This is a marathon, not a sprint, keeping up with the bigger competitors by thinking about long-term sales
Ben Amanna
founder and CEO of Boxraw
The eCommerce Rocketship is a passion project of REVIEWS.io founder and CEO, Callum Mckeefery, and his son Hudson. Their goal is to support new online businesses by sharing the first hand experience of successful eCommerce entrepreneurs.
Hudson is non-verbal, and suffers from an extremely rare mitochondrial disease. In joining his dad on the rocketship, he’s learning new ways to communicate and raising awareness of a condition few people are aware of.
Far more than a clothing line, Ben’s passion for the business and what it represents is infectious. Hard to condense into a 25 minute interview, highlights include building relationships with brand ambassadors, the importance of customer lifetime value, and how to scale a business in line with consumer demand.
00:00-08:00 - Introduction to Ben and background of Boxraw
Boxraw is a boxing lifestyle brand, who work with some of the biggest boxers in the industry started the brand just over 3 and half years ago, scaling up very quickly, out there to compete with bigger competitors. Recognised there was a gap in the market, worked on his own to establish the business. Brand ambassadors came through networking, started with no contracts, Boxraw does not pay anything for endorsement, and makes money through collaborations.
08:00- 17:00 - Metric analysis and Impact of changes
Boxraw is goal-orientated, looking at sales from previous days, and the biggest metric is the customer lifetime value (CLV) which is tracked weekly. Keep up with bigger competitors by thinking long-term sales such as how customers interact with the brand. Shopify has been used from the start and now moved to using shopify plus. Trusting people without a contract was a big mistake, and trusting the facebook ad machine too much.
17:00-26:00 - Marketing trends
Business advice given by side mentores, doing extra reading on entrepreneurs and listing to podcasts. During business expansion there is a learning process, as systems and responsibilities will and have changed. In the next 10 years, Boxraw sees them as a listed company in both the US and UK as they have a bigger US market. Looking back at starting up the business understanding more about the product and manufacturing is key.
