00:03:28 · S8
[00:03:28] S8: Levi and myself had known each other for a very, very long time. I think probably around five or six years old. We were both homeschooled in a rural community. My family moved overseas, we moved to Indonesia, I lived there for the majority of my teenage years from 13 to 18 years old. You know, when you experience a different culture, you experience a different country, society, the way of doing things is totally different. All of a sudden, you see problems and you see opportunities everywhere around you. And so that's true when going into the culture, but also when you come back to your home country. And that was what was really motivational to me was that there seemed like there was so much obvious problems to solve. When we first co founded that original company, we'd always be talking about different business ideas, different solutions to different problems. I'd experienced living in China and experiencing how advanced the e commerce landscape, how integrated technology was with society and people's day to day life. Coming back or having that experience of where New Zealand was at in that landscape, it felt like a step ten years back into the past. It was sort of a glaringly obvious problem that someone needed to solve. At the time, you know, Levi had actually constructed a caravan. I had renovated the garage and I'd been living in there and then Levi parked his caravan in the driveway and so we had this makeshift, very odd group of people all living in this one property and that kind of comes down to what we call in New Zealand number eight y mentality. It was not a good office at all. Every day we would have to fold up the bed, we would take out all of the different bits and pieces from inside, we would carry in desks into the caravan and then work around twelve hours coding away, writing away. We did that for six months just nonstop altogether in this one space. And that was the environment or the melting pot of ingenuity, innovation, and entrepreneur entrepreneurship that the business was birthed out of.
00:05:24 · Levi Fawcett, S0, S1, S2, S3, S4
[00:05:24] S9: Allgoods was designed to help SMBs, help small to medium businesses sell online. We built quite a good business around it, growing to just over a thousand business customers, 400,000 monthly users on the platform, but it was extremely low margin. It was clear that the business was never gonna be wildly successful. We kind of ended up competing with a low Ad[00:05:50] S0: This episode is brought to Ad[00:05:51] S1: you by Indeed. You're ready to level up your business, but the pressure to find the right person to make that happen is intense. Indeed Sponsored Jobs can help carry the load. Ad[00:06:01] S2: It boosts your job post to help it reach quality talent fast. Cut through Ad[00:06:05] S1: the chaos with Indeed sponsored jobs. Get a $75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring now? Then this is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs. Ad[00:06:20] S3: Sam's Club is the club for every holiday club. Guess who's joining the club this season? Walmart Plus. Yep. Sam's Club Plus membership now comes with Walmart Plus at no extra cost. Two memberships, one great price. Just a $120 Ad[00:06:32] S4: a year can save Ad[00:06:33] S3: you time and over $700. Wanna get in on the membership duo of the century? Visit sam'sclub.com. Come join us. Sam's Club.
00:06:33 · S3, S5, S10
Ad[00:06:33] S3: you time and over $700. Wanna get in on the membership duo of the century? Visit sam'sclub.com. Come join us. Sam's Club. Ad[00:06:41] S5: Annual plan only auto renews TNC apply estimate based on average combined Walmart Plus and Sam's Club Plus savings among members of both for one plus year versus nonmember or club member pricing slash fees. Excludes membership fees. See Walmart Plus terms and Sam's Club terms for more info. Ad[00:06:50] S10: This is Blue from the UPS Store with a very special holiday announcement for small business owners. We're open. Let's be real. Your deadlines don't take holidays. So while the other guys are checking out, the UPS Store is here to pack, ship, print, shred, notarize, and check more things off your list all year long. With over 5,500 locations, there's a blue near you at the UPS store. Shredding services are provided by Iron Mountain as is. Visit the upsstore.com/shredding for full details. Locations are independently owned. Product, services, prices, hours of operation may vary. See store for details.
00:06:50 · S10, S7, Levi Fawcett
Ad[00:06:50] S10: This is Blue from the UPS Store with a very special holiday announcement for small business owners. We're open. Let's be real. Your deadlines don't take holidays. So while the other guys are checking out, the UPS Store is here to pack, ship, print, shred, notarize, and check more things off your list all year long. With over 5,500 locations, there's a blue near you at the UPS store. Shredding services are provided by Iron Mountain as is. Visit the upsstore.com/shredding for full details. Locations are independently owned. Product, services, prices, hours of operation may vary. See store for details. Ad[00:07:20] S7: It's officially the holiday season, and Abercrombie's new collection has outfits for everything on your calendar. It's the busiest time of year, and between shopping and party invites, I don't have time to plan every look. But Abercrombie's always got me covered. Their sweaters are the perfect easy layer for low key plans. And on a nice night out, I'm reaching for their classic trousers. Fill your closet with the pieces you'll need all season long. Have a very Abercrombie holiday. Shop in the app, online, and in stores. [00:07:50] S9: Called marketplace. Competing with marketplaces is fundamentally a terrible idea. Marketplaces have these deep network effects, and so it just doesn't make sense to compete.
00:07:50 · Levi Fawcett, S8
[00:07:50] S9: Called marketplace. Competing with marketplaces is fundamentally a terrible idea. Marketplaces have these deep network effects, and so it just doesn't make sense to compete. [00:07:58] S8: It was a long journey. We built this company from nothing. Just a few guys coding away or riding away inside this dark caravan. It was a great sort of deep dive into how do you get your first customers? How do you do any marketing? It was just a wild experience for a young group of 20 year olds to have this taste of, wow, we could actually do something impactful in the world. [00:08:25] S9: On top of that, there were all of these kind of weird dynamics. About 20 of our customers sold parts online so they were always telling us 'hey can you make it easier?' Every other category most orders were coming from within New Zealand parts 85% were coming from outside of New Zealand and so the more we looked into this and the more we tied this back to my previous experience building things it became a lot more clear real global problem wasn't helping small and medium businesses. We thought about it for a long time. We didn't change the business for about two months because Allgoods wasn't failing. It was just not wildly successful, And we felt like every week we were doing something that was going to bring us to the next level or cross the line. It took us two weeks before we finally said, look, we're going to shut down Allgoods. From day one, we exist in New Zealand, but we're not a New Zealand focused company.
00:08:25 · Levi Fawcett, S8
[00:08:25] S9: On top of that, there were all of these kind of weird dynamics. About 20 of our customers sold parts online so they were always telling us 'hey can you make it easier?' Every other category most orders were coming from within New Zealand parts 85% were coming from outside of New Zealand and so the more we looked into this and the more we tied this back to my previous experience building things it became a lot more clear real global problem wasn't helping small and medium businesses. We thought about it for a long time. We didn't change the business for about two months because Allgoods wasn't failing. It was just not wildly successful, And we felt like every week we were doing something that was going to bring us to the next level or cross the line. It took us two weeks before we finally said, look, we're going to shut down Allgoods. From day one, we exist in New Zealand, but we're not a New Zealand focused company. [00:09:12] S8: A lot of people, when they think of automotive or when they think of parts, they think, oh, wow. That's a niche problem. But I think having a second thought about that, they realize this is an industry where everyone in their lifetime is buying parts multiple times. The latest numbers that we have on this is there's around about $1,900,000,000,000 spent on parts.