The Oodie Journey: How I Built a Global Brand

this is my story how I went from a terrible kid in school all the way to creating one of Australia's biggest e-commerce brand doing over $550 million in sales when I was in school I was not a good kid I'm almost ashamed of who I was the first day of school I remember throwing a yogurt on a kid and instantly getting called into the uh principal's office and I almost got suspended on the very first day I remember handing in my assignment one day in class to a teacher and she just looked me up and

down and said don't be stupid I quickly then started to resent teachers and I would just purposely make their life living hell I quickly started to believe that I was stupid after a little while a few teachers really did start to put their faith in me and uh one teacher my physics teacher took me aside and was showing me logarithms and I was really understanding it and he really kind of backed me and said you're wasting your talent I started to really believe in myself you know I had some good teachers that and also my

parents really started to support me and make me realize that you are the master of your own destiny you are responsible for everything that happens to you some people listening to this will be like oh he was privileged his parents taught him how to do a business in the early years the truth is everyone has [ __ ] and your [ __ ] may be bigger than mine but that's not going to help you achieve your dreams and me being an angry distracted hyperactive kid was part of my [ __ ] and by realizing that

I needed to deal with that was the first step for me to create Financial Freedom to create happiness in my life to take responsibility in my own future and now you're probably you know the people that listen to this and they don't get inspired they get angry and they're like he doesn't know what's happening to me sure you can take that mentality but the only person that you are hurting with that mentality is yourself so despite being hyperactive in a bad way I was also hyperactive in a good way I was just constantly curious trying

to figure things out in grade four I started baking cookies cuz I lived next to the the primary school and I'd walk up after school with cordial and cookies and try to sell them to the teachers and I quickly learned about cost of goods and and material cost because I came home with I think about six six bucks or something like that and mom made me pay her for all of the cookie dough and I think I probably netted a loss on that one that was my first taste of a business loss but it definitely

wasn't my last I my probably second entrepreneurial venture was when I started selling uh caps and hoodies in year 11 I would just post them on social media I just go on to Facebook comment on people's photos and just try to sell one by one these hoodies and that started to work really well I was probably making you know $300 a week or so uh actually in school probably my first really successful business though was when I started to learn about Instagrams and I would sell advertising on Instagrams you would post content like you've probably

seen lots of similar Pages at the moment that post recipes motivational videos and then you can just post other brands on them and charge them 10 to$ 50 to $100 depending on how big your page is I grew followers up to about 6 600,000 and I ended up selling it to uh greater Van Real who had a network of about 15 million followers which then led me to actually go over to uh Melbourne and work with her and um the fifth Watchers team and I really started to learn learned the power of social media which

was my very very first taste of e-commerce after that I thought I was invincible I thought I was the smartest kid in e-commerce I was like all I'm going to launch multiple e-commerce Brands the first one was I started grinding seasonings in my shed and that was an absolute disaster I bought all of these seasonings from the US I think I was importing like basil and parsley and stuff like that and I was just grinding them up in Tupper aare container stupidly I used glass vials to package the product which would not only very heavy

would break uh if you ship them luckily I didn't ship any because I didn't have any customers I quickly realized that I just needed to become better if you're not getting results chances are that you're just probably not as good as you think you are and my journey was just YouTube videos after calls with people that have done things that are really successful after book after just testing things and what I did was I went to a bunch of Brands Adelaide based Brands and I just said I will work for you for free I want

to learn Facebook ads I want to learn websites and I want to learn videography those three skill sets if you think about it videographers are very expensive so everyone was like yep that's great you can handle all of the whole chain of the digital marketing which was very very valuable for these people and I got to learn while getting paid because they did start paying me eventually after you know two or three weeks that I was actually working for them I was just doing everything wrong I didn't understand persuasion marketing I didn't understand how to

frame a problem rather than just talking about the features of the product talk about what they can actually do for the customer and that led me to actually really understanding product which then led me to launching caling blankets now I know I said I would talk about the Udi and I definitely am getting there but it's really important to understand that I actually had a bigger brand than the udie in the early stages and that was calming blankets I was on Facebook scrolling down and there was this Mom and she was just posting on like

a forum or like one of those Niche pages and she just said this is the weighted blankets that I make for my kids she wasn't selling them or anything and I was like wow that's really really interesting and at that time I just went onto Alibaba and realized that there was nobody actually selling that product it was so brand new and then I did a bit research understood about propri acceptive input that there was actually just a peer- reviewed Journal which really opens up your ability to actually Market the product and then I just imported

like 100 or 200 of these products I spent my entire bank account that I've saved up from working with all of these Adelaide based Brands and pretty much drained it I had no idea what I was doing I was getting phone calls from people like Customs agents saying hey we've got all of your blankets here you need to pay duties and taxes and these kind of things and it was just absolute shambles I think I ended up Landing the blankets more than I was going to sell them for but it was an instant success I

ended up doing about $10 million in sales and over a million dollar profit in its first year I would jump on calls with people that are just incredible in the industry that have been working on e-commerce forever and they just immediately assumed that I was doing something incredibly unique and that I was very very smart but the truth was in anything that I did was working and that was simply because the product with products you've got certain stages so people can be problem aware so they can be problem aware around let's say global warming or

something like that and then they become solution aware so they understand that there is an hour solution for that product but then there's the final stage which is brand aware so they understand that you are the brand to actually sell that solution to that problem the perfect Trends are kind of where people are becoming solution aware but nobody is brand aware because then you can then allow Facebook's algorithms to insert the content in front of those people that are now really really ready to purchase and educated and that's exactly way the blankets were when I

first launched it after you find a successful business and you're doing a decent amount of sales you get this fear and it's a fear that everything is going to be taken away from you you create this narrative in your head oh my Facebook ad account's going to get banned and I'm going to get sued which does happen I'll tell you about that soon and then you you you create these excuses that you need to repeat what you've done in this situation because this first situation is too good to be true and it's going to be

taken away from you that is wrong for there is going to be risks in certain businesses and some businesses that may be true but the truth is that most problems can be over come and if you have Revenue if you have profit and you are doing everything in best faith and not being a bad actor and scamming people then chances are you will be able to work out the problems in your business that fear though made me think that I needed a new product because if this product goes away then I'll just sell this new

one and only 4 months in as well which was very very naive but I was like okay what are we selling we're selling weighted blankets we're selling something to calm anxiety and and be cozy I was like what what's a better product to add on to that and it was wearable blankets so I set up over the weekend I got a sample I set up the uh product actually on the calming blankets website so I thought this would just be a secondary product to the calming blank brand that was really really selling the sample came

in I think it was it was bright pink and I was like all right let's let's try to Market this when it first came in where you know I remember my parents saying oh I'm not really sure about this one and I wasn't either it was it's very common now for people to be like oh that looks like interesting that's not that ugly but back then it was hideous people just were shocked that anyone would actually wear that I remember reaching out to influencers saying hey can you take some photos for me and they just

literally said that is the ugliest thing I've ever seen and it was a very very long slug to actually get people to try the product and realize how soft it was and the first month or so odies just were not able to sell I was pushing them as hard as I could in the exact same way as caling blankets using Facebook ads but people just weren't really even solution aware or even problem aware for that product so it was very very slow the problem also was that I just didn't have any cash in the bank

because you need to buy inventory for future orders in advance and PVE in advance so I was trying to fund all of these future orders for cing blankets so so I didn't have time and investment to push into this product and I I really did consider should I scrap this product and focus because everyone was telling me you need to focus on one brand you need to focus on one product and I while I do believe that to be true for the most part if I only did that for cing blankets I wouldn't have aie

today so you need to be very confident that the thing that you're focusing on has long-term prospects not just this is going to be shortterm what I should be focusing on and therefore I'm going to miss future opportunities you still need to have long-term thinking when coming to focus as well despite it not working I just didn't give up I would got my girlfriend over I got my mom over I got my new puppy and I would just take photos and videos and just kept working on my marketing skills and finally it started to work

every morning my routine was the same I would get up at about 6:00 a.m. I would get Uber Eats at about 8:00 a.m. I would work on optimizing the website I would get my mom and to wear different hoodies and I would just film them and create ads I would then drive to the warehouse where i' would pack all the orders and it was just absolute non-stop managing the two Brands eventually I decided to hire my brother as well who is incredibly intelligent so he was working on customer service and packing orders managing the warehouse

so I could just focus on marketing and we just slowly grew and grew hiring you know friends and family as most people do when they first of business and have no idea what they're doing so now we're going to pull up to the original wear outs this is where I was packing orders um all myself just would get the shipment in and have a ton of pre-sales would pack them all and then then ship them off the next day the Australia Post guy did not like me what up we wanted to get some nostalgic footage

of where I packed oodies back in the day back in the day this is where it all started we used to have our Australia pose labels packed over there it'll be like this and then I'll do have a little station here I think I've got a photo of piled up of packages here and we'll just pack orders nonstop it be one day we um my first ever shipment of caling blankets I didn't realize that when you start importing something as as a new company there's something called a border hold so they scan all of your

packages and I sold everything on pre-sale I was like yeah we'll Ship by like 18th of August 18th of August arrived and they're like oh no we're going to hold this in Border hold until we've scanned all the packages I was just like had like $10,000 in sales I was just emailing customers frantically and then they arrived and I was just like pretty much in tears the truck rocked up down this street and pulled up and we just I unloaded like like I don't know maybe 500 or so weighted blankets in those days I didn't

even know where to take the orders cuz we had sold so many I couldn't just take them to the local post shop and I was also packing a free candle in every box so I repackaged every single thing and did it in like 2 3 hours then loaded them all up on Utes and took them to like two post office and they're like we can't take that we can't do that we went to the wrong one in the city and then we ended up finding places to to drop them off and kind of spread them

around um and then I started to actually learn how to run a business which was fun first the first udie merchandise I used to buy like business cards and stuff even though I didn't need them I just put the udie logo and everything and this was the headquarters of the operation would have meetings with just me and Todd they weren't meetings our Chinese suppliers came here it's he's tatted up my brother and he also had like a muscle singlet on and just like so out of their depth I was so confused I then realized that

eventually there's just going to be a ton of people selling this which there now is you know Kart Target all of these people have a version a lesser quality version and I realized that we needed to create something somewhat proprietary and that's where the characters were born I was actually in Europe on sale Croatia with my friends I saw this like cute little unicorn toy at one of the shops and I was like that needs to be on the so I added I I hired someone and put koalas corgis also unicorns as well which eventually

became our top sellers and really allowed us to kind of when someone sees it on social media they know it's an udie and they know where to get it as well they can even write Ki waited blanket and it will pop up I remember my first $500,000 day I was actually sitting in a villa in barley and it ticked over across both of those brands it was kind of this first moment of where I'm like hang on a second all of those teachers were wrong if you never give up and you constantly dedicate yourself to

learning you drop all ego and you just pursue the dreams that you really want to do it doesn't matter who you are it doesn't matter how smart you are you can achieve it and from there I went and I bought my dream house I went and and bought my dream car as well I remember driving out of the uh lot when I was I rocked up in ripped jeans the person thought that I couldn't even afford it they're kind of giving me daggers and didn't want to come over and serve me and I just bought

it straight then with with cash I think those are the moments that you need to be thinking about in the hardest times after all my Brands were skyrocketing I ended up launching ppnps as well which did over a million dollars in its like eighth month of business and I was like wow this ecommer game is so easy immediately that ego stepped straight back in and that's when things all went really really downhill as soon as the work from home finished sales just dropped and we had to completely restructure the organization I had to stop a

bunch of brands that I was launching I let a ton of people down all due to my greed which I'll never let happen again I then quickly learned that I needed more mentors in place I needed a great senior leadership team which I now have I needed people to teach me the things that I didn't know that they've learned from their 20 30 years in other organizations because I was 25 and a CEO I didn't even know how to run a meeting properly so with all the help of these people I was finally able to

kind of call myself out of that mess put proper controls in their business put a proper strategy in place and then things just started to take off again so we're now pulling up at our new oody office which is exciting we just moved about a month ago um so we'll see the team I don't go into the office very much cuz I'm working on a lot of other things but it'll be good to see everyone hello everybody how are we everyone remember Charlie it's been a long time how's it going you he works here more

than you do yeah that's so true this up for you perfect we actually do weddings as well don't thing how often do you wash your Woody uh I just get a new one every single time what's your favorite Woody product uh I was trying to think of something creative give me a sec wait start took too long yeah I understand how Tik Tok works okay and go um so we're going to ask you some hypothetical questions cuz you're our CH boss okay Katie go first what would you do if I was driving the G wagon

somewhere and I crashed it I would make sure that you're okay oh that's cute I've already played that in my head the amount of time you I'm like if she calls you and she crashes the car just check she's okay first I think it's cool to do gym content and um gaming content but you just can't do exactly like come up with a three concepts that you've never seen on YouTube before or you've seen like once that went okay oh that looks so good all right goodbye everyone good to see you no worries see you

soon we were able to work with some of the biggest licenses in the world like Disney Pokemon Warner Brothers we've got amazing new product categories like bathrobes you know we're also doing wholesale now so we're actually entering into stores and I do think that the Udi can actually be a global brand a household brand something that I always dreamed about when I was a kid all righty next stop this is this is the old office primary school is over there so I'd literally just jumped that little white fence still was late to class this is

where me and my um friend J Who uh was co-founder of ppnps we set up um our desks I remember being in this big offers by ourselves setting up the desk wondering what we got ourselves into um which was definitely a Pinchy moment cuz it was like wow maybe we're we're a serious business this is it this is the study it'll be seven Uber Eats bags here and I'll just lock in this is the first ever udie shoot bought a light standand from Amazon for 20 bucks and then I just got a white sheet the

sheet off my bed put it there cool and just do that SHP of fleece the inside again for me 24 hours I'll do 50,000 for 20% if you say yes right [Music] yes