Entrepreneur Couple Bootstrapping an E-Commerce Business Using a Paycheck and Crowdfunding: Nomad Lane Co-Founders Kish Vasnani and Vanessa Jeswani (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: This email list where you got pre-orders from, was that just your email list from before or did that include Indiegogo crowdfunding email list?

Kish Vasnani: It was a combination of all. We were able to segment the list. We also had a segment of people who were very interested in the bag but had a bad experience. A huge segment wanted to buy directly from our website when we had a formal return policy in place.

Sramana Mitra: It looks like Indiegogo helped you generate a prospect list as well and not just sell on the Indiegogo platform.

Vanessa Jeswani: Yes, it was also people who used the bags a little bit. There was a lot of word-of-mouth as well.

Sramana Mitra: One question that comes to my mind is, you have not mentioned anything about the marketplaces. You had originally started off by talking about Etsy. By end of 2019, Amazon was very big. eBay has been big all along. Those weren’t options you considered?

Kish Vasnani: No. 

Vanessa Jeswani: We wanted to primarily focus on building the brand as well. On your website, you have a little bit more room.

Sramana Mitra: How far did the email marketing, brand building, and product positioning get you?

Kish Vasnani: When we relaunched the version two on our own website, that was another million dollars. Then around December 2019, we were doing paid ads. We were doing the email campaign. We started exploring influencer strategies. We just started looking around.

Where are people going for discovery? We found that YouTube was an amazing place to find products like ours. Starting beginning of 2019 up until February 2020, we looked for influencers. We made arrangements with them. One person was a flight attendant. Another woman was a travel doctor. We had a fixed fee and affiliate model. That, in itself, propelled us. 

Sramana Mitra: Which worked? 

Kish Vasnani: Both worked. There was one influencer who was a full-time flight attendant. She just wanted a one-time payment. Another influencer wanted the affiliate route. We worked with around 20 influencers. That generated another million dollars in sales.

Sramana Mitra: How many were doing affiliate?

Kish Vasnani: About nine of them.

Sramana Mitra: About what percentage of the revenue came from the affiliate?

Kish Vasnani: We were able to track right around $500,000 or so.

Sramana Mitra: So about half. If it works, affiliate is a great model. Now we’re in 2020 and travel comes to a halt.

Kish Vasnani: I have two additional points I want to bring up. During 2019, we left New York. We felt that we needed to be closer to our factory. We actually flew from New York to Bali. Because we were so fixated on getting our reputation back, we decided to live on the same time zone as our factory. This is also a way for us to save money. Vanessa’s family is nearby too. We were there to correct our issues. 

Sramana Mitra: Where in Bali?

Kish Vasnani: We were between Seminyak and Umalas.

Sramana Mitra: Who was doing the fulfillment?

Kish Vasnani: We had a warehouse in Georgia, and we had one in LA. Now we have one in Nevada. We have a third-party fulfillment system. There is no way that it could fit in our apartment.

Sramana Mitra: That was an interesting aside. Was there something else you wanted to mention?

Kish Vasnani: Fast forward to March 2020 when the world shut down, it was very surreal to watch it because we were in Bali. We heard about something happening in China.

Vanessa Jeswani: We were worried that it would affect our supply chain. 

Kish Vasnani: That was tough for us. Since we moved to Bali, our monthly overhead is very low.

Sramana Mitra: It’s just the two of you, right?

Kish Vasnani: Correct. 

This segment is part 6 in the series : Entrepreneur Couple Bootstrapping an E-Commerce Business Using a Paycheck and Crowdfunding: Nomad Lane Co-Founders Kish Vasnani and Vanessa Jeswani
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