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Liz: Happy Canada Day, Shopify-ers! I’m Liz, from the guru team, and I’m here to
share with you a wonderful surprise that we’ve been talking about all well; Guru Webinar
#3. We’ve had the awesome opportunity of interviewing one of our great Canadian Shopify
shops, also known as Mafia Jewelry. Victoria and Lia from the shop have graciously offered
to share with us their tips, you guys have sent us in your questions over the week, and
we have asked them, and they have answered for you. We are in the heart of downtown Ottawa,
where all the Canada Day festivities are going to be happening. Here we go!
Hey Shop-folk, Liz here from the guru team. I’m here with Tori and Lia from Mafia Jewelry.
First of all, we wish you a Happy Canada Day, and Happy Fourth of July weekend for our all
of our friends down south. We’re going to talk a little bit about your questions that
you sent us this week, about how you guys got started with Mafia Jewelry, and as you
can see, we’ve got a nice selection of necklaces and rings, the showcase from our friends.
How did you guys get started with your business, and what inspired you to start selling jewelry?
Speaker 1: I took a trip in 2007 to Bangkok, Thailand, and on my last day there I went
into a weekend market, and found a shop, and they were selling jewelry at four times the
price any other jewelry in Bangkok is sold for. So I tried to negotiate, and they said,
“No, we’re not selling it, this is the price for it.” After going back and forth
four times, I finally returned to Canada with this ring, and a “sex, drugs, rock ‘n’
roll” necklace, and two presents for my friends. I said, “This stuff is so cool,
you can’t see it anywhere in Canada.” Went online to find the shop, they weren’t
online. I couldn’t reorder, I couldn’t get it anywhere else, when someone said, “Where’d
you get that ring from,” I said, “Bangkok,” you don’t fly to Bangkok to buy a ring.
I found his business card, by chance, three months later, cleaning out my wallet, we started
an email relationship about my idea of what the brand could be, and that’s how we got
started.
Liz: Is this something that you’ve always wanted to do, run your own business?
Speaker 1: Yes. Absolutely.
Liz: What made you decide that e-commerce was a worthwhile path for this business?
Speaker 1: It’s a great brand.
Speaker 2: The whole way we got into it is because it wasn’t available online. For
someone to fly to Bangkok to get a ring, it needs to be accessible to the whole global
market. That was our vision for the get-go, let’s make available to the world, take
this tiny market stall and make it a worldwide brand.
Speaker 1: The only way you can get it is going to the weekend market in Bangkok, that’s
crazy. People travel there, they see it, but they can’t re-buy it.
Speaker 2: In these days, I think people expect it to be available online. If you can’t
find something online, or a store isn’t available online, it’s like, “Really?”
It’s behind the times, get with it.
Liz: What made you guys choose Shopify for your e-commerce solution?
Speaker 1: First, we tried a web designer. We had to resize all the photos twice, it
was expensive to get him to design it, there was no back-end support, there was no support
in general.
Speaker 2: Really finicky, just a hard platform to work with.
Speaker 1: Then we tried Yahoo shops…
Liz: So you tried a whole bunch of things?
Speaker 1: Yes. And then my boyfriend said, “You should talk to my friend Harley, he
works at Shopify.” I said, “What the heck is Shopify, it sounds amazing.” I went on
and was like, this is exactly what we need, it has everything, and it’s seamless. So
that’s what we decided.
Liz: That leads into the next question really well; what tips would you have to launching
a brand, such as you own? What advice would you give to our fellow Shop-folk?
Speaker 1: The most important thing, I think, in any pursuit, is passion. You need to find
something that you want to work on every day, it’s not easy getting up, promoting a brand,
you don’t get paid a lot right away. It’s your face behind the brand, you need to find
something that you’re really passionate about and that you love to work on.
Speaker 2: The other thing I would say is, find people you really want to work with.
Network and work with the right people. If you find other passionate, go-get-‘ems,
do that, and then work together, and *** the brand, get it out there.
Speaker 1: And cross reference.
Liz: Do you have any specific sales tactics that helped you make Mafia Jewelry so successful?
Speaker 2: We haven’t actually forcefully tried any sales tactics. It’s been amazing
the uptake we’ve had by just talking to people, or launching a Facebook page, and
having our blog on Shopify, we keep people posted, word has just spread.
Speaker 1: So it’s year one, we incorporated in 2010, I decided to quit my job and go full-out
Mafia. Year one was testing the market – do people even like this stuff in Canada? Because
they like it in Bangkok. Year one was testing, and it just word-of-mouth spread like that.
In terms of other marketing, I would say affiliate.
Liz: This is another question from our fellow Shopify-ers: do you use drop shippers, to
fill in your stores, with other items, and if so, do you make deals with the other manufacturers
directly?
Speaker 1: Our designer, the people we partner with, also manufacture with their friends.
What we originally did in the beginning, our concept was, order one piece online, it’s
shipped to you directly from the factory. But the postage was $30. But once you get
to a certain limit of maybe 500, a thousand out a month, you can use a fulfillment service,
which is really helpful, and takes a lot of work off of you. Instead of having all the
orders come in and you send them out. But you have to reach a certain target in order
to do that, and I’d say after 50 pieces a month, after doing that, you can move towards
a fulfillment service.
Liz: Did you make any marketing partners, or affiliates? I know you had talked about
affiliates, so how did you find these partners?
Speaker 1: A lot of them came from word-of-mouth, and recommendations. I hired on some reps
to take the brand around and get more feedback, because we’re starting a silver line, so
I wanted to know which of the pieces were the most popular. As affiliates, they posted
to MTV, and MTV saw it and they said they wanted to have it on their show. It just goes
from there. It all depends on the brand you choose.
Liz: And like you said, traffic-wise, it’s a lot of word-of-mouth, so you’re not doing
too much advertising yourselves.
Speaker 1: Year two, because now we know it works. Have a business plan too, I’d really
recommend that.
Speaker 2: We haven’t actually paid for any advertising yet, we’re going to be in
Fashion magazine upcoming, so that’s our first stint into actually doing that.
Liz: How did you get celebrity customers? We know that you were featured at this year’s
Juno awards, so I’m sure a lot of people want to know how you did it?
Speaker 2: That’s a tricky one, because we haven’t really reached out, people have
somehow found us in our little niche market. We were approached by EMI Canada, who came
to us and said, “Would you be interested in doing the gift-bags for all the celebrities
for the Juno awards?” And of course we were interested. So we worked closely with EMI
Canada, and then did some MTV stuff, and it just goes from there. If you’re a positive
avenue, and you network well, and people hear that you’re good to work with, people want
to work with you. Speaker 1: It’s about passionate, really.
Liz: How did you choose which pieces went into the gift-baskets?
Speaker 1: We did a lot of music-based pieces obviously, but for some people like Katy Perry,
I gave her this one, because it just looks like Katy Perry, this looks like Drake, or
this one… Beiber too…
Speaker 2: And Rihanna has a tattoo that was exactly like that gun, so she got that ring.
Speaker 1: Beiber was a little more difficult, I was thinking this one. It’s really all
about noticing opportunities, picking up on them, and being persistent. You could write
100 stores, in 100 days, and get 50 of them, but you’d get 50 of them. Persistence pays
off, and having faith in your product.
Liz: What do you find is the most effective way to test-run a product, if you’re not
sure it will be successful? I know you guys did a lot of testing your first year, so what
worked and what didn’t?
Speaker 1: Before ordering in the pieces, we would get pictures of them up, and label
them as sold out. And then you test how many click, what the click ratio is, how many go
through to which pages, and then you know which product is the most popular. Very important
before picking something that you don’t know it’s going to work or not. Take it
out, show your friends, have people over, get it out, wear it all the time, get feedback.
This is your baby, take it out with you.
Liz: What is your opinion of Kick-Starter, as a way to promote your Shopify store?
Speaker 1: So Kick-Starter’s based in the U.S.? The problem with that is that we can’t
actually get money from them, because we’re Canadian-based, but something like Rocket
Hub, has a similar concept, I think is awesome. People who like the brand, and want to see
it move up, and know about your business, can call you and talk to you. Then you don’t
have to give off equity, which is also important.
Liz: Maybe we can talk about a couple of your pieces that you’re showing here, I know
there’s a couple pieces that were the inspiring pieces, maybe your personal favourites?
Speaker 1: My personal favourite is this one: this is a sterling silver teeth necklace,
I think it’s so bad-***. People stop me all the time, and say, “What’s going on
with your necklace?” We’re doing these in cufflinks now. Great Gatsby-ish. Sterling
silver’s very popular in Canada. The brass is a different kind of market.
Speaker 2: My favourite piece is this one, this is a ring.
Speaker 1: Comes in a necklace as well. And you can’t lose with this one, you wear this
out to a club, and you are noticed.
Speaker 2: We’re all about statement pieces, we want things that people are going to look
at and say, “That is amazing, where did you get that?” If you have a double-fingered
gun ring, someone’s bound to say something.
Speaker 1: It takes awhile getting used to, but you get used to it.
Liz: Is there anything else you guys want to share? Any personal insights?
Speaker 1: I didn’t hesitate at all to do this interview, because Shopify is fantastic.
Speaker 2: We would 100% recommend it, it has been incredible. Saved us a ton of money,
it’s so easy to use.
Speaker 1: And you can get support. Like, “I want this removed from my site,” done!
“Please call me back,” done! In this world of online sales, people expect things fast.
So I’m happy with you guys.
Liz: Thank you so much for doing this, I do want to share a gift with you. We’ve got
some books and t-shirts for you… Happy Canada Day everyone, have a great long weekend, and
we’ll see you guys soon.