Hey, so I think it's going to go, it's going back right now. It's going to go towards impersonal perfect. Yeah, it's going to go to human driven again because it, it, it looks too fake. It's it's not real People like they like to buy from people. They don't like to buy from corporations. Hello and welcome to the Retail Podcast. I've got a big smile on my face because we've got an authentic, real show for you. Do they don't that the others aren't authentic or real?
It's just already, from the few minutes that we've had before they're the start of the show, I could tell that we're in for a treat today. And we're lucky enough to be joined by Dave Munson, who's the founder and CEO and president of Saddleback Leather. Hopefully, Dave, that's correct. I've got that right. Well, you couldn't have got it wrong. That Lady was all Yeah.
We'll take that as a win. And also I'm joined by Senior Director of Brand and Content Marketing, Melissa Dixon from Big Commerce. Hi Alex, Thanks for having me. Absolute pleasure. So what we're going to do is traditionally when we talk about e-commerce and digital, sometimes I think people get lost in this sort of where's the customer, right? Where is the person we're doing
all of this for? And so for me to have the opportunity to have Someone Like You, Dave, who has gone through the journey of not only have you got beautiful products, but you also have bought those beautiful products online. And if you haven't had a chance, please go and have a look at Saddleback's website. Their, their products are beautiful. And I'm, I'm hopefully, you know, once I'm in the US, I'll be getting online and getting
myself a satchel or something. But anyway, the relationship between e-commerce and product sometimes gets lost. And So what I'd like to do is spend some time with Dave talking about his journey on, you know, the the challenges that he faced as a the CEO president of this brand that's growing every year, going from strength to strength. But it's not always easy and there are challenges and you
have to overcome that. And then we'll focus with big commerce in terms of how they help Saddleback. We will start with Saddleback first and then we'll come to you, if that's okay. Melissa, absolutely perfect. Thank you. So Dave, I was just talking there about the the challenges in terms of Saddleback leather and and what you face from an e-commerce perspective as your store group. Can you just sort of shine a light on that for us? What did that look?
Like so when I started Saddleback, I started selling pretty consistently in 2003. And so website, my website was eBay, Yeah, and. Then at least then that's run off people. I should, we should have laughed cause some people do pay, yeah? And then, you know, I just thought, well, if you just have a website, people just start coming to it. And. But I didn't know about, you know, all of the technical things. A friend of mine made him.
Yeah, kind of like a, it was like a third grade extra credit project website. And it was kind of working. There were a lot of websites, you know, then and as as many, you know, and, and it was everything is more pure. And so. Yeah. Then we got onto different platforms and we finally came to big commerce and had needed an, ER, full ERP. We've tried somewhere else. I don't want to disparage the awful and horrible company that I was with before that was. Cool. Oh my gosh.
And so, but we found big commerce and and we tied that in with Acumatica. They tie in real nicely and it's just so everyone so easy. Everyone's just like. So that's been really helpful to have something you can use. We had a space shuttle before and there 1000 switches everywhere and I didn't know which ones did what. And this is just there are 1000 switches. But that just though like fly go forward to go backwards. It's, it's, it's really simple to you.
So we really enjoyed. That's really helped us out a lot that when that when there's so much stuff, it's like having data, when there's so much data, you don't know what to do with any of it. Got you. It's low. Just the the most important thing to write in front and that's that simplifying our business was, is, is what's been helpful.
Did you see obviously the products and, and when we put the video out, I'll have some footage of your products so people can actually, you know, keep talking about your products, But ultimately for me, it's about feel about smell about the look of these products, right. So how, what what was going through your mind when you were sort of crafting the E the customer experience online, you know, tailoring your e-commerce platform to meet?
I think they are unique demands. I, I guess you and perfumes, you know, in, in the sense that you want people to smell stuff, but you want to buy them online. How did you, what did that look like for you in terms of these tools that you've mentioned? How did you create that seamless shopping experience? Yeah. So what I found is that if people like you, then they will buy from you.
People when they walk into a church for example, within the 1st 5 minutes they'll they'll decide whether they're going to come back or not. And we have when they come on to the website to let people know what you're all about and with the textures of the website, the colours of the website, the the great and glorious front photo, we don't, we don't have a carousel going around because only we found only 1% of people click on that. But we want the happy smiley
place. This is where I want to be. That's me right there. I want that in my life. Go, you get that. And then they go look around for something that they want to buy. We want them. So we're very relational. So we want warmth. We love people. We really, really love people. And so we want warmth. We want to let them get to know us. So I have our Saddleback story, which is a really interesting business story, how we start it. That's kind of our highlight. So we highlight my dog.
The the story of my dog blew in every eyes when they read it. And so we try to make it real personal and warm and swear they go, I like these people. There's something about them that I like, tell stories. So because we're only online, they can't smell it, you know, they can't paste it, lick it, then nothing. So it is like you want to do all of that. So, so yeah, we have to make it warm and personable. And that's, that's our our key. That's what we strive after all the time.
Dave, do you, I, if you don't mind, I should have done this right up front. Could you? It's just when you said the story, I, because I've spent some time on your website, I've just taken for granted listening some of the watches of this have all been to your website and they've seen your story and you know about how your, how you, how it all came to life for you. Would you mind just taking us
through that? Just if you don't mind, just like, just spend a few minutes of bringing that bit to life. Yeah, sure. So, so I was teaching English down in Mexico in 1999 and I, I was 28 and I thought, and I thought I need a bag, you know, to carry around my school book, books. And I walked everywhere. I think I had like a jet sport backpack or something from college. And so I thought, what would
Indiana Jones carry? And so that guy's a man and, you know, and everyone I bought a whip when after I saw the movie, I went to Mexico and I have Tijuana and bought a whip from the, the market there. And I was like, OK. And so I looked around for a bag, couldn't find one like the one I I had in my head. And I didn't know that I liked designing at the time. I just knew that I, I, I thought everyone could see things in their head like that.
So, so I found a guy making bags and I said, hey, could you make up this bag? If, if I sketch it out and I don't want any breakable parts. And so, you know, our slogan is they'll fight over it when you're dead. But I didn't have it yet. I just said, you know, when I'm dead and, and the grandkids are rummaging through my office and they're fighting over things, I want them to fight over this bag. Oh, wow. And so, and so, yeah, he made it in 1999.
And then when I got back to the up to Portland, OR where I'm from, people were four or five times a day asking me, excuse me, Sir, where can I find a bag like that? That is amazing. Where can I get one or where can I get 1? And I thought, hey, so I, I mean, I was a youth pastor. So I thought, I thought, hey, this would support my, my youth work and I wouldn't have to raise money. I wouldn't have to get a job.
I can go anywhere. So I, I started having some more made, I moved to Juarez, Mexico with my black lab. Yeah. And we slept in a little 300, no $100 a month apartment on the floor, no air conditioning, no heat, just on the floor for three years. And all the money I was saving though, I was sending down putting it into the Bank of his father and son. They would send bags up on the bus to to the Juarez bus station and then I would get them and take them to El Paso.
And I sold them on A at a friend's mechanic shop at night on eBay. And in 2006 I was in Panama doing some photos of the bag and a suitcase that I had and and I met my wife on Myspace. I checked. Myspace. Oh my. Goodness, I was like oh hubba hubba, shoot pretty. So started talking, flew to San Antonio, TX and started kissing. And next thing you know, we got married and just a few months later. And then nine months and 15 minutes later, we had our little daughter.
And we, yeah, just been a in 2008, we started the factory in Mexico where all day memories are. And it's, oh, it's this beautiful part of the country and but tanneries everywhere and everyone knows leather shoe manufacturing capital. And so we started the factory there because no one cares about your, your stuff as much as you do. So we, we started making our own things and it's just been growing ever since. And we just celebrated 16 years with our own factory.
Oh, wow, last month. No, no, this earlier this month. And so we have a lot of the original employees now we have a school with a, a school there. It's an all English homeschool curriculum. So for all of the kids of the employees to give them a English is a big, huge deal. And we have marriage classes and parenting classes and we have counselling because we love our people.
And so ministry never stopped. I just used to be with youth, but it just continued on in a different way with our people at the factory. So. That's fantastic and it actually lends itself to the sort of the question. So as you've gone on this journey, if I, if I understand this quickly, you've always sold online, is that is that correct? Exclusively online, yes. And so obviously we were in focus on your previous provider who was who was a very tough experience for you and they'll
and you were with eBay. Can you just tell me in what do you look for then? Because you must have some, I don't know, secret Spidey sense that tells you that these are the sorts of in order to improve the website. I mean, I know you said you use data for the carousel, for example. You know, you weren't getting a lot of clicks and carousels. So that's not where we're going to focus. How do you decide on where you
are focusing? So on conversion rate, because the goal of a business is to make money. Like if you don't make money, then if you can't leave the company to making money, then at the end of the year, then who cares? All of the activities you do if you don't make money. So it's a lot easier to get to convert more of the customers that you already get to the website than to get more, more people to the website. So working on viral videos and all of that sort of thing.
That's that's nice and everything. And do an NCO that that helps get more customers in. Yeah, once they get there, if you can, you go from 2% to 4% and you just doubled your sales for the whole year. Yeah, holy cow. And so split testing and doing all kinds of just what, what? So we're looking at marketing. We go, yeah, we go what, what videos will help people to make a decision today and we work on what will have the most impact for which product. So we look and which colour.
And so for a flight back, for example, one of our briefcases, which is the best colour and then we'll go on that colour and then we'll do a video explaining and taking all the questions that customer service asks gets asked about it so that people don't ask customer service and they, and it's really easy, easy, easy. So that's where we focus is more on conversion rate than anything else.
This is one of the questions that I'm I'm sort of just made me think of in terms of your digital touch points through or your path to purchase like the, the mission that people go through your store. You mentioned data earlier. Do you feel that you have enough data now on the bringing the invisible and making that visible as people go through your store? Are you happy with that level of visibility that you have now? You know, it's always changes.
It's always changing. I, you know, when the iPads first came out, someone, one of my friends said, dude, you'd crush it if you had an iPad case. I mean, there's nothing out there. There's like you would do so well. And I go, it was like the iPad 2 and I go, but I do have an iPad case. He goes, no, you don't. I looked at all of your website and I couldn't find it. And so I made it visible. I made it like on the top navigation iPad cases got you sold thousands of them.
Yeah, totally right. Sold thousands. So it's my fault if, if I can't, if I, it's not their fault that they just they're too dumb or something to find it. It's that I had 7 drop downs to get to it. Yeah. And so, so yeah, no, that's, that's a big deal. People finding and a lot of things they don't know that they need it. Yeah. Like we have this little, this little serving little tray here, little ballet tray. OK all. Yeah, yeah. And and pipes and cigar cutters and stuff and no one.
I didn't know I needed it until I got till I designed it. It was like, holy cow, it is awesome. And now, yeah, we sell oodles of them, but people don't know they they need it until they find it. So part of the really thinking through and of course thinking through what, what is the most profitable. Also, our trunk is not very profitable, but it's, you know, $5900. But I would rather sell this little serving little ballet tray all day long over a trunk because I more profitable.
The data I use is, is which pieces are more profitable. So at the end of the year, if I focus on which briefcase, which duffel bag, I focus on, not necessarily trying to show everything to everyone because they can't see it all. I got you. Well, I mean, again, we're coming up to hopefully this episode will be out in the next couple of weeks. I think it'll probably be out next week. So it'll be well in the, you know, Christmas period. Christmas people are Christmas
shopping. I'm just curious the data that you use for colours and again, because you've been doing this for so long, where are you, what, what, what's sort of driving that for you? And do you see any trends for this Christmas that you think, you know, I don't know, there's a colour that's really from your website, you're pulling that insight and then that's going to go into your holiday season,
marketing or e-commerce? Yeah, so we used to do snowflakes going, coming down on our website, you know, Yeah, you'd absolutely, I'm hearing yeah, little, but all of those little details make it like holly around around the the our logo. It slows down our our load time a little bit, but it just makes people smile. If you can make people smile and Yep, and have warmth and have smiley pictures of people smiling, they're happy they're with other people. That's what everyone wants.
So like this leather right here, it's a has a warmth to it as opposed to like a a greyish brown. It just feels warmth. Fireplaces Reds will have a lot of Reds in Christmassy red. Everyone just likes red. So warmer, warmer colours. Red's not serious. Yeah, I think people like warmth. Got you. When you when you look to the future of e-commerce, do you see any major? Do you, I mean, I'm, I'm asking you to look into your looking glass. Well, what do you see the major
trends? I see it's gonna swing from just I I think it's gonna swing away from no personality to heavy. It's gonna go back. Right now it's it's swinging towards AI driven content. Yeah. And every word is perfect and it flows like perfectly. Everything's perfect. But that's not real life. Yeah, well, don't make mistakes. People make mistakes. People use commas and and they they're live and they maybe ramble a little. So I think it's going to go,
it's going back right now. It's going to go towards impersonal perfect. It's going to go to human driven again because it, it, it looks too fake. It's it's not real people like they like to buy from people. They don't like to buy from corporations and so I think it's going to go back to very being very personal and and less corporate. OK. So it's, it's really, really interesting.
We're obviously we're talking about Christmas and, and the, and the holiday season in general because it's let's look at it as a festive season with the economy and the backdrop of the economy. I know we've got the election in a couple of weeks, but life is still tough for for a lot of people out there. I'm just curious how you go
about your pricing strategy. Your you mentioned about your profit strategy, if you like, you know, selling the trays over the the big suitcase or or trunk, that's what you call it trunk. I'm just curious what how do you decide especially in like a tough economy where, where people are very price or yeah price conscious? Yeah. So we found 299 is it? You'll sell way more at 299 than you will at 300. So as in like two 299 not 299? $299 you. Sell 9290. Nine.
Yeah, right. Candy bar now, yeah. But two. Yeah, 299. Yeah. Someone will, someone will buy something. It's kind of a a spontaneous so. Well, they have been good to be this year. I'll get something like that. But 319, 329, anything over that, it starts getting like, think about it, it's height right now. Do I really need this? But with retail therapy, I'm sad, I'm depressed, I don't feel good. Everything's tough. I haven't had any luxury in my life.
What the heck, I'm going to buy something and they want to feel nice. And so when people and when so we we are promoting selling. Our average order value went down this year over prior years, this year and last year over the years before because we started focusing on selling lower, I started designing lower dollar pieces, still high quality. We didn't lower quality at all, but things that bring people joy. So I would rather sell 1010 little ballet trays than sell 11 briefcase.
And it's easier to sell 10 little ballet trays than one briefcase. I got all. And so, so we've been promoting lower dollar, still high quality, lower dollar stuff to our people and it's been successful. That's phenomenal. So. So something for everyone, as they would say. Yes. Right. OK, fantastic. Melissa, I know that big commerce does a lot of research for the holiday season and you, you must have so much back end
data that you you have. I'm just curious what what types of trends are you seeing for this 2024 holiday season? Yeah, well, I, I wish I had all the data. We have a lot, a couple things are really standing out. So first and foremost, you know, we always talk about, oh, it seems like the holidays start earlier every year.
They do, you know, I think we've seen this for a couple years now, but retailers like Amazon, Walmart, Target, they're rolling out, you know, huge shopping events in October. So that's really a standout thing. We also know that I believe it was, I think it's NRS reported that nearly half, like 45% of holiday shoppers plan to buy items before November. I mean, we're almost in November now. So I, I, it's likely, you know,
held true. But I think, I think what that means for these brands and retailers is that kind of just like Dave said, holiday sales, pricing, promotions, discounts, they remain essential to incentivize shoppers in this season. So Cyber Week also, those five days between Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday, those are still huge. It's still the biggest shopping week of the year. We see that with our big commerce customers, the broader industry trends reflect that.
So it's really important for these brands and retailers to sort of strike a balance between the early promotions and also the big like traditional holiday deals. So basically just the span of the holiday season is longer than it used to be. So that's a big one that that has a really notable impact on on shopping trends. And then also another one worth calling out, I think is the increased demand for flexible payment options. Like that's huge. Dave spoke a lot about check out
and that is that's critical. So we're talking about things like digital wallets, the NPL, and that's buy now, pay later, even crypto, You know, I would say all of those are key. Buy now, pay later has really interesting data around it. The most recent forecast that I read, which I think was in August, the US buy now pay later market is projected to reach 94 billion this year and then exceed 100 billion in 2025.
This is massive and it's, you know, it's not for every shopper, it's not for every business, but it's important to see how these trends are growing because really the overarching, the overarching trend is the need for flexibility. So either it's BNPL or whether it's digital wallets, it's all about making sure that your customers have the options that
they want. And then the last standout trend that I'll really mention this should come as no surprise to anybody, but mobile commerce is just keeps going up. Like I, I was looking at, I think I use E marketer a lot to pull data and six in 10 US consumers are using mobile wallets to make payments this year. So mobile is, is just on the rise. And that's of course going to be crucial for, for the holiday
season. In fact, I don't know if you, if you recall this Alex or Dave, but last year, last holiday season was the first year that mobile sales overall surpassed desktop. That's a big deal. You know, it, that was just last year. It was, it was the first year that we did that. So that it was 51% last year. It's projected to be 53% this year. So what that means is that having that mobile friendly experiences is absolutely a
must. So that's, you know, mobile friendly design, smooth navigation, a layout that basically works seamlessly on any screen. Melissa, I've got a question about that. I'm sorry, interrupting. Sure. Do you have that by category or like are people buying yachts on their on their phone or are they buying like is it, is it skirts? I mean, yeah. So. Really, what is it? Yeah. So definitely look at, if you're interested, look at like NRF data, they always have, they always have the best.
And then there's also Salesforce and Adobe for our big commerce data. And in the broader industry trends, what we're seeing is that people are becoming more and more comfortable buying those big purchases. So whereas in the beginning, maybe pre pandemic, it was, you know, mostly just fashion or small goods, we're starting to see the industry starting to see larger purchases becoming more
common on mobile. People got more comfortable with it during COVID, and now across generations, they're starting to embrace it. So yeah, it's really interesting to watch. So those are a few of the key trends that we really see. And of course, you know, I mean, retailers are still gonna have their fair share of challenges like every year talked about economic uncertainty, macroeconomics, you know, and they're still always planning
for traffic surges and demand. But I think that what it all comes down to whether you're whether you're leveraging, you know, some of the latest technologies, whether you're adhering to these trends, trying to apply them to your business. It's really about during the holiday season, I think just having that clear communication with your shoppers to manage their expectations and just, you know, telling them, telling them
when things are going to arrive. Having really clear best sellers like you talked about Dave with the iPad case, like that's a perfect example. And make sure your site's optimised for search and, you know, merchandising and having your best sellers out there communicating those discounts and just strong communication throughout.
If you were going to make a list, I say the top five things for the trends that you're saying that I need to be getting my business aware of or ready for trading or the holiday season. Well, I say five. Maybe it could be less, it could be more, but I'm just curious what, what are those features that I need on my e-commerce site to hit those? Yeah, great question. I would argue that in a lot of the data back to the sub, Dave, you, you kind of spoke to this too.
Check out is the most critical point, right? And you want to remove all friction. So I would say overall it's the checkout experience. Now a huge piece of that is having the flexible payment options. So for example, we at Big Commerce, we just launched Fast Lane by PayPal. That's a good example of one. We're actually, I, I love how Big Commerce is always innovating with payments too. And with our partners, we were actually the first e-commerce platform to launch Fast Lane by PayPal.
So that's really exciting 'cause we're trying to stay on the forefront for our customers so that they can deliver the best experience to their customers. So check out and payments is in in my mind and based on everyone I've spoken to and all the number one absolutely hands down. These like Fast Lane are really interesting because it's just this immediate purchase where you know, you don't have to put
in any information. These are just things that during the holiday season especially, people have a lot of shopping to do and don't want the friction. So I would say payments and checkout are #1 I would also say that I do think optimising for mobile is huge. It a must and if you know there may be delays like people may have put things off like we're seeing now that like I was just saying if mobile purchases or eclipsing desktop this is no
longer a nice to have. I was just talking to one of our customers actually leading a panel on mobile commerce last week. One of our customers homedics, great brand and the the woman that I was speaking with was talking about the fold does not exist. You know, for so many years we lived by this idea of the fold and merchandising and now it's, you know, it's obsolete. So designing for any device, especially mobile forward is be
great. I think too there's also, I would say what's also paramount and this, this is not a trend, but just the direction of e-commerce and commerce in general is just optimising for Omni channel commerce and the connectivity between channels. I mean, that's, that's huge. You know, we have a big commerce, one of the ways that we're helping people. We have our subsidiary brand Feedinomics, which for many is like a feed management solution,
which is so fantastic. And I, I just want to, this is one that I just want to like scream it from the rooftops because I'm like, wait a second, why isn't everybody using this? It's basically what it does is like harmonises your product data across all your channels. It automates and optimises your product catalogue to ensure that your product listings are showing up accurately and optimise across all these
channels. Everything like marketplaces, social, you know, your website ads like anywhere. So that means your products are that much more discoverable. And implication is then you know, you're reaching more people, you're making more sales. So I think Omni channel connectivity is is another one that's paramount. And yeah, Wilson to us for five.
I'll keep going. I mean, I do think that AI powered functionality like there's there are so many use cases that are so much broader than people even realise that you just give brands the the competitive edge. But, you know, I think there's tools like Cleveland Bloomreach and search string that like analyse browser behaviour and provide tailored product searches and personalised merchandising and recommendations.
Like, you know, that's, that's different, that's a different thing than using AI to create content or which, you know, there's nothing wrong with that either. It's for some people, for some people, it's not the businesses that maybe aren't so keen on using AI to create content, for example, it might behove them to look into using AI to make, you know, to have AI generated product recommendations and
merchandising and all of that. So I do think that is that's been another huge trend that's, that's really just, you know, shifting the way we go about utilising our data. OK. I I'm just curious in terms of wrapping things up when you look to and and Dave, I do have one
question for you. Don't jump off and when you, when you, when you look at sort of 24/20/24, 2020, 25 is big commerce like you mentioned payments, are they are there any other areas that you're focusing on in terms of providing that seamless shopping experience across all channels? What what are your, if you like big bets or innovations and enhancements that that you're going to be focusing on as you go forward? So where are we innovating?
Yeah. I think like what you're going to focus on in 2025. OK, so there's so a lot of exciting stuff happening. One of the biggest ones that we're so excited about is called Catalyst, which is our new headless storefront solution. Then basically it's like pre optimised for performance for SEO and it's designed to simplify headless builds so people can get to market faster. And a lot of people, you know, we can get into headless, but that's a whole subject of its own.
But the, the, the point is that this is something that creates a stronger, more effective user experience that asks people to go to market faster. And so that solution layered with Makeswift, which is subsidiary and that's our, that's our no code visual editor. You have these two entities, they're Catalyst and Makeswift. And it basically it's a game changer, like allowing brands and retailers to quickly create these beautiful, engaging experiences with like 0 coding knowledge.
So Burrow is a customer that I love. That's a good example. Their furniture, their furniture brand too, that's utilising that. So there's that. And then I already talked about Feedenomics. One of the things Feedenomics is doing though, on top of just the the standard, you know, feed management, Feedenomics is also has a new instant commerce offering, which is basically partnering with like brands and retailers and marketplaces to enable same day delivery.
It's essentially to keep up with the competition and the Amazon effect as we say. So that's something that is going to be really useful for brands year round, but also for the holidays, like something like that can help capture a last minute shoppers who maybe miss the standard shipping cut
off. Also with AI driven personalization, a couple of things we're focusing on now, you know, we're we're dipping our toes into the AI game and getting there with tools like we have big AI, we call it big AI product recommendations that you know, personalise that shopper
journey. And then also there is a big AI copywriter tool that we have, which does streamline the creation of SEO friendly product descriptions, which is really useful to a lot of brands when it comes to writing descriptions and then advanced checkout tools. That's going to continue to be an area of innovation native one page check out and I mentioned fast Lane, which is like the latest in our payment innovation partnerships. So yeah, so lots of exciting things happen.
It's. Just and then it's interesting in terms of the focus areas that you've got in terms of as in like check out payments are some of the the trends. Dave, again, I always make this assumption. Are you actually in physical stores anywhere? It's like, you know, we talk about Omni channels and channels. Or are you pureplay online only? No, Just yeah. Is that called pureplay?
Oh as well, we come to that. Or yeah, So yeah, we're pure players, OK. Plan I'm just curious as an e-commerce leader, are you looking or an e-commerce business? Are you looking is physical because I'm just if you're going to go through the sort of iterations that some other pureplay E com companies have done. No, just in our own little little shop here, yeah. Here in and where is that? When you say here, where is that? We're in Azle, TX. It's near Fort Worth, Dallas Fort Worth. OK.
So in fact, one of our customers flew in from California. A lot of people fly in the DFW for a conference. Yeah. And they drive all the way over to come to the mothership to. The and how, how, how long of a drive is that? Because I'm just planning my next trip. It's about 45 minutes from the airport, OK, And we're building our headquarters about 5 minutes from here. We're going after the coolest headquarters in the whole world. That's our goal, not the big.
Curious why? Have you got plans of what's going to make that cool? Tunnels and swinging bridges between the buildings and and secret rooms and we're going to have a lot of fire and one of the buildings we're making with solid leather leather bricks, bricks of of like straw bales and hay bales or baling are leather scraps so the whole building will be solid leather so yeah, stuff like that but no the. When's that? When's that opening? So OK. We're hoping to have that open May 1st.
But in 25? In 20. Yes, yes. And we have a little, you know, you got to fix it up a little bit, but for the zip lines and stuff. But we're, yeah, that's the, that's the goal. But you know, just there. And So what we do is we're strictly online. But what I've seen is people going away from getting into other people's stores, wholesaling B to B Yeah.
What I've seen is they pull out of that and I've seen them opening their own stores cuz in high traffic areas, if you're Lucchesi or some really recognised boot brand or something, you go to a store that sells those. But if no one knows about you, they're not going to go to a strip mall or somewhere that doesn't have you want them to discover you for smaller brands. So we're going to be opening, we're hoping to open some stores in high traffic areas close by.
But the mothership will be here at the here at the headquarters. Fantastic. So so watch this space. Watch this space. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, But the as soon as we start saying it costs us $100 to make it and then so we wholesale it for 200 to a, to a big box store and then they sell it for 400. We just like, we, we, we, we don't like that. We like the flexibility of if it costs 100, we could sell it for 2:50.
Yeah, I got it. As you said, it has an impact on your pricing strategy, so. Yeah, there was, you know, you have nice stuff. But I mean, I, I like Aston Martins, the Rolls Royces, but at the same time, you know, they're not affordable. I wouldn't be married if I bought 1. Of course, my, my marriage would struggle a lot if I, if I bought 1 and so, but I wouldn't struggle as much as someone bought a, you know, a 5A5
hundred $700.00 briefcase. If it were at $1000 or 1200, you start getting out of the realm of like, maybe one day, yeah.
I got you perfect. So Melissa same question to you before we wrap things up. So you mentioned as we were talking about communication being key, I was wondering can you obviously it is key and and all the different forms of communication that exists out there, you know, whether it's WhatsApp, whether it's messaging I miss, can you, can you just expand on that whole thing for us a bit?
Yeah, I think what sometimes get gets lost in the fray of the holidays is how crucial communication is to the customer experience. You know, I mean, as a seller, as a retailer, as a brand, one of your objectives, you're trying to build trust and confidence to make sure those shoppers feel confident enough to make the purchase right. So that it's so crucial to be able to communicate proactively
with your customers. And what we find, what the data shows is that if you are, if you're telling your customers upfront, hey, maybe this product isn't going to arrive overnight, but it's going to be here, then you know, here's here are the updates with your order. Here is the cut off date for you know, to get your product by the holidays. Here is when this particularly great holiday offer ends.
People, shoppers are so much more likely to embrace that than if you don't provide them with the chin upfront. So I, I can't, you know, overstate that enough. I think that just making sure that you're communicating clearly with your shoppers like Dave talked about being liked. And, you know, saying if people like you, they will buy from you. And that's a huge piece of that is if you're transparent and communicate with your shoppers.
So definitely take that to heart for the holidays, I think. Yeah, I, I, I agree. I mean, we're not going to talk about it, but for me, retail is a conversation and it's one that you want to be involved in and you want people to sort of slip into that. Like we all love those beautiful conversations and I, I can so see why communication is so important because you need that ongoing communication.
Dave, Melissa, thank you so much for carving out some time in your days to have this conversation. For me, it's been super enlightening and I look forward to seeing you both in person. Maybe Melissa at NRF, but Dave, hopefully in Dallas sometime I'll be there. So let's just watch this space. Yeah, thank. Thank you for having us. I really appreciate you including us in what you're doing. It was. Fantastic. Thank you.