NZB: What are some of the fundamentals of running an online business? What unique issues do you face?

Also, appreciate that in the digital age people don’t want to wait for an answer. We are more likely to have a customer query come through our social pages than through email; people want an answer pretty much instantly.

If you’re running a digital e-commerce site you need to appreciate that your working day will not be 9 to 5.

Staying on customers, don’t underestimate how influential they can be. Ninety percent of respondents in our recent shopper survey said they’d recommended our brand to others – this is highly influential and costeffective ‘word of mouth’ for us. Something money can’t buy. Of course, they’re not going to take that action unless our brand delivered on its promise.

Therefore you need to be authentic with your brand and your actions. Don’t try and be something that you’re not and don’t claim to do something if you can’t or won’t deliver.

That’s why we called our brand The Best Beauty Box Ever – it forces us to be accountable to our shoppers and forces authenticity with everything that we do.

Be decisive and make quick decisions. You don’t have to wait until you’ve got every single piece of information at hand. You make a wrong decision? So what? You’ve learnt something, and there’s generally nothing that can’t be fixed.

Don’t try and be an expert at everything, figure out what you’re good at and outsource the rest.

The biggest issue we face is how to get our brand to stand out in a cluttered media market, and the best way to cut through to our customers who are bombarded with thousands of brand messages daily. We’ve been lucky that we’ve built our sister brand www.beautyreview. co.nz into one of New Zealand’s largest beauty influencers, so we already have a large database of people interested in beauty products to cross market to.