The Exchanges

Q Exactly. We can unpack that later in the video. So, uh, what you're kind of saying is, you know, utility doesn't need to be like your standard utility around Uh, just covering, covering the phone, but it could mean like, how do you, how do you put utility and marry that to what's happening in the cultural zeitgeist? Is that what you're saying?

A Exactly. That's exactly what I'm saying. Cause I think your luxury point is actually an interesting one. And I spend a lot of my background is in like the conversation around luxury and higher end and items that sell for a premium price point. And so like the concept of luxury, I think is really important for people with ideas to understand is there's basically like luxury is inherently rooted in craft, right? People buy the Hermes saddle or whatever it is because of the quality level with which has been sustained over a period of time. And then the, the desire that comes from people, you know, wanting to attain the ability to acquire that quality level. So luxury is inherently rooted in craft. And since an iPhone case, I don't know how much craft you can apply to that. We've already seen the carbon fiber cases and rare Python leather or whatever. It doesn't really change my experience. But then one level down from that, we have what I call designer products, right? Where the design differentiates it. You can charge a premium because the design is so cool or so interesting. And a good example of that is, I don't know if you've seen those metal cases that are like two pieces, but it's like a little metal Like almost like liquid metal looking thing that goes on top and the bottom. They advertise on, on Instagram a lot. That's a designer case, right? You're charging a premium for …

AI assessment note: “Exactly. That's exactly what I'm saying. Cause I think your luxury point”

Q Just to finish up on the TikTok thing, what else do people need to know about building on TikTok, starting a business on TikTok?

A Uh, It's an operational nightmare. Um, The hardest part about that is dealing with TikTok and your inventory being in there and not. So like I mentioned, I was at a toy brand, uh, with this beforehand, we, we were getting, we got shut down on TikTok shop so much that we basically stopped. Um, we had a product that was on the edge of compliance. There's a reason for that, but basically there's just so many logistics around shipping and customer service and compliance and violations and strikes. That's like all automated by TikTok that you have to be, you need to have a uniquely insane and process driven operational person who is dedicated to that, to work through the scale. But if you are, it is likely worth that on the other end, especially if you are, have a good Amazon business, because the crossover is huge. And if you're walking into a retail conversation, something I like to call out is I worked with this water brand called chlorophyll water, where he was really early on TikTok, the founder seeded out a ton of product on TikTok. When he launched, we had this whole SEO strategy we put together, but he had, there was something like a billion views on the chlorophyll water hashtag when he launched. And he walked that right into retail. And was like, look at the demand for my product. And it is, but this is not a product that is consumed online. People don't buy cases of water…

AI assessment note: “It's an operational nightmare. Um, The hardest part about that is dealing with TikTok”

Q What sort of software tools do you use to come up with ideas, figure out supply chain, competitive analysis? Like what's your, uh, content creation? What is, what are the things that people probably need to look into?

A Um, there, there's, there's a whole, there's a whole bunch of them. Um, But I would say like, yeah, so like e-commerce, like particles, interesting on e-commerce. Cause you can basically look at any brands like Shopify data over time, um, and store data over time. And so that's a good one to be like, how much do people do promotions? What colors do they sell the most of? How much do they really sell of X, X units or Y? Then there's the more traditional, um, ones like Amazon ones, like, like a Kilium 10 and things like that. There is a really specific one for Tik Tok shop. That my brain is, uh, is short circuiting on right, right now, but I'll, I'll find that one before the end of it. But like, I manage my entire life in Notion in these like databases where basically every project has like the supply chain is all, is all tracked in there and Notion is great because it's also functional in, in China. Um, so people can update their statuses and stuff and all like that, but basically every project is tracked in terms of like where things are in production and target dates. Content roadmap is populated by where product roadmap ends on like on, on a separate, uh, separate doc. Um, but it is interesting. The creative workflow is the one that's most interesting to talk about because we have CRM, we have ERP, but creative teams, like there's so many briefs and so much content being crea…

AI assessment note: “I manage my entire life in Notion in these like databases”

Q it because obviously let's say you're buying, okay, Charizard is probably a bad example because there's some Charizards that go for like 30,000 dollars, but there are like I don't know, maybe it's a squirtle or something like that, um, which you can put in, buy it for 20 dollars, it costs you five dollars to make the case, and you sell it for 75 dollars. What do you think?

A Definitely intrigued. I do. It is funny. You mentioned up, I have, I have an influencer iPhone case. I don't know, for, for lack of a better term, I have a, uh, this is, this is from Maximize. I don't know if you've seen his, uh, his, his videos, his weapon of mass distraction. So I'm a believer in the vanity iPhone case. Um, and, and, uh, I'm also, I, the, the, the place where I, where I, I work is, uh, we, we do websites and that includes the road, the road website who did that, the viral, um, the case that has lipstick colors. Look, I would immediately take that and be looking at, all right, you have, The IP angle is a great angle, but I think the utility angle is still the best angle to take for, uh, For anything that's going on the internet, right? Because people are more likely to save and share something with utility than they think is cool because we were so inundated with cool stuff. And that was just my, my general, um, take of like where we are right now in the zeitgeist. And so I'd be looking at, okay, what can we take within the Charizard world that like makes this useful, right? Can we slap, is it, can we make like the back case big enough to put a, uh, a full pack of cards in or whatever that is. You could like, you can hold your deck or whatever that would be that would tie into what that experience looks like, or, What else are like the youth really, really int…

AI assessment note: “Definitely intrigued. I do... The IP angle is a great angle, but”