Experience Explosive Growth Through SEO

0:00It was crazy. When we changed the name to Zero Waste Store, I think we gained 100 ,000 followers in less than 12 months. Hey everyone, welcome to Shopify Masters, your companion for starting and building a business. I'm your host, Shuang Esther Shan. In a world drowning in plastic, zero-waste store isn't just building a business. They are making low-waste lifestyles more accessible. They are a marketplace honoring and bringing new products to life that are rooted in sustainable values and don't compromise on ethics or quality. From$6 ,000 to$2 million in sales in just one year, Sarah Salinsky and JJ Filano have proven that sustainability and profitability can thrive together.

0:46Sarah, JJ, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having us. Yeah, thanks for having us here. Been looking forward to our conversation. And Sarah, I understand before starting this business, You worked in conservation and environmental education. How have these experiences shaped your approach to building Zero Waste Store? Yeah, so I grew up surrounded by nature. My dad taught me everything I know. And I've just always been very passionate about wildlife, conservation, and the environment in general. So as I got older, old enough to start volunteering, I started volunteering and working at a local wildlife center.

1:25And the connection I felt with the animals and just being able to help them and release them back into the wild, it just sparked something inside of me. And I just had this calling that I really wanted to do more. So I became a board member of our local conservation alliance where I worked to help our local city try and reduce plastic pollution, get straws and stuff out of restaurants and stop construction and new development for certain things where there were protected areas. And it just I wanted to do more. So JJ actually gave me the idea to start my own store because I was already trying to reduce plastic waste at home and live a more low waste lifestyle.

2:14And that's how Zero Waste Store started. Yes. And I love the foundation that you have to kind of set the value system you wanted to instill within business. initially the business was actually launched as earthy shop and there was this rebrand into zero waste which helped to also allow the business to scale jj can you talk to us about the rebrand and what can new founders think about when they're trying to link seo with branding when they're setting up a new business yeah i mean when we first started i just told sarah like hey if you can get, you know, 100 orders a month, that would be like a home run, you know, some extra money to do what you want to do and, and all that good stuff.

2:59And so we started, you know, it was earthy shop originally. And then, you know, I've done marketing for the last 10 years. So I've been very heavily integrated with Google ads and search engine optimization. And I saw like a trend of a lot of people looking like for zero waste products, particularly. And I come to find out that zero waste store, that domain name was not being used. And it actually got searched like, I think, 10 or 15 ,000 times a month, people were actively looking for, you know, that that keyword and variations of that keyword. And I said, Well, you know, we just started, you know, we're about a few months in and I'm like, I think there's a really strong play here.

3:49So why don't we rebrand as zero waste store? We can use the acronym ZWS and we'll probably grab a lot of that market share almost instantaneously. And sure enough, by making the switch and doing the rebrand, And we went from initially doing a few hundred orders a month at most to doing over a million dollars in sales within the first year of doing that rebrand. So that was like a huge lever of success that we pulled that was able to do that. So yeah, it was definitely a great move and it's really paid off for us. It sounds like such a great strategic decision that you guys have made. I'm sure it also came with a lot of work because you do have to rebrand.

4:40There's also a financial investment to actually buy the domain. When you're at this kind of crossroads and you're thinking about a big change like this, what should founders think about when they consider rebranding? Yeah, I think there's, I've seen brands do it in the past and there's a lot. there's a lot to consider, but I would think one of the nuggets that I could provide just from trial and error in the past and knowing SEO is when you do do a rebrand, a lot of brands aren't redirecting a lot of the URLs, like from the old domain to the new one. And you actually get a lot of dead links in Google search.

5:24So you could potentially lose a lot of the traffic that you've you've gained from your prior branding. But you could also, you know, save a lot of traffic if you if you do your due diligence in that area and really make sure everything is redirecting correctly. And then make sure that your Google rankings actually don't, you know, go down from not doing that. So we did it very early on. So I would say it wasn't like such a huge undertaking for us because we were still very early on in the infancy of the business. The funny thing was the domain name, I bought it from a gentleman actually in Colorado.

6:07And he loved like what I kind of told him what we were planning on doing with it. And we were, you know, he saw Earthy Shop and we showed him the brand. And he loved it so much. So he was like, hey, man, just, you know, give me like, I think he told me like$1 ,500 and you could have the domain. And he kind of saw the bigger vision behind what we were trying to do with the mission of the brand. And that was really cool. I mean, that is a huge, typically a larger investment. We got lucky, but sometimes domains go from anywhere from, I mean, they could be in the hundreds of thousands to purchase a domain.

6:45So we got lucky in that sense. But, you know, picking the right domain, making sure if you are going to make the switch, that domain actually will help you get more rankings and you'll see some upside by doing that. And then also, if you do have an established brand, knowing that all the redirects from the old marketing channels are being pushed to the new ones is one of the big things that I see. And I've seen a few brands in our industry do incorrectly. And it's really caused detrimental effects for SEO specifically. you know, so. Yeah. I love the fact that also you built this relationship with the person who is selling you this domain as well so that they can understand the value.

7:32We also have some past episodes with Waterboy and Vitruvi where they've also gone through a rebrand if listeners are interested to hear more about that journey. Sarah, for you though, you know, this business initially started and pulling on this relationship thread, you also had to go out and look for businesses that aligned with your value to source their products and build out this marketplace. Talk to us about finding the right businesses that you wanted to feature and help them sell their products. Yeah. When we first decided to start the business, I spent about six months researching and doing my best to try and find products that were made by small businesses because we wanted to support small businesses specifically and just make sure they were made mindfully and eco-consciously with minimum packaging, especially no plastic packaging, you know, ingredients that are sourced sustainably.

8:33And I thought that was very important. So we spent about six months researching and testing. I tested hundreds of products and we launched with our shampoo and conditioner bars, which today are still our number one best-selling product. That was the beginning of the journey. Then the both of you have slowly developed your own branded products that also exist within your marketplace. What are some factors entrepreneurs should think about when they're deciding to develop their own products and go through that manufacturing process? I think important for profitability because marketing is just so, you know, marketing and ads, if you're planning on taking that approach to drive revenue, just making sure you have a healthy, you know, healthy margin on your cost of goods is, you know, really vital right out the gate, you know, two to three times, you know, is two to 300 % is typically good, you know, because you have to think about shipping costs to the customer, cost to acquire a customer through ad spend.

9:42And then if you are doing organic marketing as well, you know, there's a cost there to, you know, to accomplish that. So I think that your margin on your products is very important. And then I'm sure Sarah could probably go into some more details about sourcing products and finding the right relationships with manufacturers. The manufacturers we've been working with, we've built the relationship over years. So now we fully trust them and we can ask them questions and feedback about different products we want to create, even if it's possible. And we always make sure that the manufacturers have certifications in place like for fair wage and working practices and that they are actively working towards bettering themselves and their business alongside ours.

10:34So the manufacturers and brands that we work with now, we have really good relationships with them. And honestly, they're our friends, you know, so. Yeah. And I believe when you're running a marketplace and you're developing your products, there might be a little tension when you're looking at it as an outsider, when you're thinking about promoting your own brand of products alongside products from other businesses. How do you find that balance? We try to provide products that are sustainable, but also affordable to customers. And that's really an important part of the whole thing, right? Right.

11:10Sustainability, like for a long time is not it. You can get sustainable products, but sometimes they're a lot more money into the average consumer that that becomes, you know, almost a wedge between them actually taking that that step to being more more more sustainable, more eco friendly in their lifestyle. So we've kind of noticed trends with certain products that tend to be on the higher side. So we kind of take that approach with sourcing products where, you know, our essential line is products that, you know, everybody's using every day. But they're able to buy them, feel good about the purchase because they know it's coming.

11:51It's all sustainable. It's plastic free. And it's affordable for them as well. So I think like the product line that we've developed outside of our marketplace component of the website is more for products that we've seen an issue with price point for everyday consumers. So that's kind of how we approach it, you know, with brands. So we, you know, there's, there's brands that develop products that, you know, skincare for being an example, like we don't, we don't have any type of like skincare products that we sell, you know, in the essentials line, just because like there's other brands that do a way better job than probably we would and be able to provide it to the consumer at a way more affordable rate.

12:39So we kind of try to stay with what we know we're good at. And like I said, what we think is we can accomplish to the end consumer that is at an affordable price point. But also, you know, we're still keeping our ethos and our mission in place for sustainability and plastic-free and eco-friendly products. It sounds like you're taking accessibility into account when you're developing this product line because one of your ethos is not to force all consumers to adopt everything zero waste, but to just make it as easy as possible for them to incorporate some element of that into their life. So I think when you're making those products more accessible, it's a great way to start.

13:25And I know that there's also use of Shopify data and tools that helps you to make larger decisions and investing in different categories. What are some other learnings you've gleaned from these tools? Yeah, I mean, you know, Shopify's reports are like a huge cornerstone of our business. So like we use those to make everyday decisions. you know, specifically, like you're saying, like, products, you know, sales by product, just to kind of see what, like, what are our top products, you know, what's trending towards, like, because we're adding new products every day, whether, you know, it's through our essentials line, or we're adding new small businesses to the marketplace side.

14:09So we're seeing we have a huge product catalog. So we kind of things are constantly changing, like, based on like, what consumers are buying and stuff. So we're able to see that through Shopify reports and like see kind of, you know, Q1 might be different than Q2 because we've added, you know, 10 new brands onto the marketplace. And we're seeing like what actually is working and then maybe what's not working so well. So I would say the reporting is a huge, a huge component of it. And then also just, you know, Shopify as a whole being an all one ecommerce platform really covers all your bases for anybody starting an ecommerce business.

14:50You know, you have access to, you know, the App Store, which you know, you guys probably have the largest database of apps, you know, in the ecommerce industry. I mean, you know, there's other other players, but I mean, the resources and the and if you have functionalities that you want to implement into your your business, You can almost find an app, a Shopify app for it, which is huge for somebody that doesn't want to pay a developer and pay all that upfront cost to do that. So yeah. So the community you build on social media has grown so much from zero to tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands.

15:32How do you balance providing educational content that has components of entertainment and also sales? I think personally, our community is the number one most important thing with Zero Waste Store. Before we launched, I spent probably six to eight months building our Instagram following. And this was back in 2018 when Instagram photos were the big thing. There was no such thing as reels or TikTok. So I was just extremely consistent. I spent a lot of time taking photos of our upcoming products and just building a relationship with our audience and showing people like we need to wake up and see all of what's going on, like all the plastic pollution and how it's just harming wildlife in our environment.

16:18And it's just devastating. So we built our following to about 10 ,000 followers before we launched. And just from there, it was crazy. When we changed the name to Zero Waste Store, I think we gained 100 ,000 followers in less than 12 months. So that was a wake up call. I was like, wow, I'm not the only one who cares, you know, like all these people care just as much as I do, which is why we push imperfectly zero waste. So the community is the number one most important thing. And I managed the social media by myself for the first four years, and I made sure to post every single day. And the relationships we built with our community has really made our brand such mission driven and just goes to show you how many people actually care about the environment.

17:06So it's really, you know, in the doom and gloom, it's very positive and it makes you see the light at the end of the tunnel, you know? Yeah, Sarah, Sarah still takes calls to this day. Customers, they'll be like, I do answer customer service calls. They'll be like, Oh my God, you're the owner. It's quite, it's really cool. Yeah, I love that so much because I'm sure from either one-to-one, those phone conversations or interactions on social media, you learn so much what the community wants and therefore you're growing the business and expanding in a way that serves the community as well. Has there been any feedback from the community that you've implemented that really dramatically changed the business in terms of where you wanted to be or how you scaled the business?

17:55I wouldn't say dramatically changed the business, but we definitely listened to all customer feedback. They've given us, honestly, I remember reading a DM about where we can buy shipping labels that are 100 % compostable and recyclable. And I had no idea they even existed. So that's a big one. So now all of our shipping labels can be recycled. We found TerraCycle through Instagram, which is a brand that recycles everything. so now we have tear cycle boxes all over the warehouse and we recycle any plastic that we do receive from shipments so those are just a couple things no i think those two are so impactful and i think when we're thinking about impact on the environment or social impact or trying to build a lot of times founders struggle with being profitable and the impact they want to create So what is your way of trying to balance the two and actually align, you know, your goals with profit as well?

19:00I think that when we first started, all I wanted to do was make a positive impact on the environment. I was not even considering profit. That's where JJ comes in. We tug a war on this actually all the time because I'm more like, I'm more the like logic finance, you know, marketing guy and making sure like our return on ad spend and our, like I said, our cost of goods is, is, you know, there, there's enough, enough spread there to be profitable and ensure profitability. And then she's the, the voice of reason for like, Hey, I don't care. Like we still need to be sustainable. You know, we'll figure out the money, you know, but we'll, we still need to ensure that our mission is aligned with, with you know, why we're doing this.

19:44And, and I think that's important. And it we've kind of, we've kind of balanced it now where it's, you know, our mission is obviously priority over everything. But then like, we got to, you know, we follow up with like, all right, well, how do we make sure that that's still in place, but we also can sustain, you know, a healthy profit margin, because e commerce is, you know, there's, there's a lot of operating costs, and it can, you know, you can spread those profits very thin, just in, you know, like I said, marketing and operational costs. If you're not really looking at your numbers and taking a whole overview picture of everything and how you operate the business as a whole.

20:31I'm the passion side of the business. So if I could give away all these products for free, then I would. So it's definitely hard. It's a hard balance because sustainable products are are so much more expensive because you have to take into consideration where the products are sourced from the ingredients, the packaging. So that's how JJ has helped me a lot, try and balance like how we can make it a business that we can grow into while also offering, you know, a more affordable, sustainable product for the consumer in addition to sticking with our mission and just trying to make as big of a positive impact as possible on the planet.

21:12Yeah, and I could just add to that a little bit more. I think the essential line that we've developed has helped us a lot. So we kind of solved the problem with providing consumers more affordable products, but we also were able to increase our profit margin by having that essentials line and manufacturing products ourselves and just controlling that process more. And then it's also helped us be able to sustain the small business side, the marketplace side as well, because those are, you know, we're pretty much buying those products wholesale from small businesses so that, you know, so we don't get as good as a margin.

21:49But like I said, the essential line allows us to kind of balance everything out as a whole because, you know, some of our core products are flagship products that we do sell. you know, we have a larger profit margin. And then all the businesses that we have, customers are able to add those on while they're buying, you know, the essentials line, if they want a skincare product, it's there for them. So, you know, it's kind of a win-win for pretty much everybody, our small business vendors, and then ourselves by having, you know, kind of the synergy between the essentials line and then offering the third party products that we have through small business vendors.

22:31Sounds like you both are coming from two very different but important sides of the business and you're also life and business partners. So where do you find the balance working together when you do come from opposing sides? I don't know. Honestly, we're just great partners. A lot of people ask us this question and we just work so well together and we balance each other out. I think communication is a very big part of that. We're very open and honest about our feelings and transparent about, you know, the hard stuff, what's really going on. And, okay, this month we have to cut back. This month, you know, let's do this and this.

23:13And we sit down and really take the time to hear each other out. And it's worked out really well. Yeah, I believe, you know, a relationship is a part, it's a business partnership, you know, and I think that does apply. in a lot of areas. So like, you know, I think us just being able to kind of see where the other person's coming from, you know, and just kind of allowing grace in some areas of the business is really, you know, really something to always keep in mind if you are going into business with your life partner, but also just any partner in general, right? So yeah, I think we've we've been pretty good at that.

23:59And we've, we've kind of been able to balance each other out with, with our differences. So it works well. There's, there's good synergy there. I also wanted to add that we make sure that there's a work life balance. So we do take time to not worry about the business and focus on, focus on our personal life. So even though it is our whole life, our business, you know, you never really stop thinking about it. It's, it's a 24 seven thing. It's an online store. It doesn't shut down or close for the day. But I think we, we have a pretty good balance on, you know, when we should take a break. Yeah.

24:35I love how much both of you have grown and grown the business together. And I think I also want to take it back to the growth that you built on social as well, because Sarah, to your point, you scaled the account from zero to 10 ,000 to hundreds of thousands of followers. how have you been able to keep the core of your messaging while you're marketing and there's so many different audiences that are joining you and you still haven't diluted your message for the community that you've built online well the reason I ran our social media for the first four years is because I was scared uh to let anybody else take over because nobody's going to do as good of a job as you are.

25:19You know, like, I am the founder of the business and I, I'm the one who cares the most. So I was, I was very wary of passing that along. But I have found someone who is just as passionate in sustainability. And she's a great member of the team. Her name's Clara. And she just is a rock star on social media. And I just make sure all of our posts align with our mission, which is, you know, we don't need a handful of people doing zero waste perfectly. We need millions of people doing it imperfectly. So when you wake up in the morning, if you just make one decision throughout your day just to, hey, this is going to, you know, be a better option for the planet, that's all that matters.

26:01And it also makes you feel good, you know, when you're doing something that's better for the planet, the wildlife, and also your health. Yeah. And I think what's also amazing is the fact that different pieces of content, there is an element of education threaded throughout, but you've been able to make it entertaining. There is also this marketing element as well. So how do you make sure the content is well balanced when it's educational, entertaining, and there's a sales marketing factor too? We try to keep things as lighthearted as possible, and we want to be a resource for people to come and follow us just to gain something from it.

26:41We're not there to push sales. Obviously, we do post about our products every once in a while. But the number one thing is we want people to watch our posts, our reels, and gain something from it. Like, wow, I never thought of that. Or I didn't know that. Or, you know, I'm going to start doing this in my everyday life. And all of those things have a positive impact on the planet. So that's the most important thing. Yeah. Yeah. I think you could get really caught up in the doom and gloom of like, you know, humans polluting the planet. And, and that is a real thing. It really is. And that's why we're here.

27:17And that's why we're so mission driven towards, you know, towards reducing that. But I think we, we also try to make it that, you know, hey, like, if you, you could do a little bit every day, and that will make an impact, you know, and, and everybody, I feel like everybody that is aware of this and has concern of what's going on with our waste as a society, I think everybody knows that this is a good thing. And you're doing something that's bigger than yourself. And everybody wants to be a part of something that is essentially good and can do more than what is just within themselves. You know, I think that's a huge thing for a lot of our customers and why they're so loyal.

28:10Because I think they believe just like we do, like, you know, we're all doing collectively. We're all here and we're working towards something that is bigger than all of us. And that's like, you know, preserving the planet and preserving the very thing that keeps us all alive and, you know, able to do what we do. So I think that's like a huge thing for social media too and how we kind of spread that, you know, out and through social media. And I think beyond social media, we talked about SEO in relation to the branding and the name change. But I think optimizing your search is something that you need to think about every single day.

28:56So I guess what are some other strategies that has helped the growth of Zero Waste Store in the realm of SEO? Yeah. So kind of what we talked about with the domain name being keyword targeted, I think you could apply that. I mean, this is what we do is blogging is super important. So if you can use tools like, you know, obviously Shopify has a lot of insight on what people are searching and, you know, where you're getting traffic from. But also you could use a tool called like SEMrush is a great like SEO tool. And you can really, you know, start pulling keywords and topic ideas of like what people are searching for that actually get searched.

29:38Because sometimes if you don't have a direction, you'll write a blog and it'll be a great blog. But no one's actually, you know, searching for that, you know, or searching a specific keyword surrounding that. So if you could really drill down like, you know, what keywords you want to target and then surround your blogs and your content, your pages around those, you know, you really can get a jumpstart in getting organic rankings and also getting obviously, you know, more revenue through that sales channel. In today's world of SEO, content is king and blogging is the most important thing that you probably could be doing.