Five minutes. That's how long it took Laura Davies to agree a deal to buy Scandiborn, a competitor three times the size of her own business. Making it work took the next two years.

Richard Hill sits down with Laura, founder of The Kid Collective, whose story starts 18 years ago in a spare room selling reusable nappies, learning eCommerce from online forums with no maternity leave.

When her loyal community kept moving on after 18 months, she launched The Kid Collective to keep them longer, tested what stuck and landed on toys. After the eco market crashed post-Covid, Laura sold the nappy brand, went all in, and in May 2024 acquired Scandiborn. In July 2025, both businesses moved into one warehouse over a single weekend, with zero web downtime.

This isn't a polished success story. Their first joint peak "hit us like a ton of bricks." The backlog passed 8,000 orders, stock had nowhere to go and paid marketing had to be scaled back. Laura's line in the sand was every Christmas order out by 22 December without a single cancellation and they did it.

Richard and Laura also dig into choosing which brand partners to go all in on, why the Nuremberg Toy Fair matters every January, merging two teams onto Shopify without losing the culture, and how two brands in one market avoid cannibalising each other, from pricing to Meta strategy.

If you're weighing up an acquisition, running more than one brand or bracing for an untested peak, this one is packed with hard-won lessons.

Listen to the full episode now, and don't forget to hit subscribe.

Topics Covered

00:00 Introduction: Laura Davies, The Kid Collective and Scandiborn

01:10 Choosing which brand partners to go all in on, exclusives and the Nuremberg Toy Fair

07:00 From reusable nappies in the spare room to launching The Kid Collective

09:50 Buying Scandiborn, three times the size, in five minutes, and merging into one warehouse

14:30 The first joint peak: an 8,000+ order backlog and the 22 December deadline

18:50 Migrating to Shopify Plus and structuring teams without losing the culture

22:30 Fast-fire round and the Rainbows Hospice fundraising partnership

28:45 Running two brands: SEO, paid media, pricing and avoiding cannibalisation

36:20 What's next: range expansion and moving beyond a flat structure

38:20 Book recommendation and where to find Laura

Richard Hill sits down with Roger Dooley, the behavioural science author and neuromarketing expert behind Brainfluence, Friction and his latest book The Persuasion Engine. He unpacks why 95% of purchase decisions happen below the level of conscious thought and what that means for how eCommerce brands sell, price and design their checkout.

Roger walks through the research behind non-conscious buying triggers, including a countdown timer test that lifted conversion by 15% simply by creating urgency. He shares the JCPenney story of what happened when former CEO Ron Johnson stripped out discounts in favour of “everyday fair pricing”. Disclosure, sales collapsed within three quarters, the company nearly went bankrupt, and the old markdown strategy was reinstated almost overnight.

From there the conversation turns to friction, including Amazon's one-click ordering patent, the legal fight with Barnes & Noble that followed, and Steve Jobs paying Amazon $1 million just to license one click for the original iTunes Store. Richard also brings in a live example from an eComOne client, where removing guest checkout in favour of forced account creation quietly killed conversions on low-value orders.

This isn't a polished highlight reel of marketing hacks. It's a genuinely practical breakdown of where eCommerce brands are losing sales without realising it, from pricing pages that anchor on the wrong number, to product pages stuffed with logical features and missing the emotional cues that actually move people to buy.

Along the way, Roger and Richard cover a wide range of themes including, how AI tracking tools can now show exactly where customers look on a page for the cost of a coffee, what actually makes a testimonial credible, the psychology of price colour and anchoring, and a live experiment showing that AI-written customer messages were rated more empathetic than human-written ones, until people knew which was which.

Roger also shares the lesson in trust and community he took from co-founding College Confidential and a sobering AI case study involving a Starbucks Korea promotion that went badly wrong.

If you're running a scaling eCommerce brand and want to understand exactly why customers hesitate, what actually gets them to act, and how to make the buying journey easier without giving away margin, this episode is packed with actionable insights.

Listen to the full episode now, and don't forget to hit subscribe.

Topics Covered

00:00 – Cold open: friction vs persuasion, pricing psychology

02:33 – 95% of decisions are unconscious (Zaltman's research)

04:23 – Buying psychology across machinery, fragrance and apparel

06:04 – Countdown timer test: +15% conversion

07:59 – The JCPenney story: killing the markdowns

10:19 – Why "friction" is eCommerce's most important word

10:42 – Amazon's one-click patent, Barnes & Noble, and Jobs' $1M payout

12:55 – How Amazon made returns a loyalty weapon

17:43 – The guest checkout mistake costing a client conversions now

18:38 – Inside The Persuasion Engine's "neuromarketing 2.0"

21:23 – AI eye-tracking: predicting where customers look

21:38 – Roger's own invisible CTA fix

23:54 – AI eye-tracking tools: Feng Gui, Neurons Inc, Expose.io

25:16 – Levelling up social proof beyond star ratings

27:39 – Borrowing authority: when a logo does the selling

29:05 – Pricing psychology: red tags and anchoring

33:08 – Quickfire round

36:16 – What College Confidential taught Roger about trust

38:03 – Roger's 3-year AI/eCommerce prediction

38:59 – Starbucks Korea's "Tank Day," and the AI empathy audit fix

41:41 – Book rec: Cialdini's Influence

“There’s only so many times the director can put Michael Caine on the floor on a freezing cold day in Shoreditch.” If you want to understand this quote from episode 233, give it a listen.

Richard Hill sits down with Ben Grass, founder of Grass & Co., to explore the journey of building a wellness brand that started in the CBD space and has boldly transitioned into the booming world of functional mushrooms and drinks.

Ben Grass reveals the behind-the-scenes realities of getting stocked in over 1,500 UK stores, shares practical tips for securing and maintaining major retail listings, and opens up about navigating regulatory hurdles in an evolving industry.

The conversation also delves into Grass & Co.'s international expansion attempts, the operational challenges of scaling up, and why strong products and authentic brand positioning outweigh chasing trends.

Rounding out the episode are insights from Ben Grass's unique career journey, from producing films with legends like Michael Caine to innovating in the world of wellness. Whether you're an eCommerce entrepreneur, aspiring retailer, or wellness enthusiast, this episode is packed with actionable advice and inspiring stories.

Topics Covered:

00:00 - Ben Grass on scaling retail brands

04:55 - Launching initial CBD product lines

10:44 - Getting into Holland Barrett

12:41 - Improving in-store product communication

16:49 - Managing Cash Flow Challenges

17:59 - Entering the Chinese market

21:15 - Testing the German market

25:10 - Challenges of Movie Financing

30:47 - Discussing CBD regulations challenges

32:52 - Navigating regulatory challenges in marketing

36:23 - The "Touching Grass" campaign

39:28 - Expanding drinks distribution and innovation

42:31 - Ending and subscribe reminder

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