Transforming eCommerce With Turnkey Solutions
Guest: AJ Asgari
Meet AJ - a family guy, serial entrepreneur, and your go-to pharmacy doc who's not just at the helm of multiple pharmacies, but also the mastermind behind Drugstore2door. More than a CEO, he's your everyday superhero dedicated to lifting others up. His mantra? "We only win when we win together!"
Key Takeaways:
AJ's Entrepreneurial Journey: Starting from his experience at CVS to owning independent pharmacies, AJ Asgari shares his transition towards recognizing the crucial need for a strong online presence in the pharmacy sector. Despite being in Oklahoma, not a typical tech hub, AJ's story is a testament to breaking industry boundaries through perseverance and vision.
Custom Technology for Pharmacies: AJ discusses the unique challenges of integrating eCommerce into the pharmacy industry, like dealing with prescriptions and offering services such as immunizations. His approach? Developing custom technology tailored to these specific needs, leading to a platform that benefits not just his business but the entire industry.
The Future of Pharmacy and Retail: The conversation goes beyond just overcoming current challenges, delving into the future of the pharmacy sector. AJ and Matt Edmundson discuss emerging technologies like AI and augmented reality, and their potential to revolutionize customer service and operational efficiency in pharmacies, setting the stage for an exciting, tech-driven future.
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Matt: [00:00:00] Well, hello and welcome to The eCommerce Podcast with me, your host, Matt Edmundson. Oh yes, now this is a show all about helping you deliver eCommerce wow. And to help us do just that, today I am chatting with AJ Asgari from Drugstore to Door about transforming eCommerce with turnkey solutions. Yes we are, this is going to be an interesting one, I have no doubt.
Now, if you are subscribed already to our newsletter. All of the show notes, all of the links, all that sort of good stuff from the show will be winging their way to your inbox when this all gets made live. Uh, but of course if you haven't signed up to the newsletter, you're gonna miss out on that. So sign up to the newsletter, that's basically what I'm trying to tell you.
Just head over to the website, eCommercePodcast. net Sign up to it. It's free. It all comes to you. It's worth doing. Subscribe to that. Now, this podcast is [00:01:00] sponsored and brought to you by the fabulous eCommerce Cohort. Yes, it is. Now, eCom Cohort is a membership group that we run and every month we bring you expert workshops on how to do eCommerce better.
Better for you, better for the business, better for the planet and all that sort of good stuff. It's an awesome membership group plus the perk. One of the key perks is you get to watch the podcast recordings live Which means you when we have guests like AJ you can come along you can ask your questions So come check it out at ecommercecohort.
com, it'd be great to see you in there. Oh yes, and I managed to do all that before the music ended, which has got to be a first for this show, I'm not going to lie, it's all about timing, and my timing is not great on that whole side of things. Here we go.
There we go. Now let's talk about AJ, our guest, a family guy, a serial [00:02:00] entrepreneur, and your go to pharmacy doc, who's not just at the helm of multiple pharmacies, oh no, no, no, but also the mastermind behind Drugstore to Door. More than a CEO, he's your everyday superhero. Oh yes, dedicated to lifting others up.
His mantra, we're only, uh, we only win when we win together. Oh, yes. Now, AJ, great to have you on the show, man. How are we doing today?
AJ: Fantastic. Glad to be here. Glad to be here.
Matt: Ah, it's good. Now, whereabouts in the world are you, sir?
AJ: I am in Oklahoma,
Matt: Ah, okay.
AJ: University of Oklahoma is in my backyard, so not necessarily the tech epicenter of the world, if you will. But we're trying to break boundaries here.
Matt: That's true. It's not known for that, I suppose, and maybe it should be. Maybe it will be after today's podcast.
AJ: Hopefully we at least crack it a little bit.
Matt: Yeah, no doubt. I think, and [00:03:00] I hope I'm not doing a disjustice to any previous guest on the show, but I think you're our first guest from Oklahoma. Um, so yes, normally it's Florida, New York, you know, California, sometimes Kansas, Dallas is quite popular, Austin, you know, those kind of places, but Oklahoma, you're trailing a blaze there, sir, trailing a blaze.
AJ: telling you, I'm telling you. It's um, it's rough, but it's good. It's good. We are. It'd be easier if we're in oil, I think. I think that fits in perfect here, but we could say the same about Texas. Texas has taken a pretty good shift into technology. So we'll, we'll see.
Matt: yeah, absolutely. The way to do it, the way to do it. So you are a pharmacist by trade, is that right? Fair
AJ: I am. So I got my doctorate of pharmacy from the University of Oklahoma. Um, practiced as a pharmacist in the beginning for a little period of time as I was acquiring independent pharmacies and, um, Once I got a little bit down the road and realized I wanted to do things a little bigger, impact the [00:04:00] space in a larger way, and I didn't want to do it through a hundred or two hundred or three hundred locations of your traditional run of pharmacy, I backed out and now I probably shouldn't work behind the bench anymore.
It's been a while, but I definitely started my run there.
Matt: enough. Yeah, you don't want, you don't want you serving you the, the, the drugs which you've ordered is probably what you're saying. Yeah, it's fair play. It's fair play. Know your skills, know your talents and know where you're at. Always a top tip.
AJ: I stay pretty current, but not as current as I should. So I'll stay on the sidelines, let my team do what they do.
Matt: Fantastic. So the, so you started out acquiring pharmacies. Um, uh, I'm curious, when did that particular journey start, AJ? Was eCommerce a thing when you started doing this or was it, was it not really a thing at this point of your life?
AJ: The big thing, you know, like I'm not that old, but old enough to where like Facebook was coming out when I was in college. Um, you know, so we were just starting to get a taste and flavor of all this. By the [00:05:00] time I was in pharmacy though, uh, you know, I worked for CVS for one year before I bought my first store.
You know, it's just traditional. You think of independent pharmacy in the U. S. especially as kind of your mom and pop shops. They're the independently owned pharmacies across the country. There's a lot of them, about 20, 000 of them. Um, and so as I got in and started acquiring stores and operating these stores, I just realized Jesus, we suck online, like across the board, we suck and it's not getting better.
No one's coming to solve the problem. Um, and so I started honestly, selfishly, just how do I fix it for ourselves and brought marketers in and worked on things and tried to leverage, you know, leverage the Shopify's of the world and other pieces and just kept falling flat because this industry is. A very challenging one.
You know, we're not selling t shirts and tennis shoes and, um, and not to discount the struggle of any retail shop, but for pharmacy, there's so many caveats and regulation and all these different situations. And [00:06:00] so finally, I just got to the point and said, F it. We've got to figure out how to do it and if we're going to do it and spend the money and the time and the energy and the development and all this stuff, let's just attack it for the industry, you know, let's build it for scale and let's just start taking the lumps now, um, and you know, and see how fast we can go prematurely gray.
So I'm, I'm killing it.
Matt: Yeah. Me both, bud. Yeah. Me both. I'm only 20 years old. Um, so, uh, that's kind of, it's fascinating cause you started your eCommerce journey then as eCommerce was actually becoming a sort of a growing industry. Um, and back in the day, I say back in the day because I remember it like it was yesterday, there was no real Shopify at the time and you all had to, you know, it was a wild west.
I mean, there's a lot of stuff you can do now which helps you, which you didn't have back then. Um, so I can imagine you, how complex that was for multiple pharmacists because you would build something and six months later it wouldn't [00:07:00] necessarily be the right thing that you would have built. And so did you just feel like you were throwing money into a sort of bottomless pit at this point of your life?
AJ: Yeah, money was a vacuum. We'd start to get somewhere and you're thinking like, Oh, we got it. We got it. And then come out and be like, this is a turd. Like, what were we thinking? No, like, cause it's moving so fast. Uh, you know, and then when you're a non tech tech founder trying to innovate, uh, it's, you know, with everything else, I always joke and all my other businesses, I can roll my sleeves up and just go in development.
I can't do that. Like. It's like you go get the switch out of the backyard and start whipping developers and they're like, that's not going to work, you know, that's not how this goes. Uh, so your hands are kind of locked in that. So we really had to take a hard look at what's out there, how far can we leverage it, what starts to like constrain us.
So it was exactly that. It kind of felt like this vortex in the beginning. What can we do? How can we do it? Because we had to solve more than an eCom problem for pharmacy. I mean, you're getting drugs there, prescription [00:08:00] drugs. You're getting services like immunizations and testing and all this other stuff.
And you've got the ability to buy products. But the products are straightforward. The prescriptions have insurance reimbursement in the U. S. So prices can change, co pays can change, your services, your prices can change. So there's no product carts out there where you can put an initial price in, modify that price without doing a refund, put a new price in the cart and change the overall, you know, so just all these complexities.
Start to show up. Uh, and, and so we just decided at some point it's just full on custom development. We don't have an option, um, other than just create it from the ground up.
Matt: Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, it sounds like a lot of challenges you had to overcome. 'cause like you say, I mean, I sell, I've sold all kinds of things online from beauty supplement, uh, beauty products to health supplements, to spa products. I mean, you know, we've probably sold most things online, but in, in essence, at the end of the day, I'm selling a product.
I mean, supplements. [00:09:00] I suppose health supplements have, they have more regulation here in the UK than they do in the States. But even so, it's not a heavy regulated industry. It's not like pharmaceuticals where you, you know, you've got some real issues going on there. So it sounds like a real big challenge to sort of overcome.
AJ: Yeah. In multiple ways. I mean, all the way down to processing, right? Even just finding a processor to run prescriptions. It's easier for me to sell ar fifteens online through a processor than it is to sell prescription drugs. I mean, so there's, there was challenges every single step of the way that we had to overcome.
Uh, to create the model for what it is we do today. So every aspect, I can't think of one, we went, Oh, that was easy, bam, nailed it. Yeah,
Matt: Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it? Because I think, um, every eCommerce. Company I know has got their own story. They've got their own journey and they've got their own difficulties and stuff they've had to [00:10:00] overcome. Um, having done work with pharmaceutical companies myself, in terms of trying to get things online. Man alive. My hat's off to you if you've cracked the code because the legislation, just even around what you can and can't say in any promotions or ads, um, it's terrifying in a lot of ways, you know. And so what, what caused you to sort of continually drive to solve this problem was it was it because you saw the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow or because you you think you could solve quite a few problems for a community or whatever and what I'm curious what was the drive because I know in this industry like I do that man that's a lot of tenacity I'm not gonna lie
AJ: yeah, easier things to tackle for sure. Um, the objective for us was far beyond. We've had acquisition talks and other things that we've turned down at this point. We're pretty mission driven where we are in our current phase of growth, if you [00:11:00] will, or I'm just an idiot and too far in. I can't let it We'll leave that to be determined, but we're going to call it mission today.
We're going to call it mission. So we really do believe we can solve a fundamental problem. Um. You know, if you just look at the U. S. right now, you've got Rite Aid who's going bankrupt. Um, you've got CVS and Walgreens. Between CVS, Walgreens, and Rite Aid, you've got about 1, 500, 1, 600 pharmacy locations across the country that are closing.
Um, this limits access to people. You know, when we think about access to people, we think about big cities. You're Dallas, and you know, as we were talking, Dallas and Austin, and all these spots where, sure, there's a pharmacy on every single block, but what happens when you get out into Ida Bell, Oklahoma, or, you know, these little small towns that have communities.
Um, that don't have access to appropriate healthcare. This is where independent pharmacy really solves an issue. Not only do we solve it in the metropolitan areas, we solve it in every crack of the U S if you [00:12:00] will, right? And so for us, it's how do we take this network of independent pharmacies and leverage what it is they can do and make them incredibly accessible to the user base, right?
To people like you or our families or whatever it might be. And at some point, technology will trump, you know, the, the wonderful service that small businesses provide their customers. You have to go beyond that, right? When you go on Amazon and they drone drop a prescription in less than an hour to your front door.
You better damn well have something to back up what you're doing, um, in a way that competes to where even if your guy's on the ground in a car bringing it in 45 minutes, that's still comparable, right? As long as my path to acquisition was simple, you know, running through, being able to go online and run through.
So, for us, we really think, not just in the U. S., but in, in every market. We can really take these pharmacies into a last mile delivery stance. And if we give them [00:13:00] phenomenal technology and all the tools to execute, they can just extend all the things they do. We don't have to be that company. We extend their ability to do the things that they do and then from a consumer standpoint, they're going, hey, I'm not giving anything up, you know, I'm saving money, I've got great access, I can get my meds quickly, all of those things that we want as consumers, right, simpler, faster, so on and so forth, cheaper, et cetera, that helps, uh, these, these guys accomplish it because most small business owners are not going to go spend what I've spent at this point to create what we've created, right?
It's not going to happen just because it's not feasible. Right. Right.
Matt: yeah, no, that's very true and I think, um, we looked at something similar in the salon space, in the, in the digital salon space when we owned a beauty site. It's like we'd learned a lot and we had some great tech. Could we then give that tech to smaller businesses who could leverage that for themselves where they wouldn't have, you know, they're not going to go and spend whatever it was, quarter of a million or whatever we spent on [00:14:00] that site, you know, just, it's just, it's a pointless thing to think about.
But if you can give them that tech, well then that makes it interesting again, like you say, for the small sort of independent, isn't it? Because I imagine Walgreens, um, Which is a large pharmaceutical chain in the States, isn't it? For those outside the States, Walgreens and CVS, um, is both of, both of which I, I was in the States a few months ago.
I went into one pharmacy and I thought, man, I think I'm going to have to sell my right kidney just to get some antihistamines. And I'm, I'm not quite understanding why. Um, very different in the UK, I'm not going to lie. And so, um, So I was shocked by the price of, uh, meds over in the States, but I imagine these guys, I mean, I know the profit margins, because I see what they're charging for the medication, right?
Um, I imagine these guys are trying to create their own sort of online system to prevent the smaller guys, you know, just to lock them out. We're just going to lock this market [00:15:00] out.
AJ: I won't even get into that. We'll need a whole nother four episodes of podcast to get through it, but, um, it's a really jacked up system. And the bad thing for us as pharmacy owners is the margin on prescription drugs is terrible. I mean, there are times we Taking losses, filling prescriptions for, for patients.
And so for us, we have to combat that. And so the way I always talk with pharmacies is let's get into the sport supplements or the cosmetic lines or the other industries. There are plenty of industries that would give their left leg for the traffic flow. A pharmacy, right? And so for a pharmacy to not capitalize on that traffic flow and not to extend or grab more of that customer's wallet when you've already got their attention and they trust you and there's a lot of things you can sell to them is ridiculous, right?
But the majority of pharmacy, independent pharmacy, if you will, it's all wrapped up. 90 95 percent of their earnings is in the prescription side, which leaves this whole untapped. [00:16:00] Um, you know, call it opportunity in multiple areas that they're just not touching. And so we're trying to move them in that direction.
Matt: yeah. This is interesting because you're talking in some respects about a brick and mortar store. But in eCommerce, it's exactly the same thing. We just call it average order value, right? We just want to increase the average order value because we like to give things poncy names in eCommerce, don't we?
And so let's increase the average order value and what else can we sell, upsell, cross sell, downsell, et cetera, et cetera. And I imagine with pharmacy. Uh, the, like you said, the unique characteristic that you have is you have a high trust factor from the clientele walking through the door. Whereas if someone's walking into, I don't know, a smoothie shop or a clothes shop or something.
It's not quite the same, is it really? Uh, you're not going to save my life or kill me if you give me something right or wrong. And so, um, I suppose that's, that's quite an interesting point because you do, you may have low margins, um, [00:17:00] but you've got this high trust factor, which you can then capitalize on building average order value and stuff like that.
What sort of things have you seen then work for that? Online. I'm curious, you know, what, what sort of things have you seen drive that?
AJ: It's funny. We see, uh, it depends. So for pharmacies that aren't versed, who are not comfortable doing something even like this, right? You got to think your personality type of a pharmacist is very type A. They kind of fit that engineering line. Like I'm the odd ball in the industry, right? I love to run my mouth.
I love to be around people. A lot of people are like, you're a pharmacist, you know? But it. For me, it's, it's different. Right. And you don't find that. And I didn't realize that like, Hey, I'm the weird one. They're not the weird ones until I got in and was hiring pharmacists and trying to train them to upsell and do things in the pharmacy.
They just got weird about, you know, they just. Literally got weird about. So for us training pharmacies and trying to teach them, I try to find ways to integrate the tech into their daily flow. So we're not stretching them so far [00:18:00] out of their comfort bubble that they're going to
Matt: Yeah, yeah.
AJ: When you ask what's working, I've guys like me who will get on social media and they have no, they will go the whole nine yards, right?
And I, there are some who kill it. on social media, their social media translates to sales, you know, and then their sales and their volume go crazy. They'll get on and do a butt paste video and sell 50, 000 of butt paste in 24 hours, right? And you think it's a joke, but it's not a joke. Like it's the
Matt: No, I'm sure it's a really example. Yeah, yeah. Buttpaste. I didn't realize there was such a thing, but you carry on.
AJ: Yeah, it's, it's, it, and I say it for the extreme example, but it's very true. I mean, it's very true. And then you've got others who we just take things that they do, whether it's specialized compounding or filling scripts. So we took our technology and said, Hey, let's, let's take it a step further. Let's take it to the point where a customer doesn't just come in and shop the sites, but we can populate suggested carts for customers, right?
Because we are the advice givers. We are the [00:19:00] ones who, you know, went to school and got our doctorate degrees and understand how medicine works and what goes with what and what you're going to be depleted in and all of these things that are important for your overall health. So I could come to you and say, Matt, you're on these three medications.
I know for sure these reduce these essential vitamins and minerals in your body. I've got two here I've suggested for you with a discount code you can utilize at a checkout, or
Matt: Genius.
AJ: you can just delete them out of the cart, no big deal, get your prescription, but right, and now you're gonna, you're not walking into, and I don't know if you've got GNCs or other supplement stores, they've always joked with pharmacists, I'm like, you got people going in getting bro advice from an 18 year old on what they should be supplementing, To be a healthy person, and you got a damn doctorate over here, and you're scared to talk to them about what they should actually be doing, right?
So how can we leverage tech to offset that? Because we should be killing the supplement stores at what they do.
Matt: No, you totally should. Uh, I mean, I sell supplements online. I know how it all works, but yeah, it's what I find fascinating here, AJ, what you're talking about. Uh, [00:20:00] cause often I get asked, um, you know, I, it's probably one of the most common questions we get asked. How do we compete with Amazon? Uh, cause Amazon is.
It's just crazy what it does, and, um, the technology and the algorithms and the scale and the infrastructure. You go, well, you can't, can you, in a lot of, you can't compete on a like for like basis. What you can do though, is you can bring a level of knowledge and expertise to your website that Amazon simply doesn't.
And what you've highlighted here is an ideal example of this. It's like. I know if you take these three medications, you're going to be missing these vitamins and minerals. So take this supplement and we'll put that in your bag. Amazon can't do that. Right, because they, they've not got pharmacists sat around going, well if they order this, they can maybe do it with some kind of algorithm that maybe might, might, might look out.
But this is, this is I think where, where I do think it's genius, where you're using your knowledge and your experience and your expertise to go, what else can [00:21:00] I do to leverage this relationship I have with a client to help them, but also build my average order value. You're using your knowledge and expertise to do that.
And I think as eCommerce entrepreneurs. That's how we compete with Amazon.
AJ: Absolutely. If you think about, here's how I think about it, maybe this will help some people listening, your value is paid to you. If you're not getting paid for a consult, so if I'm not sitting you in a room like a doctor and saying, an MD for instance, Hey, I'm going to give you 20 minutes of my time.
You're going to give me 300 of your dollars to listen to what comes out of my mouth. If you don't have that relationship, then you're doing it through product. So the things that come out of your mouth should be sold, right? And if they're not going to be sold via time, they got to be sold via product. So when I talk to pharmacists, I always tell them, get your value back out of the consults, the time spent, the energy that you're utilizing.
You paid a lot of money and spent a lot of time to be the expert in the neighborhood. For when someone comes to you and [00:22:00] says, hey, little Jimmy's sick, or I got a fever, or can he take this with that, right? If it's a this with that, you should be selling the this with that while giving the advice on the this with that, right?
Not giving them the advice and then the joke we always have in the U. S. is they go to Wal Mart, right? Like they leave your store, take all your advice, and then they go give Wal Mart. The dollars for the advice you'd give, that should not happen. Right. And you should make it in such a way that it, it, the likelihood of it happening is incredibly low.
Matt: that's really good. Yeah, really fast. It just fascinates me how some of these very simple statements, you know, still apply to eCom, don't they? It's like, you know, you don't need all the latest technology and silver bullets. It's common sense, lads. You know, let's play to our strengths. Um, and, and utilize that.
What sort of things, I'm kind of curious, AJ, what sort of things have you seen work well on the sites which you have then, because obviously you're, you get to see the sales data for all the pharmacies [00:23:00] which, um, use your system and you, and you're creating these sort of, um, uh, value ads, I suppose is, is a, is a good way to describe it for your, for websites.
What sort of things have you seen work well there? Mm
AJ: So one area I see work incredibly well is, let's call it reminders. Um, but our reminders go a step further because it comes in a populated cart. So if you're getting a medication that you should be taking every single. 30 days or you're on a supplement or a vitamin you should be on every 30 days. The more you can help that customer achieve that by automatic orders, populating the cart for them, giving them suggestions inside of that cart, people taking things away.
Versus adding things. It's incredible how much more sticks around if it's kind of in a done for you package. Um, and so I see pharmacies win there. And you got to remember, we're talking about, um, we're not just starting out a thin air. We're walking in and saying, Hey, you've got a thousand customers who use [00:24:00] you in your brick and mortar every single day.
You've got to convince them that online is the new Holy grail for them, right? And so they got to change shopping behavior from a traditional retail brick and mortar customer. Over to online. So we start looking for all the low hanging fruit to help them get to that point. We see it with high-end, um, supplement lines, doctors who are really, um, into preventative care and that type of stuff, right?
They're looking at these. Well absorbed, just high quality tested products that are non pharmaceutical but are supplement in nature and if you can turn a few people on to it that become, think of it like your affiliate if you will, that are driving people to you because you've got the expertise, you've got the products, you carry what they carry, you support their line of business.
I'm always looking for those mutual relationships and synergy. So those are a couple ways and then you've got people who just do well online. They get online and they give a ton of [00:25:00] value. And then in return for that value, people will pay you whatever you're charging them because they, you've built your credibility, you know, continuing to drop value every single day.
So we see it all over the place. You know, pharmacy again is different. We'll see custom compounded medications, right? So I'm making something that's specific for you, right? You come in. You are nauseated. You can't take a pill. You've got diarrhea. You can't put something up the back end. So what are you left to do?
Right? I'm going to compound you a transdermal gel that you can rub on your wrist. And I'm going to be your lifesaver in about 20 minutes. Right? And then that person gets. That grab again, that trust again, and now everything that supports that, you have the opportunity to start to pull that in. So there's a million ways is just kind of the good thing for us is nobody's really starting from scratch, but the ones who are like startup pharmacies, new pharmacies that go in.
I always send them to look for the synergies, and again, it's [00:26:00] industry dependent, I'm sure, but there are a lot of industries I can think about the synergies, where if you can go enhance somebody else's service, i. e. the doctor, by providing things really quickly that could be ordered right there in clinic, knowing that the pharmacy can just drop it at the consumer's house or the patient's house as soon as they leave the doctor's office, that's a game changer.
Now you've got a little salesperson who's helping drive Your econ sells. Right. And I think this can happen times a million different ways. Um, once you start to build something that gets people talking,
Matt: hmm. Mate, there's a lot there. Let's dig into some of that. One of the things you said right at the start, um, something that I call the one click cart. So you, you're sending out emails that a customer can click and that takes them to a pre populated cart with their products in. Have you guys been doing that long?
AJ: we started testing this over the last year or so, um, and it's been, it, it's been one of the most effective runs [00:27:00] of everything, quite honestly.
Matt: Yeah, yeah, it's interesting you say that because actually, I mean, we, um, our sites are all custom. So, uh, our eCommerce sites are custom websites because we started out in eCommerce in 2002. You know, we, we built web development teams, we've, it's just, I'm not going to, I'm not going to change that now. I, you know, it's as good as Shopify is, um, but we have our own. Proprietary system, which we've developed and one of the things I've been talking to the developers about and some of the things that we've been testing, one of which is this one click cart, right, where you send out an email, you click it and everything's in your cart. You don't even have to go shopping.
We're probably going to add a few other extras into your cart, like you say, which you can take out if you want to, you know, some kind of bonus or something. Um, yeah. And my initial response to this is this is actually where I don't have any, I can't say to you that it's closed conversion rate, uh, you know, or increased conversion rate by 30 percent or it's reduced out to baskets by [00:28:00] 20%.
I can't give you that hard data yet. I think what I can say is anecdotally, I think what I can say is anecdotally, Holy cow, do you know what I mean, and I don't know if you've discovered this yourself,
AJ: Yeah. So I can give you a little bit of it. Um, from a conversion factor, taking someone from brick and mortar to a populated cart for checkout, we've hit 40 percent conversion on our outbound phone calls. Not emails, not texts, but outbound phone calls with a scripted line, which is ridiculous. I'm expecting that to fall off at some point, but those are trusted customers.
So when that happened, that holy S H I T line, right? Like, wow. Um, then the next thing we are seeing, and we'll see if this trend remains, is The upsell of the cart is almost nailing 20 percent of the time, which is nuts. So one in five transactions, you've got that extra 20, 30, 40 bucks that you've tossed in that cart.
Uh, and so sometimes even those numbers, you'll talk to a traditional retail shop. They don't understand how ridiculous those numbers [00:29:00] are from an online perspective, adoption, conversion, all that kind of stuff.
Matt: yeah, yeah, now I'm with you, a friend of mine, he, um, he owns a hair salon and when we looked at his numbers Um, there was one point in my life where I thought, well, do we get involved? Do we invest in, in, this is when we had the beauty, I could grow a chain of hair salons and beauty salons if I wanted to.
And we were looking at it and the, similar to the beauty, I mean, the beauty salon was more than the hair salon because, uh, with the beauty salon, we had a lot more products, but the hair salon had shampoo and wax, right? That was it. Uh, cause it was, it was for men, but the actual sales of the shampoo and wax were accounted for as much as 30 percent of turnover. And you're like. That's fascinating that actually you can increase your turnover just by adding one or two extra things like that, which makes sense for your product or service. And so I can see why that would have such high value [00:30:00] for, from a pharmacy point of view. Um, I, I can, um, you're just circling back, sorry, just another line you dropped.
You're using outbound calls. So you're still calling people. Um, you're not just emailing people, um, you're still using the good old fashioned telephone to help drive traffic to your website.
AJ: Yeah, because I'm looking for that edge, the non Amazon edge, right? Amazon's going to bombard my inbox with emails, I'm going to get bombarded, I mean, to the point now with text messages, it's unreal how much spam I get, you know, and so, and we all know as the noise gets louder and louder and louder, we kill it.
The thing for the outbound calls is, again, we're going after a trusted audience. So we're not getting hung up on and as long as we bring real value to the phone call which is hey We're gonna do all this stuff for you Anyways, would life get easier if I just shot you a link to check out and then you can just come grab this thing like a Starbucks coffee And you don't have to worry about dealing with the line and the checkout and any of that kind of stuff, right?
Yeah, sign [00:31:00] me up for that, right? Here's the link. So, again, we're taking the audience we know and we're saying, hey, let's get more out of this audience, right? And it's interesting what you say. We actually have looked hard at the, the beauty salon industry in the U. S. as well, because when I start looking at all mid level market, we're highly focused in drugs, you know, obviously in pharmacies and that's our mission, but we've built a technology so far at this point, it's like, I can solve, you name a business, I can solve their problems at this point.
If you handle all the core pillars of, uh, retail business, then it's, give me the business and I can change the rules around the dashboard and we can solve their problems, you know? So I love to hear that you're, you've looked in that space.
Matt: yeah, yeah. Well, we almost created a product similar to what you've created here in the UK, um, called Salon Digital. And, um, uh, we sold the beauty business, which is why we never sort of carried on with it. Maybe I should do it at some point. Maybe I
AJ: Here we go. It's a collaboration, man. We'll get off this call and figure it
Matt: I'll just [00:32:00] white label what you've done.
Um But I, I, I think it's fascinating, um, AJ, the fact that you're, I don't know of any eCommerce company that is doing telesales, um, and in fact, most people would have got into eCommerce so they don't have to do the phone call thing. But what you've, what you've said there, which I think is so powerful is you, you're trying to not, you're trying to be different to Amazon and you're calling your high value customers, aren't you?
I. I can almost hear the anxiety in people listening to the podcast now, um, and I, I, I'm sorry to induce this, but, um, do you find that, my response to this would be if I started calling people, say for our supplement company here in the UK, I'm kind of curious to know what the response to that would be, whether it would be positive or negative.
Um,
AJ: depends, on what's coming out. Like, what are you [00:33:00] calling them for? I think that's the big question mark.
Matt: right. So how would I, how would I, I guess, how would I deliver value then? How do you, have you, what have you guys figured out here? Yeah.
AJ: taking someone who's. It's coming into the physical store, right? They're coming into the physical store. They're getting their goods either via drive thru or walking into a physical location. Um, they're ordering their prescriptions either through a telephone phone call or an IVR punch button system, maybe an app where they go in and suggest a refill, but they're doing very manual things and our goal is to take those away from them so it's a quick value add phone call, um, that we bring to these customers.
Uh, and then it makes it all worth it, right? Because then we can take all of the labor pieces where you're going, Hey, people are probably cringing, listening to you. We're doing it backwards at this point, right? So it's like, how do we take all the backwards stuff and move them into the digital age so that we have less of the hands on, not saying we don't want to see our patients [00:34:00] and we don't want to talk to them and all those things, but how can we streamline the simple stuff so that the conversations are.
High level or you know, what's actually needed or solving a real problem and take care of the mundane stuff, you know, we should be able to get our prescriptions, like we get our hamburger. I mean, it should be that easy, uh, for the customer . So, uh, we kind of, we made that a thing when we put drive-throughs in, you know, it's like what do you expect a customer to do when they pull up to a drive through and they've been trained?
To get a whole family dinner in three minutes. You know, they expect the same thing out of their medicine.
Matt: Yeah, they do. And again, that, uh, just circling back to something that you said earlier, to be frank, I, I don't know if I've ever seen a drive through pharmacy in the UK. Um,
AJ: Interesting.
Matt: I just, I don't know if I have to be fair, but if I, if I'm honest with you, my local pharmacy is like a six minute walk from my house.
Uh, which is more how, how, because there's again, a lot of local pharmacy. There's some big chain ones, [00:35:00] but, uh, as is a local one owned by Connie, she's lovely. And you walk down, you have a little chat and you know, she's great and then you walk back. Um, but again, the same sort of things. You walk into the shop, she's just selling the drugs.
She's not selling all the other stuff, really, you know, not, not really thought it through, but, um. But what fascinates me here is, apart from the fact that I'm curious to see whether a drive thru pharmacy would work in the UK, I'm super tempted just to go and open one and find out, uh, but, um, you, you talk about the local pharmacy being that last mile.
This was something that we saw in COVID. Um, that here in the uk and I saw it, I suppose a little in, in the states. You see this, the difference between the states and the UK is size, it's landmass. So we have, um, whatever, 70, 80 million people in a very small. So I can walk, within five minutes of my house, I can walk anywhere and get pretty much most things that I need, if I'm honest with you.
Whereas in the [00:36:00] States, everything is much more spread out, and land is a lot cheaper, right? So I get that I have to go in my car and travel somewhere for most things in the States, then it becomes about convenience, so drive throughs, they work, they make sense in my head. So you talked about the sort of the last mile with the local pharmacy, um.
And like I say, when COVID, one of the things that I noticed was the local shop down the road, which is five minutes from my house, was doing a delivery service. So like if you lived within like so many meters of his shop, it was like, order the stuff online because it was easy to put the website up and I'll drop it at your door by 4pm that day.
And I, I am surprised if I'm honest with you that I have not seen this. www. youtube. com or www. youtube. com www. [00:37:00] youtube. com But the local corner shop, which has got everything you need from beans to bread, you can get within sort of half an hour. So just speak to that a little minute, because obviously you've played around this and you've worked on this with your pharmacist.
AJ: Yeah, for me, it's the same thing. It's getting them the appropriate tech to actually accomplish it versus doing a small portion of it. They can actually extend the full digital offering. And then if you can do that, then it's not, well, hey, I could get my beans and my bread and my Tylenol, but if I need my prescription, I got to still go into the pharmacy.
So why in the world am I going to get these three
Matt: yeah, yeah.
AJ: walk five minutes and get all of it, right? But if you could go on and get your beans, your bread, your Tylenol, your prescriptions, and book a flu shot to be delivered at your front door, if that's the thing that they want to do. Then that's a game changer, right?
That's going to take five minutes of your day for, for that to come and come to fruition. And so pharmacies have to [00:38:00] build their models to support what they're going to put out there. And I think they absolutely should. You want to talk about the fear of Amazon? I mean, they're testing drone delivery on prescriptions here in the U S so get ready for a drone to zip that thing over.
And at your doorstep. And so we have to be prepared. Um, you know, and at some point you see, uh, players like this in the U S like you've got Mark Cuban and others trying to disrupt spaces. They still leverage this network. And if you, I imagine if you go and, and, uh, you know, really take account of who's out there, big chain, who's out there, small retailer in your area, even in that condensed area, you're going to find there's an individual.
Owner who could perform at a very high level. Like I would take that challenge all day long and say, Hey, we will put a team together and bring what we do into the uk. I just need to come unpack what it looks like out there. I mean, we have full intention to say, how do we go far beyond? We've explored Canada and Australia and other places, um, you know, and we're growing our footprint here so fast, we're [00:39:00] just knocking this down.
Um, but it's gonna, it will work anywhere, but we're
Matt: Oh, yeah. Absolutely. And this, yeah, and I think the takeaways here, um, AJ. For those of you listening who aren't running a pharmacy, a local pharmacy, the takeaways here that you've talked about, um, are quite extraordinary because they, things like increasing average order value, using your experience and your knowledge to add stuff, um, to customers at, uh, carts, Amazon cart, using one click carts.
If you have some kind of retail store, utilizing that last mile, like, how can I? How can I just sort of go above and beyond with a little bit of that extra thinking, that extra delivery, and just totally transform our business as a result? I think it's, it's stuff that, uh, we started to talk about with COVID, uh, for most businesses, and [00:40:00] then COVID kind of went, and so everyone's sort of starting to go back to their default before COVID.
And you think, I don't know, I just think someone needs to, You can keep pushing and innovating in this space. And I think there's a lot that we can learn from what you guys are doing. Like for me in the health supplement space and for others in, in, in whatever space they're doing, you know, selling couches or whatever.
Um, I think it's, I think you, there's a lot of conversations to have around some of the things that you've said. So I appreciate, you know, some of the stuff that you've shared with us. It's been, it's been eye opening. Hmm.
AJ: Covid was like a window of saying, Hey, I'm gonna give you a snapshot of what the future looks like, and then we're gonna retract it. And it's up to you to determine what you're gonna do with it. But when you think about where AI is going, you think about what Apple's about to release, what Magic Leap and all these others have been working on with an augmented reality and meta and all of this.
Like if you think about bringing the world to your living room, bringing the world to your space, it [00:41:00] comes to you versus you go to it. You are doing yourself a huge disjustice if you are not preparing for that future because it's going to be here so fast. And I'm excited. Quite frankly, I'm excited. Like, I would love to be sitting in my house and have wearables giving me, you know, keeping data feed on me, and am I healthy, and am I two hours from a heart attack, and can I order my stuff on demand, and I love all that.
Like, I'm, I'm ready. Um, or we're all going to kill ourselves because we don't know how to control this monster we're creating. Either way, it's going to be exciting. Yeah, either way, it will be exciting.
Matt: Yeah, is it Terminator or is it not? We just don't know yet. Uh, Cyberdyne Systems, you know?
AJ: know. It's a tad terrifying, but also super
exciting.
Matt: it is. And I think it's very wise words. I think it's, this industry eCommerce changes at a rapid pace and you don't have to keep up with everything, but you have to keep up in a smart way, I think, that keeps you [00:42:00] differentiated from your competitors. Um, whether that's Amazon or whether that's somebody else down the road, you know, you've keeping customers coming back to your site to buy your products.
Um, you can't just assume that what you did last year is going to work this year. Um,
AJ: Probably should stop that assumption, period. It's a rapid change. Like, period. With all, the
Matt: yeah, yeah, absolutely. There's that great book, isn't it? Was it Marshall Goldsmith wrote it? What Got You Here Won't Get You There? Yeah.
AJ: in my, I just gave a presentation in Orlando last week, and that was one of my slides. That exact quote.
Matt: Yeah, yeah, yeah, great quote, really great quote. AJ, listen, I feel like we're just touching the tip of this iceberg, but I'm aware of time, but if people want to reach you, if they want to connect with you, find out more about what you're doing, especially in the States for their local pharmacy, what's the best way to do that?
AJ: Yeah, honestly, you can find me via my name, AJ Asgari, all that stuff. I don't go crazy on social. I don't [00:43:00] build, you know, it's not my avenue, at least not yet. I probably need to pony up and do it, but you can find me through those channels. You can DM me through those channels. I even have a random landing page, which is my name.
com. AJAsgari. com, you can find me there, spelled A S G A R I, uh, just trying to make myself accessible. So if we can help someone go, let's help them go, or if you can bring me value, I'll take it all day long, baby. Bring it on.
Matt: All the way to Oklahoma, definitely. Uh, and why not? And why not? What is the, um, just enclosing there, AJ, then, what does the future look like for you? What's the next sort of year or two's development? What are some of the things you're really excited about?
AJ: Uh, you know, we've closed the loop here. So for us, really, it's the, the landmass grab over the next 24 months, I really want to have a big chunk of. The independent pharmacy market in the U S I'd really like to see us expand out of the U S uh, in these two years. Uh, and then we want to open the [00:44:00] door from, um, uh, national standpoint to where not only are we solving a problem boots on the ground for these pharmacies, but we can actually start to drive value back to them.
And I think with the collective network that we're building, we're really going to be able to do that, um, which is a whole nother podcast, but exciting stuff, exciting stuff coming.
Matt: Fantastic, fantastic. Well listen man, appreciate you coming on the show, appreciate you taking the time to share with us what's working for you, uh, it's um, I've really enjoyed it actually, talking to someone who's doing eCommerce and running the businesses and picking your brains a little bit, so genuinely appreciate you coming on and the best of British with, uh, with what you're doing over at Drugstore to Door.
AJ: I appreciate you having me.
Matt: Ah, it's been great. Now of course we will link to, uh, all of AJ's links, uh, in the show notes which you can get along for free with the transcript at ecommercepodcast. net or they will be coming direct to your inbox if you have done the thing which I suggested at the start which was sign up to the newsletter if you haven't go and do it because it will [00:45:00] help you yes it will so Great conversation.
Huge thanks again to AJ for joining me today. Also, a big shout out to today's show sponsor, the eCommerce Cohort. Remember, do check them out if you're in eCommerce. Go have a look. Join the membership. Be great to see you in there. eCommerceCohort. com Now, be sure to follow the eCommerce Podcast wherever you get your podcasts from because we've got yet more great conversations lined up and I don't want you to miss any of them.
And in case no one has told you yet today, let me be the first. You are awesome. Yes, you are. Created awesome. It's just a burden you have to bear. AJ's got to bear it. I've gotta bear it. You've gotta bear it as well. Now, the E-Commerce Podcast is produced by Aurion Media. You can find our entire archive of episodes on your favorite podcast app.
The team that makes this show possible is Sadaf Beynon and Tanya Hutsuliak theme song was written by Josh Edmundson and as I mentioned, the transcript and show notes.[00:46:00]
So that's it from me, that's it from AJ, thank you so much for joining us, have a fantastic week wherever you are in the world, I'll see you next time, bye for now.
