CheckoutWeekly/TaskHusky Curated Newsletter #2129

Hey *|FNAME|*... Let’s Get Rich with Nietzsche and GouletPens

July 27, 2021

Hello -

There’s an internet business saying — “Niches Make Riches.”  It rhymes when you read it … unless you read it out load. Then, not so much. But it makes a valid point. The interwebs are such a huge leverage that the entire world can become your customer. Think about it. There are nearly 8 BILLION people on the planet. If just one out of every thousand people ON EARTH likes something you sell, your potential market is 8 million customers. So, I sat myself down with a box of chicken nuggets and two dipping sauces to think — I get both the ranch AND the BBQ because the gal at the drive-through likes me and … well, frankly it’s delicious that way. Anyway … I was thinking about what the most niche-y niche thing you could ever sell … even to a famous 19th century writer like Friedrich Nietzsche. And you know what I came up with in the age of the smartphone? Fountain pens. You know … those pointy little backstabbers you have to actually fill yourself with liquid ink and accidently squirt blank perma-stains all over the white shirt your Dad gave you and then you have to lie and say the dog ripped it because your Dad could never be disappointed with a dog. But let’s not go there. The question is, could you scratch the itch to get nouveau niche in this Nietzsche niche? Turns out you can. Here’s this week’s teardown. Happy selling,Zachary

This Week’s Target: GouletPens.comCompany ProfileWhen I told the team that I was going to write about GouletPens for this week’s newsletter … well let’s just say “the mature guy” on the team said, “You mean like Robert Goulet?” As the rest of us stared in awkward silence he went on to explain how there was an actor and singer back in the day and yadda yadda yadda … we poured him a cup of coffee and smiled like we all understood what the heck he was talking about. But I did Google it and, sure enough, the guy was a big hit with the ladies long before any of the rest of us were born. But as expected, Robert Goulet has absolutely nothing to do with GouletPens. GouletPens started as the woodworking hobby of Brian Goulet (not Robert). He was “turning pens” — which is something you do with blocks of wood on a wickedly-dangerous piece of equipment called a "lathe" in a dimly-lit workshop with a crazy look in your eyes while the neighbors talk about you being a “nice fellow who kept to himself and didn’t make any trouble.” Anyway … that was in 2007. And he made so many pens that he started selling them at pen shows … because of course they have those kinds of things where wild-eyed nice fellows who keep to themselves get together and swap … pens, I suppose. A few years later they are importing and selling pens from like-crazy-minded companies around the world and opening up the online store. Today they are #266 on Shopify’s most successful stores list. They sell on their Shopify Plus site and directly on Facebook’s marketplace. On Amazon — they of questionable morals — will let you search for Goulet Pens and then show you everyone who wants to rip them off. Their average price point is about $145 and they have a pen set for sale today that is over $33k. I now officially want one. The Shopify Theme They UseThe super-top-secret analysis tools were deployed against this site. After hours of extensive processing, those expensive DARPA-level algorithms gave us ... nothing. They say it is a custom theme, but I don’t buy it. I think that they are masking and that this is a standard theme of some sort that has been modified. But who ya gonna trust? The Good StuffThe navigation is actually pretty good here. The main menu wastes no time at all with silly “Home” or “About Us” links. Everything is about getting pens or information on pens. This is the way it should be, The product photography is great, but they have a significant advantage here because the fine pen industry is famous for providing great photography. I like the product pages. Clean with good content, solid social proof, solid SEO (ALT tags and everything!), more great above-the-fold info. Here’s an example. You can see the installment payments info right there too. Whenever you have price points above $100 or so, that improves conversion folks. The checkout process is solid, but not exceptional. They do deploy Express Payment options, with is a win every time. OK … this is neither good nor bad. The page speed is still in the “Google hates it range,” but it is average among Shopify sites. They should work on it. Just say’in. But let’s go to the next section, shall we? Needs ImprovementSo, although the speed sucks less than many sites, it is still WAY to heavy (mis-formatted images), the DOM is huge, and they need to defer the tracking code. OK, now we can move along. Apps They DeployWe ran a scan to see what Shopify apps & supporting services they are deploying. Get a load of this list:

  • Bold Commerce — Modular eCommerce apps.

  • Findify — Personalized search.

  • Klaviyo — Customer lifecycle management.

  • Hotjar — Website user heatmaps.

  • Convert — Personalized content.

  • Back in Stock — Inventory alerts.

  • Foursixty — Instagram marketplace.

  • Stamped – Customer ratings and reviews.

  • VeruPass — Exclusive discouting.

  • Elfsight — Social media widgets.

  • Bugsnag – That which snage bugs … in the code.

  • Bold UpSell — Upselling andcross-selling.

  • PayPal/AmazonPay/ApplePay/ShopPay — Express payment options.

  • Affirm — Installment payments.

  • DoubleClick — Retargeting ads.

This may not be a complete list. But that’s a pretty small list.

Marketing Stuff They DoSo, I “think” that they are running social media ads through a third-party service. That means that I can’t show you the ads here, but they will haunt my Facebook timeline for days and the retargeting ads mean I will see it when I visit my favorite blog sites … like The Chicken Nugget News (and this is NOT me). But I can say that they have huge social presence with Facebook (55k followers), Twitter (35k followers), Instagram (an impressive 130k followers), Pinterest (41k followers), and even YouTube with a crazy 172k followers. I know what you’re thinking. How do you get 170k followers with videos of people writing with pens? But no matter how they got there, that’s a LOT for a pen company if you ask me. You will see screen captures of those pages below. Got to be that niche thing. I can also say that they have a VERY good PR agency because I found them mentioned in like 3 Forbes articles, the New York Times, even Fortune magazine, and more. Heck, there are even mentioned in ReddIt threads.

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