The Exchanges

Q done this in a very unique way. To make this thing modular, it has to be very visual. And you've sort of said, hey, does your product shop want to look like an influencer's bedroom? Does it want to look like our, our block concept where it's like triple layer could be different colors? You've got some sort of other concepts as well. Walk through sort of how this works.

A Right. So, um, effectively there is, it's very simple. What we've done is we've created these pre-made recipe styles because what we learned very early on is that brands themselves don't know what they want. And especially our target consumer is your SMB. So it's people that, you know, standard consumer good products, but people that might be drop shipping or, you know, your average Shopify seller that started a product and wants to launch it. Um, and a lot of times these people, first of all, creating a product is new for them. But on top of that, it's very unlikely that they'll have many creative talents and be able to Actually create the content that competes with your L'Oreal and deals of the world, and we have that background. So you'd come on, you'd find a recipe, you like it, you tell us how many photos you want, you send it, and then from there you can select the sizes you want, and then one thing that's really worked well for us is we actually pick up your product the next day. So we're offering that in the UK right now, but we'll be expanding it globally now too, where we come and collect your product, it comes to our studio, and you have your photos within 48 to 72 hours after that.

AI assessment note: “you find a recipe, you like it, you tell us how many photos”

Q bunch of influencers on Instagram who already take great images and just send them free product and then have the rights to use that content. UGC themselves. Your model is, hey, Glossier, listen, just ship us your product. We'll take these professional shots and you can use them on billboards or your own marketing any way you want, but you're paying us a fixed price per image. Is that accurate?

A That's correct. And that's so interesting. You mentioned that right now as well, because one of our advisors runs, one's one that runs one of the most successful influencer agencies here in the UK. And what we learned from them is that 30% of the influencer content transactions that are happening now are actually just for your standard kind of pack shots or, or flat lay type shots, like that influencer bedroom, because brands don't know where to go. And they're paying on average 1400 dollars per shot. To an influencer, not for any exposure. These are people with less than 2000 followers or people that can just create good content. Um, and we're really, you know, a huge fraction of that price, you know? So, um, that's why it's becoming a lot more attractive to then bring those brands into our ecosystem instead of having to go to influencers.

AI assessment note: “That's correct.”

Q Okay, and do they do that consistently? Like, is this a SaaS plate? Can you rely on them paying you 400 bucks or 400 pounds every month?

A So we actually started off as a subscription model. Uh, so very early on we did that, and we noticed this kind of concept called ad fatigue or content fatigue. What happens is brands tend to over-purchase. So what happens is you say, hey, I need 30 photos because I'm going to put one a day on Instagram. That's their method of thinking. And what they realize is they can't actually do that. They then have too much content sitting there, and now we look like the bad guy. Like we've almost taken too much money from them. But when we switched the model into a pay-as-you-go model, we had huge retention. So we saw that anywhere between 40 to 60% of our customers were coming back. And they're coming back because they're now ordering at their leisure, and they are then ordering photos based on their business needs. And now we've made our experience a lot more of an intuitive experience for them, hence the platform where they can kind of plug in and buy as they need, and the photos just appear on their dashboard.

AI assessment note: “when we switched the model into a pay-as-you-go model, we had huge retention”

Q You look, you're, and this is a compliment, your website, you look way bigger and more mature than what you actually are in terms of revenue. Have you guys invested a crap ton into this thing? Like, did you raise a bunch of money for this?

A Oh, thanks so much. Uh, no, I am a designer myself. So my actual background. Yes. I'm a UI UX designer kind of by trade. So what I did is I was freelancing since I was at 18 and then put a bunch of money into the agency around the agency. And obviously when we pivoted the agency, like you mentioned, we were doing around a million dollars in, uh, in revenue in the agency. And then we flipped it into this model, which gave us some cash to run through into this. So up to date now, we've probably invested around a quarter of a million pounds in Probably around 400,000 dollars into the platform over the last two or three years, just to be able to have it running at this level in terms of, you know, could be the, the infrastructure, the, the, the physical space as well.

AI assessment note: “we've probably invested around a quarter of a million pounds in Probably around 400,000 dollars”

Q Can she set price? Can she say, I'm not doing a shot for 30 bucks a shot? It's got to be 300. I'm that good. And then Procter & Gamble can decide if they want to pay 300 bucks or not.

A Not at this stage. So at this stage, how we're doing it is we have standard recipes and then we'll be bringing, bringing in premium recipes. So standard recipes will just be the kind of things that we offer generally like those block styles. Premium will be, for instance, let's say Shelly has a nice rustic kitchen in her house and that's a style that is unique to her because her home, she can then sell that as a recipe and that will be a premium style. So there'll be a bigger incentive for her because she's put on the platform and she can make money from it as well. Um, but also what we know through our economics and the modeling that we put out for this is that creators on average will be able to earn four times more than what their, their average salary for a photographer is right now as well. So we know there's tremendous kind of upside for them on that end, just because we know that creators just want to create. And if we can get them to just enjoy the process of outputting content, as opposed to doing all the menial tasks behind it, and let us handle that as an ecosystem, we really speed up that process, both for brands and creators.

AI assessment note: “Not at this stage. So at this stage, how we're doing it is”

Q Got it. So, so what does that come out to? That's like, they're paying you like a 150, 160, well, a hundred to 150 bucks a month.

A Um, so yeah, it averages out. The thing is the, how we work on the model we work on right now is we, we're just very early revenue as well, by the way, because we've been iterating the product for a while. So we were really testing different, different pricing structures. So the key right now for us, the goal over this next year is to get to 3000 transactions across the board from customers, which will take us to around a million in revenue by next July. So that's kind of our target right now. We're working towards that. And a large part of that Is actually implementing the platform ecosystem as well, which allows the content to be scalable. Right now, it's a very manual process where the product has to come here and be shot here. But as soon as we can start bringing in creators from around the world, it becomes a lot more interesting for brands too.

AI assessment note: “Um, so yeah, it averages out. The thing is the, how we work”