5 minutes of eComm Wisdom: Nate from Express Checkout

‍

One of the things that makes partnerships successful, is one being very active in the community and knowing all the different players and potential partners that are out there:

Um, so on our side, at Levitate, we're a full service marketing agency. We have no say in the finances of somebody's business. But if somebody's talking about they're coming up on a retail launch, or we see they're growing, hopefully with the help of our paid ads,we can suggest like a Dash.Fi to help finance ads or like a Settle to help with inventory financing.

So I think there's other ways to be helpful and partner both with our clients and both with other players in this space beyond just the explicit we should be working with marketing companies. I think the other side of it too is just keeping up to date with everything.

Uh, the latest in updates from our partners in terms of what they offer and also just who's there and just getting to know those people. So,you're always top of mind, they're always top of mind and you can help mutually help each other.

I think one way that I've been keeping a lot of relationships warm is by going to events, hosting our own events, engaging with people just as organically as possible. I am transitioning to doing that plus actually using a CRM, having my own sort of internal database of all of the partners with the key contacts, what they're used for, any links, and anything else that might be relevant to how we want to work with this, this partner. Um, so right now internally we're basically using Google Sheets and HubSpot to keep everything up to date and front of mind. I think something that I'm going to be starting to do is actually build out almost many one pagers on all of our partners. One so I can arm our internal team with the right tools and also provide them with insights when they're talking to a client. If they, if the client says something, maybe they mention a retail launch or they mention they're struggling in some way, whatever it is that our internal team, whether it's our eCommerce team, our account management team, our lifecycle team, whoever it is: they can look at that and be like ''Oh, that sounds like you should talk to this person or this company' or 'Oh, it sounds like you need reviews'.

Um, sort of being able to keep everything as high touch point as possible. Even if we're not like necessarily talking to our partners all the time, there's still this, database of who and what they are.

So I think last year, a lot of brands started to push more into focusing on profitability rather than growth at all costs. I think venture dollars have been drying up. They're still there. People are still raising. Wilde Brands just raised, I think, like $15m. Um, there's

some money out there, but it's for brands that are scaling at a certain rate, that have certain profitability metrics... those brands are definitely succeeding. I think, especially this year and especially over the past couple of months and with Foxtrot shutting down and rumors of certain alternative lenderswith things hitting the fan I have definitely felt some struggles from CPG brands. I think this year will be very telling in how many brands actually stay around if they don't pivot or if they don't get acquired in some capacity. But

generally speaking, like it definitely feels like it's tougher out there than in the past. There's definitely a crunch happening.

There's one brand called Smoosh. S M O O S H. So, sort of a sister brand to LeafShave which is a sustainable razor company. So, Smoosh makes what I would say is, uh, sustainable Loofahs. So they make silicone loofahs that, in the center of it, there is an opening for soap, so they also make soap they make soap in-house. They have a custom shape and it sticks right in the center. You can roll it up or roll it down like deodorant and it

is the best way I've used soap and have cleaned myself in a minute. It is great. The product feels really good. I think they're going to be coming out with some new types of soap and some new types of actual like scrubbers, which are really exciting. And it's like sustainable, but it's not yelling sustainability in your face, which I think a lot of consumers don't really care about, unfortunately. But I really think this product's good. I think the way they operate it is really interesting. I love the founder and the team is really, they're lean, they're mean. They have their own distribution and everything. it's really impressive and it's like a simple new product that. you don't need any education for. The only difference, really, is that soap piece. And that's like a fun novelty that I think works really well.

‍