Sustainable Shopify watch brand plants 880,000+ trees AND sells $3m a year – meet TruWood (episode 414)
Bishoi Khella is the founder and CEO at TruWood, a Canadian wooden watches brand. Selling on Shopify they’re on a mission to provide as much value to the world as possible, which includes planting over 880,000 trees so far! Founded in 2016 they now are doing about $3million a year.
Listen now for free:
Bishoi’s eCommerce Journey
It was during their last semester in university that Bishoi and his friends tried to figure out how to be their own bosses instead of taking on 9-to-5 jobs.
They started a few stores before starting TruWood, and what they realized was that if you don’t have passion for what you’re doing, you’ll lose motivation when things don’t go well.
They eventually stumbled on wooden products and quickly fell in love with the uniqueness of different grains of wood. Combining their newfound fascination with wood and their love for watches, they launched TruWood.
The Watch that Gives Back
For every watch they sell, TruWood plants ten trees, and this came from their desire to have a net positive impact on the environment by giving more than they’ve taken.
Bishoi believes this initiative is part of the reason customers buy their watches. It’s not their main motivation, but it’s definitely an added value that attracts their audience.
Expanding the Product Range
This year, TruWood has been busy redefining themselves and be known as a brand that’s more than just watches.
They’ve expanded their line to include other accessories and even came out with Apple Watch bands in keeping with their initial focus on watches.
Bishoi says expanding their product range not only creates an ecosystem of wooden accessories but also ensures that they’re future-proofing themselves with
Becoming a Better Marketer
Bishoi says that because of iOS 14, they’ve taken a step back from advertising on Facebook and Google and placed more focus on their actual messaging and content.
This means there’s a chance to learn how to be a real marketer instead of just an advertiser. What Bishoi has been doing is reading marketing books and understanding the psychology of marketing. From identifying their target audience to clarifying their message through good copywriting, he’s putting in the work to really be better at formulating their brand story in order to solidify TruWood as a real brand.
And this has been paying off for Bishoi and the company not only through an increase in sales but also in terms of personal fulfillment.
TruWood’s Goal in 2023
For the last two years, TruWood has been working toward its Million Tree goal.
Next year, when they hit the mark, they’re launching a limited edition collection to commemorate the milestone. This will be available to their loyal fans, and Bishoi is pretty excited for the collection’s release.
eCommerce Book Top Tip
- Contagious: Why Things Catch On Paperback by Jonah Berger
- Building a StoryBrand: Clarify Your Message So Customers Will Listen by Donald Miller
eCommerce Traffic Top Tip
- For Bishoi, it’s word-of-mouth marketing and having that direct one-on-one communication with real people.
Tool Top Tip
- Trello project management tool
Growth Top Tip
- Focus on learning and being a real marketer, not just an advertiser. You have to learn how to market yourself and your brand and understand your audience so you can create highly-focused messaging with a great offer.
Interview Links
Thank you to Yotpo SMSBump for recommending TruWood and Bishoi!!
Related episodes 2
- 393: Story, content and partnerships for growth with James le Compte from To’ak Chocolate
- A truly inspiring sustainable startup – Marc Bucci from Social Socks (episode 407)
- Why Customer Research and a Slow Startup works for Gusto Snacks with Giuseppe Baidoo (episode 409)
Without the sponsors the podcast wouldn’t be possible – please do check them out:
Klaviyo is a leading customer data and marketing automation platform dedicated to accelerating revenue and customer connection for online businesses. Klaviyo makes it easy to store, access, analyze and use transactional and behavioral data to power highly-targeted customer and prospect communications.
The company’s hybrid customer-data and marketing-platform model allows companies to grow by fostering direct relationships with customers, without giving up their valuable data to popular big-tech ad platforms. Over 80,000 innovative companies like Unilever, Custom Ink, Living Proof and Huckberry sell more with Klaviyo.
Learn more at www.klaviyo.com.
Many eCommerce businesses get held back by the need to pay suppliers upfront. But instead of tying up capital in goods that take months to arrive, you can now use Treyd.
Treyd pays your suppliers for you. You pay back up to 4 months later.
The solution is simple, but the impact on your growth (not to mention cash flow management) can be massive.
Learn more – and check if Treyd can help your business at ecmp.info/treyd
Digital Gearbox is a specialist pay per click (PPC) agency originally founded and set up by none other than eCommerce Masterplan’s very own Chloë Thomas! Digital Gearbox harness online advertising tools such as Google Search, Shopping & Display, Facebook, Instagram and Bing Ads to drive high-quality traffic and game-changing leads and sales for a wide variety of businesses.
They want to help you to make your Google Ad campaigns work harder so right now they’re offering a free account audit for anyone who might be stuck in a rut with their campaigns, or are simply looking for new opportunities to scale up their online sales in 2022.
Learn what you’re doing well, and what you could be doing better from the experts. Book your free audit here.
Full transcript to read & download:
Like to be a guest? Apply Here‘