An interview with our Founder Helen; all things E-commerce!

Helen Edwards, the Founder of East End Prints, had the pleasure of being interviewed by Alistair from the Blitz Brand about the wonderful world of running a business.

Read on to find out more about all things E-commerce and East End Prints:

Alistair:

Welcome to another exciting episode of Underground E-comms, the podcast for the Blitz brands, where you know we delve deep into the world of E-commerce and bring you exclusive insights from the minds of the business. I'm your host Alistair and today we have a special guest who's been on a remarkable journey, I should say, in the world of online retail. 

So joining us today is Helen. She's the visionary founder of East End Prints, a fast growing E-commerce Direct-to-consumer Business; From humble beginnings to carving out a unique...her place in a unique niche market. And Helen has navigated, I think, an ever evolved landscape of E-commerce with innovation, determination and a relentless passion for products. 

So yeah, for those who don't know Underground E-comm, obviously we are Klaviyo Master Elite partners, always happy to bring you some good content here apart from managing all the other brands we do in email marketing, it's always good to hear the war stories from the brand owners that we have in the E-comm world should we say. 

Anyway, Helen I would just really like to know...knowing a bit of your story, we've been in touch for a while now, and what I really wanted to know is how the journey has been for you and how you embarked on this e-commerce adventure.

Helen:

Hi Alistair, thank you for the invitation it's very nice to be able to discuss this with you. 

It's been a rocky road, to be honest, it's not smooth as any business owner would say. It looks easy on the outside, but it's not. It's a difficult one, but there's absolute moments of pleasure, success, breakthroughs and change of course, which is the most important thing in business, to constantly evolve in a very changing landscape. 

When I started 13 years ago, we didn't..there was no such as Google ads or anything. I was actually taking around boxes of prints around Spitalfields art market, so that's really where it was physical, we were being seen we were building a social media audience, we were, you know, making sure we were doing all the right things at the start, email marketing even back then, gradually growing those lists, growing that audience in a very different world.

I think now every business owner is a little bit more savvy about what they need to do within marketing a business. Obviously we had some huge breakthroughs after lockdown where we picked up John Lewis, who's one of our biggest trade customers now. So we obviously had all the logistics to do with that like plugging into this to this monster of a retailer who actually were, you know, going through the changes in the landscape of everything of having quite an old website, bolting these other bits in to make it suitable for a dropship audience and I think that's what's been so fascinating as well. A lot of the companies during that time really had to make themselves available for an online audience more than ever, and that hasn't gone away and I think that's one of the biggest breakthroughs we've noticed that change, you know, with the hybrid working and the online shopping has just exploded in the last two to three years and that's here to stay, which has got to be a good thing. 

I mean, we do still have a physical shop on Brick Lane, so we still we still have that which we can showcase things, we have people coming in for their last minute purchases, I think that's still really useful. Obviously we're constantly battling with that - the pains of the speed with Amazon, the delivery, the turnaround times, all of that are constantly challenging for us because we literally print when a customer orders. So we are a print on demand product which we proudly present to the world because we love the idea of having no stock. So in this way we feel like it's better for the planet. But ultimately it's the idea that you have to compete with those turnaround times, which is the Amazon thinking 'I want this now, i want this today'. 

Ironically, we're now going to plug into Amazon. We're going to do a big launch at the end of September, so that's a big kind of bit of growth for us as a business that's something new and exciting. So that's the biggest sort of bit change we're doing now. 

Alistair: 

Going a few steps back on your story. What wasn't that actually motivating to take that first step? Why this niche in the first place? And was it like, did you come in saying like 'I'm going to make millions', 'I'm go to get into print' or was it just something by accident? Just happened for you? 

Helen - So in the 2000's, I'm old. I worked for a publishing, an art publisher who owned Athena. If you remember Athena, the poster people? I've always loved poster art, art publishing.

My background is art publishing, so I used to find artists and travel around the world and negotiate the deals with the artists and bring them to this publishing house that did the posters and this was the time a lithographic print runs - there was no digital printing. So we are talking thousands were printed in warehouses in the UK and issued to gallery shops, Ikea places like that. So the art like Misty Road in IKEA was one of the pieces I found that still is consistently one of their best sellers, in IKEA. So that's been a really interesting thing.

So I had this experience of publishing I didn't have the E-comms experience bolted on, but I sort of self-taught. I built a few websites, we messed around with I think other people's pics or some of these really early, kind of easy to use user- friendly sites where you could just put some images up. 

We were doing group shows, we had WGSN, some style magazines used to come and go 'I love this, let me write an article about it'. I thought well, you know, we've really got something here, I really think we could grow this. And then I built one of the websites and thought 'oh my God, here we go', this is it now this is the print part of the business, this was the big, you know, digital prints. And I found a really good printer, who I'd worked with before, and he really is what makes the product what it is. It's digital Giclee printing, beautiful quality and you know, when I found that was like the marrying of two businesses because that's when it really worked, he was able to dropship for us, which was key with the type of style of frames that we needed. 

And then I think the first bit of business I was actually going to labor and we got a really big deal with Urban Outfitters. That's just something I remember, just doing this myself and I was like 'I really need some help here'. And you suddenly realise you have a little bit more cash, so we...I think we did crowdfunding for the first role we had, which was really, it's endearing to even think back in these times. And then we have a little bit more money so we got a tiny office with two desks, gradually growing and growing and slowly, slowly because obviously we've never gone for investment, we've never gone for funding - although I'm now looking at that to go to the next stage. 

We've got a team of 12 and we're maxed out on how much work we can do and this is what we need to get to that next stage and that is the proper international growth and really expanding. So that's the bit I'm really excited about as well. But generally, you know we've had moments where we've grown faster than we have team. Like during lockdown I furloughed everyone thinking 'it's the end of the world'. But then one of our competitors switched their manufacturing off and we just leapt in on some of these contracts and got them and managed to just un-furlough everyone, get the team back and working, expand the team, recruiting during lockdown and just basically grow to double the size of what we were then. And bearing in mind we were only three people round a desk in a shop at this point. 

Alistair:

Going back to what you were just saying just there with the furlough and the lockdown and things were happening like that, would you say that accelerated your business into a whole new realm altogether?

Helen :

Well it's, people were stuck at home, they were staring at walls right, they were building home offices, we have the perfect product for that. If somebody told me in March 2020 that that was the case I wouldn't believe them. But two months into that it was like, hang on a minute. I got my thinking around it. Do the opposite of what everyone else is doing don't live in a state of fear, come back with the idea that this is actually a growth time and a really exciting time to be honest. So that was what really worked for us and we were busy. And I don't ever want to do the homeschooling again while trying to run a business that's something that I hope never happens again. 

But generally, you know we've got to this point slowly growing we've kind of just stabilised the ship now I would say. There's obviously a huge amount of new technology coming, Ai I think will just change everything, change the way everyone works with even data. I think we're heading for a big breakthrough within that soon and including, you know, building websites. We're focusing a lot on our database at the moment, really tidying up, making sure we are ready for that next level. 

Alistair:

Because you know B2C or director consumer businesses really heavily rely on digital marketing rights, so what would you say is the highlight of some of the impactful digital market tactics that you've contributed to your company growth right now. 

Helen:

Yeah, I mean digital marketing is so broad now, we use basically a few channels to communicate our messages but I think the move to Klaviyo has been one of the most exciting breakthroughs, just seeing how the flows work, getting the data and really working with the data. That is something we're constantly improving on. 

But I personally really enjoy working with Klaviyo I think it's very intuitive it's an absolute upgrade in the world of email marketing and I think this was needed to happen alongside the world of, you know. MailChimp. And I suppose you know we have a digital strategy we have launches of about 200 products every two months and then we have beautiful products that go out, we change to look and feel of the carousels, the website, the Shop blocks, the products, we're constantly upgrading our themes, our checkouts. And then obviously looking at the whole customer flow from reaching out, Google Shopping, Google Ads, Facebook Ads, we do those kind of platforms and Tiktok, a little bit on Tiktok, we're not quite there yet, should we do more? Yes, possibly, but I think stick to what's great. 

Instagram really works for us because we're interiors, creative businesses, it's so visual and we go up by about 400 users, I think, per month. Which to me is great, that's pretty much the same as our email marketing as well. 

Alistair: 

So, how do you prioritise which channels you are going to invest your resources in? 

Helen: 

By the amount of growth. So by looking at the data, looking absolutely at the bits which are helping us generate the most. The comments, the interactions with the customers and nurturing that. 

Facebook's been one of those weird ones that we've never actually grown our likes but we've now started doing reaching out to doing slightly different ad strategies on there to see if that helps. 

Alistair:

Why do you think that's not such an impactful platform for you?

Helen: 

Facebook. I don't think I think it's Instagram, instagram is it. Facebook doesn't work as well and I've never quite got to the root of what it is. I've heard young people aren't on Facebook, you know, it's just they're not on Facebook as much. It's something my generation would be on and actually our core customers are like 25 to 40 now. So we've got a slightly younger market who have that disposable income.

Alistair:

Funny that it's phased down isn't it? 

Helen:

Yeah, yeah.

And Twitter forget it. Twitter's not for us anymore and whatever they've done to that logo, they need to stop.

I loved the bird. It was iconic and they should never have got rid of that. Even my sons said the other day goes, 'what's that?'

Alistair: 

People don't recognise it, it's funny just, but I guess you know it? Yeah, it's one of those things that I think you know when you have Elon trying to make his impact in that area. So to create his own image. But it's a tough one. when Twitter has has been cemented for so long with that logo, that brand.

Helen:

Also I'm around an 11 year- old, a future consumer, so I'm watching what he's watching and it's all youtube shorts. It's that short, consumable information which is ultimately selling something to someone. And I think this is where we need to keep an eye on what the kids are doing because that's where the future of marketing is going and it's those short sound bites of information, little bits of knowledge, being the authority on something, giving away a little bit and it's fascinating because it's just so alien, so I can't bear any of that but I know young people are loving this. 

Alistair:

It is. I mean, now you're going to embark onto the whole situation with Amazon, which is great. We've been in discussions about email marketing, we know where you're at and we see that you're in the right direction there as well. So you're going through a massive phase right now from what I can imagine. Looking ahead, fore seeing and shaping the future of East End Prints, how do you plan to position East End Prints to capitalise on these trends that we just mentioned?

Helen:

So we are looking at growth obviously, everyone says 'just spend more on advertising', particularly in a time of fear when people are pulling back on their marketing budgets, do the opposite. So we're looking at how we're going to do that. And obviously we have a brilliant ROAS, I can see that on Google Ads, should we should we put more money? That's the point I'm at just going 'Do we do this? Do we get the investment to just put in ads?'.

Can we do more with our Organic Marketing? I mean I want to go international. You know, our printers now totally set up to print in America and Europe so we are good to deliver a dropship. So that side of it is completely good to go. It's us, we need to be absolutely ready with the team to support that. You know, the customer service and everything, that's what we're laying out at the moment, the foundations to how we do that growth because that could be obviously exponential. 

Alistair:

It's been a one amazing journey, Helen, and it's been a pleasure speaking with you on this podcast. I know you've got to run, so you know I think the insights you've given us have been really, really good. 

It's been an exclusive look into the world of East End Prints and the visionary behind it with you Helen. You've done a great job from back in the 2000's until now I think you can look back and be really proud of what you've done and achieved and it's an ongoing challenge that keeps us on our toes. I guess.

But what you've just said is just you know, it's been valuable for our listeners who are also navigating through a dynamic world of E-commerce just like you are. And you know to our listeners, make sure  you visit East End Prints... experience the innovation and quality that has made Helen and the team stand out players in the industry.

If you want, you can support Alistair and listen to the podcast here.