Who is Louise?

Meet Louise Fritjofsson, Co-Founder and CEO of Martie!

About Martie

Martie is a food brand that hopes to eliminate the overwhelming number of food insecurity in the U.S. by providing overstock products at affordable prices. At Martie, customers can save up to 40-70% off with each purchase. The company works with brand partners to buy excess inventory and sells it at a significantly lower rate, making the wide range of products accessible for everyone.

Louise’s Journey

Louise has been in the e-commerce space for 19 years, and Martie is her fourth company.

Back then, it was a very different world, she explains. Louise worked in dropshipping, but it didn’t have a name at the time. While we have Shopify now, 19 years ago, there were only clunky, hard-to-understand platforms that tried to help aspiring companies understand e-commerce.

There weren't easy payment platforms, and then, people were hesitant to use their credit cards to purchase products online. Overall, it was a very different part of the business that entrepreneurs were focusing their energy on.

Crafting the Company

Since then, Louise has built app networks and tech companies. Ten years ago, she realized that she wants to work with companies who specialize in making people healthier.

Because 40 million Americans are food insecure and 9 million of them are children. Creating accessible pathways to feed your family and do it sustainably comes at a higher cost. With Martie, Louise hopes to make groceries more affordable, accessible, and sustainable.

“How can we democratize sustainability and make sure that by saving money, you’re doing something great for the environment? That’s essentially what we’re doing with Martie,” she says.

The Martie Team

Martie began at the heels of COVID, so they began building a remote team right out of the gate. The team is composed of 7 people primarily based in California, and they try to meet with each other every three weeks. 

For a remote team to work, Louise explains, you have to make sure the team gets together every now and then. It’s also important to have the right tools and the right culture for the team to thrive.

Managing a Remote Team

The team relies on Slack to maintain the high level of communication that is essential to a remote team’s success. Everyone must be keyed in to the conversation so they know what’s going and they don’t feel left out.

Like any other company, the team uses the same tools, but in a different way so they are effective for everyone. Upholding cultural values in the workplace is crucial to create a successful remote team. 

One cultural value for her team is API — assume positive intent. Because her team is small and the company brings in significant revenue, everyone wears a lot of hats. The team sends each other short messages because everyone is so busy, so it’s important not to take it personally.

“We make it very clear to assume positive intent,” she says. “API is our core value, and if there’s an issue or problem, transparency is our second value.”

The CX Philosophy at Martie

Every time you come to Martie you should feel like you’re winning.

Every customer that shops at Martie will save money on their groceries. On average, customers save $54 per cart. 

The company wants customers to adopt a fun and positive state of mind while shopping with them. Martie takes overstock at grocery stores and sells them at great prices. For customers, it’s always a bargain.

The team experiments with ways that encourage the customer mindset. When customers add an item to the cart, it prompts a burst of confetti and tells the customer how much they saved on the product. Illustrations and icons on the website are also fun and engaging.

“We really think a lot about the idea of experience,” she says. “It’s fun, family-friendly, super affordable, but most people think it’s modern and looks fine. That’s kind of the pathway we’re on to — [becoming] a modern, fun and engaging brand that customers are proud to shop with. They’re proud because they’re doing something great for the environment and [the products] are affordable and high-quality.”

Going the Extra Mile

Louise wants to continue providing successful customer service for every person, but it can be difficult for smaller companies that are experiencing a lot of growth. The Martie team uses AI to leverage the growing amount of customer tickets and requests, which allows the company to continuously improve.

At Martie, customer success involves building a core relationship with VIP customers. The company provides white glove service, and Louise would like to send emails to different groups of customers to understand where the gaps are in between the company’s goals and the overall customer experience. This type of feedback is valuable for a company to continuously improve

Fostering Innovation

In the near future, the Martie team will continue innovating and come up with new ways to engage the audience. Louise has fun ideas for apps that have entertainment-based functionalities. The company launched a mobile app six months ago, and it already has more than 40% of users on the platform. Sixty percent of Martie’s revenue is app-based, so it’s important to take heed of its success.

Louise explains that an app’s tools can create a personalized experience for each customer, which in turn increases customer retention. 

Based on the company’s data, it’s apparent that the future is mobile. Eighty-five percent of the company’s web traffic comes from mobile devices. 

Because of this surge in the app’s popularity, Louise wants to use polls to gauge what customers would like to see from the company moving forward and add more innovative and entertaining features. An app is the perfect platform for Martie to do these things.

Tracking Company Growth

Louise started tracking the company’s healthy unit economics around August and September last year. In that position, a start-up company can begin focusing on growth. 

Martie spends a small amount on paid marketing, but Louise emphasizes that a company should build its own media channels to grow through. After working with Meta and seeing other successful companies flounder after partnering with them, Louise’s goal was to create a channel that the team had full control over.

The company values word-of-mouth and PR. They try to find growth in a more natural and easily-controlled way. 

Martie also uses a Refer-a-Friend platform, which provides an incentive for customers to save more and help the company grow. Additionally, the company relies on organic SEO, which can be achieved through backlinks and affiliate partnerships, and secures commercials during local news segments.

Martie’s Growth Strategies

The Martie team spent a lot of time planning for eventual growth in its operations department. Louise explains that Martie’s growth wasn’t a surprise because the company was meeting its milestones and forecasts along the way! 

With this growth, the company has been able to expand and receive more support. Currently, Martie is building an offshore team that will help Martie continue on its steady incline of success. In addition to the company’s core team, the company also has the extra help of four offshore support professionals based in the Philippines who assist with customer support and product onboarding. 

Having ample support is key for the company, Louise mentions. Additionally, she and the Martie team want to be forward-thinking and identify what the company will need as it continues to grow in the future. 

“It’s really easy with growth when you're just like getting stuck [and] not planning… because growth is so fast,” she says, “but if growth is expected and you're actually working on the business — what it's going to need and what it's going to look like in a month from now — in that way you can sustain yourself and get ahead of the curve.”

This is also a very important practice for a company that is on track for major growth. Because Martie is shipping hundreds of thousands of products on a regular basis, planning ahead helps the company stay ahead of the game. There is a risk and reward to this as well — planning ahead helps growing companies benefit from eventual growth, but a founder needs to take a risk and believe that this type of growth can be achieved.

Advice for Entrepreneurs

Louise tells other e-commerce entrepreneurs to talk to other leaders in the industry. Asking the right questions is hard, so leaders should identify what their challenges are and then reach out to founders, investors, and former CEOs who have done something similar and can give great advice.

“Get really good at asking questions and figuring out who could give good advice so that you can collect a ton of data before you get out there,” she says. “Find someone who’s tried and kind of succeeded in something similar… Get their learnings now. If you learn that skill, it’s a huge unlock in life.”

kill to ask good questions, it's a huge unlock for lif