Bringing a Brick’n’Mortar Business Online with Sanjay Jenkins of Buff City Soap

Kris:

Hey Sanjay, welcome to the show. I am so excited to have you on. You and I have been Twitter friends for a long time, and so this is such an exciting conversation to finally have.

Sanjay Jenkins: 

Kris 11 La Spain, thank you for having me on your show. This is such a big moment for me. I'm really excited to be here.

Kris: 

Oh good. I love that you just pulled out my Kris 11 La Spain notate for my emails.

Sanjay Jenkins: 

I have not forgotten. I read that, and it's been burned in my brain.

Kris: 

I have this sneaky little engagement measurement tactic that I'm doing with my newsletters that I'm ending them all with a weird name. I think this week it was Crispy La Francy Pants or something.

Sanjay Jenkins:

Yeah, that's what it was.

Kris: 

Yeah. And the thing is when people comment on it, that's how I know people are reading my emails.

Sanjay Jenkins: 

No, that's genius actually.

Kris: 

Sneaky little tricks is my favorite. It's my favorite marketing. So, Sanjay, I know you have a really incredible story on how you got where you are today with Buff City. You shared it on Twitter not too long ago. And we'll link up to it on the show notes, but can you just give us a background, a little bit about you, and how you ended up where you are?

Sanjay Jenkins: 

Yeah, absolutely. So, Sanjay Jenkins here. I am in the grand scheme of things. An e-commerce nobody, and I love it. So, I'm from Missouri. I've lived in Arkansas for the last five years. I got my start in e-commerce running basically a BarkBox clone. We didn't make any money. Basically, it was toys and treats for cats and dogs and every box that we send to a customer, we would send one to an animal shelter. And just from a shipping component ... Yeah, again, we didn't make any money. But that's how I got my start in e-commerce.

Sanjay Jenkins: 

From there I worked at a consulting company and they did industry data for the architecture and engineering firm. And they had an e-commerce division. So, I would sell these $500 books of data. It was literally just spreadsheets copied and pasted into a book. And people would ... We cleared seven figures easily every year selling those weird industry data booklets. And that was all email marketing. So, I learned how to use Klaviyo back then. And then I just quit that job because it wasn't a great environment. I was just broke, and alone. I didn't know anything.

Sanjay Jenkins: 

So, that was probably one of the major inflection points for me personally where I was like, "Okay, I got to get serious. I got to learn some real skills. So, I'm never in this position again." I think I referenced this in that Twitter thread, but the real catalyzing moment for me in that whole experience was choosing whether to pay for food or for gas to get to a ... at that point I posted on Craigslist that I teach people how to design landing pages for 35 bucks an hour. And so it was like, "Do I pay for gas to get to that, or do I just eat?" And so, that really kicked off a fire. And then I got a job at an e-commerce platform, which is really interesting.

Sanjay Jenkins: 

So, the founder of that platform had raised $100 million in Arkansas, which is the biggest round I think to date in venture capital, in Arkansas. And we were basically going after the space in between Shopify Plus and Demandware, those enterprise-level clients. And that's where I've formalized a lot of my e-commerce knowledge. So, in order for me to be able to sell to someone who is an e-commerce operator, I need to understand what it's to be an operator, all the nuances, what are the mechanics of e-commerce? What's the foundation? What's the basics?

Sanjay Jenkins: 

And then I started running a performance marketing agency just for the heck of it on the side. And I eventually quit with a buddy of mine. We quit to go run the agency full-time. We left in June of 2019, I sold my half of the agency to him so I could come run e-commerce here at Buff City. And that's how I got here to this moment.

Kris: 

[crosstalk]. See, the thing is I feel I see constantly and you said it at the beginning, like, "Oh, I'm an e-commerce nobody, and I don't know anything." I feel you know a lot. I feel you don't give yourself enough credit for how much experience you actually have in the industry.

Sanjay Jenkins: 

That's probably fair. Yeah, I guess, one of the things is that I'm constantly around, or reading stuff like what Patrick could do of supply, or my buddy John Max Bowling, Andrew Foxwell, David Herman, Jimmy Schmidt from Schmidt Naturals, all these fabulous people who just have built tremendous e-commerce businesses, and are tremendous e-commerce operators. And I'm trying to learn as much as I can from them. And also the same time I'm comparing myself from them, and I'm like ... For one, I'm not as old as they are.

Sanjay Jenkins: 

And I haven't been in the game as long as they have. But I still try to compare myself to them. Which I guess it's a pretty like ... I mean, I'm Indian. It's baked into to how I was brought up. My mom being like, "Oh, so-and-so got into Stanford." Like, "Oh, that's great. I'm here." Just trying to make [crosstalk]-

Kris: 

Thanks mom.

Sanjay Jenkins: 

Yeah. Right.

Kris: 

Yeah. No, I mean it's interesting too because I feel like you and I are almost in this same stage where we're following the footsteps of a lot of e-commerce greats, and trying to learn from them. But also we have this really interesting perspective of being very fresh, and not necessarily knowing all of the background of e-commerce. And I think that gives us a chance to see things that other people don't see. This is something that I deal with a lot as a podcaster when I started this podcast, I was like, "Really, who am I to talk about this stuff? I don't know what I'm doing." And it's just for me it's been a learning curve of you don't have to know everything. You just have to be curious to learn.

Kris: 

And that's really what makes you successful in this industry. And also well liked to this industry because I think people really like to hear these conversations that are so authentic, and being able to say like, "I might not know everything, but I've got some cool stuff to share." Which I know you have some cool stuff to share. So, I'm excited.

Sanjay Jenkins: 

[crosstalk]. Appreciate that.

Kris: 

So, I got to ask really, you had this agency going, you had a plan. What was it about Buff City Soap that really made you rethink, and actually join the team full-time?

Sanjay Jenkins: 

Yeah. Well, I guess, the first thing is that e-commerce is such an afterthought at this business. So, Buff City Soap is we make plant-based bath and body goods. Bars of soap, that's our main shtick. Bars of soap, laundry soap, which is probably my favorite product that we carry. Body butter, just bath, and body products, plant-based. It's all made in store. So, we're primarily a physical retail, a franchise business. Right? So, e-commerce is a complete afterthought. It did less than 5% of the revenue for the company in 2019.

Sanjay Jenkins: 

And for me, I'm looking at like, "Okay, we could just go in and blow this up, just to deploy some e-commerce fundamentals, and blow this up." But even still, like, even if e-commerce is wildly successful this year, it'll still dwarf what we're doing on the physical retail front. And that was just nice, because it just allowed for a level of experimentation. And just overall, there's a higher risk tolerance because there's nothing done. And it was just like, "Okay, well, it's going to make money. It's like this profitable offshoot. It's going to grow no matter what, it's scale as the physical footprint scales."

Sanjay Jenkins: 

So, if I can go in and help adjust that inflection point, the growth curve, then it can be one of those career defining moments for me. And if not, then I will have had the opportunity to work with some absolute killers. I mean, the team that we have here is just tremendous. We've got our COO, she's from Michaels, and she took them from a small store footprint to a massive footprint. The CEO, he sold online tuxedo rental business to the founder of Men's Warehouse. It was like George Zimmer-

Kris: 

Oh, man.

Sanjay Jenkins: 

... And this is a crazy, crazy team that we have here. And it's just such a ... The founder of the company started making soap in his garage. His name's Brad Kellum. He was a firefighter who one day decided he wanted to go to law school. So, he went to law school, and then he was making soap in his garage. And people in his neighborhood was like, "Oh, it smells pretty good. [crosstalk]?"

Kris: 

What are you making in there?

Sanjay Jenkins: 

Yeah, and then it just he opened up a retail location in Memphis, and just took off from there.

Kris: 

Yeah. This is what I find so interesting about Buff City, and why I think this conversation is going to be unique to the season is that a lot of conversations in e-commerce right now there's this trend we keep talking about of like, at some point we're going to bridge the offline, and the online. And all these digitally native brands are starting to think about popup, and think about retail. Buff City is the complete opposite, that you already have the retail, and you have this, I almost think it's a leg up because you have this one-on-one connection with customers. You have this physical understanding of customers. And then going back and saying, "Okay, now, we can turn this into an e-commerce arm as well." Because when you look at it, I think I counted 30 something [crosstalk]-

Sanjay Jenkins:

33. Yeah, we got 33 right now.

Kris:

Yeah, 33 locations around the US. And to think that the e-commerce site is only driving about 5% of sales is pretty crazy. And it's also just such an exciting opportunity. And I can totally see how you see that as like it's a super fun opportunity, but also the risk is not as high if it's completely dependent on digitally native brands. You have this area to play and learn, which I think is what's going to be really cool coming out of this conversation. How does that retail operation, how does it actually impact your side of things when you're thinking about an e-commerce strategy? Is it playing into it? Are you learning from the retail side, or is it two separate things?

Sanjay Jenkins:

No, it's really seamless. I mean, ultimately, we want to be able to create a really seamless experience for the end consumer, right? They can go into a store, buy something. Say they want to like ... Like the laundry soap for example is a really great example of this. They go into the store, they buy the laundry soap for the first time. They wash their clothes with it. They realize it's the greatest thing that's ever been made, and they're like, "Okay, well, I don't know if we want to go back to the store to get this. I just want to like ... Let me throw this on a subscription." They should be able to easily do that. The interesting thing that I have that I think that not a lot of ... Probably, I mean none of the other DTC companies that are doing physical retail really have to face this problem, is that I have to also keep in mind the best interest for our franchisees.

Sanjay Jenkins:

So, our e-commerce efforts cannot be at the detriment of franchisees, and franchisee growth because at that point, I'm essentially just destroying the entire system. So, there's this extra level of responsibility that I have to the entire organization, and all the people that make it up. On the physical retail side, that informs just how I go about the offline to online, and then like, especially, from a retention standpoint, but they're all good problems to have. It's like, how do we compensate franchisees for online orders? And I think the model that we're developing ... And this is me totally tooting our own horn here-

Kris:

Toot away.

Sanjay Jenkins:

... But I think what we're doing here is actually ... Hopefully, the system that we build is going to be successful, and will be something that we'll be able to roll out to other franchisee businesses.

Kris:

Yeah. Because that is such an interesting problem to have that you can't create a competition within the business itself. And trying to think of that and figuring out how to balance where you push marketing, and where you push consumers, and do you want them to go directly to the e-commerce site? Do you want them to try and go to a retail store first? That story going to retail store, having that physical experience, getting the product, and then wanting to just buy it online seems like a really natural flow for a lot of customers. And it gives ... Something with retention I talk a lot about is that that first purchase, does somebody get the product from a box, open it, feel something good about the product, and then use it, and then feel good about the use of it?

Kris:

With retail, you get to skip a lot of that because you're getting that human to humain contact. You're getting that really authentic side of teaching the customer about the product. So, by the time they've bought it, they're actually really excited to go home and use it. So, there's a lot of that "onboarding" that seems a lot easier when you have that retail experience on top of it.

Sanjay Jenkins:

Absolutely. And one of the things that I think is just so unique about our stores in particular is that there's such a huge element of retail theater. So, all of the products that you see in one of our stores is made in that store. Everything's produced right there. And you actually get to see, if you go into one of our stores, you'll see soap being made, you'll see bath bombs being made. If you want to have an event, you can have a soap making event. You can get your entire office and go in there and make some soap, or have a bath bomb birthday party. And it's a lot of fun. I got to make soap for the first time a couple of weeks ago, and it's just a fascinating experience just being able to make a physical product.

Sanjay Jenkins:

But then when customers come in, they see one of our soap makers making something really elaborate, and beautiful, and then you just point them to your shelf. It's like, "Oh yeah, that's what we're making." That experience translating that online is the most Herculean task that I have in front of me. And I can't do that all the way. So, that's when I started thinking about like ... I think we'll talk about this soon, but it's the SMS component of it. What are some other communication channels that allow me to give the level of service that we are able to give in store but online?

Sanjay Jenkins:

So, because when you go into a store, whether it's a soap maker, or just someone who's working in that environment, they'll be able to say like, "Okay, what scents do you like." Or, "What products are you into? Try this. Put this body butter on, see how it feels." They're all these little, subtle human interactions that we can't directly recreate one-to-one. But we can facilitate some of those conversations to where we're allowing for that service to still happen in some capacity.

Kris: 

Yeah. That was actually going to be ... As you were talking, the question that I wrote down was how do you replicate that experience online? So, you beat me to my question because that has to be ... I mean, the benefit I think for you is that you get to actually experience these things, and see how the customers are interacting, and then say, "Okay, I know what this experience needs to at least emulate. How can we do that online?" Versus a lot of brands that have no idea because they don't have that basis of information. So, they're creating this dialogue from nothing, and trying to build this interaction. So, it's so cool. Let's just dive right into the SMS stuff, because this is something you and I are both super passionate about.

Kris:

We both talk about it a lot on Twitter. We rile each other up on Twitter about it. Some people get upset with us, but I think that you and I really do have the right approach to it. So, you have this SMS plan for Buff City Soap, at least something that you've told me you really want to do. Can you tell us what your idea is there, and what you've learned about SMS that's driven you to decide like this is a good channel for the brand?

Sanjay Jenkins:

Absolutely. So, I love SMS. I think it's such a powerful channel. And I want to be a responsible user of the channel before the rest ... I'm a marketer, before we all just ruin it.

Kris:

Like we all ruined the inbox?

Sanjay Jenkins:

Yeah, absolutely. It's just a matter of when. But my stance on it as you know is 10-digit numbers and it has to be two-way. I mean, every brand right now you can sign up for, it's like, oh, just like you could sign up for an email newsletter, you could sign up for a text message blast. It's like, "Okay, cool, you're running a sale, or you've got this like, okay, new product." That stuff is great. And then when you look at conversion metrics that yes, the open rates are better, the click through rates are better, the purchase rates are better but it's not just a marketing channel.

Sanjay Jenkins:

This is such a great opportunity to just share an intimate moment with one of your customers and get feedback at a rate that you just would not be able to otherwise online. And we've been using SMS for probably the last six months now, really aggressively. And so, my buddy Blake, who I ran the agency with, he was telling me about a really interesting [inaudible] he had on a campaign that he just ran where he asked ... The brand it's hair cream for curly haired people. And he was having this back and forth discussion like 9:00 PM about how this person, they were really sad because they couldn't find anything that was right for their hair.

Sanjay Jenkins:

And then they started looking on YouTube and then they found some content from the brand that he's working for. And it was just like, you get to go into a person's life, and really extract what's really meaningful to them. Why they transact with you, why they care. And then by doing so, by showing that there's a real human on the other side of this online persona, this brand, you humanize yourself, and the company, and you just build this weird loyalty, and almost ... I wouldn't say it's an obligation, but it's like, if you're in a retail environment, and the staff's really nice to you, and they care for you. And they're not like pressuring you in any way. And it's like, "Well, it's like at this point it's like, yeah, of course I'm going to buy something."

Sanjay Jenkins:

From a conversion standpoint, it helps you maintain a really great LTV as well. But you get so much more understanding of who your customers are, and what they care about, and what they want. You can run surveys, and just have great feedback on, like, "Okay, this ... " Maybe you're testing a new formula for a product. And then Moiz Ali, he's a pretty famous for how he would test if products would work. It's like, "You can do this." But you get even more direct feedback rather than just waiting to see what return rates are, [crosstalk] people are just rate like ... Just it goes beyond cohorting. You can go pull it a step foot back and say like, "Okay, we've tested this new batch of ingredients, and people this, this and this, but they don't like this. Let's go back to the drawing board and fix this." That was a lot of stuff basically like-

Kris: 

I loved it.

Sanjay Jenkins:

... Relationships [crosstalk]. And brands need to build relationships.

Kris: 

Yeah. And this is exactly my opinion on SMS especially too, and even this is ... I think we share this opinion about email as well, that it doesn't always have to be this really marketing type feel. There's this really unique opportunity that if you can approach SMS in a way that makes customers feel comfortable going back and forth with you, then that unlocks ... It's easier than calling your customer, but you're still getting that communication. And actually, I'm just thinking about myself, if I don't have to call somewhere, I don't want to call. That's just how I am.

Kris:

Which seems interesting now that I'm a podcaster, and I spend all my time talking on the phone, but I don't want to talk on the phone ever. If I could have those interactions with a brand on SMS, I would be so much more likely to tell them what I think about things, or how I feel. And having that two-way conversation is huge. I think there's a time and place for single channel notifications, and things that help with the customer experience. But if you're going to roll out a real SMS plan, having the two-way conversation is huge.

Kris:

You mentioned the 10-digit number. And this is something that very recently you and I we've gotten in some Twitter conversations with different people. Some people agree with us, some people don't agree with us. Can you explain for the listeners what is a 10-digit number versus a short code, and why do you feel the 10-digit's so important?

Sanjay Jenkins: 

10-digit, it's another layer of humanity, and it reduces the, oh, this is a marketing message pre-selection that happens in your brain when you see a message popup on your phone. Short codes are, in my opinion, inherently transactional. And 10-digit allows you to go above the transactional element of it, and actually start building those relationships. I think just from a mechanical standpoint, most of the text message businesses that are using short codes, they're sharing short codes across brands. And those platforms will also be the same ones that say, "Oh, we're never going to share a short code with a brand that's going to overlap." Your customer base is going to overlap. And you can bleep these out if need be. I think I'm going to go ahead and name drop here some brands here.

Kris:

Do it.

Sanjay Jenkins:

But Attentive said that ... That was one of the big things. It was like, "Okay, you're never going to have an audience that overlaps." Back last summer we were looking at it, and we noticed that Peel phone cases was sharing a short code with somersault swimwear. I don't know why there wouldn't be the possibility for an overlap for someone who wants a minimalist phone case, and a really nice swimsuit. Why can't that concentric circle exists? Or why can't that Venn diagram exist?

Kris:

And it feels like it would for some people.

Sanjay Jenkins: 

Oh, absolutely. And it just gets really dangerous because at that point it's only transactional. People know it's just going to be transactional. And if you try to start implementing a lot of the two-way stuff on those short codes, it gets jumbled up. Like, am I talking to Peel right now? Am I talking to Somersault? Like, "Okay, my swimsuit top didn't fit. I want to answer this question but am I going to get a response about how my iPhone 11 phone case?" It's just weird things. And just for the record, I love both Peel and somersault. I know some of the people at those organizations, and they're just fantastic people. This is more of a thing on Attentive than it is on them at all. But it's just consumers know, consumers are smart.

Kris:

And you had a really good example on Twitter where you showed the interaction. And it's that short code digit, I don't know how many digits are in a short code? Seven.

Sanjay Jenkins: 

Five.

Kris: 

Five?

Sanjay Jenkins:

I think it's five, yeah.

Kris: 

Yeah, five. And you showed responding. It was two beauty brands that were sharing a short code, which goes against that idea that there can't be a customer crossover because two beauty brands is a pretty obvious crossover there. And you texted back a yes response to one of the brands, but then the other brand responded. And it just becomes this very jumbled, and really something that I think is a lot of consumers are already pretty weary about SMS. It's like that, "I don't want brands to be texting me because I already know what happens when they email me, and it's no fun." And then when you have that experience, maybe it's not going to happen on a large scale, but when it does, as a consumer, it feels so uncomfortable. And it starts to deteriorate a relationship very, very quickly.

Sanjay Jenkins:

Yeah, it really does.

Kris:

So, you guys are really focusing on this two-way conversation. How are you rolling out this systematically? Are you triggering conversations to go out, or is it just you going by the gut, and feeling things out right now? How are you guys actually plotting this out for the brand? And what messages are you really trying to send?

Sanjay Jenkins:

Yeah. So, right now, we're moving off of blue commerce on the Shopify that launches ... Today's the 7th of February. In 10 days or so is when we're going to be on Shopify. So, we can add all of these things in. We're actually piloting, so we're using a system called Voxy, that's been my go-to text message platform for the last year now. They're based out of Atlanta. I love the team there. We're piloting Voxy in a set of stores that we have in Tennessee first. So, teaching staff in store how to respond to customers two-way, because before it was all just a single communication. A lot of what we're going to do initially is it's going to be a blend of automated stuff. So, like, you sign up, you give us your phone number on the website, or you go through an inbound texting, and you opt in.

Sanjay Jenkins:

It's like, "Okay, like, let me get some basic information." Like, what's your name? When's your birthday? Let me send you something on your birthday. We can automate those kinds of things. But then if someone has a question about a product, or question about ship ... Just literally anything that we'd normally have in our FAQs for example, we're going to be texting them back just individually. So, right now it's me, and one other person on my team. And she and I are literally just going to be in the Voxy dashboard messaging people back when we roll this out on our new website. And the goal is we'll learn really quickly the kinds of conversations that we are having. So, a lot of things like basic FAQ.

Sanjay Jenkins: 

So I was like, "Oh, how long is it going to take to ship to me? I live here." We can automate a lot of those things but there are going to be moments when a real person needs to be brought in, and that's when ... Our goal is in a few months we're going to have a scaled customer experience team that's going to be messaging back on Instagram DMs. They're going to be messaging back on SMS. And basically, nurturing people through not just the purchase funnel, but also just the retention funnel about the laundry soap.

Sanjay Jenkins: 

How do I use it in my machine if I have one of these newer washing machines? Things of that nature. So, we're trying to be very conscious of, one, understanding the conversations that people want to have with us, initially, the questions that they're having. And then from there, building out a team that has the empathy, and the autonomy to provide really great service. But just be really available for the end consumer.

Kris:

Yeah. You said so many things that I love here. One is that this idea that you have to start, and as you start, you're going to start learning about your customers, and learning what these conversations are going to look like. And then it becomes a lot more scalable because you're feeding your own internal machine of things you can then start to automate, and things you can start to get ahead of. I can't remember who was talking about it, but they used a lot of the text message conversations they had to then write new FAQ content on their site. And it slowly starts to make the customer experience, and journey a lot simpler because you're just ahead of all these little issues that could possibly come up, which is really cool.

Kris: 

For you as running the growth, and running the marketing side, we're talking about building out a customer experience team. And sometimes I think for a lot of brands, these two things like marketing, and CX feel like two different branches, in two different departments. So, why is it so important to you as a marketer to say, "All right, we need to actually think about building out this entire CX team." Why is this so important to you on the growth side?

Sanjay Jenkins:

If we don't have a great customer ... It goes back to the experience that we give a person when they walk into one of our physical stores. It's something that they never really experienced before. There are these elements of magic, and elements of wow. And then also the utility, and the quality of the products. I feel like growth is only as good as your retention until you grow a ton, and then just implode if you're not retaining any of those customers. And having a great customer experience allows us to retain better. We're not having to pay the Facebook text at the same rate if we are able to acquire people, and then all it takes to keep them around is just chatting with them about how they've been using your soap, or our fruity loopy body butter.

Sanjay Jenkins: 

From a growth standpoint, if we don't have a great ... It's just one aspect of your conversion, and your post purchase funnel. But I think it's probably the most overlooked. A lot of e-commerce companies tend to outsource your customer service and your customer experience. And the ones that I think that are really great are the ones that do it in-house, or at least have codified, and have built just a really great outsource team that it's basically in-house.

Kris: 

Yeah. Because it's the same argument along the lines of, okay, agency versus building things in-house is, it's hard to get across that what you said really well the empathy for the brand, and the brand voice, and keeping it really standard across, and keeping the high standard of that communication if it's outsourced. When it's internal, you get that chance to really train the employees on not just this is how we respond to this, and this but this is the kind of customer that we have coming in. And this is how we feel about them, and this is the mission and the story behind everything that we do. I think that drives a lot better customer experience. And your answer is really good on how this all relates back to retention. I think the best quote so far of the season now is going to be growth is only as good as your retention.

Kris: 

That's an amazing way to put it. It's so simple. In my head it's so simple of like, "Well, of course the customer experience is going to be the biggest driver of retention." It doesn't always seem so clean cut for everybody. So, that's why I really to ask my guests that question so listeners can hear from other people on that. Something else you talk a lot about on Twitter is the speed of the supply chain at Buff City. Operations obviously has a huge play in the customer experience and retention. It seems pretty floaty, and a faraway reach for a lot of people that consider that operations can lead into retention. But how has that speed of the supply chain impacted you on the marketing side?

Sanjay Jenkins:

It allows for a level of freedom, and creativity that we could not otherwise have if we had a longer supply chain. So, again, everything that we sell is made in a store, is made in the store that you're going to buy it from. We have a centralized basically [inaudible] fulfillment center, and we don't have to keep a whole lot of inventory on hand because we can make stuff. We can make it so.it doesn't take a whole lot, less than a week to make a bar that we can sell. And what that does is it allows us to be as creative as like, Ryan Reynolds with the Peloton callback. Right?

Kris: 

Yeah. I love Ryan Reynolds.

Sanjay Jenkins:

I think he's probably the best marketer that I've ever met. I haven't met him, but I was like just come across. You can tap into cultural events, and memes, and just what's happening in the world, and respond in realtime. Whereas if you had really long supply chain, and it took you even two weeks or a week to be able to get something up, to be able to shoot a sample, photography, video, things of that nature, you're just not able to compete in the same way. And so, having a really fast supply chain just allows me to be almost endlessly creative.

Kris:

Yeah. That's so fun. This is something I've talked about on [inaudible] as well as one of the big drivers of their retention is this ability to stay relevant, especially, relevant to their customers' lives. And that really helps with the whole subscription fatigue. And I have 50 pairs of me on these I probably don't need anymore. And then they release a new print and you're like, "Ah, dang it, I need this." It really gives you the opportunity to stay relevant to the trends that are happening in your customers' lives, not just in general, but you're able to say like, "Okay, we know that, a lot of our customers tend to like this." I saw you guys did a baby Yoda soap bar.

Sanjay Jenkins:

Yeah.

Kris:

So quickly. It's so cool to see that you can respond so fast to something that people are talking about, and that just drives even more loyalty and retention because as a consumer you have this overall view of the brand as a staple in the house. That's a really good product that we stand behind but then also it's this unexpected brand that's always going to be a little bit fun, and new things are going to come out which just from a metric and business standpoint, you're thinking about things like average order value, and people buying in between subscriptions, or buying a product they've never done before because you have that opportunity to add some excitement consistently.

Sanjay Jenkins:

It's just the surprise and delight components of our products. First of all, our products, I'm going to hype them up because this is one of the few moments in my life when I've just been able to really, really, really be proud of the product that I get to sell. The products are fantastic. I am not a bar soap person, and I have become one because just the way the soap works. I know all the ingredients in it. I can read them, I understand what they are. I know what olive oil is, coconut oil, things of that nature. And the quality of the products is fantastic. They smell fantastic. It's not overpowering by any means.

Sanjay Jenkins: 

And our ability to just spin stuff up on a dime, it's unreal. I've never been in an environment where we've just been able to like ... Right now, my favorite body butter scent is fruity loopy. I'm sure you can guess what that smells like. And it's just unreal. We could have a whole breakfast line of body butters.

Kris:

Oh my God. Please do that.

Sanjay Jenkins:

Like, I really want a cinnamon toast crunch body butter. That'd be fantastic.

Kris: 

That'd be amazing. Be so much fun to market that. Just throw back to all your nostalgic childhood cereals.

Sanjay Jenkins:

Oh, yeah. I'm there. It's what I eat now, so-

Kris:

Well, same here. I tried to do healthy cereal, and I have Lucky Charms and Cocoa Puffs in my pantry right now. So ...

Sanjay Jenkins: 

Have you tried Magic Spoon? That seems really interesting to me.

Kris: 

I have tried Magic Spoon, and I have a lot of love for their brand, and their customer experience is really good. I didn't like the cereal.

Sanjay Jenkins:

Okay, that's fair.

Kris: 

... Neither did my husband but I think it's because we're such suckers for the sugary [inaudible] stuff, and we only have cereal in that vein. It's like the junk food we have on the weekends, or late night snack. And so to have it turn healthy where you're both just like, "She doesn't fit in with our lifestyle or our cereal."

Sanjay Jenkins: 

Yeah. Absolutely. I get it. I'm there too. I'm like, "Well, maybe I should try Special K." That's the furthest of help cereals that I'll go.

Kris: 

My "healthy" cereal is raisin bread crunch.

Sanjay Jenkins:

There it is.

Kris:

Which it seems healthy because there's raisins in it, and then you look at the sugar content and you're like-

Sanjay Jenkins: 

Nope.

Kris: 

Nope but I [crosstalk]-

Kris: 

... Keep pretending. But you should try magic spoon. I'm interested to see if other people have different opinions because I think it's just my weird thing.

Sanjay Jenkins:

I want to try it. I haven't tried it yet. It's just like, I love their branding. I think it's so good.

Kris:

Yeah. Their branding is amazing. So, okay. I got to ask, you've been learning e-commerce by quite literally being just thrown into the driver's seat of it, and learning as you go. What are some of the most valuable lessons you think you've learned in this space?

Sanjay Jenkins:

Valuable lessons, accounting. I was a very, very bad accounting ... I was just a management major in college. So, B school, preschool if you will. I slept through most of my accounting classes, and just having been in there ... I manage a P&L now, so I'm sure someone's out there listening, like, "Okay, this guy is a proper idiot." But, no, I mean I had to learn accounting trial by fire, even just for ads, managing ads for clients, really understand the ins and outs of a P&L, and try to maintain profitability. So, that's been a huge learning curve. I think one of the biggest lessons is just really zooming out, understanding the big picture, and having data to back it out. So, it's not just like, "Okay, what's my one day ROAS?" Right?

Kris: 

Yeah.

Sanjay Jenkins:

If I'm trying to spend ... What's your 30-day ROAS? What's your 60 ... Or it's ROAS, and then like, what's CAC look in 30, 60, 90? What's 120, 180-day? What's your LTV in those timeframes? Really zooming out and looking at a much bigger picture than, "Here's how much money I made today." In that longterm mindset is something that I'm starting to develop more and more, especially, because we have like ... I wish I could tell you the number, but the number of stories that are coming online in the next couple of years is just unreal. We're going to explode. And this is probably the most marketing that we're going to do about it for a little while, me being on this podcast. And I don't know. I think I just got really excited about all this growth, I forgot where I was going. I apologize.

Kris: 

That's okay. That's what I do 90% of the time I'm on this podcast, I forget what I'm saying. And then I just end the statement with like, "What do you think?" Because I lose my place. I mean, that lesson is huge. That zooming out and understanding the bigger picture I think it's the number one piece of advice I give anybody. And it's the number one piece of advice if you want to think about retention in any way, shape, or form, is that you have to think bigger than a day, or a week, even a month. And for DTC and e-commerce, it's so tempting to just follow the short metrics because you get this ... It's almost addicting.

Kris: 

Like, you can get this little win, little win, and you feel like everything's going great. And then you step back, six months later, and you look at everything in a hole, and it's like, "Well, all those little wins didn't actually add up to a really large win for the brand." And I think that's where a lot of these brands being like, "Oh God, we got to look at retention." That's where that chaos feeling is coming from.

Sanjay Jenkins: 

It's hard for a lot of brands. A lot of brands just can't necessarily afford to zoom out as much as I'm sure they'd like to. And that's one of the advantages that I have is that I can, because of just the nature of the entire organization, I have a little less pressure to perform on day one [crosstalk].

Kris: 

Yeah. And it's so fun to see you be able to build out that holistic experience and thinking. Broader.

Sanjay Jenkins: 

Absolutely. I'm just really excited to share something that will be in people's lives every single day. People, I hope use soap every single day.

Kris: 

Yeah, we hope.

Sanjay Jenkins: 

I pray for it every day. Like, man, I hope everyone I interact with washes their hands.

Kris: 

Yes, you do hope that especially nowadays.

Sanjay Jenkins:

And the only way that we get to continue to be a part of people's lives, part of customers' lives everyday is just by really caring about what we're doing to retain them. And then caring about them while we're retaining them.

Kris:

Yeah. That empathy and care is ... It seems so obvious that you need to care about your products. You need to care about your customers. It seems like an obvious thing, but then actually executing on that is really, really difficult, especially, when you have to move fast, and you have to be agile, and you have to think about marketing strategies, and sales, and getting the ROAS up, and getting all this.

Kris:

Stepping back and thinking about empathy is very difficult. In marketing, how are you making sure that you're always coming back to that as you're thinking about strategies? Is there something that you hold as a way to you thinking up a new campaign or something, is there something you do to step back, and say like, "Okay, how is this affecting everything else we're doing?"

Sanjay Jenkins: 

I think the metric that I've been using lately, in the last couple of weeks is, am I going to piss off franchisees if I do this? And which it's weird because they're not necessarily the end consumer, but they're part of my team. And they're such a group of people that I have a lot of responsibility for even if maybe it doesn't seem that way. I don't run anything franchisee-related. As we grow, our goal is to be able to fill out of stores, which will be pretty slick. But I mean, just in general, I want to be able to make sure that they're taking care of it.

Sanjay Jenkins:

It's just the system-wide responsibility. There's nothing specific that I do right now. I think it's just I realized part of this job is caring about the entire system. And it's like everything that I do has to align for that. And I've not been in this role long enough to where I guess I'm so bogged down by other things to where I'm starting to take that for granted, or I'm just not thinking about it, it's still pretty fresh for me. Yeah. That's how I'm looking at it.

Kris: 

Yeah. I think that that view and that responsibility feeling is actually what a lot of e-commerce marketers are missing. That even if you are in a brand that's not like Buff City where you have this ability to slow down, you have the retail to depend on. It's still having that idea that everything you do impacts the entire system. And being able to think that way, I think is the most important trait and characteristics of marketers that are going to be coming out in the next three to five years is, do you care about not only your metrics as like the open rate of this email, or the conversion rate of this email, but are you also considering how does this email play into the entire system of this brand?

Kris: 

And does it then add to the customer experience or is it not really worth it at this point? I mean, it's a big task to do, but I just had to point that out for the listeners because I love that approach, and I think we need more of it. Okay. I know that you have a lot of brand inspiration that you're following and thinking of, like you mentioned Patrick from supply. Are there any other big brands that you are looking to as inspiration as you're growing?

Sanjay Jenkins: 

The world is my swipe file.

Kris: 

I like that.

Sanjay Jenkins: 

It's just about every day I add something to it. I'm really big on like Haus, Helena and Woody, I love them to death. And [crosstalk] talk to them, or met them. And I hope I do. I hope 2020 is the year that I get to like jam out with them.

Kris: 

Oh, I bet you will. We'll make it happen.

Sanjay Jenkins: 

Oh, that'd be great. I've looked up to the DTC world. I've learned from the DTC world. I will continue to learn from the DTC world, whether it's the great things that Casper did, or like the not so great things, like losing a lot of money. Like things like that. There's always something new to learn. That's one of the reasons why I love using Twitter. Probably, if I got rid of all my other social media apps, I'd be happy if I just got to keep Twitter.

Kris: 

Same.

Sanjay Jenkins: 

Because not only do you get to go learn like ... One of the cool lessons that I've been like really chewing on lately was Chris Cantino, Schmidt's Naturals. He talked about when he was selling into Target and Whole Foods, if I recall this correctly, but he's talking about like the pitch, isn't like, "We're going to be like the top, like product in the category." It's like, "No, the work that we do is going to raise the entire category." Like it's going to be incredible. We got to like add to the entire deodorant category essentially.

Sanjay Jenkins: 

And just like these little insights that you can pick up that aren't necessarily like tactical e-commerce, or DTC, things that you can go deploy. It's like, "How am I really thinking about my business? How am I thinking about e-commerce in general?" It's just out there. Like, I really do think that we get to stand on the shoulders of giants because the giants are tweeting, and we can tweet them back [crosstalk].

Kris: 

Yeah. I love that point because something I always try to do in this podcast is not only just talking about like theories and ideas, but also getting really tactical. But at the same time there is so much power in just thinking about a different way to think about something, using a different mindset, these theories around retention, how we're talking, the responsibility about the entire system. These things aren't necessarily tactics but they are actually really, really important things that change the way you think about your own business.

Kris: 

And I will add to the conversation that DTC Twitter is one of the coolest, and most fun communities and places to be because everybody's open, and sharing, and learning from each other, which is just ... You and I were talking about this before recording, it can be lonely in these roles that you're sitting behind a computer, and trying to put all this stuff together in your own head, and then to be able to go to Twitter, and see other operators talking, and experts talking, and sharing the things that they're learning, it's such a nice part of this industry.

Sanjay Jenkins: 

Yeah, absolutely. If you're new to the e-commerce game, listen to this podcast, obviously, like keep listening to this podcast. There's just so much to learn. You'll never learn all of it, and you don't need to. Ultimately it's like, make sure that you're going back and applying stuff to your own business, your own projects, and your own thinking. And like, "Okay, I have this idea. What's plus two? What's the second, and third order operation that comes after this?" You know?

Kris: 

Yeah.

Sanjay Jenkins:

But it's just, I love learning. I read probably more books than I need to sometimes I think just like-

Kris: 

Yeah, me too.

Sanjay Jenkins: 

But it's-

Kris: 

Wait, have you ever taken the Enneagram test?

Sanjay Jenkins: 

I have. So, my old roommate would literally ask me what my Enneagram is like every other day. I took it like a year and a half ago, and I don't remember what it is.

Kris: 

I have a feeling you have a five somewhere in it because I'm a six wing five. And the biggest thing about fives is that they're like information hoarders, just gather information. So, when you said that, I was like, "I bet you have a five in your Enneagram."

Sanjay Jenkins: 

Does that also translate to like physical stuff? Because I tend to be like a hoarder, hoarder too.

Kris: 

Really? That's [crosstalk].

Sanjay Jenkins: 

It's weird. It's a lot easier ... So, when I moved from Arkansas to Dallas this past week, I got rid of most things, which is really tough for me. But before I was just like, "Yes, this movie ticket I shall keep for the next 10 years."

Kris:

I must keep this forever.

Sanjay Jenkins:

Yeah.

Kris: 

I'm the opposite about stuff. Like when I do a closet clean, I'm ruthless about it, to a faultiness, where I'll get to the point where I'm like, "Oh, I threw away all of my shirts, and now I have nothing."

Sanjay Jenkins: 

Yeah. I'm like, "Oh, this shirt, oh yes, I wore that when I went on this really great drive in the Canyons in LA." And I was like, "Oh, I can't get rid of that."

Sanjay Jenkins: 

There was this one moment, six years ago that I did this one thing, [crosstalk] ridiculous.

Kris:

Yeah. Okay, now, this is something that I have to ask. You sent me a picture of this yesterday, the company hat for Buff City Soaps says ... Have we cast yet? Have we made it this far?

Sanjay Jenkins: 

I don't know but we're about to.

Kris: 

Okay. We're about to. The company hat says, "Fuck candles."

Sanjay Jenkins: 

Yeah, it does.

Kris: 

What is this about? Because I have to know.

Sanjay Jenkins: 

So Brad Kellum, the founder, the firefighter turned lawyer, turned soap making empire kingpin, he hates candles. And the one thing that he hates the most is when someone comes into the store, smells the bar soap, is like, "Oh, this would be so great if it was in a candle." I'll be like, "No, this is terrible." So, like one of the closing dinners we were at, he actually wore a hat that said, "Fuck candles." And that's how this got immortalized. And now everybody's got a fuck handles hat.

Sanjay Jenkins: 

That was actually funny. We were interviewing people yesterday, and we're interviewing people for manager positions. And I am just recently in a manager role, something that's kind of new to me, like managing a team, being an executive at this level, at an organization of this kind of size for me as well. And I'm sitting there and I realized like I have the fuck candles hat on. And I put it on earlier because I was just walking outside, and then I took it off and I realized I had mad hat hair. So, I was just like locked in for the hat. I'm sitting there-

Kris: 

Yup. You're committed now.

Sanjay Jenkins: 

Absolutely. And I'm interviewing this person, and it's probably already crazy. Like I'm wearing like a pink and green bowling shirt. And I have got like pink shoes on, a fuck candles hat. And it was probably like either the most, I don't know ... I'm curious to know what other people think when they see that. But if I saw that I'd be like, "Who is this guy?"

Kris: 

I don't know. I feel like if I saw that, I'd be like, "I got to work here."

Sanjay Jenkins: 

It's a lot of fun. I'm really grateful to work with all ... We've got just a ... Like last night, the director of business development, the CEO, and I, we went and got sushi together, and then we went and played Forza for like an hour at the CEO's house. So, it's like a super chill, like we're all pretty much family at this point in the corporate office.

Kris: 

Yeah. I love that. I mean, it's such a funny story, and a fun thing that you guys get to have in a culture. But I think that also is this like almost underlying theme to this fuck candles thing that is also saying basically like, "No, fuck candles. Like we don't do candles. We're a soap company. You come here for soap. Like get out of here if you want a candle, that's not what we stand for." And I think it's a fun way of doing it, but it's a really cool dedication to what you guys do.

Sanjay Jenkins: 

Absolutely. Put a bar of soap in your room, and your room's going to smell great. Like that's all you need. You don't need a candle for that.

Kris: 

Yeah, fuck that candle.

Sanjay Jenkins: 

It's really funny. So, to go back on like companies that we were looking up to, I found out about the fuck handles thing like my first day at work. And I was about to present an idea for sampling, the example I was going to pull up was Otherland-

Sanjay Jenkins: 

And how they do ... And so we ended up like ordering like an Otherland like starter kit, and the sample kit as well. And it was just funny that that's where we got a little bit of inspiration from was candles.

Kris: 

Yeah. I love it. It works so well. So, this is a big question because Buff City Soap has a huge chance to expand here. And you are new. So this is a fun question, and I'm excited to see what you think. Where do you see Buff City growing in about three to five years?

Sanjay Jenkins: 

Three to five years we're going to be completely ... I think we're going to be all over the country. And then later this year we're going to start going international. I think that's my goal. So, ultimately, we're going to be the Starbucks of soap. I think that is the goal.

Kris: 

That's a quote that I had copied and pasted that I was going to ask you about. So, I was trying to bring it out of you.

Sanjay Jenkins: 

There it is.

Kris: 

See my secret interview styles here. I love that, that this Starbucks of soap thing is just that it brings up that like lifestyle feel that you guys just have this aim to be the soap company, and be so popular that people recognize it, and recognize the brand, and connect with the brand like people do with Starbucks. It's a cool mission. And I'm excited to watch you guys grow. I can see big stuff happening. Last question for you before we wrap up, what's something that's really surprised you since you've been with Buff City?

Sanjay Jenkins: 

What's really surprised me is how much people care about soap. There are people who buy a ton of it and buy it constantly. And this is like a really interesting data point that we were doing some analysis the other day, people drive like two and a half, three hours to get to a store to buy their soap. One of the really cool advantages that we have, and this is something that's really near and dear to me because I grew up in a town of 50,000 people, is that we do really well in small towns.

Sanjay Jenkins: 

We do well in some big towns. We do well in small towns. And in both of those places, like you can find people who just really care a lot about soap. And I never thought about it. Like in 2013, Brad Kellum started making soap in his garage, and you fast forward six, seven years, and all of a sudden I have a job selling it on the internet. It's just mind-boggling, like timeline and process. But yeah, people care a lot about soap and [crosstalk]-

Kris: 

Oh, I love it. Well, actually, there's two Buff City Soaps in Colorado Springs. I didn't know that. And so, I am going to go this weekend and check out a store, and let everybody know how awesome it is. And also now I think I want to do a bath bomb birthday party this year.

Sanjay Jenkins: 

Yeah, do it.

Kris: 

For sure.

Sanjay Jenkins: 

I've got some stuff that should be heading to you soon. We just had like a little delay in getting some [inaudible] that, but yeah [crosstalk]-

Kris:

I will let you guys know how amazing it is, listeners, for sure. Thank you so much, Sanjay. This was so much fun. If people want to follow you, where should they go?

Sanjay Jenkins:

Follow me on Twitter @SanjayAtPlay. I believe that is my handle.

Kris: 

It is. It's one of my favorite handles out there.

Sanjay Jenkins: 

Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. This has been such a fantastic experience. I'm just so glad that you're my friend. Like it means a lot to me.

Kris: 

I'm so glad you're my friend.

Sanjay Jenkins: 

It's fantastic.