Konstantinos 00:00
It's a challenge that we're going to we're starting to face, and we're going to be facing is product and price segmentation between different different channels.
Narrator 00:09
Welcome to the E-comm 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 out of the e-Commerce industry from top leaders in the space. Let's get into it!
Andrew Maff 00:24
Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of the E-comm show as usual. I am your host, Andrew Maff, and today I am joined by Konstantinos, who is the founder, CEO, sorry, CEO and partner over at Woowind. How you doing, buddy? Ready for a good show?
Konstantinos 00:37
Yes. Ready for a good show. Thanks for having me.
Andrew Maff 00:42
Yeah, super excited. Appreciate you joining us. Super excited to talk to you. I know you know anything in the kind of you know. So obviously we're going to talk about the whole brand and how it's in the air pump space. But it's more like, it's like electronic air pumps and electronics is always a very interesting world. But you're also based out of Hong Kong correct?
Konstantinos 01:09
Correct, yes. I am between Hong Kong and Shengzhen!
Andrew Maff 01:09
Love it. We're going to learn a lot today. I'm super excited. I like to start these off kind of stereotypically, just kind of give you the floor. Just tell us a little bit about, like, your background, about Woowin and we'll take it from there. Okay?
Konstantinos 01:18
Okay, sure. So let me start. So first of all, thanks for having us. I think it's pretty great to be here a bit of a note about myself. So I've been 20 years on the cross border, operator and an entrepreneur. I've passed through, you know, supply chain logistics to product development, product launches later, having a creative agency and doing the last couple of years, we decided to have our own brands and start to go, go for it. And that's how we have, we have Woowin right? Decide to take some skin in the game. Woowind now on the other side is a portable timeframe. Brand started being Amazon native, and now, during the last couple of years, we're transforming it into basically economic channel player.
Andrew Maff 02:08
Beautiful. So tell me a little bit about the product line.
Konstantinos 02:14
Sure. So the product line, the portable air inflators, I would say, more than tyre inflators. They go from they go on all the segment of uses that you may, you may think on those type of products, right? So we have for, for different type of cars, for, you know, off road pickup trucks. Then to, like motorbikes, bicycles, and then we will move more on the outdoors. So for like air beds, air tents, sup, you know, subs and water sports, inflatables and so on. So we try to cover a bit the whole need of inflation, in that sense.
Andrew Maff 02:50
Beautiful. So is there like a specific like, at least from a marketing perspective, is there like a specific audience that you go after, do you kind of keep it a little bit more general?
Konstantinos 03:00
Well, it's a good question. I mean, at the very beginning it was, it was pretty general. However, as we're moving along, we're, we're kind of like segmenting, segmenting the type of, the type of users. You obviously have someone that comes from, it's more on a user base, user case scenario, right? So you have, let's say, some people that are looking for, you know, the emergency kind of like the peace of mind. But what we've been looking more lately is more the classic kind of, like family oriented male or female, that they want to have something that they can carry with them when they go on a road trip, or they can help inflate or check the tires of their kids. A bit of people that are on the active side, and they like to do something in communion with other ones, right? And then some of the other and then one of the newest product goes a bit more on. You know, the bikers, the ones that want performance, they will go downhill and so on. But mostly, if you ask demographics, is people between, you know, uses 25-35, 25 to 40 around there most
Andrew Maff 04:05
Yeah, gotcha. And so in terms of where you're selling this primarily, so I know, obviously we already mentioned, you're based out of Hong Kong. Or is it a global brand? Or are you mainly focused in Asia, or you mainly focus in the states, like, where? Where's the, at least from a regional perspective, or as a top performer?
Konstantinos 04:22
Yeah, I would say it's a global although it sounds a bit too it's a global brand. So we are selling North America, Europe, mostly. Japan and Australia as well. Currently, our biggest market is Europe, followed by North America, but Canada and US or us in Canada, but the primary focus, I would say, is Europe.
Andrew Maff 04:46
Gotcha. And so what? What leaves you in in Hong Kong right now?
Konstantinos 04:52
What do you mean?
Andrew Maff 04:54
Well, like, so if a majority of your sales are based out of like, out of Europe and out of North America, and is, are you manufacturing in Hong Kong?
Konstantinos 05:03
We are producing, we're producing in Shengzhen, so, so, okay, that's one reasons to be close to, you know, the our partners and the whole team, right. So our team is speeded location, so all the back office and R&D is based in Shenzhen, and then the whole marketing media by, you know, social and even the product design is based overseas. So we are having both, both sides. I do travel a lot. My partner lives in Europe, and I'm there and I'm and I'm here.
Andrew Maff 05:37
That's a long trip. So we got mostly in Europe. You're mostly North America. I got those two as your main two regions right now. What about from a sales channels perspective, or is it primarily an Amazon? Is it primarily retail website? Where are you seeing most of the success right now?
Konstantinos 05:59
I mean, Amazon, for sure, still keep drives most of the traffic and volume, volume wise. However, where we are more excited these are our DTC and our offline distribution, plus some of the other platforms and channels, online platforms and channels we are going in both in Europe and in the UK as a whole. That is what is exciting us more, because not only providing a very valid alternative, but what I at least personally realize is that going to more channels, and especially the offline is, is basic is, how can I say it helps you professionalize more. It helps you give one more, one huge step forward as an organization, as a system, your processes, the product quality and everything that then hits back on your Amazon and your online channels, right? So it's kind of like a leap forward you're doing, and then hopefully it hits as you are stepping up the game. So for us, it's very exciting to start developing those ones since I would say Q4 last year.
Andrew Maff 07:09
Oh, wow. Okay, so basically, what you're saying is, as you kind of expand into these additional sales channels, you're kind of seeing that like rising tides, lift all boats, concept, where it's it's really helping the business holistically, and kind of developing that more omni channel concept, so it's raising all the sales channels.
Konstantinos 07:30
Everything, yeah, definitely, and obviously, you know, like you can, you can see on the sales perspective, or, you know, bottom line, whatever. But what is more interesting is the thinking you are, you are, you are creating, right? And, you know, it forces you to segment your products. It forces you to have a very clear pricing strategy. Forces you to have different marketing for different channels, your supply chain needs to be, you know, much more developed so, so all these at the end hits back to your original kind of, like online, online side or and then it kind of retrofits one with the other one. It's kind of a journey, and sometimes you hit, how can I say maybe you hit your face in the wall, because, you know, going from purely off online to, you know, to offline, is a challenge, but that challenge makes you become better at the same time.
Andrew Maff 08:24
Yeah, and are you doing more offline marketing initiatives as well?
Konstantinos 08:30
We start to do mostly with some of our partners. So to give you an example, right now, there was this exhibition of motorbikes in France. So we, not only we would like to have a booth, but in this case, we had, like a small testing and a small, kind of like local activation, right? Like an offline small activation. And we try to find small ones so you can create, kind of, like a local community, and that's what makes you different, and also makes you look better in front of your distributors, right? So, so it's a two, it's a two way you also get content from your online you get that, then it kind of hits you back, right? So, so that's kind of like a cycle we're trying to to create.
Andrew Maff 09:15
Yeah, let's say I find a lot of brands don't do that kind of more in person events or attend trade shows and things like that, and kind of you get in front of, obviously, their ideal audience. Do you find that, at least for you guys, that's performed very well? Have you done it before?
Konstantinos 09:33
We haven't done it before. I think we're starting, as I mentioned. We started since q4 end of q3 q4 last year, we find that when you kind of activate, let's say an O to O, like online to offline or offline to online. The delta is much higher than if you only activate one channel alone. So if you can, if you can do that, then it's more interesting. And in our case, every type of product has a very significant, a very concrete niche, right? So for instance, if you speak about motorbike users, they are very on the motorbike, right? And even inside, you have the guys that will do a duo versus the people that will do street bikes. So the more you can kind of speak to them and find them offline, it's easier than only activating online, right? Then maybe your, your effect of your next campaign is, is better, then it becomes kind of better. So in our case, we find that it works, it works better.
Andrew Maff 10:36
Yeah, so from an online marketing perspective, what tends to be the better performers is it, are you leaning into like, affiliate influencer marketing, things like that and social media, or is it more like, you know, sem people are already searching for this type of stuff?
Konstantinos 10:51
I would say both, both obviously the more effective ones if you manage to have a very interesting influencer campaign or affiliate influencer campaign, this drives sales and drives awareness.
Konstantinos 11:08
But okay, let's take a step back. I think it's more how you define your funnel, right? And then it's part where it hits influencer campaigns or collaborations, a lot of times, is about the awareness. We also realized, in our case, that many people don't really know the solution. They don't know that, oh, there is an electric, electronic, portable pump, right? So that helps them to discover, oh, there is this product, right? And there is this brand, and you have this category that I didn't think about it, and then probably, as they go down the SEM and paid media is what actually probably converts, unless you hit with another campaign of people they really trust, right? And then this okay, if this professional is using it, or this guy I really follow on bikes says that it is an absolute gadget for your road trips, then they will consider so it's kind of just like in a combination.
Narrator 12:07
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Andrew Maff 12:41
So let me ask you, because that's a very interesting point. So you're selling in multiple marketplaces, you're selling on D2C, Amazon, all these other places. Then you have these marketing efforts. You have clear like awareness elements, and more like middle of funnel, bottom of funnel elements. But as you also mentioned, like the more sales channels you're in, you're kind of seeing that concept of all of your marketplaces, like, you see sales rise across the board. How are you monitoring? Like, from the efforts that you do from an offline perspective, or that funnel that you just mentioned, like, how do you monitor how much growth you might be seeing on the marketplaces because of those efforts. Like to give you an example, someone could see, you know, a great influencer campaign, and they loved it. And then you're retargeting, did really well, and it stayed on top of them. But then they decided, oh, I want to go to Amazon. So do you actually monitor that, or is there a way that you're kind of just evaluating overall marketing budget to overall revenue coming in?
Konstantinos 13:39
Okay. Good question. Again, I would say it's a bit of a combination of both. Obviously, you have the overall revenue, and then you see how the overall budget and the overall revenue, and you see how they are combining. But at the same time, whenever there is an activation offline, in that case, we can monitor, do we always try to monitor doing those dates, if we have a peak in our at least on our website and at least in Amazon, that you can really follow questions and search and so on right. And then obviously we have our brand, branded keyword searches. We see over time how they are, how they are evolving on the DTC, we see the orders where they come from. So we try, we try, always, to see if there is a connection between those ones. So we did one in Germany. Suddenly, you know, Germany, we combined PR offline activation, and then we clearly saw both Amazon and DTC sales peaking for a week, right? A week or 10 days that one in France did the same in France. So this one we are seeing now, what is not so easy to see is if you are doing, let's say awareness campaigns or selling campaigns in meta or somewhere else whether it hits your Amazon, normally, you will see it as long when you stop them. But it's also like to stop them, because normally you see them, but it's difficult to calculate, obviously, top of funnel activation Tiktok, you know, Instagram, especially localized. They also you also see doing those days the traffic. So, so we don't have any tool, but we try to monitor the traffic on the website and Amazon when we do certain campaigns.
Andrew Maff 15:31
Yeah, beautiful, yeah, that would, I mean, that would make the most sense, because there's really only a couple ways to look at it. I know it's a big conversation all the time, since these marketplaces are hiding a lot of their data. It's, it's, it's 2026, so I would be remiss to not ask, AI, are you leveraging it? How do you use it? What's the concept? I know at this point, everyone's tired of talking about it, but what's, how are you currently using it at all?
Konstantinos 15:58
It's a good point. I mean, being very honest, completely, completely honest. I am not sure that we have seen the best way yet to use it for, for us, for our type of business, right, like, I cannot say over maximizing the use of the use of AI. So far, the applications we're having is more if we identify like a pain point in productivity or a pain point in control, then we create, we have created few systems to do that. So for instance, reporting from all the different marketplaces and D2C on a daily on a daily basis, some signals when things are not going correct with some kind of I can say some kind of proposed action plan on those signals, then I can actually connect to the different people, because we kind of work across all time zones. We have people from US to China. So this is something we are doing because we were seeing that, you know, coordination is not as efficient as it could as it could be so. So that's, for instance, a very clear way we are using right like collect, have a, you know, receiving signals from the different marketplaces on a daily basis. If something goes off with certain parameters, create an action plan, and then distribute to people, and then monitor how these actions are going. This is something we are doing obviously, you know, ideation, going through comments, you know, that whole content wise, and everything that's for sure, a piece, it's helping. We are not using it so much on creative so far, or video, because we find that product manipulation is not ideal yet, right? Like, static is okay, but manipulating is not there. Doesn't give a really alive very, you know, like very alive feeling, yeah.
Andrew Maff 18:00
Yeah, yeah. I don't think I would agree. I don't think the creatives really there yet, but that's very interesting in feeding in the data from there. Gotcha. So one of the things I always like to ask, because it's always kind of interesting, is, you know, when I we have these conversations, and it's always, you know, here's our product line, here's how great it is, here's all the marketplaces we're on, here's the marketing, here's everything that's working. Blah, blah. What would you say right now is, like the biggest struggle? What are you, what's the team struggling with the most right now that you guys are trying to figure out?
Konstantinos 18:33
Yeah, so I guess you have one of the things we are struggling or is a challenge that we're going to we're going to we're starting to face, and we're going to be facing is, is really the product and price segmentation between different different channels. Is not is something very new for us. So we are kind of now developing that system, that is not something we have it perfect yet, right? And, of course, because you started being in all those channels, with your current product development, right? Your current SKUs, your new ones, that they come to be different, they are not there yet, but you are already on those channels, right? So this is, this is a small issue we are facing, or we are facing the other one, see, I'll give you three. I think the other one is also when you go into many like prioritizing right like where you put the right resources for which channels and marketing activities. Because obviously, you know, cash flow and the whole thing is not unlimited. And then I will say the proper awareness in, let's say, in the case of Europe, like, what's the kind of, like, the flywheel of awareness, right? Like this kind of thing that you managed to really crack it and work. It's not us, I wouldn't say we haven't cracked it, but we are struggling to figure out let's say what works in France will work in Germany, if it's not, how to tweak it in Germany, how to make it for Spain, how is UK and UK something completely different? This kind of element this, this is also something we are, we are still trying to get into the bottom of that.
Konstantinos 19:19
Correct? Yes, yeah. I mean is, yeah, is not obviously. I mean, it's not a translation, right? Plus, then you have so many local understanding to do about how, the how the users use, it, the creatives, but also how, what, let's say, what are those signals that users are actually responding to?
Konstantinos 19:19
And sometimes you don't really know until you try many, many different alternatives and ways. Maybe one country is more the family, maybe the other one is mostly the sport. Maybe the other one is, you know, so you basically, you need to test it.
Andrew Maff 19:22
Yeah, like, so you're saying, like, so you're saying, like, when you go into different countries, like, it's pretty difficult to kind of rinse and repeat something that worked well in one definitely doesn't mean it's going to work well in another. So you almost have to start over in a certain aspect.
Andrew Maff 19:32
Yeah, yeah, those cultural differences can make a pretty big difference there. What's the plan going forward, what's the goal over the next few years?
Konstantinos 21:23
Yeah. I mean, there are, I will say, three elements, right? Like, obviously, consolidate the offline, the offline presence strongly, strongly in Europe. So I think for us, Europe is a priority in the sense of capture the market and be able to defend it very, very, very well. That will be number one.
Konstantinos 21:46
Number two is the product line. We are creating some new products, bringing some new kind of technology that exists in some other parts into this one. So change a bit of concept. Make it, you know, more powerful, smaller and so on. So, I think a full, a full product line, seeing also how the product can can escape. And more on a personal level, our business, we are looking into creating a small portfolio as well. So, so we are looking into how, let's say, this structure, we have created, both in the, you know, in the offline, online, to see the whole team how we can increase and bring maybe one or two more brands, maybe one brand this year, another one next year. That would be that's kind of like the plan. So, so those two for, for Woowind, then maybe the other one for, for our business.
Andrew Maff 22:46
Yeah, are you thinking of starting a new product line from scratch, or are you looking at acquisitions?
Konstantinos 22:52
We're looking for more acquisitions or partnerships? Yeah, no, that would be, I mean, obviously started from zero is very, very, is very, very tempting, but we saw that also the zero to one is it has a very it has a huge risk, especially on the supply chain side and everything, if it's something completely, completely new.
Konstantinos 23:18
So doesn't mean that the branding itself needs to be already up and running. But however, the supply chain and the structure behind needs to be already past, let's say the zero, the zero, the zero to one at this stage right. Or else, when launching products and doing products, you realize a lot of times that the very basic thing of success is actually supply chain, right? Is huge component, and it's only you that can produce, but you can scale. You can replicate. You can create a catalog. You can, you can grow. So we are looking, we will be looking something that's at least at that stage,
Andrew Maff 24:00
Beautiful, that is super exciting, that sounds really fun, Konstantinos, really appreciate you joining me today. I don't want to take up more of your time I know you're super busy. I would love to give you the opportunity to tell everyone where they can find out more about you, and, of course, more about Woowind.
Konstantinos 24:18
Sure, yes, that'd be great. Thank you. Yeah, thanks for having us. Yeah, man, that was great. Yeah, no worries.
Andrew Maff 24:22
Appreciate you joining everyone who tuned in. Obviously, thank you as well. Please make sure you do the usual thing, rate review, subscribe to all that fun stuff, or check us out on whichever podcast platform you want, or head over to theecommshow.com to check out all of our previous episodes, and I will see you all next time. Have a good one!
Narrator 24:40
Thank you for tuning in to the E-comm show. Head over to theecommshow.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!