#104 Paul Cunningham From Notch: How To Create A Socially Responsible E-Commerce Brand

The Ecom Show

Paul Cunningham From Notch: How To Create A Socially Responsible E-Commerce Brand

Welcome back to The Ecom Show! Today, instead of focusing on the world of eCommerce, let’s take a look at the world in general. For example, did you know that globally over 5.7 million children under the age of five are at risk of starvation each year? And this number, like our global population, is only increasing!

As humans, it’s our responsibility to make the world we live in a better place. In this episode, we will explore how businesses can do their part to make a difference with our podcast host and founder, Daniel Budai and Paul Cunningham, the CEO of Notch, a socially responsible apparel brand.

Notch is a headwear apparel brand specializing in creating hats that don’t interfere with your glasses. Committed to resolving world hunger, they’ve managed to put food on over 600,000 tables through the revenue from their sales.

Tune in to hear Paul and our podcast host and CEO Daniel Budai discuss:

✔ The story behind Notch.

✔ The key to creating a socially conscious brand.

✔ Paul’s advice for eCommerce business owners.

The Story Behind Notch

If you’re a fan of Shark Tank, you’ve probably noticed that the most successful pitches are by entrepreneurs that identify problems and create a product to solve them. Notch started the same way.

Paul has always been an inventor. One fine day, as he sat at home watching a game of golf on his television, he stumbled upon a problem that changed several lives along with his own. The need to prevent his eyesight gave him the foresight to create the perfect hat, one with a notch on the side that allows you to comfortably wear your sunglasses along with your headgear.

After researching, Paul and his wife realized that their product was a one-of-a-kind solution to a very common problem. They perfected their design and immediately applied for a utility patent. After five years of hard work, their patent was finally approved! Notch is now a patented eCommerce headwear apparel brand with a wide global reach.

Paul and his wife Terra have always believed in giving back more than they receive. Hence, since its inception, Notch has been proudly affiliated with Children’s Hunger Fund, where they contribute to resolving the issue of world hunger with every hat they sell. Let’s explore this more deeply in the next section.

The Key to Creating a Socially Conscious Brand

Every human has one thing in common: We all live on the same planet. Sharing this planet also gives all of us a sense of shared responsibility to treat it kindly and do our part to make things better. In the last couple of decades, there’s been an increased awareness of creating socially conscious brands. But, what are socially conscious brands?

Socially conscious brands are for-profit organizations that provide products or services to consumers while maintaining a not-for-profit objective that aids the welfare of society. These include brands that promote ethical and slow fashion, greener production practices, and brands that contribute a part of their revenue to NPOs.

Giving back to the community is an act of goodwill that will positively impact your customers. However, it shouldn’t be used as a marketing gimmick. Paul and his wife Terra deeply believe in giving back to the community and hence have donated a part of their revenue towards the Children Hunger Fund. Through the course of their business, they’ve been able to sponsor over 600,000+ meals to hungry children across the world. Their purpose has always been to help the children that need these meals the most, and hence their funds go towards sponsoring kids on the brink of starvation.

Social welfare is something that should be woven into the culture of a business. While businesses can increase or decrease the amount they choose to contribute towards goodwill, making it a practice from the start is more impactful than waiting for your business to reach a certain level. You can start smaller than you’d like and increase your donations as your brand grows.

Social entrepreneurs should also practice transparency. Partnering up with a verified NPO and disclosing your contribution helps your customers know how authentic your cause is. For instance, Notch has partnered up with Children Hunger Fund since they know that this NPO donates most of the proceeds towards the meals themselves. If they contribute $100, they know that $99 will end up towards children’s meals. Sharing this information with their customers not only makes the customers trust Notch more but also incentivizes them to look up more about Children Hunger Fund in general.

Paul’s Advice for Ecommerce Business Owners

Paul has always been in sales. He started off as a real estate agent and used his savings from real estate to build his eCommerce business from the ground up. As a successful business owner with ten plus years of eCommerce experience, we thought it’d be interesting to get his take on several common hurdles all eCommerce entrepreneurs face.

What is your approach to attracting customers?

We realized very early on that we can’t be putting all our eggs in one basket, which is why we diversified from depending solely on Facebook ads as a way to spread brand awareness. Currently, we use a combination of paid ads, you know, Facebook, Instagram, and then a lot of email marketing. We also have a lot of customer affinity. So we have customers, you know, that will take pictures of their product and tag us from all over the world, and so we’ll try to leverage that as well. And we’re always learning about how to engage the customer better on social media. So that, you know, we’re not at the mercy of paid ads, but we do use quite a bit of paid traffic. We’re also constantly researching how to improve our SEO.

How did you build a global presence for your brand? And what platform did you use to build your business?

All our business is done through Shopify Plus, 100% of it! About 70% of our revenue is generated from direct-to-consumer sales, and the other 30% comes from our wholesale side. We used to sell through Amazon up until early 2021. However, we discontinued this to gain more autonomy over our returns and customer engagement. With Amazon, you lose out on the customer data. As a brand, we decided to sell exclusively through our Shopify website and wholesalers.

We created a global presence by partnering with retailers across the globe. We offer them wholesale prices for reselling our products. And we have dealers in countries like Japan, Thailand, South Korea, the UK, Greece, Germany, and Spain.

How do you approach hiring? And what’s the secret to successfully running a business with your life partner?

So, we have five full-time employees apart from my wife and me. What I’ve learned is we need to hire the right type of person, and then we can train him for whatever we need because you can’t teach personality.

And so we always hire people that are low drama and easy to get along with, and then we fit them into the positions that best fit their qualifications and interests.

My wife and I have been working together at Notch for the past five years, but because we’ve been married for so long before it started, we have a solid foundation, and we know how to get through disagreements without blowing things up. She’s great with handling the day-to-day operations and systems required to keep Notch running smoothly, and I like to focus more on the other end of the business, so it works out well since we balance each other out.

That’s all for this episode of The Ecom Show. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to check out Notch to learn more about the brand, you can also follow Paul to keep up with his business journey. And don’t forget to check out the Children’s Hunger Fund and all the amazing work that they do!

Stay tuned because we come out with new episodes every Tuesday and Thursday. You can also check out our previous episodes here.

Before we end this, we’d like to give a shoutout to one of our clients, High Dive Apparel. They’re also an eCommerce apparel brand with a strong global presence. You can read through our case study to know more about their story.

Follow Daniel Budai:

Daniel’s LinkedIn

Daniel’s Facebook

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