How to Grow Your Business Regionally, Online and IRL

0:00The narrative is not what it used to be six years ago. We don't cut the middleman to save money anymore. We cut the middleman to pay more to Facebook and Google Ads. But ultimately, the cost to acquisition is getting pretty close to having a brick and mortar store.

0:21Hello, welcome back to Shopify on Location, a special series where we explore a city through the eyes of some of its most notable merchants. I'm Shuang Esr-Shan and we're in Montreal this week. The people of Montreal have a lot of pride in their city. They often shop and support local businesses. One of these companies is Polysleep. They are the mattress maker of Quebec. Polysleep won the market by investing heavily in local SEO strategies and getting seen around the town through their bicycle deliveries, retail presence, and fun social media series. Our guest today is PolySleep's founder and CEO, Jeremiah Curvers.

1:03He has been on the show before, and we're excited to have him back to talk about growing a large multi-million dollar company at a local level and beyond. Thank you so much for coming by the studio, Jeremiah. Thank you so much for having me, Schwann. What a beautiful introduction. Well, you have been running a beautiful company with so many fun creative strategies. So because our series is all about the local business scene, the city Montreal, you've got to start by telling us why is Montreal such a great place for you to start this business? Out of every provinces you can think of, due to the duality and complexity of having two languages, Quebec particularly, have a very, very strong root in local businesses.

1:51They want to have local businesses succeed because many other business will just not consider doing business in French. So that already is a higher barrier of entry for many American or larger Canadian business. It creates a lot of complexity, which becomes quite fast an advantage when you're in emerging business. So we definitely capitalize on that, among many other things. And I think it's important to set the local mattress scene of Canada. We have a giant retailer called Sleep Country, and they actually have ownership in sub-brands that specializes in direct-to-consumer. And they actually don't see a lot of success in Quebec, where versus PolySleep, 70 % of your sales come from the local market.

2:39So talk to us why it was so important to invest in the local foundation here in Quebec before you expanded. One of the core elements in my philosophy is really to create a local success before trying to expand upon it. And the main reason is associated with cost. Cost of advertisement, cost of having a team, boots on the ground, retail store. There's a cost associated with each and every step of growing a business.

3:11so when i started polysleep it was mainly because i was bedridden with an ernie in a disc there was this need i really wanted to come up with the best mattress i happened to have the greatest contact i could hope to get in the industry to develop that we worked on foam we worked on iteration based on product history and we really took what the industry came up over the last hundred years to come up with really an innovative product, not just in material, but also the construction. So we are in what people call bed in box, that family. We're trying and working really hard to escape that category because there's a lot of small player.

3:53There's a lot of player that use foreign producer, and they're often not associated with quality. We're really a mattress company that really created and found their DNA into really improving wellness through sleep. So that really resonated with people in Quebec because we're a local brand, because we manufacture our product here, because as much as we can, even the material, the raw material, when we can have them made in Quebec, we're doing it. A good example of that will be our fabric. Our fabric is actually knitted here. You won't have the yarn coming from Quebec. There's no cotton field here.

4:33That being said, the fabric to be knitted here and then assembled here, the packaging, we work with Cascade, who also have plants locally in Quebec. I think all that combined really resonated with the people in Quebec. And that snowball effect, when people are happy with a product, really accelerate how fast you can gain market share. and that's one of the reason I think it became so complex for outsider to got the success they had in other provinces because we deal with local people and we had such a great product from the get-go that just marketing become an amplifier for whatever people were already seeing which is you got to get this mattress rather than any other else and retail is basically the last step the last puzzle piece that we were missing.

5:23So it's quite exciting. I would love to zoom in on your philosophy because you mentioned you believe having this local focus was the key to success. It's kind of counterintuitive to what we hear about direct consumer model. People think I have an online store. I could reach anyone from all over the world. But if you think about it, that is not efficient and you don't have a focus. So by actually zooming in on the local market, it provided you with what was needed to actually thrive and have that snowball effect. That is correct. Another thing people got to think about is, what's the product market fit?

6:05And in our case, it is a massive 100-pound box. So to say, because I'm a direct-to-consumer first brand, I can ship that to Taiwan, no problem, or to Australia. Well, funny enough, I got a story about that. We did ship once to a guy who came here. It happens that his Airbnb for two weeks had a polysleep mattress. He loved it so much. Got in touch with us and said, I want this mattress back in Sydney in my place in Australia. I remember, I think that was three years ago. And we looked at the time and we were like, it doesn't make sense. The mattress is going to cost you like$1 ,200 and the shipping will cost you over$2 ,500.

6:47Believe it or not, he did it anyway. But that's where I say, in certain industry, if you can ship it in an envelope through, you know, USPS and it's cheap, sure, there's no necessarily operational boundaries that's going to restrict your capacity to really scale at large. but there's a lot of operational complexity in our case because when you think of it even if we compress the mattress it's a lot of air and it's a lot of weight for something that from an ESG standpoint and ecologically speaking shouldn't be produced 6 ,000 kilometers away. Why would you do that in an economy where local manufacturing is really like becoming more and more decentralized with the current tension that happened overseas?

7:35So I think there's great opportunity to rethink the model. And the direct-to-consumer model is amazing to gather data. That data can then be leveraged, adapted, rehashed to be used in external markets. But people tend to consider that the product market fit can be something easily, accessibly done without considering the demographics from a country to another. But just the United States, people who deal in the United States, you know that a blue and a red state's personas are already very different. And you're not dealing with one single unified market. It's all these states separately that will like different types of color, that will like different types of messaging.

8:23People in Hawaii and people in Texas will react differently to a brand based on the macro economics, based on politics, based on so many factors that ensuring a proper market fit, there's a bit of a trap here thinking that because you've got a persona and because you get a great product, it's going to work everywhere and anywhere. So I would be worried about that if I would start again in a business. Don't try to oversimplify. Don't create complexity when it's not necessary, but don't think a persona is the same everywhere. It's very essential to think the way that you have. And it's very important because, like you mentioned, a mattress is not like a piece of clothing that is small, compact, and light.

9:12So you need to take those factors into consideration. So for founders who are having a new idea, they want to start a business, what other components of operations should they think about when they're debating, do I stay local? Do I try other markets? How do they determine how they can follow a bit of your sales model and apply it to their business? Well, I would say go back to the basic. Ultimately, direct-to-consumer brand had such a great impact among so many verticals because the narrative was compelling. The reality is now in our industry, in the mattress industry, why so many direct-to-consumer brands just like us are going into retail.

9:56The narrative is not what it used to be six years ago. We don't cut the middleman to save money anymore. We cut the middleman to pay more to Facebook and Google Ads. But ultimately, the cost to acquisition is getting pretty close to having a proper brick and mortar store. So ultimately, you got to follow that narrative where it makes sense for the consumer. You can work your way around that. If it costs you as much to sell online and to sell locally into a store, you better have a very strong story. because it has to be very compelling for a customer to decide to go with you rather than someone else.

10:33So I would really go back to this concept first and then iterate from that. What really can you do to disrupt an industry that have been stagnating or a business model that have been taken for granted for too many years? And there is a lot of space still for innovative ideas within the direct-to-consumer landscape, I think. But it all boils down to what's the added value for the consumer, bringing it back to product market fit or service market fit. A part of your local strategy, like you mentioned, is highlighting the fact that the mattresses are produced in Quebec and your partnerships with all of the fabric makers.

11:16So how are you highlighting that part of the story? And has it been a big impact on the sales for Polysleep? All our prototypes when we iterate a new product, or original product, were developed at the same exact place with the same exact manufacturer we are still using today. In terms of consistency, we don't have a mattress that is designed here, produced elsewhere by four different factories. And therefore, that really reduced the amount of quality control we have to do in order to bring consistency amongst our product.

11:57So that's the first element which I think people really enjoy, is that they do have that expectation and they're satisfied with what they see is what you get. So that's the first element. The second element that was really critical for us in terms of choosing a local partner was all the potential waste associated with the margins. We're in an industry where it's extremely competitive and margins are under pressure from pretty much everywhere. We use, you know, subproducts from the oil industry. So all the rise that happened throughout the years really impact us in terms of raw material. We are a heavy item.

12:38So you can imagine how shipping really became something complicated. We don't have repeat business or very little. So cost of acquisition and cost of eyes really impacted us too. So all these combined, it's all about how can you save money without compromising on the quality of the product for the consumer. And I think that in the long term, this is where you can have pretty solid wins and build a very strong customer base that even though they don't buy a mattress every three years, whenever they have the opportunity to talk to someone in their family or friends, they will most likely refer your brand.

13:14And it's extremely hard from a marketing standpoint to go after people who've been referred by someone they trust. It's close to impossible. And that's also why we really wanted to go back into retail post-pandemic. We know for a fact that when someone set a foot in a retail store that are specialized in selling mattress, if we're not there, the odds is we pretty much lost that person. So that's also why we're so hyper-focused on getting in as many locations as possible. It's important because, well, your Airbnb example, someone tried the mattress in Montreal and they want one for Sydney and they were willing to pay double in shipping for it.

14:00It just shows that by experiencing the mattress in person will generate a lot of interest and sales. So talk to us about your strategy, actually partnering with local retailers instead of investing in your own retail at the beginning and why that made sense. Yeah, we played with the idea of opening our own store for quite a long time. If you remember, we had pretty large pop-up stores, downtown Montreal. We tried different stores and shopping malls. And amidst the pandemic, we've realized that the hardest thing for us was not opening a nice concept store that really was aligned with our narrative online.

14:41But it was to find people that would stay long enough to be trained and become experts in helping people choose the right product. And that was a bottleneck.

14:57everybody knows right now how hard it is to train retain employees and keep them happy especially in an environment where we don't have multiple brands that wouldn't be someone under commission so that was one of the bottleneck and this is why we explored the opposite way around which is okay we know we have amongst the best products so i'm more than happy to put in a competition with other brands. I would say the hardest part was to convince a legacy industry in the retail landscape to say, yes, I'm selling online. I'm going to compete with you if someone want to buy online. But if someone go into a store, there's zero chance they're going to go back online if your salesperson are doing the right thing, which is giving them the option of trying our product amongst others.

15:49and so far it's working extremely well we've we were really surprised about even the discrepancy there is in the market now statistics are showing that close to 90 percent of the consumers will start looking for a mattress online and amongst all the brands they're going to be exposed to Polysleep being one of them, there's some larger American brand. And like you said, the brands that are under the umbrella of either Good Morning or Sleep Country are most likely going to be the top 10 brand they're going to see. What's crazy is that that consumer that sees these 10 brands will go to a store not to find any of them.

16:31It's all going to be legacy brands like the Tempur, like all these other guys that have been there for 100 years. and we capitalize on that because we have such a strong presence. If we combine in Canada the top largest five brands that sell in stores that have been there forever, we combine them, we still 10x the traffic of these five combined brands in Canada. So consumers want to see our products and I think there's going to be a massive shift, especially with the notion of, I wouldn't even call it omni-channel commerce anymore, It's really unified commerce where people can decide, let's say, oh, I go on PolyShip website.

17:14I want the pillow to be bought right now, but I want to pick it up at that store because I'm flying to Toronto and I want to bring it in the airport, but I want the mattress to be delivered in two weeks at my place. So, yeah, we're really working hard towards that and it's quite exciting times these days. Sounds like a very dynamic retail strategy and also very complimentary to the online strategy as well. I'm excited to chat more about the loyalty aspect because it is so unique to Polysleep. I'm speaking with Jeremiah Kervers, co-founder and CEO of Polysleep. By the way, if you haven't rated our podcast yet, help us out and leave us a review on the platform you're listening right now.

17:58It helps more listeners find the show. Thank you. So we know big ticket items like mattresses, they don't come with a high repeat purchase rate, which means a loyalty program doesn't really make sense. So instead, you run a referral program. Tell us more about that.

18:21A misconception is that a transaction ends with a dollar amount being exchanged from a brand and a consumer. In my opinion, that's just one single element amongst the transactional aspects, the many transactional aspects that's going to happen throughout a sales cycle.

18:42the first one being, let's say, an email address being exchanged for information that is being sent by email, who ultimately might end up being an SMS when we go lower the funnel, et cetera, et cetera. So what we really start working on is, okay, once that transaction is passed, what are still the elements of friction we got to work on to ensure the experience is amazing? And then how can we monetize that positive experience into what would still bring value for the consumer if his whole purchase was stellar?

19:22and that's why we start realizing that referral due to excitement of not only a great product but a positive experience can be leveraged in our industry and replace that repeatability that everybody is seeking so one thing we worked um is with a partner called friend buy and what we do with them is whenever someone purchased from us, they're going to have throughout our email flow or even post-purchase call from our customer service to thank the person, have the opportunity to monetize the referral. And they could do that very easily using FriendBuy. So how it's applicable is basically if they refer a friend and that email address is used, they're going to get a$25 to$50 gift card given through an application called Tremendous.

20:13And they can do what they want with that$50. They can have it transferred to their PayPal account. They can receive a Visa prepaid card. They can even give it to a charity. So that's one of the many ways we leverage that. And some people are just becoming so good at it that we push these people towards our affiliate program. And when they become affiliate, it becomes a percentage of the many sales that are going to be generated. And one of them is a great story. She's an interior designer. She averaged, I think, over$2 ,000 a month in commission. Just referring customers that are happy. And yeah, whenever she goes into a house, she's going to do a redesign.

20:57Furnitures are going to be changed. She's going to say, by the way, what are you sleeping on? You should consider a new mattress. If you want to try them out, try that. And if you want to purchase them, well, here's a coupon for you guys because you're dealing with me. And yeah, on a monthly basis, I think, yeah, it's roughly between$2 ,000 to$3 ,000 a month she makes just doing that. I think this is also another great piece of advice that might feel a little counterintuitive. A lot of merchants, a lot of founders who are selling big ticket items that needs to attract new customers, they might not think about building on the relationship with existing customers because that is a field of referrals that they could tap into as well.

21:43You're right. And one of my greatest advantages before jumping into starting my own business and the mattress business was that I was in MarTech. I was selling marketing technology to larger companies. And it's all about advocacy. It's all about how reputable you are so that this CMO refers you to his friend who's also a CMO who potentially end up being a lead. And that approach can be applicable to pretty much any business. If you really build trust after the purchase and you ensure that the experience continues to stay great as much as you can, it's hard to control everything. the odds that your customer is being transferred to an advocate are greatly improved.

22:35And then that's what you should use and monetize because it's just so expensive nowadays to acquire a customer. Why wouldn't you ask if he loved your product? Hey, if you know anybody who need it, by referring him, I would much rather give you 50 bucks than give 200 bucks to Facebook and Google. Well, speaking to that top of funnel, trying to attract new customers, I know that your website on Shopify isn't just an online store. It's a hub for content and also where you build out a very successful SEO strategy. So talk to us about this ever-changing landscape of search engine optimization. Yeah, it was challenging.

23:18Now it's just so much easier, especially when you're a multilingual store. The recent update Shopify had released, if you're on Shopify Plus, it's just so much easier to manage multilingual now. Whereas before, if you wanted to have a subfolder structure, it was a lot more complicated. I've never wanted to use apps to automatically translate things. And that was one of the biggest roadblock we had originally when starting to work on an SEO strategy. So there's a couple of things people should consider. It's a bit like investing for your retirement plan. Don't expect short-term returns. But over a couple of years, you're going to end up drastically improving your odds of being able to gather first-party and zero-party data if you start investing from the get-go in a great content strategy.

24:07And I will get away from the SEO because the SEO, there's just so many apps, tools, and knowledge now where you can have a very strong base. You don't need to be an expert, especially now with the venue of so many AI tools. It's very easy to build a keyword list based on competitiveness or get a trial of SEMrush, look at what your competitors are doing, ensure that your on-site SEO is on point. It doesn't take a rocket scientist anymore to do that. But once that is in place, consistency is the key. And that's what we've been doing for, I mean, since we started the company. I would say more than 70 % of our traffic, which is going to pass, I think, 2.5 million user.

24:53Again, more than 70 % of them are in Quebec. So it's a lot of traffic for a website that exclusively sell mattresses, pillow. We're not even pushing accessories that much. So how we did that was really to first focus on product-related short-term and long-term keywords. We really want to own that. Meaning that if you look for a mattress store geolocalized, which we don't have, we still want to create pages that will outrank many of the small websites there. So that's one thing we did.

25:32To do that, you need a very strong store locator and a very strong local SEO strategy. So we worked on that for quite a long time, and we're pretty solid on that aspect. The second thing was products. Well, what's the best mattress? What if I want to compare this brand to Polysleep? Well, we're going to have that internally and externally worked with a proper link strategy with small blogs or other websites. Once that is checked, we started working more towards broader expression, short tail.

26:09what are the top thing that could wake you up at night what are the 10 best habits you should have in order to improve your sleep all these elements that are not necessarily tied with our product but are that are showing sign that potentially changing the mattress might be something to consider, we're trying and we're working really hard in the structure of our blog article to have as much visibility in the zero position. So having bullet points, having paragraph, different schema. And now one thing we started doing more and more too, is really pumping so much video content. Rather, it's aligned with more humor for TikTok, or more informative information or even bedtime stories on YouTube, which are starting to perform really well.

26:59So yeah, that was really, I would say at a very high level, the approach I've had when we started and where we are now. And it's so creative because I know that writing about a mattress or making a video about a mattress might not be the most fun thing. So it's very smart that you're expanding to everything that relates to sleep, bedtime stories, fun videos for TikTok. Earlier on, you mentioned how it was so important to not have translation automatically done by an app. And I think this is actually one of the pain points for individuals who are starting businesses in a multilingual environment.