SHOW TRANSCRIPTION

[Franziska] Hi and welcome back to Basic Bananas! I’m here today at our headquarters with the one and only Karla, who owns Nordic Fusion and thank you so much for joining us today…

[Karla] Thank you, thanks for having me.

[Franziska] …coming in. Would you love to~ well, I would love you to share a little bit about your business, how did you get started, and why this business?

[Karla] So actually, I didn’t start the business, I bought it from the lady who started it probably about 20 years ago, she wanted to retire but my daughter was about to start school, and I kind of had decided I had lost my mojo a little bit in the corporate world, and I decided that I kind of wanted to have a little bit more flexibility for when she started school. So I started looking for a business to start, or to buy and then this one just kind of~ it was perfect because it was in the right location, and it was with products that I love.

[Franziska] So yeah, tell us a bit about the business, what does it sell? What’s the focus what’s the mission even?

[Karla] Nordic Fusion is… we sell, we curate Scandinavian design products. So mostly homewares and gifts, and a little bit of furniture as well. We aim to just bring beauty and joy to people’s homes here in Australia, and in New Zealand, so we have a few parts of the business, so we do brick and mortar retail, we have a store in Manly, and we also do online retail and we do wholesale of some Scandinavian brands that we represent here in Australia and in New Zealand.

[Franziska] And you just got into a new warehouse too.

[Karla] Yes that’s very exciting actually, because we were very squashed in the previous place and now we have a lot of room to continue to grow.

[Franziska] And so your vision or your mission for the business is to bring joy and beauty into people’s homes yeah that’s beautiful. Why this business? How did you~ what was your selection criteria for~ because there are so many businesses for sale out there. How did you pick Nordic Fusion?

[Karla] Well I actually… before I started, I bought Nordic Fusion, I had done a few properties that I had renovated and decorated and flipped, and so that was kind of like my background with work was supply chain, so it was all numbers and very dry kind of work, so that was kind of like my my creative outlet and then this business, selling you know, furnishing for homes and beautiful homewares, was kind of a really good connection to that creative outlet, and I love the products as well. So I just thought it was a it was great.

[Franziska] And you’re proudly wearing some of your products. [Karla] Yes, so this is a beautiful Finnish brand that is called Marimekko, and it’s one of our biggest selling brands. [Franziska] And the earrings too.

[Karla] The earrings is from our favourite Swedish designer, Efva Atling, so she does products that her motto is beauty with a thought so all her pieces have either a little bit of writing on it or they have a message or they come from a moment in her life. So this is a this is a w and they just say women empower.

[Franziska] Oh that’s beautiful, and again it’s about the bringing joy and beauty into people’s lives and homes but pretty much with all the items that you sell that’s probably one of your criteria for selection.

[Karla] That’s right, exactly.

[Franzisksa] Now we’ve known each other for a while, and on this business journey there are always lots of ups and downs and challenges and highlights, what are some of your biggest challenges that stand out, that you that you would be able to share?

[Karla] I think probably for most businesses the first few years are really tough even though I bought the business that was already established, the first couple of years were really, really tough and I think mostly at the time that I bought the business, the retail world started to change quite dramatically.

[Franziska] When was that?

[Karla] So I’ve had the business for five years now, so five years ago the business that I bought was heavily reliant~ most of the revenue came from the shops, it had two stores at a time and the wholesale business was kind of a sidekick and their website, the retail part of the business, online, was pretty much non-existent. There was a website but it was just very, very, little. But at that time things started going you know retail brick and mortar retail started going into trouble, started going down, and that on top of me being inexperienced with the retail side of the business as well because my background I had worked for wholesale and wholesale business, so it was all very daunting and very scary actually, very scary times when you see the sales diving and you know and things changing, but it was you know, like most challenges it was just an opportunity to to change and just do things differently. I couldn’t continue doing the things the same as they were done before, I bought the business because the world, everything around us was changing. And so what we decided to do is was actually concentrate on the things that we knew we could do well, so I started using my expertise in processes and systems and then we improved, we changed the website straight away, that picked up. And then also we decided to close one of the stores and we started concentrating more on wholesale and driving that through you know automation, we did a website for wholesale as well. And so that kind of started shifting the business which in turn turned out to be the right decision because that’s made us grow quite significantly.

[Franziska] It’s a very brave move in… you know, five years ago without any retail experience to buy a physical store also, and then to be in a landscape where things were changing very drastically and then COVID came which again changed your, you know, the retail model completely. How~ throughout this time is very… where you’re like, “Oh my god, what am I doing here?” How did you stay positive enough to keep going?

[Karla] Well COVID was really scary, I think for everyone, obviously, when it first hit no one knew what happened. That year when COVID hit, the year had started literally with a bang for us like we had had the best January in history, we had had the best trade show in history, wholesale and so I ordered a lot of stock, just before COVID, and so it was already on a boat, I had loads and loads of stock that I had either paid for or I had to you know to pay for it as it arrived, and as soon as COVID hit, all the little stores closed and everyone cancelled their orders. So I was left with potentially a lot of debt and no cash to do things but I think what kept me strong, well first of all is like you know you kind of understanding that there are a lot of things in life that you can’t control and so you just concentrate on controlling what you can.

[Franziska] That’s really good wisdom.

[Karla] Letting the rest kind of you know roll as it goes but also I had a really, really good team and the team were so good like they they just helped out with anything, they took a cut on ours that if that we needed and they were just happy to do anything any tasks that needed to be done in the business, everyone said I’m just happy to do anything.

[Franziska] And that’s probably a testament to your leadership and having that strong mission also in the business.

[Karla] Yeah, I mean the the team, I couldn’t have done it without the team, obviously, also it was really good timing that at the time we had already changed the website, the retail website of course you know, retail was shifting completely as you said, more towards online, people were stuck at home so they were probably looking at all their things that they didn’t like at home and we sell homewares, so that was really good for the business at the time, and also yeah we had done the Clever Bunch as well, so we had a lot of tools to implement and it was really good time for testing and doing things online. So we really tried to capitalise, that was the only pretty much it was the only way that we could sell because our store was also closed, or even if it was open nobody was going out because everyone was scared. So that was our only you know revenue, that we were getting so we were kind of throwing everything at it and it worked out you know really well.

[Franziska] That’s amazing and through COVID, I’ve seen a lot of businesses that have had teams that have really just stepped up and like we’re helping, you know if we even if we work more and get paid less, we’re here and then I’ve also seen and that’s usually been because the business has had a really good culture and good leadership you know such as yours and then other businesses that have had the opposite where everybody left because they’re like I can’t do this anymore, so it’s really interesting. And so my next question is what, and maybe that is one of your highlights what have been some of your highlights or one highlight that stands out on on these last five years?

[Karla] I think probably you know the business and the culture that we’ve~ I mean I was lucky enough that quite a few of them, actually everyone that was working in the business when I bought it, they stayed for a while; the COVID time, some people had left they had changed and what have you, but the people that stayed made a really… they already had a really strong connection to each other and they just welcomed me which was really nice, and so we just built this like very strong unit together whereas I said most to this day even though everyone’s got their specific jobs everyone in the office can do everything and that’s because they don’t care they just you know they just got each other’s back and if someone’s on holidays, or sick, somebody else steps in. So yeah, I think that is probably my proudest achievement, just the team and the culture and because that’s allowed us to grow and then I mean we’ve done quite a great things, we’ve started working a lot more on our social media and and getting that right and making sure that we’re getting a lot more followers and then we also started doing a lot more advertising and we started adding content to our newsletters, they weren’t just about products, so then there’s all this additional connection that had a really massive impact and still to this day, we get comments, like sometimes people just write back an email to us about something we send them and we~ I mean, we’re a shop,

[Franziska] but you build community because you’re sharing content not just products.

[Karla] Yes.

[Franziska] I love that. That’s actually really good~ good highlight and something else that’s just stood out before and now it just went away and I’m just trying to get it back to my mind, but oh yes! The thing that you mentioned also which is really cool which you said that everyone on your team knows how to do everything or most things which is a really smart way to run your business and just before again this is something that makes me so happy I asked Karla about her social media because our team here is doing behind the scenes and to also share Nordic Fusion on our social media and Karla’s like, “I don’t really know because I don’t really… I think it’s that, but I don’t really look after our social media,” and I’m like yes, this is what I want to hear because you are… you don’t need to be able, you know you don’t need to be in charge of everything you’re a very good leader, you might empower other people to take charge.

[Karla] Yes, I think that is very important, I think it’s been really important for my sanity, spiritually I mean I’m still… someone asked me the other day, like who’s your HR person, and I’m like it’s me yeah and then who’s your who’s your, you know your software person, yeah that’s me, and there’s a lot of you know empty roles that always fall on the business owner but I think if you have capable people, you just have to let them run with things, and most of the time, I think we’ve got a new employee that she just started a month ago, and it was funny because I was telling her, I said you have to follow up on me, if I owe you something for you to finish what I’ve asked you to finish, you need to follow up on me, and she’s like she can, and I’m like, yeah this is how we work because everyone owns the bit of work, and then they just you know, I don’t have to be on top of everyone, so that’s been really good; as business owners, we already work very long hours, so it’s been very important to be able to let go of specific tasks and they control, and they… I think that makes them feel really part of it, and you know it’s also… it is you know, they’re responsible for the business.

[Franziska] Now you mentioned before that you also were part of the Clever Bunch, you’ve graduated, you’re a Genius Bunch member now, and throughout the Clever Bunch, you learned a lot of different strategies to also help with the online part of your business, why~ and this might be a bit of a silly question given the circumstances, but why did you join Clever Bunch, and what did you try before?

[Karla] When I first bought the business, I had worked with marketing people before, but I never… I didn’t really understand you know the nitty-gritty, or it’s not that I’m a marketeer now, I still have people to do that for me, but I really had no idea and so I thought, well I want to~ as soon as I bought the business, I want to grow this business, I have to have some marketing, and so I started looking outside so I started looking to agencies, and people who could do something for social media and all sorts of different people, I got like 10 different quotes from things that I didn’t understand, and the quotes went from like a thousand dollars to a hundred and fifty thousand dollars, so it was just so like mind-boggling, I just had no idea where to start, what to do, and so then I just saw I think I saw it in Facebook actually, your ad came up in Facebook and then I just signed up and I came to do the little workshop and I thought this is what I need because if nothing else it’s just for me to understand what I’m paying for if I choose to go with someone, so it just kind of opened my mind, I thought look, I’m just going to do it and then obviously it was the best decision because then I realised I didn’t want to do the hundred and fifty thousand dollar one and then that was when the business was really tough because of all the retail going down, so I just didn’t have the cash to pay anybody else, and so I just started doing things myself and experimenting and that helped me learn more about the business and as in our customers in particular, which has been really important for us to be more kind of like more niche into what our customers want, and also, it obviously I mean it paid off, it definitely~ I think the online tools have been absolutely amazing and I wouldn’t have been able to achieve the growth that we had online without those tools.

[Franziska] I love that, that’s amazing to hear and one of my favourite things that you shared here also for our audience too, this is such an important message to hear is that it can be~ as a business owner, it can be so confusing because there are so many offerings out there and should I hire an SEO expert, or a PR firm, or do I need to rebrand my business, or what do I need to do? Do you need to buy leads? And as a business owner, really you just need to understand the strategy, I always say that you need to understand the strategy and once you do, you can then outsource some of that which you have done also. What are some… do you remember some of the specifics that you have implemented?

[Karla] Well I think the copywriting was a really good part from the Clever Bunch, that was something~ for me it changed completely, but actually the main message that I think changed the whole strategy of our sales strategy actually was to make sure that it’s all the main message was it’s all about the customer, it’s got nothing to do with us you know so whenever we were trying to you know to talk to our customers and connect with them via our newsletters, or any point of communication, even in the shop, it was it’s all about them, and how they feel about us not about how great we are, and how great our product is, and how beautiful it is that’s kind of secondary, it’s all about how they feel about it, so that was a real eye-opener for me because before that, I was always thought was like you just say, well our product is the best you know, this is the best design, it’s the most beautiful and it may be, but you might not feel that way as a customer. So for us, it was trying to connect to that, so we went back to being authentic, so we make sure that everything we do is Scandinavian-based, so you know we went back to style, so a lot as we started adding content which as I said was great because that meant that we weren’t getting a lot of unsubscribes with every newsletter before every newsletter, we just got so many unsubscribed, as soon as we started adding content then that completely changed the game, people were you know they might not have been buying at the time, but they were reading the content and no one was unsubscribing, which meant that when we did have a sale then people would still receive our email, so that was really, really good and we started going doing blogs on on Scandinavian themes, and you know just about celebrating the countries, where we buy from and talking about different things.

[Franziska] I was actually going to ask you, I was going to say what kind of content because that’s such a it’s such a game changer what you’ve done there, even though it seems so simple, I’d love to see more businesses do that. What sort of content did you share?

[Karla] So we started… we got a couple of people writing little blogs for us but their content was mostly concentrated~ so Sweden celebrates something called Cinnamon Bun Day, they all eat cinnamon bun, it’s like national cinnamon bun day, yeah, like nobody thinks about that… I thought it was crazy, it’s delicious but crazy, but yeah they celebrate things like that so we would have a content with a recipe, so our blogger wrote the story about how they came to celebrate cinnamon buns in Sweden, but also a recipe from her grandma and so that’s actually to date, it has been the most read blog because it’s got a recipe right? And everyone loves the free recipe, and cinnamon buns, I mean they’re delicious, and we would talk to our friends, there is a Swedish cafe in Manly, that’s close to a shop, and so they would they would make little cinnamon buns for our store and we will have them there on the day, so all the customers that came in then they would be able~ you know, we could offer them a cinnamon bun because it’s Cinnamon Bun Day.

[Franziska] That’s a really cool strategy.

[Karla] Yeah, so we would just celebrate all the national holidays and things like that we would talk about, you know their culture as well, so the Danish instance, they have something called “hygge” which is in winter, now you hear more and more about that word nowadays but it’s about it’s about kind of coziness, there’s no literal translation, but it’s about coziness and calm and relaxed so you know having hygge they kind of develop that during the winter which is the darker months in northern Europe, and they just they light a candle, they put on woolly socks and they just have a nice cup of a hot drink, yeah, and they just sit by the fire, and read a good book, so that is you know or you have a hot bath, it’s just kind of like that~ create that environment of coziness, so we sell books about hygge, and we’ve done a blog about it and to tell people how you know, how you can create your own little space at home.

[Franziska] It’s really cool because it’s~ obviously, people love the content but also you’re sharing culture which we’re craving, you know, we’re craving culture and you’re sharing that. I love that, and the other thing that you shared sort of just in between the lines is the power of doing even collaborations with other businesses which you have done let’s say with the Swedish shop in Manly, where you collaborate and they probably send people your way and you send people their way. I love that.

[Karla] Yeah, they buy from us as well.

[Franziska] I love those stories. Now we’re coming towards the end of this interview, unfortunately. There’s so much gold in there already, one more question I’d like to just ask maybe one more question on the Clever Bunch, and then some words of wisdom from you to our audience here, why would you recommend the Clever Bunch?

[Karla] Well, I think it’s kind of no-nonsense, it’s simple, it’s this it’s just something that you can do to really understand what steps you need to take to grow your business through marketing, and you don’t need to be a genius, you don’t need to be tech-savvy, it is simple, straightforward, and yeah no-nonsense, marketing tools.

[Franziska] I love that, and that’s definitely something where we want to be known for is the no-nonsense of approach to anything that we do here at Basic Bananas. Now the two last questions I have is one is what do you wish you had known as a business owner when you first started?

[Karla] Oh yeah… I suppose I wish that I wasn’t scared of trying new things, I was really because I had never done… I mean I had managed people before but being the boss of everything, you know it’s a big responsibility, so I was a little bit scared of failure at the beginning, now I’m a little bit more you know, a little bit happier to do certain gambles that I would just say like, we’ll just try it, and trial and error, so I think that’s something that I wish I would have known then I would have, I probably would have progressed to where we’re at now, a little bit faster, you never know, but yeah that’s probably the one thing, to be a little bit less scared.

[Franziska] A little bit probably less risk, or worse, almost.

[Karla] That’s right, just…

[Franziska] A bit more, like come on let’s~ you know, you’ll all be working out…

[Karla] That’s right, yeah.

[Franziska] That’s a great lesson, I guess that we can all take from, or learn from, and the last one is what is one or two or three or few words of wisdom that you as a business owner, and you’ve walked the talk over the last years, you’ve built a successful business from going through different challenges in the retail space also, what are some words of wisdom?

[Karla] If you really want something, don’t give up and as I said before, like just try different things. If something doesn’t work, just try a different way, but if you really believe in something don’t give up, because I mean it would have been very easy, but after the first two years when things were going really, really bad to say, you know I’m not built for this, or I’m not gonna make it, I’m just gonna shut it down, but if you really believe in something, just keep going, there will be always hurdles, but you know life is trial and error now.

[Franziska] We don’t know when the next pandemic is coming and you just stick with it and you changed your business and now it’s working better than ever. Thanks so much, thanks for joining us here again for anyone who wants to come check you out, we don’t know the social media handle no we do, it’s Nordic Fusion, and also Nordic Fusion on the website, we’ll put the links in the notes here too, so make sure you check it out you can buy things online, or if you are in Sydney, there’s a beautiful store in Manly, there’s also a showroom. If you own a retail store and you would love to stock some of the products, also, you can get in touch too with Karla, and any final words?

[Karla] Just enjoy the ride.

[Franziska] Yes! Hold on and enjoy the ride! Thanks so much. Thanks, Karla, thanks for joining us.

[Karla] Thank you.