If there is one commonality between all of the guests I talk to, it’s that experimentation and constantly learning more is what makes a company grow and thrive. Andrew Goble, the co-founder and co-CEO of Jambys, preached that truth to me on this episode of Up Next in Commerce, and we were able to dissect some of his bigger experiments to draw out insights anyone could use. For example, how should you be thinking about inventory in turbulent times? What are some of the ways you could be utilizing TV ads? And why is it sometimes more important to lose a customer in the short term in order to build trust for the long term? Find out all of that and more on this episode.
Main Takeaways:
- What do you do to get over early company missteps, including communication, production, and launch issues?
- When it comes to your team, you have to be willing to do things as well as you can until you simply can’t anymore. Bringing on experts and helping hands will get you farther than trying to stay lean. And with customers, honesty is always the best policy. It’s better to be honest about delays and offer a refund now and hope they come back, than lose their trust forever.
- What platforms and channels should you get excited about?
- While it seems like every brand is going all-in on social platforms, it might be worth more to go the traditional route and lean into a channel like TV or streaming services. There, you can find more engaged audiences who will sit through a message rather than simply scroll past it.
For an in-depth look at this episode, check out the full transcript below. Quotes have been edited for clarity and length.
Key Quotes:
“The fabric was the first thing that we were like, ‘Oh, that’s an anchor.’ We were like, ‘Are we going to have boxers with pockets brand?’ And it was like, ‘No, the fabric is our anchor. Let’s go find the best people to take that even further and build around that pretty basic thing. Let’s go develop great fabrics.’”
“I probably would look at the old website through my hands now, like I’d be a little ashamed. But also, I’m glad we did it that way because it was the things we thought were going to stick or be important were so different from customers’ [thoughts], both why they bought it, why they commented on Instagram. And ultimately, we texted all of them, ‘Tell us everything you think why you liked it.’”
“We went from like, ‘Oh wow, this is a product that people want right now,’ to, ‘We’re going to have four months with no inventory.’ So, things went from good to terrible pretty quickly… Our game plan was, ‘Well, if we can’t really salvage this year, let’s develop our T-shirt, our long Jambys, our pant, and our house hoodie, and let’s just pray that they arrive sometime in October. And let’s do whatever we can to make the last three months of the year something so we can keep doing this without having to raise unnecessary capital or anything like that.’”
“Sometimes you tell a customer, ‘Hey, this thing was on backorder for five days, but it’s actually going to be the next Monday,’ and a lot of times they’re like, ‘Oh, I didn’t really think about it,’ because a lot of people are just saying like, ‘Hey, ships whenever.’ So, I think at first we were like, ‘Oh, we’ll just talk to the customers that reach out to us and let them know like, we can do full refund. This is the date we think, but it’s hard to trust any delivery carrier at this point because they’re so overloaded.’ But it was like learning to over-communicate and if any order’s still out after X amount of days, depending on the time period, just to reach out and be like, ‘We can just do a full refund.’ And when that happened, a lot of those customers ended up coming back at a different time, which is the great thing. It’s like, ‘Great, we’re not going to just keep this money out of your bank account while we wait to see what happens with this next piece of cargo. Let’s just do this when it feels good.’ And sometimes that’s felt painful being so small, but I think even just a year later, you see how important that is and that customers can trust that they’re going to get what we said they would get for what they paid. Which sounds so simple, but I think a lot of brands are not fulfilling that promise right now.”
“Mastering inventory and demand forecasting does not make a great business, but it is fundamental. You could have the world’s best ad, but it doesn’t matter if you don’t have sizes to sell.”
“With Instagram and Facebook, people are just scrolling past things now, and with TV, it’s like, usually whether you want to watch something or not, it’s kind of like, ‘It’s there, I’ll just sit through it. I don’t even know where the remote’s at, and I’m kind of focused on it. Oh, and now it’s actually an interesting commercial? Okay. I’ll watch it and check it out.’”
Bio
Andrew Goble is the co-founder and co-CEO of Jambys, a company specializing in unisex boxers with pockets, as well as several other highly comfortable variations of performance inactivewear, which you wear at home while relaxing, resting, and recharging. Andrew started his career as a writer and photographer.
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Transcript:
Stephanie Postles:
Andrew, welcome to the show.
Andrew Goble:
Hey. Thanks for having me. How’s it going?
Stephanie Postles:
It’s Going great. I still am sad that I’m not wearing my jambs. Like I told you, they’re dirty right now. I over wear them. So, that’s personal problem. But I mean, very impressed with your company, very impressed with your brand before we get into how you built it and where you started, I actually want to go back to your history, though. I know you went from like a writer to a photographer. I was looking at your LinkedIn, I’m like, “Oh, this is an interesting path that he came to starting a company,” and I was hoping we could start with that first.
Andrew Goble:
Yeah. Absolutely. I was a writer and photographer before starting Jambys, and honestly I, from since I was 16, thought I was going to be a writer and photographer forever. And so, I initially started my career at GQ. I was an intern there while I was in college. And from there, worked there on the website, then I worked on the social team, then I worked on the magazine, and then I went with my boss at the time, Devin Freeman, to go work on content marketing at a FinTech company called Wealth Simple, which is a robo-advisor in Canada. And that was the start of me seeing like, “Oh, there’s another way to make things creatively and try to speak to people that is not just writing fashion tips.” And I like both, and I still do, but to see this world like explode in front of me, this is only three or four years ago, was kind of the start of, “Oh, creativity’s getting valued in this place and I can contribute.” Yeah, but it all started just writing Instagram captions, really.
Stephanie Postles:
Yeah. I mean, that’s awesome. I mean, writers are in high demand right now and anybody with creativity, I feel like every company wants. What was the moment that you were like, “I actually want to do my own thing”? Because I’m sure there was a lot of demand coming at you to get pulled over to someone else’s company.
Andrew Goble:
Yeah. I was reading a story that… My friend Bert is a writer and he was reporting on the beginning of Facebook ads and brands really starting to invest in it when they’re starting a company, and the co-founder of Hubble Contacts, Jesse Horwitz was interviewed in it. And something just like, as he was talking about coming up with all these concepts, trying them with iPhone footage, I was like, “I want to meet that guy.” So, I emailed him and he was super nice. He was like, “Come stop by.” And he basically evangelized like direct to consumer, the power of a creative to make their own difference, and gave me some kind of throwawayQ&As to write for them just to get me interested. And a lot of going out of my own and working as a freelancer was Jesse connecting me to the agency he worked with and be like, “Hey, if you need any writing, Andrew can help,” and like, “Hey, another brand needs photography, why don’t you give Andrew a try?”
Andrew Goble:
And it was this great introduction to a world, especially with these younger brands, where someone who was an 80% good writer, a 70% good photographer, 80% good project manager, they were like, “Great, that’s one person,” and it’s a lot cheaper than an agency that requires a lot of people to execute with the polish they do. So, it was a lot of good timing that, I don’t know, that I could do a lot of things okay and they gave me a chance to try a bunch. And Jesse was always there giving intros and showing me how I could use these skills in the space, which was how I got so interested in it.
Stephanie Postles:
It’s nice thinking about just how much one person can change the trajectory of someone’s entire life. I mean, it sounds like that’s exactly what he did when he came in, started giving intros, letting you try out new skills, and also, building up a reputation by saying, “Yep, he’s worked for me before. It went great. You should try it, too.”
Andrew Goble:
Yeah. Yeah. Now I’m like, when you’re looking back, it takes a few of those conversations to really make you feel welcome in a space, and now I feel like I follow so many people on Twitter in the space and you get this advice, maybe one thing a day, you’re like, “That’s great.” Jesse was like, “Here’s a two page memo I have for new hires that’s like what are the metrics we care about, what are the things we should focus on early, how do we think about creative?” And he was just really open in that, and I always think about that when I… You sometimes get emails from people and they’re not super polished or they’re just like, “Can I pick your brain?” And I’m like, “Oh, wait, that was me not that long ago.” Just having patience with people, it’s like… It’s a hard space to get into, and the more I can at least share a like, “Here’s what I share with someone new joining Jambys,” I always try to remember a lot of people did that for me.
Stephanie Postles:
Yeah. That’s great. So, it sounds like that two pager new hire handbook left an impression on you. What are some of the things that you remember from there? Because I think that’s great, every company should maybe think about what they should have in that, but I’m guessing you also took some of those pointers and put them in your own handbook. So, what are the things that stood out to you from there that you maybe took with you?
Andrew Goble:
Yeah. For me, it was a lot of this… Sounds kind of silly, but this basic idea of scale in that a lot of these advertising platforms could start small, could be tested easily, that you could try 100 things, sometimes for like $5 each, but that if one of them worked, you could build something that was significant and at scale. And I think that idea of like we’re working here experimenting, was different from the type of creative I worked on. I was usually in the lowest role of a production of a photo shoot that was the definition of polish and it’s like the stylists were the best at what they do, the photographers are best at what they do.
Andrew Goble:
And you’d end up with four images, and to see how they thought of the importance of iterating and these things are ongoing and try whatever was a different way of thinking about how you’re making stuff, what are you making it for, even what is a successful piece of creative on Facebook. Is it a high click through rate? Is it a low CPM? Is it a low CPA? I didn’t even know what a lot of those acronyms meant [inaudible] I’m going to dig in here and just think about how you make stuff so differently.” I think that’s great.
Andrew Goble:
And then, in the same note, I ended up later having a discussion when we were first starting Jambys with Zach Reitano who’s one of the founders of Ro, and he has a medium post about basic direct consumer metrics and it made me realize I could talk to the talk but I couldn’t walk the walk. I was like, “Oh, that’s actually…” These are things that you can’t just say like, “Oh, low CPA, great.” Everything is a trade off and being thoughtful is so important. And so, those two things were so helpful as like a Bible to be like, “If these people are focusing on these things, then maybe I’ll start there.”
Stephanie Postles:
Yep. How did you go about learning about those and making sure you actually could understand it well enough to implement it in your own company?
Andrew Goble:
Yeah. I think to start, it was just knowing that if… And if you made something and it was bad, you would know quickly. That failure actually wasn’t super expensive gave Jack and I when we were first starting Jambys… I remember before we had a product, I wouldn’t advise this now, but I took a photo of Jack with like a white… the back of a poster I had in my apartment in our first sample and we just put it online. And we’re like, “Boxers with pockets or shorts you can wear commando or super soft sleep shorts,” and we just were seeing what worked. We had a little fill out form on our website. I’m not even sure we were called Jambys at this point. But that we could even use it to validate a little bit of an idea.
Andrew Goble:
I think someone commented within an hour like, “Why the heck would my boxers need pockets?” And we’re like, “Great.” There’s something here that we thought that was an interesting tension, and when we wore them, we were like, “Oh, actually, this will be interesting.” But it was interesting to see when people have strong feelings anyway at such an early stage, we’re like, “Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Now, I realize it’s a good thing.” At the beginning, we’re like, “Oh, shoot, are parents going to be mad at us that we quit what we were doing to sell boxers with pockets?” But yeah, it was cool that we could use it in this validation stage, and we still do when I’m thinking of a new direction for messaging or new audience. In the past, I would’ve thought that this is like, “Let me put together a presentation and a plan to implement it.” Now, it’s like, “Hey TJ, can I try this copy on this ad?” And if it kind of works, then we’ll try something again. So, yeah, that we can even use it to shape our messaging is so helpful.
Stephanie Postles:
Yeah. I feel like, especially now with things changing so quickly, you have to be willing to be able to experiment quickly, see what’s working, pivot away from something that’s not. Before we go any further, though, I do want you to tell people, for anyone who has not had the amazing experience of wearing Jambys, what are Jambys, what do you sell, and what’s different about them?
Andrew Goble:
Awesome. So, Jambys is… We make performance inactive wear, which is what we call it. And we started with the brand is called Jambys, our first product also called Jambys, was boxers with pockets. And the whole idea came from my co-founder Jack when he was like 10 year years old, his sisters would steal boxers or buy them from the men’s section, and we were getting phones around that time for the first time, nowhere to put it, so simple: I want to wear a boxers around the house, they should have pockets. 20 years later, he left his job and he said to me, like, “I’m doing this no matter who’s with me. This has become a personal thing. I want to bring to life at least one pair of boxers with pockets.”
Andrew Goble:
And so, we started with that, and since then, what we’ve found is that building products that lead into sitting, working from home, being in indoor temperatures, allows us to do a lot of things that you can’t do when it also needs to be good for running or also needs to be good for going on a date or going to work or whatever. And so, now, all of our products are built around the same fabric, which is built 95% modal, 5% spandex. And yeah.
Stephanie Postles:
So soft. Oh my gosh.
Andrew Goble:
Yeah. Yeah. We were talking about this before and it’s like the fabric was the first thing that we were like, “Oh, that’s an anchor.” We were like, “Is it always going to be [inaudible]? Are we going to have boxers with pockets brand?” And it was like, “No, the fabric is our anchor. Let’s go find the best people to take that even further and build around that pretty basic thing. Just let’s go develop great fabrics.
Stephanie Postles:
So, what did that process look like? I mean, to me, when I felt the fabric, I was like, “Okay, why haven’t more companies used this fabric?” And I was like, “I don’t even know what modal is. I’ve never even really seen that,” so how did you go about finding this and, yeah, bring it into where it is today?
Andrew Goble:
Yeah. It was a little bit of luck. I’d worked a lot with fabrics, so I used to do some my, of product reviewing, which was a great way to get your hands on 50 pairs of underwear. And modal is pretty similar to cotton. It’s harvested from Beachwood trees and condensed into a pulp that then gets spun into a natural fiber. You see it a lot in sleep shirts and underwear because it’s naturally so breathable and soft. But we were thrashing around making our first pair of boxers with pockets, and we’re getting samples from anyone who’d respond to an email. And one company specialized in modal or modal blends, and they were like, “This one is a little thicker than what you asked for, but I think you’ll like it.” And that for us, we were like, “Okay, this feels really soft,” and this like [inaudible]. It just feels like nothing we’d ever felt before.
Andrew Goble:
So, we got 10 samples made out of that, and I feel like that was the first set of samples where like… Usually my friends would try it on and be like, “Hey, can I give it back to you?” And this was the first where it was like people are tucking it in their purse on their way out the door and we were like, “Oh, this is what it’s going to be all about for us.” Less features and function and let’s just invest in great fabric. Yeah. But it was kind of an accident. I just remember feeling this little four inch by four inch swatch and you’re trying to picture like, “What’s that like as a boxer?” And we stuck with it, which is smart. I probably would not be here talking about it today if we picked the swatch that was one before it. Yeah.
Stephanie Postles:
That’s great. So, you’ve got your product, you’ve got your fabric. What did it look like next to drum up interest in a new company? Yeah. What were the next steps?
Andrew Goble:
Yeah. So, Jack and I, when we started, fundraising really wasn’t in the cards, so for us, it was to… I stayed working at my job freelance two days a week, Jack used some him savings he had from his previous job, and we probably took on some ill-advised credit cards, but the whole thing was like, “Let’s make 1,000 and we’ll know a lot more than if we sit here and think for three months or whatever.” So, we originally made the sample, like I took my favorite basketball shorts and Jack’s favorite pair of boxers to a sample maker in Manhattan, and he made us a couple… Like, “This one’s more like a basketball short, more like a boxer.” And once we got one we liked, we found a factory in downtown LA that specialized in new upcoming brands, small runs, and they walked us through a lot of these steps now that we we’re skipping, getting a basic tech pack, a drawing of what you’re actually going to cut out, how it’s going to get sewn together.
Andrew Goble:
And once we got that, the clock was ticking. Jack just flew to LA and stayed in the hotel next door to it and was basically there for eight hours a day, calling me, and we were Googling terms. He’d be like, “What seam do you want here?” And I’d be like, “Oh my gosh, I didn’t know there were different seams available at this stage.” While we were doing that on the product side, the goal was like what’s the most lightweight way we can sell, transact this product? Because we knew it was going to be a lot of friends and family to start.
Andrew Goble:
I grew up in Kansas City and our first six models, four of them were just people from Kansas City that lived in LA. I was like, “I’ll give you $150 or a $400 gift card, whatever you prefer.” And we photographed it in one of my photographer friend’s studio, and I think we did that on Friday and launched like three days later. So, it was pretty… I don’t know. I probably would look at the old website through my hands now, like I’d be a little ashamed. But I also, I’m glad we did it that way because it was the things we thought were going to stick or be important were so different from what customers, both why they bought it, why they commented on the Instagram, and ultimately, we texted all of them, “Tell us everything you think why they liked it,” we couldn’t have done that just sitting talking because we were so wrong about why that was.
Stephanie Postles:
Yep. Are there any so funny stories of early days starting up, anything that comes to mind where you’re like, “Looking back on it now, it’s funny,” maybe it wasn’t at the time?
Andrew Goble:
Yeah. We stopped needing coffee. It’s just like the stress was just enough to keep us on time. One of us [inaudible]. Yeah, we were buzzing on fear, terror, basically, and I remember like… I love working on my own and seeing what I can do on my own. And I was a bad communicator, and I remember being like, “We’re going to launch on October 1st,” and I told Jack like a week before, I was like, “I’m going to turn around the images. It’ll be great.” And somewhere in the process, we didn’t realize to that not all of our products were going to be done, but the first 200 of 1,000 were going to be done. So, we’re looking at this laptop… I also said we’re launching at 9:00 AM, but we were on the West coast.
Andrew Goble:
So, we woke up at 4:00 AM, went to Phil’s Coffee because, I don’t know, first thing we Googled, launched this thing. We’re having all of our friends come, they’re sharing on their Instagram story. Jack has this captivating thing about him where people from his middle school were seeing his Instagram, buying it, and then posting that they bought it. So many people wanted this-
Stephanie Postles:
Wow. That’s impressive.
Andrew Goble:
… dream he’d had for 20 years. Yeah. Yeah. And Jack’s earned it just because he’s the nicest guy in the world. And it was like, they were spreading it and we’re seeing it like, “This is so cool.” And then we walked into the factory and we’re like, “Oh crud, they are like in the middle of making this.” And everyone’s working hard and there’s a lot of people, but it was a lot of like, “Hey mom, you’re getting your Jambys a week from now because we’re filling out everything that we can before that.”
Andrew Goble:
And then after that we were like, “Great. We were able to do this in two months.” All the clothing apparel people we talked to had been like, “This is kind of a 12 to 18 month process,” and we were like, “Well, look at us.” And we soon learned why it was more of a pilot than an actual thing because we didn’t have the fabric, Jack had been running, taking bolts of white fabric to dye houses, having them dye it color, wasn’t quite perfect, but okay, whatever. To go recreate that and make the next 1,000, we basically need to go to a new factory.
Stephanie Postles:
Oh, so you were more like a startup factory, like get your beta product out there, and then move along and find someone who can support more quantities?
Andrew Goble:
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. The margins are probably not sustainable forever for us to get it to a large market of people, and so we found this really helpful guy who connected us to a factory in Mexico. And we were like, “Oh, this is so easy. You just list a color or a print.” I was like, “Let’s do a Christmas wavy stripe on this new thing, a new fabric mill, a new factory, whatever. We got this whole Excel sheet that says how to cut this thing.” And it was just from the second we knew that we should not have told people we’re selling Christmas Jambys, and without indicting ourselves, it was like, it was a hustle to get them through customs to get them to the fulfillment center. We didn’t have a fulfillment center. To get them to Jack and I on a table where we were printing things out and writing, “Thanks so much,” in the worst handwriting ever.
Andrew Goble:
But yeah, I think Jack has been often having a lot of Jambys under the seat of his car or in a luggage thing flying somewhere and being like, “Well, let’s hope no one asked why I have 200 boxers with pockets in my two pieces of luggage,” because we had to get it done. But that it was funny that sometimes you make long-term plans and you set yourself up for failure. This was like a plan we made and immediately the next day we’re like, “This was stupid. This is going to require Jack to be really hustling with people we’ve never worked with before.” And he did it while I tried to set up basic and photos here. That was a huge asset. I could kind of get things 80% good here. While Jack, every new element of the business, he just dug in, found a person who could guide us on it, and somehow got it across to us.
Stephanie Postles:
That’s great. I mean, I’m guessing you’re not working with the factory in Mexico anymore than?
Andrew Goble:
We are not.
Stephanie Postles:
Or are you?
Andrew Goble:
We are not. And so, that through… I guess, unrelated but related, was we launched in October of 2019, and then as factories started to shut down because of COVID in March, they shut down, and the only thing that they were allowed to make was with 10% of the people, they can make masks. So, we’re like, “Okay.” But at the same time, our first day running ads was I think the same day that New York got shut down, and so we’re making this indoor only product for the first time and people are responding to it. And we were donating to New York Food Bank for every sale. Long story short, we only had like so many pairs, we sold out within like three weeks, and then we’re like, “Great. They’ll make more,” and they’re like, “They can’t make more.” “Great. Someone else will make more.” No one else was taking new tiny clients on to do this thing that takes eight months.
Andrew Goble:
So, really, we went from like, “Oh wow, this is a product that people want right now,” to, “We’re going to have four months with no inventory.” So, things went from good to terrible pretty quickly, and by no means I think a lot of businesses… We were a thing that people wanted at that time, which is such a blessing, but we were poorly timed to make the most of that opportunity. And in fact, the factory was like, “We’ll be able to make stuff a few months on the line, but we have clients making 300,000 blank T-shirts and they’re going to come first. So, if you want to see when we can make some room for you…” We knew we had to look elsewhere.
Andrew Goble:
We did some fundraising at that point, but spending a third of your year without sales, it was like, “This is back on. We need to go figure something else out.” Our game plan was like, “Well, if we can’t really salvage this year, let’s develop our T-shirt, like our long Jambys, our pant, and our house hoodie, and let’s just pray that they arrive sometime in October. And let’s do whatever we can to make the last three months of the year something so we can keep doing this.” Not keep doing this, but keep doing this without having to raise unnecessary capital or anything like that. So, it went from good, to awesome, to terrible quickly, which is probably something good we learned early.
Stephanie Postles:
Yeah. I mean, yes, for sure. I mean, what did you do when thinking about those couple months? What did you do when it came to customers who maybe had orders? Or how did you keep up communication with them so you didn’t have to essentially revive new customers all over again because of that gap? What did it look like other than working on the product and working behind the scenes, what did you do customer facing?
Andrew Goble:
Yeah. I think there was 30 days where it was like, “If you’re this certain size or want the orange pair, it’s available to you pre-order, we don’t know when it’s going to happen.” I’ve seen some young entrepreneurs err on the side of shrugging and being like, “What’s up with the pre-order?” We were like, “Let’s make sure this product is arriving.” I think there was one case where we didn’t know it was going to be four months [inaudible]. It was like a month in, “Oh no, it’s still not open.” We’re like, “Of course, that makes sense.” And we kept going, and I think at one point we had a pre-order where we’d said it was two weeks and ended up being close to a month. And for us it was like, “Let’s just either scrap it or tell them that we’ll give them double the amount of product whenever we get it.”
Andrew Goble:
And it was like, we’ve always been on like… I think if you’re acquiring these customers and using ads, the worst thing you can do is leave them in a negative experience, and so we’re always like, “Great, these customers are no longer customers that will generate any profit for us, but they won’t be mad because we messed up here.” I think for the most part everyone was so accommodating knowing they didn’t want you to bust into a factory and start sewing things yourself either. Everyone’s safety was obviously way more important than some boxers with pockets. But yeah, we’ve always… And Jack still, I think wakes up at 6:00 AM and knocks out a lot of our customer service today just because I think for us, it’s like things don’t always go right, but I think there’s a way that every customer can leave being like, “Okay, well, they’ve at least told me and tried to make it as good as they can.”
Stephanie Postles:
Yeah. I mean, you’ve definitely seen a lot of examples over the past two years of the companies who over-communicated, and even though maybe things didn’t go perfectly, there were not angry customers. Versus the other side, I mean, you’ve seen big blow ups especially on Twitter with really angry customers who just didn’t know what was going on. And always better to over-communicate, for sure.
Andrew Goble:
Yeah. Yeah. And we’ve I think learned about this preemptively communicating. Sometimes you tell a customer like, “Hey, this thing was on back order for five days, but it’s actually going to be the next Monday,” and a lot of times they’re like, “Oh, I didn’t really think about it,” because a lot of people are just saying like, “Hey, ships whenever.” And like we don’t even have it in our factory. So, I think at first we were like, “Oh, we’ll just talk to the customers that reach out to us and let them know like, “Hey, can do full refund. This is the date we think, but it’s hard to trust any delivery carrier at this point because they’re so overloaded.” But I think, yeah, it was like learning to over communicate and starting to… If any order’s still out after X amount of days, depending on the time period, just to reach out and be like, “We can just do a full refund.”
Andrew Goble:
And when that happened, a lot of those customers ended up coming back at a different time, which is the great thing. It’s like, “Great, we’re not going to just keep this money out of your bank account while we wait to see what happens with this next piece of cargo. Let’s just do this when it feels good.” And sometimes that’s felt painful being so small, but I think even just a year later, you see how important that is and that customers can trust that they’re going to get what we said they would get for what they paid. Which sounds so simple, but I think a lot of brands are not fulfilling that promise right now.
Stephanie Postles:
I agree. How do you think about now with everything you went through and a lot of other companies have gone through something similar, how are you viewing keeping cash on hand or future proofing your company? What are maybe some adjustments you’ve made after all that happened to maybe change how you operate in business?
Andrew Goble:
Yeah. I think where a lot of brands at some level maturity like cashflow matters a lot and is a great lever to work. For us, it was knowing… Like an example of like a certain product in a certain color [inaudible] you want to keep 90 days on hand, for us, it was like, especially going into the end of last year, it was like, “Let’s have 25% more inventory and actually sacrifice the cash flow to avoid the risk of having to randomly fly stuff in or have delays.” We were willing to pay for some level of consistency. Because I just thought like if existing customers come to the site two or three times, and there’s always just a few things in their size or everything’s with a two week delay, they’ll learn, “When I want something, I’m going to go somewhere else.” And it’s like, we learned that we would rather have that consistency, and then when we saw a great opportunity with an influencer post or we were featured on like The Today Show, we didn’t have to hustle to make it work. We had the amount of Jambys sitting there to make something happen.
Andrew Goble:
So, we often think of inventory like how much do we want to account for those possibly good things to happen, and how much do we want to protect against bad things? And we’ve not always been successful at that, but I think we’ve finally gotten to a stage where it’s like, “Great, there’s going to be interest in a large pair of black Jambys for a long time. Let’s not try and be so smart in the Excel sheet that we miss out on opportunities or let down our customers.
Stephanie Postles:
Yep. Yeah. I think a lot of companies are definitely reassessing how they thought about what to have on hand and how to protect their company, and in a way it was like some of these shakeups might have actually been helpful. Because some companies were running way too close to no inventory, not planning things out well enough. Things were just going all well everywhere that you didn’t have to plan for much. I think sometimes shakeups like this can actually help people think differently about, “Okay, maybe I want to actually do operations completely differently. Maybe I want to manufacture somewhere completely different.” Gives you new options that you didn’t see before, which can be helpful.
Andrew Goble:
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And I think we just learned like mastering inventory and demand forecasting does not make a great business, but it is fundamental. You could have the world’s best ad, but it doesn’t matter if you don’t have sizes to sell. And for us it was like, “Okay, there’s people who know how to do this,” and it was bringing on experts. I think one massive advantage for us being so young and spending 90% of the business in the middle of a pandemic is that there are a lot of great contractors who can set up systems and help us think about things, and you’re like, “Oh yeah, why was I watching YouTube trying to master demand forecasting? One, the skill that requires decades of experience. And two, my brain’s just never going to get there.” But every time we’d have these meetings since like the first or hour, we’re like, “We should have done this six months ago.”
Andrew Goble:
And having a merchandise planner, demand forecaster, even just someone to challenged me that’s like, “You’re buying a lot of pink Jambys for no reason.” And I’m like, “Oh, I just like the color.” And you’re like, “That’s a good point,” was a great check for us and a way for us… I think still at our stage we’re still very much growing. Yeah. I think some of these brands have maturity, like they can really understand what’s December 2024 going to look like? For us, it’s like could look like a lot of things, which is exciting. But got to be a little more nimble.
Stephanie Postles:
Yep. So, what kind of platforms or advertising methods are you most excited about right now? I was reading about you guys experimenting with Roku and shoppable TV, which is a very cool area that a lot of people are interested in, but I also, I think I saw you a lot on Instagram, too, and maybe having some influencers here and there. So, what are you maybe most excited about for this coming year?
Andrew Goble:
Yeah. I guess to start on the TV front, we were like a beta partner with Roku for this integration, and it basically approx something like a Facebook ads manager, like a self-serve platform for TV. And I think huge advantage of Roku is like having information from the hardware about the customer. Not that we really used it in any optimizing content way, but just to know like, “Did this actually do anything?” And I think now that that, “Did this actually do anything?” question can get answered in TV, there’s so many advantages from a content platform. Facebook and Instagram, you’re paying for someone, whether they make it one second or all the way through TV, you have a chance for a brand like us, we want all those 30 seconds to be like, “Listen, I know boxers with pockets are crazy, but they’re so soft and their [crosstalk],” like blah, blah, blah, blah.
Andrew Goble:
And in Instagram, I think some of the best direct response marketers, like one thing, one problem, slam it, make it super interesting to see, and I think we knew where we wanted to be and how we wanted the brand to be positioned long term that TV worked great for us. We’ve expanded our efforts there more just because I think if you’re thinking of true top of funnel on Facebook or YouTube, this can hit that. Now with enough attribution that when we keep everything the same, but start a TV experiment, we can see what’s happening.
Andrew Goble:
And for me, it’s like, I always can picture new fun commercials to work on with people I used to work with for TV, and I’m still learning how to keep thinking and keep being strong when it comes to some of these channels that don’t always reward great brand stuff. It’s not agency portfolio website stuff, which is always like, “Great. That was really funny. No one knows it’s from Doritos.” But I think with TV, when it’s done right, has this opportunity to be like, “They’re on the couch, we’re telling them about clothes for their couch, and we get 30 seconds to give it our best and try and make it enjoyable,” which you just don’t get anywhere on your phone, which makes sense.
Stephanie Postles:
Yeah. I think when thinking about TV, I mean, people are a lot more focused, I would say. Like Instagram, Facebook, people are so in just scrolling past things now, and with TV, it’s like, usually whether you want to watch something or not, it’s kind of like, “It’s there, I’ll just sit through it. I don’t even know where the remote’s at, and I’m kind of focused on it. Oh, and now it’s actually an interesting commercial? Okay. I’ll watch it and check it out.”
Andrew Goble:
Yeah.
Stephanie Postles:
I think a lot of people are sleeping on that channel, though. I don’t think enough people are testing it out. Why do you think that is?
Andrew Goble:
I mean, I think it was just the cost to experiment up until very recently were so high. I don’t think a lot of small brands are like, “I’m going to take this 50K minimum needed for this network to try anything,” and so for us, Roku was a big opportunity to do that. And in the beta, we had some of the stuff that you would get as a bigger client, like getting their experience and expertise on, “Try this channel or this slot.” I think the reason we started there and then moved to linear TV with Tatari media buyer was like that we had confidence from this smaller test that the creative was working, “Oh, like the IFC network during the day, movie watching Jambys, a lot of shared space, that works.”
Andrew Goble:
And then when the bets got bigger and there was a little less clarity on you’re putting out in an auction, you don’t always know what you’re going to get and at what price. I think we needed that self-serve where we were in there trying different things and getting really quick feedback like, “Oh, that creative, that place, zero, goose egg.” And I think something that Rob the… What is it? Growth director, head of marketing at Roman. I was listening to a podcast talking about that you have to have a test big enough that you know when it fails and I think a lot of the year I was like, “Oh, let’s try $2,000 in TikTok ads,” or, “Let’s try this influencer for $800.” And [inaudible] like together with lots of bets can tell you something about a channel. On a lot of them we’d do it and be like, “Okay, let’s put a pin in that.”
Andrew Goble:
Yeah. Yeah. Failure should be like, “Uh-oh.” You’re like, “I want the eject shoot right now.” And so, all this to say, I was not super thoughtful about testing and what success would look like, what failure would look like, which makes it really hard to go in those. And for us, we’ve just decided like there’s someone who’s really good at this channel, and let’s do it right with them and make sure we have money to do a test. Then at the very least we’ll have a closed door, which can be helpful when there’s so many shiny objects. You’re like, “Great, this works for us. This doesn’t work as well.” Yeah. And at our size, you only need one or two wins to really get a chance to keep growing.
Stephanie Postles:
What were some of maybe the surprising pieces of data that you got that you were like, “Oh, I actually didn’t even realize I would get that with this channel,” and then also, what did the results look like compared to other tests you were running?
Andrew Goble:
Yeah. Through Roku, we were getting like actual conversion data from boxes that match the email of where they’re purchasing, and now through linear TV, it’s perfect pixel level measuring, though that doesn’t work either now, but you were getting a sense when we were willing to experiment big enough, like, “Okay, what are the 10 minutes after that commercial look like in terms of traffic and conversions relative the 10 minutes before it?” And then when we really were doing our first experiment, which they pushed us to do a little more spend, it made it a lot easier to track. And then how do the other elements of the business, like how does Facebook retargeting grow? How does Google search grow? How does direct grow? And a lot of the TV buyers used like a, “If this happened in the first 10 minutes, we guess that that’s probably going to double or 2.2 over the next 30 days.”
Andrew Goble:
And anytime you’re trusting a number that’s not found on anything, it can be spooky. But we tested it in an environment where we could clearly see like, “Okay, for the most part, that is true. The tide lifts when we run this much.” And I think on the creative side, we were measuring just because we weren’t spending a ton… like when you can’t optimize off conversions, you have to optimize off add to cart, and when you can’t optimize off add to cart, you can’t optimize… Who thought this was worth looking up? And so, I think we learned some interesting creative things that now we keep… My goal for this year to introduce a lot of creative that’s TV focused, but right now we have two that perform similarly, which is nice because we can do a lot of channel exploration and not worry like, “Oh, is this just a creative channel time fit that doesn’t scale?” It would be nicer if I had more creative.
Andrew Goble:
But the downside I think of linear TV is that it can be pretty difficult to get that stuff and get it right, which we were lucky that we had creative that I felt confident putting on TV. But I’m seeing brands, and [inaudible] you see on TV and I’m like, “That’s looks pretty cool. That’s the biggest I’ve ever seen a TikTok. That’s pretty cool.”
Stephanie Postles:
I mean, how do you think about creating content for TV? What are the differences there, or how should a new company be thinking about that?
Andrew Goble:
Yeah. I think, one, having a really clear goal. I think a lot of TV people use it to feed brand awareness were other channels. I think for us, it was like at first we didn’t want to do that. We’re like, “I think we’re at low enough spend that we can find places where we’re converting and getting the name out there.” So, a compromise for us was to use… We used our two best ads on Facebook that we shot, fortunately, in a way that could stretch to 16X9, and Tatari [inaudible] we just put Jambys in the corner, the little watermark. So, we were like, “Okay, we know even if someone just looks up or they go to the bathroom and come back, like okay, Jambys,” that brain awareness, where we were at, where we’re still at, can only go up.
Andrew Goble:
That is a great little intangible residual win, but those ads we know solicit a direct response. They tell you… One is like this voiceover that just goes through all these clips, shows you men and women in different situations and all the products. It’s really like, you’ll find something to be like, “Ooh, light blue pants. I’m going to go check that out.” And I think that is different than I think when a lot of people come into TV ads and they have a YouTube playlist of best Super Bowl ads ever, and it’s like those companies have different objectives and also are not price sensitive. So, if you try and make the world’s funniest ad with N’Sync in it, it’s never going to work. It’s not because small brands aren’t clever enough, it’s because it’s just totally different objectives.
Andrew Goble:
I think I got [inaudible] from some other founders that had had success on TV, that you could take angles or approaches that would work as digital ads and shape them. Maybe the visuals get a little bigger, they get a little higher production because it matches the TV, but then like I said, I think other people… I see like [inaudible] runs a really effective ad that has like… It looks a lot like an Instagram ad where the product [inaudible] comes on a background and I’m like, “Yeah, I’m so used to seeing this stuff on my phone.” I’m not like, “That’s not a TV caliber ad.” I mean, a lot of their clips also look great, but you’re like, “Oh, that does look like they took a great Instagram ad and turned into a TV ad.”
Andrew Goble:
Roman does that too, effectively, sometimes where I’m like, “Oh, I do like this…” It’s kind of cool to see something on your phone, like text flying in, logos everywhere, product spinning around. That stuff you haven’t seen on TV feels kind of fresh on there. So, all this to say, seems like a lot works. So, to not answer your question at all. But I think the thing you get is you don’t have to constantly earn their attention, which is true of other ads where it’s like everything is a chance for them to slip out because… I don’t know. [inaudible] I’m on my phone. I don’t think I watch a lot of ads to completion. And I think with TV, you get a different opportunity to think like the beginning, middle, and end don’t necessarily all have to be as sticky as possible. They can just tell the best story in aggregate which is, I don’t know, basic storytelling, but after never having worked on TV ads, I was like, “Oh yeah. That’s the difference.”
Stephanie Postles:
[inaudible] see what works.Andrew Goble:
Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
Stephanie Postles:
That’s great. So, what are you most excited about in the next year or so? Are there any secret projects you’re working on, moonshot experiments you’re not sure if they’re going to pay off, anything, that’s a little bit crazy that you’re excited about?
Andrew Goble:
Yeah. I mean, on the product side, I feel like we’re committed to investing in product development in the right team ahead of like… It’s like the long-term vision of the company is to make a lot of really awesome clothes, and I think then it’s like once we get that sorted out, one, the product sells itself. There’s nothing that matches that little extra effort in picking the right stitch for the collar. But then I think gives us a bigger foundation to take these bigger shots. I think we get a lot of questions on like why we’re not on TikTok, and it’s like, “Well, there’s four of us. And no one wants to see me and TikTok.” So, I want to do it-
Stephanie Postles:
Kind of do.
Andrew Goble:
Yeah. Maybe I can find a niche demographic of people who want nervous [inaudible]. Yeah, I think it’s like picking our shots on the advertising side is also like you forget a lot of these things require so much production to make them work. A compromise that we decided we would make early is like I can make ads in After Effects, and I have a lot of friends that can support freelance and will make this painful and a little bit slower than I think it could be so that we can get… Our apparel team is like people who’ve worked at Nike, Lululemon, Outdoor Voices, people who’ve developed the fabrics that we were like, “Oh my God, one day we want to make something like this.” We have really focused on letting them build this out and invest in it.
Andrew Goble:
And so, when it come to secret projects, a lot of what we call the Jambys lab… I think you probably saw the product, the cozy cloak, we came out with in November. We want to do more of that. I think we want to make totally new garments and not be afraid of who… They’re not for 90% of the world, but they do actually function great. And I think I’ve had just like… To be in these Zooms where we’re talking about foot pockets with people who’ve designed some of my like favorite soccer jerseys of all time, and you’re like, they’re thinking, they’re like, “Oh, well, I’m used to designing running clothes, but sitting is like…” They’re showing me joints and where the friction points are and how this hoodie could have a different bottom so that it doesn’t bunch up when you’re sitting. I think we’ve all taken that performance and active wear to heart and things like the cozy cloak…
Andrew Goble:
I think a lot about like robes, things [inaudible] on the couch. My big dream, which I’ll feel confident saying because I can’t figure it out yet, so if someone can, you can hit me up, is like to make a couch pillow that you actually want to use the pillow. If I’m really watching Netflix and laying fully out, I’ll bring my bed pillow. I’m like, “This is great.” And then my two pillows are just for looks. And I’m like, “If someone can really figure out this side laying that’s better than just having a bed pillow… One, bed pillow makes me look like I’m 14 years old. But even if it’s just like, “Oh, let’s make a cover that is kind of a trick,” I see that asa feature of Jambys stuff. It’s like stuff that’s really cozy on the inside, but not… You can still wear it to work and get away with it.
Andrew Goble:
That’s that future thing that I think we need to earn with our customers. Everything Jambys makes fits great, is super comfy, lasts a long time, is made as sustainably as that product can be made. And then we can earn like, “Hey, it’s a dress shirt with Jambys fabric on the inside, everyone’s happy.” like, I’ve been so into it and it’s been so fun just to be with a lot of creative people that are not afraid to launch a hoodie blanket with foot pockets. And I think that’s made it fun to work on.
Stephanie Postles:
Yeah. That’s really awesome. Well, for anyone who has not checked out Jambys, I mean, I highly recommend. The most comfy things I’ve ever worn. Yeah. Nice job to you and your team for creating them and it’ll be really exciting to watch where you all go. So, Andrew, thanks for hopping on here with us today and telling us all about your journey. Until next time, where can people learn more about you and Jambys?
Andrew Goble:
Oh gosh. I don’t think there’s that much more to learn about me, but I am on Twitter. I think it’s @AndrewLGoble. My middle name’s Lee. And best place to learn about Jambys, J-A-M-B-Y-S.com. I think we’ll make like Mission 20 a code. I’ll commit to that.
Stephanie Postles:
Let’s do it.
Andrew Goble:
Done. Yeah. Thank you so much for having me on. It was awesome. It’s just awesome.
