It has to start somewhere, it has to start sometime. What better place than here? What better time than now?

Hey, guys, what's up? Welcome to the latest edition of the Radcast. 

Ryan Alford [00:00:09] Hey, guys, what's up? It's Ryan Alford welcome to the latest edition of The Radcast.  I am joined today by maybe the Raddest of all Rads. I don't know but it's up there. It's for sure up there Jens. But Jens Nicolaysen, CMO, and co-founder of Shinesty What's up, brother? 

Jens Nicolaysen [00:00:37] Hey, man. Thank you guys, so much for having me on. 

Ryan Alford [00:00:40] Hey, you know, it's funny on one of our most recent episodes I had a guy on and I was like, the most appropriate name for a podcast might be Radcast for you guys but now I'm gonna throw it out. There can't be a more appropriate podcast for Shinesty than the Radcast. 

Jens Nicolaysen [00:00:59] Certainly not. I don't know if we can like self-proclaimed being rad, but we'd like to think that we're Rad. 

Ryan Alford [00:01:04] That Hawaiian shirt, if that is what it is if there's nothing right there and everything that is the boldness, boldest of bold brands, that is Shinesty. Very reverent, very cool. Which we're going to get into, but loving everything from the brand. And we talked about it pre-episode, but I've been in the vortex of Shinesty content down that rabbit hole and it was hard to get out of it in my juvenile just I guess, little boy or old boy or whatever you want to call it. It's got a sense of humor, but it was fucking hilarious. 

Jens Nicolaysen [00:01:40]  The strategy is working. 

Ryan Alford [00:01:43] Yes, it is. It's working. So Shinesty is party wear, intimate wear, ball hammocks. We have to go down that rabbit hole real fast. 

Jens Nicolaysen [00:01:59] Strong lead in Ryan. 

Ryan Alford [00:02:00]  Let's go right out. I mean, it is front and center when you hit the website, it's like no banana hammock. It's a ball hammock, people ball hammock. 

Jens Nicolaysen [00:02:11] Well, we do have a long and sometimes sordid history with banana hammocks as well. The initial industry for the company was apparel for all of life's social moments. And those were everything from, swimming at the beach with your friends to the Fourth of July to Christmas, to Halloween, to the Kentucky Derby, and everything in between.  We sell a lot of underwear and a lot more mainstream products like this shirt and now our history is rooted in many of lifes' social movements. 

Ryan Alford [00:02:49] Do we have Toga wear? 

Jen Nicolaysen [00:02:53] Toga wear is a good one. But is it more fun or is it just a sheet? I've been to plenty of parties and it was always just how inexpensively you can buy a sheet at Walmart or Target. 

Ryan Alford [00:03:02] This is true.  I guess that's like the first thing that came to mind when I… 

Jen Nicolaysen [00:03:06]  I think I have to write that down, though that might be a challenge to our product team. 

Ryan Alford [00:03:10] How long has Toga parties needed some secondary additions to the lineup? 

Jens Nicolaysen [00:03:20]  Where the hell have you been all our lives? Why aren't you over here working for us? 

Ryan Alford [00:03:25] Hey, we can talk about that later. I know you guys keep things in-house, but maybe we can go out of the house.  You could have hired me for free just because of how fucking cool the brand is. So I may just want it on the resume that I had point one, zero ideas for Shinesty. 

Jens Nicolaysen [00:03:43]  As long as you don't mind being compensated in underwear with balls hammock inside of them. 

Ryan Alford [00:03:50] You wear it with pride. So Jens let's talk a little bit about your background. What led you to Shinesty? We talked a little bit about the event party wear. But let's give a little bit of the origins here. 

Jens Nicolaysen [00:04:07] Totally, I studied marketing in college, and I guess I'm maybe one of those rare individuals that do what they studied, although what I do now does not exactly resemble what I studied in school. Well, my interest in marketing kind of stemmed from just consumer behavior and psychology in general. And I saw marketing as the business outlet for that, where depending on how you price things, depending on how you position things, depending on the way the creative communicates with individuals, you can change their behavior. So that fascinated me. And out of school, I got into management consulting basically with the emphasis on marketing, and I was primarily working for very large brands like Nestlé Portfolio, the Coca-Cola portfolio, the porno Ricard portfolio. And the list goes on and on from there. And it was great. You get to see a lot of big brands are built and how big businesses are managed and run. But you don't get to see the modern ecosystem of digital marketing. You just didn't get a lot of exposure to the digitally native brands that, you know, we were part of. And if I had one regret while I was in management consulting it is that at the end of the day, you pass off a strategy and recommendation that you don't ever get to see through to completion. And what I loved about my time in Shinesty is that we get to learn all these things. We manage everything in-house. That's going to be probably a big theme of everything we talk about here. But we got to see change. We get to see where the rubber hits the road and how things are built from the ground up versus basically a project stopping at a big report and then you hope that someone takes your recommendation and does something with it. 

Ryan Alford [00:05:57] Yeah, we have that in common.  I will say that having worked with a lot of large brands at the agency over my years and that was always a little bit of frustration. And there were some projects where some clients will involve you down to the ground level of, okay, here are the sales. But I mean, you don't know how many projects or how many clients you worked with and they're paying us big money for these huge product launches. And we do some part of it and you might see a report, but you don't ever really feel everything and see all of the elements and all of the ups and downs of the sales, much less all the digital metrics that might be there and that was always frustrating. 

Jens Nicolaysen [00:06:39]  And you never really know if the success or the failure of an idea is because of the idea itself or if it was because of the execution, then that's probably another reason. When we have good ideas, we like to think that we're probably the best people in most cases to bring them to life. For that reason, most functions, most channels, and everything that we've done has all been built and managed in-house. 

Ryan Alford [00:07:01] Yeah, I love that. So the origins of Shinesty, though, was it a party where you didn't ever want to give that up? 

Jens Nicolaysen [00:07:10] That's right. Yeah. My business partner and I, and I have to give a lot of credit to him as this was kind of his original brainchild. But we had a similar experience in college where we both love going to theme parties and events. Now we have graduated though and so we thought it was time to get rid of our party closet because the party stops here. It was time to join the real world, get jobs, and be grown-ups. And fortunately, for everyone in college listening to this, that's not true, the party does go on. It doesn't matter if you're twenty-one fresh out of college, 30 with your first kid, or 65 and retired, people party through their whole life. And so that was a big learning for us. We thought this was going to be a young professional brand for people who had a little more disposable income but didn't have the time to go find cool apparel for all of life's social moments. But fortunately, we realized, I know people need this across their whole life. And for that reason, the market is much bigger than we ever imagined. And so, yeah, we got started by, if that's the impetus for the products, we wanted to create these cool, irreverent products for all of the social moments, whether it's, again, Christmas, St. Patrick's Day, Fourth of July or all tailgates and the list goes on and on and on. And we created product lines around all these big events. And we're thinking about the products and we thought if these products are going to be pretty extra, the brand should be in your face. It should be revenue, it should be snarky, it should be sarcastic. It should be polarizing, just like the products are. And in a lot of ways, that was kind of a reaction to a lot of the brands that we're becoming big with at the time online that looked clean. They're sophisticated, they run well in a lot of cases, but they all are serious and minimalist. And we were like, no, let's flip the script and be maximalist, let's be in your face. Let's be very different than all those brands with just this copy and paste aesthetic. And I think that's certainly helped us stand out. I certainly think we are polarizing and as a result, that's one of the biggest reasons for our success overall I would say. Our marketing philosophy, in general, is to entertain first and sell second. And so we hope that comes through in everything that we do. And we consider it a badge of honor to be polarizing. If we get some blowback from what we're doing, that probably means that we toed the line and went just far enough because we want to think that, like brands in the middle brands that aren't appealing in a, really, really strong way to anyone are dying or just will never, ever stand out. So to appeal to some people, we think you have got to alienate some people along the way. And that way you know you landed with the audience. 

Ryan Alford [00:10:10]  Oh, yeah. OK, a lot to unpack there. But I am going to start with this key insight people. We got a lot of people's start-up brands, middle brands, CEOs of large companies, listen to Radcast, but this is the hallelujah amen that I want to highlight, entertain first sell second, no matter what brand you are, wherever you are, however you are, if I had an amen button, I may have hit it right there because that is the key to marketing and branding in twenty, twenty-one and you don't have to be selling ball sack hammocks or whatever it is. I'm adding hyperbole here,  but to be entertaining you could be a lawyer or a doctor or a pharmacist or insert a profession here, entertain first, sell second. Hey, that has to be in the Bible playbook of commerce in Twenty twenty-one. 

Jens Nicolaysen [00:11:05] Yeah. Well I mean I'm really glad you pointed that out. I mean clearly, we think of that as our version of entertainment as through comedy. I think a lot for a lot of brands that are just not going to be the way they entertain people. You can entertain people through other types of content, though. You can educate people. There are a lot of other ways to add value that are not comedy, which is probably what we'll continue to talk about. But if you think about it from just sheer practicality of a consumer, there's a rule, I think I'm pretty sure it's three percent or seven percent and it's some small single digits number that is like, at any time, only three percent of a market are actually in need of a product. And that was especially true for us. And I think if you're selling a denim print banana hammock, the market is probably even a lot smaller than three percent. And so we figured we needed a way to keep communicating and engaging with customers when they didn't need our products, because the chances that they needed some out there, full pattern Christmas suit or denim printed banana hammock or whatever it was, was really small. So we needed a way to keep people engaging with the brand, to keep them opening emails, watching our ads, even if they didn't need that product at that time, because most of us have a really specific time and place that doesn't happen every single day or every single weekend. 

Ryan Alford [00:12:20]  Ding, ding, ding, ding. Attention is fleeting, you need to keep your customers' attention at all times and as much as you can so that when they do need your product, they're still around and they have a reason to be around. Because what happens is in today's world, people are so brand loyal. They follow the needs and where attention is. And so they forget about you and that's what people do, they forget because they are so busy acquiring new customers, acquiring new customers. But how do we keep the attention and the leverage with the clients that we already have? This is a master class in marketing already. 

Jens Nicolaysen 1 [00:12:59] Well, thank you I'm glad you happened upon that. It couldn't be truer. And  I think it's what's made us so successful today. 

Ryan Alford [00:13:08] I will say this though, just speaking from personal observation over the years back to the party themes and all that, it's such an insight too because my wife and all of her friends, we do a supper club and every one of them are themed. Now, they're not Toga-themed amazing, but we do them. They're all themed. We had the Winter Wonderland party, we had all the stuff. It never snowed in South Carolina but it snowed on the day we did it and I was like, we called that in. But the insight, though, that people, this girls, guys, kids, boys, girls, this isn't like one or the other, people love fucking themed parties. They love that shit. They die. They want to get dressed up. They want to have fun. They want to be released from the everyday world. And people still love all that stuff. 

Jens Nicolaysen1 [00:14:00] Yeah. I mean, it's like universally people love getting together. And there's certainty like if you add a theme to it, you add this layer to the onion and make the whole event more fun. You've got to plan for it when you're there. It's a lot more fun. So,  that was a pretty critical insight and a pretty critical thing that needed to come together for this to be a business at all. And that was the first four years of this business. It was just kind of scaling to these through these types of events and releasing new products, new prints for those events. Only in the more recent couple of years, it has shifted towards product lines that have a lot more mainstream lifestyle appeal. But, yeah, we thought this was going to be a young professional or college-aged audience. And then we were totally surprised when 30-year-olds, 40-year-old, and 60-year-olds were buying. And it was a pretty broad audience, much broader than ever could have imagined. 

Ryan Alford [00:14:59] I love it. So talk about the innovation cycle for you guys. Like, how did you know, whether it's a product or whether it's marketing that would go broad in the innovation sense? What is the process like for you guys?  You have a very modern, irreverent, fun brand and in many ways you think that makes it easy to be innovative, but not necessarily. I think I'd love to know how that product development, marketing development,  just what is the innovation cycle for you guys and how you got to stay fresh?. 

Jens Nicolaysen [00:15:39] That's a great and loaded question. 

Ryan Alford [00:15:42] I  know there's a lot there. Seven questions, but I like to put them all in one and put them out there. So you can answer it as you flow naturally? 

Jens Nicolaysen [00:15:50]  The way we've done it is probably different than a lot of others would do it. At the very beginning we couldn't afford to create huge product lines for tons and tons of events that had shirts and shorts and underpants and jackets and swim trunks. And then if you think about all these themes, Christmas, Fourth of July… (Sorry that is grotesque.  I have got a huge blister on my introduction video and you guys are gonna have to cut that out.) You have all these themes, at all these different times throughout the year. And then you got all these different product types. And if you think about the number of combinations, it's impossible for a young largely bootstrapped or friends and family, you know, with a few friends and family money to go out and test all of these product categories. So we started with vintage clothing and that allowed us to test a lot of different product types across a lot of different themes. And from there, we were able to triangulate around which combinations of those got the most interest from people. And even though we couldn't sell over and over tons and tons of USA windbreakers, for instance, because they're all vintage, they all went off, we were able to track other signals behind the scenes, like how many people lingered on that product, how many people tried to add it to cart, even though it was out, so we could start to figure out which products had the most mass appeal on our site. From there we started either white labeling products or buying dead stock products to be able to sell more and more. And then we started to develop our private label line.  And today the site is ninety-nine percent products that are designed and manufactured in-house. So that's the earliest days of product innovation there. From there it's become a kind of two. Part one, we're trying to think about what are large market areas where there is limited product differentiation and our brand can stand out.  I guess that is it. Everything we're trying to do is figure out, hey, can we apply our, irreverent, unique brand to large categories, whether that's apparel or maybe in the future, not apparel because we see our creative content as the biggest differentiator. And obviously, we are going to create amazing products along the way, but we're trying to identify large market segments to inform where we put all of our product development time and all of our marketing creative efforts. 

Ryan Alford [00:18:29] Where did the creative inspiration come from? 

Jens Nicolaysen [00:18:35] That's a great question, too. I mean, this brand and all the creativity we put out, would not be possible and it would not work without the people internally. It comes from everybody that works at the brand who loves what the brand stands for, who believes in our mission to force the world to take us seriously. And so we're always trying to think about that. At the end of the day, if we're going to market a product, it has to solve the needs of the customer. And there are probably product features and benefits that make those that solve those problems. So those need to be communicated and the way you communicate them can be irreverent. And the more irreverent we've made things, the more it tends to stand out from ninety-nine point nine percent of other advertisers out there that are pitching their products in like boring generic ways. And so our mission with all of our content and all of our creativity is to entertain first and sell second and those two things go hand in hand because people are inherently drawn towards entertainment. They're inherently drawn towards comedy. It's a positive emotion. And then if you're appealing to them because they have a problem that needs to be solved and a product that can authentically fill that need, you've got a winning recipe. It's going to take off. 

Ryan Alford [00:19:52]  Absolutely.  I am talking with Jens Nicolaysen, CMO, and co-founder of Shinesty. You can find them online. You can Google them at Shinesty,  Shine S. T.Y. Yeah, man, there's a lot to unpack there as well. I can't think of anything now that is so damn PC. Everything is so serious. I mean, I'm exhausted. Like that was part of the beat going down the vortex with you guys. I've been dying to see another happy Gilmore with Adam Sandler, just a silly movie, they don't make that shit anymore. So when I went down the content rabbit hole with you guys, it was like tension relief or something. Has there ever been the right brand at the right time to cut through, You guys are nailing it? 

Jens Nicolaysen [00:20:42] Well, we appreciate that. It's something we try to hang our hats on. It's not easy to have a strategy like that as you've got to be continuously pushing creativity and it means you're going to alienate people. So if you ever take a strategy like that, you've got to be able to say, we know this isn't for everyone. But nothing is. So few things are for everyone that I think it's a much more inherent strategy to take than trying to appeal to everyone. And I think it's one of those things that it's a risk if it's not going to go down in flames. So if you think you can do it authentically, if you think you've got a repeatable content and brand strategy, it can help you stand out because said ninety-nine point nine percent of brands and businesses do not take that approach. 

Ryan Alford  [00:21:28] Yeah, I'd say ninety-nine points if there's another number there, like nine nine nine nine, you know. Absolutely. But let's talk a little bit about the nuts and bolts of marketing. What has worked for you guys? What is your bread and butter? I dare say if we can, there's very little secret sauce anymore, it's more marketing tactics. It's more of the creativity and the brand that you've built that makes it stand out. But maybe talk about some of those nuts and bolts as to what you guys lean on for telling the story. 

Jens Nicolaysen [00:22:03] Yeah, well, you said it well. First off, creativity underpins everything we do because there's the biggest point of differentiation today in digital marketing. The things that work for us tend to be the things that work for most businesses selling online. You get search paid and organic. You got CRM, email estimates, that type of thing. You've got direct mail, you've got paid ads, paid social, organic social. It's the things that tend to work for everyone that worked for us for a reason. And you also said that astutely as there's not a lot of secret sauce to those things at this point. Like the management of those channels is, It's not formulaic. But there is a tried and true process out there. And if you get the right person in the right seat, there's a great job managing that channel. And then it's the creativity and the product that has to keep you standing out on those channels. So, to sum this up, we operate as part of the same channels that ninety-nine point nine percent that are digitally native direct consumer brands do, and we run them well. I think if there wasn't we wouldn't have been able to get to this scale that we're at. But the reason we've been so successful on those is true because of our creativity and our product that stands out. 

Ryan Alford  [00:23:23] Yeah, and it certainly does. But talking about some more of the channels, with Tik Tok growth, it strikes me as it might be the right platform for you or maybe not, I'm not sure. You guys are on Tik Tok, you are young, but as you said you are older, so I could go either way on this. But what's been the Tik Tok strategy? Has it been something you are still testing or is it something that is a real needle mover for you guys? 

Jens Nicolaysen [00:23:55] It's not something that we put a lot of time and effort into yet. Candidly,  I will say there's a lot of these things that Tik Tok does that look like it is going to be a platform with real staying power. But I think there's a delicate balance that at least businesses like us, we don't have unlimited resources. We haven't raised a ton of money. We have a pretty lean marketing team, all things considered. And so I think there's real cost-benefit that goes into diverting your focus to the kind of exploring nascent channels versus putting that time and effort into the ones that are driving after today. It's a delicate balance of how much you invest in these platforms. And sometimes there's a real first-mover advantage. And sometimes, like the algorithms and the paid sides of it are just not developed enough to have disproportionate returns from the level of effort. And that same level of effort could get you a lot farther put into a more established channel. That said, will we go there? Yes. Will we figure out what it's going to do? Yes. Have we not yet? No. 

Ryan Alford [00:25:02]  You just spoke very well what I call and recommend to a lot of people, that 80-20 rule like 80 percent of your business is probably because of it coming from twenty percent of the available channels out there. And you're funneling where your audience is now, and where you know, you're getting diverted energy and what I call marketing energy. Yes, sales as part of that, but engagement energy and overall brand depth. And then, of course, the revenues and so it sounds like you're being strategically focused, which is smart again. But I'm envisioning because I've been delving, we've been digging in on Tik Tok and I can see it. I can see that coming for your future,  which might open up even another channel for you guys. But, hey, the time will come. 

Jens Nicolaysen [00:25:58], I think it's all just about exploring those things at the right time for the business. And I would like for a lot of entrepreneurs and a lot of marketers to not drop everything just to do the next new thing and the next new thing, you've got to zoom out. You've got to look at your business. You've got to look at your biggest opportunity. And you have to realize that everyone, for the most part, has limited resources. And so you've got to use those limited resources to get you the most impact now and into the future. 

Ryan Alford [00:26:28] So how do you guys go about thinking about eCom? As obviously that's where your sales are happening. I guess I'm not aware of it in stores. I mean, you guys are 100 percent ecom, right? 

Jen Nicolaysen [00:26:39] Yeah. Ninety-nine point nine percent. 

Ryan Alford [00:26:41] I know pre covid you did some of the events and I'm sure that will come back. But have you been happy with the Shopify platform?  Any ups, downs, sideways recommendations for any entrepreneurs out there just on the direct e-commerce side of the business? 

Jens Nicolaysen  [00:27:05] It's a great platform. They are always getting things together and learning how to be a better platform for the largest retailers that are on there. So if you're just starting, it's a great platform. The more you scale, the more you try to push the bounds of it, that's when you tend to feel those limitations disproportionately. But they're doing a lot. And we've been generally really happy with them. So I would highly recommend it.

Ryan Alford [00:27:29] Yeah, we are Shopify. I didn't mean to set you up, but you explained it perfectly. We are a Shopify partner and about eighty-five percent of the companies that come to us, we push them there no matter where they are. Their product says there's always a chance, like some good magenta, will need a custom solution or things like that or just custom-built. But it seems to assist with a lot of the blocking and tackling of ecom. So  I'm just curious. 

Jens Nicolaysen [00:27:57]  You think about the brands that got started on Shopify and how lean they've been able to be from a development standpoint, people used to have to hire huge engineering teams, database architects just to have a site. And, Shopify has done so much to just, and some others have done a lot too, just democratize that and make it so easy to get up and running and test the product-market fit without having tons and tons of expensive overhead to do it.

 Ryan Alford [00:28:25] What's the key thing on the horizon for Shinesty these days, whether it's marketing content, product lines, anything, in your things you can talk about? 

Jens Nicolaysen [00:28:39] Yeah and this relates to your question before about product development, too. So now that we've built a seven-figure customer base, we have a lot of ability to think, and now we can put new products out to them and test it a lot easier than starting a business, a new product where you only have paid avenues, for instance. So a lot of what we're doing is looking at that customer base and thinking what peripherals are the composition of that customer base, based on the different product types or themes or whatever you want to have and you want to break it down. And then it's pretty easy for us to see like OK, these are the big groups of people. These are the big products they buy. And then they start to think deeply about peripheral products that they also need. If someone likes our underwear, can we put that technology in swim trunks or shorts? Can we help them get their balls cleaner? Those types of things are just ideas of where ideas are and where we're going. 

Ryan Alford [00:29:36]  I love that. And this is another masterclass of marketing here, everyone. This is why you build first-party data. This is why you build your customer base because growing and acquiring customers is expensive and time-consuming. And it takes a lot of time. And once you get to scale with your customer base as you guys have, it gives you a lot of ability, not only with product development but with remarketing, with lifes' lifetime value and there are so many things that become at your call when you developed that database 

Jens Nicolaysen [00:30:17]  I agree, once you have an active and voracious audience and you just do things in front of them that they expressly need or they didn't even know they needed, the flywheel effect is really real. And for any entrepreneur starting, it's so easy to just think about the acquisition because at the beginning, that's where it's like most of your scale and success is going to come from and quickly. But if you're ignoring a long-term proposition of what's going to keep your customers engaged, you are never going to achieve profitability and you're never going to have real power. 

Ryan Alford [00:30:51] That's right. So what's the long tale for Jens? I mean, just riding this train, any personal or professional goals out there? 

Jens Nicolaysen [00:31:05] That is a really big question. I'm a new father and I've got a 16-month-old. So I'm learning how to continue growing this business and putting my all into it and to also be a new dad, which is an amazing experience, a lot of learning to do, a lot of trials and tribulations, but certainly an amazing and deeply fulfilling thing. But, yeah, I mean,  every time we've reached a new stage of success at Shinesty we've realized, wow, there's even more out there to come and more out there to come. And every time you kind of hit a new one of these levels of success it just becomes in some ways harder, but in other ways easier to just see the next stage and see the next stage. So I think we've got a long way to go. I think we've got a lot of exciting product lines. I think we've done the hardest thing to do, which is to prove that people love our brand and our philosophy around it. And now that we've proven that, we think it'll be a lot easier to kind of copy and paste other categories. 

Ryan Alford [00:32:05] I Love the man.  Where can everyone keep up with everything Shinesty and everything Jens? 

Jens Nicolaysen [00:32:11]  On pretty much every platform it’s going to be at shinestythreads and you can keep up with me on LinkedIn, so I can help anybody out. Please shoot me a message. JENS NICOLAYSEN.There's not a lot of them on LinkedIn. 

Ryan Alford [00:32:28] It's been great, and I dig the brand. I'm digging everything you guys are doing. You're doing a master class in marketing for how to engage, how to entertain, and how to keep your customer base and acquire new customers through entertainment, not selling. Love it, brother. Hey, Jens, 

Jens Nicolaysen [00:32:46] Thank you so much for having me on. 

Ryan Alford [00:32:47] Yeah, man, it's been awesome. You know where to keep up with Shinesty, he just told you where and that is what you want to be doing with your brand. You may not be irreverent,  but you need to stand out, that is more important than ever. This is Ryan Alford, you know where to find us. The Radcast.com at the.rad.cast and I'm everywhere at Ryan Alford and on Tik Tok, I am verified at  Ryan.Alford go look find, search. Keep up with all things Radical Marketing. We'll see you next time on the Radcast.