#47 • How to pay customers $180 to sharpen their cutlery. Ugh.
The woes of media in an early stage.
This is 3Bits & Change, Joseph's email about building a direct to consumer business on the internet. Today’s email was written to a coffee shop mix on Spotify. I can see Greg’s face cringing. :) Thanks Spotify.
Good morning,
I had a fun exchange with a customer in NH this week. She mentioned she had a bunch of cooking on the schedule for when her knives returned. So, I asked what exactly.
Hi Joseph, You are right that this is a transition time of year. In New Hampshire fall has arrived and comfort food is calling. I am planning on a delicious family recipe for a pot roast/sauerbraten dinner that’s easy to adjust to your own taste preference, a shepherd’s pie using lamb and colcannon for the mashed potatoes, and braised lamb shanks in a mushroom gravy. Hope these ideas give you some inspiration. Thanks again for your great service. Happy cooking to you too! C
Sent from my iPad
I needed to look up “Sauerbraten” and thought, “Oh, I’ve eaten something like that.” It’s a national dish of Germany, says the Google machine. And, those potatoes… Irish with a hint of kale? Hum…
What’s on your upcoming “transition time of year” menu?
We had lamb chops, chicken and mediterranean sides over the weekend. Oh my. So fun. And also, simply silly wine friends shared.
The Angelus was stellar. The Fonsalette, not so much. To be honest… this bottle was over aged. It was my first time smelling/tasting/seeing that. It was brown-ish on the edges. It was over oxygenated immediately as it hit your tongue - no need to swirl or mix air with strange sounds or faces. And, it did not get better with time. Both were harvested in 1995.
Hot tips: I’ll cook the chops to 150 degrees next time vs 160 (as instructed). Also, drink the wine. Yeah, you want to age ‘em. You might regret drinking them too soon. I can assure you, it’s easy to regret drinking them too late too. And, ise’t that a bit like life. As best you can… be in the moment. Own it. Soak it in. Enjoy! Not so soon. Not too late. Pick your times and enjoy!
A physical Vivront update
The contractor is in the space. Walls are being removed and others made flat. Paint is being prepared. And I’m on my way to CA to finalize an order of cutlery to have in shop for demo, classes and retail. Think about it… how many times have you purchased a knife after having tested it out? I bet it’s very seldom, if ever. We’re going to change that and provide access to a range of knives with an emphasis on Japanese makers.
Anyway… back to the store, at our current rate, we’ll be able to invite you to the shop (for sharpening and limited retail) by Oct 15th. These next two weeks are going to fly! Wahoo.
Now, on to some advertising learning.
I have dreams of getting a cash machine going with this business. It’d work like this. Feed the ad machine $1000. We’d sell +$2000 in sharpening. Repeat
Well, we keep feeding the ad machines money (FB/Insta, Google, Bing) and we get some exposure… but they don’t convert at a higher rate. We pay people to sharpen their knives with us. That is to say, we run ads, lose money on clicks to purchase ratio and burn up more than the margin on the products. A lot more. Optimization continues to be required.
Digital ads and direct to consumer business were different back in the day - like 1.5 years ago. :) Remember when social sites seemed to just know what you wanted to purchase next? Simply put, that kind of “targeting” costs more now. It just does not work like it did before.
So, we’ve joined learning groups (credentialed ones). We’ve optimized pages. We’ve dropped the price. We’ve raised the price. We’ve tested content. We’ve tested order. We’ve had a gift with purchase. We’ve changed the words we bid on. We’ve changed the creative. We’ve hired creators to make video ad spots and then run those in FB, etc. We’ve sharpened for free and had others share their reviews. We’ve tried a slew of things - and a slew more. So, what’s left? Well, actually, the list is long (open a store is on the list - BTW). But what to do now?
We tried a podcast
Bit #1 • Context
The knife sharpening market is big, 120 Million households have kitchen knives. 90% of them replying to a recent survey from a big knife brand say they’ve never sharpened their knives. Maybe honed. Maybe. But, they have not sharpened.
Awareness is an issue. Do people know they can, should, sharpen? Nope. Not in masses.
Ugh, persons don’t likely think about sharpening. It’s too easy to apply more pressure and keep “crushing” food in our kitchens. We buy $75 worth of proteins and tear them apart with our dull knives. Maybe it was not modeled growing up? Maybe it’s something to be afraid of, a knife? Maybe the perceived pay off from sharpening is not greater than spending an hour running the errand. And so many more reasons.
We hire out maintenance on our cars and buy maintenance plans for our appliances but little is done for the cutting tools. Most of the time, nothing is done. And in the process, folks have forgotten what it’s like to use a sharp knife since it’s been so long since it was new.
The thinking with a mail-order service is to make it easy. Make it like the internet. Why not, right? Remember before you every purchased wine on the internet? Appliances? How about, a direct to consumer brand for kitchen knife service? Afterall, there are services for testing lawn dirt and custom mixing fertilizer (how is that safe to ship). So also, let’s make knife service as easy as the internet including custom packaging meant for knives and pre-printed, prepaid shipping labels to boot. Easy.
Mailing + Trust
The fact that the knives were shipped to the store they were purchased does not seem to comfort people. They don’t want to ship their knives. However, they are much more interested if you pack and send them. They’ll drop them off and are fine if you mail them back.
I think it’s that they don’t want to risk injuring someone - including themselves. And, that’s fair.
So, who do we get around that?
Bit #2 • Have a trusted cooking person endorse the service
So, the thinking goes like this. What if a trusted voice in cooking talked about the problem of dull knives and offered the solution in intimate audio - a podcast. Then people would ship their knives. Right?
Our good friend Tim put together this spot. THANKS TIM!
“Did you know something like 90% of American households have never sharpened their knives? When was the last time you had your knives actually sharpened, not just honed?
I’m not surprised by that statistic. Sharpening knives correctly, safely, isn’t easy! It takes time and skill.
But now we have no excuse. Because now there’s VIVRONT. V-I-V-R-O-N-T dotcom. The fast, safe, professional way to get your knives sharpened. Chefs all over America are sending their knives to Vivront, and getting world class sharpness back in a matter of days.
It’s easy: Go to Vivront.com/milk. Use code “177”. The team will send you safe Priority Mail packaging meant for shipping knives. You ship your dull knives to Vivront with the pre-paid return postage. They fix nicks, bumps and bevels and sharpen yours up, and return them back to you in less than a week. Act now to have them back by Thanksgiving.
That’s Vivront.com/milk. Use code “177” to have one knife sharpened for FREE when you order 5 or more. You won’t believe how much better cooking will feel… with your knives newly restored, and newly sharpened by Vivront.com.”
Bit #3 • Negative revenue is not sustainable
I could tell inside the hour that the podcast dropped on Friday. The delightful Shopify cash register sound started chiming every 10-15 mins. Yet, it only lasted a few hours and trailed off. Then they started again on Saturday morning for a bit and it was done. I can guess that folks were out walking in the morning and decided to take action - something like that.
As it stands, including shipping and excluding hours spent sharpening, we paid listeners $180 per order to sharpen their knives. :) This is the amount spent on the ad plus shipping divided by the number of orders with the code mentioned in the ad.
If we made a dollar on the effort we’d do it again. If it cost $10 an order we’d do it again for the sake of lifetime value and referrals. At $180, we’re not ready to buy the ads again.
At this point we’re going to redirect capital to the shop. The brand building and conversion in direct response marketing via podcast will have to wait.
Yet, if you know anyone running a podcast and would like an excuse to talk kitchen things, knives, etc. We’d be happy to be their guest. :) Let us know. We know podcasts can sell. We’re just going to direct our capital elsewhere.
Sum
All in all, a podcast ad does not work for us right now. There are a few things I’d change.
I want to be on podcasts vs pay to be on them (for 60 seconds). Know a podcast where it’s general interest and home cooks might be listening. Let us know. Or, let the podcasters know whom are looking for content blocks. We can talk and make kitchen knives interesting for however long they’d want. :)
It might be absolutely NOT the time to run a podcast ad. We’re headed into a busy season. Yes, and, millions of phones are being purchased this time of year. Each of them prompts their owner to download all their podcasts - AGAIN. It’s not the time to be growing awareness or converting via ads that get downloaded, charged and never listened to.
Insist that the host experience the service before reading the script. There was emotion lacking in our read. Emotion is a great influencer than facts.
Mention how silly easy it is to order on mobile including payment types like Apple Pay, Google Pay and Shop Pay. Folks on a podcast need to know they can order right then and there.
Media planners - I went to a cooking show. Maybe a general interest life topics show for parents is a better placement?
Double check impression counts and duration. I was under the impression 100,000 impressions were going to be served over a month. They were all “served” in 2.5 days. That leaves no room for the audience to have more than one impression. This is a HUGE miss step. It’ll will take another $6k to get in front of those same ears 2-3 more times. We’re going to invest that money in a physical store instead and leave the ads for next time.
Change
The White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health happened last week. Here is the 44 page National Strategy that was presented. Inside the administration declared its commitment to advance “free healthy school meals for all.” LINK
We’ve been connecting with content makers to test the service and offer feedback by video. Here are two that returned this week.
The House and Senate are considering the 2022 Child Nutrition Reauthorization (CNR) in the coming weeks. It’s been over 10 years since it’s been reauthorized. It is to be revisited every 5 years.
National School Lunch week is next week, starting Oct 10. Consider thanking the staff at your school for their work in getting their programs going this fall!
On Your Way
Last week the trees on the lake were all still overly green. I mean, you could see a hint of yellow here and there like a few white hairs in the sideburns of a 40 year old man. This morning? It was a whole other story. It’s like they’ve all aged a decade in 5 days.
Happy fall!
Plan a sauerbraten dinner, or something similar. There is a family, and Vivront customer, in NH that’ll be eating the same thing along side you this week!
Follow Vivront.com on TikTok, Instagram and Facebook.
Follow @josephrueter on Instagram or Linkedin.
Order kitchen knives sharpened or give the gift of sharp at Vivront.com.