Episode Transcript
All right, Matt, it's awesome to have you here on the Bainbridge podcast. Thanks, man. Great to see you. I'm really excited for today because you've been a customer for a long time. You've given us an incredible amount of feedback on the product. Really pushed us to make it better. But I wanted to talk about your background first in the feed.
For people that don't know, thefeed.com is. Where elite athletes or aspiring elite athletes should be going for nutrition, hydration, recovery. It's an incredible site with incredible content. But before you did the feed, you had this, in this incredible career as an entrepreneur and leader Vista Mobile, you were required by converge.
This life acquired by Shutterfly, you started a, app, Superfly Mobile. You then ran a tour to France team at Slipstream Sports and then you did the feed. So I'd love to hear in your own words, you know your, sort of journey to the feed and then dive into, what you're doing now at the feed.
Yeah I, guess, you know, it's sort of flip flop back and forth between sort of sports and tech, you know, over all those years. You know, I started out, you know, racing a bike in Europe and cold and wet and you know, eventually got to LA and ran into some guys starting an internet company, and thought that was a better idea.
Being cold and wet on my bike. And then you know, trial by fire, we sort of started selling college textbooks online and this was, you know, true mid late nineties gorilla and marketing, running around college campuses, getting students to buy college textbooks from us versus the enemy who was the college bookstore.
So went through sort of that, it was sort of like my early e-commerce, you know, I guess days and, loved the. How on the e-commerce side, we could get such quick feedback, right? We could do one thing and then immediately just sort of watch what happens, right? And that's sort of what I love about the feed.
And then, you know, was in more venture back tech companies, more, you know, more software, consumer tech products that have much longer feedback loop. You know, you're developing something for six months, 12 months, two years before you sort of know if at any, if it's gonna work. And so, You know, along the way.
Yeah. Like you said, we had some great successes and then, you know, I sort of, you know, after, you know, a dozen or so years in purely tech, you know, had the opportunity to get back into cycling and with, you know, two great partners sort of, you know, run and manage or Charter France team for. For a decade, a little over a decade.
And and it continues to exist today. So it was the Garmin, it was known over the years as Garmin. Then we brought in Cannondale, and now it's EF Education first. And then they EF bought the team from us. And so one of my partners, you know, Runs it today. And it was a great timing for me because we sort of had this burgeoning sort of feed business that, you know, we had started and was sort of kicking along.
And you know I, was just sort of chomping at the bit to. You know, have more time to spend on it maybe solo focus, right? So it wasn't splitting focus throughout the day. It was sort of like I could just focus on one thing. And there was already an amazing team in place that was already, you know, I really just jumped on the wave that they had already created in terms of building the business and then, you know, had that.
Sort of opportunity to sort of run with it. And it was sort of like the cumulation of, you know, all the sports science stuff, all the sort of inside baseball of elite endurance sports that we would do at the term France and the consumer tech side of things of like, how do we make this easy for, athletes to shop?
You know, how do we educate them on the nutrition side and go from there.
It's How, Yeah. How did you, Did it always start out as was it just for cyclists and then started to be expanding or how did you even think about the, initial target audience? Yeah,
the genesis of the idea was we'd bring, I'd bring the riders out to sponsors offices.
We'd go to Garin headquarters in Olathe, Kansas, or we'd go do a big charity ride from, you know, San Francisco to San Diego. And, along the way we'd have dinner stops and the riders would get up in front of the crowd and, or in front of an auditorium of employees, of a sponsor, and we'd say, What questions do you have for these amazing athletes?
And inevitably, Like a majority of the questions were like, I know what a gel is. I have this gel. I don't know when to eat this gel. And all the writers were like, What? Not that they had a better answer, but they're like, I thought you'd want to know about something more exciting, you know? But it was always going back to nutrition was this like common theme that everyone was asking about.
I was like, Wow, there is a huge. You know, gap of knowledge of what the average consumer's doing and what these brands that are making these products think they know. And they're shipping them these things. They are buying them, but they really have no idea how to use them. And so the idea was how could I marry the education that we inherently have at the tour and also new products coming in, new technologies, new strategies.
And then rather than wait for three, four years for them to trickle down to the sort of, you know, participant audience. Let's just fast track that and put it together and we'll give away all that information for free if you then buy the products from us. Yeah. And that was sort of, that was sort of the concept.
Oh, that's awesome. Cause I, I mean, I am blown away at, the quality of your content, you know, the emails and the texts and the level of depth. Given them reviews, you know, is pretty outstanding. Like, how do you, is that all just from personal experience, are you gathering that from team members? I mean, how are you possibly understanding all these products so intimately?
Yeah, it started out more at a desperation, you know you know, we were trying to follow the classic playbook of, you know, marketing emails and product emails, and I was just, It doesn't really feel like I looked at it as an exchange of value. If you're gonna take the time to open the email we send you, can I give you something that you maybe you didn't know, you know, that you didn't expect?
You know, not just hype some product, but tell you the good and the bad, but also, you know We never want to disparage a product. You know if, a product's worth disparaging, we just don't carry it. Right? Right. We don't wanna ever be in that position. But, you know, all every product has advantages and disadvantages and sort of tell that story.
So I actually just write the emails, like literally like in an email client, like I was sending you Ben an email. You're like, Hey, I write down what the question was. That you would've asked, and then I just write you a long form response and then, you know, add a couple links as few as possible and then send that out.
Like it, that it's really just meant to be a conversation and then it became a big thing. And then I do run out of ideas every now and then, but we have a great team where we sort of, you know, we're constantly talking to our coaches who are like, you know, interfacing with athletes. Like we have some question.
You know, for tomorrow. And I went to them and said what are you guys seeing this month? What are the main things that people are struggling with? And they had a great, you know, concept and you know, so that's tomorrow's email type thing. So the only downside is I don't, I'm not very good at writing them like a four weeks ahead of time.
Like they're really sort of in the moment and unfortunately a lot of them are like written and then I send and so, you know, I try to. Fix the grammar as best I can, but you know, I dunno, I think it works. They're, very much hot off the press before they go out.
I think that works. Cause it does, it very much comes through as authentic and it feels you know, I mean, I look, I'm not a writer.
I'm not anywhere close to an elite athlete. Does feel like you're talking to me. You know, you're like, Oh, I tried this product. It's awesome. Here's why you would use it. I was like, Yes. It feels like so I think it's a real, For anybody that's listening that wants to a masterclass in brand authenticity, I would.
Heard you to sign up for Matt's emails at the feed. They're
terrific. . Yeah, there's a lot of them, unfortunately. But yeah, , we don't have a lot of unsubscribed, so, you know, hopefully people will read them, but yeah, no, it's great. It's, sort of become a life of their own these. And it's been a great way to build the brand.
And, honestly, it's maybe even a little bit of a crutch. Like I wish we could do we, would find better ways to add more product education to the website. So now we take the best of the emails and we put them up on the blog, on the homepage, sort of the feed insider. So that's now. Has a lot more really valuable conduct, which is essentially a lot of the emails plus some that we put up there.
And so it's maybe even a curated list of the emails so they sort of live on. But you know, the problem is as we educate consumers on the homepage, there's always this risk of you interfere with the shopping experience, right In our business, it's. You know it's really not necessarily a subscription business.
Some subscribe, you know, 20 plus percent of our customers are subscribers, but 80% act just like subscribers, right? They're ordering, we sell a consumable product, you know, that's relatively low unit price, you know, with an AOV of about a hundred dollars an order, and they're essentially, you know, checking out every 45 days and the retentions through the roof.
I think probably best in class in terms of, you know, obviously a few exceptions, but in terms of a focused, you know, marketplace, you know, these, our audiences keeps coming back and. .
Yeah. That's a perfect segue into another thing I wanted to talk to you about is like you've always been incredibly focused on the data and pushing the data and pushing us to get you answers in the data.
Was that always your nature? Did? Was that something you've learned from your tour days? I mean, I know that, you know, there isn't. Is there a more data intense sport than cycling? I don't know, maybe,
but Oh, I'm sure. Yeah, No, I'm sure. No, I wouldn't say it's that. I think it was more that I was the only investor in the business, so I was like desperately always trying to figure out like, where can we spend money or where should we not spend money?
How much money are we making? How much money are we losing? You know, it, it was more out of just being like really scrappy and. Efficient, you know, is I think what drove, you know, these big questions. And my partner, Ben, who's, you know, does all the technology pieces of the business, like he's extremely data driven and, you know I think we just sort of, you know, play off of each other and trying to get to the, heart of the answer all the time.
And, you know, we live, you know, if we can't prove it with the data and, you know, it's, We're probably doing something wrong where it's not provable and we probably shouldn't be doing it. Yeah.
You had that great story. I don't know if you even remember this, but you said you were having a conversation with your wife and she was like, Is this the year we're gonna make money?
You're like, Oh, I better get focused on.
Yeah, that's true. That definitely happened. So yeah no, we're it's fantastic. You know I, think that's really paid off for us now, right? We really have a very low span. We spend less than 8% of gross revenue on, you know, customer acquisition, you know, and, you know, we're, but we're still growing at, you know, over 65% sort of year over year.
So it's you. It's been great and, we really thank have to thank our customers, you know, for that because it's their loyalty. It's that cohort where we just like, it's so consistent to reorder numbers. Like one of the things that you guys have that I love the best in the Bainbridge was what, is it's a graph over for us, probably three or four years of what every cohort.
Reorder rate is at six months, 12 months, 24 months, you know, 48 months. So we'd go through these periods, especially like the tour of France and usually in July, you know, one year during Covid was in September, but we would see these spikes where we would do a lot more advertising cuz we could do TV and some other channels.
And then we're like you know, we got him on tv, they came in for a promotion. Are they really a great customer? And it was only when we started to see your data, we're like, Oh wow, those customers are. Better than the customers were getting in the non promo period. You know let's do a, how much more of that can we do in, you know, those months?
And so that's been fascinating for us. But it's, probably more than anything it's the consistency. Like I don't think we've ever seen a bad cohort month. Like it, They're Yeah. Very. .
Yeah. It, is, it's fascinating when you, how much memory sometimes these cohorts have, you know you, the, how you acquired them will.
Play forward into their performance, you know, month after month, year after year. Yeah. And it's, interesting to to see that and play out in the data and then be able to put, that together to what you did to drive it or what you didn't do. And you guys have been exceptional with that.
You've been great. Students.
Yeah. I think we never really thought of that. Every year we were trying to like, how much are we gonna sell this month? And we trying to do this in November or December, right? And we're trying to plan six, 12 months out and we're like what did we do last year?
How much do you think we're gonna grow? You know, we were just guessing. And then what you guys did was the ability to say No, you don't need to guess on like the, like all the number because we're really confident that these customers are gonna come back in this month and that, you know, and aggregate the returning customers are gonna spend X.
So now you just need to figure out how many new people you think you can get and what they're gonna spend. And all of a sudden we started limiting variables. It was so accurate that you know, at the end of July we were at, you know, so we're. Little just over, you know, more than halfway through the year, we were $8,000 of our, you know, like we were eight with, we were $8,000 ahead of our year end plan.
Which is incredible to be that precise, you know, in such a big number, right? Like we're talking about a fraction of a percent, and every month we're within, you know, 10 thousands or tens of thousands of dollars of plan. And then we've started you. Early, you know, earlier this year we started to break every month down into every day.
So we, like you guys are giving us like, Hey, the plan says you should do this, and we want to hit the plan. But in order to hit the plan, we're like, Hey, we got to look at this more than a daily basis and build this up and make sure it's realistic. So we list like every day what we're doing for marketing.
Every day what we're doing for external promotions and we put we put an average for the month in of revenue and then we do a strategic tilt. So we're like, Okay, we're pretty sure we're gonna do this right? And then every day we think, Oh, this'll do, you know, 30 K more? Or This promotion we think will do 80 k more this day.
And then, you know, but those have become so, That, you know, now we're like, we know within, we'll know within three days of a month period, any, within any three days, if we don't think we're gonna hit the target because we can see what's happening. So we track our plus minus on the target every month, Every single day.
Every single day we go in and add in the sales. And that's been incredibly helpful to just, you know, further reduce the risks of you, what we're trying to.
That's really cool. And do you, and so you're, I assume you're factoring in things like, you know, we're coming into recording this on the Friday before Labor Day weekend, so you're, Yeah.
You guys are saying like, Hey, we know that Labor Day is gonna be good or bad, or whatever, because we've seen it before.
We do, like Labor Days would be normally slower. So we have the year over year, so we sort of already have the history built into the multiple. Right. So that's sort of, you know, playing into the goal.
Yeah. And what do we think it's gonna do? You know, this weekend the tour of Spain is on tv. So we have some sort of France, We have some ads running on CNBC on Saturday and Sunday. So we know those are gonna give them some lift. We know the emails will get a little less. You know, cuz everyone's out doing something fun, you know?
So that's to be expected. But then we know that, you know, we like to play in the sort of, you know, we don't do a ton of sales like broad based storewide sales throughout the year, but Labor Day is a good excuse to do one on Sunday and Monday. So we know we're doing that, you know, and then it's a question.
You know, what kind of offer do we have? Is it, you know, the one that drives the most sales, but is the most expensive offer to us? Or is it one that is, you know, very limited to a small set subset of products, you know? Or is it somewhere in the middle? And, you know, we try to hit somewhere in the middle most of the time.
You know, when it's a really big like discount or storewide, it's. Clear that you're not just stealing from later in the month because of the repeat purchase rate. So then we all of a sudden we see people just buy ahead of plan or over buy a little. So you don't end up really that much further ahead, you know, at the end of the day.
So we're always trying to be creative with how we do that.
And I think that's you, raised a great point because you know, we see that where, sometimes people need to make up revenue. They launch a sale, they pull that revenue forward, but you've now trained the customers that like, Hey, if I just wait around long enough, I'll get a better discount.
And now, you know, that becomes a problem in and of itself. So I think,
yeah. We really try to move our customers to what we call feed credit. You know, which would be, you could consider as a loyalty points program, but we think it's just simpler to understand the dollars amount. And everyone has a balance, you know, stored, you know, and they earn, you know, rewards for spending a hundred dollars, spending $200.
Things that help us become more cost efficient. We motivate them on, you know, people that are parts of clubs and teams that we work with might be getting recurring credit. So every. You know, every quarter, you know, every three months they're getting sort of new credit topped up on their account. So we have, we really try not to do discount codes anymore at all.
They're very challenging for a lot of reasons and not necessarily, you know, super desired by the customer after that one time thing. Yeah. And, and I we're, we feel we can more richly reward the customers with credit that they can spend, you know? Yeah. To substance.
That's smart. Is it hard to manage that, program, or are you using a tool for
that?
No, we built it. So that's one of the many things that Ben built. So on our team, yeah, we, I would say that, you know, we're still very much like taking the, you know, 15 years I spent in Silicon Valley and you know, 10 of those with Ben, you know, or you know more with doing different tech companies. Yeah.
And we just build our own stuff. Right. That's sort of then the secret let me give you an example. Like the feed. A terrible business idea if anyone ever evaluated it, because one of the big value propositions we wanted to have was that you could buy just one bar or one gel. Yeah, we didn't wanna force you to buy 12, but obviously when people, Amazon forces you to buy 12, it's because the cost to go pick that item, you know, they're never gonna make money if it's just one.
But we as the consumers and athletes, were like, That's what we want. I don't wanna buy boxes of 12. Like I want, you know, one chocolate, you know, I want three chocolate chip, two brownie, three Macadamian bars. Or I want to go, you know, some, I want to I buy shoes from, you know, scratch Power bar, you know, Cliff, you know, Honey Stinger I like to have varieties.
So I, and I don't, 84 choose this month. You know what I mean? Like I just need my 20, you know, So I mix 'em up between all the brands and you know, I subscribe. So it just shows up every month. But You know, so for me, the single servers were great, but we couldn't find a warehouse management system that could do that.
We certainly couldn't find a three pl cause they're like, Oh, it's 30 cents a and we're like Wait, no, the dollar, the product's only a dollar. Like we can't change you 30 cents to make it when the product costs. And that was the best deal out there. Most were more than, So we wrote our own software, which is a great story.
Like we had this guy. This is when I was more the investor not running the business and they, the guy's running it and they said, Hey, one of the athletes that's here this summer, like picking and packing, you know, he says he's, you know, also a software engineer and he could write a system to make it way more efficient for us to pick in the warehouse and scan products and stuff.
I was like, Oh, come on guys. You know this co there's c. Like this is a big business. Like we're not gonna just write this. And I was like, How much is it? And they're like, He says they'll do it for $800. And I was like, Oh, ok. For $800, I'll take the risk. Like just cause they really wanted do it and they wanted to support this guy.
And I was like, Great. Go for it. Yeah. It's the same software we use today. So, and Neil who wrote it, you know, he was a consultant for a long time. Like we didn't touch it for four years. You know, maybe we need some marginal improvements to it and then we're like, Hey, we gotta really grow this.
And then, you know, three, three years ago we really started working on Neil works full time, you know, crazy amounts of time running this software and it's. It's expansive now, but our entire operations of our warehouse, everything we do, we write all the software. And that was a terrible idea. Maybe when we were low scale, but now when we wanna do something unique, we're not constrained by APIs or limitations, that software.
And we optimized that whole system for picking and packing. So what we did was we figured out where do people buy a lot of. Variant products, right? One can of Sue, you know, one of this is at the grocery store. So we set up the distribution center to look like a grocery store. So what happens is we have like aisle runners that run the aisle and grab the stuff super fast, right?
Yeah. And then they pass it to a checkout station that it looks just like a grocery store, like conveyor belt and that people bring it in and they, we have a scanning system just like their pos, and we scan all the products out and. We make all our boxes now custom, like it, all the products are like 3D scanned, so the box has been made just per order.
So we know it fits in perfectly. No padding, more environmentally friendly, cheap. So they just go lay it on the box and ship it out. So it costs us, you know, less than $2 in order to pick, pack and ship it. But it's all because we wrote our own flow, Right. Our own software to go to. Right.
That's
insane. That's cool. I did not know. Yeah,
that's, You gotta compete it.
Cause that's just an, that's an area that so many brands struggle with is like the fulfillment is like completely outsourced and their option for reducing that is going and finding another three pl. You know, Whereas, oh, you kind of fit the bullet and now you can, we would've
been outta business.
five years ago, if we had worked at a three pl that there's zero chance that we could have done what we've done and then we've turned it into a strategic advantage. So our, goal, we don't hit the goal every time, you know, but our, goal is to ship every order within two hours. And my view is, the way I compete with Amazon is, you know, You place, It depends on how many emails you get in a day, but you know, say you're getting a modest amount, I wanna see your order confirmation email and like literally the next email or two under in that is your order has shipped.
That's our goal, but now we're doing more and more stuff that's, you know just in time manufacturing of these orders. So yeah, I mentioned we build a box, right? So we have a big, huge machine that takes flat corrugate cuts, it folds. and then outputs a box specific to your order. You get all this products, so the products all get to pick.
Some people might order, I have one of these here, like these feed formulas. So now in rather than buying your supplements and bottles, same supplements, same bottles, same products from the same brands. You know, I hate the bottles on the counter. My wife's always There's too many bottles. Get rid of 'em.
And then you gotta open each one every morning. Pills. So I was like, let's just pack them in little pouches. So you know, we're not changing the products, we're not making the pills, but we can give you a better daily solution. So now we gotta make one of these boxes in two hours. And then I think you had a water bottle there.
I dunno if your name's on it, but We, for years would give out water bottles with orders and we said What's better than a water bottle? We're like why can't we just print it with your name on it? Or custom design. Yeah. So then we figured out how to buy this bottle printer, and this is all the same software we were talking about before that runs the operations.
So now your order comes in, a clock starts, we're picking it, we're making the box, we're filling, you're, we're filling the pouches with pills, and then we're printing a bottle that says Ben or BA Bridge. Yeah. And all those things are reassembled and out the door, hopefully within the two hours . So. Awesome.
Yeah, it's super fun. And so, you know, this is a very we, wanna turn that into a strategic advantage for us, right? Like a better way to service the customers. So
Matt what have I missed? What do you wish I had asked you about, you know, the feed or your background or, you know, that you think might be interesting to a.
I guess maybe don't, you know, don't reinvent the wheel on the tech side. You know, we're a proud sort of Shopify, you know, business and we couldn't have been here, was sort of what else what, you know, what they enabled us to do, but don't be afraid to sort of build around that. So we work with Shogun and we built a completely headless for, we had to be the first.
For sure the first marketplace to ever launch a headless front end on Shopify. And so for sure Ben made it the fastest, you know, that's out there. I, would argue it's the fastest show, headless store in the world, you know, certainly for the breadth of products that we have. Yeah. So, you know, where we have solutions, we try to build, you know we, sort of build technology around that, Right.
And we sort of figure out how. Master that. And, before we, now, before we build it, we Jimmy R get an air table and say is this gonna be a thing? You know, Before we like, you know, cause we'd built too many things and then they wouldn't turn into anything. So we would be like, okay. What's the fast, like how do we get this live in three days?
How do we manage the information in Air Table and any sort of manual processes? And let's do it for a month and see if it works. And if it works, then we'll, you know, build a, you know, custom app to sort of manage it more efficiently going forward. Nice.
Matt, thank you so much. I really appreciate you coming on the podcast.
I had a blast. I learned a ton about the feed, which I thought I knew a lot already. So this has really been
fun for me. Awesome. Thanks Ben and thank you for all the hard work you Austin and the whole team do to give us our numbers every month. And we appreci.
Thank you. Thanks.
