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BrandBreakdowns - Edition #004 - 12/30/2023

WWW.RIDGE.COM

With Christmas passing & the thought of good gifts in my mind, I knew The Ridge had to be the next brand for BrandBreakdowns. I wanted one, I’ve seen their ads for years & heard the amazing stories of the brand starting from nothing & scaling to millions of dollars. They’ve started with wallets and have since expanded to everyday carry essentials. Luggage, key holders, accessory trays etc. Let’s take a look at how Ridge has become one of the biggest e-commerce players for novelty everyday carry items.

INTERNAL ASSET REVIEW:

The Ridge’s offering has always been rock solid. Good quality, branding & customer experience all the way through. When shopping on their website, you will notice they have tons of different colors & better solutions for normal everyday carry products. A better wallet. A better key holder. A better suitcase. A better accessory tray. Making a better, more modern version of an already existing product is their ENTIRE angle.

We will cover a few really good aspects of their offers in this Breakdown, but one that we need to mention now is their 99 day free trial. They push this on their website & in their email marketing. Assumably, if you use their wallet for 98 days & decide you don’t like it, you can return it & get a full refund. An appealing way to minimize consumer risk of trying a new & improved system, which they offer for ALL of their products.

They also have a “Never Lost Forever Fit” offer for their rings. They will replace the ring up to 2 times to make up for finger size changes, or lost rings. This is a MASSIVE selling point, basically offering 2 free replacements even if you lose the ring. No other companies do that!

They also have a “Sale” link in their navigation, which appears to not truly link to sales, but link to bundles that are naturally discounted BECAUSE they are bundles.

www.ridge.com is a very simple website, we will cover some very unique things that they are doing below. But here are a couple things that are also worth showcasing.

They have a country switcher drop down so you can switch between different country websites. This changes currencies & wording on the website to fit your country.

Another awesome thing they do on their website that I am 100% going to split test myself, is a sliding announcement bar. Announcement bars are key real estate on your website. Deciding what to put there can be daunting, and you can split test tons of different things to put there. This is the first time I’ve seen someone put multiple different announcements in the bar, and have them slide from one to another. Check out their website to see it in action.

One thing that immediately pops out to me when browsing The Ridge website is their unique ways to collect customer emails. They clearly massively value their email list and are actively incentivizing people in order to grow it.

When visiting the website, after a few seconds you will be greeted with a full page pop up offering you a 30% off discount code in exchange for your email.

Full page pop ups ARE a big deal, as they can be very distracting for the customer going through the sales process. Which is why I say they must value their email list.

Another unique thing they are doing on their website to collect emails is they have a slider that takes the place of the announcement bar when you're on a collections or product page that offers a quick 10% off your order for an email address.

The Ridge has a TON of add-ons & upsells to offer, and they do it in a very unique way that I will be split testing myself. This is a huge takeaway, as I believe they have mastered this art for their brand.

One of the first things I noticed when shopping on their website, is the add-on slider on the product page right above the add to cart button.

This makes it fun to add-on other products & gives Ridge a great place to make one-time offer upsells & add ons. We have seen so much gamifying with these e-commerce brands, but this is definitely one to test!

They also have an add-on section inside of their cart drawer as well, offering similar add ons & unique one-time offers for add ons.

Of course, we will be breaking down the entire sales process & show you all pages of the sales process, but while we are on the subject of upsells, they also offer an upsell to get 1-3 day shipping times for $5. They likely increase their AOV quite a bit by doing this, and it likely doesn’t cost them much extra money to do.

Normally we would not look at images/GIF’s/videos on a BrandBreakdown’s website, but The Ridge has some features that are worth mentioning!

First of all, they have a stop motion video linked on the product page that shows how the wallet works, the different add-ons & options and other features & benefits. This is cool because stop motion is generally considered entertaining & satisfying to watch, while the video also educates & sells the customer further on buying a wallet. You can see the video here.

They also have an interactive slider animation on their product page. It allows you to slide a bar to decide how many cards you have, and it will display a regular wallet on the left, and The Ridge wallet on the right comparing how thick & bulky they each become. If you have a product that can benefit from this, I would definitely recommend getting one coded & A/B testing it on your lander.

Ridge also has another animation on the product page, showing the wallet “opening” up to display all of the cards inside. The animation plays as you scroll by & does a really good idea of showing the product in action.

One amazing thing Ridge is doing that you should absolutely try out in your store, is having a live Q&A on your product page. This allows people to comment questions directly on the website, and allows you to display the answers. It’s a little more intriguing than a regular F.A.Q. & can get more people to actually read it, handling the objections of more potential customers.

EXTERNAL MARKETING REVIEW:

Ridge is another brand that has seemingly tested hundreds of different creatives with META ads. You can see their ad library here.

One thing I noticed is that the “%” symbol is showing in over half of their ads. More than likely showing discount codes upon the first appearance with new customers. Most brands do not do this, and matter of fact one of their most popular ad copies begins with “Save 30% on our best selling…” and then they say whatever product is in the ad.

There is a whole interview on how Ridge has grown with influencer marketing, I will take away the best parts & put them here. But if you want to read it yourself, and to provide a source, here is the article.

The article claims Ridge did $50M in sales in 2020, most of the growth came from influencer marketing. They hired 750 different influencers for a total of 3,000+ videos averaging over 10 sponsorships every single day. This is insanely impressive. 

Sean (Founder) is talking about how they hire influencers in pretty much any industry. Their demographic is broad so they can run pretty much anyone. They make offers & negotiate based on what they are willing to pay based on CPM’s between $3 - $7. One unique thing he mentioned is that if an influencer wants $2,000 per video but you aren’t willing to pay that, you can offer them the same $2,000 but for however many videos you need for it to make sense and most will still take it. He lets the influencer do whatever they want with the video & there are no contracts. Those were the main takeaways from their influencer marketing.

Also on the topic, Ridge has a Media Kit for Press & influencers. This has product photos, brand logos & colors, Descriptions, stories from the founders, etc. Basically all of the information someone may need to tell the Ridge story & promote the Ridge’s product line, is all in the media kit. This is definitely smart to do for your brand, you can view theirs here.

One thing I thought was cool when researching Ridge is that they have a full blown Amazon store. They likely do FBA with Prime shipping benefits which allows them to get organic sales through Amazon listing recommendations, allows them to pick up sales from people who prefer to shop on Amazon & gives customers a 2 day shipping option without needing to pay extra through their website. These things make having an Amazon store very appealing to a brand, even if it means Amazon gets their cut. You can view their Amazon store here.

At the time of writing this BrandBreakdown, Ridge was running a collaboration with www.travismathew.com. They are a clothing brand, and have an active collaboration with another company as well. I’m not sure if there is a strategy to partnering with Travis Mathew specifically, but collaborations can benefit both brands by cross promoting each others products.

INTERNAL MARKETING REVIEW:

When browsing the website as a current customer, you get a 10% discount offer to join their “VIP Text List” to get new offers & deals texted directly to you. It’s nothing crazy, but it shows that they made the effort to go farther than just collecting phone numbers during the checkout process, not many brands have done that for collecting phone numbers.

Ridge has had probably the most aggressive abandoned cart email flow we have seen so far here on BrandBreakdowns. You can view full-screen screenshots of the full abandoned cart flow here.

1 hour after abandoning my cart, I was sent an email with a 10% off discount code. This is VERY aggressive. Most industry leaders recommend no discount code, or maximum 5% off discount code for the first abandoned cart email. 

24 hours later, they kept the discount at 10% but now mention their 99 day risk free trial offer we discussed earlier. Keeping the discount the same, but adding more value to the order.

48 hours later they sent an email mentioning 30% off, which would be insane if it was just a straight up abandoned cart email offering another 30% off. But it’s not. They are promoting their kit in which you SAVE 30% by buying 2 products instead of one inside of a bundle. Not quite the same thing.

4 days later they sent a generic email with no offer in it, this could have been the first email in their general email flows that ISN’T an abandoned cart flow, but theres no way to know so I included it anyways.

Ridge sales process was easy as usual, but not as simple & vanilla as other BrandBreakdowns, so what was different?

We already discussed upsells but it must be mentioned again. In the cart drawer there is & “Upgrade & Save” option, along with one-time pricing add ons you could easily add to your cart with one click.

In the checkout, there is also an upsell “Add to order” button, along with a $5 expedited shipping option (which works) to increase AOV.

After completing my purchase I was prompted to make a customer account. After making my account, I was sent an email offering me 40% off of my 2nd order over $100. This is a WILD offer, I also tested the code and it is not a unique code, they must send it to all of their customers.

This is crazy because 40% is nothing to scoff at, especially for a massive brand like Ridge. You NEVER see brands of this size offering discounts higher than 20%. They must have determined that getting someone to buy again with a 40% discount is cheaper than acquiring a new customer. Smart.

The product is insanely well packaged. Insanely well constructed. It felt like unboxing an Apple Iphone, & for a $150 wallet I expected nothing less. You can buy knockoffs of Ridge for $20 pretty much anywhere, but I would say Ridge has done a great job making a quality product experience that makes paying extra for the higher quality Ridge, worth it.