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From Friends to Inventors to Brand Builders

42 min listen

Donna and Andrea sell makeup glasses. If you don’t know what that is, jump on the episode to learn how they prototyped their product from scratch and how they now market something people are not familiar with.

Transcript

Jesse: Hey, Richard. It’s a podcast day.

Richard: It’s that day. I love it. Sunny Friday, another one. San Diego.

Jesse: Yeah. Friday in the studio. And today it’s awesome because I love the podcast, but my favorite part about it is when we get to talk to real Ecwid store owners. So we have some store owners on today, and even better, they actually invented a product, they created a prototype that met one of their own needs. And you know, basically inventor through building a brand and building a business. So it should be awesome.

Richard: Yeah, I’d like to say it’s the American Dream but this isn’t even happening in America.

Jesse: We’re going to our international users. We’re going across the pond to the U.K. So you get to hear a different accent today. Let’s bring in our guests. This is Donna and Andrea from Flipzeesglasses.com. How’s it going?

Donna and Andrea: Hi! Good evening!

Jesse: Good evening for you and good morning over here in San Diego. So it’s Friday. You’re done. Now, do you have day jobs or is this a full-time business?

Donna and Andrea: Flipzeesglasses is a bit of a side hustle for us. We both have full-time day jobs.

Jesse: All right. Perfect. You’re not alone. By the way, it’s very common. All right. Let me get the spelling of Flipzeesglasses in there. It’s F-L-I-P-Z-E-E-S-G-L-A-S-S-E-S DOT COM. For people that are listening so don’t type that while you’re driving, everybody. But Donna and Andrea let’s hear about… First of all, you guys are in business together. Were you friends before you started the business?

Andrea: Yes. Yes. We were friends. We met about 15 years ago. Both Donna and I I live in the same area in London called Brixton. However, we didn’t know each other, but we had a mutual friend who lived in Vietnam. I actually happened to work in Vietnam, and I got to meet him. I know him, and then Donna and her husband came to visit our mutual friend and we met and we have been friends ever since. We happen to live within five minutes of each other now.

Jesse: That’s perfect. So you met across the globe basically, and you happen to live five minutes away.

Andrea: I guess.

Donna: I have to get to Vietnam to meet Andrea.

Jesse: That’s perfect. And how did this product begin? Was there a need for it?

Donna: Yes, definitely.

Andrea: I’ll let Donna answer that one. It was her initial idea.

Donna: We both are ladies of a certain age. And when you get to that certain age you have to wear reading glasses which is fine. You know it happens. But if you like to wear makeup as well, when you’re trying to put your makeup on you can’t see without your reading glasses. And then when you put your reading glasses on you can’t put your makeup on because the glasses are in the way. So it is a problem because obviously, we don’t want to give up wearing makeup.

Jesse: And you want to be able to see yourself applying the makeup, that’s what you need (laughing.)

Donna: You need to be able to see. It does help (laughing.)

Jesse: Vision is important. Yes, I agree. By the way, I’m wearing my 40s as well as we speak here. I’ve had LASIK and I’m wearing glasses. I don’t wear makeup but I do understand…

Donna: There’s still time for that (laughing.)

Jesse: True, I guess.

Andrea: So that’s how it came about really. The initial idea was we need to come up with something that actually works. And I’ve developed products for a high-street retailer in U.K. so I suggested: “Let’s just come up with the concept. How would that actually work?” And then we can get it. I can get it materialized. I can get it done with one of my suppliers because I’m sure that wouldn’t be a problem.

Jesse: Sure.

Andrea: Donna is a very technical type. She’s an electrician by trade. So she’s very skilled and likes to do things with the hands and very creative. She’s great, she’s amazing. One day we actually sat down around the kitchen table with the first material that we had at hand, which happens to be electrical wiring.

Jesse: It’s very flexible, right?

Donna: Not very comfortable though (laughing.)

Jesse: Well, true. Yeah. That may be not the most stylish glasses there but…

Andrea: It was blue. We actually happened to have pictures of our first prototype that was created by handmade wire glasses on our website. That’s our story. And it’s not a pretty thing to look at but it’s just so funny.

Jesse: Well, that’s awesome, I mean I think that’s where a lot of products actually do start from. The first prototype is usually pretty ugly. The first website’s pretty ugly. So that’s pretty normal. That’s awesome. Do you still have the original prototype?

Donna: Yeah, somewhere in a box (laughing.)

Jesse: You better save that. That could be a collector’s item some day.

Andrea: Might end up in a museum.

Jesse: Yeah, exactly. Just make sure you took that away. So you had the prototype. You got it started and it was that… Maybe describe for people listening. What exactly are Flipzeesglasses? Because when I first saw the website, I thought it was like where you flip them up like sunglasses, but that’s not really the case. Can you describe it for people listening?

Donna: Ok. So basically, the glasses have only got one lense, one magnifying lens which relates to your reading glasses strength. And the lens match from one side of the glass to the other so you can. You have the lens on one eye, you look through the lens to see, to do the makeup on your other eye. And then you can flip the lens over sort of like 180 degrees to the first eye, look through that to see to the other eye. But there’s a reason our glasses are different from similar range products. They just don’t work because we tried them. You can then turn the whole set of glasses upside down, so you can get access to basically like your eyebrows to do your eyebrows and your mascara. But you can also do either eyeliner or concealer. And so this is what makes our glasses completely different from anything else that’s out there.

Jesse: Ok. Got it. Yeah. And when I looked at the picture, I saw the idea where you could take them off and completely flip them upside down, but you can also move the lens if you wanted to leave them on. You could kind of flip it over to the other eye as well.

Donna: Exactly. Exactly. So the frame is slim so it doesn’t get in the way. And we find that this gives you just much more options to be able to apply your makeup using the magnifying lens.

Jesse: Wow. That’s awesome.

Richard: So how long have you been doing this now?

Andrea: We had our first birthday day in November, a year of having the product.

Donna: Yeah, having the product. But I think the development took…

Andrea: The development took longer because we actually didn’t take it very seriously. We talked about for long and often played around with it. Drank some wine and laughed about it, had some silly videos. And we just decided: actually, it does make sense. This makes sense. Let’s just do it. Let’s try it.

Jesse: I think that’s going… Go ahead.

Andrea: Go. You go ahead.

Jesse: I said that’s the perfect way to create a product. I think for a while it needs to exist in your head and wine needs to be drunk in order to really deeply think about it.

Richard: And when it keeps coming up, right, when it keeps coming back and you just can’t let the idea go. That’s part of it. I mean, in some ways, not in some ways, in a lot of ways, it was harder for you to get the product than it was probably to do the majority of the Ecwid store. All right, I’m not to put it on the spot but that took some time I’m sure. I mean you did you get it patented and go through that whole process too or?

Donna: Yeah, I mean we… this is probably what took the time. We took quite a bit of advice about should we patent it. We looked to that and it was quite expensive and lengthy process and we didn’t know where it was going. So we decided to take a middle ground and we’ve registered the design and we’ve registered trademark, the name FlipZees. And we felt that was the best we could do. You know, that has to be a balance really.

Jesse: Then move on to build and sell after that.

Donna: Exactly. When we get famous and start selling millions, we can worry about it then. But you know none of this would have been possible without Andrea and her amazing contacts because I think Andrea must know every single person who has played a part in this and has so-called favors. I don’t know how she does it. She’s amazing.

Andrea: Thanks, Donna.

Donna: We never would’ve got here, unless it would be for her.

Andrea: I think she’s over-exaggerating a little bit.

Jesse: Well, nobody says you can’t use your previous experience to build a business here. If you have contacts, use them if you have. There’s no such thing as an unfair advantage, right. So you made a prototype and then how do you get these made? Do you send prototypes? Do you have to do CAD drawings or how do you go about taking something from an electrical wire into actually making, getting it made somewhere? How is that process?

Andrea: Well, once we had actual design and the mechanism, how we could work and was able to explain it to someone. I contacted someone I know that produces glasses and sunglasses in the United Kingdom for the whole of High Street and Eye contact. One of my contacts was very keen, he said it’s a great idea. There’s not much happening in that glass as well. So he was quite keen to explore that himself. And he had it done for us in China. We had several samples done. We had technical issues that to start with. We’re trying to overcome this, factoring was quite keen to work with us as because they thought something different and that’s how it came about.

Jesse: Ok. So you knew somebody local that had already experienced making glasses and getting them made in China. How many prototypes did you have to get sent back and forth? I know that can be kind of pain.

Andrea: Maybe four by four. Yes. OK. Not too many. It wasn’t too many actually.

Jesse: Oh that’s good. And what was the minimum order that they required for the first run?

Andrea: Twelve hundred units.

Jesse: Twelve hundred units, OK.

Andrea: One hundred. It’s not actually that many considering we have two colors and each color and full strength, reading glass strength. So it’s not that my eight excuses in organ total.

Jesse: Ok. Got it. So each set of glasses has its own strength. Those are not interchangeable. So you have to order. OK. Got it. So now you hope you guessed right and that all those different magnifications are all evenly distributed among your customers.

Andrea: Think it’s a guessing game at this stage without having a history of what sells and what wouldn’t. We didn’t know.

Donna: What’s been quite interesting actually that we thought that we can make applications a bit more popular actually. Being the stronger magnification that has been more popular indicating perhaps that our target audience is actually older than us because we don’t need quite need the number threes yet. Yeah. So.

Richard: So this might be a stupid question but do you tend to need to increase the magnification? Should you maybe make these be interchangeable in the next iteration of this? I don’t know the numbers but let’s just say 1 through 5 because I don’t have glasses yet. If 1 is the weakest and 5 is the strongest, if every two years they need a new lens, may be at some point you want them to be able to sell the lenses separately.

Andrea: Yes, we have considered that but we are not quite variant of the stage. What we are advising customers when they come to us and say: “Oh I’ve got one eye a lot stronger than the other”. It is possible to go to your optician to get the prescription and get it changed in the frame because a frame is flexible enough to have it for for a professional to inside the new lens in as long as it is thick. However, I’m not sure how that would work with the rotation of the glasses because it’s 360 degrees so that might not work. So you’ll have to contact your optician for that sort of thing. Well, we tend to tell our customers when they come into question now is that if they got very different prescription to each eye, they can buy two pairs and use one for one eye and the one for the other. It’s not ideal obviously but you know that’s the only way around it. At the moment.

Jesse: That’s the answer I like. You buy two.

Donna: Just buy more pairs. This is our first, you know, first production run. And there are things that we will change when we do our next production run. And we need to look at the cost of producing a pair of glasses with an interchangeable lens against the cost of the standard glasses and is it going to prohibit, they’re not particularly high-value product. So you know, after two years by maybe you do it, you just buy another pair.

Richard: That makes sense. Where I was going with that was once you look at it and especially after you have a conversation, and just someone heard this podcast and then went to your site and saw the video and saw how it works. It seems as if from a marketing perspective education is a big piece of this because you alluded to just a little bit ago a friend that worked and said there’s not much going on in the sunglass market. I mean for the most part it’s “Do they look good on me”, right? That’s usually what people are saying. And yet they’re so good-looking already. They really are good-looking glasses just sitting there as I’m looking on the website that it took me a moment to even get what was really going on because I almost expected to see when Jesse first told me about it, I wasn’t expecting it to look like a nice pair of glasses for some reason. And they actually look like nice glasses. So is education a big part of what you’ve seen as been the thing that would get people to move or buy these more than anything?

Donna: Yeah, I think so and that’s the really challenging part because you’re trying to sell a product which you have to also inform people about. They might not even know that they are the one that they need, that there is a solution to that problem. So I think that’s the challenge that we face. Plus the fact that you’re never going to wear these walking down the street, therefore, it’s wearing in your bathroom or in the toilet to touch up your makeup. So there is a bit of a hidden product I suppose.

Richard: That’s part of what I liked about it though. You know, when I first said it they took me by surprise as I wasn’t expecting in my mind as I will “Why would they still make them look like a nice pair of glasses?” And then the way that I answered myself was “Well, you want to see what your makeup looks like with a nice pair of glasses on”, right. So you’re not going to make some big orange ones or something like that.

Andrea: Exactly. Andrea was quite insistent on that and I think she was right. I think to make the product even though it’s not really going to be seen why not make it nice and pretty and you want to use it. So she’s quite right.

Jesse: This is for stylish ladies that are doing their makeup. You know you get to you have to. Yeah, exactly.

Andrea: Basically, I don’t think I’d like to be seen in those glasses. Yes, it does help me. Not on a daily basis so I’m not complaining.

Richard: So you’re at your birthday, in November you got your product. When did the store actually go live?

Donna: It’s about two days before Christmas. It was really badly time-based.

Andrea: Neither of us have any experience. Instead of doing that sort of thing. I developed the product. We all got it and we thought “OK, we get the product to the UK”. And then we can do things we haven’t had any marketing strategy. We haven’t any marketing plan and no calendar. When do we, how do we launch? We just said “Oh, let’s just start with the Facebook page. OK”. So we do it today and we thought “OK well there’s a video. There’s a Facebook page, it’s a video, you will go viral” (laughing.)

Jesse: Yes. I will just post a video and it’ll go viral. I love that. It’s never…

Richard: It’s almost like those lottery tickets.

Andrea: I mean the amount of times I look at the Facebook and all I see is this amazing video that has got millions of viewers, this is us! That didn’t happen quite like that. I mean it isn’t happening a lot about time. Yeah. I think we made a progress since then.

Jesse: I think you’ve made a lot of progress. Actually, I think the site looks great. We see a lot of videos on here and I think the video I would see that had been very important for you. I noticed… So how many videos have you made?

Andrea: Well, the first video we made, we made it for our website as a demonstration video just to show customers how the product works. It was about 50 seconds long. It was the one with the model video. And then we realize it looks great, however, people didn’t know what it was. So basically, we realized “Oh, we don’t have a problem that shows the problem and then the solution, now it’s just the solution”. So we made another video with an actual professional model to show a problem and the solution. And a shorter version, because then we found out that for social media like Facebook or Instagram it can’t be longer than 15 seconds before people’s attention span disappears. So that’s been a learning curve as well to organize a full professional photo shoot. It’s been quite a challenge. I’m no budget manager.

Jesse: And 15 seconds is always… I make videos too and I’m like: “Man, I want to do this, I do that, I want and then I’m finished with this”. You’re like “Oh yeah but that’s like 45 seconds, you have to do 15 seconds.”

Andrea: I really did not think it was possible to do what we wanted to portray and demonstrate is going to be possible to do in 15 seconds. You know, I think we’ve done it. I always would be somewhat “But it has to be a little bit longer. Can we just do 20 seconds?” I think not. Media rules.

Richard: You can, you just can’t use that platform in that way. But you could still make it. This is what we mentioned earlier when we said we really love talking to Ecwid customers because when you read a business book or listen to someone that’s in a business lecture class or going through some, you know, writing a business plan course or something. It seems like it’s really linear. It seems like “Do this, then you do that.” But when you actually listen to people that are really going through it, it has a lot of twists and turns. And first it’s a testament to you, ladies, congratulations for just keeping going and actually getting this up and your year anniversary going into Christmas season now you should definitely expect more sales this year than last year. I’m sure.

Donna: Yeah, we’ve been a bit more organized around the promotion and not the thing like, we’re actually doing some. So let’s start.

Jesse: What’s been working for you with the marketing?

Donna: Well, it’s interesting. We sent a letter with the product to print magazines to see if they would be interested in featuring us. And one came back. It was a magazine called “News Magazine” which is probably for ladies older than us. They just did it like a little help section like “Mrs. J can’t put on her makeup but how can she be helped?” and then they featured FlipZees and then offered a discount code. We have had a lot of sales straight there. And it cost us nothing just a pair of glasses and we’re still getting repeat sales. So I think the older customer keeps the magazine, shows it to their friend or it sits in the doctor’s surgery so actually, the print media has been probably, I would say, our best so far, which is interesting because it’s not where we thought we would be.

Andrea: We thought our demographic was about 40 to 60 and actually, in reality, it’s about 70 to 80.

Donna: We’ve even got customers who are saying “Well, I haven’t got the internet so how am I going to order your product?”

Andrea: People ask “Can I send you a check?” And I’m like “What’s a check”?

Jesse: That’s good. But these ladies really want it. So they’re willing to like we call it to crawl over broken glass to get them, to get the product.

Donna: Yes. Well, what we suggest normally is: “Does your son or your daughter have Internet? — Oh yes. Well, why don’t you get them to order it and pay for it? —That’s a good idea.”

Jesse: Yeah, I have it be, that’s a present from their son or daughter.

Richard: Well, it goes back to your point earlier about how the video didn’t. It only had the solution it didn’t have the problem too. And so part of what why you might be seen as a success in print media is your customers looking at the print. Right. And they probably have reading glasses on at the time they’re even reading that magazine. You never know. And so it really strikes a chord with them you’re hitting them not necessarily in the middle of the problem because they’re not putting makeup on while they’re reading the magazine. But it just shows sometimes where you want to put the marketing where your customer is. It doesn’t mean that’s what they’re doing at the time but yeah that’s right.

Jesse: Yeah, I get it. If you think OK. My customer is going to be between 40 and 60 and then you find out they’re quite a bit older and you have to adjust. Right.

Andrea: What we find is that every time it’s one of those products that you might see, it’s just like: “Oh my god, I need this.” But until we see it, you don’t know you didn’t even realize that you need that.

Jesse: Oh for sure, for sure. I mean it’s a new category. And actually, we were talking before the podcast about what I said: “Richard, what do you think people search for to find this product?” Do you know like what are they searching for on Google to find your product?

Donna: Well, when I was looking, I put something like “glasses to help me put my makeup on”. And that was all makeup glasses, maybe a magnifying glass. That’s the sort of thing that you would search for, I guess.

Jesse: Got it. Yeah. Makeup glass was my guess so. All right. I’m getting into the mind of your customer now.

Donna: Watch out for that mascara eye.

Jesse: Makeup glasses for applying my mascara correctly. You know I never want to have that. So what do you do on the Google side, do you have… Do you do ads on for Google? Or do you have search rankings that you show up for? How do you how do you track customers on that side?

Donna: Well, you know we’re still learning a bit. We did some Google ads but I think one of the issues we’ve got is our product is quite expensive in relation to other similarish products that don’t work basically. So when we were coming up in a shocking thing we just felt like we were super expensive and we didn’t really get much because in a Google ad, you can’t explain why you’re super expensive. Now, why should people pay twice as much for your product rather than one they’re going to throw in the bin. So we sort of stopped doing that because I just felt it wasn’t helping us. Yeah. So we need to be somewhere where we can more explain about the difference which is why we’ve been looking at Amazon. You know just like Facebook ads and stuff.

Richard: Ok, well this brings me back to that video we talked about in the beginning and we’ve mentioned a couple of times now about educating the customer. Part of one of the reasons why I think Google wouldn’t be successful yet is they don’t even know they have the problem to what you said earlier. They don’t even know what to put in to look for it. So it’s not like they’re picking some brand name that they already know yet. Right. Eventually, they will.

Jesse: Eventually FlipZees will be… Everybody will be searching for FlipZees after this podcast comes out.

Donna: Fingers crossed…

Richard: Yeah. But if you, for instance, when you mentioned in the video only needed to be 15 seconds. That’s true only at this point in time with the algorithm with Instagram. Right. The minute Instagram decides to change that you might be able to go 30 seconds or if you did it on Facebook you could make it longer. So again finding where that customer is and then explaining it in some ways even though it doesn’t seem like print works I see why print also works because it would be interesting you should probably get a copy of that magazine. Did you get it and see what the app was like that would be interesting because the fact that it was in print and they still described it in a way that got sales to take place on something that is hard to educate that’s worth looking at as potential copy for video with slight tweaks.

Donna: Yeah, that’s a good idea.

Andrea: Yeah. Everything like that. Any print or anything. Any mention that we have. That just gives us the contents from all social media so that’s always a good thing for us.

Jesse: Yeah, I could see that. I could see, maybe there’s probably a perfect influencer you know like an actress that’s a 50-year-old actress putting on her makeup that needs glasses like that would, of course, be talking a lot of money to get somebody get the cheap ways just like you did before sending out the glasses for free. But you know there’s a lot of crossing your fingers there and you don’t really know if you know you don’t know if anything is going to come back from that.

Andrea: Speaking of which, if you guys know anyone you like.

Jesse: Like it. Yeah.

Donna: Well we’re using that contact.

Jesse: Yeah, we’re not that far from L.A. but I don’t.

Richard: I mean actually there’s a couple I can think of. I’ll reach out. I know a couple. I’m blanking on the exact name of the website right now but they do makeup specifically and it’s makeup. And a couple for aging women of which they’re basically wanting them to. So the models have gray hair. They’re not trying to hide their hair, they want to keep their natural but they want to also do makeup as well. I don’t know. There might be some synergy or something that could happen between you. I’ll reach out and see what they’re up to.

Andrea: Amazing, thank you.

Jesse: We’ll work the contacts here.

Andrea: And my folks say it’s the networking and asking direct questions.

Jesse: Yeah. Yeah. And I see testimonials on the site. I think testimonials would be really important. And they’re also going to be very important when you make the jump to Amazon. I see the price point. The price point on the Web site here is £19.50 so $39.25 dollars I think. Yeah. That’s it. I get it. That’s a tough one to advertise on Google because in order to afford the advertising, that’s usually about the kind of cutoff point below. But yeah, on Amazon, this seems like people type in “makeup glasses” if you dominate that area. And then, of course, you do need to get a lot of reviews. That’s always the problem with Amazon is reviews.

Richard: I mean…

Donna: I mean… I didn’t realize that it’s a bit like Google, you have to pay within Amazon to be ranked on the pages. It’s like “What?!”

Jesse: There’s a reason it’s worth billions and billions of dollars. You have to pay to advertise, you have to pay the store and then you have to pay the ship when they ship.

Andrea: We really thought, we just have his great idea we’ll make it, we will have it done, and it’s just gonna sell itself. And it’s not the case. We just need a bottomless money pit at the moment because you know it is just getting really fast and it’s completely self-funded and it’s just two of us. We both don’t want to put ourselves in debts over this. We just think we can manage it all, but it would be great to be if we won the lottery.

Jesse: Well, I think you’re on the way, I think this is your own lottery here but it’s never easy though.

Donna: And I think that’s the thing when you doing your own business, it’s tough, there are ups and downs and it’s a long journey really. But I think it’s really nice when you could do with someone else. If I would do it by myself I would feel really lonely.

Andrea: Absolutely. I think both Donna and I have different strengths and we’ve been complementing each other really well. She already runs her own electrical
business and I’m the creative. So everything doesn’t have to do with the money and Amazon accounts and that’s a … “Off that goes over my head”. And all the pretty things, like video and organizing shoots. Speaking of social media… I think both of us can turn to our roles.

Jesse: Yeah, that’s the way you should do it. Building a business can be lonely at times so it’s good that you have a friend that also compliments your skills so I think you’re on the way. Amazon is the next thing you have to cross probably but a good thing about that is I saw like shipping to the rest of the world if you had them in the US, at Amazon warehouses if somebody in the US buys it you can ship it out there and then you don’t have to pay to ship from your place so that would be great. Use all sorts of good videos out there, all these pretty videos and social media, you’re on the way.

Richard: I think this is Richard again, I think it’s brilliant, and I don’t even need them. What I did when you guys were talking about it, I’d just looked up made up something that is “make up for elderly women” in Youtube and the five that popped up for me one has almost a million views, one has 2.1 million views, one has a million views, the other one has 2.2 million views. I don’t know if, but you could make a small video that pops up specifically in front of those videos. Now they’re going to a video to watch such a video about how to put make up an elderly woman. They’re not getting confused on that video everyone knows what’s going to happen in the video right and you could do one of those pre-roll ads where it actually pops up ahead of the video and that you can’t skip for 2 seconds. Here’s the thing if you do it right and you have the brand right in the background and you start with the problem to your point of the video earlier. I’m just going to keep nail and that because it’s a huge point. It’s a problem they have for such a small amount of time and it’s only frustrated at that time any time and then they’re not thinking about that problem for the rest of the day anymore. But when they aren’t thinking about that problem, this is a huge potential when it’s like you pop up in front of a video that has 1.2 million viewers and you’re saying: “Hey, you’ve ever seen, you’ve ever tried… and you just go right into the problem trying to put makeup on and it’s an older elderly person. If they hit ‘skip ad’ when they finally can skip the ad you don’t even pay for it. If you did your branding in there right you could slowly start educating people all in front of all these videos. And even if they skip it, you get to stay under budget. So you’re not spending money. If they don’t skip it and they keep watching it is probably a pretty darn good prime candidate there for you.

Andrea: We do know that these kind of things…

Donna: I feel there’s another piece of work coming my way.

Jesse: We’re going to add it to your to-do list.

Andrea: This is another one. It’s funny for us, we thought ‘Ok, we’ve got videos, we have to upload them to our Youtube channel’. We did it, all our videos are on Youtube, and then we realize: ‘How come, nobody’s watching them’. On our Youtube channel we have like six views, it’s probably me and Donna and our mothers. I talk to a lot of people about things, especially about glasses because there’s not much in my life going at the moment. And everybody says that ‘How you have your SEO done for YouTube?’ And I’m like: ‘No’. You know, these are specific things you have to do for people to come up with search in searching engines.This is completely new to us! How did you know you have to do things like that? No wonder no one is watching us.

Jesse: There’s always something to learn I would say. I’m not looking at your YouTube channel right now but I see Richard has it up here, but you’ll definitely want to use the word ‘makeup glasses’. Definitely, ‘makeup glasses’ should be sprinkled throughout the listing. I actually like Richard’s idea about the ad, and I had it in the past. You get five seconds, they can’t skip it and you can kind of show the problem with your glasses in five seconds. If they keep watching another thirty seconds, even forty-five seconds, you get to tell your whole story and the costs per view on that if somebody to watch the video is usually like five cents, ten cents, pennies to ten cents.

Donna: Because I think we’d been thinking how do we reach these influencers. Well, it’s just in a way that when someone who we could afford to pay someone to use our products in the video but I never saw before getting jumped in before the video.

Richard: They’re influencers, they have the influence. There’s someone who’s going to watch that. Influence is influence. You just jump right in front of them.

Jesse: You pay five cents, you don’t have to pay like five thousand dollars to that influencer.

Donna: Brilliant! Thank you. I’m right into it.

Jesse: I think we also… When the podcast comes out, we will find some way to help promote you on to our Ecwid community as well for everybody listening. I think this is a gift for my mom, I think my mom’s going to get it, this would be a Christmas present for her.

Donna: It’s a good Christmas present. We’re just looking at, someone says ‘What if I don’t know my mom’s prescriptions’. We’re just looking for being in touch with you, to help those people, about creating gift certificates. So people can buy come gift certificates and then the person can order the correct prescription. We think it could be a good solution.

Jesse: Good idea. Actually, I wouldn’t know what to get for my mom either so I think she’s going to get a certificate now. And they will take care of it online by the way. Awesome! So, anything that we should have asked you and forgot to ask you?

Andrea: I don’t think so. Since we started, the words getting out there, we are showing glasses. People started to talk about us. This week, we’ve been featured in a Ann-Louise magazine which is an online magazine. Today we have been feature
in an optical magazine here in the UK, which is the magazine for opticians and as a trade magazine. Hopefully, we will have the inquiries from opticians rolling in. Things are picking up, we have now over 200 units. So, we’re getting up there. We’ll go viral before we know that.

Jesse: Awesome, you’re on the path, you get in a couple of magazines. You boost some of those ads on Facebook and Instagram and you’re on your way.

Andrea: I must say being featured is just such a boost that we’re actually doing something right. People want to talk about us. It’s encouraging for us to keep going and not get discouraged at small sales.

Donna: Hearing another perspective, when you know I never ever would have thought about YouTube. So a million thanks for that. We’ll just be going to be looking into that.

Jesse: Awesome, and it is it’s coming up on the holiday seasons so this is usually the season for everybody when sales sometimes go crazy for a couple weeks there.

Richard: Speaking of…. Sorry for interrupting, I just know it’s getting close to the end. While we were talking they don’t have quite as many views but I looked under stuff for a holiday makeup in different things too for the same and they’re actually still quite a few. So you never know, you might even be able to get some people that are just looking at how to do makeup for the holidays, get fancied up, right. They’re going to dinner, they are going somewhere and take advantage of that video right there.

Jesse: Well done. And how can our customers find out more about you? Where we can they go?

Donna: To our website.

Jesse: Give us that website one more time.

Donna: It’s Flipzees-with Z-glasses.com. We also have Facebook and Instagram and YouTube.

Jesse: Especially on YouTube now. All right.

Andrea: We are there and we’d like to offer a ten percent discount for all our Ecwid customers. Just visit us and quote ECWID on the site when checking out and you get ten percent discount.

Jesse: So the coupon code is ECWID for everybody listening and that’s great. So Flipzeesglasses.com

Richard: And it says Flipzees at all the other social platforms as well.

Donna: It’s Flipzeesglasses, yeah.

Richard: Flipzeesglasses on all other platforms, ok. Perfect, we just want you to take advantage of every opportunity you can.

Jesse: Guys, I love the story you’re on the way, don’t get discouraged. Keep after it and make it happen. Thanks for being on a show.

Andrea and Donna: Thank you, bye!

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So simple to use – even my most technophobic clients can manage. Easy to install, quick to set up. Light years ahead of other shop plugins.
I’m so impressed I’ve recommended it to my website clients and am now using it for my own store along with four others for which I webmaster. Beautiful coding, excellent top-notch support, great documentation, fantastic how-to videos. Thank you so much Ecwid, you rock!
I’ve used Ecwid and I love the platform itself. Everything is so simplified it’s insane. I love how you have different options to choose shipping carriers, to be able to put in so many different variants. It’s a pretty open e-commerce gateway.
Easy to use, affordable (and a free option if starting off). Looks professional, many templates to select from. The App is my favorite feature as I can manage my store right from my phone. Highly recommended 👌👍
I like that Ecwid was easy to start and to use. Even for a person like me, without any technical background. Very well written help articles. And the support team is the best for my opinion.
For everything it has to offer, ECWID is incredibly easy to set up. Highly recommend! I did a lot of research and tried about 3 other competitors. Just try ECWID and you'll be online in no time.

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