Ep. 63 | Hari Mari’s Valuable Customer Community
This week Jeremy Stewart, founder of Hari Mari Shoes joins Allison Hartsoe in the Accelerator. When Jeremy and his wife co-founded the company, they asked themselves, how do you innovate on a 4000 year old product like shoes? Like many fast retailers, they began by closely listening to the product likes and dislikes of their prospective customers, but then they went further. Hear Jeremy talk about how being customer-led helped them move from product to philanthropy to the experience building a valued community.
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Allison Hartsoe: 00:01 This is the customer equity accelerator. If you are a marketing executive who wants to deliver bottom line and packed by identifying and connecting with revenue generating customers, then this is the show for you. I’m your host, Allison Hartsoe, CEO of ambition data. Each week I bring you the leaders behind the customer centric revolution who share their expert advice. Are you ready to accelerate? Then let’s go. Welcome everyone. Today’s show is about building a customer community and to help me discuss this topic is Jeremy Stewart. Jeremy is the founder of Hari Mari, a colorful and high-quality line of footwear. Jeremy, welcome to the show.
Jeremy Stewart: 00:48 Hey, Allison. Thanks for having me.
Allison Hartsoe: 00:49 Can you tell us a little bit more about your background and especially this very creative company name?
Jeremy Stewart: 00:57 Sure. Well, Hari Mari was born out of a strangely, not that, of all things politics, I used to be a political consultant and specifically working abroad political races and had no background, of footwear whatsoever. And so I was basically just a tired of my job and was looking for something new. And I had learned while working abroad that in politics, you’re basically dressing up a package, uh, much like you wouldn’t consumer goods, you dress, a politician up, you attach messages to them, you send them out into the world. And if you’re doing your job right and they’re doing their job right, and you have success. And so when things came to a head and was just wanting to, a change of pace and my professional life, my wife and I are, we’re living in Indonesia at the time we decided to, to focus on flip flops.
Jeremy Stewart: 01:45 So specifically we were, uh, I remember the exact day it happened. We were actually sitting in our hotel room, and we were in Vietnam at the time, and we looked up over a cup of coffee and, and watching CNN, and terrorist had bombed our favorite restaurant in Jakarta. Oh, just a few miles from our home. And my wife, who looked at me, I looked to her, we said, uh, it might be time to go. And so we left Indonesia a few weeks later, and it really started to train and focus our thoughts on what was next. So we kept coming back to the flip flops for a lot of reasons, but, but chief among them was, it was still completely state industry, and so we thought we could bring something new and innovative and really taking a new fresh approach to, to how you market flip flops and how you create customer base then would’ve been taken previously. And so that was really the beginnings of our journey in Hari Mari, and to basically tied back into where the idea came from, Hari means of the sun in Indonesia, and Mari means at the sea in Latin. But it was just fun rhyming a combination of words that we thought customers would remember and have a good recall with. But it also gives a quick nod back to how we came up with the idea.
Allison Hartsoe: 02:54 Well, and I didn’t hear you say, Oh, I was executive at Nike for 15 years, and then I decided to go make my own footwear. Why footwear?
Jeremy Stewart: 03:04 Yeah, so we thought a lot about what we could provide in terms of value. Where is our value at in this equation? And we’d seen obviously in running shoes to coffee to you know, name of consumer good that you see had this exploded the last two or three decades. And we thought that there had been a lot of innovation, but the, the big exception came and, and really sandals, and we always joke that, how do you innovate a 4,000-year-old product category. It’s almost like what’s been done has been done, but specifically, uh, we didn’t really know. We just knew that it was interesting because there hadn’t been any innovation. So we got to work knowing what we know how to do. I sort of focus grouping people age 18 to 34 back in our hometown at Dallas.
Jeremy Stewart: 03:45 I was going on college campuses handing out flyers, uh, you know, offering 50 bucks and free pizza if you came to one of our focus groups. And I just sat behind a glass. I had one of my friends who’s really good at, at moderating focus groups, I gave him a script, and he moderated five or six focus groups and a hundred people, and we just engaged opinions and attitudes on flip flops and sandals, and sat back and listened on where people bought, how they bought, what they liked or didn’t like, and what they paid, how often they bought most importantly. And out of that, those focus groups. And how that feedback is really what drove the foundation for our business. So we almost let the customer’s feedback drive the formation of what would be different about Hari Mari, what would make us unique in that field.
Jeremy Stewart: 04:33 And those things were pretty clear from the get-go. We found that one with the people love flip flops or hate flip flops. Everyone hates a little piece that goes between your first and second toe. Going to cause so much pain that we call it the war on your toes, especially the first two months you buy a new pair of flip flops. People hate that. And we found also too that, it’s the chief reason why people don’t wear flip flops that about 40% we found at the population doesn’t even wear flip flops because they don’t like the feeling of that little piece between your first and second toe. So I said, okay, well let’s do something there. The second thing we’ve done is that while we knew women were open to color because of what was available in the market, largely for men, we didn’t know because we kept seeing iterations of black and Brown flipflops, and we’re just wondering was that the demand driven or was that supply driven?
Jeremy Stewart: 05:15 And uh, what we found after presenting some embarrassingly bad crayon drawings that I had made of a flip flops and putting them on this projector that must have shocked all of our respondents that something so crude could be considered, uh, uh, design. Uh, we found that guys were actually open to color. It just had to be presented in the right way. Pre we found that while we knew that running shoes were a growing table of footwear, we’re curious about flip flops when we found it and not only through our focus groups, but through our research independently, we found that flip flops tend to be the natural recipient of this kind of ever ceasing trend towards casual in America. Um, so it’s flip flops and running shoes. In fact, if you look at the kind of the growth story of flip flops and sandals, they’re only second to running shoes in terms of their growth the last decade, of course, all footwear categories.
Allison Hartsoe: 06:02 Wow. I had no idea.
Jeremy Stewart: 06:04 Yeah, no one did. I mean at least I didn’t. And I thought that we knew quite a bit about flip flops and sandals before we did the focus groups, is we let those key pieces of information be our guide or how are we were formed in the company. But then we also looked at just from our own background in advertising, specifically what was a political advertiser. And we’d go out, we’d pulled message test and research, and we take all the information we find we’d, we’d go out, and we’d ride all those scripts, produce all the ads, are ourselves and throwing them upon error. And so from an advertising perspective, just from a consumer of advertising, what we found really interesting is that all of the brands that were based in the US we’re doing so out of California, and almost every one of them advertises through a beach and water aesthetic.
Jeremy Stewart: 06:46 And so it’s almost a, an ocean and beach vibe that’s kind of permeated the industry. And because that’s what I was born, I was born in surf. I was born in surf culture. But if you look at the true growth story now buying flip flops and sandals, the growth really is no longer on the coast. I mean, it’s still there for sure. But the real growth is in the south and southeastern US and mostly in landlocked cities and states. So we said, okay, look, if we can change a tow piece to be more comfortable, if we can incorporate and jet color into a kind of a largely black and Brown flip flop arena, if we can also just come at this from a different marketing angle, and be able to talk in themes and tones and, and narratives that more closely resonate with a landlocked audience but do so in a very aspirational way. We might have something. And that’s really how it started. That’s why we chose footwear, and that’s why we specifically we homed in on flip flops and sandals, to begin with.
Allison Hartsoe: 07:34 That’s a great story. And it sounds like you were very customer focused from the get-go and I hear that in a lot of fast retail brands, but it seems like there’s more customer heart behind the brand, which is reflected in the community that you’ve built around the Hari Mari brand. Can you talk a little bit about why the community is such a key ingredient behind the brand?
Jeremy Stewart: 07:57 Rosa was a, an important step from day one. We wanted to create more than the flip flop company. We wanted to do more than just sell flip flops. And I think that that extends into a couple of different areas for us. One is my wife and I, before we even started this company, we knew we were going to help kids in some capacity. We’re passionate about helping kids. We had volunteered quite a bit while we were abroad. My wife, I’d volunteer for an orphanage, uh, outside of Jakarta. I produced a documentary film about hunger, malnutrition, Halifax kids in Southeast Asia. And we knew that whatever we would do next, we wanted to help kids in some capacity. So a lot of great brands doing things for kids abroad. And we wanted to help kids in the US, so we looked to where we could help the best.
Jeremy Stewart: 08:38 And we found that surprisingly that pediatric cancer is the most fatal disease among children. And it’s more fatal actually than all the other childhood diseases combined. And so we said, okay, look, whatever it is, whatever we land on, let’s help kids with cancer because 20 years from now we don’t want to look back. And just having peddled a product for that, that link of time, no, actually making a meaningful impact in dent and in an issue. And specifically for us. My wife was pregnant at the time. It kind of all dovetailed very nicely together. I remember when we made that decision, and we said it could look this up for us. It’s kind of selfishly a way for us to be able to feel like we’re doing more. But indirectly you’re uh, hopefully bringing meaning to something that probably is pretty meaningless on, on a larger scale in terms of just flip flops and sandals.
Jeremy Stewart: 09:24 And so, that was one important piece of hopefully creating something much larger than brand new community around a brand. But I think the other piece that we were fanatical about from the get-go was, and because we didn’t know anything about footwear was just how do you build a brand info? We’re specifically, and we looked for a lot of different touchstones to, to help guide us beyond customer feedback and beyond the focus groups, we started reading just any book we can get our hands on. And one of those, the key books that we found, my wife and I and, and that we just gravitated very strongly towards was Tony Shade, uh, his book called delivering happiness. And in the book, I mean there’s a lot of incredibly interesting themes that Tony brings to the table, but the one that I think it keeps coming back to the kind of the connective tissue and the glue is really making your customers feel like they have the best experience possible when they’re ordering or buying from you.
Jeremy Stewart: 10:15 And whether that’s from the way that products are presented to the way the ease with which customers can purchase them to the way that they arrive on your doorstep, to the ease with which they’re able to either return or exchange. I mean, all that matters. And, and so we really harnessed what we could out of that and tried to inject that into the early, early beginnings we’re a company. So from day one, we were fanatical about creating a great customer experience and having everyone walk away saying, wow, that was incredible. And, and hopefully telling their friends and family about it. And so to us that extends and kind of this broader conversation about experiential consumerism. For us, you’re buying a great pair of flip flops, yeah, it’s, it has to start there. It has to start with product first. But you’re really hopefully purchasing an experience in our minds.
Jeremy Stewart: 10:59 And so when you receive a pair of our flip flops, you order from harimari.com. You get flip flops. You get an incredible box and packaging that we spend a lot of time crafting. They’ll get a handwritten note from us that thanks you for your purchase that lets you know that you’re special in our eyes because you are. And beyond that, we often include something else in the box that you didn’t order it as some sort of value add, whether it be, uh, a leather key chain made out of the same leather as your flip flop or a canvas bag that you can take to the beach with you. It’s something that you didn’t pay for it, but we want you to know that we’re thinking about you. And that was paramount in our minds from day one. So it almost goes from product to philanthropy to experience and kind of this brief three-tiered system, this triangulated system that we had about creating community. And as a result of that, we felt like, and we continue to feel like we’re building more than just a flip flop company. At least that’s our hope.
Allison Hartsoe: 11:50 That’s an incredible amount of work to string together the customer experience into the philanthropy and the product. I think most people try to do one of those three well but don’t send to do all of them well. So congratulations for hitting the right mark. But I imagine that there must also be you know, that’s kind of a one-way push to the customer. What do you get back from the customer once you do that?
Jeremy Stewart: 12:15 That’s the question. And I think that the answer is that you hopefully get a customer for life and that’s really what we’re trying to achieve. I think that what we found entering the flip flop arena specifically. And I’m curious to know how this extends to other areas of consumer goods and maybe this is more of an apparel footwear issue, but we found that with flip flops specifically from our focus groups and our polling is that people tend to stay pretty loyal to a brand, and they don’t tend to branch out a lot. And I think part of that’s because as humans we just when we find something we liked, we stick with it. I think part of it is that, uh, in this specific arena, there are very few new entrance, I mean, contrary, right first thought, the barriers to entry to footwear to flip flop sandals is super high.
Jeremy Stewart: 12:58 And I, for a lot of different reasons, but, um, I think what you’re trying to achieve, you’re trying to get somebody to just to give you a shot. You know, we always say to our customers at, you know, just give us a shot at the title. Give us one, one try. You know, and what we’ve found is that because of the immediate comfort that we’ve created in the product first and then followed by the kind of the things we tried to build around the product, we find that customers who try us tend to stick with us for the long haul. And so for us, that means a know repeat purchase throughout the year, but repeat purchases through friends and family that they’ve talked to them about us. And so just referenced straight reference business. And for us that’s, that’s hugely impactful. I mean, to the point, you know, most customers buy one pair of flip flops a year, I think for normal brands.
Jeremy Stewart: 13:41 But for us, we found that really they’re buying two and three times a year, maybe even four. I read an email yesterday morning from a customer that said that this was their seventh purchase, and I looked at it very first purchase was less than two years ago. And for us, that was really interesting because not only were they buying seven times in two years, but they’re buying for themselves because they’re buying the same size, and they were buying all of our different colors within certain styles. It was almost contrary to what we first thought. We thought, Oh man, we’re setting up a, a lifetime customer to buy once a year. But really that’s completely false. What, what were we ended up doing is setting up elective customer to buy multiple times within one year for themselves and hopefully multiple times within friends and family members around them. Um, the idea is it’s a permanent community. It’s not a femoral, you know, and something that hopefully builds deep roots and lasts for a very long time.
Allison Hartsoe: 14:29 Well, and it seems that that’s what’s coming through is the heart. So the heart of the company is evident in the product that comes out, the little touches in the experience of receiving the product, and then the altruism that also reflects who you are as founders. So I think in many cases, maybe millennials, maybe other generations are looking for something that’s not so corporate, they want to bond with a brand in a way that they might bond with a friend. And when you open up that maybe it’s vulnerability around what you stand for that allows them to come closer to you. Would you agree?
Jeremy Stewart: 15:09 Completely! Yeah, I think that’s exactly right. And I think we’re past the point as consumers. We’re, we’re just buying for the product alone. And I think that’s really at the heart of what we’ve tried to thoughtfully built within our company. I know a lot of other brands obviously do the same thing, but I feel like in flip flops and sandals, we’re really doing that first and foremost and hopefully we’re leading in that area.
Allison Hartsoe: 15:33 Yeah, that makes sense. And just the fact that you get the buying cycle to be what it is. And we oftentimes talk about customer lifetime value on this show and building customer equity. And I wrestled with the balance between looking at things from a transactional point of view where it’s, it’s are you ready to buy the next one or what’s the purchase cadence to the heart, uh, which is, which is really, you know, why does somebody want to buy from you? And I think you’ve really hit on something interesting here where the customer falls in love with the brand and then buys all the different colors within the style. Is there a challenge that you get when, you know, once they’ve bought all the colors is they’re pressured to generate a thousand colors of every brand?
Jeremy Stewart: 16:17 I think there can be. So we wrestle about for sure. Do you go more colors or do you even take it into two different areas in terms of functionality, that’s where they were. I hope we’ve tried to be more vocal when we’re introducing and developing new product about how our customers use them. And this goes back to the first thoughts that flip flops have grown far beyond being just something you wear pre and post surf. I mean this has become an everyday footwear option for millions of Americans. And so I think when you’re, when you’re thinking about like that and you’re thinking about all the different topographies and different travels and trips and, and we kind of think of it as kind of these adventures, um, what does that adventure look like for each one of our customers, whether that’s to the ocean or to a lake or to a, uh, a mountainous or hilly area?
Jeremy Stewart: 17:01 Or is it something more urban? And so when we’re developing a product, we’re thinking about color for sure, but we’re, we’re now also thinking about, okay, where can we functionally put these on customers? And so that’s why you’ll see certain lines with the kind of predisposition towards the certain geographic area. So if you look at our parks line, for example, there’s almost like a hiking boot outsole on it. And really we’re trying to create a functional piece of open toe foot where that people can wear on, you know, trails and, and uh, outdoors and hopefully make it feel like it’s more of a camp-themed flipflop option. On the other spectrum, we have a line we call dunes, which is a little more water-friendly and they float in the water there. Antimicrobials, they don’t stink. They have these little sipping footwear channels in the insole that we took from the outsole of a boat shoe, that channel way water from your foot, your foot dries faster.
Jeremy Stewart: 17:52 So all these things work. We’re trying to think about, you know, design and development and hopefully we’re being thoughtful about it. But yeah, I mean I think that extends the color extends to functionality. And then I think it also extends to a kind of price point to a certain extent. I mean what we would do found that in our focus grouping is that there is a customer who will pay no more than $10 for a pair of flip flops. And they’re in a lot of times don’t willingly by five to six pairs of those flip flops in a year. But they won’t spend more than $10 each time. And so what we tried to do is, is we tried to, to almost move in a different direction and where we said, okay, not only are we going to create a great experience for our customers, we also want to create hopefully more conscious consumer from the product so that we creating something for the long term and not something that’s going to go back into the landfill and a few months.
Jeremy Stewart: 18:37 And so I think that with our higher price points were seeking better materials, we’re seeing better construction methods, and we kind of marry all that together with color and in functionality. Hopefully, you’re seeing something that lasts for a really long time, stays out of landfills that you’re able to take on in certain different environments depending on where you’re going or where your life is leading you. Oh yeah. Then also at the same time, every, every pair you purchase, uh, gives back in the same brands. So, uh, to our pediatric cancer initiative called blocks wide cancer. So that’s what we’re trying to, to think about when we’re thinking about how do we not only ingratiate ourselves for the customer base, how do we build that loyalty? How do we retain a customer for life, but how are we really meeting their needs instead of just throwing a product at them, expecting them to buy it? Like I think you know, it’s been a kind of a passive strategy of other brands,
Allison Hartsoe: 19:25 so it’s pretty clear that you’re tapping into a number of tribes, people who care about sustainability, people who care about maybe altruistic causes and pediatric cancer as well as high-quality materials and they liked this casual lifestyle. When you build the community, and you reach into those tribes, do you get any discord where maybe a tribe doesn’t want to resonate with your brand or maybe they push back on you in some way? Are there areas where when you’re building a community you have to be careful?
Jeremy Stewart: 20:02 Unquestionably, yeah. I mean, look, if you lighthearted examples, there is a very hardcore pronated foot community that loves to wear flip flops, but that doesn’t have a lot of options that are available to them right now, And whether it be through construction and what their design and development. One thing we’ve found is that there are customers who want very specific types of footwear that you just can’t quite offer in our efforts to be a little more mainstream and hopefully a little bit more appealing to all. And so, um, yeah, we’ve heard feedback from people who have pronated feet, they want something a little different. We have had people who want, you know, zero drop in their, their flip flops. We have people who want a,
Allison Hartsoe: 20:48 sorry, what does zero drop mean?
Jeremy Stewart: 20:50 It means just that there’s no angle of decline from the sole of your heel to put your toes. So it’s just completely flat. And a lot of our flip flops have a little bit of declination between the heel and the toe. So, um, there’s a kind of a flat-footed audience. There’s even a, an audience that wants to see certain types of materials. And certainly, I think one great thing about different viewpoints is that you get a lot of ideas. You know, our customers have almost single-handedly given us every idea we’ve had. I think we probably wrongly received a credit for it that, you know, the customers gave. I mean even going back to our initial focus groups, even in our little pat did memory foam tow piece that now you know we have an exclusive right on that basically mitigates all the breaking periods associated with flip flops. You know, kind of used to hawk people’s toes. That little idea of foam between somebody’s toes or was an idea from you know, born of our focus groups.
Allison Hartsoe: 21:43 And I just personally want to thank you for that.
Jeremy Stewart: 21:48 To be honest. It’s been switched. What, you know, among other things to make it stand apart. But I think back to your point is yeah, you have to be careful and, and, and maybe looking to placate every audience, and you can’t be everything to everybody, right? But I do think that there is a huge value in listening to ideas and to questions or, or concerns or, or once because that’s really where design and development kind of merge for future products.
Allison Hartsoe: 22:12 Is there a process that you have internally for listening to social media or taking in the information? How do you know that the comments and the feedback coming in are from customers versus non-customer? Does it matter? Do you when you build a community?
Jeremy Stewart: 22:26 No, I think you have to listen to both equally. I mean obviously, if you have somebody who’s been blind, your flip flops for the past seven years, and there’s um, a comment with regard to the evolution of a product or there’s kind of a frame of reference from the beginning. I think you’re probably going to listen to that a little more than you would somebody who just discovered your product yesterday. But I think it’s important to listen to both. I mean you have to be able to filter what’s good and in terms of good criticism and good feedback versus something that maybe is not understood or is just kind of a fly by a curbside diagnosis of your product. That makes sense. And so, so yeah, I mean for us we don’t have a systematic social media filter or systematic customer service filter that brings a lot of these ideas from, you know, there are mostly from customers to the top.
Jeremy Stewart: 23:16 We do make a concerted effort within our company to make everybody read all of them because it does matter on so many different levels from you know, the people who worked for Hari Mari that are in customer service that you are in contact with our customers day in, day out. Obviously, that’s a hugely important deal for them to be able to receive that feedback and to be able to pass along. But I mean it really extends from everyone down to our interns for example, to knowing what our customers are saying about our products so that they can address it either directly with customers when they talked to them at events or in our stores or they can just be able to kind of have the know-how and the knowledge when they’re talking on the phone to somebody who calls up out of the blue. So I think there’s a, there’s a lot of areas that being able to kind of holistically look at feedback effect. But I think that the main point that I guess I’m trying to make here is that it’s important for all levels of our business to be able to feel bad, to be able to soundboard that from design development, advertising, marketing, customer service, even our warehouse. I mean fulfillment is a huge deal for us since we fulfill everything ourselves. And so if we have a customer feedback that, you know, hits upon fulfillment in some capacity, we want to hear about it. And I think that it’s a hugely important deal.
Allison Hartsoe: 24:25 Do you think that’s one of the necessary ingredients for building community is you have to look at the comments internally. It can’t just be a one-way content creation strategy.
Jeremy Stewart: 24:37 Unquestionably. Yeah, you have to be willing to hear the good, the bad and the ugly with all of it. And to respect it as well. I think they’re probably quite a few companies and brand owners that dismiss things out of hand because they don’t want to read negative or critical remarks. And I think that a while we don’t have a ton, we do listen very closely when we do receive them because it’s such an important deal for us. And I think that goes back Allison, to kind of our first topic is creating community. Well, if you’re not listening to the community that you’re limiting within, then you’re certainly not doing anything to advance your brand. Um, there’s an evolution here. You grow with your community. You grow with the customers and the people that brought you there. And if you turn a deaf ear to all that, it really becomes less of a community and more of a, almost like a brand dictatorship, right?
Jeremy Stewart: 25:27 It’s product pushing, product pushing. Exactly. And that goes back to the kind of the fallacy of what, you know, brands of yesteryear, it’s still continuing to do. And hopefully what we’re trying to change with our own brand is that you’re really creating something that’s wanted out there and that people have expressed a desire for. And you’re basically just trying to make that a reality versus just taking something that you like. Uh, which by the way, I’ve done before, and it’s failed miserably. We’ve had designs where we thought we were just the most brilliant thing, uh, you know, since sliced bread. And, uh, we would put it out, and it would do horribly. And, and it’s a good lesson to learn that you really want to bring things to fruition that are wanted by others, not just by you.
Allison Hartsoe: 26:07 I love that. I love that. So let’s say that I want to build a community around my brand. What do you think I should focus on first, second, third? What’s the right way to go about it?
Jeremy Stewart: 26:19 I think that product has to become first because if you can’t make a great product, the rest of the community almost doesn’t matter or won’t have a foundational live on. So I think that there’s a kind of a foundational piece to this and just focusing on product, product, product and making sure that that’s really high quality, uh, less brass that’s been key. And then kind of looking at experience around that. And so being able to kind of build a, a very, a worthwhile experience that basically matches the quality level of your product. And then beyond that, for us, again, being able to build communities, and the way that we like to do that is obviously through our philanthropic thrower and environmentally conscious kind of approach. And so again, part of that is selfishly because we want to be good stewards in what we’re doing as a brand and, and so there’s, there’s definitely a part of this is self-motivated, but I think there’s also, to your point, a lot of that hopefully gains traction within the community both in terms of hey look, there’s a product to support, and if we’re going to be buying a product anyway, why not bought something that actually gives back and held a certain cause have greater implications on our environment was so yeah, we, we hope those are the things that are, or things that people take into consideration.
Jeremy Stewart: 27:27 But I think that it has to start with a product and then you can, you build experiences and, and uh, communities are around that.
Allison Hartsoe: 27:34 It almost sounds like it’s concentric circles where product is in the center and then the experience of enjoying the product is the second circle. And then maybe who you are and the essence of the founders of the brand is the third circle or do they interlock differently?
Jeremy Stewart: 27:51 Yeah, I think the circle ideas exactly spot on. But there are parts of it that I think that almost have their own lives that live outside of the circle and the feed into an integrate within that core. And so I think for example if you looked at or flop sweating cancer initiative, there’s a whole piece of our business that is, um, it has nothing to do with flip flops. It’s really just about giving back and going to our partner hospitals and spending time with kids and families who are kind of in this struggle in this battle for their lives. And, um, and for us, it’s a hugely important piece of why we do this. But it’s also in a lot of ways it’s its own standalone piece that while connected to flip flops through, obviously our brand umbrella in through, you know, charitable percentage, uh, donated for each pair sold. It almost has its own life. And if that makes any sense. There are certain parts of it that kind of live outside, but that’s the one great example I can give where it does. So for the positive.
Allison Hartsoe: 28:52 And I think that’s where it’s hard from a quantitative standpoint, you know, if you’re trying to say, well what’s the Roi of sponsor Oregon Pediatric Cancer, I’m not sure that you can, you know, what’s the Roi of being in love with a brand or being in love with your spouse. It’s, it’s so hard to go on if I, I can’t measure it and dinners.
Jeremy Stewart: 29:12 Yeah, this is where, um, you know, accountants and numbers, hawks, uh, you know, end up scratching your heads. But I think that there has to be a part of a business that is not empirical and there has to be a part of a business that is purely emotionally motivated. And maybe that’s part of brand building. I don’t know, maybe as part of creating an emotional bond with your customers. But for us there definitely is a piece of what we do here and whether it be in our flops flooding, cancer charitable component or whether it’s in, you know, creating great packaging even though it means reducing that Roi or, or you know, reducing our gross profits or whether it means committing more resources to customer service, then probably many other brands do because just going that extra mile and taking an extra step and spending more time with our customers makes us feel like we’re actually doing something for the positive.
Jeremy Stewart: 30:07 I think we kind of look at all those things. There is a healthy argument to be made that if you’re building a brand, you’re just looking at the bottom line Roi, you’re probably not going to be a brand for long. And to your point earlier, that probably was not the case 10 20 years ago. Uh, but today I think as we build these entities and it has, they almost take on a life of their own. This is Corey Martin brand. Hopefully, if we’re doing our jobs right, he’s kind of its own breathing, living entity. If you don’t have passion around or if you don’t have an emotional nucleus, it really can’t survive on its own.
Allison Hartsoe: 30:42 Perfect. I’ve loved everything we’ve talked about. Jeremy. If people want to reach you as our way they can get in touch to talk more about community or other topics. Yeah. Cool.
Jeremy Stewart: 30:51 My email is Jeremy and [inaudible] dot com j. E r. E. M. Y. Hi Mr Com. Uh, I encourage all your beautiful listeners out there to, to uh, to check out or footwear and give us a shot at the title so to speak at [inaudible] dot com and then I would in that same breath say that you know, slip, appear on, then we’ll, we’ll take the Pepsi challenge so to speak against him. He had the upper hand and flip flops out there. So yeah, those are good starting points to connect with Hari Morin. Certainly. Thank you for making all this possible and for your time today. I really appreciate it, Allison.
Allison Hartsoe: 31:21 Yeah, I really love the aspects that we talk about. We get oftentimes. So, um, I call it navel gazing. So quantitatively navel-gazing and you know is this, is this going to actually move the needle for the business at the bottom line and we forget about this other piece that you know, like you said, the business isn’t all about being empirical, that that’s kind of the past and the way we build in the future is so much more around the heart, so thank you for sharing all of your ideas. As always, links to everything we discussed our ad ambition data.com/podcast Jeremy, I hope you’ll join us at some time in the future to share more great ideas with us.
Jeremy Stewart: 31:59 Well, probably more than you ever cared to know about flip flops, but I sure hope it wasn’t too bad.
Allison Hartsoe: 32:06 Fantastic. Remember when you use your data effectively, you can build customer equity. It’s not magic. It’s just a very specific journey that you can follow to get results. Thank you for joining today’s show. This is your host, Allison Hartsoe and I have two gifts for you. First, I’ve written a guide for the customer centric Cmo, which contains some of the best ideas from this podcast, and you can receive it right now. Simply text, ambition data, one word to three one nine nine six and after you get that white paper, you’ll have the option for the second gift, which is to receive the signal. Once a month. I put together a list of three to five things I’ve seen that represent customer equity signal, not noise, and believe me, there’s a lot of noise out there. Things I include could be smart tools. I’ve run across articles, I’ve shared cool statistics or people and companies I think are making amazing progress as they build customer equity. I hope you enjoy the CMO guide and the signal. See you next week on the customer equity accelerator.