Blake Smith. He’s the CEO and co-founder of Cladwell, a clothing company that doesn’t sell clothing. His goal is to fight for sustainability and human labor practices by enabling people to buy fewer, but better clothes. Blake was at The Top a year ago where he articulated that they passed 11,500 customers with each customer paying $6/month; so, they were doing about $70K MRR a year ago. They were at about 5% churn, monthly spending and at $17 to acquire new customers. They’re based in Cincinnati and they’ve raised about $1.8M and $100K in revenue.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – Wooden on Leadership
• What CEO do you follow? – Ben Horowitz
• Favorite online tool? — Calendly
• How many hours of sleep do you get?— 2
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Blake would tell himself the importance of following your curiosity as opposed to having a strategy or a plan

 

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:04 – Nathan introduces Blake to the show
• 01:59 – Cladwell’s current customers is around 17K in number
• 02:06 – Cladwell is an everyday styling app
• 02:50 – When you go to the Cladwell’s website, you’ll click “buy”
• 02:58 – Cladwell is also downloadable in the App store
• 03:12 – Cladwell is doing pricing tests
  • 03:45 – Cladwell looks at other SaaS products that customers are paying for
  • 04:02 – Cladwell also looks at other workout apps
  • 04:21 – Cladwell is looking into charging $9
  • 04:41 – “We’re going forward unless proven otherwise”
• 04:47 – Pricing tests never end, especially with SaaS
• 05:31 – Last month total revenue is around $60K
• 05:41 – Cladwell used to bill quarterly
• 05:49 – Cladwell is around 900K ARR
• 06:17 – 80% of Cladwell’s customers are using the web app on their mobile devices
• 06:42 – Last year’s revenue in the same month
• 07:19 – Marketing spend last year
• 07:32 – Cladwell has recently raised a $1.2M round
• 08:07 – 2016 total sales is $760K
• 09:35 – Blake explains how the app works on a daily basis
  • 09:40 – Every morning, the Cladwell app gives a recommendation of what to wear
  • 09:53 – Cladwell recommends 3 outfits basing on what’s in your closet and the daily weather
  • 10:18 – Cladwell will also know what you wore for 3 days
• 10:55 – The more that you use the app, the better the experience is
• 11:35 – Majority of Cladwell’s users are working millennial moms
• 12:18 – People have tried Cladwell’s ideas before and onboarding was the biggest issue
• 12:33 – Cladwell did something similar to Google venture’s sprint design process
• 12:56 – Cladwell provides a feed of all the potential items in a person’s wardrobe
  • 13:34 – A female customer will have an average of 60-70 pieces of clothing in her wardrobe
• 13:58 – The onboarding process is now easier for customers because of the feed
• 15:30 – Team size is around 15
• 16:02 – Cladwell’s currently spending is still TBD
• 16:18 – Churn rate is a bit high
• 16:50 – From the 17K customers, around 5K has downloaded the app
• 18:00 – The Famous Five

 

3 Key Points:

1. Onboarding is one of the biggest challenges for a styling company, customers lose interest using the product.
2. More and more millennial mothers are finding it hard to manage their time; having an app that will save them time daily is heaven sent.
3. Follow your curiosity—it can lead you to something GREAT.

 

Resources Mentioned:

• The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
• Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
• Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you’re doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience
• Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
• Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible
• Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books

Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives