In today’s episode you’ll learn:
- How Steph’s frustration at not finding suitable lunch boxes for her two boys led to her starting her own business which has grown a huge following over the years
- How she started with a simple idea and grew her business
- The mistakes made and lessons learned in her business journey
- The importance of outsourcing the stuff you don’t want to do so you can focus on the bigger picture
- And the way she values her customers and keeps them coming back
Where to find Stephanie, and the books and podcasts she talks about on the show:
Books recommended:
Podcast recommended:
She was the fire by Courtney Mangan
Where to find Stephanie:
Instagram – @montii.co
Transcript:
Hi, and welcome to The Bright Minds of eCommerce Podcast. I’m Dahna, founder of Bright Red Marketing your eCommerce advertising specialists. Today we’re here with Stephanie for Montii and Lunch Punch. She started Montii Co from her garage five years ago when she couldn’t find lunchtime essentials for two little boys that lasted more than two seconds in the playground, so she decided to make them herself.
From there, they have developed a whole range of everyday essentials, grown into a team of 20, working out of two warehouses, and with stockists all over the world. In today’s episode, she shares a journey of growing from work from home business to working out of multiple warehouses. The mind set shifts around those changes, and her most successful marketing strategies, including her tips around affiliate marketing, and much more.
So, let’s get into it. Welcome to Episode 21.
Today, we’re here with Steph from Montii and Lunch Punch. Welcome Steph.
Steph
Thank you so much for having me.
Dahna
It is a pleasure to have you. So, tell us a little bit about Montii and Lunch Punch. How did everything kind of come to be?
Steph,
Alright, so I started first off with Lunch Punch actually purchased Lunch Punch from a lovely lady called Kiersten. She’d been running the business for about seven years before I took over. And she basically got to the point where she just didn’t want the brand to just close down because she was done. So, she was looking for someone to kind of take the baton and keep running with it. So that’s where I started …. Lunch Punch was pretty little at that stage. And I had absolutely no experience and no idea what I was doing. So, started with that. And then I think I had Lunch Punch for about eight months before I started Montii because I really wanted to take that learning that I had from Lunch Punch. So, learning about manufacturing and selling wholesale and retail and all of that and put my own brand on it because I felt like the Lunch Punch audience was a little too niche for what I was wanting to do so Lunch Punch makes sandwich cutters and bento products, and they are aimed at quite young kids. And yeah, so once I started Montii, we were able to kind of open up to a much wider demographic there.
Dahna
Yeah, fantastic. What was that process of buying a business like because I know that’s often people think about getting into business that they have to start from scratch, you’ve obviously bought a business, what was that process like?
Steph
I don’t know if I’m great at giving advice on this, because Kiersten was just so generous. So, I feel like I probably paid far less than what the business was worth. And she really did such a great hand over and held my hand and taught me everything, because to her like Lunch Punch was her baby. And she had been trying to sell it for a while and not found not being able to sell it I guess at what she had imagined. And she was at the point where it was kind of sell to someone or close down.
But she was just such a huge mentor for me really patient in that handover. But when I did purchase it – it we had no social media presence; the website wasn’t really working. It was kind of just a brand, a warehouse full of products that had been sitting there for quite a while. And yeah, a whole lot of me not knowing what else do I really
Dahna
I know, that’s how everyone starts. I don’t think anyone knows what they’re doing in the beginning.
Steph
True. And you know what, in some ways, it’s a blessing. Because I think if someone had have told me, all of the super hard bits that I was gonna have to go through to get from there to where I am now. I’m not sure I would have signed up for it.
So, in some ways, it’s funny
You’re not the first person to say that,
Steph
Having no idea and being a bit naive about the process, and what it’s actually like running a business is great, because I thought it was just going to be a little hobby that I do when my boys were having it out. And that it was going to be quite easy. And yeah, just I guess went into it with a pretty positive attitude.
Dahna
I think it’s a good way to start though. I think if you go in tune negative, like you’d never succeed, like you kind of need to go with a bit of positivity and a little bit of naivety just to kind of like, get going and then you learn the lessons along the way.
Steph
So true. Yeah, it actually didn’t really cross my mind that it could go wrong.
Like how did you feel like taking that big risk in life – But at the time? I don’t think I realized it was a big risk. I do now but yeah, at the time, it just felt like I was pretty confident that it was going to work out.
Dahna
Yeah, fantastic. So obviously you purchased Lunch Punch and then started Montii, tell us a little bit about that journey. Any lessons and things you learnt that are worth sharing about you know, launching that second brand.
Steph
Yes. So Montii. I originally started because I wanted to bring out some lunch bags, so I was searching for some products for my two boys.
They’re quite rough and tumble, I guess like stereotypical boys. And I just got so frustrated trying to find products that would one… look good, and two… last – through the way that they treat things. And I found that products were either one or the other. So, they were either, you know, I find Kmart make stuff that looks really cool. But in three minutes, they’ve destroyed it, and I need to replace it again. And then there was some other brands out there that made lunch bags and drink bottles and those products that would just last forever, but they were ugly, or plain, very plain.
So, it was really born out of that frustration. And at the start, I tossed out whether I would just brand them Lunch Punch. And initially, that’s what I had planned on doing. But I found that Lunch Punch was just quite niche, the audience was quite niche. We had quite a few followers in America, and a lot of …. and I hadn’t pulled Lunch Punch, I didn’t plan on launching Montii into America straightaway. So, I decided to set it up as its own brand. And I also felt like by starting it from scratch, it could be more me …. so more like authentically me rather than diving with something that already existed.
Yeah, so Montii was actually the name that my, my second son was going to be called if he had a baby girl. So literally, I said, baby.
Dahna
Love it. I love it. So obviously, running two businesses is a big challenge. And a big ask Is there any kind of strategies you use to kind of manage your time, management practices, organizational tools, just secret weird things that you do to kind of keep everything under control?
Steph
Well see, technically, it’s one business. And this is really complicated, but the business is called Westridge goods, and we treat it as two different brands underneath. So, we’re stooges kind of the brand that we sell wholesale products through and sell International. And then I have the two retail brands on there. So, Lunch Punch in Montii. So, it’s kind of one business, but in saying that it’s kind of three brands that we have to do marketing for as well.
Not sure if that’s better or worse. But I am a super organized person with work. Not so much in my personal life, unfortunately. My house is quite chaotic, but I’ve always been a big list maker. And up until recently that has been on paper. So, I just found myself lugging a million different notepads around and rewriting and scribbling out lists. And just recently, I moved to an iPad and a program called good notes. And that was a recommendation from Claire at one Maxie actually. And that has been a game changer for me because I basically have all of my life notepads. And you can actually handwrite your notes, which I love. So, I use the Apple Pencil, and handwrite them. But you can have all your notes in there electronically. And so, I still just basically write lists, I have multiple lists in there, I made myself some pretty templates in Canva, to write my lists on but so on.
I use Asana for, like ongoing big projects and stuff that involves the rest of the team. But at the start of the week, I sit down and map my week out. And so, you know, Monday, I’m focusing on this one big, meaty task. And Tuesday, this is my one focus. So, map out the whole week. And generally, a mix of work and you know, whatever other personal commitments I’ve got, and that really, really works for me.
I’m someone who has a million ideas, and I have had to learn that I just can’t do them all this week. So being able to write them on at least so that they’re not forgotten. And then sit down on the Sunday and go, you know, which of those million ideas am I going to try and take off this week has really helped for me,
Dahna
I love that because the first thing to my desk is just covered with lists, like written and rewritten. And then I was like, it’s just not really working anymore.
Dahna
My desk has three of those to do lists checker, notepad things and then I’m playing. I think I think I need to take a page out of yours and Claire’s book and have a look at this.
Steph
Yeah, and I love that you can design your own like Notepad background in Canvas, I did that. So, I’ve got like a whole week laid out already. And then I just rub it out from you know, last week and then write up what I’m planning for next week. So that’s been really good. But in my actual work time, I also really struggle to focus. So, I’ll sit there and go, I’ve got 10 Things which one am I going to start on and maybe have three of them on the go at once. But another tip that I picked up this is actually from Leon Weber from the founder’s team is the Pomodoro timer.
So, we tried that before
Dahna
I have Yeah, it’s so great.
Steph
And so, I use noise cancelling headphones. Even if I’m at home by myself for some reason. It helps me get into
If I set a timer, which say go for 25 minutes, and then you get a five-minute break, and I’ll try to just focus on one task and knocking it over. And I found that just by doing that I’m actually achieving so much more by the end of the day. Yeah, I have used that one before. And it’s fantastic.
Dahna
I just get out of the habit of using it. But no, it is a very, very powerful technique. It is really good, isn’t it?
Steph
I don’t mind my workdays are actually quite short, because I have kids who are in school. And I’m generally either dropping them off or picking them up or doing both. So, I have to try and really maximize that time that I’m at work, because I don’t want to work in the evenings. And, you know, carry it forward just because I was not focused when I did have work time.
Dahna
Now I’m with you there.
Fantastic. So, you’ve actually grown your business from working from home to you said warehouse with 21 staff?
Steph
That’s right, yes.
Dahna
How was that Journey. Like I want to hear how you went from like working from home to like getting the warehouse and like your first staff members, like tell us a little bit about that journey. And kind of the do’s and don’ts of that process.
Steph
Sure. Yes, I started from home, it was just me for quite a while and my husband when he would come home after work. So, we’d pack orders after the boys went to bed. And then the first person that I hired was a virtual assistant. She’s actually a member of the founders team as well, Kirsty Waubra. And she was amazing. She started just doing two hours a week. And that felt like such a stretch to pay for her time. But it just freed me up to focus on different things because she was kind of strong where I was weak.
So, I, for instance, really struggled to write. So, if you asked me to talk, it’s fine. I can talk and talk on video or talk on podcast, that’s fine, but asked me to write it down… and I’m just slow, painfully slow. And I find it really hard. Whereas Kirsty was really great at that. So, my first tip, I guess for your first hire would be look at the part of the jobs in your business that you find really hard and don’t enjoy doing and see if you can work out how to outsource those. So, she started just doing these couple of hours a week. And then that worked up and up. Eventually, she left her day job and I think she was doing about 20 hours a week for us before she went off to have her baby. But the other the next hire that I had was casual help to pack orders from home. And I just got to the point where it felt like I could grow the business as in I could see that the market was there. But I was limited by space from working at home. So, in two ways, I guess it one in not being able to buy too much stock because I had no space at home to store it. So, started with the garage took over the lounge room and put my kids in one bedroom together and took over another bedroom
without getting some offsite storage, like just a container that we rented in a storage yard around the corner from us. But then we spent half our day driving back and forth between home and the container bringing stock back. So yeah, that was I guess, physical space for the stock was the first way it was hurting us. And the second way was just hiring staff. So, you can’t really hire someone to come and pack orders unless you are standing beside that packing to when it’s at home.
Dahna
Yep
Steph
And so, I just got to the point where I was like, I can never have a day off even if I’m paying people to work because it’s at home or, you know, I don’t feel comfortable hiring people I don’t know, come and work at home. So yeah, it just got to the point where we were weighing up either moving to a third-party logistics – So instead of third-party logistics and having them pack the orders for us, or getting a warehouse of our own, we went through a bit of a process to investigate those two options.
But ended up deciding that I guess for the second reason being that I wanted to be able to hire more staff and not necessarily just warehouse staff, we decided that we were better off getting a warehouse and office space. Because otherwise if we had have moved to a three PL the chances were that we’d need to rent an office any way to have those other staff in.
Dahna
It makes sense.
Steph
Yeah, decided to go down that path was super lucky that our accountant managed to work some magic and we actually purchased the warehouse using our super fund. Oh, so many. Yeah. Okay, interesting. So, my husband and I put our super together because like, we had put every cent that we had into stock and I thought, how are we even going to get a warehouse, but we managed to make that work and bought a little warehouse and we moved in about two years ago now. But we also rent two more warehouses in the same complex because we did outgrow that one quite quickly.
Dahna
Nicely done though
Steph
I kind of I guess my second piece of advice would be don’t buy the first warehouse.
Ah, because you we outgrew it so quickly. And now Yeah, I haven’t really worked out, we actually we got to the point we’ve had ours and the one next door for just over a year now. And then I had our local operations manager coming to me going, I don’t know where I’m gonna put all this stuff you’ve got, you know, a whole bunch of containers coming, I’ve got no room, and I have to work it out.
And then just magically, the universe helped us. And when other business in the complex moved out, and I was like, there we go.
Dahna
I like that one, too.
Steph
Yes, thank you. So, I think that’ll get us through the next year or so. And then we’ll have to work out what we’re doing again. So, yeah, don’t buy the first warehouse, maybe just rent the first one. And then here you go. And then yeah, maybe?
Dahna
Fantastic. Did you find you had like, the whole mindset thing is very, I suppose popular… and on a lot of people’s minds, I suppose. Did you have any kind of like mindset challenges around growing from at home to you know, hiring multiple warehouses?
Steph
Yeah, absolutely. It’s not easy. And I would say the biggest thing that I’ve struggled with is, like, on a personal level, is that what the business needs from me now is totally different to what it needed, then. So, what made me really good as a startup operator, or successful as a startup operator is not what the business needs for me now that we have 21 staff.
So, I, in my head, I guess had this stereotypical picture of what a manager would look like. And I kept trying to mold myself into becoming that. So, I’m naturally like a pretty introverted person, I would say, I’m pretty creative. I’m a bit of a nerd, I actually love doing a website and doing like, Facebook ad configuration, and all that kind of stuff. So, I had kind of in my head thought, Alright, you’re gonna have to toughen up now, like, you’re gonna have to be a bit, you know, serious, and stern, and you’re gonna have to, you know, no time on the tools, and you’re just a people manager and all this stuff.
And to be honest, I was pretty miserable for a while, they’re just trying to really mold myself into something that I’m just not. And then I actually did some work with Christine Corcoran did some coaching with her. And it just felt like she or she literally said to me, you have permission to just leave this business as you, you don’t have to completely change who you are. And that was just a huge game changer for me, because I was like, I still can be soft and gentle and creative and introverted, but be a good leader, as well. I just had to hire people who could do those bits that I couldn’t do. So, we’ve got an operations manager now, Aaron, and he’s not afraid to have the hard conversations that I’m afraid. And he’s really great at running and coordinating a team and everything. So, I don’t have to be, I could just be deciding on the strategy and, you know, directing from a different perspective.
And yeah, that was really a huge game changer. And, and just giving myself permission to still be me has meant that I really enjoy working in my business again, even though my role has changed.
Dahna
Yeah, I think it comes back to what you said before, like, you’ve got to outsource the parts of the business you don’t like – like that’s, that’s growing as a business, you got to enjoy what you do. And if that means outsourcing bits and pieces, that’s what it means.
Steph
Yeah, so for me, I pretty much outsource most of the day to day running of the business so that I can still be in a creative role, because that’s what makes me feel fulfilled. So, I want to be sitting there writing, or not writing necessarily, you know, making changes on the website, and I want to be there setting up ads. And I want to show up on Instagram stories every day. So, you know, keeping those bits and going home at the end of the day feeling like I’ve achieved something was really important to me, whereas there are personalities that just absolutely love going in and just leading a team but not doing any doing. And yes, it’s just not me.
Dahna
So that’s great. You found you found your space as the business grows.
Steph
Yeah, yeah. But it was a hard transition to go through. And I guess at every stage, like when you’re little when the business is little, I kept thinking once we get bigger, it’ll be easier. You know, once I’ve got stuff, it’ll be easier … once I get away half it’ll be easier. And I don’t necessarily think it easier. I think that it just changes. So, there’s different challenges and you know, different highs as well, obviously, but yeah, different challenges as the business grows.
Dahna
Yeah, that makes sense. So obviously your business has grown quite significantly. We love to ask people about what they’re doing marketing wise. Um when you first started, what were kind of the best strategies that you had to get customers in those early days?
Steph
So, for us, we started with my mainly a wholesale strategy. And that was purely because I had purchased Lunch Punch before I started Montii and Lunch Punch was wholesale only.
So that was such a great platform for us because I was able to launch Montii with, you know, zero followers, but get orders in, because those wholesalers who already knew me would give our brand a go. But in saying that our wholesale customers, obviously, if you are purely a wholesale brand, the profitability isn’t that great because the margin is lower. So, we were a couple of years in, and you know, looking at the P&L going well, we’re making a lot of sales, but we’re actually not super profitable, because all of those sales are either wholesale or to distributors. So, our distributors purchase direct from China, and they purchase at a lower price point again. So, I made a conscious effort that it was time for us to add some retail into the mix.
So, I wanted to do it in a really respectful way as in I don’t want to compete with our stockists. So, we don’t stock any other brands, we only sell our own brands. And I’m conscious of not constantly discounting or doing anything like that to upset our stockers because they’re our initial customers…. and without them, I feel like that would have nothing. But adding the retail into the mix really did help improve our profitability. So, we had to start that from nothing. So genuinely zero followers, no customers, nobody knowing who we were. And the thing that really worked for me, I guess, was just showing up consistently and showing up as me showing that there’s a person behind the brand, and not just a big corporation or anything like that.
And Instagram…. Instagram stories was the first real platform where I got to know our audience, and they got to know me. And that’s where initially most of our sales came from.
Dahna
Yeah, fantastic. I want to talk about your Instagram in a second. But do you have any tips and strategies for people who do want to go down the wholesale route?
Steph
Yeah, every single thing that we do in our business we do with wholesale customers in mind as well, because they are the way that I look at them as they’re like a part of our team. They’re out there actively pushing our brands to their audience; they’re introducing us people who would never have seen us otherwise. And so, we just really run our business with our wholesale customer in mind, we have an extensive gallery of images that we make available. So basically, my goal is to make it as easy as possible for them to sell our products. So, give them everything they need. So that they don’t have to take their own photos and make their own video, we kind of try and do all of that for them.
And then otherwise been pretty lucky. We don’t actively, really try and find new stock if they generally just come to us. But just I guess, yeah, very lucky. But I guess the other thing is just to factor in that wholesale price when you’re calculating your retail price when you start because it’s obviously very hard if you’ve reached out for a couple of years to go in and change your prices to make room for wholesale.
So, if you’re planning on wholesaling, I guess factor that in when you’re calculating your prices up front.
Dahna
Yeah, I think calculating that price is something a lot of people struggle with … the episode we’ve got launching after yours is actually with pricing strategist, I think will be helpful to people as well. But yeah, I think that’s important. Because I know I’ve seen a lot of posting groups and things where people are like, oh, I want to wholesale, or make any money. What do I do? Yeah. What’s the wholesale margin again? Like? Yeah.
Steph
Yeah, it is tricky.
It is. And for us, it was once we had to make so once we had, you know, our own retail customers, as well as wholesale, that’s when I feel like things started to go really well. Just focusing on one or the other, was much harder. Because it definitely would like when we launch a new product now, if the launch was only going to the people who would see it based on our retail channels, because we wouldn’t sell anywhere near as much as what we do when all of those wholesalers are out there actively blasting, you know, our message out there at the same time.
So, if you really are average, which is fantastic. Really does. Yeah. Lovely.
Dahna
Now, you mentioned Instagram Stories is a big one for you. Do you want to give us a little bit of an insight into kind of your strategy on using those, especially in the early days, we’ll get into what you do now?
Steph
Yeah, I think no more contrast. That was just the motto that I had in the back of my head was just making sure people knew who I was not just the products, but they really knew me that they liked us. So, like Dell products like what I was doing and that they felt like they could trust me as a person or trust us as a business.
So, especially when you’re buying online and you can’t physically touch the product, you’ll see the quality of it before you buy. It’s so important that people trust you. Otherwise, why would they purchase from you online? So, my strategy in the early days was really just to show up every day, and to show …. to try and not be too salesy. So, to show bits of everyday life bits of who I am as a person, and then a little bit of salesy stuff now and then. And, yeah, that just really works, that Instagram kind of grew from there. And I guess that strategy’s not totally …. not too different from that. Now, to be honest,
Dahna
Yeah. So, tell us a little bit about what you do. Now, I’ve usually mentioned you like to play with your own ads, I assume your Facebook and Instagram ads as a part of that. But what kind of do you do now to get those sales?
Steph
So, email is our best converting channel now. So, we ran quite a few campaigns or launches where people had to sign up to the email list, in order to be able to get the promotion, we actually did that for Black Friday, two years in a row. So Black Friday sale was email only. And it’s probably our best converting in terms of like, paid advertising.
Google ads is the best converting of those paid channels. But I guess once people are searching for you in Google, a lot of our customers are searching for us by name. Once they’re there. Of course, they’re going to convert because they’re actively or they’re going to be more likely to convert, because they’re already in their actively searching, wanting to buy or wanting to find out more.
Dahna
Yeah.
Steph
And so, I guess the Google Ads probably have less people, but of the people that see them are more likely to come back.
Dahna
And then it makes sense for us.
Steph
Yeah, we use Pinterest and Facebook ads for traffic generation. So, for trying to get our photos and videos and products, in front of eyes who haven’t seen us before. And I am a nerd. As I told you earlier, I love getting in there and tweaking, just testing and seeing what works, whether it’s you know, a different audience or different, creative or coming
Dahna
you’re talking to Facebook ads. So, I mean, I’m with you there
Steph
I love that. So, I don’t I don’t feel like it’s once you work out what works, that it’s just set and forget it. And never it’s I mean; I’d be out of a job. To be fair.
We’re actively Yeah, that wouldn’t be great.
Dahna
It’d be fantastic for business. I’ll give it that. But yeah, it’s Yeah, unfortunately, not set and forget at all.
Steph
It’s just not how it works. And so, yeah, that’s kind of a weekly thing for me that I’m in there looking, you know, is this creative looking a bit old? Or have we had a new product that I can update? Or how can I tweak to optimize, but those are our main channels, I would love to get into Tik Tok ads. But I felt like it was just one too many channels for us to tackle this year. And Pinterest is new for us this year.
Dahna
So, I would advise that when you have the mental space for it, the results that I’ve heard of ….. we haven’t done anything internally at the results I’ve heard of from people using Tik Tok ads is insane.
Steph
Really,
Dahna
like ridiculous, like early day Facebook sort of results.
And I think you’ve got the right kind of fun content that you would be able to do it very, very well. So, and the stock reps are fantastic. Unlike the Facebook. Sorry, Facebook,
Steph
Oh, they found it’s funny because Pinterest contacted us about having an account rep. And in the same week, so did Facebook and it just ended up that we had the calls back-to-back and it’s just chalk and cheese. So, Pinterest is absolutely amazing. So, we’ve got an account rep who meets with us fortnightly, it’s all free. And they give us tips on optimizing and stuff like that. And then Facebook is just horrible. They rang and they were clearly not necessarily very, very difficult to understand.
Dahna
Like there’s no video talking about either, like this thing suggest for campaigns is ridiculous. You’re like, what are you doing, then?
Steph
That’s it, it seems really one size fits all as well. So, you know, he, he was I found it annoying that there was no video because his accent was really hard to understand. And he’s saying well now click on this and do this. And I’m like, I have no idea what you’re talking about. Why are you even telling me to do that?
Yeah, that’s a little more tricky, but we’ve had pretty good results with both I would say working on like a bit of a full funnel strategies these days. So we’re running traffic ads, version ads and catalog sales as well.
That’s kind of where we’re at with those
Okay, so basically you’re telling me how often do TikTok ads?
Dahna
Yeah,
it’s still at the point where you can kind of get away with not doing it perfectly and still make a lot of money out of it.
We’ll call with the Tik Tok wrap that that would be my concern with, even if it’s like, because you need to create an only one listening for Tik Tok ads, you need to have Tik Tok content. It cannot be like a polished Facebook ad that you put on Tik Tok it has to be made for TikTok so the reps will be able to have a look and see what you’re doing and give you some suggestions and things. But their reps are super, super helpful. Even if you’re not ready to do it yet, at least you can kind of get that …. the gears going and start coming up with things.
Steph
Actually, this morning, when I logged into Shopify too, I saw that they’ve got a promotion saying spend $20 on TikTok ads get $200 credits, so, they’re obviously trying to push it at the end.
Dahna
And they are definitely trying to break into the the Australian market quite heavily and quite quickly. So it’s a good time to be dabbling. But obviously, you never want to stretch yourself too thin with marketing, because you wanna make sure you’re doing everything right. But it’s if you’re in a position to – it’s something I would recommend at least looking into.
Steph
Okay, good.
Dahna
Talking about customers and things, obviously, a lot of your products are reusable. Do you have any tips on things on getting repeat customers and kind of keeping that lifetime customer value up? Obviously, it’s not, you know, fast fashion or, yeah, you know, cheap things that break really easily. Like, that’s the whole point of business.
Steph
For us, it’s really just been about diversifying the product range. So when we first started, I actually only had drink bottles, and then it was about six months later that we added lunch bags. And since then, kind of gradually added to the range that added smoothie cups, coffee cups, and food jars and other products. So where we’re at now, we’re quite lucky that people come back because there’s more products in the range that is suited to them as well.
Or they come back to purchase for other family members or gifts for other people. So we do actually have quite a good return customer rate, I guess better than you’d expect being reusable products. But I do find our customers just love new launches. And every time we launch a new product, or new prints, they just lap it up. But they also come in buy a lot of the existing products as well. So if we launched one, say a new print in a lunch bag, when people order, they don’t just order that they’ll order that and a drink bottle and a smoothie cup. It’s really just spurs on the sales.
So I guess probably two years ago, we dropped our entire new release for the year in one hit, and then just kind of had nothing new to show them for quite a long time. And but now, I’ve learned to do it in smaller drops just to give people a reason. One… not, I guess not just a reason to shop, but a reason to follow us and be excited and engaged and interested because we’ve got new things to tell them about fairly frequently throughout the year.
Dahna
Yeah, it’s I think it’s important to make sure there’s, you know, something new to share, whether it is a new print or a new product, or, you know, that kind of applies to most businesses really like if you haven’t got new content, people can get bored quite easily.
Steph
They do Yeah. And then they’ll just scroll past it. Because it’s so familiar. They’ve seen it before. So we invest a lot of time and energy into content creation as well. So we have an internal photographer now who works the best full time. And we have built a studio in our warehouse. So the corner of one of the warehouses. So it’s nice and easy for us to churn out content. So generally a couple of days a week, we’re in there either taking video or photos and making sure we’ve got up to date content for whatever’s happening. So, you know, we finished our Christmas content now. But we’ve moved on to creating specific content for back to school.
Dahna
Yep.
Steph
So we work a couple of months ahead. But yeah, so we’ve got fresh photos, even if not fresh product, but fresh content for our wholesalers. Yeah, exactly. That’s also important, I think too
Dahna
Yeah, fantastic. Before we get into the last questions that we like to ask everyone, is there anything you think we’ve missed anything that you think is worth sharing?
Steph
I guess one really great marketing tip that worked for us is affiliate marketing. And it really, really helped us in the early days. So I would say that we were focusing equally on wholesale and affiliates. So our affiliates are mostly micro influencers or smaller influences who we work with. And we give them products. And they post and create the content and share that with a discount code for their followers. And they earn a commission based on the sales that come through using their discount code.
So for us, that was a really cost effective way to start marketing and reaching other audiences without paying the big fees that some of the influencers charge. Yeah, that’s worked really well for us. So we’ve got quite a network of affiliates now, who we work with. And actually our highest performing affiliate is nowhere…. not the one with the biggest audience. So last year, she earned about $23,000 worth of commission, and she only has, she only has 3000 followers. So it’s completely unrelated, it’s really comes down to how I guess how closely her audience aligns with our products and our brand values and how engaged they are with them.
So for us, you know, we send her a few products every time we have a release, and she posts about it. And it’s just great for both of us. It’s a great opportunity for her I guess, to earn some income, too.
Dahna
Yeah. Fantastic. Do you have any tips of people looking for those kinds of partnerships? And did you use a particular software program to track the affiliates?
Steph
Yes, so we have an app that we use. Our stores run on Shopify, and the app is called Affiliately.
And we use that to automatically track the source of where the sales have come from. And it tells you what the commission should be. And you can set up all kinds of different structures. So different Commission’s when you’re running a promotion, and that kind of stuff. And then, for us, I guess just reaching …. At the start out with the people who already engaged with your brand and reach out to them. So if you’re noticing someone’s ordered a few times, and they’re engaging with you on Instagram, and they seem to take a decent photo and talk about your products anyway, we reached out to them and just said, Would you be interested in being an affiliate?
And I think the other tip would be, go into it, knowing that not every time is going to be successful. So, you know, if you send product to 10 people, as affiliates expect that a couple may or may not post and just be okay with that. Be okay, do that. It’s a lower cost type of marketing, and but that it’s not going to be successful 100% of the time. So yeah,
Dahna
I find it really I don’t post game until you find the right people.
Steph
It is yeah, and I just had to let go of the fact that, you know, I’ve sent somebody $50 worth of product and they either didn’t post or they did post and the audience didn’t buy anything, I just had to let it go. Because otherwise, I wouldn’t have kept trying. And I wouldn’t have found the ones that really do convert and really do well for our brands. So …
Dahna
and I think what you said before that your best performing affiliate only has 3000 followers. So I suppose it really doesn’t come down to numbers, a lot of people like, oh, I need to find someone with 100,000 followers, because that makes them an influencer. Like, you can have someone that has 3000 that, you know, can generate, obviously a huge number of sales if she’s getting paid $20,000 for it
Steph
Yeah, exactly. She was It was amazing. We were all shocked. And, yeah, it can really be great if it works. So we feel bigger influencers when we do work with them too. But I find that you’re paying, you know, a large amount of money for you know, maybe 30 seconds that they talk about your brand. And then they move on to talking about other brands. So you kind of get a bit of a spike, maybe in orders or maybe just a spike in followers when they talk about you but with the affiliates …. they’re out there day after day, talking about you and telling their friends and taking, you know, posting stories of them during the out of their coffee cup on the way to work or whatever it is. So it’s just the like the value that you get out of it. And the community that you build by working with affiliates is so great.
Dahna
Yeah, that’s amazing. I love that. Anything else before we finish up?
I think amazing. It was an amazing last night. I’m glad you mentioned that.
Steph
Thank you.
Dahna
We talked about this briefly at the start. But do you have any other strategies or habits that you follow each day to help you stay on track?
Steph
I exercise every day first thing as soon as I wake up and it’s not because I’m a gym junkie. I mean, if you say me, you can probably tell him about a gym junkie. But I do that for my mental health. Because I find like I struggle for me. I struggled with anxiety but also it can be quite stressful running a business and the temptation is definitely there to work. 24/7 … and I just starting my day with something that wasn’t thinking about work has been really great for me.
I think just removing the pressure that exercise has to be something exciting or something really high impact. And it most of the time for me, it’s just going for a walk. So I do, do do some personal training a couple of times a week. But most days, I just get up, go for a walk, and I listen to a podcast while I’m walking and make sure it’s a podcast that is not work related.
So something just for me, something I enjoy listening to. And then just a fun starting my day. Like that makes me so much more productive and happier for the rest of the day.
Yeah, probably a bit boring.
Dahna
I love that. No, not boring at all. And I think it’s important that we talk about mental health because I suffer from anxiety and depression too. Like, I see a psychologist on a regular basis. Like, it’s good to hear how other people are managing that. Because it has to be a thing that is done daily. Like it’s not something that you can kind of just go once a month.
There’s got to be the daily habits in there that really help that so thank you for mentioning that. I love it. On that note – what’s your favourite podcast? The personal non business ones are totally fine
Steph
Actually I saw the questions asking what my favourite book and podcasts were that and though ‘oh not, she’s going to hate this…’ because I actually purposely don’t read business books. I listen to podcasts whilst I’m at work but in my own time I listen to non businessy ones
Dahna
Last episode I recorded she mentioned stand up comedy podcasts and we’ve had many people mention crime podcasts – so this is not a business question I just like to hear what people’s favourite podcasts are
Steph
OK that I can do – It’s definitely not a crime podcast because I’m a bit sissy and I wouldn’t be able to sleep.
Dahna
Me too I’m with you there
Steph
But Love mamamia out loud – because they just talk about whatever is happening in the news, whatever’s interesting, whatever celeb news.
I really enjoy ‘the undone’ as well although I know that’s targeted to people in their 20s – they say that at the start of every episode – and I’m like I’m not in my 20s I’m just hear listening alright
Dahna
I’m gonna enjoy it anyway leave me alone
Steph
Otherwise I really enjoy ‘She was the fire’ the fire by Courtney Mangan – she’s another gold coast business owner
Dahna
Lovely
Steph
In terms of books – I love trashy books chick lit books. I actually read every night before bed otherwise my brain does not turn off. Huge reader.
Dahna
Have to get some recommendations off you later. I’m also a fan
Dahna
What is the best way for people to reach and contact you?
By the way everyone my order just arrived while we were recording and I hope you didn’t hear my doorbell.
Steph
Where I hang out most …
Instagram @ Montii.co
Website – montii.co
Dahna
Fantastic thank you so much for joining us it’s been an absolute pleasure having you
Steph
Thanks so much
