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Delivering Sleep Like Uber: Inside Ecosa’s Lean Ecommerce Machine | #569

• Nathan Bush • Episode 569

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Ringo Chan, Co-Founder and CEO of Ecosa, has spent nearly a decade transforming how people buy mattresses: and now, how they sleep. What began as a bold move into the DTC bedding space has evolved into a global sleep brand with operations spanning Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, and beyond.

Today, we’re discussing:

  • How to build an edge competitors can’t replicate - even in a copycat market
  • What Ecosa learned from a 15-month product flop (and why Ringo calls it a win)
  • The AI tools cutting Ecosa’s product development time in half
  • The real secret to staying lean while still blowing customers away
  • Why genuine word-of-mouth will always beat referral codes

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SPEAKER_01:

I want customers to pay their money for the product, not for the delivery costs or storage costs. If we only think about how we convince customers to sell, that's marketing. And that's wrong. So our vision is to build a brand that actually helps people sleep better. You know, because a lot of mattresses brands are there to sell you a piece of furniture, right? When you work in a work that you you always serve other people's, you know, you yourself need it to enjoy your work as well.

SPEAKER_00:

Hey, it's Nathan Bush or Bushy, joining you from the land of the terrible people here in Brisbane, Australia. What would you do if you spent 15 months developing a brand new product that you're really excited to launch that the team had worked super hard on, only to scrap the entire thing just before launch? That's exactly what today's guest did, and it is one of the reasons that OCOSA has become one of Australia's most trusted sleep brands, and you're going to hear all about it today. Ringo Chan is the founder and the CEO of Ocosa, the Aussie sleep company that's delivering comfort to over 40,000 bedrooms every year, and is now expanding beyond mattresses into everything else that helps people sleep better. Since launching in 2015, Ringo has built Ocosa into a lean multi-warehouse operation with same day or next day delivery, a 100-night trial, and now three physical stores, the first of many, to let customers try before they buy. In this chat, you're going to hear from Ringo how he and the team at OCOSA have built trust in a high consideration, and it must be said, a low trust category, even before they had a single showroom. We talk about how he turns customer feedback and returns into product development fuel. Ringo is all about product development. If you're product development, you are going to want to listen to this. And he talks about creating a caring, high-performance culture by protecting the happiness of his team just as fiercely as he protects customer satisfaction. It's so important to him. As always, Ad Descart is brought to you by our friends at Clavio and Shopify. They are the ones that make Ad Descart happen every week. So thank you so much to the teams for supporting us ongoing. Without further ado, let's get into it. Today it's a product development masterclass with Ringo Chan, co-founder and CEO of ACOSA. Ringo, welcome to Ad Descartes. Thank you. Awesome to have you here. I've been following Acoza for a long time now, so it's brilliant to have yourself as the founder here to tell us the story. Obviously, a lot has changed in the furniture market when you first started ACOSA. How do you today describe a non-copiable edge that your competitors can't match?

SPEAKER_01:

Okay. I think to be very honest, everything can be copied, right? For us, is that the potter that are the core of the business, right? Because we sell potter and customers buy, yes, they buy the servers as well, but potter is the most important, especially our products are uh mattresses that will stay in your house for the next five, ten years. So product is the core. And you'll hear me say a lot about potter as well. So then on top of that, of course, is uh the supply chain, you know, getting to people's house, you know, as fast as possible, as you know, frictionless as possible. But then also underneath that is the way of how we operate is that we always embrace challenge. So we never stop, we just go like chase, chase, chase for for better. And I think that makes us different because you you know, by the time we stop, people will just, you know, push you and and you know, we'll be either gone or or we'll we'll just have to do better.

SPEAKER_00:

When you're embracing challenge, what challenge are you embracing at the moment?

SPEAKER_01:

Good question. Well, we see so many challenges every day, but uh just mention of a few, you know, like from a product level, you know, just a few months ago, took us 15 months to release a earpox that helps you to cancel all the noise when you sleep. And you know, from the data point of view, you know, we we did a lot of lab testing, you know, and it's supposed to be one of the best earpacks out there. But when we try to release this product online and give to a limited number of consumers to test out the product, it's just not as good as the data base. And then we just have to write off, you know, 15 months of work and also like, you know, something like 10, 5, 15,000 of product, right? We just have to write it off.

SPEAKER_00:

Because it just didn't make customer standards.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, wow. Yeah, so that's uh that's the challenge that we have to decision that we have to make. Where it's like, okay, does it mean that we are happy to waste employees 15 months of time, you know, and also wasting the product costs and everything? And you know, we also we top the photos, everything, photo should on everything, it's just ready to release. So yeah, that's a challenge on the product level.

SPEAKER_00:

And on that, do you see that as a failure or do you see it as kind of a learning experience? Will you reiterate that product again, or will you park it and put it aside and go, we tried it, we didn't want it? Failure is a learning experience. Yeah, yeah. And is that the end for that product, or do you go again in a different form? Yeah, we're we're going again. Nice. Okay. All right. That's a really great challenge. And I love your angle of product because I wasn't expecting you to say earplugs, because most people will know KOSA from mattresses and furniture. When you say product is at the forefront, do you put it with the lens of everything to do with sleep and the bedroom? Or how do you define where you can go with product? Where do you have permission to play?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, right, like sleep and bedroom. So our vision is to build a brand that actually help people sleep better, you know, because a lot of mattresses brands are there to sell you a piece of furniture, right? So eventually we want a customer to come to us and go, okay, I can't sleep well. I only sleep, you know, four hours a day because of this, this, this. And then we have either a product or service, you know, also could be in our AI app. The goal is to help this person sleep better.

SPEAKER_00:

Yep. And when you're coming up with product ideas on how to help customers sleep better, how much are you copying what's already out there and putting it in the COSA style? Versus how much are you trying to innovate and create brand new products that no one's ever seen?

SPEAKER_01:

Ah, yeah, good question. You know, there are solutions to certain problems already in the market. But then, you know, as a brand, we simply just copy a product and release the same product. Customers are not getting any value out of it. But then it's important also to know that we can't just not understand the market and just think that whatever we release are the best ones out there. It doesn't happen. So, so the first step to do is to understand what's out there and then what they are lacking, right? So there's there got to be something that you can do better and then just do better.

SPEAKER_00:

I love it. And in terms of your customer life cycle, I'm really interested there because that was what going to be one of my questions around when you're talking mattresses, you alluded to it right at the start, is that they do have a long life cycle, and you hope that they do have a long life cycle. How do you build out a customer life cycle where you can continually be part of their lives in between those big product purchases?

SPEAKER_01:

So because we are in not just the mattress industry, we're in sleep. So we we also sell pajama, you know, bad frame, bedding, and and a lot of other small parts. So we're not limited to sell just one thing, you know, that lasts for 10 years. But even with mattresses, we find that, you know, when a person buys a mattress from us, this person also seems to be liking to buy another one within the next one or two years because you know they also have a second room or you know, they may be what buying one for their parents because they like it. Yeah. So this happened. So I wouldn't say we are in the game of getting customers to buy from us every month. So what we have to build is also the quality enough for good word of mouth.

SPEAKER_00:

How do you amplify that word of mouth? Because obviously the game has changed a lot from when you started. I think it was still pretty novel when you started to be able to get mattresses delivered via online. That's probably broken a little bit now. People are open to it and it's almost become a bit normal. How do you generate now that word of mouth to stand you out from those competitors? Okay, short answer is we don't.

SPEAKER_01:

So we don't actively look to go to our customer and go, can you tell other people these that these are good product? Like we don't do that. Because what we believe is that, you know, if we do a referral, a lot of brands do referral codes, but in my experience, if my friend is giving me a code so that he can make$50 out of that code, I'm like, okay, is this genuine?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I just I actually just worked on a loyalty program that had referral as part of it, and it just was not used because I think customers feel icky about even referring for a discount rather than out of genuine goodwill and advocacy, right?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. So for us, it's like, how do we make again going back to potter, how do we make a product that people are genuinely happy about? And of course, the whole shopping experience is like, okay, give them surprise. Like, you know, a lot of people don't know that when you buy an ecosystem mattress, it will be able to arrive to your door the same day or next day. And also the same shopping experience is like we try to convince our driver to help customer lift it to their room of choice most of the time. And there are, you know, things that we try to do better so that customer expect because they already have high expectation of what we'll get from us, but how can we get better at that?

SPEAKER_00:

So do you publicize that? So same day or next day, do customers know that at purchase, or do you extend out the promise a little bit so that they're surprised when it arrives early? Oh no, they know. They know. They know.

SPEAKER_01:

On checkout, you can choose the time and date for your delivery. Because no one wanted mattress show up at your door, you know, for you know, all of the summons.

SPEAKER_00:

How important is speed when it comes to mattresses, or is it just the fact that customers are like, oh no, you've got your shit together, you know what's going on. I don't have to chase you, I don't have to worry about it. It's an item ticked off my list. You know what I mean? Because I can imagine with fashion, then yes, I might need it for an event or something, but I can imagine most times with a mattress, it's not an urgent, urgent, but customers appreciate it because they go, Hey, I've been trying it, I've been meaning to do that mattress for months now. It's just nice to have it ticked off my list and I'll get on with my life.

SPEAKER_01:

It's not well, I'm I'm sure some people will need it at a mattress on the same day because you know mattress shopping is not something that people buy every day. So a lot of people don't know that if you go to a traditional mattress store, they may give you a mattress in the amount of time after you bought it. Yeah. You know, that grab and goal is like, oh, well, what I can't get it today. This is uh something that surprised people. So for people that who, you know, literally just moved house and needed something urgently, that that happens. Majority of other people is like, because we can deliver this mattress fast, we can also allow the customer to choose date and time. And that's more important because if like a lot of people have scheduled to move house on a certain date, so they know that I need this to arrive on that date.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. I remember we talked to Drew from Toll Cloud about this, and that was one of his things. When you're renovating a house, you've got so many different deliveries and things coming in and out that actually having certainty over the delivery time was more important than fast because they actually just needed it to fit into the puzzle of what they're doing and have some certainty over it.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, but these two things go together because if you promise someone to have something delivered uh say a week later, but then a lot of the courier in Australia is that they only give you a range. It's not like the this particular day. They will give you a range of two to seven days. Now, two days and seven days are very different. Very different. Yeah, so being able to do it within the day, then we can just do the particular date a lot faster, a lot more accurate. We still miss, say, one or two percent of it, but it's because of the nature that we don't own those truck and truck drivers.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay. And so have you partnered with a courier delivery company that specializes in time-booked deliveries? No, for us it's more uh of an Uber model.

SPEAKER_01:

Um package picked packed, you know, and we just booked a career like it's this as a destination, like the one directly to you almost like Uber.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. Okay. And are you shipping them all out of different warehouses? Have you got warehouses all over? And we have a warehouse in each state. Okay. Okay. So you can do that proximity to capital cities and then book on demand essentially. Yeah, almost, almost like that. Yeah. Okay. Now, one of the things that I read about you, which was fascinating, is that when you started a COSA, it was all about championing a lean model for e-commerce, being able to do single-person delivery for mattresses, having remote teams for support, eliminating middlemen, which I think is the nirvana of e-commerce. As you move into these kind of offerings with multi-warehouses and you trying to surprise and delight customers to go above and beyond, I can imagine that's not always the cheapest or the leanest route. How do you manage staying lean as a business, but also going above and beyond for your customers? Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_01:

Staying lean is still a principle. So the first principle about it is that I want customers to pay their money for the product, not for the delivery cost or storage cost. Like if you buy a, say, a thousand dollars mattress, I want at least, you know, six way more, maybe 80% of it goes to the product itself. But the mattress industry is like, because it's needed really big warehouse and a and a really big showroom and a and two people doing the delivery, your true value of the product cost could only be 20%. And, you know, 30% goes to the delivery driver, and 30% goes. Imagine buying a thousand dollars product and you're only buying the 20% of it. Like that's not what customer wants. So we as big because businesses is about serving customers, it's about delivering what customers want. So to me, it's like customer want good product, that's the core, right? Good service, of course, like, but then that's secondary. They don't want to pay triple the price just to get the product faster, but the product is shit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we're lucky that because we sell a lot of one type of product, so actually help doing the per warehouse model and shipping it directly to customer for us is cheaper than sending it two to seven days using uh Hunter Express or LIExpress, like those bigger courier. Because then they have to send a big truck to come pick up, say, 20 mattresses to their DAPO, and then from the Dappo, they distribute. Yeah. So we are the DAPL, we distribute directly.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay. Yeah, so we want cheaper but better. Can you give us some insight in how you're running that operation? Because obviously you've got to choose the right courier partners, but there'd also be a technology piece to make sure that those orders are processed quickly and prioritize it in the right way. And then there's also the operations piece where you need to make sure that you're dispatching really quickly as well. What kind of systems or technology have you got to make sure that all of that works quickly? Because there's one thing saying, yeah, we can Uberize it and get you know deliveries one-on-one direct out, but there's a whole lot of work that needs to be done or processed that needs to be done before that to make sure that that works.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, yeah, you're right. Because if we talk about so so it's easy to send an order from website to, say, the warehousing system using API and just so that heart, it's very standard. So what businesses need to look into is the pick and pack routine. So because you can't just have a person sitting in front of a computer in a warehouse and just wait for order, right? So you need to do a routine of maybe every hour, every two hours, every maybe every three hours for business, some businesses, that they will go print and dispatch a batch of orders. And you'll be surprised because a lot of say the three PR will only do one batch a day. So maybe like before 9 a.m. they print all the orders and that's it. That the cutoff may be 10, 11. That's it.

SPEAKER_00:

And that's not gonna work in a world of Amazon anymore, is it? No, no. What kind of hours are you keeping your warehouse open now? I think they close by 5 p.m. if I'm gonna do that. Yep, but just maintaining it regularly throughout. Yes. Yeah. I'm keen to pick up on your comment around making sure that the majority of what a customer pays goes into a quality mattress. I think it's fair to say that customers might be skeptical of the mattress industry because we all go and try mattresses or or buy mattresses, and we have no idea what's in the mattress, really. Like we rely on these springs that are drawn in, you know, diagrams and we believe what's there, and there's a whole lot of mystery behind how actually a mattress is made and what's inside and whether it works. How do you convince customers that what they're buying is quality when they're in that decision-making process?

SPEAKER_01:

I think that's the wrong approach, you know. Like the goal is we want to sell. But like if we only think about how we convince customers to sell, that's marketing. And that's wrong. Like I'm not saying marketing itself is wrong. No, I like this angle. Yeah. But if you look at how to sell a mattress to a customer, it's like, what do the customer want or need? Like, what's the problem? Is this product solving the customer's problem? Right? If it solves the problem, we just have to say that, okay, this product solves this problem. That's it. Rather than selling someone a pan that they don't need.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes, yes, yes. The old trick. But in saying that, so say you've got your competitors out there, you've got everyone from your koalas to your snoozes to Harvey Norman, for example. I can imagine that most people will come in and say, I want a better night's sleep. I want a more comfortable sleep. If you're all solving the same problem, how do you convince people that yours is going to do it better than others, especially when they might not understand the product that you're selling? Renovations are stressful enough. Sending emails shouldn't be. Although, if you find a trader who can reply to emails, let me know. I'd be very interested. Tile Cloud is an online first brand helping Aussies design their dream bathrooms. They know customers need more than just tiles. They need timely advice, personalized picks, and help navigating every stage of the reno, all delivered personably and reliably. So they chose Clavio. The result? 43 times ROI after they switched and 50% year-on-year growth in Clavio attributed revenue. That's better than a warm chicken roll and a can of Coke at Smoker. If you're ready to move your customer experience from DIY to pro, visit Clavio.com forward slash AU to see how brands like Tile Cloud are scaling smarter.

SPEAKER_01:

Okay, I think it goes back to the percentage of money goes into the product, because fundamentally that's what makes the difference, and we're winning by supply chain efficiency and all that. So I think it will be easy for a customer to go to Snooze and find a good mattress that they like. But the problem is that when they look at the price tag, you know, usually they are two, three times higher than after discount. They will throw out something like$8,000, but now it's$3,000, you know. Bargain. Yeah, it's a bargain. But fundamentally, because you know, our mattresses are in a box, you know, so it doesn't cost too very strong people to lift up the mattress and deliver it to you. It doesn't waste a lot of storage in the car and you know, all that supply chain thing. It's the fundamental. So naturally, our costs are way, way, way cheaper than this because we make our own mattress. They will have to buy it from someone else. You know, we sell up to, you know, like three, five hundred mattresses per day of only a few types. And they will have to sell maybe more, but then they will have to sell kind of like 30, 40 different variations.

SPEAKER_00:

So cutting out the middleman is still really important for you in being able to give that value offering to the customer.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, yeah. Well, because when we sell a lot of one type of things, the turn turnover rate is a lot better. You know, so then that turnover rate cost doesn't have to pass on to customer. Where if I would have to stock a mattress but only sell one per month, you know, that storage cost for one per month will pass on to customer, which makes the product expensive, which makes it harder to sell. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. So it's all it's having the model right to start with before scaling. Yes. Yeah. I've noticed that on your website, you don't go hugely technical in your product details. You give enough information for people to make a decision and know exactly what the product is and the quality is. But it seems to me that you put a lot more emphasis on sharing real customer stories, whether that be through reviews or user-generated content, and make sure they're seen. And you alluded to it earlier with how important word of mouth is for you. Have you got any tips around how to generate more customer reviews that you can use to showcase that word of mouth? Okay.

SPEAKER_01:

If you have a good product, then naturally you're getting a good number of reviews when you ask. Because it's always a just a proportion. Like if you sell 10 products, you ask every one of them for a review, maybe one of them or five of them, you know, that's the percentage of how many you sell versus how many reviews you get. So you can also monitor how good your product is by how much willingness people are willing to leave a review for you. Of course, if you also offer return, you know, return guarantee, then you can also look at that. But it goes back to what I said about you don't want to sell products to customers that aren't good. You know, so rather than work on chasing for more people giving you review, the root cost is the product. You know, if you're only getting one out of ten review where other products are getting three out of ten review when you ask people, the other ones are better. Just sell the other ones and drop, drop the one out of ten and just don't sell that.

SPEAKER_00:

I love it. So your review rate is actually one of your key metrics in understanding the goodwill and how much your customers actually value your product. Yes. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Because what else can you do? Like either, you know, ask more people and send more emails. That's not going to work. That's just what if you've got a high review rate, but the reviews aren't great. Well, it also, yeah, then shows that you know people are angry about your product. So you should, you know, just continue and optimize your product first before you, you know, you spend on marketing.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've got a feeling that you don't enjoy spending a lot on marketing and that you see marketing as almost like an add-on to delivering a really great quality product and experience for your customers. Are there any marketing channels that you really think move the needle for a COSA?

SPEAKER_01:

Yes, yes, yes. Well, uh despite I I am a product person, but I'm also because I I find that the business and then I've been through in every position in the business, like customer service, procumin, also marketing. So from, you know, say SEO, Google, Facebook, they they work. But then, okay, we sell a lot of products. We find that some product works way better than other products. So hence I always go back to the root cost of like, okay, don't sell a product that has a bad ROS. But you can optimize ROS. Like, okay, out of the 10 product, you know, some may be getting a five ROS, some only have one ROS. Drop the one ROS. Don't try to optimize it and get free. You know, it's not you as a marketer that has that make it one ROS, it's the product itself. And when you get free ROS, try to optimize it to 3.3 and of course, and by targeted to more precise, more quality, qualified traffic, a more qualified customer.

SPEAKER_00:

Is 3.3 the magic number for you when it comes to ROAS? No, it was just random. I thought we got a little insight there. What about those situations though, where you may have a really good product, but you just haven't nailed positioning it to solve a customer's need? Are there times where you're like, oh, this this marketing isn't performing, but I'm not sure whether it's the product or the way we've positioned it? It's always the product. Always the product. Wow. What if people haven't had a chance to try or use the product? What if it's a hidden sleeper?

SPEAKER_01:

Well, then you marketing the product in the wrong channel. Then, you know, do your pop-up shop and then try to sell it offline. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Speaking of offline, you've just opened how many stores have you got now? Three. Three. Okay. And what was the rationale? What was the thinking behind going from purely online to now going to physical retail?

SPEAKER_01:

It's because customer has been asking for the last 10 years and we knew that this is important. But back then we didn't have enough variations or enough capital to go down to this route. But yeah, now we're ready.

SPEAKER_00:

Awesome. What's been your biggest lesson or biggest learning in going from an online environment to a physical environment? What have you had to really do differently?

SPEAKER_01:

I think you have a lot of stopper. Like people will like just like starting up a business, people will tell you that this is not the right thing to do. But you know, like, yeah, listen to yourself, listen to your customer, you know, make sure that, you know, if the customer wants this, then this is the right thing to do.

SPEAKER_00:

Do you find it's easier to convert people in person?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. Yeah, much easier. Because people can now try the product and you don't have to explain to them that, yeah, this is comfortable. You know, they can actually lay on it and uh and feel it themselves.

SPEAKER_00:

And are you bucking the trend in that if customers come into store and try the product and they go, I love it, I want to take it, can they take it there and then that day, as opposed to those some of those examples that you said before where they might have to wait a month or two?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, they can take it that day, same same time, just put it in their car because it's uh it's in a box. So most of our mattresses fit in, even in that small mini cooker.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, amazing. How good. And what's been your thinking around where you position your stores? Because we've got some very large retail and furniture chains who are known for kind of homemaker centers. Have you gone down that approach or have you thought about it a little bit differently?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, we'll we're just sleep only. Like, you know, eventually we can help. Because when people don't sleep well, they currently have to think of their own solution. It's like, oh, maybe I need a new mattress, maybe I need a new pillow, maybe I go and see a doctor, you know. Like I I would say the doctor one is like the very last thing people will think of. You know, I have like my parents having struggled with sleep for the last five years and they were afraid to see a doctor because they don't want to take sleep pill and and all those other reasons. But we want to be of course, you know, if you sick see a doctor, very important. But we want to have some sort of centralized location where you go, you know, if I go to Ecosa and pick up some potter, I will definitely sleep better tomorrow. You know, this is our promise. And uh, yeah, hence we we're different to the traditional mattress stores.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. And you've got a hundred-day guarantee to help people feel comfortable with that? Yes. Do you find many people take you up, or is it coming back to what you were saying before, is about making sure that you've got the right customers at the outset so that they have the right intentions and you're solving the right problems rather than trying to spray everywhere and get all customers. Like, do you find that many people actually take you up on that hundred-day guarantee? Is it used often?

SPEAKER_01:

Uh, it's definitely been used, and we are these are very valuable data for us to to understand if a product is good. Then, you know, of course, and and it has some incentives for us as well, because you know, the less return we get for a product, the higher profitability we are as a company. So hence, you know, even when we Release, give you an example. The first sequel matches, you know, the return rate was close to 10%. And now we have nailed it down to you know just around three. Well, yeah. So so by actively listening to customers, oh, is it too firm? You know, is this holding enough and all that? So it helps us with you know optimizing the product product each year and it evolves. So yeah, the less a return the the higher, the higher margin, the higher profit we make. And it means the the more happy customer we get.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. Yeah. How do you collect and distribute that information that you get from returns to all teams? Because I could imagine sometimes it might be product specific, sometimes it might be marketing specific. Like, how do you make sure that all teams can learn from that feedback?

SPEAKER_01:

So I think as a CEO, you can trust your team, you know, doing most things well. But it is also important for you to know, you know, but sometimes you need to get down to the ground and understand things. So first you need to trust your team and make sure that they do the right thing. But don't forget that to listen to customer yourself. So I do that. Like, you know, I would personally, you know, spend a few hours in a month and and just look at every review, you know, what customers have to say, why do they return the product? And there are decisions that only you can make. Because a lot of the times those decisions are very contradictive. Like, you know, oh, you have a really good product that's doing maybe a million dollars a year, but the reviews are bad. Do you want to drop it? You know, only you can make that decision.

SPEAKER_00:

And you gave a great example straight up in the podcast around the product that you've just launched or you tested, that you were like, it's not passing customer feedback. So we won't go ahead on that. Have you had the reverse where reviewing that customer feedback regularly has opened up brand new ideas or opportunities that you might not have thought of previously? Oh yeah, many times.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. Yeah. Customer will ask us, oh, I wish you have that. And you know, they're like, oh, good idea. Let's do that.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. And with customers coming to you for better sleep, do you bundle items up? Because I could imagine like there's a bit of excitement when you get a new mattress. It's like, oh, this is going to change my life. Have you ever like bundled up, say, pajamas and a new pillow all together to go, welcome to your new sleep?

SPEAKER_01:

We try, but it's very difficult doing this online. Where, you know, because in customer mind they were just here to buy a mattress. So when you sell them a pajama, they're like, eh, yeah. Yeah, but let's try. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, that's cool. Okay. We've all been there, right? Slipping on a great-looking pair of shoes, only to regret it, a couple of hours later. Who knew that blisters could get blisters? Well, the founders of Frankie Ford did, and that's why they've created a line of stylish, podiatrist design footwear that don't just look good, they actually feel good too. But what began as an online success story quickly stepped into the real world with retail stores opening across the country. And when they moved to the Shopify Plus plan and rolled out Shopify Pods in store, Frankie 4 really hit their stride. Now everything works together. From online browsing to install buying, it's one smooth, unified commerce experience for both customers and the Frankie4 team. And with the Shopify App Store, they're able to test new features quickly to see what works. It's paying off too, with a 170% increase in site visits, a 25% drop in return rates, and more happy feet than ever. Streamlined, stable, seriously stylish. That's Frankie4 on Shopify. To read more success stories like this, search Shopify Case Studies online. I noticed your website, it's not necessarily templated. Your range is growing and it seems like you've got some pretty unique requirements. What's your approach to developing your tech stack? Are you a custom builder? Are you taking things off shelf? What's most important to you? Yeah, we're we're a custom builder.

SPEAKER_01:

It goes back to the value that I want to pass on to the customer. I don't want to pay, you know, Shopify. I'm stingy. I don't want to pay them, you know. So, you know, we just do it ourselves. We find way, way, way cheaper to do it ourselves.

SPEAKER_00:

And have you got developers in-house? Yes. Okay. And a lot of people are scared of custom development, especially if they've grown up in a Shopify world and the thought of custom development is scary because there is legacy and there's maintenance to that. How do you make sure that what you're building is future-proofed?

SPEAKER_01:

Well, I don't think this any platform at the moment is future-proof. Yeah. Because the technology is just growing so fast, you know, nothing is future-proof. And especially with technology, we can't build a perfect platform because by the time we think this is perfect, there are you know 10 other things that come out. Even Amazon did this one that yeah set this as well, right? When they first started, just build the website and release and and and optimize it along the way. Rather than just trying to build something perfect, then by the time you'll be running out of project. So yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

How do you manage a features roadmap? Because I could imagine that when you've got an in-house team, there's no shortage of new ideas and new functionality that they want to implement. How do you prioritize what's most important to your customer online? Yeah, I think as we grow, we just keep on hiring. Just throw more resources at it. Yeah, yeah. If we want anything, we'll be FE thing. Yeah. What's your vision around how AI could improve a COSA? Do you see it more from uh helping you be more lean in terms of your operations, or do you see it in terms of being more creative and potentially helping generate more product? Like, where does AI play for a COSA?

SPEAKER_01:

AI make things faster. Yeah. So in a lot of ways, you know, even writing emails, I used to, you know, like as you can hear I'm you know not a native English speaker. So so even with writing emails, you know, it helps me write three times faster. And you know, editing photo, you know, like it used to take an hour to do something, now it's five minutes, right? But then doesn't mean that to me it's like we're not replacing people's job because it does that. Like we still need someone to do editing, and we still need someone to do certain jobs. They just it became faster. So it's just that we can do more. But then because the whole industry is also using the same tool and doing more, so yeah, it's it just expediates everyone's uh work. So we're just catching up to the standard, not even like killing the industry or anything. So I think as you will see then, you know, like before it takes us like 15 to 18 months to develop one product. Hopefully, with AI and and it helps we can develop a better product faster. Maybe shorten it to eight months. I hope, you know.

SPEAKER_00:

How would you use AI in product development to make it faster?

SPEAKER_01:

Well, like it's so much easier to get AI to research customer feedback through like forums and stuff like that, and you know, to prove some of the concept and you know, do a lot of that. And you know, down to even like product design to photo shoot to you know concept, you know, where we sell silver bats and before doing all the portal type and and getting the product ready and take some photos and and ask customer, do you like this product? We can we can use AI to do a lot of different design. I choose kind of a direction for us first, and then we'll go down and do that. So, yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

I was at NRF APAC earlier in the year, and and the most impressive thing that I saw was this new tech stack, and it's what Sheehan uses actually to produce their clothing. And it was using AI at its core, and it was about allowing designers to go in there and go, hey, tell us your idea. What do you want to create? So, hey, I want some white lotus swimwear range, for example. And it would just throw up a whole bunch of mood boards. Designer goes, something like this, this, and this, and then it'll come down to all right, what products do we need? Cool, we need a shirt, we need board shorts, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it would just take them down this aisle so that they could potentially create a new range within an hour using inspiration from around the web and then get that all the way through to production, including, like you said, photo shoots, which actually aren't photo shoots, but they look like they're on models and et cetera, to be in market within weeks, not months. You know what I mean? Like talking about fashion is that we're often designing fashion for the season ahead in 12 months' time. But they're like, Well, what do we need next season? Let's design it now. So it's going to be incredible from a product perspective where we can shortcut the process.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. Yeah. So the trick is understand that this is a new ability, not just a brand like not just you have or any person have, but it's a tool that everyone has. So there's still an element of like where do we want to spend more time in to make things better?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. One of the things that I read about you, which I think was brilliant and I'm keen to hear more about, was that you're passionate about building a nurturing human and caring company culture. And that's really important to you. What does that look like at a COSA?

SPEAKER_01:

So I believe because every day we're talking about how do we help customers, right? It's about serving people. And you know, when you work in a work that you you always serve other people's, you know, you you yourself needed to enjoy your work as well. So this is very important. So, like, you know, in a physical world, you know, you can't see a salesperson who have a smiley face when this person is not actually happy. So that plays a very important role of like, okay, businesses is not, you know, there are plenty of money to make, but you know, enjoy your work. And how do you bring that to life for your team? What makes them enjoy working at a COSA? Okay, so it's not just one thing, you know, of course, good pay, but then you know, flexible working time. Also that knowing the the vision of the company or know why you are at work. Yeah, okay. Yeah, because in a company we we of course we want to hire all the good people, but in reality, one out of ten may not be as good, you know, or maybe really bad, you know, that impacts everyone.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

So yeah, there are people that other people don't want to see Iran, and yeah, that we have to make tough decisions sometimes as well. But it's about the core thing, it's about protecting our community, of employees, and and making sure that everyone works in an environment that they really love.

SPEAKER_00:

One of the things I've really enjoyed about our conversation today is you have challenged me on some of my opinions and directions, and you know, where you go, look, I think it's more about product than it is about marketing. And I feel like you're really clear on your vision and your mission and how you're going to get there. How do you educate and take others on that journey? Especially, like you said, some of the newer or the younger talent. How do you take your experience and share that with them?

SPEAKER_01:

Well, experience you have to learn from failure, unfortunately. So don't be afraid to fail, you know? Just do whatever is in your mind and then in a cool way. And don't be afraid to fail. And don't try to trick customer, you know, because that's not going to last long. So be authentic and try to solve a real problem. And visitance is about, you know, setting a goal where other have the same goal and follows you, right? So that goal cannot be selfish. It has to be, yeah, it has to be meaningful.

SPEAKER_00:

So with that in mind, the next 12 months for a COSA, what are your priorities? What are the most important things for you for a COSA to be successful over the next 12 months?

SPEAKER_01:

Because we want to build a sleep company. There are so many other sleep products that we haven't done, and we want to do them well. So product number one. Second, we are opening stores. So we only have three, but we are definitely opening more next year. So it's to allow people to experience the culture in the store nationally. And then we are building a sleep AI app that helps people sleep faster. Oh, what get to sleep faster. Yeah, get to sleep faster. Okay. So so we're working hard on that one because yeah, it all comes from the vision.

SPEAKER_00:

If you can solve the problem of waking up at two o'clock and not being able to get back to sleep, I would be there for that.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, that's part of the sleep faster, because we realize people who woke up need a way to help them sleep back, like sleep fast again.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, yeah. You could always put the Add to Cart podcast on. You go straight back to sleep listening to my voice. I love that, Ringo. They're big priorities for the next 12 months. Thank you so much. Now, if people want to learn more about Ocosa and see more of what you're doing, what's the best place for them to go?

SPEAKER_01:

Follow us on LinkedIn, um, Instagram, TikTok. You know, we have a lot of good content that you can get inspired from.

SPEAKER_00:

I love it. I've love I did enjoy looking at your TikTok and especially the employee-generated content that's on there. Like you said, it looks like you've created an atmosphere where everyone's having fun, they're achieving, and it looks like a great culture that you've created there. So, congratulations and thank you so much for sharing your story on Ad Descart.

SPEAKER_01:

Thank you. Thanks for inviting.

SPEAKER_00:

As we were getting off that call, then Ringo just said that this was his first podcast that he's ever done. So hugely humbled that Ringo chose to come and tell the Yokoza story on Ad Descartes. The other thing that I really loved in that conversation, and I alluded to it, was that Ringo just didn't follow my thoughts along and tell me what I wanted to hear. He really challenged me to think differently around my approach to marketing and to returns and delivery. And with his experience, that's how we learned. So I really loved that approach from Ringo and enjoyed our conversation immensely. Now, as always, I want to pick out three bits of new ideas or innovation that came from Ringo that anyone in e-commerce can learn from. The first one that came up was around killing the product. I wasn't expecting this story to come up. I hadn't even heard of it before. But when Ringo told us about the earbuds that they'd just developed in the interest of sleep, it was a new product for them, but didn't meet customer standards after 15 months of development. So even though everything we heard today from Ringo was about product development and the importance of product, that comes down to whether a customer connects with that product. And he wasn't afraid to make the hard calls. He even said that he spends hours every month going through customer feedback so that he understands what products are working, what products aren't, where the opportunities are, and that it's his job as the CEO to make the call based on customer feedback at a product level. He's not asking the team to go through that feedback and make recommendations to him. Product is at the heart of everything, but the only way the product works is if customers love it. And he's not afraid to make those hard decisions. That's how he's developed drugs. Number two was the Uber for mattresses model. It doesn't go hand in hand, it's not natural. Can you imagine your Uber driver rocking up with a mattress? It doesn't make sense, especially when you take into account the lean model. Most people will think about this way of delivering product and think that it's just not sustainable. From a cost perspective, Ringo emphasized that the reason it does work is because they can be lean. Yes, they have warehouses set up in all capital cities around Australia, which makes it possible. But by delivering when needed, rather than relying on big shipments going out, he's actually been able to make it really sustainable for a COSA. And surprise and delight the customer, which has a flywheel effect of then being able to generate more word of mouth and return purchase. So make sure when you're looking at your delivery options, if you are settling for vague two to seven day windows, just because you think anything else is going to be more costly or inefficient, use Ringo as an example. Maybe it's not as expensive or intensive as you think. And number three, I want to put out there review rate as a success metric. It's not something that we put up in lights that often. What percentage of orders are actually leaving a review? But it's something that Ringo called out as really important to him because it's a metric that tells us, yes, people are really surprised and feel that you've gone above and beyond and want to leave you a really great review, which is awesome. Or on the other scale, people aren't happy and they might be a little bit angry, they might be a little bit disappointed, and you need to take that feedback and action it. The danger is when you're getting no feedback at all, which means you're just meeting the market. So if you're not tracking your review rate over time, knowing whether you're getting really happy or really upset customers, and then taking action from that, if your review rate is just sitting really low, almost in a pool of apathy, then that's a danger sign as well. Probably worse than just getting negative reviews. Again, super privileged that Ringo has chosen to come onto Ad to Cart to tell his story with the KOza. Exceptionally well toned. I love his approach and really enjoyed our conversation. Now, if you want to discuss anything that Ringo brought up today, maybe review rates, maybe custom build stacks, maybe even how to create a caring culture in e-commerce, head on over to the Add to Cart community. It's free to join. We have over 500 e-commerce professionals in there asking everything. From what tech stack should I use to has anyone got recommendations for people who could help me with this or even just sharing their own experiences and knowledge? It's free to join. Head on over to adducart.com.au. We would love to have you in there and uh get involved. That's it for this week. Thank you again for joining us. If you haven't already, hit that subscribe button on Apple or Spotify or YouTube wherever you are joining us from. We would love to bring you more e commerce stories and lessons in the future. Until next week, see you then.