Interview Willy van Knippenberg from Novus Fumus

Wie ben je en wat doe je?

Who are you and what do you do?

My name is Willy van Knippenberg. I’m 49 years old and a father of five. In 2014, I started Novus Fumus, which consists of two webshops. On www.novusfumus.nl, we sell e-cigarettes, and on www.novusfumus.com, we offer lifestyle products.

It actually started as a hobby that got out of hand. Novus Fumus has grown into one of the larger customizer-selling webshops in the Netherlands. I was working at a lovely family business, but I was spending a lot of time on my site.

I started when I saw the affiliate program of Greensmoke. I then started an affiliate website, and it went well. At some point, that company pulled out of Europe, and we filled that gap. So, you do need a bit of luck.
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What are your biggest challenges in terms of growth?

We grew so quickly that we had to keep investing, which led to cash flow challenges. Rolling out marketing activities also requires money. We invested all our money into stock, which made it difficult. Every cent that came in had to be reinvested in inventory. We invested heavily in other products, outside of refills.

If we hadn’t started with additional products, I think we might not exist anymore or would be in a smaller form. By investing in new products, we managed to keep the business at the same level.

Due to the new tobacco law, we were no longer allowed to advertise within the Netherlands or ship to customers abroad.
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Kun je iets vertellen over hoe je funnels opgebouwd zijn? Of hoe je marketing is ingericht?

We doen weinig aan marketing, want je mag niet promoten. In 2016 is nieuwe tabakswetgeving in werking getreden. We mochten toen geen reclame meer maken voor elektrische sigaretten. We zijn toen begonnen met de verkoop van andere producten, zoals rugzakken en reistassen. Eerst hadden we één webwinkel voor alle producten. Dat mocht niet meer, dus hebben we dit gesplitst in twee webwinkels.

Voor de webwinkel met lifestyle producten promoten we op social media en we steken veel resources in contentmarketing. We hebben een tekstschrijfster die regelmatig nieuwe blogs hebben over allerlei onderwerpen. Dat moet resulteren in hogere positie in Google. We maken geen gebruik van betaalde Google advertenties.
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Can you tell us about your funnels or how your marketing is structured?

We don’t do much marketing because promotion isn’t allowed. In 2016, new tobacco legislation came into effect. We were no longer allowed to advertise e-cigarettes. That’s when we started selling other products, such as backpacks and travel bags. Initially, we had one webshop for all products, but that was no longer allowed, so we split it into two webshops.

For the lifestyle products webshop, we promote on social media and invest heavily in content marketing. We have a copywriter who regularly writes new blogs on various topics. This should result in a higher ranking on Google. We don’t use paid Google ads.

Email marketing automation as a channel

We rely heavily on email marketing automation. Through automation, you can focus on specific campaigns.

For example, if someone only buys e-cigarettes and has no interest in other products, they won’t receive emails with other products. If someone has purchased a backpack, we can show them a water bottle for their next trip. This works very well for us. The email campaigns are crucial for our revenue and growth, as well as for introducing new products. We build those campaigns ourselves.

We monitor customers who buy stock for 2-3 months, and they don’t receive promotional offers, as that’s prohibited by the tobacco law. If someone hasn’t ordered for a while, we send them a blog post, keeping brand awareness alive. For lifestyle products, customers receive an invitation to leave a review after 2 weeks, a promotion for accessories after 3 weeks, and so on. We have various automated campaigns.
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How do you handle competition? (And what are your thoughts on Amazon?)

I think competition is good because it keeps everyone on their toes. We exclusively sell Nomatic products. I’m fine with competitors selling it too. It helps expand the market. We compete on customer service and customer experience.

I’m not happy with Amazon because they have too much power. Their fees are too high, and their terms can sometimes be absurd. We’ve sold through Amazon in other European countries, but Amazon always sides with the customer, even to the extreme. With exclusive products, some customers also abuse this, like going on a 30-day vacation and returning a used bag afterward. You need to find a balance with that.

We were forced to stop selling in certain countries. We couldn’t and didn’t want to comply with Amazon’s terms. This is a warning for Dutch retailers. We had to adjust our policies, which we didn’t do, so we stopped working with Amazon.

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How big is your team, and how do you manage it?

There are three of us. I started the company, and my sister and a friend joined later.

I’m responsible for the technical aspects and support. Marius Zwinkels handles logistics, including the warehouse and order picking. He also manages procurement.

My sister Jolanda handles administration. The webshop is set up so that we’ve automated as much as possible.

We outsource certain tasks. For instance, Linda writes all our content.
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What are your growth goals for 2020?

As I mentioned earlier, we’ve gone through several significant changes due to the Tobacco Act.

The Tobacco Act has halved our business. That means we need to be flexible, so setting annual goals isn’t relevant. Things can change overnight. We want to have as broad a product range as possible as quickly as possible.
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What new trends do you see, and are there any you want to pursue? Or what are the opportunities for e-commerce in 2020?

Many webshops sell through platforms like Amazon and Bol.com. I can imagine that this is good for some webshops. If you’re a manufacturer yourself, it’s an excellent sales channel. Or for smaller webshops that want a broader reach. If you want to compete with products that are already well-known or growing quickly, it’s less interesting to sell through platforms. You can lose out to larger parties from abroad with better prices on the platform. We’ve benefited from this ourselves because we could deliver cheaper in other countries than local players.
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What tools do you use?

Our webshop runs on Lightspeed combined with Pickr and Sendcloud. We want to use local software and use Sendcloud as middleware.

We send our email campaigns through Mailcampaigns. It’s a Dutch company and works well for us. It’s easy to connect to our webshop. In the software, I can segment customers based on their purchase history. If they’ve placed more than X orders, I place them in a segment. You can create workflows for these segments, so campaigns run automatically.

We use Zendesk for chat. If someone visits the site three times and hasn’t purchased, we send a message asking if we can help. People search for specific products, so we get targeted traffic. We score well on that.
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To what extent do you use data?

In a few weeks, I’ll be taking an SEO training at Frankwatching. I want to better understand what consumers are searching for and how we can rank for that.

We’re continuously working with data. We’re still expanding our product offerings. The secondary products have become the main products: we’ve delivered to 41 countries. You need to collect that data first, and we work on that every day. Our conversion rate is high, so the focus is on more visitors who are relevant to our products. I want to start focusing on that on a European scale.