Ray Hua is the director of ecommerce at Vessi, a Canada-based direct-to-consumer seller of waterproof sneakers. The brand launched in 2017 after its founders developed and patented breathable fabric that repels water. Ray joined the company in 2021.
In our recent conversation, he shared the challenges of targeting the right audience, cross-border selling, diversifying, and more.
Our entire audio is embedded below. The transcript is edited for length and clarity.
Eric Bandholz: Give us a quick rundown of who you are and what you do.
Ray Hua: I’m the director of ecommerce at Vessi, a direct-to-consumer waterproof sneaker brand. I oversee strategies for site experiences, performance, merchandising, and lifecycle marketing. It’s been with the company for about five years.
Vessie launched nine years ago. Our founders developed and patented a lightweight, waterproof, and breathable fabric called Dyma-tex. People assume waterproof means it is not breathable. But our product is comfortable and looks like a regular sneaker.
During the pandemic, we gifted our product to healthcare workers. We received a lot of positive feedback from other communities, so we collaborated with niche networks to offer our products at a discount.
We’ve hired a lot of paid influencers in categories where folks are on their feet all day. We have tiers of influencers. Some have dedicated landing pages; others are for getting our name out.
We invest heavily in Meta for customer acquisition. We’re looking to diversify into Google and TikTok Shop. We’ve advertised on TikTok and even Reddit. Both drove a lot of traffic, but the quality was not very high. We couldn’t easily attribute revenue coming from those channels.
Bandholz: Vessi now sells apparel.
Hua: It’s more of an experiment in response to feedback in our customer surveys. Many mentioned expanding into apparel, socks, and accessories. They like our technology and want items that are fashionable and functional.
So we’re testing those categories for additional revenue. It hasn’t been smooth. We developed apparel that performed poorly and diverted resources from our footwear line.
Still, it was a good experiment and demonstrated the steep learning curve for a category we are not familiar with.
Bandholz: Vessi has warehouses in Canada and the U.S. Do you market differently to consumers in those countries?
Hua: Yes, we use different ads for each market. People in Canada know our brand. Our messaging to them is typically announcements about dropping new colors or limited editions.
We’re not as prominent in the U.S. Our ads there introduce the brand and explain the product’s benefits. Seattle is probably our best region in the U.S. It’s close to Vancouver and gets a lot of rain. We’re also strong in Florida, however, which is both sunny and rainy.
Bandholz: Does AI influence your marketing efforts?
Hua: We’re using AI tools mostly for operations. For example, we use AI to identify influencers aligned with our interests.
We’ve dabbled in AI to produce ad copy. We haven’t gone into AI-generated images or videos, mainly because we have strict brand guidelines.
Bandholz: Where can people find you, support you, buy your products?
Hua: Check out our products at Vessi.com. I’m on LinkedIn.
