very, very angry at each other. There, you know, guys would be. There was no coalition between us. It was so, you know, we're only chasing revenue, we're only chasing sales. And the words, you can't do it, not possible, you don't know what you're doing was just like a constant thing. And I'm coming from a background of, you know, why? Like, there's nothing here I can do that will make this better. And Then eventually, when, you know, when I quit, and if you read the LinkedIn post, you know, he was like, you'll never be a manager. And eventually, when we started our own business, when I was only 18, 19, I made a commitment that I'll, you know, I'll never treat anybody like that. And so till this day, I mean, with Hutch, I think, you know, it's been three years. We've had, like, one or two people leave us, and they left us for different jobs and moved up. They promoted themselves. You know, with Revital, we've had staff. It's been seven years. We've had staff for seven years already. And the biggest thing is, is that I truly don't believe that any of us is better or smarter than the next person. I think that we're all. We're all the same. We just have different experiences, and we grew up differently and different privileges and stuff. I don't think that we should put anyone down or treat people differently based on things they didn't control, like the way I grew up and the way you grew up. Completely different. So I have different experience, you have a different experience. But, you know, I can't pin that against you. You know, it's not your fault. So for us, it's really about being transparent and allowing people to be what they're really good at. You know, I was really good at selling hockey equipment. Played hockey my whole life. You know, it was easy for me. I was a professional at it. Specifically to the people who came in and knew nothing, said, he put me on skis, because he's like, you're gonna fail on skis, so go do skis. Right? And it was like, why.

Such a good story? And I agree completely about treating. Treating your team.

Trust me, I shared your post with a lot of people like me, underdogs. And we all just, you know, felt that thing because all of us, I think that, you know, been through these experiences with people putting us down constantly. One day, you know, that little, little dude is gonna raise up and do something. So, yeah. Very inspiring. And in general, all that I see from you on social media is very positive and very. I think a lot of people look up to you in terms of, you know, finding a bit of, you know, nice push to do, to do things, especially given that you started so young. So I would like to talk because you're so young. I think you guys been two years in a row in force. 30 under 30, right?

No, this is our first, I think twice. Yeah. First time. Yeah.

So how tell Us. Tell us, how did you get there? How did you feel? Because I was so happy when I read that article about it.

Good question. I don't know how we got there. I don't know. We got a call a few months before, before saying that we made a short list of like 3,000 people and their only unit used 3,000 for our category. Sorry, 30 out of 3,000 for our categories, we had a very small percentage of winning. So they asked us a few questions, just making sure that the information that they read on the Internet is true and our age is true and where we're at as a business is true. And then they're just like, well, good luck. We'll announce it on the day of and that's when you'll find out. So we thought that there was, you know, there was a chance. There was, you know, a small, small, small chance. But honestly, looking at the people who've made it in the past, I was like, I don't really think so. But we woke up that morning, in fact, actually, I didn't even see it. I don't, I don't check Forbes every day. You know, I just got a. I got a bunch of messages and I was like, oh, we made it. This is cool. But, yeah, and I don't want to, I don't want to sit here and say it's life changing. So I don't think it's something that everyone should strive, build their whole life around achieving, but it's definitely cool for the day and you get to put it in your LinkedIn bio and people think you're awesome and that's about it.

There's nothing wrong with that.

And then back to work.

Now you gotta. Now you actually have more fuel on the fire. So. Yeah.

Yeah, that's awesome. And congrats. A very big congrats to that. Yes. Cool. So I wanted to go a bit more on what Derek said because Derek inspired me. He has, you know, he does that. So I know you guys are very, very customer obsessed, right? You can tell that by, you know, how you speak to, you know, in general on your social media, what I see on your website, you know, and different aspects of your business. How, how, you know, it's. Look at E commerce, right? There's you guys and then there's like 89% of the industry. And it's real. It's a very small percentage of brand owners that give a damn about their customers. Right. So you guys are here in a very short minority and you really look at people's experiences and at customers, While the other 90, 89, 90% of the industry is looking at revenue and traffic and sales and Amazon and whatever. So why do you think, you know, they are not seeing what you are seeing in the relationship that you have with your, with your customers?

That's a really good question. I think people, it's not even my line. I think it's John, friend of yours, John as well. And then he talks about the customer journey versus the company journey. And you know, if we're sitting here and all of us, you know, we're at a team of six, team of 10, whatever size it is, every day you speak about how we can improve the company, right? You know, what can we do to increase revenue, Increase profit, increase sales, increase clicks, whatever, whatever department we're trying to grow, we're trying to do, we're trying to move that needle. And oftentimes to move that needle, you need to sacrifice the customer experience. It's just, it is what it is. You want to reduce returns, make it harder to return. It's very simple. You want to, you know, you want to increase revenue, increase your price, you want to increase your retention rate, you know, drive down offer after offer every single day to someone who just bought until they buy again. There's ways to do it, right? So if you send an SMS blast every single day and we tested this, unfortunately, you will make more money, I can promise you, but people will hate you, you know, and stop texting me. We had a customer who bought five times from us and during this test of SMSing, almost every day sent to me a text because I usually respond to them when I tried to at least. And he said, I bought from you five times and I'm never buying from you ever again. Just so I never have to receive a text from you. Ouch, right? And he had a good point. Like, imagine I bought five, you know, imagine you bought five times from a company you love and they just keep harassing you with messages, right? But the data was that we were making way more money doing this, right? So it's that whole like company journey versus the customer journey. And it was really, it was really eye opening to us to say, you know what, let's scale back a little bit, right? Because you know, if you know anything about us, 2018, when we first started, you know, we were just like a $600,000 company. Then, you know, in 2019 we scaled to like a $7 million company and then 2020, just under $20 million company. We've been like 2xing or 3xing every year we're just running and sprinting. And just recently we're just like, you know, we do, like, not scale back, but we need to slow down and take care of our people. And it's been huge. It's really been. We've stopped with the harassment. We're only providing value. And then maybe at the bottom of your value. Listen, if you're interested, here's something. If you're interested, you don't need it, and your open rates go up, your sales don't skyrocket. But you have to ask yourself a question that we have to ask ourselves. Just be like, what are we really chasing? You know, what are we really going after? Are we going after doubling our sales again and like, you know, being on some news article? Or are we actually trying to build a connection with people for a really long time? And some of the best brands in the world have been doing it for decades. And for some reason, a lot of our. A lot of the smaller brands like us don't value that. You know, like, Nike is never saying, buy my shoes. They're always saying, check out this amazing athlete. They were so successful. They just won a gold medal. It's. It's. They're not even talking about their shoes. And you're like, wow, I didn't even know about that athlete who grew up like this, went like that. And they did a whole documentary on this one athlete had nothing to do with Nike. But you know that Nike's a part of that vision. And it's really where we're shifting our entire mindset to is our texts are now I sent a text of Lior and I shirtless in Tofino, which is like a surf town in Vancouver, British Columbia. It's the first time we ever been there. We literally sent a text. We're like, we've never been here. This place is beautiful. So if you've never been here in Canada, you've got to come and check this out. No link, no go buy my product. No. By the way, here's 10% off. And that text converted more than any other text we've ever sent, right? And the responses were crazy. Like, I took an RV there. Go visit my cousin. You should. My cousin owns a muscle thing. Go eat in this restaurant. Like, the responses were out of control. We were real, right? And building that connection is super, super important. And yes, it does sacrifice the short term sales, but, you know, the long term ROI non measurable.

All right, I'm holding you or I'm gonna this is where we have to measure it. I agree completely in concept and execution on this retention focus. And I think that brand connection you just described is actually really hard to, to pin down for a lot of people. So like, like you, you know, you, you, you did it right by just saying like, oh, we're in Vancouver, why don't we share this with our, you know, the whole company? Now other organizations, like larger ones, the marketing team couldn't pull that off because they'd have to get buy in from the executives and their view, you know, so if the business was larger, there would be some like pushback from somebody to do something like that. But you can see, you know, kind of the proof is it works really well, it's authentic and it's exactly what you want to be, which is just helping your customer in a general life sense as opposed to selling them over and over. But we need metrics. So how do you, how do you realign the organization from a metric standpoint towards retention? What new metrics are you looking at? Like open rate. Is open rate now preferred over say like sales revenue? Like what, you know, how do you, how do you maybe change those, those goals that are metrics still.

I mean we still, we're still track everything and we still want, you also want to see green over red every month and a bunch of different metrics. The methodology is not, let's ignore metrics. The methodology is how do we improve those metrics from the roots instead of just doing these little tactics on the top. How do we improve it from the roots? We know if we have more engaging content, if we dive deeper and if we segment deeper, we just launch a kids blanket. And we made the mistake actually of emailing, I think was 60,000 people who don't have children.

Yeah, right.

Because improper segmenting. So it's really about not. It's not. The argument is not stop messaging. The argument is stop messaging people who don't want to be messaged, you know, or message people the message that they actually want to receive. So we're, we are, we are tracking open rates, we are tracking sales, we are tracking repeat purchases which are up 25% year over year. We are tracking, you know, how often someone will buy in a year who are most like, who are most likely in our customer journey to buy again, the type of customers that see best fit. We're tracking all of that. But the idea is all of that is important. We do want to improve that over time, but the idea is how can we do that without gimmicks? How can we do that without burning through customers? Yeah. And just destroying our list and hammering people. And, you know, I've got my junk mail. I opened it actually a couple hours ago just, just to look at it. And like, some company emailed me a hundred times in ninety days. And I'm like, what? Like, you didn't offer me anything. You just kept telling me this sale, that sale, this product's good, that product's good. If you buy this product, we'll give you that product. It's like, okay, cool, but what, like, where's my value here? Why do I even buy? Why do I give a shit? You know, the reality is I don't. And most of our customers, as hard as it is to say, they don't give a shit about us. They don't care about our story. They want the product to solve a problem and move on. And it's important to treat everybody differently and create the content. That's the hardest part, which is why I write on LinkedIn all the time. I think creative people are forever gonna win these next 10 years. I mean, being creative is the hardest part. Finding the problem and what the issue is. Diagnosing a pain is easy. Finding the proper solution, the script is. That's the tough part.

I feel like there should be a magazine launch in your future. You know, like, travel the world, reduce anxiety, take the blanket with you. Kind of like lifestyle story type thing where, where your, your blanket is part of the journey. But you're, you're really just helping people live their lives a little bit better. No sales in, you know, at all in the, in the magazine kind of thing?

Yeah, something like that. Right. We're just really just reinventing our content around just being. Just living a little bit better. Right. Just like, if we can help like a half a percent, we'll take it.

Yeah. That's awesome.

So what are the customers saying about. What are the customers. What are your customers saying? How do they feel about your product and the experience with you?

Well, we just learned that actually, but we just got that retention study and it's cool. We're noticing. For years we've been saying we help with anxiety and insomnia, anxiety and insomnia and ADHD and all these surrounding issues. And what we're noticing is that a lot of our customers, yes, they do have anxiety and insomnia, but that's not the main reason they buy the product. They buy the product because they just want to live a little better. They want a normal life. And it was eye opening to Us, because we never even. We never promoted that, live a normal life, you know, live 1 or 2% better. We never promoted that at all. So that's really the reason why our customers are buying and the reason why our retention rate is so high. We don't sell it consumable. Right. So if you sell consumables, 25% retention rate isn't even that good. But we saw a product. The odds are you don't need to buy again, so should last. But the retention rate is high is because I have a product that works for me. But my friend, he's not doing so well, and I'll go and I'll buy one for him. So we have a huge gifting component about our product. And people want their friends and their family and their loved ones to live a better life as well. So it's really cool to see the main needle mover for our product.

It's amazing. Yeah. And I'm really, really happy that you guys found that. And I think it pays off and it plays actually very well in how. Guys, look at John lurking. He sent here and I know, I know he's taking care of.

What's up, John?

I am the. I'm John's biggest terrorist on LinkedIn.

We talk a lot.

So I have a question from our sponsor from Vitex. They sent me a message right now and they were lurking your LinkedIn. So they asked me, how did you guys manage to sell 3,000 pillows in 130 hours?

Oh, yeah, that's a good one. There's a couple secrets to it. None of it has anything to do with tactics. The secret was, is that we built brand for two and a half years before that. So, you know, those who had our product, I think it was like close to 80,000 or 100,000 people had our product already. They were enjoying it. They were engaging with us, they trusted us. And, you know, we had. We essentially hyped it. You know, standard thing to do with a new product. But majority of those 3,000 sales, and I think there was like 2,800 pre orders. Then we sold 200 on just like a couple ads a day off or whatever were our existing customers. And they sat back and said, you know, if hush can make a blanket this good, their pillow must be. You did right. And it's something that's unique about a pillow. Like, you know, I don't remember last time I bought a pillow before ours, but I remember you go to like a sleep store or something and you, you see like a pillow wall of, like, 40 different pillows, and you kind of, like, punch, like, all these different pillows, and you squeeze one, and eventually you squeeze the one you like, and then you buy that one. Right? You can't do that with ours, right? You kind of just, like, saw a photo and you're like, I like it, and you'll buy it. Right? So a majority of our sales were that people trusted us. They believed in us. They knew that if we made the first product of ours, which they trust the next product. It's the same thing with our eye mask, right? We released an eye mask a few weeks later, and that sold, I think, not 3000, but I think it sold like a thousand or 1200. And again, it's one of those things where people just like, well, the pillow was good, and the eye mask is good. Sorry, the blanket was good. I'm gonna get the eye mask. And that's how it really sold it. But we did generate. We did make a new pillow, right? It wasn't a pillow that has ever been done before. We created our own type of foam that is micro. It's microfiber, so it does stay poofy, but it does have memory foam, so it doesn't mold to your head over time. Completely adjustable, which, by our research before we surveyed a lot of our customers, and everyone was just like, I bought a pillow and it's too puffy. I bought a pillow, and it's too thin. I bought a pillow, and it's too hard. So we're just like, why don't we just make a pillow that you can customize exactly how you like it so people can make it poofy and small and easy to wash? All the pain points that we found with the pillows on the Internet, if we just said, if we can take care of those and, you know, we'll have buyers.

That'S awesome.

Pillows seem like a good next step. I feel like you've. You've done a great job expanding the product line, and then you've got this. This recent move into the Paw Patrol blanket. What's it like partnering with a brand on a project like that? How did you. How did the conversation start? How did the deal close? Like, I mean, you're. You know, did you. Did you feel like you. You had negotiating experience or, like, experience in this thing? Or was this just like, I have no idea what I'm doing. Let's figure it out, though?

Yeah, pretty much, right? We. We flew to Montreal in January of 2020, so it worked out just before Corona, and we met with them and you know, kind of told them our idea and you know, they weren't, they weren't super interested. You know, they, they make hundreds of millions of dollars selling just regular twenty dollar blankets at Walmart with the Paw Patrol labels on it. And ours was expensive and it's, it's high end, it's niche and they weren't super interested at all. So you know, our, we came and said, you know, we have data that shows that we sell kids blankets as it is. Right. We have, we have our in house design, we have a spaceship and unicorn and they're doing quite well. So there is kids out there who want a weighted blanket in general, specifically the Hush. Wouldn't it be cool if it had the Paw Patrol design? And it took about a year, but essentially six months throughout, they said, you know what, let's do a trial, let's test one for a year. We were able to, you know, they come with these minimums and stuff. We're able to negotiate our minimums down a little bit. And then they kind of just gave us the rights and they said go for it. They've been actually great. They designed the blanket, they give us all the marketing materials, they helped us with the box. They're very, very, very, very, very particular on how everything needs to be done. But yeah, once we got that, we knew that we can satisfy a huge amount of our customers that are Paw Patrol fans and. Yeah. And then a year later, you know, almost exactly a year later, we launched. In the end of January we launched, which was great.

You've only like this. The company is relatively new. You're making big investments. It sounds like behind the scenes. How do you, how do you juggle all this and the growth of the company?

Yeah, I mean we're, we're completely bootstrapped. So it's just Leora and I, we've never, never taken a dollar from, from any bank or people or some of these new Facebook funding agencies or whatever. We haven't done any of that. They're pretty modest lives. I mean, we don't, we're young, we don't have children yet or we don't have a big mortgage to pay. So we, we keep it really, really lean. We reinvest pretty much every dollar. I think we're on year three and Leora and I just started paying ourselves. We're not paying ourselves anything crazy. We reinvest a ton. You know, we, we've had a huge issue, like I mentioned before, with the throws that we've been out of stock forever. So we made a commitment.

I still call that a good problem.

Yeah, it's champagne problems, right? Yeah, but no problem. We just made a commitment that we're never gonna. We're never gonna be out of stock ever again. So, you know, we sunk a bunch of money into inventory. We haven't kept our promise. We're only about 80% in stock at any given point, which is okay. And yeah, you know, we're. We're investing into new products for those. There's only 100 people listening, 160 people listening. So, you know, we're working on a mattress which is taking my feet five months so far. You know, I wanted to make a mattress that doesn't exist. And if you know anything about the bed in the box industry, there's a lot of mattresses that exist. So creating something completely different, serving our customers. And yeah, you know, we really want to dominate the sleep space because specifically in Canada, and we sell in the US and in Europe actually, a little bit. But in Canada, the guys who've been crushing the sleep space are old. They've been around for a long time, some of them 40 years. And we've spoken to them, actually, and they don't know. They don't. They're moving to E Commerce and they got no idea what they're going on. And there's a huge opportunity for us to come in and actually offer a catered experience that actually takes care of a problem for people. So that's our play, really. And, you know, we still to this day stand as the. The largest weighted blanket seller in the world in terms of variance. We have the most SKUs. We've got blankets from 5 pounds all the way to 35 pounds and 5 pound increments. And no one really does that. Most people offer like 15, 25 and like, that's it.

So does that mean the future of Hush blankets is that you evolve into Hush Sleep? Like, you know, or hush.com is. I bet you've been looking at those.

We just, we just bought Hush ca. So. Okay, there you go. We'll be making that transition, I think. Monday, February 1st. Yeah.

This is amazing. I mean, that's, it's, it's, it's perfect growth. And I think for those listening, the, the. This is called the progression of the business. If you'd started with, you know, with that grandiose vision of launching mattresses and pillows and all those things, you would get distracted trying to build all the products, and you wouldn't have nailed the blanket, which was the reason you're you know, you were able to layer on the other things successfully. So I think 100%.

Yeah, I had to make any recommendation it would be to find that one or two things that you can do really, really, really well and just win it and then eventually build from there.

Yeah, I love that. But okay, so that's. Everything is great. But tell us, when did you mess up in your history?

How much time do we have?

Tell us a story where you messed it up badly and how did you come out of it?

Our biggest mistake ever. We made a lot, but I would say the biggest one, at least the one that hurts me the most, wasn't even. It wasn't even the most. The biggest financial mistake we made. I mean, we made a big one with our Kickstarter. We, you know, in short, we launched a massive Kickstarter. We sold 50,000 blankets all over the world, which is a mistake. We had no idea how to. We didn't even have a VAT number. We couldn't get into Europe. So many mistakes. And then we trusted a shipping logistics company that we didn't vet, which was our fault. We should have vetted, we should have asked around and they said they can do it all, sent them all of our products. And then they sent 13,000 people a when they ordered B and C when they ordered D, and $1.5 million, you know, Kickstarter your margins essentially exactly 100% if you're lucky. So if you mess up the first order, the second one's free with the reship it all again. And we made $0. But that was, that was one mistake. That was a financial one that we made. But the one that hurts us the Most is in 20. 2018, I believe, and now 2018, I believe, was our first Christmas. It was our first Q4 ever. So we had no idea about, like there's, there's golden week. And if you don't know about golden Week, essentially, if you order from China, if you order after September 30th, essentially, you're not getting your stuff in time for Christmas. You could try. You can air ship it, but I mean, by sea, we had no idea. So we knew, okay, it takes, you know, 60 days to get our stuff. If we order in October, it'll arrive by Christmas. We're good, right? Because the math is there little do we know that there's millions of blankets. There's not getting. You're not even getting on a container. So, you know, we pre ordered, we, we sold out in September because we've launched on Amazon prematurely. And it liquidated our stock. So we went to pre order and we told everybody, guaranteed Christmas delivery because our math made sense. 60 days, it'll arrive the first week of December. We have two weeks to ship it out. We're good. And we mass. I think it was like three or four thousand backorders. And it came time for our stuff to arrive and December 15th, I believe it was, our stuff was still on a boat. There was like some sort of typhoon or something going on and we messed up and ended up being 6,500 people's Christmas orders. And you know our. At our price point at like 200 plus, the hush is usually the anchor gift. It's like the, it's like that or the PS3.3 at the time. Right. Or PS4. So for us it was like a lot of people with empty spots under the Christmas tree. We had to remember I hand wrote like 4,000 notes and sent out stickers and T shirts and whatever we did and make it better. So that was our biggest, biggest mistake. And it's funny actually because some of those customers actually bought again. But it was, it was terrible. We had like 45% refund rate. If people ask me all the time why does our Better Business Bureau rating is still a 1.0? It's because of 2019. We had 4,500 people that created a Facebook group. They went together to the BBB and just littered with reviews. Rightfully so. I mean we screwed up. So yeah, that was our, our biggest mistake by mile for sure. We didn't. We underestimated what's going to happen in China for our first time.

I think that's great information for the people listening that are just starting this to order their stuff in time, you know. Thank you. Thank you for sharing.

That mistake you won't make twice.

Exactly.

Yeah.

That's the best kind.

Yeah. It's one that we now we order. Well, well, well. And also your first time delivering, going through customs and all this type of stuff is. It's challenging. It's not as fast. They don't know who you are. So when we actually hit the. We actually hit the border, Canada on the 19th. So we're like, wow, we can, we can express. We'll pay next day shipping. We can make this happen. Little did we know it was our first time. So the border police were like, you're putting weighted sand and pockets and like you have £35,000 worth of. We're gonna start opening here.

No one's selling that many weighted blankets. Come on now.

Exactly so they, they expect hand inspected, which took another two weeks. It was just, it was terrible. But yeah.

That'S, that's crazy. You watch those border Patrol, you know, movies where imagine. That's crazy. Well, I have one more question for you and Derek. Do you want to ask yours or should I ask mine? Mine is petty. Okay. So I wanna, I wanna, it's not a question, but I would like for you to send a message to your competitors.

Right now.

100 people here, it's just the people on all the, you know, platforms send them a message.

Honestly, I, I love my competitors. I think, I think we learn. Well, you know, it's. When we first started, we looked up to them, we watched everything they do and subscribe to all their email lists. And, you know, now it's fun to be, to be the leader because if we do something and then I see like two weeks later, then they do it. You know, we change the way we send our emails. Two weeks later, they're, they're copying our emails. But I mean, a message to them is to keep going. I mean, I wish they'll, you know, what happened in our space was everybody was at the same price point when we first entered and there was no real parity. And then we made a decision early on. Every single time our competitor would drop the price, we would find a way to improve the product, come out the new product, and then we'd raise the price. And then we've done that three times already. We have the 2.0 now. So now that our competitors have went from, I think it was 150, we all started out, they're at like 75 bucks and we're at that, you know, 289 plus. And we've created a huge gap. So my wish, my message is go back on your plan and improve the product and come meet us and provide some level of competition and content. We always say, why are we the only ones putting out content? Why don't our competitors provide some value here?

I honestly don't know. Another weighted bank selling brand that's as vocal as you guys. I couldn't name one.

We spoke to one of our competitors and he's actually a really nice guy and he lived in my building back in Toronto actually. And yeah, yeah. And he's. We'd see him in the elevator all the time and he always, every time I saw him, he'd say thank you because he's like, you drove, you drove up the searches, related blankets, you made it more popular. And then people search for cheap ones. That come by mine. Any money on marketing? I'm just like, are you kidding? Like, do sound thing. He's like, no, no, you do it all. I'm like, I'll just be the cheap version for the people that don't want to buy yours. Yeah, fair enough.

I get your runoff. That's. I think that that's the sign of a market leader, right? Is that you've got people capturing the runoff from, from, from your success. And.

This is awesome. I, I really loved everything about this episode. Episode. So thank you, thank you for being here and sharing, you know, so much with us. Wow, what an amazing episode. Aaron's story is not. I know I don't know too many entrepreneurs that start at 17, 18 in E commerce and you know, they just meet so much success, but still, you know, keep on being humble and awesome and, you know, does a lot for his community. And they are really, really dominating the sleeping industry with Hush. So you know why they're doing that? Because they're focused on customer lifetime value. They focused on building relationships with their customers. So if you do just a bit better, you are doing better than 80% of the E commerce industry. So, you know, take Aaron's example today, invest in building relationships with your customer long term and things are going to change for you. So just do a bit better. Anyway, thank you for listening today. This is Juliana Jackson, AKA the CLV lady. If you want to be on the show or if you want to say hi to me and tell me how amazing I am, reach out to me on LinkedIn at Juliana Jackson and I'll be happy to reply to you. Unless you are a weirdo, of course. This podcast was brought to you by Vitex. Vitex is the first and only fully integrated e commerce marketplace and OMS solution that offers fastest time to revenue and no upgrades ever. So go ahead, check them out. Vtex. Com.