Will Laurenson, host of Customers Who Click, talks with John Roman, CEO of BattlBox, about live shopping’s explosive rise and how brands can use it profitably. John shares insights from running BattlBox’s live shopping channel now their second-largest within six months and breaks down why Whatnot outperforms TikTok Shop. He discusses AOVs, customer behaviour, AI’s impact on commerce, and how to balance growth across DTC, marketplaces, and subscriptions. A grounded, insightful conversation about building profitable channels, adapting to changing buyer behaviour, and testing new models without losing focus on what makes your brand valuable.
Transcript:
0:02 Welcome to Customers Who Click, the podcast for DTC brands who care about conversions, not just traffic. I'm Will Lawrenson, founder of the CRO agency that helps brands. Fix the leaks and turn more clicks into customers each week I chat. With brand founders, operators and growth leaders about what's actually working and the challenges.
0:19 Getting in the way. Let's dive in. John, welcome to the show. Do you want to introduce yourself? Give us a bit of your background and you know how you've got to where you are today. So John Roman, Co founder CEO of BattlBox, also host of the ASOM Pod, which is a ecommerce centric podcast.
0:38 Yeah, we've had BattlBox for launched it in February 2015. So it's been quite, quite the journey, 10 years, everything from COVID to a Netflix show to an exit to a publicly traded company to buying it back a couple years ago. Yeah, it's been quite, quite the journey and lots of learnings along the way.
0:57 Definitely unusually high focus on content and community compared to traditional brands. And now, you know, a big focus of us is live shopping with we're seeing a lot of momentum over there. It's quickly in, in six months become our second largest channel, which is pretty wild.
1:14 So yeah, talk about lots to go. We can we can double click on anything you want. Sweet. Before we get into BattlBox in more detail, it's just kind of more generally, what are you excited about at the moment? Is it live shopping or is is there something else? Yeah, honestly, live shopping right now is, is something I'm super bullish on.
1:31 I think we became a little bit numb towards the possibility and opportunity of it because for 10 years we've talked about it and yeah, there's this constant narrative or China is doing this, China's doing that. And you know, over the last decade, we've seen several failed attempts, launches of it.
1:50 It just doesn't work. And the reality is, I think there were two, two mistakes along the way. And it was comparing the US market to the China market because they're not the same. It's a completely different consumer, different consumer behavior, different consumer purchasing.
2:05 It's never going to be the same. And I don't think the consumer behavior in the US and, and honestly, other markets like like Europe were where they needed to be and TikTok shop in their push to try to normalize that shopping by, you know, giving all of those concessions to brands and all of those promotions and really forcing the behavior and then owning that audience and, and hammering them with the algorithm.
2:31 Oh, and by this, I think what that did was it speed up the adoption in in Europe and in the US in Canada, where now it's become a little bit more normalized and it's allowed for live shopping finally to have a shot at growing.
2:47 And it's never going to grow at the same clip and same rate as China, but but it will become it will become large. And we're seeing kind of in this last two years, this exponential growth of it proportionally. You know, China, I believe it'll they'll do a trillion dollars this year and in live.
3:04 Shopping. Which is wild. We will not hit a trillion for probably best case scenario another 1213 years. But we're now following in the growth model where we are seeing adoption.
3:19 And I'm excited because I think this is this is truly infancy of it. And when you can find something that is going to be successful, when you see the infancy of it, it's just an amazing opportunity. And we're we're in that we're like anybody can start it right now.
3:37 And you're with certainty in early, which it's not very often you get to, you get to see something when you can have the opportunity to get in this early. That's what I'm most bullish about. If you would have asked me a year ago, I would have said it's not. I wasn't sure if it was going to ever be a thing.
3:54 And now that I've been in it for half a year, the validation that it's not only a thing, but it's the next, next big thing is, is kind of wild. Yeah, well, we had someone on, I want to say 2 maybe three years ago on the podcast to talk about specifically about live shopping and, and I feel like it's not changed since then really.
4:13 You know, maybe there's been a slight uptick in, in brands doing it, but I like personally can't think of a brand who I know for their live shopping. I know there are some brands who have lent into it heavily. You know, I, we spoke to a skin care brand at the start of the year, Stratia skin care.
4:29 They they do a lot of it. I can't remember it's every day, but they, you know, every, I think it's every Thursday the founder comes on and we'll do the more scientific live to, to really get into the detail. And then on other days of the week, it's a different person, but it's that same person each Tuesday, each Wednesday, each Thursday, which I think it is a really good way of doing it.
4:50 And they've, they've really leaned into it And I suppose that helps not overwhelm one person with having to do lives every week. But I mean, what's what's your approach there? Like how have you approached doing it to start to see success? Is it, is it your audience and your market or is it down do you think to the way you've approached it?
5:09 I think what you know, we quickly learned so, so in April we did our first Test. We did 10 hours of live shopping in the month of April just to understand if there was anything there. And what we quickly realized is there are so many variables in the mix, it's almost an impossible task to truly like test all of these variables in a way that you're confident of.
5:32 So sort of making assumptions just to get out there and it's a combination. So I think what we're seeing, so we did for our live shopping test, we were going to do whatnot and we were going to do tick tock TikTok because we already have the audience. We already have, you know, over 1,000,000 followers in there.
5:49 That would have been the low lift. Whatnot just happened to reach out to U.S. business development Rep, a sales guy trying to onboard us. We ended up listening to them. They gave us a deal that made sense to kind of start with them. And I think it's it's time. And I don't think what's not Whatnot the only there's a couple other players right now and you have players like TikTok shop, which I am not bullish on for live shopping at all.
6:14 And I'll I can go into that. But you have these major players like Amazon and eBay that are trying to figure out like Google with YouTube, like these guys all want to figure it out. And one of them will and one of them will probably not, but by their way to finding it out. So figuring it out. So I think there's this for the first time, like all of the a lot of major players are trying to figure it out, but you look at Whatnot as an example.
6:36 So pre COVID or even maybe a little bit into COVID, it's a twelve person team, eighteen person team, not very big. And now you're looking at they did a raise this year at a 5 billion valuation. They've over 600 employees. And it's not a time where, you know, VC and and PE money's throwing money around as loosely as they used to.
6:56 So like there's definitely some data suggesting that if they're writing these checks, there's there's a reason.
And it's, it's this combination of they're doing a good job with this community piece of bringing new audience members in just awareness campaigns where they're, they're showing the the wills and the Johns of the world that hey, this is a way to buy.
7:16 And at the same time you have all these brands that are onboarding that have pre-existing audiences elsewhere that they're then introducing into the mix. So it's a combination of both existing audiences and new audiences. And the new audiences might be from other brands, might just be through awareness.
7:33 So it's, it's just this multiple angle effect, which I think is part of kind of the success that whatnot's having where we were looking at all of the you can go into Whatnot from the, I think all users can do this on. And you can see the different categories, how many live people are are shopping in that category.
7:54 And last night I was on with a friend who's doing a show right now actually, and we were looking and and women's fashion at 17,000 people watching Live Channels at the moment. And that that Channel, that niche didn't exist on Whatnot couple years ago.
8:12 So it's kind of wild to see it take place. This is a really long answer to say it's. It's a combination combination of things. Yeah. But it, I mean, it sounds like Whatnot's probably benefited from the fact that that's what they are. They are a live shopping platform and that probably really changes the appeal of it from a both brand and customer point of view.
8:33 Whereas TikTok people are on there for the video content just to, you know, waste some time essentially. And so for a lot of people, those live shopping feeds are a bit of an interruption, you know, maybe a bit annoying. Whereas, yeah, as a customer, if I'm signing up to Whatnot and going on Whatnot, it's 2C live shopping.
8:54 So I think that's that. I think that's 100%. The fundamental difference is you and I are doom scrolling on TikTok and the algorithm serves us, an app serves us a $18.00 tchotchke to try to get us to buy it, but it's not what we were there for. We were there just to ingest.
9:10 While you're right, like if I'm on whatnot, my intent to purchase, I have high intent. I'm opening up a shopping app. Like it's no surprise that the first item and the second item and the third thing I see, I scroll through, we're all selling like, so it's a, it's a more higher intent buyer.
9:27 You know, looking at the data for us, it's wild. So average order value on TikTok for us, and this is whether it's live shopping or just TikTok shop is around $20, a little bit less actually. While on Whatnot it's it's 4X that it's in the 80s.
9:46 And if you're happy to share what what's what's it on your on the DTC website? On the D to C website it's about 137. OK. So it's still slightly higher there than it is on Whatnot. Yeah, it's still the spot. And to be fair, that's the main reason not even I think I know one of the main, main reasons it's higher on our website is because our flagship product on the website is the membership and the subscription and 55% of our subscribers are in the $200 a month box that is that is the one they get.
10:18 So you you back that out we're we're actually you back out the membership from the equation and we're actually in line with whatnot in the 80s. OK. And so the stuff you're selling or whatnot, is that, is that kind of acquisition driven?
10:34 So is it, I guess what I mean by that because I didn't phrase that very well. Are you doing it as a way to just get people through the door, get them to buy something, get them to experience the brand and the products, but the goal would be to bring them back to your website to get that subscription? So it's looking like that.
10:51 So with with certainty on TikTok Shop, that was our hope, right? Less than you're having to give a creator maybe 15%, you're having to give the platform think 6 or 8% you have to discount the product on TikTok shop to get someone to buy.
11:07 So losing another 20%, you have to give free shipping. So that could easily be another 20%. So there's a not a lot of meat on the bone on the TikTok side. But the hope was these are people that are then going to make their second purchase, you know, on our website.
11:24 But we quickly found out and, and this is part of the reason why I'm not bullish on TikTok Shop is they're not, it's very transactional. The TikTok Shop buyer doesn't care about brand. They got sold on a cool video of a $18.00 item and they don't even care or want to care who makes it.
11:40 Wow. To your point, the Whatnot side, these customers are behaving a little bit different. We track because they're both marketplaces. We don't own that customer, so we don't get the e-mail address. So it's the fun game of a lot of exports and Excel spreadsheets of, of just marrying data and it's not fun.
11:59 But you know, looking at addresses, names and addresses, you can start matching people. And the reality is we're seeing about 10 X the people that purchase on whatnot compared to the people on TikTok shop actually coming to us directly.
12:16 So it's noticeable. So again, I guess the shorter answer to answer your question is yes, but we're also running it as a business unit that's highly profitable. So even if they don't, the, the goal of course is we want the membership, right?
12:31 It's a, it's $1000 LTV to us. It's forecast able, it's you know reoccurring revenue is is the dream. So when you can have that, that's what we always want. But we're finding that this can accomplish both. It can be top of funnel for the membership which with certainty is happening.
12:49 But if we can also run already 7, possibly 8 figure sales channel that's very profitable and is top of funnel. It checks all the boxes at that point like it is. It is the dream. Yeah, that approach with the to kind of generally that approach to selling on, on Whatnot, is that something you were doing before anyway on your D to C site, but then kind of just trying to get people to buy that subscription over time or is it almost an entirely new approach And previously everything was just buy the subscription, that's what we do.
13:22 But now you've got this different, you know, different marketplace, different experience. So we've always been membership first, the subscription first you go to our site, it's front and center. Now we have, you know, 1500 skews on our website that you can buy in a one time capacity and you can get to them, you can navigate to them.
13:40 But when you get to the website, it's the the above, the full call to action, it's all about the membership. So the one time capacity and marketplaces that have existed, you know, Amazon has been a decent sized channel. It's a 7 figure channel for us. That's always been the marketplace. See we did have the subscription element on there for no longer but for a couple of years, but it was still not the lion's share of the Amazon revenue.
14:04 So we've had it, it's always accounted to marketplace and one time orders across the board have always been historically 1515% of the business all in around and 85% of the business was membership.
14:20 Now we are seeing this pivot if you will and I wouldn't even say pivot. So the membership is still growing, it's just not growing at the same rate as the one time capacity. So even though it's healthy and going in the right direction, it's, it's becoming less and less of the the total total revenue picture.
14:41 I think this year will probably finish. It'll probably be like 7778% when historically it's always been 85. And it's not to any fault of its own. It's still still doing great. It's just this one time capacity is growing rapidly. Yeah.
14:57 That's good. Yeah, no, it's a good problem, but certainly. And you know, the fact that you're saying it, these are profitable channels for you, or at least, you know, Amazon and Whatnot are. So you know, it's, it's what every good brand needs to do, right? It's it's adapting to changing circumstances or, or even you know, it's obviously you have to really dig into the data to understand this as a brand, but you're not losing.
15:19 Well, I don't know unless you, unless you've specified it, but you're not necessarily losing subscriptions, but you've just got this other channel which is growing, which just means that balance is changing. And I know it can be easy sometimes to look at those numbers and, and panic a little bit and think like, why is our hero product, you know, the subscription, our percent of revenue is dropping and your immediate reaction can be, well, that's bad.
15:44 We don't want our we don't want our percent of. Revenue to be dropping. It's good, but if it's. Yeah, if it's still growing. Like it's still growing, it's still moving in the right direction. It's just not, not at the same speed as live shopping as even our Amazon is now growing exponentially.
16:00 You know, we're just seeing this, you know, slight pivoting consumer behavior and how they're purchasing and I think go ahead. Have you seen an impact on Amazon since you started? Whatnot? Yeah, so it's interesting there's it's not as much of A Halo effect as TikTok shop.
16:16 TikTok shop with certainty has this Halo effect where there's this buyer that's on TikTok that is there for the dooms growing. They're not interested in purchasing through the platform, but they will look at the item and then search for it on a website or Amazon and and buy it there because they know they know what the Amazon experience is, right?
16:38 You're going to get it quickly. Do you think there's a bit of a trust thing there? Like if I, if I see something on Amazon and it's cheap, often heavily discounted, is there a bit of a, is this actually a legit quality thing? So they go and check maybe your website, maybe Amazon. And that's the bit which makes them go, Oh yeah, actually.
16:55 I think so. I think, you know, while Byte dance TikTok has, has done some great things with, with changing consumer behavior and getting people to buy on their platform. And ultimately it is the, the powder keg that's going to allow live shopping to, to be a thing in, in Europe and in the US and Canada.
17:13 You're spot on that the problem if it is, they've made it so easy, such a low barrier to entry. And well, you and I could end this call right now and we could create a, a TikTok shop, go live, start selling stuff in like 30 minutes.
17:30 So the problem is because they made it so easy, you have people that shouldn't be doing it that are going to do things maliciously also just not do things maliciously just because they don't know any better, right? Like, Can you imagine you and I not having any understanding of this industry, ending this call, starting a TikTok shop, selling a couple items and then not shipping them for a week and a half because we just didn't have time.
17:54 And what does that? What does that matter? That's a thing. I mean, the, the big one that popped up that I've noticed a few months ago was creating gummies where it's turned out there's loads of brands who are selling creating gummies that basically don't have creatine in them. And I imagine there's probably a couple of brands on there who probably knew that.
18:13 And we're just like, well, doesn't really matter. We'll, we'll just, we'll just do it. And a couple of brands who just did not even think that they should do an independent check and make sure that the gummies they were being provided. Wasn't even in their in their, yeah. Why? Why would you check? You've got a supplier, you've got someone who's willing to sell you the product.
18:30 Why? Why would they possibly lie to you and make something up? But yeah, I suppose that barrier to entry. But then maybe that's again contribute to maybe why TikTok shops not that great for some brands because there's a bit of an element of doubt over whether the products are quality.
18:46 Yeah, they've done some stuff so you know kudos where they definitely changed consumer buying behavior and they moved it in a direction that's going to open up other opportunities and other companies to to take advantage of it. But they've also done some things to get there that are semi questionable. So great example would be you and I could make a video for this knife, right?
19:08 And then we could take it to our video editing team and the finished product. We could even make it less polished for the UGC vibe. But the entire flow of the video is going to be perfect script. First 3 seconds are going to grab your attention. Like we could follow the playbook of a perfect viral video.
19:26 And then we could have my next door neighbor son who is a teenager and you know, understand social media but doesn't know how to edit a video. And we could have him make the video of the knife, tell him he can't even edit it. He has to edit it in platform.
19:42 And we're both going to tag the knife. We're both going to post it 100 out of 100 times, maybe 99 out of 100 times his video is going to perform better. And that should not be the case. But what Tik Tok's done on the algorithm is if you're a creator, if you're tagging a a product that is not yours and is someone else and and you're going to get a Commission, the algorithm will treat that content as if it's exponentially better than the content you and I posted on our channel as our brand.
20:14 And that's a fundamental issue right there. I understand what they're trying to accomplish. You're trying to incentivize and create this creator economy and follow this consumer behavior trend that they've that they've cracked. But they're creating behavior.
20:30 It's just just not good, right? It's not real. It's it's made-up and I think that just creates all kinds of additional issues when you start playing the viral God. Yeah, I suppose with the the AI tools that are out now and and some of the updates we've been seeing over the last few months in particular, you're just going to get AI like a real, I guess the way to do it would be have a real person create an account, post something, but then create AI videos of themselves then promoting those products.
20:57 Yeah, that would work. And then unless it can then detect this AI content, but I imagine because you've posted your own original non AI content or maybe you post every now and again with a real video. And then in between them is the AI promotional stuff. Yeah, I mentioned to someone else on the podcast a little while back and saying, you know, when are we going to see a brand just just develop its own AI influencers and just have a team of their own AI influencers who are apparently independent, look independent, but are just AI influencers promoting their product and maybe some other stuff dripped in there.
21:34 So they're not, you know, obviously too on it or or just. Or just, I mean, I think we're, we're pretty close to it. You know, you could, you could jump into a, you know, jump even into VO. You can create these eight second clips.
21:50 The, the problem is, you know, the, the, the consumer version of it is, or even the brand version to a small brand, like the ability to have the same guy or to have it be me every time or you every time is a little bit challenging to, to, to a novice user.
22:07 But I would imagine, I mean, there's already platforms that offer that, right? You can create your, your person. And then with, like with Sora now I could take that person that is created and make tons of videos. So we're getting close to it. We are just going to take a quick.
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22:43 It's how we prioritize growth for our clients. And now it's yours. Free. Grab it now at customers who click.com/priority Dash testing or hit the link in the show notes. Now back to the episode. You know, when I see AI content, I always am.
23:01 I able to identify right away now that it is. But what I'm quickly finding out is that maybe that's just because I'm close to it, and the reality is the majority of consumers cannot really tell the difference. Yeah, I mean I.
23:16 Short of it being something obvious, right? Mr. Rogers and and Tupac in a video together that's obviously not real, but some of the stuff you can't, I think most consumers can't tell. Yeah, right. I had a sales call yesterday.
23:32 Someone, someone phoned me, They'd left me a voicemail the the day before. So I when he, when he started talking, I knew who it was. And it was about halfway through the call that I suddenly went, I wonder if this is AI because it's actually it's, it is an AI lead Gen. agency.
23:51 Yeah. And it was just, it was something about the conversation that maybe just go, I wonder if I'm actually talking to AI right now and that's how you're booking me. In which case it's actually in a way, it's actually really good for them because it's, you know, if it convinces me to buy from them, then they've proved that their, that their model works, right.
24:12 But it's also scary in that, yeah, any, anyone can phone anyone up. You can get a phone call from apparently anyone. And it'd be really, really difficult to to tell. Yeah, we're getting, we're definitely getting in this some weird grey area of, of society and, and yeah, I don't know how, I don't know how I feel about it there.
24:36 Oh, another example, there was and, and I hate to, to reference China again, but there is a, there was a big seller, live seller in China that did a show and did some revenue, some some revenue records and it turned out that it was, it was an AI version.
24:56 Of them. And they didn't even, they didn't disclose it until afterwards and no one knew and everyone bought thinking it was this guy and it was just a, it was AAI version of it. Yeah. And it's, I mean, obviously it's a bit of a problem.
25:11 Is, is that a an actual problem out there or was it just a OK, it would have been nice to know AI or is there AI don't? Know no, I don't know. This is like this is a rabbit hole. I don't, I don't know what is. I don't I don't have any answers.
25:28 I know there's some stuff in the EUI don't know if it's actually come through yet and we we can move off this topic in a second, but they were basically saying any anything that is produced that is even part produced using AI has to be clearly stated as being AI or or that AI was used in the production.
25:51 So but it's such a vague thing. It's, it's if I in a way, you could argue if I, I don't know, got got AI to proof check my spelling or I don't know if I just got its opinion on an e-mail that I'd written and it didn't change my e-mail at all, but it just said to me, Oh, have you considered changing the tone to be more, you know, more direct or something?
26:21 And then I went and made those changes. There'd be an argument to say that that because that was influenced by AI, I have to, I'd have to mark that because that's, that's how vague this thing's been left open. And obviously there's, there's loads of AI tools that do like transcripts and things.
26:38 So suddenly you have to mark. That is, that is it. You have to mark it then, because you used. Yeah, it's. Honestly I think I feel like 90% of content you see out there would have to be marked as as AI involved because.
26:54 And I love the concept. I love the concept of of having to announce it in theory. But then what's going to stop me from not doing that? Like, how are you going to prove it? Which is, yeah, we're definitely quickly going into some Black Mirror episodes, it seems.
27:16 But let's let's move on that for for a bit. What was what's the goal for the business at the moment? The goal for the business, I mean just just healthy growth right now, you know, it's nothing it we're nothing too granular, nothing too, too specific.
27:38 It's just continued profitable growth and, and moving, moving in the right direction. The you know, we're we're a semi semi small team. We're a little bigger team than most of our size just because we own our own warehouse and fulfillment.
27:57 So we have a, a chunk of team members that are that are there. But you know, we've added, hired 6 people in the last six weeks, 8 weeks, which is a, it's a, that's a, that's a big number. That's a, that's a double digit growth in, in employee size, which is exciting.
28:19 But at the same time like it, it means we have to continue this, continue this profitable growth because, you know, bringing, bringing people on is a big deal. You don't want to bring someone on and then not have the growth to support them and have to have that tough conversation of like, we've uprooted your life.
28:38 And you know, I, I never want to do that. I think it's, it's, I don't want to take the, the I, I, it gives me a little bit of a of cringe when when you hear companies say, Oh, we're a family. Like I don't, I don't like that kool-aid ask.
28:55 But we do hire people that, that, that we enjoy hanging out with, that we enjoy spending the amount of time we do because most people spend more time with on work than they do their their personal lives, right. So, so there is, there is the, the, the culture with us of, of that where it does matter.
29:16 I don't want to say the family thing, but like we care about these people that are on the team. Like we do, like we're always going to do the right thing by them, but we also don't want to have to do do things that are not fun. So trying to grow smart, smart and conservatively while also supporting this, this additional profitable growth.
29:36 So high level, very, very simple, just more revenue and more profit than last year. Yeah, no, it makes sense.
I mean, I'm not, I'm not seeing it so much the in the last maybe year, maybe a bit more previously and and definitely as you got closer to to kind of COVID, it was just growth, growth, growth.
29:57 People were just spending money and I, and I think a lot of people actually didn't know how much profit they were making. Which is wild, but yes. When you know, looking at that top, top line number of revenue and thinking, OK, this is great, we're getting great growth.
30:13 We can, we can hire new people, we can do this, we can do that. And actually the money's, the money's not there. So it's, it's good that it's, you're looking at this from a, well, we've, we've hired 6 more people. Let's, let's make sure that, you know, we, we don't lose them at some point because we've done something wrong.
30:30 Let's let's scale properly. So I guess you know, are you, are you kind of set with your channels and things now when you're let's just make all these channels better and and grow before looking at anything else? Or are you still kind of maybe testing some complete new things?
30:47 Yeah. So I mean, you know, I would, I would still put live shopping in that category of new, right. It's only 6 months old. You know, Amazon, we've been on for a while and like Amazon, for example, it's, you know, we're trying to have have growth and we get that by, you know, adding more or more products to the catalog and all the existing channels.
31:08 That's, you know, how do we how do we grow them conservatively with the live shopping whatnot pieces still early that we don't know where that's going to land, right. So it could be a 4 million a year channel for us.
31:24 It it could be a 20 million if we if we figure out some different, different paths with it. I mean, it could be even larger. We, we, we, we, we're toying around with some, some big ideas with it where it, it, it could be just as big as the rest of the business, which is, which is crazy.
31:40 So we just, that's pretty good. With the exception of live shopping, everything is kind of slow and steady wins the race and live shopping is going to be where we test our our our appetite for risk. Do you get stream on your sites with Whatnot or do you have to do it through theirs so.
31:56 Could you do it? We do it through. You do it both. Yeah, OK. Yeah. So I'm still I'm still a little, you know, this is a very I'm very risk adverse in general and the the fear of bringing live shopping one time products to our website.
32:18 I, I fear that there might be some cannibalization of our membership, which at the end of the day, whether it's 78 or 85% of our revenue, that is, that is what keeps the lights on. That is what that is what writes the checks for, for payroll.
32:34 So I'm a little bit hesitant on there. I, I prefer it on their platform actually because it's, it's separated, but also to what we spoke about earlier, it's, it's serving as top of funnel for us. Directly, it's an acquisition channel, not a.
32:51 It's an acquisition. Channel, not your existing audience, yeah. So, yeah, so I like that. It's that way actually. Yeah, yeah, it makes. Sense because while we don't capture their e-mail addresses, the customers that identify and connect with us, we capture theirs because they come to our website and they join.
33:12 Can you do much to nurture that or are they are they is Whatnot strict at all with what you can put in packages or anything like that? I suppose they don't really know if if you're fulfilling, but yeah. I mean, I think I, I think the, the path, the path you're going down is the right, right path without, without saying that we're doing anything specific.
33:32 It's, it's, there's, there's, there's definitely ways, right? They're not as, they're not as strict per SE as, as Amazon, right? Amazon is a very, very, very strict policy where you don't, where you don't do any of that because you'll get your account killed. So yeah, I mean, it's a it's a little bit faster and loose on whatnot and even TikTok shop for that matter.
33:57 So yeah, there's definitely there's definitely some ways to to try to get that focus on on them. Sweet. And what's what's the like? Doesn't have to be a big challenge, but what's what's the main challenge you're focused on at the moment?
34:17 The main challenge is is a stoa not to keep talking about live shopping, but but live shopping in the sense that we're a we're a remote team. So we do have our warehouse, but only operations is there. I'm not there. It's two hours away from me.
34:33 None of our creators are there. It's two hours, at least two hours away from the from them, sometimes more. So on this live shopping piece, there's so much more efficiency and likely profitability and it all kinds of boxes checked if we were all together.
34:54 Unfortunately, we're not. So we're trying to see, you know, I'm not going to move two hours South of where we are now. I'm just I'm, I'm, I'm not moving. But I don't think it's, I don't think any of our creators or or other people want to move too. And I don't think moving there is the right option, but there might be hybrid world where we might.
35:15 So our warehouse facility is about two hours South of Atlanta now, but we do have a, a, a large amount of people in the metro Atlanta area. So it might make sense for us to stand up a, a, a secondary site physical site in somewhere in metro Atlanta where, because we can have a decent amount of people there.
35:34 And, and that's how we take, take live shopping to the next level. So that's kind of the, the hurdle and the, the, the, the things we're trying to figure out now is, is we don't have all the benefit of, of, of being in person, but we know that there would be benefits.
35:52 So is there some kind of hybrid world that isn't going to give the team members too much frustration either because everybody gets used to remote and no one wants to go back to in person, but there's so much value for having in person.
36:09 Yeah, yeah. Can you come to this location which is actually quite close to you? Maybe a couple of times a week is a lot easier than I need you to travel down 2 hours to the to the warehouse once or twice a week to do recordings. Yeah. And The thing is like, so we were in Miami this past weekend for a what, not live collaboration show.
36:29 It was an all day show we did with some other big channels and because of that or that it was a show on Saturday. But Friday we all met down there, six of us. And as the BattlBox team, we had dinner, we hung out, you know, Saturday after the event, we went back to the hotel and hung out.
36:46 And I don't think anybody would argue that that hangout time is, is, is fun and is of value. And it, it bonds us and gets us all a little bit closer together. And I don't think anybody would argue that there's not value in that. It's just how, how frequent can you do it without it becoming problematic?
37:05 Yeah. Absolutely amazing. But and it's not cost efficient to take everybody down to Miami every weekend. No, that's it. It's a bit of a bit of a trek. Amazing. Well, thank you so much. I wanted to reach out to you. What's the best way of doing that?
37:20 I'm probably most active on LinkedIn. I yeah, LinkedIn onlinequeso.com is my blog, so lots of information there. I'm documenting this whole zeroed up whatever we end up at on, on whatnot. So that's cool. Yeah, I'm sharing that.
37:36 There's some wins, but I'm sharing a lot of the losses and a lot of the learnings that we're getting along the way, hopefully so someone else, you know, get a head start on it. Sweet, awesome. All right. Thank you so much, John. Yeah. Thanks for all. Have a good one. That's it for today. If you enjoyed this episode, hit subscribe, leave a quick review and share it with someone who will find it useful and.
37:55 If you're looking. For help with landing pages or website optimization you can find me on LinkedIn. See you next time.