Jacob Johnson 00:03
Most of us don't want human beings to be bought and sold like commodities. It's really dark issue. I know I'm not alone in that, and so wanted to create an enterprise that could connect the dots and help fund specific nonprofits doing great work.
Narrator 00:17
Welcome to the Ecomm Show podcast. I am your host Andrew Maff, owner and founder of Bluetuskr. From groundbreaking industry updates to success stories and strategies. Get to know the ins and outs of the e-commerce industry from top leaders in the space. Let's get into it!
Andrew Maff 00:32
Hello, everyone. Welcome to another episode of the Ecomm Show. As usual, I'm your host Andrew Maff. Today, I'm joined by the amazing Jacob Johnson, who is the founder and CEO over at Calyan Wax Co., Jacob. How you doing, buddy? Ready for a good show?
Jacob Johnson 00:44
I'm ready. Feel refreshed after the the fourth weekend, and excited to to share more about Calyan.
Andrew Maff 00:51
I am. I'm so excited to talk to you. Seeing you know, getting to speak to someone who's grown a candle company to over an eight figure brand is wild. Like that's not common in this space, so super impressive. So I obviously very excited to hear more about it. I always like to kind of start these off relatively stereotypically and just kind of give you the floor and just tell us a little bit about your background and Calyan and how you got started, and we'll take it from there.
Jacob Johnson 01:17
Sounds great. Sounds great. You know, Calyan is a home fragrance brand with a give back mission. We believe in clean home fragrance and clear social impact, specifically in the fight against human trafficking here in the U.S. That really is the passion, the why behind the company. That's why I have even endeavored to try to create a mainly candle brand, but we're now really rebranding as home fragrance as we expand outside of candles. But I care about that issue a lot, and I've recognized that most of us don't want human beings to be bought and sold like commodities. It's really dark issue. Study it for a little bit, and your heart will be tugged, and you might even get a little angry. And I know I'm not alone in that, and so wanted to create an enterprise that could connect the dots through a simple, beautiful purchase of a home fragrance product that you know and love, candles. And we want to, from then, be very generous with some of our profits and help fund specific nonprofits doing great work, and hopefully bring in more awareness to these nonprofits, more awareness to the the struggle against human trafficking, and also just we believe in great, fun, unique product as well. So it's a beautiful blend of all that social entrepreneurship. That's my world, and that's Calyan.
Andrew Maff 02:36
Nice. That's awesome. So feel free to go as deep as you'd like, or as not as deep as you like. But what kind of encouraged building the brand to be so focused on the human trafficking side?
Jacob Johnson 02:49
Yeah, it's a great question. You know, all of us can generally say, "Hey, we don't want that to exist, but there are certain people that just want to dive that feel really passionate about that issue. I, in general, am in the pursuit of of bringing justice to the world. I believe in Jesus Christ, and He calls. He doesn't like evil, and He doesn't like people oppressing other people. And so, I I want to use my life to to bring freedom. I also the short story for me is senior year of high school, my dad was arrested for crimes of abuse, and my mom of five children, four siblings, was thrown into a really rough world of becoming a single mom overnight and raising five kids. And that experience leading into college really drove me to say, "Hey, I'm going to, in some form or fashion, thought it might be law enforcement. Now it's business. I'm gonna fight bad guys like my dad, and I'm gonna help take care of my mom. And so, at the core core of it, there's a lot of story there that is around the why, and it's deep.
Andrew Maff 03:58
Yeah. Wow. Yeah, that would definitely motivate me. So then, why the candle route? Why the fragrance route?
Jacob Johnson 04:06
Yeah, this is always a fun thing. Like, okay, we're talking human trafficking. We're talking like family story. Why candles? It was a product that caught my eye. I have a little obsessive tendency, but it caught my eye as a product that people understand they already purchase, they consume that has metaphorical ties to bringing light to a dark world. Something we could manufacture ourselves at small scale, relatively simple. Simply scaling has been very difficult, and something that if hey we hit the quality mark, you'd want to buy again and again. And candles just kind of fit the strategic bill there. And so I was like, all right, I I think we could build this around candles, and now it's around home fragrance. And so, not a specific love for candles. I've grown to appreciate home fragrance, and it's been a really good choice. God had His hand over that decision. It was very. It sounds sophisticated. It wasn't. I was 21 years old, thinking of a product I could try to sell, but it's been a good category. I'm glad we chose it.
Andrew Maff 05:05
Yeah, I mean you're absolutely crushing it. So tell me about like where are you selling it? I know you're on your website. I know you have it on Amazon. Believe you're in retail as well. Correct me if I'm wrong there. Like tell me about sales channels.
Jacob Johnson 05:18
Definitely omni channel. Actually indexed more on the wholesale distribution side through retail partnerships with Whole Foods, Sprouts, H E B, Fresh Chime, a lot of regional groceries, mainly in premium grocery or more natural grocery, and that's been our sweet spot. Those are our consumers, socially conscious, disposable income, really care about ingredients. Go a step further of really making sure they're doing their due diligence on product. That's us. That's the Calyan ethos of clean product, intentionally designed, socially impactful, and so that's a big piece of the business. But you know, we are continuing to grow online, and there's a lot of opportunity there through Amazon, and on our own website.
Andrew Maff 06:01
So as of right now, a majority of the business sounds like it's stemming through distribution.
Jacob Johnson 06:07
Yes, yes, there's a majority over there. Yeah, a lot of people play the online play. Let's get some traction. Let's show some awareness on our socials so that retail buyers will get excited about us. Oddly, we took the other route, and some of it was intentional, and some of it happened, and we rolled. Yeah, but that's the story of Calyan, and now it's really both. You know, people are gaining awareness of the brand in retail stores, physically seeing it, and then going and following us online. And we are slowly trying to, you know, of course, connect the dots and track where our customers are coming from. It's definitely partly because of you finding us in a store, a boutique, your grocery store, that sort of thing.
Andrew Maff 06:51
That is very interesting because, to your point, I mean that is usually not the approach. Usually, it's the other way around. You start on online, kind of generate some awareness, and it makes it easier to go retail. So, how? Tell me a little bit about like in the beginning there when you first started going through distribution retail. Like, how did you do that without much of a presence online first? I don't think anyone can wrap their mind around that concept today.
Jacob Johnson 07:15
I know, I know. Maybe it's timing. This is back in you know we got our first trial run at Whole Foods in 2019 2017 and 2018 2017 is when we started. We were focused on boutiques, and I'll share a little bit there, and then that could maybe open up or paint the picture of how this happened. But bootstrapped this thing, self funded, then raised a little bit of seed capital, and that's been it. And so each year, it's like, hey, what do we have the budget to do? And in years one and two, it was, hey, we don't have a ton of money to start investing on online advertising, or even sophisticated agencies, or even bringing more capable people to grow the social channel, that sort of thing. But we did have time. My when I say we, myself and another part time guy looped in to call boutiques and Instagram DM all these independent specialty gift stores.
Jacob Johnson 08:07
We can do that for free, and so we decided to focus there and say, "Hey, we're going to focus on wholesale distribution. At that point, it was in the home and gift world-your specialty stores, Main Street stores, more gift versus grocery-and from there we gained some traction there, and from there there's some serendipity, and I like to say God's sovereign hand over the business. We got on the radar of Whole Foods and Sprouts and Central Market similar timing, and we were able to close the deals and get trial runs, and then it was just proven out that the brand had legs, and that their consumer actually was our consumer. And so, yeah, we it was mainly out of a budget constraint forced the reality of wholesale work versus online work. Online has always been there, but it's catching up to the sophistication and the intentionality of the wholesale side.
Narrator 09:01
Is your e-commerce business experiencing falling revenue? Bluetuskr has helped many brands like yours excel. Unlike other marketing partners, Bluetuskr leverages a team of specialists to ensure every strategy is created and executed toward your business growth. As an extension of your marketing team, Bluetuskr prides itself on helping to fill in the gaps and develop strong omni-channel strategies to diversify your business from the rest. Ready to scale your marketing initiatives? Visit their website, bluetuskr.com. That's b-l-u-e-t-u-s-k-r.com.
Andrew Maff 09:34
It's a long, long way away. I always say a letter of intent is like negotiating the price. When you negotiate the full purchase documents, we're actually doing a risk negotiation. We're identifying these areas of risk and assigning, signing it to among the parties and dividing it up among the parties, and that's what really the complexity of M and A is about. I know everybody's trying to do their own M and A on Claude, but it's like they kind of missed the underlying context, which is really about risk management. It's not about some boilerplate document that just needs to be signed. It's nothing like that. These documents are harsh.
Jacob Johnson 10:17
Our each year, we're trying to take one intentional bet or new level of risk to grow online, or maybe not risk but investment. And this year we have started a trial run with CTV advertising. We use Vibe to help source and purchase this stuff for us. And the thesis there was, hey, that's going to have a halo effect on all our channels, not just our website, and what we're learning right now is it has a huge halo effect on Amazon, a little bit on our website as well, but it is compounding our Amazon growth tremendously, and we're really excited about that. And that's where a lot of my mind goes to. And we're only doing you know trial runs in different regions, and we're still in the trial phase of it, like five months in. But already, it is bringing absorbent amount of traffic to Amazon. Or organic search volumes is skyrocketing over there. So that's really exciting. Every year, we spend more on Meta and Google, and so we're continuing to get better at the classics, yes. But CTV ads, I'll sing those praises. Talk to me at the end of the year. I'm very interested to see how it does when you know Q4 hits and everything gets more competitive. But so far, that's been the thing that's excited me most this year.
Andrew Maff 11:35
Yeah, you know, it's really interesting. I've got a handful of brands we work with that are doing a similar approach, and it's shocking. Like it's you almost kind of go into it with like, ah, let's just see what kind of happens. And it's not the world's most expensive thing. You can definitely spend more money on other channels, and it is very interesting to see the halo effect through CTV and like where they're headed. Certain brands, like it sounds like yours, people lean in heavier on the Amazon side. Some will lean in more to the website, depending on what the product line is for the ads that you're putting out there. Are you directing people to Amazon, or is it just a general brand and just see where they end up?
Jacob Johnson 12:14
General brand, yeah. That's what's been interesting. So I, there's a lot to test here, but I am very interested. Once we more intentionally drive it straight to Amazon, or we've yet to even try actual Amazon's streaming ads directly in their portal. That's other maybe low hanging fruit and taking it one step at a time. I'm the assumption, of course, and we'll test it here toward the end of the year for sure next year. Is if we were to drive it straight to Amazon, or even advertise it within Amazon, that's only going to compound. But right now, we're really trying to grow both. You know, we want to grow our own website. We want to own the customer if we can. It's just more people want to buy our product on Amazon, and we've got it readily available. We've invested a lot in that channel, and so we're okay with it.
Andrew Maff 13:02
You know, it's interesting. There's a. It reminds me of. There's a brand we work with. I mean, they spend a ridiculous amount of money on advertising, but their CTV approach is they'll do CTV. They direct people to Amazon, but then they have what is it? The Buy with Prime and like MCF set up, so that allows you to run ads from Amazon back to your website. So they'll do CTV, direct people to Amazon, and then they'll just do Amazon DSP ads, retargeting people that visited their listing and didn't convert, and send them back to their website. And it's just like watching the growth of this is like wild. It's like you. It's we spend more time looking at the data and trying to prove that it's accurate because sometimes the numbers are just ridiculous. Of like, wow, it's very interesting to see. Most people are going to go to Amazon because they trust the kind of third-party reviews, but then if they've educated themselves there and you want to earn that data back now that Amazon lets you do all that is wild. But you haven't tried DSP at all yet, huh?
Jacob Johnson 14:04
On Amazon, we've got a variety of advertising efforts there to meet, and so there is a little concern that we're you know double paying for conversion. But right now the macro numbers are working out well, and yeah, we've got an agency that handles all our Amazon advertising, and we're still investing heavily over there. So we want to make sure if you're searching for us, we also have some reseller issues. Always, we want to if you search for us, you're definitely going to see Calyan and Cal us like the brand owner.
Andrew Maff 14:37
So to that point, actually, because I know you positioned this right at the beginning of kind of that omni-channel approach. You obviously have the ability to do very true omni-channel because you also have a retail capability, and then you also have you're now doing CTV. So it's kind of a it's not your traditional e-commerce way of tracking success around it. So. When you're spending marketing dollars on things like the basics, social media, Google, etc. Amazon, but then you're also spending money on CTV, and then you have your efforts from a retail position. How are you evaluating where customers coming from, what your return is on certain things? Are you looking at everything very holistically, or are you finding ways to break it down per channel and kind of look at attribution?
Jacob Johnson 15:23
Attribution is hard with CTV. We knew that going in, and so obviously the macro MER is the main telltale sign. But even now we know there's some trickle ripple effect into retail, which is almost really impossible. That's why we've actually started to do more regional testing just to see if we can glean because we're monitoring retail sales data weekly. You know, so we see and we're trying to articulate. It's just the how much we're spending on CTV, even if it drove like it did well, it's still going to be little blips of data in the retail side. So it's hard. And then on the online side right now, the main tracking into Amazon is we're just tracking organic search volumes of the brand and organic sales on Amazon, and then on our website, you know, we can track that a little bit more intently, just website traffic. So really, just traffic to our brand holistically, and we've got a lot of room to grow here.
Jacob Johnson 16:25
Again, we're in the testing phases; it's lifting all ships somewhat, and we're getting-I'll call them suspicions versus like directly correlated data points. And I'm excited to get more sophisticated here and maybe tracking. We're tracking all the classic stuff where we can, and then obviously we track. You know, you can track return on CTV, and you might do well if it pays for itself. But even then, it's generally not. It's paying for itself elsewhere. So the short answer is, hey, that's the new frontiers. Okay, if we want to compound this, let's have enough data in front of us to be less suspicious and more like factual.
Andrew Maff 17:02
Yeah, it sounds like you're doing it right. I mean, that's you know looking at it from more of a macro level and then kind of doing more intentional based kind of testing is really the best way to look at it. Because I always try to position it of like, if you think back to like the Mad Men days, like that show, like you never saw that show, and they were like, "Hey, can you tell me like the ROI of that billboard that we ran? Like, no, you can't. Like, it's just not doable. So when you start to, if you really want to scale a business and get well into that eight figure range, like you've you've got to open up your mind around the things that you just can't track because we've all been spoiled with being able to track almost everything. That's awesome. That is a very that is a very cool approach. One of the things I'm always curious about because whenever I have these interviews, it's always you know this is all the cool stuff that our business is doing, and this is you know how well this is going, how well that's going. What's keeping you up at night right now? What are you guys struggling with?
Jacob Johnson 17:57
There's always something. Always something. Always a challenge around the corner, and then always there's always a good amount like little fires are burning, just trying to keep them tempered and attack the biggest one at a time. The main thing that keeps me up now that I'm really I'm saying I'm trying to transition from founder to CEO, and I'm also first-time founder, relatively young, and historically haven't known what I was doing, and still feel that way a lot. Even talking about this stuff, it's like we're tracking some stuff, but there's I know there's a far more sophisticated, professional way to get it done, and we're pursuing it. So in that transition to try to really scale this, you know, we our aspirations are far greater than what we've accomplished so far. It's building the team and elevating as a founder and getting out of micro decisions, building an autonomous leadership team that can really manage each function of the business better than I ever could.
Jacob Johnson 18:58
I since I started this so simply, you know, I started literally making candles in a bedroom with my now wife. Like it was on the dresser. Like we didn't even have like I started as humbly as you could do it. And every single aspect of the business I've done to some extent. Not saying it was good, but out of necessity have done those things. And so to elevate out of all of that and to hand the baton off to someone you trust to not only execute it to the current spec, but to enrich it and make it more efficient and better, it is a grind. I also, you know, I probably a lot of founders can relate, but I have you know control issues and I have my preferences and just to relinquish those and say, hey, even if it even if mistakes happen, it is okay. You've got to elevate and have this business expand beyond yourself. Yeah. So my mind goes really. I know that's more theoretical and high level, but that's the new frontier for me is team building, org structure management, strategic thought into where to deploy investment. Managing cash flow still were heavily seasonal, so my mind goes into vision, people, and cash. That's that, and just name the day, and I'm more notated on one of the one of those three.
Andrew Maff 20:55
Yeah, Paul, super interesting. This was great. I really appreciate this, because all these, every almost every episode I've ever had is always about like the minutia of the brand running the day to day, like the you're in the thick of it, and this is this is all very interesting insight into the end game, like what happens at the end, what are you dealing with, what could you get? This was awesome, I really appreciate it. We'll definitely have to do this again, but I'd love to give you the floor, tell everybody where they can find out more about you and more about Rafelson Law.
Andrew Maff 20:13
Sure, no, I appreciate that. Yeah, no, feel free to bring me on, we can always talk about the high level stuff, you know, we see a lot in this world, everything from Prop 65 to compliance to IP, it's a fun world.
Paul Rafelson 21:40
Giving up the stuff that you think you know best is so hard, but nine times out of 10, every time I've ever done it. I'm always like, ah, wow! I actually didn't, I didn't do it that well last time. So you're actually better than me. So I get, but it's that it's still that personal like it's that control issue, I guess, that a lot of us end up having. You mentioned your very seasonal. I'm guessing Q4.
Jacob Johnson 20:38
Yes, late Q3, Q4 is our peak into Q1 The cooler months are really the peak. Now that we're getting into other product lines outside of candles, I'm interested to see how that tempers. More hopeful it is. That's one of our strategic things. We want to be less seasonal, but yes, it's all about q4
Andrew Maff 20:56
You mean on like the infringement side and unauthorized seller side?
Jacob Johnson 21:09
I'm not. You're asking the wrong person here. I'm still learning how to use Claude, and then you know I used the basic chat GPT to help me get a document going. The general thought this is definitely, of course, on our radar. And internally, we're trying to leverage Claude, like mainly Excel work, to automate more Excel stuff. But we're constantly, and thankfully, Shopify is on on top of this as well. Yeah, trying to be what do they call it? It's not the AI version of SEO. AEO
Andrew Maff 21:46
GEO AEO. Everyone's got too many offerings at this point.
Jacob Johnson 21:53
And I feel less bad about not knowing that on the e-commerce podcast. But we're constantly seeing when we're ready and eager to spend some advertising dollars on it when it comes, and we're just monitoring that. But man, I think it's going to be big. Obviously, people are already using it so drastically that way. And so, for me, what I'm the lens I'm thinking through of it is probably still a little bit behind. But I just want to be in the good glories. I want to be like when back in when Google started paid advertising, you're paying a penny a click. Like I want to, as soon as we can spend serious direct money on it, I want to be one of the first adopters. Like I'm willing to make that bet and experience some good days. Same thing with Amazon. We're already it's so competitive now compared to in the past, and so I'm excited for a new frontier and to be like right and focus and have the capital to deploy in the good days. We'll see how that actually comes. Soon enough, they'll be here.
Andrew Maff 22:51
Yeah, I think it'll be super interesting to see how much the consumers actually leverage their own AI to shop this year for Q4. That's probably going to give these LLMs a lot more data, and then I'm sure we'll start to see like a ChatGPT finally release like some type of checkout functionality that I know they like kind of rolled it out, but they really yeah to the masses
Jacob Johnson 23:13
Yeah it'll be really interesting.
Andrew Maff 23:14
Yeah I really appreciate you having the show and I don't want to take up too much of your time I know you're super busy. I'd love to give you the floor. Tell everyone when they can find out more about you, and of course, more about Callion Wax.
Jacob Johnson 23:27
Calyanwaxco.com. That's C-A-L-Y-A-N. It's Nancy Waxco.com. That's our handle on all the socials. You can follow me on LinkedIn, Jacob Johnson Callion, I believe, and or just give us a quick Google, and hopefully you find this beautiful podcast and others just to learn more about the social mission. On that side, there's a lot of depth there. Go to our website. We let you know all the nonprofits we donate to. We're extremely transparent. One of our core values, and reach out. We'd love to share more about nonprofits, about the product. We respond quick. We believe in serious customer service.
Andrew Maff 24:06
Love it, Jacob. You're the man. Appreciate you having the show. Sorry if you can hear my dogs losing their mind right at the greatest time of this.
Jacob Johnson 24:14
Getting sent off.
Andrew Maff 24:14
The joys of working at home. But everyone who tuned in, thank you. Obviously, do the usual thing: rate, review, subscribe, all that fun stuff on whichever podcast platform you prefer, or head over to theecommshow.com to check out all of our previous episodes. But as usual, thank you all for joining us. Jacob, you as well. Everyone else, talk to you later. Have a good one.
Narrator 24:34
Thank you for tuning in to the E-comm Show. Head over to ecommshow.com to subscribe on your favorite podcast platform or on the Bluetuskr YouTube channel. The E-comm show is brought to you by Bluetuskr a full-service digital marketing company specifically for e-commerce sellers looking to accelerate their growth. Go to bluetusker.com now for more information. Make sure to tune in next week for. Another amazing episode of The E-comm Show!