Tote&Carry:

Jeff Walter (00:00)

Hi, I’m Jeff Walter and welcome back to the training impact podcast the podcast about scaling channel performance training infrastructure My guest today is Emily Vernon Emily is the head of social media at

 

tote and carry. They’re an affordable luxury bag brand specializing in statement fashion pieces and travel sets designed to elevate your look for any occasion. Emily, welcome to the podcast.

 

Emily (00:24)

Thank you. Thanks for having me on.

 

Jeff Walter (00:26)

So Emily, as my listeners know, the first thing I, you I always, I’m always interested in the human story. You know, how did, I always believe we’re, you’re accidental tourists in our careers, but with a, with a destination that we think we’re in mind. So, so how’d you end up over at Toten Carey? Tell us a little bit more about Toten Carey, how you ended up there, what your role is and all that good fun stuff.

 

Emily of Tote&Carry (00:48)

Sure, I’ll give you a little bit of my origin story. I’m originally from Florida, but I moved to LA working in a career in predominantly fashion corporate on the e-commerce side. So worked for brands for many years, worked for True Religion, The Honest Company, VCBG. And I actually started an agency ⁓ working with brands on ⁓ web development as well as email marketing. And I actually was introduced

 

Jeff Walter (01:05)

Mm-hmm.

 

Emily of Tote&Carry (01:13)

through a friend to the owner of Totten Carey. And that’s kind of how I got started working as the head of social media, as well as partnerships and influencer marketing.

 

Jeff Walter (01:22)

So, and that’s what we want to focus on. know, like I said earlier, know, Tone Carry makes some really nice high fashion yet affordable stuff, you know, look good, but doesn’t kill your wallet. the cool, affordable luxury. And the cool thing is it’s a direct, you know, predominantly direct to consumer, but we’ll talk about some of your future plans. And you’ve built a really great channel.

 

Emily of Tote&Carry (01:33)

Affordable luxury. ⁓

 

Mm-hmm.

 

Jeff Walter (01:48)

you know, with ambassadors and affiliates. so let’s talk about that and a little bit, you know, help us understand. Okay. So you’re a direct to consumer company. I think it’s the, you’re the first one I’ve interviewed that’s built this type of channel partner. We’re using ambassadors and affiliates. So, so what was the vision? How did you guys put it together? What, you know, help people understand what it is. And I’ll ask 17 more questions before we’re done.

 

Emily of Tote&Carry (02:13)

Definitely. So I think there’s several different ways of getting visibility to your brand, right? One of them being ads. But another big channel is influencer marketing. getting, so there’s a couple of brands that have gone viral. I’m not sure if you’ve ever heard of comfort, comfort hoodies. went viral on TikTok because they literally flooded TikTok with affiliates. They were just gifting all of this product. And it’s like, every time you go to your for you page, you’re like, what is this hoodie? And there’s an advert site.

 

Jeff Walter (02:28)

Mm-hmm.

 

All

 

right.

 

Emily of Tote&Carry (02:38)

advertising

 

stat that’s like if you have to see a brand seven times before you purchase it. So it’s like you see it so many times and you’re like, you know what? I’m sold. Let me try it. There’s got to be something to it if I keep seeing it all over my page. And that’s kind of what influencer marketing is. It’s just your, your creative program. Our ambassador program is predominantly based off of gifting. So we gift, you know, our influencers, people that either

 

⁓ reach out to us because they love the brand. I think we’ve been around for 10 years, so we grew kind of a following, so we get reached out to all the time for modeling gigs and that sort of thing. Or we do outreach to influencers, or we meet them. We do have like a street team, so we’ll meet them at events. We’re in LA, so there’s a lot going on. And we will propose like, hey, we’ll gift you XYZ bags in exchange for content. You have to post it.

 

We need white listing ⁓ ad usage and if you’re a top creator, you incentivize them. So you either regift them or give them a percentage of sales. But it’s just another way for people to see your brand that may not have ever seen your brand. So you can only target so much from an ad perspective, but you may get their followers or some of their eyes from their audience coming to your brand based off of them posting it.

 

So that’s kind of just another way of people getting visibility to the brown.

 

Jeff Walter (03:56)

Okay. So, so let’s kind of, uh, start piecing it apart. And it’s, and it’s really cool. As, as you were talking, I recently was at a conference and I got to see Damon John, uh, talk about how he got his, and he, and, know, kind of pre-internet. And it was, it was the same thing. He got, he got all this stuff on all the rap videos and all that and all, and, and, uh, but if, if I could just, uh, go down a rat hole, which, uh, or rabbit hole, should say.

 

Emily of Tote&Carry (04:13)

Yeah.

 

Exactly.

 

Jeff Walter (04:24)

One of the coolest things he did when he was talking and it was listening to one of the coolest things he did is he noticed that, you know, back in Queens, back in Hollis, you know, there was graffiti on all the gates that would come down. And he went around to all the store owners and said, would you mind if I spanked it over your graffiti with my brand? And this is, this is way back when he was starting and he was hustling. And so he did over, I think he said over 200 storefronts.

 

Emily of Tote&Carry (04:36)

Mm-hmm.

 

yeah.

 

Jeff Walter (04:52)

with their security gates down and he spray painted, you know, authorized distributor of his brand with the brand logo on there. And so like when you came in in the morning at the Hollis, it was all his advertising all over the place. every, you know, it’s like, it didn’t matter if you were a Chinese restaurant, a dry cleaner. It didn’t matter what you were, you were an authorized distributor.

 

Emily of Tote&Carry (05:08)

Wow.

 

that’s amazing. See, it’s like

 

you see it everywhere and you’re like, that must be like something, you know what I mean? It just registers to people.

 

Jeff Walter (05:25)

⁓

 

Exactly. then, but then same thing, you know, in terms of getting it out there, getting people wearing it, getting influencers that were not social media influencers back then. But anyway, I just thought it was really interesting as you were talking about. So how do you put that plan together? Because you got a brand, you got, I mean, especially you guys, right? You have a very specific set of brand standards, right?

 

Your brand means something. You’re not selling copper pipe, right? So you got some brand standards and then in order to get the influence, there’s got to be a, you got to identify them. You got to help us walk me through the process. how do you, you know what you guys stand for. You know what your ICP is. So now what do you do?

 

Emily of Tote&Carry (06:12)

Yeah,

 

there’s different systems you can utilize and now AI is a big factor, right? So one of the systems we use for influencer marketing, specifically for Metta is called Grin. And then we use for affiliate marketing, which is specifically TikTok, we use something called super affiliates, we are in the process of actually potentially moving to another platform that’s in just up for debate in discussions right now. But a lot of those tools

 

For instance, like super affiliates has AI that will help you find the highest GMV creators that suit your brand. So AI is a big factor in this. And then also just, I think seeing what was done previously, what works from an ad perspective and then kind of capitalizing off of that. there’s, I might have a vision of what I think needs to.

 

be the influencer. But then when we see ad performance, we’re like, well, our customer is a little bit of an older demographic. We need to give them the type of content that they’re looking for. So actually looking for creators that make the most sense for our brand and our target demo, as well as incentivizing the creators that we’ve already worked with. So that’s actually what we’re kind of doing right now is going through looking at ad performance, looking at.

 

the highest creators that have had the highest revenue and going back and starting that relationship. A lot of it is relationship building. You don’t want to just work with a creator and then discard them and move on to the next one. It’s like, hey, you’re doing really well. We want to work with you and have you grow with the brand. And building that relationship has a lot to do with it.

 

Jeff Walter (07:42)

Okay. And so, so help me understand, cause this is new to me. So I, I may not be the sharpest tool in the shed, but I get it eventually. So when you’re saying ad, you’re talking about the content that the influencer is creating, not a paid ad, like a Google ad or anything like that. You’re talking about that’s the content. Yeah.

 

Emily of Tote&Carry (07:58)

Yes, a paid ad. So there’s two types of ads. There’s ads that

 

you can run. All of them are paid, right? You’ve got to pay for ads in general. But just an ad that you’re feeding to Metta and you’re deciding if you want it to be a retargeting ad to retarget people that have already, that are familiar with their brand. And that actually performs usually better than an ad targeting a new customer, right? New customer acquisition. So there’s different strategies for that.

 

Jeff Walter (08:05)

Right.

 

Okay.

 

Emily of Tote&Carry (08:22)

but there’s also a type of ad called whitelisting, which we’ve seen a lot of success on. And that’s essentially any either customer or influencer that had posted a video or any type of content on specifically Instagram or Facebook meta in general. We can send them a request to run it as an ad. So essentially when you’re going down your timeline, it looks like somebody’s profile. So it’s actually gaining a lot of visibility to your page.

 

Jeff Walter (08:41)

you

 

Emily of Tote&Carry (08:47)

but it just has a small carousel underneath and it’s like shop now if you want to purchase what was in that image. But it looks like your profile has your caption. I mean, we do have the ability to edit the captions, but that whitelisting, it’s more organic. And as a person who’s on the feed scrolling, it doesn’t look like an ad. So it feels more organic shopping than actually seeing an ad and purchasing from it.

 

Jeff Walter (09:11)

Okay. So, so let’s, let’s start at the beginning. I’m ⁓ a, I want to kick off a program where I created an ambassador program where I’m going to, build a network of, of social media influencers. Right. And, ⁓ so what would your, if I was starting from zero, what would your suggestion be to somebody that’s just starting out? Like.

 

Emily of Tote&Carry (09:14)

Mm-hmm.

 

would say number

 

one, and I can tell you this just from experience, have a creative brief of specific deliverables that you want. If you let creators go and create, sometimes you’re not gonna get what you want and you want it to be branded. You want it to be aesthetically pleasing because there’s times where we’ve done that in the past where it’s like, well, let’s let them be creative, but then sometimes they might not match the brand. So you wanna give them a specific creative brief that outlines exactly

 

what it is you’re looking for. You know, give them some examples of content that has been done in the past that has performed well. And then give them just ideas for captions or, you know, the type of music, the type of lighting, just to give them an idea of aesthetically how you want the video to be. And then also letting them know what is the usage for this video. We’re going to be using it for ads. We’re going to be using it for whitelisting. We’re going to be using it for, you know, on the website and whatever the terms are. Some people

 

only want 60 or 90 day windows. Some people don’t care. So just outlining those deliverables. you get, you make sure you have your video within X amount of time. It looks, you know, branded and you’re able to utilize it with all the channels that you want to use it for.

 

Jeff Walter (10:45)

So, so you called that a content brief. Was that the right term? Okay. And then, so basically, you know, first thing is figure out what you want, put a content brief together. Basically has all your brand standards in there and, you know, and, target demographic and ICP and all that kind of fun stuff. But then also around that, you know, all those standards and that, okay. Now I’ve got that. Now I’ve got to go start recruiting people. I want to start recruiting ambassadors.

 

Emily of Tote&Carry (10:48)

content brief. Yeah.

 

Okay.

 

Jeff Walter (11:13)

So how do I go get ambassadors?

 

Emily of Tote&Carry (11:17)

So if you, you’re going to have to use a system at some point. So whether it’s grin, whether it’s super affiliates, whatever this system is, there’s Kruva, there’s a couple, there’s a bunch of different ones. They have an AI tool in there. If you’re just brand new and you don’t know where to start, there’s AI tools. You can say, this is our target demo. This is the type of creator. This is the type of content. That’s one route. Another route that I’ve done as well is going through specifically, I look at TikTok.

 

Jeff Walter (11:26)

Okay.

 

Emily of Tote&Carry (11:45)

and I’ll look at competitors. Who’s made videos for our competitors that look really good and are visually pleasing and also let’s say there are people that do bag reviews or whatever it is that we’re looking for specifically, I’ll do outreach personally to those creators. Hey, my name is Emily of Tote&Carry. I’m the head of social media at Totten Carey. Love your content, wanna work with you. And that personal touch actually has gotten a lot of traction of just reaching out to people personally.

 

Jeff Walter (12:10)

Okay.

 

So, it seems like from a ambassador development system, you got two channels, right? It’s one is find a good tool based on the platform that you want to use. There’s a number of tools out there. You mentioned a few. And within that tool, you can specify what your ideal customer profile is.

 

Emily of Tote&Carry (12:27)

Mm-hmm.

 

Jeff Walter (12:34)

Put some other things like, which gets into the demographics, put some other things like, what kind of content you’re interested in making and, and, and some descriptors around that. And then based on that, it basically goes out into the universe and, or into the platform and then comes back and goes, here’s a list of a bunch of people that we think would be good ambassadors for your brand. Is that, am I getting that? And then I would imagine that they have the, the pipeline tools to sit there and go.

 

Emily of Tote&Carry (12:56)

Mm-hmm. Yes.

 

Jeff Walter (13:03)

Reach out to them, follow up with them until you bring them in and close them as an ambassador. Am I thinking about that right? Okay.

 

Emily of Tote&Carry (13:11)

Yes, yes, definitely.

 

And I think another big recommendation I would make is depending on what your strategy is, right? When you’re a smaller brand and you’re just starting out, I would say less is more. So try to be very intentional about the creators, especially if you’re paying them, right? Be very intentional about the creators that you’re using. And I would use a smaller set of creators. I think when you’re a bigger brand, there’s a lot more

 

I would say like pressure to do outreach. So you’re just reaching out to people, but it might not fit the brand. So I would say in other brands that I’ve worked for, I’ve noticed that they were using, they were outsourcing a lot of the outreach to other countries, let’s say Philippines or whatever. And I think a lot of it was very chatty BT, impersonal, felt like AI. And I think that personal touch really makes a difference. Cause again, your relationship building with this creator from day one.

 

Jeff Walter (13:53)

Right.

 

Emily of Tote&Carry (14:05)

So you wanna make it a little bit more personal. I also noticed a difference even when I do the whitelisting. So I do the outreach through Meta. It sends a request to the creator to say, can we list your, use this as an ad. But it’s just like a small little, like if you open it, maybe you’ll think it’s spam. You might not know what that is and some people ignore it. But I sent a personal message right after I send the whitelist request and I say, hey, we wanna bring visibility to your page.

 

Jeff Walter (14:05)

Right.

 

No.

 

Emily of Tote&Carry (14:33)

And I’ve noticed that a ton more people are accepting the request versus one that I was just sending the meta requests because you want that personal touch. I’m not a person or I am a person. I’m not a robot. Yeah. And then I also put my email. I also put my email in there if you have any questions. So I noticed that people email me and they’re like, Hey, I’m a model or this. And, know, sometimes it could, it could get your inbox a little noisy, that little personal touch makes a big difference.

 

Jeff Walter (14:40)

Now, interesting.

 

I’m right. Well, you know, it’s really interesting. Yeah.

 

Well, you know, it’s interesting because we’re finding the same thing. And just as an individual, I’m, you know, I’m finding the same thing that there seems to be a order of magnitude uptick in messaging of all types. And like 90 % of it is automated and you’re just like, you know, but that, well, so, and it was, that’s interesting that, you know, that you bring in that personal touch. So, you know, getting back to the two channels there, there’s, you’re using these tools to identify potential.

 

Emily of Tote&Carry (15:17)

Yeah.

 

Jeff Walter (15:31)

ambassadors, content creators, and then there’s a whole treatment strategy, right? You’ve got the, just do the automated thing, do the personal thing. You get higher up to, you know, it’s kind of one of those, you know, you got to invest more, but you get more, right? Um, but then the other thing you said that was also interesting is you created a second channel, which is, Hey, I’m going out to my competitors. I’m searching the platforms, you know, uh, and, looking for particular types of content creators. And then.

 

Emily of Tote&Carry (15:36)

Mm-hmm.

 

Jeff Walter (16:01)

I’m identifying them kind of, you know, the old fashioned shoe leather way. Like I see them, I like them. I put them in my hopper. I see them. I like them. put it, and then you put them in your hopper and you start, you know, the treatment strategy, however, you know, whatever, which is more of a direct outreach, right? Hey, so are you stuff what you did for X or what you do or what you did for this brand? You know, am I getting that right? Okay. Okay. And then if I’m following the process, it’s okay. Okay. So I got somebody that goes, yeah, this would be awesome.

 

Emily of Tote&Carry (16:22)

Yeah, no, absolutely.

 

Jeff Walter (16:31)

I’d like to do this and you’re giving them a nickel or you’re giving them some swag or you’re giving them something for their efforts. commissions on the uplift like an affiliate or their own link. Like, I guess that’s all part of the onboarding process. You’ve got the…

 

You’ve got the guidelines that you put together earlier, the brand guidelines, content guidelines, content brief. Sorry, that was right. Did I get that right? The content brief. then on top of that, you’ve got, well, here’s the reward system, whatever that is. It could be, here’s a dollar. It could be, here’s how you earn free gifts. It could be, here’s the link that gets you affiliate dollars. Am I hitting all the major ones? Right.

 

Emily of Tote&Carry (16:50)

Okay.

 

Yeah, content brief. ⁓

 

Yeah.

 

Yeah.

 

Yes. on

 

our end, what our strategy is, free gifts and 20 % commission.

Jeff Walter (00:00)

Emily of Tote&Carry, you know one thing I noticed on your website is that you had several levels of ambassador I don’t know if it was bronze silver gold, but they were like something like a level one level two level three

 

How does that play into this whole, you you’ve got this program with certain commissions and gifting. So how does one go from, you know, was it bronze, silver, gold, or was it something different?

 

Emily of Tote&Carry of Tote&Carry(00:25)

It’s different. Ours is travel related. it’s like economy, business, first class.

 

Jeff Walter (00:30)

Okay, and so how does one go from being an economy ambassador to a business class or a first class ambassador?

 

Emily of Tote&Carry(00:38)

It’s all dependent on how your content performs. So based on sales, based on revenue, based on, you know, if your ad performs well, then we kind of move you to another tier, but it’s based on revenue.

 

Jeff Walter (00:51)

Okay, so we did the onboarding, two different ways. had the kind of, hey, let me go out and find people that I think would be good ambassadors. And then you had the let me use the tool, every platform has its own set of third party tools that help you manage this type of thing. Now you’ve got them on board. We’ve given them the brand standards and the content brief.

 

and now they’re starting to produce content which I assume they’re putting it out on their, you know, as their content. And then that’s where they’re getting the click through revenue on for that. But then you’re looking at that content and going, hey, I really like this. I wanna promote this through a paid ad. Is that, okay, and that’s the white label that you’re talking about. And then it shoots into people’s…

 

Emily of Tote&Carry(01:20)

Yeah.

 

Yes.

 

Jeff Walter (01:37)

It pops in and they don’t even realize they’re looking at an ad because they’re actually they’re not looking at an ad They’re looking at somebody’s content. You’re just paying to promote that content, which is

 

Emily of Tote&Carry(01:44)

Yeah. Yeah,

 

it literally looks just like their profile. has their, their Instagram handle the same way you would see somebody’s post on your feed. The only difference is that has a small car, carousel underneath with some products in it and it’ll say like shop now or whatever CTA we add to that.

 

Jeff Walter (02:02)

And now when people buy off of that, is that counting towards, is that commissionable or since you’re promoting it, it’s not commissionable? Right, okay, because you’re promoting it.

 

Emily of Tote&Carry(02:10)

That one is not commissionable. White listing

 

is not commissionable, but if they’re promoting on their end, yes. But sometimes we do utilize something that has like, sometimes they’ll put text on it that has their promo code on it. So then technically they still can get commission from that. it’s in the caption or somewhere written on the image, they can still get commission. But are we paying commission from the ad? No, not at this time.

 

Jeff Walter (02:16)

Okay.

 

Okay, gotcha.

 

Yeah, so they’re creating content, putting on their own channel. You’re repurposing that as ad content to go on.

 

promoting it however you’re promoting it. Maybe there’s a promo code in there that ends up tagging back to them if it’s in but that’s not you know that so it can be a little bit of both but that and then and then you’re looking at the performance of the ad and then you’re also looking at the performance of the content they’re creating and saying ⁓ this particular partner you know the unit economics of this partner are this versus this other partner this other partner this other partner.

 

Emily of Tote&Carry(02:53)

Yes.

 

Jeff Walter (03:10)

Really interesting. That’s, that’s, that’s, and then, and then as, as your product line is evolved, I’m just starting to think of other things. As your product line is evolving, how does that update, you know, it’s a new season, you’ve got new, you know, new product, you’re pushing it out there. Does it go through the gifting and, and, know, lather, rinse, repeat is, and, keeping them on the brand standards is that.

 

Like, so you’re tracking the performance. Help me understand that a little bit.

 

Emily of Tote&Carry(03:42)

Yeah, so we’re tracking performance based on, you know, either revenue or how people are interacting with the post. There’s a couple of different KPIs that we use. And then that’s that helps us determine is this somebody that’s going to move to the next level? Are we going to continue working with them? Do we want to continue further building this relationship? Is this on brand for us? So it’s just, you know, monitoring the KPIs.

 

Jeff Walter (04:07)

Okay. And what are your highest value KPIs for you as the, you know, as a sponsor of the network?

 

Emily of Tote&Carry(04:14)

I would

 

say definitely revenue and how often we track a lot of that through their promo code. So are people using this promo code? Are they adding these products to their cart? If there’s like a specific product that we were gifting, you know, what’s the conversion rate, those types of KPIs we’re looking at.

 

Jeff Walter (04:32)

So kind of your classic e-commerce type of stuff, but now you’re narrowing it down to this ambassador versus this ambassador, this partner versus this partner versus this partner versus this partner. And for those that are looking at this or that are doing it and want to take that performance to the next level.

 

Emily of Tote&Carry(04:37)

Yep, classic metrics. Yeah.

 

Yeah.

 

Yeah.

 

Jeff Walter (04:56)

What kind of, I mean, how variable do you see these, performance from partner A to partner B? Like, you know, do you have, like, is it, you know, huge, narrow? Like, is it, I gotta imagine the variability would be huge.

 

Emily of Tote&Carry(05:13)

Definitely, and also we’re always testing different types of content. Because I think we’re always trying to, and I think every brand kind of gets caught up in this, is capturing all audiences, right? But then also staying true to who your demo is. So we do want to capture that Gen Z and younger audience. we do use creators and contents that’s kind of geared towards that, but does that work for us? So I think testing, you’re always in a testing phase of like,

 

Jeff Walter (05:36)

Right.

 

Emily of Tote&Carry(05:40)

Content is so subjectable, you know what I mean? It’s like, you might think it looks great, I might think it looks great, but is it converting? And there’s some element, you know, it’s like, there’s a secret sauce to everything that it’s like, what is it that’s making people convert? Is it that they resonate so much with this creator and they love them? Is it the content? Is it, that they’ve seen an ad 10 times and they’re like, okay, let me just try it. So it’s always trying to find the why in everything. Why are people purchasing? Why are people?

 

Jeff Walter (05:43)

Mm-hmm.

 

Emily of Tote&Carry(06:09)

you know, adding this to their cart. Why are people clicking on the ad? So just always trying to work through and test and figure out what that why is.

 

Jeff Walter (06:16)

As you’ve been as you’ve been doing that have you have you come across any real big surprises like hey I thought this bag would be great for this demographic But then I’ve got a creator that you know, has a slightly different ⁓ audience and all of a sudden it took off like in this other demo like You know, what kind of funds what kind of fun surprises have come along as you’ve been doing this?

 

Emily of Tote&Carry(06:36)

Yes.

 

I mean, I think the surprises are more when I get the tagged photos from our customers, because we get tagged quite a bit. And I see the customer and the type of content. And it’s not content that I would probably consume just because I’m a different demographic. I’m a millennial, you know? And then I see that and I’m like, OK, maybe we’re approaching this too aesthetic and it needs to be more organic and it needs to be more like relaxed and just like, you know, it doesn’t have to be so posy and like,

 

photo shooting, it doesn’t have to be perfect. And I think that’s my bigger surprise is like, I look at content, especially from like competitors or other travel brands. And I think we get caught up in this like, it needs to look this certain way. But sometimes when it’s, and that’s the beauty of like TikTok, I guess, is you could come as you are, be yourself. You don’t have to have your hair and makeup done. You could do whatever you want. You could do your unboxing video and your PJs. And I think that type of content.

 

Jeff Walter (07:13)

Right.

 

Emily of Tote&Carry(07:37)

versus the super stage stuff that does perform well. Or I even see creators content that goes crazy and gets crazy engagement. And it’s really just like them at home, know, putting stuff on their kitchen counter, not caring what their kids running around. Like I think that type of stuff works now. Like I think we’re in a generation now where it’s just like, doesn’t have to be that perfection anymore. can be just like, it has to resonate. It has to be relatable. And I think a lot of our, you know, our audience are

 

Jeff Walter (07:39)

Mm-hmm.

 

Emily of Tote&Carry(08:07)

you know, late 30s to like early 50s. So they have kids, they’re, you know, they’re working parents, they’re establishing their career, they went to college. So I think those types of like hitting those foundations and getting people that are have that type of content is gonna relate to them more and probably resonate in an ad versus a model that’s like, you know, 25 years old and just posing and like, I don’t think that resonates the same way that.

 

Jeff Walter (08:10)

Mm-hmm.

 

Emily of Tote&Carry(08:34)

If it’s somebody that looks like you, you’re definitely gonna wanna probably purchase.

 

Jeff Walter (08:37)

Right.

 

Interesting. And have any of those been complete surprises to you or it’s just gone like so that’s a different what I think I hear you saying is that some of the content is you know, especially in that late 30s early 50s demographic surprised you because it’s a it’s a different demographic than you personally.

 

Which or what?

 

Emily of Tote&Carry(09:09)

It’s

 

not that it’s a different demographic than me. It’s that when I see the tagged content and I’ve also worked for other brands and looked at their tag content and theirs is, I guess it’s a little bit of a different demo so they care more about aesthetics and this and that. And then when I see the tags and I’m like, these are just like regular everyday people. Come as you are, be who you are. It doesn’t have to be perfect. And then when I’ve worked for other brands, like I’ve worked for beauty brands and stuff, it’s very like.

 

Jeff Walter (09:15)

Yeah.

 

Yeah.

 

⁓

 

Emily of Tote&Carry(09:36)

it’s makeup, so you have to be flawless. it’s very like, the lighting has to be perfect. But I think once I see the tag content and I’m like, these are our real customers, they’re real everyday people, we need to cater to that. And that’s a different look and feel than this highly staged photo shoot. And you know, I’m not sure that people even care about that anymore, unless you’re like a high end brand.

 

Jeff Walter (09:58)

Well, that’s interesting because it does. What I always find is you think you know something, especially when it comes to the market, right? And we kind of all project our own vision onto it, our own biases, our own beliefs is a better way of saying it. And then it just really helps to stay humble.

 

Emily of Tote&Carry(10:10)

Yes.

 

Yeah, okay, there we go. Exactly.

 

Jeff Walter (10:21)

Yeah, I never ceases to amaze me how I’m like well, of course we should do it this way like and then and then all of a sudden you see something like, huh, I would have never thought that ⁓

 

Emily of Tote&Carry(10:28)

Yeah.

 

That’s

 

kind of literally what it’s been. It’s like, okay. Like don’t have to overthink this the way that I’ve been overthinking it, you know?

 

Jeff Walter (10:40)

Yeah.

 

Yeah. Well, it also sounds like, and we haven’t really talked about it, but it sounds like key to your strategy is also constantly experimenting. Cause you’ve mentioned that a couple of times, right? That you’ll bring on different ambassadors, different partners to get different types of content and say, Hey, to your point, like, well, let’s try this person who just is filming from their living room with the kids and the dog running around and let’s see what happens.

 

Emily of Tote&Carry(10:50)

Yes. Yeah.

 

I know.

 

Jeff Walter (11:08)

And then, and then you’ve got the performance stuff on the back end to sit there and go, well, that would, that took off more than we ever thought. Or that was a really bad idea. You know, filming off of a yacht in the Mediterranean didn’t seem to work out so well. Right. Like.

 

Emily of Tote&Carry(11:23)

Yeah,

 

exactly. And two of our top converting people now that I actually just, this just clicked to me, are both people that do relationship content or have their partner in their content. So I’m like, that could be something relatable because this demo might be, you know, they’re married, they have kids, they’re, have families. So that resonates more with them where their partner is in the content, doing the unboxing, talking.

 

Jeff Walter (11:33)

Uh-huh.

 

Okay.

 

Emily of Tote&Carry(11:52)

you know, bouncing funny jokes off of each other. And that’s very relatable to them. And the bag is so secondary in that that it’s like, it’s just them. And then you see yourself in that, right? me and my husband, you know, we got our Amazon packages and we open them together. So that’s something to think about. Or there’s another couple very stylish. Shout out to Leilani Matthews. So she’s one of our top creators and her husband went super viral. They just got hit a million views and

 

Jeff Walter (12:03)

Right.

 

Emily of Tote&Carry(12:20)

I’m thinking about another very stylish couple, they do these things together and they do all these videos. And I’m like, that’s relatable. Like you kind of want to be that like, I’d love to be, you know, do this matching thing with my husband. And like, I think that just resonates to people, especially that I just put the relationship thing together. Like maybe this, you know, that’s like another type of consumer and feeding that type of content to them works, you know, cause that relates to them. They have their families and their partners and yeah.

 

Jeff Walter (12:40)

Right.

 

Yeah. That’s very interesting. So, so let’s shift gears a little. Well, thank you. You gave, I mean, this is a type of channel partner that I have not had any personal experience with. So you educated me a lot and I really appreciate that. Cause I, the thing I love about this the most is I just learn stuff. That’s the best part. That’s, that’s, that’s the best part of this. You know, my day job, I run a company, but

 

Emily of Tote&Carry(12:56)

Mission.

 

Yeah.

 

Jeff Walter (13:15)

This is so much fun because I learned so much and it’s so cool because it’s like, it’s really interesting because all the, all that rich market data is right there at your fingertips. And it’s so cool that you can kind of do those experiments and go, my gosh, I never would have thought that this particular product or, or this particular content creator that appeals to this particular demographic in this particular way.

 

Emily of Tote&Carry(13:25)

Uh-huh.

 

Jeff Walter (13:43)

I would have never thought that, but you can experiment and it, but it, but it does go to some like timeless principles, which is it’s all gotta be performance based. So what I love about what you, what I love about what you’re doing and what it resonates with me. And when we first talked, it resonated with me a lot is a lot of people forget about the, those, like we just talked about it for like five seconds, the KPIs, but that drives everything right on the backend. It’s like, you know, it’s like,

 

Emily of Tote&Carry(13:52)

Exactly.

 

Yeah. It does.

 

Jeff Walter (14:12)

Well, this is really interesting, but if it doesn’t show up in the KPIs as, they got a million views. it ended up with so many visits to our site that ended up in so many, you know, selling ⁓ so much in revenue. Well, if you don’t have those KPIs, if you’re not tracking that performance on the backend, you know, you’re just shooting in the dark. You know, like, ⁓

 

Emily of Tote&Carry(14:34)

Shooting in the dark, exactly. But I love

 

what you said though, because I always say this, I’m a student first. I love to learn and learning about new industries and just like every day I’m learning. I don’t have all the answers. I do consider myself an expert because I’ve been in the industry for so many years, but every day I’m learning something new. And again, it’s just so, you never know. Like sometimes you try things and you don’t know if it’s gonna work or not. And I feel like we’re always in this experimentation phase.

 

Jeff Walter (14:53)

Yeah.

 

Emily of Tote&Carry(15:02)

of like, you know, even with like other clients that I work with, it’s like you’re A-B testing these emails. You don’t know what subject line. I might feel so strongly about a subject line A-B tested. And I’m like, why did people like that? Why did that resonate? ⁓ So I think just figuring out the storytelling that resonates with your audience, because everything at the end of the day is about storytelling. It’s like, what is going to work for them and thinking with your customer hat on? Because sometimes we get so caught up in the brand. We’re seeing the behind the scenes. We’re seeing the development of the bags being

 

Jeff Walter (15:14)

Yeah. Yeah.

 

Emily of Tote&Carry(15:31)

created, we’re seeing, you know, so many different aspects that you’re caught up in that mindset. But sometimes you need to go through the website, go through every single channel as a customer. I always say I’m putting my customer hat on now and looking at it from a different lens. And it’s really eye opening because sometimes you get caught up in that day to day minutia of like being in your role, but really looking at it from a customer lens and like

 

Jeff Walter (15:37)

Yes.

 

Emily of Tote&Carry(15:55)

Hey, when I click on this CTA, where is it taking me? Does that make sense? You know, just little, little, little things that may get missed and just thinking with their, you know, as a customer.

 

Jeff Walter (16:04)

Yeah. Well, you know, it’s, funny you say that we just had that experience. It actually just yesterday. yeah, we’re, we’re, we’re using, you you’re using AI to create our demo videos. And so we have avatars doing our demos, ⁓ and, and, and, and doing training and there’s, you know, on the training side, it’s, you know, it’s good to do that because it makes changing it easier as you change the product and all the kind of fun stuff. Anyway, to your point about being in the minutiae.

 

Emily of Tote&Carry(16:17)

Mm-hmm.

 

Jeff Walter (16:29)

We’re in a minutiae doing this, that, and the other thing. We just launched this product that’s an AI knowledge product, and we had the demo video and one of our, one of our people was showing it to a bunch of their, you know, to clients and, and prospects and, and, and just friends. And she said, they all came back and they didn’t like the avatar, you know, and it is, it was like, ⁓ because, ⁓ she was, too young and dressed too casually.

 

Emily of Tote&Carry(16:47)

Nah.

 

Jeff Walter (16:56)

You know, and so these were kind of people in that demographic you were talking about, like mid thirties to fiftiesh. You know, that was the demographic. And then the avatar looked like, you know, young woman that was maybe 22, but she had a t-shirt on with a vest, a knit vest or something. And, so she looked like she was in college and they were like, so like, but they’re, but

 

Emily of Tote&Carry(17:13)

Yeah.

 

Yeah.

 

Jeff Walter (17:21)

But the advertiser is trying to be the authority in something. And they were like, she’s just not an authority. And it was so funny because and and

 

Emily of Tote&Carry(17:28)

Yeah, exactly. And some people

 

view it that way because it’s all about perspective, right? It’s subjective.

 

Jeff Walter (17:33)

Right. And it was like,

 

and we’ve been like, we’ve been using her for years. Like, what are you talking about? Yeah, this is, this is, this is our avatar for our demos. And, and it was just kind of one of those things like, well, it, well, the, cool thing is even when you’re doing all this technology stuff, it’s, it’s what you said, it’s about storytelling and storytelling is about getting the viewer to put themselves into the character, into the story that it.

 

Emily of Tote&Carry(17:44)

Exactly. It’s about knowing your audience. Knowing your audience.

 

Yep.

 

Jeff Walter (18:02)

To make the story relatable is actually the story is telling them something about how they should manage their lives. We’re narrative creatures. We live by narratives. We think by narratives. And so we have a narrative for our life. We have a narrative for everything. We’ve mapped the entire universe into a narrative in our heads. And the storytelling, what makes the story compelling is it’s a narrative that captures us.

 

Emily of Tote&Carry(18:10)

Yeah.

 

Jeff Walter (18:30)

that either reinforces one of the narratives we have or allows us to see part of our world in a different way and change the narrative. so it’s really because I do believe it does all go back to that. And so when you get these new things, like you said, like I would have never thought that, you know, a middle aged mom in the middle of the living room with dogs and kids running around would be a good spokesperson for a affordable luxury brand. Like never would have crossed my mind in the boardroom.

 

right?

 

Emily of Tote&Carry(19:00)

Yeah, as a non

 

middle aged mom with no kids, wouldn’t, I don’t think that way. So, you know, it’s like, that’s another thing you have to look at. It’s like, who’s your demo? They’re a little older, actually a colleague of mine, we were ⁓ putting together some audits for different parts of the business and we’re making a pitch deck for something. And then he was like, it’s so funny because I’m used to working. I guess his other clients are older demographic. He’s like, they want everything in a word format. Give me the information.

 

but a younger audience or especially if you’re pitching something creative, you put it in a deck and then it’s like, ooh, it looks really pretty and presentable. But it’s like, you’re, you know, if you’re in a different demo, you might just give me the information. I don’t care about the fluff. So you gotta really just know your audience and who you’re talking to, you know?

 

Jeff Walter (19:36)

Yeah.

 

Yeah.

 

Yeah, yeah. Well, it, it, I mean, it’s funny because on a personal note, uh, in the last couple of years, experiencing exact same thing personally. So if I, so I’ve been around a little while and when I was early in my career, well, I was early in my career as a consultant and everybody I was consult and I was supposed to be the authority and everybody that was my client was at least 10 years older than me. Right. 10 to 20 years older than me. And I’m supposed to be telling them about something. Right.

 

Emily of Tote&Carry(20:15)

So

 

they were only like 35.

 

Jeff Walter (20:18)

Yeah, there were

 

35 to, yeah, there were, there were 35 to 50, 35. No, no, no, no, no, no, this is back. No, but yes. Yes, exactly. No, no. Back in the day. Um, no, but it, but it was, but it was interesting because it’s all about that humbleness and it’s all about, always have to be. And so I was in my twenties and everybody I’m consulting to all my clients are in their thirties and forties. And, um, and what I.

 

Emily of Tote&Carry(20:22)

I thought you were saying today, this day and age, they’re 10 years old, they, my gosh, they’re only 35 then.

 

Jeff Walter (20:46)

I discovered is if I dressed, you know, conservative, these are wrong number, but more formal than them. Right. So I was always with a suit and tie and, it gave me the suit and tie gave me authority. Right. That I, that my, my, my face and skin and youth didn’t present.

 

Emily of Tote&Carry(21:04)

Yes.

 

Jeff Walter (21:11)

And so all of a sudden, and if I was dressed a little more formal than they were, I would be, I would get perceived authority. So, so I ran my whole career like that, right? Well, I’m a little older now and I might be a little older than those folks now. Same demographic, right? In that thirties and forties. And, and, uh, it was about a couple of years ago, I was talking to a colleague and they were like,

 

Emily of Tote&Carry(21:27)

Yeah.

 

Jeff Walter (21:38)

Well, you got to stop dressing so formally because now my body type, but you know, you know, I got a couple of lines and a couple of, it’s like, no, your face has the authority because you’ve been, you’ve gone around the sun a bunch of times and now you have to be more informal than they are to make it more like to get that relatable. It’s just interesting to make it relate. It’s just really interesting. And I was like, huh? And it’s kind of like what we’re

 

Emily of Tote&Carry(21:59)

to make it relatable, yeah.

 

Hahaha!

 

Jeff Walter (22:06)

It’s kind of like what we’re talking about here. It’s like you’re thinking one thing and you’re projecting, but it’s, you’re always telling a story, right? It’s like always type of some type of story. So it’s really, really interesting.

 

Emily of Tote&Carry(22:13)

Exactly. See the

 

clothing is doing the storytelling in this situation. There’s always a story, right?

 

Jeff Walter (22:20)

Well, yeah, you know, well, I actually that exactly what was it was a lesson I learned when I just got out of college. And I just got out of college. I moved to Houston and I needed to outfit my apartment and I want to get a water bed. And so this is this was the eighties and, you know, so tells you how you could do the math. And but anyway.

 

So there I am in my high tops, acid wash jeans and pink flamingo button down short sleeve shirt going into buy a couple thousand dollar water bed and nobody gives me the time of day. Nobody. Yeah. I look like some college kid that doesn’t have any money to spend on anything. And and I’m like, but but I got the information. I tend to want to research things before I buy. And then I out what I want.

 

Emily of Tote&Carry(22:48)

Yeah.

 

That’s so-

 

Yeah.

 

Jeff Walter (23:14)

I come back not a week later. I’m dressed in a suit. You know, same hair, same everything, but I’m wearing a tie, a suit with a tie. Walk into the same store with the same salespeople and they couldn’t get out of their way to help me. Right. Like it’s like this guy can buy something he looks like. And I was like, I’m the same guy. I was just wearing something I would have wore last year. You know,

 

Emily of Tote&Carry(23:34)

Wow.

 

Jeff Walter (23:44)

at school when I came in and now I’m just wearing a suit and you just treated me completely different based on that because you saw a different story in front of you, right?

 

Emily of Tote&Carry(23:50)

Hahaha!

 

Exactly.

 

And I think I think that also has like, obviously changed a lot. Like, I feel like before it was like that. It was like, if you’re just formal, you mean business and you, you know, I feel like that was just more of a thing back in the day. And my brother who’s he’s 50 and he works in finance, he works ⁓ at Charles Schwab as a stockbroker. And he is one of the few people that go to work every day with a suit on. He’s like, these kids want to wear their jeans. And I’m like,

 

Jeff Walter (24:02)

Yeah.

 

Emily of Tote&Carry(24:21)

Be comfortable, what is, you know, but he just is like, has that mindset of like, that, you know, when you walk in the room, that’s what you see first. I’m wearing sweatpants and a t-shirt and I work in a very informal business. So I don’t think like that.

 

Jeff Walter (24:35)

Yeah. Well,

 

but even in that industry, because I’m from New York, it’s like, well, no, now they’re all wearing, you know, khakis in their vest. Right. Nobody’s wearing the suit and tie, but they. Right. With jeans. Right. Right. Exactly. And, you know, and it’s not that.

 

Emily of Tote&Carry(24:40)

Yeah.

 

No, it’s a suit jacket with jeans or the khakis with the vest or something or like a button down. Yeah. Yeah.

 

Jeff Walter (24:57)

Like ⁓ to me, the lesson there was not that a particular style or you should wear this or you should wear that. it’s it’s it’s it goes back to the story. What you’re wearing, how you conduct yourself, what your hairstyle is, all of that is presenting something to the world. It’s presenting a story to the world. And and and you are going and they are going to respond to you in a certain way because of that. And.

 

And the particulars change over time, right? You know, if you go back a couple hundred years ago and look at the aristocracy was wearing in Europe, you’d be like, oh my God, nobody would wear that. You’d be perceived completely different if you walked down the street in that today. But there, then it meant it told a certain story, right? And it’s the same thing. Like right now, if you go walking in with a suit and tie and high gloss

 

Emily of Tote&Carry(25:39)

Yeah.

 

Mm-hmm.

 

Jeff Walter (25:55)

shine shoes. It’s a story, but it’s not the story you necessarily think you want to tell. And, but, but anyway, it’s just, it’s not that it go down that little rabbit hole, but, but, ⁓ but it will, but it is interesting because it goes, it does, it does tie back to the content and it does tie back to the channel. And in, in, and this particular type of channel where you’re, it’s a social media channel and you’re talking about content, you’d never know what’s going to resonate with your ICP.

 

Emily of Tote&Carry(26:05)

Hahaha

 

Jeff Walter (26:25)

You take your best guess, but it goes back to being humble. Like you said, I love and the experiments and then having the performance metrics on the back end. Like if you’re not experimenting and you’re not like, then I think you’re. Your toast. Well, you’re shooting into dark, right? And then you’re.

 

Emily of Tote&Carry(26:25)

Do not hang up.

 

Yeah,

 

yeah, you got to evolve with the brand, with the times, with what’s going on, especially with social media. There’s trends, everything’s always changing, but you always have to measure that. Do our customers care about trends? Are they trend focused? Do they care about the funny skits? Do they care about, it’s like, what are their interests? Gauging that interest, learning more about them, and personalizing your content for that.

 

Jeff Walter (26:49)

Right.

 

Well, and you know, it’s funny because a lot of people, and this is another thing I’ve learned. Like if you ask people, they’ll suddenly like a bunch of people. So, no, I don’t care about trends or this, that or the other thing. Uh, but we’re up here in, uh, in Michigan. And so, you know, big automotive space, right. And you say, you know, so not, you know, non trendy and all that. Well, the fascinating thing is, and I forget the exact heuristic.

 

But the car color, the color of the car you’re buying today was walking down the runway at the high in Milan like six years ago. Like I forget, I forget the exact, you know, um, heuristic, but it’s like, if, if you want to know what color cars are going to be in so many years, go to some fashion, you know, some high fashion, uh, runway show and you will see the colors. They’re going to show up.

 

Emily of Tote&Carry(27:38)

Hahaha

 

Jeff Walter (27:56)

in your cars in like, you five, it’s like five or six years down the road or something like that. And it’s like, you don’t think you’re following the fashion, but, but yes, but it is happening whether you’re aware of it or not. And it’s fascinating. Yeah.

 

Emily of Tote&Carry(28:00)

Yeah.

 

Yeah, it’s a trickle down. It’s a trickle down.

 

Yeah, it’s a trickle down effect. Yeah, it starts

 

here and then it goes down. So Pantone announces the color of the year every year. Fashion follows that. Then it goes down to furniture and paint colors for your house and home decor. is a complete trickle down effect and we’re all affected by it. Whether you’re buying from Walmart or you’re buying from Balenciaga, at the end of the day, Walmart’s eventually gonna dupe the Balenciaga stuff and you don’t even know it.

 

Jeff Walter (28:24)

Yeah.

 

Emily of Tote&Carry(28:39)

and now you’re part of the trend.

 

Jeff Walter (28:39)

Yeah.

 

Yeah, it’s just, fascinating. It’s really, it’s, it’s very fascinating.

 

Emily of Tote&Carry(28:43)

Yeah.

 

Jeff Walter (28:45)

So what’s the future look like for Toton Carry? You’ve got this great direct to market, direct to consumer, you’ve got the affiliate program, you’ve got the ambassador program. What’s the future look like for you guys?

 

Emily of Tote&Carry(28:59)

Yeah, so we have explored the option for many years of moving into the retail space. We are in conversations. I don’t know if I can say who, but we are moving into that. It’s looking like probably next year is gonna happen. So we’re gonna be in retail stores. And then we also do use a couple of other channels. So for instance, like Sheen, we’re on Amazon. So outside of our just…

 

you know, our DTC website, we are in a couple of channels. We do treat those channels more as liquidation channels, even TikTok. We have different products on there. Some of our product that we’re, we’ve either been sitting on inventory for a long time trying to get it rid of. We also created product lines specifically for these channels that are these like lower end channels. We’ve seen a lot of success on TikTok doing, doing TikTok lives, but anybody that’s on TikTok knows that.

 

your product has to be discounted. is just a discount world over there. Everything is a flash sale. Everything is a percentage off. That’s the only way people will buy. So we do have like our own product lines in there specifically for that, or just things that we’re trying to get rid of. So we treat them more as liquidation channels.

 

Jeff Walter (30:02)

Okay.

 

And when you end up with the liquidation channels, it’s, it’s, it’s, well, it’s, falling under your brand, right? You’re not, you didn’t rebrand it under some other, you know, something to liquidate. Yeah. Okay. No. No.

 

Emily of Tote&Carry(30:12)

No, no, no, no, it’s not like white labeled or anything. It’s our brand.

 

Just some of them are we were able to get them at a cheaper price point and we know that we can sell them for lower and deeper discount it. We’ve been testing different pricing strategies on there and we found that worked best. Also, just like products that we want to sell through and that we don’t plan on restocking.

 

Jeff Walter (30:31)

Yeah, it’s funny because I was talking to a friend about a rug business and we were talking about that exact same thing of you need that liquidation channel to be able to flip the inventory and all that kind of fun stuff. we were having the debate of do you do that under your brand or do you do that under a separate brand?

 

Emily of Tote&Carry(30:46)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

 

We’ve had those conversations too. We’ve had those conversations, but I mean, if you look at it, a lot of high-end brands do that. Like Polo does it. Polo has different labels, purple label, black label, and all of those are different price points and they speak to different customers. So there are ways of doing it, but it also can get either pricey or confusing. you know, as long as you market it the right way and have the resources, you could definitely do it that way or even have its own outlet.

 

You know, there’s ways of marketing that.

 

Jeff Walter (31:24)

Yeah, yeah, I think you can maintain the integrity of the brand if you if you give it a brand extension like a a Nordstrom rack or something like you know, you got going to get the Nordstrom experience, you know that, you know, you know what the deal is, right? This is this is a liquidation outlet. It’s not it’s not a nice big

 

Emily of Tote&Carry(31:33)

Yes.

 

Jeff Walter (31:46)

beautiful store. It’s got the racks. You go through it, you get what you get, you don’t get what you don’t get. And you’ll see what you’ll see what’s there next week. Right. And ⁓ so it’s interesting. That’s that’s interesting. What as you as you start looking at bring bring on retailers and non liquidation channels, brick and mortar non liquidation, you know, what do you think that what

 

Emily of Tote&Carry(31:51)

Yeah.

 

Exactly.

 

Jeff Walter (32:08)

challenges or do you think you’re going to see there or how are you going to treat that differently? guess would be a good is what I’m asking.

 

Emily of Tote&Carry(32:16)

Yeah, I think something that we’ve done recently that was like very eye opening for us is we have such a huge broad assortment of products. We also have gone into a little bit of like ⁓ apparel, there’s some jewelry. just became like our, it got to a point where the site was very overwhelming to shop because there was just overwhelming amount of product and it’s like half of it is not discoverable so people aren’t purchasing it or just that’s not really our customer.

 

Jeff Walter (32:37)

Mm-hmm.

 

Emily of Tote&Carry(32:44)

and we’ve had to discount it heavily in order to sell it. So we’ve actually identified our core 62 SKUs and that’s what we’re pushing. We’re putting all of our ⁓ budgets behind creating content around that. That’s what we’re showcasing on the site. That’s what we’re highlighting on the homepage and it’s just the core and that’s it. And then everything else could be distributed to other channels. So I think identifying what sells for you and coming up with a…

 

Jeff Walter (32:55)

Mm-hmm.

 

Emily of Tote&Carry(33:11)

good brand and pricing strategy because you know, it’s like, we want to discount these core items? We don’t want to continue doing that anymore because we’ve, you know, we know people are buying it. We don’t have to discount it. Why are we putting on a sale just because everybody’s on sale, you know, during Black Friday or whatever the case is. So making sure we we’re highlighting that premium collection, keeping it premium, keeping the integrity of that, and then having these other items and coming up with a pricing strategy around those of how to liquidate them.

 

Jeff Walter (33:20)

Right.

 

Emily of Tote&Carry(33:40)

and either reinvent the core that we have or we do have some new product lines that are rolling out this year and just investing our efforts into that versus how do we get rid of all this other stuff when there’s so many different channels that we can out kind of get rid of it. So I think our pricing strategy has been the biggest focus this year. It’s like, let’s make sure that we’re being conscious of the cost of the product, how deeply we can discount.

 

Jeff Walter (33:47)

Mm-hmm.

 

Right.

 

Emily of Tote&Carry(34:05)

what channels are people looking for what and then highlighting this premium collection and keeping the integrity of that.

 

Jeff Walter (34:11)

And is that a function of trying to optimize the direct to consumer or or is the okay. And then is that same set of premium collection? Is that what your plan on moving through the retail channels? Like because because no.

 

Emily of Tote&Carry(34:17)

Yes.

 

⁓ No, no,

 

think it’s going to be a mixture of that and some of our kill list items that we have just been sitting on inventory for years. So it’s going to be a mixture, but it’s going to be less of the premium, the premium we’re going to keep on our site and then our other product lines we’re going to move into other channels.

 

Jeff Walter (34:31)

Okay.

 

Okay.

 

okay. Interesting. Cool. And very cool. Well, hey, you’ve been very generous with your time and I greatly appreciate that.

 

Emily of Tote&Carry(34:53)

Hahaha

 

thank you so much for also being

 

generous with your time. It’s been a pleasure. I can yap about this all day long.

 

Jeff Walter (35:00)

Yeah, well, I’m glad you do because I learned a lot. The audience learned a lot.

 

Yeah, we are really focused on scaling channel performance. And this is a different type of channel that most of our listeners are not familiar with. And so we’re usually in the hard goods moving through distributors and franchisers and stuff like that. So this is really eye opening and I love cross pollinating ideas too. ⁓ So it’s really, really cool. So thank you. Now, if somebody wants to get a hold of you or TotenCarrie, what’s the best way to get a hold of you or TotenCarrie?

 

Emily of Tote&Carry(35:24)

Yeah.

 

So Totten Carey is T-O-T-E-N, the letter N, Carey, C-A-R-R-Y on all platforms. But if you want to get a hold of me, you can find me at vice versa strategy. So that’s all my handles.

 

Jeff Walter (35:50)

All right. Emily, thank you so much for your time today. I really appreciate you sharing your knowledge with everybody.

 

Emily of Tote&Carry(35:56)

Thank you so much. Have an amazing day.

 

Jeff Walter (35:58)

You too. And then for everybody out there, thanks for listening and we’ll see you next time.