SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders

MIT Grad Reinventing Clothes with $7,000,000 Raised and $500k on Kickstarter, EP 295: Aman Advani

17 Jun 2016

Audio

Description

Aman Advani, a man who's bringing technological innovation to the fashion industry. Aman's the founder of Ministry of Supply, a company that's employing engineers alongside fashion designers to bring performance technology into the wear-to-work clothing space. Listen in as Nathan and Aman talk minimum wage, which numbers to focus on, and just how Ministry Of Supply made 14x their Kickstarter goal. Famous 5 Favorite Book? – Good To Great What CEO do you follow? — John Carlson What is your favorite online tool? — Boomerang Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— No If you could let your 20 year old self know one thing, what would it be? —In building a business, all the easy things are hard and all the hard things are easy Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:30 – Nathan's introduction 01:58 – Welcoming Aman to the show 02:08 – Ministry Of Supply generates revenue through selling products 02:40 – Company launched on Kickstarter in 2012, raising $429k - 14x their goal 03:34 – Sampler package sold for $150 03:53 – "We didn't factor in packaging or shipping...we joke that we probably lost money" 04:24 – Shipped over 100k units 04:55 – Started with a repeat rate of 10-20% over 22 days - that's now doubled 05:50 – Team of 20 people 06:00 – Taken $7 million in outside financing through 2 priced rounds and 1 convertible note 06:40 – Currently focused on growth: they aren't profitable 07:05 – Hoping to be profitable later this year 07:30 – Made $500k in sales in 2012 07:35 – Nathan guesses around $4 million in topline revenue in 2015 08:40 – Aman would rather focus on numbers like margins and repeat rate than revenue 10:05 – A direct sales model; not subscription 10:44 – Around 50k customers so far 11:00 – Focusing on optimising gross margin 12:00 – "We're infusing technology into a fairly stagnant fashion business" 13:00 – Acquisition: currently investing in podcast advertising and direct mail 13:40 – Currently have two brick-and-mortar stores that are a significant investment 14:15 – "What's your position on $15 minimum wage?" 15:30 – We'll automate certain tasks and re-allocate humans to higher-value tasks 16:10 – Optimising inventory turnover - "A good rate for us would be 4-5 turns a year" 16:57 – Connect with Aman on Linkedin 19:25 – Famous Five 3 Key Points: Choose to focus on numbers that mean something to you. Put people in the highest-value positions you can. Make the most of your workforce. You don't need to be immediately profitable - but know when you're going to be profitable Resources Mentioned: Freshbooks - The site Nathan uses to manage his invoices and accounts. Host Gator – The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for cheapest price possible. Leadpages – The drag and drop tool Nathan uses to quickly create his webinar landing pages which convert at 35%+ Audible – Nathan uses Audible when he's driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5 hour drive) to listen to audio books. Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

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