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The FODcast
In the FODcast (The Future of #DigitalCommerce) we explore the real career stories of the people who have made it to the very top of the sector and those who are working at the cutting edge of innovation and change right now. Listeners to the podcast gain insight into the journeys industry leaders have taken to be where they are today, the challenges they are facing now and their aims for the future.
The FODcast
Crafting Community in a Digital Age: Vivo Barefoot's Approach to Modern Commerce with Steve Irwin
"If you touch it, you can trust it."
In this episode of The FODcast, we’re joined by Steven Irwin – Chief Commercial & Technology Officer at Vivobarefoot - to explore how today’s most progressive D2C brands are blending technology, purpose, and people to drive long-term growth.
With leadership experience at ASICS, Hunter Boots, Wolverine Worldwide, and more, Steve brings a unique, cross-functional perspective on what it takes to build authentic, resilient brands in an increasingly complex digital world.
In this conversation, we cover:
- How Vivobarefoot’s ReVivo and community initiatives are redefining what post-purchase brand engagement looks like
- The rise of sustainable commerce - and why it's more than a marketing trend
- What the pandemic taught us about omnichannel agility and real-world connection
- Why purpose-led brand identity is your most defensible asset in a noisy market
If you're navigating D2C growth, scaling ecommerce infrastructure, or want to better align digital strategy with values and community impact, this one’s a must-listen.
Simply Commerce is the leading supplier of talent into digital commerce across technology, digital marketing, product, sales, and leadership.
Find our more about our approach and our services within digital commerce recruitment here: https://simply-commerce.co.uk/
Hello and welcome to Season 7 of the podcast, the podcast focused on the future of digital commerce hosted by Simply Commerce. Season 7 promises to continue to bring you some of the industry's brightest minds across the globe as we unpick the sector and where it's heading From war stories to strategy and technology, deep dives to future trends we cover it all as we continue our journey to have one of the most popular podcasts in commerce. Before we start, if you enjoy our content, please do hit the subscribe button on whatever platform you're listening on, like and share on socials. Hello and welcome back to the podcast. The future of all things digital commerce. Today, I'd like to welcome Steve Owen, chief Commercial and Technology Officer for Vivo Barefoot. Quick disclaimer I don't own any Vivos. However, it's a brand I've long admired due to their position in the market Before Vivo. Steve's background is focused heavily in the sports and outdoors industry, with leadership gigs at Hunter's Boots, wolverine Worldwide and Asics, amongst others. Welcome, steve.
Speaker 2:Thanks, James. Thanks for having me on and glad to be here.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm looking forward to this one Really do admire your background, given my interest in the sports industry myself. I think, before we start, do you want to go into a bit more detail around some of the roles you've held in the past?
Speaker 2:Yeah, definitely so. My career in e-commerce and coming into the sports and outdoor space actually started from university time. So when I was at university university I was a failing professional rugby player, so wasn't getting anywhere with rugby and decided to pivot and actually start an econ business. So I started a online econ business at a time when there wasn't a whole lot of them around and therefore things were easier and harder because the path wasn't trodden very well. So there were some things that you had to work out yourself and other things were easier in terms of lack of competition on things like paid search and whatnot as well. So you could. The learning curve was steep and that was my entry into the space. So it was.
Speaker 2:I was selling triathlon products online and that was an exciting time for me, and I moved on from there into a number of kind of retail roles working for companies in the cycling and outdoor space. So Chain Reaction Cycles at the time were the biggest online bike retailer in the world, so I joined them. They didn't even have a head of e-composition. It was actually a buyer and trading role that I took there, because the role at that point wasn't even really properly established, but it was basically end-to-end buying and sourcing products, trading online, digital marketing strategies, then to get it out the door and convert that into dollars. I then moved into a pure play role with science and sport, which was the into the health and nutrition space, um, and took them from a three percent share um ddc business to a 50 plus ddc share business. So so re-platform the organization, uh, really, and um took, took, uh, what was an e-com website that was taking telephone orders for, for stock stock, and converted that to a intuitive website that allowed them to kind of go on a strong growth curve and then to the ones you mentioned, then moved into the kind of footwear space from there really working for ASICs as a digital director there, so managing their e-com platforms initially, and then the role pivoted into a more multi-channel role where I took on all of digital wholesale and strategic accounts as well, which was an amazing role and taught me a lot, but also allowed me to kind of flex some of the skills I'd learned in retail through e-commerce into other parts of the business as well, which was really helpful because obviously when you're working in that space, the wholesale accounts you deal with are also retailers and they're dealing in e-commerce and and the same challenges and same space. Actually that that you are as a brand, so made for more meaningful dialogue um.
Speaker 2:And then worked for uh wolverine, which is a, a multi-brand um business, so it has sockany, merrill, uh, cat, caterpillar, um and several other brands, and that was interesting because that felt more like an agency type role, because I was servicing the brands rather than being um singularly involved in managing a brand strategy. I was. I was basically servicing an output for across the different brand portfolio there. So that was an interesting role for me and a bit of a change of of of play. And then with hunter um it, it was a very similar role to to the asics role, just on a on a global scale rather than across a media um, and allowed me to allow me to kind of look at the markets more holistically across the globe, which was which was an exciting time nice.
Speaker 1:It's, uh, probably no surprise then to say we're going to be focusing this conversation on uh, on the d2c industry, particularly around how brands can stand, how d2c brands can stand out. Um, so I think it's probably a good place to start with just the rise of d2c over the last 10 years, because it's an area where we have seen a lot of growth and a lot of investment for brands and how they can engage, interact and sell to their customers totally yeah, and and it's changed a whole lot, like I say, from from the time where I had my own uh stab at it, um, which was maybe closer to 20 years ago uh, now, um, the, the space was really uncompetitive when I was doing google paid ads.
Speaker 2:I was one of the very few doing google paid ads in that category and therefore the, the cost of acquisition was was so much lower, um, and actually the, the pull through or what, what was being referred to at the time as a golden bullet was easier to hit because the competition was so low and the adoption was so, so slow that actually, whenever you did do campaigns on some of these, um, in some of these marketing platforms, they were so much more effective, um, than what they are now. And obviously, things like, uh, paid search. It's a highly competitive space, um, the the winners in that, I think, are google for sure, because they just keep putting the rents up and and people are happy to pay it because they know it's it's where they need to play for, for share a voice with the consumer, and then, in time, more marketing platforms came and rose and fell, or rose and plateaued, maybe, and so things like social, when, when Facebook started, advertising kind of came on the scene. That became a big impact and then affiliates and email marketing and all the rest as we go through the years. But within the last 10 years specifically I think probably what I saw in the sports industry in particular was when Nike pivoted and Addy started to pivot more into D2C. That kind of sent shockwaves through specifically the footwear industry because they had been large pure play or large wholesale-based businesses where 90% plus of their business was driven through wholesale relationships.
Speaker 2:They then started to double down and invest in D2C then and I think other brands like ASICS responded to that a lot slower. I think they they were their Japanese-owned company and therefore they tend to be a bit more cautious by approach and and actually it took asics a lot longer to pivot and start to kind of gear into ddc. So we saw trends from big brands starting to announce the move into ddc and people thinking it's almost gimmicky maybe at that point and then actually seeing the the success of those brands by doing so because nike was was rising fast at that point still um, and andidas too, because they quickly followed suit. And then I think then brands like ASICS then started to react to that and said, right, well, we need to get our act together here as well and start to invest there. So really, within the last five or six years, then we saw brands like ASICS and other brands start to really put their money towards D2C infrastructure.
Speaker 2:And then I would suggest that when COVID happened, which was the big catalyst I would say, many of these brands and retail businesses went from basically having digital in a future roadmap view to having to fast forward their digital and D2C offerings by a magnitude of 10 years. They've moved forward 10 years, probably within the space of two, because they had to. It was kind of a an adapt or die situation. Whenever the only opportunity you had was to sell the people online during during some of those worst parts of the COVID period. So, yeah, and my time during the COVID period was was with ASIC. So I single-handedly saw that um response. Um, as as we went through that we we grew kind of circa 200 during that that first year in covid in the online sales space, because it was the only place that we could really sell to customers. People were out running more as well and and that then kind of gave a bit of a compound effect I was going to say, I guess the uh, the impact that the covid restrictions had as well.
Speaker 1:We meant that more people were shopping with brands like asics as well.
Speaker 2:Right, because they were naturally outdoors, more running, etc yeah, yeah, if you were tagging any of your mates, you was tag five and run 5k or whatever right um.
Speaker 2:So, like every everybody was doing it, the running bubble really kind of rose at that period. And and and also the outdoor space as well, because the only the only option we had afforded to ourselves at that time was was getting into the outdoors. So, yeah it, it changed a lot. And then obviously I was, I was managing the um wholesale side as well at ASICS for strategic accounts and digital accounts and and some of the strategic accounts like Sports Direct they were they were pivoting fast. They were traditionally a big retail uh driven business and very much bricks and mortar based um, and they they pivoted quickly and started to accelerate their investment into digital at that point and they're now probably, you know, doing a much greater share of of online sales now than what they what they ever were, and that's probably largely uh driven by by the likes of covid um kind of coming on, coming around I coming around, I would agree, I think.
Speaker 1:Just on that note, I think something that we're seeing right now anyway is those businesses, that I mean every business's online sales increased substantially over that time and continued to probably up until about last year. We're starting to see a bit more consolidation now and actually we're seeing in-store in-store sales rise again, and I guess that comes to the whole like unified and the omni-channel conversation around having all your systems in sync. But I find it quite interesting that consumers are almost like they want to go back into store and they want to get that in-store experience again, which is quite cool, albeit in a very different way to what they would have had.
Speaker 2:It maybe pre-covid totally and I think I think part of that is that we were starved of experience during that time, really, because we were all working at home, doing our zoom parties or whatever we were right and you kind of you lost that human experience and you lost that physical touch, quite literally. Uh, during that, I think, as, as that accelerated, it definitely accelerated and fast-forwarded the e-com channel in particular. But, um, what I think I completely agree with you, what you're seeing now is one, because the e-com space accelerated so fast, it probably made a lot of the cost base go up within that area as well. So more competition on, like I say, the likes of google, meta, um, other areas as well. So those spaces all like I say, the likes of google and meta and other areas as well, so those spaces all have become more competitive and therefore the cost to serve is higher than what it was, you know, for even four or five years ago.
Speaker 2:Um, and look at all aspects of that, even operations or other areas, as you build scale on something then then then the the reality is that a lot of the parties know that they can kind of charge more now because there's more competition for them to choose from and that's made definitely the cost to serve higher.
Speaker 2:Even if I just look at cat crates and acquisition costs over the last few years across some of the businesses I've worked in, they've definitely all been heading north and that's largely because of that competition and I think the only way that can really um pivot out of that is by looking at your multi-channel strategy and ensuring that you have strong channels across your business, not just an e-com, and not over leverage yourself in that area.
Speaker 2:Um, and and for sure, even at vivo, where I am now, that's that's a big area of investment for us is expanding on physical retail and to really bring that experience forward and give that human touch side. But but also because we want to serve the customer where the customer is, and and and that's that's ultimately a choice. Not everybody wants to just be afforded the, the convenience of online. They want to try on the product, they want to feel the product, look at it, you know and and hear the full story behind it, rather than you know just click on a, on a meta ad or a paid search ad, and and transact. Um.
Speaker 1:It's definitely more about the experience as well for some people yeah, and that's a really interesting point you touch upon, and for me, that's a, that's a a big part of the rise of d2c brands, because it's clear, right, if you're selling directly to the customer, you're going to have a better margin because you're cutting out the middle person, the middle store, whatever it might be. You obviously get access to the data firsthand as well, which is going to be super important when it comes to personalization and all that cool stuff when it comes to loyalty. But when you look at experience like, there is a clear demand for customers to feel a brand, particularly at the minute. They want to be involved in the brand, they want to see its values. That, to me, that is how companies are differentiating themselves to their competitors right now, and you can do that online, for sure, but you can definitely do that to a far higher standard, and that in store you can interact with your customers really well, both in terms of their experience in the store, how they're served and everything else.
Speaker 2:So for me, that's a really, really important point absolutely and and it's you know from from two lenses. So on one side, if I, if I think about, like even just marketing itself, when you look at community-based marketing, a lot of that is driven through physical experience. So, um, asics have has a community uh based experience called front runner and it's about front runner clubs and they basically bring people together through that experience. And vivo has a has a community group as well that it utilizes to basically create physical experiences for people and that connects then into a retail experience. But it's it's mainly about bringing people together and giving them that that kind of physical touch point.
Speaker 2:And I think that's that's one lens where we're seeing some progression there, or maybe some regression from from the e-com experience, if you want to see it that way, and where we're actually we're using physical um interactions as a, as a means of marketing and pushing that message to customers.
Speaker 2:But on the on the other side of it as well, the, the retail side, sees a benefit of it, if you, if you think about even you know the rise in run clubs and how run clubs are becoming the new kind of social networking or even dating forums for some people as well, where they're coming together and they're doing exercise, like that's all community based, but there's quite often an adjacency to that to a running store or a you know a retail experience as well.
Speaker 2:Like if I think even just here where I'm based in Glasgow, you've got Achilles heel, which is like a really specialist retail environment for for runners like that as a run club. Part of that is the social element of bringing people together, but it, like it, also obviously drives transaction through the store, so it's given them footfall, it gives them engaged customers, which is what we're all trying to replicate in a digital experience. You know we're trying to create that tangible, real love for a brand in a digital way. But if you can create that in a digital space where you have the physical interaction and then combining that with the digital element, like it's the key unlock really to really kind of resonate as a brand with customers and also give them what they need in in all fronts it's.
Speaker 1:It's funny saying that it's something that I mean I'm experiencing firsthand myself right now. I've always been into my, into my functional fitness. The last two years I got really into my running and joined a run club, and there's obviously the affiliate with a few things in the local area, which is quite cool. Some of the brands that I follow they do a lot of run clubs that are sponsored by, like sorkin e, for example, and what have you. So I'm literally seeing that kind of firsthand and and to me, me, it's like the perfect way for a business to market itself Totally.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I'm part of a footwear couple, so obviously I work for Vivo Barefoot myself, but my wife is working at Saucony. Okay, she's leading a lot of this stuff and community-based stuff for Saucony and for her and her business and and we we met when I worked at Wolverine, so that was that's the crossover, obviously, but, but, um, she, she's, she's obviously um, seeing firsthand the benefit of this. Like Saucony has been a brand that's been been rising, uh, incredibly well in the last few years. But this moment of the run club interaction which really is giving people, like you know, I think it gives people a social interaction beyond alcohol or other things in the uk where people typically form and bond over meeting at the pub, and it's now giving people an opportunity to meet in in ways and socialize together in a way that's actually really good for you and and there's benefits. It's like a win-win-win scenario.
Speaker 2:Um, and, like I say, the win part for the brand is they're getting love and loyalty from from the customers. Win for the customer is they're getting an experiential environment, a point to socialize, a point to bring humans together, and and and then I guess the win on the transactional side is if there's a retail store or the brand itself is connected into this piece, then there's also a commercial benefit as well and it kind of connects quite nicely. So I think we'll continue to see that trend kind of develop and build on it. I guess the challenge is that when all brands see this as an opportunity, then it becomes kind of saturated. So it'll be interesting to see how the authenticity of it remains as as more and more brands enter into this space.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I would agree. I feel we're still very much at the the early stage of this. But, yeah, give it a couple of years, we'll start to see it overdone for sure, and it'll be okay. Well, how, what then happens? Overdone for sure, and it'll be okay. Well, how, what then happens?
Speaker 1:Um, I think you yeah, you raise a really good point actually there, um, I know we're going to talk about community and authenticity a little bit more later on, so, um, we've looked at, um, obviously, I guess, the why behind the d2c, but there's not just, there's the why they would do it. But I guess it's not just a case of businesses can say, right, we're going to go and serve the customer here, we're going to do, we're going to spin up a website. Well, you can now, but for a long time you couldn't. So I guess it'd probably be good to talk about technology itself and how that's evolved over the last 10 years to enable DTC brands to engage with their customers. Because, like, if you go back to your asics days, it wasn't quite as easy to spin up a website and sell into them within within a couple of hours or whatever. Do you know?
Speaker 2:what I mean for sure, and and like. So it's a good point because it's all a bit relative, right, like if you think about those big businesses like asics right, they're, they're a four billion turnover company, right and? And therefore, the bigger you are, the more, uh, slow, slowly you adapt to the trends in the market and and the slower it is for that big ship to turn right, because they have infrastructure around them. Their erp system is massive, it's a global erp, it's servicing multiple markets, lots of complexity in it and therefore, for them to pivot and change into another area or to just spin up a website, it's not the straightforward because there's a lot of bureaucracy and in those types of organizations typically naturally so, because they need to protect the brand um at that size and that level, especially the, the shareholders they have um.
Speaker 2:But be that, the reality is they they typically have antiquated um structures or infrastructures that were built around wholesale businesses as opposed to D2C focused organizations.
Speaker 2:So they they can't just spin up a Shopify site and not connect it to an OMS and an ERP the same way that you know a startup, could you know they can find ways around that or they can tune different ways to kind of the kind of bypass or gap fill, just so they can move quickly.
Speaker 2:So I think definitely in big brands like AS, asics, you don't have the same agility as what you have in in in some of the, in some of the smaller brands, I think. I think for sure like it's not to say that they don't do things progressively or they aren't agile on the front end, but for sure on the back end and infrastructure side, they're definitely slower. And I think, when, when I think about where we are now, you're right, the circumstances have changed With the rise of AI. You can brief in AI and ask it to spin up a website in a matter of days, and actually that's been one of the big challenges that I had with Vivo last year is that we had a huge influx of counterfeit sites basically trying to spin up Vivo copy websites basically, and and they were doing it in a matter of days every time we were taking one down, three more were popping up.
Speaker 2:It was like wow, so it was you know and a lot of that is to do with the ease of of creation now of these sites. Not that these were working sites. A lot of these were just front-end layers that allowed customers to come and transact and for fraud to take place, but that that was really damaging for us as a brand, because we're you're dealing with the PR message and whether it's you as a brand or not which in this case, obviously it wasn't you're still dealing with the flack of that and we are still also. We also still care about our customers and want to make sure that if they've gone on there thinking that they're getting some sort of deal from Vivo, that that you know the the love hasn't been lost for the brand. So so that was a big effort for us to kind of manage that and monitor that as well.
Speaker 2:Um, and and the ease of launching those sites now is actually almost too easy. That that I I think where we're going to end up is is a space where you've got such a busy online space with lots of different brands for lots of different things that actually, you know, when we're talking earlier about multi-channel experience, people will probably crave more experience because they'll be in such a busy space, or maybe even an unknown space, because of how easy it is for for counterfeit brands to appear and counterfeit digital products to appear, that that they'll want that authentic, real experience because it's safer, essentially, you know.
Speaker 1:So if you touch it, you can trust it. I guess, right?
Speaker 2:exactly right, you know. So that that may, may come. But, yeah, I think, like for for me, even on on the um the technology side, I think, for for us, um, even at vivo, like where, where we're looking to, I think you had the headless trend come in a few years ago where where people are trying to decouple their front end and back ends to make them slightly more flexible and and allow for that um ability to to kind of um shape different parts of the business and at different, I guess, speed levels, um, without having a back end that restricts, uh, certain movements in the organization. We're looking at that and we have been looking at that for the last couple of years. But we're probably heading more towards a microsite structure where similar, I guess, to a headless principle, but we definitely see that as kind of a future state where you have microsites connected to the base of the ERP.
Speaker 2:So if we want to change out our CMS because a new product comes onto the market where it has better facilitation for the things we need, it's easy to exchange that basically with another rather than us having to be reliant on the CMS that's been highly embedded into our tech structure. That means that it's it's so complicated to unwind from it that we don't have that flexibility or agility, and I think that's that's really where the key will be um, particularly for the big brands and, like I say, the slower moving ones is how they create their technology stacks to allow for more flexibility and agility, even in a large um kind of organization. So so for us at Vivo, as we're scaling, we're definitely looking to the future and we're kind of trying to be future-proofed in our tech structure so that we have that agility on the front end to be able to interchange what we need based on the consumer demand, but not completely throw the baby out with the bathwater, essentially, and go through our full replatform project every single time.
Speaker 1:We need to make that adaptability yeah, that's what you don't want, right? I think if you're having to re-platform every couple of years, it's it's going to be a large expense, um, not just in terms of cost, but in terms of downtime, with innovation and other things as well. Again, I'd be interested to get your viewpoint on this, and I appreciate there's not going to be a one-size-fits-all approach. But if you're building a brand right now, at what point do you think okay, we need to start looking at what serves us here and now versus okay, what serves us for the future as well. Because if you're, if you're literally just selling a couple of products and your turnover is within a few thousands, you're not really going to be fussed about. Okay, what?
Speaker 2:I presume we're selling multi-million pounds, so where would you say that kind of point is where you wouldn't start considering that yeah, I think I think it's hard to say the exact point, because I think you know it depends where you are in your journey and and you know some people are bootstrapping and just getting on and and they're not, they're not building out a three to five year plan there. Really. They're just, they make, they're true entrepreneurs and they're making each day work as it goes and they're reacting to whatever's in front of them in each day. And you know, having been in that position myself at a point like I know how you can barely see the trees for the woods or the woods for the tree, sorry, um, in in that scenario. So even get into the headspace to be able to sit back and do a three to five year plan is highly, highly unlikely. So I think I think it depends where you are. If you're in that space, I can't imagine you're looking at your long-term infrastructure. It's probably when you start to bring more people into the business and create then a bit more space for yourself to be able to do that, um, that that's maybe the case. But I definitely say in in small to medium-sized brands like um, really, we we look at our three to five year business plan and we're trying to understand like where do we expect our regional shift to go over the next three to five years? Where do we see our category shift going over the next three to five years? Where do we see our customer builds growing over those next three to five years? And once you've kind of got that foundation in place and you understand exactly where the markets are, you're going to play in. Where you've kind of got that foundation in place and you understand exactly where the markets are, you're going to play in, where the categories are, you're going to play in and the customers you're going to, you're going to be approaching there, then it makes it much easier for us to kind of develop our technology agenda to service that and and ultimately, technology.
Speaker 2:I I see that part of my role, definitely as a service function on on the business and it's it's quite interesting that I get to wear two hats. I'm wearing the commercial hat so I'm looking at the future growth and development of the organization in the five-year plan and then I'm basically trying to figure out with my other hat, how do I service that through um, building the right infrastructure and allowing for the right technology stack to to facilitate that. So I'd say you know there's no, there's no particular moment. But as you build that financial plan and financial model over the over the three to five years and you look at the drivers that sit behind that, it makes it much easier for you to kind of take that bigger picture view, to say, okay, well, if, if we are going to be playing, you know, let's say this isn't the case for vivo but if you're going to be playing 50% more in Asia and Chinese markets, for example, because you want to avoid the US tariffs, maybe you then are building an infrastructure that services more towards marketplaces. And you then need you know, I don't know a very good DAM system with images that can be ported straight into marketplace platforms, or a PIM tool that will allow you to kind of build out all the um metadata and and product information that can easily be ported again then into into third-party systems. That's maybe your approach, um.
Speaker 2:Or if you see the US tariff thing as an opportunity, maybe you're saying, hey, we're going to go big guns into the US and therefore you want to build an opportunity. Maybe you're saying, hey, we're going to go big guns into the US and therefore you want to build an infrastructure that allows you to service the US market well and then you look at what is best practice in that market. What are the trends that are coming in that market? What is the expectation of the customer? Is it highly personalized? Is it localization? They have a big Spanish speaking population in the US. Do you need to offer localization into Spanish as well as English and consider other aspects, and then you start to build that profile based off of that need. But I think it all starts with that kind of long range plan and really understanding where you're going to play, how you're going to play and who you're going to play with in those spaces in those in those spaces, and I guess that goes down to looking at the business problems and then using technology to solve that problem, right?
Speaker 1:do you? Do you feel as though having a commercial hat and a technology hat benefits the decisions that are made for the business, because I guess you're looking at it down the commercial lens, like as a priority? Often I hear hear about decisions that I've made and they've probably been too focused around the technology and not necessarily the business problems.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but but I guess I I I potentially have the bias to go the other way, right and and serve as more on the commercial side rather than maybe some of the technology based pieces, because I guess technology for me has probably three elements. One is the things we have to do to be legal and compliant. Um, the the second big bucket is is probably geared around um, infrastructure and supporting the organization. So, um, you're talking about anything you need to do through the ERP, it systems and any of those things that supports the business. And then the third bucket is the website and how we generate the website and other digital aspects of the business, so omnichannel services and anything that really drives commercial value. So one of them is legal and compliant. It's not going to drive any commercial value, but we have to do it because if we get fined we're going to get probably in pretty hot water. The second one is infrastructural. It's the non-sexy stuff, but it's all platform based or or fundamental foundational stuff that is going to allow us to do the sexy stuff on the front end that that can kind of move the business forward. So it's not necessarily going to give you a big roi in that space, but it's going to give, give you the right foundation to be able to go and do the front end stuff that really gives you that commercial benefit. And then that third bucket is really the commercial drivers and what is driving the growth of the organization. And some things are growth driven, some things are UX based, some things are cost saving, even or efficiency based within that model. But those are the three big buckets that I look at, and when I'm working with the tech team I sit down and go, okay, well, what do we need to do to be compliant? Because all that stuff just has to be done. It's just a hygiene factor that we need to do. The infrastructural stuff that we do to support the growth of the business is, you know, it's probably the hardest one because you know whether it be upgrading your ERP system, reviewing I don't know a new WMS issue that you have with your global 3PL provider, and consolidating that like there's. There's lots of these big projects or big bucket things that we could do that would make it slightly more efficient or slightly more productive as an organization, but you can't do all of them because they're usually all a money suck and a resource suck as well, so you have to be selective there. So so usually on that it's trying to work out where we're going to get the biggest bang for a buck. And then on the commercial side, usually we what we?
Speaker 2:We use a scoring criteria on that right and it's it's. It's scored in a matrix type um scorecard that allows us to understand okay, does that UX benefit, keep customers happy and therefore it might improve our LTV? Does that cost saving issue, does that give us a major cost saving? That actually is even better than a revenue return, because we can then reinvest that cost saving into talking to more customers or spending that in your performance marketing funnel talking to more customers, or or spending that in your performance marketing funnel. Or does the commercial driver ie a new localized site in the netherlands, for instance, is that going to give us a major benefit? Because it's going to open us up to a brand new customer segment in the netherlands.
Speaker 2:Right and and and it's weighing those up and and there's a weighted scorecard then kind of then determines which one we then put our, put our investment behind and put our resource, uh, time behind, because the amount of things you can do is almost infinite but the, the resource you have is very, very much finite, um, yeah, working through that well, I like, I like the fact that it all sits with you because you, you, you, like I said you went up into those three buckets and you put in a scorecard in place to work out where you would invest, right.
Speaker 1:So I like the fact that it's just that with one person and not with two, because you're looking at it holistically, right.
Speaker 2:I think that does help. It does. It means it's less me, you know, battling with a c and a cto saying no, I'm going to put all the time and resource into infrastructural stuff which actually won't give us a benefit. It's kind of I am fortunate enough that I know that I have to put certain investment behind the things that are going to drive revenue gain, otherwise I'm not going to hit the, the commercial number of put forward to the organization. So it it definitely does help me, facilitate that and and makes that much easier, rather than lots and lots of debate on what should we do and why are we not doing all these commercial things you know?
Speaker 1:and and that bit then definitely is is a benefit for sure yeah, so just quickly, whilst we're talking about this, then another decision that's been made by vivo bear for is to have an internal development team. Now, that's that's a decision that isn't taken by every brand. Obviously, there's many out there that decide to outsource their. Their development function, so in some cases, their whole it function. So, um, I guess what? What is the key reason that you guys have decided to to bring your engineering in-house?
Speaker 2:yeah, so we, we basically have a more of a hybrid model, so we do. We do have an external partner that we work with as well, so it allows us to kind of scale up and scale down depending on the number of um items that are on the the agenda. Like vivo, vivo has a very big and uh complex agenda for a relatively small brand. You know we're kind of 100 million brand and in real terms you know we're not the same size of an asics or or wolverine, but but the reality is for for a brand of our size, we have big ambitions and that's everything from our regenerative mission and how we do take back and returns and repairs and all those things to make sure we reduce the number of things that go to landfill. If that is our global expansion plans, where we basically service more than 110 markets globally, the number of channels we play in we play in e-com, retail, wholesale distributors, franchise models, shop-and-shop models there's a big, complex organization behind a relatively small brand and I think that's a big part of the reason why we're so excited. And to do that you kind of need to be able to be in control of your destiny a little bit. So I've worked in both models where I've worked with a business where it's been completely in-house and everything has been done internally, I've worked with completely external as well.
Speaker 2:Personally, I find the benefit of working more with internal only on the basis of they are brand aligned already, so you don't need to spend the time on trying to bring them into the brand mission because they're bathed in it, they live it every day. We have a very connected organization where we get together at different retreats four times a year. So those people spend time with other people, they hear the company presentations, they know where we're going directionally, so they're bathed in everything from a brand perspective. Um, and and I guess, um, without sort of crass, the difference between internal resource and agency is an agency, yes, I can penalize them through the contract and whatever else, but through an internal employee, I can motivate them probably much easier on a direct basis. So I I I personally find having a higher weighting to internal resource helps and and I I find my, my agenda items tend to get completed faster um than than what I do when, when I work solely with an agency.
Speaker 2:Um, that's not to say that that's just me badly managing an agency, right, so it could be the case, but I definitely think I get more output whenever I have an internal engineering team. But, as I say, we're kind of working almost hybrid at the minute, where it's probably geared 60% 70% towards in-housed engineering and about 30% of our output is done through an agency partner. That's been a solid partner for us in the last six months. We've brought them on so they're helping us deliver a number of projects that take us away from BAU, that are kind of looking at that kind of forward facing stuff.
Speaker 1:Nice. I think obviously you found a good blend, which is good, and let's say there's no one-size-fits-all approach to that, to that question, right? However, uh, you feel it fit better. The business I like the fact you touch upon having the permanent employees bought into the, the vision and the brand, and it's clear that for someone like viva barefoot, that's really important for you, um, and you just don't get that with agencies, so yeah, I get it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, try as they might, they just never get it because they're not living and breathing it and they're possibly working across four or five different brands at one time right, and that's good. Like I say, it gives you a flex up, flex down opportunity as a business, but the reality is they're never going to be as mission aligned or as brand focused as what your in-house team are. We also made the decision to stick with Magento, so we went through a discussion on our Adobe. We went through a discussion on replatform. We decided that we've put a lot of investment into this asset that we have on the website and actually right now isn't the time for us to replatform. So we're now looking, like I said, to work towards this microsite structure where we have composable parts within the infrastructure that we can take away and exchange out. However, the asset that we've built on, we want to continue to invest in and therefore we've in-housed full-stack developers and front-end as well as back-end developers to be able to help support that as we grow and build on this asset.
Speaker 1:Yeah, magento is an interesting one. I feel like it's the most marmite of e-commerce platforms. They've got such a strong community. That open source community is huge, but then, on the complete opposite end of the spectrum, you've got people that have just been saying Magento is dead for like five years and it's clearly still there.
Speaker 2:It's got about a 10 market share for, like, enterprise retail brand. Just, I mean, it's doing all right, totally, totally. And look, you know, is is I have to say so, magento outlives my legacy and in vivo, you know, they've been on it and for quite a long time I've been in vivo for a year and or just over a year and so so that that decision, uh, basically, was concluded before I joined um. Whether it's the right decision or not, I think is is debatable, but I I think platforms are always debatable, you know, and and from my own perspective, I'm relatively platform agnostic in a lot of ways. Like, typically, they will all do the same thing. It just depends on how, how you work within them, right, and I think some of them definitely offer slightly more flexibility and agility.
Speaker 2:I think, like shopify can be great for, you know, turning things around relatively relatively quickly. Um and magento definitely requires a lot more customization. But by going through that customization journey, we we typically have more personalized features on our site than than maybe what some others would have out of the box, right? So I think there's yeah, it could be a long debate. Will we stay on Magento forever? You know, who knows, we kind of keep the right to review that on a regular basis. But to the earlier discussion I definitely don't want to get into a position where you're having that replatform discussion every two to three years. Building kind of a microsite structure allows us to almost create a composable element so that the e-com piece could also be replaced. So if we decided to step away from Magento and bring in Shopify in five years' time, then we could do that if we so wish. But that for me is more of the important part of creating an infrastructure that allows for that flexibility and discussion, and then we kind of, you know, just take it as it comes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, who knows what other platforms will be here in five years, right? Yeah, for sure, okay, so in your opinion, then, how can a D2C brand thrive in the market right now?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think. Actually it's probably a lot of what we touched on a little bit earlier in the conversation on that authenticity side, right? So I think the barriers to entry for D2C brands are relatively low now in a lot of ways, right, you can get a website set up in shopify relatively quickly. You can generate a lot of content through chat, gbt to populate that site. You can source a product in asia or somewhere else or bring a product to market relatively quickly, right. That's the first step, but the second step is obviously then coming into a very competitive space and navigating that in the right way to be able to build and develop the brand in the right way and resonate with customers in a very busy space where attention spans are low and cost to serve can be relatively high, depending on what approach you take. I think for me, once you've come through those steps and you're at that position where you're talking to customers and your market and your brand and you have all your ducks in a row, the key part is going to be remaining authentic, because there's going to be so many brands in there playing in a space that they're doing it inauthentically, because they either are just trying to pivot, to adapt, or they're trying to just basically make a quick buck or whatever, whatever, whatever the motivations are, um, you know the. The reality is for me that you can't lose that authenticity. Like you know, amazon, being a completely consumer-centric business and never changing that model is, is that way for a reason. You know the biggest, uh, you know d2c potential retailer in the world, and they're that way because they reason. You know the biggest, you know DTC potential retailer in the world, and they're that way because they continually make the consumer at the center of everything they do. And, and I think, if, if you take that approach as a DTC brand, that the consumer is number one, no matter what you do, the only way you're going to really keep their attention and stay engaged with them is through authenticity.
Speaker 2:And I think you know just when we were talking earlier about community, I think that's a big part of it.
Speaker 2:You know it's like how do you bring them into an experience that connects them to more than just that transaction?
Speaker 2:Like how do you make them feel that when they come and buy their vivos, that they've joined an exclusive club of, you know, vivo wearers and, and, and that means more than just that transaction, at the point of till because genuinely, for a brand like vivo and I say this authentically, like it's more than that for them as a business you know we're, we are trying to fulfill a mission to try and reduce the amount of product that's going to landfill, and to do that we need to be as authentic as possible because you know our customers need to believe what we're pushing is is the right approach.
Speaker 2:They also need to have faith in our supply chain that we're doing all the things humanly possible to make sure that that's as efficient as possible. We're offering services so that they don't need to put product to landfill. We will recycle them or we will repair them, and we will make that journey much easier for them as well. So so create an authenticity behind that and also then bathing it in a community that makes people feel like they're part of something more rather than just a transaction. I think is really important in the DTC space.
Speaker 1:Okay. So, as we touched upon earlier, that the community element, and involving yourself within that community, is starting to become harder. It's becoming more common to become harder. It's becoming more, more common and over time we are going to see the uh that take an impact in the results that dc brands will receive off the back of it. So how do they navigate? That is that. I mean, is that not possible right now? Or how do you see that developing, I guess over the next sort of 12, 18, 24 months?
Speaker 2:I, I, I do think it's possible, but I think, like you have to be doing it with the right reasons. Like you have to be doing it with the right reasons, like you have to be doing it because you believe that you can. You know whether it be. Let's just use an example, a practical example. Like, say, it's a run club. You're a nutrition brand and you want to start a run club because you want more people to test and trial your products in real time, to be able to then go on and and and take a journey with the brand. Right, you know, if you're doing that for the right reasons, you're, you're basically going to set up and facilitate a run club that is probably free of charge from them to attend. It's a sampling opportunity for you as a brand, for them to test it, trial it and and and determine whether they like it. It's also a good opportunity for you to get feedback from customers and and treat it almost like a focus group environment as well, so you can get direct feedback on your products and if you're, if you're taking that insight and you're using that to, you know, develop better products or improve products or do any of those things. Like that's legitimate and it's there's, there's an authenticity to that and customers aren't stupid either. Like, they will determine that as well and and they'll they'll also have the right to choose.
Speaker 2:Um. So, like it's, it's on you to use that in your gift to be able to develop your product, bring your products to market in a way that then serves those customers as you gain those insights, and but also then find a way to lock them in so, like, like. What is your then tie to have them then stay with you as as partner? You know, is it by joining the Run Club? You have an always on logged in 10% off on all of your nutrition purchases, for life or for the time that you're a member? You know, whatever it is and whatever the mechanic is, it needs to be authentic. But it's on you as a brand, I think, to really determine how you take that from a point of application to locking them in then into the brand and making sure that that's done in a way that's as authentic as possible.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that leads on to a bit of a loyalty conversation as well, which I find really interesting because for a long time I felt brands can do a lot more to retain their customers. I've always been one that's very much out to get the best deal customers. I've always been one that's very much out to get the best deal um. So I've always been well. Why am I like that? And that's because I don't feel as though anyone really makes the effort to try and know me as a customer. Um, but interestingly, I had um, I had sam at talon one, I had fiona from loyalty line on the pod at the end of last year, so this year, and they were telling me about what some of the brands are doing from a loyalty point of view and I found it really cool.
Speaker 1:One of the best ones was AU Vodka and all of their top-tier loyalty customers get invited to a big party once a year. There's like thousands of people turning completely free. It's a massive event and obviously that is cool for the customer because they're going to this exclusive event for the brand. Off the back of that they're getting some amazing marketing completely. Well, say, completely free of charge. It's not free of charge because they're putting the event on, but they're getting x amount of thousands of people posting all over socials. They're creating that buzz, that community. They're giving back and in turn they're going to go and buy some more you've all could directly from them. So they've, like they've got it sort of pretty good. I'm sure that that's just one example.
Speaker 2:There'd be loads out there yeah, heaps man, and like you, yeah, you hit the nail on the head right that that touches three things. It's it's the community aspect, it's ugc they're creating all the content coming out of the back of that and it's experience. It's like just what we were talking about. It's as much as you know it. It depends on the category, of course. If it's an fmcg category and it's a consumable item, you know, maybe it is slightly more transactional. But it doesn't have to just be transactional. It can be. It can be kind of something where you feel like you know, at least you're getting more from it, and if it's kind of point to be a scheme, that then leads to something like that's going to bring great engagement.
Speaker 2:Um, things like footwear.
Speaker 2:It's kind of tricky because typically you'll have, you know, people purchasing that one time a year, maybe two times a year, depending on how quickly they go through their running shoes or their shoes in that category.
Speaker 2:So you need to find a way to stay relevant to those customers in the moments where they're not buying right, and one of the things that we do in Vivo is we obviously offer services for repairs or returns on your products. So that's one area. Another area is V Health, where we have kind of health workshops and digital content that allows you to then engage, and it might be a yoga session. It might be a barefoot fundamentals course. It might be a barefoot running fundamentals course, where you start to really understand your body and understand the benefits of the product. And that's important to do, not just from a locking customers in perspective, but it's also important to do because it means that we're being responsible as a brand, like we're. We're really guiding you on your barefoot journey, which is different from, you know, when you're wearing a, a standard pair of cushion shoes or shoes that don't give you those same benefits yeah, more than 100, and I mean I think that's actually really cool.
Speaker 1:So I wasn't aware that you offered that as a brand, um. But I guess the thing I like about vivo is you've got that whole sustainable doing, doing the right thing piece, but actually you've also got the the barefoot feel as well, which I think I don't know enough about it. So so forgive me if I talk about this slightly naively, but uh, there's a big uh drive, a big community of people that really feel that kind of uh, foot to ground, barefoot feel, and being able to educate them and the wider audience on that is only going to benefit the brand and, like you said, having knowing you're doing the right thing to educate the right people definitely definitely like that the thing is with that, so.
Speaker 2:So there's two elements to it, right for us. One there's the physical benefit of barefoot shoes because, essentially, when you go into a pair of barefoot shoes, your, your toes get to splay as they're, as they're supposed to like if you think about traditional running shoes, your feet tend to bunch up slightly and and and your toes tend to suffer in that. So that's how you get corns or bunions or different things in in in certain shoes. So so there's a physical benefit, because as your feet splay, your feet are able to strengthen and develop. So there's there's a physical benefit that we can communicate and we we share with others. But there's there's probably more of a philosophical or psychological benefit as well, right, because what, what we also do is it's a zero drop shoe, so essentially there's no cushioning below your foot. So you feel more, and you feel more on a literal sense and you feel more um on a, on a figurative sense, because you're literally becoming closer to nature, essentially by wearing barefoot shoes. So there's kind of an, a, an ethereal element to to what we position the brand does as well, because you know, if you think about, even you know, during covid, something we talked about earlier.
Speaker 2:Like I spent a lot of time when I could then in the outdoors and I just felt like I was, uh, one, I felt like the stress levels kind of dissipated quite a lot. And then obviously there was the physical benefits. So the physical benefit was I was out, moving and walking in nature and I was kind of getting the all the physical benefits that come with that. But I was getting a lot of psychological benefit from that as well and the freedom of feeling, you know, humbled in by mother nature or whatever you want to call it right. Like there definitely is an element of that that helps.
Speaker 2:Then, you know, your, your psychological health, I think, as well, and that's something that we genuinely lean into because it's important to us. We meet as a, as a team, in nature. Like we have a lot of our, our senior leadership team meetings around a campfire and that's literally done on the basis of, you know, we, we feel a more creative, probably in nature, but B it's it's legitimate to our mission and it's legitimate to to what we see is important in the world and hence why we are a regenerative brand, because it's not about um taking away less it's, it's about almost trying to create a brand that gives back more rather than, um you know, just extracting resources from the earth and I remember when you first told me about the the outdoor meeting stuff, I thought that was really cool and I absolutely love it.
Speaker 1:I've long said we need to do more outdoor meetings, activities, team building. Even just when I take a call, I like to walk around and what have you? And it's just you. We're not designed to be sat behind the desk or behind the screen. Do you know what I mean? We need to be out at one with nature and just breathing in nice air totally.
Speaker 1:I love that I that I love how you push that through, and obviously that builds the community, and what have you, too, so cool? Okay, so look, um, just quickly then if, if you were a ddc brand, I know you're probably gonna say answer that I focus around community and authenticity and what have you. But what are the three areas that you'd be investing in right now?
Speaker 2:yeah, um, I would say three areas. Um, it is a sliding scale depending on the size of the business, um, so, so let's say, if you're in the early stages, you're going to invest in something slightly different than than what you would as a mature business. Um, I'll, I'll, maybe, I'll maybe flip this and tell you the three areas that we're investing in in vivo, because we're a mid-sized business, so you can kind of maybe get a bit of a view on on both ends. So so, if I look at the three areas that we're investing in, we're investing in um revivo, my vivo and our vivo. So revivo, essentially, we're we're investing in um, the production element of our product, so ensuring that we have the highest quality in our product, essentially, which means looking at loads of elements behind that. That's, looking at how do we make our materials easier to recycle, how do we source better materials to get better quality, feel on foot, all of those things. So, ultimately, putting product first and also using that in a mission-driven way so that, when the product comes to the end of its life cycle, it can be recycled and put back in a way that that, when, when the product comes at the end of its life cycle. It can be recycled and and and put back in a way that um is right for for the planet and for the customer.
Speaker 2:The second part is is probably our vivo, which is um infrastructure. So we're investing a lot in infrastructure to support that future growth. So, something we talked about earlier, um, you know, we we have been on a rapid growth journey for the last five, six years, really as a brand, and what tends to happen is, as you grow up quite quickly, you tend to have infrastructure that's not fit for purpose anymore or for the future, and I always liken it to you're living in a two bed house and all of a sudden, your family grows to five people, so you start putting extensions onto the house and actually, before you know it, you have this house that doesn't make any sense, with a bathroom up in the attic and I don't know, maybe your kitchen is somewhere where the, where the living room should be right, and and that's just the nature of growing up quickly and and it tends to happen quite often from a technical and technology perspective and in real terms, what the best thing you could do is probably flatten the house and rebuild it from scratch, but but that isn't an option because you're having to live in it while you're while you're doing it. You know so. So the the bits that we are looking at is to try and say, okay, where, where do we see our, our business, in three to five years time and how do we, how do we gear our infrastructure to support that growth and support that part of the business? So I'd say, definitely our vivo and how we shape the systems and infrastructure of the organization is is critical.
Speaker 2:And then the, the third and final part, and it's also one you touched on um, it's, it's my vivo, and that's basically our loyalty and customer experience piece um, and it's it's bringing together all the different elements. You you said you know you hadn't heard of v health, which is kind of our, our content platform, our health-based platform. Other customers also haven't um, I know you're not a customer, but but customers that we have also aren't aware of it because it's it's really hard to house all of those things together. You know, if somebody is just coming to purchase and they come to the website and buy a product, they maybe aren't exploring all the different facets of the site to understand that that's available or that revivo as a returns process will allow them to return their products, their old shoes and and whatnot as well.
Speaker 2:So through um, through a loyalty lens, we're building a my vivo platform that is fully connected and allows us to kind of bring all of the different elements that the brand offers, bring that together in a in a digital space so that connects both to our digital space and also our offline spaces, like our retail stores, um to really bring a unique experience that is authentic, that is community driven um, but also gives real value in the brand beyond just the transaction, and and you know we have so many of these things that gives value beyond a transaction, but we're just not very good at bragging about it. We're quite a humble brand in a lot of ways and and actually where we, it's not that we necessarily need to shout about it, we just need to make it easier from a customer experience perspective to experience all of those things and and that's a big area of focus for us so really trying to drive loyalty and um a bigger sense of connection to the brand through through that my vivo lens well, I think what's clear from what you said.
Speaker 1:I love the reviewer, our vivo, my vivo.
Speaker 1:Like the business is about vivo, like everything that we spoke about today, you can really feel and see, like the how important is, like the business mission and values.
Speaker 1:I mean, and everything that you've you said from, from just the names of of re are and my vivo, to actually what they all mean and do and their purpose behind them, um thing that speaks, echoes about the brand and I love it and I've really enjoyed it. Yeah, cool, I think. I think the one thing that I would add I think when you are a brand which sells a specific product to target a certain type of individual or so or whatever it might be I, in this case, you've got the shoe which is targeting individuals that want to be barefoot it does really help you dial in, it helps you have an identity and when you've got an identity, you can then really focus on your authenticity and tapping into it. I think if you're a more generic brand where actually you're just selling products as cheap as possible, it's going to be far harder, um, but uh, but yeah and you talked about it earlier like there's, there's a big piece of consolidation and I think and that's happening.
Speaker 2:you see it like the the market's becoming more polarized in a lot of ways that you have consolidation at the high end um, luxury space and you have consolidation at the lower end and and actually the one the brands that are getting squeezed the most are the ones that don't have that identity where they're just offering a me too product and they, they basically, are just trying to sell it for either as cheap as possible or sell as many as possible, and usually those two things are linked and actually they're the ones that are really suffering here, because the margin will dilute for them as well as they do that, and it'll be much harder for them to add that value.
Speaker 2:So I'd definitely say, if you're a D2C brand out there and you're feeling like you're in that space, you probably need to look at how you invest some of that profit into developing a greater identity and really building on that identity to drive authenticity, and you'll then develop an LTV that is much more appropriate for your brand. You know you want to be driving that longer term value because you know, obviously it depends on the product. If you're selling a sofa, you maybe are just thinking it's a one and done deal, maybe, but you know, if you've got any future aspirations to sell to that customer again or for that customer to go and tell people that they had a freaking amazing experience with your brand, like you need to be thinking about the long term. It can't just be transactional and and I think you're spot on it starts with identity and then that builds on authenticity from there.
Speaker 1:well, I don't know if anything like my wife and you won't just be a one and done with her so far.
Speaker 1:She wants to replace us every three years I mean we're still paying our one off when she's only looking at new ones. So there we go, um, but there you go. That's it, I guess, how to thrive as a dc brand, have an identity like definitely, I would agree, brilliant. Well, look, I think that's a good place to wrap things up. Steve um, love it, really appreciate your time, um, yeah, and I really enjoyed this one. Thank you very much for joining me, um, and I hope everyone else has enjoyed it as well. Thank you for tuning in, thank you for listening, and please do like, share and spread across your networks and I'll see you next time.
