In this episode of the eCommerce Podcast, host Matt Edmundson interviews Alex Back, CEO and founder of Couch.com, about his eCommerce journey and the transition from his previous venture, Apartment 2B, to his new project: Couch.com. 

1. Moving Away from Traditional eCommerce: After exiting Apartment 2B, Alex founded Couch.com with a new approach. Instead of directly selling products, Couch.com focuses on providing valuable content and education to consumers about buying couches. This includes brand reviews and guides to help users make informed decisions. This strategic shift aims to create a scalable platform that benefits both consumers and retailers.
2. Importance of Quality Over Quantity in SEO: Alex emphasises the significance of focusing on high-quality content rather than producing a large volume of articles. He believes that having the best, most informative articles on specific topics (e.g., how to clean a couch) is more effective for SEO than a scattergun approach. This quality-first strategy helps Couch.com rank well on Google and attract organic traffic.
3. Iterative Approach and Flexibility in Business: Alex highlights the importance of being flexible and iterative in business. He acknowledges that initial plans often need adjustments and that being open to pivoting is crucial for success. For example, Couch.com is currently focusing on brand reviews as the quickest path to monetization, even though the ultimate goal is to provide a comprehensive marketplace for couches. This adaptability allows the business to respond to market needs and opportunities effectively.

[EP] - Alex Back | Reimagining eCommerce With Content-Driven Marketplaces

Couch. Couch. com! You get the right accent. That's, that's pretty impressive, Alex, not gonna lie. From Couch. com, we're gonna be talking about his eCommerce journey. Uh, here's, well I'm gonna read this by him in just a second, but you're gonna want to grab your notebooks, but before you do, let me tell you a warm welcome to you.

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So you're definitely going to want to subscribe to that. Head over to eCommercePodcast. net where you can find out more information because why would you not want to? Yes. Okay, so let's talk about Alex. Now, Alex is the visionary CEO and founder of Couch. com, the latest game changer in the quest for the perfect couch at unbeatable prices.

Many a comfy seeker, far and wide. Where on earth do I score an awesome couch? So, buckle up for a cosy ride, grab your blanket, grab your cup of tea. Oh yes, because we're heading to Furniture Nirvana, because with Couch. com, finding your dream couch is no longer just a dream. Love that. That's one of the best intros we've had for a long time.

Alex, welcome to the show, man. Great to have you. How are you doing?

Alex Back: Best intro indeed. If they gave out Webby Awards for best intro to podcasts, I think you should be on that nominations list, Matt. Unbelievable.

Matt Edmundson: Yeah, yeah. I wish I could claim credit for that. I really do. But, um, I can't. It's the team. The awesome team.

Alex Back: Yeah, I'm all the way on the Pacific. I live in Los Angeles, California.

Matt Edmundson: Where the weather is sunny and the weather is warm and the sun is shining and the night is setting here. So a warm, warm welcome to you.

Tell me, um, have you always been in LA? Were you sort of born and bred there or are you an import?

Alex Back: Great question. Most people in LA are imports. from other places. It is usually the entertainment business and, or the sunshine, sometimes the surfing that brings people here. But, um, I'm from New York city, so I had a big, you know, two big cities, but a pretty, pretty big life change when I was younger.

I've lived here for about 20 years and I've split my life in one place and the other and very interesting places to be from. Brooklyn, New York,

Matt Edmundson: LA. Yeah, I mean you can't get any further away from New York and still stay in the continental United States, can you?

I mean, when you do the math, it is quite literally. Yeah, yeah.

Matt Edmundson: I have, um, I have two sons, uh, both of which are currently at university and one of them went to St Andrews, one of them went to Exeter. Now I appreciate you might not know the geography of the British Isles, but I live in Liverpool and you cannot get further away from Liverpool, really, uh, further north than St Andrews and you can't get any further away, really south.

So, um, I, I said, I said to my boys, I'm not quite sure what it is you're trying to tell me, but I'm not that impressed, children. And they just laughed at me. Well, sometimes,

Alex Back: well, sometimes Matt, you got to look in the mirror and figure out why certain things might be happening, I guess.

Matt Edmundson: Yeah, absolutely. I just, I don't know if I'll ever find it out, if I'm honest with you.

Alex Back: Absolutely. So Apartment 2B is a Still around today.

Their website existed as sort of like an online showroom. Um, and that was very, very common back then because the biggest barrier to entry was sort of just to get people to buy furniture online or, or make a large purchase. So we came a long way from that.

Not couches, not furniture, um, tiny little things that fit in tiny little boxes. Uh, so you came along, it is a bit of a game changer. Game Changer. What caused you to sort of think, I don't know, let's go sell dining room tables and chairs online and see what happens?

Alex Back: Well, it's a pretty good story. My, uh, business partner and co founder of Apartment 2B, he sort of grew up in the furniture industry, right?

His dad was a manufacturer, sales rep, like a Willy Loman type who's, you know, on the road, calling on different accounts. And Matt ended up getting into the furniture industry after college. He ran a popular retail store here in LA and then, um, went and became a manufacturer sales rep, kind of like his old man.

He was selling a lot of couches on, in coastal California. That was his. His territory as a sales rep. And then he gets an email out of the blue. Someone wanted to open an online account. It's like, okay, well, that's interesting. He called up the factory in Mississippi and asked them, Hey, do you mind if I open up this online account?

Do we have any online accounts? So like, No, we don't have anybody. So go take a crack at it, son. So he goes out, he opens up this account, asks them what they needed to, to do so. He's like, well, would you like to have an opening order? They're like, well, no, we, we don't need any inventory. We just need images and, uh, you know, product detail on the spreadsheet.

And this was something that was really taken off. That entity, that online retailer, was called CSN Stores, which is now Wayfair. Ah, okay. So it just goes to show how we felt like our finger was right on the pulse of something very big. That's pretty much all we had at the time. We didn't know what the heck we were doing, to be honest with you.

But we figured it out.

Matt Edmundson: Now, so where did the name Apartment 2B come from?

Furnishing solution, right? A whole home solution for everything you need for your apartment. We used to sell dishes. We used to sell towels, um, in addition to the furniture and all of these sort of complete home packages. The knickknacks. Choose. Nicknack, pattywacket, no, yes, all the knickknacks and, uh, we, all the things you would need for your home.

Matt Edmundson: worked.

So what happened in the, in the, the apartment two B grew. You exited and then you thought, well, let's get back in it and do couch

Alex Back: Let's get back in it. . Uh, let's gonna get back in and do couch. Yeah, let's get back on that horse. Yeah, that's, lemme back on that horse. I mean, that's basically what happened. Uh, no really it was so, so yeah, we, we grew the company and we bootstrapped it for. Uh, about seven or eight years and we're approached by a, uh, mid major retail chain here in the States.

Uh, well, we, we had at the time of acquisition, probably under 20. Um, and they benefited from us in many ways. I was in an executive team meeting for four years. We all learned a lot and we achieved a lot. And, um, after four years of staying on as COO, it was time for me to move on.

Matt Edmundson: Yeah.

com and something hit me that like. This is something that I, if I got this domain, I can make this into something much bigger and much more scalable than the world that I sort of had been in. I'm just a singular direct to consumer brand.

Mm

Alex Back: hmm. This is a platform for the entire industry to benefit from, where the users can come and get education about where and how to buy a couch.

This thing that, as you mentioned before, is not a repeatable purchase or, or, or, you know, regular purchase. It is something that happens over, you know, five, six, seven years in between each purchase. So people are generally very, very under, under educated about how to do, how to do this thing, how to buy the right couch for them.

Um, so I'm intending to bring in the users that are looking for couches, And I'm intending for the advertisers of the industry, all the retailers, like the ones that I used to run, um, to be very happy to have some very warm leads of people who are ready to put their butts in some couches. In

Matt Edmundson: some couches.

No, I love it. So this is what fascinates me here. I got a lot of questions for you, uh, if I'm honest. Um, You went down the traditional eCommerce route, right, uh, where you're, you're buying product, you're selling product, you're selling to customers online, direct to consumer, you're shipping it out, um, or you're using, you know, uh, companies that do that.

Why did you not just go, well, buy couch. com because that's a brilliant domain and I'll put couches on it and flog them to end users again. I'm kind of curious what your thinking was in that.

Alex Back: Yeah. I think the biggest thing is that I believe the opportunity. www. aurionmedia. com You know, would go up against my former brand.

So that, that just allowed me to think outside the box a little, right. Knowing that I didn't want to do the exact same thing. And then I just started like thinking I probably made some lists and I listened to them. You know, I wrote pretty bright notes everywhere and I probably wrote some notes down about, you know, how I can leverage my experience, my, my unique sort of positioning in this market.

I'm understanding the user, understanding the manufacturing side of things, understanding large retailers, small retailers, online brick and mortar. And how do I bring it all together and what's really needed? And so, like I described, I think, I think there truly is a huge opportunity here. Um, and uh, um, the industry mostly, mostly on the industry side, like the industry and the retailers, there's very little, very little branding in furniture.

Mm-Hmm.

Alex Back: Um, what's a, you know, what's, what are the best retailers that you should consider for that pink tufted couch that's gonna be good for cats that you need in two days in your home? There's not a lot of retailers that could to serve that specific need, but our intention in our marketplace and, and, and, and, um.

Brand database that we're creating and putting together is to allow users to find those things more easily. That's really intriguing. I, I'm, I'm

Um, but I, I think that the rise of marketplaces fascinates me. And, and, and you've decided to sort of go down this road and

how do you, how do you do what you do in the sense of, I'm imagining you are focusing much more on the content of the website and on getting advertisers. For the site versus, I'm thinking about, you know, website optimization, for example. I'm, I'm assuming there are some subtle changes in your thinking that have had to occur

Alex Back: big time.

We were involved in, you name a marketplace, I've had some experience with it. And in every case, If you take someone's money, you're going to be on the hook for that purchase and you're going to have to focus a lot of your effort and resources on doing that. Case in point, at my company. By the end when I left, you know, we had, we were part of a much larger company, but the part that I managed directly had 40 employees and about 34 of them were focused on customer care, operations, logistics.

I had five or six people on product, product, merchandising, eCommerce, and marketing. Just to give you a sense, the percentage breakdown is so heavily weighted in the operational area. So I wanted to focus on what I think we can do best without getting, you know, sort of blinded by, um, by the marketplace or eCommerce aspects of it, as much as those are very comfortable to me.

Um, and not just like finding tricky ways to get them to convert on our site. Yeah,

Matt Edmundson: yeah. Well, I, I'm loving the idea and I, I, I'm, I'm, I'm fascinated. How long have you been doing couch. com?

Alex Back: So right now when we're recording this, it's the end of April. Um, I acquired the domain back in July. I stood up what we have now, which is currently a WordPress site.

That's been our main focus as I work with my tech partner to build a brand. The ultimate platform, which has, you know, as you can tell from everything I've said about it, we have some, you know, pretty scalable ideas and big scope concepts that we're trying to achieve. So it wasn't just like a Shopify theme and, you know, turn the lights on type of situation.

Matt Edmundson: Yeah, yeah, no fair. I'm curious though, why WordPress? It's not a name I've heard for a while actually, WordPress.

So we're sort of in a, in an identity shift in a way, um, certainly in the eyes of Google, as we move to a completely different platform and sort of self identify more as a marketplace than a content site. Um, but we are in the place now where. Yeah, WordPress was literally just to get content up and get it ranking and it's working.

Um, we're, you know, we ranking for a lot of very high value terms, um, that had we just waited to launch the ultimate platform, we would, we wouldn't be doing. So I'm really happy that we got started when we did as difficult as it has been to ride the wave, um, and figure it all out. But we're in a good spot right now.

That this has got to be right, that's got to be right, this has got to be right. And I'm imagining, and correct me if I'm wrong, that over the last however many months, you know, eight, nine months this has been live, you've made an awful lot of sort of smaller pivots along the way to get to where you are now.

Had you have waited until now, do you think the product would be? As good as it is?

Alex Back: I love that question. I've listened, you know, in the last year, all I did when I left my last company, I took my shirt off. We're very similarly complex. I've never had a tan before in my life. I don't know, have you had a tan before in your life?

Matt Edmundson: I've had what they call the red tan. Uh, I get burnt very, very easily. Like, yeah, the red tan. Yeah.

Yeah.

Show me a startup who hasn't pivoted that's incredibly successful. I would be shocked, shocked because, um, and some of the best ones are the ones that have remained nimble enough mentally to be able to make a shift when a shift is necessary. So approaching this business as an iterative process is, I think, like, uh, One of my superpowers right now, like I don't really care, Matt, how we get there.

If this is going to hit first, if we're right now, we're focused on brand reviews. I don't think that that's the essence of what the best, the best value that we can offer, but if that's our quickest path to monetization right now, yeah, okay. Let's focus on that for a few months and then we can move on to the other stuff.

Matt Edmundson: Do you, if you don't mind me asking, when you exited, uh, uh, Apartment 2B, I'm assuming that that gave you a level of financial independence and has that then giving you a security maybe to play around with this a bit more, that.

But maybe you didn't have to say, for example, with apartment 2B, you know, um, I, I, I'm kind of curious where you are with that.

Alex Back: Yeah. Well, I'll tell you something. It costs a lot to stand outside without your shirt on playing basketball all day. You got two kids in private school. I've been bleeding money for the last year, my friend.

I think everyone just like the default is you think about laying on the beach or buying a house, you know, whatever. Um, and then I talked to a lot of people who have just use, use this to get to the next, to the next level, much like any, any good investment. I mean, you start somewhere in the stock market and something hits and then you, you can either cash out or you can reinvest it and keep going.

And that's the path that I chose.

Matt Edmundson: Now, a very similar story. I've exited a few business and each time you exit, you, you take that capital event and I think you invest it into the next phase of you really. And I. Investing in yourself, I think, is always a, is a, it's not always a safe bet, but I think it, it makes the most sense to me, and so, exactly what you've said, and it, I'm, I am curious though, Alex, if you, it's, we obviously get people listening to the show at very different places in their, in their walk in their eCommerce journey.

Alex Back: Oh, well, there's a lot. There's a lot of advice I'd give myself. But the first thing I'm thinking about is, because we just talked about it, um, I gave the example of, you know, me sort of going after brand reviews right now, um, because that is the quickest path to monetization. Now why is that the quickest path, just a quick aside, it's because we're catching users or customers at the lower funnel part of their journey when they're close.

I'm not, I don't, I don't love this concept. Ultimately I want to help people find. Where to buy couches. I don't want to help them, you know, what was the deal necessarily. So, um, this is an example of, you know, just, I wouldn't call it a pivot. It's just a focus on something that's the reality of the situation is I need to be revenue positive soon with this company.

Um, Not only for my own personal, personal stake in the game, but also just to prove the concept that this is a business that can make money, that there is a model here that's worth continuing to invest in. So it's ultimately just a representative of, of accepting the reality of your situation, right? You may have some lofty goals.

You don't have to achieve, you know, the, the, your full scale idea or concept out of the gate. You can take baby steps. No one really cares. It's all about how you sell it to them in the future. Um, You know, no one's going to look back at every, every little thing you ever did. You know, you got to support yourself.

You've got to stay healthy and mentally focused. So if you need to, if you need to, you know, go resell wireless headphones for a little while, rather than creating your own, or maybe selling the ones that you think are the best ones that are not Apple AirPods out there, and that's your focus just to get on the map

and

Alex Back: make some money right away.

Matt Edmundson: Yeah. No, I love that. Do you think that, um, the, the path that you've gone down where you're, I mean, you're very focused on, on your content, you know, a few years ago in eCom that the buzzword was content marketing.

It sort of seems to fizzled off slightly now. But if I was going to sell, say, wireless headphones. Um, and I, I, I, one option is I could retail some other stuff, but if I guess I'm doing it a side hustle and I don't need to make money this month, would it make sense for me to invest in a content marketing strategy where I am starting to put content out there in wireless headphones?

Um, knowing that there is going to be, I don't know, three, six months before I really start to see an uplift in traffic.

Alex Back: That is a tough one. And I talked a lot about this with, um, colleagues in eCommerce recently. When do you invest in SEO?

Um,

Alex Back: content marketing or whatever you want to call it. When do you invest in organic?

I think for me, if I had to do one thing differently early on in my former company, it would be, I would triple down. On SEO

because

Alex Back: mind you, hindsight is 20, 20. It's a beautiful thing. If I knew we were going to be around 13, 14, 15 years later, I mean, like, okay, this is a business that's going to last. If we invest now, we are literally going to, if we invest now in SEO hardcore, we are going to save so much money, millions of dollars in the future, millions it could have saved users that we were acquiring from a paid advertising Platform where we could have just gotten them organically off of their Google search.

Right. Do I want to spend all my time right now having awesome conversations with people like you? I do. That's what I really, what I want to do, but I probably should be doing other things too with my time. So it's all a balance of, I think what you can spend your time on.

Matt Edmundson: Fair enough. I was always told you when people ask me that question, when's the best time to invest in SEO?

com?

Alex Back: Yeah, great question. I think a couple of things. One, taking a fairly focused approach is, uh, way easier to do than doing sort of a blanketed, I call it spray and pray, um, you know, approach. Like for instance, in the furniture space, there are tons of keywords that have tons of search volume where users are searching for new couch, couch.

How To Buy A Sofa, How To Clean My Couch.

Matt Edmundson: Yeah.

We're focusing on single articles. And what that is is overall it's, it's, it's, um, it is a vote of confidence for quality. Over quantity. And I think honestly, that's the name of the game in SEO right now. Having one article, that's the best freaking article about cleaning your couch or having the best freaking article about wireless headphones in the industry is better than writing a thousand articles about wireless headphones and the adjacent keywords.

I think doing something that's real, that is not AI, all the kind, all the insider networks that I'm in. Everybody's super. Super against AI content right now, not just because it's of its current, um, detectability, but also its future detectability. This is a problem, major problem for Google that Google needs to solve.

Matt Edmundson: It's always been the case. I think well, I'm gonna say it's always been the case you know, these these things come and go in sort of fads and cycles don't they but Do you use AI at all in your content creation?

Do you use it as a start? Do you use it for idea generation? Or are you just literally, no, I'm going to research these keywords and I'm going to, me, myself and I am going to put on my wireless headphones, list some music and create the best content.

Alex Back: Okay. We're definitely starting a wireless headphone business.

Yeah. I feel like we're getting ranked. We

Matt Edmundson: get, we put the transcript on the website. We're getting ranked for wireless

headphones. How to

Matt Edmundson: buy the best wireless headphones. How To Buy The Best Wireless Headphones For Small Ears, How To Buy The Best Wireless Headphones For Big Ears. I figure someone's going to find us.

I love that. That's something we were discussing before we started recording. Yeah, it's bizarre. Anyway,

okay,

Alex Back: all right, um, yeah, I, we, okay, we used AI a lot in, in our content and creation. Um, it's sort of, sort of as an extrapolation of doing keyword research, right? Keyword research in itself, in and of itself, is sort of a version of AI.

You're saying, what are the people searching for the most? You're asking a question and getting quick answers to it, okay? So, now you have the terms that are most searched, or the ones you want to focus on. Okay, well, Give me some information about this. I mean, I could go research it myself. I would say doing, using AI to do research and compiling thoughts and ideas is probably pretty safe.

Um, so the, and as I see a lot of our content. People in my, in people in my part of the content industry right now, they're going back and making things better. You know, you don't have only, you don't get just one chance and you're done. Yeah, yeah. You can go back in and mess with stuff. But ultimately I think using AI as a tool to help you, um, is great.

Yeah.

Alex Back: Um, I have one really good idea, which I think other people have validated too. And you mentioned transcript before. I think doing this type of thing, like I have a lot of couch knowledge in my head and I know a lot of people who know a lot about couch. Yeah. So what I've been doing recently, I don't have a podcast per se yet, but I do have been recording videos with people in my industry.

I did one this morning with the CEO of a manufacturer. We had a great conversation. Get the transcripts from that and ask AI to summarize that transcript of absolute real human material into something that is accessible. You know, a short synopsis. To me, I think that's safe so far, but nobody really knows.

I hope that made some sense and was helpful. Yeah, no,

I'm just scratching the surface again with my questions. Um, when you X to Department 2B, looking back, What's one piece of advice that you wish you'd had that you didn't, um, have, that would maybe help that process be a little bit better, smoother, more enjoyable?

I think what's the difference is, is investing the amount in, investing the amount of time that it takes to find the right people to delegate to and investing the money. That it takes to pay those people to do their job the right way. I was always sort of averse to delegating. I'm like, okay, but they can't, they can't do this.

Like I can spend 10 hours showing, but they, but they show me nothing that tells me that they can do this part of my job that I do like adequately. Well, I think that was ultimately my fault because I didn't invest or see the bigger picture enough to. To hire and, and surround myself with the right types of people right now, as I'm sort of trying to figure out exactly specifically how I'm scaling couch.

Now I've taken this, taken it to where. You know, we're seeing some growth, but I need someone to help take it to the next level. I think using other people to help you is key.

Matt Edmundson: Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. A lesson I feel like I am still learning, uh, and will continue to learn, no doubt, for the next 20 years of my life.

Yeah,

Matt Edmundson: I might get there. I don't know. I don't know. I just don't know. Um, Alex, listen, uh, we have this new segment, this new slot, uh, where, which we, uh, At the moment, we're calling Ask Matt. At some point, I will, I will use the beautiful AI and come up with a better name for it. I've just not had a chance. And this is where you get to ask me a question, but I answer it on social media.

So if you could ask me one question that I would answer, what would that question be good, sir?

Um, or do something greater and use their former experience as a springboard or catapult to the next level. Um, what do you, do you, what do you feel like drives you forward after exits? What is it personally about you and how maybe there's a more, maybe there's a relatable sort of anecdote or lesson or idea or concept that the listeners would, would appreciate?

What is, what is your driving force? I mean, why are you not sitting on a beach right now somewhere?

Matt Edmundson: Very good question. I will answer that on social media, of course, uh, part of the answer. Sneak preview. I just enjoy talking to people like your good self. Why would I not want to do that? Uh, it's been quite fun.

Alex Back: I'm a very communicative person. If you can't tell I'm a big talker. Um, so I'm, I'm, I'm very open to anyone reaching out to me on LinkedIn. I'm incredibly easy to find Alex back couch. com. Um, and my email address is Alex at couch. com. So I'm very happy to hear from anyone who has a question, an idea, a thought, some feedback, an opportunity.

Anything, anything at all, I, I have a big inbox, but I get back to every single person that ever reaches out to me. So I'm not at the level where I can't do that anymore. So I love hearing from people and I love talking to people just like you said, so please reach

Matt Edmundson: out. Fantastic. We will of course put all of that information in the show notes as well, because why would we not, right?

Well, look, there's nothing out there like it, Matt, you know that. Yeah, there will be soon, I just, oh absolutely brilliant, but genuine man, thanks for coming on, you are an absolute legend and I really appreciate it. Thank you. Same to you, sir. Well, there you have it. What a great conversation. Huge thanks again to Alex for joining me today.

Now be sure to follow the eCommerce Podcast wherever you get your point, because of course we've got some 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 by me. Awesome. It's just a burden you have to bear.

Our theme music was written by Josh Edmundson. And as I mentioned, if you would like to read the transcript or show notes that Head over to the website ecommercepodcast. net where instantly you can sign up for the weekly newsletter. I'll be telling you more about the changes to the newsletter coming up.

So, uh, if you're subscribed to the show, you'll find out more about them, or if you subscribe to the newsletter, you'll also find out about them. So just go check that out, but that's it from me. That's it from Alex. Thank you so much for joining us. Have a fantastic week, wherever you are in the world. I'll see you next time.