Ecommerce and marketing consultancy Entropy, is our exclusive partner for the new series of Ecommerce Hero on ECA
Lysander Bickham is the co-founder of Leo’s Box, an Eco-friendly members club. Members are able to have access to a number of products hand-picked by Leo’s Box, at a reduced price. Their boxes are made with recycled cardboard and sent straight to your door. They are also flat-pack and thus are easily recyclable.
For the past 3 years 18 year old Lysander has been working in local shops in order to save up funds to start the business. He says “I’m passionate about the environment and wanted to create a business that would give something back to our precious planet.”
Who is your ecommerce hero?
Freddy Garland from Freddie’s flowers
What has he done to win hero status in your eyes?
Freddie’s flowers is another DTC business that has done really well on democratizing access to flowers. Freddy is basically creating easy ways for people to include flowers in their day-to-day life and it brings joy to people. That is why I’ve nominated him as my Ecommerce hero.
How has his heroism helped drive ecommerce?
He has created an online experience that is really flexible. You can select the flowers that you like, or an arrangement which you can do as a one-time purchase or by setting up a regular subscription. The flexibility they’ve added is a great part of the proposition.
What are the biggest challenges in ecommerce we need another hero to solve?
We found that lack of trust is one of the things that needs to be improved online and how to convey that trust online. The main way we’ve tried to achieve that is by creating a solid community that we are looking to develop further in 2022.
What are the main issues you have faced during the pandemic to reach your goals in eCommerce?
We had some major difficulties with our supply chain as well. 4 of our 5 suppliers shut down due to the pandemic so we needed to find alternatives as quickly as possible! In addition, I’m still at school so I’ve been juggling all of this with my schoolwork!
What did you do to overcome those issues?
Well, consumers didn’t find some element of disruption surprising due to the pandemic as many businesses were struggling with the same issue, so we focussed on improving our communication with our customers and letting them know when we had delays and they were very supportive. As many other businesses have we also taken the step of trying to mitigate these problems when they came up by increasing our stock to be able to support demand.
