Technology’s Role in Helping BYLT’s Shoppers Traverse the vast eCommerce Landscape

In our debut episode of WAIR Chats, we interview Ryan Groh, eCommerce Manager at BYLT Basics, on the far-reaching implications of eCommerce, enhancing the customer experience through sizing, and a bit of rock and roll.

Connect with our guest

BYLT Basics

Website:

https://byltbasics.com/

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/BYLTbasics/

LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/company/bylt-basics/

Transcript

Greg: Welcome to the WAIR Chats podcast, a series where we dive into conversation surrounding all facets of e-commerce, and the people working to make it more sustainable and productive industry for all. My name is Greg Moore, founder and CEO of WAIR, and your host for today's podcast. Join us as we learn how BYLT evolved their business to provide an amazing shopper experience in this interview with Ryan Groh, the eCommerce Manager BYLT.

For those of you out there, my name is Greg Moore. I'm the CEO and co-founder of WAIR and I have with me today, Ryan Groh. And Ryan, you want to give everyone an introduction of yourself?‍

Ryan: Yeah, of course. Hi, everyone. My name is Ryan Groh. I'm the eCommerce manager at BYLT basics. ‍

Greg: Awesome. Well, Ryan, thanks for joining us today. So, I'd love to jump into just how you got into eCommerce in the first place. And maybe a little background on yourself.‍

‍Ryan: Yeah, definitely. So, out of college, I was kind of working in college radio and music, and kind of bopping around in that industry. There's a lot of contract work. You kind of jumped from this ship to that ship. And I kind of found myself working in kind of the music merchandising role of it kind of pre-COVID. And as I kind of jumped into that, I saw there's a ton of room for growth here, a lot of opportunity, and got more involved in merchandising, apparel. And that kind of has been kind of shaping my career for the last like 4 or 5 years. So, yeah, I was kind of working with multiple brands and partners, record labels, and so forth, got more involved on kind of the POs, ordering, kind of understanding blanks, different fabrics, fields, sizing, bulk ordering, wholesales, and so forth. And, yeah, kind of got moved more into the apparel side of it from those aspects.

From there, I started at BYLT Basics, and yeah, just kind of been all over Shopify for the last 5 years. It's with me every day. I dream about. It’s just kind of is what I do. So, yeah, it's been great. There's a ton of opportunity with it. It's once you kind of get more involved in e-commerce, and especially like the music world of it, and the apparel side of it, you kind of realize it's a very smaller business than what it seems to be and everybody's very tight knit and close. And kind of easy, and everybody's very open and collaborative. So, it's nice to kind of see what other people are doing, see what you're doing, compare and contrast. And there's always something new and upcoming. So, yeah, for people that aren't very familiar with e-commerce, there's a lot of room for growth, and it's very exciting. So, happy to be a part of it.

‍Greg: Yeah. No, it’s awesome. I love that you mentioned that you dream about Shopify. I mean, at the end of the day, it’s like such a big ecosystem that like you could explore the corners of the earth and not hit all of Shopify.‍

Ryan: Seriously.‍

Greg: It’s a huge transition from music to apparel. I mean, that, I wouldn't put those 2 things together. So, talk to me about that transition. Like how do you... how did you find the differences between the 2? And then what kind of excites you about the apparel side of it, versus the music side of it, which is where you started?‍

Ryan: Yeah. So, working in music, it's day-to-day grind. You can kind of be working all hours of the day, and so forth. And when you're looking at it from the artists perspective and the income that they get, there's only so much that kind of comes from the music and streaming, and concerts, and merchandising, and all these different sorts. So, when a lot of bands and people are on the road, they rely a lot on in-presence kind of tour sales and something and such. But what they didn't really kind of understand what's been growing or last few years is the e-commerce kind of side of it, and channels selling through their own store and their own brand name, or through the record label, and kind of the new avenues of revenue that that has kind of created. So, that's been a fairly big push in the music industry, especially with COVID with all these tours, kind of coming to a halt, no shows, and just kind of trying to find different ways with live streams and stuff like that.‍

Greg: Right.‍

Ryan: The e-commerce side of that world became huge, as well as anybody in retail and apparel.‍

Greg: Sure.‍

Ryan: So, kind of looking at it in that aspect is kind of how I transitioned into more of the apparel realm, and kind of understanding that. And that's kind of how I came to find BYLT Basics here in Orange County. And yeah, I've been kind of just hitting it hard here. And we're constantly growing, and our catalog is getting huge. And, yeah, no, there's a lot of exciting stuff going on right now. So, but that's kind of a how I kind of transitioned into it.‍

Greg: Sure. No, I think that's fantastic. It's funny because there's a couple of different worlds that can merge together, and there's like underlying principles of all of those worlds. So, my background is that I worked in professional sports for a long time on the technology side, and then transitioned into like fitness technology with like body scanning, things like that. And then ultimately, came down to ecommerce. And if you look at those things at a top level, you would see that they're totally disjointed. Like, there's nothing between them whatsoever. And then all of a sudden, you understand that each one of those industries is undergoing like huge digital transformations, where data is the foundation of a lot of the decision making that's happening in the future. And when you look at the core of sort of like what I built in my career, it's an understanding of how to capture and utilize data to benefit the customer.

And so, you wouldn't necessarily read that story together just looking at it on the surface. And I think the same is true with the music, the understanding of the revolution of how to monetize music, and it moving more towards digital, more towards ecommerce. And being able to utilize those resources and that wisdom then for apparel, right? Which seems seemingly very different, but it's got all the underlying foundational stuff. Which is really cool. I love that. Cool. So, in that sense, like when you are kind of living your day to day, now we know that Shopify keeps you up at night from a positive perspective, you dream about it, but what are the things, some of the things as an e-commerce manager that like keep you up at night that you’re just like, “I’ve got to solve that problem,”? Like, what are the things that you guys are facing right now that you're looking towards solving?‍

Ryan: Yeah. I mean, it's a constant like battle with like multiple things as we continue to grow. We've since moved into a headless environment, and with that have come a lot of ups, a lot of downs, and just kind of understanding what we want the most out of this. Of course, we want like better site performance, better AOV, better speed. But a lot of it is just kind of limiting returns, understanding our customer a little bit better. How can we prove the differences in our fabrics to our customers in a span of 3 seconds, rather than in a whole email or a video, or something of that nature? How do we better show it, prove it, understand it, keep people engaged? As much as our catalog continues to grow, and our customers are like, “Oh, the t-shirts. Oh, the tank tops,” but like, “Oh, we have outerwear. We're developing our women's line.” So, it's a constant of just kind of continuing to tell that story of, “Oh, we're not just this, we're also that. And here's this to see. But we want you to know this. And here's these reward values,” and just kind of creating a better experience overall for all of our customers.

Some kind of challenges and things that we've looked at doing this year itself have just been kind of an overhaul of multiple things, with just kind of our interface. What are people clicking on? What's like getting in the way? How far are they scrolling on this page? What are they seeing here? What's... is it 2 rows? Is that 3 rows? What's kind of a better view for mobile versus desktop and tablet and so forth?‍

Greg: Yeah, yeah.‍

Ryan: But no, so we've been working on a ton of cool projects, I mean, Wair being one of those, of course. Updating our size guide to kind of go with it. Creating like a new overhaul and aesthetic for our PDPs. Adding like tiered upsell. And kind of just making things easier for people, like understanding our FAQs and Contact Us, how to find things, search function. So, there's a lot of it. But yeah, I guess like, that's kind of what kind of keeps the ball rolling, for me at least. But...‍

Greg: Sure. That's so much stuff. I mean, I can imagine that you guys probably think strategically about a roadmap that you're going to create. And then you're obviously going to execute on that roadmap for the year. But with so much stuff, like you just mentioned, how do you maintain the focus instead of getting pulled in one direction of like, “Oh, I just saw this thing. It's really cool. Like, we need to think about integrating this in the site or in the storefront,”?‍

Ryan: Yeah. I mean, luckily, we have like a pretty good team here. It's constantly growing. So, it's nice to kind of be able to... with people integrated and kind of understand their functions and what they're supposed to do. We keep things quite organized, I mean, with all the different boards and different communication channels, and just kind of platforms that we use to really keep on top of everything. And kind of go through that consistent and comfortable flow of, “Okay, here's the PO. Here's the inventory. Warehouse is cool with it. Here's the creative. Here's the assets. Here's the kind of plan behind everything.” So, it kind of just goes through the whole chain of command to finally get to that point of e-com side, and it's like, “Alright, man, let's push this live. Let's get this going. Let’s drag people to the...”‍

Greg: Very cool, yeah.‍

Ryan: “So, let's show them this, show them that, and then kind of just really work on those... that whole campaign aspect and just really push it.”‍

Greg: I love that. I mean, I think that we even struggled with that too. Like, one of the base things for us is we get, there's like so much drive for usage, just because the numbers of people that use Wair are just so much better for brands than those that don't. And so, we get so much customer feedback, and so much customer like, “Oh, I'd be great if we could do this, and this and this, and this, and this.” And they're all amazing ideas, right? But we have to be really, really disciplined about how we structure our roadmaps such that we get things very well thought through and then to completion, right? Which I think is sometimes forgotten in a sense.‍

Ryan: Yeah.‍

Greg: But that's cool. Yeah, it makes sense that it feels that way as well. Yep. Ryan, one of the things you mentioned is that, obviously, you guys, you integrated Wair, how long ago was it?‍

Ryan: It's been about 2 months.‍

Greg: About 2 months, cool. And one of the things that we always talk through when we're talking with just folks in the industry is what got you to the decision where you realized that, “Ah, we need to solve this problem. Like this is something that we've tried through a bunch of different ways, it's not happening, and we need a tool to help here,” what was that catalyst for you?‍

Ryan: Yeah. I mean, one of the things was just seeing like other brands in the space that are utilizing a tool like Wair or one similar to it, and like, “Dang, all these people have this. It's really easy to see. It's easy to use. It's just 5 seconds, 5 to 10 seconds, and you automatically have a recommendation for anything across that entire site, which is great.” And I mean, not everybody has the same body shape that fits a normal standard alpha or numerical sizing thing. So, in some brands, a 33 in this may be a 35 in that, or something like that.‍

Greg: Yeah.‍

Ryan: So, it's really hard to kind of gauge and guesstimate, especially as a brand, just kind of growing and developing and understanding the new products, the new sizing. And some things may not always be exactly the same as the other product with that. And then kind of just looking with our customer service team, our warehouse returns, outbound, inbound, and kind of just understanding the difference in refund exchange, the backend dashboard journey of, “Is it too small? Is it too big?” Requiring customers to kind of give feedback, or optional add pictures, what's working, what's not working? Kind of coming to a point of seeing that, “This percentage of exchanges are due to sizing issues. What can we do to better that? Why are we seeing 86% of people say it's this first stock, and 14% say this for stock or something? How can we better share that information and avoid consistent returns of this amount, especially going into this like before the holiday season?”

So, yeah, that's kind of like a big feature of it with it. showcasing it on the PDP, a banner. Troy has been constantly kind of showing us like, “Oh, here's different analytics to look out. Here's different things that other markets are doing.” So, it's cool to get ahead of the curve and understand like, “Oh, what can we do? What are we doing? And what aren't we doing?” type of thing. Another cool thing that we've kind of just did with it, with Wair was we were kind of just testing, having the W icon versus not having it, and found that when people found it with the icon versus not.‍

Greg: Oh, really?‍

Ryan: We did, yeah.‍

Greg: Yeah, that's awesome. I think that's one of the things that we see pretty consistent. And it's funny, I don't think we had planned to get on this path, but vendor attribution on a PDP, like that critical point of inflection for shoppers where we’re trying to convert them, and having another like brand's logo and other vendor's logo on there is something that gets vacillated back and forth all the time. But we've seen exactly what she said, right, which is that there are certain vendors, certain tools where it gives the shopper a lot of confidence knowing that, BYLT in this case, basically hired Wair to solve the sizing communication problem for them, right? And that we dedicate our entire lives to this problem. So, in that sense, yeah, it does. It drives it. What we see as it drives a lot of clicks and a lot of usage when we start to see the logo that's on there. But it’s one of those tricky things where everybody has their own brand aesthetics, and they want to make sure that it aligns with that stuff. But it's good to good to know that that's the case. It's how we expected it, but very cool to see it.‍

Ryan: Yeah, definitely. I mean, I'm very excited to have it.‍

Greg: Cool, cool. And then from some of the goals like that you set out with Wair, right, I mean, obviously we went through the conversations before we launched with it, but is it... I'm assuming it's meeting your eye expectations, but I know Troy kind of runs the control as a customer success manager is amazing. But I'd love to hear your feedback on how it's going for you guys so far, how the program is working with Wair.‍

Ryan: Yeah, no, I mean, it's been great. We've enjoyed it thoroughly. It looks great on every PDP. I’ll like reach out to our customer service team from time and time be like, “Hey, are you guys getting any tickets of anybody asking about Wair or the Fit advisor? Is anybody asking you about this quiz? Is it hard to use? Are people understanding how to use it?” And then constantly seeing in the dashboard of conversion, people that use Wair versus don’t. The weekly analytics that kind of show the differences of people that kind of fill out the whole quiz and end up buying after that, mobile versus desktop. There's a lot of really cool analytical data to kind of understand why we have it and what we're using it for. And then looking with our own kind of like returns team, and understanding the difference, “Oh, this person returned this, but did they use Wair? Or they bought this size, they recommended this, but did they use Wair, yes, no?” and so forth.

And then just like some other kind of cool facts is I get pretty stoked. I'm a nerd, I get kind of stoked on like all these e-com updates. And we’ll have like meetings and I'm like, “Oh, check this out,” and everyone's like, “Oh, okay,” and I'm like, “Yo, this is. Like, you need to get more stoked.” But, yeah, like I'll share these updates with like friends, family, other people in the e-commerce apparel world. And my uncle was, he's like 71, and he was looking at BYLT the other day, and he's like, “I couldn't really figure out what to wear. And I'm getting old, and all these models that really fit.” So, I did that find my fit thing, and it fits him great.‍

Greg: That's awesome.‍

Ryan: So, it’s like, “Alright, this guy that's born in the 50s figured it out.” So, it's awesome, easy to see, and, yeah, it's right there, and yeah, it can help anybody. So, it's just kind of cool to see that it's versatile and easy to use and helping people such as him.‍

Greg: Yeah, I love that. It's funny. One of the questions that we get all the time, again, just when talking with industry is like, “Alright, I could see you know, that Millennial or like the 20s to 40s type person using the service, btu like what about other consumers? Like what about people that are not all that tech enabled?” And that story just resonates with me, because I think one of the things that we really believe in as a company is that sizing is complicated, and that's hard, kind of like we talked about at the beginning. And so, our whole vision behind this whole thing is like, “How can we make the journey, the shopping journey totally sizeless? You just don't have to think about it.”‍

Ryan: Yeah.‍

Greg: And to know that that works like across all sorts of different age groups is something that just really, it warms us. It's something that we're really excited about, which is cool.‍

Ryan: Definitely.‍

Greg: Awesome. Well, Ryan, like one other question I have. So, when you think about other brands, like looking to make the decision to go with the sizing solution like Wair, or Wair in particular, is there any reason why you would see like that they wouldn't go with this, right? Is there? Is there any objection that you've seen that’s like, “Ah, yes, I could see this being a challenge. And so, therefore, like maybe pause on it,”? Or is it kind of like, “Why? Like, why don't you have this already? It’s 2022. We don't need this stuff, the same tools we've been using for 75 years,”? I'd love to get your opinion on it.‍

Ryan: Yeah, I guess it kind of comes down to just like any old brands priorities, the size of their team, the size of their catalog, what they're kind of expanding and looking to do. Is it just 1 solo product? Are you just selling underwear, and everything's pretty straightforward? Or are you a brand that has tops, bottoms, outerwear, anything of that nature, both men and women, kids? How are you going to kind of share that journey, understand the size as your catalog continues to grow? Ours is growing exponentially. And we have our drop cuts and split hems, which are pretty similar sizings that our customers are pretty trained to understand. But as we get kind of our bottoms with like straight, loose fit, slim, and then t-shirts that are oversized, how do we share that with them without having to put it right in their face on the product title or something like that? Different models, different heights, sizes, shapes, anyways to kind of show that.

But yeah, I mean, if you're a brand and you're starting to grow and your catalogs growing, I see this as a no brainer. It's incredibly helpful, resourceful, easy to find on mobile, desktop, tablet. And yeah, it takes 5 to 10 seconds that doesn't harm you whatsoever. It's super easy to use, and it can save you from a 3-week journey of a return and exchange nightmare. So why not?‍

Greg: Yeah, totally. We have to adopt the slogan like, “No kids hurt in the creation of Wair,” or something.‍

Ryan: Yeah, I mean...‍

Greg: I like it. It doesn't harm you.‍

Ryan: I mean, yeah.‍

Greg: That's funny. That's our new slogan. I’ve gotta talk to Danny, our marketing director. But no, Ryan, this is awesome, man. Thank you for that. I really appreciate it. And one of the things, alright, so it kind of like taking a step back from sizing communication, because we spent some time, and we can wrap up with this one, is when you think about the future e-commerce in the future of retail, what's the vision that you want to see? Like, if you go 5 years forward, like what is e-commerce and retail look like to you, in a sense, given that you are creating it on a day-by-day basis?‍

Ryan: That's a great question. Yeah, I mean, like having multiple systems being able to connect. Like, something that we're working on is a physical location with our e-commerce, how can those both sync? How can they read together? How can we loop in multiple vendors? There's so many vendors out there, but people are starting to constantly kind of expand and bring one thing together. How can we start incorporating that and minimizing this, saving time to kind of look into newer and better and fresher ventures that ultimately kind of create a better experience for us and our customers? Yeah, find new marketing ventures. There's so many like different new tools coming out. And it's hard to say, because there's just like, every few months, it's like, “Oh, have you seen this?” or like, “Look at this new opportunity.”‍

Greg: Sure.‍

Ryan: And so, Wair being one of them, it's just great to have. And, yeah, I mean, just kind of coming down the pipeline, I'm sure a year from now, my vision and kind of ideas to what I think maybe could be completely changed. So, kind of got me there.‍

Greg: Yeah, that's true. I think the evolution of the industry is happening so fast. And as it the pace quickens, there's more people that are working on it, which is just kind of make the pace go even faster. But I think like one of the areas that we are so passionate about is, you've probably seen this before, but if you go on a page and it's what I call the doom scroll. Like, if you go to a categorical page and you start scrolling and scrolling and scrolling and scrolling, right? It's like, there's so much information out there on every single shopper, that if the e-commerce engine can basically dynamically serve products with ranking that are likely to be satisfactory towards its consumer, like it's just a whole different world in that sense, right? We're having to scroll through like 1000 products to get the 1 that I want. But there's just so much stuff. I mean, that's just 1 thing, but there's so much stuff in e-commerce and in like the omni-channel experience, that the future retail is it's really exciting. It’s just going to be this like burgeoning of opportunity and ideas there in the future, which is really cool.‍

Ryan: Definitely. Yeah, personalization, like you're saying, that's huge. I mean, that's something that we'd love to kind of look into and start adding into our tech stack. But the difference in AV testing between showing somebody this collection banner versus that, or understanding what they like, what their recent purchases are, what they've clicked on in the past, what they haven't done, abandon cart flows, and just kind of showing them what they want to see, that's a huge tactic. And there's so much opportunity there to kind of see and understand and expand with. And as our catalog grows, there's just limitless room for kind of creating those options there.‍

Greg: Yeah, totally. I love that. I think that makes a ton of sense. Awesome. Well, Ryan, I had a blast, man. Thank you for your time. I love talking about e-commerce, retail. I love working with you guys. Troy, who’s our customer success manager for BYLT says nothing but amazing things about the relationship that he's formed with you. And we're proud to support that growth. I mean, having a product catalog that's growing as fast as you guys is a challenge, but it's also an amazing experience that we get to work with that hands on. And I think that's really, really cool. You just did a great job. So, thank you so much for your time, man. I really appreciate it. And yeah, we'll keep talking about the future of e-commerce and we'll build it together.‍

Ryan: Sounds good, man. Yeah, appreciate your time, Greg. This has been great. And yeah, stoked on the partnership, what's ahead. And already have new updates coming down the pipeline this week, so stoked on that. And thanks again, man. I appreciate your time.

Technology’s Role in Helping BYLT’s Shoppers Traverse the vast eCommerce Landscape

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