The Power of Operational Agility: Insights from Daniel Henao of Why Don't We | EP. #169

When Cards Against Humanity first came out, it was a hit- yet today the market is flooded with card games. How can they stand out? In this 169th episode episode, Andrew Maff sits down with Daniel Henao, COO of Why Don't We. From inventory management to shipping logistics, we learn that operational processes can make or break a company's bottom line.

In this episode, we'll dig deep into why Amazon has been the most profitable channel for them due to the unique cash flow problems this type of product has. Daniel illustrates how his agility in operations and authenticity in creating the product has played a crucial role in the success of the business- despite the competition. If you're an e-commerce entrepreneur and get an idea or two about operations (especially Amazon), this episode is for you.

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 The Power of Operational Agility: Insights from Daniel Henao of Why Don't We

Andrew Maff and Daniel Henao

CONNECT WITH OUR HOST: AndrewMaff.com  |  Twitter: @AndrewMaff | LinkedIn: @AndrewMaff 

Daniel Henao

Hi! This is the short story on how I switched from having a 9 to 5 job in Miami, Florida to building a brand that has reached more than 100.000 couples worldwide. When the pandemic hit, everything changed. Suddenly, me and my girlfriend found ourselves stuck at home struggling to make the most of our time together. We heard from other couples who were facing the same challenges. Between work, kids, and all the other things life throws our way, it's easy to put our relationships on the back burner. That's why and when we created Why Don't We. We wanted to help couples stay connected and keep the spark alive no matter what. We started with one product idea and $400, today we have 6 products and we are creating amazing new ones with the purpose of prioritizing your relationship. We're so excited to share it with the world and help couples everywhere rediscover the joy of spending time with each other.

00:02

For four years, we were the only brand that creates only products for couples. Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of the E comm Show. I'm your host, as usual, Andrew Maff, and today I'm joined by the amazing Daniel Henao who is the COO of, Why Don't We? Daniel, how you doing? Man? You ready for good job, really? How are you beautiful? I'm doing good. I'm very excited to have you on the show, because my wife and I are actually big fans of this product line, type, and I'm ordering yours as soon as we're done here. Because I'm like, Well, I think I've done them all at this point. So very excited to talk to you and kind of learn a little bit more about the back end of everything. But I always like to do the usual, kind of, let you kick things off, tell us a little bit about your background, obviously, about how you got started with why don't we, and we'll take them

01:39

there. Yeah. I mean, my background, it's in it I was working. I mean, I used to have a, like a nine to five job in Miami, from 2015 to 2022 I mean, before that, I mean, I was born in California, but because my parents were going to university there, and then I was raised in Venezuela, so I moved back to the US 2015 I was working in IT for a company. And during COVID, my girlfriend and I, I mean, we started hearing stories, you know, that it was difficult times. So some couples were doing good, some others were not doing that well, and we decided to create the brand. Okay, at first it would, it was a little on the on the spicy side. That was that, that I was that that's the reason of the name of, why don't we okay? And we started with one product. It was really on the spicy side. So we had kind of, it was difficult, difficult to market the product, okay, because there's a lot of limitations on social media, on on meta ads on Instagram. So we created a second product, kind of to link it to this one. Okay, we put it. We started with $400 it was funny. So we had the time, because it was COVID, we said, let's try it. And the second product had a really nice start on Amazon, okay? And well, now today, four years later, we have six products. We sell the worldwide. I mean, we're selling in the US and Canada, Mexico, in UK, and we launched this year in Australia. So we're selling almost in every continent. And, yeah, we're doing pretty well. And we try to have the products adapted culturally, not only like like, not only the language, but also culturally, to to each country, okay? Because we're talking about relationships. So we wanted like, each product to be adapted to, to the to the to the target that we are we're selling to,

03:37

yeah. So one of the things that I was obviously curious about was, you know, obviously you started off spicy, and then you kind of move into everything else. This is not, it's kind of a space that, in my opinion, took off with Cards Against Humanity, and then it just, there was 500 different versions of it, you know, kind of, and now it's just an incredibly crowded market. So how did you position it to help, like, stand out from all of the other ones that are out there? I mean, it's,

04:08

to be honest, it's not that hard. I'm gonna tell you why, because really, our brand is really unique. So you're right. There's 1000s and 1000s of games, yeah. And I think now after four years, I mean, for four years, we were the only brand that creates only products for couples, okay, so they were couples for like products for couples, okay, but the brand did also something else. Did family products. They did like, like cars against humanity, okay. They have, like, a version, for example, for couples and but we were the only ones, and we said, and we're still doing the same. We're only doing products for couples, okay? And that's, that's our model, like it's making it changing the world, one happy couple at a time. So, yeah, so we decided that's that we're gonna stick to that niche, okay? And that's, that's what we have done, and that's why we have, we have, like, a whole range of. Products from very romantics or depending, for some people, they are lame. Some people, they love it. So we have every type of game for every stage or every type of relationship. So that's, that's how we have a stand out. And today, now we're see we have, like, one or two competitors that are only doing products for couples. But, I mean, but since the beginning, we we've only done that, and we have certain competitors in for a specific product, but not as a brand. So that's, that's how we have differentiate

05:30

what, uh, what are the six different products that you have in place? Because to give you a little insight, so my wife and I, we play these like it's our job, mainly because we're coming up on 10 years of marriage next year as well, 20 years together. So, like, we've just run out of stuff to talk about. So sometimes we'll come across those games where it's like, oh, ice breakers. Like, I don't need to break the ice. I know you pretty well. It's more of like, the longer ones that become kind of interesting. So like, what are

06:02

you we have, we have one, we have one funny story. One of our review says, like, I thought I knew my wife well, but after playing this game, we got divorced.

06:11

So I'm sure you're not very good at sales, yeah,

06:15

but I mean, no, for example, I mean we have, there's one product that we just relaunch it. I mean, it's a conversation starters in fact, okay, but we created, I mean, we knew what was in the market. We bought several games to compare. We also love playing games. That's that's our thing. Okay? Every weekend we were used to have a date night. We love playing games. We love playing drinking games too. So that's part of how we ended up here. Okay, but for example, the first product is we just rebranded it. It's called talk for hours, so and so it arrives with with the brand. So it's, why don't we? And all of the games have something related to the brand. So why don't we talk for hours? Why don't we laugh together? Why don't we spice it up. This one out, why don't we? Why not? That's, that's another one. It doesn't the brand, but, and why don't we are missing and why don't we date? Okay, they talk for hours, because there's a lot of products like that in the market. Tons of it. Okay, we now did a twist with the product. Yes, 240 cars. A lot of different topics that I'm sure you have in touch with your wife. We're very also careful that all of the topics, or all of the questions, questions are not going to make you not going to end up in a fight. So we don't talk, for example, about past relationships. We're really careful with that, okay? And we have two psychologists that help us with that, but all of the quench questions are on the fun side. Our products are not therapeutic. It can be okay, but are not made with that intention, okay? Are made like we always say, like, for example, you can make the honeymoon phase last forever, okay? And we have products for different parts of that, okay. So this one is to get to know each other more, even even though, even if you have been together for a long time, they spice it up as as it sounds. Of course, it's most more on the on the spicy side, the laugh together is a competition game, like, really, to compete and have points. So you do kind of have you played cranium? Yep, it's like, cranium, okay, but, uh, but, but for couples, all related to couples, and you can compete. And why not? It's also on the spicy side. And the date, why don't we? Date, is 52 dates, so you can have one different date for a year each week with your partner, like, and there are surprise dates, nice, yeah, what? Uh,

08:38

tell me about, like, some of the complications of the business. Because, like, to your point, you know, you start with $400 so the barrier to entry isn't tough. And the theory being, you know, okay, they're cards. I come up with a bunch of questions. I can start my own business here. But as you already alluded to, you've got psychologists that are following up on some of these questions, making sure you're not causing more divorces than you already have. So what like, what's, what are, what are some of the struggles of having a business like this?

09:06

I mean, I think the our main market is Amazon, okay? And the, I think, has changed a lot in four years. Now we have a lot of more competition, okay? I think the struggles is the cash flow. Because if you have a successful product, and the turnaround of the of the money of your sales is not that fast when you sell on Amazon. Okay, so you need to be really prepared for that. That's, I think it's the main, the main, yeah, the main constraint when you start selling online. But also, I mean, we have, we have people think that selling online is just putting up your product and that's it, or they think that it's that it's a passive income, and we love so much because, I mean, it's, it's totally the opposite. We work a lot, I don't know, some days we were yesterday, I think we were, like, 10 hours a day, and we, we are really focusing on having, like, amazing. In products we have since the beginning. We have, like, like, our packaging is amazing. We really differentiate for all from other products. We check our products, we try to play the games before launching them. So it's not just throwing out there a game, and that's it. So, and people think it's like that. So no, there's a lot of work behind it. Okay? There's a lot of optimization process every year. Like every time we we are gonna, like, have a new batch, we try to improve it somehow, on the packaging, on the cards, we try to look at our reviews, what are our clients saying, and see where we can improve. So

10:33

you mentioned, obviously you're leaning really Amazon's one of your bigger channels, and I obviously did a little bit of digging ahead of time, like you lean kind of into the social media side a little bit, but even your social media pretty much directs people almost directly to Amazon, and your Amazon store ranks higher than your own website. So do you lean real heavy into Amazon and are just, kind of like the websites just in existence?

10:59

Yeah. And I think based on your question, I think I can add something to your previous question. And I think one of the biggest struggles, I think, like two years ago, we said, You know what, let's not depend so much on one channel. Let's try to bring traffic to our website. We did, like a lot of our advertising, like on Facebook and on Instagram, trying to drive traffic to our website, and it wasn't. It wasn't successful. To be honest, I know that there are some brands that do it, and they do it really well. For us, it didn't. It didn't work that well. We're trying it again. Next year is one of the goals, okay? And we're also, like, one of the other goals next year is to try to bring traffic through social media to our website, but, but, yeah, that's a big challenge. Like, when people ask us, because people have seen that we have been successful. I mean, we're doing really well, people ask if they want to launch a product now. Now they're and they're more enthusiastic about launching their own brand. And we all, we tell them, like, don't start with your website. Like on Amazon, you're going to have a better conversion if you have a good product. Okay, so if you got a good product, people are going to Amazon. They're ready to buy when they go to your website, that's gonna, yeah, of course, you're not gonna have the fee that Amazon charges. But also, people are gonna doubt if, if the website is the JIT or something. So so I would say the conversion rate on Amazon, if your product, product is is good, it's gonna be better. So I think that's a big challenge trying to sell to your website for us, at least it has been. It has been difficult.

12:28

Yeah, and there's, there's pros and cons to both of them, right? Like, obviously Amazon, you've got their pre existing audience, so they're there to shop. That's what they're doing. So that's why you see conversion rates that are 2030, 40% whereas on a website, you've got to focus so much on brand building and top of funnel like you see more like 234, percent. But when you were staying focused on the website, were you fulfilling it? Or did you have Amazon fulfilling the orders?

12:53

No Amazon was fulfilling the orders. I think that's also something I recommend to a lot of sellers or people to come that come to us, they still haven't negotiated like, a really good rate with with UPS or other fulfillment services, even even their trucks now. So, so I would say, I mean, even when you compare it to, even to having, like a business account with FedEx or with UPS, I would say, like fulfillment with Amazon is fast if you have enough inventory, there's also some tricks there. If you have low inventory, it's not gonna be that fast. But if you have enough inventory, you're gonna be able to ship quick to your clients and for a better price and going to to a USBs, FedEx or or UBS, yeah,

13:35

maybe especially for a product line like yours. I can see how that makes a lot of sense, because, like, typically, our scenario is like, Oh, we're we have nothing to do this weekend, and we realized that, like Wednesday or Thursday. And so I've if we're going to do one of these games, like I've got, it's got to be here in 48 hours, or we're just not, we're still going to have a boring weekend. So I could see how, for a product line like yours, that quicker shipping time as well is probably beneficial, which is why I was kind of curious about who was fulfilling from the website side, yeah, what, um, what marketing channel has been your best is it basically just Amazon? Do you pretty much just lean into the advertising side?

14:12

Yeah? I think, yeah, yeah, for sure, it has been Amazon. Okay? And we go, we go heavy on Amazon advertising, okay? We also, I think we have good products, because we are, they are very well ranked organically. When you look for couples games, you're going to find two, three of our products. But, I mean, we, we tried, or one of the plans was to try social media this year. Okay, at the end we we were really busy, and we were not able to do it. Now we hire, we just hired, like, two weeks ago, a social media strategist in house. So, so the idea is to grow on social media, try to post more, etc. We're, I mean, we're not. We don't post that much on our personal social media. So it has been a challenge. Okay, there's people that, for them, it's really easy, but we know that business is going that way. And there are a lot of brands that they're just selling a lot. Lot through social media. Okay, so, yeah, I would say Amazon is our main We are also on Walmart and on our website. But yeah, if you compare it, it's just minimum compared to what we do on Amazon. Yeah,

15:15

the social media side, I can definitely, I know, like for a product line like this, it could definitely do really well influencer marketing for stuff like this. Marketing for stuff like this is obviously really good. But even like the Tick Tock side, this product line always has tick tock written all over. You. Just give it to an influencer, let them set it up on tick tock shop, and they they sell it through. Have you, is that kind of on the the docket for your new social person to kind of explore the Tick Tock side and influencer marketing?

15:40

Yeah, it is, it is. I mean, the thing is, we're still, I mean, we're a small business with a lot of things to do. So that, that was one of our, of our goals this year, to go into Tiktok shop. Since June, I started setting it up, but, I mean, but we're doing, kind of doing everything, okay? Now the team has grown, but, but we're doing everything. So we were not able to really try it out. I think we have, like, two or three sales on Tiktok shop, but, yeah, it's, it's in waiting. One of of the social media strategies, his goals is to set up the Tiktok shop and try to reach to out to influencers so they can post about the product and, yeah, and have more brand awareness, because at the end, I mean, we know that our products are good. I mean, that's, that's the feedback that we get. But there's, it's funny, a lot of people, they don't know that these products even exist. Okay, so, so, yeah, we want to get the word out there, and that's what we're going to do next year. Even more,

16:32

what's the, what's the expansion plan? Are you, like, are you thinking, like, Oh, we've got additional products we're going to be launching or, like, expansion packs, like, what's that whole kind of approach? Yeah.

16:43

I mean, this year, that was one of my LinkedIn posts. It was, it was about talking about optimization versus growing. Okay? And the first three years, we did a lot of launches of new products. This year, we decided to, you know what, let's optimize. Let's slow it the slow down the creativity process. And I didn't want well too. I'm not gonna say when. I mean, we were able now we have, like, our listings are amazing. We're very happy with our photos, with our everything that we're doing with our products. But next year, we're going again, like full speed, and we're planning to launch eight new products, maybe a new brand, even. So, yeah, the energy is to double our catalog. I'm not I'm gonna be honest, it's difficult. We love the creativity process. It's between my girlfriend and I. We just sit together, we have, like, creativity weeks, and we disconnect from everything, and we try to come up with new products. For couples. Is difficult. I think for any type of game, is difficult. But yeah, their goal is to launch at least eight products next year, so we're gonna be kind of doubling our catalog. Yeah,

17:47

geez, that's, yeah. I'm thinking about, Oh, you're scaring me. Have fun. How are you thinking about kind of replicating the process and doing it for something other than couples? Or is that you don't have to tell me? Yeah,

17:59

no, no, no, of course. Of course. I mean, we have a big knowledge of Amazon now, and I think it would be a waste not to leverage on what we know. So, so we've been successful for four years there. So we're, we're going to do it slowly, that part, the part of launching a new brand. But yeah, of course, we want to take leverage the part that we know and see if we can maybe start a new brand or something, if it, if it aligns with us and what we like. We always say that we we love playing games and so we love what we're doing right now. So if it's something, I'm not gonna do something for kids, because we don't have kids, okay? So even if they tell me, I'm gonna make millions, it's not about that. If, if I know, if we know that we can make a difference with a product or with a brand, we're gonna do it, yeah,

18:40

how's, uh, how's the expansion into the other regions going? It's

18:44

really well. I mean, we started at the beginning. We started with UK too, and, and it's been going well. And Mexico, I mean, as probably because of my accent, you have noticed, and sometimes I miss some words in English, but yeah, I mean, I speak Spanish. So, so it's Mexico has been doing really well, and we have grown our team in Mexico. Okay? We have found, like, amazing talent in Mexico and and we're taking also advantage of that and growing into Mexico even with products that we don't have in the US marketplace. Okay, so that's the idea, okay? And also, the good thing about having talent in Mexico said they speak English really well. Okay? So they can also help us with the US marketplace. So in Mexico, have been we have we have done really well. And in Australia, I mean, still a small Amazon market, okay? And, and it has been, well, we only launched two products, but the idea is to take the rest of our catalog to take it to Australia to see how it goes. That's a good thing about Amazon, to be honest. It lets you at least test or try new markets. It's kind of easy, and see how it goes. And then, well, then you have to go all in and develop your brand, etc, but, but you can at least do a test in new countries.

19:56

I didn't hear. Are you in Canada? Yeah. No,

20:00

I mean, two years ago we decided to leave Miami, okay, because we're doing this remotely. And we said, You know what, let's travel the world and and right now I'm in Albania in and in December, yeah, very nice. I really recommend it. And we are going back to Miami in December, and then we're doing Argentina, and that's it. We're jumping, like, every three, four months, we jump to different different countries.

20:25

That's, I mean, that's the joy of of having a business that you can do stuff like this with, where it's all online. However, I actually meant, are you selling in Canada through through it was the only country you didn't mention. And I was like, usually when you're in the States, that's like, the very first thing people do is they jump to Canada market.

20:44

We sell in Canada. Yes, we sell in Canada. We have, yeah, like, four of our five or six products. We have them in Canada. Yeah, yeah, in Canada. And we don't have it in French. We haven't only in, like, the US version. We have thought about it. But, I mean, at the end, I've been in Quebec, and I know that they speak French, but they also speak English. So we're kind of, yeah, we're gonna, we're gonna continue rolling into Canada. Yeah, it's not, it's not as we have grown a lot in Mexico and the US and Canada has been more steady the growth, but, but, but it's a good marketplace. But, yeah, it's if you launch in the US. It's, it's a no brainer to launch also in in Canada, yeah? Beautiful. Even in Mexico, you know, because, because you can do like remote fulfillment to Mexico, and there's a lot of people in Mexico that buy your, your your your products, even though they're in English, yeah?

21:36

Beautiful, yeah. No. Amazon, in terms of being, if you start in the states hitting North America, they make it easy. And so if you got the ability to easily translate for the Mexican market, it's just like you could own the whole continent if you need to. But Daniel, this is awesome. I really appreciate all the insight into this very interesting product line. Super appreciate it. I would love to give you the opportunity here let everyone know they can find out more about you, and, of course, more about why don't we?

22:02

Yeah, well, you can follow us on our social media. It's making happy couples on Instagram, on Facebook, on on YouTube. Okay, and you're gonna see more content soon, so, but you're gonna find content already there, so follow us there. Perfect.

22:18

Thank you, sir. Appreciate it. Having on the show everyone who tuned in, of course, thank you as well. Please make sure you 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 and we'll see you all next time.

22:35

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