Using Content to Grow a 7-Figure Dog Pet Jewelry Business – Parth Kukreja of PupRing

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks  

Hey there entrepreneurs My name is Mis, and welcome to Trep talks. This is the show where I interview successful ecommerce entrepreneurs, business executives and thought leaders and ask them questions about their business story, and also dive deep into some of the strategies and tactics that they have used to start to grow their businesses. And today, I’m really excited to welcome part kukreja to the show. Park is the founder of preparing for bring sells custom pet jewelry for dog owners. And today I’m going to ask part of your questions about his entrepreneurial journey, and some of the strategies and tactics that he has used to start and grow his business. So thank you so much for joining me today.

Parth Kukreja of PupRing  

Yeah, it’s a pleasure to be here, Sean.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks  

So can you share a little bit about your business, your the product that you’re selling? How do you describe it? And what motivated you to start with?

Parth Kukreja of PupRing  

Alright, so um, well peppering is this brand that I started two years ago, where we sell custom pet jewelry, we basically take your pet’s name paw print, or, you know, knows, and we’re right now working on face, but we engrave it into a necklace or ring of your choice. And it’s completely personalized for the user. So we do a lot of engravings. We do a lot of stuff like that. And what motivated me You asked to get in this?

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks  

Yeah, I mean, I mean, this, this product is kind of like, you know, the first time I came across your product, I was almost, I mean, fattener. It’s like, it’s not a ring for the person, it’s for the person who is so much attached to their pet that they would go to the extent of having an engraved ring, and wearing that ring. So it’s such a pleasure scratch for me. Can you define like, how did you come up with this idea? Or how did you discover this idea?

Parth Kukreja of PupRing  

Sure. So I unfortunately can’t be credited with discovering this idea. But my buddy, so back in the day used to work as a web developer. And my buddy he was doing selling this product was drop shipping it from a supplier in overseas,

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks  

by the way, just to interrupt you. So you worked as a web developer, but you’re only what? 19 years old?

Parth Kukreja of PupRing  

You know, I turned 20 in July of last year.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks  

Okay. So we’re, we’re talking like you were doing web development, like, five years ago? Or?

Parth Kukreja of PupRing  

Yeah, two years ago, two years ago. Wow. Is 18. Such.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks  

Okay, sorry. Sorry, I interrupted you. Good. Oh, no,

Parth Kukreja of PupRing  

no worries. Um, but yeah, so my buddy was my buddy who was selling this product. And I was, you know, he hits me up, he says, Hey, I need a store built. We have a script product. And I’m like, awesome. Seems like a cool idea. I also was confused about the idea. I was like, I looked at this back end, and it was working for him. So I was like, you know, what, can’t judge it. And so I built him a nice looking store. And he lets me know, hey, we decided not to continue with this. And obviously, as a as a freelancer, I’m like, I’m still getting paid for this, right? No, of course, of course. But um, yeah. So he’s like, I don’t want to continue with blah, blah, having some issues with the manufacturer. And I was like, Oh, that’s terrible to hear. But I was like, Do you mind if I take a look at it? You know, try it myself. Because I started like six, seven other businesses before I got into web development. So I started my entrepreneurship journey very, very early. So then I was like, Yeah, I have a bit of experience running some businesses, I want to try to see if I can, you know, fix up the issues with this. And yeah, that’s kind of how I got started with puffery eventually. Just took it off the ground, and the rest is kind of history from there.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks  

So you’re your friend, have you still own the business? Are you like, partners? How does that what did he sell? You?

Parth Kukreja of PupRing  

Know, so he basically, I asked him for more of like a, you know, courtesy, I was like, Hey, listen, if you’re not gonna do this, I’d love to give it a shot. He’s like, Yeah, go for it. So you kind of just gave me his Facebook ads data. He gave me some of his data that he had on the like, basically has information about like, what the demographics were, what audiences worked, etc, etc. And then I use the ALI Express listing, which is no longer available. Okay. Yeah, we don’t dropship at all anymore. By the way, we I think I only dropship for maybe 100 to 150 orders and then I moved everything in house.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks  

Okay, so basically the guy said, Okay, you can take over the idea. And you took over and really created this empire. The friend regretted.

Parth Kukreja of PupRing  

I’m gonna be 100 summers. I have not talked to him in a long time. But I’m also like, I don’t think anyone could have anticipated how big this has gotten. I definitely didn’t, I thought it was just something I was going to do for a little while. But it turned out to be a business which I ended up becoming passionate about, like, I never like my motivations Initially when I started this, and my motivations now are completely different. Because at first I was like, Oh, well, dog right now. I’m just like, obsessed with pets as well, like I, I’m actually planning on adopting my own golden retriever soon.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks  

Cool. So you had this idea you took took over this thing? What was the first thing that you did? So you, you knew that there was a market like that, when you took this over? You knew that there was a market for it? How did you How do you take that idea and grow it into a business.

Parth Kukreja of PupRing  

So first off, um, to explain my situation, I was a very, very, very broke college student slash high school, or actually, I was still in high school. This is a long ago, I was very broke person. As soon as I hit 18, I applied for a credit card, and I had a $1,500 limit on the sides for that I probably had like a couple $100 in my bank account. So the first goal for me was, since I was working on such a fine line was to test profitability. So I took one of his winning creatives that he made, repurpose it, like edited around, fix it up a little bit, and then launched it to see how that would run. And initially, you know, that started to break even. So, at that point, it kind of confirmed, you know, most products, they have like a huge trend, like, you become very unprofitable. Eventually you balance out and then you start earning profit, this product, it was like a very small Euchre, like us, maybe only in the whole, like a couple 100 bucks before it started to turn around. Sounds like immediately I was like, Alright, this is a product that has a lot of potential, let me build out some more angles, build some creatives and then do a lot more Facebook testing.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks  

So in terms of the people who actually buy the product, can you share a little bit about the demographic of your customer? Is it more male versus female? Like, is it? I mean, even if you’re a pet owner, you really have to be really passionate about your pet in order to wear a ring? I mean, not I don’t think I mean, I wouldn’t wear a ring for my name or you know, handprint footprint, something. Can you share a little bit about your customer? What have you learned about your customer? Who Who are the people who are actually buying

Parth Kukreja of PupRing  

the product, of course, so for most of my customers, or most of the customers proper, it’s kind of like a common trend we’ve noticed. So a lot of these customers, you know, they’re extremely passionate about their pet for them, and for me, well, not yet, but soon. But a pet is kind of like a family member, it’s like a, you know, someone that you get added onto your external family. So it’s a lot of like love and a lot of stuff built around it. So you know, you get your your kit like a tablet, people get their kids like, or people get their dog was like a pup ring. But, um, in terms of audiences, when marketing, we went through the entire range, when we started, we did older demographics, like we had 45 to 65 Women who are interested in golden retrievers and stuff, just various dog types, and we just test that interest targeting. And then nowadays, we’re noticing that a lot of our demographics are no younger people. So we’re hitting any between 20 to 30. And that’s been working for a small scale.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks  

And is the idea that, you know, these people who are really passionate about their pets, they may not even know about this kind of product that exists. It really that you know, you run the ad, it pops up on their phone, maybe. And they say, okay, you know, this is exactly for me, because I love my dog. It’s kind of like a family member. And it’s kind of a novelty thing, you know, and probably not very expensive. Let’s let’s get this man is that the general idea.

Parth Kukreja of PupRing  

It’s like an impulse purchase. And the crazy part is a lot of people. We haven’t even been able to do much with Facebook ads like Now obviously, we’ve moved it over to more Facebook ads, advanced stuff, but for the entirety, if not, most of 2021 and half of 2022 like the first couple of months, our main traffic source was actually just organic tic TOCs or no organic Instagram content.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks  

And that I mean I want to come down, come to that point and a little bit I know you’ve done really great with your tick tock so so you launched this business, can you share like you started running ad and that’s really the way you started getting your first customer for the inside, you know, it was completely Organic.

Parth Kukreja of PupRing  

Um, so when we started launching ads, just so that I understand the correct question, correct? I’m just gonna rephrase it. How did we kind of get started with this? Or

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks  

how did you get your first customers and start to scale this business?

Parth Kukreja of PupRing  

Oh, yeah. So first customers were through ads, just through our ally Express supplier, which, you know, I only use that supply I’m I’m very against like drop shipping in the sense of, you know, having anyone Wait 20 to 30 days for product. It’s just absurd in my head. So I only used ally Express for maybe like the first 50 orders. And there was a running joke at that time, which is painful to say. But it was true that our 500th order would arrive before first order just because our 500th Order was more of an in house structure that we made versus our first order was through the supplier.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks  

So what kind of equipment? Or machinery does it take to do this in house? And what kind of investment did you make to require that?

Parth Kukreja of PupRing  

Sure. So initially, when we first started, I ran everything out of my basement. And it was a hassle. While I’m so happy to have great parents, my parents helped build the fulfillment initially, like, they’re like, Hey, if you’re taking her basically, mice will help you. But um, we basically, I bought an engraving machine straight from China, I had no idea how to operate one of these things. And I literally had no clue what I was doing. I just bought the machine. And I was like, I’m going to learn it because I kind of have too much. The first machine we got was 4000. So it was still a hefty fee to get. But it was definitely worth it. Because at the time, our Facebook feedback score was like dipping below a two, which, for most advertisers, they know that when you dip below to you’re unable to advertise slash your engagement is lower. So it’s like it’s not something we wanted to even ever occur. But it was something that desperately needed to happen. So we brought everything in house. It took a while to figure out the proper settings. But, you know, once we started having a more personalized process where we work directly with the customers, and we’re able to offer shipping within like full delivery in 10 days, a lot of customers were happy because our biggest issue was the shipping times. Customers just didn’t want to wait 30 days for something that seems like it should only take maybe like a few days to make.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks  

So you got this machine from China. I’m assuming how big How big is this machine like the whole operation?

Parth Kukreja of PupRing  

It wasn’t that big but it was extremely heavy. I could say it’s probably the size of probably like about probably about like six feet by eight feet by three feet.

All right, pretty good.

Parth Kukreja of PupRing  

Yeah, it’s it’s pretty big. But it came in two parts. So it had like the laser engraver at the top. And then it has like the laser box which is attached to it. And it was like so heavy, I had to put it on a skateboard and we’ll get into the house.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks  

Even though even the shipping must have been quite expensive. And from China, Oh,

Parth Kukreja of PupRing  

it came in the world’s biggest wooden box. Literally, I come back from school one day, and there’s just a giant wooden box we had to get a crowbar and everything to pry it open and my parents were like hearth what are we going to do with the wooden box

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks  

and there was no one there like an instruction instructional manual with the box on how to operate the machine. And

Parth Kukreja of PupRing  

so my so I got a bit I wouldn’t say lucky but actually I’ll say lucky. I got a bit lucky so I had a buddy who was very into the engraving space. So I just asked him for advice. He routed me to the manufacturer. The manufacturer just kind of helped me figure out the machine so I just kept messaging them on WhatsApp and they were like okay do this this and this but you know after a certain amount of time when they close the sale they’re like yeah, you know, we helped you out but please stop bother.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks  

Okay, so machine is the one parts on one machine does the engraving and assume you need the the ring part of it also so you protect that from China as well or?

Parth Kukreja of PupRing  

Yeah, so now we have we have a direct manufacturer in China who works only with us on the product. So we have all our different variations with this specific supplier. And it’s been it’s been a hassle trying to find the supplier because you know some suppliers they are Um, you know, say, Oh, it’s 95 sterling silver, but then when you get the material checked, it’s not completely sterling silver, they’re trying to skimp off the material. So it took a while, but we finally got a supplier who is willing to work with us and isn’t trying to, you know, rip off the material or anything like that.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks  

Okay. So, I mean, now your business is what it’s like, eight figures.

Parth Kukreja of PupRing  

I wish we are in the mid seven figure range,

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks  

mid seven pillar. So I mean, as a 20 year old with this kind of business, which I’m assuming has a decent profit margin like, and to me, it seems like it doesn’t even require a lot of investment back into the business, like, what do you do? You know, like, how do you how do you feel the club? And, you know, I’m assuming it’s continuing to grow? How do you want to grow it? Can you give me an idea.

Parth Kukreja of PupRing  

Um, so personally, I’ll talk about the business idea, and then my personal growth, but I for personal growth, I kind of decided to go out on a whim and I got an apartment in New York. And I’ve quite frankly, learned that New York is very expensive and expensive. And saving is important. But my game plan when I came into this entire business was to, you know, be financially free. So definitely, one of the things I wanted to start doing was, I’m big into stocks. So I like to put money aside for saving. And you know, just like a few, like, just this year, I’ve kind of learned that, you know, it’s probably better to buy rather than rent, so I can get more property invested, and just diversify myself, so I can eventually, you know, retire healthily. Or if I want to do other ventures, I don’t have to worry about the money aspect as much. But event basically, the goal for me is financial future for peppering the goal basically, is to just keep growing like right now we’re, we’re expanding our team drastically, we just got two new people hired this month. Lizzie and what we’re finalizing the candidate, so I don’t know if they are, but I’m Lizzie and one other individual. And it’s awesome, it’s really good to have these, like, new people had it on because you feel good. And also, it’s like, hey, the heat is growing. And it’s like, it becomes a lot more real when you have all these people depending on you for their paychecks. That’s it’s awesome. It’s it’s really great experience, but it’s also very, very stressful.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks  

It’s stressful, in what way

Parth Kukreja of PupRing  

stressful in the way that you know, when when you’re doing something you don’t want to you don’t want to make a mistake, but at the same time, if you’re ever too afraid to make a mistake, that’s when you truly lost my opinion. Because the best way to learn is by seeing what doesn’t work. And, you know, obviously when you’re at the bigger you get, the more you want things to work, the less you’re afraid to make mistakes, and it’s just stressful in the way of because you have to like weigh out your choices now it’s a lot more like oh before when it was just me if I fail, it’s all it’s all good. You know, I can always start up I can always rebuild my capital, I didn’t put too much into it, etc, etc. But when you have a team of let’s just say seven people you know you now have you plus the six other people that you have to make sure are able to get paid on that timely manner.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks  

So do you I mean as a 20 year old you have to be very disciplined not to go just start you know, buying you know, great cars and or doing all the kinds of things that you know, a young person would want to do. Have you splurged on something so feel started.

Parth Kukreja of PupRing  

On the fortunately, yes, I’ve splurged on my M one finance account. I’ve given it a little too much contribution. And one it’s a it’s an investing app. No, I actually did splurge, I was making a joke. I did splurge, I got an apartment in New York with my buddy, my brother, my buddy and me. And it’s honestly been a really good experience because it forced me to because like when you’re working in your parents basement, right, you don’t have the perspective that most adults do. Because most adults, you know, they have bills, they have expenses, they have a bunch of things to handle. And then when you’re like 19 And you come into all this wealth you know, it’s a lot of it’s a lot hard to get the perspective that other people have spent years getting so getting into this apartment and then having to deal with all these you know, things it’s it gives you a lot of perspective on what you need to prioritize as like a young adult

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks  

So let’s let’s shift the topic a little bit towards marketing side of things. Would you consider your business to be marketing driven? Or? Or is it really organic? acquisition?

Parth Kukreja of PupRing  

I think, even even if it’s organic, there’s still marketing involved, like my answer to this would be I think everything is marketing. But in terms of if we’re not being technical about it, I would say, organic is our primary revenue driver, and traffic driver. It’s more over like, organic builds up a community. And then as they receive the content, you know, we don’t have some people on organic, they just follow us, they don’t impulse purchase, they don’t even know about the puppy and say, they just come on to Instagram because we post funny content. And then eventually, we’ll mention like a sale, or I mentioned something, and they’re like, oh, wow, you guys have these awesome products. And then they go ahead and shop with us. Or for some people, you know, they just see one of our tic TOCs. They’re like, yep, gotta get this right. It’s awesome. So I think there’s a bit of marketing in everything we do. But our biggest focus as a company, is just building the customer experience on organic, just building it. So that way, they have a reason to come back and engage with us as brand.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks  

Now, you’re not the face of the company in a way? Because it seems like your your partner, business partner is the one who’s actually making the social media content. Can you share a little bit about that? How did you get a partner? Is he like an equity partner? And what is the general strategy of making engaging content on social media?

Parth Kukreja of PupRing  

So initially, when I first started peppering into the first month, I wasn’t the best at marketing, at Facebook ads. So I asked a buddy of mine, Alex, who’s now my business partner, to go ahead and help me out with the ad side of things. And, you know, he helped me out made sure the ads are profitable, but he saw a lot of potential in me and the business. And he eventually was like, Hey, listen, I kind of want to go in on the business with you. And at first, you know, I was like, Yeah, let’s definitely do it. And we worked our way up to a 5050 split, we’re now it’s not just him doing marketing. It’s like, you know, we have a dedicated team. He’s doing some organic stuff. I’m out here managing the team, finances and all the fun stuff that no one that you know, it’s super important, but no one really cares about. But the thing is, is like, well, everyone cares about finances, you get what I’m saying? Yeah, sorry, I’m a bit nervous. Because there’s a reason I’m not the face. It’s because I’m usually like a very what’s the word? I’m looking for? Introvert. Introvert.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks  

But but you’re, you’re doing just fine. So you’re doing great. So, yeah, so I guess my second question, and part of that question was, you know, seems like you’re so in this partner of yours. And, you know, I’ve seen some of the tech talks, they’re funny, he’s engaging, it’s creating these, this piece of content really organically comes across very natural. If he, I mean, does social media really just boiled down to being the kind of personality that really just flows well, on social media content kind of a thing? Or does he actually have some sort of strategy, you, you map things out, okay, this day, I’m going to create this content, you know, map that kind of thing out in a calendar, and work in that fashion.

Parth Kukreja of PupRing  

Um, so I know from Alex’s point of view, he probably says he has a strategy. From my point of view, it’s more of like, organized chaos, in the sense of, he has all these awesome ideas. And most of them obviously, are written down and logged, and we like to see what works better. But when it comes to creating the content, he kind of just creates whatever feels right to him at the moment. So if he’s like, oh, I want to create this today, he goes ahead and creates like two or three of those styles that tic tock, obviously to him, you know, he knows a lot more about that side than I do. So he probably has like a method to his madness. But from an outside perspective, it’s more of, or at least from an other internal perspective. It’s, it’s more of like me just witnessing all of these random videos go together. But at the end of the day, we log we log, what works. And we take it into a similar strategy to what Viscount media does, which is you log the hook you log content, you log the different parts of the content and just see what works.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks  

So in terms of your most successful organic channel, the just Instagram tick tock and even between those two or more tick tock

Parth Kukreja of PupRing  

So in 2021, it was ticked up because back in the day tick tock had their crazy algorithm, which anyone could go viral. And then in September, they changed up their algorithm. That way, it’s a lot harder for you to go viral, and they changed up a lot of the metrics around it. And that’s when we kind of pivoted over to Instagram reels, and reels has been kind of our primary traffic driver ever since with tick tock, um, you know, still as like up there, but it’s not our primary anymore.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks  

Well, very interesting. So it’s almost like in the social media world, you have to almost chase the next new thing that’s coming up, and you really have to get in on it early on to really capitalize I think that that’s going to have any kind of audience channel even with like social, you know, any social channels, you know, when definitely,

Parth Kukreja of PupRing  

yeah, definitely, with what we noticed with iOS 14, like everybody and their mother was running Facebook, like the the, the only strategy that people had to make their businesses successful was to go ahead and do all these crazy Facebook strategies. And the second iOS 14 came. A lot of these companies just disappeared, because they didn’t adapt. And organic is like one of those things where you have to adapt. Like, even now we’re starting to see reels, dip down a little bit. And that’s why we’re moving over to our YouTube because we think YouTube is the next platform were a real skill. But the interesting part of YouTube, and this is kind of like an insider secret that one of my buddies told me is that instead of posting daily, which Instagram and Tiktok one, your reels go more viral if you post every three days, which I don’t understand the logic of, but it works.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks  

Okay. Very interesting. A little bit about competition. So seems like, you know, there’s, there’s a big market for this product out there. I’m assuming you’re selling mostly in North America, or is that like a global kind of thing.

Parth Kukreja of PupRing  

Um, so most of our social media ads are directed towards. So all of our ads are directed to US, Canada, but our tic TOCs reach, like everywhere. So on the TIC tock side, we have like a lot of international orders. But mainly our retargeting and our primary customer base is North America.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks  

So basically, the question I was trying to ask is, you know, if you think about competition, and there’s a market out there, do you have other competitors, other businesses that are building this, these kinds of things? And are you? Because I don’t I don’t think you can patent this idea. Right? So how do you how are you making sure that you are able to, like you have, you’re not losing your market share with, you know, a bunch of other businesses? Because to me, it seems like, you know, making the spring, as you said, you know, getting a $4,000 machine, anyone can start printing or engraving, these rings? How are you making sure that you maintain your customer base and your share of the market?

Parth Kukreja of PupRing  

That’s, that’s a very good question, actually. So for us, you know, obviously, we’ve we’ve made a big enough splash in the ocean where some of our competitors are even trying to put their own version of the dog bone rain. And the reality is, as well, they’re trying to replicate what we’re what works for us right now. We’re trying to develop more products that work in leather work in the future, like, our newest product that we’re planning on bringing up is something that involves, like engraving the pet’s name. So right now we have a product that engraved that pets paw, and that’s been a complete absolute hit. Our customers love that. So we’re trying to do is eventually change your engraving style. So it’s a lot more detailed, and focuses on like, the PA the name of it, right. And obviously, you know, anyone who goes ahead and gets an engraving machine gets a supplier and goes ahead and does this, they have a good chance of, you know, making a splash in the market and potentially competing. But I don’t think that and the reason we’re a lot more open with our strategies and all that stuff, is because there’s not a lot of people who are willing to take that kind of risk of going out and dropping almost 10 to $20,000 on a product that may or may not work for them. Right. So we’re more than happy to share these strategies because at the end of the day, if someone wants to go and do that, I mostly will walk them because I believe there’s enough of a market share for all of us to be able to come to the table and eat together.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks  

And given that now you probably have or you actually do have a big customer base of people will purchase from you and also a big base of audience on your social media channels and other channels. Do you ever think of like making your business more of a threat Pet Products business rather than, you know, pet jewelry business. So you know, you can start selling maybe your own branded, you know, pet food or, you know, pet apparel. I mean, I don’t I’m not very familiar with the whole pet industry but but I mean, to me, it seems like it would be very easy for you to start adding another product or product line and you know, growing that and then adding another thing, and so forth. And really just building a pet based business out of this

Parth Kukreja of PupRing  

100% I think one of the things we’re planning on doing is developing, Alex actually funny enough one, it’s make like pack T shirts and all that stuff and develop more of into like an alpha approach Alpha PA is one of our not really competitor, but it’s one of the brands we look up to in the pet industry, because what they do is they have a solid following on social media. And the only product they have is paw print based or pet design T shirts, like mainly dog T shirts. And obviously, you know, anyone can open a print on demand store and do that kind of stuff. But they they don’t a different kind of way where they have such an engaged audience a great follow on Instagram, and they’ve just adapted throughout the years in a way that’s very admirable to us. Back on track. I’m sorry, what was the question again?

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks  

You know, growing your business like one adding new product lines of growing your business like that?

Parth Kukreja of PupRing  

Oh, yeah, there. That’s what I was getting back to. I’m getting back on track question. My mentor still tells me there’s a lot more room to grow with the dog Boehner. Like even though we have these other products that are absolute bangers and doing well. He’s like, Nope, you can still scale the dog wondering, you can keep putting more spin into it. And seeing the numbers he does, he’s probably right.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks  

So who’s your mentor?

Parth Kukreja of PupRing  

Alright, so he’s a good friend of mine that I take a lot of advice from he’s, his name is Colin, Colin McGuire, he runs a boomin. Long story short, he’s probably like, a, like a nine figure entrepreneur. And he manages like 14 brands or something crazy like that. And I don’t know how I got here, but I have the absolute pleasure of learning from him. And it’s a great, it’s a great and like opportunity, because I get to see how he thinks and how he operates brands. And he offers a lot of helpful insight onto what we could be doing better, and just a different way of looking at business.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks  

So, so let me ask you this question. You know, given that now you have so much experience in E commerce and you’ve seen, you know, your friend, who’s doing it on a different scale. If a person if you want to take a new product and build an E commerce business hours, you know, a product that is not as unique as dog offering, what would you do to make it successful? Like, let’s say, let’s say you just take a generic product, any kind of product and you want to build an E commerce business out of it.

Parth Kukreja of PupRing  

So my advice that I would give is something that was told to me by Colin, and I’m going to share it with with you. Because I think this is the most important thing of ECAM. And when you actually hear this, it will blow your mind. Think of your business as a content creation agency, right? Your entire goal is to keep on creating more content and you monetize the product. When you get in that state of mind, your entire goal is to just keep going keep creating more and more content. So if it’s for ads, you keep creating more and more different advertisements. If it’s for organic, you keep on creating more and more organic content, but the more content you put out there, the more people engage with it similar to like YouTube, right? You know, a lot of people are out there, you know, building these awesome YouTube channels. And they’re not focused on monetizing products, right? Obviously, eventually, they can monetize whatever they want, because they have such great following. But the advice I would give is create the content. And if your content is engaging enough, you can monetize your products or your services or whatever you’re trying to create through there.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks  

So basically, the the secret is really, you have to create engaging content. And with that, you can attract attention. And then once you have that attention, you can monetize it in any way you want.

Parth Kukreja of PupRing  

Exactly, like you could have a groundbreaking product but if you look at the best brands out there, like for example, zesty, it’s a hot sauce brands, right? They have such insane content that I actually buy hot sauce at $12. Right? And if you tell me that at Costco, I’m going to spend $12 To buy hot sauce. I’d be like you’re out here Like, but then I look at their content, I look at their ads, I look at all that stuff. And I’m like, You know what I have to try it out I have to try it out and I love it there outsource is actually good. It so it comes down to your the way your brand is put out there like dole lashes another example right? Like you can get lashes anywhere you can go on Amazon, get them for a few bucks. But instead you have people paying like 10s of $15, even $20 For packs of lashes, which is insane, rich wallet. It’s literally just metal screws and a band, but the way that they put themselves out there is just such an it’s their content is so engaging, and it makes you think about the wallet, like altogether in a different way. Like I actually have a rigid wall right there. And I absolutely, I’m not gonna lie, it’s not my cup of tea. But the fact is, I still got it because I loved the marketing. And I was like, You know what, I have to see what the rage is all about.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks  

So at the end of the day, you really have to be a personality, or, you know, a brand that that can create a kind of an engaging content. Very, very interesting. A little bit about your warehousing fulfillment, shipping strategy, do you do you think like, you know, your product is small enough that you don’t? Like, do you have your own warehouse? And can you share a little bit about your shipping? How do you manage that?

Parth Kukreja of PupRing  

Sure, I have a story to share with this though. It’s very integral to how I created my or not my our shipping network. But back in the day I used to I used to play a lot of video games and on my on my Discord server with my my buddies. We ended up you know, playing games with this guy, his name was Gordo, right, and he was one of my friends friends. He was just stationed in New Jersey for Marine Corps stuff. So eventually, you know, I and I hung out with him because Oh, yeah, Gordo seems like a great guy. We played games together. awesome guy. And then I kind of told him a little pup bring it with us for accomplished back in like 2020. And he was like, Dude, this sounds like an awesome idea. You know, I want to help you out with like, you know, I want to help you with fulfillment, because you know, you talk about all the time and how painstaking it is because it really was back. Like, I want to help you, you’ve been such a good friend to me, Allah. And he’s like, I’ll come over for free. And I’m like, nonsense, if you can help me out, you get paid. That’s how it works. So he came over to my house, you know, an hour drive out of his way for no reason, but just help a friend. And he just sat down and did rings on me. And it became to a point where I had him on payroll for all of 2020. And then eventually, I was like, he he finished his contract with the Marine Corps, and he wanted to move back to Ohio or which is where he from. So after knowing this guy for six months, I give him the entire engraving machine along with all our inventory, to take back to Ohio and put in the warehouse. And that’s kind of how our fulfillment department became. Now we have a Gordo who manages and oversees all the filament for pepper. And, you know, he loves it, I’m happy he’s there. And it was just such a random string of events that led to, you know, me not having to engrave rings ever again, which I’m thankful for. Because it is. It’s this, it’s a very painstaking process in the sense, it’s very detail oriented.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks  

So I mean, that, that’s very interesting, why, but to me, it feels like that also the kind of thing that you can easily hire a person for. So why were you doing with yourself.

Parth Kukreja of PupRing  

Um, it was more of a sense of I wanted to Well, first off back in the day, and 2020, I wouldn’t feel comfortable hire anyone because like, I want to make sure profitability was there. And at the time, we made a lot of mistakes, and we weren’t as profitable as we’d like to be. And also, it was Moreover, just like, we went through all these hurdles, where we had it first being shipped to us, and then drop shipping and all that stuff. It just felt right to finally do it myself. That I’m also like, kind of like a control freak. I like to see how everything’s going.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks  

Okay, cool. So that brings me to the final question here. I know in every entrepreneurial journey, there’s always mistakes made failure, lessons learned. I’m sure you know, there were some of those in your thoughts. So can you share like maybe one of your biggest mistakes that stand out for you? What was the lesson learned for you and what can other entrepreneurs learn from it?

Parth Kukreja of PupRing  

Ah, let’s see. We made so many mistakes to the point where at this point, I kind of just shrugged them off, and I’m like, oh, that’s just another mistake for the books. Um, I wouldn’t say that I Honestly, I can’t say that I have a biggest mistake off the top my head, I guess the worst mistake I could have ever made was not taking action on something. In the sense of like, a real life example that we had last year was, we had a, we had a team of media buyers that weren’t performing up to the standards that we want to hit. Right. So we We obviously wanted to hit like, just for example, sake, let’s just say a to M er, right, we wanted to hit a to M er, and our media buyers were just shy of the no such word hitting it. And at that time, we know that if we pushed a lot more content, and we did a lot more things differently, there’s a great chance we can even hit three or four. And the relationship just wasn’t working between us and that media buying company. But rather than, you know, cut it off and take media buying back in house, we ended up waiting, like three months. And that almost brought us to the brink of bankruptcy because we were too afraid to take the action that was needed. So I guess the advice that I can offer is, you know, just don’t be afraid to take action. I know there’s a lot of like, what if, or you know if ands, and buts, but reality is not doing something is a lot more painful than doing it and failing. Because if we didn’t get rid of those guys, we would have kept them. Sure I might have kept the Lego relationship that might not have lasted because let’s be real there media buyers, they don’t like me for my great jokes and nice hairline. They like me for the money I give them. But yeah, just not if I took action on that sooner, we would have saved ourselves 10s of 1000s of dollars. And we might even have scaled faster, because we would have done that.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks  

Now we’re going to move on to our rapid fire segment, and then the segment, I’m going to ask you a few quick questions, and you have to answer them, but the one word two word, one sentence. So the first one is one book that you would recommend to entrepreneurs or business professionals in 2022. And why do you do read books?

Parth Kukreja of PupRing  

Of course. Okay. Um, question? Oh, one book that was relevant when I started was the third door. And the reason I liked that book so much is because it gives you a different way of thinking. But one book that’s also relevant right now for me, is the One Minute Manager because it gives you a different outlook on how to manage team on a great environment. Sorry, I had two books either just bolted on top my head

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks  

and innovative product or idea and the current ecommerce retail or tech landscape that you feel excited about.

Parth Kukreja of PupRing  

I don’t know how long this will take to come to fruition. But one of the things that I’m completely fascinated about is bio printing. Because I just find the idea fascinating that in the future, there’ll be able to print vital organs that we have donor lists that span for miles long. And instead you can hook it up to a 3d printing machine, just print yourself a new kidney, I think the idea is fascinating,

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks  

really interesting business or productivity tool or software that you would recommend or productivity.

Parth Kukreja of PupRing  

I don’t know about a service altogether. But if there’s one thing I recommend paying for, it’s Microsoft Excel. We have everything on Excel, we have ever all of our organization for media buyers, from our daily p&l to what content in our modular strategy works best?

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks  

Yeah, so definitely great. So, I mean, I have used Google Sheets a little bit, but not I mean, of course, it’s not. I’m not used to it on on that as much as Excel. You don’t use Google Sheets.

Parth Kukreja of PupRing  

So I am not a fan of Google Sheets. But I’ve had to become a fan of them because everything we do is in a team environment now. So I personally prefer it’s off my personal stuff. But I’ve just had to get used to Google Sheets as well. Okay.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks  

Startup or business and E commerce retailer that you think is currently doing great.

Parth Kukreja of PupRing  

I think Viscount media they’re a marketing agency. I’m not working with them or affiliated with them in any way. But if you look at their brands, their modular style of testing creatives is very very interesting.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks  

What is the number one waves gap media?

Parth Kukreja of PupRing  

Yeah, vi es CAAP media

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks  

appear entrepreneur or business person whom you look up to or someone who inspires you. I know you mentioned one one of your mentors but anyone else?

Parth Kukreja of PupRing  

Honestly, I look up to my business partner Alex because I look up to Colin obviously, because it’s my mentor, but I look up to Alex a lot because even when times are tough, he keeps his head centered. And then when times are A he’s always the best person I can call to get a beer with.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks  

And final question, best business advice you ever received or you would get?

Parth Kukreja of PupRing  

Um, I think it’s the the thing I said earlier, where if you look at your business as a content creation agency instead of, you know, an econ business, just that frame of mind that you put yourself in, will get you to massive success, at least in ECAM, at least from my personal experience, because creating content is the most important thing, especially with ads, right? Like, the best way to be profitable Facebook ads nowadays, isn’t to come up with some new creative strategy or whatever it’s to go ahead and figure out what works and what and just keep creating content that

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks  

does work. Well, thank you, Bart. Very, very interesting interview. Very interesting talking to you. Thank you so much for sharing your story for sharing your business strategies and tactics. Really, really, really, really appreciate your time. If anyone wants to buy your product where where can they go and purchase it.

Parth Kukreja of PupRing  

If you want to check out pepper and go ahead, feel free to follow us on Instagram at buffering. And then if you want to buy the product because he loved the idea so much. You can go to a buffering.com Perfect, thank you and it was also a pleasure to talk to you. She said I hope I didn’t drone on too long. I’m not the best at interviewing. So

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks  

no, I think it was I think it was great. I mean, I really appreciate it. Thank you. I appreciate