Behind Dorwest’s Success: Trust, Systems, and a Smarter Way to Scale Online

Speaker A: Having someone else who's as invested in it as you are, that's, I think, the key to success of any business, whoever you're working with, whether that's your wife, your friend. Three big things in the business and in any relationship is honesty, trust and communication. If you don't have one of those, the other two are going to fall down.

Speaker B: It's the e commerce master plan podcast here to help you solve your marketing problems and grow your e commerce business. Cutting through the hype to bring you inspiration and advice from the e commerce sector and beyond. Here's your host, Chloe Thomas.

Speaker C: Hello and welcome. It's great to have you here. Thank you for hitting play and choosing

Speaker D: to listen to one of our inspiring

Speaker C: guests in this episode.

Speaker D: I get to catch up with the ops director of a brilliant e commerce brand. They've got. They're really big in a specific niche

Speaker C: and they've been doing some really, really

Speaker D: clever stuff behind the scenes that he's going to be taking us through. We'll be talking about making the most of a migration to Shopify and what comes after the M migration to Shopify. We will be talking about process optimization, why you may want to keep fulfillment and production in house. We'll be talking about. We'll be talking about a little bit of marketing, too. And his top tips are absolutely brilliant. So make sure you stick around for those at the end of the episode.

Speaker A: Ahora mascolos hill vacada prociento nona selection.

Speaker E: M. M. M.

Speaker F: Granger knows when you're a procurement manager for an office park, you're not managing one building, you're managing all of them. And to stay ahead, you need to see through walls and around corners. Lights about to fail, Filters ready to clog. H Vac on its last leg. If you wait until something breaks, you're already behind. Count on Grainger for quality products, easy reordering and 24. 7 support. Call 1-800-GRAINGER click grainger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done.

Speaker D: And now to introduce our special guest. Ben Boughton White is the operations director at Door West. Experts in herbal pest pet care since 1948, selling globally via wholesale marketplaces. Crofts and their, uh, own Shopify store. They now do over 50,000 orders a year.

Speaker C: Hello, Ben.

Speaker A: Hi, Chloe. And, uh, thanks for the introduction.

Speaker D: Oh, great to have you on the show. Such a fascinating business. But how did you get into the world of E commerce?

Speaker A: Well, um, my background, is it traditionally? Uh, that's my first job kind of out of university. It wasn't my degree, I was completely unrelated but ended up in it. And then uh, kind of found my way into systems engineering and cyber security. Kind of a strange as kind of a natural path. And then by that point I was married to Joe who is the third generation of the, the family who started Door West. And um, due to kind of how the business was going for her and her parents were kind of beginning to retire, she needed that support. So I kind of came into the business at that point. Felt I had something to offer with my side of my skills really the kind of technical skills I had, process, procedure, that uh, kind of thing from working in much bigger businesses. So it kind of made sense for us to give that a go really. And that was 10 years ago. So from there once I joined Door West I uh, kind of the technical system side of the business in general and naturally E comms a part of that became my area of expertise really. And that's kind of what I do day to day really. So I look after the systems that we have and kind of as well as the production and dispatching areas of our business as well. So kind of the more technical side of it. And whereas Jo really looks after the marketing and the customer services side, that's where her passion is, the vision for the brand uh, and how we operate as a business. And I make sure that everything runs smoothly hopefully in the technical aspects. Yeah.

Speaker D: So two massive questions I have to ask after you, after that intro. Number one, what was the degree?

Speaker A: Uh marine environmental science.

Speaker B: Wow.

Speaker D: That is ah, like I did history and ended up in E commerce but marine and environmental science into it.

Speaker C: That's elite.

Speaker A: Yeah. Well actually I worked for the UK Hydrographic Office in Somerset. So I went there because I thought that's what my degree was in. So I got a job as a temp in IT for about a year, ended up doing something to do with my degree. Hated it, lasted three days, went back to it and loved it. I think it's just the kind of the hands on nature with uh, and my inquisition of how things work. I'm quite mechanically minded as well. So I do love how things work and I remember kind of just being so engrossed in all this technology that was coming into the office and how new systems work. That's kind of how I am here at Door west really. So I love making sure that our website works really well. The ERP behind it works really well and I really hate inefficiency. So when I see it in our business and also Kind of when I talk to other friends or you know, experience other businesses, I really hate that kind of inefficiency side of things. So kind of I think the it and my kind of systematic brain loves the kind of stimulation that gives me,

Speaker D: if you like, that makes so much sense. And then the second question I have to ask is working with your wife and starting working with your wife. Clearly it's going well because you've stayed there for 10 years. Um, any tips for anyone else doing that family business thing? Because I've spoken to people who've been like, yeah, we talk about it 247 and it's brilliant. And others who go, we leave it at the office. But what's your, your kind of recipe for success or any tips you can share?

Speaker A: We do talk about it a lot, uh, in work and outside of work. But also I think having that ability to discuss it out of work means we can leave it alone, uh, a lot more easily. So we've got four dogs. So every morning we're up at 6 o', clock, out with the dogs. We have lots of really great conversations at that point in the morning because invariably things are on your mind overnight. They come to you in the m. Morning. So that half an hour dog walk in the morning enables you to kind of get them off your chest, set the scene for the day. And also having someone else who's as invested in it as you are, that's I think the key to success of any business. Whoever you're working with, whether that's your wife, your friend, just another associated director, you've got to have that common goal in mind. So. And also understanding our, uh, different strengths. So like I said, Joe looks after very much the brand vision and the marketing and I look after the technical side of it. It means we're not stepping on each other's toes, but we both work together really well. And communication, you know, our big three big things in the business and in any relationship is honesty, trust and communication. If you don't have one of those, the other two are going to fall down. So we, we push that quite hard in the business. I think it's something that people say a lot, but unless you actually do it, you won't see the benefit of it. And we definitely do. And I think we can not talk about it as much as we can talk about it. So just come back off a week's holiday. We didn't talk about work really that much, maybe a little bit, but, uh, only because you can relax into, relax into things and then Just have that little five minute conversation rather than sitting there spoiling on it and not talking about it. You know, it's not a 9 to 5 job anymore. But then at the same token it's not a 9 to 5 job. That's great. I really love that aspect. It gives me the flexibility or else the flexibility to do what we need to do as a family and as individuals, but also at the same time have a really successful business.

Speaker D: Love those tips. Thank you for that one, Ben. Right, let's, let's deviate back to the business proper now. Um, I've explained the product ludicrously simply as um, herbal pet care. Tell us a bit more about the product that you're selling please.

Speaker A: Okay, so obviously we're Dor West. We're uh, formed in 1948, based in Poundbury in Dorchester was actually where it all started in 1948 was a little shed in I think one of the roads not far from where we are now. Our products are natural, mainly herbal supplements and plus topical uh, products for dogs, some cats, mainly dogs, they were dog kind of people. So there are tablets, capsules, powders, liquids, oils, balms around about 125 SKUs across 50 product lines. Uh, we cover a range of conditions, uh, so kind of joint support, uh, digestive support, calming and behavior. They're our biggest, uh, that's our biggest kind of sector if you like. And then things like shampoos, balms, everything along those lines really. So traditionally we're very much kind of condition based. So we previously had veterinary herbal medicines. We're uh, now just purely supplements due to you know, the ease of producing supplements and actually we can make a better quality product for being a supplement rather than a medicine. Which is something that sounds crazy but it's a whole other discussion. Um, yeah, so we're small business, I'd say 20 people, uh, end to end. Uh, we do everything in house except for manufacturing. So we don't physically make the product in house but we do all um, marketing, customer services, technical quality and production and dispatch. So our production unit does assembly from bulk. So we buy our tablets from our manufacturer by the million and then we assemble those into the salable units you'll find on our website. So hundreds, two hundreds, five hundreds. Same with powders that comes in in bulk and we package that on site into the saleable units. And by having that hands on control of all processes from assembly through to dispatch, we can ensure the quality of that all the way through. And I think in a uh, in e commerce we're always approached by, you know, third party logistics. You know, we'll take that, we'll put a price on that for you and we'll do all that side of it for you. And that, that for us is disingenuous. We wouldn't want that because we like having that quality from the first person someone might speak to on the phone. Because still a lot of our customers will phone us up to talk about their dogs and talk um, about their issues. So our customer service team will talk them, they'll process the order, they'll go downstairs to our dispatch team, they'll pick it, pack it, you know, put the, put everything in the envelope, put the sticker on the, on the envelope and then send that out. We've got control of that from end to end. So that's very much where our technical quality comes in as well. We can ensure that if there's any kind of, uh, lost in post or incorrect products, damaged products. We know were we particularly busy who was working on dispatch that day? Do we have a different batch of packing material, all those kind of things, we can see it end to end and everything. It probably makes it sound a little bit like control freaks, but we just care about the quality, uh, the advice that's given to our customers, the quality of the marketing that we do and also how we dispatch our products out, uh, to our customers. So we do, although I said we kind of do everything in house, there are selected things that we do with trusted third parties. So we are as well as wanting to do as much as we can ourselves. We recognize the need for trusted experts if you like. So things that we can't do to the quality or the standard we'd want. So things like digital, uh, and design. Design, Digital marketing if you like. So SEO is a dark art to me, uh, and kind of like any kind of the digital online ads and, and they kind of. We're very fortunate to work with a really good design, uh, agency who've been with us since we did our rebrand, uh, over ten years ago. So we went from being like a cartoon little hand drawn dog to the pestle and mortar logo and through to the kind of the arch logo you'll find on our products. Now we work with a, uh, a relatively local husband and wife design team who are kind of like our brand guardians with us so they understand everything about how our brand should look and feel. So when we want to do a new product or a new campaign, we can go to them and we don't have to explain as much because they know it. They wrote our brand guidelines with us, they did all our color palettes. So we work with people like that and then product experts, those kind of vets for product development. We'll work with those to make sure we get the best possible advice. Same with manufacturing. We use kind of contract manufacturing who just manufacture our products for us. They're not white labeled. We don't white label to anyone else and technical partners. So that's really kind of my side of things. So, uh, when we did our uh, Shopify migration product project last year, it was really important to find the right companies to do that job for us. So as well as it being the product, so Shopify, it was about finding the right agency. And uh, we've done a, uh, podcast together before about this. You know, um, cubics of people we worked with then was so good. They were just the people who just literally spoke the same way that we did and I understood what they were trying to say. So we work with people like that and we also have a cyber security partner, uh, who ensures the kind of the safety and security of our systems and digital security, things like that. But again, they're people that I have to be able to talk to and understand what they're asking of us and they have to understand what we're asking of them so we can work together. We really try to select people to work with who are like us. So that means often the people we work with are relatively small businesses as well. But I think together it gives us that impact.

Speaker C: I think that bit about finding people you can talk to is so critical because back in the day I used to do a lot of website tendering projects and the last one I did was an exclusively Shopify tendering project for uh, an E commerce business. And the massive difference between those two was previously it was all but can they create the right checkout for us and do they understand our zoom requirements? And all that kind of techy stuff was how we chose between different people when it came to the Shopify tendering process. It was who gets us, who gets the values, who do the people sitting to my right, who are the client, who do they like? You know, such a different experience when finding your supplier.

Speaker D: So I love the fact you brought that up.

Speaker C: But question for you. You mentioned that you've, you've recently or 12 months ago you moved over to Shopify and before we hit record you said you were taking, you're taking quite, I would say quite an enlightened approach to your migration to shopify of what happens after it went live. So how have you approached post live making the most of Shopify?

Speaker A: I think what we've done is we've tried to take our time. I think it's probably the biggest thing I've tried to encourage the teams to do. And obviously Shopify is, and the app store basically is full of lots of wonderful things that will change your life and I'm sure they would but I'm always kind of very conscious of kind of requirements creepy and kind of just trying to do too much and not doing anything particularly well. So one of our kind of next projects for the Shopify site is our loyalty club. Now there are 101 or um, more loyalty based apps and everyone will do amazing things and our loyalty club is probably one of the oldest things about our business. And you know, when we did our uh, rebrand we went back through the archives. Very fortunate in my, the second generation of the business and the first generation of the business. So Jo's grandfather and her parents kept everything, all the archive material and there's letters written by her grandfather and kind of ideas he'd written down like he wanted to write, you know, he, his outline for a loyalty club of ensuring that, you know, loyal customers after their second order got 10% off for life. And that's something that we continue to do till we move to Shopify and those all of our old loyalty club customers still get 10% off. But we're now looking to relaunch that in a modern way. But we've taken our time. It was in the original scope but we didn't feel we could deliver it at the time the way we wanted to deliver it. So we didn't, we waited. And the same we also looked at subscription, you know, because subscription is massive. You know, it's very simple to implement from uh, Shopify, but it didn't feel right for us and our customers because as customers of other sites that use subscription, it frustrates me so much. In fact, I've canceled a couple of subscriptions this week because their communication is so bad and I don't want that for our customers. And that's how we ended up at Shopify. We wanted the best possible experience for our customers. We wanted them to be able to order the products they wanted as simply as possible. So whether that's the website's performing well, they can pay really easily. They can update their details, you know, the password list entry with, you know, shop codes. So that's really how our uh, whole Shopify migration started. It's like, okay, well, that's what we want first. We want the Shopify experience for our customers. What does it mean? What needs to happen behind it that the customers don't really care about? And I wouldn't want them to. I want them just to have that great experience. So we've gone very slowly. We've done. We've added little things along the way that customers probably wouldn't notice, hopefully, because we just made their experience better, whether that's adding the right leaflet when they buy a new product or it's giving them kind of marketing communications during the promotion period. So we've just gone really kind of slowly, slowly. We kind of replicated what we did previously on our old system, but done it better. Yeah, that's it, really. I think I'm, um. That's kind of my role. I think part of my role is to kind of gatekeep that and stop it running away, because I'm sure it would run away. But our Shopify partner are very pragmatic as well. They understand what we're trying to achieve and what we're trying to. The experience we're trying to give to our customers.

Speaker C: I mean, I think it. It's such a wise way of approaching it because you mentioned subscriptions, you mentioned loyalty there. And it's like it's so easy for someone like me or a consultant or whatever to come along and go, oh, my God, Door west don't have subscription. You should slap that on the site right away. But as with the loyalty piece, it's. The make or break is in the

Speaker D: strategy behind it and the way you implement it.

Speaker C: And turning an app on today is neither strategic nor well implemented, is it?

Speaker D: So taking the time to work it

Speaker C: out and how you could actually work that out when you've just changed your

Speaker D: entire systems, you know, you don't have the knowledge to be able to buy well, to add another thing in.

Speaker A: Absolutely. And, you know, there's been a. I think really the kind of the implementation on the switching on is, you know, less than 10% of the whole project. For us, it's about, you know, respecting the history of our loyal customers. How do we want to reward them moving forward? How do. What do we want to do to modernize it? Because just giving 10% off for life is. Is fantastic for our loyal customers, but we now have the ability to do more. But what does more look like? Because, you know, whether you look at every loyalty inverted commerce system out there, uh, websites are offering different things. It might be, you know, free Shipping at a certain level. You know, are we going to introduce like a merch line? Because people go mad for us at Crufts when we're wearing our uh, branded T shirts and our bobble hats. You know, we could probably sell as many of them as we do our most popular products. So do we, is that something we look at? But how do we deliver that? What has to come behind it? You know, it's not just a matter because I, I just don't like it when you have to switch things off because they're not right and they're ill thought out really. I don't enjoy that and feels like a failure.

Speaker C: It is about as far from efficiency as you can get, you know. Um, and you, you've mentioned multiple times that you are hugely focused on efficiency. So are there any key ways you've, you've gone about. You're particularly pleased with how you've built efficiency into the business.

Speaker A: Being in systems engineering for the kind of sector I worked in, we were all about documentation. And we'll kind of come on to this later in my, in my top tips is that we document everything, every, every process, every way of working, maintenance tasks, cleaning task, in our production facility especially or man of uh, assembly and dispatch has all documented. Because the only way we can ensure quality is to do things the same way over and over again. And if we do things the same way over and over again, we should get the quality. If there's a quality issue, we can then go and look. Is the process wrong? Was the process not followed? Are people not trained correctly? Is the accessibility of documentation not correct? So that's kind of one of the ways we've done it. And that has meant, you know, in our production and dispatch team, pretty much everyone who works in those areas can do any job because the documentation is there and you can train people. There's training matrices, there's you know, gmp, uh, audits on how they do everything. It's really nice to be able to see and it makes everyone super proud because they get audited by our technical quality manager on a monthly basis and have they follow procedure, you know, and is everything running right? And I think there is a danger when you introduce kind of a program to document everything. People do it, think you're doing it because you don't think they do the job properly. You're actually doing it because you want everyone to do it right. And you know, we don't use temporary workers. We don't have any kind of, we got very uh, long term loyal staff. So that's, that's great. And you could just go, well, that's the way we've always done it. But actually by having documented, you can go back and review. Is that the right way to do it? Still hold up. Just because that's the way you always did it doesn't mean it's the right way now. But if you don't have things documented, you can't really kind of determine whether there is a problem in a system or problem in a process.

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Speaker E: M.

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Speaker B: it's time for the Top Tips round.

Speaker C: Okay.

Speaker D: I love this section because it gives me and our listeners some really quick ideas for taking our businesses to the next level. Ben, are you ready for the top tips?

Speaker A: Yes. Let's go.

Speaker C: Okay, the book Top Tip. If everyone listening to this podcast agreed to take Friday off and read a book to make their business better, which book would you recommend?

Speaker A: Okay. Uh, I do love to read. I can't sleep at night without reading and I do try and vary what I read. I don't read business books before I go to sleep. I'm not that bad. But I do try and kind of get into my cycle of reading business books. Uh, so one of my books that really spoke to me, even the title just spoke to me, which made me want to read. It is the 12 week work year. So I think there is a danger when you're in a position like Joe and I are, where the kind of the train set is ours. We can do what we want with the business and run it how we want is to try and do everything you can't. And when we've got a relatively young family so we Kind of almost beholden to that five to six week cycle of school half terms. The 12 week work year meant we could bring a bit more focus to what we're trying to do rather than thinking, oh, uh, we're going to get this done by the end of our financial year and before you know it we've had our busiest time of year, which is the autumn, which is our uh, the fireworks season for our calming product. Then you've got Black Friday, then you go into Christmas, then we've got cross in the spring and all of a sudden before you know it we kind of got like the last quarter of our year and we haven't achieved what we wanted to do and ah, you go, we did to do it next year. But the 12 week work year, the main thing it does is kind of encourages you to do more simple tasks and project tracking. So do fewer things in a shorter amount of time rather than everything over the course of a year because you'll get nothing done or little done. Uh, you know, when we did our Shopify migration project, we did that in a relatively short period of time. I don't know how other people feel about it, but we did it in like 90 days I think from start to finish, uh, which actually looking back was quite aggressive but it worked really well. So I'm a big fan of the 12 week work. Yeah, it kind of helps me keep focus and as you know, running a business with, with Joe helps us kind of remain that focus between us. Uh, and also means that kind of we don't end up in that position with our staff where we say we're going to do all these wonderful things and don't get them done. If we do it on a short time frame, things happen and you got more accountability and it's easier to track.

Speaker D: Is one of my favorite business books, like top three business books listeners. I've just had to resist the urge to jump out the way. So because we've got video on right now, me, M and Ben, I've had to resist the urge to jump out the way and point at it on the bookshelf behind me and I'm now going to resist the urge to geek out in how you implement it. Instead I'm going to ask you and keep us on track and I'm going to ask you the traffic top tip, which is which marketing method do you either prize above all others or think doesn't get the press it deserves?

Speaker A: Okay, um, I wasn't really sure how to answer this one because I'm not Traditionally kind of a marketeer, I'm not directly involved in marketing but obviously, hopefully from what we've already discussed, you'll understand that. Kind of very tech based. So my biggest tip for people is to kind of not be afraid of asking those awkward questions of your tech providers because we don't, you know, hopefully not implementing or designing, building, maintaining your own tech stack if you're buying in products or subscribing to products. Don't be afraid to ask those awkward questions if you don't understand something. So like when we went to Shopify, that was our single biggest thing that improved our traffic. We were warned by people close to us, relatively close to us, that we would should expect a 40% drop in traffic first month. And obviously we built that into our budgets to try and put more money into the SEO. Actually we saw a 25% increase in traffic first month. I'm not saying everyone's going to get that, but it just goes to show you that don't be afraid of doing big things the right way to make a big change. You can't continue to do the same thing, expect a different outcome. I'm sure there's a better way of putting that. But for us, you know, that was a big headline for us and it was really positive because all of a sudden we'd, you know, we, I don't think we necessarily spent any more on SEO on, when we, when we're on Shopify than we did previously. It was just more effective. Obviously, you know, Google loves to read Shopify, that it's, everything's just written better for it to. So that's kind of uh, my traffic top tip is to you know, find the right platform and system for you because Shopify is not for everyone, I'm sure. But for us it was just the best thing we could have done.

Speaker C: I will take that as a very

Speaker D: good traffic top tip that is acceptable. Okay, the tool top tip.

Speaker C: Maybe a collaboration tool, a social media

Speaker D: plugin, a phone app or just a way of working. Is there a cool little tool you use that makes you and your team more efficient from day to day?

Speaker A: Okay, I've got two here.

Speaker F: Cool.

Speaker A: Two, uh, kind of ones like an efficiency thing. So we use, we uh, uh, as with most companies we, I guess we have tried different tools to make us work better as a team but the one we've kind of settled on at the moment, I'm not saying it's forever is Monday. So we use Monday because it's kind of cross department. We don't use it throughout the business. Because I think the danger of trying to force someone who is in assembly and production to use Monday, it's not right. It doesn't fit for them. But for marketing and Joe and myself, it's really good, really good tool. It kind of goes across everything that we do in the marketing for kind of planning, um, marketing campaigns, product launches, research projects. You know, even Joe and I have private boards for home stuff where the kids are, uniform purchases, school trips. It's just so useful. And it's across everything. You can use it on any web browser, use applications on our, on our laptops. And it's on my phone. I try not to have notifications which on my phone, but it's always there if I need to take a note, put something on. Uh, and the other one I really love, uh, kind of comes back to what we talked about. Our document everything kind of mantra is scribe. Um, with so many digital systems that we are trying to document ways of how to do things, Scribe is just brilliant. It's just so easy to use. And you know, what would have previous previously been like a 35 page how to document all of a sudden becomes like a f minute exercise to do your job. It will document it and you go in and tweak how it kind of lays it out and then kind of we integrate that into our QMS in the business. So that's been really good for us.

Speaker C: Is QMS Quality Management System?

Speaker A: Yes, it is. Yeah. So sorry. QMS is where we keep all of our SOPs for our, uh, standard operating procedures, standard working procedures for our production side, which is now kind of backflowing to the rest of the business.

Speaker D: Got you.

Speaker A: So it'd be the defact for us. It's the de facto place you go to find out how to do something nice.

Speaker D: And scribe is spelled S C R

Speaker A: I B E. That's it.

Speaker D: Yeah, it is.

Speaker F: Wow.

Speaker D: Unusual. An app that's actually spelled how it sounds. Um, okay, the carbon top tip. What's your favorite way to reduce the carbon footprint of an E Commerce store?

Speaker A: Uh, well, for us, obviously all of our products are packed in plastic, which on the face of it doesn't look great in a world where you're trying to reduce plastic use. But we are, um, production team and in particular our production manager is very focused on that. So actually we now use plastic which is partly sugar cane based. So it's not all virgin plastic. But that's not my top tip. My top tip for us or thing that we've done is we reduce the use of plastic in our Dispatch department by 98%.

Speaker D: Wow.

Speaker A: Because it was got to a point probably about five years ago where we couldn't shut the recycling bin on a Tuesday night before it got empty. And I'm like, okay, well what's in here? Well, there's lots of cardboard boxes. Okay. And so we're buying in bubble wrap and we're throwing away cardboard. So we bought a 2,000 pound cardboard shredder that turns old cardboard boxes into packaging material. So that's the one we use that for. Ones that we can't reuse. Ones we can reuse, we do. So we don't buy in as many cardboard boxes. Now we still have uh, a line of branded cardboard boxes which go to specific customers because that's looks really nice. But if you know the, the volumes of orders we're sending out to things like Amazon vendor, they all go out in reused packaging boxes. So we don't buy in boxes for that. And they're all filled with shredded cardboard. So that, you know, we don't use bubble bags anymore. We don't use bubble wrap, uh, we don't use any kind of bags like that. It's all wrapped in either, uh, boxer, which is like um, kind of craft paper style. Uh, and also alongside that, one of the biggest things I don't think some people understand is that um, what stops cardboard off from being recycled is the tape that you put on it to make it stick. So we have water based adhesive on all of our tape. Now I'm getting really geeky again. All of our tape is on uh, that we use for packaging. Comes off like an automated machine where you can set the length you want whips to a little water bath that activates the adhesive. So then that is just craft tape with perfectly recyclable glue on it. Fantastic. So we try and send out stuff that is easily recyclable and all of our product packaging is household recyclable.

Speaker D: Anyway, what I love about your answer there is the focus on what happens to the materials after they leave the fulfillment center. You know, it's like, yeah, we found this amazing stuff that's, it's 90 recyclable. And uh, we can send it to the customers, but the customers can't do anything with it. You know, they, whereas, you know, even talking about that tape, it enables more of the cardboard at the consumer end to be recycled. And I think cardboard is probably the easiest thing for a consumer to recycle out of all the packaging materials that come through. So I love that kind of full, full life cycle thought you've got going on there. Ben, right before we say goodbye, because we're very nearly at the end, could you please let the listeners know where they can find you and Door west on the web and social if they want to get in contact.

Speaker A: Yeah, of course. So our website is nice and easy to find, www.doorbest.com. uh, we also have a trade site as well which is trade.doorwest.com if anyone out there is interested in becoming the stockist or learning more about uh, taking our products uh, on all social networks. So we're on Facebook, uh, and Instagram and TikTok, but we are just Door West. And if you shop on our website we've uh, got an exclusive code just for the Masterplan listeners for 10% off your order and that is Masterplan nice and easy.

Speaker D: Marvellous, lovely offer.

Speaker C: Thank you very much Ben and thanks for being such an awesome guest. It's been a pleasure geeking out on OPS with you. So thanks so much for sharing so much.

Speaker A: No problem. Thank you Chloe. It's great to speak to you.

Speaker C: Fascinating to get to just chat ops

Speaker D: there with Ben and I think you

Speaker C: can really see in the conversation with

Speaker D: him how they are doing great on the growth front and keeping things super efficient but super effective with the focus on giving the customers a great experience, giving them a great product. Really ringing true there. Uh, particularly liked, obviously I loved his recommendation of the 12 week work year. If you haven't read that, read it. It is just brings so much clarity to life. It really does. And it's a fascinating read because it's all based on what sports teams do and stuff. So um, I obviously thoroughly recommend that one as well. And I like the cardboard top tip. And I say chatting to Ben about Ops, I almost want to go off and uh, find a new career as an Ops director rather than a marketing director. Maybe it's just me, uh, but yeah, Ops, Ops and efficiency. Love a bit of Ops and efficiency. Right before I waffle on about that for even longer, you can get your hands on the notes from this episod including the top tips and links to what we mentioned by heading over to ecommercemasterplan.com you can also use our direct episode short links. Just put ecmp.info the number of this episode into the URL bar and you'll be redirected straight to the right page of the site. And when you get to the website, why not add yourself to my email list? Why not? Go on, do it. Get the newsletter if you like this

Speaker C: episode then check out episode 280. Quite a long way back up the feed with Brian Larson from US Business

Speaker D: Restorer Pet, which is another pet supplements brand and he's talking about how he grew that. So that will give you another angle on pet supplements. And you can hear all our uh, episodes with big brands@ecmp.info big.

Speaker C: Thank you for tuning in to this and every episode that you do of the E Commerce Master Plan Podcast.

Speaker D: We love it to have you out there listening.

Speaker C: I bring you a new interview every week because I want to inspire and help e commerce business owners like you to succeed and thrive with your businesses, including becoming ever closer to carbon neutral. So if you know someone this show can help, please tell them to listen to the E Commerce Master Plan podcast. Hope you have a great week and don't forget to keep optimizing.

Speaker B: Thank you for listening to the E Commerce Master Plan podcast. Find out more@ecommercemasterplan M.com podcast.

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