Episode #109: From WordPress to Shopify Podcast: Inside Babyboo.ie's Replatforming Journey

Speaker A: Welcome to the Milk Bottle E Commerce show brought to you by Milk Bottle Labs, one of the world's top rated accredited ah, Shopify experts. The Irish based Milk Bottle Labs team Upgrade, migrate, manage and advise some of the highest performing Shopify stores worldwide. Founder Keith Matthews interviews merchants, developers, fellow agency owners and Shopify folk to share as many Shopify tips and tricks as possible. If you're planning on upgrading to Shopify 2.0 or migrating over to Shopify, reach out. Milk Bottle will help. Now over to Keith.

Speaker B: Welcome back to the show folks. Today I am, um, delighted to be joined by Vicki o'. Callaghan. Vicki is the owner of Babyboo ae, one of Ireland's go to destinations for their little ones. Vicki's story is one of a lot of Irish business owners would relate to. She built baby boo on WordPress and like many growing E Commerce stores, she reached a point where the platform was holding her back more than it was helping her move forward. Last year, the team at Milkbot Labs had the pleasure of working with Vicky to replatform Babyboo ie over Shopify. This move has opened up a whole new chapter for the business and today we're going to get into the nitty gritty of that journey. What it was like working on WordPress, what was good, what worked and what didn't, and most importantly, what has changed for Viki's business since she has begun to operate on the Shopify platform. If you're a business owner sitting on the fence about re platforming or you're just curious about what goes into a move, this is well worth listening to. Vicky, you are very welcome.

Speaker C: Hi Keith, how are you?

Speaker B: Good, good. Uh, great to have you.

Speaker C: Thanks very much, Vicky.

Speaker B: I love your story. A lot of the businesses that we move over to Shopify, there's always a story, there's always a genuine story. And a lot of the media and a lot of the stories that you read in the media aren't necessarily, I don't think, as authentic as your story. So genuinely delighted to have you. For those listeners that do not know what Baby Boo doo, what is Baby Boudo.

Speaker C: So we design and manufacture organic cotton clothing for babies and toddlers. We being myself and M. Michelle, my business partner, we have five kids between us. They're not babies anymore, but they all had very sensitive skin. Ruby, my daughter, had really bad eczema and reflux. So. So I suppose that was kind of the starting point for the business. There was a gap in the market. We couldn't find bibs without plastic backs. Which if you have a child with sensitive skin, plastic is a big. No, no plastic, polyester, all that kind of thing. So we started by designing our bandana bibs and then we've extended the range now to include lots of other products, uh, cellular blankets, sleep bags, sleep suits. And we personalize our products now as well. So it's, I suppose it's a much bigger business now but initially it started off as a bib business.

Speaker B: And a lot of your product is organic, isn't that correct?

Speaker C: Yes, yeah, we make everything with organic cotton. Um, and everything is manufactured in Turkey which is really important because the climate in Turkey, it's to do with how the cotton is grown and uh, how absorbent it is basically. So if you do any kind of research, Turkish cotton comes close second to Egyptian cotton. So it is a really high quality product I suppose.

Speaker B: And Vicky, does that require, you know we've worked with suppliers in other verticals where they end up doing you know, two or three months a year at a trade show. Do you have to engage, visit these suppliers or do you have a long term relationship with a single supplier?

Speaker C: Yeah, I suppose we're really lucky with this. We have three manufacturers in Turkey and they all kind of specialize in different types of fabric and different products as a result. Um, so we have one for example who looks after all of our knitwear and our blankets. It's all organic cotton yarn that's used. We have another one that looks after the bibs because that's a different type of absorption. It's a different type of Jersey cotton. And then we have another one who looks after sleep bags and muslins because again another type of cotton, another type of, of um, fabric. But we've had all three of those for eight plus years now. We've met all three of them at ah, um, trade shows in Cologne. There's a very big one every September in Cologne called Kind and Jugend. Um, it's huge. So we've gone to that a few times and we've met them. So we've also had ah T teams go in and check their ethics, check, you know, the workforce. I suppose any business that's using organic cotton anyway, if it's got certified, there has to be a certain level of, I suppose, fair trade and ethics that they have to reach in order to get that certification. So that was really important to us. We wanted to keep the manufacturing within Europe as much as possible because I suppose when you go further afield it's harder to trace and it's harder to Track where the cotton is coming from and all that kind of thing.

Speaker B: So as a supplier to you, they have to have all of their boxes ticked. So then you can buy in confidence from them, knowing that it's the equivalent of coffee fair trade. Is that.

Speaker C: Yeah, yeah.

Speaker B: Okay. And I remember at one point during the build, you mentioned that there was also somebody else checking the standards in the product. From an Irish consumer point of view.

Speaker C: Yeah. So there's a few things that go on, I suppose, when you're manufacturing and selling baby products, especially if it's related to baby sleep, it's really important that certain safety standards are met. So we would independently safety test our sleep bags, for example, and our cellular blankets would be the two key ones. So that means that, I suppose you'll see a lot of companies and a lot of larger, um, retailers, they sell sleep bags and they'll say, you know, they're made to the specific safety standards that are a requirement. You have to have them made to a certain safety standard in Europe to sell in Europe. But what we actually do, I suppose, is we go a step further and we actually have our manufacturer send them off and have them independently tested after they're made so that we can stand over them and we know that they are 100%, uh, made according to that safety standard. It's a really expensive process, Keith. I, uh, mean, every time we bring in a new design for the sleep bag, it has to go off to be tested. So even though they're all made to the same, uh, tech spec, it's called, you'd have a technical specification for all of your products. Even though they're all made to the same tech spec, they still have to. Because it's a different design.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: Like literally a different color. They all have to be sent off to be tested again. So I suppose it's really important to us that we can stand over anything that especially small, small babies are going to be sleeping in, uh, like that. Now, our cellular blankets, as far as I'm aware, we're the only company that actually tests our cellular blankets. You'll see, I suppose if you're packing a hospital bag now, it's a requirement that you have a cellular blanket in the hospital bag. And that means that they have a certain cellular structure in the yarn when it's knitted so that it's breathable effectively, so that if it goes over the baby's face, baby can still breathe. We've sent ours. There isn't actually, would you believe, a safety standard that measures that. But there is a standard there that you can have a tested breathability and air permeability. So we've had that done again independently sent off to Intertek, which are a huge international, um, testing house for products. So yeah, it's very important to us, I suppose that all of our. What, what's the expression? I's are dotted and T's are crossed when it comes to all that kind of thing.

Speaker B: Yeah, it's, it's. When I asked you that question, I didn't think there was that much detail. But it just show, it just goes to show. And as you're talking, I'm being reminded that you're, you're supplying clothes and accessories for babies. So what you just described makes perfect sense because there's absolutely no way you could stand over a business. You know, you describe the ethics of the production and now you're just, you just describe the safety. So it makes perfect sense when it's explained. But to the average person purchasing something for a child, I suppose they don't realize what goes into it.

Speaker C: No, they don't. You know, and I suppose not everyone does that either. So, uh, you know, there's a lot of fast fashion and Chinese companies that they're now selling similar products, but they're certainly not the same level of safety testing and standards met in their production, you know.

Speaker B: Yeah. So Vicky, a major part of your business is customization. Mhm. So can you just explain the setup that you have to deliver that? So obviously the product that you just described is basically a plain product, isn't it?

Speaker C: Ah, some of them, some are not. Take the bibs for example. Um, so we would have about 200 designs in our bandana bib in stock at any one time. And we would also have about 30 plain colors depending on the season we change them. So obviously coming up to Christmas, red would be much more popular, maroon would be more popular, and we'd always have baby pink, baby blue, white, cream, you know, the kind of standard neutral colors. But we have four industrial embroidery machines. So about probably about 30 to 40% of the orders coming in every day now have customization. So we embroidered the bibs, the blankets, cardigans are a huge area for us. Most of the products at this point would have a plain version that can be embroidered. And it's. Yeah, it's a huge thing. The whole personalization area of the business, which was one of the biggest challenges we had in moving to Shopify actually.

Speaker B: And um, before we get to that, you have staff then on site that are, that are embroidering every morning, isn't it?

Speaker C: Right, so we have, well there's three or four of us are trained to use the embroidery machines but we have one staff member who, that's her job every day. So she comes in at half seven, she embroiders for four to five hours. We're actually recruiting at the moment. We're hoping to get someone to work opposite her in the evenings because it's just so busy.

Speaker B: So the product comes in, you store the product. Obviously you're selling on Shopify and then it gets embroidered. So if I was to purchase an embroidered item on a Friday night at 6 o', clock, what sort of turnaround time? Because you're also very proud of the service that you give.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: So what sort of a turnaround time do you end up with?

Speaker C: You have a few options I suppose with delivery. So we do click and collect in Cork. If you ordered on a Friday night, it will be ready on a Monday morning. So the next day, if you ordered as a priority order it would go out on a Monday. If you ordered as a regular trapped delivery it would be uh, gone out of the warehouse generally by the Tuesday, potentially Wednesday depending how busy it is. Different times a year now. Obviously coming up to Christmas that stretches to six to seven days because it's just so crazy with personalization at Christmas.

Speaker B: Do you ramp your staff up and down for. Based on seasonality?

Speaker C: We do. We always recruit someone coming into September and generally we, we keep them usually and then recruit another person. I suppose. The business has been growing fairly consistently year on year so it's been, we've just been expanding the team where possible. You don't always keep staff members obviously it's all part time here.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: So you'll have most of our staff work about four to five hours up until everyone is gone by half as one every day. That's kind of the model we wanted from the start. We wanted kind of a flexible model that suited people returning to work, parents, you know, people who I suppose struggle to find part time job work while kids are in school, that kind of thing. Yeah.

Speaker B: Ah. So Vicky, if, if you Reflect now on 12 months ago on WordPress and, and um, now you're on Shopify. What's the biggest difference that you find having opening up Shopify on, on a Monday morning versus WordPress.

Speaker C: Obviously there's pros and cons to everything but I think with Shopify the biggest thing is how easy it is to find information, analytics information. So the app is fantastic on the phone like nearly too Fantastic. I find it difficult not to keep going and checking, you know, how many orders have come in today and what the, what's the turnover so far today. But I think the biggest change for us has been on the front end. Definitely. The customer experience is far superior.

Speaker B: And, uh, like, I, I know that you have a lot of loyal customers, you know, like mothers and dads in their nature. If they buy off a store and get a good service for, you know, if they're happy with the product and service is good, you've. That results in repeat business. So have you got feedback from people direct to say, you know, well done, or have people noticed it? Because.

Speaker C: Yeah, they did. They have, yeah. I suppose when we went live initially in October, we had feedback immediately from people who use the site a lot because. Because I suppose with the bibs in particular, we have a lot of return business and, um, it's all been positive. We haven't had any negatives at all really, to be honest.

Speaker B: Uh, in terms of operating Shopify, is there anything that Shopify doesn't do that you'd like it to do?

Speaker C: There is a few things, but nothing major, to be honest. I suppose a lot of it is because we were on WooCommerce for 10 years. It was a big change for the team. It was a lot of adjustments.

Speaker B: Massive, massive.

Speaker C: So it took a while to kind of bed in the change. But now, uh, uh, I don't think any of us really even remember Woocommerce. It's mad how quickly your, your brain just restructures and refocuses.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: Um, as I say, pros and cons to everything. Woocommerce is easier in some ways to manipulate. If you want a specific thing, you can generally just code it in and do it. Shopify is a bit more structured. Like, for example, we have a gift note section on the website and it doesn't feed back into the confirmation email that customers get now it's on the list to fix it will be something,

Speaker B: uh, we could do. We could do that.

Speaker C: Yeah, I know. Um, but that's one thing. And that's, I suppose, creates. Then most people who order, get their confirmation email, check it and go, oh, no, the gift note didn't go in. And then we got an email. Can you confirm you have the gift note? So small things like that. But generally, no, it's been, you know, very positive experience.

Speaker B: Yeah, it is. Look, it is. You're obviously, you're an online store too, which is. Which is heavily customizable. I think, though, that it's Just in my view, I think it's a good thing that you need to get somebody in to make certain changes because there has to be guardrails, you know. Now you're particularly confident as well. If I remember correctly, you were in and you were doing everything. You mentioned the app. I think the app is one of the game changers.

Speaker C: The app is brilliant.

Speaker B: Like, if you're running multiple physical stores and you have the Shopify Pause app in there, you can actually see your turnover every day across your entire business. Um, which is fantastic. And I remember as well, the reporting is quite good, isn't it?

Speaker C: The reporting is good. The sidekick, the AI reporting is really handy. Really good for quick stats on things like how many Blue Bessie bibs have I sold this month? And it'll give you the feedback straight away rather than having to go in and search, you know.

Speaker B: Yeah, like that.

Speaker C: Yeah. Um, so that's really helpful. Yeah. Like, it's. It's a brilliant system. There's no denying that.

Speaker B: That's good. Vicki, One of the things that I'm always fascinated about is, is international sales. So Ireland is your core market. What's your second market?

Speaker C: Uk.

Speaker B: Uk. And that is. That is growing.

Speaker C: It is growing. Yeah. We're doing a lot of work on it at the moment. I suppose we would have put a lot of investment into it pre Brexit. And then Brexit happened and it just fell off a cliff. There was no sales coming in, it was just gone. So we stepped back from it. But again, in the last six months or so, now we've started investing again. We've. We're working with an agency, we've a lot of, um, UGC content, um, from UK influencers. So we're doing a lot of that kind of, um, marketing to build up that market again. And yeah, it's. It's a slow builder, but it is. It is definitely our second biggest market.

Speaker B: Yeah, that's the case with a lot of businesses. And, um, I think the hangover of Brexit has declined slightly.

Speaker C: I think just the whole Customs thing has become much easier and I suppose they're used to taking in stuff now, whereas at the start it was a nightmare.

Speaker B: Yeah, the fulfillment providers now can handle it. And the truth about it is, is that it's a wonderful market. It's a larger market, demographics similar to ourselves. And there's a massive business for anybody that's not exporting to the UK or has ruled it out. I'm sure there's not very many people that have ruled it Out. But if you, if you have as a listener ruled it out, it's, it's a wonderful country to sell into. I run a number of Shopify stores and I run one of the stores in the uk. It's an Irish store, but it's, the market is primarily UK and even, even the communication with customers is, seems a little less, it's a little bit more formal and very professional, I find they're, they're great customers to deal with, basically, is what I'm saying.

Speaker C: Yeah, you know, it's very different to the Irish market. And I remember that even from the last time we did a lot of events in London and that kind of thing. And it's, it is a very different consumer, I suppose, to the Irish consumer. You kind of have to approach things a little bit differently with your language and that kind of thing. Yeah, but it's, yeah, it's, it's a good one. It's big.

Speaker B: It is. I think it's. The city of Birmingham has the same population as Ireland. Like uh, a single city, you know, so. Which is massive, massive opportunity. Vicki, when we were moving over, the customization of the product was one of the biggest, uh, was the most difficult, um, piece. And now it's working. Okay, so is, is customization your, your core service or is that the one that rises your average order value?

Speaker C: It I suppose has the biggest markup.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: So, yeah, like realistically. Yeah, as it was a huge challenge when we were swapping over because I suppose we had done things in a certain way on Woocommerce. And like, there's no denying the setup on Woocommerce in the back end was way easier for the personalization side of things. It was just way more. It's just much easier.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: Shopify took a bit of what work to get it to where it is now. But from the front end point of view, Shopify is way, way cleaner, way easier for the customer to use. Much more professional looking Woocommerce. You were. It was great and it was easy to do in the back end. And we say this a lot actually in the warehouse in general, where things are, were easier in the back end on, um, Woocommerce on the front end. They're far superior on Shopify. And I suppose you're weighing up whether your customer experience is more important to your efficiency in the warehouse. And for us, customer experience obviously will always win.

Speaker B: Look, you know, you were on WordPress for over 10 years, weren't you? The interesting thing is there's also a psychological element to Moving platform. Everybody talks about, you know, the uh, Shopify app and the ching ching when you make a sale and the administration, the dashboard and it's fantastic. But very few people talk about the actual, the stress of it. The stress of uh. Not like a lot of people will log into WordPress and they'll get a warning up top to say that that plugin has to be updated and they get tired of that.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: But if you're doing that for 10 years, you also get used to it.

Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I suppose like you said, I, I would be fairly technical. So that kind of thing wasn't really an issue for us. We just outgrew it, I suppose. We had looked at it four or five times over the years about moving and obviously we knew where we know lots of other businesses and we knew lots of businesses who were on um, Shopify and all had had positive experiences. But at the same time it was a huge decision to actually move and a big investment as well. Like there's no denying it's not, it's not a straightforward thing to do. It's not an easy change. It's a big project. And now obviously working with he helped. It wasn't something we were ever going to do by ourselves, but it was definitely the right thing to do and I think it was just the right time for us to do it. I don't think it would have been.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: Uh, in other iterations of the business. Whereas I think we, we really had outgrown WooCommerce.

Speaker B: Yeah. And it's, it's like in some cases it's a once in a lifetime project because like the chances are for the life of the business, you probably won't need to move off Shopify. No, it's probably the equivalent of, you know, a house renovation or an extension. I mean it's uh, it's probably something that you only do once, you know, in terms of your future plans. You, you're going to focus on the uk. Is there any other interesting market that you found that just landed on your doorstep or is there a particular place that you're popular without any kind of logical marketing or reasoning?

Speaker C: Not really, to be honest. We're looking at, we're doing a lot of work on the German market at the moment. So we've looked at, we spent a bit of time researching the different European EU countries I suppose specifically. Um, and the German consultants consumer has a certain level of quality that they look for in a product. They generally prefer to buy organic. They're the lowest fast fashion company our country in Europe. So they don't buy a lot of fast fashion. It's a culture thing. So we've started doing a lot of advertising to the German market and we've tailored a lot of our UGC ads. We have some German influencers who've created, um, native German speaking ads and that kind of thing. So that's one that we're trialing at the moment. We're going to give it six months and see how it goes for us. And Australia is the other one I think where there's obviously so many expats. We've just created a collection on the website for actually it's interesting. We noted when we were doing some research in the uh, in the first quarter of the year we were focused on people purchasing to send to Australia to send to Irish people living in Australia. We hadn't actually taken into account that a lot of the Irish people living abroad actually want to buy presents for people in Ireland who have babies. Uh, we've added two new collections to the website which will be used as landing pages for ads. One is popular gifts in Ireland and popular gifts to send outside Ireland. Yeah, we'll see how that goes. But Australia is a big one for us as well because obviously there are so many Irish people in Australia.

Speaker B: That's good. Yeah. And uh, Australia as a market, the most advanced e commerce market in the world. The first market where e commerce penetrated the most was Canada and the second was Australia. They're a very similar demographic. That's interesting. You talk about Australians buying for people in Ireland. We did a lot of work on a bookstore one time and it was based in Ireland and they couldn't understand why they were getting a lot of traffic from Portugal and Spain. And what actually happened was if they were Irish people making purchases while they were on holidays for deliveries in Ireland, so the traffic was coming somewhere else, but the orders were for Ireland. So it was a particular time of the year where they were a certain set of books was very popular. You know Vicky, it was an absolute pleasure to talk to you.

Speaker C: Thanks Keith.

Speaker B: We will post links to the site in the show notes. And um, on behalf of the team Loopwater, I want to wish you all the best in the. Good job.

Speaker C: Thanks.

Speaker A: Thanks for listening. All of our episodes are available on Apple, Spotify, itunes and Google podcasts. If you're an e commerce professional with an exciting story to tell, reach out to the team on, um, hellokbottle, uh, labs.com until the next time. Take care.