A Competitor Copied Everything. So She Borrowed a Jet, a Lambo and a Black Dress | #654

Most of Conni’s customers wish they never had to buy its products. By the time they do, they probably needed them four weeks ago. This Playbook is anchored by Norm Douglas, CEO of Conni, which has made reusable absorbent products in North Geelong for around 25 years. His team talks about pee and poo as plainly as sizing, because it’s a normal part of life. In this playbook, we cover three things ecommerce operators need to know about marketing awkward products: Design for the moment the need ...

Nakisah Williams’ first embroidery attempt was so bad she hid it in a drawer. Years later, it became the reason every Craft Club kit is built to be fail-proof. Nakisah launched Craft Club in 2021 with six cross-stitch designs. It now sells kits across a long list of crafts, ships worldwide and has its own community app with more than 8,000 members. In this episode: Category of one - why Craft Club grows fastest in crafts nobody else is sellingTesting without the risk - preorders and a Shenzhe...

Plenty of brands have tried AI ads and given up. It’s usually not the tool’s fault. The output doesn’t look like the brand, and fixing one thing breaks three others. This Playbook is anchored by Sam Kroonenburg, who sold A Cloud Guru for just over $2 billion and now runs Cuttable, an AI ad platform. Before building it, his team sat down with 50 to 70 brands to work out why AI creative wasn’t working. In this playbook, we cover three things ecommerce operators need to know about briefing AI so...

Courtney Ray built Daily Blooms so she'd never need a flower shop. Now she's opening one. Eight years in finance showed her the problem with florists. High rent and a shop full of stock that dies in days. So in 2014 she sold one bouquet a day online and stopped when it sold out. More than a million customers later, Daily Blooms is opening a store in Fitzroy. In Add To Cart episode #672, Courtney explains why it sits in the marketing budget. Today, we're discussing: The working capital problem...

90% of TileCloud customers buy a $15 sample before they buy tiles. Product seeding still works. Most brands just judge it on social coverage and kill it when the posts are thin. This Playbook is anchored by Taryn Williams, founder of #gifted, which runs product gifting between 11,000 creators and 5,000 brands. She argues the real return is the dinner party conversation you never see. In this playbook, we cover three things ecommerce operators need to know about turning product seeding into wo...