730: How Two JP Morgan Men Sell $600k+ In Baby Clothes

Cam Miller and Akin Onal, the founders of MORI/BabyMori.com. Cam is the chief growth officer and co-founder at MORI. He is responsible for building out their essential babies’ brand and the creative use of marketing and technology. This summer, he represented the brand as one of the 500 startups at Mountain View Accelerator. Prior to MORI, he studied an MBA at London Business School, had various roles in Australia, France and the UK, and studied engineering business development finance and event management.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – The Lean Startup (Cam)
• Most recent read book –  Bhagavad Gita
• Favorite online tool? — Slack (Akin)
• How many hours of sleep do you get?— 7-7/5 (Akin)
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “I wish I got into entrepreneurship a bit sooner”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:08 – Nathan introduces Cam and Akin to the show
• 01:47 – Cam and Akin met at JP Morgan
• 02:12 – There are a lot similarities between what they were doing at JP Morgan and what they are doing now
• 02:19 – MORI is a direct-to-consumer business model
• 02:33 – MORI has over 10K customers over 50 countries acquiring 1000 additional customers per month
• 02:57 – The non-subscription model is what MORI have on most countries
• 03:05 – MORI has really high repeat orders per month
• 03:13 – MORI is looking to relaunch a new and improved subscription model
• 03:31 – The sleeping bag has been their bestseller for the last 6 months
• 03:51 – A repurchase is when the same customer buys the same item, but a bigger size
• 04:35 – Half of the revenue per month comes from repeat customers
• 05:15 – The sweet spot on sales for repeat customers ends around 2-2.5 y/o
• 05:45 – Average cart price is $100
• 06:26 – MORI uses Klaviyo and MailChimp for their upsell
• 07:21 – The website’s product recommendation is manual
• 08:35 – 2016 topline sales was around $500K
• 09:00 – 2017 goal is $4M topline
• 10:03 – Cam and Akin have pivoted over 1 and half years
• 10:09 – MORI had a subscription model before the e-commerce
• 10:24 – After launching the latest collection in an ecommerce platform, sales went up
• 11:32 – The subscription is only for a specific product
• 13:20 – A repeat customer is the one who goes to the site to buy again
• 13:33 – The subscription model is almost phased out
• 14:22 – A lot of the products on the site are bundled, but they’re not part of the subscription
• 14:45 – The customer cohort of MORI outgrows them
• 15:53 – Paid acquisition last month was $50K
  • 16:14 – They’ve recently launched a retargeting program
• 17:00 – MORI just closed a $2M round which was an equity round
• 17:28 – LTV
• 18:14 – LTV is measured on the growth trade and not on revenue
• 18:31 – Pre-money valuation
• 19:45 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

1. The right model for your business can be proven by an increase of revenue.
2. Keep in mind that your revenue growth is NOT the only basis of your LTV.
3. Start entrepreneurship as early as possible.

Resources Mentioned:

• The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
• Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
• Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you’re doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience
• Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
• Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible
• Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books

Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives