Unlock the secrets of eCommerce success in this video as Kasim sits down with Nab Ahmed, the founder of NAB Leather. In this exclusive interview, Nab shares his expert insights on how to build a profitable online business.

Discover the biggest mistakes and regrets Nab made when he first started out and how you can learn from them to avoid costly errors. Learn how to make your value proposition stand out in a crowded market, and attract loyal customers who keep returning.

Nab also reveals his top strategies for reducing returns and exchanges by 15%, boosting your average order value, building an engaged community around your brand, and gaining valuable user-generated content.

Finally, learn why social proof is essential for eCommerce success and how to use it to drive more sales and grow your business. Don't miss out on this must-listen episode for anyone looking to start or improve their eCommerce business. Tune in now!

Mentioned links:

NAB Leather: https://nableather.com/

Loox Product Reviews & Photos: https://apps.shopify.com/loox

BOGOS: https://apps.shopify.com/freegifts

AfterSell Post Purchase Upsell: https://apps.shopify.com/aftersell

By the Numbers: https://www.bythenumbersapp.com/

Northbeam: https://www.northbeam.io/

Bestie: https://apps.shopify.com/bestie

Meet with Kasim: https://sol8.com/meet-kasim/

Davie Fogarty: https://www.youtube.com/@DavieFogarty...

Connect with Nab here:

Nab on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nabeel-ah...

Nab on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nabthethird/

0:00 eCommerce Insider Secrets with Nab of NAB Leather

3:12 Backstory of NAB Leather

9:17 How Nab gets user-generated content

12:50 Other widgets and tools for eCommerce

17:39 The future for NAB Leather

22:54 Hacks and best practices for eCommerce businesses

--------------------------------

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Scott, I with Solutions eight.

This is your day of the Google =News= and I'm super excited today 'cause

I've got a gentleman here who's a phenomenal entrepreneur, but I think if

Memory Serves, started watching YouTube videos and then hired Solutions eight.

Did I get that right?

That's right, yeah.

I was listening to the perpetual Traffic Podcast and I heard you.

That was the podcast, first podcast.

That's nice.

Well, I appreciate you being here, man.

This is NAB of Nab Leather.

E-commerce store owner.

For how long, when did you launch Nab Leather?

About four years ago.

just before the pandemic.

Oh, dude.

Perfect timing.

Yeah.

And then with the pandemic, you know, just like everyone, we forced to spend

our resources to push the online.

Yeah.

And do you think the pandemic hurt or helped you?

I think it definitely helped, especially initially there was just

a huge boost in online retail Right.

And online traffic.

Right.

So I think that definitely helped.

It's so funny, dude.

'cause when the pandemic started, I was just convinced, was tightening

my belt and warning my employees and I was like, it's gonna get rocky.

And then all of a sudden things just got better and better and better.

It sounds so predatory to say, it grew my business more than any other single event.

Yeah, no, for sure.

I mean, obviously it was a terrible thing to happen to the

world, but it was the low key.

Blessing in disguise for some business owners.

Yeah.

The reason we're doing this call is because when you and I were

on a call last, I looked at your website and I was just so impressed

with everything that you've done.

It really felt like a gold standard e-com build.

So if you're watching this, I'll include links in the description of the video.

You can go to nab leather.com, n a b leather.com and Let's talk a little

bit to the, e-comm entrepreneurs out there, maybe some of the newbies.

And I'm gonna go broad and then we'll go specific.

If you could go back four years ago mm-hmm.

And like, redo some stuff, what are the big mistakes you

make that you wish could have?

I wish somebody told me this.

That's a great question.

I think for sure.

Lower the ad spend.

I feel like a lot of it was wasted.

Or, you know, we were pushing ads on creatives that weren't great.

Where I think you could lower the spend, spend on better creatives, spend on

creating a more engaged community spend on Content, just content in general, because

I think that's what people want to see.

So what we are focusing a lot now is the behind the scenes.

How are our belts created?

'cause people really care about that.

People care about what are the artisans doing?

What are the machineries, what are the tools involved?

And they're really interested to see how leather belts, wallets, everything

or whatever your product you may sell.

What's the backstory behind that?

What is the backstory?

Why, belts?

Why leather?

So me and my brother, we used to sell belts in flea markets

when we were teenagers.

We used to make belts and just sell 'em there.

And we saw, my family used to also import belts and they would sell that.

But we have an emphasis on Canadian made goods 'cause we really care about that.

So we started off, you know, selling in flea markets and now

we have our own little workshop.

That's awesome, man.

So your belts are made in Toronto or somewhere in Canada?

That's right in Toronto.

That's amazing.

Good for you.

That locally sourced, that's really tough.

From a margin perspective, generally speaking, have you been able to hurdle

that or is that still one of the issues?

It, it, it seemed like an issue at first, and it, it can sometimes still be, but you

just mark it up accordingly because Right.

People who care about Canadian made leather goods, they will pay that extra.

That's the true, we have a, client one of our longest

running clients sells hammocks.

And when you look at 'em from the outside looking in, they feel

expensive if I'm just comparing them to a hammock on Amazon.

But then you dive into the story and her and her husband take

women in Thailand out of poverty.

Teach them a skilled trade, pay them a fair wage, and they make these beautiful,

they're handmade, like truly crafted hammock versus like whatever machine made

garbage you're gonna get from Amazon.

And, and then when you hear the story, you're like, oh, of

course I'm buying this Hamm.

It's yellow leaf hammocks, by the way, for anybody that wants to go check them out.

So it sounds like you're kind of, you're playing that same game,

it's like a, not just for profit, Hey, we're here on a mission.

Mm-hmm.

And your customers are willing to pay for that quality.

Right.

Yeah.

going back to your question, to focus on that kind of message in community,

instead of just aimlessly spending ad dollars on Facebook, I think that's

something I would go back and redo.

Is that where you started Facebook?

Yep.

when the website was launched, is the trouble that everyone runs

into, how do we get traffic?

How do we get traffic?

And so we just ran into Facebook, spent a couple hundred dollars,

I think the, initially we spent a thousand, we got no sales and then

gave up on Facebook initially.

Yeah, everybody does.

That's Facebook is where you have to start.

I did the exact same thing when I was an agency a full funnel agency.

I went to Facebook first, which is really funny given what I do now, right?

Yeah.

Same story.

I got, , all the leads I got were garbage and then we just

ended up pulling the plug.

How do you make your value proposition readily apparent

in a short period of time?

So it's handmade Canadian leather made in Canada.

That feels like a lot of message.

Given how much real estate is limited?

So have you you know, specific soundbites and narratives and

figured out how to do that?

Yeah, that's a good question.

So we actually don't use that much video.

A lot of it is image with ad copy.

Hmm.

And then when we get to the website, it's in the reviews, which is, you know

what we'll talk about you almost let your customer do the talking for you.

So they'll see all that there on the landing page or on the product page.

And then the other thing is when they do sign up for our email list, we have a flow

that kind of educates them as well on, how the belts are made, what kind of leather

is used and what we do at the workshop.

Yeah.

So I'm on one of your product pages right now.

Lemme share my screen.

If you're listening to this, this is why you watch the YouTube

videos on the product page.

Beautiful imagery.

Do you do this yourself?

Do you farm this out?

Yep.

No, we did it all ourselves initially.

Now we're finally starting to.

You know, spend budget on professional photographers, bro.

Well, I mean, the fact that you did this yourself that's, to me says

you're a professional photographer.

'cause I, I can see down to like granular levels of detail on the leather.

That's all on with just the Samsung phone.

Are you kidding?

That's so funny.

I heard somebody the other day say that if you have an iPhone that's younger than two

years old, you have a better camera than James Cameron shot the most recent avatar.

Isn't that nuts?

These cameras are crazy and you're following all the right rules.

So, phenomenal imagery, really robust titles is super important.

Product descriptions, features, details and you dive deep on the

details too, which I really like.

Measurement guide.

Of the things that I love is I don't have to leave this page to make a decision.

A confused mind says no, and you're eliminating all confusion.

And we've got our little accordion here too.

And, and incidentally I like redundancy.

So you have your sizing guide here, but you also have your sizing guide there.

And you might say like, oh, well that's a repeat.

Eh, it isn't necessarily, especially if I'm on mobile, depending on where

it shows up, how it shows up, You've got your lifetime, dude, look at this.

Our belts are lifetime guaranteed.

And then you show a day one and a day 3000.

How cool.

That's maybe one of the coolest guarantee visualizations I've ever seen.

Thanks.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We definitely added the size guide twice.

That was actually intentional we noticed that it reduced returns

and exchanges by like 15%.

Oh wow.

You know, putting an emphasis to make sure they measured themselves

correctly on the guarantee.

How often do you have to put your money where your mouth is?

Rarely.

Rarely.

'cause we, we source the leather Really, I guess we're very picky with the leather.

Mm.

rarely does anything go wrong with the leather.

If anything, it's the buckle, which is kind of counterintuitive

'cause the buckle's like steel.

But somehow, right, like it does break sometimes whether people

drop it or there's a lot of tension from some bigger people.

So we do have to sometimes change the buckle on, that guarantee.

Where are you getting your buckles?

From Taiwan and Brazil mostly.

Okay.

And then from the states?

Yeah, from Jersey.

I think we have a client that sells buckles.

I should make an intro.

that'd be awesome.

We've got our delivery outline here.

You ship worldwide?

So talk to me a little bit about fulfillment.

How are you storing, fulfilling managing processing?

Are you outsourcing that or is that all internal?

Nope, it's all internal.

We do use shipper who gives us better rates.

I guess.

they get better rates from, from Canada post.

Which is our main shipping here.

It's basically arbitrage.

They sell those shipping to us for slightly higher than we can

get directly from Canada Post.

That's cool.

And then this was, I think the reason that we initially booked this call

is I saw this review widget you were using reminds me of the good

old fashioned Firestone footer.

And dude, I love the fact that you got all of this user generated

content, the social proof.

And if you're listening, not watching, It feels like an Instagram feed almost.

You've got a picture of a dude wearing the belt and then the stars, the

reviews are also really detailed.

How are you getting this content out of these people?

This feels like a really lift.

Right?

That's a great question.

So we use an app called Luke's.

It's a Shopify integrated app.

How do you spell it?

Luke's, L o o x, that app is what's being used here?

That's right.

So essentially after a customer order has been fulfilled, you

can set a set amount of time and Luke's will send them an email.

Asking for review.

And on top of that you can incentivize them with, you know, 15, 20, however

much percent to leave a picture.

And so this is, powerful in two ways in that you do get the picture and

it's very good for social proof, but it also gives them a coat and

increases L T V and retention.

Oh dude, that is brilliant.

And I'm looking at yours.

You give 'em 15% off for a photo and 25% off for a video.

Right.

And that's a change we just made because, One of the Luke's guys

called me up a few weeks ago and said, Hey, we offer video now.

Video is super powerful, U G C, so try to get some more video on your site.

Yeah, I love that man.

That's brilliant.

I'm gonna be so obnoxious.

Everybody's got, random ideas, right?

But it'd be cool if Luke's had a feature that increased the percentage

discount with character count.

So the more the people type, you're at seven and it goes 8, 9, 10, and it

just starts to, to stack on that would be really, Dude, this is amazing.

Yeah, I really like that.

all these great little product creators too, for Shopify.

Good for that.

And Luke's isn't little, it has 12,000 reviews.

So this is obviously a, really well run app.

10 bucks a month, is that about what you're paying or do you have to ascend?

No, we have to ascend.

I think we're paying around $50 a month.

Okay.

But for the value that it also, that it brings, I mean, it's

nothing, in fact, you get that more in just retention from that app.

than just, you know, paying $50 a month.

Yeah.

I sell one extra belt.

Yeah, exactly.

One extra belt.

Boom.

You got it.

What I really like about the videos though is it's true real u g c.

It's not like, what, everyone's running on Facebook ads with fake U G C, where

they're paying below or something else.

They're getting these actors to make U G C and I've done

that we get, we've gotten that.

But with this, it's real.

It's your customer, it's their words.

They're endorsing it.

And what I've found, like psychologically.

When you get your customer to make a video, initially they were just, they

liked your product, maybe they loved it, but once they've taken that step to make

the video, it's almost psychologically they've made themselves into a fan.

Now, they love your brand.

They're a brand ambassador.

They're good point.

That is, they're almost like they're now convincing themselves.

Right.

Exactly.

So I, I find that very powerful and.

And with that, , they will share all your stuff and, and it just creates that

community right there on your website.

What other little widgets and tools are you using that people should know about?

I.

the standard post, purchase upsell, the buy one get one type apps where

you can get a, give them a free gift over a certain purchase amount.

Yeah, so we do free wallet over $200.

Then we have the post purchase upsell where with one click

they can add something else.

You give 'em a little discount and they can add something

else right after purchase.

How are you doing?

Is that all in Shopify using their.

OTOs and upsells?

Or are they third party apps?

Third party apps, yeah, most of those.

, what are the third party apps, if you don't mind sharing?

Yeah, no problem.

Let me bring them up right now.

Tool time is one of my favorite discussions.

It's like, what are, because you've already done all the work, one of

them is called BOGOs, B O G O Ss, so that's a, you know, free gift.

Where after they send a spend a certain amount, you can offer a free gift.

It raises the average order value.

It's been pretty effective, especially around holiday time.

Then we have after sell, post-purchase upsell, so that'll be right

after they finish their order, they'll land on a thank you page.

And then on that thank you page, you can say, Hey, add another belt or add

another wallet or some complimentary item for some discount that you offer.

And all they have to do is just click and it gets added to the same order.

it's fulfilled in the same order, so you're saving on

shipping that way as well.

Oh, cool.

And it looks like after sell integrates with Luke's.

Oh, I didn't even know that.

Yeah.

Well, I mean, it says integrates with always interesting to see what they

mean by that because then you dive into the integration, it's like, oh,

we'll share a name back and forth.

I'm like, well thank you for nothing.

But yeah, under the, integrates with and integrates with Luke's.

Makes you wonder how it is that those two play together.

'cause that'd be kind of cool too.

Yeah, I'll definitely look into that.

Does Luke's let you pull the media it's producing and use it for other things?

Like could you go use it on an Instagram ad?

Yeah.

Yeah, it does.

Yep.

You can use all of that.

You can export all the reviews with photos into an Excel.

That's awesome, man.

I love that.

I think the most important discussion e-commerce store owners could possibly

have is, how do I increase L T V?

Mm-hmm.

Yep.

Are you using Klaviyo?

Yes, we are.

Yep.

For email.

Okay.

What about by the numbers?

By the numbers?

Like what percentage of.

There's a Shopify app called Buy the Numbers that my business

partner's obsessed with.

It's this one.

Okay.

this is where like he goes for C M O Math basically.

But it's not cost prohibitive at all.

I forget what it costs, , 30 bucks a month, 50 bucks a month for the premium.

And it breaks down just the marketing numbers you would need to

make really intelligent decisions.

given that you're a solution's a client, this is what you

would use to go yell at us.

So you pull up by the numbers and you're like, you guys listen.

So it doesn't do attribution exceptionally well just because attribution's

hard But worth looking at, We just signed up with what's her name?

North Beam for attribution and it has some.

Okay, that's great.

Similar, it has similar stats to by the numbers that you just

brought up from what I can see.

Yeah.

North Beam for attribution is, absolutely preferable.

we pimp them out to everybody.

I'm an investor, so I'm also very partial, but I was a user before I was an investor.

I tell everybody North Beam is the best bad option ' cause, and I'd say that

if Austin, the c e o were on this call, like there's no way you're ever gonna

get actual visibility and attribution.

Yeah.

So all of these software applications are like, We guess this And North Beam

they just do a way better job guessing.

we're using them.

And then there's another app called Bestie on Shopify, which is a post-purchase

survey app, which is really cool.

Basically, you can ask your customer after they purchase, like, Hey,

where did you hear about us?

And then you can show them.

If they say Facebook, then you can show 'em, Hey, did you see any of these ads?

And then they'll click that.

No way.

Yeah, it's really cool.

So we're using That is brilliant.

You know what I like about them?

They only have nine reviews, which means they're new.

They're very new.

Yep.

Yeah.

I love figuring stuff like that out because that's what a great way to go.

Put yourself ahead of the curve.

And they're actually relatively, for a thousand orders or

less, it's 50 bucks a month.

That's right.

Yep.

Fairly cheap.

Dude, this has been great.

I really appreciate that.

Yeah.

I'm gonna go play with bestie.

what's on the horizon for nab leather?

So like, I, obviously you want to grow, you wanna scale.

Is that vertical?

Is that horizontal?

Are you gonna add more products, try to scale more ad spend?

Like what's the, the growth path?

I've kind of been obsessed with digital marketing and online recently.

Yeah.

Someone gave me a quick call about a month ago and just changed my mindset

about how to leverage the brand.

And she gave me a call and she was actually trying to sell me something and

then she goes, Hey, are you in retail?

And then I'm just like retail?

What do you mean retail?

Like, I thought what I do is retail.

She's like, Are you in any boutique stores?

Blah, blah, blah.

I'm like, oh, no, I'm not.

She's like, Hey, let me hook you up with, with Mark's Warehouse.

they're a brand here in, Canada and they're looking

for a leather belt supplier.

And I'm like, really?

So I was like, you know what, why are we not in retail?

You know, we can, we can produce something like five to 7,000 belts a month.

Why do we not leverage the brand and, wholesale to these smaller boutiques

all the way up to bigger stores?

And, and leverage a brand, give them a, a suggested retail price, whole

wholesale to them based on volume.

So that's kind of my goal this year, dude.

I love that.

How do you do that?

Is that just like knocking on doors and meeting buyers?

That's a great question.

Yeah, that's what it's been so far.

We've also had a couple people email us in the past and we've

never really put that much.

Effort into them.

But now whoever does contact us and whoever we contact, we just send out

free samples from our bestsellers.

We're like, Hey, check these out.

Put 'em up on your store.

I'm telling you they're gonna sell.

Give us a call back after.

That's so cool.

I love that idea.

Do you do any consulting?

I don't.

No.

You should.

yeah, what's gonna happen is the video goes live or the podcast goes live and

man, I see folks that are ravenous for this is e-comm store owners that are

actually willing to, and it's only, don't allow it to be a distraction.

I mean, you've got your thing and you know what you're doing and

you're super successful at it.

So maybe don't do consulting, but.

If somebody wanted to reach out to you, just have an hourly in mind.

Sure.

And the way I do this, by the way, is I charge the amount of money that I would

need to charge in order to not be pissed off at having to take that call, which

for me right now is two grand a month.

So if somebody goes and tries to book with me which you can do it under my link

tree, you can go to soli.com/meet cassam.

Mm-hmm.

And if somebody wants to meet, it's two grand for an hour.

If someone's gonna pay me two grand for an hour, I'm like, I'll

sit on a call with you for a dude.

But it, what's funny too is I started at 500 bucks and

then people started to pay it.

Yeah.

And I'm not worth $500 an hour, by the way.

It's just because I'm on perpetual traffic.

And, you know, they think I'm smarter than I am.

then when they started to pay it, I boosted it 2000 and I boosted

15, and now I'm at two grand and I stop when people stop paying it.

Yeah.

So you know that nobody's paying me.

two grand an hour, but have that hourly in mind because I, have a

feeling that if you do enough of these and with as smart as you are doing

as many codes as you've cracked I could see you doing really well in the

consulting space for e-commerce stores.

Thanks, man.

I'll definitely consider, I've paid in the past, I've paid other,

brands that were bigger than mine.

I've paid two, $300.

US dollars, somewhere in Canada.

So US is a big deal for us, but two, 300 US dollars an hour for consulting.

And I think that's how I was able to crack some of these

codes just by listening to them.

Yeah.

Oh dude, I do the exact same thing.

If I have a problem, I go find the smartest, most successful, most expensive

person in that space and I just pay them.

I did this with Dennis U.

I paid Dennis Yu, I think he's two grand for an hour too, and I gave him this two

grand and it's worth 200,000 to me, right?

Yeah.

What it's yielded.

Yeah.

It's amazing.

Moses says the same thing, just go find the absolute best in it.

Pay him.

Yep.

It'll save you so much time.

And, yeah, dude, that guy, God, you wanna talk about the

smartest market in the world.

I hate him so much.

He's so smart and ripped.

And it's like, just have the good grace to not be like insanely fit too.

You jackass.

Yeah, I swear.

Who else do you listen to?

What other thought leaders do you follow?

I've been listening to him a lot recently.

there's a guy, David Fogarty, he's an e-commerce brand owner too.

He had this brand called Udi, who I've been following recently.

He has his own YouTube channel as well, but apparently his, e-com

brand is worth upwards of 200 mil.

I'm not sure how accurate that is, but he's been someone been

watching specifically for branding.

Oh, I got him here.

How I went from $500 to half a billion in five years.

That's a good video.

good for him.

300,000 subscribers.

Yep.

I'm always so jealous of, I have 25,000 subscribers and I had

to claw for every one of them.

I know it's not easy.

I'm like, how does somebody get to 300,000?

You just have to be better than me is what it is.

You have to be better content.

Yeah.

Cool man.

What other notes, nuggets, tips, tricks, hacks, best practices would

you have for any C store owner?

To really put an emphasis on social proof, and this is one

of the first lessons I learned.

So when I started the store, I had trouble bringing traffic in and when I

did get traffic, I wasn't getting sales.

We were very, very low conversion rate.

And I was seriously depressed about this six to eight months in like zero sales.

And we put so much effort in like the photography I did all myself.

was watching YouTube videos on photography, so it was a lot of work

and to get no sales really hurt.

I didn't wanna give up and so I went to Etsy.

'cause you know, it's a marketplace for handmade goods.

Was kind of right up my alley and I try, , I put everything to Etsy.

And two, three months go by and still no sales.

And I'm just really upset.

And I go to the flea market one day and there's this lady and she's selling

masks, Toronto Raptors, Toronto Maple Leafs masks, and, and they're flying.

And I call my friends, I'm like, Hey, you guys want some Like I, there's,

I got these masks and all of them were like, yes, get us the masks.

So I went and I bought and I bought like 50 of them, and I gave 'em

out to all my friends, and I'm like, why don't I sell these?

So I started selling them on Etsy and because they're established brand.

The masks started selling.

Hmm.

I started selling very quickly and I was super happy.

I finally got some sales.

And like three months in, I get a cease and desist letter like,

Hey, you can't be doing this.

I'm like, damn.

So I took all the listings down, but interestingly enough,

suddenly my bell started selling.

I hadn't sold a single bill yet, but now that on Etsy there's like

800 sales, 200 reviews, it almost didn't matter what I was selling.

People would just look at the 800, the number 800 and suddenly they would trust.

Now, there is a subset of that who will dive deeply into the reviews.

But there's also a subset that aren't, they just looked at the

number, Hey, eight under sales here.

it's not only the belt started to sell and as this belt sold, we got

more reviews and then more belts sold and more reviews and so on.

So that was my first lesson the power of social Proof.

And then with that capital, we were able to invest in

Facebook ads and Instagram ads.

And the rest is kind of history.

bro, that is a freaking brilliant nugget for my editing team.

I want that cut out as a reel.

That was so good.

And you know what, if you wanted to be really shady about

it, that's a hell of a hack.

You go and find like the bestselling brand, you go, plaster Jay-Z's face on

something, sell as many of them as you can until you get the cease and desist, but

you've already like, juiced your reviews.

That's right.

Yeah, man, that is absolutely brilliant.

I'm gonna steal that story from you that's going on.

Perpetual traffic for sure.

That's awesome that I, that was one of my goals to make it on there.

that's a really good one, man.

I appreciate that.

Where can people find you if they wanna follow you?

On Instagram, NAB the third or on LinkedIn?

Just Nabeel Ahmed on LinkedIn.

Yeah.

Send me links to that and I'll make sure they're included in the show notes.

Are you the third?

No, I honestly, I just had that Instagram handle forever.

Oh, I was gonna say that's pretty cool if you are.

Cool man.

Well I appreciate you hopping on, dude.

This has been awesome.

I've learned a lot rooting for you, obviously with your e-comm store.

Just super impressed with everything you've done.

I love that you've just bootstrapped and kind of figured all this

shit out, , one step at a time.

I think that's super cool.

Last words to you, parting gifts, parting statements.

No, that's awesome.

Thanks for meeting with me.

I think that was a great idea for the consulting.

I will consider it, it's just a way to give back as well.

That's awesome.

So if you're watching this and you want go con nab into some consulting time,

reach out to him on Instagram or LinkedIn and hopefully he's uh, not too busy.

But this is awesome dude.

I'm gonna keep an eye on the growth of your brand.

Hopefully have you back on the show.

And other than that, if you're watching, I shoot a video every

day, like, comment, subscribe, and I'll catch you all tomorrow.

Thanks, man.

Take care.