Crucial Black Friday Tactics w/Connor and Connor

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[00:00:18] Taylor: Welcome to another episode of the e commerce playbook podcast. Today we are getting tactical and I had to do this because this morning on my way into work, I opened up the operators podcast and listened to 20 minutes of these gentlemen talking about building their homes and the macroeconomic policies of blah, blah, blah.

And I was like, you know what, we have got to get back to some e commerce tactics. And so we are, Not here with the host of the operator podcast. We are here with the men behind the leaders, the Connors from both Hexclad and Ridge. Connor McDonald and Connor Rolaine Stoke to have you both here. Thanks for joining.

We are going to be diving in today to cover some Black Friday topics, but I know Connor Rolaine, you're a repeat guest. So the guests, people may have heard you, but Connor, Connor Mack or Ridge Connor, however, we'll refer to you over the course of this podcast. Why don't you tell the little, the people a little bit about.

Who you are and what you do at Ridge.

[00:01:12] Connor HexClad: Yeah, of course. I'm the CMO here at Ridge. We have for a long time mostly sold wallets, but we've got a, we've got a nice little growing ring business and a larger kind of premium accessories brand. So I oversee all of You know, web acquisition, retention, we're going to multi channel. So there's a wholesale marketing component and Amazon and things like that.

[00:01:30] Connor Ridge: So I've been doing that for quite a while here at Ridge.

[00:01:33] Taylor: Awesome, Connor. I appreciate that. Mr. Rolaine, second time guest for those of the, for the people that didn't get a chance to just hear from you and Richie the last time we talked, give the audience a little bit about who you are and what you do at Hex.

[00:01:44] Connor HexClad: Yeah, so I'm the head of growth at hex clad really overseeing our revenue driving initiatives and channels, both on the acquisition and the retention side of things. So. Anything that has the goal of, you know, driving a sale on our. com is kind of falls under my purview. And that, that's, you know, a wide ranging number of initiatives and channels and, and all the things that, you know, we can do tactically.

So yeah, if it's revenue driving I kind of have my hand in it in some way, shape or form. I'm going

[00:02:13] Taylor: was it has been really cool the way in which

[00:02:18] Connor HexClad: little

[00:02:20] Taylor: Founders and CEOs have.

[00:02:21] Connor HexClad: time to think

[00:02:25] Taylor: a lot of people have enjoyed that, but at this moment of the year, this is really an opportunity, I think, where a lot of people are zoomed in on focused on really what is the core execution for most of our calendar in e commerce. And so I thought the opportunity for us today was for you guys to come in and say, Hey, leading your teams, orgs.

What does it actually practically entail to execute against the kind of volume in this moment that you all have? And as specific as you're willing to be, I think we're all going to benefit from that visibility. So I outlined a few questions here that I want us to dive into to get to exactly what execution of Black Friday Cyber Monday inside of a nine figure brand looks like.

And we're going to start with a classic, which is just the pacing, the calendar. When. Is this sale starting for all of you this year? And how do you think about the calendar as it relates to your offer and moments for BCFM? Let's go with Ridge Cotter first.

[00:03:18] Connor Ridge: Yeah, cool. So, we've got an interesting one this year. I mean, I think historically we've always kind of inched up our sale earlier and earlier. So we've definitely been pacing towards that this year. Super interesting. Our entire Q4 has more newness than we've ever had. So I think our. The way we've structured our sale, which I'll get into in just a second, it's kind of dictated by our merchandising calendar, essentially.

So we've come out with, like, for reference, two new collections over the last two weeks. We're launching a new category in 14 days. So we've got a lot of new things going on and it's, and it's I felt it was best for us to kind of like temper out and, and pace out the rollout of the sale. So what we're actually doing is we're launching our gift guide tomorrow, which will come with some smaller discounts.

So we're going to start speaking to the early gift givers very early, earlier than we have ever have October 26th. Then we've got a bunch of new things for the first week of November. That's just new product launches, new category launches. And then we're doing the full rollout of the sale on the 13th.

Where we do a much larger discount across the site, we don't use, I don't, this might be a later question. We're not using codes. We do strikethrough pricing because we have a lot of different pricing strategies across our different materials and products and categories and then we will be doing additional discounts on exclusive SKUs the week, the week of Black Friday, Cyber Monday, that like Turkey 5, we stretch it out to like a Turkey 8.

[00:04:40] Taylor: Love that. So let me say it back to you. So we got gift guide this week. Then we're going to new product launches the first couple of weeks. Core sale starts the 13th and then that week we kind of create moments around individualized SKUs to create some additional engagement points for people, new reasons to send an email over the, what you're calling Turkey five, Turkey eight.

Is that right? I like that. That's a cool pace. Okay. Connor Roland, what are you guys doing?

[00:05:02] Connor HexClad: Yeah, so we, we have a similar approach as far as new products go. We're launching a lot of highly sought after products this quarter, which will, in my opinion, be our, our best new products this year. We probably launched at the end of the year. I've launched over 10 new products, which is awesome. But yeah, so we have a.

Probably what I think is going to be our best product launch going live at the end of this week. We have a double burner griddle going live. Then we are launching a new series of knives and the, at the end of the first week of November, then we will launch our core BFCM offers, both our acquisition and retention offers.

So that's what we'll launch all the paid media campaigns. That's when we'll start putting out our own media campaigns doing different offers for each group of people. As it pertains to the timing though, you know, I've, I've thought a lot about this and I think it really comes down to your, your consideration period.

I think. I think the shorter consideration period you have, like my buddy, Richie from she's birdie. Like they found, they found out that like most of their conversions are happening within 24 hours of discovery. And if not within 24 hours, definitely within a few days or seven days at the most. So I think they're a brand where.

The longer they can run that sale, they're going to reach way more people. And they're probably gonna be missing out conversions if they only run that sale for two weeks compared to a month, just because their ability to reach more people and get discovery and conversion. And that 24 to 48 hour window is going to be a lot more if they have more time to do it.

Whereas us. Like we don't, we don't see our, our impulse buy metrics go up that much during these core sale periods. Like people are still telling us that they heard about us for one to three months, three to 12 months. So for us, it's not as important to have this sale running for a month or longer. It's really just important to make sure that we've been spending to the levels that we need to be spending at to make sure our, our funnel is super full for when these offers do go live.

The other, the other timing considerations, like of course we need to give. Everyone that is in our funnel enough time to convert, right? So we're not going to run the sale for two days. Cause that's probably not enough time to convert all those people. So that's why we run it. We're launching November 15th.

We'll run it through the 29th. Maybe extended if we need to, but probably not. I don't, I prefer not to do that type of stuff. So yeah, that's, that's like the big consideration that we have is like our, the people that are in our funnel when we launched the sale, those are for the, like 80 percent of those conversions are going to be already there, have already heard about us, maybe 20 percent will convert within that seven day window and more of an impulse buy manner.

But I think because of that, it's less important for us to launch super, super early,

[00:07:36] Taylor: So it's funny. So you guys both would consider the 13th not super early. So that's interesting. So 13th and 15th, both of you for primary sales. And I'm like, wait a second, that, that to me is actually pretty early for the full the same full site wide offer relative to, I think a lot of the places that I've seen some other people in.

So I think that is

[00:07:55] Connor HexClad: I mean, you see some brands like November one, right? Like their core offers are live and those are the offers that are going to be live for the whole month into December event. So like when I hear early now, and this is just how like DTC has changed and consumer buying patterns have changed. It's like November one.

It's like, Jesus Christ, there's just no urgency. Right. And that's the other thing I like to always push urgency as much as possible. It's like, Hey, best offers of the year, two weeks. Go get it while it's here. Right. It's not a 45 day sale where there's no, there's no real urgency messaging. Nope. I mean, you could kind of make fake urgency messaging, which a lot of brands do, but no real urgency.

If you're, if you're running your sale for 60 days. Okay. Okay. Okay. Great. Thank

[00:08:33] Taylor: yeah, I think you're right. I think it is an interesting sort of Overton window change here for us, where what was early before is now defined differently. And these words just don't mean the same thing anymore as we've sort of continued to try and maximum stretch this period as long as possible. The other thing I just want to point out that both of you did when asked this question, which I think is a testament to the sequence of how you all run your marketing orgs, is that you both began at this like high level marketing.

You call it a merchandising calendar corner, but like this idea that the core message that we have to deliver revolves around the product messaging first and the new product releases that we have, which are our core tenant of building to the calendar and distribution. And I think that's such a critical way to think about this is that rather than starting at the bottom of like, what is the message for the month?

It's like, well, what's the actual production plan related to the new products that we have and how into those come out and how does that set the calendar and how do we flow from there? Both of you guys began there, which I think is important for people to notice. Okay. So 15th for the core offer. A couple of weeks.

Connor, I love the like, peak moments of individual SKUs. I love coming up with an additional reason to say something new throughout that core weekend. Just what is the subject line that's going to cut through the noise in a way that's not the same offer being shown to you now for two weeks. That's live.

So maybe talk about, and then start with what is the core offer? What, how did you get there? And then what are those five offers that you're going to do on the individual SKUs? And then Connor or Elaine, you said something interesting, which is, It sounds like you had a distinction between an acquisition and a retention offer.

So coming to you after that, but, but Ridge Connor, tell me the offer, why, and then what are the five spike offers that you're going to run throughout that weekend?

[00:10:04] Connor Ridge: yeah. So what we've started, we started doing this last year. And then we have like, you're a proponent of this, but like, kind of four key points throughout the year. And we've kind of dialed in some of these things. So we do an anniversary sale, Q1, Father's Day, Q2, we do a sweepstakes at Q3, and now this, this Q4 holiday offer.

So, we don't do something as simple like, oh, 20 percent off site wide. Like some people might we largely do 20 percent off individual skews. So like our wallet business, at least some of our core styles will be marked down 20% for inventory reasons or for newness reasons, we'll have a lot of wallets at full price and we'll have some wallets at more than 20 percent off.

So we can kind of like, kind of push and pull sales between skews as we see fit for like whatever kind of objectives we have. So the key messaging is actually, it's. Up to 30 percent off our kids will be 30 percent off. And then we've got individual skews marked down somewhere between like 20 to 25%, something like that.

That is the, that's the bulk of the offer. That's starting the 13th. And then we'll run some version of that, like, deep into December as well. That also sounds pretty different than what, and then the turkey eight, we actually, we don't do individual offers on like days. I've, I like having refreshed messaging for that like weekend.

Let's just call it. But we've never gone to the point of like having new messaging on an individual basis. So we end up doing on. I'm not going to get too far into these deals here, but on essentially this year, it'll be four wallets used. We'll be doing deeper discounts on a couple of them ranging between like some of our more premium offerings.

So taking something that's typically 175, 195 down closer to a hundred. And then what really moves the needle for us is just like actually decreasing the, that initial entry point. So going from 76 to somewhere sub 70. So it's not a particularly large discount but it's fresh messaging. Helps us cut through the noise a little bit more, helps us convert those like marginal buyers a little bit further.

And we'll promote that for that. Yeah, like I said, Turkey eight or so.

[00:11:58] Taylor: Yeah, that's great. I think, I think one of the things that's important is that when we think about the messaging. We want to think about the hook, right? And so the fact that you have up to 30 percent right, that's the core driver. And that's sort of what we get to put on our headlines, our ads. And that sort of drives like, okay, there's real big discount opportunity here, but it's not applied universally in a way that you're leveraging the potential 30 percent off into a very select set of skews.

So it gives you something to hook customers, drive attention and awareness in a way that then you can be more selective about the actual allocation of that discount. So I think that's important for people to consider is that if you can, even one skew is up to 50 percent off, it affords you the opportunity to speak in a way that I think drives that into that.

What is a sort of more diverse set of discounts on the page? But the customer is there, they're engaged and you've got, you've won the click, so to speak. So I think that's a an underplayed tactic.

[00:12:47] Connor Ridge: We do, we do have like, we end up playing that slightly more conservatively. We say up to 30 percent off. We have plenty that are up to 30 percent off. It's like our, our standard kind of bundle option. We could do like an up to 40, but then that felt like we've done that in the past. And like, I just didn't feel great about it from a brand perspective.

You get a couple users writing in like, Hey, use it up to 40. There's one option here. I don't feel great about that. We did run an AB test at the time. And like you do win the click, you see a higher click through rate, it ends up netting out to be slightly positive. But there's some sort of brand cost there that like, for this year and for the future, we're, we're, we're not going to take.

[00:13:23] Taylor: Yeah, yeah, sure. The the ethics of advertising topic for another episode, topic for another episode. All right, Mr. Rowland. Tell us about your offer. What are you guys doing?

[00:13:32] Connor HexClad: Well, so we actually saw the same thing, Connor, we in one of our previous sales this year, we messaged, you know, save 300 plus versus save up to, and then like some very specific number, like 764. That was our best dollar off. But so we do the same thing in terms of like overall how we message it. The nice thing about our, our brand and our skew mix is we do some pretty big bundles that have huge, huge, huge dollar off savings compared to if you were to buy all those products as an individual you know, individual skews in your cart.

So like, for example, we just created this new bundle called everything, but the kitchen sink bundle is now live on our site. It's a 3, 000 bundle, but it has a, you know, over a 4, 600 value. If you look at all the retail prices, so we can do some really fun stuff and say stuff like, you know, save 1000 plus.

And then they hit our collection page, the sales collection page, and then we'll merchandise our different offers based on, you know, what we have the most volume on. And they're still great offers. But to your point, it's like, you got to find that balance and like, I'm always hitting up our, our, our director of CS and saying, Hey, like, please let me know if you're getting an increase in CS tickets that are saying, Hey, I think what you're doing is misleading and stuff like that, because, you know, we got to protect that brand experience.

So it's, it's an interesting balance to find and like performance over, over brand experience. But

[00:14:51] Taylor: There's, there's a, there's real fast. There's a great thing there. What I just call like the rule of the bigger number, which is when you go to message a discount, if 30 percent off is 9, say 30 percent off. If 30% off is $900, say $900. Right? So it's like whatever actually produces the bigger number in terms of the messaging of the discount.

So like in your case, Connor, 20% off might only be a few bucks in some cases, but for you guys at Hex, 20% off might be hundreds of dollars. So say the hundreds of dollars, you know, it's like just the rule of saying the bigger number in the message.

[00:15:21] Connor HexClad: totally. No, 100 percent agree with that. In terms of our offers and how we think about acquisition versus retention, you know, our core first time order products are the 12 piece set and the six piece set. So if you look at our LTV as a function of like percent increase on those orders over 12 months, it doesn't look great because someone just bought 12 pieces of cookware for 699 99.

They're not really coming back right away. But if you look at other things like cohort sizes and number of people that own certain product skews and product categories are, you know, if you look at retention from that perspective, it looks a lot better, but we're always thinking so on the retention side or on the acquisition side of things, first off, like we're testing these offers all year long, both evergreen and during sale periods, like we've tested into, you know, The best performing offers, which are all surrounding the 12 piece and six piece set.

Those net us the most volume and that is the most contribution dollars on that first order. So everything that we do is really a function of those 2 skews. On the retention side of things, we're thinking, like, Hey, well, someone that's already coming in and bought this 12 piece set or the 6 piece set, like, what are they going to want to buy?

And what do we have margin for? To offer a discount on. So what we're doing now during BFCM and during holiday is we're doing dollar off on individual products. And this is the only time of the year that we do that. And these are going to appeal a lot more to someone that has already bought the 12 piece set or the six piece set.

We still will push those acquisition offers to people that have already bought those products because we get a lot of gifting of our cookware during this time of year and those still perform very well for us, but we want to make something that appeals both to gifting and self consumption for someone that's already bought before.

The other reason I like that is the same reason that Connor mentioned already is we can push a lot of different messages to our own media list during this time of year, because we have a lot of different product categories that are that are on discount. So we can use this up to messaging. I think our best our best dollar off is 50%.

So that'll be like our big headline in our retention offers, you know, save up to. 50 percent off on these individual products. It's the only time we do this all year long, but we can also, we're going to have campaigns that are focused around cookware, around cutting boards, around knives, around accessories, around our salt and pepper grinders.

So that's going to really keep our messaging fresh. And the way that we go about, you know, deciding like, Hey, how many, how many campaigns should we send on our accessory cookware versus knives versus cutting boards? It's just simply by being in really close lockstep with our inventory and finance team.

I know what we're projecting year over year in terms of percentage growth at a skew level, both on our acquisition offers and on our retention offers. And that a hundred percent dictates how we're merchandising in our, in our channels and on site. So in terms of like, Hey, we're going to send this mini on, on cookware, this mini on cutting boards, this mini on knives.

And then we'll leave a little bit of flexibility if we need to come in and be like, Hey, we're under pacing on knives. Like let's pepper in some more knives or we're over pacing on cookware. Let's pull back on cookware. Same thing with our acquisition offers. Right. Like We're building out ads, pushing, we have like, we have three core offers.

And then I would say we have six other offers that are bundles that are not going to be as popular by volume, but we'll still be very popular. So, you know, we're creating ads for every single offer we have so we can manipulate how much traffic, like if we're really under pacing on 12 piece set and we're over indexing on 6 piece set, that's going to put us in a really tough spot for Q1. So we have ads for every single acquisition offer ready to go built out.

So that way we can artificially crank down 6 piece set, crank up 12 piece set or however it shapes out. But that's like the overall approach for, you know, acquisition versus retention. And how do we craft offers that are a driven in the data that we've tested into this year, but B are going to be appealing to both, you know, subsets of, of people that, that either are in our lists or are not in our lists already and, and people that we're gonna be pushing offers to via paid media versus our own media channels.

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[00:19:57] Taylor: It's great. Awesome, guys. Again, I'm going to keep extracting what I'm hearing you guys do, which I think is part of why you're both so good at what you do is that one again, you both sort of have this deep, intimate connection to product and inventory and demand levels where kind of for you guys at Ridge, it sounds like one like.

Inventory volume and the ability to turn maybe dead inventory into cash in a way that gives you the opportunity to buy stuff is driving discount rates and maybe to a higher level. And then stuff that's moving at a high velocity that you don't need to discount is probably going to be not necessary to do that.

Right? So there's a real consideration for. What is the value of this skew that I have? And then how does that relate to the need for discount to drive the maximum marginal value of every skew, right? So there's like that, then Connor, you guys are really connected again. And the same thing where from the ad level to the inventory position, there's this connection between how much volume is happening at any given time.

And then how that relates to this idea of like really maximizing the marginal value of every unit that I have. And the reality is like our basket of inventory that we have is just like a basket of stocks. Like some of them are not worth as much as others. And so the point at which we'd be willing to liquidate that less quality SKU is a lot lower than the one that we were going to use for our best selling SKU.

And so I think being cognizant of that. There's this temptation, sometimes this mistake that I think people do, which is like, take my best customers and my best prospect or best customers and best products and offer them the biggest discount as if it's like some sort of a reward, which I think can be useful in some cases.

But in reality, a lot of times what that does is it deteriorates your margin capture in entirety. And so I think being really thoughtful about how you offer. Value to your highest value customers without deteriorating the margin capture that you would get from them naturally is really something you have to be cautious of in this process.

For sure.

[00:21:40] Connor HexClad: Well, and that's why we launch our new products like at the beginning of like, that's why we're launching these two new products at the beginning of the month prior to our sales going live. Cause we know we can get a ton of high value customers coming in and buying these products at full price with no discount just because they're new and there's limited inventory and they're exciting and fun.

And the goal is to get that person to buy the double burner and the master series knives based on those value props. And then also get them to buy the griddle or the cutting board based on this offer that we're proposing to them. So it's very intentional about, and then also obviously trying to, trying to capitalize on this.

You know, consumer intent during this time of year. So it's very intentional, like why we're dropping these two new products prior to BFCM going live, and then we're dropping another new product at full price in between BFCM and in between holiday. It's like, it's very intentional based on what you just said, Taylor is like, we are not going to discount new products in the first month that we dropped them because we don't need to, we can, we can get people on the, on the excitement of this new product and the, and the product value prop, but it's very intentional with how that.

Interplays with the sale periods. And I think it sounds like Connor, you guys are doing the same thing with, with your, how you're like dropping some of these new products earlier in the month prior to launching these, you know, bigger sales that, that everyone will have access to.

[00:22:57] Connor Ridge: Yeah, yeah, same thing. We won't discount anything that we launched in Q3 either. So we, we, we've gotten more conservative over the years. But yeah, we'll wait quite a while before we start marking down anything new.

[00:23:08] Taylor: There's being in, like, working with some, like, large fashion retail brands that work on seasonal promotion has been a. Really good lesson for me in this where they really have this 90 day period to move inventory and on day one, the price is going to be 100 percent and their job is to maximize the margin capture for as long as possible.

But then at some point, that inventory has got to go because it is dead after that 90 day period. And it's just like, you know, You know, you could imagine a dynamic pricing mechanism. That's like, okay, it moves from full price to the discount kind of grows and grows and grows until whatever the worst inventory is, has to be liquidated at whatever price the market will take it at.

And I think a lot of times as marketers, our job is to have a pulse of the point at which the mark, the market will take the volume I need at the price of my product. And that relates to the discount rate. And I think you guys are clearly very in tune with that in a way that I think people shouldn't miss.

So, cause I think sometimes there's this like. And even now I see, and I'd be curious how you guys would relate this. There's this trade off between clarity and simplicity, 20 percent off site wide. Everything is there. One message, easy ads, easy to communicate to the customer versus the sophistication and nuance of what you all are doing in terms of promotion.

So how do you think you battle that simplicity and clarity versus complexity and connection to the inventory? And what's the trade off?

[00:24:23] Connor Ridge: So that's one of the reasons we don't use codes. I was a big proponent of that a while back where it's like, you end up just getting limited for a number of reasons. One. We used to do site wide code based discounts, and then we wouldn't have a hundred percent utilization on our order. So it's like, okay, there's clearly people just like not understanding how to get the discount.

That seems like a bad experience. And then the second thing is like, as soon as you want it to get any more complex, it's almost impossible to do via codes. And one of my least favorite things that brands do is they're like, use a code for this, use a code for this and a code for that. And if you bundle these and you get one of them free with another code.

And that just feels incredibly unintuitive. And I think there's a cost to any additional messaging that you need to get done. That's why we've leaned into the, the no codes, strikethrough pricing, incredibly clear where the value is being created. It's not incredibly clear, like what percentage discount you're getting.

But I'm happy to make that trade off for like 100 percent utilization and ease of, of you know, finding and selecting and buying the prices that you want at the price that you'd like to purchase.

[00:25:25] Connor HexClad: Yeah, I mean, we, we think about it the same way, like, we don't use codes either. I, I, I love thinking about. Like, especially during any sale period, but especially during BFCM, especially during holiday sale, I always take the, like, I always take the approach, like with this constraint in mind of how can we murder BFCM?

How can we murder holiday? If the only thing we could do is manipulate our website and the UI and the UX, like if we could, if we didn't do any ads. We didn't do any own media promotions of this all. They would only see it once they hit the website. So like, we're really thinking about all the way from the homepage to check out.

What's the most seamless process for someone to get their offer and be clear about what they're getting and what the offers are. So like, this is the first time all year we're doing the dollar off. Same thing. We are not doing, we are not doing any discount code. It's all baked into the, to the SKU at the Shopify level.

And we've really thought intentionally about, well, how do we message this? Because our 12 piece set, for example, that's usually again, going back to the bundling, you know, evergreen offer on bundling, it's like, Hey, we're always going to show an MSRP strikethrough of what the total value is of those products on our bundles and then the retail price, we're doing an additional dollar off this year.

So it's like, all right, well, how do we show. How do we like visually show that on site that they're getting an additional strikethrough price here? So it's like nine to 99 total value struck through. Then it's sale price, 699 99. And then below that we have black Friday offer 599 99 that lives on the product page and the hero carousel.

We have collection page elements letting people know like which products at a glance are included in our black Friday offer. We have our upsell. Message in our cart section, and with one click, they can add both products to their cart. Anytime we do a free gift offer, it auto adds to their cart. We're messaging at the collection and the product page level.

They don't have to like, click a rebuy button to add it to their cart. It auto populates with a digital product that we make on the back end. So same thing, like, even if we have to their cart. Nine acquisition offers, which in theory we do, it's so, so easy for the customer based on the way that we've merchandised our website to understand what the value is and understand how to claim that.

Like we, we really try to make it super, super dummy proof. And that's really all with the website user experience.

[00:27:45] Taylor: Love it. All right, let's talk media mix. Where are we spending our money? How has it changed throughout the year? Is November different for you? Will be the week of BFCM be different? Where are the dollars going by channel?

[00:27:59] Connor Ridge: We, we spent, I mean, our approach has been we've historically had a really wide marketing mix, really diverse marketing mix. Like when I first joined, a lot of our early wins were just getting out in front of net new. Like largely male audiences. So we were buying on emails and partnerships and we were very early on Snapchat and all these other things.

And that's kind of changed over the years, but where we're at this year is we spend most of our budget on Facebook. And then we'll take like 30 to 40 percent of the rest of the budget. And that gets allocated between. Largely social swipe content. So we've spent a lot on TikTok this year, YouTube shorts, Snapchat, we've all seen a lot of wins with from a creative standpoint, it's slightly easier if we're just building up content and iterating on that content and we can just share it across more platforms.

We spent Q3.

[00:28:46] Connor HexClad: talking

[00:28:47] Connor Ridge: of, like pulsing our budgets for our media mix modeling so that we get a better understanding of like, better understanding of what value each of these channels is creating and then using that MMM to set that budget allocation. So all all to say we landed this kind of perfect mix of like, Hey, we've got this top line revenue goal based on what we understand the performance of each of these channels and their cost curves, we're going to allocate budgets in this way.

We set all that up. That's what we planned for. And then almost what always happens is something surprises us and we change things like throughout the period. 

[00:29:19] Taylor: So can you give us the initial, what's the breakdown of the initial play setting aside the reality that things will change like percentage by channel? What would you say

[00:29:27] Connor Ridge: percentage by channel. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Roughly, I'm not going to remember all of them, but it's like 50 percent to Facebook, 50 to 55 percent on Facebook, we spend 15 to 20 percent of our budget on Google search. And then the rest gets done between YouTube in stream ads, YouTube shorts, Snapchat, Tik TOK, and Twitter.

[00:29:46] Taylor: No TV.

[00:29:47] Connor Ridge: No linear TV. No. Or connected TV. We do we're on YouTube. So that obviously serves on like some TVs. But, we we turned off Tatari last year and haven't reactivated with them yet.

[00:30:01] Taylor: We'll come back to that at some point in our lives together, probably in a Twitter thread because you were the, you were the, you were the TV defender, Connor. I just want to call that out in my, in my, you, you jumped into defense. So it's something that we're going to talk about. All right. Good to hear it.

I love the mix. Okay. Connor lane. What about you? Similar, different.

[00:30:17] Connor HexClad: I'd say a little different, but I think similar overall approach what you what you've seen what we've seen in our media mix especially in September and October as we head into November. And again, this goes back to our consideration period and our just like overall. Consumer buying journey is that we've brought our like Facebook spend down to roughly 50 percent of our overall media budget.

That'll come up closer to probably 60 to 65%, maybe even up as high as 70 percent during certain times of the year, because that's our, that's one of our best last click channels. Same with search. We brought it down a little bit in these months leading into November. And then we'll bring that up to get all the conversion.

To, to convert that demand that we're generating in these months leading into. Into November and December. So what that means in terms of the other channels is that we really started spending more not started. We have been spending more in these more top of funnel channels, even though we're not seeing as good a blended performance in September and October.

So, for example, linear TV is up big. We've been doing a lot of one off TV buys recently. Like we MLB playoff spot last night. We did the Monday night football spot on Monday and. We're not seeing a huge immediate return. We're seeing big lifts in traffic and that's how we kind of, that's like an early indicator we use to understand how these linear spots are doing for us.

But yeah, the, the big picture changes will be that as a percentage, Facebook and Google will be a lot higher during November and December, and as a percentage channels like connected TV, linear TV, YouTube, direct mail, podcasting have all been a lot higher. In September and October to build that funnel up for when our offers go live and we want to crank up our conversion channels.

[00:31:57] Taylor: You've heard it here, guys. When it's time to make money, the dollars go to meta. It sounds like, but no, I'd be curious, like, so how, and, you know, I think my sentiments on. Maybe some of this is well documented, but I curious, like when I think about an MMM or even MTA or these different measurement principles, they tend to, in my experience, all boiled down to what we would all as marketers probably guess in terms of incrementality by channel of new customer acquisition, where those dollars would go.

But I'd be curious. Connor, is there any novel insight that has changed that mix for you in a way that was surprising? Like, is there anything that you're like, Oh, wow, Snapchat proved out to be better than anticipated. Like what, what novel information have you gathered in a way that's changed the allocation for you guys?

[00:32:43] Connor Ridge: Yeah, for us it's really just about being more scientific in how we're allocating on these, like, tertiary channels. So, these ones where, like, YouTube Shorts, for instance. Especially late last year, early this year, it was just the value that you're creating should be measured in a completely different way.

You're getting 1, 1. 50 CPMs. It's full screen. It's a it's fantastic ad inventory. That was coming at a great rate. Maybe not as bottom of funnel is something like a Facebook, but there's obviously value being created there. And what we appreciate about the MMM is that we're at the very least measuring everything on a like for like basis.

We're just looking at dollars and on a day to day basis and then modeling new customer revenue against that. So the idea is we can just be. You're right in that intuitively we still end up at Facebook being the lion's share of the budget It's the MMM's like if you can spend more on Google search you can and I'm like, yes I would love for more people to be searching for metal wallets and then but then when it comes to like Just a more methodical approach to allocating between all these other channels which kind of create value in a different way That's what we really value it.

So, What have we gotten from it? It's like, yeah, we're more confident in our ability to allocate budget towards something like a Snapchat, where we've seen a lot of success this year, as well as the YouTube Shorts.

[00:33:58] Taylor: Cool. Yeah, that makes, that makes total sense. I also, without derailing us, can you give me your definition of top of funnel?

[00:34:05] Connor Ridge: My definition of Top of Funnel? Yeah, I mean, there's like a conceptual Top of Funnel, I guess, where it's like, hey, you want to be like, introducing yourself to somebody who hasn't heard of Ridge. When we think about top of funnel on a more tactical basis, we're looking at like, well, what channels are driving higher percent new visits.

So we consistently see higher percent new visits from a,

[00:34:27] Connor HexClad: Transcripts provided by Transcription Outsourcing,

[00:34:27] Connor Ridge: from a YouTube shorts or a Snapchat or a or a Twitter, or right now we're advertising to women really heavily. So it's like, that is. By definition, we're top of the funnel. We're reaching more net new net new users. We're serving net new impressions, and we're seeing that by driving more net new visitors you know, based on the M.

1. A. So, that's how we think about it, like on a more on like a metric basis. It's just like how many of these people are new. Same with like non branded search, for

[00:34:54] Taylor: percentage basis versus volume basis.

[00:34:57] Connor Ridge: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, well, it's a combination of the two, right? Like we want from a volume perspective. We want to be feeding the top of the funnel. How do we ensure that a channel is top of funnel? It's that it's driving a high, a high percentage of that traffic is net is new visit. That's the point that I'm making there.

And that's where like, right now we're advertising to women. We launched a new ceramic powder collection. We are, we know that this is more top of funnel that we're introducing ourselves to more new people because our, our present new visits from Facebook is 85, 90%. The flip side of that is something like a non branded search, which.

Somebody is googling metal wallet. I mean, some people might think of that as top of funnel. It's not, they're not searching for Ridge wallet. They're definitely not bottom of funnel, but we see those people, they're coming in 60, 65 percent of them are, are actually net new. So we can very well assume we've prospected them.

They've been here before they're coming to the site via non branded search. They're not specifically looking for Ridge, but. We can kind of capture them at the middle of the funnel. So that's how we kind of construct it. And then that helps us allocate our budgets to just ensure, Hey, let's make sure we're driving new visits.

And that's feeding the funnel for non branded search or a Facebook, which sits in that like mid to upper funnel range. And then we're, we're getting our email traffic and our SMS and our branded searches, et cetera.

[00:36:12] Taylor: So it sounds like if a, a new visit is a top of funnel metric, right? So, and then you think of a channel as being a new concentration of people that you haven't reached. At all, but so, so, cause I think sometimes these people think of channels as top of funnel. Like they would say that like YouTube is top of funnel or TV is top of funnel.

Like the thing I think I struggle with, with this language, because I think I get defensive over meta as a top of funnel mechanism. And so I would think of it as like, let's imagine I reached 10, 000 people on meta and it was a 50 percent repeat versus new visit. Okay. So 5, 000 new visitors. Now let's imagine that I went to YouTube and reached 5, 000 people, but 8, 000 of them, so the higher percentage new visit, but lower total new visits.

[00:37:03] Connor Ridge: right, right, right.

[00:37:04] Taylor: is a better top of funnel action?

[00:37:05] Connor Ridge: Well, I think that's, I

[00:37:07] Taylor: I'm studying. Well, that's fair. It's a setup. But I think the question for me is like the percentage thing feels like it. It hides the reality that, yeah, there are people on meta that you've reached before, but if the amount of new people that you're reaching it from a volume basis is still massive, would that, would that, would that

[00:37:24] Connor HexClad: would say

[00:37:24] Taylor: it from a total?

Yeah. Well, does that disqualify it as top of funnel in your definition?

[00:37:29] Connor HexClad: I think it's

[00:37:29] Connor Ridge: Well, so,

[00:37:30] Connor HexClad: Right?

[00:37:31] Connor Ridge: yeah, yeah, my, my concern is,

[00:37:33] Connor HexClad: Okay.

[00:37:34] Connor Ridge: yeah, so sorry, because, because my, my concern here, the way we talk about this internally is like, if we have a campaign, we're optimizing for conversions in Facebook, half of that traffic, Is returning visitors. I don't feel good that it doesn't matter about the volume to me.

I don't feel good that Facebook is doing what I want it to do. If I, if I expect that to be feeding the funnel. That's my, that's my main concern there. It's like, oh, yeah, if we're going to, are we scaling that? And like, where do percent new visits go from there? Is it actually moving a funnel? Is it moving bottom of funnel?

If we set up, hey, we want to be. We want to be optimizing for conversions, driving new customer revenue. That just is easier to do on other channels. If you haven't spent there before, you're just more likely to reach a new person. And I think that's a valuable metric to have that helps you construct it.

You're right. And ultimately it comes down to a volume perspective, but the levers that you have available to you to control that. Is dictated by that percent new visit number. In my opinion,

[00:38:32] Taylor: Fair. Fair. Mr. Rowland, any, any thoughts? How do you guys define top of funnel?

[00:38:38] Connor HexClad: Yeah, I mean, I, I think to answer to go back to your question, like gun to my head. In that situation, you said where maybe Facebook's lower as a percentage than YouTube is, but the net number of new visitors is higher on Facebook. Well, I'm going to say that Facebook's more top of funnel because it's again, our whole goal is to like funnel new people into our funnel as much as possible in Q3, knowing that they're going to convert in November and December.

So for me, it's like, which channels are going to do that best? It's the one that is, is driving the most net new, the most net new people to the site. And, you know, we pay a lot of, we pay very close attention to the percentage too, because I do think that's important, but we're also, and I know Connor, I've seen you like, talk about this on Twitter.

We're also very into now with the different levers that we need to pull within a platform to drive more net new versus more returning visitors. So for us, like, we know business as usual campaigns versus ASC, always going to see a lot more. A net and higher percentage net new visitors compared to ASC, even with asset type now, and we think about this with how we message in videos versus statics, like our statics are very direct response.

And that's by design. It's because we know that statics in our account reaches a much lower percentage of new visitors than videos do. So the videos are generally speaking. More product focus, more explain the value props of the product, as well as going into the offer, if it's an offer period, whereas the statics are very much like big, bold, here's the offer, because we know that these people for the, as a percentage and as a net net, probably have already visited our site, probably have done some reading on what makes heck different.

So we even think about that intro channel of like, which assets are going to be more top of funnel and bottom of funnel. But I think at the end of the day, it's like net new visitors to the site, that's super important for us. And we were super surprised. Like, and we're newer with the MMM. We rolled out in like August.

So we're still, you know, we've got a lot of value out of, out of it. We're still wrapping our heads around it, but like, we were super surprised at what they were telling us to do with connected TV, linear TV, and tech talk in terms of how much they wanted us to scale it. Especially with Tik TOK, cause the MTA data does not look good.

You know, you take it on a 90 day click one day view, but the MMM is saying, Hey, scale, scale, tick, tock, tick, tock. Our hypothesis that we're just getting so much value out of that view and they're not taking action, but they're, they're converting down the line. And that's why the MMM wanted us to scale it so much.

So we were super surprised that at some of those things. And it's gonna be really interesting to get to the end of November, the end of December, go look at our post purchase survey data and see how the responses of where first people are saying they first heard about us has changed this year compared to last year, because we've spent a lot more on TikTok, we've spent a lot more on connected and linear TV, so I'm very excited, and we have such a long consideration period that We almost have to hold our breath and wait to an extent to see, you know, where people are telling us they came from and to see where our, you know, Amer and CAC numbers land at the end of the year, knowing that there's going to be a huge lag from the dollars we're spending in Q3 to the actual numbers that we're seeing in, in, in November and literally like a 30 day window.

It's, it's kind of crazy. So yeah, that's my thoughts on some of that stuff.

[00:41:42] Taylor: Yeah, that's great. I think the, what I'm trying to be defensive about is, is that. It is becoming more and more common for people to get sold to from these ad platforms under the banner of top of funnel in particular. I think in, I'm seeing this a lot in the connected TV sort of process, which is this idea that they are attacking the premise that their current media mix offers top of funnel at all.

And that you need this alternative that top of funnel is a channel thing like that new people only exist in these other channels. And that that's the part where I think for a lot of brands, it's a really, really dangerous premise. And. That they, that the idea that what we're looking for is a net new person.

Who's never like, I would just define top of funnel as simply a customer that has never been to your site before in any way, like to, to do it any broader than that, I think moves into philosophical more than it does into measurable. And I would just prefer to be able to define the term with something I can measure.

And so I love percent new visits. And so to me, it's like, if you are driving percent new visits and for most brands that are way smaller than you guys too, like they are driving. Massive amounts of percent new visits off of their core channel that is profitable on a per dollar basis, and that they, when they deviate away from that, they destroy their metrics in the short term.

Now you guys have Much broader media mixes that a lot of folks, but I think that in many cases, I think that term is like a siren song for people. It's like, Oh, I need, I need top of funnel. I need this idea that, and really it just means you need new people who have never seen you before to see your product, wherever you can do that most efficiently do it.

But the idea that that only exists in some channels is a weird premise to me. I don't understand that when there's 2 billion people on the platform.

[00:43:15] Connor Ridge: No, I would agree with that. I mean, our experience has been, I know we're like, really kind of splitting hairs here a little bit, but if you look for people who are new to the brand and willing to buy. There have, there are plenty examples for us where a new channel, we've been able to find those people more cost effectively on a new channel.

Like you can top of funnel, you can say, yeah, we want to reach out to new people. We want to drive a percent new visits, but we want to run you know, impression optimized campaigns on Facebook and like, oh, that is top of funnel. That's all net new, but like those people aren't buying. Whereas it's very clear, like when we launched now, this is a, we, we launched on Snapchat in 2018 Q3.

And and it was very clear, incredibly net new willing buyers who were like ready and they were like, you know, whatever it is, a demo fit, we had a, we had a solution to a problem that they had, et cetera, et cetera. And it's, it's not just about reaching those net new people, but it's about people who are net new and willing to buy.

And I think that will. That can often come from channel expansion, not, it doesn't come by definition, like, I, I do understand, like, the, the concerns about saying a certain channel is top of funnel and is necessary and should be measured through, like, some new lens, but there's, I don't know. I think there's a lot to consider when it comes to channel expansion.

[00:44:31] Taylor: We could go for hours on that. Thank you. I want to go ahead, Connor. Add to it. Keep us going.

[00:44:35] Connor HexClad: I just want to add 1 added note here. I think I think seeing those metrics. We use North theme. I think Connor, you guys use North being like, seeing those, those percent new visit. Metrics really helps us rationalize these new channels, especially when they're not super high spend and for us. Twitter's a great example where we launched Twitter in February of this year.

We've seen as good of a one day, click row as is Facebook, albeit it's one 10th of the spend, but our year to date percentage of new traffic from Twitter is like 89%. So it makes it a lot. I have a lot easier times, you know, telling my team to go focus on this channel. Whereas like without that data, I'd be like, well, should we even put our, put any eggs in this basket?

Cause for every 1 we're spending here, we're spending 10 on Facebook. When I see that percentage in that new visit. Yeah, almost 90%. I know for a fact that we are not reaching these people in Facebook that we are reaching on Twitter. It's a little bit. It's very it's hard with like a connected or linear TV because you don't get that that like digital stamp that you get with like a Twitter or a new or Snapchat or a new digital channel.

But like paying attention to those metrics, it helps you rationalize rolling out these, these smaller incremental channels, because you're not getting, I'm not getting that Twitter person on Facebook and same with Tik TOK and probably same with YouTube. Like there are different people, different users.

And that makes me feel more confident in, in like putting my teams and my bandwidth on rolling out some of these new channels. Cause we're getting a bigger piece of the overall pie to our website.

[00:46:04] Connor Ridge: And it's that you're seeing row is from Twitter while you're hitting 89 percent net new visits. Cause you could go

[00:46:09] Connor HexClad: row S was

[00:46:10] Connor Ridge: on Facebook. You, you, you drive 95 percent net new visits, but that doesn't mean anything. That's why, like, there's a, there's a, there's a balance to strike between performance and how we're defining the funnel.

[00:46:21] Taylor: And so that's the thing I would just say, like. In hearing you, Connor, I think the key to the statement where I would even walk through the door with you was you started with saying it was profitable on a measurement basis on a one day click. And so it's like, cool, now I'm in, let's talk about now within the context of a dollar, that's generating the incremental return that I need the allocation.

Accordingly, I think what people will do is they'll often flip it though. They'll go, but look at all the new visitors at my really poor performance. And that's the justification in some way. So. Same page. All right. Last question. I want to get, were you, were you going to add, do you want to throw something else?

Last? Do you want to tie it off?

[00:46:54] Connor Ridge: I was just, I was going to make the point that all of that. And it sounds like, yes, we are on the exact same page.

[00:46:59] Taylor: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah, I think we might, I'd probably go after Connor's TV spend if I saw it, but other than that, I, I, I think, I think we're on the same page, but okay. I want to go, I want to end with

[00:47:09] Connor HexClad: that. You'd like that. However, our uptick in traffic, though.

[00:47:11] Taylor: Yeah. A bunch of traffic that just bounces off your site in seven seconds cause they're like,

[00:47:16] Connor HexClad: Hey, the post purchase survey data, man. Post purchase survey data validates

[00:47:20] Connor Ridge: Yes. Yes. Yes.

[00:47:22] Taylor: Don't even get me started. Now. Now we're going to, now we're going to dive into humans capacity to determine their, the impact on their decision making.

We got to get Jeremiah on here. He and I argue about this relentlessly. All right, let's end with something a little more like a softer as leaders in terms of what is the work schedule for you and your team this weekend? When do you make them show up? What is your expectation of them? How do you guys actually set that from an organizational standpoint as leaders?

Thank you.

[00:47:46] Connor Ridge: So I'll, I'll start here. I'll say, you know, we've been hiring exclusively remote for a while now. We've also done a lot of hiring on, on our performance team over the last year. So frankly, we don't have a, we don't, I don't have like a defined, like we're online at 6 a. m. We've got people in so many different time zones at this point that like, we will have like, 20 hours of Black Friday covered somebody.

It will be a normal working hour for someone. So we've really benefited from that, that more global workforce, making sure we've got people who understand what we're looking for and can pull levers if necessary. I'll work 6 a. m. to 10 p. m. or something like that. But that's how we'll structure it.

Really just taking advantage of the, the, the multiple time zones that we're in.

[00:48:24] Connor HexClad: Yeah, I think about it from the perspective of, like, where, where would we need to pull levers during this weekend? Like from Thursday through Monday, what channels would we even need to pull levers on? If we do our job right, the only levers we should really be pulling are budget levers. Like, we shouldn't be launching new ads, we shouldn't be putting new, like, emails into Eklavvya.

Like, that should all be done well ahead of that. And if it's, if it's not, then I'm going to have to, like, talk to my team about, like, where our process went wrong. So, really, the only, like, there's, there's two core channels. It's, Like, where is shit going to break the website if, if the website breaks, we're screwed.

So that's, it's really, you know, we have a head of website. We just hired another developer to work under him. And then we also work with, with van group on a lot of our web dev and design. So for those, for like the website stuff, we're just going to create a calendar. It's like, Hey, Hey, You know, it's not that you'd be working during these times, but we do need you to be available because if the website breaks, even for an hour, like that's huge losses in revenue and efficiency.

So really creating schedules across those 3 folks to make sure that if something breaks, everyone knows who to go to. And then it's the media buyers. We also have do some media buying in internal. Same thing. It's just creating a schedule. I'm going to be.

Like available and monitoring the entire weekend from an overall blended performance. Like, hey, if we create these sensitivity tables to help us inform, like, hey, should we. Should we stay where we're at at this current M. E. R. or should we scale up or pull back and like what nets is the best contribution dollar.

So it's the it's the age old question of like, are we better off doing 10 million out of five X or we better off doing 8 million at a six X M. E. R. in terms of contribution margin. So like, I'll be monitoring that stuff throughout the weekend. And then again, we'll have a schedule saying, Hey, these media buyers are available during these times.

So if I go in there and I'm like, shit, we're at. You know, we're pacing 180 percent growth year over year, and we're at a 10x MER, like, I think we could push for 2 25 percent at a 7. 5x MER, then I'll know who to hit up and say, hey, Like let's, let's go crank and put this much more budget in the account, but we're going to create a calendar or like a scheduling essentially, where it's like these hours, this person for this thing, and those are the two channels that I'm the most concerned about is like the website and then our, our, our paid media channels that are driving conversions during that four day clip, which is primarily going to be Facebook, Tik TOK in search.

[00:50:49] Taylor: Love it. Do you guys do an hourly forecast for BFCM to track that against? Like, do you look at an expectation of what you, what is happening each hour or how do you, how do you sort of actually day of track?

[00:51:02] Connor Ridge: We have, we have daily goals. We have, we have daily goals and then throughout the day we'll do hourly reporting. So we don't project it down. We could project it down to an hourly basis if we thought it'd be the same distribution. But yeah, we did that last time, last year for the first time. Looking at basically MER on an hourly basis and then looking at that year over year.

[00:51:22] Taylor: Yeah, that's exactly what we do is we, we take last year, spend last year, spend by hour, and then we'll take the percentages and plot the expectation then in a similar way, just to give us a starting point of like, okay, because I think it's, it's really hard. Especially Friday and Saturday, they have weird, different pacing relative to most days.

So like in my experience. Spend peaks around like 1, 2 p. m. PST on be on Friday in particular, which is earlier a little than normal Saturday. The distribution is a little bit more normalized. And then Mondays actually goes later in the day. And so I think it. Just getting context as a media buyer because it can feel like early on, especially Mondays where this gets really hard because it sort of gets into that last second thing where the pacing, you know, we always called it the bump comes late.

And so it's just getting the confidence that, Oh no, I'm behind spend. I'm behind spend. Well, am I actually, or is the allocation just different than I thought? So I think that can be super helpful.

[00:52:17] Connor Ridge: Do you guys are like I'm super curious cause we've also, last year we saw like quite a lag in reporting from Google and even Facebook. So are you guys really just, Managing spend and then looking at a AMER or something to like, decide whether you're deploying more. And then like, what, what, what data do you have available to you?

Like intraday to make campaign by campaign decisions.

[00:52:39] Taylor: so I'll Corey, we can put a screenshot of this, but I'll show you sort of what it looks like. So we have a direct API connection and the API queries are pretty consistent. Actually, day by hour. So we don't get a big lag. So we'll see, like, so this is an actualized version of 2022. So you can see that we pulled the purple, which was last year's spend expectation by our For Facebook, Ross, Tik Tok, Snapchat, et cetera, et cetera.

And then we'll get it down to NER, Net Sales, AMER. And then day of, we're sort of actualizing against it to see, okay, how are we pacing relative to each of these spots in each place? Just to make sure like, all right, did we beat last year's hour? Are we ahead of schedule? Are we behind schedule relative to expectation?

Knowing that like, Hey, we have this peak coming. We don't need a panic if we're a little bit behind, but we, because we have expected that that hour is really going to be where the core distribution is. Now, it doesn't always mimic it exactly, but it just allows you as you're going throughout the day to see like, okay, how am I doing?

Well, oftentimes, like note. The moment we're sending the email to like, we'll denote the hour that the email goes out and things like that. So just it, it's never gonna map exactly right. But it just gives you some sense of like, where am I at relative to where I need to be at this at this moment? Do I need to ratchet this up a little bit?

Am I pacing? Okay. Sometimes you'll get weird campaign delivery in different pockets. So you're just trying to get Get eyeballs on it, but using, and I think these sheets were actually just built with super metrics queries. Now we have more direct database, but I think this was all built with super metrics queries.

[00:54:08] Connor Ridge: The, the API must be faster. Cause we just got way better data from North beam than in platform, at least in those like early hours of the day. So that's how we. Help justify like increasing spend on a, you know, on search or something.

[00:54:22] Taylor: Awesome. Well, Hey guys, I appreciate your generosity. It's super helpful. I know a lot of people look to you all for direction and this is a moment of the year when there's a lot of pressure. So you heard it from these guys, launch your sale the 13th or 15th and just. Piggy piggyback the wave.

They're going to create, they're going to move the market. They're going to let everybody know that black Friday has started and we'll just all reap the rewards, but Hey, appreciate you both. Thanks for your time and generosity. And we'll talk soon.

[00:54:45] Connor Ridge: Sounds good. All right. Take care.

[00:54:48] Connor HexClad: bye