YouTube: Huckberry’s Hidden Gem
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In this conversation, Ike Armstrong from Huckberry discusses the unique marketing strategies employed by the brand, particularly in relation to their customer acquisition.
He emphasizes the importance of creating funnels for house brands, leveraging influencer marketing, and utilizing YouTube for customer engagement. The discussion also covers retention strategies, customer lifecycle management, and the significance of measuring success through CAC and marketing efficiency.
Key Takeaways
How retention strategies make up a crucial ingredient for breaking even on first purchases.
Why Huckberry chose to focus on lifestyle branding to connect with their customers.
How Influencer marketing and UGC has become a bigger part of their creative strategy
Why this often ignored platform has become a powerful tool for their customer engagement.
The two metrics Huckberry focuses on most when driving growth.
Why Huckberry leaned into more memorable gifting experiences for the holidays.
The most valuable insights Huckberry has learned engaging with their customers face-to-face.
To Learn more about Ike & Huckberry you can follow head to at https://huckberry.com/
To learn more about the Foxwell Founders community or to join head here
Full Transcript
Hey guys, welcome to Foxwell Founders podcast. I'm Triss and we're here with Ike Armstrong today who's doing marketing for Huckberry. They are a one stop men's shop who makes commerce and content. my God, I'm so excited. Edwin, kick us off with the first question.
Ike (00:43.5)
That sounds great.
Edwin @ Snappic (00:59.791)
So the thing I'm most curious about is Huckberry does a bunch of stuff, but you guys also carry multiple brands. And so for Black Friday, tell me what is your plan for Black Friday? Cause your dynamic is completely different from a DTC play. So tell me more about that.
Ike (01:18.987)
Yeah, it's a great question, Edwin. We're getting really excited about Q4 and Black Friday. One thing that's interesting for Huckberry is that as much as we are a men's shop making our own apparel, we have a design studio where we have a team that's crafting kind of unique, ingenuitive designs on specific apparel that we've found and think there's an opportunity to improve. We also are a marketplace too. So we have all these third party products on our website. I big, big brands, Patagonia. We were just talking about
Edwin @ Snappic (01:43.203)
Yeah. Yeah.
Ike (01:49.224)
the three of us, we even sell barrel sauna kits. So we have a a huge inventory. Think of your run of the mill, beanies and gloves that the consumer's getting excited about for the winter holiday, but then also these like these one-off, somewhat tangential, larger items. So the way that we kind of set up our marketing approach within Huckberry is we have our third party products, which are used as a lure of a new customer acquisition driver. So you come to us with brands that you're familiar with.
Edwin @ Snappic (02:15.545)
Tris Dyer (02:17.088)
you
Ike (02:19.0)
Think Patagonia you like their jacket you've come to Huckberry in search of that new Patagonia But we open you up to this element of discovery and surprise on the website and with that we use it as a means of introducing what we call our house brands now the most popular of our house brands Flint and tinder is It's kind of the the brand that it emulates what Huckberry is the Flint and tinder man is an outdoorsman He's someone who is still in this professional career, but also likes to get dirty
Edwin @ Snappic (02:19.318)
Okay.
Edwin @ Snappic (02:33.409)
Ike (02:49.218)
get adventurous and get out there. So when it comes to our Black Friday approach, we're all about creating funnels for our house brands and then also leveraging unique handpicked products. So what I do is I drive a lot into curated gifting selection and Huckberry is not very promotion heavy, but we will be running some strong hero product promotions through Q4. So what I kind of hinge on and think about is like we have that traditional Q4 promotion and then we
Edwin @ Snappic (02:57.358)
Okay.
Edwin @ Snappic (03:05.614)
Okay.
Ike (03:18.433)
we also have our evergreen value propositions that our customers come back and know us for so well. So how can we hinge kind of in this moment where traditionally we don't run a lot of promotions, now we're gonna juice promotions and still keep that brand image and brand voice the same as year round when we're kind of tighter in our promotion sphere.
Edwin @ Snappic (03:31.822)
Yep.
Tris Dyer (03:39.648)
So just go into that a bit more. specifically, if you've got a certain jacket or something like that, that you've got like a ton of variants of it in your house brand, your thing is bring in a Patagonia, bring in like four or five other brands that people are already aware of. They're Googling it. You're doing well on search results. You're doing well on what I suppose is now ChatGBT and stuff like that. You're showing up for these and they're like, okay, this is where you buy this product. And then they find your product as well. So it's a discovery.
Is it a loss maker on first purchase then? Because you obviously share like in terms of margins then, or like we're going deep here real quick. But is that the kind of the play here is like it goes, we're not going to make a huge amount upfront. But then when we find these people find this, we're going to make a ton in the end.
Ike (04:20.537)
It's a great question, Tris. And it goes back and forth. Like sometimes we see that loss on the first purchase, but then we get to break even because we have such strong retention programs, email flow, blast messaging, SMS to really hold in and lure our customers that have converted with us. Huckberry is unique in the way that we spend a lot of time on our content. So when you get a Huckberry mailer, you're not going to get sold an item. You're going to get sold something and taught about something. We call it gear, not stuff.
Tris Dyer (04:29.535)
Mmm.
Tris Dyer (04:41.024)
Hmm.
Ike (04:50.803)
So when thinking about that first purchase break even we do we are a higher AOV storefront So we our goal is to break even from a margin basis on our customer acquisition costs of the new customer
Edwin @ Snappic (04:52.878)
Yeah.
Tris Dyer (05:00.864)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Edwin @ Snappic (05:03.981)
Okay.
Ike (05:04.792)
Now you would call it out. Those third party products do have a lower margin dollar amount than those house brand products. We try to do somewhat of a cross sell upsell in that. So you might be lured in with that Patagonia jacket, but then we recommend to you before you check out a beanie, a wool beanie of ours that's at a competitive price point and so forth. we're
Tris Dyer (05:17.568)
Mmm.
Tris Dyer (05:21.6)
Right. Yeah.
Edwin @ Snappic (05:21.677)
Okay.
Ike (05:24.69)
putting the ideas in your brain about these Huckberry House Brands, kind of these core smaller AOV products to start with, and then through the customer lifecycle, you'll be sent numerous mailers, information, and that follow up.
Tris Dyer (05:36.96)
of the things there.
Edwin @ Snappic (05:39.439)
So tell me some of your aha moments with your retention flow, right? Because normally when I see a DDC company, right? And you look at their repeat customer rate within 12 months, maybe you'll see a couple that are like two or three purchases per year, but those are sort of the outliers. That's not normal. I have a feeling with you, it is very normal to see, well, I guess first tell me like,
where are you guys seeing, like, per year, how many purchases people are making, and then tell me, like, some of the aha moments, because this is something really curious to me.
Ike (06:17.167)
And this is, it's interesting to me, Edwin. Now I do want to say that I work on the acquisition side, so I'm less well-versed on the retention side, but a couple things from the growth marketing lens that have been interesting when we think about the customer lifecycle and remarketing to them is one, our brand is not just selling you.
one set of products. It's selling you everything from like I called out the sauna to the beanie to the toaster that sits in your kitchen. So an aha moment from the marketing perspective is that we are a marketplace where customers if we can make them.
Edwin @ Snappic (06:40.387)
Yeah. Yeah.
Ike (06:51.44)
aware and confident that we have guaranteed shipping speeds, that we have excellent customer service, that the product that you bought online is the product that you're going to get and its quality and been vetted. It goes through kind of this internal like merchandising where everything that we're going to put on the website has kind of a backed proven promise. So the aha moment is really how do we leverage from a growth marketing lens the extent of our entire catalog knowing that we're going to be selling apparel, home goods and hard goods to
our customer to get them to repeat throughout the year knowing that they're going to be looking for different things in different departments throughout the year. Does that answer your question? It's kind of vague I know because it's good.
Tris Dyer (07:31.189)
Yeah
Edwin @ Snappic (07:31.279)
And so how, yeah, so then how do you actually leverage it then? So like you have this wide swath, right? And so most DTC brands, pay lip service and they say, I'm a lifestyle brand, but you truly are a lifestyle brand because you'll sell them the toaster and the sauna and the beanie that matches the actual lifestyle. And so tell me how you're actually leveraging.
Ike (07:57.002)
Yeah.
I mean, think that one thing that we do to really leverage that is through our YouTube media. I mean, we have a whole extension of our organic presence and then our paid presence on YouTube. And one thing that does is really cement that lifestyle. Like you just called out those three items, we're going to show you those and think like an architectural digest home tour format. Huckberry Homes is going to take you inside some of the life of aspirational men. It's going to show you those diverse set of products and give
Edwin @ Snappic (08:23.961)
Okay.
Ike (08:27.281)
get you aware of like, that's unique for my life. And then real you in there. That's kind of like the main thing that we're going to do is like, we're going to show you a swath of different products.
Tris Dyer (08:33.972)
interesting.
Ike (08:40.331)
customer and then we are going to essentially like root in different products throughout your experience with the company.
Tris Dyer (08:51.296)
Nice, nice. So Tommy, just on that, when you come back to how your, I guess your acquisition works, so you've got your acquisition on maybe a hero product that people know about, how much would you blend that with, say for example, an influencer or a UGC creative? Like how does that link up? Because you talked about aspirational men, that's really interesting because they're living the lifestyle, that's technically what an influencer is, right? It's kind of how people are aspirational towards this.
Do you find yourself leaning a lot more towards influencer marketing then and UGC?
Ike (09:24.906)
Yeah, you know, it's something that we haven't leveraged in the past a whole lot, but we're ramping up quite a bit on our UGC and influencer marketing. So.
In the past, like I said, we've had this compilation of third party and house brand products. We've used those third parties as a means of luring. As our house brand products have gotten more tethered and popular, such as the Flanneline Wax Trucker Jacket, which was worn in HBO's The Last of Us Show. As we've gotten pop cultural moments around these jackets, we've been able to hinge those through influencer and UGC content and then combine that with our organic content to kind of create a
a path or a funnel, if you will, to say, you saw this jacket in a pop culture moment. Here we are talking about it in our gear labs, where we're looking at the details, talking about the apocalypse. And now you're being served with a direct response converting ad. So throughout the company's evolution, we've gotten more and more.
Tris Dyer (10:19.132)
into that.
Ike (10:24.141)
front and center with the Hero products being our house brand products. We've got two real core Hero products. The Flannel Line Wax Trucker, a wax nice heavyweight flannel jacket. And then we have the 365 pant. And the 365 pant, the core benefit of that is that it's a super versatile pant and it fits perfectly. We have the Huckberry Fit Guarantee, which is across our house brands. You can expect that your pants are going to fit identical between them. So as we've carved out these niches, if you will,
Tris Dyer (10:27.232)
Hmm.
Edwin @ Snappic (10:51.567)
That is a brave statement. Because my legs are different from Tris's legs. Pants are the hardest. They are the hardest apparel item. Yeah.
Tris Dyer (10:52.047)
that's good.
Ike (10:54.09)
It's, you know, yeah.
Tris Dyer (10:59.401)
and
Ike (11:01.368)
Pants, pants are the hardest Edwin. So try out a pair of 365s and let me know. You know, what's so I think Tris to your point, it's been as we've grown the business and as our hero products, our house brand core products have gotten more popular organically and through the paid lens, we've been able to shift those into the hero product slot, speak more to those products, people know them through word of mouth. So now we're engaging more with creator content and so forth.
Edwin @ Snappic (11:06.863)
Hahaha
Tris Dyer (11:28.362)
Yeah.
Edwin @ Snappic (11:29.315)
And so tell me, so you mentioned YouTube before, right? And so a lot of our listeners, they're very familiar with Meta. You guys run heavy into YouTube. And so tell me about, tell me how that has sort of helped you guys grow. Like, what are you guys looking at? How are you guys approaching it? Because I feel like that is an area that not a lot of our listeners go as deep as you guys do.
Ike (11:55.44)
Yeah, it's a great question, Edwin. I think there's a lot of untapped potential on YouTube still. I'm very bullish and excited on YouTube, specifically for Huckberry, where we have a big organic presence. We have about 220,000 followers to our organic channel. That's all over the world. Now we only sell and distribute to the United States of America. However, what we find is that when we take our long form organic content, which is like I said, it's these architectural digest home tours, it's a farm to table experience.
Edwin @ Snappic (12:00.706)
Okay.
Edwin @ Snappic (12:10.625)
okay.
Ike (12:25.346)
Experiences of local cuisine stuff that's not necessarily as much there to show you about the brand and the product more to show you a lifestyle and teach you something We take those long form content We chop that up and we create funnels within YouTube to drive conversions in action from our customers So we'll use our organic YouTube presence as a means of remarketing organic video viewers with shortened versions of maybe the longer video that they've seen that
Edwin @ Snappic (12:47.044)
Yeah.
Ike (12:55.306)
stills down to those product shots. So think we're in the field where me go go ahead and if you have a question.
Edwin @ Snappic (13:01.261)
like on your remarketing on YouTube or you're cutting it up and you're putting it on the other platforms?
Ike (13:08.165)
we're remarketing it on YouTube. So we're taking that organic long form 30 minute content, we're chopping it down to be more product centric and then we're remarketing video viewers of that organic content with these more product focused shots. And then.
Edwin @ Snappic (13:10.841)
Okay.
Ike (13:25.709)
once they're into our remarketing funnel, if you call it, we have a lot of like Tris called that UGC creator direct response lifestyle, varying age group demographics, where we will link in videos that are of the same product that you were viewing before, say in the shortcut of the long form, and then push you down the funnel that way to teach you more about the product to take you in from like the production design side to say, this is why you need this. And this is why it's differentiated.
Edwin @ Snappic (13:29.55)
Yeah.
Edwin @ Snappic (13:55.693)
And so tell me, tell me, tell me about the, so, so you, I'm sure you didn't start off doing that, right? So tell me, tell me what did you guys start off doing? And then now you guys have, have this process in place, which, which obviously is working for you. And tell me how different is the performance on this process that you guys have compared to what you guys were doing, let's say at the beginning.
Tris Dyer (13:55.754)
So, I think I was gonna, I know what the question is.
Ike (14:23.078)
radically different. mean, I think of YouTube as you need to warm up your audience on YouTube. And so what we were previously doing was somewhat unrelated creatives to our organic content. So you might see a testimonial of our bestselling pants having not necessarily been introduced to the brand before. And in a in a time when there's a lot of different brands that not everyone can keep up with or know about, we found that just that hit him with a direct response. It wasn't producing
Edwin @ Snappic (14:24.472)
Okay.
Edwin @ Snappic (14:28.815)
Okay.
Ike (14:52.655)
like the desired result. Conversion rate was low. Our view through conversions was low. We weren't seeing incremental returns from that YouTube media. But when we start with a funnel strategy, we know it's going to take longer to get the customer to the conversion, but we know we can do a better job to inform them and keep them engaged. So when we shifted to pairing our organic content with our commerce strategy, knowing that we're going to introduce you through a brand awareness play, a longer form play, and then if you were engaged, we're going to push you down our funnel.
Tris Dyer (14:58.303)
Hmm.
Ike (15:23.123)
It's been night and day. I mean the brand lift that we see is like 3x what we used to see just running standard Video campaigns we see you know incremental returns on YouTube where you know We had a long a long time trying to struggle what like the triangulation of YouTube KPIs look like But you know, I think like the most for aha moment has been
A soft introduction makes the world of difference, as opposed to a hard sell without any introduction.
Tris Dyer (15:48.32)
you
Yeah. So how does that lead into your CAC then? So if you're doing a lot of top of top of funnel stuff, is that sounds like it's game changing, it's taking you to that next level. It gives people, I'd say your LTV is probably better. I you don't talk necessarily about your retention, but I'd say your LTV is like night and day, as you say. But in terms of your actual acquisition then, how are you justifying a much, higher CAC no doubt?
with the longer tail kind of the LTV on that. Is there kind of some sums in the background or are going straight in and be like, our cack is fine?
Ike (16:24.605)
It's a great question, Tris. It's certainly, it's not the latter. I wish it was. we could, you know, do a little, I cack is fine. We use a means of triangulation internally where I'm sure most, you know, most brands of our size are getting to this now where we know that no platform is going to be the utmost source of truth or North star for us. So we use a combination of the UI. we're looking at what's our CPM, what's our view rate, what's our engagement rate. We're using the UI really for those engagement metrics because we want
Edwin @ Snappic (16:28.751)
You
Tris Dyer (16:30.193)
Tris Dyer (16:42.921)
Mm.
Ike (16:54.471)
want people to take action when they see our videos. then beyond the UI, we're looking at our measurement provider dashboard within measure to look at the incremental returns. We're using scale testing methodology to push harder in certain cell markets and then see what the overall business impact is on our top line revenue when we push harder on YouTube. these two things are core. Another thing that we use to layer in is post purchase survey responses. These have been really valuable as we've increased our
middle and top of funnel presence because just like you said there's no real way to connect you know clearly a video view campaign to a brand conversion. So we use post-purchase surveys to get a bead and a bill of health on where are you coming from where are new customers coming from because we do want to be driving net new so where can we identify net new reach and also identify net new users are coming in post conversion.
Tris Dyer (17:35.146)
Mmm.
Tris Dyer (17:52.352)
Okay, and so when you log in on a Tuesday morning, you look at your dashboard, you look at your measurement dashboard, what's healthy? Like are we looking at, you're really looking at CAC per se on a daily basis, or are you, maybe not. You're not making in-platform adjustments based on CAC on a daily basis. You're looking at trends of how your viewability and everything else is, and then CAC falls out of the bottom of that.
Ike (18:13.723)
Somewhat we're looking at media efficiency ratio. So if I'm looking into my M.E.R. I'm going to take into account all of my funnel spending and then somewhat think about that in the way that it plays on my overall revenue at a company level, knowing that we also are, know, consent mode is active. We're losing U.T.M. parameters. There's some visibility loss. And so we do view more and more, I guess, less from a channel perspective and more from an overall company. How are our upper funnel initiatives?
Tris Dyer (18:16.628)
Okay.
Tris Dyer (18:26.144)
Gotcha.
Tris Dyer (18:33.898)
Yeah.
Ike (18:43.607)
affecting the bottom line as we scale and move about.
Edwin @ Snappic (18:46.967)
And so how, so as of this moment, what is the primary channel for you guys? Is it YouTube? Is it meta? what, what is, cause you guys are running the post purchase, post purchase stuff. Tell, I guess first tell me what, what is, what is the channel that is putting the most new customers into the system?
Ike (19:07.688)
It's interesting. So we run a lot on Meta and we run a lot on Google. And YouTube is actually, it's a smaller portion of the pie compared to those two, but we're finding more and more that it is a new customer acquisition device. But everything that Trish just called out, I think has been the challenge is to getting that media investment and feeling really confident when it comes to juicing scale there. when we think about where the new customers come in, they come in primarily through Google or through organic
Edwin @ Snappic (19:11.811)
Yeah. Yeah.
Ike (19:36.921)
search, but where they're being driven is largely on meta. Now we do a lot of meta tactics to highlight those house brands. So our core campaigns are going to be, you know, of a very creative heavy on pushing value propositions on specific products or lines. We know that there's going to be a halo effect that transcends into conversion focused channels. So meta is a primarily the tactic of new customer acquisition paired with YouTube ads.
Tris Dyer (20:06.624)
Interesting, interesting. like that. I mean, where does that go in Q4? you do because you're looking at a lot more brand tactics and overall going into Q4 is it you mentioned obviously having sales and obviously, you know, good promotions that are coming up. Are you more focused then on now pushing it so that in November is going to be a lot bigger because of all the brand stuff that you've been doing? Because obviously the path to purchase is a lot longer, especially the way you're doing it, which is no problem. But it's more of a surge more than a spike.
Ike (20:31.147)
Yeah.
Ike (20:36.555)
Yeah, absolutely. So last year, Q4, we we did not surge in November. We didn't surge in October, November. We kind of followed the I would say like the traditional demand thought, which is like we'll surge on Black Friday, we'll surge through Cyber 5 and go from there to capture as much revenue demand as possible. But this year we've changed our plan of attack and we're front loading a lot of that like you called out. So we're fueling that funnel, the upper funnel tactics, meta and YouTube, probably extending
Tris Dyer (20:59.893)
Hmm.
Ike (21:06.709)
over what we would consider like a healthy MER right now with the hope of when gifting season time comes, when the website flips to be more holiday oriented, customers are going to remember those value propositions that we put forth ahead of time. know, gift, huckberry, get adventure, gear, not stuff, these things that will kind of cut the noise of the rest of, you know, the rest of what everyone else is selling, so to speak. So yeah, certainly trying to push hard and fill the funnel now.
Tris Dyer (21:29.461)
Mmm.
Edwin @ Snappic (21:35.959)
And so how early are you going then? So last year you guys were like, you guys wanted to kick off at Black Friday and follow the traditional search. You're coming in earlier this year. How early are you coming in?
Ike (21:47.783)
We're coming in right now. So we started ramping up. Yeah right now. yeah, yeah, so, you know gift it Yeah, and it feels early but you know what we find is that sales are picking up and one thing I should caveat about the brand too is that we're heavy fall winter So that is something that affects us too. So seasonality is certainly on our side as the temperatures get colder We have a you know, we've talked about like our existing customer
Edwin @ Snappic (21:50.115)
No. No. Whoa.
Tris Dyer (21:53.684)
middle of October we're talking.
Edwin @ Snappic (22:00.905)
okay.
Ike (22:15.999)
LCV and like that strength of our remarketing and retargeting and retention flow. know, customers remember us, I think, for our unique handpicked selection. And that's something that we really drill into is this holiday season, get them something that they're really going to enjoy use and like. And so we're already planting those seeds of like, you're going to see a lot of promotions, you're going to see a lot of products and ads that are coming your way. This is actually something that's unique and worth your time, maybe to come back to.
Tris Dyer (22:45.568)
make sense, makes sense. So Edwin loves a 30 % discount Black Friday straight out the gate. works out, it works out for, hey, it works out for lot of people. I'm more on the side, it looks, look, it's devil and angel, who's which, but I'm more on the side of value add, right? So just to keep the price the same, but add more value in for the same price. We're two sides of the same coin, Edwin, we're still making coin, doesn't matter. Yeah, right? But the question for you, mean, look, when it comes to Huckberry, like is it...
Edwin @ Snappic (22:51.602)
Ha ha ha.
Ike (22:52.628)
Love it.
Edwin @ Snappic (23:03.619)
Nah.
Ike (23:04.939)
Yeah
Edwin @ Snappic (23:06.029)
No!
It's true, it's true, it's true.
Tris Dyer (23:15.2)
value add or is it a straight out right get your discount now because you've got done all that legwork that is amazing the content that you're putting in there is amazing and really built people up but is it like hit them with a 30 % and you're gonna empty out that funnel
Ike (23:29.223)
So it's bit of both. Like I don't think we're doing like a value add necessarily in the way that we're sending like a free product or something. But beyond that hero deal that we're going to offer to squeeze the funnel, if you will, knowing that our customer base is aware that we don't have a lot of sales, they're hungry for it and we want to give it to them too and let them shop, you know, maybe above where they normally could. So we're certainly going to lean on that hero markdown offer as our first driver of
Tris Dyer (23:40.937)
Mmm. Mmm.
Tris Dyer (23:48.384)
Mm.
Edwin @ Snappic (23:57.962)
okay.
Tris Dyer (23:59.007)
Hmm.
Ike (23:59.457)
Okay of a promotion But we are gonna lean also on Free shipping days we're gonna offer you know expedited free shipping We're gonna offer some value ads that you wouldn't normally get when shopping on huckberry so someone somewhat of the two
Tris Dyer (24:09.824)
you
Tris Dyer (24:17.662)
Yeah, yeah, actually a tip for you as well. If you're going, if you can get overnight, if you can sort overnight out, get it sorted and people will pay way more. It's better to pay the overnight and have a present than not pay the overnight. We've seen that so many times. It works so well for us.
Ike (24:32.032)
Absolutely.
Edwin @ Snappic (24:32.153)
The, so going back, so before you were mentioning how a lot of your products, right, you're pushing value prop through meta, right? And a lot of your products, so you mentioned a beanie, right? A beanie.
I hate to say it, but a beanie is a beanie. But in the advertisement, you're like, this is a huckberry beanie, right? And tell me more about your process, about how you are identifying the value props that are resonating with your customer. Because, right? A red beanie is really, it's a red beanie. But if you present it as a red huckberry beanie and you have the right USP, it hits totally different.
Ike (24:58.719)
Yep.
Edwin @ Snappic (25:19.629)
And so tell me how do you guys get there?
Ike (25:19.969)
Yeah.
a Japanese beanie made with wool. You know, these kind of things are learned through, we call them VIP happy hours. So one thing that we do at our headquarters is we'll have, and if you have a physical business or, you know, a coffee shop near you, this can be a great driver, I think, of getting to know your customer more as we invite our VIP customers to happy hours to engage with our co-founder, with, you know, the team, the marketing team, with the brand content team. And we ask them, these discerning customers of ours,
What is it that's most valuable to you when you do your shopping as a man? You know, what are you looking for? So we like to engage with our customers actually kind of face to face to find out more about their shopping habits more about what they're looking for and then use that to inform the value propositions that we're after now we also You know, I think like that's the high level is just getting to know your customer persona really well what they're looking for and scrutinizing there's also the lens of
Edwin @ Snappic (25:58.607)
Ike (26:22.553)
we know that a beanie is a beanie and you can find one for $5 on Amazon if you want to. So we do need to lean on those core USPs. 100 % Merino wool, made in Japan. This is the product differentiator. So it's a little bit of both. Our customer persona is probably what guides though the main marketing messages and the USPs that we're gonna include in paid media and who we're speaking to.
Edwin @ Snappic (26:32.76)
Yeah.
Edwin @ Snappic (26:48.843)
Okay, so but you do it, even though you do it digitally, the driver is in real life. Like you guys are like three beers deep, tell me why this beanie?
Ike (26:56.491)
Exactly. Yeah.
Tris Dyer (27:02.185)
You
Ike (27:03.918)
Exactly. Typically whiskey, but yeah.
Tris Dyer (27:05.392)
A bit of Ilvino Veritas there. I think that's a good, it's always a good one. That's, mean, that's how you're driving product. That's how you're driving messaging. Like you guys are designing product all the time. Is it coming from the same source? Are you hearing like from these people, hey, I'd like that thing or that I've heard about this thing is cool. That's the kind of stuff you're doing.
Ike (27:25.171)
yeah, it's you know, our product design team is super engaged. So thinking about all of like the common things, you know, going out, you know, workshopping, meeting with other brands, like we talked about Buck Mason thinking about like, you know, you know, I'm less involved with fashion design, but I know that they are deeply rooted in not only staying up on trends, but also leaning into that core customer. Everything at Huckberry is about Jack. Jack is our core shopper. He is the guy who's coming in
Tris Dyer (27:28.842)
Mm.
Tris Dyer (27:53.92)
interesting.
Ike (27:54.915)
shopping with us. And to us, know, it's a it's the one stop men shop. So it's important that we stay true to Jack. It's important that we don't think that we know him. It's important that we actually know him and meet him where he wants to be and engage with him there. So while again, it's like while digital and while on YouTube and while we might be remote here, it's so important that we take the time to actually like get to know why did we cut through the noise for you when so
Tris Dyer (27:59.424)
Mm-hmm.
Tris Dyer (28:08.02)
Yeah.
Ike (28:24.915)
other things are distracting you.
Tris Dyer (28:27.296)
That's so interesting.
Edwin @ Snappic (28:27.361)
And so what are some other ways that you've gotten to know your persona, Jack, right? Like what are some of the key questions that you asked in your post purchase survey that gave you like real needle moving insight into this persona?
Ike (28:41.995)
Yeah.
You know, I think one that's been really unique is just who are you shopping for today? we are we, you know, are we seeing a lot of Jack shopping for themselves? Are these gift givers? Are they shopping for their significant others? And that's helped inform the merchandising allocation when it comes to do we stock a lot of clothes that Jack would be buying for himself or gifts that he might be searching for his family? So that question has really helped guide like, is this a gift giving purchase?
or is this a self gifting or self made purchase? And then how long ago did you hear about us? I think that one's been really informational when it comes to channel attribution. If you said that you heard about us from YouTube, how long ago did you hear about us? Maybe four weeks. What we find is that if we were to compare the results of say Google shopping or Google text ads with meta.
Edwin @ Snappic (29:25.611)
Ike (29:38.623)
the latency period when someone had heard about us is weeks different. So we see with Google, instant you've heard about us. But of course, with views, view through and click through conversions, we know that it's going to be more latent. you might find four weeks ago you heard about us. So that's helped inform a latency period when it comes to an adjustment factor, which helps inform our channel budget allocations.
Edwin @ Snappic (29:50.511)
Yeah.
Tris Dyer (30:01.664)
Absolutely. So forward thinking. just it makes it makes a ton of sense. It's like be the brand rather than be the numbers you're doing. That's what you're doing. You're driving that forward. So I mean with Jack and with Huckberry, what's the future? What does 2025 look like? You know, in a insert president name here world. What is that going to be like? What what what is the plans? How are you going to evolve on this? Because it seems like you guys are already ahead of the game, but to keep ahead, you got to innovate. So what are you guys thinking about next year?
Ike (30:31.394)
We're continuing down the successful road of thoughtful growth with our customer in mind. So the next year will really be about how can we continue to drive the value of these house brands. We're also excited that we're gonna be opening our first brick and mortar store. So we're gonna have some omni-channel on the East Coast. It hasn't officially been announced yet, but I can't say it's on the East Coast.
Edwin @ Snappic (30:47.373)
Where?
Edwin @ Snappic (30:51.906)
Okay.
Tris Dyer (30:52.82)
Do we get an exclusive on this podcast? Fantastic.
Ike (30:55.201)
Absolutely, absolutely. This is you know, this this has been years in the works, but I'm really excited that we're going to open our first store. So we're going to have some omni channel focus in the next year on the growth acquisition marketing team. We're going to give Jack that experience of the in store, which I think is is hard and why we've excelled at our e commerce presence is that we've stayed true like you talked about it went to the customer first. And that's that's hard if you don't have a physical storefront. It's hard to be a website
Edwin @ Snappic (31:19.854)
Yeah.
Tris Dyer (31:23.84)
you
Edwin @ Snappic (31:24.953)
Yeah!
Ike (31:25.165)
that really can engage and interact with your customers. So this physical retail location is really going to help bridge us to the community, which I'm really excited about. And then just honing in and focusing on our house brand allocation and driving home kind of our place in the market for our house brands. So while, you know, at the outset, I talked about these third party products that are coming in, let's show the customer and continue to show the customer why our products are better than the products that they might have been introduced and bought.
initially.
Edwin @ Snappic (31:56.921)
And what coffee are you serving at your new... Japanese! Are you gonna bring it in from Japan?
Ike (32:00.417)
It'll be something.
Tris Dyer (32:02.57)
I can, yeah, I recommend Irish whiskey. Yeah. If you're going to have whiskey, have some Irish whiskey. That'll sort them right out. They'll buy whatever you give them then. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. But that's going to be amazing. And so in that, in that experience, obviously, so, you know, from an e-commerce standpoint, like again, we're just kind of, I'm asking numbers questions, but I get that this is kind of.
Ike (32:10.785)
Yeah, exactly. Take another four of this. Yes.
Tris Dyer (32:28.256)
moving towards an experiential feeling and kind of a virgin megastore as it were, know, go in, listen to the CDs he was like, and then you can buy some, bring it home. Where does that sit in terms of your, obviously it's experiential, but how is that gonna take away from your e-commerce sales? It's obviously people in that location. Is it gonna be more of a destination location or is it gonna just people walking by and hopefully people pop in?
Ike (32:50.803)
It's going to be the latter. It's going to be that that store heavy storefront or heavy foot traffic storefront where people are walking by introducing themselves to us. They can come inside, learn a bit about us. So not so much a destination. Now, maybe someday we hope to have that in a ranch or some kind of maybe a skiing destination and so forth. But this will really prove itself as a heavy foot traffic awareness tactic. And I think it's interesting, you know,
Tris Dyer (32:59.872)
Hmm.
Tris Dyer (33:09.791)
Nice.
Ike (33:17.671)
Certainly will be some attribution challenges that we'll need to solve. know, one thing that's unique about Huckberry is we've only been selling on our domain on Huckberry.com. We are for a into Amazon as a new marketplace now, and that's come with its own, you know, not not challenges, but ways of thinking about how do our upper funnel tactics feed into an incremental purchase on a marketplace that isn't our own. So I'm sure we'll be met with a subset of questions that are what is our media doing?
Tris Dyer (33:40.297)
Mm.
Ike (33:47.595)
and how is it informing our store sales or our store foot traffic? But I think like we'll still continue with that methodology of thinking about the overall company's revenue in relation to how we're feeling our marketing funnels.
Tris Dyer (34:03.072)
Yeah, I hear that.
Edwin @ Snappic (34:03.223)
And so you're, you're brick and mortar. You're opening it up in the coming year. How are you guys thinking of it from a financial point of view? Are you guys taking it as basically like, let's say the rent is 30,000, right? A high foot traffic or in New York or you're in Boston, wherever it is. And let's say rent is 30,000. Are you just going to treat it like, I just want to break even. I just want to wash it because I need, I just want this as an awareness play.
Or are you like, no man, like we are making money off this. How are you thinking?
Ike (34:36.957)
Yeah, mean, Edwin, that's a great question. I, you know, I don't know. And I don't want to tell an answer that I don't know. I would think from a growth marketing lens, though, it would have to be a bit of both. You know, we would want to quantify the impression similar to like a billboard or digital out of home play. We'll want to quantify a semblance of like a metric to the store's impressions that we're driving while also maintaining
Edwin @ Snappic (34:44.706)
Of course.
Edwin @ Snappic (34:50.338)
Okay.
Ike (35:02.311)
and a siloed P &L for that retail location to know that it's operating in good health. So I think the hope would be both there is.
a break even goal, but also this knowledge that this store is going to do wonders for introducing customers to a $400 jacket that they were apprehensive about purchasing online. But when they see it in their hands, they see this full grain leather, these details so well. So I think it'll be a bit of both where even if the store initially, you know, it's kind of operating a bit of a loss, so to speak, we're still this place where customers can finally go and discover our products.
Edwin @ Snappic (35:23.512)
Yeah.
Ike (35:41.856)
and connect with the brand a bit more. So that'll be, I think there'll be a semblance of fleshing that out and I'm not as well versed in it, but I think it'll be a bit of both, which is a great question.
Tris Dyer (35:50.346)
Who'd thought in the middle of COVID we'd have an awareness play as a shop front? Like, you guys are getting a shop front for an awareness play. I absolutely love that.
Edwin @ Snappic (35:54.962)
Edwin @ Snappic (35:59.359)
But that's the little secret of like, there's so many large DTC brands that use this store as like, as the awareness play. It's like insane.
Tris Dyer (36:10.282)
Yeah, yeah, it makes a ton of sense.
Ike (36:11.445)
N-I-N
You know, we're joking about whiskey. We're joking about coffee. But I think that that is the next evolution of the retail storefront. And you bet Huckberry will have something similar where you're coming in, not just a shop and it's, you know, a lifeless experience, but you're going to engage with the employees that work there. They're going to hear your story and vice versa. And I think about it as like a community place where you can come gather, hang, not necessarily for the sole purpose of buying. Of course, we want you to make a purchase, but also to connect with us as a brand.
Tris Dyer (36:43.08)
Interesting and so well in terms of huckberry just I mean switching gears a bit back to online So you guys what do you guys guys roughly revenue limit at the moment?
Ike (36:53.249)
Yearly, we're doing about 150 million plus in revenue. Yeah.
Tris Dyer (36:54.804)
Yeah. Okay. Okay. So that's actually a really good. So at that benchmark and look, mean, the spend say you're doing a certain percent in M.E.R. and on your, on your spend, how is your marketing team structured? So you're working on the acquisition side. Tell me a bit more about the structure of the acquisition team in a brand that size.
Ike (37:13.58)
Yeah. So we actually are pretty lean, scrappy team, which I like because it allows us to move on our toes easily. And so we are comprised of, we've got three arms, so to speak. We've got the paid search arm. have the paid social arm, and then we have our affiliate creator arm. And within these tracks, there's, you know, a total of six people. So a small team that are working within these different disciplines. And so that's kind of the team structure. We have
these six core media buyers, tactical people working within the channels themselves. Ancillary to that, we have a creative team that's focused just on performance marketing creative with a creative strategist that bridges the gap of data-driven insights to the creative team so that we can go back to the drawing board and iterate on what's working and what's not. And then we have, we worked very closely with data and finance. Marketing data finance is this trio of growth.
Tris Dyer (38:03.465)
single time.
Ike (38:13.541)
for Huckberry who works very closely together to make sure that one, we have investment, two, put the media forward, two, we put the media forward as best as we possibly can, and then three, we attribute it as best as we can. So we work really in lockstep with data and finance to make sure that anything that's happening on the media buying side, we're tracking internally and that there's a firm justification to why that purchase is being made from the revenue lens.
Tris Dyer (38:39.736)
I like that that's really and that makes a ton of sense because then the people in the actual channels know their stuff but then it has to lead up into everything you're doing and Then there's somebody making the puppeteer at the top making sure that you're going this is we're going the content route because it makes a ton more sense to have someone Knowing as a marketer and then you've got the people the channel specialists in there Yeah
Ike (38:59.921)
Exactly, totally. And I think one benefit of ours is, again, we're a lean team, so we're able to iterate and move quickly on if we want to pursue a different channel or a different approach and campaign tactic. So that gives us some room to work there where we don't have a lot of red tape to cut through, which is nice.
Tris Dyer (39:14.079)
Yeah.
Nice. And so you're talking to two agency owners. The question on my lips is anyway, why are you doing it? Why did you build up the internal team as opposed to taking and putting in an agency? Because there's two different ways of doing it. We work with brands similar size to yours and I've seen both sides. Very good that you guys are doing it that way, but I'd like to know the rationale behind it.
Ike (39:20.048)
My on my lips is anyways, why are you doing it? Why did you build up the internal team as a post-it?
Ike (39:30.296)
similar size to yours and I've seen boats up.
Ike (39:38.0)
Sorry Tris, I lost you just for a minute. Could you repeat the question?
Tris Dyer (39:40.576)
Of course, yeah. hang on, I'll just mark that because it can refresh. Okay, can you hear me now? Yeah, cool. Okay, no, no, it's okay. This is showbiz. We'll go again. Okay, cool. So you're talking to two agency owners. Answer, the question on my lips is very, very kind of simple. We've grown brands, something similar size to yours and we've done it with agency, so we're an agency. We've done it with people. I've seen companies grow it internally. So what was the thought process between internal and agency?
Ike (39:45.998)
Yeah, sorry.
Ike (39:50.682)
So much fun.
Tris Dyer (40:10.196)
you know, if you were agency, when did you make the shift?
Ike (40:14.321)
So when I came into Huckberry, we were working with a couple different agencies. I came from an agency background myself and the decision to change to in-house management from the agency side really came from a lens of growth. The company found themselves at a place where they had historically relied on agencies for their media buying. So they were less informed internally about how these agencies and the revenue that they were driving, the tactics that they were pursuing,
Tris Dyer (40:28.896)
Mm.
Tris Dyer (40:44.16)
Hmm.
Ike (40:44.283)
kind of funneled into overall company performance. And so the decision to move in-house and, you know, some of the media had already been run in-house, you know, big, large CTV buys, you know, some meta media. But I think that the core thing was just wanting to become more ingrained with the overall business operations, knowing that we have a huge internal data lake. Our finance and revenue team is, is top notch and very like up on
the company health on a daily lens, the team was just being led by an individual that was managing agencies, which was causing some blindness and some somewhat of a, I think of a slowness reaction time when it came to making quick decisions. So we still, you know, certainly there's still a need for agencies when it comes to being that strategic partner, thinking about, you know, creative attribution and so forth, channel expansion. But for these core channels, Google, YouTube,
Tris Dyer (41:24.234)
Gotcha.
Tris Dyer (41:29.162)
Makes sense.
Tris Dyer (41:39.669)
Mm-hmm.
Ike (41:44.143)
and meta, it was pretty plug and play to move in-house and kind of inform our media approach then. I think where we went is maybe we felt that we were over-expending, investing a little heavily for the returns that we were getting with the agency. Now we've come in-house, done a holistic health analysis. Are we spending what we should be spending and so forth? Are we getting these returns that we want? And now we can be a bit more agile internally, but also engage with agencies when we find ourselves in need.
Tris Dyer (41:44.766)
I know, yeah.
Ike (42:14.082)
of that external support and consultation.
Tris Dyer (42:16.512)
Makes a ton of sense. Thank you for the honesty. I went a bit off piece there, but I think it's, you know, it's just, very interested, obviously, as you guys grow, what was the decision to do that? Because it's, it's so many people go, agencies are shy. They're, they're so detached. It doesn't work. And then agencies are like, well, you're not giving us all the information. There's, there's that butting heads and this, this is actually really refreshing to kind of say, well, we did it, it worked, but then we actually wanted to go and grow this way, but we still engage, which is really, really nice to see. Absolutely love it.
Ike (42:32.752)
Exactly.
Ike (42:42.95)
Absolutely, I mean the media buying component and everything being AI driven has gotten easier in platform but also so much harder because it's hard to cut through the noise as we talked about and that's where I feel that an agency partner can really help is to drive your strategy to poke holes to rip Band-Aids off. So always a proponent of involving an agency with your media to get that second set of eyeballs on.
Tris Dyer (42:55.776)
Mmm.
Tris Dyer (43:05.291)
You paint it like someone coming along with a baseball bat and just knocking your pan apart and be like, fix that, change that, that's wrong. Yeah, I love it. I love it. Exactly. Well, listen, I don't know, Edwin, have you got any more questions?
Ike (43:12.829)
I know how to beat you on the other side.
Edwin @ Snappic (43:19.855)
I've gotten all my questions. It was really cool, man. Like, it's really interesting how you guys fleshed out the personas and like, Jack persona is like, it's really, because I think you guys also, no, no, Uncrate. I'm thinking about Uncrate because I think one of my watch guys, one of my watch dealers supplies the watches for, well, he supplies it for Uncrate.
Tris Dyer (43:22.686)
Yeah, this was fun.
Edwin @ Snappic (43:49.145)
But like, I collect all vintage watches. And so like, it's like, your persona is a very interesting customer.
Ike (43:53.045)
Awesome. Yeah.
Well that's a wrap for us. Guys, we have learned so much about personas, about YouTube, about everything, everything. Ike from Huckberry, it has been a pleasure. I'm Edwin.
Tris Dyer (44:43.538)
I'm Tris. Thanks, everyone. See you later.
Ike (44:45.152)
Thanks guys, really appreciate the time.
Edwin @ Snappic (44:48.409)
See ya.