Thinkitate: How to Scale Up Knot Theory to a top brand making multimillions?

Do what my competitors do, but better.

Do what my competitors have not thought of doing. I’m super creative and innovative. I can think of hundreds of things to outsmart them.

We are also more agile than my competitors.

  1. Be willing to spend more money this year, on building a
    1. great product and
    2. great brand and
    3. great team and
    4. better customer engagement / community culture and
    5. more marketing and
    6. more sales channel outreach, and
    7. track all performance with measurable metrics!
    8. Track progress in my planner! (design my own planner!)
  2. How to build better, great products?
    1. Better quality control
      1. Hire someone on top of Martin if needed. Or ask him to hire someone. Extra layer of QC. But not hurt his ego.
      2. Track each iteration of production with barcode text (date)
    2. Better sizing to reduce return rate
      1. If CF needs a resizing, do it!
    3. Better inventory management to minimize OOS and delayed delivery
      1. Have in-stock inventory
      2. Have pre-packaged products
    4. Better silicone so less stretching out (chi xiang silicone)
    5. Always keeping track of what’s happening in the field. What are our competitors doing? We gotta keep up.
      1. Read their reviews
      2. Subscribe to their newsletter
      3. Visit their website
    6. Always keeping pulse on what people what. What do our customers want? What do our prospective customers want?
      1. ManyChat
      2. Email
      3. Email sequence for survey
  3. Great brand
    1. Masha says: freedom, flexible
    2. Cyndi says: flexible, fun, stylish, unconventional
    3. I personally want to embody these values: innovation, excellence, better person, safety, love, quality, timelessness, contribution, community
    4. Possibly also: playfulness, creativity
    5. Who are my avatars?
    6. What brands do my avatar buy from?
      1. Lululemon
      2. Arc’teryx.
    7. Tell a better (founder) story, and put it everywhere. Website, IG, FB, our blog, interviews, podcasts, articles
    8. Always learning from brand case studies
    9. and growth hack case studies
    10. Not only learn from the best, but have the time, money, resources to execute what I have learned (or my team does)
    11. Craft a powerful hashtag and message. For example “We are..” “I am this moment” words: epic, timeless, better every day, gamechanger (great name for a collection), you are in my heart (collection name; shorter?)
    12. I want Knot Theory to have depth. To have a soul. To be playful, but in a smart way. To be lighthearted and funny, but in a brainy way. To be open, inclusive. Thriving. Inspiring. Brighter and more fun than Arc’teryx for example. More depth than Pura vida. (btw Lokai attracts youths. How did that happen?)
    14. Arc’teryx lessons:
      1. Amer bought in 2005, but started transforming in 2015
      2. Rebuilt company culture and brand story
        1. Most staff didn’t stay for longer than 3 years in its 25 years of existence, so they had to build the culture
        2. Brand story: #celebratewild. “I am this moment, this place”.  (too many messages but they are good)
          1. https://arcteryx.com/us/en/explore
          2. Branding agency for the brand story https://www.echostories.com/publication/arcteryx/
          3. This page is too long but has some good components
          4. Ideally should be very easy for our customers to relay the message and be our customers
      3. Specialize – can specialize rings for activities, comfort, etc
      4. Very recognizable style (because of logo also haha)
      5. Branched out to China
      6. Instead of having distributors in China, they took it over and marketed on TMall themselves. 20% growth yoy, but last year at 80% growth (http://gateway17.com/case-study-arcteryx/)
      7. Their growth strategy:
        1. “Growth comes from consumer centric product excellence, in store excellence, distribution coverage expansion and investing in brand awareness”, Wauters sums up.  (https://www.amersports.com/2014/01/arcteryx-growing-with-confidence/)
      8. Now has over 3000 storefronts since first store in 2006. Opening 4 stores in London, Vancouver, Shanghai, and Seattle in ~2014. Several hundred more stores / storefronts each year as part of their expansion plan.
      9. They are very aware of online growth. Also they partner with many athletes. They’ve been hosting athlete academies for over 10 years now too. But this last one is probably less of a growth hack.
  4. Great team
    1. A team member is not expensive if they can generate more revenue than their salary
    2. Team must have pride in the company! How? Company is successful, direct exposure to customers being happy with product, pride in quality, and seeing growth.
    3. Will consider disclosing our income to Jay so he can be on more tasks.
    4. Transparency is good. Companies disclose their revenue too. It helps our staff know that we are winning. Especially if we share our income increase month over month, year over year
    5. Give team the opportunity to earn more, based on their personality. For example Jay loves to write. Should let him write about KT and earn a commission.
    6. Another team member might be driving more sales via IG referrals
    7. Or if they opt to not do these, still give incentive to perform well by measuring customer satisfaction level, returning customer rate, etc. Or give a yearly bonus based on company performance. This will be great incentive that is not toooo direct, so they won’t spoil the customer unnecessarily, but will have this higher goal of driving more sales and customers. (Make sure to not burn out my team, lose money by over-spoiling customers, etc.)
    8. Staff needs to have some control over sales and marketing, so they feel empowered to drive our revenue up! Repeat customers, etc.
    9. Is there a way to know the best way to incentivize a staff?
    10. Personality test on all staff I hire to test compatibility and to better understand how to lead.
    11. I don’t want my VA to lose the focus of their task, and dive too deep into spending their personal or work time trying out things unsuccessfully to drive sales. And I don’t want them to be too salesy, too commission driven. I don’t want them to destroy the brand with garbage articles or pushy customer service. And I don’t want them to not want to do the regular tasks because they are spending time making reports etc.
    12. Idea: Only on certain days they can work on driving more sales.
    13. Idea: customer care team is different from sales team. Do not share incentivizers. CC team should not be centivized by commission. Maybe just customer satisfaction.
    14. Need a VA who really understands Amazon so can deal with review / listing merge/split. Can potentially train Jay for this.
  5. Better customer engagement and community culture. We want cult fans!
    1. Impact Theory University – learn how to build fan base
  6. Marketing
    1. More stores
      1. Tradeshows or send samples?
      2. Which stores to target?
        1. jewelry
        2. sports
        3. police / firefighter / medical stores
      3. How to not lose the brand awareness while in these unromantic stores?
        1. classy brand packaging with strong brand image/message/story and with custom messages for the niche (e.g. use quotes from customers in this niche), or, even easier, amazing PDQ customized for the niche.
      4. Study the success and failures of Enso and Qalo in stores
  7. Sales channels expansion
    1. Walmart (brand consistent?)
    2. Aim at big orgs. Hospital and more. We know them already. Firefighters, police, vets, army, etc.
    3. Be even more creative in finding new niches. Travellers, nomads, vegabonders, burners.
    4. Hire excellent sales people. Ask Laurent. Try John.
    5. Try sales people who belong to these specific niches.
  8. Excellent wholesale program
  9. Excellent referral program
  10. Subscription program?
  11. Study growth hack methods
  12. Who can we partner with for growth and brand building?
    1. Influencers who are our audience and our fan
      1. e.g. athletes, moms, couples, relationship experts, people who work with their hands
      2. On our website promote the fact that we are always seeking partners
      3. On our website promote openness, inclusiveness, diversity
      4. Spotlight on our partners (stores, people, brands)
  13. IG Growth:
    1. Hire an expert to revamp the account, come up with a strategy, set goals, and oversee the initial 3 months
    2. Have a guideline for aethetics of photos and posts
    3. Set up a way to always have high quality photos
      1. partner / sponsor influencers who already do high quality photos
      2. hire instagram photogs (e.g. from airbnb)
      3. work with photogs around the world
    4. Have milestones
    5. Have roadmaps and a continual, consistent action plan:
      1. influencer outreach
      2. giveaways / contests
      3. strategic partnerships
      4. community building
      5. growing and maintaining brand awareness on the account
      6. how often to post, what to post. e.g. Every Thursday post about excellence. Every Saturday post a cute animal.
      7. Measure response: engagement, conversion, shares, etc.
  14. I’ve done this writeup before. Read what I wrote there too.