EPISODE 81 OF THE MARKETING SOLUTIONS PODCAST: ECOMMERCE: WHAT WE CAN LEARN FROM SHINY FLAKES, THE TEENAGE DRUGLORD

Sonya:
I watched his documentary on the weekend, about a kid in Germany who became a teenage drug lord through an e-commerce website easily accessible via Google. I messaged my business partner and said, "This kid is an e-commerce genius. You need to go and watch this." So I thought I'd share with you how he was so successful and hopefully you take these lessons and use them for good in your e-commerce business, rather than illegal activity like in this documentary.

Sonya:
Welcome to the Boom Your Biz podcast, a podcast for the movers, the shakers, and even bigger action takers in business. I'm your host on your McIntyre-Reid and each week I'll be exploring the question of what really makes businesses and organizations thrive. I'm on a mission to educate, empower, and inspire business owners and myself along the way.

Sonya:
So this documentary on Netflix is called Shiny Flakes and it is insane. Obviously it's a documentary, it's a true story. This teenager discovers the dark web in 2013 and basically goes, "God, this is way too hard for an average consumer to access. I'm going to build a website accessible to anyone by Google, and they'll be able to purchase drugs online." Mind blowing, right? And he got away with it for two years. But the thing I found most interesting about this documentary is the principles he followed have an explosive e-commerce store, which by the way, had about 15,000 orders from around the world every single day. First up, he does a ton of market research and identified his target market. He found a gap in the market where he felt he could fill it, offering three unique selling propositions.

Sonya:
Number one was the ease of accessibility. As I mentioned before, this stuff was available to buy on the dark web and a site called Silk Road, but it was only accessible via a VPN. Google told me it's pretty simple to access, but if I a digital marketing gal in 2021 has never accessed it, I daresay a lot of others back in 2013 wouldn't have. He also realized during this process that there was a demographic that was not going to go and do a drug deal in the park or down an alleyway. Professionals, for example. So by making it accessible on Google and the product being delivered via the post, it was ideal for the target market. His second USP was the quality of product. This kid somehow managed to forge relationships with suppliers who provided the highest quality drugs available at the time. And his third was the pricing. He found that whenever another dealer was selling high quality products on the dark web, the price was exorbitant. This kid took upon an audit, massive quantities of each drug and was able to negotiate cheap prices as a result with the suppliers. It's amazing to me that so many e-commerce businesses have not nailed that USP down or their ideal client avatar and pain points, and also haven't negotiated with their suppliers by buying in bulk. It is the first thing that you need to do when starting any business.

Sonya:
He then built an incredibly user-friendly website. People were able to search various products and filter based on a number of conditions. He created a frequently asked question page, which explained the whole process to people. His product photography was beautiful. These three things, the search features and filters, the FAQ's, and the beautiful photography are essential for any e-commerce website.

Sonya:
He also added a number of trust signals to the website. Now I talk about this a lot with my clients. If a person doesn't know your brand and you need to reassure them that it's legit and it's safe to give you their money, again, illegal offering or not, the way he processed payment was actually by Bitcoin, which was completely safe, it ensured that all of the information was encrypted. It was basically untraceable. Any security had a feature available, he had implemented to protect his identity and his customers'. To add more trust. He also had a ton of reviews from verified customers on the website for each and every product. The way he built the website and the keywords he used ensured that the search engine optimization was on point. So for example, if you typed in "buy cocaine," his site would appear as number one, the organic aspect meant he got orders really quickly once the site went live.

Sonya:
Okay, so that's the actual online experience, but let's talk about how he got re-paid customers and encouraged that word of mouth to spread. First of all, his shipping was baby. The German postal service sounds incredible and Aus Post, you should really take some notes. In the documentary, he said that if he put the order in the mail at 3:00 PM, it would arrive by 8:00 AM the next morning. When the package arrived, it was beautifully wrapped and included a packet of gummy bears. This was an added bonus and surprise to people that made the experience memorable. It was really funny seeing that because I placed an order with a company a couple of weeks ago now and arrived with one of these little packs of gummy bears. Don't worry. It was a legitimate site, I was not buying drugs online.

Sonya:
Eventually though, one of his supplies stuffed up got caught and let the place to Max, the teenage drug Lord. They could not believe that an operation this size had been run for two years by a 19 year old from his childhood bedroom. Imagine if Max had dedicated his time and energy into early legitimate, legal product. He could have been the next Jeff Bezos.