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Uncle Matt’s Hats: Using Storytelling, UGC, and Mission to Grow an eCommerce Brand

eCommerce MasterPlan · 32 min

0:00--:--

Uncle Matt's Hats, founded by Steve Willicott in 2024, is a D2C hat brand built around a mental health mission inspired by his brother Matt's death by suicide. The business treats the product - premium, 95% recycled baseball caps and beanies - as secondary to impact, with every element from hat design (an internal 'Brain Freeze' graphic representing mental overload) to packaging (oversized ice cream tub boxes labeled 'Uncle Matt's Brain Freeze Ice Cream') engineered to serve both the mission and ecommerce mechanics. Willicott, a former sports ecommerce CEO with 11 years of operational experience, deliberately designs unboxing experiences that generate organic UGC without paid promotion, drive giftability, and create content that fuels both acquisition and retention. The packaging itself tells stories to delivery drivers, customers, and social audiences. Second product launches (beanies, t-shirts) aim to make the mission accessible to people who don't wear baseball caps. Willicott also hosts seminars and events featuring mental health speakers and community advocates, normalizing conversations around mental wellbeing. This episode is essential for founders building mission-driven brands, DTC operators rethinking packaging as a marketing asset, and anyone seeking to align product, mission, and business mechanics without budget-heavy paid acquisition.

Key takeaways

  • →Every element of the business - product design, packaging, unboxing experience - should serve both the mission and solve specific ecommerce problems like UGC generation and customer retention.
  • →Premium product quality and thoughtful design details (like the Brain Freeze graphic inside the hat) make packaging and unboxing so compelling that customers organically create UGC without paid incentives.
  • →A clear brand mission attracts customers who buy into the purpose rather than the product itself, allowing product line extensions (beanies, t-shirts) that serve different customer preferences while staying mission-aligned.
  • →Operational experience from logistics and fulfillment helps founders understand what's actually practicable versus what marketing teams might promise, preventing disconnect between promises and delivery.
  • →Strategic storytelling touchpoints throughout the customer journey - from delivery driver notes to event seminars - multiply marketing impact with minimal budget by making every interaction reinforce the brand mission.

In this episode

  1. 1From Ops to eCommerce: Steve's Career Path
  2. 2The Origin Story: Uncle Matt and the Mission
  3. 3Product Design Philosophy: Making the Hat Secondary to Impact
  4. 4Expanding Beyond Baseball Caps: Beanies and T-Shirts
  5. 5Packaging as Strategy: Brain Freeze Ice Cream Tubs
  6. 6Organic UGC and Customer-Generated Content
  7. 7Community Events: Normalizing Mental Health Conversations

Mentioned

Uncle Matt's HatsShopifySteve WillicottChloe ThomasGraingerBarclaysMetaAlibaba

Guests

Steve Willicott

Topics in this episode

ShopifyUser-generated content (UGC)Uncle Matt's HatsDTC ecommerceSustainable materials (95% recycled)Brain Freeze graphic designIce cream tub packagingMental health advocacyBeanie hat product extensionT-shirt product line

Questions this episode answers

Why did Steve Willicott start Uncle Matt's Hats?

His brother Matt died by suicide in 2020, and Matt was known for always wearing baseball caps and buying them for Willicott's children, who called them 'Uncle Matt's Hats.' Willicott founded the brand to create social good around men's mental health using Matt's name and the metaphor of hats as protecting your head - protecting yourself mentally.

What is the 'Brain Freeze' graphic on Uncle Matt's Hats?

The Brain Freeze graphic is a pattern on the inside of the hats representing the moment when mental overload becomes too much. Willicott spent more time designing the interior graphic than the exterior because it communicates the brand's core message about internal mental struggle, making it impossible to use off-the-shelf products.

How does the ice cream tub packaging generate UGC and marketing content?

Uncle Matt's hats ship in oversized ice cream tubs branded as 'Uncle Matt's Brain Freeze Ice Cream' with fictional nutrition labels listing stress, confusion, and frustration instead of calories. Customers organically unbox and share photos without payment; Willicott then requests permission to use the content on the website and in Meta ads, creating a cyclical acquisition loop powered by customer-generated content.

What is the purpose of the second product lines - beanies and t-shirts?

Many customers said they love the mission but don't wear baseball caps; Willicott launched beanies to serve people who prefer them, and t-shirts to let non-hat-wearers still represent the brand and support the mission.

How do Uncle Matt's Hats events contribute to the business mission?

The brand runs seminars and conferences featuring mental health speakers, podcasters, community group leaders, and individuals sharing personal experiences, normalizing mental health conversations without being prescriptive about what works for people's wellbeing.

Conversation analysis

Computed from the transcript - who did the talking, and the words that came up most.

Share of words spoken

  • Speaker A67%
  • Speaker B29%
  • Speaker C4%

Most-used words

product29hats25mission23commerce18brand17help16matt15part14uncle14marketing12grainger12baseball12wear12cream12thank11love11

Episode notes

Steve Willicott is the founder at Uncle Matt's Hats, selling baseball caps and supporting men’s mental health. Founded in 2024, they sell via their Shopify store, and are about to launch their second range. In this episode, Steve explains how Uncle Matt's Hats has built every part of the business around its mission - from product design to packaging to customer acquisition. It’s a smart look at how purpose-led brands can create stronger differentiation, generate organic content, and grow without relying on big ad budgets.

Full transcript

32 min

Transcribed and scored by The B2B Podcast Index.

Speaker A: Part of the thing of being a startup and not having a massive budget, everything needs to work a lot harder uh, for us. So the packaging needs to do a job, the product needs to do a job, our experience of unboxing needs to do a job and provide us that ugc. So I guess everything has kind of been designed to reduce down the need for that paid acquisition. It's the E Commerce Master Plan podcast here to help you solve your marketing problems and grow your 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 B: Hello and um, welcome. It's great to have you here. Thank you for hitting play and choosing to listen to one of our inspiring guests. We are a show funded by our sponsors. They really do make all this possible. So brands, excuse me for a second or two whilst I speak to our supplier side listeners. Our sponsorship calendar for the second half of 2026 is now open with some cool hold back catalog of episodes options that really get your campaign in front of the maximum ears fast. So please do get in touch with me via ecmp.info Sponsor if you're interested in finding out more about that. In this episode we're talking to a smaller business than usual, but one that's doing some really cool stuff really well that we can all listen to, listen from, learn from. They are they've created a product that's kind of secondary to the mission of the business, but as you'll get about to hear, they've created that product so in harmony with the mission. There's not another angle I think they could have thought of and then even the packaging goes into that as well and then that impacts on how they do the marketing. It's both delivering on the mission perfectly whilst also delivering maximum impact for the E commerce business as well. Super fascinating. Great guest. I know you're going to like it and make sure you listen to the end of the episode because you don't want to miss out on his top tips. Together with our discussion about the pros and cons of AI Note takers.

Speaker A: Ahora Mascolos Hill Vacada projecto al sigente Niver Ahora quince porciento Nuna selection de puertas.

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Speaker B: And now to introduce our special guest. Steve Willicott is the founder at Uncle Matt's Hats, selling baseball caps and supporting men's mental health. Founded in 2024 they sell via their Shopify store and are about to second product range. Hello Steve.

Speaker A: Oh, thank you for having me.

Speaker B: Very cool to have you on the show and I love the kind of the all encompassing thing of your business. So very cool to get into that shortly I'm sure. But first off Steve, how did you end up in the marvellous world of E commerce?

Speaker A: Not without planning actually, but um, so I was the CEO of a pure play Ecom business for 11 years. An online sports business selling rugby and football gear. So joined that more from an operational point of view then obviously got into more of the uh, digital and E commerce, uh, based functions, left that business in 2016, exited and set up a consultancy. Um, so I advise businesses that mainly brands that have a E commerce function but also have bricks and mortar or third party wholesale, that sort of thing, help them with their e commerce function and then more recently set up a uh, Pure Play DTC brand, uh, which is the hat brand.

Speaker B: Very cool. And you said you came into E commerce from the ops side of things. Do you think that was a good way in, you know, is it easier if you know the logistics to learn the marketing or vice versa?

Speaker A: Um, I think so I think because then you know the limitations. You know I think there sometimes can be a disconnect between you know, marketing digital and then uh, you know, the actual very basic function of getting something out the door and getting to the customer and the service this. So I think so I think it does help that because you sort of then can decide what is practicable and what isn't practical in terms of what you can actually push uh, through marketing.

Speaker B: I think it's so easy for us to sit in our offices and forget especially if we're nowhere near our own fulfilment and forget the physical reality. Whereas I think if you've, yes, if you've come in from that angle it's so, so much harder to forget actually there's customers, they're not numbers on a sheet actually. There's physical product, there's box, there's all of this going on which is so important if we're going to run a Business. Business. Well, to understand all of it, I

Speaker A: think, you know, we all sort of say, oh, you know, we put the customer first and we do what the customer wants. But it's quite easy to be distanced from that quite quickly. So I think it's always good to have a check in and sort of go, you know, what. What can we physically do? What can't we physically do? And then. And then we will, uh, market appropriately.

Speaker B: Very true. Now, let's talk about Uncle Matt's Hats, your hat brand. Where in the world are you and where do you sell to?

Speaker A: Uh, we are, uh, as I say, we're pure play D2C, so we only sell online. Uh, we do run some of our own events where we, uh, retail, you know, in person. But the majority is Ecom, uh, dtc. So through our website. Um, yes.

Speaker B: And, uh, do you sell globally or are you purely uk?

Speaker A: No, globally. Globally. So obviously the, uh, the predominant sales at the moment is uk, but yes, we do. I mean, we've got hats, uh, I think probably in every continent at the moment.

Speaker B: So, uh, yeah, and I don't think we can talk about the product without talking about why you started the business. So let's, let's, uh, let's start with why you started the business. Then we can get into the product itself.

Speaker A: Sure. Okay. So the business is called Uncle Matt's Hats. Um, Matt was my brother who we sadly lost in 2020 to suicide. One of the things he would do was he always wore baseball caps and he would always buy my kids baseball caps, and they became known to them as their Uncle Matt's Hats because he was their uncle and he was called Matt. And so I then wanted to set up the business and do some, you know, almost sort of social good. A, uh, business for social good. And when we thought about naming it, of course, it just made sense to use that same term, that Uncle Matt's Hat. So whilst it's not about him per se, that's why his name is on it. And I think there's quite a nice link of hat and your head and protecting your head, uh, you know, in terms of a metaphor for looking after yourself. So, yeah, that's where it came from.

Speaker B: And do you think of the product of the business as the hat or the impact that you have?

Speaker A: Definitely the impact. Definitely the impact. In fact, the hat is, uh, you know, almost secondary to what we're trying to do. And, you know, we always thought this, but we have proved it since launch. People don't come to us because they need A hat. You know, they're not going on holiday and going, right, it's going to be sunny, need a hat, or, you know, those sorts of things. They're coming to us because of the mission, because of the purpose, because of, because of what it's all about and what we're trying to do. And then obviously they buy into it because they think, oh, yeah, I could, I can wear a hat. Or, you know, some people buy the hats and sort of, you know, stick it on a shelf as a kind of an ornament. Some people have every color that we, that we, um, have put out there. So whilst it is a hat brand, it's not necessarily about hats, which makes

Speaker B: so much sense, but so little sense at the same time.

Speaker A: That's right, yes. And I mean, ultimately we're not, you know, we're not trying to solve a gap in the market in terms of hats. You know, we're not trying to make a hat that doesn't currently exist.

Speaker C: It.

Speaker A: It does. You know, then they're very good hats. They're very premium. You know, they're made of good materials. They're 95% recycled materials. And, you know, so. So they're a decent hat. But we're not trying to solve a problem that hasn't, uh, already been solved. What we're trying to do is help, uh, with a mission by using that product.

Speaker B: I think it would have been so easy with the mission that you've got to just go and take another baseball cap off the shelf and slap a logo on it. But you've gone a lot more into the creation of the product and into creating something that's really worthwhile, not just, you know, going on to Alibaba, buying some units, uh, which I think, you know, it would have been perfectly reasonable for you to do given the mission. So why did you want to make sure the hat was really good as well?

Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, God, I wish we could have just stuck a logo on a hat that we could buy in, because it would have been a lot, a lot easier. Um, again, the reason comes out of the proposition of the brand in that if we launch a hat and say, oh, it's about men. Well, if you really strip it back and say, right, we're going to launch a hat. Okay, why would anybody buy our hat? Well, I don't really know the answer to that. Is it because it's got a cool logo? One ball? Some people might not like that logo. Some people might. So let's layer on, uh, uh, we want to have a You know, a social effect and do some good in the mental health world. Okay, let's layer that on there. Does that mean people would buy that hat? Well, they might buy into it a little bit more because of the purpose and the mission, but it's still just a hat. So what can we do? You know, we kind of stripped everything back layer by layer and go, does it still work without this part of it? And if it doesn't, then we can't do it. So to explain that the hats are very clean and simple on the outside, very, uh, classic and kind of uncluttered. But on the inside we have a graphic, a pattern, and it's what we call, uh, the brain freeze graphic. But it's representing that moment where just stuff becomes too much. You've got too much going on inside your head. And that came from the idea that when I was speaking to people after I lost my brother, a lot of people said that when they're struggling, they would look at other people and say, why am I feeling like this? Everyone else is fine, everyone else has got their life sorted. Why am I feeling like this? And so what we did is we took that, you know, a step further and said, well, on the inside is where all this stuff is going on. So let's put that on the inside. So in fact, we spent more time designing the inside of the hat that people don't see than designing the outside of the hat. So without that kind of layer of storytelling, it doesn't work as a, as a proposition. What that then means is you cannot take an off the shelf hat and apply a pattern very well. You can try and do it, but very well to the inside of a hat. Equally, we didn't want to take a cheap hat that probably has a, uh, you know, um, I don't know, has not been made particularly ethically or isn't using very sort of sustainable materials, those sorts of things. So we had to go more bespoke for that. So actually the hat itself is completely built from the ground up just to solve those couple of problems.

Speaker B: Makes so much sense. And it really just shows that, uh, whole there's not a bit of your business that isn't untouched by the mission.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: Now you mentioned to me before, I said in the intro, you're about to launch that your second product range, given you have this clear mission with the business, and as you've already said, it's more important than the product, than the physical product is what's the rationale for creating a second product? Because presumably you don't necessarily need a second product. From the outsider's perspective. You've got the mission, we've got the hat, we don't need anything else. So why go tell us what the second product is and then what the strategy behind it is?

Speaker A: Yeah, again, very simple really, in that, uh, we've had lots of people, and this is interesting when, when we sort of talking about the, the fact that the, the product isn't necessarily the proposition. Lots of people saying, love what you're doing. Really, really like the whole, you know, the whole, the whole story, the whole, the whole purpose. We love the. I'm sure we'll talk about the packaging in a minute, but love all the packaging that we do and the kind of the, the unboxing, um, experience. But I don't wear hats and I've got uh, a bit. Sorry, I don't wear baseball caps and I've got a, uh. Or I've got an overly large head or a small head. I've never found a hat that fits me. All these sorts of things. So that's one. As have said, I always wear beanie hats. I never wear baseball caps. Baseball caps don't look any good on me. And so, uh, that's the second range we've launched, uh, into beanie hats. Just to sort of solve that thing where if somebody doesn't want to wear a baseball cap but they always wear a beanie hat, then we can fulfill that. What comes next as well is again to plug that gap is whilst we are a hat brand and we don't want to go away from the fact that we are a hat brand as our primary message, we ran one of our events last, uh, year and had some T shirts for the staff to wear and everybody was asking where they could buy the T shirts and I said, oh, we don't wear a hat brand or I don't sell T shirts, but I would wear that. So we're also launching, launching a very simple range of T shirts just so that people can buy into that if they don't want to wear a hat. But they still uh, sort uh, of want to be part of the brand and I guess represent the brand. So yeah, that's the reasoning behind launching, uh, into other areas that makes so

Speaker B: much sense when, now you've explained it to me. It's like if we want to fulfill the mission, we need to make it available to everybody. And not everybody wears baseball caps.

Speaker A: Yes, that's right. Sadly, I wish everybody did. But, uh, yes, that's exactly it.

Speaker B: I giggle as I Am someone who doesn't wear baseball caps. Baseball caps plus fringe. Terrible, terrible combination.

Speaker A: Can I interest you in a beanie?

Speaker B: We'll talk after. So you mentioned about the unboxing, which for me is a core part of the product as well. So please explain to the audience what you're doing with the unboxing, because I think this is brilliant.

Speaker A: Yes. So as I said, when we built out the actual hat design and the story of the hat, and we called that graphic that's on the inside of the hat, uh, the Brain Freeze graphic, because it represents that moment where your brain goes, just can't take it anymore. Something's got to change. I've either got to get help or I've got to change my lifestyle, whatever it is. And we kept referring to this thing as brain freeze. And we were trying to think of a way of getting unboxing videos, UGC on social channels, things like that. Social proof obviously is going to be massive in this because it then becomes part of the tribe and you feel like you're doing good by talking about the product. And so, you know, uh, in the various brands and businesses I've, I've helped over the years, we do a lot on unboxing. Um, and it's very hard to get brands to think about it other than a very functional, you know, thing. We need to get that product to that customer's door and it needs to be safe and it needs to be kept dry or warm or cold or hot or, you know, whatever the product is. And I was thinking about why isn't that part of the proposition? It just tends to be very functional. So what we thought was, well, if we're talking about this brain Freeze moment, what would really make people sort of go, wow, that's different, that's weird, that's quirky, and want to find out more about it. So we created these massive oversized ice cream tubs. And what we did is we designed them as though they were, uh, a separate brand, a separate product. So it's called Uncle Matt's Brain Freeze Ice Cream. And from a functional point of view, it is a hat box. So if you're a, ah, you know, if you're a sneaker head that keeps their shoes in the, in the boxes and, you know, keeps them all nice, then you can use it for that. Other people use it to keep dog treats in or, you know, things. But the key thing for me was making something too good to throw away so people wouldn't actually sort of just sort of stick it in the bin. It becomes part of the, part of the experience. So, so we've got these massive ice cream tubs. As I say, they're branded up with uncle, uh, Matt's Brain Freeze ice cream. But what we've got on the back, where you would normally have the, uh, things like the nutritional info, instead of having, you know, fats and carbohydrates, calories, we've got things like confusion and stress and frustration and things like that. How it all adds up, um, and, you know, becomes to a, uh, total of, of too much. Almost like, you know, if you're having something that's really bad for you, that's, that's not good for you. So it enables us to do all these sort of storytelling moments and little Easter eggs that people find as they go along the way. What we've then found is that, that, you know, whereas, you know, in multiple businesses I've worked with, you know, we're paying people for UGC because we want that content to post online or to pump into paid ads or whatever it may be, we're finding that we're getting that organically without actually having to pay for that. So somebody's buying this using their own money and then doing us a very piece of UGC unboxing, um, the product, which we then sort of obviously gives us organic reach. But also, um, we then talk to them and say, can we use that content on our website? Which 9 times out of 10 they say yes, can we pump that into more, uh, meta ads? They normally say yes. And so it almost becomes this cyclical piece where your customers are creating the content for our acquisition piece, which then obviously helps us acquire. It becomes repetitive. But the packaging also aids us with retention because it becomes quite highly giftable. So if you've bought it and you've experienced, you know, had a nice experience, you thought it was good, and, you know, somebody that's either you just want to buy as a gift or somebody that's going through a tricky time, oh, well, let's send them a giant ice cream tub with a hat in it and uh, hopefully, you know, make them smile just for a few minutes. And then we've got other ideas for other, other types of hats where we stick them in other strange packaging, which then hopefully it becomes a bit collectible. So as you say, every part of what we've done has been for a reason. Whether it's to aid our acquisition, to fuel our retention, whether it's our gifting piece, whether it's our content piece. We also then get, um, we put These tubs, uh, in an outer box because obviously we don't want the tubs to be damaged in transit. And on the outside of the box it says keep chill. And it's got lots of um, ice cream and uh, keep refrigerated type uh, wording on there. And what we found is that gives us some brilliant content and really good stories where people have panicked because they've signed for a order for somebody and they've gone, oh my God, it's ice cream, I need to freeze this. And uh, we've had pictures of it appearing in freezers, in co working spaces, stuff like that, whereas the customer couldn't find this stuff. So again, it gives us good content, good storytelling and all of that helps to fuel the mission.

Speaker B: I find it so fascinating the way in which in your business you have managed to take the product and the mission and the needs of an E commerce business that is sales and repeat purchases and customer love and all of this and combine them into one strategy that delivers on all fronts. And I think it's such a lesson for all of us on if you actually have that clear vision and mission in the business and you actually think about these different points in the customer journey, you can do so much with so little in terms of it's a brown box around the ice cream tub, box around a baseball cap, but yet it ticks so many boxes both for your mission and for the customer journey and for the need for UGC content for marketing and

Speaker A: yes, yes, that's it. And we tend to think about, you know, scrutinize everything. Where is there an opportunity in this thing? So for example, on the outside of the box it says keep chill as I've said. But then there's a little note underneath it that talks to the um, delivery driver that says don't worry, you don't really need to keep this refrigerated. But what we're doing is that it's very short paragraph, uh, of text, but it actually explains the mission to the delivery driver because we thought, well, actually being Pure play and D2C, every one of our purchases will be handled by multiple people, uh, when it leaves us to landing with the customer. So let's use that as an opportunity. Let's try and tell the story to them as well. So they might think what the hell is this thing? And it doesn't feel like ice cream is quite light. So all that sort of intrigue and storytelling. Where can you apply storytelling? And if we can, we do.

Speaker B: You mentioned earlier that you have um, an Events program. We're not talking a pop up shop where you're selling some hats, are we? It's, it's more of a seminar. Would that be a fair word?

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, exactly that, exactly that. So, so, you know, as part of our mission, we've said we're very much in terms of the mental health space. We're trying to sit at the kind of the prevention end of the scale, you know, normalizing it enough, getting enough people to talk about it, that if and when you do have an issue, a crisis of some uh, sort, you don't go, oh my God, what the hell is wrong with me? Uh, I'm the only person that's ever felt like this. I need to take drastic action, which obviously is what happened with my brother. So normalizing all those things. So the way we do that is obviously, you know, taking a bit of an irreverent approach to um, the subject. So, you know, sticking them in a giant, a giant ice cream tub. But also these events that we put on are basically gathering people. So gathering people. Much you would do in the marketing ecom space where we all turn up to seminars and conferences and things like that and learn about what people are doing in our world. It's exactly that but for the mental health, uh, world. So we have speakers on that may be podcasters in the mental health space or people that run community groups or even just people talking about their own experiences. We had um, a collaboration with Barclays where we ran one in their sort of flagship store in Moorgate. And um, we had one of their vice presidents just talking about his experiences and his issues that he's experienced in the past. You know, so becomes just a way of sort of telling the story without being too heavy. What we didn't want to be do is being too prescriptive and saying to improve your mental health, you must do this, this, this, this. You know, we don't know we're all in the same boat, you know, and what, what works for you might not work for, for someone else, but it allows us to start having those conversations. And, and that is a massive part of our give back. Uh, and then the other part is with partner charity which is much more at the um, intervention end of the scale where, you know, people need help. So we uh, we support a charity called Chasing the Stigma that has um, a directory of all mental health services where people can get help online. So, so yes it is. Whilst obviously, you know, we do sell hats there and we encourage people to buy hats there. That's not the purpose of the event.

Speaker B: I love the way it all comes together. But I must ask you about the marketing decisions in the business because I

Speaker C: think

Speaker B: it's especially hard when you have a mission driven business. When you're contributing to charities and doing all this good is how much do you spend on marketing, which channels do you go down? If someone came to me and said I'm launching a hat brand, I go right, you need to do X, Y and Z to grow it. But I feel like I'd be making different decisions if I was running a vision mission business. Have you found with all your experience working for advising many businesses and running a much bigger business in the past, have you found you've made different decisions about the marketing because of the mission of the business or is it still the same playbook?

Speaker A: Well, I think there's a couple of things that I think, you know, obviously on this I've been able to do exactly what I feel is right. Obviously you know, advising businesses is always, there's always other uh, I guess forces that you know, uh, allow or prevent you to do certain things. So I've kind of had free reign. So I've maybe overindulged myself. But equally I think part of the thing of being a startup and not having a massive budget for some other businesses, we may have solved an issue by saying, okay, we've got that budget, we can flood the market with that particular messaging or we can utilize budget to solve that problem, um, not necessarily just throwing money at it but doing it in a considered way. We don't have that budget so everything needs to work a lot harder uh, for us. So the packaging needs to do a job, the product needs to do a job. Um, uh, experience of unboxing needs to do a job and provide us that ugc. So I guess everything has kind of been designed to reduce down the need for that paid acquisition. So whilst we obviously do support that uh, with a small budget, if we tell all these stories and we create this kind of a hook, we in theory don't need to spend as much on acquiring a customer as another brand would do. Particularly if they're another me too brand. It's very hard competitive space where you say what's different about this product? Actually it's the same as that, that other product over there. So we're going to trade on price, Are we going to pay more in terms of advertising? You know, all the things we've got in our arsenal. The more different we make our brand, the easier it is to cut through and therefore the less we have to pay to acquire a customer. E commerce master plan is supported by some of the greatest companies in the E commerce sector. Here's a reminder of who they are. Pros save more on what you need to get the job done right Right now at Lowe's, get 15 off select custom entry and interior doors. Plus save $80 on the DeWalt 20 volt max 2 tool combo kit. Now just $169. And at the Lowe's pro desk, bring us your materials list and get a quote in minutes. Handwritten, a photo or even a sticky note is all you need. Keep your jobs moving faster and on budget. Access at Lowe's valid through 7 8, while supplies last selection varies by location.

Speaker C: Grainger M 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 247 support. Call 1-800-GRAINGER click grainger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done.

Speaker A: It's time for the top tips round.

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

Speaker A: I was born ready.

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

Speaker A: I mean, I'm not a massive, uh, fan of kind of, you know, business growth books. I think they can all be a bit kind of convoluted. But one of the ones that has always stuck with me, and I'm sure many people have seen it, many, many listeners have seen it, is the, uh, start with why. So the Simon Sinek book, which is uh, all around why, why are you doing that thing? Why are you making that product? So, not the what you're doing, not the how you're doing it, but the why. And I think that's always stuck with me. One with the work I do with other brands, you know, and how, how is that product. But, um, definitely with this, you know, why are we doing this? We're not doing this to actually enable people to put some hats on their heads. That's not the purpose.

Speaker B: Great recommendation. Uh, the traffic top tip. Even which marketing method do we either prize above all others or think doesn't get the press it deserves.

Speaker A: I'm m old school, I think I'm still very heavily email focused. Um, you know you hear still a lot of things saying how email's dead and things like that. Well you know in any number of the businesses I work with and even in my business that's simply not true. So in terms of traffic driver I think um, you tend to sometimes have to rely on the paid channels. So meta, Google, those sorts of things to drive traffic. I think the biggest thing that people don't do is they look as uh, a primary conversion goal of getting an order, getting a purchase which obviously everybody's going to want to do. But I think what people don't do is look at a secondary conversion goal and say well if they don't purchase what else can I get? And hopefully that's an email address. So if I can get an email address I can then start talking to these people and explaining why we're different, why we that they should buy into our brand. So I think you know, definitely need to rely on those paid channels for traffic but definitely second conversions for email.

Speaker B: Totally agree with you. Tooltop tip. Maybe a collaboration tool, a social media 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: I think this probably says more about me than anything else but uh, I've fallen in love with AI note takers simply because I've gotten to the point where I was writing so many notes and all these things and I come back and I go, I do not know, I don't know. This is me that I'm bad at writing notes but I do not know what my notes mean. They do not make any sense to me. So actually being able to rely on AI note takers and then be able to almost prompt them to give me the information I need out of all the meetings and things that I've attended I find massively useful.

Speaker B: I have a love hate relationship with them.

Speaker A: Really?

Speaker B: Yeah. I think if I was still a consultant doing lots of client calls, calls and catch ups or if I was still running the marketing agency, you know, with lots of client calls and in depth new business calls and all that, I think I'd use them just to have a black and white record of what had been said. Um, and I probably would be using them in the way you've described but with what I do now I'm just, it Keeps being there. I go, yeah, I'm not letting you in today. I don't think I've looked back at the notes. It's taken once. So I'm, I'm love and people rave about them just like you did. But I'm not, I can't find a way to make it useful. Useful.

Speaker A: But the only problem I have is that I then go into, I uh, rely on it too much. I go into face to face meetings, forget to take notes and then come out and try and find the, the AI notes that obviously wasn't there. And, and, and they go, oh, what was that thing we said?

Speaker B: And now I have a tip for that which is um, record the meeting on your mobile phone. Obviously ask permission first.

Speaker A: Yes, yes. It's weird because people are happy to be recorded on a video call but they're not happy to be recorded in person person.

Speaker B: Really?

Speaker A: Yeah, it's really strange. There's a psychological thing there. I don't know what it is.

Speaker B: How fascinating. Right? We should, we're in the top tips. We should be, we should be doing the next one. But love, thank you for the tips. Uh, okay, the carbon top tip. What's your favorite way to reduce the carbon footprint of an E commerce store?

Speaker A: Again, fairly kind of basic. You know I, I encourage people not to use single use plastic to uh, to you know, use cardboard. Um, we're a little bit guilty because we do send a, ah, you know, quite a lot of air with our, with our parcels because of the whole ice cream tub and things like that. But I think just it as minimal as possible, you know when producing what, what sustainable materials can you use? As I say our hats are 95% recycled plastic. Uh so yeah, I think it's just not using materials when you don't need to.

Speaker B: Yeah, I totally agree with you. And personally I think the amount of air you're shipping is justified by the goals.

Speaker A: Oh, thank you, thank you.

Speaker B: I think you've got my tick in the shipping too much air box. Um, the good side of that. Anyway, anyway, um, Steve, before we say goodbye, could you please let the listeners know when they can find more about you and Uncle Matt's Hats.

Speaker A: Yes, Uncle Matt's Hats is exactly that. Uncle Matt's Hats on all the social channels. So on Insta, on TikTok, on Facebook, we're all just at Uncle Matt's Hats. The uh website is unclemat's hats dot com. So basically just Google Uncle Matt's Hats and you'll find us.

Speaker B: Simple as that. And um, Steve, you also work and help with other e commerce brands with their challenges and problems. So could you please tell the audience a little bit about what you get up to and how they can get in contact if they want your help?

Speaker A: Yes. Uh, so I tend to work with businesses mainly between kind of, uh, 5 and 10 million, some larger than that in terms of turnover. But, um, uh, it's kind of. Because I've been on all aspects of E commerce, I normally say, what do you need help with? And nine times out of ten I can help. If I can't help, I normally know somebody that can because I've had to seek them out in the past. So I have a good network of people that can help on those fronts. So, yes, I guess, um, uh, you'll find me on LinkedIn.

Speaker B: Always LinkedIn. Awesome. Steve, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. It's been fascinating learning about what you're up to with Uncle Matt's hat. So thank you so much for being here.

Speaker A: No, thank you, thank you. I appreciate it.

Speaker B: Fascinating stuff there from Steve and I think he may be running a relatively small business at the moment, but there's so much we can all take away from that in terms of how thought through each element of it is. You know, just the, the, um, ice cream tub packaging, how that delivers on mission, on value, on literally exciting the people who are handling it as it gets to the person who receives it and bringing that little part of joy and then how they bring the events into the mix as well. Partly to sell products, but also to build community and to build conversations. Super fascinating business. So I hope you had some good takeaways from that one too. You can get your hands on our notes from this episode, including the top tips and links to what we've mentioned by heading over to ecommerce Masterpl. Or you can use our direct to episode short links. That's ecmp.info theepisode number when you get to the website, you can also add yourself to the Chloe Thomas newsletter list so you don't miss out on any of the stuff I'm sharing to help you improve your business. If you liked this episode, then I've got a recommendation for you. Why not have a listen to episode 457, 457, where I'm chatting with another fashion brand on a mission, Canada's Frank and Oliver. So that's episode 457. And if you want more episodes about fashion, then head to ecmp um.infofashion to find all the fashion episodes on the website. Thank you for tuning into this and every episode of the Ecommerce Master Plan Podcast. I bring you a new interview every week because I want to inspire and help E commerce business owners to succeed and thrive with your businesses, including encouraging businesses and consumers to make more sustainable buying decisions. So if you know someone this show can help, please tell them to listen to the E Commerce Master Plan Podcast. I hope you have a great week and don't forget to keep optimizing.

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

Speaker C: Um. Granger knows when you're a procurement manager for an office park, you're not managing one building, you're managing all of the 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.

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