Episode 42: On Selling Sticker Subscriptions with Nathaniel Vazquez, CEO of Pipsticks, Inc

In this week’s episode of Subscriptions: Scaled, we speak with Nathaniel Vazquez, CEO of Pipsticks. 

In the episode, we discover everything from the online platforms used in the business to how the company dealt with Covid-19. Keep reading to learn more about the episode and how Pipsticks works.

Nathaniel Vazquez

The episode begins with Nathaniel explaining the concept of Pipsticks before sharing his career background.

Nathaniel used to work in finance, and his wife is a graphic designer by trade. Nathaniel’s wife took some time off when the couple had kids and wanted to figure out a side hustle. She received a sticker chain mail in the post, and the kids went crazy for it.

She decided to go online and arrange a sticker subscription for the kids. As she couldn’t find one, Nathaniel’s wife decided to start her own. Around a year and a half after the company was established, there were some changes with Nathaniel at work, and he decided it was time to switch jobs.

Nathaniel left his job at the bank following 15 years of trading. He fell into the CEO role of Pipsticks after a couple of months. He restructured the company around six years ago and went full-time with the role and hasn’t looked back since.

It took a while for Nathaniel to work out how to best operate the company, as his previous career had been so different. Starting the business with his wife was a huge change to what he was used to.

There was a lot of scraping and mistakes, but after a while, the couple got to grips with the brand. In the past two or three years, the company has been particularly successful.

Pipsticks

Pipsticks is a subscription sticker company popular with various customers, including parents with young kids and creative types interested in activities like scrapbooking.

The team at Pipsticks learned pretty quickly that their biggest audience wasn't necessarily just moms buying for their kids but also the crafters, planners, and scrapbookers. Demographically, Pipsticks attracts women between the ages of 20 to 40 who are into creative activities. However, they still have a substantial population of moms and dads buying for their kids, too.

The Effects of Covid-19

Nathaniel then discusses the huge impact Covid-19 had on the business and the significant changes that developed from it. One of the shifts Nathaniel mentions was the business moving from being solely a subscription company to using e-commerce transactions.

While there could be the fear that one way of purchasing could ruin the other, Nathaniel says that it has worked out well, having both options for customers.

Nathaniel explains that they have a couple of different kinds of customers. There are casual customers who buy a subscription and may opt in and out, and there are others who purchase stickers one-off.

The majority of Pipsticks customers are fanatics about stickers and have multiple subscriptions. Then, if some stickers that they want are missing from their subscription, they may buy a sheet of stickers separately. So it hasn't been an issue of ruining one way of purchasing stickers, it’s more that the customers tend to love stickers so much that they mix and match with subscriptions and one-off sales.

Customers are allowed to buy the brand differently and participate even more than before.

Operating Wholesale

Nathaniel also talks about Pipsticks operating wholesale.

Operating wholesale for Pipsticks now fits into a couple of categories, with the biggest being the small retail mom and dad gift and craft stores. Pipsticks also has a fleet of sales reps who walk door to door and sell their stickers to stores that sell them to customers.

Pipsticks is constantly working on the key accounts and big brand names, such as Walmart, hoping to grow even further in wholesale.

Platforms

We also learn about the different platforms the company has used, such as Cratejoy, WordPress, and Shopify. We discover how specific platforms integrate well with others.

Initially, Pipsticks chose Cratejoy as their platform and used WordPress for their blog. However, the site and the backend were all done by Cratejoy. The team at Pipsticks was happy with Cratejoy for a very long time and believed they did an excellent job for subscription companies.

However, when Pipsticks moved into e-commerce and wholesale, they needed a more flexible platform, as Cratejoy specialized in subscriptions.

Pipsticks switched to Shopify and are now using Shopify Recharge. Nathaniel admits that while every platform has limitations and problems, Shopify allows the team to do all necessary non-subscription actions.

Shopify allowed Pipsticks to place a non-subscription store on the site in a straightforward and easy process. It also allows you to integrate with plenty of apps, which makes using Shopify significantly easier.

The primary limitation the team at Pipsticks has experienced is that the Recharge and Shopify environments have two different shopping carts, which makes things a bit more complicated.

Marketing

Nathaniel discusses how the brand markets itself, such as using Facebook. He also shares how the company retains customers looking to cancel their subscription, such as implementing win-back campaigns to those who decide to cancel.

While marketing started as word-of-mouth in the beginning, the couple moved on to influencer marketing. They would send boxes to people to review them and share their thoughts with their followers.

When Nathaniel joined Pipsticks, he spent a significant amount of time researching and understanding how Facebook worked and used it for marketing which helped the company grow. While the majority of Pipsticks’ acquisition has been through Facebook, they also used Google Ads.

When it comes to retaining customers, Pipsticks uses email marketing to reach out. However, Nathaniel admits that if someone is unhappy, he doesn’t want to try and keep them around and would prefer to leave them in a good state and offer an easy way to leave the subscription.

Nathaniel explains that the company tries to offer a great product that people aren’t going to want to cancel in the first place. He would rather people loved the brand.

If a customer wants to cancel, it’s easy for them to do so on the website without any problems. 

However, Pipsticks does have several win-back campaigns that they’ll implement once someone has canceled a subscription. Pipsticks will reach out a month or two later and offer a deal to win back customers.

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