Wet Shave Club’s Rohan Gilkes talks subscriptions, tribes, social media and brand – to turnover $350,000 in year 1 (episode 017)

28th September by Chloë Thomas

Rohan Gilkes runs WetShaveClub.com which is about bringing back the manly ritual of traditional shaving. It is an online only business with a strong subscription side. They have a tribe of 20,000 and a turnover in year one of $350,000. I’m really looking forward to finding out more about Rohan and WebShaveClub.com’s email sign methods and use of social media.

Click to tweet: Check out Wet Shave Club’s Rohan Gilkes on @eComMasterPlan podcast on how to turnover $350,000 in year 1

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About the business

eCommerce Business Structure – Online Only
Product Range Scale – more niche than department store
On Cratejoy (the shopify for subscription boxes), with Woocommerce and WordPress
$350,000 turnover year one
90% of sales are subscriptions
5 people in the business
Based in the USA, 80% of sales to the USA
Key widgets in the website – are all bespoke

Listen to hear how Rohan got started in eCommerce, and how they have grown their email sign ups to 8%

Social Media and Branding

Rohan took Wet Shave Club from $300 per month, to $350,000 a year by getting the branding right and building a powerful social media presence. He explains how he did this on the podcast.

Links:

Gleam.io for competitions
99designs
before and after and how they got the branding right to double conversions
how they expanded the product line

Most Awesome Thing Right Now

The relationships with the customers – within the Private Customers-Only Facebook Group

Listen to hear how they use this to improve the business

On the Radar for the Coming Months

Just launched the ladies box

Christmas (of course!)

eCommerce Book Top Tip

Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath

eCommerce Traffic Top Tip

Identify the top Bloggers and youTubers then get them to feature your product

Tool Top Tip

Dapulse.com – team management for one week at a time

Start Up Top Tip

Is what you’re selling something someone else is making a lot of money selling already? If not, don’t do it.

If your business didn’t exist, which eCommerce Business Would you like to be Running?

Birchbox – another subscription box company because you have the recurring revenue