How to Bring a Viral Product to a New Market

0:00I think that that probably spoke to him because as a business owner now, I think nobody cares as much about your business as you do. Hello, welcome to Shopify Masters, your companion for starting and building a business. I'm Shuang Esther Shan. To start a business, you don't always have to come up with a new product yourself. Take Jillian Gallant. She first saw Papershoot Cameras on TikTok. It's a digital camera that's as simple to use as a disposable camera, without the hassle of dealing with film and none of the plastic waste. Papershoot cameras were only available in Asia at the time, so she saw an opportunity to bring it into a new market.

0:41Jillian is here today to talk about how she went from seeing the product online to becoming the exclusive distributor in North America, and how she scaled Papershoot camera to a multi-million dollar business with more than 70 ,000 customers. Jillian, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you so much for having me. So I know that you originally saw paper shoot cameras on TikTok. Tell us what about this product really caught your eye. Yeah, absolutely. So whenever I saw the TikTok video, it had been somebody that had gone to Asia and purchased the camera. They brought it back to the United States.

1:16And at the time, my partner and I were selling disposable cameras on Amazon. During the pandemic, we started an Amazon business. And so we were finding products to sell. and one of the most popular things that we were selling was disposable Kodak Fuji cameras. It was definitely coming back as a trend. And so whenever I saw this camera being talked about in this TikTok video, she had described it like taking photos like a disposable camera, but it was digital. So there's not a limitation on the amount of photos. You don't have to get them developed. And the camera that she was holding was super cute, had different designs on it.

1:49I just knew this product was going to be something special. And so I wanted to get involved with it. And who did you envision as a user of a paper shoot camera? So because I found it on TikTok, I really think that the demographic that I thought was going to really enjoy this was sort of the younger millennials and the Gen Zs. Sort of like the TikTok age, because I think with the older generations, whenever you are not used to technology, you want the latest and greatest. But younger generations that grew up with technology, they kind of don't remember a time where they didn't have it. And so sometimes they like going back to sort of a nostalgic feeling or back to a little bit more simplicity because they're used to the latest and greatest that, you know, the latest iPhone doesn't impress as much as something that kind of just goes back to basics and gives them a break from the technology.

2:36It also almost has the best of both worlds where you have the technology of a digital camera, but you also don't need to constantly look at your screen, pick out a best photo. You're just kind of like, take a photo, forget about it, and we'll see it the next time when we check up on these photos when we plug it into a laptop. Very cool. So you mentioned that you actually had an Amazon business. What other experience did you have within the e-commerce space? So at the time, we were about like six months into selling on Amazon because it was in 2020. Whenever I saw the video, it was sort of end of 2020.

3:11And we started basically whenever the pandemic hit. So we only had like six months of experience on Amazon and we were doing something called retail arbitrage. So we were finding some things that were on sale and we would then sell it on Amazon online. We would send it into Amazon. So that was our really our only experience. But I had a background in marketing. And so whenever I did see that TikTok video and I reached out to the inventor of the camera in Taiwan, we sort of pitched to them that we wanted to bring it on as a product that we sell and sort of be the North American distributor. Honestly, we didn't have the experience to sort of back up that request, but luckily they said yes and they allowed us to sort of bring it into the new market.

3:49So you reached out to George Lynn, who's the inventor of Paper Shoot. What do you think it was about your pitch that really spoke to George and made him decide to pick you as the distributor for Paper Shoot in North America? I don't imagine I was the first person to reach out. That video had gotten a lot of views, and I don't think that I would be the first person that would have seen that and sort of seen that there would be an opportunity to bring it to North America. We kind of went back and forth a little bit, and then his email sort of dropped off a little bit and so I figured I have nothing to lose and I sent him this big long email basically saying how passionate I would be to promote his cameras in North America how I saw that there was a great opportunity how I think that it's an amazing product and how I love the innovation and I think that that probably spoke to him because as a business owner now I think nobody cares as much about your business as you do And so if somebody actually has that passion behind wanting to work with you and going to basically put in the work and the time and the effort to really take care of your baby, because that's what it is.

4:56Like business owners, their business is their baby. So I think just sort of the passion that I portrayed in that email to him, I think that did speak to him and sort of give us that opportunity for him to see that we would be a really good fit for his product. So George wasn't the only person you had to convince. You also have your partner, Jack, who was a manager from a previous job that helped to fund this business. So what did he originally think about this idea? You know what, I think, I mean, he is sort of in the older generation as well, that we were kind of going back to talking about the younger generation with the technology.

5:33So we were kind of reflecting on this the other day, actually, and him and his friends didn't really see it, but they're not the target demographic. So I think luckily we had that experience selling those disposable cameras. He was confused on why we were selling a lot of disposable cameras as well. So I think if we hadn't had that disposable camera success on Amazon, he maybe wouldn't have seen it as clear. But I think the comparison between the disposable and this digital version of that concept was something that he was able to see a little bit because of that reason. But yeah, there's not a lot of people that in my circle believed in the product right away.

6:09So we had a little bit of convincing, but I think that that disposable camera sales really did help kind of convince Jack. And I think what's interesting about this is as you're becoming the person to carry the camera for North America, you actually have to invest in a lot of inventory. So Papershoot in Asia and Georgia's team, they get a huge order from you. All of this stuff arrives in your house and now you have to sell it. So what did you do to first initially market the camera? Yeah, so the original plan and the reason why we wanted to bring this product in was to sell on Amazon. But because we are the North American exclusive distributor, we knew that we had to have a website that we could purchase off Amazon.

6:54So the first step was, you know, creating our Shopify website and product photography, making sure that we had everything that we needed, product descriptions, all that set up. And then I knew that I found it on social media. So we needed to make sure that we started building our social media in a really good way and start the branding process. And it's launching a new product in a market that hasn't seen this product before. So I knew that it was a big undertaking. And so my first person that I brought onto the team was our social media manager. I knew that this was an important role because social media is how I found it and how it went viral and how I wanted to sort of promote it as well.

7:30So we did a lot of social media. We still do a lot of social media. That was our main marketing plan was to just get a bunch of content out there, showcase the product, tell people about the product and go from there. So aside from setting up the website, our social media setup was next in line. You also saw a lot of success early on on TikTok, the platform you discover the product. A lot of people would say, is it because it's luck or is it because you were strategic with the content? So tell us about the strategies and the thinking behind each piece of content and what kind of stories were you telling through the videos?

8:07I think it's a bit of both. I think that the product in itself is very unique and it's very easy to go viral just because it is such an interesting concept. It's a very innovative take on the camera and it's eco-friendly. I think that there's a lot of points that sort of help that virality of it. But then of course there is strategy. There's many different elements that we sort of incorporate into our social media. We play on the fact that it's eco-friendly. We play on the fact that they're really cute. You can get lots of cute designs, swap it out with your outfit or your style. And then there's the education purpose as well, how to use.

8:42So we really just broke down the different elements that we would want to feature and made sure that we were kind of evenly distributing content online. I kind of covered a few different things and then hopping on the TikTok trends, Instagram trends, and sort of capturing what's sort of going on in pop culture, because I know that our demographic is very involved with pop culture and the newest trends that happen online. What was one of the first videos that went viral on TikTok for you? Break down the content for us. Our first viral video was our social media manager had photoshopped our cameras into Timothee Chalamet's hands and said that Timothee Chalamet loves our cameras.

9:20But it wasn't in like a misleading way. It was very clear that it was Photoshop. It was of like a parody type thing. You could see the hand that was originally holding the camera superimposed onto Timothee Chalamet's hand. So it was very much not a misleading thing. It was a funny thing. And a lot of people resonated with that. And maybe a lot of Timothee Chalamet fans out there are also paper shoot fans, because that was our first viral video. And that happened in month two of us being in business. But the first month that I brought on my social media manager. Super fun. And you also were very cognizant of not just being investing in one channel.

9:57You also have built up the Instagram following. You also invest in Pinterest. So talk to us about being active in different channels and how you manage all of the different areas that you can promote Papershoot. Yeah, absolutely. My social media manager, she is she's awesome and that is why I definitely wanted to bring her on right away so with TikTok and Instagram we use a lot of the same videos for TikTok videos onto Instagram reels and then we make sure that our feed posts are a little bit more like I think of an Instagram profile as kind of like a website so you're going to want to make sure that you have information about the product you're going to want to make sure that you have photo examples and lots of information that people can sort of go to and browse.

10:38While TikTok videos and reels are sort of, it lives in the For You page or the Explore page on Instagram. And people don't really go back to the videos. It's sort of like a right now and while an Instagram feed is a longevity play. So it sounds like Instagram is almost the business portfolio where people can find information. And then TikTok is where you grab the attention and bring people into the now. What about Pinterest? What are you doing on that platform? So with Pinterest, we're going with like sort of an aesthetic and a design sort of approach. We make different pins every single day. We post some videos that we've done on TikTok and Instagram as well.

11:17And it's a lot of things where like, it'll be like travel ideas because it's a great product to bring on while you're traveling or matching our cameras to your outfit because a lot of people get inspiration for design, creativity, art. It has a very different demographic on Pinterest. While it definitely shares some demographic with TikTok and Instagram, it is definitely with more of the looks and the aesthetic that is on Pinterest. So we try to translate that angle onto Pinterest. All of these channels sound like these are earned channels where you're bringing more people into the universe that is paper shoot.

11:51How are you transitioning that audience into it owned audience, be it newsletters or SMS marketing or any other channels that you're experimenting with? So we do have an email newsletter sign up on our website, which is great. We built that out right from the first time we launched the website and we built a great list of people that are super engaged with our content. And we make sure that we keep that email list entertained by sending lots of emails and stuff like that. Different promotions, some exclusive offers, all that. And then we did only start building our SMS list about six months ago.

12:25We were a little bit late on that, but that's definitely important as well because not a lot of people will check their email, but pretty much everybody will check their text messages. And then throughout all the different channels, all the different areas that you're experimenting with, what are some key takeaways you have for founders who are trying to build out all these different pipelines for the marketing efforts? I think repurposing content is huge. And like I said, I use the same TikTok videos on our Instagram reels. Although there's sometimes can be like a different style versus Instagram reels and TikTok, I found that videos on TikTok and Instagram, I don't know which one is they're going to blow up.

13:01I could flop on TikTok and blow up on Instagram or vice versa. So even though we're only creating for one of the platforms, we share it on both. So that allows you to be on both platforms and you might get more views on one than the other or, you know, equally, but at least that's double the views that you would have gotten if you just posted on one platform. So repurposing content. And then, of course, if you're taking product photography for your Instagram feed, you can use it for your website. So I think just repurposing and not really having a piece of content only go to one place, you can use it on several different platforms and that saves your time and money and everything if you're repurposing as much as you can.

13:39Be efficient with your content creation. I'm chatting with Jillian Galland, CEO of Paper Shoot Camera. I hope you're enjoying our conversation. If you haven't already, please subscribe or follow Shopify Masters wherever you get your podcasts and leave us a review or feedback for the show. Thanks. So you bring Papershoot Camera into North America. To your point, it's probably not the first time that George has been approached and probably not the first time he has thought about it because entering a new market is quite difficult. And you've mentioned just being a founder based in Canada, shipping to different parts of North America.

14:17Walk us through some of the logistic challenges that you've overcome. There's definitely challenges, but as a business owner, you adapt wherever you can. Something that we're still struggling with that I didn't think would be this difficult is I'm Canadian. My partner's Canadian, so our business is registered in Canada. We now have a registered business in the United States, but we haven't been able to get a United States credit card. which means I cannot get a USPS account because they need to have a credit card that has a billing address that's in the United States and all my credit cards have billing addresses in Canada.

14:54So that is something that we had to sort of do a workaround. We had to use a third-party program that actually uses their UPS and DHL and different accounts and we just paid this company that will accept a Canadian credit card. But that's been something I've been struggling for a while with And I still don't have a U.S. credit card just because everything is registered in Canada. So that's just one example of just sort of entering a new market. And U.S. is a really great market for us, but it just hasn't been as easy as you would think. And I imagine because Paper Shoe Headquarters is mainly based in Taiwan, all of their production happens in Asia.

15:30So then it goes to you in Canada. And so it seems like there's many steps. How has been keeping the inventory predicting sales been? That's been kind of difficult. We have a lot of SKUs. And if I were to make a brand new product, I would try to do something with less SKUs. But I understand that the SKUs are the different designs. So we want to be able to offer multiple different designs on our cameras. It just makes it hard to manage in that way because we will look at the numbers. We'll try to use as much data as possible to predict how many more of a certain design of a camera that we need to bring in.

16:06And we'll look at the last 30 days, last 90 days, last 120 days. And we'll think that we need more of one than we do the other. And then as soon as we get it all in stock, we're ready to go. Another one that didn't show as many sales in the past data, all of a sudden sells out. And now we're out of stock of that. And now everybody wants that one, even though it didn't sell very quickly whenever we were looking at our data. So it's definitely hard with lots of SKUs, but we are trying to stay on top of it always. We dealt with a lot of inventory shortages over the pandemic. We had some shortages on materials.

16:39So luckily, we're not dealing with that anymore. So we can get an order a lot quicker than we used to. But something being out of stock back when there was inventory shortages would make it be a very long time before we could get that design back in stock. So it is a little bit better, but there is that manual back and forth and logistics to get something in stock if we do run out. And how are you personally learning more about data and analyzing the data that you do have to help make better decisions about ordering and managing inventory? Data is very key for businesses that are online. It's really great to use the Shopify dashboard to see where referring sites are coming from.

17:19So where the visitors are coming from, whether that's like for marketing or which landing page they're landing on. So that would associate with a specific ad that we're running. It really does help with the analytics to understand what marketing is working for us. And then, of course, like I said, with the inventory, while it hasn't always been completely accurate with just the trends of our customers and what they would like, it is accurate to see what has sold and how much we can predict moving forward. Because whenever you're purchasing bulk inventory and you're making bulk orders, you want to be able to order what is going to move the fastest so that your money's not sitting there in inventory, which makes it difficult to turn over.

17:55Analytics is definitely good. We download it and analyze it all the time just to make sure that we're making the right decisions for our business. And one of the reasons why Paper Shoot Camera is selling out is because the added advantage of being a sustainable option compared to traditional disposable cameras. Can you walk us through some of the ways that the camera itself is sustainable and also the way that the camera is made and how the workers are creating these different devices has been so great for the sustainability aspect? George Lin, the inventor of Paper Shoot, he loves film photography.

18:33This digital camera was inspired by the feel of film photos. So there's nothing against film. I think whenever you're comparing it to a disposable camera where it's kind of a trend because you want to get that look to the photos, but it's not necessarily somebody that is a film fanatic that really enjoys the developing process. But if you look at it just from a broad perspective, a digital option where you don't have to develop the photos is a more sustainable version than film. But to go beyond that for the sustainability element of the cameras, the cameras themselves are digital. But most digital cameras are sort of the technologies wrapped with plastic because that's the simplest and the easiest and the cheapest to produce.

19:14But George, whenever he was inventing, came up with the concept. He had worked at a paper mill and he had worked in tech. He had knowledge of stone paper, which is basically where we got our name. We got Paper Shoot Camera, but it's not actually paper. So it doesn't use trees or water to produce. Stone paper is what we use. And it is basically just crushed stones binded by a non-toxic resin. And we print the design on it with eco-friendly ink. So he wanted to, instead of using plastic, create a digital camera that used something that was more sustainable as the outer casing. His artistic side also came out whenever he was able to use the stone paper to create awesome designs on the front of the camera so that it was more artistic looking as well.

19:57So not only does the outside of our camera have sustainable materials, we also have a ROHS certification. It means that the production of our technology, They don't use any toxic chemicals to produce in the factories themselves. And we also repurpose a lot of the materials. For example, we repurpose lenses from Apple, the lenses that are 99 % perfect for an Apple iPhone. We repurpose them, we fix them up, and then we use them for our cameras instead of having the lenses go to the landfill whenever they're perfectly good to repurpose and turn them into something else. It is really wonderful to see that a company kind of has thought of all of those different methods to repurpose materials and use materials that sort of have a better impact on the environment.

20:43Sounds like a very efficient way to create this product. And also, it's a product that once you hear it, oh, this is like a one-time purchase versus you have to purchase so many different disposable cameras. This also comes with a challenge for you because it would mean less repeat customers. So how are you combating that side of the business challenge? A lot of our customers are one-time purchases. It's just a different approach with marketing and targeting a lot of new people instead of retargeting. But because of the nature of the product and we can launch different designs, we will release a new accessory for the camera or a new case design.

21:24And we do get repeat customers with that because they want to switch it out. What I find with our product is our fans are really our fans. they absolutely love it they'll buy more designs because they just want to swap it out match it to their outfit or whatever reason or whenever we launch new versions of the camera we've had to do that two times since i've been in business we've upgraded the camera technology itself or if we add any accessories like the camera doesn't have a flash because it's a very simple sort of point and shoot it has one button it doesn't have a flash built into the camera so we came out with a ring light that definitely gives the effect of having a flash on the camera but it just screws onto the front of the camera.

22:02So for example, we just sold out of our last one yesterday and those went really, really, really quickly. So those are people that already have cameras that are purchasing it for that extra feature that we sort of implemented so that they can use it on their current camera, but it's a new one. So we do have some different accessory and case releases, but it isn't as much of a repeat buy as some other products out there. I also think these cameras have a butterfly effect. because you bring it on a trip or a party and your friends would also want to have a camera like this, which speaks so true to your recent experience with South by Southwest.

22:41Tell us about the festival and how was your experience there? South by Southwest was a really, really great experience. Definitely one of my highlights of working with Paper Shoot Camera this year. But yeah, the in-person experience was very different. We are very much an online brand. We don't really have very many retail opportunities. And even if we did, it's not me behind the counter. selling the camera. So it's really nice to see people in person, their real time reactions to it, the explaining it, their eyes lighting up whenever they see it, just being excited about it. That was just a really great experience.

23:12So we were there in the trade show for four days and there'd be people that came on the first day, purchased the camera and would come back and just tell me how much they love the photos that it's taken. And they were walking around with it and they got compliments on it. And it was just very nice to see in real time because I think that, You know, if they buy something online, not a lot of people will just email you saying how great it is or sort of see that experience because they didn't really connect with you at the purchase stage. So they might not feel the need to tell you how much they love it.

23:39We do get that in DMs, but just seeing the real person effect was really, really wonderful to see. And we're going to be selling cameras at Coachella as well. So that's really exciting. Next one that we're going to get to do in person again. Super fun. And in addition, it just sounds like you've grown so much over the last few years running this business and you also have learned a lot too. Looking back, what is your biggest takeaway of growing this business and how have you grown in this role of building something from scratch? catch. Something I'm most proud of is my personal growth throughout this stage.

24:15At the beginning, I remember needing my partner to be on sales calls with me because I just felt like I wasn't able to. I'm definitely not a salesperson, but I just didn't have that confidence to be able to kind of handle myself. As silly as that sounds, I just felt nervous about talking to people and sort of representing and kind of having that negotiation, that back and forth. But now calls are a lot easier. I've definitely grown in confidence personally. And I think it's a really interesting process because this is my first business. I'm now a team leader. I have a team that relies on me to lead the company.

24:48And that's not something that I had ever done before. So really just learning as I go, but trying to reflect on every single thing as a learning opportunity to get better and become a better leader, because it's not something I mean, nobody's ever born as a leader. The decisions in their life make them get to that point. But really, there's nothing more special about me than anybody else on my team. It just happens to be that I found it and I brought it here, but it could have been anybody else. So I don't have any seniority really, except for just the position I happen to be in. So it's my responsibility to learn and to grow and really take every opportunity to become better as a leader and a business owner to try to improve the business and be reliable for the livelihoods of the people that are on my team.