The best way to learn something is by doing, which is a lesson that Thomas Lotrecchiano’s father taught him early on. Thomas and his father started Omigo together in 2018 as an alternate route to Thomas going to school for an MBA, and in the years since, that lesson keeps cropping up.
Omigo is a DTC bidet company, and like many industry disruptors, its biggest challenge is educating the consumer base and converting skeptics into loyal customers. On this episode of Up Next in Commerce, Thomas explains how they have done exactly that by blending humor and educational content, building an infrastructure that allows them to ride the changing tides of demand, and by betting big on TV moving forward. Plus, Thomas shares some of the lessons he has learned from his father, who is an ecommerce gamechanger in his own right, having grown a small online business from a modest five employees to 250 in the early days of the industry.. Enjoy this episode!
Main Takeaways:
- How Long Will It Take?: Getting consumers to adopt a new product, especially an intimate one, requires a great deal of education, patience, and listening. Just because your product works flawlessly and it has certain innate benefits doesn’t mean that it will immediately be a hit. You have to invest in educating the consumer base and then listening to and incorporating their feedback into your products and messaging.
- Don’t Overlook the Obvious: It’s easy to fall in love with your product and spend time and money selling its unique features, but what actually makes people convert is if you can show them how to use it, how to install it, and lastly the value that can be derived from it. Those are the conversion areas that you should be laser-focused on, and highlighting any of the superfluous features can come later.
- Basic Building Blocks: There are three fundamental elements that DTC businesses need to start with before getting their company off the ground. They are: customer service, fulfillment, and a functioning, lead-generating website that has the ability to scale. Without these building blocks, your company is not ready to scale.
For an in-depth look at this episode, check out the full transcript below. Quotes have been edited for clarity and length.
Key Quotes:
“UGC isn’t always something that I’m going to be showing on my website, because it’s true, I’m not going to be able to get the everyday consumer to send me a video while they’re on their bidet, talking about how awesome it is. But when we do use that approach, it’s been in the influencer space. A lot of people look at influencers as people they trust, guides in their lives, people they aspire to live like. Whether you agree or disagree with how people portray themselves on Instagram or social media, it’s still a place for aspirational content and to look at people and see what they’re doing.”
“That’s where a lot of the power comes from is building those audiences on Facebook and showing them these people that look and think and talk like them, and then getting them to look at this product and say, ‘Oh, I’ve never heard of it. These people are using it. Hmm.’ It’s kind of like that ‘this is everywhere’ approach. You’re going to get hit with a funny ad, you’ll see my dad and I, and then you’ll see an influencer with it. So breaking down those walls and making it normal is a big thing in customer acquisition.”
“It takes a long time to develop. Years and years. So being able to hear what people are saying, seeing patterns in their responses, will definitely be guiding our product development.”
“Listening to our customers at the beginning was more about why they decided to try the product, what they like about it, and what they were skeptical about, and then taking that feedback and putting it back into our messaging.”
“On the pre-purchase side, it really came down to listening to the frustration points of what we weren’t showing and telling people on our website. There are little complications with your seat size and shape and your plumbing fixtures and I was looking at it from a world of head down in bidets and toilets, and to be able to hear a customer pick your head up and say, ‘Oh, well, I obviously need to show this information. Why wasn’t I doing that before?’”
“We keep customer service and product development in-house. Super important to keep that close to home, understand that feedback loop of what are people saying, how can we answer their questions more efficiently, and making sure that when it comes to a plumbing product, they have a great experience talking to someone and getting their questions answered.”
“[My father] was consulting with ecommerce brands of all sizes: $5 million a year to $120-150 million a year and everywhere in between. So what we took from his experience into Omigo was what he calls his ‘ecommerce playbook,’ and it was the fundamentals of where you need to start with a direct-to-consumer business. And the basics of that were: great customer service, solid fulfillment and the fundamentals of a website, that being: something simple and functional, having a great hero and landing page, having solid email capture, having all of your email flows built and all of your knowledge base in place and everything ready to scale, because something could happen overnight like it did with Omigo, and you have to be ready to go from 10 orders a day to 150.”
Bio:
Thomas Lotrechiano is the co-founder of Omigo, a DTC bidet company he started with his father in 2018. Their mission is to revolutionize the way the U.S. thinks about bidets and shed some light on a solution Americans have slept on for too many years.
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Transcript:
Stephanie:
Hey, everyone, and welcome back to Up Next in Commerce. This is your host, Stephanie Postles, co-founder and CEO at Mission.org. Today on the show, we have Thomas Lotrecchiano, the co-founder of Omigo. How’s it going, Thomas?
Thomas:
It is great. You nailed the last name. Perfect.
Stephanie:
Yes. I’m so happy. I was looking at that like, “Oh, can I do this one?” So many tricky names on this show, but I’m like a 50/50 shot at getting them right, so it’s all right. So I’d love to hear a bit about Omigo. I saw it’s a bidet company, which was very exciting to me, surprisingly, because I’ve been to Japan before, and I remember entering the airport and going into one of the stalls, and it closed and music started playing. They had this beautiful toilet. I couldn’t hear anything. I was in my own little spaceship. And the toilet was obviously a great bidet, and so I’m very excited about the world of bidets, but I want to hear a bit about how you guys even got into this.
Thomas:
I love hearing about people’s first bidet stories, and they’re always so different. A lot of people talk about Japan. Some people talk about [inaudible] or having to use their hand, or bum guns in Southeast Asia, or the traditional ones in Italy, and not having any clue how to use them. Bidets, bidets. So it started when my dad rented a new apartment in Raleigh, North Carolina, and they had an electric bidet seat there, and it was just like the ones that we’re selling now. Very similar. So it was his first bidet experience, besides the ancient extra fixtures you see in European bathrooms that you might want to wash your feet in.
Thomas:
And he didn’t use it for a month. Wouldn’t touch it. My mom loved it immediately. And so, after some time, he warmed up and he sat down, used it. Basically, I like to imagine an epiphany where he sat down and some angelic music played and lights lit up around him and his life was changed forever. He wouldn’t stop talking about it. I had been exposed to bidets in Southeast Asia. A little bit different than what we’re selling now. But that’s how both of us kind of got our start with a bidet, but the company came from when my dad just would not stop talking about these Japanese toilet seats every family gathering, whenever I was with him, I lived in the same city as him, and it just wouldn’t wouldn’t end.
Stephanie:
Yeah. Yep. Once you get that experience, I feel like it’s hard to go back. I know when I worked at the main campus at Google, they were everywhere, in every bathroom. And to me, that’s such a foreign concept, but there’s so many different people there, that was just part of the norm. And I would always have friends come and visit me and family come on campus, and after just me being like, “Go try it. Don’t be scared. You’re going to love it,” it’s like it was a conversation for the entire week afterwards. So it was very life-changing. I mean, what’s interesting, too, about your guys’ company is that you co-founded it with your dad. Which I think is a very fun story and I want to hear a bit about that, because I see he has a big background in ecommerce, as well, and had a company that went from 5 to 250 employees, which you were working at as a teenager. So I’d love to hear a bit of the background there and what it’s like working with your dad.
Thomas:
Yeah, absolutely. Super accomplished guy. Really happy to be working with him now. So just kind of how he and I got started, I’ll fast forward to. There was a time where I was choosing a career path after I had done two years of service in AmeriCorps, which is a nonprofit, national organization: NCCC. And we had known we’d always wanted to work together. We’re very similar people and we get along. We have a lot of the same thought processes. And so, it came a time where this bidet epiphany had happened, and he said, “Hey, I know that you’re thinking about going to school for an MBA. Instead of getting an MBA, we’re going to start this business together. You’re going to learn more. You’re going to actually get paid instead of paying. And it’s going to start a new career for you.” And I was game-
Stephanie:
Smart dad.
Thomas:
Right? Very smart dad. I trusted him, I believed what he was saying, and I knew from all of those years’ experience, like you mentioned, that I was going to learn a ton. And so, the business that you referred to that he took from five to… I forget how many hundreds of employees, was called Canvas On Demand. And so, it is a digital or physical image-to-canvas art company, and when he started it, you only really found that in Walgreens. And so, he took it to the ecommerce space, which was… In 2005, selling stuff online was weird. It wasn’t huge yet. You were still going to the store, picking things up. But I want to reel back just a little bit more. He started Art.com. He purchased the Art.com domain-
Stephanie:
Domain?
Thomas:
And started selling… Yeah, selling posters in 2001 with a different company. And that kind of set him on this online trajectory. Then, he launched into this Canvas On Demand company, which yes, I worked at as a teenager every summer, every holiday, I was probably the eighth employee, technically. From the beginning, I’ve been working with my dad, and I’ve definitely watched him run his companies and I’ve admired what he’s done from afar and up close for years now, so it’s great to work with him.
Stephanie:
Yeah. Very cool. So what does the separation of roles look like for what your dad does and when he’s like, “And this is for you to run on your own”?
Thomas:
Yeah, so I would say that my dad is the big picture guy. He is really good at thinking outside the box, pushing the brand, and making sure that everything is in the right place, and then my job is running the day-to-day. So running the store, managing all of our agencies and merchants, and working on [inaudible]. And I’m really in the day-to-day of Omigo.
Stephanie:
Cool. And how challenging has it been to bring this product to the US, sell people on the benefits? How do you even approach that marketing? Because I feel like unless you’ve really tried it, it’s pretty hard to convince someone who’s never even thought about it to be sold on a product like that. So how do you think about introducing people to this kind of new product? At least in the US still feels kind of new.
Thomas:
Yeah, it’s shocking. I still have to convince my friends to try it. I run a bidet brand and it’s still work to get people that know and trust me to sit down and wash their butts. Washing your butt is such a foreign concept here and it is maddening, because, like you said, once you try it, it’s almost impossible to go back. You have to get some sort of bidet in your home. And we knew it was going to be a challenge, but we know that that fact I just stated, once you try it, you’ll never go back, and it’s such a better way, cleaner way to go to the bathroom, that it’s just a matter of time before it catches on in the United States.
Stephanie:
But it’s been a long time. That’s my thing. These have been around for [inaudible]. How much more time do we need? What kind of [inaudible] are you going to get yourself out there? What kind of marketing are you going to use? Are you going to pull a Poo-Pourri and really go hard with the unicorn type of stuff? Or how are you guys thinking about educating and selling this idea?
Thomas:
Yeah. Well, you need multiple people in the space to start disrupting and pushing this kind of taboo idea in people’s faces, and what we’ve done is we took an educational approach. No one knows what Japanese bidet toilet seats are, and so we have this awesome product that does all these great things, makes you feel amazing, super easy to install, and that’s the tactic that we went with was letting people know that it’s not intimidating. So we use plain language to describe the installation. We let you know exactly how it functions. And then, along the way, we’re using a little bit of humor and that expressive “how it makes you feel” experience, and try to get that across in our visual and audio cues.
Stephanie:
Yeah. And what kind of formats have you seen do best? Where you’re like, “Oh, this one video that centered around humor did better than a pure educational one.” What are you seeing connect with people, especially in the marketing campaigns that you’re running?
Thomas:
Yeah. So humor has been a big one for us. We have one called “Bidet, Mate,” and it’s an Australian man and he talks about if you stepped in a lot of dingo dung, you wouldn’t wipe it off, you’d wash it. So use a little bit of humor there, but he’s also explaining exactly how this great product works, so it breaks down that wall of, “This is gross. I’m not talking about poop. But poop is funny, so let’s make jokes about it.” And then it says, “Okay, we’re here. We’re talking about it. Now, look at this awesome thing. Toilet paper is disgusting. You’re reaching down and you’re wiping yourself, so why don’t you wash instead?” And so, [crosstalk] a good one. And an accent.
Stephanie:
Any accents you can get into marketing I feel like will probably have a good ROI. I don’t know. Don’t measure me on that, but it seems like it would. All right, so you’re using humor. I sometimes feel like humor can go both ways though. You’ve got one side that can work really well, like I was saying, like Poo-Pourri and then the Harmon Brothers do a bunch of ad campaigns all around humor and a lot of them have done really well. But then, it also seems like it can be like a short blip of people are excited about the Squatty Potty, and then it’s like, “Is anyone still using that thing? What happened to it?” So how are you approaching that balance between funny but then also, “This is something that you’re going to keep for a long time”?
Thomas:
Yeah. So humor’s a great attention-grabber. So I make you laugh. It’s a little bit funny. You’re interested in the product, and then we also have educational, but kind of… So I’ll say I am in a video with my dad on YouTube and it is called, “Our Founder Spot and Why We Founded Omigo,” and it tells you basically this story, and then, it lets us explain the product without being funny. And we think it’s approachable and educational and real, coming from real people, not actors, and that seems to do extremely well combined with that humor. So I agree. It could definitely be flash in the pan and we’ve done funny stuff that hasn’t worked, but on that front end, getting people’s attention, humor does seem to work really well for bidets, specifically.
Stephanie:
Yeah, and I think that authenticity is definitely key, especially around a product that people don’t really understand. And yeah, I’m even thinking, how do you guys lean into maybe user-generated content? Which to me, if you see someone using it that is like you, you’re like instantly, “I’ll probably give it a try, because you’re like me and if you like it, I probably would, too.” But for something like this, are your customers even willing to talk about it and get the word out there and help spread the message?
Thomas:
Yeah, so we have seen a steady increase in our post-purchase survey for friends and family, word of mouth. And that’s exactly where it comes from: people that you trust talking about such an intimate topic. So UGC isn’t always something that I’m going to be showing on my website, because it’s true, I’m not going to be able to get the everyday consumer to send me a video while they’re on their bidet, talking about how awesome it is. But when we do use that approach, it’s been in the influencer space. A lot of people look at influencers as people they trust, guides in their lives, people they aspire to live like. Whether you agree or disagree with how people portray themselves on Instagram or social media, it’s still a place for aspirational content and to look at people and see what they’re doing. And we’ve seen some very good traction there, utilizing that influencer content elsewhere on our marketing channels.
Stephanie:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). What platforms are you working with alongside these influencers?
Thomas:
Yeah, so they post on Instagram and then we use whitelisting on Facebook and Instagram.
Stephanie:
Got it. Okay. And then, what are the results for that when it comes to conversions, and what does that funnel look like versus maybe just a typical ad out in the world or on YouTube, maybe running it against your video with your dad, like a very authentic company story. How do those two perform side-by-side?
Thomas:
Yeah. So we typically don’t run those side-by-side or A/B test them. We kind of keep them separate. The best thing about whitelisting… Are you familiar with the concept?
Stephanie:
Yeah. Go into the detail, because I’m not…
Thomas:
Yeah, sure. So whitelisting content is working with an influencer where you get them to create some awesome content around your brand. You guide them and let them do their own thing, but then you technically have access to their account, and from there-
Stephanie:
Oh, got it. Yeah.
Thomas:
Yeah, you can use their audience and create a lookalike from it on Facebook and Instagram, and then re-target them with that content from the actual influencer. So that’s where a lot of the power comes from is building those audiences on Facebook and showing them these people that look and think and talk like them, and then getting them to look at this product and say, “Oh, I’ve never heard of it. These people are using it. Hmm.” It’s kind of like that “this is everywhere” approach. You’re going to get hit with a funny ad, you’ll see my dad and I, and then you’ll see an influencer with it. So breaking down those walls and making it normal is a big thing in the customer acquisition.
Stephanie:
Yep. Yeah. Completely agree. So how do you even garner… I’m thinking about like, you have this product, and do customers give you feedback and do you let that influence the product? Or are you more kind of like tunnel vision? “We know it’s good. We’ve been to Japan. We know what it needs to be like.” How do you think about that product development cycle?
Thomas:
Yeah. The product is what the product is right now. We know that we have a great bidet seat, and we know that we have great bidet attachments, and we have faith in these products to perform extremely well. They’re super high quality. A lot of people love them. When you’re working with a product that 98% of Americans don’t have in their homes, you’re going to get a lot of feedback about that product in particular. We are always listening, though. It’s not to say we turn a deaf ear to what people are coming back and mentioning about the product, because there are things you can change down the road. So it takes a long time to develop. Years and years. So being able to hear what people are saying, seeing patterns in their responses, will definitely be guiding our product development. But for me, listening to our customers at the beginning was more about why they decided to try the product, what they like about it, and what they were skeptical about, and then taking that feedback and putting it back into our messaging. So that was super important to me.
Stephanie:
Yeah. That’s a really good way to view feedback, from all angles. What are some of the most surprising pieces of feedback, either before the sale or after, that you’ve received where you’re like, “Oh, that’s very interesting”? Where you actually maybe implemented it into your copy, your language, the way you educate people? What was something surprising, or more than one thing, that actually helped influence how you talked about it or sold it?
Thomas:
Yeah, so one thing that we hear a lot, and I love to hear it, is: “Why didn’t I do this sooner?” And it’s that sentiment where it’s like, “Ugh, I’ve been living my entire life wiping with dry paper, and these bidets have been around. What was I doing before?” And so, we take that sentiment into our marketing now. And then, on the pre-purchase side, it really came down to listening the frustration points of what we weren’t showing and telling people on our website.
Thomas:
So there are little complications with your seat size and shape and your plumbing fixtures, and it’s a complicated world down there by the toilet. And I was looking at it from a world of head down in bidets and toilets, and I knew too much about toilets than I ever needed to, and to be able to hear a customer pick your head up and say, “Oh, well, I obviously need to show this information. Why wasn’t I doing that before? It doesn’t matter. Put it on there now.” That always has been a winning tactic for us.
Stephanie:
Yeah. I mean, it also seems like a good way, even around customer acquisition, building a piece of content of just, “How do I even hook this thing up?” I mean, even if they’ve bought it from a different brand or they’re even considering it, I mean, that’d be my first question is, “Can I even do this myself? Do I need someone to come and install it for me? And what kind of things should I think about before buying something brand-new?” So it seems like a good content angle, too, to attract customers that maybe you wouldn’t have otherwise.
Thomas:
Yeah. We put installation in a lot of our videos, and it’s simple language, it’s DIY, self-install, no special tools, no plumber required. Right? And that’s kind of all you need to know. “Oh. I can handle it,” is basically the message.
Stephanie:
Yep. Yeah. That’s great. So earlier, you mentioned working with agencies was a piece of your world, and that’s a topic that… We’ve had many founders on here where some are excited about it, some are like, “It didn’t go well.” How do you view working with agencies? What things did you choose to maybe hire out? What did you keep in-house? And how do you keep a good working relationship there?
Thomas:
Yeah, so the agency battle is: it seems incessant, until you find an amazing partner. And we’ve really settled into a couple of great partnerships, and those are the ones that we work harder at because we like the people internally and the work that they do. We get along with them. We have similar values when it comes to business, and so we put in extra time and effort say, “Hey, we don’t really like this right now. We would like to change it this way,” or, “We would like to see more of this.” And the ones that take your feedback and change are the ones that you’re going to stay with, and those are the people that we continue to work with.
Thomas:
So it’s not easy finding a good agency, and we’ve had agency turnover multiple times with Omigo so far, but settling into a great relationship is extremely fruitful; and it’s still going to be work, but that’s the approach that we’ve taken. And to answer what we have kept in-house versus kind of farmed out, we keep customer service and product development in-house. Super important to keep that close to home, understand that feedback loop of what are people saying, how can we answer their questions more efficiently, and making sure that when it comes to a plumbing product, they have a great experience talking to someone and getting their questions answered. So keeping that close to home is super important.
Stephanie:
Yeah, it definitely seems like a high-touch customer service experience that, once you get past that point, it can be an instant sale as long as you have a good lead in and know everything and their questions are all answered from the start much easier, and you have to kind of keep that in-house. I can see why. So getting back to you working with your dad, and he’s done a bunch of cool things before, what are some of the lessons and insights he brought into the company that you’re like, “Wow, that really helped get it off the ground,” or, “These insights here or his experience here really helped kind of get it going”? What kind of things did he bring to this company today that helped you guys lead it to where it is?
Thomas:
Yeah, so after he sold and exited Canvas On Demand, he started to consult with other ecommerce brands. So he is the friendliest person I know probably, and loves being around people, talking with them, listening to them, helping them, so it was a natural fit for him to take this… How many years was it? Seven or eight years at Canvas On Demand, where ecommerce was changing. It was in such a growth stage. Everything was different year after year, and so he had to adapt constantly. And I think that really shaped his way of thinking about ecommerce and allowed him to go past this legacy concept of ecommerce, that you might get stuck if you started in 2001, and really grow with that channel.
Thomas:
So he took that into his consulting career, and so, for the six years in between his sale and Omigo, he was consulting with ecommerce brands of all sizes: $5 million a year to $120-150 million a year and everywhere in between. So what we took from his experience into Omigo was what he calls his “ecommerce playbook,” and it was the fundamentals of where you need to start with a direct-to-consumer business. And the basics of that were: great customer service, like I mentioned, solid fulfillment,
Thomas:
And the fundamentals of a website, so that being: something simple and functional, having a great hero and landing page, having solid email capture, having all of your email flows built and all of your knowledge base in place and everything ready to scale, because something could happen overnight like it did with Omigo, and you have to be ready to go from 10 orders a day to 150. So he brought this ecommerce playbook and this really rich knowledge base and a lot of connections to the start of Omigo.
Stephanie:
Nice. And so, how many orders are you guys at today? You just talked about going from like 10 a day to a hundred. What does it look like today, and what did that process look like scaling to where you are now?
Thomas:
Yeah, it fluctuates. So it’s been a funny year-and-a-half for Omigo, because at the beginning of the pandemic, the toilet paper shortage hit.
Stephanie:
Oh, yeah. I forgot about that.
Thomas:
Right? Forgot about that.
Stephanie:
Yeah.
Thomas:
What a crazy time.
Stephanie:
I like to forget about dumb things like that. We didn’t actually have a toilet paper shortage, we just had a logistics problem. But okay. Carry on.
Thomas:
We had a hoarding problem and a logistics problem. Either way, it was great for the bidet industry. It was an odd time to prosper, when you had a lot of people going through hardships and a lot of unknown in the future, but we couldn’t look at that in the moment because people needed a solution to the toilet paper shortage. And bidets are the best answer, so, “Hello. We’re Omigo. We’ve been here. Welcome.” And during that time, it was Black Friday every day for a week. And then, that lasted about a month and a half. We sold out. Sales tapered back down in the summer, picked back up during holiday paper shortage, and then kind of continued into the new year. And we’re seeing kind of a mini decline right now, and a steadying out of how many purchases we get. So still trying to figure it out. We haven’t cracked the code 100% and we’re working at it constantly, but definitely going with the flow as far as when orders are coming in and when they’re not.
Stephanie:
So what are some lessons or things that you’re adjusting going forward now that you’ve kind of seen these fluctuations of demand and Black Friday every day for a week, and then tapering down again? What kind of things are you maybe adjusting going forward to kind of future-proof the back end as well to make sure that you can keep up with it when it’s there and then still have your suppliers and manufacturers when it’s not Black Friday levels? How are you guys thinking about that now?
Thomas:
Yeah. Well, after we sold out, we realized this could happen again, especially during the pandemic. It was super unsure times. So we really shored up our supply chain. We ordered a lot of product, and we have a lot of product, and we are continually ordering it. Because we know it’s a matter of time until bidets are ubiquitous. I mean, I am confident in that. It may take five more years. It may take 20 more years, but there’s going to be one day where bidets are everywhere. And our products, they’re shelf stable. It’s not like they’re going to be going bad, so having that on hand, being ready for a boom, is one way that we’re future-proofing ourselves.
Thomas:
And another way is just keeping everything tight on our website. We are constantly A/B testing and trying out new copy or new design to optimize how customers are coming in, learning about our product, and finally purchasing. So keeping everything tight on the website keeps us future-proof. And being direct to consumer, we have a great relationship with our distribution centers, so always knowing that we’re going to have a distribution relationship where, “Hey, yeah, we’re at X amount of orders today, but that could double in the next three weeks and we need to make sure that you’re ready.” So having the infrastructure there, as well.
Stephanie:
So where are you most excited to take Omigo over the next maybe three to five years? What are you guys working towards? What are you most excited about right now?
Thomas:
Yeah, I’m really excited about television.
Stephanie:
Yeah?
Thomas:
I think that it’s funny, because you think TV five years ago, you’re like, “Oh, TV is dying. It’s all going to be streaming.” And yeah, it is a lot of streaming, but it’s still a traditional marketing platform. There are still ads on every streaming platform and cable is still a booming industry. It is a gigantic industry. A lot of people have cable, Dish, and the like, and I think that for a young direct-to-consumer brand, getting in front of that many eyeballs is really exciting for us. So it’s not a new channel; it’s just new to us.
Thomas:
We are going to be launching soon. Yeah, we’re going to be launching soon and are excited about the results. We have some people that we know that are doing well on TV and we think that we’re going to do well, also.
Stephanie:
Cool. And is it specifically focusing on cable? Which I do feel like a lot of people are kind of sleeping on that, but I also wonder if maybe it’s a generational thing, where it depends on who your target audience is that you’re trying to get in front of; where maybe people closer to our age, they might not have cable. They’re probably Netflix, Hulu, everywhere else, YouTube. But then, when I about maybe my parents, for sure they still have cable, and they’re probably not going to get rid of it for a long time. So which areas… Or are you exploring all of that?
Thomas:
Yeah, we’ll definitely explore all of it. Streaming is great. We have those low-price bidet attachments at Omigo that start at $89. So great entry-level, great price for anyone that wants a bidet. And then, our top-of-the-line bidet is at $649, and we do see the demographic there swing older. And that’s a demographic that is humongous in this country. A lot of them are still watching cable, like you said, so they don’t know about these luxury bidet toilet seats. And if they see it on TV, I think that kind of awareness is just going to do good things for every bidet company out there.
Stephanie:
Cool. Yeah, we’ll have to circle back once you guys are live and [crosstalk] see you out there in the world on one of the channels.
Thomas:
You will.
Stephanie:
That’d be fun to hear the results and how it’s going.
Thomas:
Yeah, so excited.
Stephanie:
All right. Well, let’s shift over to the lightning round. Lightning round is brought to you by Salesforce Commerce Cloud. This is where I ask a question and you have a minute or less to answer. Are you ready, Thomas?
Thomas:
Yes.
Stephanie:
Cool. What ecommerce tool or piece of technology are you most excited about right now that you guys are maybe experimenting with?
Thomas:
So we’ve been on SMS for awhile, but SMS has just been a great platform for us. Being able to get into people’s pockets and the open rate and click-through rate has been awesome. So SMS is a killer. It’s not going anywhere and we’re super excited about it.
Stephanie:
Awesome. What’s up next on your reading list or your podcast queue?
Thomas:
Let’s see. Guiltily been learning more about crypto lately on my podcast queue, so trying to educate myself on not just kind of what’s booming and busting, but the inner workings and how to actually invest longterm into that world. So definitely a little bit of crypto podcasts in there.
Stephanie:
Nice. Yeah. There’s some good ones out there. Personal favorites.
Thomas:
I’ll have to ask. Yeah.
Stephanie:
I’ll just send some episodes your way that are good ones. When you want to get creative, what do you do to get into that headspace?
Thomas:
I turn off everything around me, because I’m a very distractible person, and I really put myself into the place of who this creative project is for. Put on a little different hat for email, put on a different hat for Facebook, and if I’m stuck, I leave. Wherever I am. I go outside and move my body. I’m a very active person, so being able to get some blood flow gets my creative juices going, too.
Stephanie:
Yep. Yeah, same. Cool. All right. And the last one, what one thing will have the biggest impact on ecommerce in the next year?
Thomas:
The next year: the continued at-home life. People are not going to go back to the office full-time. A lot of people are going to keep spending time at home. People are buying houses. So this at-home goods and everything that you can use around the house is going to be huge, because people are still shopping online. People are still getting everything shipped to their door. We’re not going to go back to retail yet. I think that’s going to be in the next year. A big one.
Stephanie:
Cool. All right, Thomas, thanks so much for coming on the show and talking about bidets and the fun world. Where can people find out more about you and Omigo?
Thomas:
Yep, so if you want to find out about me, you can find me on LinkedIn: Thomas Lotrecchiano. And if you want to find out about Omigo, you can go to Myomigo.com. That’s M-Y-O-M-I-G-O dot com. We have all of your butt washing needs. Stop wiping, people. Wash your butt.
Stephanie:
Do it the right way. Come on. All right. Thanks so much, Thomas.
Thomas:
Thank you, Stephanie. It’s been a lot of fun.
