All right, we are here Black Friday. I have a special edition today with the man, the myth, the legend, Harley, who is president of Shopify. We're going to go over five to seven stores that are absolutely crushing it. Now, here's the advantage that Harley has and that we can share that no one else can: he knows what's going on in every single store across the world in Shopify. So he knows who's killing it, by how much, and what they're doing. And then we're going to highlight some of the things that they're doing specifically well so that you can either apply this to your Shopify store or just how you sell whatever it is that you sell. We're effectively turning on the camera for conversations that you and I usually have privately, right? Like over text or phone calls or whatever. I'm like, 'Hey, check this out, this is really cool.' And so now we're just going to kind of open up the conversation for it. Before we do that, you check this out.
Yeah, let's go. So Black Friday, Cyber Monday weekend is sort of the Super Bowl. We have millions of stores on Shopify, and so what we want to do is project in real time, literally like minute to a minute, how things are going. And I think we hit peak a little earlier today, brand new EST on Friday, but we're now at $3.475 million in sales every single minute. Every single minute. 28,000 orders per minute and almost 30,000 unique shoppers. What is amazing though, okay, so we're about to... North America is about to come here. Can I stand up? So what you're about to see is this North America right here. So you see where the orders originating from, where it's going to, but there you may also see these little fireworks. Those fireworks, every one of those fireworks is a brand new entrepreneur getting their very first sale. That is a brand new entrepreneur being created. The common thread of what we're going to talk about today is that they're doing things that I think are unobvious, incredibly effective.
Well, let's kick this off with Gymshark. I was just texting someone before this like, 'Hey, is there anything...' I think with Gymshark, because obviously we're going to look at the site, we're about to break all the little details down, but there's also the things that they do prior to getting into the site, right? Which is what is the brand, what is the brand context that this sits within. And so I think Gymshark does such a good job of building the brand and providing value and making positive associations with the right people, the right athletes at the right time. That when they need to give, and they did like reps for mental health, they give when they need to give. But when it's time to ask, they ask, and they mean it. And so Black Friday is the best time to ask. And so let's dive into it. They also know their audience really, really well. So remember, there's a couple things. Let's start high level and we'll go into actual tactics. High level, Gymshark is the quintessential online retailer. Started online, Ben Francis starts this, he's literally a pizza delivery guy in 2012, starts Gymshark, and they build this amazing online business. It's an online brand, phenomenally. But actually right now, one of the most interesting things about them is they have a massive physical store popup in New York City. So they are not necessarily staying within the confines of one particular channel. They're expanding well beyond that as well. This offline presence is going well. Now, they will still do the majority of their sales, I suspect, they haven't told me this, I suspect will be online. It doesn't matter. This idea of having a 12-week popup for the holidays is amazing. That's one. Second is, it's a 12-week holiday popup, right? It's not four days, it's 12 weeks. And so the fact that they're doing a three-month popup about holidays means not only are they starting before their competition, they're also ending after their competition. So they're expanding that. That's something that's really cool. They did this really cool social media campaign which was sort of like, quote, 'There will be signs,' and no one knew what their 'There will be signs' meant. Well, what it meant was in all their advertising there would actually be Easter eggs, these little clues of what they were doing. Now it wasn't obvious, it was super unobvious, but because Gymshark is so creative and their community and fans are so creative, their fans kind of understood something there. So people started doing a deep dive into every marketing campaign, every new product. So they actually convinced people to spend more time on the site to look at what they're actually doing. It's kind of like the Super Bowl when people are like, 'Oh, I just want to watch the ads.' It's like they're actually getting their whole audience, the most engaged audience, to pay attention to it.
But not only that, but also make content about their marketing.
That's exactly right, which then gives them this whole extra lift to their impressions. And so I thought that was really, really cool. So a couple things, so I'm just putting that... what is it, Easter eggs. A lot of Easter eggs. They did really, really well. All right, cool. So let's start with the site. So what's the... if we're talking pure conversion, look at this site, it's effectively a giant coupon. Now one of the little... this is me getting tactical. So if we look here, there's a couple things that I want to point out to my folks, which is number one is they talk about lowest prices on top sellers, which is nice because number one, it's like, okay, we're not just doing it on the crap, we're doing it on the good stuff. All right, so that's point one. Number two is, now this is a little bit of... again, this is just tactics. Notice that it's with the code. And so I know this sounds like a small thing, but sometimes basically getting people to... I think you maintain the retail value from a brand perception perspective and then only at the checkout people then realize the savings. And I think it feels different as it's closer to the purchase. Now, I don't have a double-blind placebo split test to back it up, that's just me as a... well, actually, what I would suggest though is that in this particular case they're being incredible, like they're giving it to you on a silver platter. They're saying effectively, 'Go buy right now.' Now traditionally, if you look at this site in three weeks from now, it's very slick, incredible imagery, great product photography. This is different. I don't know what... like this is a completely different thing that you've never seen before. I also want to point something out. Also look at the order on top. There's only three things in the top header: women's sale, men's sale, accessory sale. They don't have any of their other product categories. This is deliberately designed for this particular week. So if we're thinking about when you're making offers for whatever it is that you're selling, it's narrowing focus, right? Or focus, right? So we've seen that.
The... so they did this experiment. There's 24 jars of jam and then six jars of jam at the supermarket, and they had people try them out. And the 24 jars of jam had more people try them but less people buy, and then the six got way more buyers, like two or three times more buyers. And so the same thing happens is that we have to focus as entrepreneurs and say, 'Okay, I'm going to have a disproportionate amount of attention, my customers are going to have their wallets out at this moment, what am I going to prioritize?'
Yeah, yeah, and it's a paradox of choice. Give people too much choice and they're going to get lost. So this I think is very, very effective because they are giving you breadcrumbs leading you exactly to where they want you to go. I'm saying focused product suite is another one, and I'll add in the conversion coupon emphasis. All right, so there is one other thing that before we move on from them that I thought was interesting. So I was curious about why would they do a longer popup. And one of the things that I think they did, didn't tell me this, but I... is at the early stage of their popup, again this was a holiday popup that was three months in duration, is I believe they figured out very quickly what was going to be the hottest items for the holiday season. So they pre-tested, again this is only my hypothesis, they're very smart. I think the fact that they were able to get in on October 1st, they knew what was going to sell at the end of November. No one else was able to do that. I think that type of... I don't know, like crystal ball. I think that is very effective. And I'm certain that's in some marketing meeting or some meeting at that company or even in other companies they said, 'Why would Gymshark do a three-month popup for the holidays?' And I think they were thinking to themselves, 'We're going to get so much data sooner.'
So what's your... later... this is such a... so all businesses, I like this big generalization, but like data is so powerful when it comes to weaponizing resources, right? And so for us, for example, like I'll just completely different perspective, but like the content that we know performs the best tends to be when we look at past content that has done well and then we combine just winners. And so it's like we create, you know, 450 pieces of content a week, but we only make one or two longs, and the longs do really well. But it's because we have 438 shots on goal that we say, 'Okay, we're just going to take the top 20 of the... you don't have to make any assumptions, right? You can see right away, we know this before.'
That's exactly right. Awesome. Those are some of the things I think for Gymshark that work really well. All right, rock and roll. Let's move on to... let's actually, let's go to BarkBox. You have it up here, let's rock it.
Okay, BarkBox. If you have a pet, you likely know. You want to move this? I'm going to... this guy, we'll recap at the end. All right. BarkBox, this is like a... you know, an Alex-sized post-it note. This is how I... good. Okay, so BarkBox, if you don't know it, is this incredible pet food business, pet company. And one of the things that I think they do really, really well is that they have a deep understanding of their customer, not dissimilar from Gymshark. But one of the things they did was they actually created challenges to get discounts. So rather than simply give up the discount, they created these pet quizzes. They've been doing this for a couple weeks now, but it also created this interactive gamification. It wasn't simply, 'Here's a coupon, go buy it.' And they have competition. I mean, there's a lot of shoes, there's a lot of other companies out there, but I think one of the reasons that BarkBox is winning is because it doesn't feel like a simple transaction. It feels like you're actually doing something a lot different. It's like customer... it's like...
And you're also challenging people to say like, if you do this and you do it well, you get this reward, right? It's almost Pavlovian.
Yeah, and I think... so I just think they did it really well. I also think they did is they created a very personalized experience because one of the things they got from the quiz, they got a lot of great information about the customer. Notice common theme on the data here side, not... yes.
Oh yeah, exactly. I mean all these people are... yeah, they're retailers, I guess primarily, but they're incredibly smart business innovators. They look at data, they're scientific about how they run these promotions. And so here's a great idea because they did this challenge-based coupon, so you got this gamification piece of it, but you also... they were able to ingest a ton of data from their customers. So now you know, like I didn't take the quiz, but I assume one of the quiz questions was name of your pet, tell me about the age of your pet. Now you actually have a wonderful database.
They know they're remarketing, what they're going to be precisely. Now you have this wonderful database, breed, right? Sure. But I think this idea that like the best entrepreneurs play into the brand, the strength of their brand. They're not trying to be... at some point we're going to talk about Butcher Box, not BarkBox, you make that mistake, it may be awkward. But they're not trying to be like a high-end meat company. They're just trying to be who they are. And I think they have a really good understanding of that. So low-key personalized experience that was delivered through this gamification, I think they did really well. And BarkBox has been phenomenal. And I'll talk about one really big one. So on Gymshark, I didn't mention it, but it was there, they had a top banner. And so one of the best and most valuable pieces of real estate on any online store is going to be the top banner. I think when I was scrolling this guy, there it is. Yep. So you can see they have their top banner and they're making like... that is especially on mobile, which you probably know the percentage of traffic, but a huge percentage of traffic, more than... right now across the internet, more for online retail, more than half the traffic is on mobile. Historically, the actual checkout was lower. That's changed with things like Shop Pay.
Ah, like Shop Pay. I'm not... this isn't a Shopify pitch.
It's true. Because even though you may browse on a mobile device, you didn't want to have to put in your credit card number on a mobile device. Annoying. But now it's... whether it's Shop Pay or Apple Pay, makes it much easier. So conversions have gone dramatically up on a mobile device because of accelerated checkout, which is great because that's where a lot of impressions are served.
Precisely. So BarkBox also has this, but I want to double click into... not actually double click, but like let's zoom into... they wanted to make it easy for first-time buyers. And so they're going, you know, obviously they have all this marketing, they have all these people sharing stuff, and get your first box for $7, right? So they know obviously they're going to do things for their repeat customers, they're going to take care of their existing audience. But you have this opportunity where you have a disproportionate amount of eyeballs with new customers. And so if you can double down and make a crazy offer because you know what your LTV is on that customer, it's a great time to do it. Now when paired with, and this is again, we're going to mix and match here, but with Gymshark's in-store emphasis, it's like you can get this deep relationship. Now they're approximating that by getting tons of information on them, but in the IRL setting, so in real life, you also get this... test for in a clothing store, right? And they're like, 'Wow,' and it becomes a totally different shopping experience. It becomes an identity shift. You say, 'You know, I'm a Gymshark fan, I'm a Gymshark athlete,' whatever. And look, products that are on there, they are their top... I don't know, I can't really see if there's light there, I think those are top four selling products likely, right? They're just making it all... here's what we sell. Do you want these things? You can buy them right now. We have first-time buyer incentives. And they did the same thing as Gymshark, which is prioritize the buy box, right? They know what people want and they're making sure that it's clear and evident. And it's timely. Look what the banner says: 'Bark Friday.' This page is created for today. It is Black Friday. It is not like the weekend or holiday special. This is a deal for right now in hyper real time. And if you don't get it by midnight, you know, as I say in French, 'C'est fini.'
Yeah, 'C'est fini.' So, but yeah, so banner urgency and first-time offer, prioritizing the best products, using data to create deeper relationships for remarketing in the future. People are going to have lower action thresholds now, so it's easier to get people to take that first step and give you a little bit more information. We did something like that this morning as well, which is like, okay, we're going to make this big for Acquisition.com. We have our scaling roadmap that came out, but people had to fill out all this information for their business. Now obviously that's going to help tailor the thing that we're going to give them, but it also helps you, it's going to be useful for me. And actually that's a great quid pro quo because most people don't want to give information for free. But if I can give you information, in return for that information you're going to give me a discount, you're going to give me money back.
That's right. And also bottom left corner of the screen, this is what they want. They want you to sign up for their subscription. Yeah, right? So they like it, like yes, you can buy things a la carte, they're up there as well, but it's ultimately they want a multi-month subscription from you. And they're giving you an incentive to do it on Bark Friday. Now also, back to Harley's point earlier, notice the top, we've got... there's only three or four things that they had there. And I'm sure that their site probably has a more in-depth navigation. I mean, we... this is the trend we're seeing right now, right? These sites are built for today.
Built for today. I mean, when you have... when you... that sounds cheesy, but I mean like literally built for Black Friday. Because you might be able to do a month... like think about the amount of work that you do for a month. If you can do that amount of sales in three days, then you should allocate the same amount of resources, basically you should respect that time as an additional month of the year.
Yeah, yeah. All right, so look, like, you know, 12 hours ago Shopify, you know, if you looked at that counter when it first came live Thursday night, it was about $800,000 a minute. Now it's $3.5 million a minute. Like this isn't just some random thing. This is the day the consumers are purchasing and these people have begun to prepare. How many minutes would we... going rough, 10, 15?
