Hey Rusty was created from the love of music bringing people together. Landmark Global and Shiptheory spoke to Nigel about how Shiptheory allows him to automate his process and access all his sales channels in one place.
Hey Rusty Interview
Lets see how Hey Rusty uses Landmark and Shiptheory together to make his business run smoothly.
Q: What's the background on the Rusty story?
We've been in the music business for probably longer than we care to think about. Back in the day we would sell CDs and DVDs all over the world. However, retail partners fell out of love with that product, about 15 years ago. So the merchandise became a bigger seller. We were working with a number of the agencies up into about three years ago when we sort of decided that we could do it better, so that's when Hey Rusty was born. We sell around 9,000 unique products, all officially licensed. Everything we do is official.So, it's about 40,000 SKUs and we sell it all around the world.
The beauty of our product is that, regardless of culture, countries, borders or boundaries we will never need to explain who Led Zeppelin is. People understand our brand immediately, having affinity with, either the band, or the era, or the genre, and the sales happen and due to that really. So really. It's just about being in the right place at the right time and making sure they're on the right sort of search engines and working with the right marketplaces and platforms.
Q : What sales channels do you use?
We sell through a number of sales channels, Etsy, Wish, eBay and Walmart just to name a few. However, not as many as I'd like, but there are so many idiosyncrasies with marketplaces. Then obviously the EU ones are all very problematic for us to get on to, I mean, prior to talking to you, we are sitting here working through the new marketplaces that we're going after trying to expand the business through them. That's always the goal.
Q: How did you guys hear about Shiptheory?
We heard about Shiptheory when we Joined landmark. Before Shiptheory we were with another shipping solution, whose name I won’t mention, they managed to magnificently lose 602 orders over the Christmas period as well as be pretty incompetent to the point I could scarcely believe it. I met a colleague then at Landmark who was fantastically professional and is just around the corner from us at Heathrow, which made it even more handy because we either get products collected or we can take them there. Then came the need to find a company to generate the labels and that's where Shiptheory came in.
Q: How have Shiptheory and Landmark helped you?
With Shiptheory I just need to get these labels done quickly. I need them to be transparent. I need to be able to understand via the platform what I'm looking at. Shiptheory can tell me the size, shape, SKU and where it's going. All those are very important when I'm making a label. What I like with Shiptheory is the moment an order comes in it pops up on the Shiptheory system, other systems we have used have had a half-hour lag between these sorts of things, so it's super useful having an instant response. Convenience and usefulness are the two major things for me and Shiptheorys pricing is very good. I have no qualms about that.
Then it’s sent with Landmark and giving them credit their tracking is superb! They are always very professional and transparent.
Q: What were you doing for shipping before you had a solution in place?
It is hard to quantify the time I used to spend but I would spend a stupid amount of time making postal labels. It used to drive me mad. I should be running the business and driving things forward, but I would spend probably half my day doing nothing other than orders, labels and printing. Shiptheory definitely saves me time and money too. The system is set up in a way where you can make multiple labels very quickly. I can happily advocate for others to use it.
Q: What's your ambitions for Hey Rusty in the future, where can you see yourselves?
I think we're really only tapping the sides. I think there's massive opportunities. We're only limited by the scope of our ambition. In terms of the product that we do, we're going to start licensing our own products soon. So we'll have a much more hands-on approach. Yeah, anticipate, our business will grow exponentially over the next five years. I would hope we doubled at least one year.
Q: Are there some key markets or do you see anywhere more spectacular grow?
Key market is the USA 100%, number one, all day, every day, that's 80% of what we do. Bizarrely we aren't even really focused on the US, we should be a lot more and I'm going to start to. Another place we are planning on focusing on is Europe, at the moment I sell more in Australia than I do the whole of the continent of Europe, and you cannot tell me that European people are not into Metallica. Southeast Asia is another one we're looking at Japan, South Korea. Fantastic markets, the opportunity can be endless for us.
Q: Would you recommend Shiptheory and Landmark together?
For me it's not about speed, it's about accountability. The way that landmarks do their tracking information is: It is accountable, even if it hasn't got there as quickly as you want it to, and believe me, it's never quick enough for the consumer. Once that dispatch notification goes out, then their expectation is tempered by the fact, they know it's coming and they can follow the process. I would not hesitate to recommend them to everyone I know because I think they're fantastic. That's based, by the way, on probably nine months of working with them, I think once you go beyond sort of two quarters, you get a really good understanding of how they work. As for the Shiptheory, it does what it says, on the tin. I mean my level of expectation is simply that the labels are produced. They're clear that they convey everything the consumer has asked us to do. It does it quickly and efficiently . Yeah, I would happily recommend both companies