Episode Summary
In this episode of the 7-Figures & Beyond podcast, host Greg Shuey interviews Dan Barnes, one of the founders of PhoneSoap, a company that manufactures and sells UV light phone sanitizers. They discuss the impact of appearing on Shark Tank, the spike in sales during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the challenges faced after the pandemic. Barnes shares how they had to shift their messaging and marketing strategies to adapt to changing customer behavior and increased competition. He emphasizes the importance of putting the customer first and being data-driven in decision-making. Barnes also advises businesses experiencing a massive shift to assess the sustainability of the growth and prioritize customer and employee satisfaction.
Video Replay
Key Takeaways
- Entrepreneurial Journey and Innovation: Dan Barnes shares his journey from aspiring entrepreneur to co-founding PhoneSoap, highlighting the importance of innovation, identifying market needs, and adapting to opportunities. His story emphasizes the value of perseverance, creativity, and learning from various experiences, including early ventures and roles in digital marketing.
- Impact of Shark Tank: Barnes discusses the significant impact of appearing on Shark Tank, including securing a deal with Lori Greiner, the boost in brand visibility, and the subsequent sales acceleration. This underscores the power of media exposure and strategic partnerships in scaling a business and enhancing its credibility.
- Adapting to Market Changes During the Pandemic: The episode details how PhoneSoap capitalized on the increased awareness and need for sanitation products during the COVID-19 pandemic, showcasing the ability to quickly adapt to market changes and leverage opportunities for growth, even in challenging times.
- Navigating Challenges and Competition: Barnes shares the challenges PhoneSoap faced post-pandemic, including regulatory hurdles, market saturation, and shifting consumer priorities. This part of the conversation highlights the importance of resilience, strategic pivoting, and the need to continuously innovate and differentiate in a competitive market.
- Marketing and Brand Evolution: The discussion on how PhoneSoap adjusted its marketing strategy and messaging post-pandemic to focus on supporting a healthy lifestyle and integrating with consumers’ wellness routines offers insights into the importance of evolving brand positioning and communication strategies to stay relevant and connect with changing consumer values.
Links
Greg Shuey LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/greg-shuey/
Dan Barnes LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielhb/
Phone Soap: https://www.phonesoap.com/
Shark Tank Episode: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2v00o1
Episode Transcript
Greg Shuey:
All right. Welcome to episode seven of the 7-Figures & Beyond podcast. So apparently today our lucky number is seven. Episode seven of the 7-Figures & Beyond podcasts. So today is going to be absolutely epic. So I hope you enjoyed last week’s episode and have taken some time to start looking at some of the ways to take your customer data collection to the next level. I know that I’ve already made a few tweaks to the post-purchase surveys that I have on both of my brands that I own, so I was super, super excited about that discussion. So let’s talk about today’s guest. I think we’ve probably had this one on the books for well over a month. I think we even had to move the date once because you were traveling.
Dan Barnes:
Yeah. That’s right.
Greg Shuey:
Our guest today, his name is Dan Barnes and he is one of the founders of PhoneSoap. If you don’t know who PhoneSoap is, they manufacture and sell UV light phone sanitizers. They’re Shark Tank brands so super cool. For those who are familiar with the show, Shark Tank, they got to deal with Lori. Is that right, Dan?
Dan Barnes:
That’s correct. Yep. Lori Greiner.
Greg Shuey:
Yeah. So if you want to watch the episode, you can go and google it. I watched it again last night and those sharks were pretty ruthless to you and Wes.
Dan Barnes:
Aren’t they always? Oh, it was painful.
Greg Shuey:
Oh man. Some of those questions and some of the things they said, I got a giggle and you guys looked like deer in the headlights a couple of times. It was awesome.
Dan Barnes:
Yeah. You can recommend your viewers watch. I will not recommend that.
Greg Shuey:
Oh man, I love it. All right. So before we dive into our discussion today, Dan, would you please take a few minutes to introduce yourself to our listeners and please share a little bit about your personal story and how you’ve gotten to where you are today?
Dan Barnes:
Okay. Yeah. It’s great to be here, Greg. Thanks for having me. I am Dan Barnes. My personal story/professional story, I guess they go hand in hand. I grew up in California. Always wanted to be an entrepreneur. Washed windows as a kid. Painted addresses on curbs. Actually, one of the first things that got me interested is I had a desk job working for a local accountant and my neighbor asked me if I wanted to prepare the little league baseball fields. And so I got to drive the cart around and draw the lines out, but he gave me a flat payment for completing the job. It was the first time I realized, okay, the harder I work, the faster I do this while still doing good the more I technically get paid. So that I think spurred my mindset away from technically an hourly job. But that’s not to say I still didn’t do that. Coming out of college, we launched PhoneSoap. At least the ideation while we were at university and we could talk about that. But coming out of college, we were still figuring out supply chain manufacturing, all the above. And so I did take a full-time job at Zappos first running their digital marketing. For Zappos I was focused mostly on paid search, and that was in 2009. So technically the early days.
Greg Shuey:
That was the wild west.
Dan Barnes:
Wild wild west. And there wasn’t good attribution between us and all the other channels. And so we’d be at all hands meetings and they’d be like, Hey, operating spends going up and revenue’s not going up much. And I’m like, it could be that the marketing team is spending hundreds of millions of dollars and we all think we’re making hundreds of millions of dollars. But it was a lot of fun. Learned a lot. Learned by fire. I’d done some stuff, some eBooks, some other things, but I was lucky enough to just jump right in and start making bids and learning how to run campaigns. From there, I went to American Eagle Outfitters and oversaw all of their digital marketing, and that was a lot of fun. That was in Pittsburgh. So we went from Vegas for Zappos to Pittsburgh for American Eagle Outfitters, and then eventually opened up an office with them in San Francisco for a few months. And it was about that time that PhoneSoap had a final product ready to go. So it was still a calculated risk, but a little less risky than it would’ve been four years previous. And that took us back to PhoneSoap, which we’ll talk about. But I’ve got four kids ranging from nine, almost 10 to one and a half, almost two. That keeps me mostly busy outside of work. And then neighbors like Greg also keep me busy.
Greg Shuey:
I was just going to mention that. I think on our last episode I mentioned that you and I are neighbors and have gotten to know each other really well over the last four years. I’m that weird creepy neighbor that gets bored and then I wander the streets in the evenings and on Saturdays. I poke my nose in other people’s businesses. What are you cutting that wood for? Let me [inaudible 00:05:45].
Dan Barnes:
Yeah. I had to add more security cameras to know when Greg was coming. No. It’s great. We love having you as a neighbor and yeah, you keep us all close. It’s fantastic.
Greg Shuey:
It’s not a good thing how nosy I. Oh man. So yeah, it’s been super fun to chat with you a lot and get updates on how the brand has evolved over time and I’m excited to hear more about that today. So I’ve put together a few questions to guide our conversation. Are you ready to dive in?
Dan Barnes:
Let’s do it.
Greg Shuey:
Perfect. All right. And I prepped you on some of these questions, but not-
Dan Barnes:
I did. I read some of them.
Greg Shuey:
This is a surprise. I did some research yesterday and I learned that as of October 2023, you are the 13th largest Shark Tank company. Did you know that?
Dan Barnes:
Yes. I did because they asked me and I had to give him some numbers and we were on … I think this season they had a top … I thought it was top 10. It was top 15, and luckily we still made it.
Greg Shuey:
That’s awesome.
Dan Barnes:
So I did see that episode go out. It’s great. It’s something we’re very proud of.
Greg Shuey:
That’s so cool. When I saw that, I’m like, huh, he’s never told me that. So that’s super cool. Did you see a little bump in sales from that update?
Dan Barnes:
A little bit. Little bit. It’s a little less noticeable now. When we first aired, which we’ll talk about, it was pretty obvious anytime we had a re-airing. Obviously the first airing. But to your point, even re-airings, we noticed. These are a little less so in the last few years, but we still get spikes. We still get sales every time we re-air.
Greg Shuey:
You wake up one morning and you’re like, huh, wonder what that was? Did we re-air on Shark Tank?
Dan Barnes:
No. That was a conversation. Our marketing team would know when they were coming often too. They’d look it up or figure it out because they knew it was worth it.
Greg Shuey:
That’s awesome. So the first time you aired was 2015?
Dan Barnes:
Yes.
Greg Shuey:
How did that really accelerate your sales through the last half of the 2010s and into the pandemic?
Dan Barnes:
Yeah.
Greg Shuey:
I assume that that really impacted all areas of your marketing, is that right?
Dan Barnes:
Yeah. Very much so. We started in 2009 or ’10-ish. Just the idea. And the idea itself was catchy. And so it’s reminded me of … It’s been years since I read it, but Made to Stick. Just this idea of … We first started with marketing around, Hey, there’s poop on your phone. Just really lighthearted, funny, stupid.
Greg Shuey:
All you sickos take your phones into your bathroom.
Dan Barnes:
That’s right. And back then no one admitted they did that, right?
Greg Shuey:
Sure.
Dan Barnes:
But we knew we did it. And so it was just really gimmicky and fun and people liked it. So we got a lot of early marketing just hits on … Well, we launched on Kickstarter, and that got us little hits on all the tech blogs. And so we had some momentum. Some more high level brand-ish type momentum without paying forward to really knowing what we were doing. And we got one really good land in Staples. And so that really gave us momentum going into Shark Tank. I’m not so sure what would’ve happened if it weren’t for that. So we filmed for Shark Tank in 2014. It was almost a year from first meeting with Shark Tank to airing. Not filming. Filming was somewhere in the middle. But it was a long process and it was a lot of fun. But the airing itself was very valuable. We had a massive spike for where we were at the night of airing. And then the branding that came from that was also significant. All of the posts, the blogs. I don’t follow it as much anymore. I’m not so sure how big it is now, but back then, if you were on Shark Tank, you were written about all over the place.
Greg Shuey:
You’re on TechCrunch and all of these tech blogs and so much PR.
Dan Barnes:
So much PR. And by the time we got on there wasn’t like a fee, equity, price, nothing, just you got on. So it’s just this massive commercial that did extremely well for us. And moving the business up, It was more than just sales from the airing, it was the partnerships that came out of it. Lori Greiner really is fantastic and was so great to work with. She got us almost immediately … In fact, now that I’m thinking about it, I think the night we aired, I might’ve been on QVC if not that weekend, the week after.
Greg Shuey:
What? Wow.
Dan Barnes:
Yeah. She plans it all out. She knows what she’s doing. They don’t really tell you. They’re like, “Oh, we don’t know when you’ll air or if you’ll air.” And I’m sure you’ll have a Shark Tank podcast at some point where you’d go more in depth there. But she knew it was coming and had already got us on QVC and had our first air date in hand with that. And so that changed our business dramatically. We were on QVC for five years, and it moved our scale up dramatically. So before that, we were all direct to consumer. I mentioned Staples. There was one big PO there, and we’d had a few other smaller wholesale partners. ThinkGeek. I don’t think they’re even around anymore.
Greg Shuey:
Yeah. I haven’t thought about them forever.
Dan Barnes:
Yeah. They were one of the first guys to pick us up. So we had some momentum. Mostly direct to consumer. But QVC at the time, an MBA would look at us and say, Hey, a percentage of QVC to your business is too large. But it was amazing. And it allowed us to decrease costs nearly 50% from where we used to be just with getting that type of momentum. So it was a big boost to our brand, our margin, our revenue, all the above, particularly coming from QVC and Bed Bath & Beyond, and some of the partnerships that came out of that.
Greg Shuey:
Interesting. Do you know for some of our listeners, is it incredibly difficult to get onto QVC if you’re not connected with someone like Laurie?
Dan Barnes:
Yeah. In fact, we had tried before and they told us no.
Greg Shuey:
Why?
Dan Barnes:
So just the health concerns. The FDA, et cetera around our product, which you mentioned. We for the most part sell UV sanitizers. And we started out focused on cell phones. Coming out of Shark Tank, between Shark Tank and moving into, we’ll call it the pandemic, we’ve spread out into other electronics. And now post pandemic, we’ll talk about other products we did. But yeah. So we had a UV sanitizer, our original one, brought it to QVC, and we actually got some communication from them, but the answer was no. Basically, they’re watched very closely as to what they say on air. And same thing. Even once I got on with Lori, it was still the same thing. There was only five things I could say, and they were very heavily proved out by our third party results. And that’s why QVC was fun. You’d go on for 10 minutes and we basically have a minute pitch, we’d just repeat over and over, and I’d say the exact same lines. And so we got it figured out.
But yeah. No. It’s very difficult. At least for us. You might have a home run that just works, but we had multiple nos before Lori and then with Lori, heavy legal work, making sure our data was in order and then a couple of test runs with her. I mentioned basically 2015 through 2020, we were on air, and every year she’d tell me, “Look, just enjoy it while it lasts because QVC comes and goes.” And so we were one of the very few ones that at least she worked with that lasted that long. I was lucky enough to go on air with her. It was just technical enough of a product that she’d bring me on with her. She doesn’t always do that. And so I built a great relationship with her and her team and just a lot of fun flying out to Philadelphia. I’d be out there almost every weekend in Q4 all the way through 2019. Come the pandemic. It was all remote, I would call in. We haven’t really done it since the pandemic, but at least all my experience was positive. Again, Lori has great contracts. They can’t send a lot of product back. So again, just going back to the value of Shark Tank, it was extremely helpful.
Greg Shuey:
Yeah. All right. So let’s talk a little bit about the pandemic. So once COVID hit, things changed overnight for everyone and every single business out there. So talk to me about how you had to shift gears to really capitalize. And I hate saying this word, but the opportunity. The opportunity of COVID.
Dan Barnes:
Yes. Yeah. Well, I feel like we’re one of those rare ones where we can say that and mean it. We’re not just like, oh, the opportunity of people buying treadmills because they’re stuck at home. It’s like, no, the opportunity to really help people and make a difference. So it was special. I remember it very well. I remember the first meeting we had, which is like, well, things are changing quickly. So we do a lot of work in China. So we were already tracking this. Because our factories already were concerned about it, and I can’t remember if they were shut down yet. They might’ve been. But we were aware of it and thought that it might be some sort of business spike for us, but we weren’t sure. But as soon as it hit it … I think in our minds it’s like March X, I can’t remember. I remember that people have a date. The 15th, the 18th, whatever-
Greg Shuey:
It was like the middle of the month. Yeah.
Dan Barnes:
Yeah. The NBA shut down. And that’s the moment for everyone. I remember it was just really late February for us where we started seeing the spike where people finally started getting concerned. So we sat down. I should have come a little more prepared. I don’t remember when we sold out, but sometime in March we saw a significant spike, and then we were sold out in March. And it was just this mad rush of trying to figure out how to fulfill demand that where factors were shut down. I’m really proud of what we pulled off. We couldn’t sell on Amazon because you can’t really pre-order there. So we were completely off Amazon. But we decided to obviously keep our website live and put our best bets late summer delivery. This is months away, and people just kept buying.
Greg Shuey:
No one’s going to work. Warehouse workers can’t come in to ship product. You didn’t have product, and you’re just like, well-
Dan Barnes:
We didn’t have product. Which I guess worked to our favor, right? Because we weren’t trying to balance how do we get our warehouses in the warehouse because there was nothing for them to do after we sold out. They had pretty much shipped it all going into that main date where it’s like everyone’s got to go home. And it’s not like there wasn’t partial work to do and things to do, but we didn’t have to have hundreds of people in the warehouse. And so we had this multiple month period of trying to figure out how to navigate having people in a warehouse while producing them. So we put the product on our website, we sold and we accepted cash. And some businesses say, no, that’s legal. You accept cash when you ship. Others accept cash and it ships when it ships. There’s a mixed results on who you asked for. Now, of course, from an accounting perspective, we didn’t account for those sales until they shipped, but we collected the cash and that was the only way we were able to fund our growth.
Now, I guess I should rephrase that. Because we did that, we didn’t have to go look for funding. I’m sure we could have found funding because we had all of these orders. But we were able to self-fund our growth, and it was basically 5X year over year, and it happened rapidly. I even remember we had an air purifier, which we hadn’t launched yet, that we had planned launching later in the year, but we were like, no, we need to accelerate this. So we moved that up, and I think we launched it in April to also … I’ll just use the word capitalize. And that became more important as the pandemic went on because it moved a little away from surface and more towards air.
Greg Shuey:
I remember walking into your living room and seeing it sitting there, and I’m like, “What the heck is that?” That was before you even launched it.
Dan Barnes:
Yeah. Yeah. And I should have reminisced a little more, but it’s all coming back to me. We had, if I’m remembering you right, it was like Singapore. There were just so many moments early on in the pandemic that were so meaningful for us where it connected it to phones. I want to say it was some government official in Singapore who said we’re able to track the transfer of this virus from cell phones.
Greg Shuey:
Wow.
Dan Barnes:
So it wasn’t just like, hey, there’s a virus. There was a message around phones and around electronics and around services, and no one else was selling it but us. There was one or two out there. And then coming out of the pandemic, which just talk about, there’s now hundreds. But it was interesting. We started our business marketing around, Hey, your cell phone’s dirty. And that was our message going into Shark Tank and then Shark Tank too … The pandemic was well, your phone’s dirty. Everyone’s starting to admit that. Now UVC light’s the best way to disinfect it. And that was our main messaging. And then moving into the pandemic, even before the pandemic, we started messaging more, why does this matter? Okay, your phone’s dirty, you know how to clean it, but do you care? Does it actually make you sick? And then that was just the message during COVID, which is like, yes, you actually can have the flu and COVID and other things live on your phone and come back and hurt you. And that was our message. You wash your hands, but then you touch your phone and your hands and your face are dirty again. So it paired perfectly with that. And moving out of the pandemic, people are sick of hearing that, which we’ll talk about. And so the focus has more been just a healthy lifestyle.
But yeah, the pandemic was massive growth. Something we’re really proud of. Our factories came back up online sooner than anticipated. I want to say we started delivering in July. And not only were we able to deliver all of that, we were able to have enough stock in for the holiday spike too, which is where another huge piece of that growth came from. So it was a lot of fun, very stressful, but we also just felt very impactful. We were giving away product to healthcare and masks. They were worried about disinfecting masks and we’re very transparent. UVC light, all of our tests are on hard, non-porous surfaces. Fabrics, even the masks, we can’t guarantee the exact same disinfection. But healthcare moved away and they still are more focused … Less on like 99.9999% disinfection and a little bit more on just breaking the chain. Even 99% now is better than nothing. And if you repeat that disinfection process over time, it’s going to just get better and better. So we were giving out products for masks that were being reused and just helping any way we could. Obviously employing people, which was great during the time, both marketing operations, sales, obviously warehouse, you name it. So a lot of fun. We’d always seen success, we’d always had healthy growth, but this was the first time really experiencing hyper growth and it was a great learning experience.
Greg Shuey:
That’s awesome. From a marketing perspective, did you double down on your marketing or did you just let the pandemic do its thing?
Dan Barnes:
Both. Both. So we moved up the funnel as we already had. We started the business coming out of digital marketing and being bootstrapped. We started the business, all low funnel. Keywords, Google, things like that. We’ve moved up. I want to say 2018, 2019, we were already doing radio, podcasts. Then during the pandemic we even did some TV and otherwise. And when I say TV, obviously we’d been on TV, we’d done sales on Good Morning America, things like that. But actually paying for ad spots was during the pandemic. So early on we didn’t change much, but we really just wanted to maximize everything that happened that year. So coming into holiday of 2020, we were spending a whole lot more on everything. Radio, TV, you name it. And it all worked. It was a special feeling. Our product’s always been niche. We actually never thought it would be that big. We’d surpassed revenue goals that we thought this business would be before the pandemic and of course, the pandemic was just nothing we’d ever imagined. So it proved us wrong, at least through the pandemic. But it was a little harder to sell before, and it was really easy to sell during COVID.
So I think we probably could have had a better ROI, but we also just wanted to get everywhere we could. And I guess as I’m thinking about it, again, moving into holiday, we started to see the competitors. So Samsung had a version that was out and they just flipped it out of China, and we’ve tested it and it isn’t very effective. Phillips, same thing. And then of course, all these no name brands. So coming into holiday of 2020, we also needed to spend, because now there was competitors out there.
Greg Shuey:
Gotcha. Okay. So coming out of COVID, people were a little less worried about germs. Plus you had a bunch of competitors come into market. It got harder to sell the product at the end of the day. I think the shooting household went from probably buying one of those huge Germ-X bottles a month to maybe a couple a year. We definitely don’t use our PhoneSoap as much as we did when we were right smack dab in the middle of holy smokes, you’ve got germs on you, you’ve got germs on your phone.
Dan Barnes:
That’s right.
Greg Shuey:
How did you have to shift again to either keep the momentum or start rebuilding that momentum? What did you have to do differently to really start carrying you through where we are today and through the rest of the 2020s?
Dan Barnes:
Yeah. It’s very difficult. Just so many headwinds and issues from the FDA to the EPA to consumer behavior.
Greg Shuey:
Ooh, I forgot about those.
Dan Barnes:
There’s a whole lot of stuff.
Greg Shuey:
Oh, yeah.
Dan Barnes:
You’re making me relive. It’s been a painful three years. So we said the pandemic was the best thing that’s ever happened to us. And then we were like, it’s the best, the worst thing. And now I’m like it’s just the worst thing that’s ever happened to us. And looking back, I don’t have any regrets. Well, I shouldn’t say that. Plenty of regrets. But I don’t feel like we could have done it much differently. No one would’ve anticipated that the concern around it would’ve gone away that quickly. So we knew it was a spike, but it was how long are vaccines going to take? There were so many questions. And on top of that, there was plenty of concerns that China would shut down again.
So coming into holiday of ’20, we overbought even to what we normally would to anticipate basically the next year having still high sell through. Lower than we did, but still higher than we normally do. But we thought, look, we got to protect ourselves against the risk of our factory shutting down. Because they were telling us it could happen any day again, and their cases were still high. So we go into ’21 with a lot of product. And then really, I want to say February of ’21, the vaccine hits and sales just dropped. Now, they were still higher than the pre-pandemic.
Greg Shuey:
Just because of a vaccine. Wow.
Dan Barnes:
That’s the one thing that I can pin it to. So we missed slightly, even though it grew five X during holiday. So we could start telling the competitors, especially Samsung are impacting us. There were signals and things, but that was wind out of the sails. And then we’ll talk about the headwinds. And again, it was still fine. You could manage. But going from where we were to where we’re at was difficult. And what I mean is looking back, we would’ve done things differently. We wouldn’t have ordered quite as high. We had a little too much cash inventory. We would’ve worked more with contractors than full-time employees. And it just would’ve been a smoother transition back to normal. But we figured it would’ve been at least six months, probably another year. On top of that, we were making some serious impact. And we had really cool plans for products. We had masks for healthcare that were enclosed. I’m sure you’ve seen the Dyson headphones.
Greg Shuey:
Yeah.
Dan Barnes:
Like that, but actually real. They worked. They had this case that sucked in air, cleaned the air, fed them healthy air. We’ve had some incredible stuff in the pipeline. And so we were investing heavily in R&D to really impact the world for good. Air monitoring in full facilities. A lot of cool stuff. And there are people working on it now just in their own divisions. We just have a whole company doing it all. But there was a recent article by Vox, UV light Kills Virus, Why isn’t it Everywhere? And that’s what we started noticing. Which is like, it’s proven. We know it works. Why isn’t it everywhere? We still don’t have a great answer to that.
Greg Shuey:
Interesting.
Dan Barnes:
But coming out of it, sales dropped fairly quickly, and it was managing that. The team and the excess inventory as it turned out to be excess. And we really pin it on the vaccine changing that. Now what’s funny is it became so political when it didn’t need to, but what I can say is no matter what people were saying, no one cared about disinfecting. They might’ve said they did, but no one did. You’re right. That interest just really went away. And we struggled with our identity for a year or two, just deer in the headlights. What is going on? So we have transitioned. We still overspent in marketing too for that first year on purpose because we weren’t sure if we were losing just sales to Samsung or if truly volume is down. Obviously we could tell on Google search and Amazon brand analytics that yes, volume was down, but still we weren’t sure how much we were losing to the big names because you get someone like Samsung coming in, that makes a big difference.
I’ll just hit some of the headwinds briefly as they come to my mind. The EPA’s one. We’ve been really the only company compliant with the EPA. The EPA ironically monitors us. Not the FDA, because we kill bugs. So Clorox wipes are monitored by the EPA. While we don’t use liquid, which I think you often think about with EPA, we are killing similar types of buggers. And so the EPA monitors us. We’re the only firm who cared about that and has registered. You saw a product coming in under the radar from China and selling it for real cheap. And we had issues with the EPA. They would say, “Hey, you can’t say this. You can’t say that.” They’d hold our product at the border. There was all sorts of stuff going on. And we fixed it all. We cleaned it all up, got it all in. But they caused significant challenges when we were trying to make positive impact.
And then you move on to the FDA. So in 2022 or maybe the end of ’21, we had our brand new the next phase of our business called the SurfaceSoap. It was a wand that killed viruses on any surface, and it would do it in two seconds. It was very effective. So a Clorox wipe, if you wipe a table down, you actually need to leave the liquid on for five to 10 minutes, depending on which one you use to kill the bacteria. Ours did in two seconds. So we started selling that, seeing really good success, moving our business to the next stage. Again, reinventing ourselves to your point. And then the FDA, shut it down. They said it’s too dangerous. And we gave a lot of data as to how we protect the user, et cetera, et cetera, but they weren’t having it. So that was the next thing that brought us down.
And then moving into ’22, all of our competitors started liquidating. So Samsung, they seemed to have stopped selling their product. They don’t sell it anymore. Amazon doesn’t sell it anymore, but a bunch of resellers do, and they’re selling it for 15 bucks. And then all of our competitors were in the 20 to $10 range. And so you just had all of these headwinds coming against us, and it just became very difficult to sell the product. Especially when you see a name like Samsung for 15 bucks. You’re like, I’m not going to buy a PhoneSoap for 80.
Greg Shuey:
Never a PhoneSoap. Yeah.
Dan Barnes:
So we had to start lowering our prices to, and we’ve worked through a lot of that. And honestly, last year was where we finally started seeing a lot of those fall off. Now they still exist. Samsung’s still there. Samsung’s still cheap. But we’ve been able to move our prices back up and reengage our brand. And at the end of the day, I mentioned we’ve now moved away from just like, hey, kills bacteria, kills viruses, all of our old messages and we’ve really started just trying to focus on support your immune system. No one wants to get sick. We’ll all admit that. So maybe we don’t want to be freaked out about the flu. We don’t want to hear what it is, but we want to be healthier. So we’ve tried to connect ourselves to people who are eating healthier or going to the gym, and it’s like you’re trying to live a healthy lifestyle. PhoneSoap helps you with that. We partner with your immune system. Your immune system can only handle so much bacterial load. So it’s doing a great job. We believe in your immune system, but eventually there’s too much and PhoneSoap minimizes the amount that you have to deal with to just help you in your healthy lifestyle.
And so we’ve started seeing that work. We’ve launched new products that haven’t been shut down by the FDA. Water bottles, air purifiers, toothbrush sanitizers. So we’re just doing everything we can to just get back into the good graces of people where they’re not like they see an ad and they’re just like, ugh, I don’t want to look at that. So that’s our journey, Greg.
Greg Shuey:
That’s awesome.
Dan Barnes:
So it’s been a long journey. It’s been fun. I learned a lot in just regular growth. I learned a lot in hyper growth. I learned even more during shrinkage, and it’s just been a wild ride.
Greg Shuey:
Okay. I have one follow up question from what we just barely talked about. So you said you’re starting to change your messaging and positioning. How has that impacted your marketing? Are you doing anything different from a marketing perspective?
Dan Barnes:
Well. From a messaging perspective and a visual perspective. But from ad buying, not necessarily yet. The team’s smaller than it once was. So moving quickly is harder and easier, I guess ironically. You get that. But it’s not like we were corporate sized. We were still moving fairly fast. So we’ve had to really figure out at a pace, maybe a little slower than we want to, what’s working? What are the analytics? What’s good? What’s bad? Apple came in the mix in all of this too. And basically now everyone’s just buying billboards again. So we’re not overly targeted, but we’ve tried just really broad video ads, but focus more on health, move them into the funnel, move them into email SMS, move them down to retargeting. So similar activities, but just different messaging. I guess what I’m saying is we’re just starting to see the ROI come back, which is helpful.
And we do that both by in the channel with the data that we can see. But for the past years, I’ve often just focused on, look, what’s our total marketing spend to our total sales, and let’s keep that at a healthy number and give our team a little freedom in there to figure out what does work and doesn’t work. It’s like I grew up in this digital world, which was so fun, and I thought I was an advertising creative guy, but it turns out I liked the numbers and it was an adventure, so I missed that. But it’s also a little relaxing. You take a step back and it’s just like, well just do the basics and see what works versus this analyzing this ad with green versus that ad with blue. And I know people still do it. Probably do and that is effective. But it’s also been a breath of fresh air to just say, let’s just throw out wide variations of content and see what is driving better click through, better conversion where we can track it, all the above.
Greg Shuey:
Yeah. I love that. I love to hear that you’re doing that too. I think that that’s the future. We talked about that on another podcast episode. It’s just data loss. With privacy laws and cookie lists, tracking. It’s a mess out there. And we have to go back to how marketers operated before analytics even. What is our marketing span and how is that impacting our overall business?
Dan Barnes:
Yeah, it’s funny. We’re just moving old school again in a digital world in a different way. One thing that’s worked really well for us, which is ironic, is we do these TikTok ads or videos without ads. Organic. We probably have a hundred million views across our channel. And one of our biggest is on TikTok alone is probably 25-ish, maybe 30-ish. But it also did well on Instagram and TikTok. We took bacteria testing plates and we put them underneath a hand dryer, and we showed that, look, your hand dryer is actually just sucking in all the bacteria, all the fecal matter in the air and blowing on your hands. And we do a lot of videos like this. We’ve tested the top of soda cans from the gas station, and it gets a ton of momentum. So I’m sitting here saying, people don’t care about germs. Well, they watch our videos and they comment and they sort of do. And that’s when we realized-
Greg Shuey:
And then I go back to the gas station and get my caffeine fix.
Dan Barnes:
Yeah. But then what do you actually do about it right? No, you’re right. But that’s when we realized, okay, there’s still something here. We just need to lay off the, you’re going to die from it and just be like, look, that’s still is gross. Isn’t it gross? So it’s almost like going back to our same idea of, look, this fecal matter on your phone, and I don’t know, maybe you’re going to get really sick from it, but in general, that’s sick. You don’t want poop on your face. We don’t say it that way anymore but it’s that same idea of like, look, you want a healthy lifestyle, you know this stuff is gross. Let us help you out. So TikTok has been wildly successful from us on an organic standpoint. We got into their early TikTok shop, we’ve run ads. Those don’t see as much success. You know what I mean?
Greg Shuey:
Interesting.
Dan Barnes:
I don’t know. We’re still figuring things out, but we know we’re getting volume back to our website via these types of organic content too.
Greg Shuey:
Yeah. Very cool. All right. So I’m a big believer in the mindset that all businesses will have some kind of thing that happens to them that will create a massive shift in how they operate. So do you have any final parting words of wisdom for anyone who’s currently experiencing that massive shift, whether it’s in their industry, whether it’s in their customer base, whatever. Any final words?
Dan Barnes:
Well, I would say coming up and out of Zappos, for me, it’s just always been the customer first. Find a way in your hyper growth to still care about that individual buyer and protect their purchase and their happiness with your product, and you’ll see continued success. I think anyone going through a spike … Obviously as someone who’s been through a pandemic, it’s just, Hey, take a step back and make sure that this seems to be driven not by one massive land on a huge podcast or a virus. You’ll be able to tell when it’s momentum that will sustain versus us. But I can say, if you can tell that it’s something driven by spike, just be relatively smart about how you grow and how you hire and how you fulfill. But I think if someone’s being realistic, it’s pretty easy to tell when it’s a spike versus just organic continued … You know what I mean by organic, not necessarily paid or organic, but just a real growth that will sustain.
So those are my two parting words. Really get a feel for why you’re growing and if you really believe it’s sustainable. That’ll help you stay healthy moving forward. And in that whole process, taking care of your customers. And I should and want to add employees too. Which again, those are things we don’t regret. We cared a lot about them. We did a lot of good things for them, our employees and the community, and that was meaningful and felt good, and something that you don’t regret, even though it was painful having to send some employees on, which I had never had to do before. But we were transparent during the whole process. So that’s how we protected them and they all were able to land quickly and safely and were grateful and had a great time while they were here. So that’s what matters to me. Customers, employees, and then just be really data driven around where that spike’s coming from and why.
Greg Shuey:
Nice. I love it. Cool, man. Well, thank you again for taking some time out of your busy schedule to chat.
Dan Barnes:
Yes, sir.
Greg Shuey:
I enjoyed the story. I learned a couple of things that I hadn’t known, so thank you so much for sharing. I wish you guys the best of luck throughout the rest of the year. Hope you guys kill it.
Dan Barnes:
Awesome, Greg. Appreciate it. Thanks for having me.
Greg Shuey:
Yeah. So that’s a wrap for this week. In next week’s episode, I will have our VP at Stryde, Laurel Teuscher, back on. We’re going to talk about fishing in ponds and meeting your potential customers where they spend time online. So in that episode, we plan to talk about the different tools you can use to really figure out where your target audience is, how to organically jump conversations and initiate discussions with folks, and then how to tailor an ad strategy to each platform. So that should be a really good listen for brands that are trying to get traction outside of just your media buying your, Google your Meta ads. Alrighty, I think that’s enough for today. So as always, take what you’ve learned here and make a plan and take massive action this year. Thanks for joining us.
Greg is the founder and CEO of Stryde and a seasoned digital marketer who has worked with thousands of businesses, large and small, to generate more revenue via online marketing strategy and execution. Greg has written hundreds of blog posts as well as spoken at many events about online marketing strategy. You can follow Greg on Twitter and connect with him on LinkedIn.
