Your guided tour of the world of growth, performance marketing, customer acquisition, paid media, and affiliate marketing.
We talk with industry experts and discuss experiments and their learnings in growth, marketing, and life.
Time to nerd out, check your biases at the door, and have some fun talking about data-driven growth and lessons learned!
Welcome to another edition of the Always Be Testing podcast with your
host, Ty DeGrange. Get a guided tour of the world of growth, performance
marketing, customer acquisition, paid media, and affiliate marketing.
We talk with industry experts and discuss experiments and their learnings in growth,
marketing, and life. Time to nerd out, check your biases at the door, and
have some fun talking about data driven growth and lessons learned.
Welcome. Welcome. Welcome to another episode of the Always Be Testing podcast.
I'm your host, Ty DeGrange, and I am very excited to talk
to Nicole Phillips today. What's up, Nicole? Not much. Thanks for having me, Ty.
Great to have you. Great to dive in. Happy Friday. Happy Friday.
Yeah. So Nicole is awesome. She has, been an
entrepreneur. She's the founder and CEO of CATCH. Did I pronounce it correctly? Yeah. It
stands for quick match. CATCH. You said it perfectly. Awesome. So a
text first, consumer driven AI powered product recommendations.
Can you can you tell us more? Sure. So CATCH
started from my own frustration as a consumer. I was
working in the legal world, but for fashion and retail clients
in New York City, and I needed to stay trendy up up on
all of the trends. But working eighty hours a week meant there was no time to actually go in
store, so I was always shopping online. And it was very
difficult to find products that you loved, especially now the trend cycle, season
cycle is almost a week to two weeks, so there's constantly new products coming
out. And I started, you know, helping a lot of my clients implement these
really cool b to b, tech solutions that were very data driven. And it was always
helping the company improve operations, become a lot more efficient, be
really, really smart in how it's leveraging all the state. And I just kept thinking, I know you're
capturing my data, but how is it helping how is it helping me? How is it helping my user
experience? And so I built Catch as selfishly
for myself. And what it formed into is now something
that's loved by over a hundred thousand other women, which is this
relationship that you're building with your CATCH stylist. It's it's actually all
automated, but we use a lot of machine learning, a lot of AI powered
product recommendations to send you things that we think that you're going to love or anticipating that
you're gonna love this product from a brand you may or may not have heard of. We do it through text, so it's
just inherently a personal means of communication, and there's a feedback loop built into
it. So Love it. Yeah. Every product you can love or dislike, and then we'll learn
your style as as you are on Catch Longer and as trends and seasons change.
Love it. Yeah. Nicole is amazing. As you can tell, super smart, super accomplished.
Prior to Catch, she was a practicing attorney, and I think it's fun to see
you kind of enter the partner marketing space, the performance marketing space to some
extent, and just kind of kill it and and navigate it with such ease.
And, the concept that you've created with, you know, the entrepreneurial spirit, the hustle, this
product seems to be really I was gonna say catching on, but I didn't wanna make a dad joke too
soon. I just did. We love punts. We love them. It it seems to be getting some
good traction, and so I'm I'm excited to kind of dive in more. And, like, it sounds like you're getting
really good feedback from customers. You're you're seeing that it's, like, a great way to kind of come up
with product recommendations. Is it primarily fashion, or are there other verticals that you're
eyeing? Yeah. So we started with clothing. It's the expertise of of myself and our
team, but we've since expanded into accessories and actually beauty in just a couple of
months. And it's only women, but we have plans to launch men's in twenty twenty four.
Wow. That's exciting. Yeah. Yeah. I've I've liked so many ideas and questions and
and maybe Ask away. Maybe going back in time. Yeah.
We've had some awesome chats, but maybe starting with your background for folks that don't know
much about you. Yeah. So my I I have a sort of nontraditional
entrepreneurial route, if you will. So I right out of out of college,
I decided to go to law school rather than business school even though I've always known I wanted to
start a business. My father is an entrepreneur. A bunch of my sisters I have four sisters.
There's five girls in our family. I know my poor father. Wow. Yeah. A lot of my sisters
have started businesses as well. So I I kind of always knew I was going to I was going to start a
business. I didn't know what it was. I didn't know what that would look like. But, honestly, I decided to go to law school because
it sounded harder. It sounds funny to say, but, you know, law school versus business
school, law school just seemed like this set of skills that was put on this pedestal
and really kind of difficult. So I'm always up for the challenge. So I went to law school,
got my JD, passed in New York and Massachusetts bar. I'm originally from New York
and worked at a big law firm doing complex sub litigation. And I had a couple of
retail clients, and I loved working with them. So I actually decided to go back to law school
because that was a good, you know, waste of time and money. But I focused on
fashion specifically, fashion clients, and so I got my master's of law there. And then
from that, I worked in house for a luxury jewelry designer in Manhattan and kinda became
this Jackie of all trades, if you will. So I was doing copyright,
trademark, registration, and protection. I was doing licensing,
manufacturing contracts, FTC, and and marketing guidelines for for
businesses, and also simultaneously learning about all the data privacy legislation that
was going on, which very interesting and and timely for what we ended up building here
at Catch. Mhmm. So I kinda mentioned that story early on. As I was working with
these clients and these businesses, I saw this opportunity that I needed myself
to leverage some retail technology that was being used by the clients, but on the consumer side. And
now we've realized it's not only powerful for the shopper, it's actually really powerful marketing
channel for brands too. You know, we can we can sort of get into that. Yeah.
Absolutely. And I I guess, how have you I have so many kind of
angles here. So, like, first, I think of Stitch Fix in terms of, like, what they did with personalized
fashion. How do you think about them and and kind of, like, what kind of sparked your
journey of, like, this is our value prop. This is what why we're building. This is how we kind of
compare to what's out there in the space. Stitch Fix is a great example because in
a lot of ways, we looked at that model and everything that we thought, if
Katrina Lake was building it today, what she would do, and we sort of went with that. So the first was
Stitch Fix, at least at the time of starting catch, it was used primarily by an older
audience. And so when you talk to a younger Gen Z Mhmm.
Shopper, Citrix is something that her mom would wear and not necessarily something that she would
ever wear. So it's really hard. I learned it's very hard to go down market, in terms
of age demographics. So we knew we wanted to start young, and it would be similar to
Facebook. Right? Started out with the with the young kids, and now all of our parents are on it. So it'd be a lot easier to
go upstream. So that was the first thing. We wanted to start with a young, almost college savvy,
digitally native shopper. The second was the feedback loop of Stitch Fix. To
me, the most important feedback that they were missing was when someone would open the box in their bedroom
and pull out a shirt and say, oh my god, no, Throw it to the side. Pull out a pair of jeans and say, I love
this. Try them on a couple times. Send photos to the friends. Get that feedback. What do you think? What do you you
know, should I buy them? And but then ultimately say maybe you just, you know, bought something expensive the last
month. And so you return both of those products, but doesn't necessarily mean it wasn't your style. Right? And so
they missed that that behavior that just kind of happens when we're looking and
observing with and interacting with clothing that we love and and wanna buy. So I
wanted a way that I could capture all of those touch points. And with catch, you can. We can see when
someone is sharing it. We get those messages back. Hey, I love that neckline. But if for
my figure, V neck is a little bit better. We get all of these messages in real time, and it's
kind of it's kind of wild. And Stitch Fix obviously has a four week feedback loop,
and we have couple of seconds. So Wow. Those are just two two examples in business model,
obviously, as well. That's amazing. And and how are you what are some of the, like, things
that you're implementing, you know, from a user experience perspective to kind of continue that
conversation or that feedback loop in the product, in the app, in the messaging? I'm I'm curious to learn more about
that because that sounds like a pretty exciting piece of how you're you're very different and very modern and
very, like, real time. Yeah. That's a great question. So I think one of the things
that my team and I have have done really well is we listen to our customer. It's hard
to not do because you have to check to check all the incoming messages. Yeah. And we build we
build around that. So catch today is is a bit different than what we actually
going out and building. So the first was we're sending just five recommendations through tax, and
that was that was the experience. Right? So you get five every week, you interact, and then that's it. But
a lot of people kept saying, send me more, send me more, send me more. And so for those that wanted more,
we actually built out an entire website. It's it's a web app, so you can go on your
phone, but you can also go on desktop. And you can every single day see more product
recommendations that our algorithm has picked for you and simultaneously interact with, I love this.
I like it. I don't like it. And it actually merges every reaction you've done through text into
this one place. So you can kind of, you know, pop in on your desktop and say, oh, yeah. I did like
that from text, and here here are some other things. So we've built that kind of Pinterest y
shopping experience, but powered by our algorithm. And then the second thing, which is launching again
in twenty twenty four, is AI powered on demand styling. So a lot
of our shoppers will, send specific requests or send photos and
say, I love this outfit from Blake Lively. It's five thousand dollars Can you find me a more
affordable version? And with all the AI technology that's coming out, we normally would have
real human stylists doing that. But with how we've trained all of our inventory and and just
how our operations work, it's the perfect use case to allow someone to upload an
image. We already know their price sensitivities, their style, what they've loved, the brands that
they've that they've interacted with positively, find those products that are similar in our
inventory, and send it right out to them almost in real time. So really excited Yeah.
To see how that works. And, again, that was that was because people were texting us crazy, and we're,
like, running around. Okay. We we gotta answer these messages. We gotta find Yeah. We gotta find this outfit first. She
wants to look like Blake Lively. Who doesn't? So doing that now at scale will be really exciting.
Who doesn't wanna look like Blake Legally? I just signed up for the men's wear. I gotta go get
my phone to get the, text alert because I wanna Love it. Complete my registration
here. So I'm gonna do it right now just so Love it. I become a member.
And then I'm hoping my wife doesn't become a member so that she doesn't
Yeah. Go wild, but she might like it. So thanks, babe. You're in. Oh, I like
that little like the fireworks after you sign up. I like that. You win. You did a
good job. I got the dopamine hit. I'm feeling good. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly.
Gamify the shopping. That's what we try to do here. That's what it's all about. So speaking of kind
of the audience you're going into, the traction you're seeing, so how did you kind of get
and I love the kind of talking to customers piece. I think that gets completely underutilized,
misunderstood, not invested enough. I always think of Glossier of of, like,
the the peak example of that and how amazing that example was.
How did you build trust with that younger demo, gen
z demo, different you know what I mean? Like, initially, especially when you were brand new. Again,
these are these are great questions and ones that I think are taken for granted
from brands quite often. So for our marketing, at least early
on, we worked a lot with college ambassadors. So we had a program called Catch Me on
Campus, and we would basically find these really trendy
women that were they didn't need to be big influencers at all, but they were something that if we saw them,
we saw their Instagram, we were kind of influenced by them. And so we really have them be
the voice on the ground, sharing what Couch is like, who's behind it, two sisters.
Building that, hey, we are just like you. We know we shop where you shop. We are seeing
the same things on TikTok. We're influenced by the same trends. This is just really easy way.
Go one place, and we'll send it to you. So that was an easy way to to build that relationship. And
then we realized that if we're asking for a lot of data, which we really are from
our shoppers, and it's pretty incredible the amount of data that we get at the first touch point. Like, you just took this out because
I mean, there's ask we ask a decent amount of of questions. If you
show the consumer how you're using that data in a
very quick turnaround time, then they are more likely to continue
sharing their lives and sharing their preferences with you rather than
taking a twenty question style quiz and then not getting recommendations or
just getting something random that that is not a fit and not having the ability to
provide that feedback. So I think it's been really helpful. They they feel
especially the op the opportunity to say, I don't love this. Yeah. People say that they don't love recommendations
all the time, and it's incredible because it really does help us learn what they want, what they
don't want. So Yeah. It's a relationship. Yeah. For sure. You're giving more than
you're taking balancing that. You're you're learning from their their feedback
and and importing that into the the relationship, as you said. That's amazing.
Yeah. And I'd love and maybe you can share some things that are not, you know, super secret, but, like, maybe
sharing some of the attraction and growth you're seeing with and that would be interesting just to note, like,
maybe responses from brands or from customers, just understanding kind of, like, your
growth journey, where you're at, where you're trying to go. Yeah. So I can tell you some
some high level metrics. Yeah. We just passed a hundred thousand members, which
is incredible. We've spent we've spent less than
seventy five thousand dollars on marketing to get there. So a lot of the tactics
that we do to grow our user base is organic,
it's referral based, and the times when we do use
spend spend money to acquire customers, we're using a lot of the data that we have on our
existing cohort to go out and find them in a really, really cost effective way. And that was one of the
things that popped in our minds of, wow, marketing, we're we're we're pretty good at
marketing. Right? So so that's when we started really focusing on the brand side of our
business. We have closed some incredible brands, CVS,
Forever twenty one, even Talbot, which is funny because I mentioned we have a younger
demographic. We also have older women who are signing up and
saying, hey. I I I love this. Can you find more brands like x, y, and z? And
they'll actually send us names of brands. We'll use that to go out and get some some of
these some of these brand partners. And That's awesome. Yeah. It's it's been incredible. Our
revenue growth has been, almost a thousand percent year over year for Wow.
As of as of July. So we're we're growing we're growing quite quickly. Congrats.
But our team is still very lean. We're still very focused on Yep. A customer
a customer controlled marketing channel. Yep. And I wanna dive back into that. But before, since we're
talking revenue, can you tell us a bit just to kind of, like, how you make money? Yeah.
Absolutely. So we we monetize both sides of the platform. So we have a free
to paid on the shopper side. So that paid is is VIP.
We actually really don't advertise it too much. We it's kind of more reserved at this point,
still in beta. Mhmm. It's reserved for those really engaged members who are are texting
us constantly and saying Yeah. I have this vacation in
Italy Right. Coming up. Help me help me dress for it. Personal shopper
kinda thing. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. So we have a way to
to monetize that for those really high engaged shoppers where they don't have to go out and pay
Love it. Five hundred dollars for a personal stylist. And then on the brand side, there's a couple
of different ways that we partner with brands. We have grandfathered in a lot of
commission based relationships with some bigger brands. Going forward, we actually now monetize
either per click or on a flat fee basis. So you can buy packages. You can buy you know, we'll
include you a couple of times over the next six months, make sure that your
products are getting put into the recommendations assuming there's a fit for our
audience, and then we can help brands stay at a cap. So if our algorithm
just doesn't include you in recommendations, you're not you're not paying for it. Right? So it's
it's performance based. But it's a really great way Yeah. To make sure that you are top of
mind if there is a if there is a fit. As we include some new features in
twenty twenty four, it'll actually allow us to open up our partnership
opportunities outside of sort of the core clothing, accessory, beauty. We
get approached by a lot of brands that are just industry adjacent that really we think
would be a great fit for our audience. But the way that the user experience is built
now, it it would jet too much into the Yeah. Into the user experience. So so we're
building that out so that we can work with more of these brands that we think are a great fit. That's awesome.
That's really cool. And are are there brands that you kinda say, like, okay. If you kinda fall into
this category, you're a perfect fit for us at Catch? Or how do you kind of think about, like,
brands that kind of are no brainers for you to kind of come in and enter enter the marketplace? So
there are based on all of the data, which we have, you know, fifty
million data points that we can go based off of. Right? Price points, style
type, target demographic, that there's all these sort of demographic and psychographic information that we
know if a brand is gonna be a really good fit or you are similar to x, y, and z. You know,
Urban Outfitters, Princess Polly, Banana Republic,
those are some really, really great brands on our platform. Revolve does extremely
well. But if you are a brand that kind of has a niche
target demographic, I think it's really important for assuming
that we have shoppers with that type of style, it's really important for us to partner so that we
can get it in front of the right demographic. Right? It may not be all one hundred thousand members who
are going to see your products, but it may be five thousand, and those five thousand may not have
ever come across you before. And so, you know, the way our algorithm
works is if your price point is out of is is too high for
a shopper, it's not going to reach them. But if the style fits, the price and
the sizing requirements fit, you'll be served up. And it's a
really interesting way to be introduced to a shopper.
Well, speaking of served up, so I just went through the setup process. I went through
and loaded up my it took me no time at all. And I swear to you,
it said new for you, and I scrolled down, pair of shorts, more of a dressy
shirt, a t shirt, and then the exact same shoes I'm wearing right now,
a variation of those were served up to me. So that's that's pretty I don't know if
that's just luck of the draw or, like, insanely good targeting, but well done.
Yeah. You'd be surprised. I mean, I sit I sit said across some investors, and, you know,
they'll have signed up before our call, and they're like, how did you do that? I just bought one of the first five
recommend. How did you do that? And It's nuts. We built I just got targeted
those. We built this for three years. Yeah. Yeah. I I love it. So thank you. Thanks for
sharing that. That's it's always great to hear. You kind of alluded to a lean team with a lot of
users and growing and the challenges of growing and learning. Like, what are some of
those, like, learnings and challenges that you've encountered? I'd love to kind of learn more about that. I think
the hardest one is building a technical product when you're not a technical,
founder. So, you know, it it this when you look at it from the from an outsider
perspective, it this looks like just an another personal styling
platform, but really everything is powered by tech. And and that's what another thing that we
wanted to do dissimilar to Stitch Fix, not have a team of hundreds of stylists
doing this. We wanted to always be able to have a really small team and power this up for millions
of people. So that requires a lot of tech. So I can imagine it, and
I know exactly what I want it to look like. And then you have to go out and find the technical expertise to deliver. So
that's been but it's it's challenging. I imagine it would also be challenging if I was technical,
and I just didn't necessarily have the time to be really, really hands on and doing it myself. So
Yeah. Almost a different type of challenge. Yes. Exactly. Exactly. And
then I you know, another challenge is I alluded to this earlier. We had a plan
for CATCH. It looked a certain way from how I imagined it. And our
members said, this is actually what we want. And so being flexible, but being having that
discernment to know, don't be too flexible. Don't go after potentially the wrong customer who
isn't going to be the ones that will bring you Yeah. Along. You have to just know you
have to know that difference. And so Love that. So so, yeah, you have you have to be flexible, but
but also really savvy. Yeah. Slack, Instagram, great examples of starting in one area and
then having the intellectual flexibility to go in a new area. This is awesome. We've we've
packed a ton of awesome ideas and questions and into this conversation. Maybe share
with the audience, who are getting to know you what maybe what's something that people are
surprised to learn about you or maybe, many people don't know about you.
So, you know, when I'm not working on cash, which is couple hours here and
there, my husband and I are big supporters in dog rescue organizations. We
actually have two dog rescues ourselves. My retirement plan will be buying
a huge plot of land and building a sanctuary, dogs, and other
animals. And so I volunteer for local organizations in my
free time, and it's something that really, really hits hits home to me.
So that's one of the most wonderful things, I I think, about this this journey. It's it's one of my
my outlets that that that makes it easy. And the other one that people are
very surprised to hear, but I think it's relevant since it's almost October and Halloween is
approaching depending on when this launches, is my mother is actually
has her own paranormal investigation team. And I kid you
not, people call her. She travels all over the United States to investigate
with some amazing technology. The the technology in the paranormal investigation
space is fascinating. It's fascinating. And so I tag along
here and there. I I think it's so interesting. Wow. We have some really cool
evidence of things turning on and off, intelligent responses. And I'm so
into it. Yeah. Very, very different. I don't know I don't know a lot of other people who can
say that, but it's something that I that I love to do. And, again, especially that that tech aspect.
I love it. Some really cool technology being developed in that space. A mix of old school and new school, if you will. If
you're thinking about people who have deceased, that's, you know Thanks. Yeah. Bring it into the
bottom bed. I have to, tag along on one of these, ghost hunter adventures that you're
referencing. This sounds just too good to be true. Oh, it's it's great. Sometimes we do.
We we will actually sleep over if it's, you know, bed and breakfast. We'll actually sleep over, in the
haunted There you go. Not to dares. Yeah. You sleep with an eye mask. For the real daring
for the daring. Yeah. Yes. The the more fearful, I
I'm on it. I love it. Love to challenge myself. Count me in. I love I love it. Nicole, it's been a
pleasure. This has been amazing conversation, tons of information,
on catching your growth and your success. For those wanting to learn more about you and and the business,
just where where what's best place to to find you and and get in touch? Yeah.
So visit our website, join catch dot com, j o I n
q a t c h dot com. You can email me nicole at join catch dot com if
you wanna learn more, but check us out. It's it's a pretty cool product. I love it. Thank you
for having me, Ty. It was wonderful. It was it was a pleasure. Thank you so much, and and, talk soon. Bye.