336 | Turning Brand Values Into Growth Strategy | with Julie De Angulo

Julie De Angulo

It's about building a thoughtful and scalable foundation that supports consistent growth year after year.  

Chase Clymer

Welcome to Honest Ecommerce, a podcast dedicated to cutting through the BS and finding actionable advice for online store owners. I'm your host, Chase Clymer. And I believe running a direct-to-consumer brand does not have to be complicated or a guessing game. 

On this podcast, we interview founders and experts who are putting in the work and creating  real results. 

I also share my own insights from running our top Shopify consultancy, Electric Eye. We cut the fluff in favor of facts to help you grow your Ecommerce business.

Let's get on with the show.

Chase Clymer

Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of Honest Ecommerce. Today, I am excited to welcome to the show Julie, the vice president of Ecommerce and Digital for Bajio Sunglasses. Julie, welcome to the show. 

Julie De Angulo

Thanks, Chase. Thanks for having me. 

Chase Clymer

I'm excited to chat. So what's so special about these sunglasses over there? What's unique about Bajio? 

Julie De Angulo

Yeah. So we're a small company out of Florida, Musmerna Beach. We've been in the business for about four years, about to turn five actually. And we specialize in premium fishing sunglasses. So, our main niche and consumer is the Angler, right? Anybody that's on the water  and wants to cast a rod and catch fish, we have a product for them. But our lenses are unique. They have technology,  the LAPIS technology that basically just clears out all of the blue light. All of our lenses and sunglasses are polarized. We have, our product is number one in the industry. And our mission is just to make the best sunglasses and lenses out there for anybody that's out in the water, either fishing or just out on the beach or in the boat.

Chase Clymer

That's amazing. And as a fisherman, anytime you schedule a headboat to take you out or you're going out with a tour guide or whatever, it's like sunscreen and then polarized sunglasses is the second thing that they require you to have  to get on the boat. So I definitely know the niche that you are feeling here. So I'm super excited to chat today. 

Julie De Angulo

Awesome. 

Chase Clymer

Now, take me back in time. Where do we want to start this conversation? You're not necessarily on the founding team. But it's a small team and it's only been around 5 years now. So it's still  close enough.  But do we want to start at this... Where you joined Bajio or are we going to go back in time with your career in Ecommerce? 

Julie De Angulo

Yeah. My main focus has always been Ecommerce. I've been in Ecommerce for about 20 years.  And I've gone from industries from apparel, home goods, pet products, my journey has just always been rooted in truly understanding a brand, right? The values and how it's perceived from the customer's point of view. And I'm always passionate about how you can communicate a brand's message in a clear and engaging way. And then you're already halfway to your success. With Bajio, I started about, I think, a year after they had been in business.

And I started here, I would say, when there was little to no Ecommerce, I would say, presence.  And one of my biggest things, and one of the things actually that I'm most proud of here is just taking the business with little to no Ecommerce presence and turning it into a strong revenue generated challenge, a channel.

So yeah, I've been here for four years and just watching that transformation unfold and knowing that I played our key role in shaping every stage of the customer lifecycle from acquisition to retention has been incredibly rewarding. I had no idea what you just said about fishing before I started here. I've owned boats before and I love to be underwater. So it was definitely a fit for me. 

Fishing has never been my thing. But now I'm definitely part of the culture, definitely part of the company. And it's not just about hitting revenue goals, although that's always a win. But it's about building a thoughtful and scalable foundation that supports consistent growth year after year. 

Chase Clymer

With your career in Ecommerce almost spanning two decades, you remember what was your first job or entry point into the Ecommerce world?

Julie De Angulo

So I started back in 2011. 2012 with Perry Ellis. So I started in apparel. Yeah, back in 2011, 2012, there were not a lot of majors, you know, a lot of degrees that had Ecommerce and general marketing. Every industry today was still understanding what this is, right? So I started more with email marketing and learning, you know, the basis.  

My passion and actually what I majored in was mass communications and marketing. And I started out in publications, but then when I went into the Ecommerce side, just changing that mindset from, okay, the customer is now digital and everything is your data, right? Everything is now measured in data. Understanding that from the beginning has helped me tremendously  from my early years. 

And then after that, I had my own agency at some point, but really working on the client side. Then I worked for a company that did artificial plants and that was actually back in 2020. And it actually did really well because everybody was home and with the internet, they had nowhere to go. So everybody was renovating their homes. So that was also a very good experience. 

Then I also worked with a company that sold pet supplements. So, just working with each brand and helping them understand their brand's message and then translating that into the customer and seeing how you can mesh that with what the customer needs. I think it's beautiful. 

Chase Clymer

Absolutely. With joining Bajio, you mentioned a few minutes ago that they didn't have much of an online business at all. Were they more of a traditional wholesale B2B startup before you came in? And what were some of the first challenges you tried to help them overcome? 

Julie De Angulo

Yeah. And so we have two different channels, Wholesale Optical and Ecommerce. And  Ecommerce was, it had a presence. They had a website which is now, it's the same, bajiosunglasses.com. But it was more of a catalog for our wholesale business.

There was really no real strategy or plan developed for the customer that wanted to be in DTC.  And I came in and it was perceived as, well, this is more like a catalog for wholesale. And I was like, okay, I'm definitely going to help you with that. But you're going to see how I'm going to help you also transform and create that brand message for our customers.

Because now, we don't only have retailers here in Florida, but now we are reaching people in Washington state, and all over the United States. And we weren't having that. And in 3 years, we've grown very much on the online presence. 

Chase Clymer

Absolutely. What were some of those specific initiatives that you helped the brand navigate to see that growth?

Julie De Angulo

Well, to have a clear understanding on what we wanted to say online, right? Making sure that we had our brand's message from being manufactured here in the US in New Smyrna Beach to having the best sustainable quality products to you is definitely paying for what you get with us.

From there, having that laid out and then understanding that and then creating things on a more granular, our email marketing, our SMS, our SEO, and ultimately our paid campaigns. So definitely a programmatic  marketing, but building the whole customer lifecycle and how that  journey would look for.

Not only what I was telling you earlier in regards to the niche. So the person that fishes here in Florida is very different from the person that's going to do fly fishing and very different from the, that's going to do bass fishing, right? They're all very passionate about their sport. But having a true message and exactly, you know, like when we write stories, building those stories with the product and having a good merchandising and stories. 

It looks authentic because we want to make sure that that message that's very authentic to somebody that's very passionate about either fly fishing or a bass tournament or here in Florida being in the water. If we sell the story and if we tell the story and it comes with a product, we want to make sure that it's authentic. And it's not just something that we want to sell to a customer just because.

Chase Clymer

It makes a lot of sense what you're saying there. If you're trying to create that story and craft a message and you're talking about the salt on the air and that ad is touching someone in Lake Erie, there's no salt on the air up in Lake Erie. While they all are participating in the same sport,  per se. The way that you're talking about those stories is different. I thought about that. 

Julie De Angulo

Yeah, absolutely. You know, I mean, like anything, you know, if let's say, you know, for example, I'm very passionate about things like mountain biking or just traveling, right? So if I read something online and you know, I hear that it's fluff, I'm probably not going to want to buy the product. So for example, we don't do it when it comes to influencer marketing, we don't do influencer marketing. If you see, we hire guides. So we have a program where our pros are

the guide. So the guide that takes you on your fishing trip, wherever you are, those guides can join our program, and then we'll be able to partner with them. And they're going to be our best influencers out there. So we don't actually hire just any influencer, because we want to make sure that the people that do touch our product, and use our product and speak for our product for us, know what they're talking about.

Chase Clymer

Yeah. Those brand advocates couldn't be any more in tune with your market and your target demo. And do you often talk to them to try to get ideas for ad campaigns or anything to see how they're talking about it? 

Julie De Angulo

Oh, yeah. Well, when it comes to ad campaigns, those are very separate. We do have community leaders that are always on the field doing events. We have them for fly fishing, saltwater, bass tournaments. And they are the best at what they do. And then they're the ones that are the key point to talk to our pros. And that's why every time you see a video, usually  mostly on our ID or Facebook, on the organic side, if you see a video or if you see anybody talking about  our product or saying, being in an event, it's authentic.  

And then when it comes to our ads, it's photo shoots that we do with our own models  and nothing is outsourced. So that's very unique. I would say challenging to maintain because sometimes you want to have more content and more things faster. But it's definitely  a great aspect because it keeps us authentic.  

Chase Clymer

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Chase Clymer

What are you most proud of in your Ecommerce journey to date? 

Julie De Angulo

Let's see. Most proud of. So I would say, my journey, where I am now, I would say here at the H.E.O. And again, like I told you earlier, one of things I'm most proud of is being a part of a brand's growth from the ground up. When I joined Perry Ellis, he was already known worldwide.  When I was working for HomeGoods, it was also pretty big. I scaled, it went from 10 million to 20 million in four years, but it was also  a very well-known established brand. Same thing with the pet supplement.  

It's a global brand. Here, it's such a beautiful product. And the story from our founder, and his wife, they started this brand and this product with a mission to not only have the world's  clearest lenses, but to have a company that really resonates with what they want to build.

So being part of a brand's growth from the ground up and taking the business channel with little or no Ecommerce presence that he had at the time and turning it into what it is today, which is a revenue generating channel. Watching that transformation unfold, it's really rewarding. And again, it's not just about hitting the revenue goals, although that's obviously also a win for everybody in the company. But it's also about building a thoughtful and scalable foundation and seeing that consistent growth year over year. It's very rewarding. And I'm very proud of that. 

Chase Clymer

Absolutely. It's funny that resonates with some of the ethos that we have over at our agency. It's a lot more fun working with small things. It can mean anything to anybody. But smaller brands. And it's more like if you help a brand make another million dollars, that is sub 8 figures. So a brand that's worth less than $10 million, if you help them make another million, that's massively life-changing. 

Julie De Angulo

Correct. 

Chase Clymer

Versus if you help a publicly traded company make another million dollars.

Julie De Angulo

Right.

Chase Clymer

Maybe not even enough and you might lose your job. 

Julie De Angulo

Yeah, exactly. And it's not just that. I've been doing this already for so long that it's like, I know  the formula that works. So once you understand the brand, once I understand the brand, okay, you know what's going to work, you know from customer acquisition to then, your other channels and seeing, you know from the data, what you need to make the brand grow. So once you have that, which I've had here, like you said, now it's kind of like setting up the brand so that in two, three, four, five years, you're, you know, triple where we are today. But then you also have to grow everything else, right? 

Cause it's not just Ecommerce and those are some of the challenges that I face now. It's not that you're growing too fast, but then it's like, okay, so now I'm ready to scale 10 times. But then you need to have more customer service agents. You need to have a bigger warehouse. And then everybody's like, oh, wow. So good problems to have. But yeah, that's definitely something that I'm very proud of. 

Chase Clymer

Yeah. That's something that if you are out there talking to a new person. If you're thinking about hiring someone or maybe partnering with a new agency or something, and they're not asking you a question like, Hey, what happens if this goes really well and you double your sales overnight? What happened? Can you do that? Can  you sell twice the amount of products you're selling right now? 

Julie De Angulo

Exactly. 

Chase Clymer

Right? If people aren't asking you those questions, A, they don't have the confidence in their services maybe, or they haven't done it before. But B, it's like they need to understand that the channels that already exist can support the growth they're trying to bring. 

Julie De Angulo

Right. Yeah. And then you need to ask, okay, are you going to be able to have the product? 

Especially with everything happening now. So think about anybody that has goods. And if you want to scale five times, you need to have the product for it. Because if you have the demand, if you run out of inventory, which is a lot of times what happens to companies, it's not planning enough to have enough inventory for your Ecommerce group. 

Chase Clymer

Yeah. And if you have a campaign that just goes super successful or by a strike of lightning, you get something that goes viral, and you can't capitalize on that, and you run out of stock, by the time you get it back in stock, the momentum might be gone. 

Julie De Angulo

Yes. And I've seen that happen. It's actually happened to my team and other companies where something went viral. Other companies were like home goods, we had influencers, right? So we would ship things to the influencers. And there was this particular product that went viral and we didn't have enough of it. And it went viral and it was like we couldn't sell. And then after 3 months supply, it was gone. So yeah. 

Chase Clymer

Yeah. And then you might be in a situation where you have too much of a product that won't sell anymore. 

Julie De Angulo

Exactly. It's like, no, it's viral. It's gone. Which is the thing about Ecommerce too, right? Things go viral. So those are the things that I try to do. With this brand, what I try to stay away from.  We don't have a lot of different SKUs. We don't have a lot of products. So I like to make sure that our best sellers are always changing. If I run out of something, I can back up with something else. And I mean, our best sellers are off sizes for all types of. They're all unisex. That's definitely a plus on my end. 

Chase Clymer

Yeah. Just to highlight that for our listeners, you have a dozen or so hero products without any variants attached to them, right? As opposed to keeping that stock in fashion. Even small, medium, large is 3 times the complexity to what you guys are bringing to the table with a one-size-fits-all unisex sunglasses. 

Julie De Angulo

Exactly. Yeah. And some sunglasses might be more for women. But I mean, I would say some might be just for men because they're extra large. So something that I wouldn't be able to wear  because they're too big. Yeah, so our best sellers are just constantly  changing. And if something does go viral, we'll have enough of that because we manufacture here in the US.  But we'll always have enough, and have a supply for all the best sellers. 

Chase Clymer

Awesome. Julie, now is there anything I didn't ask you about today that you think would resonate with our audience? 

Julie De Angulo

Emerging technologies?  

Chase Clymer

Oh, yes. What are you guys looking at over there? 

Julie De Angulo

So I was recently at eTail in California.

Chase Clymer

That's where we met everyone, by the way. 

Julie De Angulo

Right. And everybody's talking about AI. And AI is such a buzzword though. So I was very interested in all the sessions and presentations that everybody had about AI. I think as we're learning AI, I think every company out there is trying to sell you AI, right? But let's say, for example, for a brand like mine, what is AI and what can you do for me? So for example, for me, in a perfect world, I would like AI to, Chase came to my site and Chase has made no purchases, he looks at a product, then personalize everything for him so that I don't have to show him, if he looks for something that's large, I don't have to show him something that's small or medium.  

If he looks based on the type of fishing, so personalization based on AI from a first time visit, that's huge for me. I haven't been able to find that yet. And then obviously returning customers. I mean, we have a very high rate of returning customers, which is beautiful because people, once they come to Bajio,  actually, I'll send you some sunglasses and I can assure you, once you go to Bajio, you won't go back to anything else.  

But once they come to Bajio, they start coming back because they love it and then it's lifetime warranty. But those returning customers, I don't want to show them again what they've seen in the past, even though it's our best seller year after year. So what can I show them? So that type of technology is what I'm looking for.

But that doesn't have to be hundreds and thousands of dollars.  So that's what I'm looking for. And I know that tech is emerging now, but I'm always just curious to see how that's going  to go. And also your experience on paid ads, Facebook and Instagram, know what's out there. I don't want to show you something, like you said, if you're somewhere where saltwater is not your thing, I don't want to show you an ad where it's all about saltwater. I want to show you about your specific niche for fishiness.

Chase Clymer

I think the hardest challenge with AI and bringing it into your business is it can do everything. Now try to come at it with some very specific results or outcomes you want and then backpedal from those results is the way to think about it. Because I think a lot of people just look. It's almost like you're looking at this blue ocean and you don't know what to do with it. And it's just like, well, just start thinking about things that are a pain.

But to do every day at work, we love ChatGPT over at the agency. We use it for all sorts of stuff. The way that we found to utilize it is just conceptualizing new ideas or organizing thoughts or  data manipulation. We're barely scratching the surface with what this stuff can do. 

I know there's some crazy people out there that are building quote, unquote, AI agents that are just trained to do particular tasks. It's gonna be very interesting to see where the future goes. 

Julie De Angulo

It's definitely gonna be. Yeah. But I'm also looking for predictive analytics. So predictive analytics when it comes to forecasting. So forecasting, just so many different things that can help a business. I wouldn't say definitely not eliminate people because that's also why it's become such a buzzword because people are like, are we going to start having AI agents? 

Chase Clymer

It's going to take our jobs. These things are dumb. They only do exactly what you tell them to do. 

Julie De Angulo

Right. It's like, okay, so how do we make people work more effectively? 

Chase Clymer

Right? Yeah, that's it. 

Julie De Angulo

Exactly. And there are so many companies out there that have people writing POs a day. How can we make this AI work for us so we can be more effective and grow more? Be more productive?  

Chase Clymer

It's still the gold rush. AI isn't replacing the shovel. It's just a better shovel. And if you just find ways to use the better things within your workflow, you become more efficient, more valuable. You're then producing more value for the people that you work for. And everyone wants you to stay around. 

Julie De Angulo

Exactly. 

Chase Clymer

Yep. Awesome. Julie, now, you talked about how sweet these sunglasses are. If I'm interested, where should I go? What should I do? 

Julie De Angulo

Alright. So definitely come to bajiosunglasses.com. Alright. What type of fishing did you say you like to do? 

Chase Clymer

I am in the Midwest and I fish Lake Erie probably once a month. So what  do you catch? That is  freshwater. 

Julie De Angulo

Okay. 

Chase Clymer

We got a lot of bass up there, catfish around the things. But it's mostly perch and walleye are the ones you really want. 

Julie De Angulo

Okay. So this is your thing? Is this what you like to do on weekends?  

Chase Clymer

Yeah. Lake Erie is a great time. North of Ohio. It's in between. I think it touches Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Ohio for sure. And then on the other side, Canada, Toronto is right on Lake Erie as well. 

Julie De Angulo

Nice. Okay.  Well, I would definitely head over to bajiosunglasses.com. You could start with shopping by size. I would probably say,  what do  you usually do when you come  for sunglasses? What's your size?  

Chase Clymer

I don't know. I think I have a normal man-sized head.

Julie De Angulo

So not extra large. Okay. So large. And the beautiful thing about our frames is, depending on what you want them for, if you want them to be full wrap,  so you don't get the glare on your eyes, we have 7 different lenses. And from those lenses, then you can go. You usually fish in the morning, in the afternoon. 

Chase Clymer

Mornings.  

Julie De Angulo

Mornings. Okay. So sometimes, when it's in the wintertime. We have our lenses that are more for low light. We have our low light lenses. And these lenses actually also help you when there's not a lot of light bodies. 

So the beautiful thing about sunglasses and the reason why we have so many returning  customers is because they'll buy a frame and then they'll buy the same frame with different lenses. We also have prescriptions, which is  very good to know. And then we also have readers for people that are starting to dip your toes on the plus one and plus two before they go to prescription. 

Chase Clymer

That's amazing. 

Julie De Angulo

Yeah. 

Chase Clymer

And we'll make sure to link to Bajio Sunglasses in the show notes. Julie, thank you so much for coming on the show today. 

Julie De Angulo

Thank you so much for having me, Chase. Hope to see you around. Are you going to be in eTail this year again? 

Chase Clymer

I'll be at all of them. They love me there. 

Julie De Angulo

Awesome. Are you going to be in West Palm?  

Chase Clymer

Not that one. But I'll be at the one  in Boston at the end of the year. 

Julie De Angulo

Awesome. Okay, I'll see you there.

Chase Clymer

We can't thank our guests enough for coming on the show and sharing their knowledge and journey with us. We've got a lot to think about and potentially add into our own business. You can find all the links in the show notes. 

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Until next time!