The Unofficial Shopify Podcast is hosted by Kurt Elster and explores the stories behind successful Shopify stores. Get actionable insights, practical strategies, and proven tactics from entrepreneurs who've built thriving ecommerce businesses.
BattlBox picked Whatnot over a million TikTok followers. It wasn't close.
"Not knowing what we were doing, just bobbling through it, we did a couple thousand dollars an hour, and we were like, whoa, this might be something."
John Roman bought BattlBox back in 2023 and went looking for the next channel. With over a million TikTok followers, TikTok Shop looked obvious. Then a Whatnot sales rep sent an email. Seventeen months later, live selling on Whatnot does $447K a month, with no ad spend.
John breaks down why Whatnot buyers spend three times what TikTok Shop buyers spend, what a three-hour show looks like when each product gets 30 seconds, and the host-hiring mistake that seemed like a sure thing.
Transcript from video:
Chapter 1: Intro
0:00 We didn't know what we were doing. Took the phone, turn it on, go live, did a couple thousand dollars an hour. And we were like, whoa, this might be something. You don't open up the Amazon app to to look at content, right? And I think that's the difference is they're opening up the whatnot app to purchase and then they're getting the bonus of being entertained at the same time.
0:20 You know, like is there a rule of thumb you have for this is a product that will not work well on whatnot. This is a product that will probably work well.
0:38 Today on the Unofficial Shopify podcast, we have a returning guest who's going to teach me about WhatNot, right? We keep hearing about live selling. Whatnot is one of those channels, and I've definitely I've seen it be successful. I don't have direct experience with it, but we've got someone who does. a returning guest, John Roman from BattlBox, last on the show January 2023 when they just bought the business back.
1:00 They'd had a successful Netflix show run that they had pitched Netflix on, you know, and well, I want an update on how things are going. Uh, it sounds like it's pretty good, but I also want to hear about live shopping, right? We're all looking for this this new channel.
1:12 We're looking for alternatives to our traditional channels like Meta and Google, right, to help bolster those things. And so hopefully John's got some answer for us. John Roman, BattlBox, welcome. How you doing, man?
1:23 Good. Kurt, I can't believe it's been 3 years. It that went by so quickly. If you had asked me, I'd be like, "Yeah, that was like 18 months ago." So, all right, that's close.
1:34 Yeah. A a lot's gone on. Well, thanks for having me again. Yeah. Um, so, as you said, we had just bought the business back in I think a couple months prior before the the show had aired. So, it was, you know, we had sold the business. We thought we were done.
Chapter 2: Buying BattlBox back, and why TikTok Shop looked obvious
1:48 Opportunity to buy it back. And as we as we got a hold of it, you know, how do we how do we take it to the next level? How do we grow further? And you know, we we we thought we were mastering direct and we were like, okay, well, let's look at marketplaces. Amazon is a is a our number two as far as source of revenue.
2:08 We knew we wanted to scale that further, but we're looking at these other options and and TikTok seems to be the thing that we're like, okay, it's TikTok. Everyone's talking about TikTok shop.
2:19 that's clearly the move. We have the most followers on there with over a million. Like that's going to be it. And we were starting to go down the path. And now I I think he runs like a department, but um at the time just a sales guy sent us a email talking about whatnot. I was a little familiar. So whatnot um started in the collectibles like sports cards, Pokemon.
2:44 Let's remind people before we continue. What does Battlebox sell? Oh, yeah. Um, that would be helpful.
Chapter 3: What BattlBox sells, and the membership
2:51 Outdoor gear, adventure gear. So, everything from camping, hiking to just general preparedness. Um, like I have my box of gear that when the power goes out, I have kind of what I need to not um go back into the caveman style. So, um, the full the full gambit of outdoor and preparedness gear.
3:10 And this it's a it's a monthly subscription. It's an outdoor gear box. I subscribe. I pick my box and then every month I get a box of cool stuff from you. Yeah. So, so still our core business is the membership. So, the membership will be um you know in the infancy for the first few years was 99% of our revenue.
3:29 Um now it's probably this year it'll be in the 70 low 70s% of the business. So still meaningful. Um it's great. It's recurring revenue. It's it's extremely forecastable. we know exactly where we're going to end up each month with with the active membership. And the the key benefit or the main thing of the membership is that monthly box. Lots of
3:52 other additional added value that we spent time on where it's more than just a physical products. It's a community. It's access um it's battle games, but but ultimately it is a physical box of curated gear. We have a team of experts.
4:07 We test it. Um, it doesn't it's not like white label, private label crap like it's name brand. I'm on BattlBox and it looks good. It looks like you also sell this stuff and you've got like a separate catalog. I could go through bestsellers.
4:21 Yeah, I could 1500 1500 SKs around that we sell direct on the website, too. That's obviously another part of the business. Okay, I'm on board with that. Like I proof is in the numbers. It's selling.
4:32 People like it and it's been going for years now. So great. I think it's cool. So now you've got to scale it. So we're back to all right, you've dis you're thinking about TikTok shop. You've discovered whatnot. You're aware of it,
Chapter 4: Finding Whatnot
4:45 but it's like it's early. So, you know, it's a lot of people doing opening trading cards on a stream. Yeah. That's all that's all it is at the time. There there's a little bit of outdoor gear. There's a little bit of women's fashion. There's a little bit of all that, but at the time it's just baseball cards and Pokemon um and bobbleheads and Funko Pops.
5:05 Yeah. So, but they tell us and they paint this picture of, you know, we're we're building this to be this platform um that's going to have all categories and we we believed them and they were right and we we jumped in. We we didn't
5:20 know what we were doing. It was super super easy. We took the phone, turned it on, go live, and um Brandon, who's one
Chapter 5: The first show and the monthly ramp
5:29 of the faces of of of the brand, always one of the guys you'll see in the videos, big beard, tall guy, he just started. We had agreed on these 30 items we were going to sell through. They were all normal items in our catalog with Shopify integration, so we have quantity. and not knowing what we were
5:46 doing, just bobbling through it, we did um did a couple thousand an hour and we were like, "Wo, this this might be something." So, it it was as simple as that. I was like, "Okay, well, okay, I don't know if this hourly rate's, you know, scalable, but like let's do some
6:03 math." And all of a sudden, okay, this is a this is a number. So, we said, "Okay, we're gonna put more resources in it." So, this was April of last year. We did um right under 25K. Our first month we ran 10 hours. In May we said, "Okay, we're going to run more." We ran 26
6:18 hours. We did 95K. In June, we ran 60 hours. We did 156K. And we just kept going. 1666K, 177K, 213K, 269, 273, December 277. Keep going. August last month. Scaling like you're build. What do you think's You're building an audience?
6:38 You're getting better. What's all of the above? Um, all of the above. We're getting better. We're building an audience. We're also doing more hours. So, I look at I look at August, for example. Our last full month, we did 447K,
6:51 but we ran 317 hours. So, the hourly, we got down to,400. There was definitely some diminishing returns as we scaled with the hourly, but um it still scales, right? So, it's uh it's right now it's we have the strategy down. It's how many hours could we do?
7:10 Interesting. Okay. So, follow-up question. It's a separate platform, but I have a there's a whatnot sales channel I install in Shopify.
Chapter 6: The Whatnot sales channel in Shopify
7:19 Correct. And that is that it unifies the catalog. It's like the the product sync, the inventory sync so I don't oversell if I don't want to. And uh how does buying work and whatnot?
7:32 So, so you have a couple options. The most popular and what we do for 95% is auctions. So you can you can start it at
Chapter 7: How auctions and dollar starts work
7:41 a certain point. That can be retail. It can be a little bit below retail. If you're feeling um uh risky, you can do a dollar start. The crazy part is starting a $120 knife at a dollar is the psychology of a starting at a dollar.
7:56 It's just like eBay or any auction site. It ends up performing the best, but you're also opening yourself up to risk. The medium is Tik Tok and the format is HSN.
8:06 Yes. And and and the big difference is in my opinion and why we why we made the decision to go whatnot instead of Tik
Chapter 8: Whatnot vs TikTok: buying intent
8:14 Tok and why we've continued to put all of our resources in whatnot is you look at Tik Tok their algorithm I think I would argue it is the best algorithm for social media anybody's ever created. It knows how to how to show you what you
8:31 want and send you down rabbit holes and it knows with Tik Tok shop when to show you a $20 item to buy. Like their algorithm is is dialed in. Credit where credit's due. The difference is when you're on TikTok, you go there to ingest content, brain rot, whatever you want to call it, right?
8:51 Um and the algo is good. knows when to say, "Hey, buy this $20, you know, cup." But with whatnot, whatnot's just like the eBay app or Amazon app, like you open it up to buy.
9:06 You don't open up the Amazon app to to look at content, right? You don't open up the eBay app to look at you your your buying intent is so much further along. And I think that's the difference is they're opening up the whatnot app to purchase and then they're getting the bonus of being entertained at the same
9:24 time. So it's like this weird special unique approach. Um and I think those two things combine is the new generations QVC, but it also it's that digestible content and your buying intent is just so much further along.
Chapter 9: The show format: 30 seconds per product
9:43 the thing that, you know, I have not wrapped my head around, what does the format for that look like? They're always like, "Man, we just screw around." Okay. What does that mean?
9:52 Yeah. So, I mean, we we follow a pretty we we definitely follow a strategy. So, we'll have and at this point, you know, we're running, you know, I guess we run 86 shows with average show length being um doing the quick math over three hours. That's not easy.
10:08 No, it's a lot. So, we have six different hosts that do it. Um, we have showrunners who run the back end. We have seven showrunners. What they do is they build the show. They have their products they want to talk through. And think of it in the QVC HSN style, but the difference is on QVC, they're
10:25 talking about this product for 8 minutes or 13 minutes, right? This we're talking about it for 30 seconds. We're selling it. We might sell another one. We might sell three or four more and then we move on to the next item. So it's that current younger generation
10:41 ADHD like need new. It it it feeds that perfectly. So you're just like you're just whipping through it and and that's what we're when we're when we're going through strategy and trying to optimize we're talking through that. How do we go faster? How do we optimize revenue and get it up even even higher?
10:57 And all right. So talk to me about hosts. Like how do I find a host? Is this like is there someone who who will do this as a cottage industry job? they're just streaming out of their house for like five different brands.
11:08 It's an opportunity for someone to stand something up that sources them because it's probably the biggest choke point, but it's also become on that channel on that platform a normalized thing. We have multiple hosts that came to us.
11:24 They were just on the channel. They were buyers and they said, "Hey, like do you ever need another host?" And so so that exists, but there's not like a a one-size-fits-all solution for fighting those. And the host is arguably one of the most valuable pieces of it. Um for us starting off and still um three of our hosts are full-time team members that have other other focuses, too.
11:48 All right. Have you So we when we started out, you were like, well, we're looking at TikTok and then we went with whatnot. Live streaming works on TikTok as well. Have we tried it there?
Chapter 10: TikTok Shop live and eBay Live
11:57 It does. and and we did um we also did eBay live too. We got put in there. Um I didn't know that was a thing and I'm a big eBay guy. So they're they're um they haven't figured it out yet, but I think they are getting close. The biggest problem on the eBay side is that their
12:14 infrastructure that the tech is a little bit a little clunky. Little clunky. It's the that's the best way to say it. Um but it's something that they can absolutely fix, right? You've seen big platforms fix their clunkiness. Walmart did it.
12:29 They did. Yeah. They had to get a new CTO. When we were first selling on Walmart, we had to upload a CSV of our inventory. Like, it was just wild. But yeah, so we tried Tik Tok and it's we we kind of validated the the thing I said earlier
12:45 that yes, people were in there and we might have a hundred people watching us, but how many of them are buyers, right? And I think a lot of them are just swiping and the algorithm is like, "Oh, show them this." And um while the algorithm is often right, like a lot of people aren't buyers. So there's the audience is there.
13:03 Yeah. It's built for engagement. It's not built to find a buyer, which correct like I didn't put that together, but yeah, it's whatot. It's like, okay, their algorithm is built to find a buyer. The whole thing's built around buying, so there's not a surprise.
13:16 So yeah. So there's there's I hear it a lot and I actually do agree with it. I think there are exceptions to the rules. You've seen some some massive brands that have hundred $200 items sell sell like hot cakes on TikTok. And I think for some brands it does work. Um for us it didn't. We our our majority.
Chapter 11: AOV: under $20 on TikTok, about $68 on Whatnot
13:36 Yeah. Our AOV was under $20. Our AOV on whatnot is 64 70 in July, but around that around that point. So almost three acts. Um the other big thing, you know, as you know, I'm I'm BattlBox is like a big on the community piece and the
13:52 content piece and um what they've built, what whatnot has built on there from the community point aspect is like really
14:00 interesting where um it's like a bunch of little things, but they add up together to something special. So, like one random thing on there is so you're
Chapter 12: Raids and community boosts
14:09 running Curt, you and I get off this podcast, we're running our first why not together. We're selling whatever and we're at the end of the road and we're we're telling everybody goodbye. You have two options. You can hit end and it's over, which is the same everywhere else. Or you can hit the raid button and
14:28 the raid button then pulls up another screen and you can choose some other show going on at the moment. Hit the button, hit raid. If I have if we had 120 people in the show, you, myself, and the other 120 have just shown up on someone else's show.
14:47 And there's no there's no monetary benefit to me doing that. This is a social thing. I Twitch does this, right? Do they?
14:54 I think they either like they do or just rate another channel in that fashion. I don't know if it's like a feature, but it's a a concept that occurs on Twitch. So So it's genius. So, like I'm not getting anything monetarily from it.
15:08 That person's happy. You possibly made their evening. They're excited. They'll do a giveaway for those people. Those people are screaming raid and excited. Like, it's like this moment of community. And there's lots of little things like that. There's community boosts. So, you can I'm watching your
15:25 show on there. I get community boost and give $5. It runs $5 worth of ads for that person's channel, which I'll get the full metrics on on the new viewers I got because of it, the sales I got because of it, and it's it's called a community boost, and it's saying, "Hey,
15:42 I like your show. I want to help." So, I got all these little pieces of it, and it just makes this community where like these whatnot buyers are very sticky.
15:51 Um, but they also like they're connecting. So if you have a community yourself, like the the natural flow from a a TikTok shop buyer to our site, you know, at the end of the day, marketplace person is not our customer, right? We don't have their email address. That's
Chapter 13: Whatnot as top of funnel for the membership
16:09 the the the thing about marketplaces, but you know, the addresses are the same. So you can look at data with Claude. You can you can marry profiles and understand our data a little bit better than we used to be smart. But you can see a lot of on on TikTok, the $20 buyer doesn't doesn't
16:25 come and check us out. They might not even they might buy our item, but they don't even know who we are. But the the whatnot buyer seems to be a little bit more bought in and and understand and respect and want to be a part of something bigger. So, we see a lot of flow that ends up just being top of
16:41 funnel for the the rest of the business, which is super super unique because it stands on its own. That's just kind of icing on the cake. You know, like is there a rule of thumb you have for this is a product that will not work well on whatnot? This is a product that will probably work well.
16:55 Um, I think you have have you have to have a deeper cat. You have to have a deep catalog. You can't have just three SKs or four SKs or probably even 10 SKs.
Chapter 14: Novelty, speed, and 50 to 60 items a show
17:05 Yeah, you're right. You have to be able it's a lot of it. It's novelty and speed. Yeah. And so, similar to, you know, the the brain rot, I'm just swiping trying to find something new and different. You got to bring that because if you're like, "All right, it's three items that are really similar in a row." They've left the channel, haven't they?
17:21 Right. So, we right now like we try to maintain about 200 of our products being offered on whatnot at one time. Like right now, we're a little low. We're at 160 on on a standard 3-hour show, we'll probably get through about 50 to 60 items. So, quick math. I mean, after 120 minutes, 180 minutes.
17:42 Yeah. Like you can in a whole day of three shows and nine hours like we're going we're going through items. Um Yeah. It's like every three every 3 to four minutes you are changing items. Yeah. It's quick.
17:54 You could have a lesser catalog. You just probably aren't going to be able to rock 300 hours in a month like like we're doing. It's just not going to scale as high as you're going to have some product fatigue.
Chapter 15: The mistake: TikTok creators as live hosts
18:04 Are there any mistakes you made early on that you wouldn't do again? Yeah. So, we uh one of the mistakes we made is to your question earlier about how do we find hosts, right? But we
18:16 said, "Okay, well, we have all of these Tik Tok shop influencers that are, you know, doing videos for them. They get paid the the affiliate fee drives the GMV.
18:30 We we'll just grab these guys and and see if anyone want to make extra money doing whatnot." All right. this doesn't you're I already know this is being presented as a
18:37 mistake but from the get-go this is how I would have approached it as well if I seem like a great idea I was like this should see like this should translate okay where does this go wrong it's just a different different animal right so like weird well the Tik Tok influence shop
18:53 influencer they're making a video they're on the couch like they film something and they're editing and making variations and um being live in front of someone.
19:05 You're right. Very it's just it's a different animal. And the the scale of having to be in live and trying to sell someone for for three hours when I can shoot something for two minutes and sit on my couch and do all
19:20 the editing and the variations of it and and not have to deal with people. Um it's it's just a different proposition.
19:27 Yeah, you're right. You better be you need to be prepared. Like going face to camera is one thing. like you have to get over that hurdle first. You know, conquer cringe mountain on that one.
19:36 Okay, great. Both you and I have both done it. And it it wasn't easy, but here we are now. It doesn't seem hard for me. The idea of like, oh, doing a three-hour live stream sounds exhausting and difficult,
19:50 you know, like I with effort. I'm sure I could do it with some effort, but man, like that that would it that's a new skill. Well, coming to the end of our time together, I want to know what's next for Battle Box. What are you excited about?
Chapter 16: What's next: BattlGames season three
20:03 So, we just concluded season three of Battle Games, which was um every year for the last three years, we throw a golden ticket um into a bunch of boxes.
20:12 We select vit winners, bring 10 of them out. We brought them out outside of Athens, Georgia this year, 3 days of competition, survivalesque skills, and the winner got 25K. Um that's going to drop on YouTube exclusively. It's a six-part series uh weekly. It's going to start dropping in November.
20:33 If someone wanted to learn more about you or BattlBox, where should we go? Google BattlBox. B- A TL B Ox. Or spell it any which way you want and it'll come up. Um or battlBox.com with no e.
20:44 I did. I misspelled it. BL Ox. And got it immediately. So, good SEO. The The only funkiness with that is if you go to B-tb.com, Disney owns that. So yeah, uh LinkedIn is probably the best place to find me.
21:00 I'm the most active there. Um I'm all next, but I'm just not any good at that channel. Um and then online queso is the uh is my monthly blog where I just kind of outline everything.
21:12 Man, thanks so much for doing this. I got to I'm going to crack. I'm going to download whatnot and check out your stream. Uh John Roman BattlBox. Thank you so much, Kurt. Thank you so much.
