We are happy to share with you the highlights from our founder series guest, Michael Gottfried, CEO of Piper Golf & PCKL.
Piper Golf is a golf lifestyle brand, specializing in direct-to-consumer golf balls and apparel. On the other hand, PCKL, eliminated complexity in picking a paddle, giving you the confidence to play your best.
Mark: Hello, welcome to the first.
Mike: Hey, Mark.
Mark: Hi.
Mike: Hi
Mark: How are you? It's great to see you.
Mike: Nice to see you too
Mark: And looking forward to seeing you again next week in sunny Florida.
Thank you for joining me on the first of what I hope is of many Coldsmoke Founder Series, where we talk to e commerce owners and operators and folks who are growing. Starting growing e commerce businesses and just grilling them, just absolutely raking them over the coals, no softballs here.
Mark: Trying to get to the bottom of how do you grow an ecommerce business?
Mark: What are your, deepest, darkest secrets, both work related and personal and just, you know, just have a good time, have a little fun too, hopefully.
Mark: So I'm really excited to have have you with us. You know, we've known each other a long time and I've Been very excited to watch your success over the past few years with the the businesses that you've started and have been appreciative of your, your career path and trajectory having been on the agency side in the past, and then moving on to a large DTC brand and then now starting your own.
Mark: So I'm excited. I think you have a lot of valuable information. I know you have a lot of valuable information that you've shared with me privately in the past, and now the hope is to expose you. And all of your information so that other people can learn from it. So without further ado would love to just learn a little bit about your background experience.
Mark: You could just walk everybody through how you started, you know, born in 86, 85.
Mike: 86, I'm 30. How old am I? 36 years old. Yeah. My journey started in similar shoes to where you are now, which is with an e commerce agency. And this was sort of post college. The economy was terrible in 2008.
Mike: By the way, I'm. Mike Gottfried, I don't know if anybody.
Mark: Oh, sorry. This is Mike Gottfried.
Mike: Hi, I'm Mike. So yeah, I graduated from college, and the economy was terrible. We were in this 2008–2009 recession, and I got together with a friend. And we decided that we knew how to build websites and talk to people. So we were going to be in a marketing agency.
Mike: And what we found was people were looking for ways to sell stuff online at the time. So we started building some Magento sites and we started building Shopify sites. We started doing email marketing and we started doing Facebook ads from there. And we grew a nice little agency business out of that.
Mike: And that was a decade for me of being in the shoes that you're in. With clients and building those digital experiences to sell stuff on the internet and through that I got exposure to businesses big, small, good, bad, got to know what worked and what didn't work in a lot of different cases. And was able to take that and take that experience and ultimately in 2018. So 10 years later go in house at a Video game accessories company called KontrolFreek to run that direct to consumer business.
Mike: And what that meant was basically again applying all of that industry and agency knowledge to a single focused client to develop and grow a business without the complexity of multiple clients, which I think is both illuminating in the sense that you, like I said, you get to expose yourself to a lot of different types of businesses, but also refreshing in the sense that you've got focus on one internal client, if you will, if we're talking about being an agency
Mark: And one of my favorite products ever is what KontrolFreek sells.
Mike: So we had our banner product was the KontrolFreek performance thumbstick. So these were little controller attachments for Xbox and PlayStation.
Mike: So on a little monument right here, if you imagine this is a PlayStation controller. So these are like, yeah, these little thumbstick extenders that made games like Call of Duty and Halo and Fortnite first person shooter games.
Mike: Easier to play, better leverage. So, but there was a really great brand around it too. And so we were running the direct to consumer site. I was running the Amazon business, all the digital and direct to consumer advertising from Facebook ads, YouTube ads, organic, social, email, and SMS. PR influencers. We had a really big sort of influencer affiliate program going on.
Mike: Ultimately, you know, grew that business and sold it in, in 2020. So sort of peak pandemic and got to work on what was next for me. So now I've done the agency thing. I've done the in house thing. I'm gonna get back to my roots and to do the entrepreneurial route again.
Mike: Early 2021, I started a golf ball company, golf ball company called Piper golf. And, you know, it's rooted in all the things that I had learned previously from how to select what product to make.
Mike: My personal thing was like, I've got all this experience and marketing and brand building. I just don't have a product. So once I identify the product which started with golf balls, I was really able to build the rest of the business around it.
Mike: The financials, the brand, the packaging, the direct to consumer strategies and so on, which we'll get into, I'm sure.
Mike: And one brand with Piper Golf quickly became two brands, right? So if we're able to do it with one, let's do it with two. So, Piper
Mike: And now we have PCKL, which you can see a little bit of the display behind me. It's a pickleball company. We're selling pickleball paddles and balls and launched in sort of late Q3, 2022. So still relatively fresh and new, but has just been shot out of a cannon in terms of our sort of growth and exposure. And that's been. You know, had the tailwinds of the boom of pickleball as a, as a game and as an industry.
Mike: So that's been really exciting. And so now we've got two plates spinning, two brands spinning and going forward with that, with our small team and, and operation here in Atlanta.
Mark: Incredible, great journey. Thank you for the recap. I don't wanna jump too far ahead. So can you talk a little bit about the process of at post KontrolFreek sale, then you're inspired to start your own thing.
Mark: I totally understand the benefits of moving into something golf related, knowing that you're an avid golfer and you love to play and all of the benefits that come with working in the industry.
Mark: But what is that process of, okay, it'd be fun to work in golf, in something golf related.
Mark: How do you get from there to designing, developing a ball, developing product relationships with manufacturers, and how many other ideas got, thrown in the waste bin during that process?
Mike: Well, being in an industry that is something you like and also something fun. Sorry, the lights just turned out near me.
Mike: It was, was part of the framework, but I did have a framework.
Mike: I'm going to keep talking while I turn the lights back on.
Mike: I did have the framework, right ? So the first thing I did sort of post acquisition was build this framework from the experience that I had which was, what does the product need to be?
Mike: How does it look? You know, where where does it come from? You know margins size and then on the brand side the framework of like.
Mike: What does the consumer need to look like and repeat purchase and all these different components that I packaged together first into a framework before? Knowing what the product was going to be what the brand was going to be or anything else like that.
Mike: So you know, my framework, among other things, dictated, had to have certain gross margins, had to be small and easy to store and ship, had to have a high repeat purchase rate, had to be in an industry where brand matters, where brand driven marketing can outshine just simple product innovation.
Mike: I'm not a product guy. I'm not an engineer. I'm not an inventor. So I didn't want to have to go and invent a new category or new product. I wanted to really have, have brand be the, the, the, one of the primary drivers of the business. And so I looked at all sorts of stuff. I looked at a few existing businesses.
Mike: I looked at sourcing new products. I looked at everything from reusable plastic bags to stick on nails, to knee braces, to ultimately golf balls and a handful of other things and landed on golf balls at that first. Go for all those reasons and check the boxes in the framework. And it was something I was passionate about.
Mike: I knew something about, I knew how to exist in that space. And so that was really after saying no to a bunch of stuff, kind of drilled it down to that one. And when you show up every day and you get to talk about golf and now pickleball, it is more fun and more engaging. It helps with. employee engagement and authenticity in your marketing if you care and enjoy and have fun with the subject matter.
Mark: Yeah, for sure. And do you think that starting with a golf ball that directly led to being able to then go do a pickleball company? Or do you think if you started with toilet paper, a previous business of yours, by the way?
Mark: You might have also then been able to. To go with pickleball or do you think that you have kind of your a bit of a sporting goods niche that that yielded, better into moving into something like that.
Mike: I think it ultimately felt natural to go from gaming to golf to pickleball, these are games and sports, if you will, e sports or real sports that people build a lifestyle around, right?
Mike: So that brand driven marketing really matters. It's like, you've got the core products and you've got the primary business, but it comes with people wanting to wear the hat or wear the bag or put the sticker on their laptop or their car, because they're sort of lifestyle driven.
Mike: Categories you know, the 16 to 26 year olds who were absolutely passionate about call of duty, made that part of their lifestyle and spent hours and hours and hours online playing call of duty and could again spend their time and ultimately their money building that lifestyle golf is the same thing.
Mike: My life still kind of revolves around a golf lifestyle. The clothes I wear, the people I'm friends with is very much, in the orbit of the golf world, it's what I love to do. I love now to play pickleball too. And that became sort of a pandemic hobby. That's become something that I've done.
Mike: And, and you can see it now too, where like. Athleisure has quickly moved into pickleball. It's this ultimate approachable form of adult competition and socialization and fitness. And people are building a lifestyle around it. And so I hate to just use the term lifestyle brand, but that's ultimately what this kind of is.
Mike: It's like there's a lifestyle behind the thing that you're building and you get people to really buy into the brand and the industry in a way that they wouldn't if you were selling toilet paper, right? I don't, I mean, maybe there are people who build their lifestyle around toilet paper. I don't,
Mark: Right. Not to disparage anyone who does. So jumping back to Piper, what was that launch like in terms of throwing, starting a new brand? You have a lot of competition, a lot of kind of mainstays. In your, your large brands, what did launch look like and what were some of the, like the things that were challenging and what were some of the things that went well, or how did you overcome those challenges to eventually find traction?
Mike: Yeah. So we'll start with what went well.
Mike: What went well was I was able to, source and test product that I again myself could have an input on. I knew enough about golf balls to be dangerous. And so I was really happy with the initial product lineup. We had four different golf balls, which kept the simplicity, sourcing and sort of the skew.
Mike: I didn't want to be in the apparel business. I didn't want lots of sizes and colors, right?
Mike: So four products for different golf balls, a pack of a dozen, really simple to understand, really simple to kind of put out there. I built the initial marketing push around myself and my network of people I know. Hundreds of people who play golf and built like that initial launch and the hype around it, there was probably a six month lead up to the actual selling point where every conversation I had with someone who I used to play golf with was like, Hey, I'm starting a golf ball company throw your email into this list and sign up.
Mike: And I had close to a thousand contacts ready to go on day one with limited inventory, building a little bit of hype behind. What I was doing and again knowing that was sort of a beta test and I wanted to see kind of how people received it and went from there.
Mike: I also over marketed myself what went wrong was I didn't realize. You have to have product to be able to sell product in the e commerce world.
Mike: Unless you're really really good at like long term pre order hype but a golf ball is something that people aren't going to sit around and wait six months for it to arrive so beyond that initial friends and family and sort of like, one to two degrees of separation contact list that I had built I did what I knew how to do which was the market and via sort of earned channels, reached out to influencers and celebrities and things like that had a big hit on the Tony Kornheiser show.
Mark: In terms of building that hype, I know you got that big, big, big promotion on the Tony Kornheiser show. That's, you know, an absolute dream.
Mark: What were some other tactics you used to build that pre launch hype? Were there any, any key parts of your marketing stack or tech stack that were super important in the beginning?
Mike: Look, I think understanding that you're only as powerful as your audience size is almost right. Like that was sort of the thing I was focused on. And so from a tech stack perspective, right? Like I use Klaviyo as both the email service provider as well as sort of the customer CRM, right? So like, I just wanted to kind of feed the beast.
Mike: I was even running relatively inexpensive ads to try and run, lead ads to get people to enter their email addresses into, into ultimately like Klaviyo database prior to launch. Organic social, you know, started to just try to build hype. And this was like, you know, again, take with a grain of salt two and a half years ago when like social landscape looked different.
Mike: And it's weird to see how much it's changed in that period of time on the organic side. But for whatever reason, like my friends and the people I'd played golf with and the contacts that I'd made felt, some of them felt compelled to like share it with their friends and then they share it with their friends.
Mike: And have you heard about this guy starting this golf ball company? And it seemed to really travel and spread sort of digitally via word of mouth. But there were no trick plays in that. It was just, talking to two different people, trying to get the word out.
Mark: Were running at like paid ads to try and just build your list and build hype around it. Was that mostly Facebook, Instagram, what channels were you using?
Mike: Facebook and Instagram at the time. I don't think there was much else in terms of, of lead ads. I mean, like, again, crazy. It seems like TikTok wasn't quite as prominent as it is now.
Mike: I was focused on the social side of things. Again, I felt like I built a nice visual brand. And so that kind of carried some weight in terms of even some simple visual Canva assets that I used to like pop into Facebook and boost with a little bit of dollars behind them.
Mark: Yeah. So one of the big differences between you and like, say a Titleist, Piper and Titleist is the direct to consumer approach. And I feel like that's kind of part of your thesis is that you know, you can't outspend them, you're probably not going to out innovate them, but you can out market them in a certain, you know, from a direct to consumer place. Like, I don't think I've ever in my life ordered golf balls from like Titleist direct on their website.
Mark: Ever, you know, I get it at the course or something. So you're sort of changing, you're also changing the, like the buying experience and the buying behavior of golf balls, in addition to coming at a better price point.
Mike: Yeah, and that's something that came into focus over the course of the like 15 years that I've been doing this is why would someone want to come and buy from your site?
Mike: Like you have to be able to answer that question, now more than ever in terms of what is the experience like with the site so like understanding the end to end customer experience the brand, the packaging, how it feels to take it out of the box, but yes, on your site, what can you do differently?
Mike: That's not just a catalog that I click order from. I can do that on Amazon. By the way, we built a nice Amazon business, but with the focus on the site at first, right?
Mike: Like what are these other big, big brands not doing? They have distribution. They have pro shop reps who can talk the talk about their stuff.
Mike: So trying to find our way. And one of the things we kind of, you know, I hung my hat on early it's like this on site quiz, right?
Mike: Like a ball recommendation quiz, that was like super simple in a per people. I felt there was this mysticism around golf balls. And I think it's still the case that most people don't understand what they should be playing, right?
Mike: They think like more expensive equals better golf ball. And that's true to a degree, but there's also enough nuance in the actual construction of the golf ball and the cover material that I wanted to try to match people with a product so they could confidently buy from our site, go play golf and feel good about the product they got, the purchase that they made and ultimately the match that they had with like their golf gain, their skill level, their swing speed, all these different things and what we'd match them up with.
Mike: So that was something early on. Again, it's not completely unique to us, but if we could nail that customer experience, that was a really compelling reason for people to come to our site, take the quiz, drop in their email address, be matched with a product. Receive the product, have the great out of box experience, go play golf, all packaged up together.
Mark: Yeah. And that's something, you know, not that that isn't hard work to, to put that package together, but that's something that you can iterate and put together relatively quickly using tools like Shopify and, and whatever you're using, whatever app you're using for the quiz and then tying that into Klaviyo and setting up the different segmentation campaigns.
Mark: But it's also something that these bigger players like that would take them months or a year to do, or they would just never do it because they're just these big, large companies that don't move, they don't work that way.
Mike: Yeah. Look, I was the perfect sort of test customer for all of this. If it worked on me, I was building it for me and me and my friends. And if it worked for us, like it was going to work for other people.
Mike: So like having that sort of core target consumer understanding in mind and building for that person, like that's the stuff that I can do and love to do, and so it was really fun to put all those pieces together and I didn't have to, you know, get budget approval from corporate or anything like that.
Mark: Right. Kind of that organic customer development stuff like that stuff just came to you and was organic.
Mark: Jumping back, you made a comment that you built a nice Amazon business. Was Amazon always in your plans? And at what point did you start allocating time and effort and resources into building on Amazon versus just the D2C side on Shopify?
Mike: Yeah. It was always in the back of my mind. I think I saw with again, exposure through my agency world and through the KontrolFreek journey that the different channels serve different purposes and ultimately at scale and over the long term, a healthy business utilizes many channels in terms of its selling to be successful.
Mike: Even the best, best, best direct to consumer brands ultimately cross that bridge and I'm not saying specifically with Amazon, but they go into retail or they open their own physical retail stores. At that scale it becomes about distribution and we have to have a healthy understanding that in 2021 and now even more so in 2023. There are lots and lots of channels where people buy from they get into habits Amazon's a search engine as much as google is a search engine when it comes to buying products and so we built a really nice healthy amazon business at KontrolFreek and I knew that it would be a viable channel for both golf balls and pickleball equipment because of the nature of the beast, it's, it's where people, some people start their shopping journey.
Mark: A lot
Mike: Yeah, and again, like, I'm not saying, you know. As a small and upstart brand, we've got the ability to be nimble on Amazon. We've got the ability to use Amazon fulfillment and be a third party seller, which gives us flexibility in a way that like a Titleist or a TaylorMade maybe can't because they're selling direct to Amazon.
Mike: Ultimately, Amazon is a customer for them where Amazon is a owned sales channel for us to a degree where they're handling the fulfillment. So we look at it as an extension of our brand and the ability to build brand on Amazon, utilizing all of the tools at your disposal from A plus content to exceptional product listing images and product descriptions and even utilizing their media buying as an extension of the, Google or Facebook or other media buying that you're doing as part of the the whole business
Mark: So amazon, I mean building on amazon has been net positive for for piper it goes without saying.
Mike: Yeah, again, like tens and tens of thousands of customers that would have taken a lot longer to reach had we tried to do it all through "We're staying away from Amazon".
Mark: Right. This is not a gotcha question, but what are some of the like challenges or the negatives of growing a portion of your business on Amazon?
Mark: And at what point, like if you're looking at like the balance, do you say, okay, , we got to like pull back our efforts or reduce spend on Amazon and try and balance it out so that we own more of our customers, you know, what's that internal conversation looking like?
Mike: Yeah you're a direct to consumer, the reasons that you want to build the sort of own Shopify site, if you will, is for better margins and better data.
Mike: But that comes at the trade office is likely going to be smaller volume. And so with Amazon comes larger volume, how the margins get compressed and your access to customer data through market and remarket to folks is. Compromised and different than if you were to, you know, sell direct from your site.
Mike: And so that's what i'm talking about with the balance of channels If you've got a healthy channel mix. You've got a healthy direct to consumer channel that comprises enough data that you do know your customer and you do know things like where they are and what their lifetime value is and what their average order value is and what the product mix looks like and if they bought this first, do they eventually buy?
Mike: Right. Well, you got enough data from your direct to consumer store that even if you are flying completely blind on Amazon, which we try to get as much data as we can. You're still able to know your customer sort of own your customer and market to enough of a base that it can propel the business forward and ultimately like when you're thinking about brand building
Mike: I like to think that there's the halo effect that we call which is like you're directing your marketing towards your owned ecommerce store, but that has some immeasurable impact on your amazon business or on your wholesale or retail business because you're marketing the brand and products and so again with KontrolFreek as the example It was really easy to sort of say we're doing these things on YouTube.
We know that that has some effect on getting people to walk into a gamestop store and buy our accessories We just can't say exactly what but it's still doing even if you don't see like the complete direct line of run an ad, click an ad, buy from your site, calculate ROAS, and move forward.
Mark: Right. The attribution is a bit harder, but. Surely, if you matched up the graph, the graphs of spend on YouTube to, well, you're going to see a downstream effect.
Mark: What are the, like, what are the top KPIs that you look at as a company and how often are you reviewing them? And then what are the levers that you pull to, to adjust those?
Mike: Yeah, so we are, and I say, we now we're, we're a team of of eight folks. Now we're incredibly data driven. We, as a team look at our primary KPIs every Monday morning. And make sure that everybody's digesting and understanding the numbers. We are updating constantly in terms of forecasting for different channels, financial forecasting.
Mike: What I've said recently that I didn't have such a great understanding of until I was kind of at the helm myself was a realistic to conservative forecast and financial model. Is absolutely, you know, imperative to success understanding what the future is going to potentially look like to the best of your ability, helps you make decisions and helps you navigate over the course of months and years that you wouldn't be able to do just sitting in the moment and planning for like, what's going to be the sales pop today.
Mike: So, you know, We used to be, and I said, we with KontrolFreek. And even prior to that, like in the sort of pre iOS update world, we were focused on turn on ad spend and you wanted to maintain a healthy advertising ROAs. Now that has morphed into a marketing efficiency ratio, which is money spent as a factor of the entire revenue of the business.
Mike: And how do we peg an advertising spend based on sort of how we think we want to grow or what we think our, our revenue is going to be and adjust from that. Knowing that you don't have the direct click attribution data on every single sale anymore. You've gotta, I don't know, it's a little bit more of a leap of faith to be able to spend money on marketing and advertising that you can't immediately see a return on.
Mike: And, and that's good and bad. I think it's, it's pushed us to do some things that maybe we wouldn't have done before because we wouldn't have seen the ROAS. But a lot of those activities are brand building exercises that come back to you. You know, on a longer timeframe, then, like I said, this sort of direct click direct path to purchase types of marketing that we were, we were doing in the late 20 teens.
Mark: Late 20 teens, how quickly after that iOS update, did you start seeing, you know, the cookie Armageddon or whatever people were calling it, like how quickly did that start to affect your marketing strategy and what are some of those things that you mentioned that are, you know, your, your marketing activities now that are, are working really well that maybe you wouldn't have done pre cookie apocalypse,
Mike: The cookie apocalypse was, I think slower than. We were sort of expecting like it's going to change and then like everything is going to be screwed up from day one and it wasn't really, but you know, I guess as people were both updating their phones and then opting out of tracking within Facebook and Facebook was making changes to their stuff and Apple continued to make changes to their stuff between some time in 2020 and sometime in 2022 kind of took the full effect.
Mark: Do you think we're out of a new normal now? Or I mean, things are just constantly evolving, right?
Mike: Yeah, we're planning for a new normal where, I mean , it may be the businesses that we're in comparison to controller, video game controller accessories, but we're planning for tactics and channels, marketing channels.
Mike: That were kind of out of the question before it had even gone away. Like all of a sudden, some of the more traditional marketing comes back into focus is like, I wonder if we should look into direct mail or we should look at, you know, Whatever, radio, podcasts, like these are all different things that matter.
Mike: I think for better, for worse, we used to heavily index on, on Google and Facebook, and it's still definitely a part of the mix, but you know, again, simply running a positive ROAs Facebook campaign, isn't the growth engine that I think it was a couple of years ago.
Mike: And new stuff, right? Like that again, you asked about that. We're finding that there's no substitute for word of mouth. So empowering our customers and brand advocates and ambassadors to be the best that they can be in terms of spreading the word has been something that we've really focused on. And that for pickleball looks even different than it did for anything else where we've got some of our best brand ambassadors and advocates have zero reach on social media.
Mike: But they're out there playing pickleball six days a week with, you know, 400 different people per week and can. Really infiltrate and spread the word amongst communities in a way that you couldn't do. I don't know running a Carousel out on Facebook.
Mark: That's so interesting. How do you build a brand ambassador or influencer marketing program like where do you start and then what are the signs that it's working?
Mark: I mean, I would you know, the signs that it's working is like sales and attributed sales.
Mike: Yeah. Coupon code usage or link clicks. We can track all that good stuff. It comes back to do people care? Do they want to care? Do they want to be a part of it? And empowering them to want to care, right. Giving them whatever means it is to, to get them engaged.
Mike: So It's a ground game in terms of maintaining communication with folk, you know, again asking them what it is that they need to do their job the best they can equipment marketing, support, swag, right?
Mike: Like, a lot of these folks just want to kind of be a part of something they're going to be playing pickable anyway, so let's make them into the best brand advocates that they can be.
Mike: Authenticity is huge, too, right? Do they actually like the product and want to use it and want to tell their friends and competitors and opponents about it? You know, that comes into play, too. So we have a lot of conversations with individuals, be it social influencers or non social boots on the ground influencers to try to put ourselves in their shoes and then give them what they need to succeed as a, as a brand ambassador or brand advocate.
Mike: Affiliate commissions are part of that too, right? We want them to be compensated and compensated well in some cases for what they can drive for the business. And so maintaining some transparency and tracking and. Communication around those efforts is, is a big part of the program for us too.
Mark: It's obviously a hugely important part of, building a direct to consumer business.
Mark: I'm going to leave with one last question. You've been very generous with your time.
Mark: If you were building a course on how to build an e commerce brand, what would the chapters be, main topics?
Mike: So I've thought about doing this. Maybe I should the handbook. Right. I know it's, it's, I got a lot going on.
Mike: I would say the first chapter would have to be that framework that I talked about before. Build yourself a framework and build yourself an understanding of what success looks like at the end.
Mike: What are you actually trying to do? And I mean that from sort of a philosophical perspective as well as a financial perspective.
Mike: So maybe even before framework is like, what does success look like to you? Is it building yourself a lifestyle business? Is it building yourself X number of dollars in income per year? Is it ultimately selling the enterprise for X million dollars, you know, at the end of it, and what does that time horizon look like?
Mike: So understand what success looks like to you. At the end I'll help you kind of track towards that with that gold I then get would get into the framework and what I mean by the framework is brand and product.
Mike: Ultimately e commerce for the most part is a brand and product driven business so outline , if you don't have a specific product in mind outline the characteristics of the brand and the product before you get into sourcing, before you even decide which product it is that you want to build your business around. Having a depth of understanding of the technology is critical as well.
Mike: So what does your tech stack look like? I have, again, through my years of experience, like probably 75 to 80 percent of that tech stack built out of the box, your Shopify, your Klaviyo you know, all of your sort of data and analytics tools and how you're tracking. So that tech stack would be a part of it.
Mike: Experience design, sort of user experience design, and that's online and offline too. And we touched on that. Things like your on site quiz and your product pages, but also your product out of the box your packaging. You know, what is the card that's included in each order say and how is that making a difference for connecting with your consumers?
Mike: The financial side of it having a really, again healthy financial model realistic to conservative financial model that will guide you and help you look into the future to help make decisions .
Mike: These are big prompts and things that you have to have a real solid understanding of to be able to move into the future and succeed. I'm probably leaving a few chapters at the end, but those are the ones that I would write first.
Mark: Yeah, well, those can be part two of the course or of the book,
Mike: But advanced level.
Mark: Yeah, exactly. That's 201, e commerce 201.
Mark: Mike, thanks so much for, for coming on and sharing your story and your wisdom, always fun to chat with you and really, really appreciate it. And good luck with with the growth of, of both brands and excited to see when's the third brand coming out?
Mark: Do we want to break news here?
Mike: No plans. No, I wish I had more plans two has been, a challenge, but it's been an exciting challenge and it's been having a dual income household, if you will, has been a breath of fresh air for us, too. So we'll stick with two until we really got room for three mentally and capacity wise.
Mike: And until we find the perfect opportunity for number three, we'll jump on it.
Mark: Cool. Well, we'll do another video then. When the when it's time for the third video or third, third product thank you so much for, for joining, for everyone watching or listening.
Mark: Where can they buy Piper Golf and, and PCKL products?
Mike: So you can go to piper. golf for our wonderful golf balls and you can go to pckl. com. For PCKL on either site you can use the code friends and fam for a nice discount because Mark, you're both my, and my fam.
Mark: So we're going to have to get a Coldsmoke branded one at some point.
Mike: Absolutely. I would use that and get a sweet dozen golf balls with the Coldsmoke logo and branding.
Mike: Feel really bad. It was one of those in the water though.
Mark: Yeah, it'll happen.
Mike: Yeah.
Mark: Thank you so much. And thanks everyone for, for tuning in and I'll talk to you soon.
Mike: Thanks Mark.
Mark: Cheers.
