How is CROSSNET taking over the world with Chris Meade.

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 Valentin Radu, CEO of OmniConvert. Thank you for tuning in today for a new episode of E Commerce Growth Stories.

Do you like snooping around? I know I do.

I don't know.

Did you ever wonder what Sony uses to power their e commerce business? Or Coca Cola or Motorola or other big names in E commerce and retail? Well, today the secret is gonna be revealed and I am talking about Vitex. Vitex is the first and only fully integrated commerce marketplace and OMS solution that offers fastest time to revenue and no upgrades like ever. So if you're an E commerce brand and you're looking to find a software that can really become a powerhouse to your business, providing you the best go to market speed, flexibility, daily updates and reports and overall platform stability and agility, you really have to check these guys out. So make sure you go to visit vtex.com that's vtex.com today and give that ecommerce business the boost.

We have a super special guest who I've been trying to I guess get on the same calendar with for some time. We have Chris Mead here and I hope I didn't mess up your last name because I tend to do that. Cool. So Chris is the co founder of Crossnet. Actually I think it's you and your brother Greg because I follow both of you on, on LinkedIn and Crossnet is actually a sport that has been taken over the US and Canada and Australia. I've seen I think a coup friend, Adam McDonald talking about you guys everywhere and we just wanted to have you here so that our European, you know, audience learn more, learns more about Crossnet. So please, thank you for being here and tell us what is Crossnet?

Thank you. Yes, I'm Chris, I'm one of the co founders of Crossnet. It's the world's first four way volleyball game. So we've invented a four way net and takes the child to game of four square which European. Europe's may not know about it. It's a childhood game here in America essentially don't let the ball land in your square. It's a ball lands in your square year out. So it's volleyball in the air but to keep it alive. So it's really, really growing fast and we're in over 3,000 stores here in the States and quickly growing over to Europe and Australia as well.

Yeah. So, Chris, first of all, a bit of housekeeping. Can you turn your volume?

Yeah, I was just. I was thinking the same thing.

Because it's an echo and we don't want.

Yeah, and we don't want.

All right, let's see. Can you say something? Let's see if it's. It's okay right now. No, we can't hear you. It's. It's actually hard to. To hear you, but I guess that's because of your mic. Maybe if either two tabs opened. Either. You have to.

You're so smart. I had this open twice. Yeah, my bad. Europe. Love you guys. All right, cool. I'm a sports guy. All right, cool. So cross net, world's first four way volleyball game ever. This is so much smoother. Thank you for calling that out. Two volleyball nets that intersect rapidly growing in over 3,000 stores. We just rolled out to Walmart, which is amazing and completely self funded with literally a dream. Back four years ago, we had no idea what the hell we were doing. We're just three kids out of college and we said, why not us?

Excellent. So how, how, how have you come up with, with this idea around the Crossnet? So how, how it started?

Yeah, so we. I was working a full time job, cold calling for Uber. So I launched Uber Eats, which is like a food delivery platform here.

Yeah, we have E as well.

Yeah. Cold calling restaurants. Do you want to be on the app? Do you want to be on the app? I'd be doing that 10 hours a day. It sucked. I hated it. But I made a lot of money. So I came home one summer and my brother and my friend were all on the couch and they didn't want a real job either. I was sick of my job. And we were 20, they were 21. I was 23. And I kind of felt like I needed to retire already. Right. I was so bored with the work. And we just wrote down ideas all night long, like, what can we make? What can we make? What can we make? And sports were on in the background. We're a big sports family growing up. And wrote down four way volleyball. And we googled it. We assumed somebody would have already done it. And there's not a single thing on the Internet. So the next day we woke up, it was like 4 in the morning. We had an idea. Like we went to bed real quick. We woke up, went to Walmart and we bought two badminton nets and cut out the center and is rigged up a prototype in our backyard. And that was the beginning of Crossnet.

I think it's amazing how you started. So what was on the second spot on that list of possible ideas? Do you remember?

Yeah, it's crappy, so it's like a charger. So you plug it in. So it's like a phone charger, but there's like a speaker built into it. So while your phone charges, music comes out. I don't know. It wasn't a good idea.

So. Yeah. So you went into the winning. Winning decision, let's say.

Exactly.

And in, in terms of the, let's say go to market strategy. How, How? I mean, before the go to market strategy, have you made like a prototype on how it was it? You've said, okay, let's do it how you've built it.

So we didn't have a go to market strategy. We, we built the, the prototype in our backyard, right? We cut out the center of the net, we rigged it together. And I remember it was balancing on the side of my mom and her garden. And then we had like 20 kids over playing, taking pictures. And then my friend Mike, who's our co founder, he actually has a, an engineering degree. So he put the blueprint together in cad, which saves us a lot of money. And then the next thing was, how do we find a manufacturer to make it? Because between the three of us, we had less than $20,000 to our name. We're all small farm town. It's not like we had, oh, here's a hundred thousand, let's risk it all on a company. It was take every dollar you have in your bank account. Let's try to make this work. And if not, we're back to our real jobs. So we took that blueprint, we went onto Alibaba, we would type in like volleyball net supplier, and then we would message them and say, hey, we have this cool idea. We didn't want to message too many people because you didn't want to wake up and have your idea stolen. So we'd message a few and say, hey, can you make this? And then they're like, oh, of course we can make it. How much money you have for me? And we finally found one that was kind of willing to work with our budget.

Excellent. So how many of them have you done? First time?

So the first time we made right around 100. So that cost almost all of our money. We had very bad terms and it cost us a lot because we were only making so little. But we told that lady, we said, hey, please just work with us. In three years, you're going to be so Happy. And now we're the biggest company in their entire factory. And we still work with her today. So we've made, like, well over 100,000 since. So it's been wild.

Excellent. So the first customers, or how you. How you've met. I mean, they shipped 100 pieces of Craftsman. What. What happened afterwards? How the first customers.

Nothing happened. So we launched the website. We got super excited, like everybody does when they launch a website, and nothing happened. Nobody bought it. Nobody cared. We had like 10 viewers, and we're like, okay, we spent 20,000. We gotta get these out. So we. We moved to Miami. We moved to Miami, and we'd go to the beach every day, and we'd set up crossnet. And that's when things started to actually change. People would come, they'd be like, what is that? Everyone stares at it, takes pictures, and then they play with us all day long. And you guys would have a blast, right? And you'd say, hey, Chris, can I buy this from you? Or we'd be trying to sell it to you and be like, hey, take it home for 100 bucks. It's really 150. Take this one that you used for a hundred. We would then sell it to that person. We would get content all day long. I'd be running around with my camera and my phone to then go upload to Facebook to run ads on at night. But more importantly is you guys would take it home to wherever you're from, and you would start playing, and then sales would be coming in from your neighborhood because you're doing the same that I did in Miami. So that's how we got the first hundred out. And now it's like we have a hundred thousand out. So whenever people are playing, like, these Facebook ads are great, but this, like, viral web is happening whenever somebody has a net out because somebody's getting exposed to it. So it's really. It's really crazy.

Yeah, that's.

It's smart. It's crazy and smart at the same time.

Yeah, exactly. So it's been. Yeah, so that. That's how it first started. I remember these girls from New Jersey, they loved it so much, and they took it home and they played every day on the weekend. And what do you know? Every weekend we'd get sales from that one town of all the places America be that one pound buy.

That's crazy. And how. How did you guys got out of the. Of out of the US because I spoke to Adam McDonald some time ago, and he was like, did you see these guys? Did you see how cool they are. Like, yeah, I'm following them on LinkedIn. He was like, no, but this is so cool for Australia. So it's like a huge jump. So probably was like the network effect also in terms of how you guys expanded outside of the United States. So how are people outside of the United States responding to crossnet?

They love it. So far, we definitely haven't spent as much marketing dollars. Nowhere close to like educate the consumers on how it's actually played. I think right now when I think of like where we are in Europe and Australia, it's still that year one of, oh, this is cool, how do I play? And we're not there yet. We're now in America. People get across net, they know how to play, they know the rules, they know it's a sport. So we're getting there. But it's, it's exciting. And it's all been built really on LinkedIn distributors reaching out, saying, hey Chris, I'd love to carry you in my store. We have 30 locations here. And I'm like, I don't even have 30, 30 crossnets there yet. So we, we're working out deals with like 3pls or warehouses. Adam's been great with us so far. So slowly but surely it's, it's nice to know that we're not going anywhere.

So this is again the. Yeah, yeah. But again, see, this is the power of LinkedIn because a lot of people think that LinkedIn doesn't work. But for the ecommerce industry, I think LinkedIn is like super instrumental for brands, for consultants, for whoever. So a lot of people don't understand how massive and important LinkedIn is in their day to day. Yeah. Because a lot of people still don't believe it. And I think it's really cool because you and the guys at Hajj and Erica, I think you guys are like the poster, you know?

Yeah.

Like all of us watch you, you know, on, on social media. And I think like, it's so awesome to see how much you guys have grown. And I think you guys were also in Forbes 30 under 30 together with Lior and Aaron. Right?

Yeah.

So how was that for you? How did that happen?

It was amazing. It's crazy. Like I tell those guys, like, we grew up in a very small farm town. Like One Stop Light, one restaurant that only served pizza. The gas station 30 minutes away. The movie theater was an hour away. Like people from our town, like they're, they're mostly still in our town. Right. So like have our face and our name and like the inside of Forbes, like, that's wild. And we still feel like we're, we're very. We're lucky. Right. We had a crazy idea and we made it work. Obviously, there's a ridiculous amount of work we've put into it, but it's still super humbling. Like, I have friends that I'm just like, wow, that person is actually my friend. And they text me back. Like, it's, it's kind of cool. So the Forbes thing has been great. It's been great for recognition. It's been right around the same time we, like, we rolled out to Walmart, so kind of help with the success there as well.

That's, that's for sure. So if we can get back a bit, Chris, on how you've diversified the channel so you've put the product in front of the consumers. Let's say the consumers were seeing it, they loved it, they want it, they bought it. That was the, the network effect. But besides the network effect, have you put some other things on the fire, let's say other, other channels, how you've started to diversify because you, you were, you, you've said that you were doing also social media and Facebook and filming down and how that went.

Yeah. So right now we're sold on our Shopify store, which is our first channel. We have Amazon, which is a very, very large channel. And there's pros and cons that come to that. We could spend hours talking about that and then the retail diversification across all of our stores. On the paid side, Facebook is still our number one acquisition strategy. Do I want it to be? No. But do I have any other choice? Not really. That's where the impressions are. That's where we hit most of the moms and dads. That's kind of our core demo. Trying to grow it into like an actual sport where somebody like myself goes out and plays a few times a week. But a lot of the consumers on Facebook are our moms and dads who have $150 to actually buy the game. Right?

Yeah.

So Facebook, Instagram, are big two. Starting to diversify with Snapchat and Pinterest. And then as of late, we just started doing out of home marketing. So there's billboards that we have up right now in Salt Lake City, in Chicago and San Diego, and then we're going to be doing commercials and morning news starting like in a few weeks. So a lot of different marketing strategies. Whole goal is to build top of funnel awareness to Crossnet and then lower funnel is get them where they're shopping, whether it's on Amazon or dot com or the retail stores.

Excellent. So Chris, if you can disclose this growth pattern, like first year, second year it went like it skyrocketed instantly or.

How this growth space really slow. So the first year we did $87,000 in sales. We pretty much were like we should go back to our full time job. The next year we did two and a half million last last year we did over eight figures and this year we're shooting for like 20 mil. So yeah, that's not bad. Quick, quick growth when you look at it. But the first three years were very challenging. When we didn't take a single paycheck for two years, we didn't pay ourselves a damn thing. Every dollar went straight back into the business. We'd buy what we'd sell one Crossnet and we'd buy two back. And we just kept doing that. We own 100 of the company, no investors, nobody but ourselves has any, any stake in Crossnet.

Excellent. So Chris, regarding this, this bootstrap strategy, the do you think it, I mean it crossed your mind to get funding in the second year and how you've said no?

Yeah, it's definitely been challenging. Especially I think it would be less challenging if we didn't have the relationships with retail stores that we do. Anybody who doesn't work with big box doesn't really fully understand, hey, Walmart will ask you for, here's an actual real life example. Walmart bought 10,000 cross nets. That's over millions of dollars of inventory. I have to then front the inventory for 60 days. It sits on the shelf for 90 days and then they don't pay me till after that. So I'm out of cash for a long, long time that I need to operate my business and that's going on concurrently with Dicks and Wegmans and Shields and all these other massive stores. So there's been times where we really needed the cash. But thank God, like we invested the money wisely into the business. We didn't, none of us. I live in a small apartment complex. It's not like we have a lot of assets. So that big payout and that reward will happen one day. It's just like how do we be patient and keep reinvesting into the business until then?

Chris, first of all, you're amazing. Yeah, first of all, you're amazing that you managed to do all of those things. But I'm sure that the connection between you and the founders was Truly amazing as well, because as you've said, you weren't alone at the beginning. So what was the dynamic with your co founders and how it helped the company to grow?

Yeah, so in the beginning, we all moved to Miami together. We lived in a one bedroom apartment. We just wake up and go to the beach every day. But now we're all siloed. We all live remotely, which is nice, actually. We all work better remotely. Once a quarter or every few months, we'll get together and we'll just nerd out for hours on end. It's awesome. But the cool thing, I think the great thing about crossnet's growth has been all the founders are so, so good at doing different things. Right. I'm the sales and marketing guy. Mike's the engineer. Greg does a little bit of everything, like on the legal side. So I'm not stepping on Mike's toes, I'm not stepping on Greg's toes. And all three of us are just like, going up together. If I had a partner who's like, looking over my shoulder every second, nothing would ever get done because we constantly be like, arguing over stuff. So for me it's like, hey, boys, we're in Walmart. Great. And then the other guy's like, oh, we got a new product out.

Cool.

Like, so we're just all working together rather than working in, like, conflict, which is really good. And that's been, that's really been the way the company has been since 2017. So, like, we just keep adding headcount under us. We just hired our 20th employee, which is.

Oh, wow.

Also crazy. So now we're, we're building teams under us to support. Rather than me going to be like, yo, Greg, I need help for the next week on this project. He's like, no, you have a team of eight people now to help you. So that's been great.

I think. Yeah, that's the most challenging and exciting part is when you get to scale outside yourself. And I think that's like the dilemma of each entrepreneur to, you know, each other people how to do stuff. And then, you know, you focus on other sides of the business while your team is maintaining, you know, the, the lights on. And yeah, that's, that's the hardest thing to do. I think people don't understand how hard it is to let go of the control and let other people do it. Yeah. So we have a lot of entrepreneurs listening to this. I need to ask you this. So what were your top three challenges as an entrepreneur? Because I want to see if we relate on them. But yeah, what were your challenges and how do you overcome, how did you overcame, you know, those challenges, but also how, you know, are you still working on overcoming them?

I could answer that in a few different ways. So some of the things the way I decide. So we can answer this in a few different ways. Like I just said, when I decide to hire for a role, I need to like have be doing the same grunt work like hours and hours a day. So if I see myself doing like the same project four or five hours a day, I got to get off my plate because somebody else could be doing it and my time should be spent wisely. But the biggest challenge for us was supply chain. None of us fully understood how to manage the supply chain. Right. We knew how to get cross sense to America, but we didn't know lead time. We didn't know how to do that. So we got a much wiser and older guy on our team. Kurt. Shout out Kurt. If you're watching this, amazing. He's been doing it for like 40 years. So he crushes it and just like make sure we're never out of stock. Make sure we're shipping Crossnets to Australia, to Canada, to Europe. What one do we ship first? What factory do we pull from? We have like seven factories now, so it's a lot of work there. Supply chain was a nightmare. Something we were all terrible at hired for that. Secondly, I'm good at getting in the door. I built all of our relationships with all of our wholesalers. So Walmart, Dick's, Dillard's, all those deals I did myself.

Cold calling cold.

LinkedIn. LinkedIn actually.

Yeah, but the training to be experienced.

Exactly. So I'm good at that. But like, do I know the first thing about like an end cap and using allowances to like advertise in the store? No, not, not at all. So I've recently hired a global head of sales who's also much more senior and better looking and he has a good, great rapport. Great rapport with all the buyers. So he's. That was a real. To your question, like I built all of these great connections with like Walmart and Target. Like how do I offload that onto somebody and trust them to not damage the relationship? And that's off because that's like all of our money coming in from these stores. I give it to the wrong person. He just screwed all of those relationships and crossnets back to 2018 version of Crossnets. So yeah, that was really tough. And then third is just hiring the right People, that's the challenge for every company. But I want everyone to wake up and like be happy to go to work. I don't want to be like, oh, I gotta work for Chris again. Like, I don't want to like our, our company is actually fun. I think everybody will actually say that nobody has a boss that's overlooking them. Nobody's micromanaging anybody. Do you want to go to the gym at 11 o' clock and come back at 12? Go ahead. Like I don't care as long as you get your work done. So like keeping that crossnet culture, I want, it's important that I could go and have a beer with everyone on my team. But at the same time they also need to be the best person for the job. So it's a tough way to manage that and try to find that perfect fit.

And how do you find that perfect fit? That's my first one.

Yeah, tell us your hire.

So we just did a job post on LinkedIn. It got 499 applications in under one hour for a graphic designer. So it's like how do I even go through all 499 people? Right? Like you can't. So easiest way was just to vet out for like reckonable, like recognizable. It's too early here. Recognizable places that I've like seen. Right. Like one guy was like working at Foot Locker and Finish Line, those are sports brands. Kind of coincides well with what Crossnet's got going on. So he gets an interview, but after that it's like he meets with me, he meets with our entire team, which is like eight folks. We put them through a paid project. So for graphic design was like, hey, we'll pay you 50 or $100. Do a one hour project for us. I need to see how you work with the brand before doing free work. So come do some, some work for us and then from there if it's a vibe, it checks out, you just got to pull the trigger. Because there's been so many times where we were too hesitant because we interviewed 200 people that our perfect person actually got lost. So you have a good feeling, go for it. Think life always changes. Like nothing is permanent. None of these people are going to be working for Crossnet for 75 years, hopefully. But like life changes if, if you think they're a good fit, you just got to go for it.

I want to know if Valentin thought I was a good fit when I came up and he hired me.

Yeah, it's probably still regret was you were an appearance that's for sure.

Yeah, we, we. I've seen a lot in E commerce because I'm friends with a lot of brand owners.

Yeah.

And they're all like the supply chain thing is real. Like those are the biggest issues with shipping times and customer support and tickets and mad people. And if you don't have a good shipping, you know, situation going on, you're gon lose a lot of money and a lot of, I guess, credibility when it comes to your brand. And it's so hard because people are expecting you to just, you know, ship like that. And it's hard to compete with Amazon. Right. When it comes to shipping. Shipping. So how do you handle stuff? Like I get, I get it. You guys have more warehousing options at the moment. But like are you still managing to ship on time where people are still hesitant?

No. It's tough. And like you, as we grow, we become more and more. I always call it a legit brand. Right. Like we're cross nets from my basement, they're crossing it from the warehouse. But when people shop online, they expect their stuff to be here within 48 hours thing.

Yeah.

Because Amazon. Right.

Because yeah.

And it's a crazy precedent that we have. But yeah. So we are fully stocked on every product besides H2O. So H2O is our new water, cross net, four way, volleyball in the pool.

I've seen it. That's something I would do.

It's so much fun. And so we sold out really quickly. And normally we would have been restocked in like three weeks, no problem. But supply chain is slowing down. Everything cargoes triple the price, quadruple the price and four times as slow. So right now we're in stock of every item besides H2O customers can buy right now with the expectation that their order ships June 7th. So that's been going on for about three weeks now. Hasn't created too many. We've canceled, we had to cancel like 20 orders or so. Which is fine at the scale that we're doing. But the best way, the best thing you got to do is just over communicate and be honest. In the beginning you, you're starting your company and you're like, do I want to say that at the end it's gonna bite you in the ass. You gotta just be honest. Like this is the date, June 7th. If it comes sooner, amazing. Nobody's gonna complain about it coming sooner. June 7th. This is our like our stretch goal. Like we're gonna hit it this date and you over communicate, you say it on the website. You say it in order confirmation, say it in follow up email. You do it a million times just to make it clear because you got to build that trust. Because you lose their trust once, they're never going to come back.

That's true, that's true. And this is something that a lot of people still don't do and have like weird ass shipping times and don't want to communicate and like just be honest because if someone wants your product, they'll wait for it. Like they spend 200, $300, they're gonna wait for it. It was the same, you know, like it's, I think this is the biggest problem right now in the, in the industry with the, with the supply chain and the shipping. But also another problem that I see and you touched about, you touched on it a bit is finding talent to hire. And, and a lot of my friends that are, you know, brand owners have very big issues finding talent and understanding, you know, if it's the right fit. And they make like sometimes bad decisions when it comes to hiring people. So do you have like some sort of things that you look at, you know, when it comes to say, okay, this, I'm going to work with this guy. So what, what are like some things that you look at?

Yeah, I don't really care much about a resume unless it's like a really prestigious, prestigious place they've worked at. Typically finding Friends of Friends has been really successful for us. Like Aaron and Liu are for example. I could go text them now and say, hey, have you have a graphic designer you've worked with in the past? And I'd much rather trust their recommendation because they're at a similar scale to us than me just blindly accepting an applicant from the Internet. But Friends of Friends have been good LinkedIn and the biggest thing for us has been projects. I know I hate being on an interview and doing projects, but if we're paying you for it, like it doesn't make me feel like a bad guy. I'm paying you what you, yeah, I'm paying you for your time. It's a way that I can make sure it's a good fit and I'm not rolling the dice as much where they come in. Like hired a social media manager, she made us a mock post and she made us a mock video. Like that's what you're going to be doing in a day to day. So like show me, show me your work. And it was awesome. And she got hired. So like that's kind of how we, we set the stage for Those things.

Yeah. Chris, in terms of the customer experience, you've said that it's clear that you need to deliver on the expectations and that the expectations are being set by Amazon, which has these crazy standards. But how do you measure or track or monitor how happy the customers are until. But let's touch a bit the topic of customer experience and how this is fueling your future growth.

Yeah. So, one, it's tough, right? You're not going to hear back from every customer. I absolutely wish I could pick up the phone. In the early days, that's what we did, actually. We pick up the phone and we'd call. When we got 20 orders a day, we'd call everyone and say, hey, where'd you find Crossnet? Are you enjoying it and do you need help? That's not scalable at this point. But what we really do is, one, we look for Instagram posts all the time. We try to communicate with anybody who tags Crossnet, message them, how are you liking it? How could it be better? Do you need anything? Try to help them there. Secondly, we use a tool called Okendo, which is a review tool. It allows us to send out reviews really, really quickly for us. I've struggled with Yotbo and Bazaar Voice and all these other tools. Okendo has been the most affordable one and also the best one for me so far. So it lets us gather a lot of reviews. And, yeah, it's worked really great. So great way to get feedback. Not always the best feedback that makes your company better. And then lately it's been going out. So we just had an event that's going to air on ESPN in a few weeks. So it was our first ever tournament. So we literally just had. It was back like the early days, right? You go to the beach, you talk to customers. We had hundreds of people playing Crossnet. What did you like, what didn't you like? How can we make this better? I sent out an email yesterday to all the people who played in the tournament. It's our first tournament ever. How can I make this better for you? And I got responses back and I'll actually take them and try to make them better. But it's just as a brand owner, you got to realize you're not always the smartest one or you may be missing obvious things that other people just maybe noticing, but you haven't because you're so in the weeds.

Yeah, I, I think it's, it's amazing how, how, how your, your, let's say, strength, strength point is around being empathic. And, and listening first and then, and then let's say, acting on this. Chris, we, we are, let's say obsessed about the, the NPS and uh, and tracking down the net promoter score and then uh, let's say looping this back into the, into the growth machine, let's say, because mainly that's what you, you've done so far. You, you've made a great experience and then you, you've let your future customers see that great experience and that got amplified. So, so you, you, you've made it from the, from the real life. What's your, what. Which are your most important things? Let's say, that show you that you're on the right path. Let's say which are your most important KPIs or metrics or numbers? Because there's a fluid of things that matter and people are hypnotized about CTRs, ROAS, whatever. But tell us, I don't know if you would be looking at only 2, 3 metrics, which are the ones that show you that Crossnet is doing well.

Profitability, most important, especially a cell phoned company, you need to be profitable, otherwise the lights don't stay on. Second is it goes back. So we used to do like a cpa, right? Like what's our acquisition cost? But now it's tough to, to really look at that because Crossnet's 150. My Facebook acquisition cost is 200. The normal, normal perspective is, Chris, you lost 50 bucks. But I'm like, no, that's one Facebook sale. We then have three Amazon sales, we have five Walmart sales. And all of that is off that 200 cost. So like this omnichannel number. So we have a thing called Mersheet. So long as that's in the green and we have a certain number that we set. Money in, money out, we track every week. As long as the money in is more than the money out, we're doing good. So that's the most important thing for me, going back to profitability and then customer satisfaction. I want people playing crossnet. My big thing for the company is like, this is a novice idea. It's going to be new in Europe and new in Australia. Hell, it's still new here in the States. I don't think of Crossnet like it's going anywhere. You see a basketball hoop, you're not like, oh, that's a basketball hoop. You're like, oh, that's basketball hoop. I want you to look at a crossnet in 10 years and be like, oh, that's a Crossnet.

Cool.

It is what it is. I think we're going to be a sport for. My kids are going to play crossnet. My kids kids will play crossnet. We're building a real sport. It's not an Internet fad for a few years and I'm going to go live on a yacht somewhere. This is a real sport forever.

I love it. And by the way, tell us about your other products. So you've started with this Crossnet and then you went on doing a net for the pools. Right. For the water. And what's next on your agenda?

Yeah, so we have Crossnet. We have Crossnet doubles, which is a normal cross nets, four players. It's more of a smaller version of the game. Doubles it a team sport. So twice as big, twice as many people. That's where we're really going to grow the sport. H2O and then we also have the Wilson optics ball. So anybody who plays professional volleyball knows that you have to play with this one ball. Like this is the one ball you play with. We have a co branded one with Wilson. So that's really exciting. Kind of legitimizes the sport. And also like just looking at our company infrastructure, we have 20 employees. We're obviously got the supply chain thing down now. We're pretty smart. We have a bunch of products in the pipeline that I can. Yeah, but the whole goal is like grow Crossnet and then why can't we be a sporting manufacturing company for the long term that makes innovative ideas that comes out with a good idea every year and it's. And it breaks the Internet like that's the goal.

Yeah, Find a pattern and then amplify it.

Exactly.

I love it. And I think it's like you guys are also trying to build the whole category even if it's sport, because it's not like only with us in software because we're trying to do the same thing but with customer value optimization. But you guys in sports, I think think it's a harder entry barrier than it is for us in software because sports is like very standardized. Even if, you know, a lot of things happen and a lot of, you know, new things appear, sports is still very standardized. It's like a team. It's football, it's soccer, it's rugby and basketball. But you guys like are like coming with something and just like completely, you know, blowing everyone apart. And I think it's, I think it's awesome. So we have a question from our sponsor from Vitex and they're asking you guys if you had managed to. They're from Latin, from Brazil. So they're asking you guys if you had sold any cross nets in South America so far.

Yes, we have. Not to the scale that I would like. It's funny because in South America what we're seeing is that the $150 price point is a bit too expensive for the average consumer. We're looking at talk, and this is not official yet, but we're looking at making a more reduced cost item to go into these markets because Mexico, South America, they would love Crossnet, but we.

Have a lot of fun.

Growing up, I barely had 150 to buy something like this. How could I expect somebody in these countries to purchase that? So we're looking at a quicker barrier to entry, like more cost affordable. And I think that's how you're going to really grow the sport. Like our margins may not be as great, but hell, we might sell 10 times the amount and the sport becomes way more legit because right now it's only $150 and a lot of the world doesn't have $150, especially in these times.

It's true, it's true. And it's something that a lot of brands forget, you know, because especially if you're an American brand and you're used to USD and you're used to American prices and you know, the, I guess the wages there, when you look at other from South America or even Europe, like Eastern Europe, where we are like, I, I, I, I've been gonna say this until the guys. So there's this website called Pit Viper and they're selling like the nicest. I love those guys. So I was trying and I'm complaining in every podcast episode. Maybe they like I was trying to do the, you know, abandoned card for a 20% off. They wouldn't give me a. Because I know all the tricks obviously. So I was trying everything to get a 20% off because their PR high for me in Romania, it's like I was doing like the shipping and everything. It would have been like $200. But for me, $200 is like almost half my rent because that's how cheap it is here. I'm like, I'm not gonna spend half my rent on a pair of, you know, shades. So that's, that's, that's the thing with E commerce brands. Like when you sell outside your, your backyard, you have to be very conscious of the culture there and the social economic situation. So it's, it's indeed like a bet you Take like it's gon margins in the beginning, but if the adoption is big, then your margins are gonna get, you know, get back. And I think that you guys have a huge opportunity because there's like beaches here in Croatia, in Italy, in Greece, in Romania. Even in here in Romania. Like I would see you guys of.

Of season.

Yeah, exactly. Because I would see you guys in Mamaya. Yeah, like I will see you guys in Mamaya, which is a huge beach station here.

Yeah, they expanded. The beach actually is now larger than in Barcelona. Yeah. Anyways, so Chris, I have a very, very important, I don't know, question or thing to pick your brain on. What is the problem with the E Commerce at this moment? Because you're one of the winners and you, you've made. It sounds like when you, we look at you, you're so happy, you're so cheerful, you're, you're, you've done it. But nobody sees your struggle in the year 1, 2 and 3 even. Nobody sees the work. Nobody sees the, the rejections from a lot of, I don't know, whatever.

Nobody cares about the rejection. Sadly. They care about it afterwards. But when you're in it, nobody wants to help you. So it's like, it's tough. But yeah, that's a big issue with E Commerce right now is like there's a lot of people that are trying to make it. I know with the iOS changes that affects a lot of people, it seems like. I actually don't think you got your full question out. But it seems like the lower priced items are the ones having the largest issue right now. Fortunately for us, with 150, like an AOV of 165, we're doing all right. I had my own problems, right. Like we have over diversification. We're in 3,000 stores. How do I track that? It's impossible. So like how do I track money into Facebook and I get 11 sales elsewhere? Like did Walmart people buy from my ad or not? I have no idea. But yeah, E commerce is getting more and more difficult, especially with the supply chain issues. Like we're kind of weeding out these drop shippers, which in my opinion is a good thing and forcing the, forcing the building of brand. But it's tough. Building a strong brand takes a long, long time. You can't cut shortcore, you can't take short cuts. And also like people all. I think there's a very shitty notion that you need VC funding to like build a company these days. Like you need to take money. I think that really sets a, a bad precedent. Like if you gave the 23 year old and 21 year old kids of Crossnet $200,000, but I lit that money on fire, I would have no idea what I was doing. You need to like, actually get your hands dirty before you just get a trustworthy responsibility. Yeah, it's crazy. Like, no, these companies aren't going to be profitable because you don't know what the hell you're doing. So, like, you gotta. It's tough. And for us, like the first two years, I took jobs on upwork, I built people's websites, I was mentoring. I didn't know what the hell I was mentoring, but I was mentoring somebody and. But I just kept the lights on. I did anything and everything to keep the lights on, knowing that two or three years from now, I'm gonna be able to live the life I want. Like, after this call, I'm going to the coffee shop. I can't wait. I'm going to coffee shop. And I don't have a boss yelling at me, like, that's worth all. That's worth more money than I could ever ask for.

Yeah. So the struggling moment took you here.

Two years of struggling, no paycheck, nothing. Literally, not a dollar from the company. You see, oh, our Shopify is coming in. Oh, we made 10,000 bucks today. No, I didn't make 10,000. The company did. That's going all back to the company. And it was tough, but it was.

Really worth it, clearly. Yeah, I think it's awesome because I, you know, these are the problems when you're. I call this, like, it's a dilemma that you have as an entrepreneur. Like, can I, can I pull this shit until the end? Can I really pull it? You know, like, that's the thing. And you're like constantly sabotaging yourself and saying, I don't know, can I do this? Maybe I should. So it's like some days you wake up and you're like super motivated. You're gonna do that. And some days are like, oh my God, what am I gonna do? Like, everybody, everything is falling apart. So it's just like a whole roller coaster. So a lot of people are trying to glamorize entrepreneurship and glamorize the hustle, but the hustle is actually the work that you put in, not what, you know, what people actually think it is. So that's, it's, it's insane. And I'm just like happy for you guys and I hope you guys will come. You know, we will actually get to use your products to volunteer. Maybe we should get a crystal and go to the beach with the team in a team building.

Let's do that.

Yeah, I think we should do that. Maybe we can convince the people to come in the team building we're trying to do.

You do ship to Romania, right?

We do.

Okay. Because we will advertise for you on.

The beach in Romania. Like, let's do this.

Yeah.

No, it's cool. Thank you. This is awesome. So every time I ask when we have a brand owner coming in, do you want to give some advice to people that are actually just entering E commerce right now? And they were like, in your shoes when you were 23 and you didn't know what you were doing. So what would be like, the top advice you could give to them so they don't. They stick there to the. To their dreams.

So the landscape's definitely shifted since when I started a few years back. But it would be make small calculated bets and keep. Keep testing a lot. Like, we started with $50 on Facebook a day and then see what results that got and set like real KPIs. In the beginning for me, it was always, how much does it cost to get 100 visitors to my site? And what is my conversion rate off of those hundred visitors? And then there's two things you can do from there. Make your site better to get them down into the funnel quicker or make your advertising either better or change who you're advertising to. And so each day I would push it, how much to get 150 visitors, how much to get 200 visitors? Am I more profitable or am I less profitable when I had 100 compared to 200? And we just keep doing that every day. And it took months, if not years to go from 100 to a thousand visitors, but then we went from a thousand to five thousand and five thousand to ten thousand. It's just start scaling, like, small and smartly. And then also even advice as like. And I gotta think, I gotta reflect on this sometimes too. Like, you got to treat every dollar like it's your own money coming out of your own bank account. Like, would you be spending this if it wasn't your company's money? Because if you wouldn't, then you probably shouldn't be spending that money. And as you get bigger and bigger, you kind of lose track of that. And I'm sure as hell guilty of that. But, like, in the early days, every dollar counts. Otherwise your company's not going to get off the ground. And then the last thing I Always say is like, I'm literally just a kid from Connecticut, from a farm. I grew up with chickens and apples and like, I'm not a tech kid. I didn't come from Silicon Valley. My parents worked at a gas station. Like, you could do it. Like, the Internet lets anybody do it. Like, nobody is better than anybody on the Internet. The Internet gives everybody the same power. So as long as you have the grit, you could do it.

I love that. And it's true. It's true. It's awesome. Well, thank you so much for being here, Chris. If anyone that's listening wants to get a crossnet, and I highly advise you to crossnet game.com, that's crossnetgame.com for the people listening only and not watching the video. And Chris, if people want to connect with you, I believe they can find you on LinkedIn. Right?

Yeah, that's my spot. Yeah.

You can get rejected by your LinkedIn, right?

Yeah, but don't pitch. Don't make sure you don't pitch Chris on LinkedIn. Don't send him anything. Just be cool. So if you want to connect with Chris, just look for him. Look him up on LinkedIn. He's at Chris Mead. And I'm gonna drop the links in episode notes for the. For the website. Thank you so much for, for being here. You brought a bit of Florida. My husband is from West Palm beach, but he lives in Romania. Yeah, he hates our beach. He says, like, it's not a beach. Yeah. And yeah, thank you for being here. This was a great conversation. We appreciate and we want to see you grow. We want to see you, like, own this.

So, yeah, good luck tournament here in Europe, man.

Yeah, Coming soon.

Excellent. So thanks a lot, Chris, and keep it real. All the best from Bucharest, everyone, and thanks for listening to to us.

See you guys next week.

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.