Intro 0:04
Welcome to another episode of Ecom Experiences, a podcast for E commerce marketing leaders who want to grow and scale their brands faster. Join us as we interview some of the smartest brand founders and marketing leaders in the industry. Explore the lessons they learned, discover the keys to their success and discuss what excites them most about the future.
Samir Balwani 0:28
Hi, it's Samir Balwani here, host of Ecom Experiences where we talk to brand founders and marketing leaders about their experiences growing brands. This episode is brought to you by QRY. QRY is a paid media agency that helps brands balance brand awareness and performance marketing to drive predictable and profitable growth, to learn more about how we can help you visit. Weareqry.com, I'm really excited about our guest today. I have Andrew Mosko, the VP of DTC and marketing at Juiced Bikes. He's super smart. Has a lot to share. Thank you for joining us.
Andrew Mosko 1:03
Thanks Samir. Really, really glad to be here.
Samir Balwani 1:05
Well, Andrew, let's, let's get started and kind of just give people an understanding of who you are and what's the brand that you work for. Absolutely
Andrew Mosko 1:14
so I am Andrew Mosko. I lead the direct to consumer and marketing here at Juiced Bikes. Juiced Bikes is a direct to consumer e bike company, slash brand. We design and manufacture our bikes and sell them direct to consumer Juiced Bikes.com we have no currently. We have no retailers. We are through no partners. We do it 100% direct online. And it is, it is exciting from an E bike perspective, we have been around going on 16 years. So we pride ourselves on being one of those brands that has been around from essentially the start of the E bike craze. We didn't just pop up during the pandemic. Our founder Torah Harris prides himself and we pride ourselves on the organization at painstakingly engineering e bikes that riders will enjoy, right? We never sacrifice performance for or function for harm, safety for speed. And like I said, Tor Harris is our founder, 2009 former US Olympic high jumper. So we are built on competitiveness and competitive nature.
Samir Balwani 2:27
That's So Andrew, talk to me more about what makes Juiced Bikes different than the other e bike brands out there. I know you kind of said it in the abstrakts, but can you give me like an example or two?
Andrew Mosko 2:38
Yeah, absolutely. So our bikes are made. We have quality bikes in the world that we bikes. You know, you may compare our bike to another brand, and we may be $800,000 more. The reason for that is that we build our bikes for sustainability, for long term, so that you purchase that bike today, you are not in market for another E bike in 18 months, as most are when you buy inexpensive bikes from overseas. Our bikes are meticulously engineered down to the handlebar to the seats to our torque sensors, so that when a rider, or when someone's in market for E bikes, and they actually ride one of our products, they instantaneously fall in love with it, because it doesn't feel like a bike, and it doesn't feel like an E bike, it gives you this effortless ride that all of our owners enjoy, and this is why we have customer we have a large percent of, more than half of our customers come back more than once to purchase a second bike and a third bike.
Samir Balwani 3:54
Oh, that's so interesting. It's funny, because it's like they don't need to buy it, but they want to buy it because they want to have the whole gamut of bikes and Yeah. And I'm curious, Andrew, how many of them are gifts, also for, like, family members and things like that. So
Andrew Mosko 4:07
usually the second and third bikes are gifts or purchases for wife or girlfriend, for husband, for partner, for kids, yeah. And we pride ourselves on that, because that first purchase we are we, we have sold ourselves to that owner or to the bike purchase, and they believe in the brand. They become loyalists. We have. There are Facebook fan groups on Juiced Bikes that you wouldn't believe what some of our owners and some of our riders do to their bikes from a customization perspective.
Samir Balwani 4:38
Yeah, it's interesting, because I think a lot of people think the only way to extend your LTV is to either have new product lines that people can come and purchase, or have a product that degrades over time, so they have to be replaced. But there's also this third element that you guys have absolutely locked into, around buying as a gift and being something. You're so excited about that you want to give it to other people, and high price point does a lot preclude you, right? Like, it's kind of crazy, because it's not a inexpensive purchase. And so, so that is a very thoughtful one. That's awesome. So I'm excited to chat more about your role specifically. So your title is DTC and marketing. There's a lot in there. So tell us kind of what is. What does your day look like? What do you
Andrew Mosko 5:25
do? Yeah, let's unpack that a bit. Um, my role is direct to consumer, which encompasses our DTC site, ecommerce and marketing, which is heavily skewed towards digital marketing today, because we are a digital DTC brand. I lead the team that manages the online merchandising, the content for our.com juiced bikes.com, I lead the team that strategizes around promotions, promotional calendars, content, social media, email, SMS, any touch affiliates, influencers, blogs, any touch point direct to consumer through any of those channels, is what my umbrella is. Ultimately, our goal is to use every of those channels and drive sales through E commerce through our site and on the marketing side, all of our organic and paid marketing efforts, whether PPC, organic, SEO, on site, content, social, social, paid all of that also is run through my team, we do use some external agencies. Because when I see my team, I say that loosely, because we are a small brand as well, and I lead the strategy, I do have some hands on in some of the execution for ultimately driving revenue and sales for the brand as
Samir Balwani 6:59
a huge role, and it has a lot into it. So I'm really curious. You know, when you're looking at your role, what are your biggest challenges right now?
Andrew Mosko 7:09
Yeah, so the biggest challenge, you know, what keeps keeps me up at night, is the competition. And what I say by that is, we're not afraid of the competition. However, there are e bike companies that have essentially sprouted overnight during the pandemic. A lot of these companies are off brands that are being made and shipped from overseas at extremely inexpensive price points. When a casual consumer who's looking to buy an E bike doesn't know a lot about the technical functions or the technical specifications, and there is a large portion of this audience that does shop solely based on price and price point. That is the biggest challenge today, because we're selling bikes on average 16, $1,700 some some of them north of 2000 and we are competing against e by pop up shops that have come within the last few months that are selling for 600 $700 Wow, that seems to be at least our biggest challenge is really how we differentiating ourselves. How are we getting through that clutter and still identifying our target customer who is looking to purchase a quality, borderline luxury e bike? It's interesting
Samir Balwani 8:32
because it sounds like it's almost an the biggest challenge in that is like an education series, right? Like, how are you educating the consumer on the fact that, hey, if you buy that $800 bike, you're probably going to be buying another $800 bike in about six to 12 months, you know, just buy ours, then you don't have to worry about it anymore. And, and these are the elements of it. So how are you guys kind of going after that? What are you doing to help, you know, educate the category.
Andrew Mosko 8:58
Yeah, we're positioning ourselves as our you know, what is our advantage? What are our value props? And we're using that as our primary message going forward, in our marketing, in our communication, we're also trying to humbleize this and be more in touch with a writer or consumers lifestyle and less of their wallet, price point or less what they're looking to spend. By doing that, we are actually clearing that path away from those consumers that are looking for a cheap and expensive bike, and we're speaking directly to those users that are looking to find a solution to that need that they're looking for in any bike. And it could be someone that is looking to transition from in New York City, transition from riding the subway or riding the train to work, and when they're where there's nice, ride 60 blocks on an E bike and effortlessly ride and. Don't get to the office all sweaty, and know that that bike is going to have enough battery power for the for the entire week, depending on their on their ride in a single charge. Know that that bike has enough power to pick up in the event they need to quickly get out of the way of a pedestrian or a car, and also bike that's really, really cool looking our bikes, a lot of our bikes we have, and this is where we get into the technical specifications, where we speak to that consumer, not on a price point. Our bikes have thicker tires, so it makes it easier for consumer that may be on road, off road, right, and someone in market or has familiarity with the E bike industry will know that that is something that they will pay a premium for.
Samir Balwani 10:48
It's interesting because there's also this element of functional versus emotional, right? And so generally, a higher price point product is like an emotional need. It's, I want to look like a specific way, or be, you know, aligned with a specific way. I'm assuming that that's why you guys end up doing a lot of, like influencer work, because that that, you know, it's positioning the brand and in that area. Or have you guys thought about how you reach that emotional aspect? I know you said you like trying to get into the writer's lifestyle, but I would almost imagine that there's like the urban rider and then the suburban rider. They've got to be very different customers. Yeah,
Andrew Mosko 11:26
completely different customers. And that's where, when you dissect our marketing, dissect our campaigns, we have different bike types for that, and we're speaking to those customers differently. So for example, the commuter, we have some bikes that are catered and tailored towards urban and city riding, and that messaging is solely to make their life easier during a commute. Make their life easier when they're going out and they want to go for a casual ride. How do we satisfy that? And then we have the riders that are all about adventure and excitement, and we have bikes that do that, and we speak to them on, you know, we have we have this. We have some bikes that are battery ranges 70 miles on a single charge, which is incredible. So based on that, we can speak to the adventurist. They can go into the mountains, they can go into the trails, and they don't have to worry about the battery dying in an hour, right? That bad? Yeah, last for six hours, if needed, depending on how
Samir Balwani 12:25
you can you imagine getting stuck up there like that? That's exactly what your your biggest fear would be, yeah, and
Andrew Mosko 12:31
that's what we don't want them to be fearful of when they're on a bike. So that that's, that's how we're speaking to our different customer segments. Then we have the casual rider. We have the first time e bike rider that may not know what it is they want. In our marketing, we drive back to our site, we have an E bike, you know, e bike finder, slash quiz, where a user can populate what their needs are. We'll recommend which bike is great for them, which bike may be a little too much for them, and we help that journey from start to
Samir Balwani 13:04
finish. Yeah, it's really interesting, because you guys have gone after that education for the consumer in both the product itself and allowing people to decide what products kind of make the most sense for them, but also through your marketing and making it very clear, helping the category actually up level itself. That's really, really interesting. So I'm so excited to just kind of continue in on this. You know, we spoke about challenges for a little bit, but I really want to understand one. How are you know, what are you excited about now? Right? Like I, you know, casual consumers, competition and the market as a whole. I would imagine you're also dealing with kind of the pullback post covid, right? This, this element of correction there as well. Before we go into the excitement element, I'd love to just better understand, you know, what are you doing, both internally in your planning to kind of account for that, but then also, as that consumer mindset shifts, how do you go after somebody that's that's looking at E bikes? Now,
Andrew Mosko 14:11
I think, you know, post covid, I think, I think the biggest difference is, during covid, no one knew what they were doing, and they just needed the kill time. Nice. Yeah. However, so
Samir Balwani 14:23
accurately put
Andrew Mosko 14:27
however during covid. You know, I wasn't part of the organization during when I look at the data and I look at sales, our purchasers were haven't changed much from today during covid. Yeah, as most brands did, you had a larger opportunity for purchasers, but our core purchase and our core customer has not changed much at all. Our price points haven't changed much either since covid. So from that standpoint, the target consumer. Or hasn't adjusted. We are still seeing extremely similar and similar customer types make purchases of the brand. And I think everyone had this natural, you know, this, this progression or regression or transition out of covid. But I think we are a bit we are further away from the outside of covid that we have normalized as most have so far. Yeah, and I think, you know, it's very exciting, very positive movement so far.
Samir Balwani 15:33
Yeah, that's awesome. So So, yeah. So as we kind of look ahead, what are you excited about?
Andrew Mosko 15:39
Yeah, outside of, you know, Juiced Bikes itself, just the whole industry and E commerce and marketing on a whole, you know. And this has been a trend since day one of what we call the Internet. I think the most exciting piece for me is really the the evolution and the continuing innovation that is currently happening, both in E commerce and digital marketing. I think, as with the advancement of technology, AI being more involved, which AI has always been involved online. We called it machine learning before AI became the the catchphrase as AI becomes more intertwined into a consumer's life. I'm really excited to see how that transitions into emergence of new experiences, new tools that we're seeing, new platforms and really trying to revolutionize, again, as we did during the pandemic, revolutionize a new way where brands can connect directly with their customers. You know, for example, finding even better ways to personalize a user experience that is going to help us optimize how we market to these customers and really over time. You know, adopting and adapting this virtual, augmented reality that some retailers and some brands are doing well in trying to implement that into our daily DTC or.com experiences to really drive sales at the end of the day. How are we utilizing this technology to capture and sell a brand, to get a consumer to purchase. And again, my excitement, a little bit of concern, is with all of this technology and all of this integration, ensuring that the data and analytics portion and piece stays equally as fast and moving, so that we have accurate data to really take back and use and forecast and find out trends on. So that's where I'm excited about. I'm excited about the long story short, about the evolution, the continuous change. Some may call that challenges, but I'm excited about that. Oh, I
Samir Balwani 17:58
mean, within a change is a challenge, but also an opportunity. And I think the brands that recognize that as quickly as possible will see the benefits of it. I think I love that you said AI, because I think you guys are absolutely poised to take the most advantage of it in that you said your large challenge was education. Well, AI makes it easy to educate people at scale, like the idea of having a chat GPT bot that can help you decide, like, you know, take your quiz to a whole nother level is is like a really interesting opportunity. And then to your point on the measurement aspect of it, the it, the one challenge that I think a lot of people forget about is with the amount of things that we can do, keeping track of all of it, starts to become the bottleneck. And so as you look back on and you know, you said it earlier on that you weren't with the organization during covid, I'm sure outside of the data, there's no like, log of hey, we did this, and then we did that, and then we did this. And so when you look back on the data, you're like, all right? Well, I can make inferences and assumptions on what we did at that point, but you never know exactly, and that is actually a danger for a tool like an AI that may not be able to make the same inference you do, but then give you the wrong output. On the other side, I have this like I envision at some point there's going to be a role where there's a historian at a brand who's just job is to document everything that the company does that doesn't get lost.
Andrew Mosko 19:32
I would not be surprised, yeah, you know, and that bottleneck also, at the same time, the amount of data just becomes a bottleneck, yeah? Because, you know, not just here, but other organizations, even some very large organizations, there's so much data that they don't know where to start or finish. Yeah, and then
Samir Balwani 19:53
decide what matters right, like, what actually even matters in this Right, correct? Because,
Andrew Mosko 19:58
you know. So you have so much data, you can tell any story with numbers, and it's how are you identifying the right story to tell with the act with the most accurate extrapolations or data insights to help you drive forward? And I think that's a big challenge when we talk about data as well, whether in a small organization or a large organization, is there's so much data that is just sitting there,
Samir Balwani 20:24
yes, and not being used properly, well, and getting every everyone aligned on the data, right? Like, yeah, the word it's my favorite, is when you talk to a CMO and a CFO, and they talk about the data, and they both talk about the same metric, but it's coming from two different viewpoints, and it's like, so one thinks it's a great thing and one thinks it's a horrible thing, and you're just like, All right, we've got to come to a definition of what good is and what zones. Yeah, 100% so I love that, but so I have one last question for you, Andrew, to you know, as we you've been in your role for a while. But when you're talking to a new marketing director, a new marketing leader, what advice would you give them for their first 90 days?
Andrew Mosko 21:06
Yeah, you know, that's a great question. And I've been asked that from some new and really green team members in the past. And I think from my standpoint, you know, as you know, having experience leading successful marketing teams and very large organizations, small organizations, and leading successful strategies, I think no any piece of advice or recommendation I would give to a new marketing leader or someone new coming into the E commerce or marketing world would be piggybacking what we just said, being able to prioritize data driven decisions. And you know why I would say that is because we all have our gut instinct on what we think we should do or what we think is right for a business, for marketing, for e commerce, for drive to consumer. However, we need to be able to take a look at the data and use that as accurately as possible to help drive that decision making. We are moving so fast. Everyone's moving so fast that in this really fast pace, and this extremely competitive world that we're in, competitive landscape that we're in, it's critical that, I think anyone who's leading or prioritizing any strategies be able to dissect data accurately and correctly understand everything from customer behavior tracking, campaign performance, optimizing campaigns, optimizing performance, on site, off site, touch points, attribution models, whatever it may be, and using that data to really drive that decision. Anyone new or new marketing leader can really maximize their impact. They can identify trends, audiences measure successes, and outside of that, I would think, from a collaboration perspective, is someone that is really fostering and empowering a team, proper culture, empowering them, from a execution and a work perspective, helping them think outside the box, being innovative and even open to experimenting. And I know a lot of brands are scared of that, but I think that's where we really find these areas of growth and real areas of new opportunity, and just staying agile and adapting and not taking a a loss or a a misjudgment or wrong decision, partially, because that's going to happen every day, and that's how you're going to grow and really refine who you are. That's
Samir Balwani 23:55
awesome. Yeah, I think the if I were to tease out one of the ones that I would live to call out from the recommendations that you made, but not being afraid to make big bets, because that's what moves the brand and the business forward, you'll make a bad decision for sure, like it's invariable, and yeah. And so how do you actually just not lose your your marketing confidence, so that way you're not, you know not, you don't make that decision again,
Andrew Mosko 24:27
because what happens is, if you've made a bad decision, you're going to be afraid to make a decision. Yeah, and you don't want to end up in a position where you're not making decisions, because then things are stalling, things aren't happening, and then every decision from that standpoint, will be a bad decision, because you're not making the right decision or a decision,
Samir Balwani 24:48
yeah, yeah. It's like, not making a decision is a decision. It's like, right? Yeah, that's awesome. Andrew, thank you so much for joining us today. If someone wants to find you online, where can people go to learn? More about you.
Andrew Mosko 25:00
I'm on LinkedIn. I'm on LinkedIn. Andrew Mosko, cool again. Thank
Samir Balwani 25:06
you for coming
Andrew Mosko 25:08
Absolutely. Thank you for having me.
Outro 25:15
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