I’m back! What’s been happening?
Sorry I’ve been missing for so long but not only have I been really busy, but we’ve had a couple of staff changes in the office. Last year we covered the enormous success of gift delivery during lockdowns, and I’m pleased to report nothing has changed. If your eCommerce business is suited to gift delivery I suggest you jump on board as I feel it will continue to be a success for at least a few more months.
- Jim has left; Liz has returned!
- Why you should adapt for gift delivery.
- Don’t be afraid to ask questions.
- If you need me to check something out just ask.
Transcript
Hey, welcome back Rankers. How are you going? It’s been a long time. Actually this is the longest time in the history of the world that I have not done a show, true story, and it’s been for a number of reasons. Been a bit concerned about what I can actually say these days. Everybody seems to be getting censored and cancelled and smeared left, right, and centre if they ask questions and quite frankly, I find it a little bit concerning and just a tad frightening. So ask more questions. It’s really important right now. Speak your truth.
We’ve had some big changes over the last 10 days though. And thank you to Michael from Cloud 9 Fragrances who does beautiful scented candles and essential oils. Go and check him out. He’s going to kill me for calling them essential oils. Smelly reed things you put in your… anyway, thanks Michael, for prompting me.
So we’ve been really busy and we’ve undergone some big changes obviously, in the last year, like everyone. We’ll talk about that in a second, but many of you have been following us for a while, have known us for a while. Maybe you’re familiar with Jim Haritonis. Awesome bloke, and after seven years, he’s decided to go out and do his own thing. So all the best to him and yeah, sad to lose him, of course. But we lost someone else last year that hurt really badly. And that was Liz. And she went to another agency.
Anyway, Liz is back with us now. So she’s taking over Jim’s digital consultant work and I couldn’t be happier with that, the replacement. I just want to say a big thank you this week also to Danielle Johnson, who’s been with us this month, for what, eight years, which is just extraordinary in this industry. She’s our general manager, chief mystery shopper and digital consultant extraordinaire. So thank you to Liz, Danielle and Jim. Right. Let’s get back into things.
Can you do gift delivery?
Last year, we talked about gift delivery and how it was going spiking during the first lockdown. I’m saying, if you’re doing e-commerce, you should be doing gift delivery if it makes sense that your product should be actually a gift, if you know what I mean. Don’t try to gift wrap a turd. So just make sure your products are right for gift delivery. But you can see there, it’s even gone higher this year. That spike is mainly coming from New South Wales where the main lockdown is going on at the moment unfortunately.
And then we’ve got outdoor furniture which was a big category last year, and these categories usually are like clockwork, right? And you can read them over the years and you might see a gradual increase as an audience gets bigger or searches for more things. But generic categories like outdoor furniture is usually pretty stable. You can see here that first spike is the start of September usually, you’ll get that first spike. But then last year we got this middle of the year winter spike, which is highly unusual as you can see for outdoor furniture. And then we had the big spring spike, but then you can see here already in August. This is August here. We’re already way above August 2019. So that one’s going to continue to benefit as well. And office chair, it’s still going. That was an extraordinary one last year. No one could get an office chair. Anyway, it looks like there’s going to be a shortage again this year, unfortunately. I think it’s important while some industries are going well, I think it’s important to spare a thought for travel, obviously, and just entertainment generally. They got walloped. They started coming back and they’re getting walloped again. It just sucks. I hate it.
Feel free to reach out.
That’s it for us. We had another client come back on this week, who left us last year for a variety of reasons with lockdowns and everything else. And he said, “You know why I like working with you guys?” He said, “You’re a team of specialists.” He said, “It’s like, you’re a band, and you’ve all got your own instruments and you come together and you make some something wonderful.”
It’s like, “Thank you for saying that, that’s how we feel.” And we’re passionate about what we do, which is why we were able to get Liz back. And we’re very, very keen. And we don’t take on everyone obviously which is why I haven’t been doing many shows, but if you want some help, if you’re looking for a second opinion, please reach out to me [email protected]. Happy to take a look, probably can’t work with most people just because of the nature of how we do things. But if you’re looking for someone, you want a second opinion, hit us up. Thanks very much. Stay safe. Ask questions, share, tell your friends, like, subscribe and see if you can find me on Telegram.
Jim’s been here for a while, you know who he is.
