In episode 47, we are chatting with Andy Hayes from PlumDeluxe.com. Andy shares the story about selling organic tea online. He tells us his personal insights on the pros and cons of usingWooCommerce, as well as some of the technical challenges he faced. We also get a bit of behind-the-scenes advice on what it’s like to sell custom, organic tea online.

We chatted about:

* Why he chose WordPress and WooCommerce for his store

* What he loves about WooCommerce his biggest frustration with the eCommerce plugin

* When he chose to turn his site into a subscription site,  and how he did that

* The challenges of selling organic tea online

* The number one thing he wishes he had known when he first started

Thanks To Our Podcast Sponsor: infolinks

Transcript

You can download the transcript of this show at: The WP eCommerce Show Transcript January 25 2017

Bob Dunn: Hey everybody, and welcome back to the WP eCommerce show. Bob Dunn here, also known as BobWP on the web. Today we are swinging back around and bringing you some insights directly from a shop owner:  Andy Hayes from PlumDeluxe.com.

We like to bring shop owners on as guests because it helps other online store owners learn from their experience. And consultants, developers, and designers can also take away some solid tips of what works and doesn’t work in the eCommerce realm. Today we’re going to hear the story of PlumDeluxe.com.

Meet Andy Hayes, owner of Plum Deluxe, the best monthly tea subscription service

Andy, welcome to the show.

Andy Hayes: Hey Bob, thanks for having me. It’s a shame that we have to schedule a podcast call to catch up. I haven’t seen you in awhile.

Bob Dunn: We don’t live that far from each other so.

Andy Hayes: Not anymore.

Bob Dunn: We’ll have to actually do something and we can say all the stuff we want to say that we don’t want other people to hear.

Andy Hayes: Sounds like a plan.

Bob Dunn: Well, let’s start out by having you just tell us kind of in a nutshell what Plum Deluxe is.

Andy Hayes: Thanks. Plum Deluxe, we like to say, is the website that helps you create moments that matter. We’ve been around almost ten years now. Some name changes, some business changes on that journey. Plum Deluxe started as just a blog. When I started my question that I was really curious to answer was why are we better versions of ourselves when we’re on vacation? This was the question that started it all.

At the beginning, it was a blog that we had similar to the show like this. We had sponsors and advertisers that would pay for the content. Think of, I guess, an online magazine kinda thing. Over the years we tried a lot of different kinds of products to make it more of a richer experience. We did themed Plum Deluxe events. We created our own store that was actually an affiliate store, so we had links to other people’s products. It never was really enough to make it what my vision was.

Once I really got clear on what was the purpose of this website, which was kind of … I spent more of my life living in Europe and I felt that here in the United States, people just never slow down and take a second and have a thoughtful conversation.

Bob Dunn: Right.

A unique business model