Hello, let's talk about Pepper Mayo. This is a bonus episode, a big business just in case you don't know. Every week I come out with a main episode and then I also come out with a little bonus episode because I just want to give you the most.
And today we're spilling the tea. We're not really spilling the.
Tea, but I want to take a little look into what's happened with pepper Mayo recently. For those of you that don't know, pepper Mayo is an Australian clothing brand.
They've been around for quite a while.
Let me actually google when did pepper Mayo start. Let's see, let's see, let's see it started in twoenty twelve.
Holy shit, they've been going, I'm really bad at mass, but is that thirteen years?
I'm You know what people always say to me when I like post something online or like an achievement that I've done, People always comment like, what can't you do, Britt?
And I always write back, I can't count properly, like I need to use my fingers and go ten thirteen fourteen, fifteen sixteen with my fingers, Like that's one thing that I actually can't do.
Ah.
But anyway. Pepper Mayo Australian clothing brand.
I don't think I've ever bought anything there from there in my whole life.
I don't think it's really my style.
I think it's more like festively kind of fun clothes and I'm a plain old Jane. But they've recently been under fire on social media and I've seen a little bit bit of it popping up on my TikTok. I've seen people making negative videos. Oh what a disaster from a brand's perspective. And I had someone send me a DM on my Big Business Podcast Instagram accounts, So thank you so much for the person that's sent through this question.
And by the way, in case you didn't know, send.
Me a DM on there, and I'll absolutely see it because it's only a little baby account. Xander's in the dms too, like we're all monitoring the DM. So if you ever have a question for me, if there's something you want me to talk about, if there's something you want me to do a whole episode about, send send us a DM on there because we read them more. Anyway, this message said I need a Big Business EP on
the whole Pepper Mayo situation. Poor customer service, the ghosting, people just never receiving orders.
TikTok is popping off with it now. I've seen a few of.
These tiktoks myself, and I just think, oh god, what
an internal disaster. I can't imagine how stressful it must be to have, like I don't know how many people have made videos about them, but just what a stressful situation to have all of your customers going on social media saying I haven't received my order, they're not writing back to me, and people like share the emails back and forth like they've got receipts, and I just think, oh my goodness, if this happened to me, I would just want to, Like, obviously I wouldn't, but you just
want to like dig a little hole and jump in it, you know what I mean. But obviously, when you're a business, you're not gonna do that. But personally, oh my god, I just want to crawl into a hole. But let's just read out, just so we're all on the same page. An Aussie fashion brand has gone global for its trendy outfits for women, but customers are turning on it in droves as a common complaint emergers, a global Australian clothing brand has been slammed slammed as disgruntled customers accuse it
of failing to deliver their orders. Pepper Mayer is also facing accusations it has deliberately deleted comments by customers sharing their complaints on the brand social media pages. Its Instagram account contains several comments from customers who are experiencing problems with communicating with the brand's support team.
Blah blah blah.
One frustrated customer commented, can someone please respond regarding shipping emails have not been responded to. Another customer said I've sent multiple emails trying to get in contact.
This is ridiculous.
Another one wrote, wait, I didn't realize so many other people were also waiting forever for their package?
How long is it taking? Should I just dispute?
So Essentially, what I think has happened here is it's kind of been like a snowball effect on social media. Someone must have started this by posting a video or whatever, and then it's just created this massive snowball effect of so many customers coming out of the woodworks.
Going, oh my god, I'm dealing with this too, What a bloody nightmare.
So the owners have come out and I think it's yeah. I think yeah, it's the two owners. They've come out and they've made a statement. Clearly something is going on in the back end of Pepper Mayo, whether it's like a logistics problem, a software problem, like that's what it sounds like if customers, like just from my experience, if customers are not receiving their orders, there's something happening happening Logistically,
I can't speak to customers not being responded to. My only thought could be perhaps they're getting so many emails that the team are just struggling to get back to every single one of them in a timely manner. But like, as for us as a fashion brand, we reply to all of our emails every single day, all day long. So my guess there is they're probably getting slammed with
so many that their team can't keep up. They could also be having some staff issue tied in with this, like maybe that are they're understaffed or their staff are quitting, like who knows, I can't say, but their apology and statement says this, Firstly, we want to sincerely apologize for the recent delays experienced by our amazing customers. In receiving their orders and for our lack of transparency during this time.
The statement said, we know we let.
You down, and for that we are truly sorry. It also says here that this statement comes just days after the founders hosted a BP trip to Gojeller for.
A group of social media influences. What a disaster. Oh my god.
I feel bad because I'm not trying to like shame them or whatever, but just speaking from my experience, if if we were in turmoil with our customers and people went receiving their orders and emails we're being responded to, it is so tone deaf to then take your influences.
On a fucking Coachella trip.
I can't but again, like, yeah, I see it from their point too. The trip was probably booked a year in advance, so of course they got to do it, and they got to keep the market and going, Oh goodness, what a disaster. You'd think that they would address something, yes,
like if you've got the trip planned. Like, again, I'm only speaking from me, but if I had all this shit going on in the back end, and I had the Coachella trip planned and everything's already paid for and locked in, like understandably they're gonna go, But as the founder, I would have jumped on our social media and said, look, I want to make this video before it blows up, and here's what's happening. XYZ is happening and we're working
on it. Like give your statement and then say and by the way, sorry, but we're taking influences on a trip and you're all gonna be really pissed off at that. But I'd just be fucking honest instead of just like ignoring and then doing the trip. The statement then says, we understand that seeing our recent Coachella event may have been.
Upsetting during this period.
Please know these campaigns were planned months in advance, so there you go. And like anyone with a brain between their two ears will know that when a brand is doing a Coachella trip, that shit is planned six plus months in advance. They haven't gone and just booked this trip in spite of the customers that have the concerns, but it still comes across as extremely tone deaf and
not caring towards their community. The founders assured customers that their team had cleared approximately eighty five percent of their order backlog and planned to be fully caught up by the end of the weekend like when this happened. They went on to explain that their decision to move their operations, which are based in the United States.
I thought they were an Australian brand. Who knows, maybe they're set up over there.
It caused the backlog and offered free express shipping to customers for a month as a small way of making it right.
Oh spicy.
You know, logistics is really difficult and stuff can happen, like you can be one decision away from like fucking up your logistics. And again I don't work at Pepper mao. I don't know them, but maybe they have, you know, moved warehouses or whatever, and it's just caused this backlog. And if you're getting a heap of orders, it can throw the whole thing off. And I can speak to
this from our experience as well. At Fate, we take a lot of pride in being able to get our orders out really quickly, and our customers that shop with us frequently, they know how fast the shipping is. Especially in our Fate Society Facebook group. Our customers will place an order, you know, at night time, and then they'll get their shipping notification let's say the next morning, and they'll always post in our Fate Society group being like, oh my god, Chris Jenner works hard, but the Fate
Warehouse team works harder. And our customers always praise us for how quickly we get our orders out. But then let's say, for example, we do a sale, then all of a sudden, we can't get every one's order out the next morning because we have thousands and thousands and thousands of orders to get through, and I notice it within our community group. Let's say if we do a sale.
When we do a sale, it can take like up to two weeks to get everyone's orders out from that one sale because the volume of it is just on another level. And then we've had people posting in our community group to be like, where's my order? Like usually it comes out so so quickly, but I ordered a week ago and it's still not shipped. And it's just because when you've got that many orders, it slows down the whole.
The whole process.
But when doing anything like this like moving warehouses, changing softwares, doing a sale, it's up to us as brands to clearly communicate to our community, hey, we're doing a sale or hey, we're moving warehouse, whatever it is, it's so important that you communicate that to your customers to say, look, I know we usually get the orders out really quickly, but because we're doing a sale, you can expect it to take anywhere from X to X for us to
get our orders out. I feel like this is a massive doozy on Pepper Mayo's behalf, and I'm sure this will be a massive learning curve for the founders of Pepper Mayo. When you're doing something that's going to be changing the logistics of your company, like they've moved warehouse or shipping providers or whatever, it's just so important to
be transparent with your community. And I know the times that we've moved warehouses, it's fucked, Like moving warehouses is fucked, but we've always expressed that to our community and they know that we're moving, you know. And then it's important to make sure our customer service team is across everything that we're doing so that they're also giving that correct messaging to the people that are emailing. But yeah, well I do not envy Pepper Mayo, and I mean no
shade to them by doing this episode. But it's just been a hot topic on social media in the last couple of weeks and they've been absolutely under fire. I think it's important to remember no business is perfect, and I'm sure their intentions are good. I think the Coachella trip being lined up with this disaster happening for them definitely made everything a lot worse. But we all make mistakes in our business journey and we can only learn from them and move forward, and it's all about just
being transparent and keeping your community in the loop. They will absolutely appreciate it, but yeah, I do not envy the Pepper Mao team at all, and also sending my love to their customer service team because unfortunately, when something like this happens, they're the ones that cop it, because they're the ones that are getting the emails off everyone who's rightfully so upset that they haven't received their orders or responses. But it's the team mem that are the
ones getting slammed. I can only imagine in the inbox when the customer service team would have had nothing to do with this disaster unfolding. They're quite literally just shown up and doing their jobs and something's obviously gone really wrong in the back end, and they're the ones that are going to be copying it and the social media team on the comments.
Oh to be a fly on the wall.
In some other workplaces. Good times, good times for her Mayo. But from one business to another, I hope that they have by this time, you know, rectified it, smoothed it all out. It would have been so stressful, like, yes, they've made a mistake and it was maybe their own fault,
but regardless, it would have been extremely stressful. I know for a fact, I'd be fucking stressed if we couldn't get through all of our orders and the emails were pouring in in the thousands, you'd just be like, holy shit. But for their sake and their team's sake, I hope they were able to get through it, and I'm sure they would have learned a million lessons to kind of hopefully never have happened again, and touch Wooden, something like this never happens to me.
Oh.
Anyway, that's all for today's bonus episode, and I'll see you next week for My Maine