Next Ecommerce Journey: Launching “Blimps” (and announcing new Ecommerce brand) with Luciano Drehmer

In today’s episode, we will be chatting about this new program called the blimp method which is a whole new way of doing e-commerce. Our guest for today is Luciano Drehmer, a talented designer and brand expert and also our new business partner in the new case study brand.

Let’s tune in.

√ Luciano’s VIP Page
√ Mike’s letter for 2022 + Announcing Blimp
√ Blimp Method program
√ Free Webinar to learn on how to launch a product in 2022
√ ExcaliburBrothers.com B2C site
√ Excalibur Brothers blimp program landing page

Thank you Luciano, we are happy to welcome you as our new partner in this new venture.

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[00:00:00] Episode 365 Blimp method. You’re ready Shaina? Yeah, very excited about this.  Alright,

[00:00:06] let’s tune in. Welcome to the Global from Asia podcast, where the daunting process of running an international business is broken down into straight up actionable advice. And now your host, Michael Michelini. So Shaina, it’s great to have you back in our intro with us. How are you doing? I miss this, you know, 

[00:00:30] doing the intro for the podcast.

[00:00:32] I really miss this one. Yeah. It’s awesome. It’s really, it’s really cool. Actually. I’m also getting used to it. I just switched to gallery mode. I don’t know if hopefully it will work, still getting used to the video. This is an audio podcast, actually, most people I think, listen, we got some great feedback from the last show with the Now Shenzhen

[00:00:49] Relaunch. But yes, it’s great to have you here with us Shaina. It’s always fun. And it’s the end of the year, right? I think we think we’ve got one more show before the end of the year to not our last show of the year, but, but it’s getting into the holidays, excited for the holidays.  Holiday season is waving, sitting in the corner.

[00:01:08] It’s super fast. I mean, it’s super fast. I mean, of course it’s still, the world is still not normal, but maybe it’s the new normal, but hope we can all have a great holiday, holiday season. And yeah. So, so I don’t know if you have, what do you, what do you have planned for the, for the Christmas or the New year?

[00:01:29] Actually, we don’t, we don’t have a really concise plan yet, but maybe I’ll just stop over to my parents for them to come over to our house and just have a small gathering with my kids. Great. How about you? How’s the holiday season there? I’m like you, I haven’t, I haven’t made a decision yet. But, you know, it’s actually a little bit weird, cause there’s not much for Christmas in China, you know, we don’t even have a tree in our house this year.  Don’t worry,

[00:01:58] we don’t have one too. Oh, you don’t have one either. Okay. I didn’t have time to purchase and decorate our house yet. Oh, okay. Yeah. I mean, I don’t think I’ve ever done it since, since I was in the U S and you know, we’re talking 2006 is I think the last time I’ve seen a Christmas tree in where I’ve lived. So, but the kids, you know, they’re getting older, so they’re like, they’re asking because school talks about it.

[00:02:22] So they’re like, where’s our Christmas tree. Anyway, part of Asia, especially in China, the holidays are different, but we’re excited for today’s show. You know, I know in the Global from Asia community and, and, you know, we’ve been chatting about this new program, I think. Even earlier in our, our internal talks is the Blimp method.

[00:02:40] It’s a, it’s a whole new way of doing e-commerce and I think today’s the first time we’re going to publicly talk about it. So that’s quite exciting. Yeah. It’s pretty cool. So. So I think in the, well, we can talk, we can talk about more in our outro after the interview, but this interview is Luciano. He’s an amazing, he actually worked at Amazon in Beijing before he’s from Brazil and he’s a really talented designer and brand expert.

[00:03:07] So he’s on our show today. He’s our new business partner in the new case study brand. We’ll share during the talk and afterwards Shaina, you and I can talk a little bit more about this Blimp program. So what do you think let’s dive into the interview? Yeah, sure. Let’s go ahead. Right, Hey, Mike. So how about if the person that is interested with the Blimp method, doesn’t have yet a company, can they still join it?

[00:03:35] Sure. For sure. I mean, anybody is welcome to join and start up their new company and we will be happy to help them, and it actually leads into one of our sponsors. They just renewed for the next year, 2022 mercury.com. So they help you with US bank accounts remotely. So you don’t have to apply in person.

[00:03:53] A lot of people here are using their service, ourselves included. Even for the Blimp method we use mercury. So that’s definitely one of our partners that we’d recommend in the Blimp method for people with their bank account. And of course the company, it could be, you know, that would be a U S structure and we can help them out with that.

[00:04:10] But of course, even if you’re not joining Blimp, support, our sponsor apply with our special link for bonuses for, for both you as listener and, and for us at globalfromasia.com/mercury. Welcome to Global from Asia podcast, episode 365. So in this episode, we’ll talk about the next e-commerce journey and we’ll introduce a new e-commerce business model.

[00:04:33] So today we have here with us, Luciano Drehmer, actually Luciano, I know we met him through Meir, and it’s always a pleasure to have you on the show Luciano. Yeah, thanks so much for the warm welcome and, uh, very excited to be here again. Yeah. Yeah. Always. So you want to share a little bit about yourself?

[00:05:00] Yeah. I met Meir I think around two years ago, three to four years ago. We cooperate in some projects, right in Amazon building Amazon brands. At that time, I was actually working for Amazon in Beijing, building the brands and managing the brands inside Amazon. Right. So before that I was working for some e-commerce companies in China and building brands for them.

[00:05:31] And. And, it was very exciting. We, we did some work together for Blupond and for Knight Visor. It is a very good, very cool, case we, we built there and, and now I’m back to China in the last few years. And building brands here, have a company here, exciting company, called Be Kind we,we do hair hair products.

[00:06:02] So now it’s, yeah.

[00:06:07] Such a talented artist, right. So it’s been great to get to know you more in the community. And thank you so much for supporting the Global from Asia program over the years. So. Let’s talk more about your brand. So how does it get started? How do you get started with this new brand? So I can take that question.

[00:06:28] So the brand, we haven’t said the name yet. I think it’s called Excalibur Brothers. So actually, it was a friend of mine started this many, many years ago in 2003 Laurence. And I’ve been friends with him since 2004. If you can believe it, through message boards. I’ve met him in Chicago, Laurence if you’re watching Hi Laurence. And we, during COVID, you know, everything was changing and he was mostly drop-shipping these.

[00:06:59] And we made a deal and we took over, took over the site, took over the business and, you know, I think Aubrey has been helping with it too. You know, also I remember you even working with the Excalibur Brothers website, thanks for that, Aubrey. But it seems like a really amazing brand opportunity to grow even to the next level.

[00:07:20] And it’s so established with, you know, traffic, internet marketing and the positioning. So we started, started working on this earlier this year to take it to Amazon, to grow it as a, as a product brand. And, you know, I’m back here at Shenzhen and I actually, I think it Luciano is like one of the first friends I met when I came back down.

[00:07:40] Right. We were chatting and you’re like, let’s kind of meet. And so we met at once here in OCT loft, Mexican restaurant. And, I showed him about this product and we actually have some sample products where we’re developing and then he he’s like, we’ve been talking about working together for awhile and we feel like this is a great opportunity with his talented brand experience and design experience with, you know, our side, with the web and the traffic and the

[00:08:14] The operational side. So we, we put our forces together and we’ve been building this out. And to, finally, till this day, you know, of course it’s always nerve wracking to be so public and open on the internet in this show, it’s going to be an online. I know some people, say don’t share your brand publicly, but you know, I think we’re pretty confident about what we’ve been building and what we have and this program and this opportunity, but

[00:08:41] But yeah, we’ve been working on this for quite a few months now together, and it’s been fun to work closer with Luciano. Yeah. It’s very exciting. And being, Michael told me about the idea about Excalibur Brothers and I think they were in the right maturity stage to advance. And we had the opportunity to match our SKUs together, working on that project together.

[00:09:13] Like every weekend we, we have a meetup to, to talk about that. And I think we did a very solid progress on that. And, and we, what we do is very, very, very interesting, exciting. So for those, we do this, actually, this is meant to be an audio podcast, but now we have this green screen and the lights and the cameras, but this is going to be also on audio.

[00:09:41] So if you’re on audio, you can check out on the show notes, the pictures and the links, but it’s been really amazing seeing that come to life, to, to the next level, right? Like brand’s been there for many years. People are searching for this, this brand on, on Google, on the internet. They’re looking for these products, but, you know, I think, what Luciano has done and with my, you know, it’s been the two of us working, like you said, mostly on weekends and chatting all throughout the week.

[00:10:06] it’s really the next level of, of this brand. Very interesting. We we went through very deep into the, the personality of the brand, and we run a brand strategy workshop together. Right. And we fill out all the, the brand points like when you went to the brand mission, brand vision and, and customer personality.

[00:10:35] And, and we get to know who these people are and we become more and more one of them try to impersonate that, and, and it’s very exciting. We build the, build the living thing. Right. I I’m excited. So we’ve, we’ve also been working on products to add to this portfolio. So I think we’ll stick to the agenda and Aubrey’s hosting us.

[00:11:01] What’s what we can make sure we talk about the model, but yeah, basically that’s the story. It’s been really fun. And a lot of people think a brand is a logo, especially like sometimes a lot of Chinese factories. Of course, we’re both here in Shenzhen and we work and mark, I’m more on marketing side. He’s more on design and branding.

[00:11:17] We talked a lot of factories, but not just factory. I think even people in the, in the, in the, around the world, they think a logo is the brand or like a, a sticker or the name. But it’s, it’s much more than that today. We can’t, of course it’s not a branding course or branding workshop, but you know, like Luciano says, we, the avatar, the user, like we went through Luciano’s, system and they had, we had this checklist and it was multiple multiples, long sessions.

[00:11:46] That we went through to really define who is the target customer, what’s their pain points. What are their, the problems. What they’re looking for, who are the competitors in the same, niche and how to, how, how do the brands. How we as a brand, solve this problem for them. So this is the most important thing that we are addressing that.

[00:12:09] So I think as a brand,I think that would the way to define what is a brand is like a brand is what people say about what people say about you when you’re not in the room.

[00:12:24] I really liked, I really liked that, that mindset because it, it makes you work on the brand – Core, heart and reputation. Right. And how, how do you, how do you build this elements out of the brand and make people think you in a good way? So this is what we’re trying to do here, right? Exactly. So really getting the bigger picture about this Excalibur.

[00:12:49] Brother’s right. So thank you for that. Thank you for that, Mike and Luciano. So now I’m just wondering, what are the steps or some steps that you have taken so far? Sure. So we, we kind of went through some of the steps. So far, you know, we had obviously a very aged website with traffic and, and customers from, from 2003.

[00:13:14] And, you know, we have now gone through all the branding upgrades. I think for right now, we’ve gone through everything and we’ve prepared products to launch on Amazon. We’re principally preparing everything for our, this new business model, which we’ve been talking about. I think we have Meir on the show already, in this exact show.

[00:13:36] But those are the main, what would, you know, I think we talked about some of the steps, right, Luciano? Yeah I mean, we first run the strategy and then we translate this strategy inputs and outputs and the tangible things like first we, we, we make a guideline. We make first

[00:14:02] We make more guideline and, and, and from this guideline we can build products, right. We have the the, the right to start to grow into a product line. Right. And yeah, you can translate in a very solid brand with very consistent language. Right. There’s a scalable and it’s, and it’s manageable. Right. You can actually manage and improve these assets over time.

[00:14:33] Yeah. So, yeah, so basically this new venture is, we’re going to put it as a community program, right. So we can share more about it to the GFA audience. How would you introduce it? Can you introduce it to our audience? How would it be related to our new business model? Sure. Sure. So, so yeah, like I’ve been writing a lot lately.

[00:15:01] There’s going to be a long blog post. I think Aubrey already read it. I don’t know if I sent it to Luciano, even. I just wrote that this week before the show. But it’s the next generation, you know, I think some of you were here for E-commerce gladiator and Sisitano, so we are this, the new generation, a new model is the blimp method as the program.

[00:15:20] And the brand is Excalibur brothers. So the, basically the idea is, it’s December almost Christmas and new years happy new year, happy holidays. So we thought it’d be a perfect time you know, like Luciano, been working hard to prepare to this point and working with Meir on the model. So we want to open up this to the audience, to the people listening, you know, of course.

[00:15:41] And maybe it’s your first time to find the show when you’re interested. Of course it’s application process. So we’re going to have a link for you to apply. And basically the way this works is we’re going to call it the franchise model. There’s licensed model and franchise model, but this is where Luciano

[00:15:58] and I decided to do the franchise model, which means we’re going to give you basically even more than a licensee model. We’re going that we have the products ready, we have suppliers ready. We have some basic research, right? Of these products. And of course our branding is ready and, we’ll be supporting you.

[00:16:18] And the model is if you want to join, I think no more than 10, but at least five, we’re going to at least go with five people. And each going to have their own business, your own seller account, your own company, bank account, everything, you will open this. If you need our help and we can help you, or I’ll help you with that.

[00:16:35] You know, we’ve mostly been US companies lately. So once you a registered company and funded, or, you know, your funds, we recommend around 10,000 US dollars, maybe a little bit less. Of course you can go higher depending on your budgets. And if you’re approved for our program, you can join and then we will match you with the best product that we believe will fit your budget and your risk tolerance.

[00:16:59] Of course, we want you to like the product that you’re picked to and you will be the exclusive seller in Amazon US of that product. And we will work with you to launch that with you in Excalibur brothers brand. So we’ll use our storefront, our website or email traffic. Of course, hopefully Global From Asia

[00:17:17] People will support us and we’re going to launch together. Each person will be there again, their own company, their own Amazon seller account. And, and an exclusive product from, from us Luciano and I, and others will work with you. And then you’re gonna go through this program. We’re going to have mastermind calls for the Excalibur Brothers using a blimp method strategy.

[00:17:39] You know, Meir will be supporting, of course he has amazing software he put together to manage all of this and. And that’s the basic model. And I guess you’re wondering, where does the money go? I don’t know. There’s so much, that’s pretty, it’s a brand new thing, right? I don’t know if I should squeeze all of this in, but basically the money goes to you as a seller.

[00:17:57] You know, we trust you. You’re going to get the money first for the products you sell is your inventory. You, you invested in the inventory so you can get the sales. And we at Excalibur Brothers brand, we’ll get a royalty. So I can talk, I know there’s probably a lot of questions, but that’s the basic model. So basically we’re launching this in January, it’s December now.

[00:18:18] And we want to get more people to know about this model, to know about our brand or case study and work with you collaboratively, not competitively, but collaborative, collaboratively.  Did I say that right? So thank you, Mike. For our listeners, they can join through our website, we’re gonna link them on the show notes of course.

[00:18:42] I think there’s only so many links. We’re going to a webinar later this month. There’s going to be of course, the program, the Excalibur Brothers, opportunity everything. So all of these links will be at globalfromasia.com/blimp.  B L I M P. And the link to this podcast, everything’s gonna be there. So, that’s the best place to go if you’re watching this, especially in December of 2021.

[00:19:09] So again, how about you, Luciano, any last words are message you want to tell our community? Well, I think the model is, is brilliant. I think it’s a very good opportunity for people who, who want to have a real brand and a real product to launch and is not there yet, to save a lot of time and, and build something very solid in the marketplace.

[00:19:38] We both have a lot of experience on that. We are very happy to share that to everyone who could be interested in the program. Right. And, and very happy to help, any questions, very happy, choose to offer any advice and anything in this area. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for joining us and thank you so much for supporting again, the Global from Asia and yes.

[00:20:10] We’re happy to welcome you as our new partner in this new venture. And I hope for the success for this project. Yeah. Thank you so much. That’s great. So again, just to, just to wrap up, you know, you can check out the brand site, excaliburbrothers.com. Uh, there’s going to be some big revamp. I don’t think by the time the show goes online and we’ll have all of those, you know, those amazing.  But it’s already okay.

[00:20:34] I mean, it’s getting traffic, but there’s going to be a massive upgrade happening. But you know, we want you to be part of this. We want you to be part of this. I believe it will be launched the Excalibur brothers.com where we’re going to put a landing page about what Luciano has built. He’s he’s already.

[00:20:50] Provided us all this amazing materials and the web team is building this landing page. So you can get some inspiration about what’s being built and we want you to succeed. And this is perfect for people of course, there is a capital requirement, but I think selling on, of course, selling on Amazon or e-commerce certainly eCommerce models does include some inventory.

[00:21:10] So this will have an inventory investment and the program fees and some setup fees, we would also take care of the whole listing. I think I didn’t mention that. The listing we’ll, we’ll help you with the listing photos, the descriptions, you know, all the different materials. Of course, we have our website, traffic, you know, various email and social traffic to really boost this up.

[00:21:30] Plus of course we have our GFA expert community on top of Meir and others in our program. There will be even more people from our podcast, guests who are members to our friends, helping make sure that your success and the idea is this is like a good first step to get into Amazon. And it’s your business, your seller account.

[00:21:50] You can add more products from Excalibur brothers, you can add more products of yourself. You’ve got your own brand in the future, but we think this is maybe a great first step, or maybe you’re already selling. You just want to add this on. You want to work with us. You want to, you know, maybe 10,000, is not a big deal for you.

[00:22:06] You want to get involved. It’s going to be not just a course, right? It’s a product. It’s a business in a box. It’s everything you need. Plus working with us, working with some other great people in a group learning community, environment. So, again, check out, I made another video, you can see like a five minute video.

[00:22:23] I did at a Christmas tree downstairs. You saw that Christmas tree. But, it’s really great. And I’m really happy again, to work with Luciano and someone watching or listening today. Thanks again. All right. Thank you, Luciano. And also Aubrey was our host in that, that episode. So Shaina, we got to get you into the next one.

[00:22:44] I can’t wait to have you hosting more shows too, you’re a natural.  Don’t worry I’ll be there on the next, you know, interview. Sure, sure. And so, you know, it’s the end of the year and people always are thinking about the new year’s. Do you have a new year’s resolution Shaina?

[00:23:02] I don’t know, maybe to live a less stressful life. Yeah. Yeah. We were talking before the recording, but we like, I like your new haircut, your new hairstyle. It’s pretty nice. I had it colored, a new one. And then it took me five hours to just to finish this. Wow. Okay. But it came out really nice. So that’s, it’s not yet new years, but you know, everybody’s always talking about their hair fixed, or losing weight, you know, getting more exercise, eating healthy, you know, but a lot of times people talk about business.

[00:23:39] So, you know, with this Blimp method, that’s why I’ve been wondering when to tell people about it. We’ve been working on it for, for quite a while here, in internally. But I hope people, if they want to really start on Amazon and e-commerce in a, in a kind of a business in a box method, like we described with Luciano, it’s giving you everything, Shaina,

[00:23:58] Cause you know, our team in, in Shadstone, actually we have the, we have our, a writing team, our content team, you know, you also help with the content. So we have this amazing content. We can take care of all of the listing, all of the, all of the product details. You know, Luciano’s got our amazing branding.

[00:24:15] We have traffic, we have Amazon going. So the opportunity for people listening is it’s your own company, right? We can also help you opening the company if you need it, or you can do it by yourself, but the sales goes to your account. And then we cooperate together in this blimp method. And so the URL is globalfromasia.com/blimp.

[00:24:35] -story. So this is going to be the first and we can have people check out these links, right? Shana. Yeah. I’m sure they will check that out. Yeah. So there’s also a webinar we’re going to do at the end of the month. Meir was also going to be a guest on this show, but we’re going to save that for an upcoming episode.

[00:24:53] Maybe next, next episode, will be Meir to talk about, he’s the mastermind behind the whole brand licensing programs and he has some software he’s working on. So maybe, maybe Shaina you could also help with hosting that. We didn’t get that in, in time. We’re trying to get them both because the idea actually was have Luciano and Meir in today’s episode, but we couldn’t get Meir in time.

[00:25:14] So we’re going to have him probably on upcoming show to share people. Hopefully I can host that one. Yeah. Let’s make it happen. That’s what we do here in our community. We make things happen and thank everybody for listening and enjoy the holiday season for everybody. I think we have one more show. It will be on the 28th.

[00:25:35] So it will be after the Christmas holiday. Of course not everybody might celebrate Christmas, but yeah, it’s always a fun time. Hope Santa Claus takes good care everybody with or without a Christmas tree, you know, I know. We both don’t have Christmas trees in our house. I think Santa’s still comes.  I can relate to that. All right.

[00:25:57] So thank you everybody. And thank you Shaina. To get more info about running an international business. Please visit our website at www.globalfromasia.com. That’s www.globalfromasia.com. Also be sure to subscribe to our iTunes feed. Thanks for tuning in.