Kunle: Hi Boris. Could you take a minute or two to introduce yourself to listeners?

Boris: Absolutely. My name is Boris Mordkovich and I’m the cofounder and CEO of a five-year-old electric bike company based out of New York called EVELO. What we do is we produce, manufacture, and distribute directly to consumer really phenomenal electric bikes.

Kunle: Okay. By phenomenal… I actually picked up a press release which claims you guys produce the best electric bikes. Why? Why do you lay claim to the innovation EVELO has as compared to other electric bikes?

Boris: You know that’s actually a really great question because the way that we look at it is, it’s a 50-50 sort of formula. So 50% of it is the technology itself behind the bikes and what we do in order to make them a bit more powerful, a bit lighter, and to give them a little bit more range than the competition. But the other 50% is really how we do business. And it ranges from things like being able to, instead of purchasing the bike outright, people can finance it for a year or more. People have a free seven day at home trial. We offer seven days a week support. Things like that.

Kunle: Okay. Do you have a distribution channel? Do you have a distribution model or are you more decentralized?

Boris: We are fairly centralized. So traditionally in the bike industry the way that most bike manufacturers operate is they will distribute bikes either directly through local independent bike shops or the big-box retailers. However, because myself and my cofounder, we actually come from a very different background, we come from primarily an e-commerce background, when we entered this industry we didn’t really have the traditional ways of doing business sort of philosophy set in. So we started doing a direct to consumer pretty much entirely online business model. Which, for the bike industry, hasn’t really been done before.

Kunle: Interesting. Interesting. So does that mean every single sale comes through the website, EVELO.com?

Boris: Correct, correct. So every sale does come directly through us and that’s one of the reasons that that also allows us to really control the entire user experience, from when they find out about the brand to how we treat them a year or two down the line and what sort of support we’re able to offer.

Kunle: Okay, okay. I’m just looking at your Alexa ranking on there and it’s about 447,000 and just looking at SimilarWeb, this is not entirely correct, but it says that you guys have a monthly estimated desktop visit of about 20,000 visits per month, based on these stats on the outside. Is that near to accurate in terms of the traffic that you get?

Boris: Yeah, no that is quite correct. To be completely honest, we typically don’t really look too much at things like Alexa rankings ourselves. Typically, the sort of metrics that we pay very close attention to is not even the visitor count itself, but things like revenue per visitor that we generate, conversion rates, things that really add to the bottom line, essentially.

Kunle: Absolutely. Speaking of the bottom line, what kind of revenue did you generate in 2015?

Boris: In 2015 we did around $2 million and then this year we’re on track to actually double that and go for a little over $4 million.

Kunle: That’s brilliant. We’re going to talk about how you raise capital, you know, the avenues you used. But when did that happen? When did you raise capital? And the revenue you generated last year, does it have anything to do with the seed investment you got, or not the seed investment, but the additional investment you got, or was that more or less from your organic growth?

Boris: Sure. To answer your question, we raised the funds towards the end of last year. However, kind of the context for this is, my cofounder and I, we had another company that we sold about five years ago and we used the proceeds from that company to essentially start EVELO. So we started EVELO for a fairly small amount, around $100,000. And we were able to grow it for three years pretty much completely organically, just relying on the revenues and profits were coming in. So it went from essentially $0 to about $2 million in revenue before we raised a single dollar from investors. And that was very intentional.

Kunle: When you say intentional, was that more or less a proof of concept and a test of market?

Boris: So, it was a couple of reasons. Part of it was our own philosophy in the sense that we did not want to take on money from outsiders until we were confident that we would be able to deliver a real return to them. And second of all, with the physical goods businesses, the way that you attract funds and the sort of interest that you are able to generate, it’s quite different than from the traditional, say, Silicon Valley software business where often you’re able to raise huge amounts of money just based on the idea. With the physical goods businesses, investors are typically a lot more careful, they are more conservative, and they do want to see actual revenue numbers before giving you a dollar.

Kunle: That’s a very, very good point. Okay, let’s talk about your cofounder. He’s your brother, right?

Boris: Correct.

Kunle: And he is Afghani. Is he… because I picked up from a press release again, in regards to how you started EVELO, so is he the engineer? How does it work? How do you guys share learning the business between yourselves? What do you do, and what hat does he wear?

Boris: Sure. So our roles over the last 3-4 years did evolve quite a bit. When we first started, essentially we were you know just between the two of us for the first year or so. Literally we do everything from the strategic ideas and implementation, to answering customers’ questions and driving bikes around, and just really figuring out every aspect of the business. Even from very early on, the way that we would essentially divide the responsibilities, loosely, would be where Yevgeniy, he was responsible for product development, for overall post-sale customer experience – so basically everything that would happen after a customer purchased the bike, how they service it, how would it get delivered to them, just every everything that goes into that. Whereas my responsibility in the beginning was primarily sales, our brand, brand design, and development. And initially the teambuilding, essentially, hiring the first couple people that came on board and bringing them up to speed.

Kunle: Interesting.

Boris: Today it’s so similar. The main difference is that we have a team of about 11 people right now. So our roles… the overall direction is still similar but the sort of things that we do on a day-to-day basis kind of shifted.

Kunle: Okay, okay. All right, interesting. So let’s track back to my initial question in terms of, what makes EVELO the best? You said it was 50% technical and 50% operational, and just the way you treat your customers, the options they have from a financial standpoint – the 7-day testing and a few other perks they get, which just distinguishes their experience from what they get traditionally. So I could see on your website you’ve got, correct me if I’m wrong please, five core bike types. So you’ve got the Aries, Aurora, Luna, Orion, and what I found really interesting, I was just having a conversation with a chap here before, the Omni Wheel, which I think is quite revolutionary. Could you break down why EVELO is so potentially disruptive, not just from market standpoint and the way you do business but also from your offering?

Boris: Absolutely. So, we’ll talk about for example the Omni Wheel for a minute, since… This is something that we released about a year ago and it has been quite disruptive and quite interesting from the market of reception. So traditionally with electric bikes one of the challenges is that a good electric bike typically cost somewhere between let’s say $2000-$3000, which for a lot of people is out of reach. So instead of trying to compromise for example on the components or other technology in order to do a cheaper bike, the direction that we’ve gone is we released the Omni Wheel which is essentially an all-in-one front wheel that contains the battery, motor, controller, all of the electronics in one easy package. And essentially what it allows people to do is convert a regular traditional bike into electric within about 10 minutes. All they have to do is take out the front wheel from their existing bike, put the Omni Wheel in its place, set up the display on the handlebars and they’re done. At that point their bike becomes electric.

Kunle: So does it make use of kinetics, kinetic engineering, or how does it work?

Boris: It’s actually very simple. There are two options. A user can either use a very simple throttle where they press a button and the motor kicks in and makes it easier to peddle and easier to go uphill. Or the option is they simply start pedaling and as soon as the wheel sense resistance, so to speak, it will give the user a boost. So again, the feeling that people get when they ride the Omni Wheel or our electric bikes is almost as if somebody’s giving them a gentle push from the back. And it makes it so when they climb uphill or climb a steep hill, it feels like they’re going on flat ground. If they’re going on flat ground, it feels like they’re going faster, so they can commute faster.

Kunle: Okay. So all your brands, which has proved the most popular?

Boris: So right now our core business is still the complete electric bikes. But the Omni Wheel is starting to be more and more popular because of its lower price point and its appeal to a different demographic, so to speak, a younger demographic.

Kunle: Okay. I was on your LinkedIn profile prior to the call, as I always am on guests, but you did work…or you were a Kiva Fellow. Kiva is a micro-finance platform, for those of you listening who don’t know Kiva. So could you give us a bit of your background prior? Because you said you actually founded a business prior and used the proceeds to start the EVELO. So how did you both… you know, what’s your background?

Boris: Sure, sure. So both Yevgeniy and I, we actually had a couple of companies that we started, grew, and eventually sold together. However, since you mention Kiva, Kiva was in some way responsible for EVELO upbringing as well. Because Kiva, as you mentioned, is a person-to-person micro-finance platform. Essentially allows people to lend money to entrepreneurs in the developing world. One of the fellows from Kiva, he actually went on to start another company, another start-up that I joined right before EVELO, called Turo. And Turo was essentially a person-to-person car-sharing company that would allow people to rent out their car to other people in their neighbourhood, by the hour, by the day. And working at Turo was actually a really interesting experience because it showed very clearly how the relationship that people have with vehicles, how that whole culture is starting to change in the US. Where let’s say in the past a couple decades ago, a car was viewed as a status symbol, as freedom, and things of that sort. But right now, people see owning a car as a hassle, as a huge expense, and they are actively looking for ways to either downsize from their car or use it less. So that was what essentially led to electric bikes, because electric bikes represent a very real and very viable alternative to car ownership.

Kunle: Okay. That makes sense. Now let’s talk about your most recent round of funding, which was on SeedInvest. My first question… it’s first time I’m actually hearing about the website called SeedInvest. It reminds me of a site called CrowdCube in the UK. But my question is, why do you consider Kickstarter or Indigogo, the traditional crowdfunding platforms which are quite mainstream?

Boris: It’s a great question and really for two reasons. So the first one was the Kickstarter and Indigogo is typically done to bring a particular product to market, that’s usually when a company is very young, has no revenue, has no real product yet, and they just need that initial boost of capital in order to start manufacturing. We were already passed that point in a sense that we already had most of our product lines, we already had a product pipeline for the future that we could finance ourselves. But what we needed was kind of a funding, not for manufacturing, but really for expansion. Expansion of the team, bigger marketing budget. So Kickstarter would not work for that. The other reason, you know, personally I love Kickstarter and I love the projects that it has. At the same time Kickstarter is a little bit of a double-edged sword because some of the projects on Kickstarter they have a track record of either being late with manufacturing and late with their promises or not delivering what they promised to their consumers at all. So we had a concern that by being on Kickstarter, we would actually undermine the credibility that we’ve built up over the last three years as a profitable, growing business. And when you sell a $3000 product that people expect to be able to get support and warranty for 2 to 3 years in the future, credibility is incredibly important.

Kunle: Absolutely. I do agree with you. I bought a set of headphones on Kickstarter, I financed it, I was one of the people who supported it and it’s six months delayed till today, so yes, I do agree with you. And yes, with regards to also the price points, the average order value here is about $3000, where do you start in Kickstarter, what would be the starter package, really, also?

Boris: Exactly, and you know what a lot of companies do is they will set the prices very close to cost, cost of manufacturing, and that may be okay in order to essentially prove that you can manufacture a particular product, generate awareness, but it is very difficult to build a business around Kickstarter.

Kunle: I see what you mean. I know the company will launch through Kickstarter and they managed to fulfill all their Kickstarter orders, but they currently having manufacturing issues in terms of bringing the actual business to market being improved, so they’re going to have to look for additional finance to make it happen. All right, so I’m quite surprised about SeedInvest.com because I attended a couple of capital-raising or fundraising seminars which say the US market is not as mature as the UK market with regards to finance and raising capital. So I just want to understand how the equity share looks like. You managed to raise about $750,000 I believe…

Boris: Correct.

Kunle: … from SeedInvest. So what happens? How much equity did you give to investors? And how many investors are on there? And how do you work out ownership?

Boris: Sure, sure. Again, to provide a littel bit of context, we decided to do SeedInvest as opposed to completely on our own in part because we felt that we didn’t necessarily have a lot of connections with investors when we set out to raise funds. You know, we’re based out of New York where there are lots of startups but again is not necessarily the Silicon Valley and from our perspective we were just starting from square one. So SeedInvest offered an interesting opportunity where they would essentially introduce us to their network of investors, as well as provide us with the sort of coaching and support and logistical support that we felt we needed that point. And what ended up happening was very interesting. So we raised $750,000 in exchange for a convertible note that will convert for about 15% of the company. So our valuation was $5 million. What was fascinating to us is that about a third of the money came right away from our own customers. So when we started at SeedInvest, one of the things that they encouraged us to do was let our own customers know that we were raising funds, because some of them may be interested in supporting you. And it proved to be absolutely accurate because we raised I believe $230,000 from a couple of EVELO customers. That was a game changer for us because the hardest part with fundraising is really getting that initial buy-in, because everybody typically wants to sit on the fence until they see that other investors are getting involved. After the initial funding came in, SeedInvest, what was unique about it at that particular time is that in addition to introducing us to other investors they also have their own fund where they also invested another $200,000 into our round. And then they ended up introducing us to quite a few really great investors through their own platform and through AngelList. And that allowed us to raise the balance.

Kunle: Of the remaining $300,000. Okay. From what I’ve gathered so far, it seems like a private seed-raising or capital-raising platform rather than something that’s as public as the Kickstarters and Indigogos. Is that correct or do they really publicise what’s on offer on their website?

Boris: In a sense. They do publicize it. The general approach, I would say, is different because Kickstarter is focused on the product. SeedInvest is focused on the company, so it will essentially reach out to their own investors and let them know they can invest in particular company, regardless of the product.

Kunle: Okay, okay. So it’s for more sophisticated class of investors. I think Kickstarter, you know, your neighbour could do it, there’s no equity involved. Okay, that makes sense. So how do you intend spending the cash you’ve raised? Where do you see the funds actually going to grow the business?

Boris: It’s a great question and the reason is that it is a good question because when we raised the funds, we wanted to be in a position that even before we get the investment money, we wanted to be profitable and not necessarily need the money for survival of the company. And that’s exactly what happened. Prior to the investment we were profitable and able to cover all of our expenses and grow organically. So the main purpose of the funds that we raised was essentially twofold. So one, we will be using it to fund further product development so that we can expand our product line and what we’re able to offer to our customers. And second of all, we wanted to be able to expand our marketing and client acquisition efforts; in a sense that over the last three years we developed a pretty good idea in terms of what works and what doesn’t in terms of marketing, but we were always very constrained in terms of cash flow of being able to really push forward. So with the additional capital, we’re able to add money into the channels that are very effective for us and really start growing the business at a much faster pace.

Kunle: Okay, okay. So two areas. Operational: in terms of research and development for wider products. And Marketing: to actually fuel traffic into the site that actually convert, it’s all about conversions at the end of the day as you alluded to earlier. Okay, I just have a question and this is in relation to the book I’m writing, and it’s just in regards to your perspective about the need for capital to grow a company, in this product space we’re in, in e-commerce and direct to consumer. In your opinion, when do you think capital is required? Some businesses have flourished at the start others like yourselves have gone on to show a proof of concept and successfully raise capital. What’s your philosophy on that? Is their right and wrong, or?

Boris: Well, there’s definitely no right or wrong but personally I think that I’m very conservative when it comes to accepting funds from others. And it is interesting to me because there’s almost two different schools of thought, in a sense that if you look at on the West Coast, in Silicon Valley and the typical start-ups: there the focus is let’s raise as much money as we can and then we’ll figure out how to generate revenue. And it works and it works for a lot of them. And at the same time if you look at more kind of e-commerce focused businesses, there is a great community that I’m part of called eCommerceFuel.com that is a community for e-commerce owners, e-commerce store owners that make, I believe, $1 million in revenue per year or more. And the mindset the people have there is completely different. Almost nobody raises money from the outsiders. The vast majority of people there grow their business organically. For us, I think that we were able to benefit from the best of both worlds. We were able to build up the company with a very scrappy sort of mentality, where there is not a lot of waste, we’re generally fairly efficient and mindful of how we spend money. But at the same time, we were incredibly lucky in order to be able to raise that round of financing because now we can do things that we were not able to do previously. Or, that would take us a lot longer otherwise.

Kunle: Okay. That all makes a lot of sense. What about international expansion? Do you currently only cater for the US, or North America, US and Canada?

Boris: So today, we’re primarily focused on the US and Canada simply because for us, I think that we still have another year or so to go before we can comfortably say that, ‘Okay, we have most of the stuff here figured out. Now we’re ready to go into other markets.’

Kunle: Do you reckon you’d need another round of funding to set up shop in the UK or Europe?

Boris: It depends on how quickly we want to do it. If we wanted to, let’s say, set up a shop in a European country in about a year, then yes I would say we would need to raise an additional round of funding. Not a huge one but an additional one nevertheless, in order to be able to pull that off. If we were patient and were willing to wait, let’s say, 3 to 4 years then I think that we would have enough reserves of cash internally to be able to do it ourselves.

Kunle: And just organically expand. Okay, so this brings me to the second to last segment of the show, which is how you you’ve gone about growing the business. Before we talk about growing the business, I would like to know more about the size of the market. So you operate in North America, the US and Canada, what’s the size of… obviously electric bikes are a segment of the market and people who do not use electric bikes probably can be educated to the advantages of using electric bikes. And also I suppose as you alluded to earlier, the people who drive cars are not very happy with the idea of driving cars, share cars, and are looking for a viable alternative. So from your research, from your market research, what’s the potential size of the market you are operating in?

Boris: It’s a good question. Now, in the US itself, the market is still fairly small. I would say around… the total for last year, the total market for electric bikes was likely about maybe half $1 billion. However, there is a few things that we are counting on, essentially. So first of all, we’re counting on the fact that right now US is about 5 to 7 years behind its European counterparts. So in Europe electric bikes are much more popular, much more widely accepted and more common. And the market there is significantly more, significantly bigger. Even there, the European market is a tiny section of the overall market globally. Where, let’s say, in China and the rest of Asia there are over 100 million electric bikes sold every single year. And it’s mindblowing because if you ask a typical person let’s say in the States, most people won’t really know what an electric bike is yet. So it’s almost the most popular electric vehicle in the world that nobody really talks about, yet. So for us, we think that we can grow the company over the next five years to be a $50-$70 million a year company, in the US and Canada alone.

Kunle: Which is about 10% – 20% of market share, given the market share being half a billion, which is realistic, really. And then there’s also the opportunity with education. I think educating the market and actually creating market from zero, if that makes sense.

Boris: It does. And the thing about electric bikes, personally, is I think that there are a number of trends that are colliding at the same time in North America right now. It’s the better awareness and acceptance of electric transportation. It’s more focus on health and leading an active lifestyle. It’s urbanization as well, more and more people are coming back into the cities from the suburbs so the distances that people have to travel become smaller, while at the same time owning a car and driving a car is becoming a bigger pain. So all of these things put together just create a excellent climate for this particular product.

Kunle: And I suppose there is also the Tesla effect, which is quite interesting. Okay. So tracking back to the last five years you’ve been in business, what marketing channel would you attribute to be the biggest source of growth for EVELO?

Boris: So I would say that one of the things that was a breakthrough from us in the early years was something that we called the Ambassador Program. Now, fundamentally we had one big problem that we needed to resolve in order to be successful at selling electric bikes direct to consumer. Most customers, before they buy an expensive product like this, they have two questions. The first question is, ‘Where can I go to test ride this product?’ And the second question is, ‘Where can I go if I have a problem with this product down the line?’ So in order to address the first question about the test ride, because we did not have traditional dealers and bike shops that other brands worked with, we started something called the Ambassador Program which are essentially our existing EVELO customers who buy a bike, they really like it, and they sign up to be an Ambassador so whenever we have a potential customer in their area, we’re able to connect the Ambassador and the potential customer for a test ride and a Q&A.

Kunle: Clever.

Boris: Yep. And it works great because it from the Ambassador’s perspective, well, there is a financial incentive. They make a commission every time the test ride leads to a sale. But even more so, I think that psychologically people that own things like this, you know, whether you own a Tesla or an electric bike, you’re typically going to be an enthusiast and you’re going to be happy to share your experience with other people. And that’s what we’re finding, a lot of ambassadors would do this even if there was no financial incentive involved.

Kunle: Absolutely, absolutely. Everybody I know that has a Tesla had to show me the dashboard and just take me on a tour. [laughs]

Boris: Absolutely, absolutely.

Kunle: And the same would be…yeah, quite novel a product, and very, very useful, functional. That is clever.

Boris: In our mind and in our experience over the last two years, we’re big proponents of e-commerce and the direct to consumer because it allows us to be more efficient, it allows us to offer better price to the end-user without sacrificing quality because we cut out essentially, say, a middleman that would typically add an extra 35 to 40% to the price.

Kunle: Okay, okay. Let’s scratch the surface a little bit. In order to get people to even want to test drive, or have problems or questions with regards to getting a bike, they need to be aware of EVELO. So what primary channels that led them to the awareness to the point where you lead them on to Ambassadors.

Boris: Sure. So I would say that the three key components for us are search marketing, email marketing, and content. So search marketing, both in terms of pay-per-click advertising and organic optimization, has been very important to us because people do their research online, that’s just how it is. So we do want to be able to capture that traffic and bring it to our site. At the same time, that’s only half of the battle because the next that the next step for us has always been education, in a sense that we try never to have aggressive sales tactics, both in our website and with the interactions that we have with the customers. We never want to push anybody towards anything just to make a quick buck. Our philosophy has always been, let’s educate people and help them make the right decision for themselves. So to do that, for example, we produce and write a lot of content. Anything from a 20,000-word electric bike buyers guide to articles that basically break down transparent pricing and they explain when you spend $2000 on a bike, where does every dollar go. And things like this, they really help us to make our visitors comfortable with us and also capture new potential visitors as well who are doing their research.

Kunle: Okay. So does all of this content sit on your website or do you have a distribution? Did distribute it across the web to major platforms?

Boris: We know that 90% of it is in our site and about 10% we do guest posting and things of that nature.

Kunle: Okay, so it’s really inbound. Okay, so when you create a 20,000 word buyers guide to buying electric bikes, do you just promote it organically on search for would you also buy traffic, you know, search traffic, to just drive awareness to guide?

Boris: It’s going to be a little bit of both. I would say that two-thirds of it is really done to educate our own visitors, the ones that already land on our website. But when you write good content, the side effect is that it starts to pop up on search on its own as well. So without us having to buy, let’s say, pay-per-click ads. So the end result is we’re able to both educate the traffic that we paid for, and the visitors that came to us through PPC, as well as attract completely new ones that otherwise would not have found us.

Kunle: Okay, that sounds really interesting. So how do you lead people who… say I was just researching on electric bikes and I arrived on EVELO and I arrived on your guide to electric bikes… how do you lead me down the funnel? Because it’s one thing reading content on the website, and another you know, buying from that same website.

Boris: So typically when, let’s say, you come across our guide, you usually have an option of downloading let’s say a PDF version by giving us your email address. Once you give us your email address, we’ll typically check in with you every couple of weeks, provide you additional useful information that may be helpful to you and really try to stay in touch with you so that you know, as a potential prospect, that if you ever have any questions about our electric bikes or anybody else’s electric bikes, that we are here for you 7 days a week. And we make it very easy for people to reach out, to ask questions, and tend to get a lot of leads from there.

Kunle: Okay, that makes sense. And that connects the search, the content, and the email. Because the email is your communication vehicle or channel, really. So what’s your view on social? I don’t seem to hear anything about social here?

Boris: It’s a good question. So generally speaking social has its place and for many companies it works great. From our perspective, we have not been able to really get a strong financial return on investment on paid social media marketing. And maybe it’s because our product is just a little bit too pricey or maybe because really the purpose of social media marketing is not to get actual sales but rather to foster conversations, improve just brand awareness, things of that sort. So, we’ll typically always encourage people to post about their experience with EVELO on Facebook and Twitter, share pictures, and it probably, definitely actually, has an indirect effect because other people become more comfortable with our brand when they see other users write about it. But I can’t say that we’ve really got a lot in terms of financial return through social.

Kunle: Okay. That makes sense. I’m just on your Facebook page and there’s a 4.5 review rating on the Facebook page and there’s lots of people posting to the page. Okay, right. How do you, finally, I just want to wrap up by asking you how you intend to continuously innovate at the company going forwards?

Boris: Sure. So I would say that there are several directions that we will be exploring in the future. So the first one, which is why we raised the funds, is to continue to do product development and add several new products every single year to our product line in order to be able to appeal to a bigger audience. That’s part of it. The second thing is it brings us back to the very beginning of the conversation when I mentioned that 50% of our success and what makes us special is just our approach to distribution and approach to business. So for example, one of the things that we’re exploring is a fundamentally new way of buying and owning an electric bike, where instead of potentially buying a $3000 bike, you can just lease it for let’s say $99 a month. And you will pay for it, you will receive annual tune-ups, we’ll replace the battery every two years if needed, and when you no longer need it you can return the bike and stop paying the monthly payments. So things like that can help bring a better, a higher level of mass adoption.

Kunle: Yeah. I can see that working in a city. Say for instance, I just decided to live in New York for about six months or three months. That would work really well if I could hire or rents a bike directly from yourselves, and the rest assured I don’t need to sell it on, and I just use a brand-new bike from yourselves on a monthly basis and then return it.

Boris: Absolutely, absolutely. And the other thing that we see a lot of interesting opportunities in are kind of the intersection of online and off-line world. So right now, why do people typically, say, go to a bike shop and buy a bike there. Well, they’ll typically get it because they want it to be fully assembled and they want to talk to somebody. But what if, for example, when a customer purchases a bike directly from us, they could have multiple options where they can get it either nearly fully assembled directly at their door and they kind of finish the assembly themselves, or actually have the bike shipped to a local store where it would be fully assembled for them and then delivered directly to their door by their local mechanic for an extra fee.

Kunle: Okay. So what happens at the moment when you ship bikes to customers?

Boris: So right now the bikes are shipped in what’s called 95% assembled state, which basically means that when a customer gets a bike, all they have to do is just three steps. They put on the front wheel, they adjust the handlebars to the level that they like, and they screw in the pedals. It takes about 20 minutes and it’s very easy to do. And the vast majority of our customers, they don’t have a problem with that. However, we also recognize a fact that we are potentially losing on a lot of potential customers who just don’t want to deal with this. And I get it. They just want a fully assembled bike. Period. So we’re constantly exploring ways to make that happen as well.

Kunle: Okay, okay. That makes sense. And just for the record, you’re always going to be a direct to consumer business?

Boris: Well, to be frank we’re pretty adaptable and flexible. Right now we believe that it’s a better way of doing business for our customers, for us as a company. But that’s not to say that things will not change or evolve down the line. And we’ll definitely be open to changing our way of doing things if there’s something better available.

Kunle: Interesting, okay. Right, so this is the final segment of the show, the evergreen section or what I call the lightning round. So I’m going to ask you a question and if you could use a sentence, maximum two sentences to answer, that would be brilliant. I’m going to start when you’re ready.

Boris: Sure.

Kunle: Okay. So what are your plans for the future?

Boris: For now our plan is to double in size every year moving forward.

Kunle: Fantastic. How do you hire people?

Boris: Most of our team is actually remote so we hire them all over the country, all over the world really.

Kunle: What are your three indispensable tools for managing EVELO.

Boris: Slack is a very big one since most of our people are remote, as well as Trello, which is a project management tool. And Klaviyo, which is an email marketing tool.

Kunle: They’re really good. Okay. What’s been your best mistake to date? By that I mean a setback that’s given you the biggest feedback?

Boris: Our biggest, our best mistake has probably been, I would say being very conservative with how we grow. And I mentioned during the conversation, we really waited over three years before going out after additional funds. I think that by doing that a little bit earlier we could have sped up our growth. So the challenge is, again, to know exactly when the right time is.

Kunle: Timing, timing. The benefits of hindsight, they say. Right, what one piece of advice can you give to direct to consumer e-tailers keen on 2Xing and 3Xing their sales?

Boris: Well, primarily, it’s a cliché but it takes money to make money. In a sense that for us, we do some things right and we do some things wrong. And the things that we do wrong, they end up costing us a significant amount of money. So finding a way to have a little bit of experiments budget is very important to really figure things out.

Kunle: Okay, right. If you could choose a single resource that has made the highest impact on the way you view building the business and growth, which would be?

Boris: I would say I recently read a book called The Maverick by a guy called Ricardo Semler. He runs a company in Brazil. Which to me, what that book was about was it doesn’t really matter what you do as much as it matters how you do it. His company runs kind of manufacturing sort of industry which is not super exciting yet everybody in Brazil wants to work there. And it has a phenomenal reputation and it’s just a beautiful company that he has been able to build. So, highly recommended.

Kunle: Intersting. I will check it out. Okay, I would just like to thank you immensely. Thank you, Boris, for spending time sharing so much. And wishing you the best and best of luck with EVELO, it looks like a brilliant company. Disruptive. And, hopefully, I would love to see you guys here in the UK and Europe.

Boris: Absolutely, absolutely. We’ll do what we can.

Kunle: Brilliant. For those of you sticking along, thank you for listening still til now. Thank you for sticking and I really hope you found Boris’s insights on building a direct to consumer business, product business actually, inspiring. And you’re able to pick up, even if it was just one tactic, one takeaway which you could apply in your own online retail business, just take just that one thing, two things, and apply it and take action in your online sales, online business to just move the needle. To download the show notes and the full transcript, just head over to 2XeCommerce.com. Until the next show guys, do have a fantastic one. Bye bye for now.