Does your product depend on the shared cultural trends, inside jokes, and the current meme scene? On this 180th episode of the E-Comm Show, Andrew Maff interviews Simon Cadotte, Founder of Black Maple Trading Company. Black Maple Trading Company has found a way to keep its finger on the pulse and churn out the type of stuff that makes you say, “I gotta have that.”
In this episode, Simon lets us in on their creative process and how they stay connected with their target audience (the simplicity and authenticity in this might surprise you). Moreover, how to navigate retail product drops and fade outs, all while maintaining momentum. If you're a brand that wants to keep up with the times, then this episode is a must-listen.
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Andrew Maff and Simon Cadotte
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Simon Cadotte
Simon Cadotte is the CEO of Black Maple Trading, a Montreal-based online apparel brand that celebrates Canadian culture through fashion. Under his leadership, the company has grown from a small, family-run business into a beloved brand across Canada and the U.S., known for its nostalgic and iconic designs.
With a passion for storytelling through apparel, Simon has led the expansion Black Maple Trading into Black Maple Wholesale and Black Maple Creative Custom creative divisions, supplying museums, festivals, and businesses. Now, with its sister brand Rocket Factory, he continues to push boundaries, bringing bold, trendsetting, geek chic designs to the North American market.
Simon Cadotte 00:02
Black Maple Trading is designed to celebrate sort of your roots, celebrating what sort of being where you are means to you—whether that's, you know, the mountains, the great outdoors; whether that's your city, your neighborhood; whether that's your nostalgia, your retro brands, your broadcasters—things that make people really Canadian.
Narrator 00:34
Music
Speaker 1 01:11
Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of The E-Comm Show. I am your host, as usual, Andrew Maff, and today I am joined by the amazing Simon Cadotte, who is the CEO of Black Maple Trading Company. Simon, how you doing, buddy? Ready for a good show?
Simon Cadotte 01:24
100%
Andrew Maff 01:26
Yes! Super excited to have you here. Love to have my Canadian brethren in-house. I know we were just talking that you got a yard of snow, which is, I've never even really heard anyone refer to it as a 'yard of snow.' That is insane. So I'm glad you're warm, at least.
Simon Cadotte 01:42
You know, Canada measures in centimeters, and so it doesn't translate as well. So, yeah, it's, you know, it's 39ish inches we got in one sort of fell swoop. It was a fun four days, I'll tell you.
Andrew Maff 01:56
That is crazy. Well, I'm not 100% sure when this episode will go out, but I'm hopeful that most of that snow will be gone by then.
Simon Cadotte 02:04
I would love that to be the case. Even if it goes out tomorrow, I'd love that to be the case.
Andrew Maff 02:09
Yeah, really — you and me both. Look, I love starting these off relatively stereotypically, so I kind of give you the floor and just tell us a little bit about your background, how you got started with Black Maple, and we'll take it from there, right buddy? Let's do it!
Simon Cadotte 02:20
We can. So, Black Maple is an evolution of a few different pieces that came together around 20 years ago. One of my original founders of a slightly different business had the idea that everybody loves beer and everybody loves T-shirts, and we should begin a beer T-Shirt Company. Which kind of was the really long time ago version of it all. And we sort of did that. We developed a line of T shirts that were a mixture of comedy and things from around and got involved really early in eBay, and sort of grew it big in the early 2000s on eBay back in the wild west. And then, like a lot of eBay guys, got a little tired of that weird environment, transitioned over to Amazon, and then did a lot of stuff through Amazon, and along the way, we grew into a full fledged manufacturer. So we were manufacturing, we were printing, we were designing, we were doing a bit of it all. And we ended up at a gift show in Toronto back in 2015-16, and we kept getting told bypeople that we had these great products and somebody needed to do something better than what was on the market to sort of celebrate Canada. And out of all that, out of this, this demand grew Black Maple Trading. So we, we started off as a wholesaler, and then COVID came along and pivoted us back into our roots, into a proper D2C Ecommerce business, and we've never looked back. We've just grown and grown and grown.
Andrew Maff 03:48
That'll do it. And so you also have Rocket Factory as well, which is a relatively similar brand, correct?
Simon Cadotte 03:56
It is essentially out of the gate, Black Maple Trading is designed to celebrate, sort of your roots, celebrating, celebrate what, what sort of being where you are means to you, whether that's you know, the mountains, the great outdoors, whether that's your city, your neighborhood, whether that's your nostalgia, your your retro brands, your broadcasters, things that make people really Canadian. Rocket Factory is about celebrating the things you like to do. So it sort of started off as a, as a nerd brand because we have a few nerds on board that like the maths and the sciences. And what started off as sort of math and science became whatever kind of people get nerdy about. So whether that's craft beer or wine or photography or bicycling, and so we sort of call it a nerd brand, but it's really about, you know, celebrating what you like to do. So there are some crossovers and some similarities for sure.
Andrew Maff 04:43
Yeah. So, one of the things I was super curious to ask you about, I've got, actually, several really good friends of mine that are in a similar space, of like, basically screen printing and messaging, of hitting a very certain audience, and somehow, you know, they had their community and were able to figure it out. That concept scares the living hell out of me. I don't understand. How did you? How do you scale that? How did you get it to a point where you could connect with that community and be able to offer them product that, I mean, at the end of the day, the thing that's always very interesting is, like apparel, it's subjective whether someone likes the design, if someone doesn't. So how do you scale that if it's, if it's something that's that's got that subjectivity to it?
Simon Cadotte 05:27
It's actually been, it's always been an interesting reflection I think in-house, we, Black Maple Trading has become a brand that sort of took a took sort of a fragmented marketplace and tried to put it all together into into something. In our past, you know, we basically looked at, especially when you were, you know, when you talk about the Amazons and the eBays, those were less brand-oriented and more more sort of keyword-driven and so, you you know, my sort of early path into it was to figure out things we sort of liked that we understood enough about that we could sit around with the team and and sort of make jokes about and go, 'Hey, that'd be a great T-shirt, that'd be a great T-shirt and then just test it out, you know, into these public markets using certain keywords, and double down on things that sort of take off. Even the Black Maple brands sort of started that way. It was listening to people saying, 'Hey, you guys have a kind ofa neat flair for design. We have a store; we'd like to carry, you know, something that you did that celebrated a theme.' And so, you know, we knew we were being pointed in the right direction. And as the brand has grown, I have to say that probably 40-ish percent of what we do now is is probably user-suggested. 'Oh, you guys should be doing this. I'd be fun to do that.' We've always been torn between whether we're really just an e-commerce business or a manufacturing business, because we sort of do both sides of it. But we've, we've worked out a lot of technology that allows us to do a lot of testing. You know, the world of apparel has gone more digital in the last few years, and so it did change the old-school screen printing that was more difficult to approach. And, you know, you see a lot of growing niche brands these days who find something they're passionate about, and then a community around them that's able to rally behind that.
Andrew Maff 07:10
Yeah. So, when you launch new products, is the approach to initially put it on the website and feel it out before you put it onto other marketplaces? Or the opposite of that? Like, what's, what's that product launchstrategy for something that's kind of got a short life?
Simon Cadotte 07:27
Yeah, it has definitely become website based, as we grow, we are exploring a lot more tools that can help translate customer conversations into sort of two way conversations we'd like to sort of solicit, you know, almost through polling certain types of areas before we go deeply into it. But because of some of our technology, we've been sort of able to say, oh, it's maple syrup season, let's throw out a bunch of wild ideasabout maple syrup and figure out, out of a batch of 15 or 20 in a launch, you know, what's going to resonate and then, and then, what we sort of work towards. So usually, you know, our product developmentlife cycle is launched 15, 20, 30 ideas in one shot, and then two months later, your cream sort of rises to the top and those products will often become evergreen, and the rest will either be discontinued or fizzle out, you know. So I think, in this type of field, if you get, you know, even a 20% success on everything you're launching, you're already definitely going in the right direction. And because we don't have to import 1000 pieces, 5000 pieces from overseas, and we're able to do most of that in house, it gives us that nimbleness and that flexibility to change around when we need to.
Andrew Maff 08:36
Interesting. Okay, so your product launch strategy is basically, I know apparel brands tend to refer to as like a drop. So you do like 20 to 30 different designs, and then you just let them all go and then whichever one survive, you reprint, and then the other ones, you just let them die off.
Simon Cadotte 08:53
It depends, some of them we will just put onto our back burner and still leave around just to create you know, there are we discovered that as we grew larger, the niche niche products just wouldn't compete against the more national, I guess we'd say. So, you know, a neighborhood in Philadelphia or a neighborhood in Toronto just doesn't have the same marketing, you know, market for it, or it's harder to justgo reach that person. So we still, we still, you know, because of digital we, you know, we run DTG's and embroidery and a few different techniques that don't require us to do long production runs, we'll keep anything sort of around that people have a kind of a soft spot for, without being, you know, a runaway best seller. But we will exactly that you know, we'll probably drop 40 or 50% of products after a three to four months and just go, it doesn't quite have, it just hasn't reverberated well enough and because there's just always something new coming out, the focus goes on to, you know, what's, what's the newest, latest kind ofdrop, as you we don't use the term, but it is very, very common in the industry.
Andrew Maff 09:55
Yeah, so what's the, what's that creative process like? Like, I would imagine, are you guys constantly coming up with just new ideas and you have, like, a log that you write them all down? Or is there like, a hey,Friday is the day we're all sitting down and hammering out huge ideas, like, what's what's that like?
Simon Cadotte 10:10
So we've done both. Yeah, it started as a classic, you know, younger business with beers and a few guys getting together and grabbing anybody who, who you have in your neighborhood or friend group, and saying: "Hey, we're having, you know, we're having a few beers and a brainstorm session, and that's kind of what started some of the products. And then we like to run a really flat business so whether you're, you know, somebody down in the production side, or a salesperson, or the next thing, it has become, more formally, we'll say once a month, but some teams are once per week bring some ideas to the table, get the idea going. You know, we've got people from different backgrounds, from different cultures, from different, you know, from different even first languages and it's always interesting to let a brainstorm session go because of what people sometimes will bring out of the blue based on somebody else's idea. So, it still remains really dynamic. We usually know kind of what the broad strokes of what we're going to be thinkingabout designing are, you know, like we could say maple syrup, we could say poutine, we could say the American eagle, and then it'll just sort of riff and rip around until there's a bunch of ideas and then that'll distill down to the design team, who we're lucky, we've got a terrific creative director who's got a great, who's figured out a great way to sort of create products that resonate. So, you know, we are a team that's been working together for over 15 years, and so there is a lot of trust in the team as well. And I mean, that's a that's a blessing and a gift in ways that I I wouldn't start a new company tomorrow, because I think it would be hard to develop those, those trusts and those relationships, you know?
Andrew Maff 11:45
Oh, yeah. Yeah it is all about the people you find and who you can work with after a while that's, that's really what it becomes for any business. What about, so obviously, I'm very curious on the marketing side, since that's, that's my baby, what, what's the approach like? Is you lean on the influencer side? Is it? Is it anything from social media? Is it mostly on the email side, like, what are you doing, both from an evergreenperspective as well as from kind of a product launch side?
Simon Cadotte 12:11
Right! So that's going to take probably, you know, three big prongs, and one thing that's great, maybe for the show and for a lot of listeners, we made a big, big decision last year, after a certain amount of growth, to bring all of our marketing back in house. So we had been working with agencies, and I think agencies are a great way to work for you know, smaller brands that don't have the expertise until you get to a certain size. But we found that there was a moment where marketing is so much about storytelling and so much needs to resonate with that that you know that crowd that's listening to you, that's interested in you, that you can't really outsource it effectively. I mean, there's probably exceptions to that rule, but we found that bringing our marketing back in, firstly, through a great chief marketing officer who built out a team that that does a much better job. We definitely have the thrust of marketing that's still related to social media marketing. It's a great place for, you know, that sort of impulse, I didn't know I needed it, but I just saw it, and it's awesome, I want one type of market. But we've built a very, very strong follow up machine through email marketing and SMS marketing. So we do, we do definitely nurture and maintain that community through, you know, offers, first time, first crack, different discounts that you can get sort of through that. So those are the two biggest ones, and influencers is a growing one actually, it's one that we're, we're definitely working on this year, and it's been interesting because we've had a lot of influencers reach out to us and sort of go: "Hey, you guys need a more formal program." And so, yeah, we do. So it's where we're at now. You know the absolutely there's been a lot of change in marketing, and I think influencers take up a much bigger space today than they did even five years ago. So it's hard to ignore that, especially when people who love our products are saying: "Well, I have a podcast, or, you know, I have a YouTube channel I'd love to feature some of the stuff." It's like, yeah, we need a good formal program. So that's that's really been 2024 and 2025 for us.
Andrew Maff 14:12
Yeah. Yeah I mean, to your point, I mean, I own an agency, and I can tell you right now, if you can bring it in-house, bring it in-house. Like, especially for a brand like yours, where that that creativity, that storytelling, that connection with the community, it's a it's very, very difficult. You could supply an agency with the world's best written and in depth brand guides, and it's still won't resonate as well as you need it to.
Simon Cadotte 14:38
And we've had the joy of working with some great industry, some great some great agencies at different sizes and at different levels. And I really think that there are certain products where I would never think about bringing it in house, and I think an agency has expertise and specialty that maybe you can't develop in-house. When we got bigger and the brand went forward and the storytelling and the sort of the you just, you can't expect that sort of bespoke relationship with an agency who's, you know, who is in the numbers business in a lot of different ways. So I think there's a, there's a place for both. And I, you know, I do think that there's some amazing agencies out there. I still have a few friends who own terrific agencies and who do spectacular for certain types of clients. In our case, it was a, it was a good move to bring that back in house. It just, I think it gave us a truer sense of messaging when it really came down to it.
15:32
Yeah. On the, on the influencer side, what's the approach there? Are you thinking that you'll lean in on, like, the micro side, so you're basically just gifting a product? Or are you actually leaning in on, you know, let's put a budget together and work with some of the bigger ones?
Simon Cadotte 15:46
Yeah, the strategy we're using right now is going to be that blend of the two. We are doing the gifting, we are looking at micro influencers that sort of have a demographic that already makes sense for us, whether that's, you know, poutine lovers, again, I go back to some of the common themes, or, you know, moose lovers, or Canada lovers, or some of those different things. There is a second phase to that, which is to figure out which of those micro influencers have a better a better sound, a better voice, and then looking atconverting that into into something that's a little bit deeper, and probably using the data that comes out ofthat for more paid partnerships. We, through our licensing, we do have access to some pretty neat people around the hockey market and around the broadcast market in Canada. And so we've been trying to figureout exactly what those types of influencer partnerships would look like without them seeming too advertisy or too forced, so that they remain natural. Right, there's the, we're trying to maintain that family run growing business, as opposed to the big polished business. You know, there's grassroots as part of our sort of DNA, I guess and so it's, how do you, how do you keep that feeling as you grow as being really a big part of what we're doing too.
Andrew Maff 17:09
Yeah, tell me about it. So do you for from like, your social posts or your organic stuff, or you or your paid ad stuff, I should say, are you leaning more on, like, the user generated content, kind of creative, like making itlook like someone filmed it on their phone, or you actually like, no, let's go do a photo shoot and get that done professionally?
Simon Cadotte 17:25
We have definitely done both, and I my take on it, and again, the marketing team might be different is, I think there's a place for both. I still, I still really like professionally shot, stylized sort of pieces. And I thinkwhen, you know, when you work with some great photographers or some some great videographers, you can, you can get a really quality looking product. And that sort of, you know, goes for that, that sort of shiny once in a blue moon. We also figured out that ultimately, we just, we launch too much product to be able to do that for every product. And so, we figure that, you know, there's these sort of, like headline pieces, or, again, evergreen pieces, where we'll collaborate with a great photographer, videographer and try to bring out something more polished. But we love the user-generated, I'm normal and pretty in your clothing kind of story and I think that it's true. You know what, we're not, we're not like an Oscar de la Renta, or we're not trying to be high fashion with cutting edge. We're into, you know, comfort, quality, affordability and sort of like wearing your roots. And so, it's we find definitely great results off of, off of user-generated type of content with others who go: "Hey, that looks like me. That Looks comfy. I want that." You know?
Andrew Maff 18:41
Yeah, exactly. On the, so obviously that's, that's from an off marketplace perspective, that's all the D2C side of things, it makes a lot of sense, folks in the UGC, the influencer stuff. So you're educating that market to eventually, or basically building that community to get into the site. Common sense, gotcha! Amazon, though, how are you doing that? Because you mentioned that, you know, you do launch some stuff on the marketplace side, and it's more keyword-driven. And for something where it's more community-driven, and you kind of have to present it to them, there's not a lot of like, in my opinion, there's not really a lot of window shoppers on Amazon. They're actively looking for things. So how are you doing on the keyworkd perspective?
Simon Cadotte 19:19
Correct. Amazon remains a tricky, tricky, in my opinion, a tricky tricky market for brands. Particularly brands that aren't an Amazon brand. And I say this because I've done some projects where we were an Amazon brand, and you don't have to worry about off Amazon competition, because it doesn't exist. We are working very hard at trying to figure out how to cohabitate on a premium sort of our own website, our own markets and some of our touchpoint sellers. And at the same time, also access the far deeper sort of pools that you do get on marketplaces. Whether that's, you know, whether that's Etsy at a smaller level, whether that's Amazon at a bigger level, whether that's Walmart marketplaces and some of those. And so we're generally trying to figure out how to create either unique product for that marketplace where you can't it's not part of our regular line, it's still a Black Maple Trading product, but it won't be found on the website so that we don't create comparatives, because the Amazon is a, it's a different competition than your social media or than, you know, than your search engine type of shopee market. It is a very, you know, it's a price sensitive market. It's people looking for good deals, it's people looking for speed. And so we're trying to figure out how to do what some of the bigger retail brands have managed to do too while staying you know, I won't mention it, but I think, you know, from Carhartt to Dickies, some of these companies have done great jobs of being this primary primo product in some markets. And affordable with a slightly different product in a secondary kind of market stream. And so, but I do think that it's super challenging to try to sell the same product in two markets and not cannibalize yourself.
Andrew Maff 21:07
Yeah, I know a pretty good amount of like apparel brands that kind of do a similar approach to what you do on the D2C side. So, you know, they'll, they'll do a launch of, you know, 20-30, plus different styles, and then figure out which of these is the clear winner, that's just a top seller forever. And then they'll just put that on Amazon and have that be like the product that's basically building customer acquisition, and then they focus on, okay, how do I get them back to the site? Is that a similar approach that you're thinking or are you thinking like, no, we're just gonna create completely exclusive stuff for Amazon?
Simon Cadotte 21:37
For the time being, we have created exclusive stuff for Amazon. We've played around with it, with a few of our licensed brands that that that have unlicensed items on Amazon. So we did want to, we did want to basically say: "Well, you know, we're the licensor, when you're buying a Heartland product from us, you're actually supporting Heartland, the TV show, Heartland the production company." And it, you know, there's we're, I can tell you that we're still in the exploration phase. There is the aspect of doing what you just said, which is taking your winners and putting them out on Amazon. There's also the other side, which is, you take your not as winners, perhaps, and run a more liquidation type of: "Hey, we over produce this portion, and it didn't sell quite enough, so here it is as a discount." And we have some retailers that have that interest with us as well. It is probably the biggest challenge is, how do you how do you manage an inventory which was designed to have a certain quality and a certain price point and maintain that value without eroding some of that value by having to sometimes maybe move some, you know, whether that's a big order that's gotten canceled by a retail. I mean, you know, every clothing brand ends up with sometimes a little too much of something, and then it's the how do you sort of get rid of it, but still maintain the value? So we, we are looking at Amazon as a possible liquidation. We do have an outlet store on our website, which, which is the idea that you're getting this great product that we we have too much of right now, and we're willing to, you know, part with it at a different price. We are looking at similar licensed products on a different piece, and so that the comparitons aren't really there. I'd say it's a work in progress,and the days of, you know, the days of Amazon being easy, are over. Amazon is very competitive, very competitive, both both domestically and overseas. You know, I mean, you've got, not so long ago, Amazon had a slightly more rigorous vetoing of who could sell, how you could sell, and what you had to correct. And so along with that came a mixed bag of, you know, good and bad, I guess, for it.
Andrew Maff 23:53
Yeah, that's we could do that on a whole other podcast, talking about that all day.
Simon Cadotte 23:56
We could! Not going to stop there.
Andrew Maff 24:01
But yeah, this was Simon. I really appreciate your time. This was amazing. We obviously learned a lot today. I'd love to give the opportunity please let everyone know where they can find out more about you, and, of course, more about Black Maple Trading.
Simon Cadotte 24:11
Sure you've got most of it at blackmapletrading.com and you have our sister company, which is shoprocketfactory.com where you can get more of the nerdy side of what we do and the hobby side of what we do.
Andrew Maff 24:27
Beautiful! Simon, thank you so much for joining us. Everyone who tuned in, of course, thank you as well. Please make sure you do the usual rate, review, subscribe all that fun stuff on whichever podcast platform you prefer, or head over to the ecommshow.com to check out all of our previous episodes. But as usual, thank you all for joining us. See you all next time!
Narrator 24:46
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