Under The Hood: Mordechai from Red Moose

Welcome Mordechai. Let’s chat about the growth on Red Moose: What’s that been like? 

Red Moose started out as a small private label Amazon brand called OrthoStep about 8 years ago. I only joined 3 years ago to completely overhaul, rebrand and build out a proper D2C strategy. 

It was pretty good timing for me, but terrible timing for the business because right as we got started, COVID hit. We had to sit back for about 2 years, because understandably no-one wore or cared about shoes during that time. 

So we took a step back to strategise during that time, and 6 months ago is really when the push to D2C began. 

You guys crush on Amazon, what’s the secret? 

Amazon is a platform where customers purchase with within minutes. They know what they're looking for, they'll type in the keyword “shoe polish” into the search bar and then purchase the one that catches their attention. The name of the game is to rank high and to get the most clicks / conversions. 
To do well across those dimensions - I’d say you have to get 3 things right: Imagery (high resolution, tantilizing graphics, and lifestyle imagery), listing optimization via keywords, and having a proper PPC strategy.

Let’s chat D2C: How have you been able to stand out? 

The concept of our brand is to give you a one stop shop for anything related to footwear. There’s a gap in the market where you have legacy shoe polish brands on one side (Kiwi) and Sneakerhead shoe care brands on the other. We marry the entire family of products under one catalog and only sell USA-made products. 

How are you getting new customers? 

The biggest lever that we can pull is creative. These days, ad buying is more reliant on creative than strategy. And it helps that our product are highly visual: We can easily show before / after pictures of our solution working its magic on a shoe. 

That’s one of our main creative angles, and we get extra support from the great Sarah Levinger who’s an expert on consumer psychology. She digs into our reviews and finds ways to create an emotional connection and reaction to our products. 

What about SEO - are you investing in that? 

We're using an agency called Pneuma Media, run by David Riggs. Here the name of the game is to incorporate certain keywords on our product pages & also be strategic about our blog post pushes which are synced with seasonal purchasing trends (for ex: “suede shoe care” is a term searched for in the fall/winter, which is when we put out a lot of content against that keyword). 

Tell me about CRO: How do you increase conversions on your site? 

We’ve massively improved our navigation. When a customer comes, they have a need - and we’re making it so obvious to help them find where to go by calling out the types of shoes we offer care for: “Boot Care / Sneaker Care / Leather Care” etc. Each is now its own category. 

Next was launching a custom bundle kit. That allows people to customize their order and save on costs as they add more.  

You also have a loyalty program called the Crimson Club right? How does that work? 

Yes we launched that using the Inveterate app. 

The belief is that loyalty programs which reward you with points for activities like “follow us on Instagram” etc just doesn’t work. So our Crimson Club skips all that and delivers real value. 

The membership costs $15 / month. And customers get an instant $10 credit to spend monthly. And once they start shopping, they begin to hit certain purchase tiers and unlock benefits. 

For ex: Once you spend $150, you get: a $15 credit; priority shipping; priority customer support and access to new products first. 

Nice - let’s chat operations: Any learnings? 

We happily still fulfil everything in-house. I love having that because we have the freedom and flexibility of creating new kits on the fly. We even fulfill in-house for our Amazon channel. 

Let's talk about the tech stack: What do you use? 

Shopify for eCommerce. Klaviyo for email. Postscript for SMS. Fondue for cash back. Inveterate for loyalty. Quantcast for demographic research. Okendo for reviews. Gorgias for Customer Support. And Triple Whale for attribution which we love.