[SPEAKER_02]: The key to any business is making something unique, making something have a good value proposition, and making something beneficial to the people you're selling it to.

[SPEAKER_02]: If you can get to that, you create a business, but if you do it really well, you get a global amazing business.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's the e-commerce master plan podcast.

[SPEAKER_01]: Air to help you solve your marketing problems and grow your e-commerce business.

[SPEAKER_01]: Cutting through the hinder to bring you inspiration and advice from the e-commerce sector and beyond, here's your host, Chloe Thomas.

[SPEAKER_00]: Hello and welcome, it's great to have you here.

[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for hitting play and choosing to listen to one of our inspiring guests.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, regular listeners will know that I do love to give a little shout out at the start sometimes to listeners who are kind enough to take the time to post a review of the show.

[SPEAKER_00]: We've got one of those to do today.

[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you too.

[SPEAKER_00]: I can't even attempt ifra123 by Lalala.

[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, thank you to you.

[SPEAKER_00]: I hope you know who you are.

[SPEAKER_00]: From the UK for leaving us a review on Apple podcast recently a five star review of course.

[SPEAKER_00]: Titled insightful.

[SPEAKER_00]: We always try to be and which says always enjoy listening to close podcast.

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[SPEAKER_00]: We really appreciate it.

[SPEAKER_00]: And if you listening right now would like a shout out at the start of an episode, then head to ECMP.info.screview to find out how to leave us a review.

[SPEAKER_00]: In this episode we are catching up with another of our past guests.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, it's another episode is part of our 10 years celebrations.

[SPEAKER_00]: This guest was last on the show in 2020 which was their second appearance and across those two episodes he shared a ton of advice first on fast growth and then on pivoting to profits and I was very intrigued to see where he is six years on [SPEAKER_00]: Listers, we will not be disappointed, Davies has bought the goods again.

[SPEAKER_00]: We cover a whole pile of topics from invention and products manufacturing to tariffs.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, we get into that, meta ads, some crazy stuff on meta ads, and he does the most amazing [SPEAKER_00]: way of kind of swinging from big strategic thinking to really nitty-gritty clever stuff.

[SPEAKER_00]: So you will love this episode, email me if you don't, and we can discuss.

[SPEAKER_00]: But I really believe you'll love this episode.

[SPEAKER_00]: Make sure you listen right to the end because that's when we take a really random tangent into Tarris, but a really valuable one in the top tips around and there's some other very [SPEAKER_00]: and now to introduce our special guest.

[SPEAKER_00]: Davies Roberts is co-CEO and co-founder of Flair Audio, the sound technology company who retail headphones, earplugs and ear tools.

[SPEAKER_00]: Founded in 2010, they now sell globally via their Shopify store, Amazon and a few retail partners, and are achieving around £5 million a year in sales.

[SPEAKER_00]: Hello Davies.

[SPEAKER_02]: Hi Chloe, good to meet you again.

[SPEAKER_00]: Lovely to have you back on the show.

[SPEAKER_00]: How have the last six years been?

[SPEAKER_02]: Ah, a rollercoaster, I think, that most people would agree in Ecomworld, we've gone through obviously COVID, which was a challenge for all Ecom businesses, and then the explosive sales that we saw shortly after.

[SPEAKER_02]: Now we're faced with tariffs and all the things that go along with trying to trade in today's modern world.

[SPEAKER_00]: It has been like, there's been enough crazy if you're selling in one country, but if you're selling in multiple countries and getting stock from different places, it's been a whirlwind of a year, hasn't it?

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, it's even.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's nuts, and we're even even finding today, like, you know, we've suddenly been hit with aluminium content that's in our year protection devices called isolate.

[SPEAKER_02]: And we suddenly got hit with customs, paid for work issues going into the states because of all these new regulations that have been thrown at us in the last literally feels like in the last five minutes, but he's literally been at a compressed few days this year.

[SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, it's a real challenge.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's a challenge for teams.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's a challenge for us as leaders and to navigate all that on the backdrop of what are now currently quite hard economic times for a lot of businesses globally, everyone sort of [SPEAKER_02]: coming out of the craziness of COVID lockdowns and all the explosive stuff from there, and now it's a case of really trying to find both niches and broader and audiences at the same time so that we can continue to grow businesses.

[SPEAKER_00]: It often feels to be like the world works in a pendulum swing.

[SPEAKER_00]: Everything seems to be a pendulum so I'm going backwards and forwards and you just have to kind of wait for the pendulum to go.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that's what came to mind when you were saying, you know, we went through the crazy time of COVID and now we've almost got the inverse of that swing is what we're dealing with now economically.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it will come back at some point, but the game changes so much each time that pendulum swings does not.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it does, and also regulation is changing so fast because of the way the AI and businesses are trading.

[SPEAKER_02]: I give you one example, it's matter.

[SPEAKER_02]: You know, they've basically been changing the way that you can market to people.

[SPEAKER_02]: So, for example, the health and wellbeing category, they've over the last sort of couple of years.

[SPEAKER_02]: massively restricted, the signals coming from sensitive people, so neurodivergent people, noise sensitive people, people with the HD, autistic people, all the different people that we were marketing to and making a huge difference to people's lives.

[SPEAKER_02]: We found out that [SPEAKER_02]: The algorithm changes about just under two years ago, I'd say it's about a sort of 1819 months ago, we saw a drastic decrease in efficiency.

[SPEAKER_02]: Calls by these algorithms being steered away from targeting sensitive people with sensitive products.

[SPEAKER_02]: And it was a massive change because at the time, [SPEAKER_02]: We didn't know what was happening.

[SPEAKER_02]: We just saw our ads losing efficiency day by day.

[SPEAKER_02]: It literally fell off a cliff one day.

[SPEAKER_02]: Like it happens to a lot of businesses when they make algorithm changes.

[SPEAKER_02]: And then we just saw a gradual decrease over quite some time.

[SPEAKER_02]: So whilst I can't, I don't know if there was any shadow throttling going on, I do know that it was the policy of meta and other advertisers, not to advertise.

[SPEAKER_02]: sense of products to sensitive people, that's the sort of load, it's much more complicated than that, but it gives you the idea.

[SPEAKER_02]: So we didn't realise this until about about seven or eight months ago, and then when we did become aware, we recognised that we had to remove all wording from our website related to autistic people, people with ADHD, noise sensitivities, even sound sensitive people.

[SPEAKER_02]: We removed all that from our website in 24 hours.

[SPEAKER_02]: We had to literally go sheet dipping on the entire site and remove it from all the product pages, all the reviews, all the adverts where we had video adverts that they were mentioning, that they've got autism, all they were mentioning, that they got ADHD.

[SPEAKER_02]: We had to take those videos, edit those bits out, put them back into the ads, put them back into the posts.

[SPEAKER_02]: and then we saw an explosive change to the efficiency, the CPA halved, everything just went nuts again, as that make up, of just a clear cut.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, we all watched it and it got so, it went so crazy that all the spending searched, so all of the different ad campaigns spent almost double.

[SPEAKER_02]: their daily campaign once we've made those changes.

[SPEAKER_02]: Because don't forget that we're with meta ads as an example.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's not just your ads that matter and the words what you say that matters, but it's your landing page that matters and the content of your website that matters.

[SPEAKER_02]: Because if they scan your website to make sure that it's safe to advertise and I really understand [SPEAKER_02]: You know, with all the stuff that's going on in politics and with all the stuff that's going on with AI, they have to be careful not to allow these algorithms to be as good as they were and as sensitive and laser focus as they were and they need to be more broad.

[SPEAKER_02]: So I get it, but having been through that over the last couple of years, it was hell on earth, and we're really connected with Meta, and I think their platform is amazing, and where we advertise all our products and it's incredible.

[SPEAKER_02]: But trying to navigate it as a business, it's trying to scale on that when you're selling to another sense to people, is a monumental challenge.

[SPEAKER_00]: It makes so much sense in retrospect because if you're the more you're putting into AI, you have to be careful that AI doesn't disappear off on a tangent that's embarrassing for everybody.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, and that you wouldn't, you'd have picked up a few months where I did it.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it never occurred to me that, of course, if you're doing that, you would deimpact cancelled.

[SPEAKER_00]: edit out negative keyword, things that could be potentially tricky, even with the political situation not going.

[SPEAKER_00]: If you want your AI to be reliable, you cut out the outliers, and anything that could be vaguely dangerous.

[SPEAKER_00]: It kind of makes total sense, but gosh, there was so much changing on meta over that time period.

[SPEAKER_00]: It must have been there was plenty of other things you could blame it on without realising the actual thing.

[SPEAKER_02]: So this is where we have a unique challenge compared to other brands.

[SPEAKER_02]: So back in 2010, we started Flair myself and Naomi because we wanted to improve people's relationship with sound.

[SPEAKER_02]: I know that sounds just like a cliche kind of comment, but we coming from being a firefighter for nearly 13 years I was in a service industry, I wanted to help people.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I came into the music industry and I realized I recognized quite quickly that there was a significant and serious problem in that sound devices were being treated like acoustic instruments.

[SPEAKER_02]: So if you listen to a violin, it sounds like a violin because sound is resonating through the wooden structure of the violin, giving it the tone of that violin.

[SPEAKER_02]: the same as my voice, sound is resonating around my voice and it vibrates around the different size of my mouth which makes the tone of my voice unique and you can identify it.

[SPEAKER_02]: Well, sound devices were developed on the same resonant acoustic principles.

[SPEAKER_02]: So it means that you were never going to hear sound accurately if you do the same thing with speakers [SPEAKER_02]: So we started Flair to identify how we removed residents from the devices so that we can truly advance sound quality.

[SPEAKER_02]: We started in that speakers that used in places like Selfages Cinema in London.

[SPEAKER_02]: You can go and see a film there with our Flair Zero loudspeakers, all this Olympic cinema in Barnes.

[SPEAKER_02]: Again, that uses our loudspeakers in three screens, that's where two screens that are in that cinema.

[SPEAKER_02]: But we then started because we were finding it difficult to commercialize because it's new physics.

[SPEAKER_02]: So we had to pivot into more of consumer brands and so consumer market.

[SPEAKER_02]: So we developed our first earphone the R2, which was an earphone that produced his sound without resonance using jets.

[SPEAKER_02]: Then we created an Abretecter way before Abretecter's got cool, so it's late 2015.

[SPEAKER_02]: We came out with Isolates.

[SPEAKER_02]: We were the first ones to come out with a cool, new looking Abretecter, to use metal to block sound rather than foam or silicon or plastic.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so we started to work on products that were in the air and then back in 2018, [SPEAKER_02]: I was having different producers and artists come and listen to our loudspeakers and everybody, every one of them had some kind of subjectivity to the sound.

[SPEAKER_02]: So they'd say, oh, you know, can I have a bit of 2K, a bit more 5K and the sort of different changes.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I was like, why have you got subjectivity because we've gotten rid of all residents?

[SPEAKER_02]: So it should just be universally amazing.

[SPEAKER_02]: And then I realized there's a massive problem.

[SPEAKER_02]: A huge fundamental problem with all of us as humans.

[SPEAKER_02]: And that is our ears.

[SPEAKER_02]: Our ears are basically a cluster of shells.

[SPEAKER_02]: Now, how I've developed our sound technology is I thought experiment particles.

[SPEAKER_02]: So I imagine a particle, I can then see it move from side to side, which is its vibration, which creates sound.

[SPEAKER_02]: And then I imagine spheres of particles.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I've trained all of our R and D team here and all of the people that we've got working behind the scenes to create this technology, I've created a process to really identify where distortions occur and how we can address them.

[SPEAKER_02]: So when you start to look in the human ear, you realize that all of these shells are massively resonating sound.

[SPEAKER_02]: So what we started to do is develop technologies that remove that resonance.

[SPEAKER_02]: The first one that you'll probably know about is called karma, and that is a soft silicon insert that you put in your ears with a flat side inside to remove the shell-like resonance and so that sound reflects off a flat surface rather than a cave-like shape.

[SPEAKER_02]: That's life-changing for quite a lot of people with sort of a 2 million sets and 15% of people find it life-changing.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's a very, very difficult product to market though because when you put this product in your ears, you hear no audible difference.

[SPEAKER_02]: You just put it in your ears and nothing seems to happen.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's only when you go into loud environments like on the underground or into a bar, restaurant, school, noisy office, and you wear in karma and then you remove it that you then notice this massive change of distortion.

[SPEAKER_02]: And the reason for that is our brains are constantly processing out the distortions of our ears.

[SPEAKER_02]: So it's like like with our vision and like with words, [SPEAKER_02]: So marketing it has been really tough because if we try and say to people, this is an earplug, well it doesn't block sound.

[SPEAKER_02]: The only way we're able to market it is to get real life UGC content where people have actually used it and it's made a difference to their lives.

[SPEAKER_02]: where we then put that into an ad and then we share it and we've gained tens of thousands of comments, hundreds of thousands of likes and loves on these post ads.

[SPEAKER_02]: There's about 30 of them that are constantly bringing in the revenue for us.

[SPEAKER_02]: So you can't [SPEAKER_02]: refresh an ad and just create UGC like everyone else does because karma is a tool that you're using for your ears to reduce stress.

[SPEAKER_02]: It lets still let you hear everything and you've really got to hear it from a person who's using it and to understand how it's changed in their lives is when you really believe it.

[SPEAKER_02]: So that's a big challenge for us.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I mean, with the problem of, you know, the traditional, but the key was that we're working for you so orders of noise sensitivity, et cetera, a meta.

[SPEAKER_00]: I did wonder if you would have gone down the influence of UGC organic rate in order to still get visibility on the social platforms without relying on the ads.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, clearly you've done it in order to create the ad copy, which is, you know, as we all know, a great move.

[SPEAKER_00]: Have you done it organically as well?

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's always in our feed and then we always use those posts in ads because that means our feed gets this social proof as well and it's how we've gotten to the point where, I mean, if we turn all ads off, switch everything off, we're almost break even.

[SPEAKER_02]: So we've already got a business that almost doesn't need ads, but it's still represents some monumental challenge because the education behind the product is real world experience, and I just, you just can't get an influence.

[SPEAKER_02]: So we're billions of followers to go, hey, this works like this.

[SPEAKER_02]: They just won't believe it.

[SPEAKER_02]: And it's, it's, it's a real struggle.

[SPEAKER_02]: But with me because I'm the inventor at Flair and I am always looking for the not the lowest hanging fruit, but I'm always looking for an easier path because as the inventor coming out with different technologies, I've also recognized that the key to any business is making something unique, making something have a good value proposition and making something beneficial to the people [SPEAKER_02]: If you can get to that, you create a business, but if you do it really well, you get a grow, you're global, amazing business.

[SPEAKER_02]: So that that's really been the focus over the next of the last couple of years is to get to a more broad audience.

[SPEAKER_02]: And we've done that through a new product that we've got that's only been out for a while that's called the definition.

[SPEAKER_02]: Now this is an air device that's basically it's an air insert like karma, but you wear it in your ears and it perfects sounds.

[SPEAKER_02]: So you're able to listen to a concert or a festival and it takes away all of the harsh noises but let's you hear the detail of the tracks.

[SPEAKER_02]: So that's what we've got out this year.

[SPEAKER_02]: And to get to a more broad audience next year, we're coming out with collaborations with artists and we're coming out with different headphones and earphones and sound devices in order to try and step into the more broad market because it's great making innovative products that are changing the lives of people.

[SPEAKER_02]: But it's absolutely terrifying trying to stay profitable, trying to stay on point [SPEAKER_02]: trying to make sure that all our products are meaningful.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so we're trying to get to that broad audience through product development and through adverts that we're able to put across to people that are much more main brand advertising.

[SPEAKER_02]: And in order to do that, we've got to appeal to the masses.

[SPEAKER_02]: That makes sense.

[SPEAKER_00]: It does make sense, and I think it's such an astute way of thinking about it, because as you were talking, I was thinking about our earlier conversations, you know, six plus years ago, where the goal of the business had absolutely nothing to do with helping the neurodiverse.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was about sound quality, and then you found this lucrative niche that has, you know, for the lucrative for the soul and lucrative for the bank balance niche, and then [SPEAKER_00]: with the meta changes you've almost kind of like gone back to the original mission of that sound purity and that improving the experience of the musical event.

[SPEAKER_00]: It would be my take on it.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know if that's right.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah absolutely and like so following on from the karma launch I did some research and this is this is the shocking bit about.

[SPEAKER_02]: Flair's mission and why it's now become so important.

[SPEAKER_02]: In 2018, the WHO published 186 page document called The Noise Regulations.

[SPEAKER_02]: In those regulations, and there's countless studies, they've highlighted that noise is the second biggest killer after air pollution.

[SPEAKER_02]: Wow.

[SPEAKER_02]: And the attendee being increase in traffic noise is leading to a significant increase [SPEAKER_02]: The reason that's happening is because, as we are exposed to noise, within a specific frequency, we release cortisol.

[SPEAKER_02]: A good example is to imagine a distorted guitar sound on a really crappy sounding speaker.

[SPEAKER_02]: It makes you hot, you have a really bad reaction to it.

[SPEAKER_02]: Now, when I first developed Karma back in 2019, when we first announced it, it just [SPEAKER_02]: I, well, I've put it in my ears on the side of the road and then on the Bakerloo London and I was like, oh my god, this is making this horrible screechy underground noise like a recording studio and it was at that point, I was like, there's something fundamental going on with our ears.

[SPEAKER_02]: Then I found that, that document for the WHO, which anyone can search on Google just type in the WHO noise regulations.

[SPEAKER_02]: But what I've recognized is it's not noise that's the problem.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's our ears.

[SPEAKER_02]: Because what our ears are doing with the show-like resonance has happened because of evolution, because way back in, you know, cave times when we were in the wild and we weren't in a busy, [SPEAKER_02]: We needed to become stressed against noise, because, almost certainly, if there was a noise behind us, it could be a threat and it could eat us.

[SPEAKER_02]: So that evolutionary trait about releasing cortisol has happened on purpose.

[SPEAKER_02]: Now, what I've identified is...

[SPEAKER_02]: There's a phenomenon known as HRTF or head-related transfer function.

[SPEAKER_02]: And what that describes is the way that the ears, skull, torso and body, sort of all of the spine, all of the different parts of our anatomy, affects the way we hear sound.

[SPEAKER_02]: Well, that HLTF is widely known to boost sound by up to 21 decibels at 2.7 kHz on average, now each person's different, but that's based on the shape of what is and how we resonate sound.

[SPEAKER_02]: But what I've understood is that it's not boosting, which is what the rest of the world, or the most most acoustic world regard, they just regard it as free boosting.

[SPEAKER_02]: But anybody that knows physics knows there's no such thing as free energy.

[SPEAKER_02]: because you don't get boosting from an anatomy for free.

[SPEAKER_02]: You get boosting because of distortion.

[SPEAKER_02]: So what's happening is higher frequencies and detailed a lot of frequencies are resonating around those peaks, adding a decay to sound at those frequencies.

[SPEAKER_02]: basically it's acting like an alarm bell inside our ears and it's that bit really that we're focused on through either karma, definition, we've got immerse and we're now working on a range of headphones a lot more as well that's a basically removing this distortion and it's unmasking and unlocking [SPEAKER_02]: more detail in music.

[SPEAKER_02]: I will just move to an earphone that we're currently working on, where we've actually got the first time we've removed all HRTF distortion.

[SPEAKER_02]: And this is now presenting its own challenge in the [SPEAKER_02]: you it's really important what streaming service you use to listen to music because if you listen on tidal or if you listen on Spotify you can hear a load of distortion from the Spotify, you know, compressing this now going on.

[SPEAKER_02]: and then the other problem is recording.

[SPEAKER_02]: You can hear when mics have been placed badly because it just doesn't sound that great when you're recording the snare or when you're recording a guitar.

[SPEAKER_02]: Suddenly all of these tracks are really sort of changing how they present and the really good recordings are coming out as holographic, crazy experiences like Louis Armstrong.

[SPEAKER_02]: You can hear him breathing in the studio as he's singing and like that was in order before.

[SPEAKER_02]: So when we come to marketing that product, which will be early part of next year once we've finished all the R&D work around it, it's going to be really challenging because it's a bit like when HD came along.

[SPEAKER_02]: And if you remember 20 years ago, there was this uproar by all of the artists saying, oh, we don't want HD because we're worried about what the blemishes coming out on screen.

[SPEAKER_02]: Well, we've got that same problem with audio now and it's like there's all problems that we're currently trying to work through in how we present and how we do everything because whilst everyone else or a lot of people, a lot of businesses in this world are going down the tortoise route.

[SPEAKER_02]: So the hair route.

[SPEAKER_02]: we are the tortoise and so we're going slowly and we're trying to work out exactly what we need to do and what to honestly we need to develop to really make a meaningful difference in the world and really advance sound and that's really hard when [SPEAKER_02]: all the businesses around you are going at 500 mile an hour and they're marketing and using new spins in order to sell stuff.

[SPEAKER_02]: So I think that's quite relevant for your podcast is how you navigate that in terms of business.

[SPEAKER_00]: are the endless challenges and the trying to keep up with the Jones or should we be trying to keep up with the Jones side of things and the distractions and how I find it fast, I always find it fascinating talking to you Davies because you are the inventor of the product be also so involved with the marketing side of it, you know, who we're targeting the messaging we use in all the rest of it.

[SPEAKER_00]: But going back to that kind of core invention piece, you know, you can't, I assume you can't sit down and come up with an idea, the inspiration for these problems has to come from somewhere beer, who report or something else.

[SPEAKER_00]: How do you, I mean, don't, you don't know need to share any trade secrets here, but you know, how do you find a time the space for that, that part of the invention process?

[SPEAKER_02]: Well it's it's my life it's this is not a job for me.

[SPEAKER_02]: This is an extension of me and Naomi the company is very much like our child and it's become a fascination and a total dedication really to try and to understand where distortions are happening because [SPEAKER_02]: Distortion in the real world can be spotted and fixed by AI or by glasses.

[SPEAKER_02]: If we have blurry vision, we can break glasses to correct it.

[SPEAKER_02]: If we have a missing area on photographs, we can use AI to fill it in.

[SPEAKER_02]: There's lots of...

[SPEAKER_02]: things you can do in the digital world, but in sound, it's basically invisible.

[SPEAKER_02]: There, no one can see it, and no one can measure sound quality.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's absolutely impossible, or the only microphones that you've got nowadays can really, they just pick up the intensity of each frequency, and they can show different measurements, measurements in terms of distortion, but they're all very, [SPEAKER_02]: are chaotic and they don't, there's no measure saying this has got 100% sound quality and this has got 20%.

[SPEAKER_02]: The THD numbers really pretty much meaning this and it's [SPEAKER_02]: It's that challenge and that fascination to understand what's been going wrong, where the distortions are occurring.

[SPEAKER_02]: And as we've gone on this journey over the last, I mean, it's been, but you know, we actually started this industry as a higher company in 2007.

[SPEAKER_02]: So, [SPEAKER_02]: it's been almost 20 years, it's 18 years, I think this year, and it's changed so much because what started in Rockham Roll, a gigs, tuning systems, and then realising loudspeakers had a problem developing loudspeakers, realising that [SPEAKER_02]: earphones had a problem, ear protection had a problem, then our ears have now got this problem, and now having come full circle and realising actually the problems within me, not out there, the problems in my ears and everyone else is, it's like, oh my god, we're like starting again.

[SPEAKER_02]: I think if you were to try and describe life, it's one of Chase, we're always chasing a happy life, a safer life, a loving life, a life that's rich, a life that is meaningful, trying to make a difference, it's that.

[SPEAKER_02]: So I'm trying to chase distortions in order to unlock problems to really make a difference in the world.

[SPEAKER_02]: If I, if I could achieve one thing through this whole journey, it would be to leave a mark and it would be for my inventions to endure past me and in the future when I've gone that my inventions really submit a fundamental difference.

[SPEAKER_02]: I think that's if you, if you're a genuine inventor, I think that's what you really want to do.

[SPEAKER_01]: E-commerce most at land is supported by some of the greatest companies in the E-commerce sector.

[SPEAKER_01]: Here's a reminder of who they are.

[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, I love this section because me and I'll list us some really quick ideas for taking our businesses to the next level.

[SPEAKER_00]: Davies, are you ready for the top tips?

[SPEAKER_02]: Yes.

[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, the book top tip.

[SPEAKER_00]: If everyone listening to this podcast are going to take Friday off and read a book to make their business better, which book would you recommend?

[SPEAKER_02]: I would recommend a processed people, and that is about food, because about seven years ago, I was suffering from massive debilitating anxiety.

[SPEAKER_02]: I went to the doctors, they were scribed anti-cycotics.

[SPEAKER_02]: They didn't work, and an anti-Sacrotex for an inventor is absolutely terrifying because it numbs your brain.

[SPEAKER_02]: So I went to see a psychologist.

[SPEAKER_02]: She happened to be in nutritionists, and she told me that the food I was eating, so bread and chips and sandwiches, pretty standard stuff, the low fat diet was completely wrong, and that I should eat whole natural foods and quit or sugar.

[SPEAKER_02]: etc etc.

[SPEAKER_02]: I followed her advice to the letter and within 24 hours my anxiety had gone.

[SPEAKER_02]: Then the following week, because I was on that diet for a week, following week I went and ate a domino's pizza just a day before I was going to go up on stage and I had it was terrifying the amount of anxiety that hit me like a wall that I couldn't get rid of [SPEAKER_02]: and that if there's one thing that I would like to do as well as the invention side, it's to share more about food and how eating really well, especially if you're really stressed.

[SPEAKER_02]: Especially if you're pushing your mind so you're releasing lots of cortisol and lots of hormones, it's really important that you minimize the impact of eating process food because the chemicals, the sugar, the carbohydrates, [SPEAKER_02]: cascade inflammation within your brain and within your body and it just makes your journey so much harder.

[SPEAKER_02]: If it wasn't for that book and if it wasn't for the advice given out by some really amazing people out there in terms of health and wellbeing, I think I wouldn't be sat here today.

[SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, process people.

[SPEAKER_00]: Fantastic recommendation.

[SPEAKER_00]: I love that.

[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you Davies.

[SPEAKER_00]: The traffic top tip which marketing method you either prize above all others or think [SPEAKER_02]: Well, we only advertise on Meta, and we advertise using UGC content that is created by people who actually bought the products and it's made a difference in their lives.

[SPEAKER_02]: We reward them if we find content that they've created that's good.

[SPEAKER_02]: Obviously, it'd be completely wrong of us to just share that and advertise that without paying them.

[SPEAKER_02]: So we do reward them for their content once we've discovered the content.

[SPEAKER_02]: But it has to be made before we advertise and it has to be put on on Meta.

[SPEAKER_02]: We've tried TikTok, but for us, our products are not really suitable, because it's not not really viral growing products, they're more about education, comments and interaction.

[SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, unfortunately, I'm sticking to the same one, probably I said last time, which is meta in terms of traffic.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I think traffic matters, but the quality of the traffic is [SPEAKER_02]: and anyone can start a traffic campaign and do it on any kind of platform.

[SPEAKER_02]: Well, I think if you're selling something that is on trend, then traffic may well be absolutely your thing.

[SPEAKER_02]: Because if you're in a broad market with a cool looking piss of a piece of apparel or something like that, then absolutely traffic comes into it.

[SPEAKER_02]: But for us, unfortunately, yeah, it's gotta be better.

[SPEAKER_00]: I do love your consistency.

[SPEAKER_00]: That is the third time you have recommended Facebook ads in the traffic top tips.

[SPEAKER_00]: So loving it.

[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you.

[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, the tool top tip.

[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe a collaboration tool, a social media plug-in, a phone app or just a way of working.

[SPEAKER_00]: Is there a call little tool you use that makes you and your team more efficient from day to day?

[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, well, I don't use tools because most of my life is spent inventing, but I can mention the tip of the tool that Naomi uses that's really changed her life and it's certainly changed the way in which we do business and that's a camera.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's been absolutely amazing for [SPEAKER_02]: sort of getting social content, created and edited, developed and put together, because before that, you were on Adobe Premiere or Photoshop, and it was really clunky and slow.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I see the content that's coming out, even today, I've seen like half a dozen bits of content, just fly out at the team, and it's like, yeah, it's candor.

[SPEAKER_00]: It is such a game change when it comes to graphics, I mean, just not needing a whole dictionary in order to use the other programs is a great thing, the carbon top tip, what's your favorite way to reduce the carbon footprint of an e-commerce store.

[SPEAKER_02]: through innovation.

[SPEAKER_02]: So a lot of our products that you now see on our website are 3D printed using robotic printers inside Flare HQ.

[SPEAKER_02]: That is a very big thing especially for a product derived company because prior to 3D printing, you would have to invest in very expensive, very heavy tooling that is made from solid steel and it's really like un-environmenty friendly [SPEAKER_02]: you then can't change the product and then you have to make batches a huge amounts of plastic in order to make it economically viable.

[SPEAKER_02]: So moving to 3D printing was a very big hidden way of reducing our carbon footprint.

[SPEAKER_02]: The other way which we're now working on is how we can get our manufacturing and product assembly.

[SPEAKER_02]: down so that we can actually empower people to be able to repair their own products and be able to do things to put their products that they weren't doing before.

[SPEAKER_02]: And that's...

[SPEAKER_02]: that's a very codeworded way of me saying we got something exciting coming.

[SPEAKER_02]: I can't really, I can't talk about yet because it's not out.

[SPEAKER_02]: But getting your carbon footprint down is so much more than just moving to paper packaging or green washing in some fancy way to say you're buying this many trees.

[SPEAKER_02]: Actually, being really focused on environmental issues and being really [SPEAKER_02]: focused on how you produce something without creating too much shared to.

[SPEAKER_02]: So minimal energy, minimum stock holding.

[SPEAKER_02]: and minimum impact on the world actually benefits you massively if you're doing it fundamentally, because it means that you get your costs right down, because you're now not using the energy, you're not investing in tooling, you're not investing in a load of products that's going to be out of date in six months time.

[SPEAKER_02]: And it's being able to innovate and pivot through the manufacturing process, [SPEAKER_02]: that really starts to unlock the whole core of reason of what ECO is about.

[SPEAKER_02]: Because a lot of our definition product, which you see on our website, that's made as I say, inflare, have in-lotsing, in England, in lots of USR6.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's made here, and it's using a printer that uses lasers and resin, so it's laser-fused.

[SPEAKER_02]: It can be powered off one small solar panel.

[SPEAKER_02]: It is that energy efficient.

[SPEAKER_02]: And that is drastically different to plastic injection molding, which requires high temperature and machine as big as a room.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's a completely different step.

[SPEAKER_02]: And what we're now trying to do [SPEAKER_02]: much more mass consumer and make that much more the way to go because then we can pivot product, we could change products, we can adapt it, we can listen to people and we can make little tweaks to it and we can start to improve things.

[SPEAKER_00]: It just delivers on all fronts, doesn't it?

[SPEAKER_00]: There's less waste in building the manufacturing site, there's less waste in running it, there's less waste in the product because you're making what you need not throwing away a load or whatever happens with it and then you've got [SPEAKER_00]: As a business, you've got more flexibility in terms of, we don't have to buy 10,000 units.

[SPEAKER_00]: We can run out for 100.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then if we're seeing demand spike on something else, we can run off some more of those.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it's such a benefit in so many ways on the green side of things.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then I think we started off this conversation vaguely mentioning tariffs.

[SPEAKER_00]: Of course, if you're manufacturing in country, [SPEAKER_00]: then you have got, I mean, raw products may be coming from overseas, but you're also saving somewhat on their supply chain side of the tariffs, presumably as well.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that with the tariffs is a really tricky one, because we shipped to 180 sits countries and we were pretty, we were pretty friction free.

[SPEAKER_02]: We had a very good career service and everything was getting out to the states in like two or three days, everything was rosy.

[SPEAKER_02]: And then, unfortunately, these tariffs came in and that big impact for us was the removal of the minimists.

[SPEAKER_02]: So, the minimists is where something gets into the states, you know, it's 20 quid, that you then don't have any tariffs on.

[SPEAKER_02]: Now, pretty much every country in the world has got it.

[SPEAKER_02]: an amount of tax-free duty.

[SPEAKER_02]: Because otherwise, if you've got something coming into the states at £5, when that comes in, you have to apply the 10% tariff, but then you get the admin fee for the courier, all the processing fees through customs, and you end up with a £5 item, costing it $60-$70.

[SPEAKER_02]: So it meant overnight, it ceased our V2C model in the states.

[SPEAKER_02]: And we very quickly had to locate and source a logistics partner, which we did, and we then had to get pallets and pallets of products out to the stakes as quickly as we could whilst maintaining sales to the US because it is our biggest market.

[SPEAKER_02]: But we managed to do it.

[SPEAKER_02]: We managed to keep in touch with all our customers.

[SPEAKER_02]: We shared what was going on and how we were overcoming it.

[SPEAKER_02]: And now what happens is [SPEAKER_02]: what your manufacturing goods are.

[SPEAKER_02]: If you're shipping it in terms of pallets, it means we can now absorb that cost.

[SPEAKER_02]: Whereas before, if we were shipping good from here and the customer was playing that tariff, it was much much more because it was on the retail price that they paid.

[SPEAKER_02]: plus all the admin fees.

[SPEAKER_02]: So you really have got no option, but to engage with a B2B set up with just six partner out there, which we didn't want to do, because having a logistics partner in another country means you're now slowed down in terms of innovation.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so a good idea is we came out with isolate, it protects us the new version last Thursday.

[SPEAKER_02]: it exploded in sales.

[SPEAKER_02]: We didn't quite count for how many we were going to sell because it had been a product before and so we launched the game with a new and refreshed design and our customers went mad and so we shipped a vast quantity out to the states.

[SPEAKER_02]: And then we got hit with this custom's import issue in terms of, I don't know, it's another regulation that we put on aluminium and we couldn't overcome it.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so we've then had to like balance and juggle that and send out small shipments rapidly in the next 24 hours just to make sure we can meet customer demand.

[SPEAKER_02]: But it gives you a good example of trying to keep things simple so that they're flexible.

[SPEAKER_02]: But then the world changes and that simplicity comes around to bite you.

[SPEAKER_00]: indeed it does.

[SPEAKER_00]: Davies, it has been brilliant chatting to you about all these different things, absolute treat, getting you back on the podcast again.

[SPEAKER_00]: So thank you so much for being here.

[SPEAKER_00]: Before we say goodbye for the listeners who want to try out your products or want to get in contact with you, where can they find your business new on the web and social please?

[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, so they can find us at flairordio.com.

[SPEAKER_02]: That's FL-A-R-E-A-U-D-I-O.

[SPEAKER_02]: You can see us on Instagram as for app-flareordio, on Meta, app-flareordio, and on X as well.

[SPEAKER_02]: I will also on TikTok.

[SPEAKER_02]: We've also got some small independent retail partners across the world.

[SPEAKER_02]: If you're in Australia, you can find us through a reseller called Ear Jobs.

[SPEAKER_02]: But other than that, just search on Google and you'll find all our products.

[SPEAKER_02]: And the most important I think I say to people is we're a real company, making real technology, and look at all the reviews in detail on websites and you'll start to see how our products can help you in your daily life.

[SPEAKER_00]: Awesome.

[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you so much for being on the show.

[SPEAKER_00]: David, it's been great catching up with you again.

[SPEAKER_02]: Thanks, Gary.

[SPEAKER_00]: what a fascinating discussion there with Davies.

[SPEAKER_00]: I love how he goes from massive strategic thoughts down to the nitty gritty of how to improve specific things in the business.

[SPEAKER_00]: Great advice in there and insights around.

[SPEAKER_00]: Meterads, around tariffs, around products, development innovations, so much cool stuff in there.

[SPEAKER_00]: I hope you've enjoyed that episode as much as we did recording it.

[SPEAKER_00]: You get your hands on the notes from this episode, including those top tips and links to what we mentioned by heading over to ecommercemasterplan.com.

[SPEAKER_00]: You can also use our direct-to-episode short links just put ECMP dot info forward slash the number of this episode into the URL bar and you'll [SPEAKER_00]: And when you're on the site, why not add yourself to our email list?

[SPEAKER_00]: So you don't miss out on any of the other things we share to help you improve your business.

[SPEAKER_00]: And if you liked this episode, then make sure you check out our previous chats with Davies.

[SPEAKER_00]: We first caught up in 2018 when he'd recently pivoted to consumer products and had a year of 250% growth, that's episode 164.

[SPEAKER_00]: Then he came back on the show in 2020 to share how they'd switch from a focus on fast growth to a focus on profitability.

[SPEAKER_00]: That is on episode 250 to have a listen to that one.

[SPEAKER_00]: And if you want to hear from some other bigger businesses that we've had on the show then head to ECMP.info forward slash big to find a page of all of them.

[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for tuning into this and every episode of the e-commerce master plan podcast.

[SPEAKER_00]: We bring you a new interview every week, even in December, because we want to inspire and help e-commerce business owners like you to succeed and thrive with your businesses, including progressing along the path to net zero.

[SPEAKER_00]: So if you know someone this show can help, please tell them to listen to the e-commerce master plan podcast.

[SPEAKER_00]: I hope you have a great week and don't forget to keep optimizing.

[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you for listening to the eCommerce MasterBland podcast.

[SPEAKER_01]: Find out more at eCommercemasterpland.com slash podcast.