eCommerce Podcast

Direct mail to your warm customers pulls four to five times the response of email, and most ecommerce brands aren't using it at all. This week Matt sits down with Daniel Dunn, CEO and co-founder of Paper Planes, to make the case that the letterbox is the reactivation channel hiding in plain sight.
Summary
Daniel Dunn spent years working on Tesco Clubcard data strategy before co-founding Paper Planes, a direct mail platform built for DTC ecommerce. (For anyone outside the UK, Tesco is the country's biggest supermarket and Clubcard is its loyalty scheme, one of the richest customer datasets in British retail.) His argument is simple. Most brands lean entirely on email and SMS to work their first-party data, yet a big chunk of that database never opens, clicks, or responds. Those people are prime for something tangible in the post.
Matt, who cut his teeth in direct marketing in the late '90s, digs into how the channel has changed. Dan explains why mail to warm customers outperforms email, how a single abandoned-cart postcard nudges buyers back, why hyper-personalisation lifts basket spend, and the second-purchase problem that has become the biggest challenge in DTC since COVID. There's also the Clubcard truth that one loyal customer is worth thirteen who just trial your brand once.
If you're planning your channel mix around email alone, this conversation will change how you think about where mail fits.
Why Mail to Warm Customers Beats Email
Dan's core point is about saturation. In the hour it takes to record the show, your inbox collects twenty or thirty emails. The postman, meanwhile, delivers three letters and won't be back for a couple of days. That scarcity is exactly why mail cuts through.
"In the hour it takes us to do this podcast, we'll have received 20 or 30 emails, whereas the postman came and delivered three letters, and I won't see that man again for another couple of days." — Daniel DunnThe results follow. When you send physical mail to warm customers, such as postcard follow-ups for abandoned baskets or A4 mailers to win back lapsed buyers, Dan says the response is at least four to five times higher than email. Email should still sit at the front of your strategy because it's a high-ROAS channel, but complementing it with something physical is where the value compounds.
Email first, because it's cheap and personalisable and works for certain segments
Mail for the people who've gone quiet and stopped engaging with email
A multichannel follow-up creates more value from the same customer than any single channel

The Abandoned-Cart Postcard That Lands on Day Seven
Dan walks through the mechanic. A customer fills a basket, then life gets in the way. The usual email flow fires at two hours, twenty-four hours, and seventy-two hours. If they still haven't come back, that's the moment to trigger a postcard, roughly on day three, so it lands around day seven.
The clever part is the tracking. Because Paper Planes tracks off the Shopify or Magento checkout, there's no need for a QR code, a discount code, or a microsite. You know who you triggered and roughly when they'll return, so the moment they hit the checkout you can see it. And if they come back via email first, they're stripped out of the postcard targeting, so you never waste the send.
"The beauty of tracking today off Shopify and Magento is you don't have to rely on a QR code, a discount code, or a microsite." — Daniel DunnThis answers the two big objections to mail in one go. Cost, because you're mailing the handful of people who didn't complete checkout rather than your whole list. And relevance, because digital printing lets you hyper-personalise the card around the exact products the customer looked at. On average, Dan says getting the right product combinations in front of people lifts basket spend by 25 to 30 percent. His favourite example is a pet-supplier surprise-and-delight card featuring the customer's actual pet, "Stanley, it's your birthday," using an image already on file.
The Real Prize Is the Second Purchase
Abandoned-cart recovery is where most brands start, but Dan thinks the bigger opportunity is elsewhere. Since COVID, the hardest problem in DTC has been moving one-time buyers out of what he calls the "nursery programme" and onto a second purchase as quickly as possible.
"You'd be amazed how valuable direct mail is at bringing people back for that all-important second purchase." — Daniel DunnMail recovers these second-purchase customers at rates you can't match through Meta, TikTok, or email. From there, Dan loves a loyalty play, trading people up into tiers and telling VIP cohorts about a launch first to build buzz. And it doesn't have to cost margin. Reminders and status messages, such as "here's how many points you have" or "thank you for being a valuable customer," can work as well as ten percent off. The rule throughout is test and learn.
That connects to the Clubcard truth Dan keeps coming back to. One loyal, committed customer is worth thirteen who trial your brand once and move on. So don't turn your back on your first-party data, and if you follow up on it, use personalisation, because that's where the extra sales come from.
You Don't Need Scale to Start
The old barriers, a list of 100,000 people and a couple of million in turnover, are gone. Dan's advice now is to plan mail into your channel mix from day one, the same way you'd plan SMS, so you understand how it works alongside email before you need it at scale. Paper Planes is releasing a Shopify app this summer that lets brands set up campaigns on templates with a small amount of free credit each month to dip a toe in the water.
Today's Guest
Daniel Dunn is the CEO and co-founder of Paper Planes, a direct mail and postal marketing platform built for DTC ecommerce brands. He's Vice Chairman of the DMA Print Council, previously worked on Tesco Clubcard data strategy, and runs a monthly newsletter on direct mail trends. He's based in East London, originally from Birmingham.
Website — paperplanes.co.uk
LinkedIn — Daniel Dunn (search "Daniel Dunn Paper Planes")
Email — daniel.dunn@paperplanes.co.uk

About the eCommerce Podcast
The eCommerce Podcast with Matt Edmundson is a weekly show for anyone building an online business, whether you're just starting out or running a multi-million-pound brand. Every week Matt sits down with founders and experts to dig into what actually works, from marketing and tech to story, growth, and the day-to-day of running a store.
Full show notes and back catalogue — ecommerce-podcast.com
Join the free eCommerce Cohort — a free, application-only community with monthly virtual sessions and regional groups. Apply at ecommerce-podcast.com
Subscribe to the newsletter — at ecommerce-podcast.com
Follow Matt on social — @mattedmundson

If you're part of the AI community, ask Sam to put you in touch with Dan and to help you think through direct mail ideas for your business.
Episode link: https://www.ecommerce-podcast.com/can-old-school-direct-mail-beat-email-marketing-in-ecommerce-with-daniel-dunn

There are thousands of software companies chasing the same small pool of brands on Shopify, and AI is quietly dismantling the bloated app stacks those brands built. Neal Goyal has spent eight or nine years inside ecommerce software, leading sales teams at names like Tapcart, and he now advises five or six earlier-stage software companies on how to grow. From that vantage point he's watching the "uninstall rate" surge as founders ask a new question of every app they pay for. Do I even need a tool for this at all?
In this conversation Neal walks through how the ecosystem commoditised in three waves, why agentic commerce is about to change the rules again, and why the answer for anxious founders is bracingly old-school. Stop chasing the shiny object, do the Business 101, and invest in the human relationships AI can't fake. Matt shares how his own software subscriptions have roughly halved while the amount his team builds with Claude Code has doubled, including a mobile conversion rate now 400 to 500% higher after a few hours of work.
In this episode
[13:38] How so many apps ended up chasing so few brands
[23:04] The great uninstall and why brands are tearing apps out
[26:26] Shiny object syndrome and the case for Business 101
[29:30] What the app stack can't replace
[45:02] Neal's single best tip for anyone in the ecosystem

How So Many Apps Ended Up Chasing So Few Brands
[13:38]
To understand why app stacks are collapsing, you have to understand how they got so big. Neal breaks the commoditisation of ecommerce software into three waves.
The first was COVID. Brands on Shopify went from two million to four million "in a hot second", and an equally fast race kicked off to build the software companies that served them. The count roughly doubled from 5,000 to 10,000 almost overnight.
The second wave was AI as an engineering tool, around early 2023. Suddenly four people in a basement could ship a compelling, high-quality product in 90 days and offer it cheaply. Every category, from loyalty to reviews to mobile apps, got disrupted by a player built almost overnight. The count climbed again, from 10,000 to 15,000 in roughly a year.
The third wave is the one we're in now, and Neal thinks we're only at the start of it. Part of it is agentic commerce, the idea that forcing a customer to visit a website, add to cart and fill in checkout details is already starting to feel archaic.
"We don't really know what it's gonna be today. All we know is it's gonna be different than it is today." — Neal GoyalThe other part is what's already on your desk. The ability for the average person, with no engineering background, to build their own software. The effect of all three waves is the same. There is an alternative for everything, loyalty is thin, and a brand can sign off a tool as fast as it signed on.
The Great Uninstall and Why Brands Are Tearing Apps Out
[23:04]
Most Shopify brands didn't start with a business background. They started at the kitchen table with a dream and a Shopify account, and they figured it out as they went. Neal describes it as building the plane while they flew it, "like putting duct tape on the wings as it's taking off." Every new challenge, from COVID to tariffs to iOS 14, was met by looking left and right and asking the person next to you what they were doing.
AI hasn't changed that instinct. It's supercharged it.
"We've all become superhuman in our own light." — Neal GoyalThe reflex that used to be "which tool solves this?" is now "do I even need a tool for this at all?" And the result is showing up in the numbers.
"The uninstall rate of software tools in the last 90 days is huge." — Neal GoyalBrands are quietly asking of each subscription, do I really need this, was my business really suffering without it, what value is it actually giving me. Neal is clear this isn't a bleak picture. It's a shift in mentality happening across the ecosystem, and he expects that mentality to look different again 90 days from now.
Shiny Object Syndrome and the Case for Business 101
[26:26]
The ecosystem suffers from a chronic condition Neal calls shiny object syndrome, and AI is its newest and brightest object.
"You bat your eyes and all of a sudden, next thing you know, you have this incredibly bloated tech stack." — Neal GoyalThe temptation right now is to believe that if you're not adopting every new AI tool the moment it lands, you're falling irreversibly behind. Neal doesn't buy it. There will be early adopters who benefit and pull ahead, but the learning curve is going to be gradual, because this is not a fad passing through.
"At the end of the day, we are still selling a physical good here. We're still selling a t-shirt. We're still selling a supplement." — Neal GoyalHis advice for the anxious founder is the opposite of urgency. You're almost certainly not behind. You only feel that way because of the few loud voices on LinkedIn and Instagram talking about it. The danger isn't that you're too slow to adopt AI. It's that you chase the shiny object instead of doing the unglamorous Business 101 that actually moves the needle.
What the App Stack Can't Replace
[29:30]
If software is commoditising and stacks are shrinking, what's left to compete on? Neal's answer is the part most people assume AI makes obsolete. The human stuff. As tools get more similar, the decision about which one to buy comes down to something basic.
"There's a lot of similar software like this being built, but I like those people more. They're really responsive, they're really kind." — Neal GoyalAs budgets tighten, a lot of software companies are cutting exactly the customer-facing people who build those relationships. Neal argues that's precisely the moment to do the reverse. He puts his own money where his mouth is. Of the ten largest deals he's closed in recent memory, he went and met all ten in person. Ten out of ten. Email, meanwhile, "is eroding, or completely eroded already, as a trust channel." When thousands of companies flood the same small pool of inboxes, the inbox stops being a place anyone trusts.
So the bet he's advising his clients to make is the counterintuitive one. Give before you take. Win attention rather than compete on features.
"We're not in the business of competing against other providers in the space for that brand's business. We're in the business of competing against every other software company for attention." — Neal GoyalHis single best tip, saved for the end, doubles as the whole philosophy. Forget the textbook and go strike up 20 interviews with operators who live and breathe this work. Walk in their shoes and you'll learn more than any course could teach you. He should know. He has an MBA in marketing and says the 20 conversations taught him more than the degree ever did.
Today's Guest
Today's guest: Neal Goyal
Company: SaaS Class
Website: http://saasclass.io
LinkedIn: Connect with Neal on LinkedIn
Episode link: https://www.ecommerce-podcast.com/how-ai-is-quietly-killing-your-ecommerce-app-stack-with-neal-goyal

Most Amazon sellers who try Walmart copy their listings straight across — same title, same bullet points, same ad campaigns — and wonder why it doesn't work. Andrew Deramo has spent seven years on Amazon and now puts 40% of his working time into Walmart. His argument is simple: Walmart is its own search engine, its own customer base, and its own opportunity. Sellers who treat it like a second Amazon are leaving money on the table.
In this episode, Andrew walks through the strategy he uses with his own products and his clients at SellTru — from building platform-specific listings to using Walmart's account managers to place products on virtual shelves, running flash deals and tentpole events to build organic rankings, and eventually cutting paid advertising altogether once those rankings hold.
Key Topics
06:11 — Why copy-pasting Amazon listings onto Walmart quietly undermines brands moving across
09:59 — Why Walmart is far less competitive than Amazon (and could win long-term)
18:16 — The Walmart account manager (something Amazon simply doesn't offer) and what virtual shelf placement actually means
26:24 — Flash deals, tentpole events, the commission rebate system, and why you can switch off PPC once you rank
33:12 — Importing Shopify reviews onto Walmart listings, and why conversion matters more than the algorithm question
35:54 — The wholesale opportunity — finding Amazon brands absent from Walmart and becoming their Walmart seller

Treat Walmart as Its Own Search Engine
Andrew's central point is that Walmart and Amazon are distinct search engines — different keyword volumes, different customer intent, different listing requirements. The titles are structured differently. The bullet points are structured differently. The keywords that perform well on one platform do not automatically perform well on the other.
The practical implication is that a brand moving onto Walmart needs to build a Walmart-specific listing from scratch, using Amazon data as a starting point to be checked and adjusted against Walmart search data. Andrew is direct about why this matters beyond just keyword matching.
"Set it up properly the first time. It's really difficult to change once you're already on there."The Walmart platform is less mature than Amazon's, and making changes to live listings — even something as routine as updating a main image — can take weeks to process. Getting the listing right before launch matters more on Walmart than it does on Amazon.
The Walmart Account Manager Advantage
A significant difference is the Walmart account manager — a Walmart employee assigned to a seller's account, with no equivalent on the Amazon side.
What an account manager can do is called virtual shelf placement. A seller shares the keywords their product ranks for on Amazon, and the account manager manually places that product on the relevant virtual shelves within Walmart's platform. This effectively bypasses the organic ranking process for those shelf positions, giving a new or growing product visibility it would otherwise take months to earn.
In 2026 the route to getting an account manager has changed. Previously sellers could request one; now Walmart reaches out based on GMV thresholds. Andrew notes that if a brand is doing well on Amazon, a Walmart account manager has probably already sent them an email trying to bring them across.
"Take that gift and run with it because they can be very beneficial."Account managers also facilitate flash deals — a minimum 10% discount in exchange for placement on a high-traffic promotional shelf — and give access to tentpole events around back-to-school, Black Friday, and Christmas. During those events, Walmart offers commission rebates to sellers running Walmart-exclusive discounts: if a seller discounts a product 15% on Walmart, Walmart may cut its commission rate from around 15% down to 6 or 7%.
Andrew is attending the Walmart convention in San Diego this year specifically to push for a clearer path to account manager access for sellers who qualify but haven't been contacted.
Running Ads on Walmart — and Stopping
Walmart's advertising platform is less developed than Amazon's. Andrew recommends no more than three to five keywords per campaign, running those tightly focused campaigns for a couple of months after launch to build organic rankings. The key difference from Amazon is what happens next.
On Amazon, organic ranking positions tend to decay quickly without ongoing ad spend to support them. On Walmart, Andrew finds those positions hold for one to two months after cutting PPC.
"Once I see that my organic ranking is page 1 in a good spot for specific key terms, I'll cut that off — because it'll maintain its spot for a while."The strategy that follows is to sustain sales velocity through flash deals and tentpole events rather than continuous advertising. CPC is lower on Walmart than on Amazon, but conversion rates are also lower — the platform has less established consumer trust. Andrew sees returns of 4x to 5x ROAS on well-reviewed products once they have some history on the platform.
Reviews and the Shopify Import
Reviews affect conversion on Walmart just as they do on Amazon. What Walmart allows that Amazon doesn't is a direct import of existing Shopify reviews onto a Walmart listing — sellers upload an Excel file, Walmart runs a review check, and the reviews appear on the product page.
Andrew is honest about the limits of his knowledge here: he's confident the imported reviews lift conversion, but less sure how much weight the Walmart algorithm gives them as a ranking signal. The conversion benefit is the clearer win.
"I'll get a review later and they'll be like, 'Oh, I read the reviews and this product was great.' But how much does it actually help the algorithm when you upload those? I'm not sure."The ability to port verified reviews from an existing Shopify store removes one of the biggest barriers for new products on any marketplace.
The Wholesale Opportunity
Andrew's closing advice is aimed at sellers who don't yet have their own product but want to build on Walmart.
His suggestion is wholesale. Find small brands doing well on Amazon that have no Walmart presence — either because they lack the team, haven't prioritised it, or simply haven't got around to it. Call them. Ask for a wholesale price. Then take their product through the same Walmart launch process described above.
"Go to Amazon, there's tons of small businesses out there that have great products, that do great sales on the Amazon platform, but just don't exist on Walmart. There's an opportunity right there."The logic holds because a product with a proven Amazon track record is exactly the kind of listing that Walmart keyword data and an account manager relationship can accelerate. It is a lower-risk entry point than launching an unknown brand, and there are a large number of Amazon-only brands who have simply never had the bandwidth to expand.
About the Guest
Andrew Deramo is the founder of SellTru, where he helps ecommerce brands grow on Amazon and Walmart Marketplace. He has spent seven years on both platforms, started as ecommerce director for a large beach-supply business, and now runs his own product accounts alongside his agency work.
Website: selltru.com
LinkedIn: Andrew Deramo

About the eCommerce Podcast
The eCommerce Podcast is hosted by Matt Edmundson. Each week Matt talks with ecommerce founders and experts about what's actually working — practical strategies, honest lessons, and the kind of insight that comes from running real businesses.
New episodes every week. Find show notes, transcripts, and links at ecommerce-podcast.com.
Sign up to the newsletter to get each episode delivered to your inbox, and if you want to go deeper, check out the Cohort Groups — monthly calls with ecommerce people from around the world.
Episode link: https://www.ecommerce-podcast.com/how-to-win-on-walmart-not-just-amazon-with-andrew-deramo

Leo Rodriguez has spent years watching ecommerce brands quietly overpay on shipping, sometimes billed for 18 pounds on a parcel that actually weighs two. In this episode of the eCommerce Podcast, Matt Edmundson sits down with the VP of a Los Angeles 3PL to pull apart the unglamorous moves that protect your margin, one parcel at a time.
Summary
Leo Rodriguez, VP of River Plate, Inc., joins Matt to talk through the hidden costs sitting inside every order you ship. It starts with dimensional weight, where a small product in an oversized box gets rated as a far heavier shipment, so you end up paying for air. Leo explains how "cartonization" and carrier rate-shopping can claw that money back, saving $2 to $3 per parcel for brands doing hundreds of orders a day.
From there the conversation widens out to the messier stuff. Leo breaks down why smaller brands got hit hardest by the new tariffs while bigger brands used their buying power to get manufacturers to absorb the freight. He and Matt compare notes on international shipping gray zones, customs nitpicking, fuel surcharges becoming the new normal, and Amazon's ever-growing pile of fees.
00:00 Welcome and meet Leo
03:58 The inventory and replenishment problem
09:51 Tariffs, Brexit and customs gray zones
21:29 Why small brands got hit hardest
25:29 Fuel surcharges and the new normal
29:02 Cartonization, save $2 to $3 a parcel
33:07 Amazon's fees and dim weight
41:17 How to reach Leo

Dim Weight and Cartonization, Where Your Margin Quietly Leaks
[33:07]
Dimensional weight is the formula carriers use to rate a parcel by the space it takes up, not just what it weighs. Put a light product in a box that is too big and you get penalised for the empty space.
"If you're putting it in a, you know, 12 by 12 by 12 box and weighs only 2 pounds... it's not a 2-pound shipment. It's getting rated at an 18-pound shipment." — Leo RodriguezThe fix is cartonization, where transport management software reads the net dimensions and weight of your products and picks the smallest sensible shipper. Pair that with rate-shopping across a multi-channel carrier network and the savings add up fast.
Brands doing 100 to 300 orders a day can save $2 to $3 per parcel
Shipping cost can be more than your fulfilment fee on a per-order basis
Regional carriers and zone skipping can halve transit time and cost on the right lanes

"They're saving $2 per shipment. That adds up. That's a margin protector." — Leo RodriguezWhy Smaller Brands Got Hit Hardest by Tariffs
[21:29]
When the large tariff percentages landed, the brands with leverage came out ahead. Big brands could go back to their overseas manufacturers and renegotiate, and in some cases get the factory to cover the full freight bill, between $4,000 and $9,000 a container.
Smaller brands had no such leverage. Many were left holding inventory they had already produced overseas but could not afford to import, while retail partners cancelled or halved the very purchase orders they had been banking on.
Lead times stretched from 3 to 4 weeks out to 8 to 12 weeks
Brands shifted to smaller consolidated shipments, nearshoring, and alternate-country manufacturing in places like Malaysia and Taiwan
Standing up a new supply chain takes time, so the relief is rarely quick

International Shipping and the Customs Gray Zone
[09:51]
Matt and Leo swap war stories on cross-border shipping, with Matt's running Brexit gag as the UK parallel to US tariff chaos. On both sides of the Atlantic, free global trade turns out not to be that free.
Country-by-country rules are strict, especially on cosmetics and skincare, with Italy, Spain and Mexico all flagged. You can send 50 or 100 shipments through fine, then one customs agent nitpicks and the product gets stuck, disposed of, and the brand cops the bad review.
"Free global trade is not actually that free... it does require quite a lot of joined-up thinking." — Matt EdmundsonLeo's advice is to build item-level profiles, get the harmonised codes and packaging language right at the point of manufacture, and register properly for tax before you fire away.
Fuel Surcharges, Amazon's Fees, and the New Normal
[25:29]
Fuel surcharges jumped roughly 18 to 20% in two months, and the historical pattern is that surcharges ratchet up and never quite come back down. Plastics and packaging climbed 20 to 30%, hitting shrink wrap, poly mailers and bubble bags.
Amazon comes in for a closer look too. Powerful, yes, but fee-laden, with per-unit charges, ageing and seasonality storage tiers, FBA percentages, marketing fees, and a quietly added fuel surcharge in early May. Leo's case is for channel diversification, so you keep some control and predictability rather than living entirely inside one ecosystem.
"I am optimistic overall still. I think brands, you get smart and then you have to be resilient." — Leo RodriguezToday's Guest
Leo Rodriguez is Vice President of River Plate, Inc., a Los Angeles-based 3PL and fulfilment company serving DTC, wholesale and Amazon brands. River Plate handles fulfilment, logistics and international shipping, and Leo is happy to take a quick call to see whether there is a fit.
Website: riverplateinc.com
LinkedIn: Leo Rodriguez
River Plate Inc on Instagram and LinkedIn
Email: sales@riverplateinc.com

About the eCommerce Podcast
The eCommerce Podcast helps you deliver eCommerce WOW. Every Thursday, Matt Edmundson talks with experts and founders who've built the stores and learned the hard way, so you don't have to.
Subscribe and find every episode, with full show notes and links, at ecommerce-podcast.com. While you're there, take a look at the free monthly eCommerce Cohort and Slingshot AI Mentor.
Episode link: https://www.ecommerce-podcast.com/why-your-2-pound-parcel-ships-like-it-weighs-18

Emma Burke didn't set out to start a business. She was standing on the sidelines of her son's football training in the wind and the rain when a parent looped an elastic band around a boy's boots so his laces would stop coming undone. Everyone else's kids retied their laces three, four, five times a game. His didn't. That was the moment Laceeze was born.
Summary
This is a founder story about turning a problem nobody was searching for into a brand sold around the world. Emma had trained as a vet nurse on £80 a week, then built a 60-person contract cleaning company she quietly dreaded, before spotting that elastic-band trick on the touchline. She didn't invent it. She saw it work, asked the parents and the kids whether they'd buy and wear a proper version, and took the answer to market. Laceeze launched in 2017 at £6 and is still going today.
She and Matt get into the marketing problem most product founders never see coming, which is customers who don't yet know they need you. Emma explains how she built the UK with no marketing budget through an ambassador programme, why selling to an audience of children means treating safeguarding seriously, and how being honest on social media (the wins and the bits that go tits up) builds the kind of trust that ads can't buy. There's a brave call she made pulling her best seller right before Christmas, the supplier relationship she rates above everything else, and a complaint she turned into a five-star review.
Key sections by timestamp:
00:00 Welcome, Liverpool to Bournemouth
02:09 The elastic band on the touchline, how Laceeze started
03:47 From an £80-a-week vet nurse to a 60-person cleaning company
05:41 Throw away the business plan (she's never written one)
10:38 Going full-time, and trying to crack the USA
14:42 When customers don't know they need you, the ambassador programme
17:39 Safeguarding kids, and a TikTok violation
19:14 Grassroots community and giving back
21:38 Founder-led and honest on social media
27:35 Winning customers for life when things go wrong
34:45 Free market research, competitor sites and an inspiration folder
37:16 The one she wishes she'd known, pulling the best seller at Christmas
40:17 The most important relationship in the business
41:18 Rapid fire, Shopify, Klaviyo and getting into Claude
44:54 The dream, the US and a big brand collaboration

The Accidental Founder Who's Never Written a Business Plan (02:09)
Emma is clear that she's no inventor ("save that for Mr Dyson"). What she has is a little black book of crazy ideas and a habit of acting on the good ones. Before Laceeze there was a vet-nursing career she loved and a contract cleaning company she grew to 60 staff on the back of a Dorset property boom, knowing, by her own account, almost nothing about running a business when she started.
"I'm not your textbook kind of business builder. I've never written a business plan in my life." — Emma BurkeMatt's seen the same thing from the other side. He once had a would-be founder spread every form she thought she needed across his boardroom table, business plan and all. He swept the lot into the bin so they could actually start. The point both of them make is the same. Begin with a real problem and the simplest possible solution, and let the rest snowball.
"It was never done like, oh, we're going to create this product and it's going to go global. It was literally, there's a problem, here's a solution, and let's just take that to market." — Emma BurkeWhen Your Customers Don't Know They Need You (14:42)
The hard part of selling Laceeze isn't the product. It's that nobody wakes up looking for it. A parent watches their kid retie a lace five times a match and never thinks twice about it. Building what Matt calls solution awareness is the whole game, and in the UK Emma did it with no marketing budget at all, through an ambassador programme that started with a few mums on the sidelines and a £9.99 pair of bands gifted in exchange for a tag.
"You've hit the nail on the head, because we've got a solution to a problem, but parents don't go looking for the solution." — Emma BurkeThat programme is now a points-based platform with monthly challenges, and she's rebuilding it by hand in the United States, where the brand-recognition gap is the real reason PPC on Amazon wasn't growing. Because the audience is children, the work comes with a duty of care. Laceeze only sends to parent-run or clearly flagged accounts, and Emma is candid about a TikTok post of the product on a pitch being flagged for "exploiting children", with the appeal auto-rejected by a bot in about fifteen seconds.
Honesty as a Marketing Tool (27:35)
Emma's case for founder-led social media is simple. Tell the truth, including when a container's stuck or a shipment's delayed, because that's the reality of building a brand and people connect with it. Matt backs it up with a story of his own. One of his sites had its best month ever after a totally honest email about a stock shortage, telling customers they'd get one of six now and the rest later at the company's expense. Sales went mental.
The same instinct shows up when things go wrong. Emma describes a customer who vented on Facebook without ever contacting the brand directly. She moved them into the DMs, apologised, sent product, and two weeks later they were asking where to leave a review.
"Take the more negative, unhappy ones and see what you can do to resolve that. Because let's be honest, they're the ones that shout the loudest." — Emma BurkeAs Matt puts it, the angry ones are at least telling you what the problem is. Going out of your way to fix it is the secret marketing tool no one talks about.
The Brave Call That Saved the Reputation (37:16)
Asked what she wishes she'd known sooner, Emma goes right back to the first Christmas. The bands started snapping, a cutting and manufacturing issue, and rather than risk kids finding duds in their stocking fillers, Laceeze pulled everything at peak selling season. It was gut-wrenching, every instinct told her to keep selling and just replace the faulty ones, but the unseen risk was the customers who'd never complain and would simply decide the product was rubbish.
"It's not just a rubber band. There's a lot more to it." — Emma BurkeThey switched manufacturers afterwards and have stayed put since. Emma rates that relationship above every other in the business, a supplier with a UK office and a China factory, on her time zone, close enough to pick up the phone. The brave call cost a Christmas. It bought the reputation that carried the brand worldwide.
Today's Guest
Emma Burke is the Founder and Managing Director of Laceeze, the elastic-band brand that keeps kids' football laces tied and gives back to grassroots sport with every UK sale. She spotted the idea on the touchline of her son's training, launched in 2017, and is now building the brand in the United States.
Website: laceeze.co.uk
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/emma-burke-5bb73826
Social: Laceeze on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok

About the eCommerce Podcast
New episodes of the eCommerce Podcast land every Thursday. Join the free eCommerce Cohort, our monthly group for ecommerce founders, at ecommerce-podcast.com/cohort, and find everything else at ecommerce-podcast.com.
Episode link: https://www.ecommerce-podcast.com/the-elastic-band-that-became-a-global-brand-with-emma-burke