On this episode, you’re going to learn about the story of an eCommerce founder who runs two eCommerce brands and started his journey as an account manager at Facebook or Meta. It’s a great episode you do not want to miss.

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Welcome to the 2X eCommerce Podcast. This is a podcast dedicated to rapid growth in online retail or, we could say, digital commerce insights for retail and eCommerce teams. Each week, on this podcast, we interview a commerce expert, a founder of a digital-native consumer brand, or a representative from a best-in-class eCommerce SaaS platform. We give them a tight remit to give you ideas you could test right away on your brand so you can improve eCommerce growth metrics such as conversions, average order value, repeat customers, your audience size, and ultimately your gross merchant value or sales. We’re here to help you sell more sustainably and we tell brand stories.

Speaking of which, this episode you’re about to read is a heartwarming conversation I had with Tray Brunner, who is a serial entrepreneur. He has two seven-figure businesses. I don’t like talking about seven-figure, eight-figure, and all of that stuff. When he gave me his backstory and he gave me where he is now, I was blown away. I was blown away by Tray. It’s something you want to read in terms of someone’s back story.

He worked in Facebook. We talk a lot about tactics on Meta advertising. This is interesting when you read this episode. When he worked in Facebook, Facebook used to give the employees ad credits, 400 or 500 boxers a month, to their employees to test ads. He was the only employee in Facebook Chicago that utilized it and then took the ad credits from his other colleagues to start his eCommerce business, which eventually is what we talk about in this episode. How brilliant is that? It’s totally brilliant.

Tray calls himself a problem solver. He has a brand called Bamboo Ave. and it’s an apparel brand. He has another brand, which is in the interior art space. It’s interesting. He did all this from Bali. When we recorded this conversation, he had just moved to the States again. He was in Austin, Texas. He was like, “I’m not feeling this life back in America again.” We talked about his backstory. We talked about how we started the brands.

We talked about Meta advertising. We talked about retention. We talked about product quality. It’s interesting in terms of sustainability. We talked about greenwashing, it was something he didn’t want to do. We talk about leaning on advice with trusted people. I enjoyed this one. I enjoyed speaking with Tray. This guy is calm and cool. It’s a memorable one, for sure. Enjoy this episode. I shall catch you on the other side. Cheers.

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Tray, welcome to the 2X eCommerce podcast.

Thank you. I’m happy to be here.

I’ve been looking forward to this conversation. We’ve been speaking with your team. I love the backstory. For readers, I’d like them to dig into your backstory. Let’s start with your childhood and how that linked up to college, which you did parts of it in Thailand, which is fascinating in and of itself. Where did you grow up? What kind of childhood did you have and how did it connect to college and adulthood?

I never talk about this. I don’t talk about my childhood too much on podcasts or in public and the reason being is that I don’t like to use my circumstances as a projection of where my future should be. I was raised by a single mother, she was incarcerated for ten years of my life. It wasn’t always easy growing up, in my opinion. I am the oldest of eleven as well. I’ve always been the leader of my family. Going to college right away was my biggest focus in leading and sending an example for my family.

I graduated from UW Madison, which is in Wisconsin, which is a pretty good university in the States. From there, I would work hard to get my dream job at Facebook. Before doing that, I skipped over the part, I had an opportunity to study abroad in Bangkok. Short story, my roommate said, “Do you want some free pizza?” I was like, “Yeah.” He took me to the Study Abroad event at my university and that’s where I learned about Bangkok and studying abroad.

I told my family about this experience and they supported me and pushed me to do it. They had never done that. We’ve only traveled out of the country at that point one time before I started abroad and that was to the Dominican Republic for a vacation. We were not avid travelers at all and it was a big step for me. Taking that study abroad trip changed my life forever.

I always wanted to work hard and be the CEO. I had all these internships during college. I wanted to work my way up the corporate ladder. When I studied abroad, it all changed, it was all about making sure I’m living a fulfilling life. I met my partner, Mariah, who also runs our businesses with me, and she’s also my partner in life. We’ve been together for over six years. That’s my story and what motivated me to live this fulfilling life.

I got my job at Facebook and my job was to teach all these brands how to advertise. I wasn’t as fulfilled as I was when I was studying abroad. I got a chance to travel for three months more after college around the world and I wanted to live that again. I took that experience at Facebook and learned as much as I could. It was like a boot camp. I said, “I want to start my own business.” That’s what led to me being an entrepreneur and traveling the world as well.

It’s funny how tough circumstances shape our perspective. Sometimes it’s about internal perspective. If you can solve shift those challenges to goals, which you had, which is, “I need to go to university. I will go to university.” You worked your way to university. In university, you said you had to get that at Facebook. There was the study abroad program, which exposed you to living abroad, and true freedom through travel. Those are impactful stuff. Thank you for sharing, Tray. I don’t want to dwell too much into that story but you were the first child.

First child out of eleven.

You’re a leader there in itself. People were looking up to you and people still look up to you. How do you balance living as an entrepreneur with family? How do you create that balance?

As far as spending time with family, I have a limited amount of time, honestly, because I am an entrepreneur. One of the biggest challenges for me is showing and giving my family the amount of time and effort so they can do the same route. One thing you learn from anybody when you start seeing success, you want everybody else around you to start seeing that success as well but not everybody wants to take that same journey as you. That has been my most recent challenge, trying to figure out how I can support my family.

My ultimate goal is to support my family, take them to Bali, Indonesia, show them the world, and show how much we were missing out on. I want to show how many opportunities there are to make money online, start businesses, and things like that. You also have to understand that not everybody wants to take that route and that’s the bounce I’ve been trying to figure out, how much to push them versus how much to pull them.

Sometimes it’s by example, sometimes you can only do what you can do. Sometimes they need your presence, they need to see what is possible, and they find their way. I’ve also seen circumstances in which you try and force your thoughts about success on a relative, it could be to a niece, a nephew, or a sibling, and it’s not quite right for them. You let them sort of pave their way as long as they know you’re there.

Me, being the oldest, my mom was always like, “Tray did this. You should do this to your younger siblings.” They felt resentment, like, “I don’t want to be Tray. I want to figure it out myself.” That’s the balance that I’m trying to figure out.

It’s a tough one. The key thing is being present and listening to what they have to say and supporting them in any way you can. I’m speaking about personal circumstances myself. It’s a tough one. Thanks for sharing. When you started at Facebook, was it in Wisconsin? Did you have to go to California for the job?

The job was in Chicago. I was fortunate. As anybody, we get lucky in these random situations. I was working so hard to get a job at Microsoft, Amazon, or any tech company but Facebook was not on my radar. I barely applied to Facebook and I got denied right away. I then got a call the next week and he was like, “We have a role in Chicago.” I was like, “This is perfect.” I didn’t get any of those other jobs I worked so hard for. I was networking and meeting people for the summer. Facebook landed on my lap even though I felt like I prepared so much but not necessarily for Facebook.

Were you an enterprise account manager? What was the job at Facebook?

At Facebook, I was an account manager. I worked with 50 clients per quarter spending over $5 million in ads each quarter. My goal was to support them whenever they had any questions on the technical side not necessarily but questions about strategy, “How can I scale my account? How can I get better performance?” My job was to learn the platform and the back end and learn from the best practices across all these other successful businesses and share it with my local business.

From the 50 or so clients you worked with, there must have been a top five killing it, and utilizing every single leverage they could off the back of the Facebook advertising platforms. Without naming names or giving names to these advertisers, what common thread did you notice in these top-performing accounts?

This is a bummer answer, to be honest, but I worked in the CPG space, that’s consumer packaged goods. This is selling more in-store. You didn’t get to see the results necessarily. With a caveat, I did get to see a lot of successful brands because I had teammates who worked on different accounts and different types of businesses.

The one thing I learned there is more on the technical side but it was how much the DPA, dynamic ads, where it’s showing your product, how successful those ads can be. I have brands spending $20,000 a day on DPA campaigns where it’s showing a product, no videos, no cool graphics, just a product with a white background. As I started learning the DPA side of it, it showed me there are so many things that you can do on this platform and I should start testing myself. Otherwise, I’ll be here forever.

Let’s go back. Do you use DPA ads now, dynamic product ads?

Yeah, I use it, but it’s not as successful for our variants. I thought it would be but it wasn’t. A lot of the things that I learned when I was at Facebook are not applicable with the iOS updates and how much the platform has shifted. Today, marketing on Facebook and Instagram is all about being an actual marketer, testing new angles, understanding your data is most important, and learning how to scale there. It’s not those tactical strategies that you saw back in 2018 where they’ll have 100 campaigns, 100 ads, and they’re spending $2 a day on each one. Those strategies don’t necessarily work anymore from what I see.

It makes sense.

The tactical side of Facebook that I learned so much about when I was there is not applicable anymore. You just have to be a marketer and not an advertiser anymore.

Are you implying that it’s very much also dependent on your creatives? We’re still going to get into your brands. How are you approaching ads? What’s the most important component in a Facebook campaign or Facebook account now for advertisers from your point of view running your brand? You have two brands.

We didn’t get into the brands. Because I have two, what I learned the most is data is the most important. The reason I say data is the most important is that for one of my brands, ads don’t work as far as being creative. The only thing that works is the DPA side of it. I have another business where it’s only videos that work.

The reason why I say data is important is that you have to understand that each brand is different and that the consumers are different and how they react to the platform is different. Making sure that you understand the data, you’re testing a lot, and looking to see what that data tells you to make the decision. Since I have two businesses, if I use the same strategy on both of them, we probably would be done already running a business because there are different strategies for each business, and it all comes down to the data that we keep learning.

Back to Chicago, Facebook, how long did you last?

At Facebook, I lasted two years.

Quite a stint.

I quit two weeks before my two-year Face-versary as they call it. My teammates all had a big celebration and I missed it. It was during COVID as well. Financially, I thought it was the right move for us and we were just ready.

When did you start seriously considering a new career through entrepreneurship at Facebook? What period? Was it twelve months?

I would say six months at Facebook. I love the job at Facebook. If I had to work a 9:00 to 5:00 again, it would be Facebook in the culture I was in at that moment. I knew that I was missing out on so much that I wanted to do in life, especially being young than I am. I wanted to travel and I knew Facebook wasn’t allowing me to do so.

They give you a month off in the US, a vacation, or 21 days. To me, that wasn’t enough. I wanted to travel a lot more. After six months, it was January 1st, I was looking at a note on my iPhone, I made a resolution to start the business. By March  15th, I said, “I need to have products in my hand, samples. By June 1st, I needed to start it.” Within a year of working at Facebook, we did start our Bamboo Ave.

How did you get your first 100 customers at Bamboo Ave? Let’s talk about Bamboo Ave. itself. You guys sell sustainable apparel. You started with shorts. You’re now venturing into t-shirts. In 2023, you’d be into women’s apparel. At the moment, it’s a men’s apparel brand, which will be changing fairly soon. Do you want to give us the genesis of Bamboo Ave., your why, and your story? Give us those initial building blocks.

Bamboo Ave. is a sustainable apparel business. We like to say athleisure, that’s a big trending topic, at least in the US. What that means is we’re trying to build products that are versatile for almost everything, whether you’re going on a hike, you’re working out, you’re lounging and watching Netflix, you’re working from home. We’re trying to build those products that are comfortable and versatile to do so.

How we started or why we decided to do this was because we wanted to start a business and we wanted to build a product that embodied what we cared about and, at the time, that was living abroad and moving to Bali. We wanted to come up with products that resembled that. We started with men’s shorts, it was swim trunks to be particular. In the beginning, it was swim trunks. We were selling swim trunks for men. It wasn’t crazy successful from day one. After running it for six months, we sent a survey to all of our customers and said, “How are you liking the shorts?” A whole bunch of questions about how they’re using it.

What we found out was that because we didn’t put an inner liner or inner mesh into it, they were using it for working from home, they were using it to walk their dogs, and they weren’t wearing it as swim trunks. That’s when we decided that we wanted to be in this athleisure space, building products that embody the lifestyle we live, We don’t do one thing a day. We’re running, we’re working, we’re doing all these things, and walking our dog so we wanted to build products around that.

How did I acquire our first 100 customers? this is where I become privileged and I acknowledged this. I worked at Facebook and Facebook gave us $250 per month per employee to run ads, they called it dogfooding, to test out the ads. As long as you made less than $50,000 in revenue, you can test out your own brand. They encouraged it.

When it comes to getting my first 100 customers, probably the first 300 customers or something, I was using Facebook’s money and the knowledge they gave me. I was able to get my friends all on Facebook, “Can I get your $250 this month?” They weren’t using it, no one was using it. It was an employee benefit if you wanted to. It’s a privilege in that regard.

I didn’t know about that. Did any other colleague of yours have a brand of their own?

No. In the Chicago office, 500 of us in that office, from my knowledge, I was the only one with a business that was taking it seriously. When I was leaving, after six months, it was starting to pop up everywhere, everyone was doing business. Facebook changed its whole rules, you cannot dog food anymore. I don’t know how much I had to contribute to that. Also, there are a lot of people who worked at Facebook who have their own businesses now. In my office, there was no one on the sales side doing it.

Marketing, advertising, and driving traffic are one thing, but the actual product research, building a brand, getting suppliers, fulfilling orders, and customer service, when did this start to emerge as serious functions of your business? This is speaking to your first brand, Bamboo Ave. When did you start to dig in with all of these functions outside of marketing?

To even go a little further than that, what we learned right away is marketing and advertising are, to me, different topics. What I learned at Facebook is how to advertise and how to push out marketing. I didn’t know how to market at that time. I didn’t know how to connect to consumers and how to sell my product until I read the book, Building a StoryBrand. That book transitioned to so far. We’re not just selling shorts, we’re selling the lifestyle that you can live in shorts. That’s what we’re selling. that was step one.

Step two, as far as fulfillment, every part of our business, even today, we have to figure it out. That’s my favorite quote, figure it out. It makes people hate me sometimes because I say it so much, especially when they’re asking me for advice on things I don’t know. They want me to go search it up and I’m like, “Figure it out.” That’s what we had to do our whole journey.

We were fulfilling from our apartment complex for the first year. Every morning, at 6:00 AM, we would get up, see how many orders we had, fulfill them in our living room, take them to the USPS, and then go to work on the way. Every day was figuring out our branding. We’re still figuring out everything every single day. If someone tells you not, they’re lying. That’s the true part of entrepreneurship. If you can figure it out, you will succeed. If you can’t, you probably won’t succeed.

With Bamboo Ave., the name seems to suggest that the fabric is bamboo. Was this intentional? How did you figure out the supply chain of bamboo apparel manufacturers and the rest? A lot of people get stuck in that bit of product development going to market. You did mention that you were listening to certain podcasts. I’d like you to share the podcast that fired you up to get into the product or how to market. If you could outline those initial steps you did to get your prototype and to get the first production run-through, that’d be quite insightful.

To start, I have to correct you. We named our business Bamboo Ave. before we even knew we wanted a business. We named it because we were traveling in Southeast Asia and we saw this row of bamboo. We’re sitting at a cafe and we thought it was a good thing, Bamboo Ave. We were saying Bamboo Street and all that. That name is how Bamboo Ave. originated. Three years later, when we started the business, we were like, “It’s going to be called Bamboo Ave.”

The initial goal was to use bamboo as fabric. When we first started, we didn’t even focus on that, we focused on getting started. I listened to the How I Built This podcast. The number one advice they give you is to get started. I even wrote this quote down that I also heard on there, it said, “Learn to fail or fail to learn.” For us, it was all about getting started. When we first started, we did not use bamboo, we just used polyester shorts.

Fast forward, almost four years later, we still don’t use bamboo but we use recycled coconuts and recycled plastic bottles to make our shorts. The reason why we’re using that instead of bamboo is that what we’ve learned from our research and from other big companies’ research like Patagonia is turning bamboo into the softest and most comfortable fabric is one of the least sustainable fabrics to use. If we want to build a brand about being sustainable, we learned that using bamboo is what they call greenwashing. I knew nothing about this. This is us learning as we went.

I was at this networking event and I told someone about Bamboo Ave and he was like, “You better not be using bamboo.” He told me everything. I did the research six different times and every time, it’s the same result. Bamboo is the most sustainable plant but it’s not the most sustainable material once it’s broken down into this soft and comfortable shirt. We found an alternative. I can get into that.

Yes, please. Let’s jump right in. It’d be quite interesting to understand how you made the transition and the uptake from customers whether you needed to make any compromises on quality or if the quality is even improved in terms of the look and feel of the materials.

When we first started, finding a supplier is straightforward from our experience. We use Alibaba. Our suppliers are in China. They have a lot of tools on Alibaba to vet out good suppliers such as how long they’ve been in business, do they have an audit, and you can see their audits on their Alibaba profiles, how much revenue they get from the US and different markets to understand if they’re producing products. That was step one.

We picked out five or maybe six different top suppliers that we felt confident with. This is back in 2019 when we were first starting on basic fabric. What we did is we ordered samples from all of them. We made our decision before we even got the samples, to be honest. We based it on the relationship that we’re building with them. We can tell who was just trying to make an order versus someone who was trying to commit to growing our business because we were starting just right there. That was the first product we ever developed.

At that time, we picked one supplier and the supplier we picked is the supplier who made our logo. We told them, “We don’t have a logo.” They said, “We can help you with that.” They helped us make the logo and that’s the logo we still use today for Bamboo Ave. We still use the supplier, we have five now. That supplier helped us at the beginning. I encourage people who are looking to start, especially in the clothing space, to leverage Alibaba and find finding a good supplier because they will help you so much if you ask for it.

When we first started in January 2019, we were trying to find a supplier in the US, and it wasn’t feasible for us. They were talking $7,000 right away for a tech pack, which is a document that tells you all the details about the short. At that moment, when we first started, we knew nothing about shorts and we knew nothing about fabric. We needed to rely on a consultant to lead us in the right direction and our supplier did that for us. They told us, “You should use this fabric. You shouldn’t use this.” They gave us reasoning, “You shouldn’t use this zipper.” They pretty much helped us design our product.

My recommendation there is to make sure that you leverage Alibaba in my case and make sure that you’re vetting your suppliers. Make sure that you feel like they’re good partners. If you feel so, make sure the product is good. You should be good moving forward. After year one, we were doing pretty well. We knew we wanted to make that transition to the sustainability part. We leaned on the supplier to give us a whole bunch of options on what we could leverage that wasn’t bamboo. They came in and introduced us to Coco-tex, which are upcycled coconuts and recycled plastic bottles from REPREVE, which is a worldwide known brand for recycled plastic bottle material.

We got a whole bunch of samples of those and we loved it. It’s way better than the first product that we ever came out with, fabric, and touch. The reason being is we make our custom fabric now. You can’t just buy this in a market, they have to get all the raw materials, the coconuts, the plastic bottles, and do the whole grazing process and all that. Now we have a lot more control over our product than we did when we were doing standard.

How do you communicate this painstaking process to customers and customers to be and what feedback do you get from them when this is communicated?

Regarding bamboo?

The process of making the fabrics with upcycled coconuts and recycled bottles. What is the reaction when you explain you know this process to your customers? How do you communicate to your customers this process?

That’s something that we’re always working on. I’ll give you a high level of what we think about sustainability for our customers and it’s a checkbox for a customer in our market. Looking at our post-purchase surveys and why they bought from Bamboo Ave, it’s not that much sustainability. We don’t focus on it. We focus on marketing it. We focus on producing sustainable products but we don’t focus on marketing them. Every time we focus on it or try to emphasize how sustainable we are than other brands or whatever the case is, the results don’t come through on Facebook and Instagram marketing.

What we found out is that it’s a checkbox. I learned that in a different podcast I was listening to. We found that resembled our brand as well. People buy our products because we’re helping them live this versatile lifestyle that they don’t have to change all the time. They’re like, “Yes, plus, it’s sustainable.” That’s what we’ve learned from our experience.

What we’re hoping to push further moving forward is to educate our customers more on why we use our materials. I would say that we shied away from targeting other brands. There are brands that use bamboo material. We don’t want to necessarily call them out because we’re not trying to make enemies in this business, we’re trying to run a good business, and we think ours probably is better not using bamboo. We’re still trying to navigate how we communicate not using bamboo and how with greenwashing.

I’m looking at your website and your Meta ad library and your ads are nice, they’re very lifestyle-ly and colorful. They have that scroll-stop effect. How do you go about putting these creatives together? What’s the process like from photography to the graphics? There’s one I’m seeing which has a silhouette, it feels like you’re on a vacation. GQ, Boss, and Daily Beast are featured in those publications. What is the creative process like?

We have a team who handles the actual media buying and they use the data that I referred to at the beginning. They use this data to determine what we should produce next. We have a team of freelancers who create this for us. We work with freelancers more on a long-term basis than on a short-term basis.

Where did you hire the freelancers from?

Upwork is the most successful for us with finding video editing and graphic design work. We’re hoping to get to a stage where we can bring somebody in-house. We have a process where, every week, our media buyers come up with some data to lead us in a different direction or in a direction on what’s working and what’s not. We share that feedback with our graphic designers and our video editors and then they produce more content.

Everything you see now, it’s Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and sales. Everything worked this year for us. It’s a lot product-focused, that’s what we see on our end, not the lifestyle as much as we want. One thing that we’ve learned from our businesses is it’s different for every business. When we did the $10,000 shoot in Bali and showed this amazing life or the $5,000 shoot in LA, the videos don’t convert as well.

People want to see the product, at least for the direct response side of it. Those ones never performed well, it was a waste of money. The content that works the best for us is these assets as you see now, just the product, nice background, and maybe some call-outs of some social proof such as what articles you were in or the reviews. That’s what’s working for us in our business.

I like it. How important is photography? You have a second brand. Do you want to shed some more light on your second brand? You already have enough work with Bamboo Ave.  Why spin off a second brand? I’m very curious. We never touched on this prior. I’ll be quite interested to know why.

We have a second business called Vybe Interior and we focus on interior design products. We mainly focus on canvas art. We partner with artists across the world and we get exclusive rights to sell their art in the US. We started because I was in his entrepreneurial mindset. I wanted to succeed. It was six months after starting Bamboo Ave.

We started Bamboo Ave in June 2019. Six months later, it was December, so it was cold in the US, and no one was buying shorts. I had a lot of time again. I was bored and I didn’t know what to do. The first six months of Bamboo Ave weren’t too successful either because we didn’t read that book and learned how to market.

One weekend, I stayed in, and I said, “I want to start another business.” I like to play around on different websites. I saw there was a lot of art that I wanted to put in my house that weekend. I worked that through and I said, “Let me start this business,” and we started it. It was way easier starting Bamboo Ave because we learned so much already on advertising, marketing, and how to communicate with customers.

Three years later, Vybe Interior is way easier to run than Bamboo Ave. We enjoy both of them. We’re looking to grow Vybe Interior three times next year. The focus is launching internationally and launching a lot more products. My ultimate goal is to get back to Bali and bring some of the products that I love to Bali and bring it to Vybe Interior to the US audience.

I love it. I like Vibe Interior because I’m into art. The choice of pieces with Vybe art is they’re nice. They’re prints but they’re nice. Some of the abstracts are amazing. I like the one with the cow. What are your plans for both brands? You talked about bringing in some full-timers eventually for Bamboo Ave. You also talked about expanding the offering in Bamboo ads. Moving forward, what are your broader goals? You’re a seven-figure business. Is it combined or individual?

Individually, they’re both seven figures.

What are the plans? Get to eight figures or to sell?

It’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot, to be honest. Because of the market that we’re in and worldwide of this recession and how businesses going, there’s some data on eCommerce on how it’s dying down in the US based on data. Each business is different. Our biggest constraint in Bamboo Ave is inventory.

Let’s say we doubled two times this year. To double again two times next year, I have to put all the profits back into the business. Could we have zero funding outside? For me, that’s risky. If you read the book, Shoe Dog, he did this for sixteen years, which is crazy. Every year taking that much risk on inventory.

For me, what I’m focusing on Bamboo Ave is building it to be a better business by the numbers so focusing on the bottom line. What I mean by that and what some tactics that we’re going to do to do so is launching more products to get feedback to see what works well, launching twenty more designs on the short side, and launching women.

When we leave 2023, I feel confident that we’ll be in a place where we understand our trajectory for the next five years of Bamboo Ave, what people like, what they don’t like, and where we can predict our brand to go. 2023 for Bamboo Ave is a year for us to figure out, “Are we selling in 3 years or are we growing this for 10 years?” It’s a year where we have a lot of flexibility to learn but there’s a lot of risk on the table as well. That’s how I’m thinking about Bamboo Ave.

What about Vybe Interior?

For Vybe Interior, because we have a supplier, we don’t have to handle the inventory, that’s the hardest part about scaling. Our goal for Vybe Interior is to grow three times next year. It’s different than Bamboo Ave. With Bamboo Ave, we’re like, “Let’s be smarter with the inventory. Let’s try to figure out what’s working the best and what else we can launch and grow in 2024.”

This 2023, for Vybe Interior, is the time we’ve learned so much in the last three years about our consumers and what they want. We’ve done a lot of surveys. Now, let’s launch to the UK, Australia, and Canada, and show them our art but also let’s launch new products. We already have new products in the pipeline. Our growth is to grow three times next year.

For some context in the audience, we’re recording this on the 22nd of November 2022, which is about three days before Black Friday and Cyber Monday. It leads me to my question, why are you running Black Friday ads for Bamboo Ave? I can’t seem to see Black Friday ads for Vybe Interior.

For Vybe Interior, we’re going to change the ads where it’s more focused. If you go to our website, you see it’s 45% off. For Bamboo Ave, it’s a lot more focused. One thing we learned this year in the eCommerce world is that everyone is receptive to sales right now. We started early for Bamboo Ave. We thought we were starting early. All of our competitors started even a week earlier than us this 2022. It is getting crazy. November 1st, I’m like, “There has to be an ethical line.”

It’s no longer ethical. Amazon had a prime day and it was October. That’s share of wallet. People can only spend so much and they’re trying to get there early.

Here’s one of the big things that I think about in 2023. Don’t quote me necessarily on it but I do think this quarter could be one of the last quarter where people are spending this recklessly as a consumer. We saw the COVID bump in 2021, people were spending a lot. Now, we’re talking about a recession. I’m not a negative person at all but I’m assuming people are going to be hit in 2023 after they buy all these gifts and everything. That’s another reason why we’re trying to be a little more strategic with them in 2023.

I want to speak about a few things. I don’t recall the person, I think it was Tony Robbins I was listening to and he was like, “In the face of contraction, which is what’s about to happen with the recession, expand.” That sat with me because everybody’s going to be scared to expand. There’s this fear of the market and a lot of people would say, “I don’t have the resources to expand. What you talking about, Kunle?”

I attended a small Christmas party speaking to an eCommerce entrepreneur who’s UK-based. He expanded his international business. He’s like, “Kunle, if we were still just focused in the UK, we’ll be screwed as a business, we’ll be messed up. What has been our saving grace? The reason why we’re still growing in the midst of all of this is that we sorted out our 3PL in Europe. We sorted out our 3PL in America. The UK’s share of business has dropped from almost 30% to 19%.” He didn’t do that now. He started it a year ago, the expansion. It’s paying its dividends. He didn’t know what was coming but he knew he had to do it because he felt he was capping out the market.

We acquired a business this 2022. When we acquired the business two years ago, it was a UK-only business, they started to expand a few SKUs to Europe early this 2023, in January or February. Our saving grace for this business thus far is that we have not even scraped the surface of Europe. There’s so much to grow in Europe. Regardless of what’s happening in the economy, we’re trying to get market share. My point to the audience who is reading this is to try and look through the opportunity in this chaos. There’s always opportunity in the midst of chaos. We should just try and expand because if we contract, somebody’s going to take that space.

I will add to that. The way I’m looking at it is let’s say we are contracting, we go to a contraction in maybe two years, it’s going to be the businesses who did stay consistent and who did make it out that are going to thrive in 3 or 5 years. That’s our focus for Bamboo Ave and Vybe. It’s not necessarily scaling back but being smarter, being more strategic, and also expanding to new markets and new products to stay profitable and growing.

The new market players are so important. A tip, this is the second time I’m saying this, I said it to a previous guest I had. There’s a service called Treyd and we personally use it. They don’t sponsor this podcast but they’ve helped us. What they do is finance supplier invoices. Let’s say you have a supplier invoice due today, they will pay today and then you pay them in four months’ time. There’s a royalty fee and then 1% per month. That saves you cashflow to deploy in other growth areas.

Think about it, inventory is like weights. Money used for inventory is a weight on your business, it doesn’t bring any returns. If this guy holds the fort for a quarter and a bit and you then use those monies for markets and grow the brand, you increase your cash conversion cycles. Super interesting stuff with regard to the two businesses and the future of the two businesses. Tips to entrepreneurs reading in 2023, what are your thoughts this quarter? It may or may not be good. Who knows? It’s all up in the air. In the midst of this recession, which we’ve probably been in for the last two quarters in my personal opinion, what are your top tips?

My top tip right now that we’re trying to do is to be more strategic and look at your business and find ways to cut costs that don’t need to be there. Focus on what’s working and doubling down on that and also building the processes and doubling down on your big bet. One big bet we have in 2023 is telling our story more using these channels like TikTok and Reels and showing our story. Similar to what I’m doing now in this podcast, a lot of people connect with this and they will buy from you, they will grow in love with your brand if you do that. That’s a big bet that we’re taking.

We’re about to round up. What I do with every founder that comes on here is we have what’s called a Lightning Round. How we go about this is I’m going to ask you about 6 or 7 questions and if you could use a single sentence to answer each of them, we’re okay.

Perfect.

Are you a morning person?

Yes, at times. As I transition, back to the US, I haven’t been so far in the last few months. Every night, I’m up until 2:00 or 3:00 AM so no.

On that basis, do you have a daily morning routine when you’re in the right morning mindset?

I hit the gym right in the morning. In Bali, I was living the best life. I was going to the gym in the morning for 2 to 3 hours, working out, running, and ice cold baths. I then come home, eat breakfast, and then I get to grinding for the day until 5:00 PM.

Are you into sports?

I love sports. I play basketball in Austin 4 or 5 times a week.

What is your favorite team?

I’m a Green Bay Packers fan, that’s American football. I am a die-hard fan. I won’t miss any game no matter where I am.

That was hugely empathetic by you saying, first of all, it’s an American football team. You’re an empathetic person, for sure. What two things can’t you live without?

Fitness and sun. I need both, my mental health. I have better days. Today, I wasn’t having a good day and it’s because I didn’t go on a walk this morning. A five-minute walk with my dog. I need the sun.

Is that why you chose Austin?

I did.

I heard it snowed in Austin.

It didn’t snow but it’s been gloomy here for the whole month. I’m like, “I need to get back to Bali ASAP.”

Bless you. What book are you reading or listening to?

The Millionaire Next Door. I haven’t read it. I just started it and I hear a lot of people talking about it.

The final question is, what has been your best mistake to date? By that, I mean a setback that’s given you the biggest feedback.

The best mistake is working with a new supplier who didn’t go through the vetting process. He was giving us cheaper prices. We went through the whole process. We got samples and we loved them. We got the bulk and it was completely terrible. It set us up and it made us a better business though because we know we have to vet our suppliers. We need quality control and never fall for the cheaper prices.

Tray, it’s been an absolute pleasure having you on the 2X eCommerce Podcast show. For those reading, Tray runs two brands, one is Bamboo Ave, and the other is Vybe interior. Tray, are you active on any social media platforms?

Yes, I’m trying to build my TikTok, @Tray_Brunner. I have my Instagram but that’s more personal.

Thank you so much for coming on the 2X eCommerce podcast.

Thank you.

Cheers.